#and the ultra specific dollar bill thing....)

[nenoname]

opening up tbob for the first time in a while and then losing my shit cos this is the first thing i see

[five-rivers]

Pretty in Pink (and Other Colors)

For @jadenoryuu!

.

A ghost watched Amity Park.  Specifically, he watched a group of five teenagers walk down a street.  He watched not from up close, not from down the street, or from one of the buildings lining it, but from far, far away, through a ghost-powered device that could see through both space and time, and which could even allow a properly-prepared traveler to pass through it to the place and time it showed.  

In his right hand, the ghost carried a staff.  In his left, he held a wrinkled and creased hundred dollar bill.  He drummed his fingers on the haft of his staff, but was otherwise still.  Watching.  Waiting.  

Then, when the teenagers had reached a position remarkable only to the ghost, he reached out and dropped the bill.  It fell through the time screen and drifted gently to the ground in front of the teenagers.  

The tallest teen, a blonde, noticed it and stooped to pick it up, grinning at his companions all the while.  In the ghost’s lair, other time screens turned to static, flickered, and then turned back on, showing very different scenes.  

The ghost smiled.  “Perhaps this is not the way it was meant to be,” he said, tilting his head to look at the other screens, “but it will be amusing, nonetheless.”

.

“... was bright pink.  And that's why my allowance was cut off, so I can't bring my usual to the party,” explained Dash.  His usual was beer, obtained through an acquaintance who didn’t care much about the legalities involved.  And who, admittedly, thought Dash was two years older than he actually was.  

“Lame,” said Valerie. 

“Extremely lame,” agreed Star.

“Next level is actively pathetic, Dash, and you don’t want to go there,” said Paulina.  “Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.” 

“Well, I should have been able to deliver, it’s not my fault.”  He kicked at the sidewalk, then paused, spotting something on the ground.  “Oh, nice!”  He picked a bill up off the ground and waved it over his head.  “The party is back on!”

“The party was never off,” said Valerie, rolling her eyes.  “Just the drinking part, which I can’t do, anyway.”

“Aw,” said Paulina, jostling Valerie playfully.  “Why not?  Did you become Mormon or something?  Ultra-orthodox super-protestant Christian something or other?”

“Ew, no,” said Valerie.  “But my dad wants me home at a ‘reasonable time,’ he will be sitting up waiting for me, and he has a breathalyzer.”

“Why does he even have one of those?” asked Kwan.  “I mean, I know the school has one for prom and stuff.”

“He used it for work, back when he was just building up the company.  There was an incident where some of his guys showed up drunk for work.  That just makes it grosser, though.  It’s used.”

“Bleh,” said Star and Paulina simultaneously, before breaking out into giggles.

“Bet it’s still, like, full of spit.  Old guy spit,” said Paulina.  

“Ewww,” said Star.  “That’s so gross.”

“Laugh all you want, but I’ll be the only one who can ride my bike in a straight line by the end of the night.”

“Hey, I can just walk home,” said Dash.  

“Sleepover time,” sang Paulina, throwing an arm around Star’s shoulders.  

“Yeah!  We can have a guys sleepover, too, right, Kwan?”

“Uhhh,” said Kwan.  “I’ve actually gotta go home, too.”

“What,” said Dash, “now?”

“No, like, I mean, I have to go home early.  Mom wants me to take school seriously now that I’m in high school, which means, uh, sleep schedules.  You know.”

“Oh, bummer,” said Dash.  “Hope she lightens up.  It’s not like we’re seniors.”

“Yeah, man, me too.”

They continued down the street for a while longer, until Dash and Kwan split off to meet up with Dash’s ‘buddy’ and the girls went shopping for somewhat less illegal things, like makeup.  

They met up again at Paulina’s house.  Of course, they weren’t the only ones coming to the party.  All the cool kids were.  But, even as freshmen, Paulina, Dash, Valerie, Star, and Kwan were the coolest of the cool.  

And, as such, they were there the longest, long after other guests had left, and got the best perks.  Like Dash’s haul.  And the no-holds-barred truth or dare game.  

Dash climbed out of the pool and clambered over to where his friends were lounging. “See?  I told you wusses that I could make it in from the roof.”  He sat back down and spun the bottle sitting on its side between them.  

The bottle spun and spun, and eventually stopped pointing at Paulina.  “Ooh,” said Paulina.  “My turn, my turn.  So, Valerie, truth or dare?”

“Mhm,” said Valerie, looking at her watch.  “Make it dare and make it quick.  I’ve got to go, soon.”

“Okay, so.”  Paulina squared her shoulders and leaned towards Valerie.  “I dare you to… take a shot.”

“Uh, no,” said Valerie.  She stood up.  And with that, it’s time for me to go.”

“Nooo, Val, that’s so lame!” said Star.  “So super lame.”

“Very lame, Val.  You can’t break the sacred bond of truth and dare.” 

“The sacred bond was broken as soon as you asked me to do something that would get me grounded literally forever.  So.  Hey, Kwan.  Kwan.”  She nudged Kwan with her foot.

“Let a guy sleep,” said Dash.  

“He said he wanted to go early.”

“If he tried to bike home now, he’d crash,” said Star.  “Like, look at him.  Dead to the world.  Totally out of it.”

“He can stay, my dad isn’t back until the day after tomorrow.  What he doesn’t know, he won’t care about.  Probably safer that way.”

“Guess you can explain that to Kean when he gets grounded forever,” said Valerie.  “Later guys.  Call me if you need help with clean-up.  I know the name of a service that works fast.”  She took one last look around the back yard, and walked out.  

“Later, girl!” called Paulina.  “So, Star, truth or dare?”

“Hey, wait, you already went,” said Dash.  

“And the one I picked bailed.  I deserve another shot.”

“Let’s just spin the bottle again,” said Star.  “It’ll probably just land on you again anyway, right?  There’s three of us, so that’s, like, three halves.  Two thirds?  Ugh, geez, I can’t do math while I’m duck.  Drunk.  God.  Just spin it, Pauli.”

“Whatever,” said Paulina.  Pouting, she spun the bottle.  It went around and around and around… And landed on her again.  “Okay, so, Star.  Truth or dare?”

“Ughh,” said Star.  “Truth, I guess.”

“You’ve done truth every time,” complained Dash.  “Pick something new.  Pick dare.”

“No,” said Star.

“Dare, dare, dare, dare, dare,” chanted Paulina.

“You’re awful.  I don’t know why I’m friend of you.  With you.  Whatever.  God.  Fine.  Dare.”

“Okay, so… I dare you to… lick Kwan.”

“Oh, gross.  Oh my God.  You’re disgusting.”

“Do it!”

“It’s not like your tongue’s never been on him.”

“Ewwww.  Don’t say that.  You’re such a weirdo.”  Still, she got up on her knees and crawled over to Kwan.  “Such a weirdo.  Weirdest weirdo.  How do you even think of this?”  She leaned down and just barely touched her tongue to his forehead.  “Ew, ew, ew, totally gross.  He’s all sweaty.  Stop laughing, you weirdos.”

“Hey, hey,” said Dash.  “I obj- obje– I don’t like that.  Don’t say we’re the weirdest weirdos.  There’s like.  So many weirdos out there.”

“Yeah, name one,” said Star.  “Just one weirder weirdo than you, weirdo.  Weirdo.  That’s such a weird word.”

“Fine.  Fenderbender.”

“Who?” asked Star, squinting.

“Fenderbender.  Fentanyl.  Fentonail.  Fentina.  Fentodor.  Fentertainment.”

“Wait, Fenton?  Way to go for the low hanging fruit.”

“You calli-calling me a fruit?”

“You did say just one, Starlight,” said Paulina.  “He is weird.  His whole family is weird.  And he looks at me funny.”

“He looks at you like he has a crush on you, Pauli.  Like, every boy looks at you like that.”

“Yeah, but he’s super creepy about it.  He’s all scrawny and greasy, and he’s always got, like, green slime on him, and his shouty parents and his annoying sister.  What’s their deal anyway?”

“Ghosts,” said Dash.  “They’re like, freaking ghosts.  Ghost hunters.”

“Well, yeah, but beyond that, even.  Ghosts could be cool.  Those programs make cash, y’know?  But they’re, like, super crazy, and they have a super weird basement or whatever.  Spin already, Star.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it, Pauli.”  She spun the bottle around.  “Ooh, Dash, you go.”

“Okay, okay.  So, weirdos.  Pauli.  Whatcha gonna pick?”

Paulina took another swig of beer.  “Dare,” she said.  

“Dare.  I’ve got a great one.  I dare you.  Paulina Sanchez.  To break into the Fenton’s house.”

“Oh my God, Dash.  For real.  You can’t ask Pauli to do something illegal.”

“Well, you could always wimp out like freaking– Like Val.  You gonna wimp, Pauli?”

Paulina glared at him.  “Who do you think I am?  I’m not going to fall for some peer– peer pressure, like, you know, the after school special.  You think I’m going to fall for that?”

“So, you’re gonna wimp?”

Star giggled.  “I gotta say, I’m curious.”

“Stop saying that.  You’re such losers.”  She took another drink.  “Okay, okay, I’ll do it.”

Dash cheered raucously.

“I’ll do it,” said Paulina.  “But you’ve– you’ve got to come with me.  Like, to witness.”

“But we’ve– we’ve gotta get there first,” said Star.  “It’s, like, hours away.”

“It’s thirty minutes tops,” said Paulina.  “And we can get a cab.”

“Not if we’re breaking in.  That’s like, criminal one-oh-one, Pauli.  No witnesses.”

Fine,” said Paulina.  “We walk.  Whatever.  The freaking- The things I do for you.  Wow.  Incredible.”  She got to her feet.  “Okay.  Onward!  To the weird ghost hunter basement raid.”

The three teens made their stumbling way out of the house and down the street.  

“Are you sure this is the way?” asked Star, squinting at one of the signs. 

“Absolutely,” said Dash.  “Followed Fenfreak enough.”

“This is way more than half an hour,” said Star.  “This is boring.”

“But it’ll be so exciting at the end,” said Paulina.  “Like, we’ll be spies.”

“This street,” said Dash.  “Totally.  This street.”

“Oh, wow,” said Paulina, after they turned the corner.  “Don’t know how we missed that.  Jesus.”

“Is that a freaking spaceship?” asked Star.  “Or, no.  Hell.  It’s a- a–  What do you call it?  Broadcast tower.  Freaking hell.”

“Yeah, wow,” said Paulina.  

“Hey, who wants to be the whack jobs don’t lock their front door?” asked Dash.  He ran up to the door, yanked on the handle, and… it opened.  

“Wild,” said Star, slinking closer.  “I’d’ve thought there was, like, a trap or something.”

Paulina stayed on the sidewalk.  Now that they were here, it all seemed…  Bigger.  Scarier.  They were breaking into someone’s house.  They could get into serious trouble for this.  

But Dash was already going in.  Paulina steeled herself and followed.  Star clung to her side.  

The Fentons’ house felt… small.  Dark.  Dirty.  And there were weird sounds everywhere.  Like, snoring and boards squeaking, and was that awful drone their fridge?  She halfway felt as if every move she made would set off something.  

“Hey,” whispered Dash, loudly.  “I think I found the basement!”

He had.  There was a creepy metal door in the kitchen, and when they opened it, it led to stairs, going down to a faintly green darkness.

“Do we really need to go down there?” asked Star.  

“Well, yeah, duh,” said Dash.  “Duh.”

“You didn’t need to say it twice, Dash.  That’s lame.”  Paulina stalked downstairs with as much dignity as she could muster.  She was maybe a bit tipsy.  Then almost had a heart attack when Dash turned on the light.  “What the hell, Dash?”

“They’re not down here, they’re not going to see.”

“Whatever,” said Paulina, flipping her hair.  She looked around.  “Wow, they went super mad scientist down here.”  There were steel lab tables and bubbling vials.  There were computers and wires.  There were hot plates and bits of disassembled household appliances.  There were things Paulina couldn’t even begin to identify. 

And it was all incredibly gross.  And messy.  There was goo.  

“Y’know,” said Star, “some of this stuff is actually, like, high-end.  Like, serious money.  Do you think Fenton’s actually rich?”

“Not a chance,” said Paulina.  “Even if he were, it wouldn’t matter.  He’d still suck.  Him and his catty little nerd friends.”

“Hey, where d’you think this tunnel goes?” asked Dash.  “Like, are these freaks holding– Not holding.  Drilling?  Drilling to China?  Freaks.”  He laughed to himself.  “Freaking freaks.”

“Wow, you are plastered if you think that’s funny,” said Star.  

“Whatever, shut up.  Hey, Pauli!  Dare you to go down here’n’ see what’s on the other end!”

Paulina walked over to look down the dark and foreboding tunnel.  It was full of electrical wire and metal hoops.  “Maybe they’re skimming off the grid or something,” she said.  “Or trading drugs.  That’d be a break in the cliches.  A Mexican finding the nice, eccentric white nuclear family is dealing drugs.”  She looked over at Dash.  “After this, we go.  Quietly.”

“Yeah, yeah, just go on in, for this win.  You’ve got to do more than us, yeah?  You’re the one who got the dare.”

“Whatever, Dash.”  She walked up to the threshold and looked around in distaste.  “God, they’re so freaking weird.”  She stepped over and started walking back, picking her way through the tangled wires.  

She shouldn’t have worn heels, but she’d wanted to look cute.  Maybe that shouldn’t have been her first priority when sneaking into someone’s house, but, like, what else was she supposed to do?  She was just naturally cute.  Like, for real.

Whatever.

She slipped.  

And the world came apart. 

[rainydawgradioblog]

Interview: Guerilla Toss - 09/26 @ the Vera Project

Guerilla Toss is a NYC-based experimental rock / synthpop / psychedelic / post-funk / prog-whatever / everything in between band signed to DFA records who is currently touring all throughout the continental US. This past Saturday, before their show with Calvin Johnson and Behavior at the Vera Project, my friend Anna and I were graciously invited into their tour van decked out with psychedelic decorations to chat with vocalist Kassie Carlson and hang out with her internet-famous Chow-Chow Watley. Enjoy the interview and catch them in these cities in the coming weeks!

Elliott: Hey! Thanks for taking the time to talk to me! How are you doing?

Kassie: Good, good! Just got done with soundcheck.

Elliott: Cool! How far into your tour are you guys at this point?

Kassie: Not that far actually, we’ve only done four dates or something, but we drove out here.

Elliott: That’s a long drive.

Anna: You guys just did Salt Lake, right?

Kassie: Yup, Diabolical Records. We were just in Portland, then Vancouver, then here.

Elliott: Cool, enough talking like a normal person, I’m gonna ask you a bunch of convoluted questions now. First of all, this bill is kind of wild, Calvin Johnson is another one of my favorite artists. How did this show come together? Are you guys big K Records fans?

Calvin Johnson and band opening the show.

Kassie: Calvin actually played at our light and projections person’s record store in Macon, GA. So that’s how we made the connection, and Calvin was really interested in coming here!

Watley gets up and walks around.

Elliott: Hi Watley!

Kassie: Sit! Watley…

Elliott: Have you had any other particularly cool openers this tour so far, or in recent memory?

Kassie: Well, the other opener tonight is Behavior, a couple members of Wand, the drummer and guitarist, so I’m really excited about that!

Elliott: Nice, I just saw Wand open for Stereolab!

Kassie: Cool, yeah, it’s an epic bill.

Elliott: I’m excited! I also noticed last time I saw you guys, you busted out a violin which was a bit unexpected but really cool! Are there any other instruments members play that you would maybe want to use on Guerilla Toss stuff?

Kassie: I also recently got an OP-1, which has been cool to experiment with. There’s lots of sounds, and this guy Cuckoo on Patreon puts a lot of samples for the OP-1 online for super cheap, like you can buy stuff for a dollar. He always puts up new stuff, so I’ve been getting down that rabbit hole, but yeah! I’ll be playing it tonight, it should be fun!

Anna: That’s a difficult purchase to make these days! Those things are not easy to come by.

Kassie: Yeah, me and the drummer split it. And we got it on eBay or something, it was used.

Anna: Those things are great.

Elliott: I’ve also heard you guys like to do band hikes. I also interviewed your friends Palberta on Rainy Dawg a while ago…

Watley steps on voice recorder, and tries to get out of the van door.

Kassie: Watley!

Elliott: Haha! Anyway… Palberta told me they bring a rice cooker and camp every night on tour. Are there any other activities people typically forgo on tour that you like to make time for?

Kassie: Yeah, we just went to Moab on this tour, to the arches. It’s good to get out of the van and stretch your legs a bit. That was fun. It’s cool to drive around, sometimes there’s not time to do the hiking thing, but we took some days off this time around so we’re not in the car for 8 hours. It’s good for morale.

Anna: Moab especially, it’s so nice.

Kassie: Yeah I’d never been, so it was cool to make it out there.

Elliott: So, it feels lately like vocals being more forefront in recent material, that the music is driven more by lyrics and melody. I got into you guys via Gay Disco, but my favorite of yours is GT Ultra. It feels like my experience as a listen has changed a lot, you cover a lot of ground in that there’s different ways to enjoy Guerilla Toss as a listener. Do you feel like your writing process has significantly changed?

Kassie: Well we’ve mostly just been shifting things around and trying different things to keep it fresh. It’s lots of fun, yeah!

Elliott: And about writing stuff, I know you’re very into jamming, you improv a lot live. Does writing material ever come out of that?

Kassie: We mostly just improv between songs. They’re all through-composed, and all have parts that are pretty specific. Sometimes we’ll write songs by jamming for a few hours, but a lot of the time, say Peter (drummer) will come in with a part of a song, or a skeleton of a song, or even a full song, which is how it’s mostly been lately, and then I’ll put some vocals on it, and we’ll try different things, different instrumentation.

Anna: Are there any members that bring more in terms of song structure?

Kassie: Definitely Peter brings the most, but I do all the vocals, everyone does their respective parts.

Elliott: Cool! Do you have a particular favorite piece of gear? Anything that might have inspired a song or a moment in a song?

Kassie: Yeah, I have a red Boss V-20 vocal pedal, that I use a lot and I really like. I use it for harmonies, there’s chorus on there, there’s delay and reverb, harmonies and doubling. I feel like it just helps my voice feel a lot thicker and more present, you know. It gives me more control over my sound. A lot of the time in venues, especially DIY venues, it can get buried. And also I want to be more true to the recording, like in “Betty Dreams of Green Men,” there’s those harmonies that come in off and on, so I use the pedal to create that harmony.

Anna: And what you said about DIY shows, getting sounds that are accurate. Do you play a lot of stuff like that now?

Kassie: No, not as much lately. But even in bars and stuff, it can be tough. We don’t travel with a sound person, we’re not playing stadiums.

Anna: Is that a shift that you miss at all?

Kassie: Not really. I like being able to hear myself when I sing, so it doesn’t hurt my voice as much. Of course I love the vibe of DIY venues but there’s good things in the middle, where your friends from DIY shows will come, but it won’t get shut down, and we have money for gas and stuff like that.

Elliott: Gas money is definitely important.

Trucks passing by.

Kassie: Watley’s scared of the trucks…

Elliott: So I have a question that’s part fun fact, part question. Your Wikipedia page, where it says you encourage tapers at your show, it used to say you encouraged tapirs, like the weird little animal. It was a typo but it actually linked to the tapir page!

Kassie: Oh weird! I didn’t notice but that is sick.

Elliott: Yeah, someone actually linked it to the page!

Kassie: That’s awesome!

Elliott: So that got me thinking, there probably haven’t been many tapirs at Guerilla Toss shows, but I think it would be sick! What sort of animals would you want to see at a Guerilla Toss shows? Also, these hypothetical animals have all the hypothetical ear protection they need.

Kassie: A lot more chows! We also really like otters. We were talking a lot during our soundcheck about snails. So snails would be cool. Snails all over the place. But really animal would be interesting!

Anna: Species-inclusive venue!

Kassie: Yeah! Oh, and bison, Watley loves bison. A few cows. He loves cows, he’s always looking at me like “Mom, did you see that? Woah, look there’s cows!” Yeah, good boy!

Elliott: Does Watley have a favorite Guerilla Toss song? Is he gonna get a feature anytime soon?

Kassie: He might actually, yeah!

Anna: A bark sample, that must be fun to work with on the OP-1! 

Kassie: Yeah, that’s one of the many things that are on my to-do list for sure.

Elliott: Hell yeah, I’m stoked for that whenever it happens. You guys seem to have a lot of collabs, one-off releases, live albums, splits and stuff. Do you usually come into those thinking “we’re gonna write an album” or just a song, or working with somebody, or is your writing process usually the same for those?

Kassie: We usually just create a whole album, we only did that one split with the Sediment Club. The live album was a cool project, that was completely live, we recorded it in Nashville.

Elliott: You also have that remix album with Jay Glass Dubs?

Kassie: Oh yeah, that was just a DFA thing, he totally did that himself.

Elliott: Cool! So visuals are clearly an important part of Guerilla Toss, I was wondering if you look at these different forms of visuals in the same way, like do you tie in live projections, music videos, album art or do you view them separately?

Kassie: They’re kinda separate. Lots of different people do our album art. Keith Rankin did a few, the most recent one was by someone named Yu Maeda, and before that was Jacob van Loon, he did Twisted Crystal. And then GT Ultra is actually acid strips from the 70s.

Anna: That one was a particularly cool design. Do you mostly reach out to the artists to do the art?

Kassie: Thank you! And yeah, it’s usually something they already have done that we use, but a couple of the ones from Keith Rankin were commissions.

Elliott: Cool! So, I feel like your albums tend to have a coherent sonic palette, but they cover a lot of ground as far as the songs go. Do you come into recording an album with a bunch of songs you’ve written or do you write specifically for an album?

Kassie: I think Peter is pretty much always writing music, and we already have new music we’re working on for after What Would The Odd Do, so it’s just kind of a constant stream of stuff, lots of never-ending recording and never-ending writing.

Elliott: Cool, well I didn’t write anything else down.

Kassie: Alright! Any other random questions?

Elliott: Not that I can think of. I’m excited to see you guys play!

Kassie: Hell yeah!

Anna: Actually, I usually ask touring bands this. What kind of stuff have you been listening to on the way over?

Kassie: Oh all kinds of things! Listened to a little Battles.

Elliott: Oh nice! The new one, Juice B Crypts?

Kassie: All of the albums! I think it was a consensus that we liked the earlier albums better, but hey, that’s something people always say. I like it all! It’s pretty cool.

Elliott: Cool, well thank you for letting us in the van and talking with us!

Kassie: Of course! Can you unhook that leash?

Elliott: Sure!

Kassie: (to Watley) Let’s go pee!

- Elliott Hansen

[gdelgiproducer]

What’s been your favorite staged version of JCS? (Non-concert)

First, a list of the staged (non-concert) versions of JCS I’ve seen: two high school productions (about which you’ll hear nothing in this post; it’s unfair to judge them in competition with pros), the closing performance of the 2000 Broadway revival, two performances of the national tour that followed said revival (one of which featured Carl Anderson as Judas and Barry Dennen – Pilate on the original album, Broadway, and in the 1973 film – as Herod), and four performances of a national tour initially billed as Ted Neeley’s “farewell” engagement in the role of Jesus. In total, discounting the number of performances of each, five productions, only three of which we will consider here.

The 2000 Broadway revival had basically all the problems of the video of the same production: I’m sure Gale Edwards is a fine director of other shows, but she missed the boat with this particular iteration of JCS. (Not having seen her original production at the Lyceum Theatre in 1996, which unfortunately never left that venue and was reportedly far better than the one that went wide, I can only comment on this version.) Her direction and the production design that accompanied it were full of the kinds of blatant, offensively obvious attempts at symbolism and subtlety that appeal only to pseudo-intellectual theater kids. In real life, there’s no such thing as obvious good vs. obvious evil (things just ain’t black and white, people), and any attempt to portray this concept on stage or in a film usually results in a hokey “comic book” product, which is kind of what the 2000 production was. 

The first thing Edwards did was draw her line in the sand. “These are the good guys, and these are the bad guys.” The overall production design played into this ‘line in the sand’ feel as well, being so plain in its intentions as to almost beat you over the head with them. There may have been some good concepts mixed in, but for a show that runs on moral ambiguity, they were very poorly executed and did damage to the piece. Some examples:

Annas and Caiaphas were devoutly “evil,” seemingly designed to inspire fear.  It’s easy to see good as so very good, and bad as so very bad; to want to have the evil in a nice little box. But it’s not that simple. As Captain Jean-Luc Picard (and now you know where my Star Trek loyalties lie, curse you!) once said, “…villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those that clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.”  Evil isn’t always a clear and recognizable stereotype. Evil could be lurking inside anyone, maybe even in you, and you would never know. People aren’t inherently evil. Like good, it’s a role they grow and live into. And since history is basically a story of the developments and actions of humans over the ages, maybe it’s a mistake to view the characters who’ve played their parts in it so one-dimensionally. It doesn’t dismiss the evil they did, but it does allow one to understand that this potential to be good or to be evil is in everyone, and that it’s not always as simple as just doing the right thing.

Judas was an almost thoroughly unlikable prick (though Tony Vincent played him a tiny bit more sympathetically than Jerome Pradon in the video); in beating Jesus over the head with his cynicism and curt remarks, any sense of a fully three dimensional person was lost, leaving us with a total, utter dickhead. If the audience is to truly feel for Judas, and appreciate his fall, it’s imperative for them to see his positive relationship with Jesus. More importantly, it has to be readily apparent. It shouldn’t be the audience’s responsibility to assume as much. I never once saw any love, or even a hint of friendship, between Jesus and Judas in the 2000 production. Judas’ interactions with Jesus were a constant barrage of either completely in-your-face aggression, or more restrained (but still fully palpable) aggression. No hint of a conflict in him, or at least none the audience could see, and what use is a conflict or emotion if the audience isn’t privy to it?

And when not telegraphing an ultra-specific view of the story’s events, everything else about the design would’ve left a first-time viewer befogged. Young me liked the industrial, post-apocalyptic, pseudo-Gotham City atmosphere of the set. Older me still likes it (though I am firm in my opinion it works best on stage), but realizes what a mess the rest of it was. We’ve got Jesus and the apostles straight out of Rent, Roman guards that looked (with the choice of riot gear) like an army of Darth Vader clones with nightsticks substituting for light sabers, priests that practically stepped off the screen from The Matrix, a Pilate in generic neo-Nazi regalia, a Herod with showgirls and chorus boys that seemed to have visited from a flash-and-trash third-rate Vegas spectacular, a Temple full of ethnic stereotypes and a mish-mosh of dime-store criminals, and a creepy mob with a striking resemblance to The Addams Family that only popped up in the show’s darker moments. Lots of interesting ideas which might work (operative word being “might”) decently in productions of their own, all tossed in to spice up a rather bland soup. The solution to having a bunch of conflicting ideas is not to throw all of them at the wall at once; you look for a pattern to present itself, and follow it. If no pattern emerges from the ideas you have, it’s a sign you should start over.

You can see what my basic issue was: where other productions at least explored motivation, examining possibilities and presenting conflicting viewpoints for consideration, the 2000 production (when not utterly confused in its storytelling thanks to conflicting design) blatantly stated what it thought the motivation was without any room for interpretation – this is who they are, what they did, why they did it, so switch off your brain and accept what we put in front of you. Which, to me, is the total opposite of what JCS is about; it didn’t get famous for espousing that view, but for going totally against the grain of that.

The national tour at least had Carl and Barry to recommend for it the first time around, but for all the mistakes it corrected about the 2000 revival (swapping out the shady market in the Temple for a scene where stockbrokers worshiped the almighty dollar, with an electronic ticker broadcasting then-topical references to Enron, ImClone, and Viagra, among others, was a fun twist, and, for me, Barry Dennen gave the definitive performance of Herod), it introduced some confusing new ones as well:

For one, Carl – and, later, his replacement, Lawrence Clayton – looked twice the age of the other actors onstage. Granted, Christ was only 33 when this happened, but next to both Carl and Clayton, Eric Kunze (I thankfully never caught his predecessor) looked almost like a teenager. When Ted and Carl did the show in the Nineties and both were in their fifties, they were past the correct ages for their characters, but it worked – in addition to their being terrific performers and friends in real life whose chemistry was reflected onstage – because they were around the same age, so it wasn’t so glaring. Without that dynamic, the way Jesus and Judas looked together just seemed weird, and it didn’t help anyone accept their relationship.

Speaking of looking weird together, the performer playing Caiaphas – who was bald, and so unfortunately resembled a member of the Blue Man Group thanks to the color of lighting frequently focused on the priests – was enormously big and tall, while the actor in the role of Annas was extremely short. Basically, Big Guy, Little Guy in action. Every time I saw them onstage, I had to stifle the urge to laugh out loud. I’ve written a great deal about how Caiaphas and Annas are not (supposed to be) the show’s villains, but that’s still not the reaction I should have to them.

The relentlessness of pace was ridiculous. It was so fast that the show, which started at 1:40 PM, was down by 3:30 PM – and that included a 20-minute intermission. What time does that leave for any moments to be taken at all? A scene barely even ended before the next began. At the end of the Temple scene, Jesus threw all the lepers out, rolled over, and there was Mary singing the “Everything’s Alright” reprise already. How about a second to breathe for Mary to get there? Nope. How about giving Judas and Jesus two seconds’ break in the betrayal scene at Gethsemane? The guards were already grabbing Christ the minute he was kissed. I was so absolutely exhausted towards the end of the show that I was tempted to holler at the stage to please slow down for a minute. The pace didn’t allow for any moment in the show to be completed, if it was ever begun; it was just too fast to really take advantage of subtle touches and moments the actors could’ve had, and as a result, I think they were unable to build even a general emotional connection, because one certainly didn’t come across.

The cast was uniformly talented singing-wise, with excellent ranges and very accomplished voices. (In fact, the second time around, the woman understudying Mary, Darlesia Cearcy, walked away with the whole show in my opinion, and I am incredibly glad to have seen her career take off since then.) But, in addition to some being more concerned with singing the notes on the page just because they were there than imbuing them with emotion and motivation, the cast was undercut by the choices that production made with the music. For one, there’s a huge difference between singing “words and notes” and singing “lyrics and phrases.” When you have a phrase like “Ah, gentlemen, you know why we are here / We’ve not much time, and quite a problem here…” you sing the sentence, and if sometimes a word needs to be spoken, you do that. You don’t make sure you hit every single note by treating each like a “money note” (which you hit and hold as long as you can to make sure everyone hears it), dragging out the tempo to hang on to each note as long as you can. Generally, the actors were so busy making sure every note was sung – and worse, sung like a money note – that they missed the point of singing a phrase, and how to use one to their advantage. Caiaphas and Pilate were particularly egregious offenders. (I’ve never understood some of these conductors who are so concerned that every note written has to be sung. The result suffers from it.) 

And then there’s Ted’s production. Of the three, it’s the one I liked the most, but that’s not saying much when it was better by default. 

The production design was stripped-down, the set basically limited to a bridge, some steps, a stage deck with some levels, and a couple of drops (and a noose) that were “flown in.” The costumes were simple, the sound was very well-balanced, and the lighting was the icing on the cake. Combined, the story they told was clear.

The music sounded very full, considering the pit consisted of a five-piece band relying in part on orchestral samples.

Ted, for being of advanced age, was in terrific form vocally, if his acting fell back a little much on huge, obvious, emotive gestures and choices. (I love him and all, but his attempts at acting were kind of like a “Mr. Jesus” pageant, striking all the appropriate Renaissance poses. The film, through editing and close-ups, allows him a subtlety he just ain’t got onstage.)

And there were some beautiful stage pictures; for example, there was a drop with an image of a coin with Caesar’s head on it in the Temple scene, and it fell on the crowd when Jesus cleared out the riff-raff. In the leper sequence that followed, the chorus’ heads popped out of holes in the cloth, under which they undulated, pulsing to the beat, and rather than being treated as a literal mob scene, the sequence had a very dream-like effect, a mass of lost souls reaching out to Christ. It was rather like a Blake painting, with a creepy vibe in a different manner from the typical “physically overwhelm him” approach. He didn’t interact with them, didn’t even turn to look at them, until finally he whipped around with a banishing thrust of his arm, hollering “Heal yourselves!” Sometimes it was over-acted with annoying character voices (remember, I saw this four times), but when it wasn’t, the effect was chilling.

My main beef with the show was, oddly enough, on a similar line to my beef with Gale Edwards’ production: it drew lines in the sand. But in this case, it drew them with respect to Jesus’ divinity. 

As written, JCS deals with Jesus as if he were only a man, and not the Son of God. The show never suggests that Jesus isn’t divine, but neither does it reinforce the view that he is. Portrayed in detail in JCS is the mostly-unexplored human side: ecstasy and depression, trial and error, success and regret. He agonizes over his fate, is often unsure of his divinity, and rails at God. Not so in this production. Aside from “The Temple” and “Gethsemane,” there was never any room for doubt that Jesus was the mystical, magic man portrayed in the Gospels.

At the top of the show, after a fight between his followers and the Romans during the overture (a popular staging choice I’m not a real fan of, but you’ve got to do something during that moment in a fully staged version, and I understand why it’s an easy choice to make for exposition purposes), Jesus made his majestic entrance, spotlit in robes that looked whiter than Clorox bleach could produce, and raised a man from the dead. Well, where’s the room for Judas to doubt? Clearly “this talk of God is true,” we just saw it! If this guy is actually capable of performing miracles, and more than that specializes in necromancy, good luck telling him that fame has gone to his head at the expense of the message and he’s losing sight of the consequences! Try explaining to anyone that that person is “just a man”!

If that weren’t enough, Jesus went on to have a constant connection with God throughout the show, speaking to a spotlight that focused only on him and often served to distract him from anything else happening onstage, and at the end, during “John 19:41,” his body separated from the cross, which fell back into the stage, and he ascended to heaven. 

Now, though the former was admittedly played to excess (some reviewers unkindly compared Neeley to a homeless man with Bluetooth), there are arguments to be made in favor of both of these choices: a Jesus who constantly seeks a connection with God that isn’t reciprocated, searching for guidance or at least a friggin’ clue, is great foreshadowing for his eruption – and acceptance – in “Gethsemane.” As for the ascension, depending on how it’s staged, there’s room for argument that it could be interpreted more metaphorically than literally, as the moment when Jesus’ spirit is born, as Carl Anderson once put it (meaning, to me, that his message is given life and strength when his body fails him). But this production didn’t have that level of shading and layers to it, and coupled with the resurrection at the start, it defeated the rest of the story.

None of ‘em’s perfect, and I don’t think I could create the perfect one. Thus, concert.

[alexsmitposts]

Democrats Hate Russia, Republicans Hate China – the New Divide in America’s Ruling Class Since the 2016 elections, the Democratic Party has been calling out President Trump for his alleged ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even after the investigation of Trump for “collusion” has been concluded, new hearings regarding Trump’s dealing with Ukraine have been turned into a festival of anti-Russian phrase mongering. Meanwhile, Trump is waging a trade war with China. The White House Trade Council includes Peter Navarro, an economic flimflam man whose entire career has consisted of blaming China for all of America’s woes. While Republicans love “law and order” at home, they seem to line up behind the Hong Kong protesters without question as they light people on fire and attack police officers. Meanwhile, Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire and former New York City Mayor who recently announced a Presidential run as a centrist Democrat, speaks positively of Xi Jinping. Furthermore, despite it not showing up in his policies, Trump has made positive statements about the Russian President and expressed a desire to improve US-Russia relations. So, what is going on here? It’s actually quite easy to understand. All it takes is an understanding of the Russian and Chinese economies, the US Deep State apparatus, and the different interests among the circles of American power. The Eurasian Alternative – Two Economic Giants, Different Markets At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia and China were both deeply poor countries. Their economies were largely agrarian. The people were mostly illiterate and routinely died of starvation. Russia and China were both more or less dominated by western capitalist nations. This changed due to one thing: socialism. Following the 1917 revolution, and most specifically following the 1928 implementation of “Socialism in One Country” and 5-year economic plans, Russia became an industrial superpower. By the mid-1930s, Russia had huge state run industries, the country had been electrified, and the world was marveling at what was being accomplished while the west experienced the “great depression.” In the 1990s, after the defeat of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced huge economic catastrophe. Mass unemployment, drug addiction, suicide, human trafficking, what US economist Andre Gunder Frank called “economic genocide.” Free market policies implemented under the advice of Jeffrey Sachs led to the country being looted by figures like Bill Browder, BP, Hermitage Capital Management, and British Petroleum. However, at the dawn of the 21st Century, Russia restructured itself with Putin’s economic re-orientation. As President, Putin put his academic thesis into practice and made Gazprom and Rosneft into gigantic state controlled mega corporations. The result was an economic reboot that raised wages, reduced poverty, and restored the industrial output to pre-1991 levels. Russia’s economy is now centered around state control of oil and gas. Russia exports huge amounts of energy, and the proceeds are utilized in order to keep the economy churning along. China’s 1949 revolution also resulted in the building up of state-run industries. With 5 year economic plans, Mao Zedong led China to build its first steel mills, new power plants, and basic industrialization. The 1961 Sino-Soviet split was a significant setback, and after a more than a decade of attempting to build an ultra-egalitarian and “pure” version of socialism with the Cultural Revolution, China began reorienting toward “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” and a large market sector. Like Russia, China has an economy centered around huge, state controlled mega corporations. However, unlike Russia, these are not energy exporting companies, but manufacturers. No telecommunications manufacturer on earth is larger that Huawei technologies. The Chinese State Controlled steel industry produces over 50% of the steel on earth. China leads the world in the production of electric cars, smart phones, and computers. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Russia and China were captive markets, dependent on the western countries and dominated by Wall Street and London’s corporate monopolies. Today, Russia and China are competitors with the western capitalists. Across the world, as the Eurasian Economic Union and the Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank expand, many developing countries are choosing to sign on with Russia and China. Russia and China are cutting into the economic hegemony of western corporations. This is the basis of the hostility to them from both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats – Big Oil & Intel Agencies The Rockefeller oil dynasty were known as Republicans during the early Cold War, but the far-right of the GOP always held them with suspicion. It was the Rockefeller Family, owners of Exxon-Mobile, the modern day incarnation of John D. Rockfeller’s Standard Oil, that created the sexual revolution. The Rockefellers funded the sex research of Alfred Kinsey, arguing that homosexuality and promiscuity was more prevalent and normal, and urging the lifting of traditional constraints on behavior. Prior to that the Rockefeller family had bankrolled Margaret Sanger creation of the “Birth Control League,” today known as Planned Parenthood. The Rockefeller family has long been obsessed with sexual libertarianism. Their position in the Republican Party was based on a love affair with free markets and a hostility to labor unions. However, as the Democratic Party moved in a free market direction during the late 1980s, with Bill Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council, the Rockefeller increasingly found the USA oldest major party to be less odious. During the Obama years, the big four super majors, Exxon-Mobile, BP, Shell, and Chevron pretty clearly lined up behind Obama, while their primary opponent, the fracking corporations, lined up behind the Republicans. The “Fracking Cowboys” and the Koch Brothers continue to throw their money into Republican causes like PragerU, Turning Points USA, etc. Meanwhile, Rockefeller linked foundations and institutions such as the Ford Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Open Society Institute, tend to put out a socially liberal message critical of Trump. This divide with big oil (the 4 super majors) behind the democrats and little oil (frackers and drillers) behind Republicans, lines up pretty well in recent years. However, it also points to factions within the US state apparatus. Not only do Rockefeller linked think-tanks and institutions push a liberal message, but they are also heavily involved in the covert efforts of US intelligence agencies. George Soros efforts to topple socialist governments, the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the soft-power apparatus through which the US government peddles influence and destabilizes anti-imperialist countries, has money from big oil all over it. The Democratic Party as it exists in 2019, as the party of sexual liberation, environmental regulations to restrict the activities of frackers and maintain big oil’s monopoly, is very much an expression of big oil. Big oil sees Russia, a major oil and gas exporter, as a competitor. They aim to push Russia off the market, along with the fracking cowboys, in order to maintain “energy dominance” for the big 4 supermajors. The Democratic Party is also the party of the intelligence agencies, setting up NGOs, promoting destabilization in the name of “human rights,” and hoping to “win without war.” The intel agencies have long pushed a strategy of utilizing proxy forces and avoiding full on invasions and bombings in order to preserve the image of the United States. The Democratic Party seems to favor maintaining a covert US alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Jazeera, the voice of the Qatar monarchy, seems to push a pro-democratic party message. The Obama Presidency, in which an African-American man with a Muslim name “reset” relations with the Middle East, and played the role of “good cop” attempting to heal the discord of the Bush years, fit the CIA playbook completely. The Intel Agencies favor a Mr. Nice Guy, racially inclusive, apologetic, and friendly face for US foreign policy. Republicans – Manufacturers & the Military Industrial Complex The Pentagon’s approach toward foreign policy is the exact opposite of the intel agencies. The Pentagon contractors push “peace through strength.” Their bread is buttered with big bombs and cruise missiles, huge research budgets to develop new weapons systems, and most especially through the sale of military hardware to US-aligned countries. This of course, leads to an alliance between the US military and American manufacturers. The term “military industrial complex” was made famous by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In the post-World War 2 years, it seemed the USA was adopting the economic theories not just of John Maynard Keynes but also of Nazi economist Hjalamar Schatch. Huge amounts of military spending stimulate the US economy and keep dollars flowing to Wall Street as the US public gets poorer. One of the primary founders of Republican Party activism in the United States is Bernie Marcus. Marcus is the owner of Home Depot, an American hardware store chain that has replaced the small local businesses across the United States. Go into the shelves of Bernie Marcus’s big box tool sheds and it is hard to find a single product that isn’t manufactured by a Pentagon contractor such as Caterpillar or General Electric. The DeVos Foundation, another founder of Republican Party linked voices, is owned by the family of US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who herself is heavily tied in with military contractors. Her brother is none other than Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater (Academi). American manufacturers are closely tied in with the military industrial complex and the Republican party, and their focus is not on the energy markets. The fact that China operates as a huge state controlled booming center of production makes it the primary threat to the American manufacturers. The military industrial complex also sees lot of money to be made in selling weapons all over Asia in a “build-up” against China. In the tech world, many have been surprised to see that Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has sparked up an unlikely friendship with Donald Trump. Facebook, Twitter, and other tech companies seem very hostile to Republicans, and Apple seems to present itself as a liberal corporation. So, what has sparked this new friendship? The answer is simple. Trump is waging an all-out war on Apple’s primary competitor, Huawei. As Trump works to crush Huawei technologies, Apple is benefiting. Google, Twitter, and Facebook see China has a vast untapped market. They seek to improve US-China relations, in the hopes that the 1 billion people living in China can go online and start making revenue for the tech giants. Apple, on the other hand, sees China a market rival, manufacturing higher quality phones and threatening their monopoly. Globalist Imperialism vs. The Eurasian Alternative While Republicans emphasize opposition to China, and Democrats emphasize opposition to Russia, both parties oppose both countries, and echo the same opposition to multipolarity. The US economy functions as part of an economic order described in Lenin’s book “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.” It is an economic order in which major banks and monopolies in western countries reap “super profits” by “super exploiting” the rest of the world. Countries are kept poor, so these huge multinational corporations can stay rich. The world is carved up by different corporations into “spheres of influence” and captive markets. Impoverished countries are prevented from developing their own manufacturing, energy production, and independent economies. Impoverished countries remain as “client states” purchasing from western countries, and doing business from a place of weakness and dependency. Russia and China have broken out of this economic prison. By seizing control of their industries and natural resources, and utilizing the government to plan production, they have been able to experience un-precedented economic growth and poverty alleviation. An economic miracle is currently happening across the Eurasian subcontinent. Places like Central Asia, the Russian Far East, Tibet and Xinjiang are being lit up with electricity. Modern housing, manufacturing jobs, railway, and other modernizations are being brought to millions of people. The economic relationship that Russia and China have with developing countries in places like Africa and South America is quite different than the relationships of western countries. “Win-Win cooperation” seems to define the activities of the One Belt, One Road initiate of China and the Eurasian Economic Union led by Russia. Russia and China become wealthier at the same time that the countries they trade with become wealthier. Instead of reducing countries to weak captive markets, Russia and China build infrastructure in order to stimulate the domestic economies. Bolivia, through doing business with Russia and China, had the highest rate of GDP growth of any country in South America in 2018. While Honduras and Guatemala flounder as US client states, socialist Nicaragua, trading with Russia and China, has had huge achievements in reducing poverty and building up the domestic economy. Russia and China are a threat to the entire system of western capitalism. They discredit mythology of western economists like Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan by proving that state-planned, growth based economies are preferable to “greed is good” “laissez-faire” free trade. Despite the fact that Democrats and Republicans have a different target in the short term, in the long term, they oppose both Russia and China, as well as any other country that dares pose a challenge to Wall Street and London monopolists.

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: August 2022

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of August 2022 to make sure that they are never forgotten.    

In the latest deluded Churchillian LARP of proven liar Boris Johnson he attempted to assuage the concerns of the British people about their rapidly increasing energy bills by saying we needed to pay them to fight Putin in Ukraine, apparently under the misguided belief that British Gas have troops on the ground protecting the Ukrainian borders

The habitually clueless Liz Truss came up with a genius idea to unite the country: by saying she would ignore the “attention-seeking” Nicola Sturgeon, which was a particularly bold claim for somebody with a personal photographer following her around on overseas visits and definitely doesn't undermine her claiming to want to unite the United Kingdom

...and because Liz Truss was on a roll, she then decided to start slagging off Mark Drakeford, meaning that she was now picking fights with two democratically elected leaders while canvassing for votes for her anything but democratic bid to lead the UK

...but since that wasn’t enough Liz Truss then decided to pick a fight with Emmanuel Macron claiming in an interview with Julia Halfwit-Brewer she is unsure if he is an ally, which indicates that Truss is unaware that France is part of NATO so, yes, Macron is an ally

Mar-a-Lago getting raided seems to have sent the MAGA louts completely off kilter, what with Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently turning ANTIFA overnight in her demands that the FBI be defunded, while Eric Trump babbled incoherently about how no family in American politics has taken more arrows in the back than the Trump family as if two of the Kennedys weren’t assassinated, and taking the cake was Fox News with their framing of the entire story being how the opponent of Biden in the 2024 election was getting raided

Somehow, in the midst of Liz Truss being clueless in so many ways, she managed to also invoke just about every antisemitic trope in the space of a single statement

The ultra-relatable Rishi Sunak unveiled the surefire way to reignite his fading leadership campaign with by declaring that anybody who says bad things about the UK would be treated as extremists and sent to a re-education camp, because nothing says relatable quite like going Full Fash

All that Rudy Giuliani had to do to sell that he was not medically cleared to travel to Georgia to dodge prosecutors was to sit still and not move a muscle.  Instead what Rudy Giuliani did was try to bunk off to New Hampshire, getting busted in the process

Nice guy Rishi Sunak didn't seem to notice or care that he was being filmed while casually telling a hustings in Tunbridge Wells that he'd diverted funding for deprived northern areas to the non-deprived, non-northern safest of Tory safe seats that is Tunbridge Wells

So we’ve reached the point where Zac Goldsmith and Nadine Dorries are completely indistinguishable from Marjorie Taylor Greene when it comes to spouting absolute gibberish masquerading as conspiracy theories, specifically about the Partygate enquiry, like the good cultists they are

Not only did furious pulsating bollock Alex Jones discover that he committed perjury when he was politely informed that his grossly incompetent lawyer sent his entire phone records to the Sandy Hook families’ lawyer by mistake, he then tried his damndest to get a mistrial called to weasel out of paying $150m in damages - and that's before his persecution complex took over and he thought comparing himself to groups persecuted by the Nazis was a good look.  Funnily enough, it didn't work and he now owes tens of millions of dollars in damages, while the texts have also been handed off to the January 6th Commission

At which point will Keir Starmer realise just how mad he looks when, in his bid to be the exact opposite of Jeremy Corbyn on every subject, he says that the 66% of people who want energy companies to be renationalised are wrong and in actual fact it's better to pay a lot more money?

...although I doubt Luke Akehurst will ever realise that calling left-wing Labour party members every name under the sun might just be having a dire effect on both party finances and explain why Starmer’s Labour is not making the bold gains that the centrist hivemind insisted they would

So nice to see proven liar Boris Johnson remain committed to leading the UK throughout the last weeks of his premiership by going on holiday, coming home for a few days, then going on another holiday in the first two weeks of August

...a fact exacerbated by Nadhim Zahiwi also buggering off on holiday just in time for the energy bill hike, meaning that at the exact same time the Prime Minister and Chancellor were on holiday, while the Foreign Secretary was too busy LARPing as Margaret Thatcher during the leadership contest

Militant TERF JK Rowling sure did a 180 from demanding her safety be protected by Twitter after she was threatened in the wake of Salman Rushdie being attacked, to 72 hours later going on a full-on attack on Joanne Harris because people dared call a TERF a TERF

Two more sets of rail strikes and Grant Schapps still hasn’t bothered to even entertain the idea of meeting with either ASLEF or the RMT, but he’ll certainly meet with journalists so he can bits about ASLEF and the RMT

Unifying force Keir Starmer claims the reason it took him a mere ice age before issuing a statement about the energy bill crisis was because he was on holiday with his family for the first time in over two years...which means he either forgot about the holidays he has taken with his family to Devon or the New Forest in the last two years, or he hoped nobody else remembers 

Hooooooooooo boy did Laura Loomer look like an absolute mentalist after failing miserably in her bid for Florida’s 11th district, having a complete meltdown where she tearfully howled about non-existent election fraud and refused to concede, because apparently the MAGA louts haven;t come up with any new material since November 2020

Pompous fools Jacob Rees Mogg wrote another article harrumphing about the “laziness” of the civil service where he claimed the Serious Fraud Office was practically deserted.  Slight problem with that claim: the photo he included with the article was of his own cabinet office, presumably before he started putting notes on everybody's desks demanding they see him

Apparently the new policy at Warner Bros is to not make money, based on them yanking Batgrirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt not just from the schedules but burying them where they will never be seen in spite the amount spent on them, with Batgirl costing an estimated $90m (but they can claim back every last cent of that on a tax break...) or the fact the films were both at least 90% completed before the plug was pulled

Murderering murderer Kyle Rittenhouse moaned that he can't live a normal life ever since becoming a puppet of the alt-right, somehow failing to consider that the people he murdered can't live any sort of life at all due to Kyle Rittenhouse murdering them

Militant TERF JK Rowling unleashed her creative juices for her latest lump of leaden prose about a fantasy author who is harassed by people on social media.  No word about whether that fantasy author writes under a man’s name yet decided they're the gatekeeper of all gender identity on the internet because something something toilets

Smug bore Malcolm Gladwell is the latest pseudo intellectual who is adamant that people should not work from home, which definitely doesn't come across as Malcolm Gladwell negging people for working from home, which is exactly what Malcolm Gladwell does when tossing off another book

It's amazing how The Sun devoted so much coverage to the Wagatha Christie waste of time and brain cells and somehow it took until the thirtieth paragraph of the fourth piece they wrote on it to mention The Sun just so happened to be the other guilty party, which is odd as they were mentioned by name 133 times in the judge's summing-up

Noted shithead Dan Wootton responded to England winning the Women’s Euros in a completely normal way: by howling about how, four years from now, the entire Lionesses team could be made up of transgender players

Just when you thought GB News couldn't make themselves look more like a fascist dogwhistle factory, they only go and have Peter Imanuelson appear on the channel having a cozy chat with Neil Oliver while the rest of the world wonders why the hell they platformed a Holocaust denier

There’s ways to lose your job, and Nathan Middleton went above and beyond the call of being an arse by responding to Tottenham's last-minute draw with Chelsea by posting an unhinged antisemitic rant not just to a tweet from Tottenham’s account but copy/pasted it to various Spurs players and blogs, which lost him his gig with Stadium Rant, Sports Time and Overtime Heroics Football - and then demanding other sites hire him

It’s surprising that Matt Forde had an issue with mewling infants shitting themselves at one of his Fringe gigs, as that's an accurate summary of the quality of every single project his name's been attached to as well as his huffy response to the child not sitting down and shutting up while he talked

...meanwhile Ricky Gervais manages to be even more precious about what is or isn't allowed at his gigs by demanding ice cubes be banned from drinks at venues where he's playing, rather than working on his material so that he can't hear a couple of ice cubes clinking in a glass in the cheap seats in the dead air that occurs where other comedians make people actually laugh

Domina dev Nicholas John Leonard Gorsen had one hell of a meltdown in response to Jim Sterling posting a video about Gorsen turning into quite the far-right crybaby in Domina’s patch notes to the point that they're banned from their game’s Steam community forum, spending hours tweeting transphobic bilge and begging for Sterling to respond to their rants while claiming that they weren't mad while also demanding Twitter make Sterling respond.  It went exactly as well as could be expected...

And finally, pleading the Fifth like a crook, is Donald Trump and the espionage laws he is currently being investigated under due to removing all those boxes of sensitive documents from the White House which he claimed were declassified because he declassified them the week before the FBI showed up in spite not being in a position to declassify anything

[paulckrueger]

When to Sell Stocks: The ONLY 3 Reasons To Sell (EVER)

Should I sell my stocks? 

It’s possibly one of the most common questions in the stock-trading world. 

When to sell stocks or hold them mostly depends on your AGE.

If you’re closer to (or at) retirement age, you’ve likely been investing for a while and can sell your investments to live off of for your retirement.

If you’re younger, though, this isn’t the case. In fact, if you’re in your 20s and 30s, there are only three good reasons to sell your investments:

You need money for an emergency

You made a terrible investment that’s consistently underperforming

You achieved a specific goal

But what about those who have already invested in their 401k, Roth IRA, and index funds? If you already have your retirement accounts sorted and are now just experimenting with different individual stocks, should you still sell? Or do you keep hold of those stocks for later in life for an even bigger retirement?

That’s what we’re covering in this article, so keep reading to discover whether selling individual stocks is the best move for you (and when it isn’t).

If you setup a good financial foundation for yourself, you’ll never be strapped for cash again. Find out how in my FREE Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance.

When should you sell a stock: 5 main reasons to cash out 

How to know when to sell a stock is the million-dollar question. There are usually only five good reasons to sell a stock besides cashing out for retirement.

1. You made a bad investment

We all make mistakes and when it comes to the stock market, you can never be sure what will happen. 

If you have individual stocks that appear to be underperforming (consistently), it may be time to cut your losses before those losses stack up even higher. 

However, if you believe the market will recover (which it usually does), you may decide to hold onto your stocks and ride out the waves. A lot of people will suggest you do just that, and for the most part, that’s good advice. 

If you have index funds, then this is almost certainly what you should do because the market will recover and if your index funds are down, it means the whole market is down.

But what about the exceptions to the rule? Is there ever a good time to sell a bad investment? 

Here’s how to know when to sell a stock…

How to decide when to sell an underperforming stock

Let’s say you have a consumer goods stock that has halved in value over the past three years. It’s consistently gone down. 

Before panic-selling, take a good look at the wider industry. 

If other goods like it are also in decline, then you know it’s the industry, not just your stock. Everything’s doing poorly. This gives you a bit of extra context.

All industries experience declines for a variety of reasons. Maybe the industry is no longer as viable as it once was. Maybe competitors have changed the playing field a bit too much. 

But let’s talk about this conceptually to understand when to sell an investment for poor performance. If you pulled up a list of your investments and saw this chart, what would you do?

  Consumer-Goods Stock Price Date Price Date Price 6/3/2002 33.43 1/3/2006 23.78 1/2/2003 31.53 6/1/2006 23.90 6/2/2003 31.01 1/3/2007 26.29 1/2/2004 35.55 6/1/2007 27.28 6/1/2004 35.45 1/2/2008 22.91 1/3/2005 26.45 5/2/2008 20.61 6/1/2005 28.17    

“Holy crap,” you might be saying. “That’s a crappy stock. I need to sell it before I lose all of my investment!”

    Slow down. Instead of freaking out and selling your stock faster than you can scream, “SELL! SELL! SELL!” into a phone, look at the context.

Knowing that the example is a consumer-goods stock, how is the rest of the consumer-goods industry doing?

  Consumer Goods Industry Index Date Price Date Price 6/3/2002 50 1/3/2006 38 1/2/2003 49 6/1/2006 36 6/2/2003 45 1/3/2007 32 1/2/2004 42 6/1/2007 30 6/1/2004 44 1/2/2008 31 1/3/2005 40 5/2/2008 29 6/1/2005 38    

  By looking at the stock and the surrounding industry, you see that the entire industry is in decline. It’s not your particular investment. They’re all doing poorly.

Now, this raises questions about the industry, but it also gives you a context to explain your stock’s plunging returns. And just because they’re plunging, by the way, doesn’t mean that you should sell immediately.

That’s part of the reason why buying individual stocks can be a bit of a pain. You need to keep a close eye on them and their respective industries to check performance. Your money is often better off in an index fund where it’s spread across multiple companies. 

2. The stock has reached your target price

Savvy investors will often set a target price when they buy a stock. This is the figure that they would be happy to sell the stock for. 

While a set price may be difficult for even the most experienced investors, having a price range in mind gives you a solid enough target. Once you’ve reached that point, consider selling it and enjoy the gains.

Another good time to sell a stock is when you reach a money goal. 

��Buy and hold’ is a great strategy for ultra-long-term investments, but lots of people invest in stocks to hit short or medium-term money goals, not just retirement.

For example, “I’m going to invest for a dream vacation to Thailand. I don’t need to take the trip any time soon, so I’ll just put $100/month into my investing account.”

The great thing about this is that the money will compound and grow with a higher interest rate if you invest it into a diversified index like the S&P 500. The average savings account offers 0.06% APY — whereas the S&P 500 returns around 8% each year. So for savings goals that are further into the future, there’s nothing wrong with “saving” in an investment account.

Just make sure all your savings aren’t tied up in investments because you never know which way the market will swing. 

Having a separate savings account for money you need to access fast (e.g., an emergency) is a much safer bet. That way, you’re not cashing out during a dip and making a loss. If your goal is less than five years away, you should set up a savings goal in your savings account. For more information on that, check out our article on sub-savings accounts.

If you’ve invested money for a longer-term goal and you’ve achieved it, sell and don’t think twice. That’s a great investing success, and you should use the money for whatever your original goal was. You earned it, after all.

3. The stock’s valuation is high

The stock market can be unpredictable, just take the madness of GameStop for instance. 

Sometimes the stock market will overvalue the stock and set a market price that doesn’t seem to correspond to the expected earnings of the company.

Similarly, if the earnings expectation of the company dips but the stock price hasn’t … it’s probably only a matter of time before the stock decreases too.

In either of these cases, you might want to consider selling and cashing in the profits before the value crashes.  

4. Selling for opportunity cost

If you’re serious about making money in the stock market, you should always be on the lookout for new opportunities. 

If you spot a stock that you think has a lot of potential but your money is tied up in other investments, you may want to sell your existing stocks. 

Even if your stock is performing well enough, if a better opportunity comes along, it can pay to jump on it. Of course, there’s no guarantee either way whether this new stock will perform better. But you could be missing out if you play it safe and don’t make that leap. 

Whatever you do, make sure it’s a calculated and well-researched move. Don’t do it on impulse!

5. You need the money for an emergency

Sometimes disaster strikes and catches your wallet by surprise. In an ideal world, you’d have a nice big cash safety cushion to pick at in times like these. But sometimes it’s just too hard to prepare or predict.

If you have money in stocks, cashing them out might be inevitable if you have an emergency. 

This could involve:

Medical bills from accidents or illnesses

Big car repairs

Home repairs

Job loss

Economic crashes

When not to sell a stock

If none of the above applies to you, then in most cases, you should hold onto them. Yes, even if your stock dips. There is never an easy way to work out when to sell stocks. Just because your stock has dropped doesn’t mean you should panic-sell. It’s all about context. The next time you see a stock tumble in value, ask yourself:

Is the wider market seeing similar dips?

Has something happened in the company or the news to make it dip?

Has the company performed this way before and recovered (or not)?

What does the competition look like? If they haven’t dipped either, find out why that is.

Asking yourself these questions before you rush to sell will save you a lot of headaches in the future. 

The last thing you want to do is sell and then see the stock recover soon after. You’ll be left kicking yourself for selling. Stocks will usually recover, even if there are dips, so waiting it out is often your best bet. That is unless you have good reason to believe the stock won’t recover.

Another way to ride out the dips is to invest in index funds rather than individual stocks because you can spread your risk. It saves you putting all your eggs in one basket. 

Don’t miss out on some of the best content I’ve ever made. Grab your free PDF of my Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance now.

Bottom line: Don’t sell your stock if you can help it

Remember: Don’t just sell because your stock dropped. Look at it in context.

I used to teach a class on finance. One day, I went in front of the classroom and drew a picture of a declining stock on the chalkboard. It looked like this:

Then I turned to the class and asked them, “What should I do?”

Part of the class shouted, “Sell!” and another section said, “Hold it!” while a couple of people in the class muttered “Buy more.”

None of them were exactly right though. The truth is, you need more context.

If a stock like, say, Apple falls a bunch, you have to look at the surrounding context and ask questions like:

Is the general market falling?

Are its peers falling?

Has Apple performed this way before? What happened then?

Answering these questions provides a LOT more context to the situation and can both put your mind at ease and also help you make better judgments.

My suggestion to keep tabs on your stocks would be to just set up alerts through your broker or Google News to be notified of major industry changes.

BUT you need to keep in mind that 99.999999% of the advice you see out there is pure fear-mongering.

Two things to always keep in mind when it comes to stocks:

The professionals are almost always wrong. The stock picks of pundits are usually no better than pure chance, and even professional money managers barely ever beat the market benchmark. In other words, they don’t just underperform but they do it by A LOT. As William Bernstein, author of The Intelligent Asset Allocator, says: “There are two kinds of investors, be they large or small: Those who don’t know where the market is headed, and those who don’t know they don’t know.”

It’s mostly just noise. The fact is if you’re a long-term investor (and you should be), you don’t need to check your stocks every day. You don’t even need to check your stocks every WEEK. The daily changes in stocks are almost always noise — plain and simple. And very few (read: almost none) of your investments will be determined by the news of one day.

The best investment you can make

Your financial situation is unique to you. That’s why there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for when you should sell your stocks. It’s your money — and it’s up to you to decide at the end of the day.

But it can be confusing if you’re new to this world and have no idea how to get started.

That’s why I’m excited to offer you something for free: My Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance.

In it, you’ll learn how to:

Master your 401k: Take advantage of free money offered to you by your company … and get rich while doing it.

Manage Roth IRAs: Start saving for retirement in a worthwhile long-term investment account.

Automate your expenses: Take advantage of the wonderful magic of automation and make investing pain-free.

With this guide, you’ll be well on your way to living a Rich Life. And you don’t need any fancy get-rich-quick schemes or snake oil or other BS “solutions.” All you need is determination and the right systems put in place to help you get the most out of your financial situation and not have to worry about living “frugally” (aka sacrificing the things you love).

Click here to get your free bonus:  The Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance.

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When to Sell Stocks: The ONLY 3 Reasons To Sell (EVER) is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Surety Bond Brokers? Business https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/when-do-you-sell-a-stock/

[wirelessroutersreviews]

Netgear C7800 Review- Top Quality Cable Modem & Router

The new C7800 is the latest and greatest from Netgear. The company has always been known for making superior networking equipment. In fact, they have a long legacy of almost 20 years since they initially formed back in 1996 and they used that legacy to make top-notch devices for homes as well as companies and large tech firms. Their word is usually as good as it gets.  So, does this mean that the C7800 relives the same kind of legacy? Well, let’s give it a look and find out.

Ultra-High Speed Cable Modem Router

The Netgear C7800 is advertised as a premium modem plus router solution. It’s specifically put out there as a possible replacement option for your cable company’s modem. Netgear promises to give you a better deal by giving you greater performance.It also makes it a point to tell you that you’ll be saving the high equipment rental costs that your ISP slaps on your bill every year. It’s fitted with all the necessary ports and features you would want in a modem.

Netgear C7800 Review Specifications

 To get on the technical side, here are the specifications of the Netgear C7800.

Dimensions: 10.40 x 12.40 x 7.50 in

Weight: 3.15 lbs

Ports: 2x USB 3.0 Port 4x Ethernet Ports (4x LAN), 1x Co Axial Cable Port

Wireless Capabilities: Dual-Band AC3200 Wi-Fi @ 2GHz and 5GHz

Speed: Up to 2 Gbps (Ethernet), Up to 3200 Mbps (Wi-Fi)

C7800 Review

In terms of its design, Netgear hasn’t gone too all out with the C7800. Rather than purposefully going for a sleek or modern look, the modem has been kept fairly clean. And for a good reason too.Since this modem is all about performance and cost-saving, it makes little sense to go for a high-class look. And thankfully, the C7800 steers clear of anything that invokes gaudiness or a non-functional form.

Instead, the design is kept minimal and clean as possible. It has a rectangular form factor with a slim profile. The material is plastic, which is durable enough to sustain a few knocks while also not going for a cheap look.

That’s not to say that the design hasn’t been touched up in places to make it stand out. On the top of the unit, you’ll find a curved wave pattern going through from one side to another. A single red curve highlights the nice contrast of the otherwise glossy black finish.

On the front face, you’ll find the company logo along with all LED switches. These are used for things like power status, WPS, and Wi-Fi. Luckily there aren’t too many to crowd out the router. The rest of your status indicators are shifted off to the sideOn the back, you’ll find your necessary connectivity ports alongside the reset button, power button, and power plug. The back is also where you’ll find four chunky Wi-Fi antennas.And on the underside, you can find mounting holes so you can put your modem up on a wall instead of flat-faced on a desk. However, do bear in mind this can be a bulky router, especially when it weighs 3 lbs. It is certified by Comcast and XFINITY internet for Gig Speeds!

Connectivity

In terms of connectivity, Netgear has managed to fulfill the needs of most people.  There are four-gigabit ethernet ports on the back that can provide speeds of up to 2 Gbps for all your wired devices. This means that you can hook up your desktops to blazing-fast speeds with minimal issues.

For wireless capabilities, you have AC3200 Wi-Fi bundled with this router. This gives you speeds of 3200 Mbps for all your wireless devices. You can easily watch high-quality video streams on your phone, smart TV, or tablet using the C7800.

These options are great enough on their own. But to beef it all up, Netgear has also added in two high-speed USB 3.0 ports on this modem. That gives you the option to connect them to devices that don’t necessarily connect in conventional ways.

Connecting devices over USB is easy and gives you more options than just a computer or your phone. You can hook up a printer for print server capabilities or even stick a USB drive in there for a file server.

Security

In this day and age, keeping your network secure is of the utmost concern. The last thing you want is someone getting a hold of your private network and doing something nefarious with it.  Luckily, the C7800 gives you plenty of options to protect your home network from anything shady.

For wireless security, you have top of the line WEP and WPA/WPA2 protocols for protecting your Wi-Fi networks. This makes it virtually impossible for anyone to hack your Wi-Fi passwords.

You also get WPS capabilities that let you connect to the router without giving out your passwords. You can make guests account on the router that makes it easy to share your network with friends or family without giving out passwords each and every time.

For concerned parents, Netgear has included parental controls right out of the box. This lets them lock down networks and settings from their kids if needed. It can be great for restricting access or keeping them off the Wi-Fi during study hours.

Performance

Performance is worth writing home about on this modem. It offers fast high-speed connections that keep you connected 24/7. Both the wired and wireless connections will offer you blazing fast internet speeds.

The wired gigabit LAN connection will give you up to 2 Gbps speed while the wireless connection will give 3200 Mbps right out the gate. The connection remains rock solid and steady when you’re using and rarely ever dips or drops off.

There are four antennas on this modem that give you that beefy wireless connection. All of the antennas are supported within guilt high gain amplifiers. This boosts the Wi-Fi signal beyond the standard range that you will find in most conventional routers and modems.

In fact, the C7800 gives you 3000 sq ft of full wireless coverage. This is more than suitable for most homes and apartments out there. You can be sure that your connection isn’t going to drop if you move from one part of your house to another.

The combination of speed and range performance makes this modem a very versatile fit. Not only is it great for work applications, but it goes above and beyond that.

One of the biggest reasons people buy the C7800 is for the entertainment capabilities it can offer. With such high-speed wireless internet, you can easily enjoy all your favorite movies and TV shows in UHD 4k without putting any compromise on the quality.

The steady connection ensures that even gaming performance is above par. You can play all your favorite games online without suffering any kind of lag, network jitter, ping issues, or packet loss. You can also watch live streams of your favorite players and even professional sporting events without the network cutting out during the action.

Netgear Support

Netgear has provided extensive support for the C7800. You can be sure that you won’t face any major problems getting this modem up and running out of the box.

Support for all major ISPs is present, so you don’t have to have a specific company for you to use this modem. All major companies like Comcast, Cox, Xfinity, and many more are supported.

That said, there are a few exceptions, such as Spectrum, Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, DSL providers, DirecTV, DISH as well as voice bundled services. But for the most part, you won’t face a ton of issues with compatibility.

You won’t any problems with hardware or software compatibility either. You’ll be able to run the modem and its setup utilities with any modern device. Computers with Windows XP, 2000, 7, 8, and 10 are recommended as a minimum. It also works flawlessly with UNIX or MacOS operating systems.

Once its setup, you can access the modem settings page with any device that has a working browser. So even smartphones, smart TVs, game consoles, and other devices should be able to work here.

Pros

Fast network performance on both wired and wireless networks.

Extensive Wi-Fi range

Included USB 3.0 port for print and file server capabilities

Works on most major ISPs in the country

Plenty of Gigabit ethernet ports

Cons

A bit bulky

Not supported on Spectrum, Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, DSL providers, DirecTV, and DISH.

In a Nutshell

All in all, this modem provides a solid bundle for those looking to get the best out of their internet connection. It provides the fastest speeds that you could ever think to achieve. It also gives you top-notch security and unmatched range for all your wireless devices.

All this mounts up to be an impressive package for those that want an upgrade over their standard ISP provided modems. With that, you’ll also be saving hundreds of dollars in equipment rental fees every year. That alone makes this is a worthwhile purchase. Looking for other netgear see Netgear N600 review

from Reviewimo https://reviewimo.com/netgear-c7800-review/ from Review IMO https://reviewimo.blogspot.com/2020/06/netgear-c7800-review-top-quality-cable.html

[spacephant0m]

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp Tips: In-Game Currency

I really love animal crossing, it’s easily one of my favorite games. I had been waiting FOR SO LONG for Pocket Camp to come out, and honestly the day it was released, I cried tears of joy. I love my little animal friends. SO I decided since I’ve never had the chance to do this before (or the willpower), I decided to make my own little game guide for all of you lovely camp-goers~

First of all I’d like to say that a lot of these tips are obviously OPTIONAL. Don’t feel pressured into doing these things if you don’t want to. This is just here to help you make the most out of your gameplay!

DISCLAIMER: this is not a full-fledged guide as an absolutely amazing one has already been written here: https://sirtaptap.com/2017/10/animal-crossing-pocket-camp-guide/ . However, I feel that some quick and easy tip-sharing to make things a bit more ~personal~ is always great to have because, everyone plays games differently. There’s no one way to play a game, especially one like animal crossing. Please keep in mind that not everything in the guide is set in stone as mistakes can be made. As time goes on we’ll have more details about how everything works~

App version: 1.0.0 Date: November 24th, 2017

Making Money

Okay so there are tons of ways to make those sweet sweet bells. Obviously just talking to animal campers is a great way. But there are tons of other things you can do!

1.       Tap on campers at your campsite to see if they are available to talk. It won’t tell you above their heads in the map screen if their conversation option has refreshed yet, so you just have to look. This refreshes about every hour. Doing this will help them level up, and sometimes they will give you bells or an item! If their level is maxed out, talk to them anyways just in case they wanna give you something. Approximately every hour, 3 random campers at your site will have new requests, so fulfill those as well just in case they give you some bells/items for it.

2.       Catch ALL BUGS AND FISH YOU SEE. PICK UP ALL FRUIT AND SEASHELLS. You can sell them in the market, but if you wanna “grind for bells” quickly, you can easily just choose “sell” instead of “list for sale.” Regular items go for 10 bells a piece, rare items for 100, and then VERY rare go for 1500, (such as the rainbow trout), ULTRA rare go for 5000, (such as the tuna). I WOULD NOT recommend selling these very rare ones unless you just got lucky and somehow have like 5 tuna fish. Save them for later because with further game patches and updates, they’re likely to be useful. And Idk about you but I feel that putting it in your market box for 30k wont do any good considering -most people- do not have that many bells right now and it will be stuck in your market box for a very long time. I’ve seen way too many people doing this and it’s insane.

3.       The spawning in this game seems to work a bit like acnl, except that they don’t always randomly spawn. Sometimes you have to leave the area and then come back for new fish and bugs to spawn. Seashells take longer to respawn, though I’m not entirely sure how long it takes. But by leaving the area and coming back, you can easily catch lots of bugs and fish to sell if you’re REALLY short on bells (I’m trying so hard to get enough to buy this 5000 bell acid-washed jacket as I’m typing this).

4.       You get 100-200 bells for talking to/assisting campers, and 1000 bells each time you level up.

5.       You can shake trees in ACNL, and you can shake trees in ACPC as well! ALL OF THE TREES. EVEN THE PALM TREES. SHAKE EVERY SINGLE ONE. You can get up to 1000 bells this way. That’s like the equivalent of talking to 10 campers. It’s so easy. Shake the trees. I beg of you.

6.       You can enter shovelstrike quarry once per day, and you have a good chance and making some moolah here, so, make sure you ask those pals of yours to help ya out. You only need 5 so it shouldn’t be too difficult.

BELL SAVING

1.       Some people will say “just build everything.” But that is a no-no if you want to save time and money (and resources o lord). Personally, my main focus is campers. I want certain campers in my campsite, so I prioritized building the furniture that their heart so desires. If your focus is decorating and you don’t care for any of the campers that are available, then knock yourself out crafting those couches. But for me, once I get all of the campers I want, then I will make the furniture I want.

2.       Your items aren’t cataloged like they are in ACNL. So there is really no reason to buy every single thing at the little nookling’s shop. Buy what you WANT, but do your best not to make impulse purchases. I know it’s tempting but once the shop rotates and that rare item comes into view, you’ll be heartbroken at how poor you are and that you can’t afford that fancy jacket you wanted. Of course, if you are one of those upperclass folks who can throw dollar dollar bills at this game, then this certainly does not apply to you. Go nuts.

3.       Try to pay attention to market box prices. You can easily make 100 bells back by talking to a camper, but paying an excessive amount for a few beetles is no good. I tend to buy stuff from market boxes because I’m lazy and I don’t mind helping out my friends. However, you just have to be smart about it because you can easily spend all of your money this way.

 CAMPER CUSTOMIZATION

1.       There are currently 2 models of the camper. Vintage and modern. So you don’t HAVE to change your camper model if you don’t want to. Just pick the one you want. The models are 5000 bells and you get a free paint job if you switch models. Fancy patterns cost leaf tickets so make sure you save those up if you want one. Also, you can switch back to patterns you paid for with leaf tickets, as they are always available for free once you buy them.

2.       Loans: expanding the interior is something that you can pay off in a loan in this game, just like your house in ACNL.

1st expansion: more space in the main floor, 10,000 bells

2nd expansion: second floor, 30,000 bells

3rd expansion: more space in the second floor, 50,000 bells

4th expansion: more space in the main floor, 100,000 bells

5th expansion: more first floor space (maximum? Not sure yet), 150,000 bells

6th expansion: more second floor space (max?), 200,000 bells

NOTE: currently there is a bug with paying off a loan, where it will take out your money you put in and then later say you didn’t actually pay anything, but you will have less bells. It’s best to pay it all off at once and then immediately go to OK MOTORS and upgrade again! I’m sure they will fix this since this is only version 1.0.0.

LEAF TICKETS

Last but not least, the dreaded in-game currency. First of all I’d like to say that you should not complain about this because this is how game devs make money. I believe that all artists deserve payment for their work and, asking that they do this for free is just a no-no, even if it is a “big company.” These people have to pay their bills, man. Besides, a game like this isn’t the same as an actual fully featured video game. It’s great that people have the option to pay for something IF THEY WANT TO. And let me tell you, a copy of animal crossing new leaf is currently 20 USD, and most hardcore animal crossing fans actually purchase multiple copies of the game just so that they can have another custom town and more of the villagers that they want, since you are limited to 10 in that game.

OKAY ENOUGH BABBLING ON, time for the tips

1. Save your leaf tickets. What should you spend them on? 3 things:

Limited special items. I bought Tom Nook and K.K. even tho only one of them will be out at a time, because I love them both so much.

Expanding your crafting capacity. This is so super helpful and actually useful to you, as most things in the game you can pay for with leaf tickets are actually easily attainable. The ONLY way to expand crafting capacity is with leaf tickets, so spend them on this.

Camper paint customization. Make sure you only do this if you really truly want that fancy camper paintjob.

2. If you have a dollar to spare I’d recommend spending it on the 72 hour special offer because you can get double the amount of leaf tickets (40) for the price of 20. Offers like this in mobile games tend to only come around rarely, such as for specific holidays, game anniversaries, etc. And, personally, I like to support things that I love, which brings me to my next point.

3. This may not be a decision that you can make so early in the game’s release, however, if you like this game and you want to see it improve, SUPPORT IT. Buy yourself some leaf tickets. It is sooo important to support games that you love, as that is how they can afford to spend time making new updates and adding new content. A lot of people absolutely DESPISE this sort of thing but, good games come with paying for em. People were totally outraged that you have to pay to play Mario on mobile devices. They are giving us this game for FREE with lots of great content. It’s certainly not a pay-to-play game, which I am so thankful for. And if all else fails and you’d rather not spend money on Pocket Camp, go out and buy yourself a different animal crossing game to show your support for it. And I don’t want to see anyone whining that game devs have to make a living with their work. Creative careers are so incredibly under-appreciated because people think they should have access to LEISURE for free. HEALTH CARE should be free, not leisurely activities that are OPTIONAL. This backwards thinking is incredibly toxic behavior.

If you’re like me, a poor millennial child just trying to get through college, then you shouldn’t mindlessly throw your money away buying fishing nets and honey pots. I’d recommend you save your leaf tickets for more special items that ACPC will have in the future.

Thanks for reading and I hope you found this helpful. This is just something I whipped up to avoid writing my research paper. Please leave more tips and any corrections if you have any!

[consulting-cannibal]

Hii. I'm new to tumblr and kinda new to your stuff, but I love the look of it. The art style and the content is great! I was wondering where I could find the God 'n' Gabe books? Can I get them/read them online? Idk where you're from (I'm guessing America since it seems you go to cons, I could be wrong), and I'm from England, do would it be harder maybe? Idk. Plz answer, I'd love to check out your work better.

GOOD NEWS

i have an entire tag for all of the God’n’Gabe content i have available. you can also check out The Swaingels!

i am from the states, but when i do have books up in the shop, i will ship internationally. currently the only book whose contents are only available online is the third God’n’Gabe. i’ll probably be gradually releasing that as the summer carries on

ANYWAY here’s a full page of tags that i use that you can utilize to go through things a bit easier.

Anonymous said:

I’ve been COMPLETELY out of the fandom and the show since last year, but I still love seeing you and your art on my dash. I’m so happy for you, that you’ve been able to have so many relationships with the guys, and that people are buying and appreciating your art, etc… ~I’m happy, hope you’re happy too…~ You deserve it.

aw geez, thank you so much. it means a lot to me knowing that there’re quite a few who’ve fallen out but still find some joy in what i make. this is ultra sweet of you to say

Anonymous said:

How does making this your job work? You must be making a decent amount of money if you can make a living off it. You don’t get in trouble for selling comics and figures and stuff using the SPN world? Like I kind of understand commissions. Artists being paid for labor in producing something that happens to be part of a licenced work, but you’re specifically selling stuff based on their work. Has anyone part of the SPN crew ever said anything about it? Or are they backing you?

ah nah anon, i’m really not making too hot of a living off of it. i saved up for about 10 years so that when i felt i was ready to pursue a risky decision, such as Art Career, i’d have some fallback. what i saved has kept me going. i promise, i don’t come home and am like

also, i am heavily heavily, if at all related to the world, parodying the SPN world. there’s a whole copyright section for that! i don’t even use the words supernatural, dean, castiel, sam, etc–in my work. no anti-possession symbols, nada. i have permission from r2m and the band to use likenesses. (no band names tho! i did clear that up.) and like i said, if you’re in the biz, you know i’m not raking in the dollar bills from it.

SPN crew is backing me in the sweetest way, and i’ve had great experiences talking to those who stop by during the west coast cons. (1 crew member came by, quietly looked over everything, and then came back with a whole group of people who work on the show. literally brought them back to compliment it and show the others. i was BAMBOOZLED)

so yeah! it’s all good, my dude. i get having anxieties about that, as i’ve seen artists shut down just online for getting too big. you just have to not be scared to present the content you’re creating, discuss terms, and understand what is and isn’t cool with the network and those involved.

[smartecky]

Launching around the globe a few days ahead of the world’s largest mobile show was the ultimate big-dog move. Samsung celebrated the 10th anniversary of its flagship phone line by launching its latest device on Apple’s sometimes-stomping grounds at San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Center.

The timing was less than ideal for all of us jet-lagged gadget reviewers, but the effect clearly paid off. Dozens of the world’s highest-profile reviewers have been roaming the streets of Barcelona with the S10 in hand and Galaxy Buds in ears. You couldn’t pay for that kind of publicity.

And, naturally, none of us minded testing those new photo features in one of Europe’s most beautiful cities.

Here’s everything announced at Samsung’s Galaxy S10/Galaxy Fold event

But the 10th anniversary Galaxy arrives at a transitional time for Samsung — and the industry at large. The last couple of years have seen smartphone sales plateau for the first time since anyone started keeping track of those sorts of numbers, and big companies like Samsung and Apple are not immune.

That manner of existential crisis has led to one of the most eventful Mobile World Congresses in memory, as companies look to shake the doldrums of a stagnant market. It also led Samsung to open last week’s Unpacked event with the Galaxy Fold — first the cryptic product video and then the product unveil.

It’s a heck of a lead in, and, quite frankly, a recipe for disappointment. Here’s a look at the future, and now let’s talk about the present. Several people saw that I was carrying around a new Samsung device, got excited and were ultimately disappointed with the fact that I couldn’t unfold the thing.

None of this is any reflection on the quality of the S10 as a device, which I will happily state is quite high. But unlike the iPhone X, Apple’s 10th anniversary handset, the new Galaxy isn’t an attempt at a radical departure. Instead, it’s a culmination of 10 years of phone development, with new tricks throughout.

The Galaxy S10 doesn’t offer the same glimpse into the future as the Fold. But it does make a strong claim for the best Android smartphone of the moment. Starting at $1,000, it’s going to cost you — but if Samsung’s $1,900 foldable is any indication, smartphones of the future could make it look like a downright bargain.

Screen time

The Samsung Galaxy S10+ has been my daily driver for a week now. It joined me on an international road trip, through several product unveils from the competition and is responsible for all of the images in this post. Sometimes the best camera is the one in your pocket, as the saying goes.

A closer look at Huawei’s folding Mate X

Like other recent Samsung flagships, it’s going to be a tough device to give up when review time comes to a close. It’s a product that does a lot of things well. Tending, as Samsung often does, toward jamming as much into a product as possible — the polar opposite of chief competitor Apple’s approach.

But in the case of the Galaxy line, it all comes together very nicely. The S10 doesn’t represent a radical stylistic departure from its predecessor, maintaining the same manner of curved design language that helps the company cram a lot of phone into a relatively limited footprint, including a 93.4 percent screen-to-body ratio in the case of the S10+.

That means you can hold the handset in one hand, in spite of the ginormous 6.4-inch screen size. This is accomplished, in part, by the curved edges of the display that have been something of a Samsung trademark for a few generations now. It has also helped the Infinity-O design display, a laser cutout in the top-right of the screen, to fit the front-facing camera in as small a space as possible. In the case of the S10+, it’s more like an Infinity-OOO display.

Samsung was going to have to give in to the cutout trend sooner or later, opting to go ahead and skip the whole notch situation. The result is a largely unobtrusive break in the screen. Just for good measure, the phone’s default wallpapers have gradually darkening gradients that do a good job obscuring the cut out while not in use.

But while the whole more-screen-less-body deal is generally a good thing, there is a marked downside. I found myself accidentally triggering touch on the sides of the display with the edge of my palms, particularly when using the device with one hand. This has been a known issue for some time, of course.

Oh, and there’s one more key aspect in helping the S10+ go full screen.

Putting your finger on it

As with many of the features here, Samsung can’t claim to be the first to have the under-display fingerprint sensor. OnePlus, in a rare push to be first to market, added a similar technology to the 6T, which arrived last fall. But Samsung’s application takes things a step further.

The S10 and all of its variants are among the first to implant the fingerprint technology that Qualcomm announced at its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii last year. The key differentiator here is an extra level of security. If the OnePlus’ fingerprint sensor is akin to your standard face unlock, this is more in line with what you get on the iPhone or LG’s latest handset.

The ability to sense depth brings another layer of security to the product — quite literally. Here’s how Qualcomm describes it:

Combining a smartphone’s display and fingerprint reader for a seamless and sleek look, 3D Sonic uses technological advances and acoustics (sonic waves) to scan the pores of a user’s finger for a deeply accurate 3D image. An ultra-thin (0.2 mm) sensor enables cutting-edge form factors such as full glass edge-to-edge displays, and can be widely used with flexible OLED displays.

Setup proved a bit fussier than the standard physical fingerprint button. Once everything is squared away, the reader is actually fairly responsive, registering a rippled water animation and unlocking the phone in about a second.

Getting your finger/thumb in the right spot might take a couple of tries on the first go, but after that, it’s muscle memory. There’s also a small fingerprint shaped guide that pops up on the lock screen for help. It can still be a bit tricky for those times you’re not looking directly at the display, or if you switch between hands.

It’s also worth noting that the unlock can be tricky with some screen protectors. Samsung will be working with accessory manufacturers to design compatible ones, but picking the wrong company could severely hamper the unlock function.

In some ways, though, the in-display fingerprint reader beats face unlock. I tend to lay my device down next to my keyboard when I work. Lifting the phone up to my eyes in order to read notifications is a bit of a pain. Same goes for when I need to check messages in bed. Here you can simply touch, check the notifications and go on with your life.

Ports in a storm

Around the edge is a mirrored metal band that houses the power button on one side and volume rocker and devoted Bixby button on the other. Yes, the Bixby button is back. And no, it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Samsung is wholly devoted to the smart assistant, and the company’s mobile devices are the one foothold Bixby currently commands.

The complaint about the Bixby button mostly stems from the fact that the assistant was, quite honestly, pretty useless at launch — particularly when compared to Android’s default assistant. In fact, when Google announced this week at Mobile World Congress the upcoming arrival of Assistant buttons on third-party devices, the news was generally welcomed by the Android crowd.

Samsung’s Galaxy S9 deserves better than Bixby

Samsung, meanwhile, gets hounded about the Bixby button, as though its inclusion is a way of forcing its assistant on users. Once again, Samsung relented, giving users the ability to remap the button in order to launch specific apps instead. This has played out time and again with the last several Galaxy devices.

The fact is, after an admittedly rocky start, Bixby has slowly been getting better, feature by feature. But the assistant still has catching up to do with Google’s headset, and frankly doesn’t offer a ton of reasons to opt into it over Android’s built-in option. Samsung has certainly made big promises of late, coupled with the imminent arrival of the Galaxy Home Hub.

Samsung’s Bixby may finally get more third-party integration soon

Of course, that device was announced more than half a year ago, and when it does finally arrive, it will likely be carrying a prohibitive price tag. Beyond that, Bixby is currently the realm of things like Samsung refrigerators and washing machines. None of this adds up to a particularly compelling strategy for a multi-million-dollar AI offering that has become something of an inside joke in the industry.

But Samsung sticks to its guns, for better or worse. Sometimes that means Bixby, and sometimes that means defiantly clinging to the headphone jack. Turns out if you avoid a trend for long enough, you can become a trendsetter in your own right — or at least a respite from the maddening crowd.

It’s been a few years since the beginning of the end came for the jack, and the whole thing still leaves plenty of users with a sour taste. Even the once-defiant Google quickly gave in and dropped the jack. Samsung, however, has stood its ground and the decision has paid off. What was ubiquitous is now a differentiator, and even as the company hawks another pair of Bluetooth earbuds, it’s standing its ground here.

All charged up

The back of the device, like the front, is covered in Gorilla Glass 6. The latest from Corning, which debuted over the summer, promises to survive “up to 15 drops.” But don’t try this at home with your shiny new $1,000 smartphone, as your results may vary.

The material also helps facilitate what is arguably the device’s most compelling new feature: Wireless PowerShare. Samsung’s not the first company to roll out the feature — Huawei introduced the feature on the Mate 20 Pro last year. Still, it’s a cool feature and, perhaps most importantly, it beat Apple to the punch.

The feature needs to be activated manually, by swiping down into notifications (it will also automatically shut off when not in use). From there, tapping Wireless PowerShare will pop up a dialog box, letting you know the feature is ready to us. Turn the phone face down on a table and place a compatible phone on top, face up, and the S10 will go to work charging it.

Placement can be a bit tough to get right the first couple of times. The trick is making sure both devices are centered. Once everything is where it should be, you’ll hear a quick notification sound and the phone will register as charging. In the case of the new Galaxy Buds, the sound is accompanied by the appearance of the case’s charging light.

It’s a neat feature, for sure. I can certainly imagine lending some ill-prepared friend a little juice at the bar one night. I wouldn’t go throwing out my power bank just yet. For one thing, one of the phones needs to be face-down the whole time. For another, wireless charging isn’t nearly as fast as its wired counterpart, so beyond the initial novelty of the feature, it may not ultimately be one you end up using a lot.

And, of course, you’re actively draining the battery of the phone sharing power. It’s a little like a Giving Tree scenario, albeit with the lowest stakes humanly possible. Thankfully, the handsets all sport pretty beefy batteries. In the case of the S10+, it’s a massive 4,100 mAh (with the 5G model getting an even nuttier 4,500 mAh).

It’s clear the days of Samsung’s Note 7-induced battery cautions are well behind it, thanks in no small part to the extensive battery testing the company implemented in the wake of a seemingly endless PR nightmare. As it stands, I was able to get around a full day plus two hours with standard usage while roaming the streets and convention center halls of Barcelona. That means you shouldn’t have to worry about running out of energy by day’s end — and you may even have a bit to spare before it’s all over.

Camera ready

You know the drill by now, Samsung and Apple come out with a new flagship smartphone, which quickly shoots to the top of DxOMark’s camera ratings. The cycle repeats itself yet again — with one key difference: It’s a three-way tie.

[Left: Standard, Right: Full zoom]

Really, there’s no better distillation of the state of the smartphone industry in 2019 than this. The latest iPhone, which is now half-a-year-old, is now a few spots down the list, with Samsung in a three-way tie for first. The other two top devices are, get this, both Huawei handsets. It’s been a banner year for the Chinese handset maker on a number of fronts, and that’s got to leave the Apples and Samsungs of the world a bit nervous, all told.

For now, though, there’s a lot to like here… 109 points’ worth, in fact. The last several generations of camera races have resulted in some really well-rounded camera gear. It’s a setup that makes it difficult to take bad shots (difficult, but hardly impossible, mind), with the combination of hardware and software/AI improvements we’ve seen over the course of the last few devices.

The camera setup varies from device to device, so we’re going to focus on the S10+ — the device we’ve spent the past week with (though, granted, the 5G model’s camera warrants its own write-up). The plus model features a three-camera array, oriented horizontally in a configuration that brings nothing to mind so much as the original Microsoft Kinect.

[Left: Samsung S10+, Right: Pixel 2]

It’s been fascinating watching companies determine the best use for a multi-camera array. Take Nokia’s new five-camera system, which essentially compiles everything into one super-high-res shot. Here, however, the three lenses capture three different images. They are as follows:

Wide (Standard): 12 MP, 26mm Telephoto: 12 MP, 52mm Ultrawide: 16 MP, 12mm

The system is configured to let you seamlessly switch between lenses in order to capture a shot in a given situation. The telephoto can do 2x shots, while the ultrawide captures 123-degree shots. The 5G model, meanwhile, adds 3D-depth cameras to the front and rear, which is a pretty clear indication of where Samsung plans to go from here.

That said, the current setup is still quite capable of pulling off some cool depth tricks. This is no better exemplified than with the Live Focus feature, which applies a Portrait Mode-style bokeh effect around the objects you choose. The effect isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty convincing. Above is a shot I took on the MWC show floor and used in the led for a story about the HTC Vive.

There are some fun tricks as well, like the above Color Point effect. I’m not sure how often I’d end up using it, but damn if it doesn’t look cool.

All of that, coupled with new touches like wide-image panorama and recent advances like super-slow-motion and low-light shooting make for an extremely well-rounded camera experience. Ditto for scene identification, which does a solid job determining the differences between, say, a salad and a tree and adjusting the shooting settings accordingly.

Oh, and a low-key solid upgrade here are the improved AR Emojis, as seen above. They’re 1,000 times less creepy than the originals. I mean, I’m still not going to be sharing them with people unironically or anything, but definitely a step in the right direction.

Today’s Galaxy

The present moment is an exciting one for the mobile industry. There were glimmers of promise all over the MWC show floor and a week prior at Samsung’s own event. A stagnant industry has caused the big players to get creative, and some long-promised technologies are about to finally get real.

The Samsung Fold feels like a clear peek into the future of one of the industry’s biggest players, so it’s only natural that such an announcement would take some of the wind out of its flagship’s sails.

The S10 isn’t the smartphone of the future. Instead, it’s the culmination of 10 solid years of cutting-edge smartphone work that’s resulted into one of today’s most solid mobile devices.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/01/samsung-galaxy-s10-review/

Samsung Galaxy S10+ review Launching around the globe a few days ahead of the world’s largest mobile show was the ultimate big-dog move.

[fapangel]

In which a nice person makes a terrible mistake

So  @colonial-operations​ here asked me to weigh in on this ongoing discussion of the A-10, and since Tumblr is an atrocity in motion the only way to reply is to post on my own blog and just alert him (because tumblr won’t let me alert all the participants, because fuck you and everything you ever loved,) and I guess he can reblog it or whatever. Fuck this site. 

Anyway, I just want to say - I see where y’all are coming from, I get it, but if I have to listen to one more motherfucker spewing shit about how the F-35 is the biggest shitpile ever or how we should totes buy the Super Toucan I’m going to slap Pierre Sprey’s jizz out of your goddamn mouths. 

I get, guys. I really do. When they first announced the F-35 I took them at their word - it’s a ~joint strike fighter~ i.e. the next-gen web 2.0 to the cloooud 100$ airlandinnawoods battle acronym for “multi-role fighter.” In air-to-ground roles that makes it a strike fighter; (the F-15E Strike Eagle being an example of a purpose-built one,) a plane that gets in fast, blows up important shit, and gets out again. It’s the successor and replacement of dedicated slow bombers like the A-6 and A-7; completing a trend started with droop-snoot P-38s and dive-bombing modified F4U Corsairs in WWII; capable against strategic targets (bridges, power stations) and point/tactical targets (swatting individual tanks), and it’s fast and fighter-y so it can zoom around in contested airspace with enemy fighters and SAMs plugging away at it. Cool shit, very nice, etc. But I was upset when they said it’d replace the A-10, because the point of CAS aircraft’s existence is to keep the fancy, expensive planes like the F-35 out of the murderous shooting gallery of the low-altitude SHORAD envelope. 

Check it - the IL-2 was the most produced aircraft in history because so goddamn many of them got shot down. The A-10 itself was expected to be wiped out entirely within the first few weeks of WWIII in Western Europe - they called the pilots “speed bumps.” That’s because down low, every motherfucker with a rifle is shooting at you - even after building a flying tank, you’re guaranteed to take horrible losses. That’s why CAS aircraft - like the A-10 and attack helicopters - are cheap. They must be, to be cost-effective. And they’re kept around because you have to send something into that low-alt shooting gallery because a lot of things you just can’t spot from altitude. I thought the F-35 was the ChairFarce just abandoning the low-alt weedbeating job to the Army, because they had the Apaches and they were better suited for it anyway than a fixed-wing A-10 (which was designed specifically for Cold War Western Europe.) “We’ll still bomb shit with our strike fighters, but we ain’t doing that bird-dog shit no more.”

I was wrong. They meant it when they said they’d keep the mission role, and since flying expensive speedy planes down low is insane, that means they had to do the heretofore impossible, and find the targets from high altitude. So they designed and built a terrifying witch-eye that can see through fucking clouds and hunt down one poor motherfucker from 30,000 feet through overcast skies. Who did this? Lockheed fuckin Martin. Same people that built the F-35.

It’s hard to overstate that this shit works. It can, in fact, actually find shit from high altitude. And then, since it’s an electro-optical targeting system, it can pass that targeting data - electronically - directly to weapons to engage. This isn’t some A-10 shit where the pilot has to twiddle his wee thumbstick to put the crosshairs of the IR Maverick on the tank before he pushes butan - it’s just “camera finds tonk, plane kills tonk.” Technology has fucking evolved since the 90s. The ChairFarce spent about a hojillion fucking dollars to solve this problem, for a reason. And best of all, Lockmart’s next trick was to cram the terrifying, all-seeing witch-eye into the F-35 so it can provide air support anywhere it fucking wants to. The F-15E? it can load the witch-eye, but it can’t do that. Look at Operation Allied Force, and how the fucking road-mobile SA-6s evaded destruction constantly until they finally got lucky and shot down an F-16 - with a 30+ year old obsolete SAM system. You can either play that game, and watch your airstrikes vanish as your JTAC weeps because airspace too dangerous zomg or you can send in the F-15E with proper defenses, which include other Strike Eagles ripple-firing HARMs to suppress the SAMs (at a million bucks a pop), Compass Call jamming aircraft, fighters with missiles to protect all of them from possible enemy air intercept, an AWACS to spot said fighters, fighters to protect the AWACs, and a partridge in a pear tree, and after all that, you have to go home after one or two strikes because you can only suppress the SAM sites for so long. Unless you kill them, in which case do the above three fucking times first, and then do the CAS mission, if the grunts are still alive by then. 

OR YOU COULD JUST SEND A FUCKING F-35. 

So yes, bills-bastards, the anime icon’d fuck was right. The F-35 does do what its supposed to, and the A-10 can’t hack it anymore. Silverfaggot was right-on when he said the fucking things are worn the fuck out and the production line doesn’t exist anymore - hell, we can’t even upgrade them because the pilot-armor bathtub has a single hole in it for cabling, and we’re running so much new cabling through it that it’s causing EM interference. If we want to keep the A-10, we’ll need a next-gen replacement. 

And that’d work! The F-35 will be able to do CAS but that doesn’t mean low/slow weedbeaters are obsolete - you don’t see the Army ditching their Apaches, do you? Fixed-wing CAS can’t hide behind hills, but it can move faster, carry a lot more boom and survive more damage. Plus a new plane could carry the GAU-8, and the gun is awesome. Guns are still awesome. Even with all these ultra-badass smart bombs that can fly loop-de-loops before plowing up some goatherders ass, guns are still more flexible, weight/payload efficient (more strikes in the same weight/volume,) and reliable. Look at the new Harvest Hawk gunships - despite being PGM bombtrucks, they still slapped a 30mm cannon on there for a reason. Or watch some guncam footage of Apaches hunting down Hajis one at at time with their 30mms. Guns rule.

And the GAU-8 rules even more. It doesn’t need to fucking kill tanks - even when it was brand-new, it could only kill some tanks, and from some angles (mainly the rear.) It still kicks ass, because it still kills anything below a tank that’d shrug off most low-velocity 30mm rounds - APCs, IFVs, etc. And in CAS, the high-velocity AP rounds of a GAU-8 fuck their way right through hard cover on point targets, like light bunkers and shit. It also gives the gun impressive (1km+) standoff distance, and an A-10 successor would be built to survive high-threat environments so it could bring that gunfire in close where other gunships don’t dare (like the ACU-130, which is so vulnerable we only fly it at night even against fucking goatherders.)

And you know what? The Air Force sees the wisdom of this - they’re investigating an A-10 replacement after all, because the A-10 has worked so damn well in counter-insurgency roles that they’re like, god damn, if it’s THIS good at the job, imagine a plane like this that ISN’T FIFTY FUCKING YEARS OLD AND DESIGNED FOR A WAR THAT PREDATES THE LAST TWO GAME-CHANGING TECHNOLOGICAL PARADIGM SHIFTS. We have the technology. 

So good on y’alls, keep fighting the good fight and keep on pushing for the THUNDERBOLT III “RAZORBACK” - SON OF JUGG, because what a beautiful beast it’d be. But for the love of fuck, for the love of all that is sweet and holy, STOP spewin the fuckin “eff-thirtay-foive is shee-it it uses dem new-fangled computarz n’ sheeit dun trust’em” before getting indignant over someone calling you out out for being a fucking knuckle-dragging rocking-chair dwelling fudd telling the new platforms to get offer yer lawn. AND STOP DEMANDING WE BUY SOME GLORIFIED FUCKING CESSNA WITH SHITTY PAYLOAD THAT DOES *NOTHING* OUR *VAST FLEET OF ARMED FUCKING DRONES* DOESN’T DO BETTER, FASTER, FOR LONGER, MUCH MORE EFFICIENTLY, WITH NO RISK TO A HUMAN CREW. 

[longwindedbore]

Well, Congress is bought by the Corporations looking to bend us over. This obscenity is likely to pass unless there are major protests in the districts of GOP Representatives that face a challenge in 2018 and want to placate voters. Good luck.

Masses of protests in NYC or LA will only amuse the GOP scum in Congress.

If it is enacted, It’s important not to say or think to yourself that “they” took away net neutrality. It’s important to shout even in your mind something along The lines of”[choose your profanity] Congress and [name your local provider] are robbing us to satisfy their greed! Vote the swine in Congress out! Why not support independent candidates that work for the people! Then we can tax the corporations like they should be taxed!”

Again, NEVER call the culprits “they”. It’s not possible to get sufficiently angry against “they”. We have to be specific as to who did it and what needs to be done to address the problem. Thinking that “they” did it leaves one with a feeling of helplessness. Helplessness leads to inactivity.

Elect the right Legistators and Laws can be revoked easier than fought in court.

Be specific as you can as to the culprits. Talk to friends and family. Feel out strangers as well. Correct people who want to say “they”.

If you live in the district of a turd who voted for the bill, then check where the creep gets their campaign funding. See if the slime has a “non-profit” foundation.

Armed with information you can meet with like minded and take action. One thing to consider is business support. The increased pricing may affect them as well - even those who think tax cuts spur job growth.

Besides protests to remind our “overlords” that it’s not over till WE the PEOPLE say it’s over we can a] Garner support for alternative candidates; [b] boycott any local businesses that support either the GOP candidate for the corporation the benefits from the law; [c] do as some municipalities in counties in Colorado see if your local government is interested in providing services competing with the octopus corporation [d] if you don’t live in a GOP district make sure your representative understands that you and a large segment of angry voters say this is it over yet

Which brings me to saving our country. There will be push back along the lines of “really, it’s only X dollars per month.” Sure, we are screwed over incrementally to prevent really getting us angry.

The economy has been strangled by the greed of a very small group of Ultra Rich. When I say ultra Rich I’m talking about people who can affford to buy Legislators who themselves are worth $100,000,000.00! (Half of Congress are millionaires)

These Ultra Rich have bribed crooked legislators to create the laws and systems that allow them to amass incredible wealth. What the Ultra Rich could possible want with more I can’t figure. But they do. And a lot or most or all of their wealth is the fruit of corruption, not entrepreneurship or inheritance.

We are stopped from taking decisive action by ideas like “ownership”. Ownership as applies to our homes, cars, toothbrushes is what we paid for. Ownership of a business is what someone worked to build. But we have to stop letting the Ultra Rich claim “ownership” of the generators of wealth.

They have seized these by illegal means then retroactively legalized their plunder.

For instance: Three companies control insulin manufacturing. Insulin was discovered as the result of scientists working in several countries culminating in work at the University of Toronto in 1921. Somehow these three companies control the world supply. Of course they jack the prices of this life-saving drug. Whywould they still have patent rights (other than being good at gaming the system) and how did they get them in the first place?

Another example the recent articles about allowing drilling and protected wilderness in Alaska. Why? There’s an oil glut in the world; absolutely no reason to allow any drilling in Alaska. Some rich scum want to tie down the rights now while their bribed GOP has the majority in Congress. They are stealing public property through bribery.

What the bribed Congress is doing for the corporations by ending net neutrality is the same theft that is occurring over and over again that provides the ultra rich with their wealth.

I don’t feel helpless. I look around and I don’t see the ultrarich. What I see is all of us working for salaries, for hourly wages and part-time work. I see that all of us already are in CONTROL of the generators of wealth. We do all the work, we manage it all just fine without them.

Consider there’s no guidance or help from the ultrarich this somehow gets the food from the farm to the wholesaler to the store. We the people do all that.

It’s time to take back from the ultra rich what they have stolen from our country. Protests, voting for honest candidates, alternative corporate structures, and taxing the living shit out of Wealthy is a good start.

Would it make any difference to the running of the Economy if the theft of wealth was confiscated from 5000 families and transferred 5000 employee owned credit unions?

Don’t despair,don’t feel helpless. Get angry and and join with your neighbors. Protest. Vote.

The FCC sided with Comcast and decided to let ISPs censor the internet. The Internet needs to stop this from happening: http://cms.fightforthefuture.org/tellfcc/

Last Wednesday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced a proposal for new rules that would allow for a “ fast lane” of Internet traffic for content providers who are willing (and able) to pay a fee. [1] The proposal reverses the FCC’s previous commitment to net neutrality and open internet and allows ISP’s like Comcast or Verizon to slow down and censor services that don’t pay the toll.

We have to be totally honest, this situation is seriously grim. But there is still hope. The FCC already knows that the Internet community wants net neutrality, but they think they can put their spin on these new rules and sneak them through. If we can prove them wrong right now with a massive public outcry, we can literally save the Internet once again.

We need to stop the FCC now. Big business groups are already ramping up lobbying efforts with the FCC in swarms since Wednesday’s announcement in support of censoring the open Internet and to ensure this dangerous proposal moves forward. [2]

This is a critical moment. In the last few weeks more than 65,000 people have taken action with us. Can you help us get to 80,000 by the end of the day today?

[1] Gautham Nagesh. “FCC to Propose New ‘Net Neutrality’ Rules”. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304518704579519963416350296

[2] Edward Wyatt. Edward Wyatt. “Lobbying Efforts Intensify After F.C.C. Tries 3rd Time on Net Neutrality” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/business/lobbying-efforts-intensify-after-fcc-tries-3rd-time-on-net-neutrality.html?hpw&rref=politics

  - Fight For The Future

[keywestlou]

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF OZ AWAITS.....MONT BLANC, COURMAYEUR AND CHAMONIX

The wonderful world of Oz awaits.

Today covers Days 35 and 36. Courmayeur and Chamonix. Both sit in the shadow of Mont Blanc. Different. Exciting.

Courmayeur is the last community in northern Italy. Near the French border. On the french side is Chamonix. A 9 mile tunnel through Mont Blanc connects the two.

Courmayeur is an Alpine resort. On the sunny side of Mont Blanc. One of Chamonix’s distinctions is it sits near the junction of France, Italy and Switzerland. A skiing resort in the “French Alps.”

DAYS 35 and 36…..Greece the First Time

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Key West Lou

Between northern Italy and mid eastern France, computer/internet connections have been a disaster. I think it is because I am high up in the Alps. Whatever.

I could not blog yesterday. Today is a double header. Every word worth reading!

If I had been able to do the blog yesterday, my opening comment would have been…..The last 48 hours have been amazing! Absolutely amazing! Hard to believe!

Here it is…..48 hours ago I was in Athens, Greece. Yesterday Novara, Italy. Today Chamonix, France.

How about this…..Athens a boiling 90 degrees. Novara’s humidity a killer. It snowed last night in Chamonix and is presently 29 degrees Fahrenheit.

The trip caught up with me in Novara. The humidity unbearable. Italians have electrical power problems. Ergo, little air conditioning. I slept in Novara the one night with no air.

Fortunately, only one night in Novara. Then to Courmayeur. Courmayeur is the area in northern Italy immediately before France. I am staying a couple of nights in a Swiss chalet designed condo there.

The drive from Novara to Courmayeur took 2 hours. The speed limit was 85. I was the only one doing it. They were passing me at 125 miles per hour. Each time a car went by, I did not see it for long, but heard it loud and clear. A long swishing sound.

I stopped at a super market before going to the condominium. Needed breakfast goodies. The parking lot was an eye opener. The parking spaces were all half the size of those in the U.S. The cars small also. No big cars here. I was driving a Fiat. Stick shift.

Italians pay $12 a gallon for gas. They learned a long time ago to conserve. We have not when it comes to cars. I doubt the American public ever will. The desire is for big and more big.

Courmayeur looks like a Swiss movie. Makes sense. Switzerland is only one hour away. Old stone homes. Hundreds if not a thousand or more years old. Stone with wood trimming. The stone is gray, the wood brown.

There is a lot of renovating going on. Huge cranes all over the hill sides.

Courmayeur is in the Alps. So is Chamonix, France from where I am writing this blog. The Alps are big. No question about it. I had never seen anything so big anywhere. Majestic.

Mont Blanc is huge. As far as the eye can see in any direction. Higher than anything I have ever seen.

Mont Blanc is not one peak jetting upwards. It is a series of peaks. Eleven peaks sitting on top of an already high broad miles long mountain. The whole thing is called Mont Blanc. One of the peaks is specifically named Mont Blanc. The biggest of the big. Four thousand eight hundred ten m. I do not know what the m means. Suffice it to say, I have never seen anything bigger!

Mont Blanc is beautiful. Breathtaking.

The condo I am enjoying has two bedrooms. The building itself all stone. Two private balconies. Balconies and trim wood.

My intent was to drive to Chamonix the first evening and have dinner in France. Only a half hour away. I was too tired. It was bed for me.

Courmayeur is a valley. About two thirds the way up Mont Blanc. I was glad I had jeans. It is cold that far up.

Many power lines run along and on the mountains. Italy has a power shortage. France does not. France has nuclear reactors producing electric power. The Italians buy much of their electricity from France. At a premium price. The Italians voted at one time to ban nuclear reactors in Italy. A costly decision dollar wise. Whether health wise is another question. I make the observation because France and Italy are so close. Any French nuclear disaster would pour down on the Italians.

The drive from Novara to Courmayeur was interesting for a number of reasons. One had to do with castles. So many. Each built high on a hill. A small one. Apparently making it next to impossible for an enemy to scale the walls.

The castles were about a mile apart. I recalled that way back when there were many Italian kingdoms. Each with its own king. They warred constantly. It was easy. They were each a mile distant from each other. One hour’s walking time. Less on a horse.

Churches everywhere. Apparently each castle had its own church. The church was an integral part of each kingdom.

That is the end of Day 35. I had intended to go on to the next day. Day 36. A rendition of my first day in France. However, I am too tired. I apologize. The trip is starting to get to me. I will pick it up here tomorrow. You will love the glacier and snow stories, the dramatic drop in temperature, and the high quality of Italian roads and bridges. And more.

Enjoy your day! I am mine. I know this is the trip of a lifetime and one I will never do again.

—

The Wall Street Journal is a conservative publication. In the past 4 years, the Journal has basically supported Trump.

No more.

Trump spoke Sunday at the CPAC meeting in Orlando. Part of his self-serving speech was his claim that his 4 years as President were the best. Especially year 4 which he described as “fabulous.”

The Wall Street Journal disagreed. An Editorial piece yesterday titled The Grievances of Trump’s Past hit the nail on the head: “If 2020 was so fabulous, why are Republicans shut out of power up and down Pennsylvania Avenue?”

There is insanity on both sides of the aisle in Washington. One example is the Warren and Sanders proposed 3 percent tax on billionaires. In bill form labeled Ultra Millions Tax Act, they propose a 2 percent tax on the $50 million wealthy rising to 3 percent for billionaires over $$1 billion.

Where is the fairness? These people have already paid any taxes due in the years they received the monies. Isn’t what is proposed “double dipping?” Double taxation?

Seems UnAmerican.

Warren and Sanders believe their bill would “close the wealth gap” between the rich and poor.

If I was fortunate to have $50 million or $3 billion, I would take my money and body and move elsewhere.

Joe Manchin is playing “power politics.” The Democratic Senator from West Virginia knows he is one of the swing votes. With an equally divided Senate, the Democrats need his vote on most if not all measures. Our country will never correct itself  if Biden and team cannot get legislation passed which would get the U.S. over the many humps it faces.

Manchin has become a pompous obstructionist. He is nickel dining bills like the present stimulus one. He doesn’t care. He has his fortune. What of those that do not have a fortune to rely on and are having grave difficulties even putting food on the table.

Some of his muscle flexing hard ass tactics include his refusal to vote in support of getting rid of the filibusterer. Without it, Biden will fall far short of what he promised he could do and will do.

Even with the $1,400, Manchin is pushing Biden to give less.

He vocally opposes policy proposals from the progressive wing of his party, including Medicare For All.

One of the biggies today. Manchin is opposed to increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

On this day in 1990, 6,000 drivers went on strike against Greyhound Lines. An impasse was reached in negotiations following the calling of the strike. The union remained adamant. Greyhound fired all 6,000 workers.

Shades of Ronald Reagan and the air controllers a few years earlier.

On this day in 1899, The Court of Inquiry investigating the loss of the Battleship Maine met in the Key West Custom House.

Harry Truman was quick to recognize a good thing. Especially when it came to Key West. The President arrived this date in 1951 for a three week vacation at the Little White House.

Topsy turvy Syracuse basketball. Syracuse beat North Carolina 72-70 over the weekend.

Some sportswriters are now saying Syracuse is back on the bubble and might have a chance to play in the NCAA tournament.

Tonight, tonight will be like every Tuesday night……My blog talk radio show. Tuesday Talk with Key West Lou. Nine my time.

Great topics. Less fire and brimstone now that Trump is no longer President.

Join me for a quick moving half hour. Guaranteed you will enjoy. www.blogtalkradio.com/key-west-lou.

Enjoy your day!

    THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF OZ AWAITS…..MONT BLANC, COURMAYEUR AND CHAMONIX was originally published on Key West Lou