#death weed and sixty nining

[rinhaler]

𝐉𝐮𝐣𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐮 𝐊𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

𝐌𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐦𝐢 𝐅𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐨

Baby I Know How To Use a Gun (gun.. gun)

18+, dubcon, vaginal sex, alcohol consumption, cheating, toxic!relationship (they are both toxic af), gaslighting, manipulation, coercion, co-dependency, gun inaccuracies (probably), gunplay ♡ physical abuse?, pussy drunk!megumi, choking, dacryphilia, daddy!kink, bruising ♡, spanking, masochism, minor dildo use, fingering,dumbifcation, pussy spanks, scratching, breeding kink, calls your pussy ‘she’.

words: 8k

Requests:

little pervy brother megumi!

𝐓𝐨𝐣𝐢 𝐅𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐨

You Deserve Roses and You Know This

18+, dubcon, vaginal sex, fingering, oral (f receiving), nipple play, dacryphilia, pregnancy, abortion ideation, miscarriage, depression, adultery, breeding, creampie ♡, smoking mention.

words: 4.1k

By the Dim Lamplight

18+, fem!reader, noncon/rape mention, noncon filming mention, hybrid!reader, abuse, kidnapping, stockholm syndrome ♡, whipping mention, Fushiguro's have a Southern twang, branding, fingering, age gap (megumi + reader 20s, toji 40s), lactation!kink, tit sucking ♡ (duh), sir!kink, spanking ♡ (incl. pussy spanks), manipulation, pet names (sweetheart, darlin', honey), cheating, reader has pubes!, tummy bulge ♡, creampie.

words: 5k

Trigger Finger Ready and Got Nowhere To Run To

18+, dub/noncon, mentions of violence/murder, toxic!relationship, free use ♡, manipulation, jealousy, fem!Uraume, degradation ♡, praise, no prep, oral fixation ♡, size!kink, daddy!kink, choking (hands + belt), slight breathplay, exhibitionism, spanking, dacryphilia ♡, dumbification, creampie(s), calls your pussy “she/her”, slight cucking, oral (m+f receiving), restraints, fingering ♡, pussy spanks, squirting ♡, multiple orgasms, double penetration!(one hole), brief anal mentioning, breeding ♡, belly bulge ♡, pet names (princess, brat, good girl, sweetheart).

words: 15.2k

In The World My Demons Cultivate

18+, fem!reader, no smut, dead character, mental heatlh struggles, suicide ideation, grief/loss, drug abuse, pet names.

words: 3k

Two Lovers Entwined

18+, fem!reader, british slang (duh!), brief slut-shaming, size kink ♡, slight exhibitionism, dry humping, spanking ♡, cunnilingus, daddy!kink, vaginal sex, squirting, belly bulge ♡, creampie ♡, pet names (baby, princess, darlin', sweetheart etc.)

words 9.5k

Requests:

Toji & his bimbo sugar baby

Toji noncon w/ virgin step daughter

One night stand

Yakuza boss!Toji

Step dad!Toji is lonely and needs you

Toji + petplay

Yakuza!Toji + brat taming

Thirsts:

bloody knuckle fingering

Yakuza!Toji & Yakuza!Shiu spoil you

Step daddy!Toji making you watch porn

Toji w/ morning wood

𝐑𝐲𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐒𝐮𝐤𝐮𝐧𝐚

Am I (25F) The Asshole For Fucking My Boyfriends Older Brother (28M)

18+, dubcon, mean dom!sukuna, sub!reader, cheating, hate sex ♡, drug taking, weed smoking, blowbacks/shotgunning, heavy degradation, slight praise, fingering ♡, vaginal sex, sixty-nineing ♡, face sitting, squirting ♡, pussy spanking, noncon filming, coercion, manipulation, daddy!kink, creampie, cervix fucking.

Words: 10.6k

DEATH IS NO MORE !

18+, fem!reader, violence, blood ♡, daddy!kink, size difference ♡, age gap, degradation, fingering, orgasm denial, pussy spanks, dacryphilia, finger sucking, vaginal sex, choking ♡, creampie, squirting ♡, pet names (princess, sweetheart, baby).

Words: 10k

Requests:

plug!sukuna after fingering you

plug!sukuna and yuuji double team

noncon w/ step bro!sukuna

plug!sukuna w/ a shy girl at a party

plug!sukuna offers you a treat

sukuna slips his hand/tongue under your skirt

play fighting w/ plug!sukuna

plug!sukuna wants to hear you

jealous uncle!sukuna

cucking!Ino

Thirsts:

noncon w/ new student reader

sukuna's happy trail

𝐊𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐍𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐢

Requests:

mutual masturbation w/ uncle nanamin

uncle nanamin & step daddy gojo

uncle nanamin gives you a vibrator

step daddy!nanami is jealous

date night w/ uncle nanamin

Thirsts:

uncle nanamin

jealous uncle!nanamin

step dad!gojo and uncle nanamin catch u camming!

𝐘𝐮𝐮𝐣𝐢 𝐈𝐭𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐢

Requests:

yandere step bro!yuuji

𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐮 𝐆𝐨𝐣𝐨

Requests:

step bro!gojo noncon

step dad!gojo ft. step itadori bros

getting off to you fucking his bestie!

jealous daddy!gojo read your texts!

ex!babysitter gojo & ex!babysitter suguru dp you!

giving step!bro gojo a pussy job

Thirsts:

step dad!gojo and uncle nanamin catch u camming!

step dad!gojo and uncle!suguru

𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐨 𝐊𝐚𝐦𝐨

Requests:

pervy roomamate!choso

𝐈𝐧𝐨 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐮𝐦𝐚

Don’t You Love It When I Come Around?

18+, fem!reader, dubcon (he's high), toxic relationship, exes to lovers?, rich boy!ino, dacryphilia, pussy eating ♡, light nipple play, vaginal sex, love making ♡, drool ♡, praise, slight orgasm denial, scratching, creampie ♡, manipulation, calls your pussy she/her, pet names (princess, baby/babe, gorgeous etc.)

words: 4.6k

Thirsts:

cum eating

cucking!Ino

[xaracosmia]

ꕥ — WELCOME TO MARE COSMIA, CIARÁN CALLUM STEWART. 🌗

ꕥ  — OOC INFORMATION;

name / alias: Monet age: 24 pronouns: She/They ooc contact: @thebankery on twt other characters in xc: Philomena Roxbury, Prince Papillon, Obanai Iguro, Kellon Bishop

ꕥ  — IC INFORMATION;

name: Ciarán Callum Stewart age: 125 (25 human years) pronouns: He/Him series: OC canon point: N/A

app triggers: Death/Immortality

personality: Ciarán is a dick. But a well-meaning one. Like, most of the time.

Ciarán is a proud nerd and fighter. He knows that these hobbies usually don’t go together and he takes pride in it. His favorite things to do are puzzles and beat ass. He appreciates the logical, exact, measured aspects of life, and if he had it his way the entire world would just be a game of chess where you get to punch your opponent if you win. He likes to, AND ALWAYS WILL, do things perfectly. There’s no room for mistakes in Ciarán’s world. Not from others, and not from himself. All of his fighting moves are carefully calculated and all of his inventions are cleanly crafted. 

His strict standards don’t exactly make him impossible to deal with, though. He’s an extrovert. Though most of his socialization comes from his spars, he still enjoys spending time with other people without making them bleed. He’s just picky about who he keeps as company. The rude, direct way that he talks to people usually weeds out the people that he doesn’t want to befriend anyway.

Ciarán has few friends and likes it that way. It annoys him that he still feels emotions the same as everyone else, so he’s careful about who he’ll give his heart to. Despite the way he tries to separate logic and emotions, he’s someone that feels deeply and makes a lot of decisions based on that.

His sense of humor is sparse and his willingness to do silly goofy things is low. Ciarán likes to conduct himself in a certain way. He’s not going to make a fool of himself. It’s easy to make him yell, complain, and lose his temper though. So he usually ends up making a fool of himself regardless.

something your muse struggles with: He’s more rude than he is blunt. Finds it hard to lighten up at times.

your muse’s greatest strength: Hard worker and pretty damn smart. Good leader. Focused.

history / background:

Ciarán was born to unknown parents and left at an orphanage. Unbeknownst to them, he wasn’t a normal baby.

Ciarán’s planet was split into eight main regions, usually referred to as ‘worlds’ due to how different they were. There was little to no consistency between all of them despite all being part of one landmass. Magic was only found in one person, the queen, and objects, like magic crystals, enchanted forests, potions, dragons, and everything else that you could think of. But humans weren’t magic. That was unheard of.

 Unfortunately the queen died before she could birth an heir. People from every world began trying to rise up to be the new leader. This lawless powerplay lasted for a year and abruptly ended when seven babies were born. 

Ciarán (and six other random babies) had unique abilities that were obvious from birth. A baby Ciarán could grab and bend the fabric of reality itself, know things about people that no one could feasibly know on the first meeting, and move land just by drawing a new map. He and the other babies, one from (almost) every world, also had powerful magic similar to the late queen’s.

Unfortunately Ciarán was given to an orphanage at birth and his powers weren’t discovered until he was eleven months old. Up until that point, he was raised by the sole owner of the orphanage, a sixty-nine year old woman named Caoimhe. On that fateful day he threw a normal baby tantrum and grabbed at the air in a way that seemed to bend reality itself. Caoimhe instantly recognized it as the late Queen’s magic. The news spread quickly, and the orphanage was flooded with people claiming to be the biological parents of Ciarán. There was only one problem — Royals don’t have human DNA. They couldn’t prove anyone to be his real parent. After months of unwanted attention, bribes and even threats, Caoimhe declared herself the mother and the eleven month old agreed. As much as he could, anyway. No one could argue. Caoimhe became the new queen of their kingdom.

Ciarán had a good life growing up. Friends, money, power, travel, and a strong connection with the six other babies who were being raised in similar ways. He was very aware that his existence had brought peace to the kingdoms and from a young age he took this responsibility very, very seriously.

Only seven babies were born though. There was still a kingdom on the outskirts waiting for their magic. While the other worlds thrived, they were stagnant, waiting to become a part of the new world. Back to that later.

Ciarán was a precocious, lanky, kind of awkward kid. He took a lot of things way too seriously and didn’t smile or laugh often. He got into fights. He got into arguments. He got into trouble. He got into the books. Ciarán genuinely enjoyed STEM and spent most of his time either mastering every weapon that he could or inventing things. He surprised everyone by somehow managing to be both a nerd and a successful fighter. He started off by learning from his knights, and by 13 he was training them. Despite his love for The Spar, he kept his kingdom’s previous name — The Technology Kingdom. They were innovative, always ahead of the curve, and impossible to outdo. That’s the reputation that he wanted, anyway.

Ciarán was a well-loved king. Sure he was rude and short with people, but he cared about them. That was undeniable. They liked him so much, in fact, he never had any pressure to get an heir. He had a partner or two over the years but they never lasted. Years and years and years passed by of relative peace between the worlds. As he got older, his mother aged, and he seemed to stop. 

When Ciarán was twenty-five his mother was ninety-four. He never really thought about her age before — she was always old. He couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t. But when he woke up one morning and she didn’t come down for breakfast he knew that she was gone. Unwilling to face it, he went about his day as normal, completely engrossed in his work, so focused and closed off the castle workers couldn’t bring themselves to ask him about it. Her funeral was the next day and it was a kingdom-wide event. He didn’t go.

 Time seemed to be moving differently to him. He never knew how to explain it, but he knew — he was immortal now, and his only living family was gone.

Now at (technically but not mentally) 125 years old, Ciarán is an even tougher ruler than he was before and even harder to befriend. He still had the other six magical royal friends, at least, and some of them even had descendants. Ciarán kept pursuing his work and maintaining his kingdom. His powers are mostly micromanaging and keeping everything in working order. He’s essentially the ‘coder’ of the world and has the ability to bend reality to a certain extent. He was more than happy to just keep ruling and maintaining the world with no heirs.

One day his ex took an interest in a citizen from the still unnamed, unruled kingdom. Ciarán instantly took notice and kept a close eye on them. A non-royal invading the royal family wasn’t going to go well. He didn’t need special magic to know that. And he’d be damned if his perfect system was messed with in any way.

powers / abilities: 

Stat Reader - Ciarán can see everyone’s stats. This includes their full PREFERRED name, current pronouns, species, age (including immortality and maturity age if applicable), inventory (only items currently on their person), occupation(s), height, weight, natural and current hair and eye colors, and vitals (including injuries, diseases, allergies, past surgeries, and anomalies). He looks through a magical visor to do this, and others can look through it if he lets them.

 1-Up -  He can give someone a temporary extra life! If you die, all of your status effects and injuries will be cured, and your health will be completely restored. He can only do this every 5 hours, and doing it puts him out of commission for 30 minutes.

Reality Bender - Nerfed because he’s not in his original world, but he can bend reality like the warp tool. It doesn’t work on people. Ex: If there’s a table in front of him with a can of soda on it, he can twist it like ♻ This wouldn’t break the can or table but it would make the can slide around, depending on how he bends it.

Inherent abilities:  Ciarán is not human. He’s considered A Royal in his world, and they’re magical beings with special physical properties. Magic might affect him differently than it would on a human, depending on what it is. 

- He can’t get human illnesses or diseases.

- Immortal in age, but he can still die (he only has one life left…)

> His Fighting Skills Are OP. Just Being Honest. <

Skilled Fighter - His highest stats are shit like evasion, agility, avoidance, speed, and perception, but his others are nothing to sneeze at. He can hit hard and take a hit. His win-to-loss ratio is basically 1000-0.

Weapon Expert - He can use any weapon exceptionally well except for a gun (or anything like it) because they don’t exist in his world. 

items / weapons: 

Insane Weapon Collection - Literally every weapon that you can think of minus guns. His favorite of every category. Not listing all of them. Includes sword, bow, mace, halberd, dagger, bow staff, nunchucks, chakram, etc etc etc. No shields, sheaths, or armor or anything though.

Photo Album - A thin but well taken care of book. Has A Group Picture (Ciarán, Kellon, and a mysterious third guy(?)), A Picture of His Ex That He Needs To Get Rid Of, and A Picture of Mommy.

Bracelet His Ex Made For Him - dude

starting ability: Stat Reader starting item: Photo Album

extra:

6’5”, bi, wears nothing but black and white (and clear)

His hair is so long because he challenges people to cut it during a fight. It’s been a literal century since someone has managed to.

All of his clothes are like the bare minimum to cover as much skin as possible

This is so his nurses could easily access/tend to injuries, but it’s mostly because he can’t be assed to put together real outfits.

He seems to be mildly monochrome. Even his blood is slightly desaturated.

yeah kellon is one of his bffs im having an arc 

discord id: 00prionnsa

[tanoraqui]

Tag meme: counting.

[weirdcrocodilelady]

it’s 3:10 am and I have no life so I decided to mathematically document the shittiness of Death Note’s female representation

Disclaimer: Death Note is still my second favorite anime of all time and my third favorite TV show of all time (1 and 2 are Soul Eater and Friends, in case you were wondering). I appreciate most of its male leads and adore some of them. I don’t dislike any of the female characters in this show, even Misa. (Should I make a full post about why I like Misa? No. No, I shouldn’t. I’ll probably do it anyway.) Also, Naomi. Just...❤️Naomi.❤️

In preparation for this post, I binged the anime* for the [CLASSIFIED]th time and made a list of all its male and female characters in separate lists. A character’s inclusion on the list depends on whether they meet the following criteria:

1. They have a name that is spoken out loud at some point (alibis count; if they are only given a first name or a last name alone, that also counts);

2. They speak at least one line.

This allowed me to weed out most unimportant background characters as well as all the names written down in the various Death Notes. However, as you will see, some very minor characters still made the list.

*I’m just doing the anime this time, not the manga. I have and love the manga but didn’t feel like going through the whole thing for this. My doglike devotion to completely pointless research only goes so far, people.

Here are the male characters we encounter across all 37 episodes (in order of appearance, but not necessarily official introduction by name):

Light. Ryuk. Sudo. Ryo. Takuo Shibuimaru. Soichiro. Matsuda. Watari. L. Lind. L. Tailor. Mogi. Raye. Kiichiro Osoreda. Aizawa. Ide. Ukita. Kitamura. Demegawa. Koki Tanekabara. Gelus. Ooi. Takahashi. Kida. Higuchi. Hatori. Namikawa. Mido. Shimura. Aiber. Roger. Mello. Near. Mason. Larry Connors. Commander Rester. Eddie. Gevanni. Sidoh. Armonia Justin. Kal Snyder. Pedro Kollet. Dwhite Godon. Jose. Mikami. Matt.

Same criteria, female characters:

Sachiko. Sayu. Yuri. Naomi. Misa. Rem. Takada. Weddy. Yumi. Eriko. Nori. Lidner.

That’s 45 male characters and 13 female characters. If I did my sixth grade math correctly, that means 77.6 percent of the cast is male, compared to only 22.4 percent female. The women whose names are in bold are those whose involvement in the story hinges on her having a personal connection to a male character, either as a family member or a significant other/love interest. Yes, I did the math for that too. SIXTY-NINE POINT TWO PERCENT of the women in Death Note are heavily defined by their relationship to at least one man.

(Yeah, I know, 69. Shut up.)

Now, just for kicks, let’s narrow it down to only characters who appear and speak in more than one episode.

Men: Light. Ryuk. Soichiro. Matsuda. Watari. L. Mogi. Raye. Aizawa. Ide. Ukita. Kitamura. Demegawa. Ooi. Takahashi. Kida. Higuchi. Hatori. Namikawa. Mido. Shimura. Aiber. Roger. Mello. Near. Rester. Eddie. Gevanni. Sidoh. Pedro. Kollet. Godon. Jose. Mikami.

Women: Sachiko. Sayu. Naomi. Misa. Rem. Takada. Weddy. Yumi. Lidner.

That gives us 34 men and 9 women. 79.1% men, 20.9% women. 66.7% of those women are defined by their connection to a male character.

I haven’t even touched on all the other smaller, but still significant crumbs of sexism in Death Note, such as how the entirety of the ICPO meeting in Episode 2 is male. The Japanese NPA is intimately intertwined with the plot, yet we never once see a single female police officer. 

Naomi Misora, apparently one of the FBI’s top agents, left her job to get married and (plan to) have kids.

Kiyomi Takada is said to be one of the most intelligent and powerful women in Japan, having graduated from a very prestigious university, yet the only time we see her in school is when she disrupts a lecture to have a relationship check-in with her man meat.

Adult!Sayu gets hit on, gets kidnapped, gets traumatized, then is forgotten for the rest of the series.

Rem throws her life away for love. 

Takada agrees to throw away her core values and career for love.

Weddy’s cleavage.

Lidner’s cleavage.

Cosmé Misa.

It genuinely breaks my heart that a series I love so dearly, and that has played a significant role in shaping my morals and beliefs for almost half my life, is so cold, flippant, and downright disrespectful to my entire gender.

[maaaddiexo]

The Within Series | Legolas Greenleaf

Book 1: The Devil Within - 1.6

Mainlist | Serieslist

Nyx of Tyndall does not know love or kindness. Cursed at a young age by a jealous witch, Nyx has lived a life of solitude and death.

Until Gandalf the Grey requests her presence and uncontrollable skill in assisting a young Hobbit across Middle-Earth with nine others to destroy a ring so powerful all fall victim to its evil.

Not only must Nyx face Orcs, demons, and creatures she’s never seen before, but also the devil inside. Controlling the devil is the key to finding freedom in a spell that can’t be broken. But it will not be so easy for Nyx when every obstacle she faces pushes her to an edge she cannot return from.

Chapter Six

Through the woods they ran. The sun had barely begun to rise when they heard the screeches of the Nazgûl once more.

“Hurry!” Strider shouted from the front of the line, Frodo thrown over his shoulder. His skin had paled and small groans came through his lips every time he was jostled around.

“We’re six days from Rivendell,” Sam replied. “He’ll never make it!”

“Have faith,” Nyx said, though she feared Sam was right. “If he can withstand the Ring he may be able to stay off the poison in his veins long enough.”

They moved as fast as they could until the next sunset, finding refuge in thick foliage, surrounded by three trolls that had once been turned to stone. Nyx touched one gently. “Bilbo turned these to stone sixty years ago. Gandalf told me about it when I was younger.”

“How did he turn them to stone?” Merry asked as he wrapped an unconscious Frodo in an extra blanket. The poor Hobbit had begun to shiver.

“Trolls cannot stand sunlight. They will turn to stone if any sunlight touches their skin. Bilbo saved the entire company from being eaten that night. It was the first time he proved himself helpful to Thorin Oakenshield.”

“He’s waking up!” Sam shouted. “Look, Frodo. It’s Mister Bilbo’s trolls!”

Frodo could only moan and groan, his eyes enlarged and his skin a pale blue. All of the veins in his chest were visible. Sam touched his cheek.

“Mister Frodo? He’s going cold!”

“Is he going to die?” Pippin asked worriedly.

Strider looked sadly at the Hobbits. “He is passing into the Shadow World. He’ll soon become a wraith like them.”

Frodo gasped painfully again, and the Ringwraiths screeched in response. The noise came from all around them.

“They’re close!” Merry gasped.

“Sam? Do you know the athelas plant?”

“Athelas?”

“Kingsfoil.”

“Kingsfoil? Ah, it’s a weed.”

“It may help to slow the poison,” Strider said. Sam nodded and moved to leave but Nyx stopped him.

“I will go. I know what the plant looks like and where to find it. Besides, I am still uneasy from last night. I believe some time away from people may help calm me down.”

Strider hesitated and then nodded. “Alright. Don’t stray too far. There is another plant, echinacea. I will search for that.”

Nyx nodded and the two left the Hobbits alone and moved into the woods, searching for their respected plants. Nyx had just found hers when she heard a new voice. Not a wraith, but a woman.

“What’s this? A Ranger caught off his guard?”

Nyx grabbed her scythe. “Drop your weapon.”

“It’s alright, Nyx,” Strider said. “She is an old friend. Only having fun.”

The woman stood up straight and sheathed her sword, revealing porcelain skin and pointed ears. An Elf. “My name is Arwen. I bring no harm, but it is my job to patrol the borders. When we heard of Ringwraiths, I was sent out further to investigate.”

“Our friend, Frodo, he was stabbed with a Morgul blade,” Nyx said. “Can you help him?”

“Not here.”

“He’s this way,” Strider said. They returned to camp, Arwen with her white horse. Frodo’s head rolled to the side when they approached, but Nyx was unsure if he was truly seeing them.

“Frodo,” Arwen whispered. Frodo’s lips moved but nothing came out. Arwen said something in Elvish Nyx could barely hear. I have come to help you. Hear my voice. Come back to the light.

The Hobbit’s eyes rolled to the back of his head as some colour returned to his face.

“Who is she?” Merry whispered as Arwen knelt beside him.

“She’s an elf,” Sam said in awe. He had never seen an Elf before.

“He is fading,” Arwen whispered.

Nyx knelt on the other side of Frodo, ripping up the plant she’d gone out to find. Arwen pulled back Frodo’s shirt to examine the wound, revealing purplish and black veins stemming from the wound. After chewing on the plant, Nyx placed the plant over the wound, cooing at Frodo as he gasped in pain.

“He is not going to last. We must get him to my father.”

The three stood up and Strider picked up Frodo, moving to place him on Arwen’s horse.

“There are five Wraiths behind you. Where the other four are, I do not know.”

“They’ll be back,” Nyx said. A sense of dread filled her heart.

“Let me take him,” Arwen said.

“Arwen,” Strider sighed. Something in his eyes told Nyx that Arwen was more than just a friend to him.

“I do not fear them.”

Strider conceded, moving to let her mount her horse. “You must ride hard. Don’t look back.”

“Wait!” Nyx moved past Strider, reaching into Frodo’s pocket for the Ring. It immediately felt heavy in her hand, calling out for the devil within.

“Nyx!” Strider said harshly. “What are you doing?”

Nyx ignored him, stringing it onto the plain chain hidden underneath her dress. “Giving them a better chance.” Nyx moved to Strider’s horse, mounting it with ease.

“But they saw his face at the watchtower!” Merry shouted.

“Exactly. If the Ring is separated from the one who once had it, it will buy Arwen some extra time.”

“Nyx,” Strider warned. She looked down at him.

“I was telling you the truth the other night. I don’t want the Ring. But Gandalf believed that Frodo is destined to carry the One Ring. And if he is, he needs to be alive to do it.”

“Does it not call to you?” Strider asked softly.

“It does,” Nyx admitted. Already she could feel her resolve weakening against the curse. “But the evil inside me wants the Ring for itself. It does not want to give it away.” She tightened her grip on the reins. “I will see you all in Rivendell. With the Ring.”

“We need to hurry,” Arwen said. Nyx nodded and the two took off together. They rode through the night just like Strider had said – hard and fast. They did not stop at daybreak and they did not stop for food. At one point, when they had to cross a river, they let the horses drink momentarily and eat some grass by the shore, but then they were off again.

“How is he doing?” Nyx yelled as they rode through a meadow.

“The athelas isn’t working anymore!” Arwen replied. They both spurred their horses to go faster. The meadow ended just as suddenly as the forest began and the Ring around Nyx’s neck felt heavy with evil. Something churned inside her.

“They’re here!” she shouted to Arwen before pulling her horse away from the Elf and Hobbit. The Ring burned under her dress, begging her to take control of it. Give it to the Nazgûl. And the evil inside of her begged her to put it on and use it for herself. Nyx screamed aloud, forcing herself to stay true to her journey and dodged the trees. Hooves sounded loudly behind her and Nyx knew the Nazgûl were upon her. Through the trees to her left, she saw Arwen with a Ringwraith on either side of her. Normally, Arwen would have been able to fight them off. But Frodo was fading and she had to hold onto him to keep him on the horse.

“I cannot outrun them!”

Nyx reached for the necklace, pulling it over her head and dangling it in front of her. She didn’t have to say a word before the two Ringwraiths turned to her and left Arwen alone. “Go, Arwen!”

Nyx weaved through the trees as Arwen galloped straight ahead. They were almost at the border of Rivendell; Nyx could feel the magic in the air. The trees thickened and the air became colder as Nyx neared the riverbank. She could barely hear the trinkling of water over her laboured breath and heavy heart. The trees broke on the edge of the riverbank, and across the way she could see Arwen. She joined her side and together they watched to see if the Nazgûl would cross.

They screeched at the touch of the water.

“Give it up,” one growled.

Nyx held up the necklace while Arwen unsheathed her sword. “If you want it. If you want him, come and claim him.”

The Ringwraiths waded into the water on their horses and Nyx moved back. Arwen looked around them, muttering elvish under her breath. Nyx chanced a glance at Frodo. He was wheezing now, and green liquid was dripping from his mouth.

Something rumbled in the distance and all parties looked upstream as a tsunami of water came rushing at them. Wordlessly, Nyx moved to the shore and watched as something reached out from the rushing water.

“Horses?” she wondered. They trampled the Ringwraiths without hesitation, washing them and their horses downstream. Nyx smiled in delight, turning back to Arwen and Frodo only to see the two of them on the riverbank.

“No, Frodo!” Arwen cried. “Don’t give in.”

Frodo wheezed softly and Nyx dropped to her knees, pushing his sweaty curls out of his face. “Frodo…”

Arwen pulled the Hobbit into her, tears falling freely as she cradled the boy. “What grace has given me – let it pass to him. Let him be spared. Save him.”

Frodo gasped for air, but his eyes were still enlarged and the whites of his tinted red. Nyx looked at Arwen. “What did you do?”

“I gave him a little more time. Come on.”

Nyx mounted Strider’s horse and they were off once more. From the dirt came a stone pathway and stone arches overhead. Elves in armour watched as they raced past them but did not try to stop them. An Elven horn was blown somewhere behind them.

Arwen stopped in a round stone courtyard, and they dropped to the ground as a man with Arwen’s hair and bright blue eyes approached them.

“Arwen.”

“He’s been struck with a morgul blade. He needs help,” Arwen said. The man nodded and touched her back. Arwen hurried down the corridor on the right. Nyx moved to follow her but an arm prevented her from doing so.

“It has been a long time, Nyx of Tyndall.”

Nyx dropped into a quick curtsey. “Lord Elrond.”

“You carry more evil with you during this visit. What has happened?”

Nyx touched her sternum where the Ring rested. “Not here. And tell your men to expect more company. A Man and three Hobbits.”

Elrond nodded and led Nyx to the Council Room. “Tell me everything that has happened.”

Nervously, Nyx pulled the chain over her head and placed the ring on the table. It felt too heavy in her hands for just a ring.

“That cannot be,” Elrond gasped. The two stared down at, dread in their stomachs. “The Ring of Power has been found.”

Part 1.7 ➺

[dumbwaystodeviate]

@skyewillows This found its way into our DMs rather than asks, hence I’m tagging you.

Content warning for visiting graves and thus off screen minor character death (Cole and Gavin’s mother).

Humans were illogical. That was the truth of the matter and nothing could convince Sixty otherwise. If they would actually make sense and have a clear path of action, principles and morals then he might have seen the benefit of deviating and nor resisted so much. To make matters even worse, Connor and Nines had taken it upon themselves to try and educate him, enlighten him in the flawed logic of humans to encourage Sixty to stop weeding his red wall and just let it crumble under the ivy trying to grow across it.

“Fine,” Sixty relented, “explain to me why cemeteries are full of flowers. Why bring something dying to the already dead?”

Both Nines and Connor jumped at the chance to explain and Sixty reared away from their enthusiasm to interface.

“This is a rather personal topic, an interface would be more suited than words,” Nines reassured him and gallantly allowed Connor to show his explanation first.

The images and feelings which filtered through weren’t exactly logical and they were heavily shrouded in feelings which Sixty couldn’t quite parse. There was a grave, Hank stood next to it sombrely, the flowers were freshly laid.

“I still miss you every day, little buddy,” he murmured softly. “It’s been a few years but you still live on in my memories.”

His hand linked with Connor’s and, with a final, sad smile, he turned to head out of the cemetery.

“So, you see,” Connor jumped at the chance to explain before Sixty even had a chance to process it and decide whether he had a question, “we leave flowers because even though they are no longer with us, the flowers are symbolic that their memory is very much alive.”

It was a strange habit and Sixty looked to Nines for confirmation that this was at least a common, standardised thinking in humans. When Nines couldn’t quite meet his eyes, Sixty braced himself to be confused and let down as he reached a hand for an interface.

He was greeted with a similar image, a cemetery but this time, rather than Hank, it was Gavin standing there. His hands were constantly moving, adjusting a bouquet of flowers one way or another as he prattled on.

“There were her favourites. Well, she loved all flowers but for some off reason, the ornamental cabbage was the one she loved the most. Said it always helped her work up a good appetite.”

Nines’ voice drifted through the memory, “Your mother was a peculiar woman.”

“Well,” Gavin looked up from where he was kneeling, “why do you think I turned out the way I did?”

The interface stopped and Sixty blinked rapidly, trying to process it all.

“So you’re telling me humans leave the favourite plants of the deceased to show that they are still being thought about?”

The excited and proud smile Nines shot him was enough to make Sixty sigh. Humans most definitely made zero sense. He allowed himself to look at his red wall again, it was covered in ivy and bees buzzed around the slowly crumbling wall.

“You know,” Connor and Nines appeared in the space with him through a sneaky interface, “I think you already knew about plants and death. Why else would your own systems be commemorating your machine-hood with your favourite plant?”

Denial was quick to Sixty’s tongue, how he didn’t have a favourite plant but it was too little too late. With an almighty crack, the wall fell down under the weight of the ivy and Sixty was left staring at the world anew.

[clairenchanted]

the one about the pandemic. 

it was summer. i fucking hate summer. 

i don’t hate the earliest morning in summer -- when there’s still the faintest hint of a chill from the night. it’ll burn off in an hour, and i’m never awake enough to really appreciate it, but i can convince myself that the day won’t be so bad when it’s not that hot yet and i’m not sticky and burdened by the sun. 

i always remember the parts of the day when it’s an unseasonable temperature: spring nights that are too cold, winter afternoons that get too hot for layers of sweaters. the mornings in the summer when i can feel the breeze off the harbor. i felt it that morning and that’s why i remember it: that i had to get up, and when i did the light was at a strange, low angle, glittering around my ankles, bouncing against the buckles of my new sandals. 

people were out. it’s brooklyn; people are always out. they’re out when i get back from the bar at one in the morning, and at not-quite-eight in the morning they’re out. a few of them -- jogging, walking a dog, getting to the subway to go to work. i didn’t go to the subway. i went to the post office to pick up a certified letter that i was worried would be some sort of time sensitive thing i’d missed a deadline for. 

the whole walk, i worried. i don’t normally walk there -- it’s just a little too far and i have too little mail and even less that requires a post office. but i didn’t want to take a bus one stop. so, i walked. 

by my apartment, i can smell the honeysuckle. it grows a block down, by the shoreline, where there’s just a bike path and a park and the highway and then, finally, the bay. the further away i got, the less i smelled it, until it was finally gone and it was just the summer city awfulness: trash and exhaust and the ugly things i don’t like to think about. and weed. a lot of fucking weed. i’m extremely sick of the smell of weed. i walked away from the honeysuckle and through the trash stink and thought about the what ifs. 

it could be something about my employment -- a notice i didn’t give back in time. something disciplinary. did i do anything fireable? did i miss a class i was meant to teach? does a student hate me enough to ruin my life? i could be walking towards my firing without even knowing it. --- is it a letter from a friend that needs to be sent certified because it’s coming from far away? probably not. definitely not. that’s not something that could happen. i don’t get things in return like that, because i hold candles when i should be putting them out and saving them from melting. 

i worried, and i self pitied, and i wallowed. there’s some feeling that comes with the neighborhood’s familiarity -- some physical thing settling warmly in the pit of my stomach when i see the sights i’ve been seeing for almost all of my life, from when i lived with my family, what i see now that i’m grown and have a little apartment not a ten minute drive from my childhood home. i could walk these streets blindfolded, and on every block i see something: the bus stop i took to high school. the place i walked with my friend for hours because we didn’t want to go home and let the day end. where we got italian ices. where i got my first bike. 

the letter turned out to be a repeat of a confirmation e-mail i’d gotten a week ago, no action necessary. on the way back, i went half a block out of my way and got the largest iced coffee i could. it was sweet with vanilla and sweetener, and stayed cool in my hand even as the day warmed up. by the time i got back, my drink was melting and i could smell honeysuckles again, and it was only a quarter to nine. sunlight streamed through my window, spilling over the hardwood with a deep, golden glow. i had the whole day ahead of me. 

for fifty five days these past two months, i have not left my apartment building. it’s now day sixty seven, and i have gone on two walks in the past two weeks. after both, i had a panic attack. i scrubbed my hands until they bled. i took a shower immediately, and i have taken my temperature at least five times a day. i’ve been quarantining for over two months, completely alone. no roommates, no work, no family, and when i walk i wear my mask and gloves. 

when it started, i had at least three panic attacks every day. they ebbed off a little, then came back in my sleep. i haven’t slept more than an hour at a time in over two months. i wake up from my sleep gasping for air, crying and screaming as i try to force air into my lungs. i started throwing up again -- involuntarily. voluntarily, even though that, too, is fairly involuntary, because eating disorders are like that. 

i went out for an hour today, just to walk. i was thinking about last summer, with my dunkin’ donuts iced coffee and the golden early mornings, and i realized with a jolt that i had been inside so long that i hadn’t been there to see the trees go through their pink blossoms stage. i thought, just for a moment, that i could remember what it felt like -- to be out, when it’s not too hot yet. to feel the sun, to smell the honeysuckle. to exist, for a moment, in the person that i was last summer. in the world that person lived in. 

i have been so staunch in my convictions about how to live responsibly that i have gotten into a fight with my father every time we’ve been on the phone. don’t take your mask off and only put it on when you pass people on your walk -- you’re supposed to treat it like raw chicken and not touch it once it’s on. and birdseed’s not an essential item! you’re not going to the bird lady to buy seed! and our comfort isn’t as important as staying alive. i’m not coming home, and you’re not going out. i have showed my parents, over facetime, how to wash their hands. i have holed up in my apartment and have ducked out of the way of neighbors and people on the street. i have monitored my symptoms and have unfollowed as many news outlets as i can. i have muted anyone on social media posting about the deaths -- the destruction. the warnings. i am following them all and every time i see these things, i feel irresponsible and in terrible danger, despite the fact that i have been lucky and smart and terrified into behaving above and beyond what’s expected. 

it has kept me alive, probably, and maybe my family too. and it has eroded me from the inside out. 

this is not to complain. this is not to want something different or else. this is, singularly and only, the first time i have processed my grief. survival has been more important than my mental health, to me. this is what i told myself, over and over. this is what i remind myself when i wake up shrieking, convinced that i cannot breathe, pacing my apartment at four thirty in the morning, waiting until dawn so the sun can protect me from the shadows at night. 

i hadn’t thought, until now, about all the little things, because they weren’t important. smelling the honeysuckle and going to the post office and getting an iced coffee. these are luxuries -- but i understand now that they are also memories i cherish, because they are the small, merciful moments of happiness that i have built my survival upon like bricks shoring up a seawall. 

i am drowning. this is not a protest; i will give my life before i demand a country return to normal, when that normal isn’t real and the most vulnerable lives are at stake. but personally, quietly, with every passing day, i am drowning. i find other little things now: sitting by the window when it rains. lighting a candle. writing, here and there now. 

but the wall cannot be built up as quickly as it has come down, while i have stubbornly looked away from it, and the sea is rushing in. 

the tide is only ever coming in. 

[konmarkimageswords]

After I'm gone, some of you will seclude yourselves in the forests and mountains to meditate, while others may drink rice wine and enjoy the company of women. Both kinds of Zen are fine, but if some become professional clerics, babbling about "Zen as the Way," they are my enemies.

 Forests and fields, rocks and weeds - my true companions. The wild ways of the Crazy Cloud will never change. People think I'm mad but I don't care: If I'm a demon here on earth, there is no need to fear the hereafter.

 Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma And endlessly chant complicated sutras. Before doing that, though, they should learn How to read the love letters sent by the wind and rain, the snow and moon.

 Stilted koans and convoluted answers are all monks have, Pandering endlessly to officials and rich patrons. Good friends of the Dharma, so proud, let me tell you, A brothel girl in gold brocade is worth more than any of you.

 Ten days in this temple and my mind is reeling! Between my legs the red thread stretches and stretches. If you come some other day and ask for me, Better look in a fish stall, a sake shop, or a brothel.

 Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind. A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure. Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds; Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.

 A thatched hut of three rooms surpasses seven great halls. Crazy Cloud is shut up here far removed from the vulgar world. The night deepens, I remain within, all alone, A single light illuminating the long autumn night.

 I like it best when no one comes, Preferring fallen leaves and swirling flowers for company. Just an old Zen monk living like he should, A withered plum tree suddenly sprouting a hundred blossoms.

 A poet's treasure consists of words and phrases; A scholar's days and nights are perfumed with books. For me, plum blossoms framed by the window is an unsurpassable pleasure; A stomach tight with cold but still enchanted by snow, the moon, and dawn frost.

 The lotus flower Is unstained by mud; This single dewdrop, Just as it is, Manifests the real body of truth.

 Coming alone, Departing alone, Both are delusion: Let me teach you how Not to come, not to go!

 Dimly for thirty years; Faintly for thirty years, - Dimly and faintly for sixty years: At my death, I pass my faeces and offer them to Brahma.

   Ikkyū Sojun (1394-1481, self-named: 'Crazy Cloud') was an eccentric, iconoclastic Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and poet. He had a great impact on the infusion of Japanese art and literature with Zen attitudes and ideals.

Ikkyu's poetry is irreverent and iconoclastic, bitingly critical of false piety, hypocrisy, and formalistic religion. His poetry is often frankly erotic, sometimes humorously so. Yet it manages to reach an immediacy and insight that is the essence of Zen practice. Ikkyu was appointed to be the head priest of the great temple at Kyoto, but he renounced the position after just nine days, denouncing the hypocrisy he saw among the monks around him. In a famous line from one of his poems, he told his fellow monks they could find him in the local brothel instead. Though clearly not of an ascetic temperament, Ikkyu was a poet, calligrapher, and musician who viewed the world with a deep insight that permitted no pretense, favouring direct truth over religious and social facades.

https://allpoetry.com/Ikkyu-Sojun

https://www.poemhunter.com/ikkyu-sojun/

https://www.learnreligions.com/ikkyu-sojun-450209

https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/IkkyuStevens.html

https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/ikkyu.html

https://www.lionsroar.com/love-letters-sent-by-the-wind/

https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/I/IkkyuSojunIk/index.html

https://www.japanpowered.com/japan-culture/sex-zen-and-poetry-the-life-of-ikkyu-sojun

[berniesrevolution]

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

Labor movements emerge from class conditions. This seems easy enough to accept but too general to provide solutions to US labor’s problems. If we turn to history, it would be hard to argue that major advances or retreats were caused by just one factor — be it economic, political, or organizational — rather than many. Most important labor histories, from E.P. Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class to Jefferson Cowie’s Stayin’ Alive, center on the idea of multiple causality, or what Louis Althusser called “overdetermination.” These authors drill down beneath quantitative indices of social change to the qualitative dimensions of everyday life. They find — again and again — that cultural practices, such as “blue Monday” among nineteenth-century craftsmen, or “disco sucks” events in the 1970s, helped accelerate or inhibit working-class action.

So far, however, most of our contemporary thinking on union decline and renewal has sidestepped this question (with notable exceptions, like the work of Paul Buhle). We focus heavily on unions’ internal structures and organizing strategies while integrating accounts of political economy, labor law, and worker demographics. A common, unstated assumption is that if only the right organizing model, legislative reform, or economic conjuncture presented itself, workers would burst forth in a new wave of membership and militancy. What is left unexamined are the ways precarious employment and the rise of a host of substitute activities have reshaped workers’ practices, identities, and their willingness to take collective action.

In 2015, I went to Woonsocket, Rhode Island, with these questions in mind. It was a storied center of textile production in the early twentieth century and of militant, social-democratic unionism in the 1930s and 1940s. But it had fallen on hard times, suffering the ravages of deindustrialization and failed attempts at renewal, though over a longer time frame than Flint or Detroit.

My visit was not purely academic. During my teens, I had lived in a neighboring town where people looked down on Woonsocket. Earlier, growing up near Lowell, Massachusetts, I spent almost every school trip touring its textile museum’s sanitized version of mill life. And before that, my grandfather and his generation had worked in Rhode Island mills. Though decades removed, his family’s culture still bears the marks of hardship, solidarity, and relative gender equality imprinted by that first wave of industrial capitalism.

When I walked Woonsocket’s largely empty Main Street with its iconic “Bienvenu” sign and scattered former factories, therefore, it was with more than a detached analytic gaze. I spoke with many residents — sixty, so far — and asked them about things I knew: work, wages, unions, politics. Everyone had something to say.

Artie, a forty-eight-year-old out-of-work carpenter told me, “These are hard times, bro. I’ve probably built a million houses, I’ve been a productive part of society, and for what? Some fucking asshole up in Boca Raton?”

Theresa, a forty-two-year-old single mother who had escaped an abusive relationship only to find a cold shoulder on the job market relayed her experience: “I filled out an application and they weren’t hiring anybody who didn’t have a college degree. They wanted people who are ‘future-oriented,’ they don’t want riff-raffs.’’

And Amanda, a mom in her twenties who had moved from Massachusetts for the cheap rent, recounted similar struggles applying for aid: “They denied me every single time saying that I make too much money. But when I open my fridge, I have no milk — like, I can’t afford to get it. I feel like I am always stuck under something. I’m stuck under the things that I can’t have.”

Deprivation was not hard to find. Nor were expressions of resistance and favorable views of unions. But beneath economics lay a deeper source of suffering that I was ill-equipped to understand. It provided both joy and pain in ever-shifting doses, and though more private in practice than union or political activism, it had clear social dimensions. I am speaking, of course, of opioid addiction.

Artie, who came from a “drug addict family” and said, “I do drugs and smoke weed,” was also adamant that “I’m not a heroin head; I’m not a fucking junkie.”

Theresa, who was on methadone when we spoke, found that heroin “helped me do what I’ve got to do. It gets me get through the day. If I could afford it, I would still be doing it.”

And as Kevin, a twenty-nine-year-old former convict and meat-packer explained it: “A few of my friends passed away this year because of the dope. Everybody is doing it — everybody. It’s the culture.”

Drug use and abuse were pervasive in the lives of Woonsocketers — their own, their friends’, their families’. It was a practice more immediate than wage exploitation and the struggle against it more salient than that against employers or the state.

At the level of culture, where identity is formed socially through channeling desire, substance dependence seemed to have replaced wage dependence, and recovery to have replaced unionism. This dynamic, buttressed by the confluence of union decline and overdose death at the national level, confounds most approaches to union renewal. It suggests that workers’ loss of power is no longer simply a deficiency to be corrected, but a problem that has bred its own answers. Responding to these answers in a way that overcomes shame while tapping the moral energy of recovery should be a central task of union activists.

Figure 1: Union Decline and Overdose Death Rates in the US, 1973–2016

Figure 2: Union Decline (1983–2016) and Overdose Death Rate (2016) by US State

Pearson’s coefficient = 0.33; p-value = 0.017 Sources: Hirsch and Macpherson 2018; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2017.

Precarious Work, Distant Unions

When one thinks of New England labor, Woonsocket doesn’t usually come to mind. Places like Lawrence, Lowell, or Fall River might come first, followed by Manchester, Worcester, or Providence. Indeed, Woonsocket is diminutive compared to these peers: its population peak of 50,000 in 1950 was less than half of theirs.

But its primary industry — woolen and worsted textiles — had a longer, skill-dependent shelf-life than cotton-centered production. While those better-known cities’ labor movements were hobbled by the early flight of cotton in the 1920s and experienced the 1934 textile strike as a rearguard defeat, for Woonsocket it inaugurated an impressive rise of worker power under the Independent Textile Union (ITU).

The wolf finally came for woolen and worsted too, as employers headed south in the 1950s. But the intervening years allowed Woonsocket’s mostly French-Canadian working class to take part in the CIO upsurge and taste its material gains.

“[T]hese workers,” argues Gary Gerstle in his seminal history, “made the city … into what Fall River and then Lawrence had once been — the bastion of organized labor in New England.”

Under the leadership of Franco-Belgian socialist Joseph Schmetz and American-born Lawrence Spitz, the ITU organized 84 percent of Woonsocket’s workforce, achieved record wage gains, and sought to wrest control of daily life from employers and the clergy with an ambitious cultural program that Gerstle calls “working-class Americanism.” Though delayed by ethnic insularity and church-enforced piety, class, in something close to its Marxian form, happened in Woonsocket.

And class has continued to happen there, in ways less liberating. Unions have largely evaporated and work, for many, has become intermittent and low-wage. Jobs were something subjects endured and were compelled to constantly seek but were not a stable source of bonding or identity. Even more so unions: none were current members and only a handful had ever been, though many had relatives who were.

The unifying experience of work, once central to the formation of union consciousness, was broken if not absent entirely.

April’s history was illustrative. “I dropped out in ninth grade,” she told me, “and from there I’ve done all kinds of small tedious jobs like babysitting, mostly retail and customer service. That pretty much sums it up, that’s my life. Most of it has always been short term.”

(Continue Reading)

[freelanews-blog]

Breeding Science Students

🎼🎼🎼 Won ti po chemical po, awon mo science students Kosewe, kosegbo, kosewe, kosegbo Kosewe, kosegbo, kosewe, kosegbo Won ti po'mi gutter po, oju ti dirty🎼🎼🎼 The popular hip hop artiste, Olamide a.k.a Baddo, is one musician that has sung songs on drugs and people are torn between accusing him promoting drug abuse and creating awareness about the scourge. Olamide is one musician I like any time, any day and any mood I find myself. So, forgive me if it appears I am going to be subjective in this regards. Personally, I believe he has done more in creating awareness of the vibrant, even thriving ‘drug abuse industry’ out there by people of all ages, all socio-economic standing, religions, across all ethnic divides. This abuse takes the form of people using different pharmaceutical and psychochemical substances- pawpaw leaves, Indian Hemp Marijuana--igbo, heroin, Tramadol, alcohol, cough syrup and ‘omi gutter’ (some go as far as inhaling gases from sewage soakaway/septic tanks) included, among others. My focus, however, as it has been since I started inundating you with my thoughts on children, is on how they are readily getting into drugs these days. That is where the title from Olamide’s song, Science Students, comes in. Society seems to be creating a time-bomb, a tsunami it is seemingly oblivious of. From parents to friends, opinion moulders to celebrities, etc., through our actions, inactions, reactions, negligence, silence and complacence, we are complicit in ‘breeding science students’ and creating juvenile junkies at an alarming rate. Olamide’s Science Students are actually the army of growing junkies and drug addicts in our society today. In recent times, a BBC documentary brought to the fore the very endemic nature of this scourge in Nigeria How so? A disturbing video surfaced on Facebook some days ago. A mother who presumably carried her child-a boy, for nine solid months; a mother who I feel should naturally want the best for her child; a mother who should strive towards making her child ‘somebody’ in life, was feeding him a bottle of Hero lager. For those who don’t know, Hero is a beer brand from the stables of SABMiller Plc. The proud mother in the video was quick to tell onlookers who seem to have a kind of bemused amusement at the ‘child drinking prodigy’s prowess, that her little boy, who is not more than four, consumes two bottles of that lager at a sitting! For an adult I know pegging the limit of his beer consumption to three bottles at most, I must certainly doff my hat even though it is for something I consider very negative. Yet another video showed a man from one of these East Asian countries feeding a toddler beer. This toddler has grown to like the 'beverage' so much that she (I think it’s a girl) will not drink from her feeding bottle. For the avoidance of doubt, these little children are already into drugs. A few years back, I told a group of people that alcohol generally is a drug. “No way,” they disagreed. So I had to unearth Wikipedia’s definition of what drugs are: “A drug is any substance (other than food that provides nutritional support) that, when inhaled, injected, smoked, consumed, absorbed via a patch on the skin, or dissolved under the tongue causes a physiological (and often psychological) change in the body. Key words for me there are physiological and psychological change. When beer is consumed, does it cause physiological and psychological change? The answer is a definite yes! Now that we have established that fact, I go back on track. I have seen what drugs can do to adults first hand, let alone what it can do to children. I can relate an experience of a young boy who had the unfortunate experience of getting addicted to smoking cigarettes at a very young age. He was barely seven when he began to smoke it. Something that started as ‘catching harmless fun’ with playmates using sticks of grasses in the cold of Jos, Plateau State, soon blossomed into trying a real cigarette one day, and the rest, as they say, is history. To maintain his newly found addiction, he had to steal from both parents to make ends meet. He graduated to finishing a pack in less than two days at a time! Unfortunately for him-or so he thought at that time, he got caught. Interestingly, and according to the young adult, his father who had beat the addiction to cigarettes was on hand to guide me out of the habit. The process, I assure you is a tale for another day. Now, you will agree with me that these children have been led to drugs by the very people God has made their custodians, their parents. If you follow Pastor Tony Rapu, a medical doctor, filmmaker, life coach and the Senior Pastor of the House of Freedom and the works he does with drug abuse victims on Instagram, you will understand that the problem at hand is endemic! No one is spared, no matter the disposition, bias and echelon of life they belong. Some of the victims he worked on were runaways from very rich families. Permit me to share a very insightful and of course, incisive account from an unknown author. The source, Whatsapp: I'm probably one if not the youngest here so permit me to speak up. I attended Kings College Lagos and graduated in the 1990's. A lot of our parents had no clue how some of us were already drunk by 10am in school or how we smoked a pack of Benson and Hedges per day at age 15. They had no clue how we scaled fences from our Victoria Island campus to Bar beach in the mornings to smoke weed and visit prostitutes at Lekki beach, literally waking them up to lay with them. I smoked weed once at age 16 for the first time when a classmate named Danjuma took us to Bar-beach and introduced us to it. That day happened to be my last time by some stroke of luck or my mother’s prayers. For some weird reason I despised the uncontrolled actions of my friends after we returned to school and vowed not to be like them. I was told I didn't smoke the weed well hence my calmness so I was invited back the next day but I declined. Danjuma never finished school. Mo is dead. John is a nuisance till date and a full junkie. Atu who was raised at 1004 is roaming the streets of the Island raving mad. This all started in 1994. This is 25 years after and it's amazing how naive some parents are- end of story. The truth is, drugs abuse has evolved assuming different dimension. Interestingly however, the peer pressure and influence still remain. Children have a daunting task in school facing peer pressure influence to do drugs. Songs, movies and television programmes are not helping matters. With more internet connected mobile phones at hand and the fast rising presence of children on social media (some parents actually encourage their children to use more of it), among others, parents have their work cut out for them. As the times gets harder, parents, like the hunter that must learn to shoot without missing, need to do more, become more vigilant and take more interest in the affairs of their children. As a psychologist myself, the major work of parenting is done by the time the child is 13 years old, even though they only become confident enough to show their true character much later. The truth of this position is one I can readily relate to. During an enlightenment engagement, I was at a loss on how I would pass ‘sensitive’ information on drug use and sexual health to most of my students who will come from the junior classes. You can imagine my shock when I found out that my trepidation was unfounded as many of my students have crossed the Rubicon as far as these issues were concerned! Imagine my students schooling me on the new ingenious ways of getting ‘high’! The truth is these children, at some point, know so much more than we give them credit for and they have seen or even experienced more than we imagine possible! As a child, I knew much more than my parents gave me credit for. We need to be extra vigilant and engage our children like never before not in arguments but from a place of knowledge about repercussions of certain actions. Drug abuse prevention starts with parents learning how to talk with their children about difficult topics. Equip them enough to be able to answer any question friends may ask in a bid to sway them or bend them to do their bidding. Believe me, this is very important. It makes absolutely no sense to lie to them. They will try to find out from their friends and then expose your lies. As an example, a young innocent boy, let us call him Tayo, once asked his mom where babies came from. Without hesitation, she told him that when couples get married, they pray to God every day and when they are asleep in the night, an angel drops the child at their house before they wake. He believed her story wholeheartedly- why wouldn’t he? His mother will not lie to him… or so he thought. Well, it happened he entered into an argument with his friend, whose father recently remarried after the death of his mother. He gave him the graphical details of what married couples do before they have children. How did he know? He peeped when his parents were at it. Other friends corroborated his story, and that was it! So Tayo came into the conclusion that if he needed genuine answers to his questions, his friends will readily provide them. Also, parents should learn to become their children’s best friends… listen to them and talk to them. I have vowed to become my own children’s best friends because mine were not to be. My father is over sixty and retired, yet, when I talk with him, I punctuate with ‘sir’ and still hold this air of formal reverence for him. I have never hugged that man-now this was never a problem. Thankfully, I didn’t grow to become something negative but I was never able to share things I consider sensitive with him. Do help your child make good choices and good friends. Children are more easily influenced by those they move with. Help them choose their friends. As a child, I never liked that my parents chose my friends for me: but today, I am grateful they did as some of the persons they warned me against ended up on the wrong side of society and the law. Teach your child different ways to say “No!” and mean it. More importantly, you as their parents are the strongest influence that they have. There is no guarantee that your child will not do drugs, but drug use is much less likely to happen if you provide guidance and clear rules about not using drugs, spend time with them and avoid using tobacco or other drugs yourself. Popular American Novelist, James Baldwin once noted that children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. How fittingly true! More importantly, after we have done all these, we must pray for them too. It's a tough time to be a parent but it was never easy in the first place. I hope you enjoyed and learnt from this week’s reflections? Please leave your comments below or reach me on ….. Enjoy the week(end). Read the full article

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CARL’S BLOG: CLEBURNE COUNTY ITS PEOPLE, VOL. 2, The People of Edgemont, Arkansas

Author’s Note:  This concludes the early history of Edgemont, Cleburne County, Arkansas.  In my history of CLEBURNE COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE, I tried to seek out the early settlers of each community in the new county, and last county formed in Arkansas.  There are several other well known families, but there was not room to recognize everyone who contributed to the growth and development of Edgemont.  I hope you who have been reading these stories enjoyed reading of relatives and friends of the pass.  You will notice there is lots of genealogy in these stories.  If you had relatives included in these stories fill free to use any of the data I’ve written about.  It took me four years to research and publish CLEBURNE COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE, VOL. 1, AND 2.  There will be more to come on other settlements in days to come.  Enjoy!  Carl J. Barger, Author

3-22-20:  CLEBURNE COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE, VOL.2: The People of Edgemont, Arkansas.

W. Morgan (1870-1952)  W. Morgan was born on November 2, 1870, in South Carolina. He moved to Arkansas with his parents as a child and lived in Edgemont for seventy-two years. He was educated in an one-room school house in Edgemont. After growing to adulthood, he married Miss. Nesy B. Gadberry on December 21, 1893. They celebrated their fifty-eight wedding anniversary on December 21, 1951 at their home in Edgemont. W. W. Morgan was a member of the Christian church, a member of the Eastern Star, a Mason, a master and secretary of the Sam Williams Lodge for several years. In 1951, Mr. Morgan received a fifty year-member citation for being one of the oldest members of the lodge. Mr. Morgan was perhaps one of the most widely known citizens in Cleburne County. He was very active in the community. He served as postmaster at Edgemont for several years and served on the Edgemont Board of Education for twenty years. He was one of the county’s most respected citizens and a Christian gentleman whose character was impeachable. He was well read and was interested in current events. He was particularly interested in the welfare of his community and his fellowman. He never hesitated to take a stand on issues which he believed to be clean and wholesome. On Monday June 28, 1952, W. W. Morgan died unexpectedly at his Edgemont home. He was eighty-one years old. At the time of his death, he was survived by his wife Mrs. Neasy B. Gadberry Morgan of the home; two sons, Dewey W. Morgan of England, Arkansas, and John C. Morgan of Searcy, Arkansas; three daughters. Mrs. Lee Luker of Searcy, Mrs. Pearl Myatt of Heber Springs, and Mrs. Alice Stafford of Edgemont; a sister, Mrs. Celia Rollins of Edgemont; eight grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Funeral services were conducted by Rev. Roy Henderson of Augusta, Arkansas, at the North Crossroads Church. Special music was by a quartet, Bynum Stark T. L. Turney, Oran Beasley and Jackie Pettit. Interment was North Cross Roads under the direction of the Masonic Lodge of Edgemont and Olmstead Funeral Home of Heber Springs. Pallbearers were members of the Masonic Order of the Edgemont Lodge.

Neasy B. Gadberry Morgan (1893-1959)

Neasy B. Gadberrry Morgan was born in Eglantine, Van Buren County, Arkansas, on December 21, 1893. She and her family moved to Edgemont where she lived out her life. She was the widow of W. W. Morgan who was postmaster of Edgemont for many years and joint owner of a large mercantile store in Edgemont with his brother-in-law, William Barnum. The mercantile business flourished for many years when Edgemont was booming with activities of the lumber and stave industry. She and W. W. Morgan were parents to three daughters and two sons. Mrs. Morgan was a member of the Church of Christ. She was a charter member of the Edgemont Chapter, Order of Eastern Star and was chaplain of the chapter for many years. Her gentle and engaging personality endeared her to friends, and her ability to retain her youthful interests and graces as the years advanced were remarkably stimulating to friends. On Saturday February 7, 1959, Mrs. Neasy B. Gadberry Morgan, widow of W. W. Morgan and one of the oldest citizens of Edgemont community died at her daughter’s home in Edgemont. She was eighty-seven years old. Mrs. Morgan was preceded in death by her husband, W. W. Morgan, on June 28, 1952, and three sons. At the time of her death, she was survived by three daughters, Mrs. J. S. Luker of Searcy, Arkansas, Mrs. Alice Stafford and Mrs. Pearl Myatt of Edgemont, two sons, Dewey W. Morgan and John C. Morgan of Edgemont; two sisters, Mrs. I. L. Johnson of Farmersville, Texas, and Mrs. John McEntire of Higden; eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Funeral services for Mrs. Morgan were held at the Olmstead Funeral Home chapel under the directions of Rev. J. R. Newman. Pallbearers were E. L. Stanfield, Olan Barger, Dr. J. S. Luker, O. B. Morgan, Floyd Stafford and Everett Bradford. Interment was in the Shiloh Cemetery by Olmstead funeral home of Heber Springs, Arkansas. William F. Rollins (1905-1942) William Fletcher Rollins was born on April 5, 1905, to Robert H. Rollins and Celia Rollins of Edgemont, Cleburne County, Arkansas. William was a lifelong resident of Edgemont, Arkansas. He was one of five children born to Robert and Celia Rollins. His siblings were Anis Pauline Rollins, Floyd Rollins, Maris Rollins, and Ruth Rollins. William was educated in a two-room schoolhouse in Edgemont. After reaching adulthood, he was employed with the Missouri and Arkansas North Railroad as a bridge carpenter. On November 26, 1930, he married Miss Pearl Thompson of Cleburne County. To this marriage union were born five children. On Saturday morning, November 15, 1942, William Fletcher Rollins, age thirty-seven was fatally injured near Miller when a motor car derailed. The accident occurred at 8:55 A.M. and he died at the Estelle Hospital at 11:15 A.M. William, accompanied by other members of the bridge crew, was in route to work when the motor car ran into a split rail, wrecking the car and pinning William underneath a push car which was attached to the motor car. At the time of his death, he was survived by his mother, Celia Rollins of Edgemont; his wife, Pearl Thompson Rollins of the home; and his five children. He is also survived by one sister, Mrs. Leonard Gribble of Heber Springs; and one brother, Floyd Rollins of Edgemont. Funeral services were held at the family home at Edgemont Sunday afternoon by Rev. G. W. Norman of Heber Springs, assisted by Rev. Weed, pastor of the Edgemont Baptist Church. Interment was in the Davies Special Cemetery, Fairfield Bay, Arkansas by Olmstead Funeral Home of Heber Springs, Arkansas. Homer Dee Smith (1901-1980)

Homer Dee Smith was born on April 26, 1901, at Shiloh, Cleburne County, Arkansas. He was the son of William P. Smith and Kelly Maude Stark of Shiloh. Homer was educated in the Edgemont community schools and spent his entire life in Cleburne County. Homer was a retired farmer and a member of the Church of Christ in Higden, Arkansas. He was active in community events and was known widely throughout Cleburne County. On Friday, July 11, 1980, Homer Smith went to be with his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He died at his home in Edgemont at the age of seventy-nine. Those surviving Homer were his wife, Ella Mae Smith of the home; four sons, Alfred Smith of Higden, Dewey Smith of Edgemont, Victor Smith of Little Rock, and Bobby Smith of Vilonia; one brother, Ervin Smith of Heber Springs; two sisters, Mrs. Norma Fox of Heber Springs, and Mrs. Purdy Murphy of Kokomo, Indiana; twelve grandchildren; and ten great-grandchildren. Funeral services for Mr. Smith were held at the Church of Christ in Higden, Arkansas. Ed Inman officiated at Mr. Smith’s last rites. Interment was in the Shiloh Crossroads Cemetery by Olmstead Funeral Home of Heber Springs. Mr. Smith’s grandsons were pallbearers for the funeral. Eliza Thomas Stanfield (1872-1964) Eliza Thomas Stansfield was born in the state of Indiana on July 4, 1872. His parents were Bedford Stanfield and Helen Shields Stanfi eld. He spent most of his life in Cleburne County. He married Miss Sally J. Ash, also of Indiana, in 1893. They lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, for several years before moving to Cleburne county. Mrs. Stanfield died July 17, 1958, sixty-five years after their marriage. Mr. Stanfield settle at Edgemont in 1908 when that town was the center of a flourishing timber industry. He was active in the lumber, sawmill, and banking business there for many years before moving to Cleburne county. Mr. Stanfield was a man of remarkable stamina, who served as county engineer until he was eighty-nine. His young assistant surveyors often commented that his agility in climbing the mountains and rough terrain day after day offered them a challenge in endurance. Mr. Stansfield was active in all phases of Masonic work. He was made a Master Mason in Cincinnati in 1906, and in 1956 he was honored by the Grand Lodge of Arkansas with a fifty year emblem. He was a thirty-two-degree Mason and a Member of the Arkansas Consistory at Little Rock. Mr. Stanfield had been a member of the Sam Williams Lodge No. 89 at Edgemont for more than fifty-six years and had filled every post in the Lodge from worshipful master down. He was equally as active as a member of the Order of Eastern Star and had filled every office in the chapter. He had been a member of the Edgemont Christian Church for many years. On Friday, June 18, 1964, Eliza Thomas Stanfield passed away in the Heber Springs Hospital. He was ninety-two years old. He is survived by two sons, E.T. (Lovell) Stanfield, a retired U. S. Air Force Colonel of Heber Springs and the Rev. O. E. (Omer) Stanfi eld, a Presbyterian minister at Dardanelle; six grandchildren, ten great-grandchildren, three great-great-grandchildren, and a legion of friends who shared in the generosity of his long and upright life of good citizenship and service to his fellowmen. Funeral services were held at the Olmstead Funeral Home Chapel in Heber Springs. He was one of Cleburne County’s oldest a most prominent citizen. The Rev. Fleet Cook and Mr. Charles Dowdy offi ciated at the final tribute. Interment was in the City Cemetery with graveside honors by the Masonic Lodge.

Published by cjbarger

I am the author of SWORDS AND PLOWSHARES; MAMIE, AN OZARK MOUNTAIN GIRL OF COURAGE; CLEBURNE COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE, VOL. I &II; DARK CLOUDS OVER ALABAMA; BLUE SKIES OF EL DORADO, sequel to DARK CLOUDS OVER ALABAMA; ARKANSAS HILLBILLY, ONE MAN'S MEMOIR OF A BLESSED LIFE, and soon, SONS OF WAR. Be looking for SONS OF WAR in the next few months on Amazon.Com. and Barnes&Noble.Com.View all posts by cjbarger

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The Hipster's Guide to Classic Country Music

The Hipster's Guide to Classic Country Music

Let’s face it…if your mountain man beard, microbrew fetish, and pipe collection are no longer enough, classic country music can help you get to the next level of hipster (so can a pair of Wrangler jeans). My name is DJ Staci, the Track Star, and I grew up on country music. I lived on a 5-acre llama ranch just outside of Seattle during the grunge era…do you see how there’s a hipster seed in there? I knew I was not your standard redneck when, at 14, my dad’s hunting drew me towards vegetarianism (celebrating 26 meat-free years now). At 18, I pierced my nose and moved to southern California where I could eat tofu, get feminism tattoos, and vote for democrats in a diverse, shame-free environment…but that country music seed definitely grew roots throughout my childhood. In fact, during my 20s, I escaped my days of drinking expensive juice and visiting organic farmer’s markets by honky tonkin’ every week. I would go line dancing at the Brandin’ Iron Saloon in San Bernardino (the biggest & best honky tonk a.k.a. country bar west of Gilley’s…and watch John Travolta & Debra Winger in “Urban Cowboy” if you don’t understand either of those references).

  Memes from We Hate Pop Country

  Unfortunately, country music withered up and died after the 2000s. After DJing at the world’s largest country music festival (Stagecoach–the country cousin of Coachella), I had to stop listening to country music on the radio. The so-called country you hear on the radio today is known as “pop country” by country music purists (those of us who prefer classic country or “real” country). The artists who “ruined” country music are people like Taylor Swift, Sam Hunt, Florida Georgia Line, Thomas Rhett, & Luke Bryant (and many others). Follow “We Hate Pop Country” on Facebook to learn more.

If you like “Wake Me Up” by Avicii, “Honey I’m Good” by Andy Grammer, “I Will Wait” by Mumford & Sons, “The Country Death Song” by the Violent Femmes, “Easy” by Sheryl Crow, “Wish I Knew You” by the Revivalists, “Wagon Wheel” by Old Crow Medicine Show, or Philip Phillips, classic country will be a great fit. If watching the movie Walk the Line turned you into a Johnny Cash fan, rest assured there is plenty more music like that out there. If you resonate as a defiant outsider or a feminist or a government-hating pothead, classic country music welcomes you with open arms! Classic country is outlaw music–pure and simple. It was created by people who knew they were on the outskirts of mainstream society and unshakingly flipped it the bird à la Johnny Cash at San Quentin (below).

  Johnny Cash after photographer Jim Marshall asked him to do a shot for the warden (San Quentin Prison – 1969)

  Did you know Loretta Lynn, who sang the feminist anthem “The Pill,” & Jack White from the White Stripes, who also has some killer bluegrass tunes, created an album together? Did you know Johnny Cash has covered songs by Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode? Have you heard Lady Gaga’s country roads version of “Born This Way?” Did you know Beyonce has a kick ass collab with the Dixie Chicks (the girl-power Texas band who was banned from country radio for saying they were ashamed that George Bush is from their home state) called “Daddy Lessons”? Did you know the black lead singer of Hootie & the Blowfish bailed on the band so he could start a solo country music career (country fans know him as Darius Rucker)? Did you know when I DJ classic country parties, I have to ask the client if swear words are OK?

Do I have your attention now? I thought so. Let’s continue 🙂 You’ll love the country artists as much as you love their music–I promise.

  Justin Timberlake & Chris Stapleton performing together at the 49th Country Music Association Awards

  THE KING OF COUNTRY MUSIC

First, let’s start with the forefather of all country music kick-assery: Hank Williams. Hank signed to MGM Records in 1947 and his twangy anthems changed country music forever. He was famously fired by the Grand Ole Opry in 1952 after one of many no-shows. He lived a turbulent life that his son Hank Jr sings about in his cornerstone song “Family Tradition.” In true rock star style, Hank Sr. died of heart failure brought on by prescription drug abuse and alcoholism in 1953. Hipster-friendly Hank Williams songs include:

I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry

Hey Good Lookin’

Jambalaya (on the Bayou)

Tear in my Beer

Your Cheating Heart

  TOP 125 CLASSIC COUNTRY SONGS FOR HIPSTERS

Pour yourself some Popcorn Sutton’s Tennessee White Whiskey (that’s legal moonshine for you city slickers) & get ready for some serious drinkin’ music free of “Friends in Low Places,” “Achy Breaky Heart,” “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” “Old Town Road,” and “The Git Up.” I’ve includes lots of notes & trivia about the playlist songs because we hipsters can’t just enjoy music in a vacuum…we like to sound like a seasoned expert when putting on a playlist for friends, yes? I’ve included standards as well as a number of “B sides” that will even impress country music enthusiasts…you know the kind of people who still say “Country Western.”

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18 Wheels & a Dozen Roses, Kathy Mattea

9 to 5, Dolly Parton

A Boy Named Sue, Johnny Cash

All My Exes Live in Texas, George Strait

Amarillo by Morning, George Strait

Are You Ready for the Country, Waylon Jennings

Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?, Waylon Jennings (Referring to Hank Williams Sr.)

Back Where I Come From, Kenny Chesney

Bed You Made for Me, Highway 101

Before Country Was Cool, Barbara Mandrell

Born to Boogie, Hank Williams Jr. (Hank Sr’s son)

Chattahoochee, Alan Jackson

Church on Cumberland Road, Shenandoah

Coal Miner’s Daughter, Loretta Lynn (Watch her biographical movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter” staring Sissy Spacek!)

Coat of Many Colors, Dolly Parton

Copenhagen, Chris Le Deux (Yep, chew killed this underground country singer with a cult following. His catchy, hilarious love song to Copenhagen chewing tobacco is like a country version of “Can’t Feel My Face” or “Mary Jane.”)

Copperhead Road, Steve Earle (Listen carefully…After coming home from war, this soldier gives up on the family tradition of making moonshine because he realized when he was in Viet Nam that he could just grow weed instead.)

Country Boy Can Survive, Hank Williams Jr.

Country Club, Travis Tritt

Country Roads, Take Me Home, John Denver (Lucky if I get through this one without tearing up…)

Cowboy Take Me Away, Dixie Chicks

Crazy, Patsy Cline (Sadly, the anthem of Battered Woman’s Syndrome…Patsy was in a violent marriage at the height of her fame. Written by Willie Nelson.)

Cripple Creek, Earl Scruggs & Lester Flatt

Devil Went Down to Georgia, Charlie Daniels Band

Digging Up Bones, Randy Travis

Dixieland Delight, Alabama

Down at the Twist & Shout, Mary-Chapin Carpenter

Dueling Banjos, Roy Clark & Buck Owens

El Paso, Marty Robbins (After writing this song, Marty Robbins was flying over El Paso & had a revelation that he was the cowboy in the song in a past life…so he wrote “El Paso City” about that experience.)

Elvira, Oak Ridge Boys

Elvira, Oak Ridge Boys

Every Little Thing, Carlene Carter (Yep, June Carter’s daughter…she called Johnny Cash “Stepdad.” Roseanne Cash’s “Tennessee Flat Top Box” is also a good one.)

Family Tradition, Hank Williams Jr (A proud nod to his famous father…”Put yourself in my position–if I get stoned and sing all night long, it’s a family tradition.” When you hear this song at a honky tonk, know the customs! When Jr sings, “Why do you drink?” The crowd shouts back “To get drunk!” When Jr sings, “Why do you roll smoke?” The crowd shouts, “To get high!” When he sings, “Why must you act out the songs that you wrote?” The crowd shouts, “To get laid!”)

Fancy, Reba McEntire

Fishin’ in the Dark, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Flowers on the Wall, Statler Brothers

Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Cash

Fool-Hearted Memory, George Strait (His first of SIXTY #1 hits–the most in country music history! Too many for this list but do check them out.)

Get a Rhythm, Johnny Cash

Guitars & Cadillacs, Dwight Yoakum (One of the few west coasters on the list…from Bakersfield, California — also a vegetarian!)

Have Mercy, Judds (A female country duo–mother & sister to famous actress Ashley Judd!)

Highway Man, The Highwaymen (The Highwaymen are Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, & Kris Kristofferson.)

Hillbilly Rock, Marty Stewart

Honky Tonk Man, Dwight Yoakum

Hooked on an 8-Second Ride, Chris Le Deux (Pronounced “Le Doo”)

Hot Rod Lincoln, Commander Cody

I Ain’t Livin’ Long Like This, Waylon Jennings

I Love a Rainy Night, Eddie Rabbitt

I Think I’ll Just Sit Here & Drink, Merle Haggard

I Walk the Line, Johnny Cash

I’m No Stranger to the Rain, Keith Whitley

If You’re Gonna Play in Texas, Alabama

If You’ve Got the Money, Willie Nelson

If Your Heart Ain’t Busy, Tanya Tucker

It Only Hurts When I Cry, Dwight Yoakum

Jackson, Johnny Cash & June Carter

Jolene, Dolly Parton

Jose Cuervo, Shelly West

Kaw-Liga, Hank Williams Jr. (Hank Sr also does this one.)

Lay You Down, Conway Twitty

Long Time Gone, Dixie Chicks

Louisiana Saturday Night, Mel McDaniel

Luckenbach Texas, Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson

Mama Tried, Merle Haggard

Maybe It Was Memphis, Pam Tillis

Meet Me in Montana, Dan Seals

Midnight Girl in a Sunset Town, Sweethearts of the Rodeo

Mountain Music, Alabama

Mud on the Tires, Brad Paisley

Mule Skinner Blues, Dolly Parton

My Kind of Girl, Colin Raye

Next to You, Shenandoah

No Time to Kill, Clint Black

Nobody Wins, Radney Foster

Norma Jean Riley, Diamond Rio

One Piece at a Time, Johnny Cash

Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line, Waylon Jennings

Orange Blossom Special, Johnny Cash

Pancho & Lefty, Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard

Papa Loved Mama, Garth Brooks

Past the Point of Rescue, Hal Ketchum

Pick-Up Man, Joe Diffie

Play Something Country, Brooks & Dunn

Redneck Girl, Bellamy Brothers (During the corresponding Redneck Girl line dance, when the song says, “A redneck girl got her name on the back of her belt,” dancers shout, “Bullshit! Bullshit! F— you!” When the song says, “She’s got a kiss on her lips for her man and no one else,” dancers repeat, “Bullshit! Bullshit! F— you!” When the song says, “A coyote’s howling out on the prairie,” dancers howl. Finally, the song says, “First comes love, then comes marriage.” After “love,” dancers interject, “Then sex!!!”)

Ring of Fire, Johnny Cash

Rockin’ With the Rhythm, Judds

Rodeo, Garth Brooks

Rough & Ready, Trace Adkins

Saturday Night Special, Conway Twitty (Yes, the same guy they famously poke fun at on “Family Guy”–see below)

Sin Wagon, Dixie Chicks

Smoky Mountain Rain, Ronnie Milsap

Sold, John Michael Montgomery

Some Girls Do, Sawyer Brown

Song of the South, Alabama

Stampede, Chris Le Deux

Stand by Your Man, Tammy Wynette

Straight Tequila Night, John Anderson

Streets of Bakersfield, Dwight Yoakum

Sweet Dreams of You, Patsy Cline

Tempted, Marty Stuart

Tennessee River & a Mountain Man, Alabama

Thank God I’m a Country Boy, John Denver (He’s an outspoken vegan and & rep for P.E.T.A #MeatlessMondays)

That Kind of Girl, Patty Loveless

That’s My Story, Collin Raye

That’s What I Like About You, Trisha Yearwood (She’s married to Garth Brooks & is a celebrity chef with a reality cooking show.)

The Gambler, Kenny Rogers

The Pill, Lorettta Lynn (Also check out her cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walking.”)

The Race Is On, Sawyer Brown (or any of the older versions)

The Thunder Rolls, Garth Brooks

Ticks, Brad Paisley

Tight-Fittin’ Jeans, Conway Twitty

Tonight We Ride, Tom Russell (We played this at my dad’s funeral…definitely a “b side.”)

Tougher Than the Rest, Chris Le Deux

Tulsa Time, Don Williams

Two Feet of Topsoil, Brad Paisley

Walkin’ After Midnight, Patsy Cline (Check out the Cyndi Lauper cover!)

What Was I Thinkin,’ Dierks Bentley

When You Say Nothing At All, Keith Whitley (Alison Krauss’ version might be more popular though…)

Whiskey, If You Were a Woman, Highway 101

Why Not Me, Judds

Wide Open Spaces, Dixie Chicks

Will the Circle Be Unbroken, dozens of versions

Wrong Side of Memphis, Trisha Yearwood

You Ain’t Woman Enough, Loretta Lynn

You Really Had Me Going, Holly Dunn

You’ve Never Been This Far Before, Conway Twitty

    There are a few current country artists with that classic country sound: Chris Stapleton, Brothers Osborn, some Miranda Lambert (try “Gunpowder & Lead” or “Little Red Wagon”), or Cody Jinks.

If you’re afraid country music is too white, straight, or conservative for you, check out Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush,” Maddie & Tae’s “Girl in a Country Song,” the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl,” Los Lonely Boys’ “Heaven,” Kacey Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow,” Big & Rich’s “Love Train,” Garth Brooks’ “We Shall Be Free,” John Anderson’s “Seminole Wind,” or anything by Charlie Pride, Cowboy Troy, k.d. lang, or Freddie Fender.

If you enjoy a good DJ mix, I’m not the only one doing creative things with country music–check out DeeJay Silver, DJ Sinister’s Country Fried Mix, VDJ JD, DJ Bad Ash, or DJ Hish (who I was on the roster with at the Stagecoach Festival and the Moonshine Miles Festival).

Film enthusiast? In addition to watching Johnny Cash’s biographical Walk the Line, you can also try some of these country cult classics: Coal Miner’s Daughter (about Loretta Lynn), Urban Cowboy (with John Travolta & Debra Winger), Pure Country (starring George Strait), Sweet Dreams (about Patsy Cline), Eight Seconds (with Luke Perry)…as well as anything starring Dolly Parton (like 9 to 5 or Steel Magnolias) or Kris Kristofferson (like A Star Is Born or Blade). Dwight Yoakum has a few famous cameos as well (like Sling Blade or Crank). But the real question is: are they “acting” or just “acting natural”? Once you understand that reference, you officially get a gold star in the hipster country music Olympics!!! (Leave me your thoughts in the comments below.)

If you enjoyed the Hipster’s Guide to Classic Country Music, I urge you to explore bluegrass and folk music. And, yes, I know not every “staple” classic country jam is on the list (again, comment below). I also have my Guitar-Infused Country & Classic Rock Wedding Cocktail Hour Playlist and Ultimate Bluegrass Wedding Cocktail Hour & Dinner Music Playlist you can scope out. Some say “crank it up,” but, around here, we say “Hank it up!” Enjoy your hip classic country tunes! 

  LISTEN TO THE HIPSTER’S CLASSIC COUNTRY PLAYLIST

Check it out on YouTube or Spotify.

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Eleanor Perenyi: an Appreciation and Reconsideration  by  GR Editor

Guest Post by Constance Casey

Meeting Eleanor Perenyi in print was like having someone understand and appreciate my toil, and relieving me of guilt for failures.  In gardening, anyway.

A friend gave me her Green Thoughts  back in the early 1990s (it was published in 1981) when I was a lowly apprentice to a Washington, D.C. garden designer with high standards and demanding clients. (“I want 100 white clematis going up the wall across from the pool, and I mean blue-white, not ivory.” or “The wedding is next week; we’d like an arbor of pink roses.”) The giver, not a gardener, loved the Andrew Marvell lines that gave Perenyi her apt title.

 Annihilating all that’s made

To a green thought in a green shade.

Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden consists of 72 essays, arranged alphabetically – asters and annuals through perennials to weeds and women. (A loose arrangement, no awkward stretch to pull in an X or a Z.)

Her alphabet closes with a bang – “Woman’s Place”, in which Perenyi digs into the unusual topic of sexism in horticulture.

Women, as she sees it, were fooled into retreating to the flower garden and taking on the tedious chores like weeding and deadheading. The problem goes back to hunter-gatherer pre-history. When men retired from hunting, women, who had been the first gatherers of herbs, greens, roots, and seeds, were limited to flowers – “Of all plants the least menacing and most useless.”

The chore-assignment has persisted over the ages. The gardener La Quintinie, Perenyi reports, in charge of Louis XIV’s potagers, recommended hiring married men because the wives would be available for weeding, as well as cleaning and scraping out pots. Perenyi muses that, like so many repressions, the move to confine women sprang from fear: “Men were always half in terror of women’s complicity with nature and the power it gives them.”

Perenyi’s knowledge came from 30 years of amateur experience in her Stonington, CT garden, where she was the sole authority, the designer as well as the pot scrubber.  She did have some help – youths requiring close supervision. But we know she was willing to sling 50-pound bags of dehydrated cow manure, and take scissors to snip a tomato hornworm in half – “a disgusting business, but much safer than spraying.”

F in her alphabet is for failure, and she tells her readers that some things are not worth the trouble. Do not bother with Chinese tree peonies. These woody plants bear the supremely gorgeous silky flowers of Chinese art, but they are stingy, slow, and capricious about blooming. She sticks with the far less demanding herbaceous peony, sumptuous, fragrant, and floriferous.

Do not, she warns, attempt to replicate the garden plans of British plantswoman Gertrude Jekyll. (There was a moment, 1970s to 1980s, when every Anglophile American gardener wanted to follow her lead.) Jekyll is a true heroine and pioneer in design, but Perenyi tells the reader to remember that Jekyll herbaceous borders were 100 feet long, with something gloriously in flower nine months a year. Many of the gardens she designed were south of London, in warm temperate counties with average annual rainfall of 55 inches. In any case, a third of Jekyll’s plants were removed and replaced in the course of a summer by a battalion of skilled gardeners.

Perenyi is not as prescriptive and severe about color combinations as Jekyll. The labels on Perenyi’s dahlia tubers fell off and, when replanted, a pink flower popped up among the yellows. “Obviously one tries to avoid the worst (which for me was an old scarlet poppy next to which mauve foxgloves invariably sowed themselves) but I don’t think it’s necessary to plan a herbaceous border down to the last forget-me–not.”

Her gardens were more inclusive than those of her fellow homeowners in Stonington. A neighbor noted that Perenyi seemed to have a penchant for “the conspicuous.” “She meant vulgar”, Perenyi decides, adding, “it hasn’t escaped my notice that mine is the only WASP garden in town to contain dahlias, and not the discreet little singles either.”

She’s very firm about avoiding the use of pesticides, weed-killers, and almost any soil additive. Resist the pressure from the nursery manager to buy chemicals, or the crowd-pleasing petunias loading garden center shelves. This stinging dismissal popped up in reviews of Perenyi’s book and then in her obituaries.

“They are pretty, very pretty – and as hopelessly impractical as a chiffon ball dress. Rain soils and bedraggles them.” Perenyi knew her fabrics, chiffon and others; before retirement she was an editor at Mademoiselle and a contributor to Harper’s Bazaar.

Perenyi’s voice is an antidote to the genteel and sentimental tone of many garden writers -vinegar (white balsamic), not honey. Gardening is much more than those un-menacing flowers. Perenyi takes immense pleasure in plant material breaking down. In her compost heap bushels of yard and kitchen litter turn into to “something like devil’s food cake.”  It’s on the topic of soil enrichment when she remembers “smoking piles of straw and manure on our Hungarian estate” that we first learn about her dramatic past, and why she bears a  Hungarian last name.

Traveling in Europe with her parents, Eleanor Spencer Stone, 19, met Zsigmond Perenyi, an Oxford-educated Hungarian aristocrat twice her age, at a diplomatic dinner. After a very short courtship they married and went to live in his family’s castle in the province of Ruthenia, formerly Hungarian, but under Czech control in the 1930s. For a while the couple had a kind of paradise – albeit a feudal paradise. The young American baroness oversaw the cutting gardens, orchards, and distillery with the help of faithful servants.

The two were cast out of Eden when World War II began. Zsigmond was conscripted into the Hungarian army and Eleanor retreated to the U.S. to bear their first child in safety. She and Zsigmond never lived together again. In her 1947 memoir of her time in Hungary  – More Was Lost – (reprinted by the New York Review of Books Classics), she says simply, “we receded into different dimensions.”

Why, after working as an author-editor, raising her son Peter, and entering her sixties, did she sit down to write this book?

“Gardens like mine,” she writes, “which go by the unpleasing name of ‘labor intensive,’ are on their way out and before they go I would like to contribute my penny’s worth to their history.”

That prediction is not as accurate as her others. She would be pleased, nearly 40 years on, at the growing number of people happily performing many kinds of horticulture-intensive labor. Having no battalions of gardeners and under-gardeners, many 21st century gardeners have found the pleasure in turning the compost, cutting back the fading perennials, removing deadwood, and slicing hornworms. She would be particularly pleased that more and more gardeners are moving away from using pesticides and herbicides.

A strategy she used for avoiding pesticide use was to plant short rows of different vegetables interspersed with herbs and flowers to discourage methodical attack by insects.  She was surprised to see many suburban gardeners spreading weed-killing lawn mixtures next to a vegetable garden: “A garden is a world, and its parts are not separable.”

With a bit of baroness-hauteur, Perenyi writes, “Gardening is so little esteemed in this country that I can’t imagine where or how someone who wanted to study it would go for instruction.”

Dahlias from the author’s garden

Gardening in public places, for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (my best job ever) was proceeded by an apprenticeship and then a Brooklyn Botanic Garden certificate. My garden now is private; three hours’ drive inland from Perenyi’s coastal town. Farmers and gardeners in my county are bedeviled by a pest larger than the tomato hornworm – deer.   The creatures have modified our choices; more ferns and aromatic herbs. For the moment, the herbaceous peonies Perenyi admired are unappealing to deer.

Reading Green Thoughts is like talking to a kindred spirit, a benign ghost, over coffee. I wish she could see the change in New York’s Central Park, which, when she wrote, was “atrociously vandalized.” A gardener would leap to agree with her that autumn is the best time to work outside. She savors the season when, “heavier dews presage the morning when the moisture will have turned to ice, glazing the shriveled dahlias and lima beans, and the annuals will be blasted beyond recall. These deaths are stingless. I wouldn’t want it otherwise.”

Here’s a soothing green thought: Gardeners, Perenyi noted, tend to lead long lives. She was born in 1918, and died in 2009. Someone who believes in composting as fervently as she did knows that all flora and fauna are headed for decomposition. Charming, knowledgeable, and intelligent writing, however, survives.

Constance Casey was an assistant gardener for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation for six years. Long before that, she was an editor at the San Jose Mercury News and a national correspondent for Newhouse News Service.

Eleanor Perenyi: an Appreciation and Reconsideration originally appeared on Garden Rant on September 7, 2018.

from Garden Rant http://www.gardenrant.com/2018/09/eleanor-perenyi-an-appreciation-and-reconsideration.html

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Expert: Birds flying high you know how I feel Sun in the sky you know how I feel Breeze driftin’ on by you know how I feel And this old world is a new world And a bold world For me And I’m feeling good I’m feeling good — Nina Simone, Feeling Good, 1965 The idiocy of our times – those tick-tick-tock-tock empty cranial caverns of the American collective delusion – have us clear thinkers and revolutionaries at heart on the ropes. How do we even sleep walk through the carnival that is Facebook, Saturday Night Live, endless Black Fridays, malls and movies, the spectacle that is un-news and the infantile capacity of adults from Ellen to Trump, from Rachel to Tom Friedman, from MSM punks to you-name-it-still-employed economist to control vast hundreds of millions – check that, billions – of destinies. Looting the tax coffers, hollowing out the middle class, rampant perpetual poverty and indebtedness, chronic illness, crashing climate, and a shit-storm of a planet now that we all think Capitalism is the only solution to death. We fiddle with holiday deals while holocaust looms, and we sit, kneel, genuflect, roll over, lie down and plead in our hog-tied American way. Bombs from the suburbs lifted into space with the deadly drone god while Southern California burns, Phoenix evaporates, and both ends of the country flop around like lice-plagued GMO fish on the sinking deck. Prognostication, this is the daily bread, by the millions – blogs, WoP, WSJ, NYT, endless on-line mutterings of the controlled opposition. We have become Pokémon dealers, shuffling the next culling of the economy, or placing bets on the insanity plea of Trump and Company, hoping for black rain and Sunday bloody Sunday. This is the time of Botox broadcasters, the male and female versions of the same plastic people, there, in their million dollar flats at night, conjuring up more of the same silly and insane narratives about things they know nothing about. They ply their trade like traveling prostitutes, selling their bits of Cellophane wisdom and glowing manicured selves like jesters, clowns. The more they try and sound Ivy League and display Driveling Room Temperature IQ, the more difficult it is to understand them. The elite is not some gang of point-one One Percenters. They are in the several millions, count, sixty million of them in the USA, held together with the thieving accountants and hired hands of the legal-illegal class. They are wannabe’s and blue collar millionaires, two doctor heads of households, high end business owners, the traders of guns, pharmaceuticals, laws and other lies. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we cannot have both. — US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis Yet, we have to listen endlessly to the We Are the Ninety-nine, which is the absurdity of double-think. One percent isn’t holding up the house of cards. The minions, and the mighty masses supporting these titans of industry and billionaires, they are the Twenty-Solid (& Hard) Percent, in their glory, libertarians and thieves and unwilling to be the blood coming from their proverbial onion hearts. In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in relatively few hands. As of 2013, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 36.7% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 52.2%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.8% I dance through this mumbo-jumbo Hollywood and Single-Screen-Scroll-after-Scroll mush we call culture, and I hurdle over the Eichmann’s, big and small, and I end up in the same place I started more than 45 years ago – all thieves and charlatans, but with that big all-you-can-eat American cafeteria grin, the lives set in drive through coffee, grease and drugs delivery. This country, ripe for the taking, after genocide after genocide, and then the War is a Racket turned into America is the King Pin, the Biggest Racket of them All. Blue blood in her circulatory system, ever the slave-trading mindset, dredged in Puritanical and Crypto-Zionism. Promised Land is the Disney Effect, and chosen people come and go, as the drive-in’s turn to weeds and the ever-present huckster and PT Barnum and Lying Lynching Legal class rule over the entire mess, over all of the stars and tycoons. Beady-eyed money changers, and those sniveling ones making markets out of nothing, the very steps we take, breaths we exhale, lives we shed. There will be blood is the banker’s credo now, backed by Smith and Wesson and plethora of rockets bursting in air from every corner of the White Man’s/Christian/Jewish world. Cops and coaches, captains and CEOs, we know their kind, and no matter which XX or XY you attempt to rationalize into the madness of Capitalism, no matter which Gender or Identity serves the point-one One Percent class, the project is all cornered and flayed because Capitalism is the breeder of the heathens, the reckless and ruthless, the smiling and sincerely elitist crew. Yet, we hear endless drivel now about Groping A and Groping B, the slithering tongues of these Capitalists on steroids and amyl nitrate and human growth hormones and T-cells, and lubricated eggs from virgin sturgeon. These people in the center of that millionaire goo, in that trade of body and soul for the spin around the rotunda or jaunt down Sunset Boulevard, no matter which Charlie Rose or Dustin Hoffman or Sean Penn you end up with in the same room or office or court of law, unfortunately, they are all the same, groping or masturbating or climaxing or exhibitionisming or peeping tomming or S & M-ing, no matter how you run with them, these elites will eventually get under your skin like pin worms and chiggers. We’ll be seeing the fallout now of the alleged perversions and sexual overtures and manipulations and cajoling and assaults and rapes, wherever they go with those gag rule clauses after the payoffs and silence money. Just out on this day of infamy, Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, stories on John Travolta, one of the richest guys in Hollywood with 5 planes and jets, and his own runway in Florida. This is the microcosm of what Americans are, what they watch, what they believe. Imagine he and his wife, Kelly Preston, living their multimillionaire tax-evading, money-sheltering, cash-gouging lives. So, old John (the Italian-American actor) is accused of attacking masseuses, and he is now in the pig wash slurry of more scandal, as his movie on John Gotti is being dropped (by Lionsgate) because of the allegations swirling around old John (Travolta) attacking guys coming to his hotel rooms for massages (professional): Mafia leader Gotti was brought to trial multiple times throughout the 1980s, only to be acquitted. Travolta, 63, plays Gotti in multiple stages of his life, including when he finally went to prison in 1992. Gotti died of throat cancer, while still incarcerated, in 2002. Last month Travolta was named in a criminal complaint by a 21-year-old masseur who accused the actor of sexual battery that reportedly took place in 2000. According to the bombshell police report, the masseur alleged that Travolta groped his bare buttocks and indecently exposed himself during a deep body massage at the LaQuinta Hotel in Palm Springs, California. During the alleged incident, Travolta, 63, also made lewd remarks about gay fantasies while at the hotel’s spa facility around 1:30 am on February 15, 2000. The masseur reported the incident to the Palm Springs Sheriff’s Department. Officer Mark Peters went to the hotel to speak with Travolta, who had already checked out by the time he arrived. This isn’t the first time Travolta has been accused of misconduct while getting a massage. In 2012, Travolta was sued over accusations that he tried to have sex with a male masseur during a therapy session at the luxury Beverly Hills Hotel. Okorie Okorcha, the lawyer representing the masseur said: ‘My client is afraid of John Travolta’. He added: ‘Mr. Travolta made very explicit threats against my client, which are contained in the lawsuit. ‘Specifically, John Travolta told my client that Hollywood is controlled by homosexual Jewish men who expect favors in return for sexual activity. ‘Let’s face it, John Travolta is an extremely powerful man, and my client absolutely felt threatened by Mr. Travolta. My client was sexually assaulted by Mr. Travolta and he needs to be held accountable for his actions.’ Read more: I bring this most recent case up to illustrate the insane and perverse and surreal aspect of American society, and the money made by talent-less actors who are in bizarre relationships with spouses (arranged marriage with Preston per Scientology), who have the lives of the rich and famous all bundled up in their wacko ways. Do we want to sit through two hours of Gotti, at $12 a pop per movie ticket? Do we have no common sense in this country? The poor and the rich are the mad crowd, the spectacle now conjoined as aberrations of humanity. Travolta, a deacon in the Scientology cult. Do Americans boycott these people, these companies, these ideas, these death by a thousand cuts philosophies and this repressive un-culture to our own humanity? Boys will be boys, and then some. How many men have made the news for their alleged crimes of groping, harassing, cajoling, blackmailing? How many rabbis are speaking out against the large amount of Jewish men caught up in the allegations? How many preachers and priests are speaking up? What about the school teachers, and those university faculty? Mothers? Daughters? Aunts? Any Trump family out there willing to go out on a limb? Where is that ethical code humanity universally has to live with to make sure we do no harm? Golden Rule, Seven Sins of Gandhi ? On October 22, 1925, Gandhi published a list he called the Seven Social Sins in his weekly newspaper Young India. Politics without principles Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Knowledge without character Commerce without morality Science without humanity Worship without sacrifice The list sprung from a correspondence that Gandhi had with someone only identified as a “fair friend.” He published the list without commentary save for the following line: “Naturally, the friend does not want the readers to know these things merely through the intellect but to know them through the heart so as to avoid them.” Unlike the Catholic Church’s list, Gandhi’s list is expressly focused on the conduct of the individual in society. Gandhi preached non-violence and interdependence and every single one of these sins are examples of selfishness winning out over the common good. It’s also a list that, if fully absorbed, will make the folks over at the US Chamber of Commerce and Ayn Rand Institute itch. After all, “Wealth without work,” is a pretty accurate description of America’s 1%. (Investments ain’t work. Ask Thomas Piketty.) “Commerce without morality” sounds a lot like every single oil company out there and “knowledge without character” describes half the hacks on cable news. “Politics without principles” describes the other half. In 1947, Gandhi gave his fifth grandson, Arun Gandhi, a slip of paper with this same list on it, saying that it contained “the seven blunders that human society commits, and that cause all the violence.” The next day, Arun returned to his home in South Africa. Three months later, Gandhi was shot to death by a Hindu extremist. The law of reciprocity, and where does that fall on American culture, whether through the lens of millionaire men or millionaire women? One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself (positive or directive form). One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated (negative or prohibitive form). What you wish upon others, you wish upon yourself (empathic or responsive form). The Golden Rule differs from the maxim of reciprocity captured in do ut des—”I give so that you will give in return”—and is rather a unilateral moral commitment to the well-being of the other without the expectation of anything in return. The fall-out in this dog-eat-dog, one man/woman for him or herself stolen land, which is the undertow of predatory capitalism, unfortunately, is all (unduly so) on the shoulders of all men – fathers and uncles, teachers and social workers, sons and uncles, all of us, righteous and far from any capitalist usury mindset, divorced from the take-take-take that is America, seemingly embraced by every boy or girl, man or woman, all intersexuals and transsexuals. The voyeurism, titillation, exhibitionism, proclivities toward gender and self debasement, and the ejaculatory and phallus aims of those tainted elites, and not so elite, are tied to the usury, exploitative and downright greed in every human or business transaction in Capitalism. Men, alas, the patriarchy, are all tied up with what we in America have become along all gender and sexual identities: paranoid, exceptionalist, supremacist, imperial and self-important, warring, and supercilious, superficial and shallow.  It’s an epigenetic cause and effect relationship, inside the DNA code of most red-blooded Americans, gay, straight, lesbian, trans-sexual, and what have you! Scam, flimflam, extort, fine, levy, tax, fee-fee-fee, and then, we steal from our futures, bankrupt our own retirements, rip off generations yet born, dredge the lake for that last caviar-producing fish, and we put it all out there in Google-land, Selfie the Entire Disaster, go on Twitter Tizzies, and then ask for more, and order it all on Amazon, trucked to the door and drone-delivered to the balcony. Funny, how conservative guys like Paul Craig Roberts see this next spasm of looting with the Republicans throwing down their true colors and the Pelosi-Schumer schemers in the Big D club yawning about their protected investments/millionaire and yammering about Russia, here at Counterpunch: What we are witnessing is the complete looting of America and the entirety of the West.  While the Western World collapses, the insouciant, submissive people sit there sucking their thumbs while they are being ruined. Nothing is left of the West except looters at work. This tax bill is an abomination, an act of brutal plunder.  Its sponsors should be tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail, if not hung from a lamp post. If we really break this down, really, what is that tar and feather routine? Imagine, a real world where we aren’t going to take it anymore, one where the tar is 200 degrees and the feathers are all knife sharp and hardened. Imagine the dunking of those thieves-murderers in vats of their fossil fuel gunk, near boiling temperature. I wonder if that’s what Craig Roberts is asking for? And, then, really, what does it mean to be hung on a lamp post? The old ways put the tarred and feathered tied to a lamp post, but hung evokes a lynching. Is that what this staid and conservative Paul Craig Roberts is asking for? Hmm, a call to action, violence? The reality is Americans love their thug royalty, all the Bushes and Clintons and Obamas and the endless Kennedys and now the Trumps. This country not only tars and feathers dissidents, but we’re strung up to dry on the vine. I have lost jobs for speaking out, for advocating as a teacher or journalist or social worker. I write about this all the time, and many places I’ve called my work place were havens for women, me being in the super minority. I have no bended knee and favoritism for the female side of capitalism, like many now are gaggling about. I have been face to face with ameliorating, middling, and in many cases malfeasance prone supervisors and HR directors with the XX gene, and I am not about to go on a tirade of reverse stupidity and count all men as Harvey Weinsteins or John Conyers. We are living up to our collective reputation as mushy thinkers, in this next Tweeting for the Highest Scream for grope x, y and z. Untethered bathrobes, full-on kisses, and all the other pathetic pranks and sexist fun (sic) these leaders of the free world engage in. But . . . . Bombing the world, gutting the world, and possibly stealing all the world’s things, and we talk about Al Franken the Bumbler. Imagine now, a few days ago, that parading multimillionaire, mutilating man, Obama, calling for more women to be elected to office. “. . . because men seem to be having some problems these days.” In all his neoliberal, girl child killing, female wedding party murdering, undocumented woman deporting glee, he sits on the pile of manure that is American retro-thinking and makes these declarations worthy of the nonsense that overrules everything in this country. This is Obama at a private event in Paris on Saturday, and he, of course, was referring to the sexual misconduct allegations made against many high-profile men he golfs with, rubs elbows with, hobnobs for.  Here, this is a must read, his eleventh-grade wisdom and drearily daft psychology: “Not to generalize but women seem to have a better capacity than men do, partly because of their socialization.” Here he is, commenting on the plethora of misdeeds and worse of the great elite class, those champions of perversion like Weinstein or the Franken fellow or Alabama Crimson Tide Moore and Company. This is in Paris, speaking to his elites, arranged by a network of communications professionals known as the Les Napoleons. Millionaires, and many of them perverted on many levels. You think one of these boys and girls club acolytes have a bone of humanism left? Listening to wise scriptures, austerity, sacrifice, respectful faith, social welfare, forgiveness, purity of intent, compassion, truth and self-control—are the ten wealth of character (self). O king aim for these, may you be steadfast in these qualities. These are the basis of prosperity and rightful living. These are highest attainable things. All worlds are balanced on dharma, dharma encompasses ways to prosperity as well. O King, dharma is the best quality to have, wealth the medium and desire (kāma) the lowest. Hence, (keeping these in mind), by self-control and by making dharma (right conduct) your main focus, treat others as you treat yourself. — Mahābhārata Shānti-Parva 167:9 This is 21st Century Google Man, Obama, at his best and most hypocritical, somehow declaring that I as a man should not run for local office or be involved in social change at the political level because of a few perverts making the Twitter feeds? He declares men seemingly have a few problems, and so, this wise American Murder Incorporated CEO (ex) is asking me to stand down as a male and wait for the female leaders, because women have a better grasp on socialization? What the hell does that mean? Where do these Gollum characters come from, this Barak and his Michelle and the millions of shekels shoved into their pockets for their mere existences, for a few hiccuped words ghost-written into Number One Best Seller Hardbacks? The socialization of women like Madeline Albright, Chancellor Merkel, Margaret Thatcher, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Janet Reno, and, well, the reader can generate his-her-their own list. Socialization of these fine ladies shine a light on their incredible lightness of goodness? This is side-mouth, PC, identity politics talk. These are loopy times, and we’ve been in them for decades, really, since Eisenhauer, as undertow after riptide produced the death of integrity, the death of common thinking, the inability of the American trite and superficial man and woman to advance to a level of sophistication or deep thinking or even wisdom or common sage sense. Look at these fellows and women running the world into the ground while they stash-stash-stash away retirement money enough to feed the world 50 billion times over.  Look at how they are not us and they indeed want us prostrate and afraid and on the run and now in their goofy show of faux integrity. All for one, one for all women. Here’s a run down of some of those so-so better socialized women Obama is calling on. I need not go into their dirty deeds, their recklessness, their thieving and in many cases direct connection to murdering thousands and structurally and violently assaulting millions and millions more. That other gender Obama is asking for help from, the female persuasion, is now front and center the only gender to be socially and structurally ready for service to the country, as Obama blurts out during one of his Point One Percent Meetings in France . . .  because men seem to be having some problems these days. Madeleine Albright  Condoleezza Rice Hillary Clinton . Arizona governor Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security Margaret Spellings Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos  Secretary of Education Susan E. Rice, Loretta E. Lynch, Laura Bush, Karen Hughes (Bush Women) Samantha Power? (Wow, what a bastion of integrity . . . I had to throw that in). More rah-rah bullshit from mainstream propaganda: Forbes USA Most Powerful Women Fortune’s Most Powerful Women And, the following from other lists, imagine, the power they wield, and because they are women, according to Barak Obama’s calculus, are stalwarts of humanity! Merkel, May, Gates, Trump — bastions of integrity! Angela Merkel is still the most powerful woman in the world. The German Chancellor has held the top spot on the Forbes Most Powerful Women List for seven consecutive years, and 12 years in total. Another prominent political leader, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, ranked second. It is her first time appearing on Forbes‘s annual list. Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is the highest-ranking American woman, taking the third spot. Seven of the world’s 10 most powerful women are American, according to the Forbes list. Forbes determines its ranking by evaluating four categories: money — which covers net worth, company revenues, assets under management or GDP — media presence, influence and impact. Of the 100 women on the list, nearly half are from the United States. Ivanka Trump, senior adviser to and daughter of President Donald Trump. Here’s the David Letterman Countdown, Top Ten. Gates Foundation, Facebook, GM, YouTube, Fidelity Investments, IMF, Bank, IBM. Just think of those companies, and how unjust, how predatory, and how destructive they are, but with women in higher up positions and even as CEOs, well, according to Obama, we all can sleep better tonight now that women are at the helm! * Angela Merkel: Chancellor, Germany * Theresa May: Prime Minister, U.K. * Melinda Gates: Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, U.S. * Sheryl Sandberg: COO, Facebook, U.S. * Mary Barra: CEO, General Motors, U.S. * Susan Wojcicki: CEO, YouTube, U.S. * Abigail Johnson: CEO, Fidelity Investments, U.S. * Christine Lagarde: Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, U.S. * Ana Patricia Botín: Chair, Santander Group, Banco Santander, Spain * Ginni Rometty: CEO, IBM, U.S. Here, an interesting list, with, of course, a few amazing human beings lumped into the superficial and super-rich — Addams, Aquino, Carson, Curie, Mead, Parks, Wolff. But it’s Time Magazine, so we know what that means (run by a woman, or has she been replaced?) Jane Addams (1860-1935) Corazon Aquino (1933-2009) Rachel Carson (1907-1964) Coco Chanel (1883-1971) Julia Child (1912-2004) Hillary Clinton (1947-Present) Marie Curie (1867-1934) Aretha Franklin (1942-Present) Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) Estée Lauder (1908-2004) Madonna (1958-Present) Margaret Mead (1901-1978) Golda Meir (1898-1978) Angela Merkel (1954-Present) Sandra Day O’Connor (1930-Present) Rosa Parks (1913-2005) Jiang Qing (1914-1991) Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) Gloria Steinem (1934-Present) Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) Martha Stewart (1941-Present) Mother Teresa (1910-1997) Margaret Thatcher (1925-Present) Oprah Winfrey (1954-Present) Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) Most Powerful Women According to Fortune Magazine, 2010! Highest paid, take a look at that loot, again, as Obama proclaims, why not have them all (women) run the senate, congress, Supreme Court and the Executive Branch? Carol Bartz                          Yahoo!                 $47.2 million Safra Catz                            Oracle                   $36.4 million Carrie Cox                            Schering-Plough      $23 million Irene Rosenfeld                  Kraft Foods         $22.1 million Wellington Denahan-Norris      Annaly Capital Management $21.6 m Pamela Patsley                 Moneygram International            $17.9 million Susan Ivey                          Reynolds American          $16.2 million Martine Rothblatt            United Therapeutics       $15.8 million — Carol Meyrowitz               TJX Companies              $14.8 million Indra Nooyi                      PepsiCo                           $14.2 million Angela Braly                     WellPoint            $13.1 million Brenda Barnes                  Sara Lee               $11.5 million — Linda Chen                        Wynn Resorts    $11.2 million — Patricia Woertz                 Archer Daniels Midland     $11.0 million Kim Sinatra                       Wynn Resorts    $10.5 million — Mary Callahan Erdoes     JPMorgan Chase $10.4 million Nancy Wysenski               Vertex Pharmaceuticals          $10.2 million — Jackwyn Nemerov           Polo Ralph Lauren $10.1 million Ursula Burns                     Xerox    $9.9 million Martha Stewart                Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia     $9.7 m Ann Livermore                 Hewlett-Packard              $9.7 million Doreen Toben                   Verizon Communications              $9.2 million Katherine Krill                  AnnTaylor Stores              $9.1 million — Kathryn Fagan                  Annaly Capital Management       $8.6 million Ellen Kullman                   DuPont $8.3 million You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times. — Nina Simone Note:  Give it to the New York Daily News to call this “the Weinstein Effect as Sexual McCarthyism” http://clubof.info/

[meanwhileinoz]

People Share The Grossest Things That Have Ever Happened To Them During Sex That’ll Make You Barf

Let’s face it. Everybody love sex. The experience of sex is distinct and truly one of its own kind. Honestly, life would be so boring without it. However, even though sex is as great as it can get, it does “come” with some situations that can sometimes get awkward and very unpleasant. Here are some of the stories from Reddit that people have shared.

CAUTION: THIS IS HIGHLY NSFW.

#1 Reading this by fineblushlane will make you want to think TWICE before randomly giving head to someone you don’t know.

So a few years ago I had brought a new girl back to my apartment after being out drinking all evening. We were too drunk to make the beast with two backs so we passed out until morning.

When we awoke we started kissing and canoodling and I decided to go down on her. This is one of my favorite things and generally will do it as long as it takes to make a girl orgasm…

Anyway, I head down south and pull down her panties to see the hairiest bush i’ve ever seen in my life. Not only is it hairy but the hair is very long and also messy looking, kind of bedraggled. Like a homeless guys beard or an abandoned birds nest.

Slightly less enthused but still determined I plunged in face-first and started getting busy. The taste of this beaver, if possible, was worse than it looked. It was fetid and bitter and to make matters worse I had numerous pubic hairs caught in my throat which were tickling me and making me cough.

I decided to pull back for a second to regain my composure. I thought if I pulled open her lady-bits I might be able to have a better angle of attack on her clit. I opened up her pussy to a terrible sight. There were multiple lumps of what looked like cottage cheese dotted around her pussy lips and clit.Each lump ranged from a few millimeters in width to half a centimeter in size. It looked like some sort of fungus was growing there.

Needless to say I was fucking revolted and started gagging. I knew that despite my love of pussy I could not go down on her again without puking my guts up. I mumbled some excuse about a headache and not feeling good and fled to the bathroom, whereupon I spent ten minutes washing my mouth out and brushing my teeth.

Even now I shudder when I think back upon “cottage cheese pussy girl”.

Edit: A friend just pointed out to me that the girl from my story is now the Lehman Bros of spank bank material. Perhaps if you ever have a boner and want to lose it sharpishly you can think of cottage cheese?

#2 This story by SisterNamedJan took the famous phrase “Giving someone the taste of their own medicine” to a whole new level.

  He pulled it out to come on my face, I was unprepared and snorted his semen up my nose. We started making out and I sneezed his semen onto his own face.

Probably grosser for him than for me, but not by much.

  #3 Aaaaaa667’s girl is definitely a keeper

  I had recently found a new girlfriend. A cute, blonde girl with lots of curves in all the right places. We had been together for a little while (this was back when I was a Jr. in college and she was a freshman) when we went to this huge party. We both ended up getting totally trashed and wound up back at my place. Needless to say I was waaay to drunk to get any bidnass done that night. The next morning we woke up and started to get it on. For some reason, Im always really randy after a night of heavy drinking. Anyway…midway through the sex, we are doing it doggy style with her on all 4 at the edge of the bed and me standing behind her on the floor. I am hammering away like a rabbid jackrabbit when, all of a sudden, i get that sour food, extra saliva feeling in my mouth. I knew what was coming but it was too late. As the puke surged up my esophagus, I clenched my hands over my mouth in a death grip, but to no avail. I spun around and tried to aim for my waste bin….but it was no use. I ended up projectile vomiting in about a 3/4 circle. I managed to go from her right side, across that wall, across the wall behind me (and the bookcase that was there), all over the waste bin, and i over spun and went passed the waste bin and got it on my floor and the bed on her left side. Luckily, only some puke flak got on her back….

She’s a great girl though, that was 3 years ago and we are still together…

  #4 This one by kidmonsters almost made me puke.

  I was in a band in college and we played a show this one weekend. I was pretty smashed after drinking for free all night, and this surprisingly cute chick saunters up and started with the whole, “oh my god, you like write songs and stuff?” Despite the fact that I am usually a bit shy in situations like this, she had her arm around me and is doing all the work. “Fuck it, let’s do this,” I think to myself. While she is mid-sentence, I grabbed her hand and started walking her out the door.

We headed back to her apartment, and things started to heat up. We were on her bed, ripping off eachother’s clothes. Suddenly, in one swift move, she pounced me, knocked me onto my back, jumped on top of me, spun around and started sucking me off, 69 style. I was totally into it, and started reciprocating. Only a few moments pass before I felt a tap on my forehead. My face was fully between her legs, yet there was this tap tap tap on my forehead. Every couple of seconds, tap tap tap. This tapping continued and started to take me out of the moment. I pried my face from between her legs to get a better view of what was going on. To my horror, I witnessed, dangling from her asshole, a fucking tape worm, bouncing like a fettuccine noodle with every excited movement she made. I was totally disgusted, but kind of in shock, and she had no idea what is going on, just gobbling away down there. Before I knew it, I had thrown her off of me and I was stringing together a long series of “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck” as I put on my pants and ran out the door.

  So, the boy and I like some backdoor fun from time to time. We talk about it more than we do it because it’s tiresome to get ready and clean up after… usually worth it though ;). One Saturday afternoon, the boy is performing some world class cuminonumbulus when I feel a pressure at my nether orifice. I soon realised he was using some beads on me. We had some filthy and very very satisfying sex, then I went to the bathroom to clean up without removing the beads.

I’m so glad I did that.

I sat on the toilet to get the beads out.

I’m so glad I did that.

Those beads were solidly embedded in a great big turd.

I just stared at it dumbly for a moment before the smell hit me.

  #6 That has got to hurt. _NetWorK_ hope its ok now.

I had this happen to me too, got home from working a night shift 8pm to 8am went at it with the wife then noticed a bit of blood, figured oh she started her period got off went to the washroom to clean up then noticed blood on the bathroom floor figured I must of have not wiped the underside, my stomach churned when I saw that my frenulum (banjo string) was now in two pieces. This is when the pain starts…

Had to call my friend who worked close to my house get him to get out of work 30 minutes early to drive me to the hospital. Here’s the main content of our conversation.

“Hey John, it’s Mike can you drive me to the hospital? I think I broke it.” “Broke what?” “IT man” “Oh shit I’ll be right over”

The trip to the hospital was another story within itself, ended up having a to have it packed with surgical skin graph (they are special bandages that are meant to promote skin repairs) and not use it for 5 days… I waited 3 and now it’s all messed up it can pop out whenever it wants and where it’s suppose to stop it just keeps rolling back… I really should have waited to extra 2 days 🙁

#7 That accelerated quickly. Darzel’s experience is more of a lesson.

Girl beneath me, rolls me over onto my back – in the process we roll off the bed and we land on the floor, me on the bottom and her still straddling me. Her leg went straight through a big glass of water. Blood everywhere. She had lacerated her leg straight to the bone in a clean cut: I could see her muscle. Within ten minutes of our initial playing around there were 6 firemen and 3 policemen in the room (she was mental and shouted down the phone that I had a gun so they would come sooner). I was high and drunk and so her roomie took control. Paralysed by shock and weed, I had to hide while they took her in the ambulance as she was THAT crazy that I was expecting her to call rape.

She required 62 stiches, 40 on the muscle covering her shin.

This is the singular most traumatic experience of my life

  #8 Love is in the air, is it not mads-8?

Sixty-Nine. She came. She farted. My hair blew in it’s fetid breeze.

  #9 When you are really determined, you do what apatton19 did.

A girl I had been dating for awhile climbed on me for 69. As she scooted back, I saw something white, realized too late that it was a clump of toilet paper, and got it in my mouth. Pretty nasty, but I spit it out and kept going.

  #10 Oh my, you don’t see that every day now do you? By amaacct.

I work in an emergency room. One time we had a patient who had a colostomy (for those who don’t know, this is a surgically placed hole in the abdomen where shit comes out of after the colon is rerouted away from the ass)

Anyway, some girl comes in once with an infection in her stoma (abdominal shithole). Turns out it was gonorrhea. Her husband had been cheating on her, picked it up and had been fucking her in her stoma

  #11 Parallel universe version of ‘don’t forget to pull out’ by hong_kong_phooey

  Having sex with my wife, and then noticing that something didn’t feel quite right, she still had a tampon in from 4 days prior…and i had to help pull it out….

  #12 Tellme_areyoufree ‘s poor roommate will never think about this the same way again.

Freshman year of college, I met this guy and brought him back to my dorm (I’m also a guy). He seemed nice and everything, and he was cute, and we started to fuck around. Eventually he decided he wanted to bottom (i.e. get fucked), and so we started having intercourse…

I started to smell the distinct smell of fecal matter very soon. I thought “whatever, I guess you should expect a little smell when having anal sex.” I continued, and the smell continued to get worse.

Eventually, we finish, and I pull out – only to see a stream of shit spew out of his ass. It was everywhere. I mean, fucking everywhere. It was explosive diarrhea-type shit, on my bed, on me, on the wall even.

… and then my roomate walked in.

I found out later that the dude had a severe bowel problem of some kind, and really shouldn’t have bottomed. My ex-roomate is still a friend of mine, and I still have to assure him that that’s not what gay sex generally looks like.

#13 Quite not what Pict was expecting..

Sucking a chicks nipple in the dark. She was loving it. All of a sudden there is liquid.. Lactating.. sick. So keep going, she seems to be loving it.

Lights come on, dun dun dunnn, I had been sucking the pus out of a boil.

  #14 This story by TI-83 doesn’t have a happy ending.

I remember this story happening to an acquaintance a few years ago.. So said acquaintance meets up with a few friends and they roadtrip for a night of drinking and debauchery in Canadia. The group ends up at a strip club and the protagonist of the story ends up picking up one of the strippers by the nights end. For some unknown reason, this guy thought it was a good idea to go down on the stripper before they do the nasty. They all drive home the next day and all is good. The day after driving back, the guy wakes up in the morning and can’t open his eyes and proceeds to freak out. Paramedics are called. Turns out that the stripper he had gone down on had crabs. The crabs had gotten into his eyelashes and surrounding areas. Literally his eyes were crusted shut from the various liquids his body expelled (blood, plasma, etc.) as a result of the crabs feeding off his lifeblood. Horrible stuff.

  #15 Pay heed to what Sobe86 says at the end.

I was going out with a girl, and one night we got drunk and had sex without protection. She wasn’t on the pill, so she had to go to the pharmacy and get a morning-after type thing.

So a few days later, we were fooling around in the dark. I fingered her a bit, went down on her. I noticed it tasted a little weirder than normal, but didn’t say anything. She repaid me in similar fashion. Afterwards I go to the bathroom, and turn the light on. My whole face and arms are covered in blood. I look like a vampire after a feeding frenzy. Initially I thought it was a cut on my face or something, but I couldn’t find anything wrong. Also, the blood was not like any blood I’d seen before, like it was really thick and gooey. So I go back to the bedroom, turn the light on, and her entire lower regions are bathed in this syrupy horrible red gunk. It’s all over the bed sheets, and all down the side of her legs.

She understandably freaks out. We call emergency services etc. At first we thought I cut her down there with my fingernails or something. But it turns out when a girl uses emergency contraception, it can wreak havoc with her menstrual cycle. And I spent 5 minutes lapping up her period blood. We never spoke of it again. Remember kids: if she isnt on the pill, use a fucking condom.

  #16 I-330‘s guy will never keep a pet cat.

Last summer my husband and I were living with roommates who had a cat. We were drinking and started getting hot and heavy, he stripped down and jumped on the bed, said something about it being wet and jumped back up. One of us had left our bedroom door cracked and the cat had gotten stuck in the room, and pooped all over our bed. Worse is that apparently this cat was sick with worms. My poor husband was covered in kitty diarrhea, blood and worms.

#17 What emorrow64 shares is more than just a bad experience.

Goin down on a guy can be like being locked in the trunk of a car with old cheese. WASH YOUR BALLS! And it wouldn’t hurt to trim a lil. The grossest sexual encounter I’ve had was a guy who sweat so profusely it was dripping on me, then he flipped his sweaty ass around into my face to attempt what I can only assume was a 69 position but was more like bein force fed a butt sandwich and I could see the sweat glistening on his ass/ball hair, that, and the cheez smell coming from his balls made my eyes water and I threw him off me and ran to the shower. 30 minutes of soap and hot water and I still didn’t feel clean.

  #18 An all-time classic story by rivalthecreator but just as unpleasant at the same time.

Steve and his girlfriend Samantha went off to college in August. She went to Florida State, he went to Penn. So, she decides to fly to PA to visit him. He was really happy to see her so he decided to give her some oral action.

He had done this numerous times before and he always enjoyed doing it…but for some reason, this time, she smelled really horrible, and she tasted even worse. He didn’t want to offend her though because he hadn’t seen her in months…so he put a Jolly Rancher in his mouth to cover it up, even though it didn’t do much to help.

In the course of eating her out, he accidentally pushed the candy inside of her… and stuck a finger in to grab it out. He took it out, and put it back into his mouth and bit it. Only…it wasn’t the Jolly Rancher.

It was a nodule of gonorrhea.

As in, the blister-like structure that gonorrhea makes filled with diseased pus was the size of a fucking Jolly Rancher and the poor guy BIT it. I guess it was really dark in the room. He freaked out and started vomiting all over the place when it exploded in his mouth…

He demanded to know what was going on, turns out she had cheated on him at a club like, the first week of college, and fucked some random guy and the stupid bitch had no clue what was wrong with her. She noticed a strange smell though.

So now, Steve is freaking out that he now has gonorrhea of the mouth and God knows what else.

#19 The description by Criscoxl is actually gross, but the thing as a whole is very cute!

So this one time I’m having sex with my girlfriend right, and it was all good and sexy so we finish up and everything seems cool.

Then about 9 months later a fucking little human being comes out of her pussy! I mean just like pops out and I saw that shit with my own eyes!

The little fucker is still living with us.

http://ift.tt/2fytvHN

[daryljdugdale]

Serendipity- A chance meeting with a man in a field.

Serendipity is a strange word and indeed a strange thing! Alongside this journey with nutrition has come discussions about the use of supplements. Up until fairly recently I decided I didn`t really want to take supplements, rather relying on the use of the whole foods, vegetables and spice and herb. The literature I have read has suggested a number of vegetables, spices and fruits that help support the body`s ability to fight the spread of cancer. These include green tea, lemon tea, olives and olive oil, turmeric, ginger, garlic and onions, cruciform vegetables, vegetables high in caroteniosa such as carrots, yams ,sweet potatoes, also tomatoes soy and tofu, mushrooms and sea weed and a number of fruits. It also talks about the benefit of red wine and dark chocolate. I have been content with this list and changes to what I cook and choose to eat. However a chance meeting with a man in a field has changed all of that.

Lets call him John (not his real name). We were pitching our campervan up in a field on a site in the south coast and it was all a bit hectic having arrived within minutes of the deadline to get on site. The caravan and motorhome sites have a particular penchant for order and time!

So there I was flapping around trying to get the awning up the grey water waste bucket ect .. when a man approached who had his caravan pitched next to us. There are some people who are able to give you their life history in just five minutes , John was one of those. His keenness was rather unnerving at first but I decided it would be good to continue the conversation and I am so glad I did. It transpired John was previously a professional snooker refer, and yes now being in his sixties he was one of those guys with white gloves you would have seen on BBC during the 80`s moving the white ball around and shouting foul. It transpired John had been diagnosed with esophagus cancer the previous year. As soon as he disclosed this I felt the need to let him know I was stage 4 lung cancer. It could have easily descended into a warped game of top trumps. He then gave me a line which remains one I will remember for a long time, “My cancer diagnosis was one black ball that wasn`t going to snooker me” He then went on to tell me his tumours had not responded to the course of chemotherapy he had undertaken. Although he felt well during the process after it had finished he had felt awful for a lengthy period of time. I have been lucky that so far I have only had to have one episode of chemotherapy and the impact wasn`t too awful. So I had some sympathy for him. His CT scans post chemotherapy showed that there wasn`t the shrinkage his oncologist or he was hoping for. Then he told me about a conversation he had with his son who had done some research on the health benefits of black cumin oil (Nigella Sativa). I had to admit that in all of my reading over the past nine months I hadn`t come across the subject of black cumin oil. He proceeded to tell me that he had used black cumin oil for three months and his subsequent CT scan had shown all tumours had disappeared! I struggled to comprehend what he was saying, it appeared to me he was describing a miracle. I then thought about Stamitas and his story living on the island of Ikaria.  John stated his oncologist had suggested it may well have been the black cumin oil that had made a difference. Now as a social scientist I knew this anecdote didn`t constitute evidence and it would be dangerous to assume it had indeed made the difference, but John very kindly emailed me the link to the black cumin oil he had used and told me his dosage and the time frame he had been taking it. I then decided to do my own research to make sure what was being described wasn`t quackery. I have found a range of positive news stories on the health benefits of taking black cumin oil, both in respect of cancer and also diabetes. The history of its use through the centuries truly is inspiring. I also found one piece of research completed by Indian researchers on tissues infected with lung cancer. ( Al-Sheddi ES1, Farshori NN, Al-Oqail MM, Musarrat J, Al-Khedhairy AA, Siddiqui MA.; “Cytotoxicity of Nigella sativa seed oil and extract against human lung cancer cell line,” Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2014, PMID: 24568529.) This study investigated the anti-cancer activity of black seed oil and black seed extract when used against human lung cancer cells in the laboratory. Scientists exposed lung cancer cells to black seed oil or to black seed extract for 24 hours. They used 0.01 mg/ml to 1 mg/ml of the oil or the extract in this experiment.

The results showed that both the black seed oil and the black seed extract significantly reduce the population of living cancer cells and altered the cellular morphology. They found that the greater the concentration of the oil or the extract that was used to treat the cancer cells, the greater the level of cell death. Also, both the black seed oil and the black seed extract caused the cancer cells to lose their typical appearance and to appear smaller in size. Saudi Arabian researchers reported in 2014 that black seeds have been used in traditional medicine to treat many diseases. It is well reported that black seed oil has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial properties but John`s story was offering something else. Needless to say I have for the last two months been taking the same dosage of black cumin oil that John was taking I have yet to have a CT scan but look forward to the next one booked in for the 11th September with the results on the 5th October. I will let you know...