#getting flown out for an interview on the 20th!

[johnlockdynamic]

life never is as good as you hope it’ll be but never as bad as you fear either really is the Motto of this month for me huh

[hotforharrysheart]

Sound Booth

It was hard to believe that Apple was courting you. They were extremely interested in syndicating your, that’s right, YOUR, little true crime blog. Your last series covering the unsolved case of three missing women who had gone for a picnic at Denali National Park had reopened the Alaskan investigation with new information regarding a previous suspect who was already in custody for another similar crime. You were approached by Apple and actually had a couple independent investors who were interested in backing the project. You had a nice set up in London outside Harry’s home studio that would allow you to record the show and was additionally equipped for group interviews and investor advertisement. You’d flown back to it for your first recording and had edited from your laptop while travelling with Harry. It wasn’t as convenient as simply going to an office each day, but you were determined to make it work…even if it meant you spent more time flying than you could’ve ever imagined.

Shortly after the Prague show you’d flown back to record and due to editing had ended up missing Harry’s performance in Austria. Actually, you ended up having to stay back for a couple of days and worked round the clock to get everything completed and ready to broadcast. You’d made it back to Harry around two a.m. and were so exhausted you hardly laid your head down next to him before you were sound asleep. The next morning you wake to a note rather than the man himself because he didn’t have the heart to wake you before he went for a morning workout. On one hand you were so excited by the success of your work, however you were having to adjust to the super busy schedule and trying your best to settling in to seeing Harry less. You missed him tremendously but knew the set up you had in London was state of the art and was making all the difference in getting your work out and successful.

It was early on July 20th and you slept in. Your hotel room in Berlin was just gorgeous, but more importantly, you were enjoying the amazing bed. Maybe you were just tired…it didn’t really matter because at the moment you were just so happy to be sunk into an incredible mattress and tucked in to a warm duvet. Harry had already headed to the venue for an early sound check and to catch a private yoga session before the show. You got up, took a shower, got dressed, and had a quick brunch in the room before you head to the arena yourself. You feel guilty for sleeping in, but you arrived on a red-eye to be there and adding jet lag to the equation meant that you were exhausted by the time you crawled in to bed. It had been days since you’d seen Harry, but you had talked, and video chatted as often as you could during your time in London. You were ecstatic to see the show tonight, but more importantly you were just looking forward to seeing H; you’d missed his hugs, the smell of his skin and seeing him smile.

You arrive at the Mercedes Benz Arena and can’t wait to see him. There was a long line of people waiting to get in…it was astounding the hours people would wait to get the best standing space for one of his arena shows; and it was hours, because the show wasn’t due to start for several hours now. You hope to catch the sound check and then spend some time relaxing before the show. God, you hope it went by fast because truth be told, you were dying for some alone time with Harry and from the sound of his voice on the phone last night he was missing you just as much. He wasn’t any more happy about you being away for work than you were. It is what it is; you both had work to do and there wasn’t any way around that fact.

You hear him before you see him as you walk down the hall toward his dressing room. He was laughing about something and speaking animatedly so you knew he was in a good mood. You shake your head and grin, you were so ready to see him.

The door is ajar and you pause before you step through it. It’s weird to be nervous, but you are. You take a deep breath and push open the door.

He’s expecting the wardrobe people to come in so he doesn’t even bother looking up as you come through the door. Pauli says something and he breaks out into his ridiculously adorable knee slapping laugh.

They both look over and see you at the same time. Harry’s eyes go as big as saucers. He wasn’t expecting you until later.

Pauli excuses himself, kissing your cheek on the way out, pulling the door to as he leaves.

“Hiii,” you say softly, blushing.

He stands up and walks over to you quickly and pulls you in for a bone crushing hug. “Fucks sake, love. ‘M s’glad ya ‘ere. Wasn’t expectin’ ya til later.” He says into your neck. He pulls back and places his hands on your cheeks. “Hi baby. Missed ya s’ much.” He says, pressing his lips to yours.

You don’t even realize you’re crying until you feel the tears on your cheeks.

His thumbs wipe at your cheeks. “Don’ cry baby. Ya ‘ere. Ya finally ‘ere an’ ‘m never lettin’ ya leave me again.”

You giggle through your tears and hug him to you again. “Missed you so much, Harry.”

His eyes close as you hug him tight. Jesus, you smell good, he thinks. He can’t quite believe how much he missed you. “Missed ya mo’ than you’ll ever know, darlin’.” He pulls back to take a good look at you. “Ya s’beautiful. Ya even mo’ beautiful…how’s tha’ possible?”

You smile and blush. “It’s not but thank you.”

He smiles that killer smile and your tummy flips.

He rubs his hand over his face. “Gotta surprise fo’ ya. Come wi’ me,” he says, grabbing your hand.

“Wait…where’re we going?”

“You’ll see. C’mon,” he says, tugging your arm.

“Ok,” you say, wondering what on earth he has planned.

He leads you through the maze of tunnels in the arena until you get to a door at the back and he pushes through. This isn’t the view most people get of the rockstar life. It’s all semis and tour buses and little makeshift buildings for all of the crew. It’s teeming with crew members and roadies and they all greet you both as walk by. He finally stops at a trailer and turns to face you. “Meant wha’ I said earlier…never lettin’ ya leave like tha’ again.”

Your brows are furrowed. You’ve literally no idea what he’s on about. He knows you have to have the studio.

He can tell you’re confused. “Trust me?”

You smile. “Yes,” you say softly.

He smiles. “C’mon then,” he says as he pushes open the door and pulls you inside.

You gasp as you walk in, eyes big as saucers. Your hands fly to your face in shock. “Oh my god…Harry! You didn’t!”

He smiles watching your reaction. “I did. I tol’ ya. No mo’ back an’ forth. Ya can do ya podcast from anywhere we are.”

You throw your arms around him. “You’re the best! I can’t believe you did this for me!” You say, tears falling down your cheeks.

“Did it fo’ us. Need ya ‘ere wi’ me. Been a terror…ask the band.”

You giggle. “Thank you, H. This is…just thank you.” You squeeze him tightly around his waist. “I still can’t believe you did this.”

You run your hand over the sound board and even pull the microphone down a little just to test out its movement. You’re gentle and lean down to scrutinize the levers, buttons and knobs. “Harry, I think this is too much for me,” you say pulling your finger to your mouth.

He leans toward you and takes your wrist to move it away from your mouth. “Don’ be nervous, love, we can get ya up ta speed, you remember Gavin, who worked rehearsals wi’ us? He’s gonna be comin’ on full-time fo’ a while an’ he can show ya how ta use everythin’, he’s gonna arrive in a coupla days, but til then I can give ya a quick rundown on how ta work tha board. C’mere,” he says pulling the leather office chair out.

You stop and look around for another chair, but he has other thoughts as he grabs you around the waist and plops you down in his lap.

“Oof, Harry, you don’t have time to show me how to use all this now!” you exclaim waving your hand over the entire sound board and monitors for emphasis.

“Hav’ plenty of time, already ran sound check an’ ‘m jus’ gonna show ya the basics,” he says against your cheek.

You turn to cup his cheeks and thank him properly with a sweet kiss, “Thank you again, you’re so good to me and I just wish I could do something this special for you.”

“Baby, you bein’ here wi’ me is special an’ it’s important ta me, hate It when we’re apart,” he whispers against your lips, “I love ya s’much.”

“I love you too,” you say softly.

“Look,” he says pointing to a blue button, “this powers the board.” He takes your hand and uses your finger and his to push the button and power things up. His other hand is resting gently on your thigh, thumb stroking the skin at the edge of your shorts. “And this slide controls tha volume, see tha lights changing wi’ our voices?”

You nod slightly with furrowed brows watching as he goes on about how to change the speed of a recording, as well as the tones and background noises.

“This red button will record whatever is said through tha mic, ya can control tha sensitivity of wha’ background noises ya allow ta be recorded with this slide, but when ya press it, there’s a 5 second delay an’ then everythin’ will record ta either ya laptop hard drive or a USB thumbdrive. Ya push this ta pause tha recording an’ ta play it back, ya jus’ press here, wanna try it?”

“Okay…but I don’t have my laptop…” you say nervously. He rests his hands on your thighs and kisses your shoulder in an attempt to relax you. He fiddles with his jeans pocket underneath you and pulls out a red thumbdrive. He plugs it into the front USB port.

“Jus’ say ya name or Harry is the best shag ya ever had, yanno, just somethin’ normal,” he says with a shrug and a smirk.

You turn your head with a delayed giggle, “Oh…riiiighttt, just something normal….”

“Or ya could say somethin’ else, if ya wan’, yanno like, ‘Harry’s a sex god,’ he’s kissing your neck, “or ‘spank me sir’, I kinda like tha’ one myself, course I know you do too.” He’s worked the neck of your t-shirt down your shoulder and is nibbling and sucking your skin.

“Harry, you have a dirty mind and a filthy mouth,” you say quietly leaning your head to one side giving him better access to your neck and shoulder.

Suddenly you hear, “Harry you have a dirty mind and a filthy mouth,” repeated through the speakers. And you look down in time to see him defty click the playback button.

“Harry Styles!” you whisper-shout slapping your hand on his arm, “You’re sneaky!”

He chuckles, “An’ ya’re easily distracted, love.”

You turn your head to look at him, “I’m kinda Harry deprived at the moment.”

“I’m kinda Harry deprived at the moment,” repeats through the speakers.

“Stop it!” you say pulling his hand away from the board and back to your tummy.

He is working his hand under your t-shirt to stroke your tummy. “I missed ya s’much, baby. God, ya s’soft an’ ya smell s’good.” His other hand is pulling your hair away from your neck and kissing below your ear. “D’ya miss me?”

You nod.

“Gotta use your words in a sound booth, it won’t record when ya jus’ nod.”

“Harry, I’m not recording anything at the moment,” you say rolling your head back against his shoulder.

“We could yanno, Jesus, I’d love ta have ya recorded…I’d love ta listen to ya cum whenever I wanted, so so sexy, make the most amazin’ sounds.”

You shiver.

“D’ya touch y’self while ya were gone?” he asks lips pressed to the shell of your ear.

“No, I mean, I wanted to, but it just doesn’t feel the same without you.”

“I’m gonna ask you to do somethin’ an’ if ya want to ya can answer by jus pressing the button, but if ya don’ wanna jus’ don’ press the button, it won’ upset me, m’kay?”

“Ok,” you answer.

He nods toward the door then looks back at you. “Go lock tha door, I wanna record ya, if you agree come back ta me and push the record button, ‘s up to ya.”

You smile at him, slide off his lap and saunter over to the door and twist the lock, then come back to the board and the chair where he is man-spread and waiting for you. You run your finger along the edge of the board and walk your fingers up to the record button where you hover and glance back at him. Meeting his eyes, you gently press the button and sit on his lap.

He smiles, “Tha’s my girl,” then he sucks his lips in as he situates you on his lap, you back to his front. “Can ya undress fo’ me?” He says, gulping.

You can feel the heat rush to your cheeks. “Yes,” you whisper. You stand up and turn around to face him and slowly lift your shirt over your head, dropping it at your feet. Then you unhook your bra and let it fall to the ground. You slowly unbuckle and unzip your shorts and they slide down your legs. You’re just getting ready to pull your panties down when he stops you.

“Wait…” he swallows, “jus’ wait.” He pulls you to him by your hips. His eyes are blown out with lust, pupils dilated as he takes in your nearly naked body. “Lemme do it,” he says, his thumbs hooking into your panties and sliding them down. “God, missed this body s’ much.” His hands slide to your breasts, cupping them, fingers pinching your nipples.

Your head falls back on your shoulders. “Ahhh…mmmm…”

He smiles as he watches the lights on the board light up. “C’mere.”

You turn around and sit down in his lap.

He moves your knees so they over his and then he spreads his legs, spreading you open…wide.

“Ya comfy?”

“Yes,” you say breathily gasping as the cool air hits your pussy.

He looks down your body, his hands slowly sliding down your arms and to your thighs.

You sigh. “Missed your touch, your hands, your mouth,” you breathe out as his lips slide kisses down your neck.

He’s just running his hands up and down your thighs, just barely grazing the crease of your thigh and leg.

“Mmmm…” you gasp out as you feel yourself getting wetter.

His hands move to your breasts and his fingers lightly circle your nipples and then he pinches them hard like you like it.

“Ahhh! Ahhh, oh god,” you cry out as you feel yourself drip onto the floor.

“Jesus baby ya drippin’,” he says amazed.

“Yes,” you breathe out. You watch his fingers skate down your stomach to your dripping core.

“Ya gonna cum fo’ me? Gonna let me record ya cummin’ so I can listen whenever I wan’?”

“Yes,” you whisper as his fingers lightly run down your slit. “Mmmm…Oh god…”

“Ya s’fuckin wet, baby.”

You lick your lips. “For you. Only for you.”

He smiles against your ear. “‘M gonna make ya feel really good, yeah? Wan’ ya ta watch the sound board so ya can see all ya sexy little sounds ya makin’.”

“Harry…” you say breathily but your eyes slide to the sound board and you can see the lights move as you whimper for him as his fingers move up and down your slit.

“Ya ready fo’ my fingers?”

“Yes! So ready!”

You feel his mouth curve into a smile at your ear and his middle and ring fingers slide into your dripping entrance and still.

You gasp.

He curls his fingers up. “Gotta fin’ our spot.”

You’re panting. “There! Oh god…mmmm…”

“There she is.” His fingers curl up rhythmically as his thumb moves over your swollen clit. “S’swollen fo’ me.”

“Ahhhh…feels so good. Missed your touch…I…mmm,” you mumble as your hips tick up to get more friction. “Missed you so much.”

“Missed ya too. Missed makin’ ya cum, love makin’ ya cum,” he says, kissing behind your ear.

You’re starting to clench around his fingers and he knows you’re close.

“Can feel ya clenchin’ baby. Know ya close. Cum fo’ me. Wanna feel it.” He whispers in your ear, “wanna hear it.”

“Ungh…Harry…’m so close!” You pant out.

“Can ya hang there fo’ a minute?”

“Unghhhh…I dunno…”

He slows his movements down and you smile.

“Right there…ohhhh…so good…it feels so good.”

He smiles. He loves seeing you blissed out because of him.

“Ya ready?”

“Yes,” you whisper.

He speeds up his movements and your hips jerk.

You can feel your orgasm bubbling. His other hand over your breasts pinches your nipple and you’re gone.

“Cumming! Hahhhh…oh god, cumming for you! Ahhhh…ahhhh…”

Your head falls back on his shoulder and your back arches, even though you don’t move since he’s holding you to him tightly. It’s been so long since you came, you’re cumming hard, pulsing hard around his fingers. His thumb moves over your clit working you through it until you slump back against him and whimper.

“God I needed that so much, Harry,” you say panting and shivering.

He wraps his arms tight around you. “Ya, cold, babe?” he asks leaning forward to turn press the stop button.

“Don’t think I’m cold, but I can’t stop shaking.”

He cuddles in close, kissing just behind your ear, “Sweet’eart, ya came s’hard, still goin’ innit?”

You nod your head. His arm brushes against your nipple and you groan with a full body shiver. “Careful, Harry, so sensitive right now.”

“’M so hard an’ wanna make ya cum again s’ bad,” he whispers against your cheek.

“H, we don’t have time,” you say pointing to the time on the monitor, “everyone will be looking for you as it is, you need to get dressed and go be a rockstar for me.”

He groans, “would rather give ya my rock-hard cock, ta be honest.” His hand is running back and forth across your tummy and you can’t resist the wiggle of your bottom against the bulge in his jeans. “Stop, babe, it’s gonna be a rough night on stage as it is…gonna fuck ya so good tanight, ya gonna be ready fo’ me after?”

“Honey, you’re gonna be so tired, you give so much of yourself in the show, an…” he interrupts you with a pinch to your nipple, “Ahh!”

“Please don’ say no, ‘m beggin’, missed bein’ in you s’much…what are ya wearin’ tanight?”

“I’m gonna run back to hotel and put on a little dress I found in the closet in London, ya know, it’s like shopping when I go home having a different wardrobe to choose from.”

“Well don’ get used ta goin’ back, I need ya ‘ere wi’ me,” he mutters squeezing you tight.

“I better get dressed and run back to get ready for the show… you too,” you say with a pout.

“Tanight, will ya please stand at the middle sound board? I can see ya from there best, the light from tha monitors will lemme watch ya,” he says kissing your bare shoulder.

“Ok, tell Tommy that’s where, I’ll be, kay.”

You hate it, but you get up and get dressed. While dressing you giggle as Harry palms his bulge trying to will it to go away. “S’not funny, love. Hurts.”

“Baby, I’m sorry, you’re right, it’s not funny,” you say standing between his legs and running your hand through his hair, “Promise, it’ll be worth the wait.”

Resting his forehead on your tummy, he runs his hands up your thighs and squeezes your bum. “I love ya so much, God, I missed ya.”

“I love you too, tonight we’ll make up for the lost time. You need to get going before they send the calvary looking for you.”

He stands and hugs you tight then cups your cheeks to place a last passionate kiss. His tongue tangles with yours and you both moan.

“Gotta stop, H,” you murmur against his lips as he nibbles at your bottom lip, “We gotta get ready…”

“Want ya s’bad…” he whines.

You step away and head toward the door. “You can have me later…anyway… you want me…,” you twist the lock on the door, and then meet his gaze. “Tonight, I won’t be wearing panties…sir,” you whisper as you slip out the door.

He tosses his head back, “Fuckin’ hell!”

You make your way back to the hotel and change into a short, very tight, royal blue bandage dress. It has only one sleeve that is elbow length and has an asymmetrical hem that matches the asymmetrical line on your chest. It literally looks like you have been poured into the dress, you twist and turn in the mirror taking in the look…it cups your ass perfectly.

You rub in a shimmery lotion on your bare shoulder, arm and legs, leaving your tan skin glowing with a bit of a soft glittery look. You finger the little bee on the initial necklace Harry gave you as you look in the full-length mirror. You can’t help but think of how your skin glows like honey, oh how Harry loves his honey, your honey. The thought causes your skin to break out in goosebumps and an involuntary clench and rush of wetness flows through your channel. “No panties…what the hell was I thinking, I’m gonna be wet all night,” you say to your reflection in the mirror.

You take the time to curl your hair into long beachy waves and fluff it in a tousled sexy drape. Leaving your make-up simple you apply a bare colored lip tint and gloss. “Mine or his,” you say out loud looking at his cologne next to your perfume. You decide to spray on his cologne making sure some got in your hair, “Just a little bit of him,” you say smiling at yourself and press your lips together. Checking the time, you gasp and slip on your heels. You’re thankful that there will be a chair available to you throughout the night, because this outfit is not your usual casual concert dress, “dressed to seduce,” you comment grabbing your clutch and smiling to yourself.

You send Harry a quick message, that you won’t be able to see him before because you’re running a little late. It’s probably a good thing since you’re both horny for each other and seeing each other before would just end up in a make out session that wouldn’t be good for either one of you.

At the venue, you make your way through the throngs of fans who are amped up for a night they’ll never forget. So many people are devoted to Harry and his music, they spend their time and hard-earned money to get to be a part of his world for just a few hours. You get to the middle soundboard and find a spot to stand waiting for your man to take the stage. The energy in the arena shifts the minute he takes the stage. His presence is like a religious experience for his fans and your soul swells with pride. Music for a Sushi Restaurant starts and he’s dancing all over the stage. You’re clapping and swaying to the song when he holds up the microphone for the audience to sing. Then it happens, he catches your eye and his step falters every so slightly. His mouth drops open for just a second. It’s not something that anyone would notice but you… you know the minute he finds you. His smile turns into a smirk and he points the mic toward you. Raising your arms and swaying, you take that moment to just connect with him, with the music. As the song closes he’s waving to the crowd and blowing kisses, with one special kiss sent your way.

God, you love his music. His lyrics reflect his confidence and it’s sexy as fuck. You were doing just fine until Cinema. The crowd disappeared, it was just you and Harry. Every time he touched his body, you touched yours the same way. Let’s face it, you were wet for him and you couldn’t help but shimmy and sway thinking of some of the times you’d had him. The swing in the pink room, the dining room table at the cottage, the window at the apartment in New York….You open your eyes thinking of all the times he'd said, “eyes on me” while he fucked you into the mattress. The way he could make you cum. He caught your eye a couple of times and his smirk spoke volumes. You need him, you need to make him cum.

He lets the crowd know he’s gonna go away for a few minutes and then come back out and the stadium is buzzing with anticipation. You see three girls in front of you turned around and waving frantically. Tommy says, “think they’re waving at you.”

“They are? Why?”

He shrugs.

You smile and move in front of the sound board closer to them and wave back. They smile shyly now. “Hi!” You say brightly. They seem friendly but you’re still a little skittish after the fans in NYC.

“Hiiiiii…” they all say at the same time.

They introduce themselves as Kara, Emily, and Nancy and you’re just about to tell them your name when one of them says, “we know who you are!”

You smile. You kinda have an inkling of what it’s like for Harry. “Are you having a good time?”

They all nod at the same time.

You can tell they’re bursting with questions. “What do you want to know?” You ask them eyebrow raised.

They all giggle. “Is he as nice as everyone says?” Emily asks.

“He really is. Incredibly nice.”

“Are you really friends with Gemma?” Kara asks.

You laugh. “Yes and she’s just as feisty as you think!”

They all giggle and look at each other and you can tell they have something they really want to ask.

“Would you take a pic of us and show Harry later?” Nancy asks and then looks down. “We just…we want him to know we were here.”

You smile. “Of course!” You dig out your phone and take a pic of them. “I’ll make sure he sees it, promise.”

Kara surprises you by grabbing you and hugging you and then they all pile on in a massive group hug.

You smile and kiss the tops of their heads. It feels good to feel the love in what he’s deemed as Love on Tour. “It was nice to meet you girls. Gotta get back.”

They’re wiping tears from their eyes and smiling.

You get back to the sound booth and Tommy’s positively beaming. “Got some new fans, do ya?”

You laugh. “Yeah. Can we do something nice for them, T? They deserve it.”

He nods. “Of course. Be right back. Let me just get some info.”

You nod and smile as you watch their stunned reaction. You’re overcome with emotion for a minute thinking of all the love and niceness he inspires. It makes you love him that much more. Youre gonna make sure Tommy does something amazing for these girls.

You wipe the tears from your cheeks as the house lights go down again. You’re four songs away from being with him and you cannot wait.

As Kiwi starts up, Tommy grabs your elbow and you walk backstage and to the waiting car. It’s a long walk from where you were and you’d only been in the car for a minute before the door is flung open and a very sweaty Harry slides in next to you.

He doesn’t waste a minute before leaning over and pulling you to him and kissing you, pressing you against the window, his hand sliding up your thigh. “Jus’ makin’ sure ya no’ wearin’ any panties.”

You open your legs as wide as you can in your too tight dress and he groans as his fingers touch the bare flesh of your warm and very wet pussy.

“Fucks sake, ya s’wet fo’ me.”

“All for you,” you say breathily as you press your lips to his again. You can’t get enough of him. You moan into his mouth as his fingers gently run up and down your slit.

“Can’ wait ta get ya alone, fuck!” He says as your hand finds his jogger covered cock.

It doesn’t take long to get to the hotel and you both reluctantly part from each other and get out of the car and into the hotel.

He’s walking fast to get to the lift and once the doors open, he yanks you in and jabs the button for your floor. He doesn’t say anything but the tension is palpable. You finally get to your floor and he’s nearly in a jog to get to the room and you’re right behind. He pulls the key card out and swipes it. The door beeps and he pushes it open and pulls you inside, pressing you up against the door, kissing you breathless.

“Wan’ ya s’bad, bu’ I gotta shower. Ya comin’ wi’?”

You can barely answer since his lips move right back to yours. “Yes!” You pant out once his kisses move to your neck. He picks you up and carries you to the bathroom and then it’s a rush of undressing. He turns for a minute to turn the shower on and grabs your hand, pulling you inside with him. He’s on you the minute the water hits your back. Wrapping his arms around you he slides his hands down to your bum and pulls your pelvis in close to his. His mouth is sucking the skin below your ear. “Saw ya in tha’ fuckin’ dress, teased me all night wi’ these hips. Was so god damn hard no’ to jus’ stare. D’ya get wet fo’ me?”

“It was embarrassing, H. Can’t believe I didn’t have any panties on…mmmm…,” you moan as he kisses your mouth, “god I missed you so much.”

He licks at the seam of your lips. “Open for me,” he whispers against your lips. You open your mouth and his tongue dives in to slide against yours.

You suck at his soft tongue as he explores the inside of your mouth like he’s trying to memorize your taste. You can’t help your wandering hands; you stroke his back muscles feeling them flex as his hands explore your body. His hard cock is pressed against your tummy. You thread one hand in his hair and slide the other around to grasp him. Running your thumb across the slit at the head, you squeeze him tight. “How’d ya hide this, mister, because I was lookin’ at it.” You felt a surge of blood flood through the vein on the underside making him just that much harder.

“Wasn’ easy, baby, wasn’ easy,” he says in a lusty raspy voice.

You rise on tip toes to kiss his neck, up to his ear, feeling his hips flex. “I want my mouth on you, Harry, s’that ok?” you whisper while placing soft kisses to the shell of his ear.

“Jesus, love…,” he groans and whimpers, “do it.”

You slide down his body stopping to place kisses on his swallow tattoos and then the wings of the butterfly and finally on the stems of both laurels at his hips. “I love your ink, missed this body so much. Tried to touch myself in the shower one night,” you say settling on your knees

“D’ya cum, love?” he asks cupping his hand under your chin and pulling your face up to meet his stare.

“I couldn’t, H, it’s just not the same anymore, I can’t even fuck myself without you,” you say with a pout. “I know my orgasms are yours and it just didn’t feel right without you.”

“Good girl,” he says with a smug smile.

Keeping your eyes on him, you grasp his cock and place a soft kiss to the underside, in that spot just below the head where his super sensitive. “Missed my cock,” you whisper flicking your tongue over the slit tasting the pearl of pre-cum that dribbled out.

“Fuuuuck…” he sobs brushing your hair off your forehead. “Suck me, babe, need it so bad.”

You take the head of his cock in your mouth and suck hard flattening your tongue on the underside.

He brushes his thumb along your cheek, “Doin’ so good, baby.”

You open and pout your lips out so that you can slide down his rock-hard member until the head touches the back of your throat. You almost set off your gag reflex, but you don’t care, you want as much of him in your mouth as you can get. You can’t take your eyes off the blissed-out look on his face. His eyes closed and his jaw clenching, you pull off and turn his words back on him, “Eyes on me, H.”

He smirks, “Ok, babe” and his green eyes meet yours, pupils blow out.

The sight of your lips stretched out around his cock is almost more than he can handle. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ!”

You slide on and off him with hollowed cheeks, your hand following your mouth. You pop off to take a breath, a mixture of saliva and pre-cum gathered at the sides of your mouth. You pop your tongue out and make a show of licking his head letting a string of saliva stretch between your lower lip and the tip. You trace it back to place a slobbery kiss to the sensitive underside. “I want you to cum, Harry,” you say jacking your hand on him, “on my tongue.”

“Fuckin’ hell, babe,” he groans as his hips jerk. He places one hand on the tile wall behind you leaning forward on it for support. His other hand tangles in your hair. “Won’t take long, ya ready?”

You nod and suck his head back into your mouth, laving the tip with your tongue. You can feel him surging in your fist and the vibrations of his groan rolling through his chest and out his throat.

“Oh my god, babe!” he fists your hair tight. “Don’t stoooop…don’t…”

You continue to run your fist up and down his shaft and lick at the slit of his head.

Damp curl hanging down as he watches you, he simply says, “Cumming!”

You flatten your tongue out as ribbons of cum spurt from him.

“Unnnggghhh, shit, shit, shit!” he pants out, the sounds echoing through the shower stall.

A drip of his cum slides down your chin and he reaches down to wipe it away with his thumb. You grab his hand and promptly suck it into your mouth… licking the drop away.

He reaches down to pull you up, “Christ, tha’s sexy… you are sexy… naughty an’ sexy.”

You run your hands up his chest and around his neck, “I love making you cum, makes me feel sexy and powerful.”

“Oh really?” he says with a smirk running his hands down your back, “Well, ya definitely ‘ave a special power over me, tha’s fo’ sure.”

You place a kiss over his heart while he kisses the top of your head. “I love you.”

“I love ya so much. Let’s finish up in here,” he says grabbing the soap and leaning forward to kiss your lips, “Need ta make love to ya.”

You finish up first and slip out to dry your hair. You’re bent over trying to blow dry the underside of your hair when you feel his hand on your lower back, then his lips on your shoulder blade. You turn your head and he chuckles trying to brush away your fluff of hair so he can see your face. “Come ta bed, love, please.”

You slowly stand up and admire Harry’s nakedness as he walks toward the bedroom. How did you get so lucky, you think to yourself?

He turns his head slightly, “Comin’?” he asks.

“Oh, yeah, baby, I’m comin’” you respond smartly.

The hotel bed is a tall four-poster bed covered with a beautiful gray duvet, sheets and several pillows. Harry is plugging up his phone, when you start to crawl atop the bed. On all fours, you turn your head and smile at a staring Harry who sports an already semi-erect cock.

“You look like a man with a plan there…sir.” you comment cheekily.

“Oh, yeah, I ‘ave plans…wan’ you on my face, love.”

You bite your bottom lip and nod your head feeling a rush of arousal flow through your body.

You sit back on your knees while he situates himself on the bed. He crooks his finger at you, and you go to straddle his chest, but he stops you. “Wait, turn around, he says twirling his finger.

“I don’t thin…” you start

“Don’ think, babe, jus’ do it. Wan’ ma cunt on ma face backwards.”

You straddle his chest with your hands on his hips. “Scoot back,” he says pulling you by your hips.

You walk back on your knees until your pussy hovers his mouth. You look down to see his now fully erect cock laying over on his thigh. Leaning forward on your hands you place a kiss on the hard shaft.

“Jesus!” he cries out surprised by your move. You can feel the breath of his words and the vibration of his groan against your swollen cunt. Bracing you with his hands on your thighs he licks a stipe from clit to hole.

“Ahh…Harry!” you call out biting your bottom lip. In your bleary eyesight you look up and see a mirror over the vanity across the room. Who is that woman, you think seeing your reflection with Harry’s fingers digging into your thighs to brace you and his hard cock resting on his tummy twitching? You run your hands up your body to your breasts and pinch your nipples. You head falls back as he sucks your clit in his mouth. He’s maneuvering you with his large hands on your hips. You fall forward on your hands on either side of his hips when he pops off. You’re panting and moaning, “Harry! Need to cum!”

“On my tongue,” he says against your pussy. He stiffens his tongue and pokes it deep inside swirling around and around. You moan and look down between your legs to see his whisker covered chin bumping your clit, the sight is more than you can handle, the orgasm has no slow build up, it hits with the force of a freight train and sucks you under. You can’t even take a deep breath, all you can do is pant shallow breaths and chant Harry’s name over and over and over again. The trembling and shaking knocks you over onto your side next to him.

He turns around on the bed to join you lying with your head at the foot of the bed. “Breathe for me, love, breathe…just breathe,” he says gathering your into his arms cradling you tight. He’s smoothing your hair out of your face and gently kissing your cheeks. “Ya alright? Wan’ some water?”

You shake your head trembling and pulling him close to you, panting shallowly, “Intense. S’not stopping and ‘m cold,” is all you can say.

He sits up and you grab at him, “No’ goin’ anywhere, let’s get under the blanket an’ getcha warmed up, yeah?”

You nod and stumble your way to the head of the bed and under the blanket, that he holds open for you. He crawls in with you and pulls you to him. “Better?”

You nod and then look at him and finally, shake your head, tears rolling down your cheeks.

He startles, raising his head, “God, babe wha’ is it?”

You pull him toward you, “It’s not stopping, H. It..it still aches, need you. Can you…I mean…I just…make love to me? Please?”

He smiles proudly, “Aww, babe…don’t hafta ask.”

He rolls over on top of you and your spread your legs to cradle his hips. He’s cupping the sides of your head and stroking your cheeks with his thumbs. “Breathe baby, just breathe, ‘m right here…”

“Inside, Harry, please, I missed you being inside…”

He reaches down and lines himself up and pushes inside you stilling at the hilt.

“Mmmmgghh,” you groan at the feel of him. You take a deep breath, like you can finally breathe again. “I love you, I love you, I love you, H.”

“I love you babe, ‘m always home when I’m inside ya, ya never have to worry abou’ askin’ me to make love ta ya. S’it feel better?”

“Yes, Harry, just felt like…like… I came empty, need to cum with you inside me.”

He rears back and pushes back in deep. “Move wi’ me, babe, love when ya move wi’ me.”

You roll your hips up as he grinds forward. “So deep, want you so deep.” You shiver and wrap your legs around his thighs.

He stops for a moment just to pull the duvet up higher on his back. “Ya warm ‘nough?”

You run your hands up his sides and nod, “Just don’t stop.”

“Won’ stop, baby, never stop m’kay? I love ya so much.”

“I love you too, Harry. I need…need…,” you mumble your words.

“Wha’ d’ya need, my love?” he says pressing his forehead to yours.

“Need you to cum with me…inside me.”

“Yeah,” he softly smiles and nods his head, “Yeah, let’s cum together.”

He picks up the pace and in no time at all you’re there, the ache having never gone far. “Harry, I’m close, so close, don’t’ stop, please don’t stop.” You raise your knees up high on either side of his hips and move and grind with him until you both get lost. There’s only the sound of your breathing and soft moans and groans. Sounds you only make for each other; unspoken words that mean so much.

He collapses on top of you, breath hot on your neck as you pulse around him and try to regain control of your breathing. You’d missed this closeness while you were gone. Even earlier today you were dreading the next podcast because you didn’t want to leave and when you remember the sound booth he gifted you with, you start to cry. They’re happy tears but also tears of relief too. You can’t help but let out a sob and you clench down on him.

“Fuck!” He pulls back and sees that you’re crying and then he’s scrambling up grabbing a box of tissues and sliding back in next to you, pulling you close. “Y’ok?”

You wipe your eyes and nod. “I just…” you sniffle. “I missed you so much and then I remembered the booth and that I won’t have to leave and…and…” you trail off, a fresh batch of tears falling down your face.

He hands you a couple more tissues and watches while you wipe your face, blow your nose, and drop the tissues in the trash. He smiles the softest smile. “So…happy tears then?”

You smile and nod. “I was just overwhelmed, I think,” you say fingers running along his chest. “I’m relieved honestly. The flying, the travel, and being away from you was too much. You fixed it…like you always do,” you say, leaning over to press soft kisses to his mouth.

He smiles a smile of pure joy. “I like fixing things fo’ ya. I like tha’ ya let me take care of ya bu’ also have ya own thing.”

“Thank you. For everything.”

“Ya don’ have ta thank me bu’ ya welcome,” he says pulling you closer and slanting his lips over yours. He’d missed you - missed talking to you, kissing you, holding you, fucking you…everything about you. You grounded him but also made him soar high. You were his person and he meant it when he said he wasn’t ever letting you go. He didn’t have a ring or a date picked out or a plan really. He just knew that you were his and one day in the future you’d make it official.

[hridayarajpurohit-blog]

AUGUST: FIRST WEEK

Cuts & Transition

In the post-production process of film editing and video editing, a cut is an abrupt, but usually trivial film transition from one sequence to another. It is synonymous with the term edit, though "edit" can imply any number of transitions or effects. The cut, dissolve and wipe serve as the three primary transitions.

There are many different types of cuts

Standard Cut

This is the basic cut (also known as a hard cut) that puts two clips together, connecting the last frame of one and the beginning frame of the next. This is the most common cut, and doesn’t really invoke any meaning or feelings, as others do.

Jump Cut

This is a cut that pushes forward in time. It’s normally done within the same frame or composition, and many times it’s used within montages.

Wipe cut

A wipe is a transition that uses an animation that “wipes” the first scene away into the next scene. There are basic wipes, and there are more complex ones, but they can be seen as corny or cheesy, depending on whether you’re a snob or not.

Fade In/Out cut

Pretty self-explanatory. You fade out one clip and fade in the other. This implies a passage of time most often, like a night-to-day switch or someone falling asleep, but can be a bit jarring if not used properly. You don’t really want to use this type of cut for standard applications.

J or L Cut

J and L cuts are incredibly common. They get their names from how the clips line up in the editing software. An L cut is used when you want to have audio from clip A continue when clip B comes in. The J cut is the opposite, where the audio from clip B comes in when we’re still seeing clip A. Pretty much every documentary interview you’ve ever seen uses J and L cuts throughout.

Cutting on Action

This is what it sounds like. You cut at the point of action, because that’s what our eyes and brains are naturally expecting. When someone kicks open a door, we expect to see the change in angle when the door is kicked, not after it’s flown open and swaying for a moment.

Match Cut

A match cut is an edit that gives a context and continuity to the scene and pushes it in a certain direction, without disorienting the viewer. You use it to either move between scenes or move around a space, while keeping everything coherent. A very basic version is shooting someone opening a door from behind, and then cutting to the opposite side as they walk through it.

Smash Cut

If you’ve got a loud scene that immediately goes to a quiet scene or vice versa, this is where you’d use the smash cut. You want to use it when you’re transitioning between two completely different scenes, emotions, or narratives and you need to make an abrupt transition. This is used a ton when people wake up from dreams, and it’s also used quite often in comedy.

Invisible Cut

You can really prove just how creative you are as an editor by adding some invisible cuts in your video or film. The goal of these types of cuts is to keep the shot looking like one continuous take. You can replicate this by filling the end of one frame entirely with something black or low-lit and blending it with the beginning of the next clip.

Conglomerate

In a conglomerate structure one overall parent company owns a number of smaller companies called “subsidiary” . Each of a conglomerates’ subsidiary business runs independently but support the wider goals of the parent company.

Example of conglomerates are as follows:

Walt Disney company

Viacom

AT&T(Warner Bros)

20th century Fox

Sony

Comcast Corporation

[californiadreaminghq]

Oh good, you made it!

Did you guys know Jolie was coming? She brought Marina Lee, The Desperado! And just on time! Grab a drink, find a spot, and make sure you finish everything on the checklist. The band is just getting started – you have 24 hours to send in your account! We’re so glad you’re here!

                                I. OUT OF THE STUDIO

NAME/ALIAS: jolie / jo / whatever the hell you want to call me  (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ ✧ﾟ・: *

AGE: 21

PRONOUNS: she/her

                                                 II. ON STAGE

DESIRED SKELETON: The Desperado

NAME: Marina Lee

NICKNAMES: Rin, Rina, Rini, + Mari (If you address her by any of her nicknames, you better damn well be a friend)

FACE CLAIM: Zoe Kravitz / Indya Moore / Zoe Saldana

AGE: 25-29 (I left this open for y’all to decide!)

OCCUPATION: Being the motherfucking Disco Queen

                                               III. INTERVIEW

Answer the following questions in your character’s voice:

If you could do anything in the world for a living, what would it be?

“Oh, honey. Did you write these questions? They’re quite terrible but keep on truckin’, baby. But, wholeheartedly? This. I’d be doing this. Wouldn’t change it for the world. I love what I goddamn do. I love my fans, my team ━ the support from everyone has been out of this fucking world. I get to have a career in music ━ how many people can truly say that? It may not always be glitz and glam ━ a lot of smoke and mirrors but it’s real. Raw. Indescribable. I’m lucky to be where I am.”

If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?

“I’ve been everywhere, baby. Italy, England, Poland, Greece, France. But the place that’s always stuck with me? Tokyo, Japan. Life-changing. Talk about a culture shock. I’m from a small town in Kentucky. You think we get to see this shit every day?”  

What is one thing that makes you different than anyone else?

“My talent. Excuse my forwardness but no one is doing what I’m doing for this industry. I’m single handedly shaping disco. Now, you can roll your eyes at me. Think I’m some egotistical tramp. But it’s true ━ the tabloids know it. My fans know it. Shit, even Billy Pepper knows it. It’s why he signed me ━ I had more than enough potential. Don’t like how I hold myself in high regards? Then don’t listen to my music, baby.”  

                                               IV. BACKSTAGE

You grew up in a middle-class, over-the-top Catholic household in Bumblefuck, Kentucky, where venom-induced syllables and harsh blows to the side of your skull was considered “positive reinforcement”. Tears often stained the flesh of your cheeks. You were never good enough. Never smart enough. Never… pretty enough. Everything you did was seemingly fucking wrong. How could you have expected anything different? You weren’t the daughter your parents had prayed for. You tried, but you never succeeded. You were too much of your own person, for fucks sake. Too loud. Too gritty. Spoke what was on your mind. Stood for what you believed in. Hell, it was unacceptable ━ especially in a town as modest as your own. So, every time your father’s hand came into contact with your cheek, a little piece of you died. Sadness turned into anger. Anger turned into defiance. Defiance turned into… inspiration. Your skirts got a little shorter. Your mouth got a little more… valiant. You reeked of bourbon, one-night stands, and feel-good music. Bruises may have lined your flesh and your father may have hoped that God would save you, but for the first time in a long time, you felt liberated. Happy.

(Note: A few years later) You started out in basements. It wasn’t much but you simply didn’t mind. As long as you were able to sing, you didn’t care where you were performing ━ How fucking liberating was that? But as the audiences grew larger and more interested in what you had to offer, you realized how goddamn talented you truly were and something inside of you altered. All of these people? Cheering for you? Praising your entire being and the sound of your voice? Fucking life-changing. Fuck your part-time waitressing job at some shitty, run-down diner. You wanted something more out of this life. Craved it. No, needed it. So, when a Fusetone representative mysteriously ended up at one of your gigs, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, you could feel yourself losing touch with reality. “You know,” they had said, “I’ve had my eye on you, Marina ━ Billy’s impressed.” Billy fucking Pepper? Impressed with you? Yeah, your body went numb. There was no way you were being signed by Fusetone ━ one of the biggest goddamn labels known to man.

But oh, you were so wrong, Rin. Because when they had flown you out to LA for a few recording sessions, they practically had dollar signs in their eyes. Billy Pepper knew what you were capable of. What you would be able to do for his label. For the music industry and everything in between. So you moved out to LA in a haste manner, barely crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s. You signed a deal without reading in between the lines and yes, it may have not been your brightest moment. But it was fucking uncanny how quickly you rose to stardom. The tabloids couldn’t get enough of you ━ Who is the Disco Queen sleeping with now? Sources say [The Gold Dust], Billy Pepper’s son/daughter! Marina Lee on drugs? Turn to page 21 to find out! Paparazzi had no goddamn boundaries ━ trailed you at home. Restaurants. Clubs. For a while, you felt like you couldn’t… breathe. Fame was beginning to eat away at you in the worst fucking way possible and the more you grew, the deeper your anxieties buried themselves within your bones. Maybe you shouldn’t have jumped into this so fast ━ so bare, so open. You were just a small town girl, afterall. Nothing could have prepared you for this and hell, you’re starting to realize that nothing will ever be enough for you. You’re on the verge of being a fucking disco legend but with the crowds you’re hanging out with and the drugs you’re consuming at 3 A.M. at some hole-in-the-wall club, you’re beginning to “burn the candle at both ends, all while trying to keep up with your dreams”.

                                                   V. ENCORE

BASICS

DOB: May 20th

GENDER: Cis-female

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English + broken French

FAMILY TIES: Venus Wilson (mother: deceased), Colin Wilson (father), + Charli Wilson (younger sister) - Marina doesn’t resonate with her surname. Lee is her middle name. So ever since she moved out of her parents house at the age of 23, she’s gone by Marina Lee.  

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

HEIGHT: 5’2”

WEIGHT: 120

HAIR: Long Box Braids

EYES: Dark Brown

TATTOOS: 5 In Total (arms, back of neck, + ribcage)

PIERCINGS: Ears + Nipples

SCARS: On Her Right Knee + Left Elbow

PERSONALITY / ATTRIBUTES  

LIKES: Southern drawls, disco, performing in front of a large audience, smoking / drinking / drugs, one-night stands, Indigo Dusk, rock and roll, sunrises, staying out until 6 A.M., kissing strangers  

DISLIKES: Raw emotions, sleep, slow days, daft people, mindless conversations, Catholic freaks/religion figures, her father, paparazzi, tabloids

STRENGTHS: Fighter, organized, monarchical, refuses to put out trash music, very dedicated to her team + fans, poised in interviews (well, tries to), + cutting people off (if you gots to go, then you gots to go!)

WEAKNESSES: Stubborn, too short and thin (like grow up, bitch?), being honest, closed off, extremely unattainable, sometimes condescending, has diva tendencies, hard to work with  

FEARS: Ruining her career, falling in love, relying on drugs to feel something, becoming too overwhelmed with fame, anxiety attacks, her father, people not liking her music anymore, + not going down in history as a legend

RELIGION: Atheist

SEXUAL PREFERENCE: Bi Kween

[heavyelectricity]

Remember that time I did some reminiscing about my first ten issues of Retro Gamer? Well, that was ten months ago. Let’s do ten more - with hindsight, probably my worst block of issues, but one which had its highlights all the same.

Issue 134 (Sega Saturn): For the first time, one of my consoles was photographed for the front cover of Retro Gamer. The Saturn feature was pretty good, in large part due to the input of Tom Kalinske, who remains a very sharp guy and still seemed rather upset that he couldn't introduce the system in the way he would have preferred. I also did a Halloween feature, The Scariest Moments Of All Time, which ranks as one of my least favourite ever features. The idea was simple enough, but putting the thing together was a nightmare – because it relied on very specific events, I had to be exact with the screenshots, which was very time-consuming. Weirdly, I also got interviewed about collecting games for one of the other features in the issue. This was our final issue with our production editor, who moved on to become editor of 3D Artist. The issue did surprisingly well, given that the Saturn wasn't that popular.

Issue 135 (Pokémon): Oh man, this one was a blast. The Duck Hunt feature has one of my favourite ever photos in it. I did a 20th anniversary feature on The King Of Fighters, which was a bit underwhelming as there was no SNK input – we did at least manage to get Ryan Hart to talk though. But Pokémon, oh man. I was flown out to Germany by Nintendo, to preview the game and get interviews with Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori for both RG (original games) and GamesTM (Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire). It was my first flight ever, and I couldn't sleep the night before because I was terrified of oversleeping and missing the 6:30am takeoff. I didn't see any of Frankfurt, as we literally went into a cab from the airport to the office, and straight back again at the end of the day. The interpreter on the day was excellent and made my job easy. When I got back to Heathrow, I got straight in a cab back to Bournemouth and was hoping to sleep. The cab driver was interested in my job and talkative, so no such luck. The feature turned out well, save for the freelance proof reader actually adding errors to my work. For the first time ever, we did a split run of covers – three retail covers featuring the original evolution lines, and a special Pikachu cover for subscribers. There was resistance from management over doing a Pokémon cover, but it sold really well in the end.

Issue 136 (Elite): Hm, not a big favourite. I'm not a big Elite guy, and my features here were only okay. Lost In Translation was a feature on regional differences in games that ended up turning into a recurring spread, but it didn't have the interview content I wanted. The top 25 Master System games was fun because I love the system, but we had so many platform games that the results of the vote were, erm, massaged. I did at least get to talk about the greatness of Cool Cool Toon, so that was good.

Issue 137 (PlayStation): Another one management was concerned about – the worry was that it was “too new” for much of the audience, and that the cover with the shadowed console was too subtle. However, it was an absolute belter. I got to do the history of Eternal Champions here, which is fascinating because it somehow managed to cut across a couple of games (plus character-specific spin-offs), comics and more. I also did 20 PlayStation Games You've Never Played, which I fondly remember because I got to talk about Power Diggerz. Also, this issue was how I met Charlie, so that's a real big plus point. Oh, and this issue is where the infamous D&D photo comes from. I wasn't initially fond of it because depression was warping my thoughts, so I felt like I was being mocked, but (most of) the people I work with are nicer than that.

Issue 138 (Point & Click): I like the cover here more than I should, as I was never much of a PC gamer. This one's a personal low point. My Game Gear feature ran short and had to be cut to six pages, and the top 25 ZX81 games was interesting more on a technical and historical level than anything else. The best thing about the issue was that we got a new production editor, who is still with us today. He's a good chap.

Issue 139 (Top 25 NES Games): On an artistic level, this is one of my favourite covers in my run on the mag. The minimal approach and bold decision to move the masthead totally worked. We thought this one would do really well in the US, but a distribution hiccup ruined that. The feature was a lot of fun because there's a lot of good stuff on the NES, and the developers added a lot to an otherwise standard list. I did an unusually low number of pages this issue, for reasons I can't recall. Was I at home? Was I ill? Who knows?

Issue 140 (Lemmings): For some reason, this issue went a bit wrong while the editor was away. We had to scrap whatever the original top 25 list was and do sports games, which was actually surprisingly fun because Windjammers and Neo Turf Masters did well, and everyone agreed to call Speedball 2 a sport. We weren't even planning a Lemmings feature, either. The original plan was to do an Ultimate Guide on Pilotwings, but I was struggling with content. No conversions, no bosses, no interview, six pages? No go. So we changed it to Lemmings because I could get more content quickly and easily, and whatever the original cover feature was fell through, so we finally did Lemmings. It did pretty well, as I recall. Meanwhile I fell to bits and went back on anti-depressants, but that's another story.

Issue 141 (Disasters): I pitched this cover and again, it was the source of wobbles – perhaps a bit “negative” for the mag. It defied expectations and did well. We originally joked that the cover should be a Power Glove giving the middle finger, an image that actually made it into the feature. It was the best of our list feature covers so far, because we worked in interviews and interesting box outs. Oh, and here's something: I interviewed Simon “Stealth” Thomley for this issue, based on his excellent work with the Sonic mobile remasters.

Issue 142 (Shoot-'em-ups): We got renowed Crash/Zzap cover artist Oliver Frey to do this one, based on an old cover he did. For some reason, despite both of us being fans of the shooties, this feature was handled by a freelancer. I did The Greatest Multiplayer Games Of All Time feature for this issue, and it was a blast, not least because we did a photoshoot at the designer's flat and got a bunch of pizzas in. For some reason, we divided this by genre – I think it might have been to avoid having loads of versions of Mario Kart in the top 10. I got to do a history piece on Twisted Metal too, which was awesome fun. David Jaffe flings profanities like they're going out of fashion, and was fully open about everything to do with the series. The design really came out nicely, too. Plus, I got to do a world map box out showing landmarks you could destroy, and called it “Intrepid Exploder” – and that's why I love my job. Mortal Kombat X came into the office around this time and I fucking sucked at it, just so you know.

Issue 143 (F-Zero): In an ideal world, there would be loads of F-Zero games coming out and it'd have felt too relevant. But nope, sadly not. Still, this cover feature was ace and was the first of our “legacy” features, where we spoke to developers within the same genre to assess the impact of a game/series. This would establish the template later used for Resident Evil, Metroid, Half Life and Street Fighter II. I also got to do an Ultimate Guide on Master Of Darkness, an obvious Castlevania tribute for the Master System that I didn't clock at the time because I was a Sega kid and Castlevania didn't really mean much. Weirdly, I ended up hacking the game in order to rip sprites for the Pixel Perfect box out. The EndGame in this issue was a reprise of the writing exercise I did to get the job, a dark reinterpretation of the ending to No One Can Stop Mr Domino.

[rezilient-m3]

Dec 12

So, a lot of changes has happened since my grandma's funeral. We came home that Monday. My sister C ended up getting sick with liver failure, from taking a shit ton of Tylenol & drinking herself stupid for years. This I will come back to.

In our home, Alex got upset at my eldest girl, T again (on the 29th). Flat out said to me, in front of all the kids, mind you, that "either he's going or she does." I said "okay, we'll go." I was so upset. I cried a little. Then, got busy on my computer. I looked for jobs and rentals. And I slept on the couch, without really saying anything to Alex. I told my girl, she shouldn't worry, but she did. I seen it in her face. That was the piss off part. Like, how dare you threaten our security, once again, especially knowing this is the one thing she's terrified of. Like, my kid has had it rough. She grew up problematic and got shit taken out on her. Her step-mom would tell her how bad she is, call her a bitch within hearing range, and always kick them out of her house. So, understandably, she has issues with trusting that she'd be welcomed here no matter what. He should know these things. He should know we have to try to make her feel wanted, and loved, and secure for her to start changing her behaviours. So, why say that shit to her? Geez.

Anyways, next day I went out and viewed a place, emailed a bunch of other ones AND got an interview. Alex carried on asking me if I was leaving, I said I'm trying to, he says I shouldn't "but should try to make her act better." 😒 Boy, I wanted to scream. I didn't tho. I'm so non-confrontational and that sucks about me, so I didn't say much. I slept on the couch again. Following day, he asks why I slept on the couch again. So, again, that bothered me, but I didn't say anything. We ended up carrying on, like nothing happened. I bet our counselor is gonna have a field day with that one, cuz I wrote to her the night of complaining about everything. I really thought we'd leave. Lol. But I didn't get the houses. "Too many kids" and no job. I tried to explain I was good for the money, which I would have been. Not the point tho, they can't just trust my word. Lol. Understandable. 🤷‍♀️ Weird thing about all of this whole situation is, I felt completely fine and maybe a little bit relieved at the thought of being on my own with my kids. I hated the thought of leaving my youngest here, and sharing him. But still, that thought bugs me now cuz I'm still here. Wondering what it means? Lol. Shit. Plus, he left for work. Today is Sat, he left Sunday. Even that, I was okay with him being gone. I get to chill out with my kids not worrying about him losing it again. He'll be back after Christmas break starts. On the 20th, I think. We still msg everyday, telling each other we love each other. Cuz we do, I don't doubt that. It's just all a bit confusing. We'll work on it. 🤞

I got the job tho. 😁 I'm a EA sub for the city's school division. I got the interview on the 4th, I got everything I needed to hand in that Monday the 7th, started working on the 10th. Could have been the 8th, but I put start day for the 9th, then said I was unavailable lol. But, main thing is I'm working now. Like, for real. Crazy. I'm 32, with my first real ass, legit ass job. I was emotional that first drive up to the city. Thinking about how differently I felt bout myself. It may not seem like much to most, but hf, I did it.! And best part is, the city is short on EAs apparently, so my boss offered me a contract, starting in Jan. She offered me before I even got dispatched, so that was on Wed. So, I'm waiting. Hoping I can get papers signed before the province decides to shut down schools again. Cuz everyone thinks they will. 😬 But we will see.

I'll either be saving for being ready to go out on my own, OR a life with Alex for an extension on our house. I hope it's all of us for the rest of one of our lives lol. But I just never know. I could be in love with him one moment, and the next, he just kills it with the shit he says. So, idk. I'll be ready for whatever.

& moving onto my sister. After the funeral, she went to the clinic, got sent to the closest hospital, then flown out here to the major hospital. They out her to sleep and breathing tube. She's had liver & kidney damage, and something about her gall bladder. (Idk how relevant this is, but this be the one that Alex first started dating, before we met lol). But we all thought we were gonna lose her. I was scared. Some how, she pulled through,and woke up after 10 days. She stayed in ICU for 3 or 4 days. Those days I was allowed to go visit. Then, last Thursday, she got moved to a floor where they'd monitor her, but ell enough to get out of ICU. What does she do? Check her damn self out of the hospital. And what did I do? Go fricken get her. This is the weekend Alex found out he was leaving, so we were really busy. I had no time to drop what I was doing to drive her home. She ended up staying on my couch for the weekend. Holy fuck, did she ever turn yellow. I was mad at her. But I still drove her home. I took her, and picked up my niece to come help me, so I can start working. Idk how she's doing. She says she's fine, but who knows for real? She has an appointment with the doctor on Monday. But that gets me mad. Like, try fucking living. We're all not ready to lose you woman. But, who really is "ready", right? Idk. We'll see.

And moving onto James' news. I found out from my girl's step sister, that he's been living at his grandma's. The same grandma that caused me so much stress in my life. Lol jk. I'll try not play the blame game. But, that bitch. (Srynotsry). So, I tried to call the lead investigator to tell her what I know. She was busy. That was 2 days ago. She was supposed to call me back but hadn't yet. Bitch, her too lol. Ugh, why do ppl suck?

And in other news, I got a ticket for being on my cell today. I might lose my.license for 30 days from being convicted. Long story, but I have a history of tickets. Got to a pint where, if I lose 2 or 3 more demerits, I get suspended. So, what to go dummy. My master plan is to drag it out and hopefully lose it during the summer months, so I could at least keep working. Idk man. Out of all the good things happening for me lately, it all went down the drain when this happened earlier today. I still feel like shit about it. Wondering whats gonna happen. I'm honestly scared. Fml.

But that's all I got for now. A lot to unload, and probably did a shit job telling it. Lol. But I'm tired. It was a long day, my dudes. G'night. ✌

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/live-coronavirus-pandemic-global-updates/

Live Coronavirus Pandemic Global Updates

E.U. proposes stimulus package worth €750 billion.

The European Union’s executive arm said on Wednesday that it wanted to issue bonds in capital markets to raise 750 billion euros, or $860 billion, to finance the bloc’s economic recovery, a leap toward closer European integration seen as divisive by some, but necessary by most.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, laid out the details of the proposed recovery package for its 27 member economies, especially those hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, before the European Parliament in Brussels. “Our unique model built over 70 years is being challenged like never before in our lifetime,” she said.

The fund will distribute €500 billion worth of grants — free money that will not be added to national debt — to all 27 member states, with Italy getting the largest slice, followed by Spain.

This is a crucial element of the recovery effort, which was opposed by some of the bloc’s wealthier nations like the Netherlands and Sweden, but supported by both Germany and France. Lengthy and fraught negotiations lie ahead, as the proposal requires unanimous support by all nations, a Dutch diplomat said on Wednesday shortly after the proposal was introduced.

Europe’s recovery effort will be difficult and expensive, as some of its economies are set to shrink as much as 10 percent this year. Germany and other wealthy countries have their own funds available to spend immediately to prop up their economies, but poorer European Union members need help.

The European Central Bank has been doing the heavy lifting in the early recovery response, buying member states’ bonds itself to ensure that borrowing costs remain low and that funds continue to flow to injured economies.

European countries will also be able to apply for loans from a €250 billion fund, but that money will come with conditions and will count toward debt loads. The loans will also require a cumbersome approval process, and are unlikely to be swiftly available.

Japan made similar moves on Wednesday as its cabinet approved more than a trillion dollars in stimulus funds, including a combination of subsidies to companies and people. The Parliament is expected to approve the measure next month.

Japan’s proposal follows a raft of measures that the country passed in April. Taken together, the two packages would be equivalent to 40 percent of Japan’s economic output, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters on Wednesday.

France is no longer allowing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment.

France on Wednesday revoked the authorization allowing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19 patients, a day after halting the use of the malaria drug in clinical trials. Both steps come on the back of moves by the World Health Organization to temporarily remove the drug from global trials over safety concerns.

In France, the drug was promoted as a miracle cure by a maverick infectious diseases specialist based in Marseille, Didier Raoult, who rose to prominence by conducting several questionable experiments that he said had proved the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in combating the virus.

France had authorized limited use of the drug on patients in serious condition and had included it in several clinical trials. But now the country has joined the ranks of others moving away from the use of the drug, even after several prominent figures, including President Trump, have promoted it.

The president of El Salvador on Tuesday said that he is taking the drug in hopes of warding off the coronavirus.

“I use it as a prophylaxis, President Trump uses it as a prophylaxis, most of the world’s leaders use it as a prophylaxis,” Reuters quoted the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, as saying on Tuesday. (In fact, few if any other world leaders have said they take the drug.)

Mr. Bukele told reporters on Tuesday that his government was no longer promoting the drug as a treatment, following the W.H.O.’s advice, but that patients could still take it as a preventive treatment. El Salvador has just over 2,000 confirmed cases of the virus.

“There is still no scientific evidence, but it is being monitored and used in Brazil and worldwide,” Mr. Bolsonaro said on his official Facebook page, The Associated Press reported. “We are at war: ‘Worse than being defeated is the shame of not having fought.’”

Mr. Khanna is a Michelin-starred chef who was born in India and came to New York City as an aspiring chef 20 years ago, initially working as a dishwasher and delivery man. As the pandemic hit his home country, he watched the news and grew despondent.

“We’ve totally failed our people,” he said in an interview last week, referring to the millions of people in India who are unemployed and desperately hungry. “I wanted to show that solidarity still exists.”

Mr. Khanna posted an emotional appeal on Twitter in early April, asking people to send him details of those who were desperate for food. Within hours, he was flooded with replies.

But it wasn’t as easy to reach the hungry. His first attempt to deliver food, to an elder-care home in southern India, fell apart when the deliverer disappeared with more than 2,000 pounds of rice and nearly 900 pounds of lentils.

Absent from public view for more than a week amid rumors that he had been rushed to Moscow for emergency coronavirus treatment, Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Chechnya, has reappeared in the capital of his Caucasus region — alive but apparently unwell.

A video posted on social media on Tuesday showed Mr. Kadyrov meeting in Grozny, the Chechen capital, with officials involved in fighting the pandemic, calming speculation that the Chechen leader, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, was dying or even dead.

But with Mr. Kadyrov looking pale, acting far less boisterous than usual and wearing what looked like a cannula, a medical tube that can be used to administer intravenous fluids, on his right hand, the video only added to uncertainty about the state of his health.

The video, filmed and posted on Instagram by Chechnya’s official television channel, was later deleted. A separate video of the same meeting, pruned of footage showing Mr. Kadyrov’s right hand, appeared on Wednesday on an unofficial Instagram account used by the Chechen leader.

Mr. Kadyrov, who has repeatedly threatened journalists and acquired a fearsome reputation for brutality, was expelled from Instagram this month by Facebook, which said it had blocked his accounts in order to comply with United States sanctions. But he has active stayed on social media under various false names.

Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, back at work in the Kremlin after recovering from the coronavirus himself, said on Wednesday said he could not say anything about Mr. Kadyrov or his condition. Two Kremlin-controlled news agencies reported last week that Mr. Kadyrov had flown from Grozny to Moscow for hospital treatment.

But officials in Chechnya had denied that Mr. Kadyrov was ill and undergoing treatment in Moscow, with one suggesting that the Chechen leader had taken a low profile simply because he was “thinking.”

Mr. Kadyrov imposed a tough lockdown on his region at the start of the pandemic, denouncing residents who violated health orders as “worse than terrorists” who should be “buried in a hole in the ground.”

The region, according to official figures compiled by the authorities in Moscow, has reported 698 coronavirus cases and 13 deaths, compared with 4,161 infections and 130 deaths in the neighboring region of Dagestan.

Ten days of national mourning for the victims of the coronavirus began on Wednesday in Spain, the longest official mourning period in the country’s modern history.

The government and the royal family led a nationwide minute of silence at noon, and flags were lowered to half-staff on all public buildings. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the moment was a time for the country to show its collective sorrow and to honor the tens of thousands who died from the virus.

The major cities of Madrid and Barcelona on Monday caught up with the rest of the country in easing lockdown measures that had been gradually rolled out for weeks, and Mr. Sánchez said he had waited to start the official mourning period until the whole country had entered the first phase of returning to public life.

The extended lockdown has exacerbated political tensions over the government’s handling of the epidemic. The military police opened an investigation into the government’s decision to allow some 120,000 people to gather in Madrid for International Women’s Day on March 8, just a week before Spain declared a state of emergency.

On Monday, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Spain’s interior minister, fired the head of the military police in Madrid for not informing the government about the investigation. To protest the government’s decision, another senior police official resigned on Tuesday. Speaking in Congress on Wednesday, the leader of the main opposition party called for Mr. Grande-Marlaska to resign for mistreating Spain’s police.

For much of the last two months, Paris has been empty — its shops and cafes shuttered, its streets deserted, its millions of tourists gone.

Freed of people, the urban landscape has evoked an older Paris. In particular, it has called up the singular Paris of Eugène Atget, an early 20th-century father of modern photography, in his unsentimental focus on detail.

In thousands of pictures, Atget shot an empty city, getting up early each morning and lugging his primitive equipment throughout the streets. His images reduced Paris to its architectural essence.

A Times photographer, Mauricio Lima, has followed in Atget’s footsteps, shooting images of the same scenes his famous predecessor captured. But those streets are now deserted because of the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Lima’s recreations offer new insight into Atget’s work — and into the meaning of a city unique in its beauty but also in its coldness.

The critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin famously invoked crime scenes in discussing Atget’s photographs. He was pointing to their emptiness, their clinical attention to details of the urban landscape, their absolute rejection of the sentimental and the grandiose.

As Benjamin observed, Atget established a beneficial “distance between man and his environment.” And Mr. Lima’s haunting updated recreations confirm the long-dead photographer’s disquieting insight: Paris doesn’t care about your presence. It is indifferent, and it will certainly go on without you.

As countries across the Asia-Pacific region gradually open up after months of lockdowns, officials are struggling to strike that elusive balance between getting people back to work and keeping the virus at bay.

Economists and business leaders in China began warning in February that lockdowns and other stringent measures were hurting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people — all while contributing little to the containment effort. But when China eventually loosened its lockdowns, new pockets of infection cropped up, prompting the authorities in the northeastern province of Jilin to impose a Wuhan-style lockdown.

Similar tensions, backsliding and calls for compromise are now playing out elsewhere in the region.

In Indonesia, for example, which has 23,000 confirmed cases and counting, President Joko Widodo is concerned that the economic losses pose as much of a threat to the public as the virus. On Wednesday, he outlined plans for what he calls a “new normal” protocol meant to slow the coronavirus while reviving the economy. He called for deploying troops and police officers across hard-hit parts of the country to help enforce containment measures.

In Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory, the authorities have adopted a “suppress and lift” strategy to alternately tighten and relax measures as transmissions surge and wane. Civil servants, for instance, were ordered to work from home in March — for the second time — after the city saw a new wave of imported cases. They’re now back in the office.

And the authorities in South Korea have been easing social-distancing restrictions and reopening schools after successfully reducing what had been one of the largest outbreaks outside China to a trickle.

Still, the country reported 40 new cases on Wednesday, amid fears that an outbreak that started in nightclubs in Seoul early this month was infecting people elsewhere. The new patients in recent days include 11 cases linked to a duck restaurant in Seoul, and 36 linked to a home-delivery logistics center south of the city.

The Swiss government said on Wednesday that public and private events of up to 300 people and spontaneous gatherings of up to 30 people would be allowed again from June 6.

The government is to decide on June 24 whether to also lift a ban on events with up to 1,000 people, though larger gatherings will not be permitted before the end of August at the earliest.

About a dozen U.S. states are seeing an uptick in new virus cases, bucking the national trend of staying steady or seeing decreases. At least half of the states seeing more infections were part of an early wave of reopenings in late April and early May, among them Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee.

New coronavirus cases have also continued to rise in North Carolina, where the Republican National Convention is scheduled to be held in August. President Trump threatened on Monday to move the convention unless Gov. Roy Cooper provided a “guarantee” that there would be no virus-related restrictions on the size of the event. Mr. Cooper, a Democrat, refused to do so on Tuesday.

The new numbers could reflect increased testing capacity in some places, though they also indicate that the virus’s grip on the country is far from over.

“It’s like nothing had happened,” Mr. Chan said in an interview. “I’m dumbfounded. How could they make a U-turn so fast?”

Mr. Chan wrote “The Fat Years” as a cautionary tale. Today, it seems all too real. A disaster brings suffering and death. Collective amnesia sets in. The Communist Party emerges stronger than ever.

How could people forget so easily? Of course, the Communist Party controls the media and history. As George Orwell wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

At the height of China’s coronavirus outbreak, officials made quick use of the fancy tracking devices in everybody’s pockets — their smartphones — to identify and isolate people who might be spreading the illness.

Months later, China’s official statistics suggest that the worst of the epidemic has passed there, but the government’s monitoring apps are hardly fading into obsolescence. Instead, they are tiptoeing toward becoming a permanent fixture of everyday life, one with potential to be used in troubling and invasive ways.

Zhou Jiangyong, the Communist Party secretary of the eastern tech hub of Hangzhou, said this month that the city’s app should be an “intimate health guardian” for residents, one that is used often and “loved so much that you cannot bear to part with it,” according to an official announcement.

While the technology has doubtless helped many workers and employers get back to their lives, it has also prompted concern in China, where people are increasingly protective of their digital privacy. Companies and government agencies in China have a mixed record on keeping personal information safe from hacks and leaks. The authorities have also taken an expansive view of using high-tech surveillance tools in the name of public well-being.

The government’s virus-tracking software has been collecting information, including location data, on people in hundreds of cities across China. But the authorities have set few limits on how that data can be used. And now, officials in some places are loading their apps with new features, hoping the software will live on as more than just an emergency measure.

Like the Tokyo Olympics and other major events, international negotiations designed to address the threat of climate change will quite likely be delayed by a full year because of the pandemic.

“Given the uneven spread of Covid-19, this date would present the lowest risk of further postponement and the best chance of delivering an inclusive and ambitious” conference, British officials said.

The gathering is meant to rally world leaders to chart ways to avert the worst effects of climate change, including heat waves and flooded coastal cities.

Delaying the talks by a full year could worsen the problems, some diplomats say. Countries and international financial institutions may now feel freer to enact economic recovery plans without paying much heed to their climate implications.

More than 20 such conferences were held before countries agreed on the landmark 2015 Paris pact, under which they pledged to keep the increase in global average temperatures well below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with preindustrial levels.

Grandparents choking on food because they were fed lying down. Residents left in filthy beds and soiled diapers for hours, in rooms with “significant fecal contamination” and cockroaches. Residents screaming for help for more than two hours before anyone answered.

Canadians knew the coronavirus had shred a deadly path through the country’s long-term-care homes, but a report drafted by the Canadian military adds new layers level of horror to the shocking tale.

“It’s appalling, it’s disgusting,” Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, said on Tuesday as he released the confidential report to the public and demanded justice for families.

While nursing homes have been pummeled by the pandemic in many countries, in Canada they seem to have suffered an especially severe blow. Earlier this month, more than 80 percent of the country’s coronavirus deaths were reported to have been tied to long-term-care homes. (That figure has now passed 6,500.)

In the country’s two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec, many centers were so badly hit and so understaffed that the federal government sent in the Canadian armed forces to help last month.

The new report, which pertains to five homes in Ontario, is heart-wrenching.

It cites not just a lack of infection control, but also burned-out employees who worked in a “culture of fear to use supplies because they cost money.” Essential items like wipes and linens were kept under “lock and key,” the report says.

In one home, staff members reported that patients had not been bathed for weeks, and in others, residents were not fed regularly and food was left out of reach.

Calling the report “deeply disturbing,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “I had, obviously, a range of emotions of anger, of sadness, of frustration, of grief.”

“We need to take action as a country,” Mr. Trudeau said.

Reporting was contributed by Andrew Higgins, Katrin Bennhold, Mihir Zaveri, Karen Zraick, Adam Nossiter, Raphael Minder, Li Yuan, Constant Méheut, Shalini Venugopal Bhagat, Russell Goldman, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Elaine Yu, Choe Sang-Hun, Raymond Zhong, Richard C. Paddock, Dera Menra Sijabat, Ben Dooley, Makiko Inoue, Mike Ives, Jenny Gross, Catherine Porter, Somini Sengupta, Alexandra Stevenson and Keith Bradsher.

[krishnaprasad-blog]

***

Forty days into the Kashmir “lockdown”—stupid American jargon for a brutal and undemocratic suppression of fundamental rights—there are three, possibly four, “narratives” of what is happening in the valley.

There is the local Kashmiri view, which we do not know much about, and possibly they themselves don’t. There is the mainland India view, which the “national media” dishes out. And there is the foreign media view.

The Narendra Modi government is in control of two of them, but it is the foreign media view of which it is most concerned, as can be judged from the two paragraphs (above), reported by Suhasini Haider in The Hindu.

***

THE DRUMBEATERS OF DYSTOPIA

Krishna Prasad

On the last morning of October 1984, Rajiv Gandhi was campaigning in West Bengal when a police jeep intercepted his Mercedes to deliver the message: “There’s been an accident in the house. Return immediately to Delhi.“ His mother, prime minister Indira Gandhi, had been shot at by her Sikh bodyguards in her garden, on the way to a TV interview. As he waited for a helicopter to take him to Calcutta, the Congress general secretary turned on his transistor radio to get the latest. He tuned in, not to All India Radio but the BBC.

The news was not good but that’s not the point.

Even in pre-reforms India, when broadcast media was a government monopoly and mouthpiece, a would-be PM’s first resort of trust was “Auntie”, not mummy’s Akashvani. Thirty-five years on, with 403 private TV news channels, over 3,000 radio stations, and 17,573 registered newspapers, it is a telling commentary on the credibility of the Indian news media ecosystem—in fact, on the theology of “competition” in a free-market economy—that nearly every piece of information which contests the establishment narrative that all is well in Kashmir, has come from a non-Indian source.

Here’s a baker’s dozen since the “lockdown” began:

# First video of protests, firing: BBC, Al Jazeera, Reuters

# The number of arrested: AFP, AP, Time, New York Times

# Minors among those detained: The Washington Post

# Detenus being flown out of because of overcrowded jails: AFP

# First pellet injury death: Huffington Post

# Soura, the epicentre of resistance: Reuters

# First bullet injury death: France 24

# Beatings, torture: Foreign Policy, BBC, The Independent

# Harassment and sexual abuse of women : Deutsche Welle

# Civilians forced to chant ‘Vande Mataram’: Foreign Policy

# Doctor detained for speaking of shortage of medicines: BBC

# Hospitals turning into ‘graveyards’: The Wall Street Journal

# Emerging medical emergency: Lancet editorial

With most “national media” plunging into the patriotic duty of drumming up support for the “constitutionally contentious” move—privileging the interests of a rampaging State over that of the caged citizen—the contrast provided by global outlets unmasking the suppression of human, civil and fundamental rights of Kashmiris, has been so stark that one website was constrained to ask: “Are foreign and Indian media reporting on the same place?”

A mainland journalist on assignment says she has encountered so much hatred for the media’s part in painting a monochromatic picture, that she has had to apologise on behalf of her fraternity multiple times, to break the ice. Protestors have carried the placard, “Indian media is lier” (sic).

***

Therein lies the great paradox. For a whole month in the 21st century, Kashmiri journalists have worked in the 20th. They have not been able to freely use the phone and the internet, write or transmit stories, print or distribute newspapers. They have been denied curfew passes, harassed at security checkpoints, made to delete photos and videos. They have had to beg travellers flying out of Srinagar to carry pen drives and printouts of mobile screenshots.

Of the Valley’s 174 dailies, fewer than 10 are being published; their e-papers are frozen in time, on August 5. They have suffered physical, professional and psychological trauma. One editor going abroad for training was stopped inside an airport after he had picked up his boarding passes.  

Yet, with foreign correspondents being denied permits to go to Kashmir, American, Arabic, British, French and German media organisations have relied entirely on home-grown journalists for their stand-out coverage, which begs the question as to why Indian MSM vehicles haven’t been able to find the space or resources for them. Or, why they have felt duty-bound to “broadcast sunshine stories that life is back to normal and getting better every day,” in the words of a British academic. Either Indian media is so true to its craft, or so craven, that not a single report has yet been disputed, as a BBC video was.

For the first time since 2014, the parrot has turned a deaf ear to the cries of the majority, Muslim in this case.

It is not as if all Indian media has buried the story: there have been tiny isles of valiance in the surging ocean of conformity. Just that, after the initial flurry, the giants are coasting in the routine and the official, as per the sage advice: “Some news is best not reported”. Pockets of English print and digital journalism may still offer some exceptions but large swathes of language media have served unvarnished, Islamophobic propaganda sans scrutiny as a rule.

“Whatever Indian media is reporting, the opposite is true,” says one Kashmiri journalist unequivocally. “Editors give directions to field reporters on the kind of soundbites they want from the ground to fit into their studio scripts. People oblige but viewers do not see the security men behind the camera.”

A charitable explanation for the near-wholesale capitulation—the “underhand censorship” as one media watcher called it—is that, in the epoch of hyper-nationalism, Indian journalism is reverting to its historical and dutiful role of “nation-building”. Newspapers at the time of Independence, television now. So, while “western” media can only see anger, abuse, chaos, trouble and violence in the Kashmir kaleidoscope, ‘swadeshi’ media can only see peace, calm, order, happiness and acceptance.

In the battle between hard reality and ‘sarkari’ spin, between democracy and ‘desh bhakti’, loyal owners, editors, anchors and other toadies know which perception has greater purchase in the #NewIndia market. 

In truth, however, Kashmir marks the apogee in a long orbit of evisceration of Indian media, an ongoing project that has overturned the profession’s credo to “comfort the afflicted”. Successive low benchmarks—JNU, cow lynchings, love ‘jihad’, Sabarimala, triple ‘talaq’ , Rohit Vemula, demonetisation, Pulwama, surgical strikes—have taught and tamed the watchdogs to assume a lapdog pose. The pliancy in Kashmir, therefore, is a Pavlovian response.

As The Economist commented: “The Press’s current sycophancy rises from a hinterland of intimidation, trimming and currying favour dating back to Narendra Modi’s rise in power in 2014.” 

The strategem to subjugate the Kashmiri voice was not developed last month. The red lines were drawn when BJP joined hands with PDP in 2016. Standard intimidatory tactics with plausible deniability built into them—labelling newspapers as “anti-national”; denying government advertisements; arresting and interrogating editors in decades-old cases—served to send the signal to the rest of the tribe. Battered by revenue shortfall, salary cuts and job losses, most fell in line, printing official briefings as lead stories; health stories on op-ed pages.

An artfully created class divide among journalists between local and national, Pandit and Muslim, Indian and foreign, saw Kashmir’s best and brightest bylines find refuge in global media outlets where their stories were wanted and valued.

Despite hot-button stories like Brexit and Hong Kong, Kashmir has sparked a scramble among international news media houses, each trying to scoop the other. As the communications blackout took hold, BBC Radio thumbed its nose at Delhi by increasing the duration of its Hindi and Urdu bulletins with the teasing tagline: “Neither internet shutdowns nor power cuts can stop independent news”. Meanwhile, a supine Indian MSM was resting its oars, having done its bit in the sacred task of manufacturing consent among the Narendra Modi government’s core constituents, ahead of yet another set of state elections.

With the hashtags #KashmirMovesAhead and #KashmirWithModi trending on social media even without Kashmir being connected to the grid, Umberto Eco’s warning of the “invasion of the idiots” has come good. It is time to move on.

In the “Brave New World” of Kashmir, the Indian state has worked out the Huxleyan circuitry of how to make the media relay a unitary majoritarian message without explicitly making it appear so. Therefore, a scarcity of dissent in spite of a plethora of evidence. It is a miasmic model that can be developed further and replicated anywhere else at short notice—within the pretence of a democratic framework. 

In 1954, the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote: “Journalism is a biological necessity of humanity.”

To the eternal shame of the Republic, in 2019, from the judges of the Supreme Court to the ex-judge who heads the Press Council, from the I&B minister to industry bodies, the open-ended trade fineprint “Conditions Apply” seems to be the operative clause. And to think that the entire train of events—from the BJP pulling out of the coalition, to the abrogation of Article 370—was set off by the dastardly assassination of a journalist: Shujaat Bukhari, the founding editor of Rising Kashmir. But, then, does a Chinar tree make noise when it falls, if the Indian media is not around?

(This piece appears in The Hindu)

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  The Drumbeaters of Dystopia: Wrapped in the tricolour, Indian news media can barely contest the establishment narrative in Kashmir—global outlets can only find holes in it *** Forty days into the Kashmir "lockdown"---stupid American jargon for a brutal and undemocratic suppression of fundamental rights---there are three, possibly four, "narratives" of what is happening in the valley.

[sfaioffical]

Don Ed Hardy on The Evolution of Tattooing 

SFAI’s Alumni Exhibition, In A Flash, is opening this month and the illustrious tattoo artist and SFAI Alum Don Ed Hardy (BFA 1967) has agreed to participate! Last week SFAI’s Exhibitions Manager, Kat Trataris, and Librarian, Jeff Gunderson, headed to Hardy’s North Beach studio to talk Flash and select works for the show. (Im)Material tagged along, and we were lucky enough to get a real education in the history of tattooing in the West from one of the original masters of custom tattoo art in the United States. 

After exploring decades of highly organized early flash and custom designs, Hardy settled in among a tidy spread of artwork, books, and CDs to answer a few questions for (Im)Material. Read the interview below, and don’t forget to come see In A Flash at SFAI’s Diego Rivera Gallery, opening at 5pm on July 4! 

SFAI: Thank you so much for agreeing to do this! 

Don Ed Hardy: It’s no problem. How’s this? 

SFAI: This is perfect. Alright, so my first question is, How would you say that tattooing has evolved since you first got started?

DEH: It’s... it’s reached the potential that I think it always had. I got into it because I believed in it and it was my destiny and I just… I was obsessed with it. When I was a little kid I was like ten years old and I started drawing tattoos and I was drawing on people. And when I was getting ready to finish my undergraduate degree and was set to go to graduate school in Printmaking and probably teach and I reconnected with tattooing. And I met a guy that was another, the first—my favorite term—“renegate intellectual” that had been in tattooing. He was a published author, really intelligent guy and good tattooer, and the first day in his shop he showed me a book of Japanese tattoos.

Actually Donald Richie, he was the one who brought Japanese cinema to the west in the late 1940s, he along with a lot of conscientious objectors/pacifist people worked on merchant marine ships so that they had joined the military. He got to Japan and he fell in love with it there. He was a closeted guy and in Japan you could—especially in those days you could function as a gay person I think easier than you could in America. There’s a great tradition of it there, you know a different outlook of gender. So anyway, Donald was one of the people who brought Japanese cinema to the west because he went over there in the occupation forces after Japan lost the war and fell in love with the country and then became obsessed with the cinema, became fluent in Japanese and then he really brought that whole culture to the awareness of Western people. And he was fascinated with the whole tattoo thing and he had written a book about tattooing in Japan with photos of contemporary tattoo artists in the 60s.

So this guy Phil Sparrow that I met who was working in Oakland showed me that book that first day in his shop and when I saw it—because I was teetering and I was supposed to go to Yale and I was going to teach printmaking and you know, do that—and when I saw that I just immediately thought, if you can make tattoos look like that, you can...I can make, you can make them into anything. And I just abruptly decided I was going to take up tattooing. I thought it had great potential as just human expression. And I knew it was way deeper and way beyond people’s perceptions, you know. When I was younger when you had a tattoo it was like, “well were you drunk or were you in the military?”—it was like those two things, otherwise, why would you ever have one of these things? And mark yourself? And I just thought it was better to see if we could develop this as a medium. So that’s what I did. Obviously, you know I had to meet a lot of influential people and a lot of great artists and get their confidence and, you know, just open it up in the West. Mind you I just hated the fact that you couldn’t have a tattoo without it having that reputation, it just didn’t seem right. It was sort of the last thing in the liberation of… being able to live your own life.

Don Ed Hardy answering our questions in his studio.

SFAI: Why do you think tattooing got that reputation? And how do you think it got away from it? 

DEH:  I think it got that reputation basically because of the suffocating judeo-christian power structure that ran everything in the world. You know, shame and this is wrong and you shouldn’t mark this body that God gave you and all this bullshit — I mean I was force-marched through, you know, Christianity as a kid. My mother meant well but I wasn’t meant for it — and I think it was just looked down on. They thought it was like this savage, barbaric thing. But it really flowered in the West, which we’re going to talk about tomorrow—are you coming to that thing at the Asian Museum?

Jeff Gunderson: I’m hoping to, yeah...

DEH: Because it’s gonna be really a really good panel. We’re gonna get there early enough to see the show. It’s a show of ukiyo-e wood block prints on loan from the Boston Museum which is a fantastic collection of asian art from all the cutters and they’ve loaned all these really pristine prints that feature people in the mid-19th century. I think Japan got opened up maybe early 1860s/late 1850s and then people started going in there and seeing it and some of the things they saw were, you know, tattoos on all of these people. And there was no kind of [western] tradition of it then it was just with whalers and just seafaring types and they just had these spot tattoos, but in Japan it was a really highly developed art form. So... that had a big impact and that followed through to the 20th century. Some of the tattooists, the few tattooists who were really interested in and capable of doing unique work and had inherent art talent wanted to expand it and were trying to offer people more than just, you know, the recipe of imagery and sentiments and stuff that existed in American Flash. 

Among them was Sailor Jerry in Honolulu who was one of my primary mentors. He’d been tattooing a long time, since the, probably the 30s, but in the 60s he really got known for doing these large Japanese-inspired designs but with subject matter and more polychromatic treatment and… you know, he opened up the field as far as the kind of things you could do with the machines. But that’s when it started really was the 60s there were a few people that were pretty interested in that. 

I was able to go to Japan and work with a tattoo master and when I came back here I opened up the first private studio and the whole deal was to get—I would only do absolutely unique tattoos. So people would come in with their concepts and I could draw, so I could draw the concept, and that’s what started it more. And I began to get tattooers from all over the world as clients and they saw what I was doing and thought “well maybe I have the interest and the drawing ability to do that myself,” so that just kind of put the ripples right out. 

JG: I’m always interested in that History of Tattooing lecture you gave in Richard Shaw’s class at the Art Institute.

SFAI: On that note, how would you say your experience at SFAI impacted your art career and art practice? 

Drawing on a pizza box spotted in Ed Hardy’s studio. 

DEH: The experience was really good there because of the openness of it but the key thing really was the instructors I got to have which primarily were Joan Brown and Gordon Cook and… some other people I can’t remember some of their names but um… But the openness of it and of course just the setup of the school you know, because I was raised in this totally right-wing Orange County town in Southern California and the first time I came up with a buddy and we flew—I think it was the first time we’d flown as conscious adults—BANG we came up (it was like 11 bucks for a one way ticket) and we came up for the weekend because Richard Shaw and Martha Hall, who became his wife, and another guy had come up, Reggie Daniker. And they’d come up from Orange County. And I just couldn’t believe it, it was like… the city, the whole thing… I was very aware of beat culture and, you know, I was pretty well-steeped in alternative consciousnesses as had been exhibited earlier in the century. Anyway, I was here and I was like, “Oh I’ve found mecca!” And the school, even the setup of it was fantastic. But really, I think the people that affected me the most were really the people who didn’t teach here that long and they were able to just get away with their take on the whatever the current…   I mean, maybe the primary intent of the school is to have different voices and so it was good for that. It was definitely good for that. 

And then I was on a career track and working in the library and it was going well and I figured I was going to go to grad school because I was accepted to Yale. In those days you either figured out the… the question we always posed ourselves was: Would it be better… if we want to keep making our personal art, would it be better to have a job that doesn’t involve art at all and then do your art, or is it okay if you’re connected, teaching or doing something, is that going to leach away your energy that you would otherwise put into your personal work. You know, it’s all a psycho-drama and anyone that’s cursed with like a, you know, an “intention to make art” you’re like, how will I do this and make it fit into your life. Not even as a financial thing, just as a thing that… so you can live with yourself. So… and for me it really worked out well that I chose the tattoo thing. I’m so glad I did… because right then too the primary flavors that were popular in the world not only were the economic thing about art as a big money commodity which was sick enough in the 1960s now it’s through the roof, but the fact that you could be made totally independent of the institution. That’s what I was after. My buddy Mike Malone, who was from here too—he became a tattooer, he was a fine artist—and he basically just summed it up, he said, 

“We joined the pirates. We just decided we’re not going to be part of any kind of groups. We’re just… we’re gonna try this.”  

... Which in those days... it was very transgressive.

But yeah, I’m glad to see that tattooing has gotten popular. I mean, I didn’t try to proselytize it but for people that try to get them now there are all these incredibly talented tattooers with great careers and they’re free agents and they just go around the world and tattoo and they have people… they’re appreciated. It’s really, it’s great to have—it’s beyond anything we could have dreamed of. It’s very cool. I’m stoked that the museum is—or the school gonna do a show there. It’s natural ... it was a nice surprise to hear. There are probably way more people that I know that I didn’t realize existed that became tattoo artists that came out of there, so… it’s good! It’s a good career. It can be a positive career option. I’m glad I didn’t have to get into it today with the competition, I never would have been able to do it.

Don’t miss Don Ed Hardy’s work on view in  In A Flash opening July 4 in SFAI’s Diego Rivera Gallery! 

[keepingupwiththekennedykurse]

Two Assassinations in Five Years

An assassination is definitely a large contribution when talking about the events that curse a family, but two assassinations over the course of five years is definitely bad luck.

Both President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, were assassinated. I find this extremely interesting (and a little ironic), and wanted to see if there were any parallels between the assassinations. In order to do this, I watched two documentaries.

(Photo Source)

The first documentary that I watched, "The JFK Files: The Murder of a President", was created by The Fifth Estate, a news source that is part of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

I found this documentary extremely interesting because out of all the conspiracy theories of who really shot JFK, the documentary focused on the FBI and CIA as the president’s assassins.

The thing that I found most interesting was how much trouble these government agencies went through to make Lee Harvey Oswald look like the assassin, when really the evidence would have proved that if it wasn’t tampered with.

Let me give some background information: Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist sympathizer supposedly responsible for shooting President Kennedy from the window of the Texas School Book Depository. The building he shot from was along the route that JFK's motorcade was following when he got assassinated. What was believed to have happened was that Oswald shot the president from the sixth floor of the building that was about 300 yards away from the moving car that JFK was sitting in. That is what the government tried to tell everybody what happened, when really they were just trying to hide their involvement.

Since 1959, both government agencies have been investigating Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife, Maria. Why? Because Oswald tried to get out of America and get citizenship into Russia, at a time when the Cold War was at an all time high and Communism caused the Red Scare in America. When he was denied Russian citizenship, he handed out pro-Communist propaganda in the streets of Dallas, Texas. Up until the assassination in 1963, The FBI and CIA were constantly checking up on Oswald. So, how did he get past their supervision the weekend that JFK was going to be visiting Dallas? Well, if the government was going to use LHO as a cover up for the president's assassination, then this was all part of the plan.

The major evidence that was explained to support the argument that the government used Lee Harvey Oswald as a cover-up was in the autopsy report and government documents surrounding the assassination.

First, the autopsy report. When President Kennedy was pronounced dead, the doctors that tried to save his life were to give a brief report about the state of his body. They said that his head had very little damage and most of the damage was in his back, neck, and chest- where the bullets had entered and traveled. His body was wrapped in a white sheet and placed in a bronze casket that would be flown to Bethesda Naval Hospital for an official autopsy and then Washington, D.C. for the funeral and burial. When the body arrived for the autopsy, the doctors were shocked to see that Kennedy’s brain was missing and his head was in terrible condition. He also arrived in a body bag and metal box. The doctors believed that on the plane ride from Dallas to D.C., the government officials on the plane tampered with the body either to make it more evident that Oswald’s shots really destroyed the president’s head or to make Kennedy’s head in such a bad state that no investigating could take place.

Second, the government reports. In April 2018, President Trump had the government release more documents surrounding the investigation of JFK’s assassination. One report from the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, specifically states, “…so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.” Think about it, why would the American people need convincing if Oswald really did assassinate the president, and why is it any concern of the FBI director?

After seeing this evidence, it really made me think. If the government was in fact responsible for JFK’s assassination, then what other national tragedies are they responsible for and are covering up. I mean, if they could get away with covering up the assassination of the leader of America, what else can they get away with? One of the individuals that was interviewed several times during the documentary, Bob McKowen, was talking about how there are still millions of documents that have not been released and how he doesn’t understand why after all this time the government is keeping these documents secret and are not releasing the truth about what happened. All of the men that were served in the government during Kennedy’s presidency are dead, so even if they were found guilty, nothing could be done.

It seems like this is a lot of obvious evidence to pin the government as the group responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy… almost evidence that is too obvious. I looked into as many sources as I could to see how credible this documentary really was. I found it helpful that they included actual photocopies of the government documents, as well as video clips and pictures from November 22, 1963. The people were interviewed during most of the documentary both seemed credible and to have real knowledge about the assassination. Bob McKowen is an investigative journalist and has spent decades researching the assassination, and even made a documentary on the 20th anniversary of the assassination that was watched by millions. Jefferson Morley was another man interviewed and he is a veteran journalist for the Washington Post and has written several books on the government’s involvement with Kennedy’s assassination.  

Just five years later, John’s brother had a fate similar to his own, he was shot dead in the early hours of June 5, 1968. For this event, I watched the Netflix Original Series, “Bobby Kennedy for President” episode 3, “You Only Get One Time Around”.

(Photo Source)

The episode starts with a bunch of different news reports from 1968 announcing all the violence that was going on in the United States at the time. Two main events for violence were the Vietnam War protests and issues surrounding race (not to mention the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. as well). The world is portrayed as absolute chaos, and then there is Bobby Kennedy, making speeches and visiting people all across the United States, trying to promote peace. The people that are interviewed in this particular documentary are those who worked with him on his campaign or met him when he gave one of his many speeches promoting peace. Each person that was interviewed viewed Bobby as a hero for the future of the United States at that time.

1968 was a big year because that November there was going to be a presidential election. The election became an even bigger deal when the current president, Lyndon Johnson announced he was not going to seek re-election for another term in office. That freed up the spot for a Democratic nominee, and after a lot of coaxing, RFK decided to run for president in March 1968. Little did he know that three months later he would be assassinated and never make it to the election of 1968.

It was the night of June 4, 1968, and Robert Kennedy just won the primaries in California, a big and very important state needed to officially become the Democratic presidential nominee. He announced his triumph at the Ambassador Hotel, where a rally had been held to watch the results of the primary. The results were announced shortly after midnight, and at this point it was the early hours of June 5. He got off the podium and was escorted into the kitchen of the hotel, when a gunman came out from the surrounding crowd and shot him in the head. The assassin was taken down immediately, and unlike with his older brother, RFK’s assassin was known. The man responsible for killing Robert Kennedy was 24-year old Sirhan Sirhan. Bobby died about an hour and a half after being shot.

I did not know as much about the assassination of RFK as I knew about the assassination of JFK, but there was one thought that struck me right as I began watching the documentary: It’s sad that RFK, a man who fought so much for the end to violence was taken down and killed by violence. The same goes for Martin Luther King Jr. The same goes for John F. Kennedy. All of these men were loved by so many, it seems unfair that their lives were ended in one of the most violent ways, and were killed out of hatred.

Seriously, think about it. So many people loved President John F. Kennedy. A lot of people liked him because of how he ruled the country, but a lot of people also were attracted to his youthfulness, charisma, and the fact that he was a family man. A lot of people loved Martin Luther King, a majority being those of the African American nationality. Those who were not African American and still loved King were those who were also for civil rights. Many people loved Bobby Kennedy for his dedication to peace and his idea to reunite all the races of the United States, even before he started running for president. All of these men were loved, yet they died out of hate.

Going back to the main idea of my blog and trying to make a connection between the events of the Kennedy Curse and if fame and fortune caused these tragedies, in this case I would say yes. In both the assassination assassinations, if JFK and RFK were not famous, I think they would have lived full lives. I believe this because they would not have been seen on a global scale and their every move wouldn’t be publicized. Their political views would not have such an effect on America, and they would not be shot because of them. None of this would have happened if the Kennedys did not have such status and power as they did in the 20th century.

[thegreatduggo]

Memory Isn’t What it Used to Be - Literally....

I was just reading an interview with Neil Gaiman, the author of the novel “American Gods” that the new Amazon series is based on. He had told a story for many many years that he had met Terry Pratchet in mid February 1985. 20 or 30 years later, he comes across his desk diary for 1985 and he checked for mention of the meeting – there was nothing. Confused, he went back to January and found the meeting. Obviously, not a big deal – he was only off by a month – but it sent him into doubt about his ability to trust his own recollection. He had been absolutely convinced for all these years that the meeting had been in February,

That, in turn, reminded me of a similar ilk of discovery that I made recently about a story I've been telling for the last 23 years about when I arrived in the US for what transpired to be my permanent immigration.

I had flown into Newark on 19th April 1994, to start my new assignment with Goldman Sachs which was a 6 month commitment and of that fact, there was no doubt.

The winter of 1993/94 had been quite a harsh one and there had already been around 12 snow storms that season by the time I set off - no huge ones and many had just been a few inches, but a very active winter season nevertheless.

The story was quite good in its own right. I had, as usual, left it late to get to the airport for my flight, but I had made good time on the incredibly convoluted back-road route from South Wimbledon to Heathrow - a route known only to local mini-cab drivers and one that I could not commit to memory however hard I tried, despite having a pretty good local knowledge.

When I got to the departure gate, I still had enough time to grab a cheeky beer - perfect result! But about 10 minutes later, who should show up but my boss Terry Williams. We didn’t have a lot of time but he grabbed a beer anyway and I snagged another one of him – be rude not to!

He traveled all the time so he got a business class upgrade and we didn't see each other again during the flight.

When we arrived in Newark, it had been snowing for an hour or two and the airport was shutdown shortly after we landed at around 8 PM. It soon became clear that there were no cabs to be had heading into Manhattan, so Terry suggested I stay with him at Roy’s place in Wyckoff. Roy was coming to pick him up, so I took that option. We had quite a pleasant night and a couple of beers – nothing major.

By about 7 AM the next day, all the roads had been plowed and by around 10 AM, the local private road and drive had been cleared too by the local plowing contractor and we were free to go. We all drove to the station and caught the train to work.

A key element of my story was that this had been one of the latest significant snow-storms in local history, but when I was doing my recent update of my local weather spreadsheets using the NOAA web site, I decided to check how much snow there had been for the 19th April snow-storm, there had been no snow-storm on the 19th, nor on the 18th or 20th. In fact, there had been no snow for the whole of April. I was mystified and confused. I had been so sure of this fact.

I was actually looking at the weather records for Central Park but the weather in Newark, whilst not exactly the same as Central Park, is pretty damn close and if there was a 5 or 6" snowfall in Newark,  there would certainly been some snowfall in Central Park. I had to go back to the beginning of March to find the last snowfall.

I went back to my old passport and eventually found found a stamp for an 8th March trip to New York and that was indeed when the last snow-storm had taken place.

I did remember that particular trip - it was actually my first visit to Goldman Sachs to cover for one of our other guys who was sick at the time - but I got the two trips mixed up. So, one of the major points of interest of the story - the incredibly late snowfall - turned out to be untrue.

It's an interesting reminder of how we often rework our memories. I think in this case I mis-remembered it right off the bat and then it just became increasingly cemented into my memory banks over time.

When I first started to check the snowfall data, I wasn't even specifically looking for that snowfall, I actually wanted to check if my recollection of there being a hefty 13 snow-storms that year and that wasn't true either!

I'd rather get the story right than accidentally embellish it, so I will have to turn it into a two-parter from now on!

[alibomaye]

Togi Makabe - The Comprehensive English Interview Courtesy of njpw1972.com -- You debuted in February 1997, so your 20th anniversary is around the corner. What's the first thing that comes to mind, thinking back? Makabe: Oh man, that's a long time! Well, hang on, maybe it's been long but short at the same time. -- Long but short? Makabe: Well the first 10 years after my debut felt like such a slow grind. But, since I started rebelling against the authority when NJPW was down, time has just flown like crazy. -- In 2006, you formed your own unit in Great Bash Heel. Makabe: That's it! That was when things changed. I just had this mindset- “the company, the other wrestlers can all eat shit!”. After that everything happened in the blink of an eye! -- That was the turning point. But to approach things chronologically, let's talk about the start of your career. When you were thinking of becoming a wrestler, was New Japan the only goal you envisaged? Makabe: I’d say so, more or less. I was interested in UWF International as well, somewhat. -- Ah, when you were involved with student wrestling (ed note: student wrestling clubs exist in many Japanese universities, and are mainly looked down on by the mainstream, similar to backyard wrestling in the west) you borrowed a UWF ring, right? Makabe: Yeah, that's right. I connected with them when I went to a UWF show.Looking at young Kazushi Sakuraba and Yoshihiro Takayama kicking ass, I really looked up to them. But I thought that if I was going to be a wrestler, I wanted to be in the top company in the world, and New Japan was the high water mark. -- But when you came into New Japan, you failed the tryout first time and passed on your second try.. Makabe: Yeah. One of the guys that got through that time couldn't take it, just cut loose really soon after. So two months later they had another tryout. Me and this other guy got in, later I heard that was out of 360 applicants. -- Two out of 360! Makabe: Crazy right? Hearing that made getting in an even bigger achievement. -- It was more exclusive then. Makabe: Too exclusive! But if you think about it, we were the Japanese baby boom generation. I think that day, there were maybe 30 of us? I remember it even now, Takashi Iizuka yelled at me doing squats. “All the way up! Lift your heels!” -- It seems crazy to think about it now looking at his style, but in those days Iizuka was coaching. You've been very open in the past about how tough things were for you when you broke in. Makabe: It might have been a different story if there was someone else there with me. But the other guy that made it through the tryout was just a kid straight out of high school. He quit almost right away. I had at least been through university so I was a little more mature. I told him ‘if you're going to quit, at least do the right thing and tell everyone’. But before (Katsuyori) Shibata and (Wataru) Inoue came in as my juniors, it was a hellish two years. -- What kept you going through that period? Makabe: Stupidity? Craziness? But a rebellious spirit as well I think. I just thought “man, when I walk outta here, I'm going to *REDACTED* everyone with a *REDACTED*!” That extreme (straight faced). -- It took you to your extremes as a person. Makabe: It really did. The most frustrating thing about it was just how inconsistent everybody was. One guy here would say “OK”, another “absolutely not”. I had no idea what the right thing to do was. -- It was a period where the senior wrestlers got away with a lot of unreasonable treatment. You said yourself before that you changed that approach. Makabe: I just thought I wanted to fix what was broken. It's important to teach perseverance, and a lot of that is in being strict. But just constant negativity doesn't do any good. -- Did that terrible experience help who you are now? Makabe: Well I didn't want it to have all been in vain. I survived this messed up situation just out of a sense of arrogance, and maybe I actually knew right from wrong. But looking back, maybe I was a stubborn young kid, you know? I definitely talked a lot of shit about my debut match! -- You were so long with your interview the reporters missed the next match! Haha! I think another reason I stuck it out was I didn't want to go back to my hometown not having made it as a wrestler. My friends, the people around me all loved wrestling, and I didn't want them to feel I was a quitter. And I didn't want to leave NJPW for another promotion. ‘I'm over with the crowd, I go to NOAH and headline, come back and I'm still jerking the curtain?’ -- You broke in when New Japan was enjoying more popularity than even today. This was when the company ran a four major stadium dome tour. What was that period like for you? Makabe: That stuff felt normal back then. But there was this sense of ‘we’re doing so well, so why am I not getting anywhere?’ I'd get chances here and there, but one thing would never lead to the next. I just had to keep training. -- You were in the wilderness somewhat, but as you say, you did get chances. Three years after your debut you were in the Super J Cup, and the next year teamed with Riki Choshu to challenge for Tenzan and Kojima’s IWGP Tag Team Championships. You teamed with Yuji Nagata and went to All Japan as well. Makabe: Yeah, and I'd get coverage for it. Me and Choshu were on the covers of magazines at that time. But after something like that, next I'd be in the opening match again. I just thought I’d never be able to string anything together. It was the same feeling coming back from my foreign excursion. --When you came back in September 2002, a highlight was teaming with Yoshihiro Takayama in June 2003 and having huge outbursts at NOAH shows. Makabe: Oh yeah! I was frustrated. I was over with the crowd, headlining NOAH shows, but when I went back I'd just be jerking the curtain again. -- What were your feelings toward the company at that time? Makabe: I thought ‘this place sucks’ to be honest. That's all I thought. I was in that spot in NOAH, was getting a lot of press but the company didn't care. My personal life was pretty rocky back then too, heh. -- And at that time, the likes of Shinsuke Nakamura and Hiroshi Tanahashi were getting a lot of focus despite coming in after you. Makabe: Right. I was just a ball of hate, or of this desire to rebel. “I am going to surpass these worthless guys” kind of thing. Perhaps that was me deflecting from my shortcomings. -- Bluffing perhaps? Makabe: One thing I remember even now is when I went to an MMA event a friend was involved with. And Shinsuke Nakamura, he'd just started at that point, came to me and said “I have a friend on that card too. Mind if I come with you?”. We went to a cafe beforehand and just shot the shit for ages, had a great time. -- Really? Makabe: But right after that, he started getting his big push, and then I didn't hang out with him at all. -- You weren't getting the same attention. Are there matches during that wilderness period that stand out to you? Makabe: Definitely the title matches with Choshu and Takayama. Fighting alongside my masters and being able to prove myself to the bosses. “I'm not a name to you, but I'll make sure to show you something awesome” kind of thing. -- That Takayama tag period in September 2003 saw you wrestle the legendary Seiji Sakaguchi, wearing a judo gi. Makabe: Ah, yes! In Nagoya Rainbow Hall. I gave Sakaguchi a body drop. Later He came to me and told me how dare I threw him! -- You scored a point against the former All Japan judo champion! Makabe: That was a hell of a match. Sakaguchi’s partner was that Goddamn Chono (Masahiro), and his son (actor Kenji Sakaguchi) was in his corner. “A situation like this, I'm going all out,” I thought. “I knew that I needed to create my own opportunities. I just didn't understand how” -- Kenji Sakaguchi was very popular at the time, so that match got a lot of mainstream attention. Makabe: Yep. But after that, right back to the opening match. I'm thinking “they go through that, and put me in that spot, so why am I treated like this? Can you teacher's pets do this? ” and I didn't think Nakamura, Tanahashi, Shibata could be in the mainstream at the time. -- You were feuding with the ‘New Three Musketeers’ at that point. Makabe: At the time, they were just guys. “Ok, you guys can wrestle”. That was about it. They didn't inspire like the guys that inspired me as a kid. They didn't have the fighting spirit of Inoki, the badass nature of Choshu, the grace of Tiger Mask, the power of Hogan.. these guys had none of those things. But that was jealousy speaking. Everybody else was thinking the same of me. -- You've calmed down a bit since then. Makabe: Honestly at the time they looked at me as the bathroom break guy. And I was so frustrated. “This isn't the pro wrestling I aspired to”, I thought. This was during the MMA boom, a lot of people were leaving the company, New Japan was in a lot of trouble… It was just daily, “this place sucks”. My private life wasn't much better. -- Seems your private life was always rough back then! Makabe: For a wrestler the question is always “just what is a chance?”. The company wouldn't give me an opportunity. So, OK. I knew I had to create my own opportunities. I just didn't understand how. It seemed I could have great matches every night to no recognition. I did great matches but spotlight was always on elders and scums. I was just under constant stress, thinking “what the hell do they want from me?” -- You gave thought to leaving at the time. Makabe: Yeah, there were a few times when I thought about quitting.

[spacecollaborative-blog]

Final Edit

Introduction to Doctor Jane Healy’s Essay on the Ian McKinnon Logs.

The daily logs of Doctor Ian McKinnon were found among the rubble of the Astra 27 three days after it plummeted to earth in the April of 2067 after a failure in the electrical wiring. These logs, since then, have been heralded the most convincing piece of evidence supporting the movement to end solo space travel since the first Astra took flight in 2037. The logs support the argument that ships as technologically complex as the Astra model can not be manned alone, and that machine failure cannot be overcome alone. But I believe the logs provide substantially darker evidence as to why solo space travel should be abolished for good.

Log 1.

I think that I should perhaps do a little introduction. Hello, my name is Ian and I’m 34 years old. Goodness, this I’ve made this sound like school. Hi, I’m Ian and I’m 34 and I like TV and the colour yellow, when I grow up I’d like to fly to space. I’m rambling. They don’t make it clear what we’re meant to be reporting in these logs. I suppose some sort of progress report. Right, well, I’m heading to space and that seems to be going rather well so far. Astra 27 all intact, no malfunctions yet, at least none that the Astra deems necessary to warn me of. It’s all quite exciting. Until tomorrow!

23rd May 2067, Post-Mortem

Upon careful examination of the body of Doctor Ian McKinnon it has been discovered that the cause of death was electrocution. It has been deduced that the most likely cause of this was the deceased’s attempt to correct the faulty wiring of the ship. This deduction is being contested due to the unlikelihood of the scenario, due to each astronaut’s teachings not to touch the motherboard of the ship. Further tests are being run.

Log 61.

It seems horrifically ungrateful, doesn’t it, to say that space can get boring. I spend each morning staring down at the Earth in the same way I would stare at the stars as a boy. I could name every constellation, pull out all the important stars and attempt to make friends by listing them off to any poor child that made the faux-pas of standing too close to me at Scout Camp. Sirius, of course, was my favourite. But if anyone asked it was Vega, for it’s blue. But I knew it was Sirius, quite simply because it was big and in the dog constellation, two things that excited my prepubescent brain. And now, I stare at the Earth. I watch as it turns and each day I wait to see the tiny slice of Europe and wonder at all the little boys and girls who are just getting to sleep after spending the night looking up into the sky. How many, I wonder, will tell their friends they had seen a shooting star? I’m sure they knew, as I did, that it was really a helicopter, but their friends didn’t need to know that. But here, there is no one to tell about the slice of Europe I can see every day.

There were no malfunctions in the Astra today.

20th April 2067, The Telegraph

A night of speculation and panic has reached a devastating end this morning as the bright lights that streaked the sky in the early hours of the morning are revealed by NASA to be the Astra 27 plummeting back home. After a severe malfunction in the wiring, it appears that British astronaut Doctor Ian McKinnon tried to return the rocket to the plains of Colorado, USA, to save the £25 million machine and his own life. Yet, terribly, to no avail. Though the atmospheric shields remained secure through both the Thermosphere and Mesosphere, saving the Astra from combustion, it shut down entirely just a cruel 55km from the Earth’s surface. In a plead posted on the NASA website as dawn broke, we are asked to take a minute’s silence at midday to honour the deceased Doctor Ian McKinnon.

Log 76.

Outside the right window, you can see nothing. A static screen through the rectangular glass. It reminds me of being young again, the black with white flecks, often curtained with soft grey. But this time without the potential mystery of a unidentified flying helicopter. Perhaps, from this window, nothing is a bit harsh. In the clean, unaffected glass I can see myself. The grounding reminder that I still exist.

Log 80.

You left me a booklet that I consult every single day. It tells me about the importance of routine in maintaining your sanity. So I read it every morning as soon as I wake up. It stresses the importance of remembering your past self, your self on earth. Little tics, little habits you have to maintain. As well as new routines to integrate into your new life. So, after checking the booklet, and my pocket-watch, I go to the motherboard.

2nd June 2034, NASA interview posted to their website

We are honoured to reveal today the next revolution in battling the final frontier. After decades of innovation, experimentation and exploration, Professors Amelia Hudson and Alijaz Guildenstern can now reveal their Astra, a rocket that can not only fly itself to and through the universe, but can also repair itself if it should encounter any technical malfunction.

‘It will completely change our idea of space,’ says Hudson, ‘No longer will it be an unattainable image, but a reachable destination that any person can visit.’

That is not to say, however, that the Astra can be flown by your average man. But this is a solid step paving the way to the human race’s conquering of the stars as space travel becomes more accessible and safer by the day.

Log 95.

I woke up to bright blue lights. Small, glowing beams of iridescence, burning onto my eyelid. As I closed my eyes the image of them glowered on my eyelid from the clinical blue to a fuzzy red and when I opened my eyes again they were gone. But when I closed my eyes again they were there, but fading quickly. And the more I blinked the quicker they left, until I was quite unsure whether they really existed in the first place. I wish there was someone here, to make sure I’m not going crazy. I have checked the Astra status and there has been no reported malfunction. I have reasoned with myself and have come to the conclusion that when my eyes went from black to this sterile white interior my brain must’ve confused itself, forgot its function, forgot how to process. This makes sense to me.

As for space, it remains the same. When I stare out the window I can see the same stars, and they all look the same. Until tomorrow.

Log 129.

It doesn’t quite make sense anymore. My theory doesn’t quite play out. The blue lights are here in the day. And god how they taunt me. They dance around me but I can’t follow them. They burn onto my eyes and I can’t blink to make them run away. I think they’re maybe in my brain now. It is cruel. But who can I tell? I can look down onto the earth and see the piece of my home and scream at them, hoping that my cries will make it through the machine, the vacuum, the spheres, air, bricks, into home. But I’m not that crazy yet. There has been three alerts in the rocket today, the wiring has been damaged but it is being fixed.

Log 135.

I have spent the day investigating the blue fairies. They’re just how I imagined the sprites in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck a whirl of blue, causing mischief and praying on those who are alone, changing their psychology and their desires. Now when I wake up I don’t really see him, but I can hear him a little, his clanging in the engine room echoing into my room. I see him later though, when I check the motherboard. Not properly, of course, just a quick flash. The machine is working hard to repair the wiring.

A clipping from James Goodwin’s 2086 award winning non-fiction novel on Ian McKinnon.

On a small metal spaceship, with thin, empty corridors, sharp corners and smooth walls, any sound you might hear, you will hear. Sometimes, Ian would tap one of the metal pipes and listen as the sound reverberated through the hallways, bouncing off the sterile, steel walls until it reached him again. It was nice, for Ian to have those little conversations with the walls. It made him forget quite how alone he was. And for hours at a time he would tap, sometimes a little pattern, occasionally the tune to a simple song from home, but mostly just single taps, waiting for them to come back before he’d reply again. It became part of his routine. He would wake up to the bright blue lights, check the motherboard, then talk.

Sometimes, if Ian was lucky, he wouldn’t have to start the conversation himself. He would hear a knock, or a pattern, or a little song from home, and stop what he was doing and knock back. It never particularly crossed his mind who he was talking to, it was just nice to have someone there. In fact, it wasn’t until Ian heard him talk that he had even considered meeting him.

“Hello?” Ian said, when he heard the voice. “Who’s there?”

The man was sitting in the control centre. His hand, which was resting on his lap when Ian first saw him, was now gliding over to the motherboard. He didn’t speak when Ian saw him, although he did hear him on several occasions after though he only saw him once more after this day. He was older than he was, with receding hair and deep lines on his forehead. He wore a well-fitting grey suit, and he had with him a briefcase. He made Ian feel small, in a lovely way. Ian quite liked looking at him, he was comforting and he liked having someone there with him so he wasn’t quite so alone. His hand, which had a few freckles covered with long, curling grey hairs, ran over the buttons and wires. He ran over them in a circle, like he was memorising the pattern. He gave Ian a comforting smile, picked up his briefcase and left.

2nd June, 2067, The Telegraph.

In a disturbing progression of events, Doctor Ian McKinnon’s Captain’s Logs have been found amongst the rubble of the Astra 27. Doctor Ian McKinnon has now been honoured and mourned by the nation for his tragic death two months ago, but the public now has a new tragedy to adjust to as the logs reveal the leading weeks up to his demise were not spent in the jovial state we had all naively but rather a state of increasing paranoia and insanity.

Last Log.

I have finally accustomed to life on the Astra. I had a moment of enlightenment this morning, about the loneliness that I think eats at us throughout our lives. I have spent over 100 days staring at the Earth, the Earth in it’s entirety and I think that this gives me rather broad understanding of the people that mill there below. They’re all alone. Every one of us is alone. And here, if I make no noise, all I can here is my little pocket watch, a token from home. It’s rhythmical ticking, dimmed by time. But it reminds me that I’m alone. I can remember the moments in my life when that was all I could hear. Moments when I was physically alone. But I have come to the realisation that it doesn’t matter whether I can hear that ticking or not. We are all alone. Alone in our heads, in our thoughts. I think that maybe these are what these solo missions on the Astra are about. I think I understand it all now.

Rhiannon Whale

[torentialtribute]

Adriane Galisteu: I didn’t cheat on Ayrton Senna… the day he died my world stopped 

It's 25 years since Ayrton Senna died after the San Marino Grand Prix crash on Imola.

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the 2014 tragedy, Sportsmail interviewed Jonathan McEvoy Senna & # 39; s girlfriend at the time, the model Adriane Galisteu.

We completely re-publish that interview here.

A blonde model with blue eyes will say a prayer for Ayrton Senna on Thursday. It is the same ritual that Adriane Galisteu has practiced on each of the 19 previous anniversaries of the driver's death.

A believer like Senna – & I believe in the Lord & # 39; – she spoke to Sportsmail that weekend 20 years ago, when the boyfriend in Tambola hit a concrete wall, he killed him.

She remembers the last hours spent at the Senna villa in the Algarve counting down to the San Marino Grand Prix

Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna pictured with his girlfriend, the model Adriane Galisteu

<img id = "i-e7707672aa0c9258" src = "https://dailym.ai/2GOLLcL Formula_One_driver_Ayrton_Senna_pictured_with_his_girlfriend_the-a-18_1556700152019.jpg "height =" 472 "width =" 306 "alt =" <img id = "i-e7707672aa0c9258" src = "https://dailym.ai/2J2OwKp /01/09/12945746-6979943-Formula_One_driver_Ayrton_Senna_pictured_with_his_girlfriend_the-a-18_1556700152019.jpg "height =" 472 "width =" 306 "alt =" <img id = "i-e7707672aa0c9258" srci.dllmail: srci.dll. co.uk/1s/2019/05/01/09/12945746-6979943-Formula_One_driver_Ayrton_Senna_pictured_with_his_girlfriend_the-a-18_1556700152019.jpg "height =" 472 "width =" 306 "alt =" Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna pictured with his girlfriend, the model Adriane Galisteu "

<img id =" i-3d4f759b11cba966 "src =" https://dailym.ai/2V7BOBe /12945744-6979943-Galisteu_cries_at_Senna_s_funeral_following_his_fatal_crash_in_t-a-19_1556700158216.jpg "height =" 472 "width =" 306 "alt =" Galisteu cries over Senna & # 39; s funeral 1994 after his deadly Marinoxxxxx2009 ]

<img id = "i-3d4f759b11cba966" src = "https://dailym.ai/2GKyZvU" height = "472" width = "306" alt = "Galisteu cries at Senna & burial after his fatal crash in 1994 San Marino Grand Prix at Imola" class = "blkBorder img-share Ayrton Senna with his girlfriend Adriane Galisteu ( left), which is depicted at his funeral (right)

<img id = "i-acd60e8b" src = "https://dailym.ai/2uS4u1n / i / pix / 2014/04/29 / article- 2616230-1D6FA69A00000578-772_634x384.jpg "height =" 384 "width =" 634 "alt =" Senna & # 39; s death in the seventh round of the San Marino Grand Prix, 25 years ago, the world rocked "

<img id = "i-acd60e8b" src = "https://dailym.ai/2V5qBRO .jpg "height =" 384 "width =" 634 "alt =" Senna & # 39; s death in the seventh round of the San Marino Grand Prix, 25 years ago, shook the world "of the San Marino Grand Prix , 25 years ago, shook the world

& He called me & she said. & # 39; He was not healthy. His head was wrong. & # 39; Rubens Barrichello, his good friend, was in the hospital (after an accident in Friday practice). He was very upset by the death of Roland Ratzenberger, a fellow driver who died on Saturday (during qualifying). He told me: & # 39; I am very sad & # 39 ;.

& # 39; I had cherished him before but never heard his voice like that day. I remember telling him: & # 39; Ayrton, don't enter that breed. & # 39;

The advice Galisteu gave to Senna, the triple world champion and perhaps the greatest driver of all time, echoed the words of Professor Sid Watkins, the Brazilian friend and medical representative of Formula One, as well as one of & # 39; the world's leading brain surgeons.

Although Senna was undoubtedly emotional when he visited the site of the Ratzenberger crash, there is a suggestion that his relationship with Galisteu was acesing him.

In Ayrton, the Revealed Hero (Ernesto Rodrigues), Ernesto Rodrigues claims that Galisteu had contacted his former lover and that Senna & brother, Leonardo, had ties with these secret conversations with him. had played. ]

<img id = "i-9d950675f514bcea" src = "https://dailym.ai/2GLwf1o a-21_1556700257736.jpg "height =" 420 "width =" 634 "alt =" <img id = "i-9d950675f514bcea" src = "https://dailym.ai/2Y2S2sx /09/12945742-6979943-image-a-21_1556700257736.jpg "height =" 420 "width =" 634 "alt =" Senna, seen here celebrating his famous victory in Monaco in 1992, won three world titles

Senna, seen here celebrating his famous victory in Monaco in 1992, won three world titles.

The author, former head of the London agency of the Globo TV channel in Brazil, visited seven countries and spoke to 213 people during two years of research on the book.

& # 39; My goal is not to talk about a book I didn't read & # 39 ;, Viviane once said, got upset when she pressed the allegations about Galisteu's behavior. I made the accusation myself to Galisteu.

& # 39; It never happened, no. I was 100 percent honest with Ayrton. I remember his skin and his scent. I only told him truths. I was a young girl and shortly after I first knew him I took him home to get to know my mother and my brother, the place where I lived and how I lived. & # 39;

She says she fell in love with him when they met during the Brazilian Grand Prix of 1993, where she was an umbrella girl. She had long admired him from afar, but never thought they would become lovers.

<img id = "i-ac440e7f" src = "https://dailym.ai/2V6Yy4t 1D6DFA7200000578-542_634x407.jpg "height =" 407 "width =" 634 "alt =" Senna, pictured the day before he died, was said it & # 39; was wrong & # 39; prior to the race "

<img id = "i-ac440e7f" src = "https://dailym.ai/2GOcC8Z" height = " 407 "width =" 634 "alt =" Senna, pictured the day before he died, was said to have been & # 39; not good & # 39; prior to the race "

Senna, pictured the day before he died

& # 39; When I tried to tell him not to race against Imola, I told him that I loved his job and he just couldn't get out of the race ", she remembers. & # 39; It's my life & # 39;

His strong tendency to race is confirmed by Senna & # 39; s manager, J ulian Jakobi, one of the most respected figures in the paddock.

He told me that although Senna was upset like everyone else at the weekend, he talked to Frank Williams, the team boss, and decided to compete. & # 39; Stories that say he did not want to race are simply not true & # 39 ;, said Jakobi.

Back in Portugal, Galisteu watched the race on TV. & # 39; I saw the accident and thought nothing of it, & # 39; she said. & # 39; In fact, I thought: & # 39; Well, he will be early, thank goodness & # 39 ;.

& # 39; But then I saw that it was more serious than I imagined. I stood in front of the TV and saw the repetition time and again. I could see that the car was damaged, but I never thought I was dead.

Nicola Larini, Michael Schumacher and Flavio Briatore respond to the news of the death of Senna "

[194590] <img id =" i-9cd140c315112f7c "src =" https: //i.dailymail. co.uk/1s/2019/05/01/09/12945740-6979943-image-a-23_1556700345176.jpg "height =" 373 "width =" 634 "alt =" Nicola Larini, Michael Schumacher and Flavio Briatore respond to it news of the death of Senna Flavio Briatore responds to the news of the death of Senna "

Nicola Larini, Michael Schumacher and Flavio Briatore respond to the news of the death of Senna

& # 39 I picked up the phone and it was his best friend's wife who told me to go to Imola. We left Lisbon on a private plane. I boarded the plane and thought he was alive;

Back at Imola, Senna was taken out of the car and flown to the hospital, and after a delay of 37 minutes the race restarted, winning Michael Schumacher, who was driving in Benetton, because Senna had violated the new rules of the season that prevented traction control. The champagne was sprayed on stage.

& # 39; When the plane was about to take off, the pilot said there was a phone call from the tower. I imagined Ayrton saying: & # 39; You don't have to come, everything is fine & # 39 ;.

& # 39; It was a friend: & # 39; Adriane, you don't have to come & # 39 ;. & # 39; Wow, that's good & # 39 ;, I said, thinking he should improve. & # 39; No, he is dead. & # 39; My world stopped at that moment.

& # 39; In my mind it was impossible: he could only die of old age. It was incredible that he died while doing what he knew best in life.

& # 39; It was very difficult for Brazil, for the whole world, but even more for me. It took me many years to get my life back, especially lovingly. "1945-9000

Galisteu, shown here in 2009, claimed that Senna wanted to end his career with the famous Italian Ferrari

Galisteu, who has just turned 41, married Alexandre Iodice in June 2010 n has a three year old son, Vitt

& # 39; My time with Ayrton was a great love story. He was more loved all over the world than he had ever known. His memory will never be erased. For me it was special, but now I am married and have a child. It means I can't say I was the love of my life. "

She remembers the remarkable funeral in Sao Paulo, when the entire vast city stopped to mourn over his icon: the sultry, brilliant, ruthless, smart, mystical, megalomaniac Senna.

& # 39; I spent as long as I could with his body. I didn't go home. I didn't wash. I stayed with him.

& # 39; Ayrton had three dreams & # 39; , she says lovingly. & # 39; The first was to end his career with Ferrari, the second was to get to know Disneyworld, the third was to become a father.

& # 39; more than a champion. He had a huge heart, a simple way of life and had simple dreams. He was entertaining. At home I was like a child. He was full of happiness. "

<img id = "i-1a72a426e7f7b548" src = "https://dailym.ai/2GNsnge" height = "459 "width =" 634 " alt = "Senna won 41 races and secured 65 poles during a career that promised so much more" class = "blkBorder img-

Senna won 41 races and secured 65 poles during a career that much more promised "class =" blkBorder img-share "

[19459] WORLD CHAMPION: 1988, 1990, 1991

RACES ENTERED [wijzigen] See also [bewerken] See also [bewerken] (19459005)

STAGE READINGS: 80

FIRST F1 RACE: Brazilian Grand Prix, 1984

Senna & # 39; s death shook Formula 1 deeper than anyone else's. For the Austrian rookie Ratzenberger, the driver had died for twelve years.

Niki Lauda, ​​the triple world champion, said: & God kept his hand on the formula for a long time.

Secondly, the entire dramatic scene was broadcast on TV all over the world, giving it a worldwide impact that had never been discovered before.

Murray Walker later described it as the most difficult commentary of his life, entering the fine line between empty optimism and morbid fatalism as he watched, unable to know exactly how Senna & # 39; s precarious.

In Imola, today and the next four days, there will be races in honor of the man who won 41 races and 65 poles.

Less favorable, his ruthlessness on the right track – especially when driving with Alain Prost finished in 1990 – has time for some of the less chivalrous driving that followed. (In all honesty, McLaren boss Ron Dennis commented, Senna & # 39; s superlative talent and mercy was matched by Prost in their glorious rivalry.)

<img id = "i-4a97685b497ed128" src = "https://dailym.ai/2V4hvER" height " "633" alt = "Senna led the San Marino 1994 Grand Prix at Imola for the sixth lap crash"

<img id = "i-4a97685b497ed128" src = "https: //i.dailymail. co.uk/1s/2019/05/01/09/12914874-6979943-Senna_had_led_the_1994_San_Marino_Grand_Prix_at_Imola_before_cra-a-36_1556700717134.jpg "height =" 395 "width =" 633 "alt =" Senna had the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix before he crashed in the sixth round "Senna led the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix in Imola before he crashed in the sixth round

Senna & wreck Wi

The most intriguing question is raised by Bernie Ecclestone's trial in Germany and the doubts it raises about the future of the 83-year-old at the head of the formula One: could Senna have taken over from Bernie? Senna was smart, calculating, sharp, suppressed by nobody and saw commercial opportunities for his time.

Just before he died, I made a deal with Audi to import their road cars.

He even ensured that Ecclestone changed the terms of the super license by concluding a deal with Sega before a pan-F1 contract with Nintendo was signed.

We had the loss of a driver of sublime brilliance. Maybe we will join Adriane by praying for him.

But we also have to think about the role he could play now in Formula 1, but that afternoon in Imola.

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[fuckyeahbessiecoleman]

Bessie Coleman

(The last picture taken of Coleman before her death)

Bessie Coleman was born Elizabeth Coleman in Atlanta, Texas to a poor sharecropping family. Her exact date of birth is unknown as she was never issued a birth certificate. It falls somewhere between January 26th, 1892 and January 30th, 1900. On her pilot’s license, it is listed as January 20th, 1896.

In 1910, Coleman began studying at the Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, OK. She dropped out after a year because of a lack of funds.

In 1915, she moved to Chicago where she worked as a manicurist. Stories about pilots in WWI inspired her, and in 1920 she went to France to get her pilot’s license.

On June 15th, 1921, Coleman graduated flight school and made history as the first woman and the first African American person to hold a pilot’s license.

When asked about her motivations, Coleman commented:

“Well, because I knew we had no aviators, neither men nor women, and I knew the Race needed to be represented along this important line, so I thought it my duty to risk my life to learn aviating and to encourage among men and women of the Race who are so far behind the white men in this special line. I made up my mind to try; I lived and was successful.”

In May of 1922 Coleman returned to Europe to receive additional flight training. When she returned to America on August 12th, 1922, Coleman had earned additional certificates, including one to operate the largest plane a woman had ever flown.

On March 10th, 1923, Coleman was injured in a plane crash. She got away with only a broken leg. In an interview she did from the hospital, Coleman expressed her disappointment over the fact that only white men had signed up to take flying lessons from her. She said, “must I escape from death to open a school for ‘whites only’? Or will the Negro race give it some coloring?”

(Coleman receiving flowers from Captain Eddie McVey, 1922)

Throughout her career, Coleman gave many airshows. After a show in Savannah, Georgia, Coleman was approached by many women who wanted to thank her for what she was doing.

Coleman died in a plane crash on April 30th, 1926 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Some people continued to understate her significance. On the 5th of May, under the headline “Aviatrix Killed By Fall,” an issue of The New York Amsterdam News, made little mention of Coleman’s career and influences. It focused mostly on the man who died with her in the crash, a white man.

After her death, her body was released to the Jacksonville Negro Welfare League. Thousands of mourners gathered at three separate ceremonies to pay their respects.

At the final ceremony in Chicago, "taps" was played, her coffin was draped in an American flag, and uniformed veterans served as ushers. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was the “mistress of ceremonies.”

On the 15th of May, under the headline “As Americans Should Die,” an issue of The Chicago Defender wrote:

“What more glorious way is there to die? How better can we prove our loyalty to the country that gives us sustenance than by dying in the cause of one of its industries? How better can members of two American races die than side by side in a common cause? Patriotism, loyalty, know no color, creed nor birth. A country that is good enough to die for, and that applies to all races alike. And if we must die in one of its peacetime occupations as well as in its struggles to protect our flag and homes, why cannot we die together as Americans and not as black and white races?”

During the year after her death, the African American community still did not take to flying. On May 14th, 1927, The Chicago Defender wrote, “…there is no reason we should lose our interest in flying because of her tragic end. Rather, it should stimulate us to greater efforts to keep alive her name.”

Although there hadn’t (immediately) been an increased interest in flight, the African American community still hailed Coleman a hero. In 1927, a new apartment building in Harlem was named after her. The Pittsburgh Courier wrote:

“Recently New York City proclaimed its hero, Col. Chas. Lindbergh, therefore, it is befitting to our illustrious heroine who fought for the same cause, but ended her career with an upward flight to the great beyond only one year ago. It would be in memory of our deceased female eagle of the air.”

Coleman continued to be awarded accolades after her death. She has been inducted into multiple aviation halls of fame, including the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2006. In 1995, the United States Postal Service issued a stamp in her honor.

[headlineeternal]

An #EternalTreat for you!

Find out more about the four ebooks we’re giving away for FREE over this Mother’s Day period from 20th - 29th March 2017!

That’s right - four ebooks from Headline Eternal will be completely free from Monday 20th March to Wednesday 29th March in the UK. Yes - Jill Shalvis’s SWEET LITTLE LIES, Sabrina Jeffries’s THE ART OF SINNING, Jaci Burton’s HOPE FLAMES and Shana Gray’s MR MONDAY will be completely free. Time to find a new #EternalBookBoyfriend?

Sweet Little Lies is the first in New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis's Heartbreaker Bay series,  featuring her trademark gift for humour, warmth and romance. 

What if you fall for the one guy you can't have?

As the captain of a San Francisco Bay tour boat, Pru Harris can handle rough seas - the hard part is life on dry land. Especially when it comes to resisting her growing feelings for her new friend, Finn O'Riley. He's kind, he's gorgeous and he's Mr Right - for anybody but her.

Pru has a particular reason for wanting Finn to find happiness and it's what she wishes for at the historic fountain that's supposed to grant her heart's desire. But things get tricky when it becomes clear that, when it comes to Pru, there's more than friendship on Finn's mind - because she's been keeping a secret that could change everything...

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2nrAfgm 

Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/sweet-little-lies-heartbreaker-bay-book-1

IBooks UK: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/sweet-little-lies-heartbreaker/id1114561959?mt=11

The Art of Sinning is the first novel in the Sinful Suitors series by New York Times bestselling author Sabrina Jeffries. 

At St. George's Club, guardians conspire to keep their unattached sisters and wards out of the clutches of sinful suitors. Which works fine...except when the sinful suitors are members...

American artist Jeremy Keane refuses to return home and take over his father's business. He'd much rather sample bevvies of beauties abroad, in search of a model for the provocative masterpiece he's driven to paint. When he meets Lady Yvette Barlow at a London wedding, he realizes she's perfect for his work - and determines to capture the young heiress's defiant spirit and breathtaking sensuality on canvas.

No stranger to scandal, Yvette agrees to be Keane's subject - in exchange for his help gaining entry to the city's brothels he knows intimately, so she can track a missing woman and solve a family mystery. But when their practical partnership leads to lessons in the art of sinning, can they find a bold and lasting love?

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2n39PQZ 

Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-art-of-sinning-sinful-suitors-1

IBooks UK: https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/art-sinning-sinful-suitors/id989780797?mt=11

Hope Flames is the first in the sexy, heartwarming Hope series from Jaci Burton, New York Times bestselling author of the Play-By-Play series. 

Welcome to Hope, Oklahoma. The small town that's sure to warm your heart. Full of big hearts, fiery passion and love everlasting...

When it comes to love, they already know the rules...by  heart. Thirty-two and finally setting up her veterinary practice  in the town she once called home, Emma Burnett is on her own and loving it.  Independent and driven, she's not letting any man get in the way of her dreams - not again.

That's fine with Luke McCormack. Divorced and hardly lacking  in female company when he needs it, he's devoted to the only faithful companion  in his life - his police dog. Still, there's something about Emma he can't  shake.

When a series of local break-ins leaves Emma vulnerable, she  seeks help from the first man to spark her desire in years. And now they're  giving each other something they thought they'd lost forever...hope.

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2nrOjGI

Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/hope-flames-hope-book-1 

IBooks UK: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/hope-flames-hope-book-1/id711593168?mt=11

Mr Monday is the first part of our sexy Working Girl serial!

A sexy seven-day job interview. Seven irresistible interviewers. Who will she choose at the end of the week?

Tess has been determined to get revenge for her father, ever since he was falsely accused of misusing company funds and unceremoniously let go from Diamond Enterprises. Applying to be Executive Assistant to the elusive, elderly head of the company, Mr King, seems the ideal way to get inside the firm and clear his name.

But the job interview is not what she expects. Arriving at the company HQ, she is escorted to a helicopter, blindfolded and flown to a secret location. She meets a man whose voice is disguised, but introduces himself as Mr King and says the job advertisement was a ruse to find the new CEO of Diamond Enterprises. The catch, the interviewer says, is that the job will only be hers if she passes a seven-day interview.

Tess will have seven mysterious men who will assist her - one for each task each day. She will have to use all of her skills if she's to succeed and to resist the powerful magnetism of the irresistible men sent to help - or distract - her. Or will Tess find herself losing her heart when she meets her man of the week?

Mr Monday, Mr Tuesday, Mr Wednesday, Mr Thursday, Mr Friday, Mr Saturday, Mr Sunday. Meet all seven in Working Girl - who will be your man of the week?

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2nrLPrw 

Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/working-girl-mr-monday-part-1 

IBooks UK: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/working-girl-mr-monday-part-1/id1137654352?mt=11