#however! one of the bureaucrats is an asshole. for many reasons.

[rad10active-ketchup]

god i wish i could go back to the md wiki i really fucking miss it.

[theadusa]

All the dramas I’ve watched in 2020

These are all the dramas that I watched in 2020, with some review there should be NO Spoilers. I think I watched a lot more than usual probably because what else am I supposed to do between school and quarantine. So this is gonna be a long one...

Crash Landing on You (Lee Jung-hyo, 2019-2020)

Main Leads: Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin

Episodes: 16, 70 to 110 Minutes 

Thoughts: I enjoyed this drama, and it was a good one to start 2020 with. I thought it was a perfect blend of romance, comedy, heartfelt, found family, action, and some tragedy. I would highly recommend it, especially for those who are new to Kdramas. Also fun fact this is my first Hyun Bin drama. Rating: Fun and adorable

Tale of Nokdu (Kim Dong-hwi, 2019)

Main Leads: Jang Dong Yoon and Kim So Hyun

Episodes: 32, 35 minutes

Thoughts: I actually started watching this when it was airing but I stopped around episode 13 because of my busy schedule and finished it in the new year. I adore the main couple, the romance, comedy, the found family, and the women center story. I thought it shined the brightest when it was focused on the group and its funny and warm moments but once it got too political it kinda fell flat. I loved the ending, however. Also, I really like Jang Dong Young as an actor, I saw him in Solomon’s Perjury (2016) and Mr. Sunshine (2018) and I loved how he played Nok Du too. Rating: I love a women’s only widow village

I’ll Find You When The Weather is Nice (Han Ji-seung, 2020)

Main Leads: Seo Kang Joon and Park Min Young

Episodes: 16, 60 minutes 

Thoughts: I really liked this drama, probably one of my favorites this year. As you will notice I enjoy quieter and more slow-burn stories. Also, I am a fan of Park Min Young she tends to pick more interesting and strong-willed female roles, so it is really enjoyable to watch.  Rating: makes me want to own a book store.

King: The Eternal Monarch (Kim Eun-sook, 2020)

Main Leads: Lee Min Ho and Kim Go Eun

Episodes: 16, 70 Minutes

Thoughts: Confession; I am actually not the biggest fan of Lee Min Ho, nothing against him I just hate rich bratty characters and he tends to play them. However, I surprisingly really liked his character, he wasn’t a rich brat he actually was likable. I also really like Kim Go Eun, she is actually one of the main reasons why I watched and also with all the hype around it. Woo Do Hwan, who I have always liked, stole the whole show, however. I didn’t hate it like a lot of people, I really liked the characters, I liked the romance and the action. Also, Lee Min Ho and Kim Go Eun’s hugs were absolutely fabulous. It wasn’t my favorite and there were too many product placements, but I don’t think it was the worst drama this year. Rating: Lukewarm 

A Piece of your mind (Lee Sang-yeob, 2020)

Main Leads: Jung Hae In and Chae Soo Bin

Episodes: 12, 70 minutes

Thoughts: I actually really liked this drama despite the low views, again I’m big on slow burn stories and character focus. I believe the episodes were cut from 16 to 12 I don’t know exactly why maybe because of the Pandemic or due to viewership or a mixture of both. Despite its being cut short I really liked the ending, and I thought the two leads were sweet. Rating: Wish we had more time to develop the characters.

Its Okay not to be Okay (Park Shin Woo, 2020) 

Main Leads: Kim Soo Hyun and Seo Yea Ji and Oh Jung Se 

Episodes: 16, 70 to 85 minutes

Thoughts: Out of all the dramas I talked the most about this one. I have always been a fan of Seo Yea Ji since Save Me (2017) and Lawless Lawyer (2018) and I am happy to see her getting more recognition because of this role. The entire cast was amazing and I think I cried every episode. Such a good and heart-wrenching drama which is why I chose to watch it before work every time. Rating: I would let Seo Yea Ji stab me with a knife anytime.

Mystic Pop up bar (Jeon Chang-geun, 2020) 

Main Leads: Hwang Jung Eum and Yook Sung Jae and Choi Won Young

Episodes: 12, 70 minutes

Thoughts: I actually watched this while I was watching Its Okay Not to Be Okay and it was a nice balance to it because this was more of a found family story with less heartbreaking moments. Though it did have its share of heartbreak. I really liked all the characters and their relationship. Also, I am a sucker for bureaucratic fantasy/ magic, and kdramas are so good at it. Rating: I wish it was 16 episodes. 

When the Camila Bloom (Cha Yeong Hoon, 2019) 

Main Leads: Gong Hyo Jin and Kang Ha Neul

Episodes: 20, 63 to 75 minutes

Thoughts: I liked the story overall, the romance was cute and the mystery was interesting but I thought the family expectations was the best part of the story. This was not my favorite drama, but it was enjoyable and heartfelt. I watched it right after It's Okay Not to Be Okay and while I was watching Flower of Evil (2020) which probably is why I was so underwhelmed by it. Rating: Sweet romance and adorable found family.

Flower of Evil (Kim Cheol Kyu, 2020) 

Main Leads: Lee Joon Gi and Moon Chae Won

Episode:16, 70 minutes

Thoughts: This was my favorite drama of this year. I went into this drama not thinking much of it, and I mainly watched it as a post drama blues drama. It was an action and thriller which I mainly don’t get attached to plus I am a huge fan of Lee Joon Gi. I should have known better, I cared so much about all the characters, the acting phenomenal, also every time they showed their hands I cried. This drama left me shriveled and empty inside. Rating: Lee Joon Gi will literally kill me one day. 

Put Your Head On My Shoulders (Zhu Dongning, 2019) 

Main Leads: Xing Fei and Lin Yi 

Episodes: 24, 40 to 45 minutes

Thoughts: This is the first Chinese drama on this list. I thought it was cute, I liked the couple and thought it was alright. I started to dislike the male lead later in the series but it was overall fine. It was basic and sweet with very little drama. Rating: It did its job.

The School Nurse Files ( Lee Kyoung Mi, 2020)

Main Leads: Jung Yu Mi and Nam Joo Hyuk

Episodes: 6,  45 to 57 minutes

Thoughts: This is probably my second favorite drama. I couldn’t tell what happened in the drama but I loved it. I thought it was weird and fascinating, and just so magical. I loved the children and just how the whole school was just off its rocker. I also think that Nam Joo Hyuk does really well in serious roles, and I thought he did a really good job here. Rating: 1 jelly heart.  

Mr. Heart (Park Sun Jae, 2020) 

Main Leads: Cheon Seung Ho and Lee Se Jin

Episodes: 8, 11 Minutes

Thoughts: This was 8 episodes of start fluff and I adored it. Apparently, it is apart of a BL series by Park Sun Jae and there is a movie version that I haven’t watched. If you want to destress and watch just fluff this is the show for you. Rating: If it is any sweeter I would be going to the dentist. 

You are My Destiny ( Ding Ying Zhou, 2020) 

Main Leads: Xing Zhao Lin  and Liang Jie

Episodes: 36, 45 minutes

Thoughts: I hated this drama, I thought it was the worst thing ever. I don’t know why I even watched all 36 episodes. Apparently, it is a remake of a popular 2008 Twaniese drama Fated to Love You and there is a Korean remake of it as well. I have watched neither of them, so I was brand new to this story. I hated, despised the male lead. He was whiny, entitled, and an asshole. The only good part of the drama was the male and female lead actually had a lot of chemistry, unfortunately, they are playing awful characters. Rating: This was made in 2020???

First Romance (Ding Pei, 2020) 

Main Leads: Wan Peng and Riley Wang

Episodes: 24, 45 Minutes

Thoughts: This is another Chinese drama. Similar to Mr. Heart (2020) this show was super fluffy. I really liked the main couple they seem to respect each other and they both had adorable crushes on each other. I loved the whole dumb jock and dumb artist dynamic it was so funny. Rating: Cute!!! 

Lost Romance ( Eri Hao, 2020) 

Main Leads: Marcus Chang and Vivian Sung

Episodes: 20, 70 minutes 

Thoughts: This is the only Twainese drama on this list. I think I liked this drama, I actually only remember very little of this drama. I like the CEO in the real world more than the book world, and I also really liked the female lead except she lowkey stalked the CEO like that was not okay. Rating: I think I liked it???

When We Were Young ( Deng Ke, Liu Guo Hui, 2018)

Main Leads: Neo Hou and Wan Peng and Gala Zhang and Pan Mei and Ye Marcus Li

Episodes: 24, 45 minutes

Thoughts: I really liked this film, I loved all the characters and thought it was all very heartfelt. I cried like a baby, and Hua Biao was such a touching and relatable character. And the whole grandma story hit so close to home. Rating: Made me cry like a baby.

Moment of 18 ( Sim Na Yeon, 2019)

Main Leads: Ong Seong Wu and Kim Hyang Gi

Episodes: 16, 70 minutes

Thoughts: I really liked this drama, and I thought the romance was so cute. I also really liked the relationship between the moms and was sad that the rich mom was a bitch and ruined the friendship. I also wasn’t a big fan of the ending, but I loved the rest of it. Rating: The main lead is part of a boy group because he had a random singing moment. 

Perfect and Casual ( Li Shuang, 2020) 

Main Leads: Miles Wei and Xu Ruo Han

Episodes: 24, 45 minutes

Thoughts: This is another Chinese drama on this list. I’m pretty sure it's considered an Idol drama so that sets your expectations. I really liked this drama a lot, I am a big fan of contract marriages and I thought the leads were so cute together. Also, this is the first contract marriage drama where the leads don’t break up which I like. A lot of the drama came from outside of the relationship. Rating: You can’t analyze love.

Le Coup De Foudre ( Wang Zhi, 2019) 

Main Leads: Janice Wu and Zhang Yujian

Episodes: 35, 45 minutes

Thoughts: My favorite Chinese drama on this list. I loved this drama, I thought it was sweet and simple and the main couple was so realistic. Unpopular opinion I disliked the second couple and the best friend I thought she was annoying and brattish. However, I adore the main couple and their relationship. Rating: Realistic sweet romance. 

More Than Friends ( Choi Sung Bum, 2020)

Main Leads: Ong Seong Wu and Shin Ye Eun

Episodes: 16, 70 minutes

Thoughts: I enjoyed the overall story and characters. I loved the group and their relationships. Also, Young-Hee made me cry, and her relationship with Hyun Jae was so sweet. The main leads were also sweet, and I related a lot to Lee So. I just didn’t like the back and forth. Rating: How many times can we break up in a drama. 

Be With You ( Zhou Miao, 2020) 

Main Leads: Ji Xiao Bing and Zhang Ya-Qin

Episodes: 24, 45 minutes

Thoughts: This is the last Chinese drama I watched this year. It was alright, the romance was sweet, I really like the female lead, and the male lead was nice to look at. It was okay. Also, the second couple was so ??? She was his boss, enemy, and older than him, what?? Rating: Sometimes you need to fall in love to be creative. 

Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo ( Kim Kyu Tae, 2016) 

Main Leads: Lee Joon Gi and Lee Ji Eun (IU) 

Episodes: 20, 60 minutes

Thoughts: I know I am really late watching this, but I finally did. I went in knowing this would hurt me and Lee Joon Gi already scared me this year ( damn this man) so I was fully prepared. I really wasn’t,  it so much. (SPOIlERS) When Wang Eun and Park Soon Deok died I sob like a baby (SPOILER ENDING). It took me a long time to finish this show because its heart so much, like it physically hurt me. The show was really good, and heartbreaking, and the ending stabs me in the heart 20 times. Rating: Lee Joon Gi is trying to kill me with tears. 

Persona ( Lee Kyoung Mi, Yim Pil Sung, Jeon Go Woon, and Kim Jong Kwan, 2019) 

Main Leads: Lee Ji Eun (IU) 

Episodes: 4, 19 to 27

Thoughts: This is a collection of mini-films by directors. 4 separate stories are starring Lee Ji Eun. I thought all of them good, especially “ Kiss Burn” and “Walking at Night.” There isn’t much else to this, more than it is an artistic display of filmmaking. Rating: Hipster Kdrama

Come and Hug Me ( Choi Joon-bae, 2018) 

Main Leads: Jang Ki-Yong and Jin Ki-Joo

Episodes: 32, 35 minutes

Thoughts: I actually just finished this show today. I really liked it, I thought it was both sweet and heartwarming/wrenching. I hated that one journalist and the public like why are they blaming a victim. I didn’t watch it with my full mind because I’ve been distracted lately, but I did enjoy it. Rating: another cute but sad couple. 

Movies I watched this year: 

Spell Bound ( Hwang In Ho, 2011)

Main Cast: Son Ye Jin and Lee Min Ki

Running Time: 114 Minutes

Thoughts: I watched this at like 12 am after a bad day and it was cute. I love RomCom fantasy, which I think Korean media does really well. I don’t know what else to say except it is a really cute romance. Rating: Is it the ghost or the butterflies

The Host ( Bong Joon Ho, 2006)

Main Cast: Song Kang Ho and Byun Hee Bong and Park Hae Il and Bae Doona and Go, Ah Sung

Running Time: 119

Thoughts: This film I had to actually watch for class. It was a really good film which is expected from Bong Joon Ho. I love monster films and I thought this was a good rendition of this film. Also, The monster was so cool especially from 2006. I thought it was heartbreaking, stirring, and so beautifully shot. Rating: Oscar-worthy Direction 

Little Forest ( Yim Soon-rye, 2018) 

Main Cast: Kim Tae Ri  and Ryu Jun Yeol and Moon So Ri and Jin Ki Joo

Running Time: 103 minutes

Thoughts: I really, really liked this film. It reminded me so much of I’ll Find You When The Weather is Nice (2020) that I thought that it was based on this film but it isn’t. I have watched this film 3 times since October and every time I watch it have made bread. I really just love everything about this film, how quiet it is, the cinematography, the acting, just everything. Rating: Three loaves of bread. 

Always ( Song Il Gon, 2011)

Main Cast: So Ji Sub and Han Hyo Joo

Running Time: 106 Minutes

Thoughts: I thought it was okay, I watched it while I was knitting so I was distracted a bit. But I thought the couple was sweet, and the characters were interesting. Rating: It's Okay.

       Currently watching 

True Beauty ( Kim Sang-hyeop, 2020-) 

Main Cast: Moon Ga Young and Cha Eun Woo and Hwang In Yeop

Episodes: 16, 70 minutes 

Thoughts: This is currently an ongoing series that is actually really popular. Apparently, it is based on a webtoon, which I haven’t read. I like it so far, I always liked Moon Ga Young and I think she is a great actress. She plays Im Ju Kyung in a likable and insecure way, instead of someone annoying which could easily happen. I will be continuing watching. Rating so far: Okey dokey yo.

Live On ( Kim Sang-woo, 2020-) 

Main Cast: Jung Da Bin and Hwang Min Hyun

Episodes: 8?, 60 Minutes

Thoughts: I really Like this show. The main couple is sweet and supportive. I really like the female lead, I like that she is cold and kinda quiet, but with a sweet spot if you are not a dick. I really like the main relationship conflict comes from friendship instead of romance, I think it makes the show more interesting. Rating: I want to Join a Broadcast group.  

On My List: 

I actually don’t have anything else on my list so if anyone has recommendations please tell me. I am thinking about watching Mr. Queen ( 2020) because I really like Shin Hye Sun. I also want to watch Sweet Home (2020) the Netflix series. But please recommend me some dramas!!!

This is such a long list, and I had fun doing it and going back over all the dramas. I hope everyone has a good New year and that we will have many more good dramas in 2021!

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

I just realized what Fabian’s sleazy little ponytail reminds me of:

It’s this douchebag, from a little-known and short-lived sci-fi series called Earth 2:

This character is named Morgan Martin, and much like Fabian, he’s an ambitious, self-centered coward in a bureaucratic position who has a few specific skills that make him useful.  He is married to a kind, patient, beautiful wife that he doesn’t deserve, and spends most of the series getting himself and others in danger for mostly selfish reasons.

Unlike Fabian, though, Morgan has a few redeeming qualities.  He is strongly devoted to his wife and obviously loves her deeply (probably the only person he cares about more than himself), and he is occasionally capable of doing the right thing and even risking his life if circumstances require it.  Morgan had the potential to develop into a better person if the series had gone beyond 1 season.  Fabian, not so much.

Basically, I could absolutely imagine Morgan wearing Fabian’s exact outfit up top, and following Magneto around kissing his ass.  Morgan would not, however, betray Magneto multiple times and try to create his own harem.  He has limits.

(This was really just an excuse to remind everyone that Earth 2 was a show that existed.  Guess which character was my favorite?  That’s right.  It’s Morgan Martin the asshole.  There were so many better characters on that show, including one played by Clancy Brown, but no, my mind decided to fixate on the cowardly bureaucrat.  I love him.)

[elenatria]

That moment in the 1x02 Chernobyl episode when Bryukhanov attacks Legasov because he can't tell how the reactor can explode, then mocks him, and Legasov is troubled, so Boris steps up and asks Bryukhanov about the graphite on the roof, and he's like "How dare you? Only I can yell at Valery. Am I clear?" And my heart bursted.

HHAHAHAHHA omg it never occurred to me to see it that way?? Brilliant. A want a ficlet on that scene.

You know what, it’s about time people got to know why this pairing is so hot and tragic and inspiring and and… And I mean I’m not crazy for shipping them, am I?? I mean ok ok “real people with tragic destinies” etc etc but but b-but the writer and the actors are doing SUCH a great job giving us the enemies-to-friends (or lovers) trope so effortlessly in a matter of, like, two episodes (btw I didn’t need two episodes, just the first time they met was enough for me to ship them hahah am I nuts or am I nuts). 

Alright, SPOILERS.

So at the end of the first episode Boris Shcherbina, the head of the Bureau for Fuel and Energy (aka aggressive, unapologetic apparatchik and bureaucrat), is calling Valery Legasov,  the first deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy (aka awkward nerdy idealist scientist), to bark some orders at him and essentially tell him “We don’t want your opinion, nerd, you’re here to answer questions, nothing more, kbye.” So at their very first contact Boris is rude, entitled and arrogant to Valery, even hanging up on him.

In the second episode Valery reads Boris’ report and freaks out. When he joins General Secretary Gorbachev’s committee, Boris tries to downplay  the disaster, his arms sprawled out all over the armchair as if nothing happened. and looks at Valery in utter disbelief when the scientist tries to convince everyone how serious things are. Obviously Boris would rather be home with his wife or something. Btw in the show Valery doesn’t have a wife, he only has a cat, cat=loneliness, geddit?

When Gorbachev orders them both to visit the power plant Boris cannot believe his ears. He’s stuck with this annoying nerd, a scientist for crying out loud, a know-it-all, the kind he obviously hates because, as an apparatchik, he probably climbed the social ladder through his connections in the party and not through studying. So he obviously loathes anyone who knows more than him. He’s an alpha and wants to remain one.

Look at his face and body language when they’re left alone, he’s totally blaming the Nerd for becoming a burden. His burden.

Here it is, the “unlikely partners” trope. 

And now things start to get interesting.

As they walk towards the helicopter Boris is totally ignoring Valery. They’re not exchanging a single glance.

In the helicopter Boris asks Valery how a nuclear reactor works. Valery finds it difficult to explain and Boris quickly shows how inferior he feels to anyone who has studied more than him, so he puts on his aggressive and arrogant facade.

He acts SO entitled that he even threatens Valery that he’ll have him killed if he doesn’t explain how the reactor works.

At this point Boris inspires nothing but fear and disgust.

HOWEVER when Valery fidgets his pockets trying to find something to write on Boris is quick to give him both a pen and a piece of paper. Even if he has his poker face on, his gesture is clear. He’s helping Valery for the first time and not just because he wants to learn about reactors.

When Boris quickly catches the metaphor of the neutron being like a “bullet” Valery seems startled. Apparently Boris is a good student, who would have thought!

But as soon as the explaining is over Boris shuts Valery out once more saying he doesn’t need him anymore. Entitled and arrogant af.

Now it’s Valery’s turn to seethe internally because he’s stuck with this total asshole. 

Aaaaand then we get to the part when I totally flinched in surprise and I was like… “Okayyyyy do they want us to ship them now or what?…”

Because Valery, in a state of panic, finds the courage (or might I say, has the nerve) to call Boris by his first name (back then Soviet people would call each other by both names as a sign of respect). Valery probably mimicked Gorbachev using “Boris” in the previous scene but Boris simply. Won’t. Have it. 

He instantly snaps at the unexpected intimacy and I’m over here fangirling like crazy because who else would snap at terms of endearment and intimacy but a man who’s not used to it - and is probably craving for it. But not from this carrot-headed Nerd. Definitely not from him, he loathes the guy, okay??

Boris exercises his power once more threatening to have the pilot shot if he doesn’t fly over the reactor and for the first time Valery manages to “outrank” him by explaining to the pilot why he’d rather be shot than fly over the reactor. Valery convinces the pilot to disobey Boris - power play at its best. Boris is clearly defeated, maybe he’s never been defeated before.

And this is the first time Boris touches Valery (hopefully not the last).

As the helicopter turns to avoid the reactor Valery trips and almost falls on Boris’ lap. Notice how Boris doesn’t push him away but he rather steadies him and helps him sit. For a man who loathes his partner and is not used to intimacy he’s rather… well-behaved.

Of course the look on his face when the scene ends says it all: “You’ll pay for this, nerd.”

We’re 25 minutes into the episode and we finally see a glint of doubt in Boris’ eyes when Chief Engineer Fomin and the plant’s director Bryukhanov mouth off to Valery, disrespecting him and questioning his expertise and patriotism. For some reason something clicks inside Boris. Maybe he too had dealt with too many people doubting him and treating him like shit in the past. Maybe he feels Valery, for all his obnoxiousness, doesn’t deserve that kind of behaviour. Maybe the proud Head of the Bureau for Fuel and Energy will lose face if his partner is disgraced. Another nanosecond of doubt and he decides to step up. He uses Valery’s observations to talk about the core exploding.

At first I thought “Oh goooood I can’t believe this asshole is ripping off Valery’s observations to act all clever in front of his inferiors. What an asshole.”

But it turns out that he’s siding with Valery and starts to trust his judgement and expertise. Maybe because, for all his lack of formal education, he’s too clever to not know suck ups, cowards and liars when he sees them.

Next he challenges the two men to prove Valery wrong. Perhaps he does want to prove Valery wrong and ridicule him. Or perhaps he’s rooting for him already.

When Valery pushes him to evacuate Pripyat, Boris snaps again. He’s not here to follow the Nerd’s orders.

But the very next minute Boris walks away with the promise to get Valery as much boron and sand as he needs to put out the fire, like a king eager to impress his betrothed. “I’m going to get YOU.”

As soon as Boris leaves, General Pikalov is quick to offer Valery some help.

Because they both know they have long days and long nights ahead of them.

I will come back to the subject of the hotel in my next post. There’s another fanfiction trope right there, two unlikely partners forced to stay in the same hotel (or hotel room if you want your imagination to run wild). YESSSS.

Cut to the hotel room. An exhausted Valery massages his own neck (oh baby I’m sure you would like someone else to massage it for you.)

Boris enters his room (*their* room..?) without knocking - apparently someone doesn’t feel the need to lock his door. 

Boris is happy to announce they’ve been successful at dropping sand and boron into the reactor but Valery doesn’t share his cheerfulness.

AND THIS IS WHEN BORIS STARTS CARING ABOUT VALERY’S OPINION AND FEELINGS. The “what?” cliche when someone is not reacting while his friend/lover is begging for a response. Because. Boris. Needs. Valery’s. Approval. That’s why.

Valery insists that the city should be evacuated and Boris reassures him that they’re staying there “so it must be safe.”

But the way he utters those words in a hoarse whisper, shaking his head confidently, is almost like he’s saying “I’m glad we are staying here. Together.”

When Valery gets carried away and slaps Boris in the face with the horrible truth, Boris loses the ground beneath him.

But he doesn’t look just shocked. He looks hurt. Hurt that Valery didn’t sweeten the pill for him. 

Valery instantly regrets his bluntness and takes a step towards Boris as if to comfort a helpless child. Or a very good friend. But he can’t really hug him, shush him and tell him everything is going to be okay, can he? So he takes a step back.

“I’m sorry”…? What?? You just met the guy and you hate him and he hates you! Get a grip!!!

Boris feels so horrible that it takes him ages to pick up the phone.

When they join Gorbachev’s committee again to brief him on the crisis Boris seems totally lost, a fact that doesn’t go unnoticed by Valery who stares at him, concerned.

When Boris finally comes to terms with his own mortality he steps up once more, taking control of the situation. Valery fails to convince the workers to go to the basement and open the valves and that moment…  I just knew it was Boris’ turn for a glorious inspirational speech. And boy, does he deliver. Best, most laconic, most convincing inspirational speech I’ve ever seen. He appeals to the workers’ patriotism and self-sacrifice and he succeeds. So he’s not educated and he’s not as clever as a scientist but his true talent shines here, that of leadership. Inspiring people to do the right thing, like a true general. They’re at war and Boris knows he’s the man for the job. 

And now it’s Valery’s turn to look at him in utter awe.

“That’s him. That’s my guy.”

And I haven’t even talked about episode 3 yet. 

Oh god, ep 3, I mean…

[dgalerab]

Since you have been moving a lot in your life, I've been wondering if you have ever had any problems considering school? Since many schools don't like to accept """foreigners"""

oh boy have i

i’ve actually been homeschooled a lot partly because of this. in my experience (possibly because i’m white?) the problems were mostly bureaucratic but an incomplete list of things that i’ve been through because of schools not wanting to deal with other systems:

hungarian school would not accept my report cards from grades 1-3 because they weren’t stamped. there is no stamp for american report cards. we ended up going in to see some random american official and they hunted down A Stamp they could use. it meant nothing, but the hungarians were pleased

still wouldn’t accept that i had completed school for grade 4 because i was homeschooled? i think? i don’t remember. i studied all summer to complete tests out of hungarian material even though i’d been in america at the time, i passed everything with good grades and then the principal refused to sign off on it because she was so mad i’d gotten better grades than her daughter (who, i might add, i had been friends with since we were 3)

hungary has still not technically acknowledged my grade school education. my grandmother used to mention this as a failure of my mother’s. because she’s an asshole

uhhhhhhhh i completed geometry in six weeks so it was kinda funky on my puerto rican report card and i did precalc on my own so i didn’t have evidence of it so american schools decided i should test out of both

the testing system was still experimental and after a while i started realizing that it was grading incorrectly so on paper i kept a record of my answers and the things the system told me were the correct answers and explained that it was marking wrong on the basis of significant figures and such without specifying the form of answer it wanted. i was told to keep going and they’d sort it out once i finished. 

ALSO as part of this i realized that they were in fact giving me ALL the quizzes for all of those subjects and tried to explain this as well. they told me i should be able to do quizzes if was good enough to complete the course. i said yes, but there’s almost 100 quizzes between the two. they expressed concern about how long i was taking

the people administering these tests were not as good as me in math. i say this with all the humility in the world. one of the questions featured a question saying “find the area of the shaded shapes” and since it was in green on a black background i asked whether the green was the shaded area. they told me they weren’t supposed to help me with tests. i told them identifying the color that corresponded to the word “shaded” had nothing to do with mathematical proficiency. they told me to just go back to work

i’m going to be honest with you, this is 100% one of the reasons i pray to thor when things get real bad because that is absolutely what i did and all the computers in the lab blue screened at once. they called in my parents and told them i had been struggling. i showed my mother the list of incorrectly marked answers that were correct and explained that they were expecting me to complete all the coursework in two subjects in a few hours

many things were said but suffice it to say the next day i was enrolled in calculus and had a’s in both subjects in the system

however i was put into spanish one because i only had one semester of spanish credit. they did not care that this was spanish literature in a spanish speaking school. it was counted as spanish 1b and that was that.

hungarian college applications come with a point score. back in 10th grade we asked what american tests they accepted. they said act, sat, and ap. i did all 3. however, hungarian end of year exams have a percentage that goes into the point score. those 3 do not. we submitted the tests, i got a 0 point score and 40 extra points for english, because i had no percentages

many things were said, again

yeah it’s been fun

[trainwiz]

Do you have an overview of the races in Underspace?

The four main races (what we call the Union races, those that belong to the spanning and often borderline imperial collection we call the Intercelestial Union Of Commonly Aligned Sentient Entities. Or, for the sake of sanity, the Union).

That’s the Ijuni, lobsterfolk who all have a telepathic link to one another, which in practice and application acts more like a bunch of people screaming at once, with no ways to send specific messages and thus ending up more like a public forum or tradeboard. This makes Ijuni skilled merchants and navalmen, which is good because most Ijuni are all about making dat $$$, the practice and guidelines for doing so forming a pseudo-religious philosophy called Hiano. They also all have scottish accents for no reason.

Then the Ballden, a race of hiveminds, which is to say that every Ballden is compromised of thousands upon thousands of individual normal-sized entities they call Cells. Once Ballden reach maturity they’re loaded onto massive sleeper ships and frozen in pods that let them nevertheless interact with normal races, and Ballden consider their ships to be themselves. They’re the best when it comes to terraforming planets and building megaconstructions, while their society is mostly a religious theocracy based around the worship of the sentient suns they claim created them. Which said sentient suns did, so hey, there’s that.

There’s the Vauldwin, who look humanoid but in practice are closer to jellyfish or carnival balloons in terms of genetics, whose courtship and reproductive rituals are stupidly complicated due to them having over 50 different sexes with each sex only having one rigid defined matching set. The sheer difficulty in keeping their civillization going leads most Vauldwin to prioritize family and lineage above all else, and most Vauldwin prefer to be bureaucrats , diplomats, and producers of cultural goods and entertainment. Their society is ruled over by specific families and houses, whose leadership and allegiance is fairly loosely defined.

The final and newest Union race are the Macrovari, a race of sapient, hyperintelligent single-celled organisms who at most are about a picometer across. Macrovari are skilled craftsmen and generally prodigies at anything they apply themselves too, which is severely hampered by the fact that Macrovari that are near each fly into a homicidal rage, and their society only achieved space travel due to one of them being blown far enough away from the core group to develop radio technology. Macrovari society is a loose collection of assholes all vying for recognition, and what little leadership exists is mostly meant to keep them from starting a civil war and guiding them towards common interests. Most Macrovari like and enjoy the company of other races though, and pilot massive many-armed pods to interact with the larger world (so to speak).

There’s a smattering of non-Union races, who haven’t joined for one reason or another, these are

The Veilers, terrifying nine-foot tall beings clad head to toe (presumably they have toes that is, nobody’s ever seen them outside of) powered armor that makes Chaos Marine armor look reasonable and tasteful by comparison. Terrifying to behold, the Veilers occupy a region of space called, what else, the Veil. This area of space is so underspatially active that no other race can settle or even survive very long in it, and the mystery of how the Veilers do so is not known. Despite looking and sounding like the scariest damn things, Veilers are quite open to working with the Union, and run a toll route through the Veil, the only known way to pass through it, which has made them a very rich race. Little is known past this about the Veilers, less because they’re mysterious and generally because they have no real culture, their location and rise to power meaning that they’ve prioritized survival among all else. Their recent fortune has made them start to understand that there are other needs they have than just trying to not die.

The Ast, originally encountered by the Union and mistaken for rogue AI, the Union subsequently firebombed their homeworld before realizing their mistake and are now trying to make amends, which pisses the Ast off. However, the Ast are always angry. Despite being a race of silicate entities that resemble graceful, even beautiful crystals, this image is soon shattered by their foul disposition and fouler language, and the Ast claim, in complete seriousness, that they only have two emotions: anger and RIGHTEOUS ANGER. Ast themselves simply form out of the ground fully aware and intelligent, which leads their society to be a strange thing, and the culture that surprisingly exists is one of deep community and emphasizing the importance of choice. While the Ast remain angry, they nevertheless have accepted an alliance with the Union, mostly contributing resources to help against hyperspatial storms, which the Ast are noted to hate with a passion peculiar even to them.

and the Us, who pronounce the name like “Oos”. A race of sapient fungi, whose life cycle including reproduction and just being self-aware requires them to infest and take control of corpses, which still decompose, leading them to constantly need a fresh supply of bodies simply to live. The Us are a peaceful, contemplative race, but the sheer creepiness of their existence leads them to be outcasts, though the Us have declined to join the Union of their own volition. Most Us are found running the Deadstations, part-funeral-home, part neutral territory where any faction is allowed to stay, which makes means that at least most factions in practice tolerate them. Us are nonviolent, but little is known about them, as most people choose not to inquire too much about the existence of the Us.

[otterskin]

I wouldn’t say Odin wouldn’t be cruel to him… I mean this felt pretty cruel to me:

Odin: Your birthright was to die as a child. Cast out onto a frozen rock. If I had not taken you in you would not be here now to hate me.

Overall, Loki’s family too, in different ways, said/did some mean things to him.

Man, I wrote a whooole thing about that, but yeah, that was a bit cruel, but I'd argue that in his mind, it was cruelty with the end goal of kindness (if also tainted by Odin's resentment at being rejected). It was a calculated action to try and shock Loki into A) Recognizing he wasn't owed better than everyone else, like he did to Thor and B) getting him on speaking terms with Frigga again while Odin cast himself as Loki's main antagonist. Which did work since Loki abandoned his attempts to push Frigga away after that confrontation and started speaking with her more honestly. It wasn't the best course of action he could have taken, but I understand why Odin felt he had to take it, especially since his attempts at a kinder approach failed so miserably in Thor 1 and he's got responsibilities as King and All-Father beyond that (plus the whole sick, dying and stressed thing). At the end of the day, that scene of Loki and Odin had two very similar people fronting in very similar ways, each pretending apathy and putting on the guise of an unrepentant ruler - setting things up for the end where Loki literally puts on the guise of Odin. They've always been reflections of each other.

When Mobius is cruel, it's for the purpose of honing Loki into a tool he can use as an arm of the TVA, and not for Loki's benefit in the slightest. He doesn't have a personal stake in Loki other than having studied him, unlike Odin. He's a trickster like Loki and Odin both, and has many similarities to both, but, as you say, he lets him vent - although I disagree that he didn't antagonize him in Episode 1, he absolutely did, by bringing up Frigga's death, by telling him he was a 'little pussy cat' compared to other big bad variants, that sort of thing.

However...

Episode 4 ruined everything.

Loki: You betrayed me!

Mobius: You betrayed me!

Loki: Grow up!

Mobius: You grow up. You know, it occurred to me that you're not really the God of Mischief.

Loki: Oh, here it comes. The folksy, dopey insult from the folksy dope. What am I? The God of Self-Sabotage, yeah? The God of Back-Stabbing?

Mobius: Just kind of an asshole and a bad friend. Yeah, chew on that for a little bit.

This is not calm and warm and level, without judgement and with compassion. Mobius is angry because he felt betrayed, he’s judgemental and has no compassion as he doesn’t even asks for Loki’s reasons first but just has Sif beaten him and telling him hurting words. And okay, maybe the idea is he’s having compassion because he’s not immediately pruning him but… and Loki is not even the one who teaches him he’s a Variant, he’s merely the first who says so, in order to believe it Mobius has to go and see C-20’s video.

Like Odin, he gets upset when he perceives Loki doubting his friendship. With Odin it makes more sense - Odin has constructed a large part of his self-image, particularly the nicer bits of it, on his conception of being Loki's father. With Mobius it makes way less sense. He's not Loki's father, hasn't known him personally for a thousand years, hasn't even known him for more than half a case. I understand why he doesn't believe Loki right away and goes to confirm everything for himself (I really liked those scenes, got to see more of the bureaucratic trickster at work when he stole the time-pad) - because obviously he's not really had time to build a friendship with Loki. He's never even really been himself with Loki, it's all been airs and manipulation. He turns to Sif's violence to subjugate Loki to manipulate him again, as punishment for 'betraying their partnership', which is...odd, because again, Mobius has had no time to build a relationship with Loki.

Yeah, they rushed the hell out of that.

A part of me justifies Loki's side of the relationship by thinking that Loki is extending the forgiveness to Mobius that he wishes he could extend to Thor, Odin and Frigga - he knows Mobius did him wrong, as did his family, but he can't reach them. Mobius already acts in a way that is meant to invoke Odin, although a far harsher, crueller, and more manipulative version of him than was true in the canon. I totally get Loki's mind drawing the line. He even says that he recognizes that Mobius isn't a very good man but that doesn't matter to him (which I totally get and makes sense for Loki).

But Mobius feeling that way about Loki? I dunno. At least it's Loki initiating the hug with Mobius.

As for Verity...the thing about Verity is that she's written as a great foil to Loki, one who I think absolutely could have worked in live-action. She's deadpan where Loki is OTT dramatic, she's realistic where he's fantastic, she's calm and collected where he's agitated, but she can also be funny in her own unique way, has her own story and relationship with the truth that's different than Loki's constantly restated and recreated narratives, and is generally just great in the bandinage department, bringing a flavour that Thor doesn't but that works in a similar way. I have a LOT of problems with the Agent of Asgard comics (as I do with all Thor comics), but she was never one of them. Such a highlight. She absolutely can go on to show up in other people's stories and still be a compelling individual, too.

Sylvie is not a good foil. She doesn't bring out anything new in Loki, doesn't compliment him, doesn't even really need him. They aren't interesting screen partners at all. Mostly because Sylvie herself isn't interesting. Verity Willis is so much more defined, and Loki contrasts against her so much better. Sylvie is just...well, as you said. Just sort of an angry action girl.

While I appreciate they didn't adapt the highly problematic Enchantress, they've found whole new problematic stuff to do with Sylvie that was a totally unforced error.

I don't need Loki to have nice friends who are nice to him. I actually really like the idea of a friend who's a manipulative bastard Loki's not really sure is a friend but that he treats like one anyway because it's the best he can manage right now. If that's how the narrative played it. But like you said, it seems to want to present Mobius as just so good for Loki, and Sylvie as fixing his problems with self-hate because now he loves himself, see? And that's not at all what we got nor a good message.

While I've no hopes for a Season 2 fixing any of this (I think we're going to have to ride this out like we did Thor 2), I do hope, like you do, that we build out of these ashes because there are some great ideas. I want more of Mobius being an awesome low-key bureaucratic trickster. I want more of Sylvie figuring out what she is and what she wants and being funny and weird as her backstory should have allowed her. But forcing these relationships to be happy-happy and things that FIX Loki is unhelpful and, I daresay it, unhealthy. Because relationships with others can help us help ourselves, but they should never be what 'fixes' us. And that's what they're trying to do.

I suppose I can't really turn to fanfic to fix my issues, either. Because I'll admit it, sometimes fandom gets too far into its own head about things as well. I can't stand it when fanfic flanderizes Thor, Odin, Frigga, etc. I don't enjoy seeing those characters made into something they're not. Like - too often Odin is portrayed as abusive, violent maniac in fanfic, or Thor as an idiotic golden retriever, or Frigga as a boring saint who can do no wrong. All of which are NOT the canon, and lack the subtleties I loved in the films. (Particularly poor Odin. There's a character this fandom needs to re-evaluate, because the toxicity and misrepresentation when it comes to that wonderfully nuanced character is suffocating). Having to dig through all of that is honestly exhausting and I don't enjoy doing it anymore.

I have found a few fanfic that do me good, but at the end of the day, the fandom feels fractured. I get attacked for my opinions and told I'm a terrible person for having them.

Honestly, I think I'm probably gonna withdraw for awhile.

MCU Loki Ep 6 “For All Time. Always.” intensive analysis

So that’s the end. No, actually it’s nota s there will be a second series so basically this episode too follows the same trend the other episodes followed, it ends on a cliff-hanger.

Keep reading

[keywestlou]

GENDER EQUALITY MEANS BOYS WEAR SKIRTS AS PART OF SCHOOL GENDER EQUALITY PROGRAM

In today’s modern world, gender equality has a tendency to go a step too far. Sometimes, a mile too far!

An example of political correctness gone mad is what is occurring at a school in Lewes, England.

Last week, 100 female students protested at the gate to their school. The gate was locked barring their entry. Police were in attendance.

The school sought gender equality. Voted the school uniform would require boys and girls to wear pants. No skirts for the girls.

The girls said no way. They would would not attend school unless they could wear skirts. The line was drawn in the sand. As of today, no solution as yet.

Parents support their daughters.

The school insists it is doing what is right. “Gender neutral” addresses “inequality” and “inclusiveness.”

I see the problem a simple one. The girls are being punished in effect because – shock, horror – they want to continue wearing skirts. Let them continue wearing them. Females were wearing skirts before the birth of Christ. Men wearing skirts back then also.

Suppose in support of “gender neutrality,” the boys wanted the right to wear skirts. All hell would break loose at the administration’s end!

One parent suggested that a gender neutral uniform program would allow boys and girls to wear skirts, and both to wear trousers.

Too much for me to handle.

I have more than normal diverse topics today. Difficult to place them in any sort of order. Ergo, from this point forward I am presenting as if this were a Morning Stew blog. Laying them out as they appear in my notes!

A noon brunch at Harpoon Harry’s yesterday. Amazing the business the place does. Seems to have been in its location forever. Fifties style layout. Food good. Prices reasonable.

Even though Key West is still out of season, the place was packed. People required to wait for seating.

Relished my eggs benedict and hash browns.

A Comment to yesterday’s blog read: “The not-so-sharpie, with the sharpie.” An obvious reference to Trump.

A relatively new term gaining in popularity: Media disinformation. Means we ain’t getting the truth!

An example is Venezuela. The U.S. and the U.N.’s involvement in a devious representation.

The information came to my attention in an article published by Voltaire Network on 9/6/19. The thrust of the article was to evidence how Venezuelans had been misled when told they had no future in their home land. Additionally, it was reported Maduro was inept and illegitimate as President.

Note Voltaire claims such based on the U.S. and U.N. working in cahoots.

The article also explored the theory of “migrants as weapons of war.”

The facts.

In August 2018, the international press reported a mass exodus of Venezuelans who were fleeing the famine and chauvinist dictatorship of Nicholas Maduro. The claim was that 18,000 persons a day were fleeing Venezuela.

The U.N. predicted 5.3 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees would leave Venezuela and would be required to live in Latin America. A major crisis.

Actually, no crisis. Voltaire claims the figures were pure propaganda. Nowhere near the predicted number left. Many who did, returned.

The campaign of “media disinformation” seeking to destabilize Venezuela was in error.

This one is a bit over my head. I do not know if Voltaire is correct. I share the article however because if it was, it is cause for significant worry. Migrants being used as weapons of war. Orally and in print, without military weapons.

Trump is playing the game.

Trump keeps expanding the tariff war with China. Trump hits China with an increase, China hits back. The way of the world.

My concern continues to be an all out military conflict. One with the nation considered the second strongest in the world. I wonder whether it is #1.

China’s military has grown in the past 7 years. and continues to grow. China announced last week that it had entered into the mass production of stealth fighters. Chengdu J-20. At the moment, China has 13 in service.

Came across a new word. Hard to spell, hard to pronounce. Schadenfreude. Belongs in a spelling bee contest. Means to derive pleasure from the misfortune of another person.

Trump?

What I am about to share I can only describe as Washington behaving like assholes. Sorry for language. However, it fits.

The Bahamas were hit big by Dorian. A category 5. Things so bad, it will take years for the Bahamas to be totally rebuilt.

Many Bahamians are leaving the Bahamas for the U.S. A mere 50 mile trip.

We should be welcoming them with open arms.

Those leaving were told all they needed was a Bahamian passport and a clean police record.

After getting on the boat and before it departed, it was announced over the public address system that a visa was required also. Those without should get off the boat.

Many did not have visas. Were required to leave the boat.

The U.S. law involved reads: “All persons must possess valid identity and travel documents.”

Another tidbit involved. Turns out a different set of rules apply whether a person flies into the U.S. or arrives by boat. Rules by boat more stringent.

Some of those left behind will probably die. Merely because some bureaucratic idiot in Washington failed to get the visa rule waived. There are no rules requiring adherence in an emergency situation such as confronts the people of the Bahamas.

It has been 6 weeks since my  pancreatitis attack. I spend more evenings at home than out. Drinking the reason. I am off alcohol. The major cause of pancreatitis.

Key West a drinking town. Everyone in the bars at night.

I go much less now. Actually, rarely. As most know, if everyone else is drinking and you are not, it’s tough! No fun.

I have been spending much more time at home. Not bad. Could be better. My evenings are spent writing. Perhaps I will get another book out. Maybe the Italian one.

Here I share that I remain home most evenings, and now I will tell you how I will be out tonight.

Donna is in Detroit. Terri alone. My date tonight. We are attending Aqua’s Dueling Bartenders and then having dinner at Antonia’s.

I look forward to it. Terri good company. Will see others I have not in a while. The not drinking will bother me. I kid you not. Even watching what some will eat at Antonia’s. I am off fats. Someone nearby will be enjoying a steak or lamb chops.

I am paying for my sins!

Enjoy your day!

  GENDER EQUALITY MEANS BOYS WEAR SKIRTS AS PART OF SCHOOL GENDER EQUALITY PROGRAM was originally published on Key West Lou

[comics-mostly]

the war - a short story (written 06/21/2016)

Day 54

I’m smiling while I hold a picture of her. It just got here last week and I can’t stop myself from looking at it.. at her. She’s so beautiful. The picture almost perfectly encapsulates everything that I love about her; her perfect smile, her beautiful eyes, her long hair, which seems to have gotten even longer in my absence, and her belly.. growing ever rounder with our child.

She says she doesn’t want to know the babies sex. I’m fine with that. As long as we know that she’ll, or rather it’ll, be healthy. I’m always calling it a “she.” It’s not that I necessarily have a preference of boy or girl, but there’s just something in me that’s sure that it’ll be a she. I rub my thumb over her belly in the picture, and in my head imagine I can feel the baby kicking.

God, I wish I was there. With her. With them. I miss her more every day. I used to be able to talk to her almost daily, but now I’m lucky if I can get five minutes a week. The new base I’ve been relocated to is in the middle of a dead spot. Receptions so shitty that the calls are constantly dropping. Same goes for Internet chats, which at this point I’ve pretty much all but given up hope on. I’m hoping to get moved again soon, but even if it was tomorrow it wouldn’t be soon enough.

I close my eyes for a moment and try to imagine I’m there with her. That I’m back in our apartment, sitting on the couch watching Dancing with the Stars. I’ve never been a fan of the show but she loves it and I could never say no to her, I never want to. I love the way she lays on me while we watch the show. How every five minutes or so, like clockwork, she looks up at me, making sure I’m still attentively watching the show. How, during the commercials, she kisses me and tell me she loves me. I can almost taste her strawberry lip gloss now. Almost.  

“That your lady?” he asks.

His question rips me from my fantasy and I’m back, in the desert, trudging through ankle high sand. I look over my shoulder and he’s there, standing over me staring attentively at my wife.

“Yeah.” I make sure to convey my annoyance when I answer him.

The man’s name is Chuck, and he’s an asshole. I’ve had, maybe six or seven conversations with the man, and each of them has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn’t just the fact that he was a blatantly narrow-minded, racist, prick that made me detest him so much. It was the fact that he knew he was, and didn’t give enough of a damn to change it.

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, hated the man, and he knew it, but he just didn’t seem to care. At times it almost seemed as though he liked it, the confrontations he had with the other soldiers. Like it was some sort of game of “how many people can I piss off today?” and he was aiming to beat his record, daily.

It recently become common knowledge that he’d be leaving the base and heading back stateside. The soldiers in our platoon plan on throwing a party the day after, to celebrate his departure. I suppose it only makes sense that I, whose never been partnered with him for scouting duties, would be paired with him today. His last day. Lucky me.

“She’s, uh, she’s real pretty,” he says in his thick, Southern drawl. I turn to him, shocked. It was the first kind thing I’d ever heard him say. Perhaps the fact that he was leaving had him in a good mood.  

“Thanks,” I reply.

“Yeah, yeah. I normally wouldn’t go for a Chink but she ain’t half bad.”

There we go. That’s the Chuck I know. The racist son of bitch who was always one step from catching a fist to the face. I could hit him, it’s not as though I’d be the first. He’s gotten into physical altercations with almost every single person in the platoon. Even Victoria swung at him after he made a comment about her son being gay. But I’m not one to fight another man, sticks and stones or however the saying goes.

Today’s his last day, I tell myself a few times while taking a couple of deep breathes. That helps calm me down.

“I used to have a picture just like that of my lady.” His voice lingers at the end of the sentence. If I had to guess, I would say he wants me to comment on what he said, but truthfully, I don’t give a damn about him, his lady, or anything else concerning him. We continue walking in silence for a moment when he continues, “But that was before she died.”

Damnit. I may not like this guy, I may find him utterly detestable, but even I have sympathy for something like that.

“Uhm,” I clear my throat, “what happened?”

“Hmm?” he looks surprised that I bothered to ask, “she was killed a few years back.”

“Ah, she was a soldier too?” I ask.

“No,” he stops and pulls out his canteen and takes a sip of water, “she was killed back in the states.”

“Back in the states?” his statement catches me off-guard, “you’re saying she was murdered?”

“Huh, it’s funny you say that,” he chuckles, “is it not murder if she had died over here?”

“Well, I, uh,” I pause, unsure of how to answer the question.

“I’m just saying it’s interestin’, innit? Nobody says you got murdered when you die on the battle field. Just a casualty of war. Ya got killed, not murdered,” his smile fades, “but yeah, murdered. She was murdered.”

He starts walking again and I follow slightly behind him. I want to ask him what happened, but I don’t want it to appear as though I’m prying. While he was the one to bring it up, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he wants to discuss it. I can imagine just the thought of it must hurt him. But, on the other hand, it could be his attempt at trying to get something off his chest.

I decide to speak, “do you want to talk about what happened?”

He slows down enough so that we’re now walking side by side and says, with a smile, “tryin’ to get the low down on ol’ Chuck so you can run and tell everyone all my deep dark secrets, eh?”

“It’s not like that,” my voice is stern, “you brought it up, so I just figured that you might want to talk about it. But if not-”

“I did, didn’t I?” he looks forward again, “I guess I’m just gettin’ nostalgic is all, since I’m heading back tomorrow. They tell me I won’t be able to do any more tours, so once I’m stateside, that’s it for me.”

That actually made a lot of sense. Chuck was older than any soldier at the base, and, now that I think about it, he was even older than some of the Captains. This was his seventh tour, which was unheard of. Most soldiers took one of three routes, they either gave it up, got promoted, or died in the line of duty.

I had heard rumors that Chuck had been offered promotions, but every time they made an offer he would reject it; that his reasoning for it was that he just loved being on the frontline. Seven tours. This was my first and I’m all but ready to pack it up and head home.

“Why would you want to do any more tours?” I ask.

“Why?” he seems baffled by my question, “why the hell not?”

“It’s just, there are other ways to serve your country. You could move up in rank. I know you’ve been offered it before.”

“Not my thing. I’m not about politics and all that bureaucratic bullshit. Just give me a gun and tell me where to point it. That good enough for me.” How ridiculously simple minded. But, it doesn’t surprise me that he thinks like that, “It’s all I know. Hell, it’s all I’ve got at this point.”

“You don’t have anyone waiting for you back home? No one?”

“I never had no one to begin with, kid,” his voice is somber, “all I had was her, and even that was taken away from me.”

I decide to come right out and ask, “what happened?”

He turns to me and looks me in the eye. His gaze is intense, and it feels like he’s staring deep within my soul, as if trying to verify my motives for asking. After a moment he gives me a slight nod and turns forward again, “it happened seven years ago yesterday,” he pauses and wipes sweat from his forehead, “she was just going to get some money out of the ATM after work.

Ya see, she worked late. Always taking overtime whenever she could. Hard worker. Just one of the things I loved about ‘er,” he smiles slightly, and I can’t help but recognize it; it’s the same smile I have when I think about my wife, “well, anyway she stopped by the ATM and got the money out when they came for. Coupla God-Damn niggers,” he pauses and looks at me, “no offense.”

It’s not as though I’ve never heard the word before, or let alone been called it; I won’t say I’m used to it, but in his case, just for today, I’m willing it let it slide with him.

“None taken,” I reply.

“Oh, okay,” he continues with his story, “well, where was I?”

“The ATM.”

“Oh, yeah. After work, at the ATM,” he continued with the story, telling me how the two men came from behind and held a gun to her, forcing her to take out all of the money from her bank account; how they then proceeded to grab her and take her in their van; how they took her to a deserted place in the city and each took turns raping and beating her until she died from blunt force trauma; how she was found in a garbage container the following day by a homeless man; how he heard the news of his wife’s death while he was stationed here, and had to wait two weeks, due to bad weather in the area, before he could even go home to attend her funeral. At one point it seemed like he was about to cry, but he held it together as he continued to tell me how, once he returned and spoke to the police he found out that the eyewitness who reported the crime did not see their faces; how the police were left with no choice other than stop searching for the suspects; and, about how it was the medical officer who told him that she was pregnant with, what would have been, their first child. It was at that point that his voice broke and I was sure that, if he continued, he would most definitely break down.

I reach out my hand and place it on his shoulder, “I’m so sorry, Chuck.”

“It’s,” he clears his throat, “it’s alright. I’m fine.”

I want to tell him that it’s okay to let it out, here while we’re alone, away from the others. That I’m not going to judge him for that. I can’t even see how he’s able to keep it together as well as he does. I don’t think I’d be able to, if roles were reversed. I think of my wife, and how much she means to me. What would I do if I lost her? Lost them? How could I possibly go on living? How does he go on living?

“Look I know I’m an asshole,” he says, “I cuss a lot, I’m vulgar, I can be racist and belligerent. I understand that fully. It’s not like I suddenly became this way once I lost ‘er.. once I lost them. It was just.. Well, she accepted me for who I was. Bad and all. She was like the sun to me, ya know? She was light. I loved her more than I loved myself.”

“I understand. I mean, I don’t understand what you went through but I.. I just, I get what you’re saying.” I don’t know what else to say to him that could possibly ease the pain. I’m sure there’s nothing.

“Trippy shit is, ya know, I was over here fighting for the damn people in my country, and those same damn people were fighting against me. I fight for their, whaddya callit, inalienable rights? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right?” I nod to confirm, “yeah, and those bastards went and shitted all on it. Took her life, fucked up our liberties, and took away the only happiness I ever had. But yet and still, here I am, fighting for good ol’ America. Shit, not everybody’s bad. There’s good people,” he turns to me and smiles, “people like you, and that wife of yours. I’m sure ya’ll are good people. And I hope to Heaven you make it back to her.”

I open my mouth to respond when I feel his hand push into my chest, and I fall down towards the sand. In the same instant I see him quickly bring his assault rifle to arms and aim out into the distance.

Just as I hit the ground I turn my head and, a few clicks away, I see four armed men aiming their guns toward us.

Bullets fire from both sides.

As I’ve been taught, I keep my eyes on the enemy. I get to one knee and aim my rifle. I fire, shooting in short bursts to maintain my accuracy on the targets. One goes down, then another. I feel something rip into my left arm. It burns, but I don’t lose my focus. Pain means I’m still alive, and if I’m still alive then I’ve got to keep fighting to keep it that way.

Another one drops, this time from Chuck’s gun. I take aim at the last one and fire. The bullet rips through his skull as he falls to the ground.

All dead. I let out a sigh of relief, and then realize that I’m out of breath. It dawns on me that for the entirety of the conflict I was holding my breathe. I take a look at my arm and see that I’m bleeding, but it’s definitely not going to kill me.

I find myself laughing, glad to be alive. I turn to Chuck and am about to speak when I see that he’s not standing.

“No,” I frantically push off the ground and run towards him, “no, no, no!”

He’s lying on the ground, staring at his bloody hand, as blood gushes out of a wound in his neck.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I quickly bend down next to him and place my hand on the wound. I feel the blood pumping out of him and I realize that this is going to be ineffective. I yell, “hang in there, man! Hang in there!”  I wiggle my pack off of my shoulder and use my free hand to grab gauze. I take as much as I can, ball it up in my hand, and place it on the wound on his neck. The white gauze almost instantly turns sticky with crimson, red.

I reach to grab another spool when I feel his hand on my arm. I quickly turn back around to look at him and see him shaking his head no.

“What?” I ask, frantically. He tries to speak, but the blood in his mouth makes it difficult to understand him, “I can’t understand you Chuck. But it’s going to be okay. I’m going to get you help.”

Help. Yes. How could I forget? I reach for my walkie and radio in, “Soldier Down. Need assistance. East Wall. Repeat. East Wall. Need assistance. Soldier Down.” I turn back to him, “you’re going to make it, man. I promise you that you’ll-”

“No.” I’m able to make out the word this time.

“Yes. You will. I promise you.”

“Let me,” he coughs up blood, “die.”

A wave of ice flows through me as I realize what he’s asking me to do. He wants me to let him die.

“No!” I snap, “you’re not going to die here! That’s not happening! There’s no fucking way you’re going to die here!”

Tears swell in his eyes as he stares intently into mine and says, “Please,” he places his hand on mine, and with what little strength he has left, attempts to push it away from his neck. I keep it promptly attached, all the time staring into his eyes.

“Why? Why do you want to die? You have so much to live-” I stop midsentence and think about what I was about to say. You have so much to live for. But, does he? It’s something that people say; something you tell someone when they’re in a bad place, when things seem bleak. But with Chuck, was there really anything he had left to live for? Could it be that, perhaps, letting him die here, in this desert that he’d spent the last 10 years of his life serving in, be the best thing? He said it himself that he has nothing to go back to, and now, here he is, using what little strength he has to move my hand so that he can die.

Chuck, still looking into my eyes, sees that I understand what he wants. He grabs my hand and pushes it once more. I don’t fight it. I watch him give me another smile as the blood continues to spurt from the side of his neck. He then turns from me, and looks towards the sky. I wonder what he’s thinking about now. I wonder if it’s right, what I’m doing; letting him go like this. I want to reach back and put my hand on his neck, but stop myself. Would I really be doing it for him, or would I be doing it so I don’t have to watch him die?

While I’m debating, it happens. The blood stops, as does his heart, and he dies.

In the distance I can hear fellow soldiers approaching to provide medical assistance. It’s too late now, though. He’s gone.  

I keep my eyes on him, engraving this into my memory forever. The memory of a true solider; loyal to his country to the very end.

Goodbye, Chuck. I swear that I’ll never forget you.  

Updated 07/16/2016

[drjudycmorelockstuff]

Academic Corruption And Hypocrisy

Academia in America has increasingly abandoned the hallowed goals of facilitating intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, the pursuit of knowledge, and a life-long love of learning. Instead universities have become regimented, data-oriented, dictatorial institutions mass producing students to fit into the corporate world. This system is maintained by egotistical, authoritarian administrators, and senior faculty who stroke each others’ sense of intellectual and authoritative superiority while derogating lower status employees. As long as you stay in your place according to the established hierarchy, you will fit into this rigid system of inequality and indoctrination and become an serviceable player in perpetuating it. However, if you fail to adhere rigidly to the demands of your assigned status/role configuration, the self-aggrandized academics who are already entrenched into this corrupt system will take any action necessary to remove you from it.They will make your life a living hell and smile smile benignly and self-righteously while doing so. Furthermore, they will denigrate you as a way of justifying their unconscionable actions. Within the last 16 months, I've read about at least a dozen nationwide cases of non-tenure track lecturers being fired for minor offenses for which tenured faculty would never have been terminated, and in most of these cases, the dismissed individuals were negatively depicted in the mainstream media and on social media. The blatantly unequal and cavalier treatment of powerless lecturers in these cases is deplorable.

Universities have become the quintessential hierarchical bureaucratic organizations which administrators must protect at all cost, including treating employees like disposable commodities and punishing or terminating staff and faculty who dissent from the established "rules". Like all bureaucracies, academia is often a cold, callous system that claims to support academic freedom and justice, but commonly practices the antithesis of these values. One could say academics often epitomize hypocrisy. Nontenured faculty never know when they may be terminated, and department heads don't even have to give a reason. It could simply be because the head doesn't like a specific individual. One mistake or oversight can end a lecturer’s career without due process, regardless of how competently she or he has executed the duties and responsibilities elucidated in the faculty handbook. While the tenure system continues to function in most colleges and universities, administrators are ensuring that it’s more difficult to attain tenure and are instituting procedures to make it somewhat tenuous, thus weakening the system. There may be as much corruption in academia as in the corporate world and in the polity, but administrators guard their behavior very carefully and will do almost anything to preserve a carefully crafted public image and solidify their own positions of power.  When I was younger in my naivete, I once thought cerebral, well-educated people in higher education wouldn't be like the the unscrupulous, uncaring, power-hungry heads of corporations, banks, and government agencies, but unfortunately some of them proved to be even worse. Not only do they behave as unconscionably as CEOS and government officials drunk with power, they hide their perfidy and dishonesty behind a carefully crafted facade intended for for public consumption. Many politicians and corporatists don't bother to hide their true colors. For example, remember when the CEO of Nestle said access to drinking water isn't a human right and bankers openly drank champagne and laughed at protesters in the Occupy Movement. They're heartless assholes and don't give a damn who knows it. Academic power moguls present a style of magnanimity and fairness, while underneath, their contempt for the powerless and their willingness to crush anyone who challenges them are no different than others who hold positions of power. I had unrealistic expectations when I was young because I loved learning and teaching so much. I wanted the environment and social climate of higher education to be more inclusive, compassionate, and egalitarian. It's not. 

[apsbicepstraining]

5 Harsh Truths That Will Make You Less Of A Jerk

Humanity is principally defined by its is no way to seize the obvious. So, let me ask you this TAGEND

What is the most obviously wrong shit that beings feel on a daily basis that — wait for it — you too believe ?

I’m talking about something that you know on an intellectual level is incorrect, but five minutes after being reminded of it, you forget again. If you can’t think about one, well, I gamble I can. And it comes back to burn you in the proverbial ass method more frequently than you think …

# 5. We Are Privately Sure Everyone Feels The Same Pleasure And Pain

When you’re a toddler, you acquire everyone and everything in your world are similar to you. That’s why you used to think your thrust animals get lonely if you didn’t play with them and that your parents would love your cartoons if they would just give them an opportunity. It’s a normal chapter of a kid’s proliferation and as this much smarter guy points out, we never certainly germinate out of it.

I mean, you probably recollect being a boy and hearing an amazing new song that shaped you want to punch-dance through a brick wall … and then you played it for a couple sidekicks and they just got that gross look on their faces. You know, the watch of nervously pretending to enjoy something loathsome? What follows is more awkward three minutes of your life, during which you find yourself going steadily angrier( “Why are they claiming not to like it? ” ). But eventually, you grow up and realize that not everyone likes the same things.

Years afterwards, you get the flu but ability through production anyway, rather than miss season. Then, a co-worker catches it and takes three sick daytimes. You roll your eyes and announce him a pussy, automatically assuming that the two of you two are find exactly the same indications, but that one of you was tougher.

The obvious concept you’ll be missing is that standing is at least as subjective as music. Hell, discipline even is indicated that redheads tend to feel more ache than everyone else, due to a genetic quirk. It appears that it’s the same for women, due to how pain signals are communicated to the girl intelligence. Meanwhile, people from colder parts of the world literally stop feeling the cold the method the rest of us do. Some beings almost never appear fear — not due to firmnes, but due to a collapse of certain types of contacts in the intelligence( they’re called sociopaths ). All of the hotshots that motivate us to haunt specific actions and avoid others actually feel totally different from person to person.

She can snow angel for hours on end, but needs an ER trip and three months of rehab after a snowball engage .

You’ll shrug and say, “Of course, everyone known to be, you turdthinker, ” but five minutes after reading such articles, you’ll act in a way that substantiates you don’t. I’ve had fit acquaintances get annoyed with me when I say I’ve never experienced the “runner’s high” euphoria that comes with hard exercise. They say it’s because I’m not pushing myself hard enough, while science says some people are just physically incapable of appearing it. So, are my friends fit because they’re more dedicated than I am, or do they just enjoy the “high” of employ? They clearly want the former to be true. My thin acquaintances don’t like to admit that there’s a hormone that moves you starving and that some people simply have more of it.

That’s because formerly you accept the idea that it rightfully would feel completely different to live inside another person’s form, everything changes. After all, at what point can you safely accuse person for, well, anything?

# 4. We Don’t Realize The Battle Inside

I know what you’re saying. I ever know. “Oh, so you’re one of those buttholes who say nothing is anybody’s blame, because those poor souls are helpless to refuse their caprices? So, when somebody tortures a child to fatality, we’re supposed to give him a hug and say he couldn’t used to help? Is that it, butthole? You are the hole of a butt.”

No! You altogether are defined by how good of a position you do opposing your pernicious exhorts and overcoming hurting. Maturation is an issue of getting better at it; success is an issue of mastering it. Beating back the urge to procrastinate, to cease, to be lazy … that’s how you reach the top, child! Buy my notebook !

But …

You know that person at the part who’s ever furious? He blew up last month because soul lost an invoice. Last Christmas, he lost his shit because he thought somebody stole his lunch out of the fridge. You check him throw his outbursts and marvel at how immature he is. After all, you get angry, very, but you ensure it! Hell, you’ve had people plagiarize your lunch tons of periods, and you’ve never kicked a trashcan so difficult that it left a dent and realise the secretary cry.

Sure, you’ve fantasized about shitting in the culprit’s yogurt and blaming it on the apprentice, but you’ve never actually done it .

However, here’s the thing: From your outcome, he’s “always” angry. From his culminate, he’s had two blowups spread across several months and, in between those incidents, he successfully resisted the recommend to explode 162 experiences . His anger urges come more frequently than yours, and he experiences them more strongly. For him, every “normal” day is the result of a hard-won duel … but, you merely see when he loses. He find himself as the hero of his own life, battered and bruised by his personal demons. You envision him as a ridiculous manchild who loves to discover himself yell. You detest his unstable, feelings ass.

Or, you witness the space your depressed sidekick goes residence from operate and immediately clangs on the sofa, refusing to go out or do anything recreation. You dislike the acces she merely … affords up and refuses to even talking here it. Invisible to you is the merciless attempt she exerted precisely to make it through wreak. So, you get annoyed. Or, you find your marriage “feel like i m cheating on” you. You didn’t investigate all of the dozens of hours he had the exhort and fought. You merely encounter the moment he lastly demonstrated in. And you want to fucking kill him for it.

Basically half of all country music jobs are started this way .

And because you exclusively established up in the consequences of the these combats, they believe your grumbles to be the equivalent of some bureaucrats intimidating Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character after the events of Predator . “Why did you blow up a whole jungle, asshole? Your whole gang is dead, and it’s your flaw! No, I don’t want to hear your apologizes! Whose arm is this? “

“Fuck the chopper, your ass is getting to the unemployment path! ”

# 3. … But We’ll Usually Forgive Ourselves For The Same Failure

Here’s a question I bet you’ve never stopped to ask: Why is it an insult to allege officers of adoration doughnuts? Or to joke about how black people affection fried chicken or watermelon?

And simply clearly stated, those are reviles( in the U.S ., at the least ). If a officer plucks you over and you tell him, “Hey, you know the doughnut shop shuts at 8 p. m ., you better move, ” you know you’re pee-pee him off. If a grey buster moves up to groupings of black people standing on a street corner and says, “What, did somebody sag a barrel of fried chicken? ” he knows he’s trying to start a fight.

One that’ll end with him complaining online that nobody but him has a sense of humor anymore . But, why is it an offend? It’s not like the behaviour itself is vile — right now, there’s some grey buster sitting in a Popeyes Chicken restaurant snickering to his friends because a group of pitch-black guys trodden in. “Ha, how did I know they’d be here! I potted they’d rioting if this neighbourhood closed down! ” — literally taunting their desire of fried chicken through a sip of fried chicken. Well, what you’re find is a ritual we all go through in order to reassure ourselves. “Theres” two steps to it TAGEND

For the first, imagine a group of friends sitting around and sharing embarrassing fibs. As many of you know, during filming of the TV present Nashville , I was accidentally captured in the backdrop of a shot urinating into a fountain. So, I will tell that storey among friends, because I know someone else will immediately try to top it( “One age, ” says John, “I was pissing in the lavatory during a White House tour, and the president strolled in and I inadvertently turned around and pissed on him! I think some of it got in his lip! ” ). The aim is to reassure each other that our lives are screwed up in exactly the same way.

“For the record, John wholly plagiarized that storey from me.”

But, then comes the second largest part of the ritual, in which we’ll jest at somebody else’s screw-ups in a completely unforgiving and mean-spirited room, strictly to reassure ourselves that their failures aren’t like ours. “My family went to India a couple of years ago. All of the streets reek like piss! Merely a disgusting people — they’re like swine! “

This is why I invested my first got a couple of decades of life stimulating gay laughs with my small-town peers. For a cluster of guys scared of what their hormones were doing to them( “they can never know I jerked off to a Sports Illustrated article about beach volleyball! ” ), it was very reassuring to sit around and say, “Man, are you able dream going turned on by buster laughingstock ? ” It’s the same reason we would laugh at a friend’s messy copulation legends( “So, then I wake up and roll over — I’m like, I don’t even know this chick! She looked like fucking Richard Belzer! “) and then immediately talking here what worthless sluts those cheerleaders are. The theme? Our uncontrollable compulsions are lighthearted recreation, theirs are a signaling of weakness and degeneracy.

“Can you believe Richard Belzer just takes these pics that guys like us is likely to be masturbate to? God, what a Hollywood closet case.”

Thus, the “fried chicken” gags. The consequence is that, where my consumption of deep-fried chicken is just a ordinary buster gobbling an incredibly favourite American bowl, their uptake is due to a atrocious cultural failure to control their pushes. It shifts them into cartoonish gluttons, with no more self-control than pups. It’s the same reason my high school gay parodies often implied that homosexuals are ravenous rapists who can’t control their immorality( “When you’re in the cupboard chamber with Kevin, don’t deflect over for the soap! ” ).

But, in addition to causing us to be dicks to other people, this double standard too symbolizes …

# 2. You’re Constantly Getting Blindsided By Your Own Weaknesses

There’s this thing everybody does the first time they have to sit down and write up a budget. They’ll plan everything down to the penny — the really smart ones will even set aside some fund for disaster gondola restores and those sorts of things. But, they are able to also completely fail to plan for one important category TAGEND

Fucking up.

I’m talking about the weekend when you’re so depressed that you only buy a shitload of day-old grocery store donuts and eat all of them yourself. I’m talking about the eBay auction you acquire thanks to a drunken late-night offer, or the expensive talent bought for a special a person who has you detect doesn’t looks just like you back, or the dumb impulse buys you’ll inevitably become when you’re get over the breakup and want some kind of shining spot in their own lives( maybe it’ll be a puppy next time !).

“I’m not going to name you, so I’ll feel less guilty when you have to be returned.”

“Well, I precisely won’t do those happenings, ” you’ll say, “now that I have a fund! ” See, Future You goes tagged with the same ludicrous belief we make about strangers: All motivations can easily be overcome with a little effort. Future You won’t oblige dumb purchases to deaden desolate moods! That shit is what Old You did — from here on out, it’s smooth sailing!

And when you start dating mortal new, you never envisage, “This will be a good person to handle my alternating irritation outbursts and emotional cold spells six months after now! ” You’ll instead suppose yourself being awesome and stable, eternally. And when job opportunities comes up to take on a second place, one that would eliminate both sleep and your social life? “No problem! Future Me doesn’t get sleepy or lonely! Future Me is a robot that works with absolute precision and reliability! “

“Ho Hos from the vending machine are the only Christmas dinner I need tonight.”

Oh, sure, there are parties out there who run the opposite room, who joke about how they’re precisely a loser destined to wind up old and drunkard. But, frequently, the precise reasonablenes they’re down is because they’re repeatedly disappointed by how they screw up in the same roads again and again. Their own weaknesses continue to astonish them, since they are refuse to be realistic about how strong the desires are by comparison. Here’s a relevant time for those of you who want a brief YouTube snap TAGEND

It’s hard-handed, if not impossible, to make peace with the fact that we are always going to fuck up on occasion. And, at health risks of going taken out of situation, I’ve got to say that this has really facilitated me realize Satan.

That concept of a tempter who can work from inside your very mind, offering up short-term gratifications in exchange for long-term destruction … it prepares feel. I don’t mean as a literal being, but as a course to facilitate step outside yourself in those critical time. You get an urge and you stop to say, “Is this the devil, tempting me? ” It realise you suspicious of your short-term indulgings — the starvation, the rage, the selfishness — all that shit that will devastates your relationships and health in the long run. When someone else screws up, you can see them as a fellow casualty of the Dark Lord himself, deserving of sympathy.

But, you know, there’s a intellect Christians still cheat on their spouses and booze themselves to fatality. All they were required to do is change the focus to other people and keep it there( “Gays are just heterosexuals who’ve been invited into sin by the Devil! ” ). Hey, be talking about which …

# 1. We Give Clueless, Bullshit Solutions … And Then Get Angry When They Don’t Work

That last thing is probably the most perfect portrait of what I’m talking about in this article. Why do Christians seem so obsessed with homosexuality? Why have they decided lesbian marriage is the one issue capable of exterminating the light of the righteous from the universe eternally?

Because it’s the ultimate exam of the “Everyone knows the same temptations” fallacy.

If you sit down a cluster of anxious and tired people and start proclaiming to them about their fragilities( desire, gluttony, petty savagery, adultery ), you get lots of vexed folks altering uncomfortably in the pews. But, when you take that same mob and preach against lures they never find, if you rail against the “gay agenda” and Muslims and the depravity of Hollywood, now you get some ovations and “Amens” flowing your room. “Let us all congratulate ourselves for not succumbing to the push to change our sexual orientation or transformed into Islam! We are truly badass fighters of goodnes! “

“Like Jesus before me, I genuinely have the eye of the beast! ”

And obligate no mistake, having grown up in an evangelical church, up until my 20 s I knew exactly how to solve the lesbian wedding act: Simply give them the same rights as everyone else. And by that, I signify the right to marry the opposite fornication. I swear it built appreciation at the time and, because you presumably did not just start reading the clause right here, you already know why. Everyone, I was told, is actually a heterosexual — God said so. Thus, “gay” people simply have a funny fetish for the same fornication that they can get over with a bit tradition. If you’d told me that my homophobia was itself the result of my own bad caprices( including an overdeveloped gumption of disgust that’s common to social reactionaries ), I’d have gazed at you like you’d precisely puckered your cheeks and realized one steady fart noise. ” My behavior isn’t due to uncontrollable impulses! I’m a fully functional human being, with a person, who constitutes moral selects! “

And if you’d told me that not only is what they’re doing not immoral, but that if I swopped organizations with them, I’d be just as gay , if not more so? Hopeless. For me, at the time, the implications would have been shattering.

You’d have gotten a similar mind from me considering anyone outside my own group, in fact. If you’d driven me through the projects, I’d have calmly explained that if I was born there, I’d get a part-time job, save up some money, and move the hell out! I stepped around every day patting myself on the back for overcoming counsels I didn’t even detect, to make myself feel right about the ones I was giving in to on a daily basis. My years of asshole know-how are probably why I’m so fascinated with the Internet’s fat-hating obsession today. I return it up a lot, and it’s because each time some clueless 20 time old-fashioned says, “Losing weight is simple: It’s calories in, calories out! All you need is a little self-respect! ” I smile and nod and think, “Yep, that was me! I thought that same condescending bullshit! “

Spoiler: I was incorrect .

But, I attest that even experts acquire the same damned mistake, and always will. Pick any theme. Like the obesity stuff — we’ll listen a new possibility every month about whether fighting obesity is about cutting carbs, or paunch, or sugar, or precisely dismissing it all and cutting calories. They rarely seem to factor in the only thing that really subjects: which diet doesn’t leave you starving. Because if you’re getting pummeled with emptines insists, you will succumb. This is why exercise doesn’t induce you lose weight — exercise ignites calories but also clears you hungrier. And exactly 100 percentage of humans have a doorstep at which they no longer have the force to repel an exhort. I don’t care who you are — if the president himself got thirsty enough, he’d be begging John to pee-pee in his lip. It’s science.

It would also be a great style to choose who in the field really wants to be president .

Or what about violation? Statistically, if you grew up under certain circumstances, you’re far more likely to turn into war criminals. Now, cue the anecdotes: “Well, I grew up in the rough part of city, and I never so much as got a rushing ticket! ” See, because their impulse to commit crimes is surely no more powerful than ours, and our clean register is, hence, proof that we’re Gandhi. So, why lift a finger to improve those Ferguson “thugs” change “peoples lives”? None helped us! Better to retain a handgun under the couch and imagine about filming them when they break in.

“Well now, wait a second, ” you say, “that simply draws us back to the blame question that “youve never” got around to reacting. If we can’t genuinely know how hard individual pushed the motive to do the shitty happening he only did, then how do we know when it’s okay to call him an asshole ? “

Hmmm. Good subject. Here’s someone babying a minuscule owl.

The post 5 Harsh Truths That Will Make You Less Of A Jerk appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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[dr-trevorkian-blog1]

Talkin Anti-Terror Chicken Little Chicken-Shit  Blues

Isn't it telling how all these values, which people claim to espouse, often fall to the wayside when something serious actually happens?  No shoot to kill orders...unless some violent incident happens in real life, then we will totally flip flop our position, to appease the desperate pleas of the scared and the victimized and to counter the cynical rhetoric used to frame those who espouse an ethic of restraint as being “soft of terror”...smh.  I know it's hard to hold fast to reason and perspective when the loved ones of dead victims are pleading for action and vengeance and masses the world over call for action and demand safety but when it comes down to it, we either have values or we don't. Over-reacting and/or acting too quick without calming down and thinking it through, is deep at the root of so many of our modern problems. It happens again and again and we never seem to remember the lessons of the last time/s, once the fog of fear and panic set in and then it becomes catalyzed by political opportunists, trying to exploit it however they can. If the stick-to-it-iv-ness of our high minded rhetoric buckles under pressure, then it was a lie to or a delusion to begin with. We value freedom first or we value the illusion of safety first and if we value the later, then maybe we deserve to draw the short evolutionary stick,eh? You don't get to have it both ways. If you want to restrict digital and/or real world freedom, in the futile attempt to protect us form terrorism (terrorism which poses less real world danger than our daily commutes to and from work), than you ought to get the proverbial old school movie slap (snap out of it! Get ahold of yourself!)

You are either going to be brave and principled or you are dead already, (the living death of fraidy-cat rule mongering fear mongering dark ages level repression) even before you take your last miserable breath. Those jihadists have their martyrs and we have ours.  Theirs are brainwashed suckers who are usually too damaged and/or young to have a clue. Ours are the ones who die, while living their free lives, without fear and the ones who die fighting to avenge them and/or protect the freedoms they lived and died for. If you relinquish and compromise the freedom they loved and lived, before they died; that is the worst kind of concession to these terrorist scumbags. Did they die for nothing? When you continue to live your life, your way, on your terms, vigilant and ready for whatever but unwilling to cower and hide and self censor and forsake the precious liberties, that so many lived for and died for through the ages; that's how you honor the dead and do right by the living and those yet to be born.- Not by mob mentality or scapegoating all sorts of people who are not guilty of anything or by incrementally turning more of the “free world” into a surveillance-state prison/compound “for our own good”, which we are supposed to believe is synonymous with some cynical and convoluted notion of “national security”. B.S.

Have we really had it that easy for that long, all the while; forgetting that our own governments are making a mess of countries, societies, families and lives the world over and making well earned enemies on the daily, at home and abroad? Are most of us so lacking in perspective that we are so quick to “loose it” over any and all remotely scary things that happen anywhere in the world , even though most of them don't really affect us much, outside of the mental health effects of watching all the dubious coverage too much. Terrorism happens, always has and it will continue to happen for the foreseeable future. Some of the weapons and groups are new but for the most part this kind of thing is nothing new to history, so stop pretending like it is, to hype everyone up and lend some sense of legitimacy to all the freaking out and all the overblown expenditures. We don't need to invent new legal classifications and new agencies for every kind of murder for different motives and by different means.  Stop over-complicating this stuff. It's already hard enough without your paranoid, runaway imaginations and bureaucratic meddling making an even bigger mess of it. Our foreign policies aren't tough on terror, they are dumb on terror.

If we resist the policies that create and incite all these enemies and we resist all the cowardly, overreaching and disproportionate tightening of control and security at the expense of our freedoms and quality of life, that will be our best response to the threats that we face, at the individual civilian level.   You can stay woke and try to be informed but all you can really do beyond that is LIVE and learn and not let the fear of various boogeymen paralyze you or turn you or your countries/societies into paranoid, brutal, desperate brutes. Respond to individual credible threats as needed and in proportion but let life go on without massive overhaul and overreach. I'd rather deal with a astronomically negligible increase in statistical chances of terror attack killing me than the 100% chance of being felt up and ball-fondled by a stranger, who hasn't even had a background check at TSA and then I can't even take my laptop or tablet or even water on a flight. The Terrorists win when we turn our lives upside down to quell overblown fears and appease the same corrupt governments that got us into these messes with these crazies and who now claim to care 1st and foremost about protecting us.  Life is full of risks.  We accept the huge risk of death involved in driving cars because we value the freedom of mobility more than we fear the myriad risks. Car accidents kill waaaaaaay more people than terrorism.  Why do we bend so much more to the overblown fear of a few terrorists than we do to millions of cars and bad drivers.? It's silly and embarrassing.  If you are so afraid to die, stay off the road and never leave your house for than matter. If you want live and don't want to be stifled, live, drive, speak your mind (even if it's to call some terrorists from ISIS or from your own government; a bunch of assholes) and don't panic or get sucked into other people's panic, whenever something bad happens. Bad things happen. You are a precariously vulnerable but also resilient and sometimes intelligent ape. You are part of the food chain and you are a soft delicate bag of meat that can't survive being poked in the wrong spot, or to not breath for a few minutes, or to be exposed to any number of toxins or microscopic killer organisms, so try to calm down and accept it, live and seek balance or -  stay home (especially from the poles) and let the adrenal gland milkers at your favorite news network, stimulate and milk your glands dry in between all those commercial breaks.

[pitifulandselfish-blog]

2.20.17

“Simply put, the modern age has shaken my faith.”

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been somebody you can talk to and make a show happen. At first it was because me and other kids in my high school were forming bad bands and our bad bands didn’t have a space to play since most music venues were bars and we were 15. We got together with some of the older folks playing bad music and made shows happen at the YMCA, the empty room of temples and churches and senior community centers. From the beginning, I only did this because no one else was inspired enough to do so. It’s been this way for over a decade.

And then I went to college and there were a few clubs that were formed just to organize affordable events on campus. However, these clubs were tied up in bureaucratic bi-laws and nonsense that made them more comfortable throwing a several thousand dollar flat guarantee at bands 30 kids cared about than they were throwing a donation based show in a small practice room that cost nothing to organize in any way/shape/form. So once again, I was the guy inspired to do something because if I didn’t nobody else was going to do it. Thankfully the bands at school were better than the bands back home.

And then I spent a year after college a few miles from where I grew up. I thought my actual hometown was barren and lifeless, but the town fifteen miles North was infinitely more so. There was little else to do but exercise, read and sit in a room alone with my sad thoughts/feelings. The community spaces that used to help me as a teenager had since shut their doors to people like myself (a few too many assholes broke shit during the embarrassing death core days). I couldn’t even do something useful with my time while I was living with my mommy, trying to figure out if life was still worth living as I worked every day with people who were dying.

So I get to Philadelphia in 2014 and don’t know what else to do with myself except run from my old town, so I try to get myself back into the only world I know, playing and booking shows. Two things happened: the first being that no one wants to book white boy acoustic acts in a city swarming with wildly talented full rock bands; and two, even less people were willing to let me do something in their basement because that territory belonged to them for their own endeavors. The DIY community proved to be very exclusionary on the grounds of little more than “you’re not tight with the people I’m tight with so you must be nobody worth talking to” (despite preaching it is safe and inclusive). Not to say it’s all a waste: if you’re truly part of that community it must feel like something close to the idea of true and unconditional love. To stand outside the doors of this ever growing circle of people who all pretend to care, to hear the music through the walls, to do everything you know how to do and to still be told after three years there’s not enough space for you - it’s an emptiness I didn’t think was possible to exist within a culture of kids who spent their life feeling empty without this stuff.

I’ve been booking shows in Philly for over a year, once again I’m that someone who manages the calendar of shows at a growing all ages diy space. I think above everything else, Philly is too big for someone as small as myself. I have no desire to make myself into an important figurehead in the community, I don’t do this for any other reason than giving a decent band a decent space to play. My ambitions are small and manageable, which was never an issue before I moved here. Philly is a place with big ideas, big personalities and big sounds and the longer I try to force my way into it, the more damage I do to the community as a whole. There’s likely someone more tethered to this city, someone with more passion for the music being played worldwide, someone with more vision for the future of the spaces and the city they reside in than I could see from any vantage point. There’s someone out there who can do so much more good with the gift I didn’t truly earn than I ever could - and it feels selfish to cling to something when my heart isn’t truly in it.

Maybe I’m a sell out, maybe I’m a poser, maybe I’m a has-been that never was or will be, maybe I’m giving the perception of other people and the number of people I can get to walk through the door more validation than they deserve; but I don’t like what I do and I don’t want to keep doing it. Insanity is doing the same shit again and again and expecting it to feel different, but in this moment booking shows does feel different. I don’t know if it feels wrong because of the place I’m trying to do things, or maybe I’ve changed too much to find the same joys in this little act of kindness, or maybe my deep set fears that I have never truly belonged to any kind of culture are all true. All I know is I’m doing damage to a business and a community the longer I sit around wrestling with my own thoughts and feelings over booking little punk shows, so until I find out why this matters to me (or if it matters at all) I gotta step back and let someone better take over. Philly deserves a better person than I am capable of being.

[apsbicepstraining]

5 Harsh Truths That Will Make You Less Of A Jerk

Humanity is principally defined by its is no way to seize the obvious. So, let me ask you this TAGEND

What is the most obviously wrong shit that beings feel on a daily basis that — wait for it — you too believe ?

I’m talking about something that you know on an intellectual level is incorrect, but five minutes after being reminded of it, you forget again. If you can’t think about one, well, I gamble I can. And it comes back to burn you in the proverbial ass method more frequently than you think …

# 5. We Are Privately Sure Everyone Feels The Same Pleasure And Pain

When you’re a toddler, you acquire everyone and everything in your world are similar to you. That’s why you used to think your thrust animals get lonely if you didn’t play with them and that your parents would love your cartoons if they would just give them an opportunity. It’s a normal chapter of a kid’s proliferation and as this much smarter guy points out, we never certainly germinate out of it.

I mean, you probably recollect being a boy and hearing an amazing new song that shaped you want to punch-dance through a brick wall … and then you played it for a couple sidekicks and they just got that gross look on their faces. You know, the watch of nervously pretending to enjoy something loathsome? What follows is more awkward three minutes of your life, during which you find yourself going steadily angrier( “Why are they claiming not to like it? ” ). But eventually, you grow up and realize that not everyone likes the same things.

Years afterwards, you get the flu but ability through production anyway, rather than miss season. Then, a co-worker catches it and takes three sick daytimes. You roll your eyes and announce him a pussy, automatically assuming that the two of you two are find exactly the same indications, but that one of you was tougher.

The obvious concept you’ll be missing is that standing is at least as subjective as music. Hell, discipline even is indicated that redheads tend to feel more ache than everyone else, due to a genetic quirk. It appears that it’s the same for women, due to how pain signals are communicated to the girl intelligence. Meanwhile, people from colder parts of the world literally stop feeling the cold the method the rest of us do. Some beings almost never appear fear — not due to firmnes, but due to a collapse of certain types of contacts in the intelligence( they’re called sociopaths ). All of the hotshots that motivate us to haunt specific actions and avoid others actually feel totally different from person to person.

She can snow angel for hours on end, but needs an ER trip and three months of rehab after a snowball engage .

You’ll shrug and say, “Of course, everyone known to be, you turdthinker, ” but five minutes after reading such articles, you’ll act in a way that substantiates you don’t. I’ve had fit acquaintances get annoyed with me when I say I’ve never experienced the “runner’s high” euphoria that comes with hard exercise. They say it’s because I’m not pushing myself hard enough, while science says some people are just physically incapable of appearing it. So, are my friends fit because they’re more dedicated than I am, or do they just enjoy the “high” of employ? They clearly want the former to be true. My thin acquaintances don’t like to admit that there’s a hormone that moves you starving and that some people simply have more of it.

That’s because formerly you accept the idea that it rightfully would feel completely different to live inside another person’s form, everything changes. After all, at what point can you safely accuse person for, well, anything?

# 4. We Don’t Realize The Battle Inside

I know what you’re saying. I ever know. “Oh, so you’re one of those buttholes who say nothing is anybody’s blame, because those poor souls are helpless to refuse their caprices? So, when somebody tortures a child to fatality, we’re supposed to give him a hug and say he couldn’t used to help? Is that it, butthole? You are the hole of a butt.”

No! You altogether are defined by how good of a position you do opposing your pernicious exhorts and overcoming hurting. Maturation is an issue of getting better at it; success is an issue of mastering it. Beating back the urge to procrastinate, to cease, to be lazy … that’s how you reach the top, child! Buy my notebook !

But …

You know that person at the part who’s ever furious? He blew up last month because soul lost an invoice. Last Christmas, he lost his shit because he thought somebody stole his lunch out of the fridge. You check him throw his outbursts and marvel at how immature he is. After all, you get angry, very, but you ensure it! Hell, you’ve had people plagiarize your lunch tons of periods, and you’ve never kicked a trashcan so difficult that it left a dent and realise the secretary cry.

Sure, you’ve fantasized about shitting in the culprit’s yogurt and blaming it on the apprentice, but you’ve never actually done it .

However, here’s the thing: From your outcome, he’s “always” angry. From his culminate, he’s had two blowups spread across several months and, in between those incidents, he successfully resisted the recommend to explode 162 experiences . His anger urges come more frequently than yours, and he experiences them more strongly. For him, every “normal” day is the result of a hard-won duel … but, you merely see when he loses. He find himself as the hero of his own life, battered and bruised by his personal demons. You envision him as a ridiculous manchild who loves to discover himself yell. You detest his unstable, feelings ass.

Or, you witness the space your depressed sidekick goes residence from operate and immediately clangs on the sofa, refusing to go out or do anything recreation. You dislike the acces she merely … affords up and refuses to even talking here it. Invisible to you is the merciless attempt she exerted precisely to make it through wreak. So, you get annoyed. Or, you find your marriage “feel like i m cheating on” you. You didn’t investigate all of the dozens of hours he had the exhort and fought. You merely encounter the moment he lastly demonstrated in. And you want to fucking kill him for it.

Basically half of all country music jobs are started this way .

And because you exclusively established up in the consequences of the these combats, they believe your grumbles to be the equivalent of some bureaucrats intimidating Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character after the events of Predator . “Why did you blow up a whole jungle, asshole? Your whole gang is dead, and it’s your flaw! No, I don’t want to hear your apologizes! Whose arm is this? “

“Fuck the chopper, your ass is getting to the unemployment path! ”

# 3. … But We’ll Usually Forgive Ourselves For The Same Failure

Here’s a question I bet you’ve never stopped to ask: Why is it an insult to allege officers of adoration doughnuts? Or to joke about how black people affection fried chicken or watermelon?

And simply clearly stated, those are reviles( in the U.S ., at the least ). If a officer plucks you over and you tell him, “Hey, you know the doughnut shop shuts at 8 p. m ., you better move, ” you know you’re pee-pee him off. If a grey buster moves up to groupings of black people standing on a street corner and says, “What, did somebody sag a barrel of fried chicken? ” he knows he’s trying to start a fight.

One that’ll end with him complaining online that nobody but him has a sense of humor anymore . But, why is it an offend? It’s not like the behaviour itself is vile — right now, there’s some grey buster sitting in a Popeyes Chicken restaurant snickering to his friends because a group of pitch-black guys trodden in. “Ha, how did I know they’d be here! I potted they’d rioting if this neighbourhood closed down! ” — literally taunting their desire of fried chicken through a sip of fried chicken. Well, what you’re find is a ritual we all go through in order to reassure ourselves. “Theres” two steps to it TAGEND

For the first, imagine a group of friends sitting around and sharing embarrassing fibs. As many of you know, during filming of the TV present Nashville , I was accidentally captured in the backdrop of a shot urinating into a fountain. So, I will tell that storey among friends, because I know someone else will immediately try to top it( “One age, ” says John, “I was pissing in the lavatory during a White House tour, and the president strolled in and I inadvertently turned around and pissed on him! I think some of it got in his lip! ” ). The aim is to reassure each other that our lives are screwed up in exactly the same way.

“For the record, John wholly plagiarized that storey from me.”

But, then comes the second largest part of the ritual, in which we’ll jest at somebody else’s screw-ups in a completely unforgiving and mean-spirited room, strictly to reassure ourselves that their failures aren’t like ours. “My family went to India a couple of years ago. All of the streets reek like piss! Merely a disgusting people — they’re like swine! “

This is why I invested my first got a couple of decades of life stimulating gay laughs with my small-town peers. For a cluster of guys scared of what their hormones were doing to them( “they can never know I jerked off to a Sports Illustrated article about beach volleyball! ” ), it was very reassuring to sit around and say, “Man, are you able dream going turned on by buster laughingstock ? ” It’s the same reason we would laugh at a friend’s messy copulation legends( “So, then I wake up and roll over — I’m like, I don’t even know this chick! She looked like fucking Richard Belzer! “) and then immediately talking here what worthless sluts those cheerleaders are. The theme? Our uncontrollable compulsions are lighthearted recreation, theirs are a signaling of weakness and degeneracy.

“Can you believe Richard Belzer just takes these pics that guys like us is likely to be masturbate to? God, what a Hollywood closet case.”

Thus, the “fried chicken” gags. The consequence is that, where my consumption of deep-fried chicken is just a ordinary buster gobbling an incredibly favourite American bowl, their uptake is due to a atrocious cultural failure to control their pushes. It shifts them into cartoonish gluttons, with no more self-control than pups. It’s the same reason my high school gay parodies often implied that homosexuals are ravenous rapists who can’t control their immorality( “When you’re in the cupboard chamber with Kevin, don’t deflect over for the soap! ” ).

But, in addition to causing us to be dicks to other people, this double standard too symbolizes …

# 2. You’re Constantly Getting Blindsided By Your Own Weaknesses

There’s this thing everybody does the first time they have to sit down and write up a budget. They’ll plan everything down to the penny — the really smart ones will even set aside some fund for disaster gondola restores and those sorts of things. But, they are able to also completely fail to plan for one important category TAGEND

Fucking up.

I’m talking about the weekend when you’re so depressed that you only buy a shitload of day-old grocery store donuts and eat all of them yourself. I’m talking about the eBay auction you acquire thanks to a drunken late-night offer, or the expensive talent bought for a special a person who has you detect doesn’t looks just like you back, or the dumb impulse buys you’ll inevitably become when you’re get over the breakup and want some kind of shining spot in their own lives( maybe it’ll be a puppy next time !).

“I’m not going to name you, so I’ll feel less guilty when you have to be returned.”

“Well, I precisely won’t do those happenings, ” you’ll say, “now that I have a fund! ” See, Future You goes tagged with the same ludicrous belief we make about strangers: All motivations can easily be overcome with a little effort. Future You won’t oblige dumb purchases to deaden desolate moods! That shit is what Old You did — from here on out, it’s smooth sailing!

And when you start dating mortal new, you never envisage, “This will be a good person to handle my alternating irritation outbursts and emotional cold spells six months after now! ” You’ll instead suppose yourself being awesome and stable, eternally. And when job opportunities comes up to take on a second place, one that would eliminate both sleep and your social life? “No problem! Future Me doesn’t get sleepy or lonely! Future Me is a robot that works with absolute precision and reliability! “

“Ho Hos from the vending machine are the only Christmas dinner I need tonight.”

Oh, sure, there are parties out there who run the opposite room, who joke about how they’re precisely a loser destined to wind up old and drunkard. But, frequently, the precise reasonablenes they’re down is because they’re repeatedly disappointed by how they screw up in the same roads again and again. Their own weaknesses continue to astonish them, since they are refuse to be realistic about how strong the desires are by comparison. Here’s a relevant time for those of you who want a brief YouTube snap TAGEND

It’s hard-handed, if not impossible, to make peace with the fact that we are always going to fuck up on occasion. And, at health risks of going taken out of situation, I’ve got to say that this has really facilitated me realize Satan.

That concept of a tempter who can work from inside your very mind, offering up short-term gratifications in exchange for long-term destruction … it prepares feel. I don’t mean as a literal being, but as a course to facilitate step outside yourself in those critical time. You get an urge and you stop to say, “Is this the devil, tempting me? ” It realise you suspicious of your short-term indulgings — the starvation, the rage, the selfishness — all that shit that will devastates your relationships and health in the long run. When someone else screws up, you can see them as a fellow casualty of the Dark Lord himself, deserving of sympathy.

But, you know, there’s a intellect Christians still cheat on their spouses and booze themselves to fatality. All they were required to do is change the focus to other people and keep it there( “Gays are just heterosexuals who’ve been invited into sin by the Devil! ” ). Hey, be talking about which …

# 1. We Give Clueless, Bullshit Solutions … And Then Get Angry When They Don’t Work

That last thing is probably the most perfect portrait of what I’m talking about in this article. Why do Christians seem so obsessed with homosexuality? Why have they decided lesbian marriage is the one issue capable of exterminating the light of the righteous from the universe eternally?

Because it’s the ultimate exam of the “Everyone knows the same temptations” fallacy.

If you sit down a cluster of anxious and tired people and start proclaiming to them about their fragilities( desire, gluttony, petty savagery, adultery ), you get lots of vexed folks altering uncomfortably in the pews. But, when you take that same mob and preach against lures they never find, if you rail against the “gay agenda” and Muslims and the depravity of Hollywood, now you get some ovations and “Amens” flowing your room. “Let us all congratulate ourselves for not succumbing to the push to change our sexual orientation or transformed into Islam! We are truly badass fighters of goodnes! “

“Like Jesus before me, I genuinely have the eye of the beast! ”

And obligate no mistake, having grown up in an evangelical church, up until my 20 s I knew exactly how to solve the lesbian wedding act: Simply give them the same rights as everyone else. And by that, I signify the right to marry the opposite fornication. I swear it built appreciation at the time and, because you presumably did not just start reading the clause right here, you already know why. Everyone, I was told, is actually a heterosexual — God said so. Thus, “gay” people simply have a funny fetish for the same fornication that they can get over with a bit tradition. If you’d told me that my homophobia was itself the result of my own bad caprices( including an overdeveloped gumption of disgust that’s common to social reactionaries ), I’d have gazed at you like you’d precisely puckered your cheeks and realized one steady fart noise. ” My behavior isn’t due to uncontrollable impulses! I’m a fully functional human being, with a person, who constitutes moral selects! “

And if you’d told me that not only is what they’re doing not immoral, but that if I swopped organizations with them, I’d be just as gay , if not more so? Hopeless. For me, at the time, the implications would have been shattering.

You’d have gotten a similar mind from me considering anyone outside my own group, in fact. If you’d driven me through the projects, I’d have calmly explained that if I was born there, I’d get a part-time job, save up some money, and move the hell out! I stepped around every day patting myself on the back for overcoming counsels I didn’t even detect, to make myself feel right about the ones I was giving in to on a daily basis. My years of asshole know-how are probably why I’m so fascinated with the Internet’s fat-hating obsession today. I return it up a lot, and it’s because each time some clueless 20 time old-fashioned says, “Losing weight is simple: It’s calories in, calories out! All you need is a little self-respect! ” I smile and nod and think, “Yep, that was me! I thought that same condescending bullshit! “

Spoiler: I was incorrect .

But, I attest that even experts acquire the same damned mistake, and always will. Pick any theme. Like the obesity stuff — we’ll listen a new possibility every month about whether fighting obesity is about cutting carbs, or paunch, or sugar, or precisely dismissing it all and cutting calories. They rarely seem to factor in the only thing that really subjects: which diet doesn’t leave you starving. Because if you’re getting pummeled with emptines insists, you will succumb. This is why exercise doesn’t induce you lose weight — exercise ignites calories but also clears you hungrier. And exactly 100 percentage of humans have a doorstep at which they no longer have the force to repel an exhort. I don’t care who you are — if the president himself got thirsty enough, he’d be begging John to pee-pee in his lip. It’s science.

It would also be a great style to choose who in the field really wants to be president .

Or what about violation? Statistically, if you grew up under certain circumstances, you’re far more likely to turn into war criminals. Now, cue the anecdotes: “Well, I grew up in the rough part of city, and I never so much as got a rushing ticket! ” See, because their impulse to commit crimes is surely no more powerful than ours, and our clean register is, hence, proof that we’re Gandhi. So, why lift a finger to improve those Ferguson “thugs” change “peoples lives”? None helped us! Better to retain a handgun under the couch and imagine about filming them when they break in.

“Well now, wait a second, ” you say, “that simply draws us back to the blame question that “youve never” got around to reacting. If we can’t genuinely know how hard individual pushed the motive to do the shitty happening he only did, then how do we know when it’s okay to call him an asshole ? “

Hmmm. Good subject. Here’s someone babying a minuscule owl.

The post 5 Harsh Truths That Will Make You Less Of A Jerk appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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[apsbicepstraining]

5 Harsh Truths That Will Make You Less Of A Jerk

Humanity is principally defined by its is no way to seize the obvious. So, let me ask you this TAGEND

What is the most obviously wrong shit that beings feel on a daily basis that — wait for it — you too believe ?

I’m talking about something that you know on an intellectual level is incorrect, but five minutes after being reminded of it, you forget again. If you can’t think about one, well, I gamble I can. And it comes back to burn you in the proverbial ass method more frequently than you think …

# 5. We Are Privately Sure Everyone Feels The Same Pleasure And Pain

When you’re a toddler, you acquire everyone and everything in your world are similar to you. That’s why you used to think your thrust animals get lonely if you didn’t play with them and that your parents would love your cartoons if they would just give them an opportunity. It’s a normal chapter of a kid’s proliferation and as this much smarter guy points out, we never certainly germinate out of it.

I mean, you probably recollect being a boy and hearing an amazing new song that shaped you want to punch-dance through a brick wall … and then you played it for a couple sidekicks and they just got that gross look on their faces. You know, the watch of nervously pretending to enjoy something loathsome? What follows is more awkward three minutes of your life, during which you find yourself going steadily angrier( “Why are they claiming not to like it? ” ). But eventually, you grow up and realize that not everyone likes the same things.

Years afterwards, you get the flu but ability through production anyway, rather than miss season. Then, a co-worker catches it and takes three sick daytimes. You roll your eyes and announce him a pussy, automatically assuming that the two of you two are find exactly the same indications, but that one of you was tougher.

The obvious concept you’ll be missing is that standing is at least as subjective as music. Hell, discipline even is indicated that redheads tend to feel more ache than everyone else, due to a genetic quirk. It appears that it’s the same for women, due to how pain signals are communicated to the girl intelligence. Meanwhile, people from colder parts of the world literally stop feeling the cold the method the rest of us do. Some beings almost never appear fear — not due to firmnes, but due to a collapse of certain types of contacts in the intelligence( they’re called sociopaths ). All of the hotshots that motivate us to haunt specific actions and avoid others actually feel totally different from person to person.

She can snow angel for hours on end, but needs an ER trip and three months of rehab after a snowball engage .

You’ll shrug and say, “Of course, everyone known to be, you turdthinker, ” but five minutes after reading such articles, you’ll act in a way that substantiates you don’t. I’ve had fit acquaintances get annoyed with me when I say I’ve never experienced the “runner’s high” euphoria that comes with hard exercise. They say it’s because I’m not pushing myself hard enough, while science says some people are just physically incapable of appearing it. So, are my friends fit because they’re more dedicated than I am, or do they just enjoy the “high” of employ? They clearly want the former to be true. My thin acquaintances don’t like to admit that there’s a hormone that moves you starving and that some people simply have more of it.

That’s because formerly you accept the idea that it rightfully would feel completely different to live inside another person’s form, everything changes. After all, at what point can you safely accuse person for, well, anything?

# 4. We Don’t Realize The Battle Inside

I know what you’re saying. I ever know. “Oh, so you’re one of those buttholes who say nothing is anybody’s blame, because those poor souls are helpless to refuse their caprices? So, when somebody tortures a child to fatality, we’re supposed to give him a hug and say he couldn’t used to help? Is that it, butthole? You are the hole of a butt.”

No! You altogether are defined by how good of a position you do opposing your pernicious exhorts and overcoming hurting. Maturation is an issue of getting better at it; success is an issue of mastering it. Beating back the urge to procrastinate, to cease, to be lazy … that’s how you reach the top, child! Buy my notebook !

But …

You know that person at the part who’s ever furious? He blew up last month because soul lost an invoice. Last Christmas, he lost his shit because he thought somebody stole his lunch out of the fridge. You check him throw his outbursts and marvel at how immature he is. After all, you get angry, very, but you ensure it! Hell, you’ve had people plagiarize your lunch tons of periods, and you’ve never kicked a trashcan so difficult that it left a dent and realise the secretary cry.

Sure, you’ve fantasized about shitting in the culprit’s yogurt and blaming it on the apprentice, but you’ve never actually done it .

However, here’s the thing: From your outcome, he’s “always” angry. From his culminate, he’s had two blowups spread across several months and, in between those incidents, he successfully resisted the recommend to explode 162 experiences . His anger urges come more frequently than yours, and he experiences them more strongly. For him, every “normal” day is the result of a hard-won duel … but, you merely see when he loses. He find himself as the hero of his own life, battered and bruised by his personal demons. You envision him as a ridiculous manchild who loves to discover himself yell. You detest his unstable, feelings ass.

Or, you witness the space your depressed sidekick goes residence from operate and immediately clangs on the sofa, refusing to go out or do anything recreation. You dislike the acces she merely … affords up and refuses to even talking here it. Invisible to you is the merciless attempt she exerted precisely to make it through wreak. So, you get annoyed. Or, you find your marriage “feel like i m cheating on” you. You didn’t investigate all of the dozens of hours he had the exhort and fought. You merely encounter the moment he lastly demonstrated in. And you want to fucking kill him for it.

Basically half of all country music jobs are started this way .

And because you exclusively established up in the consequences of the these combats, they believe your grumbles to be the equivalent of some bureaucrats intimidating Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character after the events of Predator . “Why did you blow up a whole jungle, asshole? Your whole gang is dead, and it’s your flaw! No, I don’t want to hear your apologizes! Whose arm is this? “

“Fuck the chopper, your ass is getting to the unemployment path! ”

# 3. … But We’ll Usually Forgive Ourselves For The Same Failure

Here’s a question I bet you’ve never stopped to ask: Why is it an insult to allege officers of adoration doughnuts? Or to joke about how black people affection fried chicken or watermelon?

And simply clearly stated, those are reviles( in the U.S ., at the least ). If a officer plucks you over and you tell him, “Hey, you know the doughnut shop shuts at 8 p. m ., you better move, ” you know you’re pee-pee him off. If a grey buster moves up to groupings of black people standing on a street corner and says, “What, did somebody sag a barrel of fried chicken? ” he knows he’s trying to start a fight.

One that’ll end with him complaining online that nobody but him has a sense of humor anymore . But, why is it an offend? It’s not like the behaviour itself is vile — right now, there’s some grey buster sitting in a Popeyes Chicken restaurant snickering to his friends because a group of pitch-black guys trodden in. “Ha, how did I know they’d be here! I potted they’d rioting if this neighbourhood closed down! ” — literally taunting their desire of fried chicken through a sip of fried chicken. Well, what you’re find is a ritual we all go through in order to reassure ourselves. “Theres” two steps to it TAGEND

For the first, imagine a group of friends sitting around and sharing embarrassing fibs. As many of you know, during filming of the TV present Nashville , I was accidentally captured in the backdrop of a shot urinating into a fountain. So, I will tell that storey among friends, because I know someone else will immediately try to top it( “One age, ” says John, “I was pissing in the lavatory during a White House tour, and the president strolled in and I inadvertently turned around and pissed on him! I think some of it got in his lip! ” ). The aim is to reassure each other that our lives are screwed up in exactly the same way.

“For the record, John wholly plagiarized that storey from me.”

But, then comes the second largest part of the ritual, in which we’ll jest at somebody else’s screw-ups in a completely unforgiving and mean-spirited room, strictly to reassure ourselves that their failures aren’t like ours. “My family went to India a couple of years ago. All of the streets reek like piss! Merely a disgusting people — they’re like swine! “

This is why I invested my first got a couple of decades of life stimulating gay laughs with my small-town peers. For a cluster of guys scared of what their hormones were doing to them( “they can never know I jerked off to a Sports Illustrated article about beach volleyball! ” ), it was very reassuring to sit around and say, “Man, are you able dream going turned on by buster laughingstock ? ” It’s the same reason we would laugh at a friend’s messy copulation legends( “So, then I wake up and roll over — I’m like, I don’t even know this chick! She looked like fucking Richard Belzer! “) and then immediately talking here what worthless sluts those cheerleaders are. The theme? Our uncontrollable compulsions are lighthearted recreation, theirs are a signaling of weakness and degeneracy.

“Can you believe Richard Belzer just takes these pics that guys like us is likely to be masturbate to? God, what a Hollywood closet case.”

Thus, the “fried chicken” gags. The consequence is that, where my consumption of deep-fried chicken is just a ordinary buster gobbling an incredibly favourite American bowl, their uptake is due to a atrocious cultural failure to control their pushes. It shifts them into cartoonish gluttons, with no more self-control than pups. It’s the same reason my high school gay parodies often implied that homosexuals are ravenous rapists who can’t control their immorality( “When you’re in the cupboard chamber with Kevin, don’t deflect over for the soap! ” ).

But, in addition to causing us to be dicks to other people, this double standard too symbolizes …

# 2. You’re Constantly Getting Blindsided By Your Own Weaknesses

There’s this thing everybody does the first time they have to sit down and write up a budget. They’ll plan everything down to the penny — the really smart ones will even set aside some fund for disaster gondola restores and those sorts of things. But, they are able to also completely fail to plan for one important category TAGEND

Fucking up.

I’m talking about the weekend when you’re so depressed that you only buy a shitload of day-old grocery store donuts and eat all of them yourself. I’m talking about the eBay auction you acquire thanks to a drunken late-night offer, or the expensive talent bought for a special a person who has you detect doesn’t looks just like you back, or the dumb impulse buys you’ll inevitably become when you’re get over the breakup and want some kind of shining spot in their own lives( maybe it’ll be a puppy next time !).

“I’m not going to name you, so I’ll feel less guilty when you have to be returned.”

“Well, I precisely won’t do those happenings, ” you’ll say, “now that I have a fund! ” See, Future You goes tagged with the same ludicrous belief we make about strangers: All motivations can easily be overcome with a little effort. Future You won’t oblige dumb purchases to deaden desolate moods! That shit is what Old You did — from here on out, it’s smooth sailing!

And when you start dating mortal new, you never envisage, “This will be a good person to handle my alternating irritation outbursts and emotional cold spells six months after now! ” You’ll instead suppose yourself being awesome and stable, eternally. And when job opportunities comes up to take on a second place, one that would eliminate both sleep and your social life? “No problem! Future Me doesn’t get sleepy or lonely! Future Me is a robot that works with absolute precision and reliability! “

“Ho Hos from the vending machine are the only Christmas dinner I need tonight.”

Oh, sure, there are parties out there who run the opposite room, who joke about how they’re precisely a loser destined to wind up old and drunkard. But, frequently, the precise reasonablenes they’re down is because they’re repeatedly disappointed by how they screw up in the same roads again and again. Their own weaknesses continue to astonish them, since they are refuse to be realistic about how strong the desires are by comparison. Here’s a relevant time for those of you who want a brief YouTube snap TAGEND

It’s hard-handed, if not impossible, to make peace with the fact that we are always going to fuck up on occasion. And, at health risks of going taken out of situation, I’ve got to say that this has really facilitated me realize Satan.

That concept of a tempter who can work from inside your very mind, offering up short-term gratifications in exchange for long-term destruction … it prepares feel. I don’t mean as a literal being, but as a course to facilitate step outside yourself in those critical time. You get an urge and you stop to say, “Is this the devil, tempting me? ” It realise you suspicious of your short-term indulgings — the starvation, the rage, the selfishness — all that shit that will devastates your relationships and health in the long run. When someone else screws up, you can see them as a fellow casualty of the Dark Lord himself, deserving of sympathy.

But, you know, there’s a intellect Christians still cheat on their spouses and booze themselves to fatality. All they were required to do is change the focus to other people and keep it there( “Gays are just heterosexuals who’ve been invited into sin by the Devil! ” ). Hey, be talking about which …

# 1. We Give Clueless, Bullshit Solutions … And Then Get Angry When They Don’t Work

That last thing is probably the most perfect portrait of what I’m talking about in this article. Why do Christians seem so obsessed with homosexuality? Why have they decided lesbian marriage is the one issue capable of exterminating the light of the righteous from the universe eternally?

Because it’s the ultimate exam of the “Everyone knows the same temptations” fallacy.

If you sit down a cluster of anxious and tired people and start proclaiming to them about their fragilities( desire, gluttony, petty savagery, adultery ), you get lots of vexed folks altering uncomfortably in the pews. But, when you take that same mob and preach against lures they never find, if you rail against the “gay agenda” and Muslims and the depravity of Hollywood, now you get some ovations and “Amens” flowing your room. “Let us all congratulate ourselves for not succumbing to the push to change our sexual orientation or transformed into Islam! We are truly badass fighters of goodnes! “

“Like Jesus before me, I genuinely have the eye of the beast! ”

And obligate no mistake, having grown up in an evangelical church, up until my 20 s I knew exactly how to solve the lesbian wedding act: Simply give them the same rights as everyone else. And by that, I signify the right to marry the opposite fornication. I swear it built appreciation at the time and, because you presumably did not just start reading the clause right here, you already know why. Everyone, I was told, is actually a heterosexual — God said so. Thus, “gay” people simply have a funny fetish for the same fornication that they can get over with a bit tradition. If you’d told me that my homophobia was itself the result of my own bad caprices( including an overdeveloped gumption of disgust that’s common to social reactionaries ), I’d have gazed at you like you’d precisely puckered your cheeks and realized one steady fart noise. ” My behavior isn’t due to uncontrollable impulses! I’m a fully functional human being, with a person, who constitutes moral selects! “

And if you’d told me that not only is what they’re doing not immoral, but that if I swopped organizations with them, I’d be just as gay , if not more so? Hopeless. For me, at the time, the implications would have been shattering.

You’d have gotten a similar mind from me considering anyone outside my own group, in fact. If you’d driven me through the projects, I’d have calmly explained that if I was born there, I’d get a part-time job, save up some money, and move the hell out! I stepped around every day patting myself on the back for overcoming counsels I didn’t even detect, to make myself feel right about the ones I was giving in to on a daily basis. My years of asshole know-how are probably why I’m so fascinated with the Internet’s fat-hating obsession today. I return it up a lot, and it’s because each time some clueless 20 time old-fashioned says, “Losing weight is simple: It’s calories in, calories out! All you need is a little self-respect! ” I smile and nod and think, “Yep, that was me! I thought that same condescending bullshit! “

Spoiler: I was incorrect .

But, I attest that even experts acquire the same damned mistake, and always will. Pick any theme. Like the obesity stuff — we’ll listen a new possibility every month about whether fighting obesity is about cutting carbs, or paunch, or sugar, or precisely dismissing it all and cutting calories. They rarely seem to factor in the only thing that really subjects: which diet doesn’t leave you starving. Because if you’re getting pummeled with emptines insists, you will succumb. This is why exercise doesn’t induce you lose weight — exercise ignites calories but also clears you hungrier. And exactly 100 percentage of humans have a doorstep at which they no longer have the force to repel an exhort. I don’t care who you are — if the president himself got thirsty enough, he’d be begging John to pee-pee in his lip. It’s science.

It would also be a great style to choose who in the field really wants to be president .

Or what about violation? Statistically, if you grew up under certain circumstances, you’re far more likely to turn into war criminals. Now, cue the anecdotes: “Well, I grew up in the rough part of city, and I never so much as got a rushing ticket! ” See, because their impulse to commit crimes is surely no more powerful than ours, and our clean register is, hence, proof that we’re Gandhi. So, why lift a finger to improve those Ferguson “thugs” change “peoples lives”? None helped us! Better to retain a handgun under the couch and imagine about filming them when they break in.

“Well now, wait a second, ” you say, “that simply draws us back to the blame question that “youve never” got around to reacting. If we can’t genuinely know how hard individual pushed the motive to do the shitty happening he only did, then how do we know when it’s okay to call him an asshole ? “

Hmmm. Good subject. Here’s someone babying a minuscule owl.

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