#i also thought maybe the song was an analogy for divorce

[divercitizen]

Kelly Time by Owl City has been one of my favorite songs since it came out--I always thought it was about a couple of friends who got stranded on a desert island and one of them tragically died, and the other made it back home and had to move on... turns out it's based off some movie called Cast Away, and the song is about a guy and his VOLLEYBALL???

[zafirosreverie]

Coincidir (Rocío Banquells x Fem!Reader)

a/n: I regret nothing

I am a neighbor of this world for a while

You smiled when the first notes sounded and the people around you screamed with excitement. You loved that song as much as you loved the woman who sang it, and you didn't say it as just another fan.

Even after your time together, you still blushed at the thought of your girlfriend. You couldn't really understand what a woman like her could want with a silly little girl like you, but you had learned not to say that out loud.

And today it coincides that you are here too.

You rolled your eyes. It was September 15th. El grito de independencia. There were thousands of people here, and although you were proud that Rocío's concert was a success, you also knew that it was almost impossible for her to find you among so many people.

And still, you knew that she was singing to you.

It wasn't to be selfish or arrogant, it was just a fact, a secret shared between the two of you. There were songs like "Luna Mágica" or "Abrazame" that you knew she sang for her audience. But "Coincidir" was yours.

It was the first song that she dedicated to you when you started dating, with which she was able to confess her feelings to you and the one that she loved to sing in your ear at night while she bathed you with kisses.

If at night I entertain myself in the stars

And I capture the one that begins to bloom

I hold it in my hands, but it alarms me

You blushed a little. Okay, maybe that part she liked to sing while her hand roamed your body and with no plans to sleep. More than once she had told you that she loved the moles on your back, that they were like a beautiful constellation.

Also, she loved the analogy due to the age gap and the fact that she was terribly scared of hurting you at the beginning of your relationship.

Your thoughts were interrupted when people yelled a little louder and you turned your attention back to the stage. Rocío approached the steps and you smiled. Your girlfriend loved to sing among her fans.

But this time, she seemed to have a fixed destiny in mind and you froze to see that it was you. No one was supposed to know about your existence, no one suspected your relationship. What the hell was she doing?

If life is sustained for moments

And an instant is the moment to exist

The older woman smiled when your eyes met hers. You had to bite your lip to keep from gasping heavily when she reached out her hand for you to take and you could feel a thousand pairs of eyes on your back. You were going to kill her for this.

If your life is another moment, I don’t understand

Much to your regret, you took her hand. You couldn't just ignore her, first because you'd be in trouble once you were alone again. Not to mention how upset the fans would be, you don't go to a concert and then ignore the singer when she picks you out of all the fans.

Rocío caressed your cheek tenderly, to your surprise and everyone's. Fear and love filled you alike when the realization hit you and you understood that it was the end. The end of hiding.

Such strange coincidences of life

Over ten years alone, after two terrible divorces, with fans, the press, and herself wondering if she would ever find someone who truly loved her, and she found you when she least expected it. Two strangers whose souls came together on the simplest and most normal night of all. Soulmates born in different times.

The blonde looked at you with such tenderness and love that the rest of the world just disappeared for you. It was just the two of you as she brought her face close to yours and the last verses of the song left her lips to be caught by yours.

So many centuries, so many worlds, so much space

And we coincided

[sukirichi]

suk *ehem saeren (new pseud is sexy btw and also your new theme vvv sexc bestie!!!😌😌) okay so when i read chp 7-8 i was like ‘y/n c’mon. give kita the chance he deserves i mean IT’S THE MR. KITA SHINSUKE WTF WHAT MORE CAN YOU ASK?!’ but then oh god, the museum scene holy fuck. no because the cherry blossom tree works so well as an analogy for the main couple’s love story. yeah, cherry blossoms signify new beginnings and are mostly adorned by many when they bloom. why? aside from the indication of renewal, it only stays for a certain period of the year which is always a sight to see and because of the limited time frame, everyone knows the beauty it exudes will be gone after the time passes (death). going back, suna and y/n’s routine of spending time together to being away from each other’s presence is the recurring theme for them to grow. seeing them say too many goodbyes brings that anxious feeling of ‘ahh. it we will be back to square one again'  (also, not the fact that broken record connotes annoying repetition of something is aksjalks🤧) 

also yeah, when you love a person, the one should make you feel calm and secure and only then you can distinguish whether you truly love them or just merely an infatuation. but in y/n’s case, whether she has that rose-tinted glasses on or not, identifying the blaring red flags is hard to accept notice if that same marker is the one that brings her comfort due to its familiarity. and idk where to put this in my last ask because i don’t have enough brain juice to make a theory, but the way suna is nervous for his first date with mari, he should have second guessed why he’s acting like that when the happiness he felt with y/n is way more different with mari (should have listened to osamu and aran and ooh im sorry i assumed they samu and suna were schoolmates in high school when they are not akhfak). sure, he’s nervous out of excitement but for what? it's like foreshadowing that he needs to put up a front with mari just to keep her (but we all know that is not the case) in those 3 years they spent together, did he feel more on the edge than relaxed tho? 🤨

and for someone who loathes her half-sister, nagisa sure is invested with the happenings in y/n. it’s like she’s always on the lookout for her mistakes and dote it on her until her last breath. the mari and nagisa connection is possible though and it is not like they live countries apart but their meeting, from the way i see it, is like a silver lining for nagisa to topple y/n lol🤪 and aah, now it get why nagisa called y/n whore at the restaurant. when i read that part, i thought that they have somewhat lived under the same roof for some time but the succeeding chps showed they did not and was still confused because she has never shown any interest about what is going on with her affiliated family except hatred and then that happened. i guess when she burst out at that moment, it was when the two had met? 

it’s kinda disheartening to see how lucy subtly(??) controls y/n’s love life. maybe because she doesn’t want y/n to fall under the same category for marrying out of love when she is the one who refuses to divorce the dad (= she shouldn’t). should have filed that divorce, not doing so is a recipe for disaster itself. and mari 😤😤WHAT DID I SAY?? (well in this case, it is shunning others away from suna) i cannot, for my peace of mind, be able to be in the same vicinity as her. for all i know, i could be dragging her on the floor out of pure disgust. i can’t wait to find out who died and who is in critical condition. though, that critical scenario lead to afterlife too, so no wishful thinking here. but, ahh are we getting a background story for suna too?🥺 this is where i'm betting my wish at. while we’re at it, i wonder how atsumu will react to suna impregnating mari. i imagine he would say ‘dude wtf?! she chose you! how could you?!’ i know he is happy with his gf but can’t help to be caring as ever to y/n.

reading chps 7-9 in one go was a pleasant experience 1.because school😔🤢 2.angst is way more comforting than comedy 3.no more anxious thoughts of why and how this happened because at this point, i’m just playing hidden mickey here. but i truly love the story, can’t believe it’s already ending by the next update. saerennn i hope ur okay bub?🥺 and get that hashbrowns after finishing the series or while working for the last track. u deserve it!! luv u~💕💕

🍳

my egg anon, hello !! I’m so sorry for the late response, my asks were piled up and I got busy with school :<

AND AAAAAH THANK YOU I’M SO HAPPY YOU GOT THE MESSAGE OF THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS!! it was actually taken from the music video I linked back to the end of the chapter and my friend and I were discussing it because I think there were lots of symbolism on it. the one about new beginnings because the cherry blossoms only come for a certain time of the year before a new season comes also represents how YN and Suna keep going back and forth to loving, getting complicated, forgiving, getting complicated and so on and so forth. I love everything you said because it was exactly how I wanted the story to be like <33 the part about being anxious too !! that’s why YN keeps saying ‘this cycle never ends.’ and YESSSS THAT’S ALSO WHY I CHOSE BROKEN RECORDS AS THE TITLE. the ‘records’ refer to them playing love songs and then apology songs to each other over and over but then the song stops and they start to have new stories :<<

oooooh yes, totally. judging from my own experience, I can tell too whether it’s love or infatuation. when I’m with someone I love, I feel totally at peace and safe with them. it’s comfortable, it’s not supposed to be scary or nerve wracking. even if something wrong happened, you’re assured by the knowledge they’d be patient and listen to you. AND THIS PART WHERE YOU SAID THIS ABOUT SUNA ‘whether she has that rose-tinted glasses on or not, identifying the blaring red flags is hard to accept notice if that same marker is the one that brings her comfort due to its familiarity’ ITS 100% ACCURATE. same goes for suna tbh. YN was the one who broke his heart when they broke up but she was also the only able to comfort him. it’s hard for them to let each other go because they’re both a source of pain and familiarity that they struggle to find in this world. yes there’s some slight foreshadowing in how suna reacted with mari. he was on edge and he didn’t know what to do most of the time because he doesn’t understand mari the same way he understands YN. as for him being on edge, he most definitely was tiptoeing because mari placed a lot of boundaries such as keeping YN completely out of the picture and making her presence a bare minimum.

NOOOO BECAUSE THAT’S SO TRUE. Nagisa is always updated with YN. YN is the one who updates her about her life because she’s always trying to make conversation, but Nagisa pretends to be ‘uninterested’ although don’t let that fool you because she remembers every little detail just in case she can use it against her half sister. nagisa and mari met after mari broke up with suna in ch1 so yes, nagisa already knew the situation !! that’s why she called YN a ‘whore’ because if she ‘was with Suna’ then why is she also ‘dating’ Kita? so in nagisa’s eyes, YN is just the same as her mom.

lucy was half and half. sometimes she has good intentions but most of the time she’s also just messed in the head and she really fucked with YN’s trust issues. HMMM I WANTED A BACKGROUND STORY FOR SUNA TOO TBH but I didn’t know where to fit it and I didn’t want to add random, unnecessary details :<< AND FOR ATSUMUUUUU…. atsumu crushed on YN real hard… until now, even though he has a gf (now wife in the timeskip) you can tell he still cares about YN

NAUUUR angst is way more comforting than comedy sobs. and yes baby, I’m doing okay !! just a lil busy with uni work but nothing I can’t handle <33 THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS EGG ANON, I REALLY LOVE HEARING YOUR THOUGHTS ON IT BECAUSE YOU HAVE SUCH A BIG BRAIN AHHH I love you, stay safe too bb <33

[singingaboutwishingx]

hello! ik u love musicals and the ww so i had a thought—donnajosh the last 5 years au?

oh. my god. pain. why would you put me in pain like this.

i imagine that instead of being a novelist, josh is a political pundit—he has his degrees from harvard and yale, and he’s trying to climb up the ladder. at the beginning, he’s running a political news/commentary blog while he’s in a low-level position for a mid-range news outlet. donna never met freeride, but the drama minor really stuck with her, and it turned out that she was like, really good at being a musical theatre actress. after she graduated, she decided to pursue it full-time.

another difference in this au is that i would kind of reverse the roles. i think that donna would be analogous to jamie, while josh would fill cathy’s place.

i just ended up mapping the whole thing out chronologically by song, so that starts under the cut.

goodbye until tomorrow- donna and josh meet and sleep together. there’s a sense in both directions that they’ve met their soulmate, and it’s glorious.

shiksa goddess- donna is obv not jewish, but she knows that josh is not the guy her parents would want her to date. while they are republicans, and josh’s staunchly democratic views would make them uncomfortable, it’s more of the fact that he’s super outspoken, both politically and in general.

i can do better than that- basically the same as in the musical. josh and donna drive back to josh’s hometown so she can meet his parents. josh tells her about his friend, sam, whose girlfriend got pregnant in high school, and they got married and never left town. he also tells her about his college girlfriend, amy, who blew him off after nearly a year. he doesn’t need much from donna. all he wants is her.

moving too fast- donna gets a callback for the anything goes revival, and they take a chance and cast a complete unknown as hope harcourt. she becomes an instant star, a media darling, and a huge fan favorite. (it helps that they cast big names as reno and billy, which attracts some attention to the production and allows the unknown actors for oakleigh and hope to be pulled into the spotlight.) donna’s in love, and she’s on top of the world.

climbing uphill- josh is writing furiously. he keeps submitting op-eds everywhere and applying for higher positions at other companies, but there’s always someone or some writing that’s just a little bit better. he’s kind of afraid because the underachieving husband isn’t really where he thrives—he’s always had big dreams. he’s happy that donna’s found success, but he’s kind of bitter that it’s taking her away from him so much.

the schmuel song- josh is feeling down about his career. he basically just wants to give up, stop running his blog, and not even try to go any higher at his job. donna assures him that he’s immensely talented, and that she believes in him more than anyone could ever believe in someone.

when you come home to me- josh spends most of his nights alone, trying to write something that might maybe possibly be published, while donna, he knows, is out living her dream. she’s out there doing amazing things without him, but she’ll always come home at the end of the night. he knows that she’ll always come back home to him.

the next ten minutes- yay marriage! happy fun wedding time!

a summer in ohio- josh is hired to assist at a major news outlet in ohio. it feels less fun as the summer wears on, but it looks good on his resume. he misses being separated from donna so much.

a miracle would happen- donna loves josh desperately, and she honestly would never cheat on him. however, since her run in anything goes, she’s been going to all of these events and seeing all these other people who are more successful than josh. and like, the fact that his career hasn’t really taken off isn’t a problem, but she has a feeling that something doesn’t sit right with him. she wishes he’d just be happy for her with no strings.

i’m a part of that- josh sits at opening night of broadway’s new smash hit, which is essentially a star vehicle for donna (i mean, she had to audition, but the part was always hers). he sees her fall for her love interest and it’s so convincing that josh has to tell himself that she’s thinking of him when she looks at her co-star like that (and really, donna’s just! that! good!). broadway is this whole world that he can appreciate but never fully be a part of, and josh wishes that he could be thriving like donna.

if i didn’t believe in you- as josh’s resentment for donna’s constant absence grows into resentment for her success, donna’s disappointment in josh grows, too. she is by no means disappointed in his lack of tangible accomplishment—she knows her own success is such a fluke, but she’s grateful for every minute—but the way he always seems to have reservations at her triumphs. she tells josh that she loves him deeply, profoundly, but needs more support than this.

nobody needs to know- cut? sorry. i simply don’t think that donna would do this. she might have some feelings that lie elsewhere, but no way would she actually cheat on josh.

see i’m smiling- donna takes a couple days off of the show to come see josh in ohio. he actually gets to fill in for a newscaster on saturday night, and he’s really excited for donna to come to the taping. it’s also his birthday, and he thought they were planning to spend it together, but at the last minute, donna is called back to new york to meet with a movie producer about an upcoming project. josh begs her to please come see his taping and just let them work around her schedule, but donna keeps denying him. this could be a huge opportunity for her. she can always watch the recording later and they can celebrate a week late. he makes a comment about her always being gone, and it spirals into a knock-down-drag-out fight. donna leaves for new york.

i could never rescue you- months later, after their marriage has continued to slip away despite their best efforts, donna sits him down. she says she wants a divorce. she can’t be with him anymore because they’ve tried and they’ve tried, but nothing can make him happy for her and nothing can make her not feel like her success is the cause of his lack thereof. donna’s already packed a bag. she walks out the door.

still hurting- and at last, we arrive at the beginning. donna still leaves him a letter even though they sat down in person, and josh reads it and hurts. it’s not fair. how can she just walk away from him and leave him with this heavy grief for their love?

the trouble i’m having with making this au work (not that it’s a bad idea or anything—i think it’s fantastic and heartbreaking) is that cathy and jamie (i mean, mostly jamie) are worse people than josh and donna, and i just like... i don’t really see any universe where either of them cheat on the other or where one is too self-absorbed to realize how seriously cruel they are. josh had a few moments in the show that make me go “well...” about that statement, but on the whole, they’re both really kind, considerate people.

while cathy and jamie were basically incompatible from the start, josh and donna’s marriage fails because they both don’t realize what the other’s problems are. in josh’s case, his abandonment issues take center stage, while donna feels almost wrong for succeeding.

other choices for a ww tl5y au that interest me very much include cj and toby, toby and andy, and zoey and charlie.

thank you sm for sending me this idea!!!

[watchtheblog]

petty cache

thank you for coming to read my diary which masquerades as a blog but is actually just a vessel for disseminating my birthday wishlists. it’s like an event you show up to where the host tries to sell you a timeshare 25 minutes after some requisite, mindless song and dance.

welcome! if you’d like purchase a timeshare, scroll to the bottom. for the song and dance, look no further:

the other day i zoned out on zoom therapy and when my therapist asked where i “went” i had to lie because i had gone to the part of my brain that holds all the things i need to think about forever for no reason (i call it the petty cache — this is an umbrella term for the space that also houses my attitude cabinet) and dusted off a memory of a comment i saw on a stranger’s facebook three weeks ago that said “message me. i lost my password and i have good news to share”.

i don’t know either person, and that’s what i was thinking about. i spend $[redacted] a month on therapy and instead of focusing on one of my numerous unsolved mysteries, i was thinking about the nuances of this comment - like why they wouldn’t just share the news or message the person directly? or what losing their password had to do with anything? or why they would comment on facebook instead of texting or calling the person. did they not have their number? imagine not knowing someone well enough to have their phone number, but still wanting to share your good news with them!

all i want (for my birthday) is to know what the news is that this stranger has to share, and i’ll never know so i have to put that comment in my minutiae repository with all the other things that will plague me until i die from texting and driving, smoke inhalation as a result of purposely leaving a candle lit in my home overnight almost every night, consuming half a dozen hot dogs a week, or a now unnamed disease that will posthumously be attributed to my chronic inability to mind my own business.

i’m constantly concerning myself with things that are none of my concern - no matter how insignificant - because my brain is a commune of sentient pepperoni running instagram polls among themselves to discern if something is worth spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about. and guess what? it turns out absolutely everything that has ever offended, confused, bothered, intrigued, slightly inconvenienced, or merely happened to me is worth spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about.

because i devote so much energy to nonsense, i can often be found persecuting strangers for insulting me on the internet (and for other miscellaneous bad behavior). the information superhighway is my home so i have to protect myself (and my friends) here, and if that means spending 45 minutes to 48 hours trying to find every misstep you’ve made in your life until i have enough ammunition to spray a dozen simulated retaliatory bullets at your virtual head because you called me a “stupid bitch” on instagram, well… so be it!

i am relentless in my pursuit of wasting time, so if that doesn’t work, i will find the cold stone creamery you frequent, seek employment there, be hired on the spot, learn the craft, be promoted to manager, poison you on your birthday, gain access to your funeral, and tarnish your reputation by reading your shitty DM in front of the few family and friends whom i haven’t already made aware of the abhorrent way you conducted yourself online!

there are so many different ways strangers will try to hurt your feelings — an interesting genre of which come from men who (like me) have definitely never had sex before, and mistakenly think i care about the ways in which my body does not make them horny.

“no tits” one will say. and i’m like, how do you want me to respond to that? my boobs are indeed small, yes. did you come here to shoot facts back and forth all day? ok: you’re going to start balding way sooner than you’re prepared for, i bet your childhood dog is dead, your time on the internet should be supervised, your closet is full of vests, and you wait on line at nightclubs… good day?!

while i will obviously engage with anyone if they want to fight, i prefer when the unsolicited criticism is personalized, and not just thoughtless, lazily devised tripe.

a year and a half ago, a man who looked like he exhales smog DMed me to let me know - among other things in a paragraph long rant - he’d “lost brain cells” watching my story. knowing he had likely never had an adequate amount to begin with, it seemed like an emergency, so i started a group DM with his wife. because his message had come just three days after a “fuckkk [heart eye emoji]” response to a photo of my ass, i included a screenshot as evidence of his devolving mental state.

being - presumably - gainfully employed, neither of them responded.

luckily, the consolation prize for insulting me is that you gain residency in my brain and stay in my thoughts and prayers for all eternity, so i checked in on them a few days ago. they’d unfollowed and wiped their feeds clean of each other!!

because i’ve never “moved on” in my entire life, i fired up our long dormant group chat, and sent my condolences: “aw. sorry your trip to positano - where you were going to attempt to repair your ramshackle marriage - got cancelled because of covid and so you just got divorced instead :(” i wrote before being blocked by both of them. 

then i headed right over to my therapist’s facebook and commented “message me. i lost my password and i have good news to share”

i spent an entire therapy session detailing this monomania before my therapist thoughtfully suggested i “pick [my] battles”.

to which i thoughtfully responded: yeah, babe. i pick every single one.

                                                        ***

timeshare time! it’s the same list as this post, with a few additions (at top) (and edits based on availability).

places to donate food education fund pretty brown girl the okra project

some furniture stuff a side table  a pointless, laughably tiny little thing this website is calling a “drink table” a lamp one of these benches i do not want this but it’s important to me that at least 2 other people know it exists

this plant that obviously does not need to cost $165 but idk how to shop economically

air pods

gifts from the previous post - all still v much in play!

a pair of shoes (size 8 or 38) one pair, another pair, yet another, these are on sale, these are not, and a final pair

a specific clutch with three color choices they allege this color is called sand but it looks white to me, pink, green for those who do not know what malachite means (it couldn’t be me. i learned it 3 hours ago when i began compiling this cursed list)

something everyone with money to waste needs this

dresses i’ll never be able to wear until there’s a vaccine because unlike someone tacky who knows me, i won’t be having a birthday party in the middle of a global pandemic (hi, you fool) white polka dot, not white polka dot, also not polka dot, a red dress, a skirt (aka half a dress), a black dress

this sweatsuit xs in this, small in this

is sephora cancelled? i want this hair dryer which i’m sure you can buy elsewhere if sephora is cancelled, which it v well may be

this item which you may think is cheap but actually it’s not soooo a hairpin

earrings one pair, another pair, and another

this dress which i’ll never wear anywhere even when there is a vaccine because… what?! but maybe. you never know. size 34. lol when i get this far into the list i’m always blown away by how insane it is that i do this every year to no audience. so i’m just laughing alone at that. :) i am v funny to myself. another dress i’ll never wear ;)

the nicest weighted blanket you know of i’m depressed!!!!! if you can’t tell!!!!!!!

every year i have asked for a weekend bag and every year i have not received one, so alas, we try again this is not a weekend bag actually but it will do. this is!

a peloton but just venmo me the cash (@merce212) because i have a hookup

an assortment of ridiculous things a $500 body scarf a $580 beach towel with an octopus on it for no reason besides “art” i cannot tell analog time but it’s never too late to start!! how mad would you be if someone bought you a roulette table for your wrist? be honest. (THIS WATCH IS FOUR YEARS RENT!!!!!!) they won’t say how much this costs :( i’m losing my mind and must be gifted a chanel watch or else i will perish. to put my salami on when i am eating salami in my bed “24k gold crocodile [?!!) teddy bear”. the website says there’s only one left, which begs the question “why did someone buy one of these rather than buying me a chanel watch?!!” *real ‘billionaires shouldn’t exist [unless they’re buying me a watch]’ energy* to put my new watch in this is ugly but it’s on sale :) idk wtf “secret box pendant” means but i wish this necklace was also a USB with every season and spinoff of 90 day fiancé on it hi yes i’m stupid but i draw the line at $1500 connect four…

[mmmmalo]

Jade & Bec

[This is an experimental post, exploring the threads between Jade & Bec, which will be updated regularly unto some semblance of completion.]

Are you familiar with the concept of trolls as manifestations? Cool, awesome, here’s a strange edge-case:

Tavros informs Jade that he prevented her death by commanding Bec to redirect a bullet into a villain’s heart. Jade informs Tavros that the “villain” was in fact her Grandpa, and Tavros attempts to defend his misguided heroics with the dignity of a wounded puppy dog. The strangeness: if Tavros is manifesting for Jade, why is he explaining Bec’s motivations for killing Grandpa? After all, Tavros directed Bec to do something Bec was already going to do – both of them are concerned with Jade’s safety. One might conclude that Bec (like Tavros) misjudged (not really) the danger presented by Grandpa (Harley). However, the manifestation of Tavros implies that these motivations also apply to Jade, despite her vocal insistence that Tavros is wrong.

What gives? Here’s a possibility broached in the second half of the conversation:

What if Bec is Jade’s imaginary friend? Tavros’s inexplicable manifestation for two parties would then be explained as voicing the thoughts of a mind divided. This would mean Jade shot Grandpa, albeit with several psychic buffers.

I realize that this would contradict the birth of Bec seen in Jade’s dreams, and that’s certainly not something to be ignored -- but then the trolls acting as psychological manifestations would likewise seem to contradict their existence as alien entities. The uncanny dissonance comes with the territory of dream logic, maybe.

Another reason to think Bec may have always already been a part of Jade: in the same way that cherubs seek to rekindle a primordial union, the kids in Homestuck universally aspire to a reunion. When John seeks to reunite with Dad, their separation analogous to the scratch on Dave’s record, an emblem of his fractured sense of self. John’s distance from (his image of) Dad is met with anxiety, and the urge to unite with that image drives much of his behavior throughout the story. Critically, a consequence of conceiving of this union as a re-union is that John fancies himself as having spawned directly from Dad’s image. (x)(x)(x)

As her riveting anthro treatise indicates, Jade similarly wishes to unite with Bec. The creation of Jadesprite corroborates this, as does the eventual realization of dogtier!Jade. But what could it mean for Jade to think of this as a RE-union? There’s certainly the sense in which Jade romanticizes shedding the trappings of civilization and embracing animal instinct, which can be conceived as having preceded humanity as we know it. In that sense, Jade could be said to be “returning” to a state from which humanity ostensibly divorced itself.

Put in familial terms, you might say humans are descended from beasts. Thus phrased, Jade being raised by a dog seems like a very apt metaphor.

Bec being Jade’s creation would admittedly invert this sense of who is parent and who is child, but there’s precedent for that sort of thing. The metaphor rich soils of Alternia has an upper class defined by the lower class trappings of Juggalo culture, after all. At this point I only want to establish a starting point for considering what it would mean for Bec to have already been Jade.

Main topics for future additions:

Why would Jade want to shoot Grandpa?

What are we to make of Bec’s powers if he is an extension of Jade?

(and of course, further justification for either of these questions being asked)

[5/3/2019] Topic: Jade & Lightning

First, a comment:

zenosanalytic

the parent stuff seems pretty easy, considering that it's de riguer in Homestuck for kids to be the parents of their parents

so like: Bec would both be a creation of Jade, and her primary parental figure. The different would be that, whereas with the B1s&2s it's a literal genetic link, with Jade and Bec it'd be more role-based.

...'difference' rather -__-

Thanks -- that’s further reason to regard that twist as a non-issue, except insofar as it may evince confusion on Jade’s part.

To get into the subject of why Jade would want to shoot Grandpa, it would be worth it to review and reevaluate stuff leading up to this. Namely, Jade’s fear of lightning.

When John entered the Medium, he had several near-falls: slipping on a staircase, launching into the air with his new Pogo-Hammer. Each encounter with the possibility of mortal descent was followed by the appearance of large ogres, who begin their assault after John looks down into the abyss. The ogres are physical manifestations of John’s abstract fear of heights, a fear which began with his fall from the slime pogo, and which Sburb stoked by placing his home on top of a huge spire. (Or perhaps it would be better to say that heights are the aspiration, and falling is the fear)

Subsequent encounters between kids and the monsters on their planets can be similarly understood as reactions to fears exemplified in some early trauma. Rose slams an ogre face-first into the oceans of LOLAR, which reminds her of the drowning of Jaspers. Dave gets his neck slit by an agent, which is an echo of the decapitated apartment building suspended over a bloodpool of lava, itself an echo of the fracturing of Dave’s identity from fraternal emasculation. In each case, the challenges posed by the game are directly sourced from some psychological fixation.

In Jade’s case, the appearance of her first imp is triggered by an aurora that bears a striking resemblance to lightning, giving a fairly direct indication of Jade’s fear. What’s more, the form of this manifestation is a callback to Bec’s first appearance! Naturally, this could be explained as simple callback reminding us the imp has inherited Bec’s powers via prototyping. But insofar as the imp is a manifestation induced by the image of a thunderbolt, the sequence suggests that Jade’s fear of lightning is closely associated with Bec.

There are precedents for this connection: one is rooted in the idea that the sylladex is itself a medium for the abstract expression of thought. When Jade attempts to draw her Eclectic Bass back into her Pictionary Modus, she instead captures the ghost image of Johnny 5, a sentient robot. This error is not a random occurrence, but rather a short circuit of mental association. Eclectic is two letters apart from electric, and Johnny 5 emerged as a consciousness due to a lightning strike, like a metallic Frankenstein monster. Immediately following this error, Bec appears and zaps Jade back to her room. – the dog is somehow both the interruption of this line of thought and its culmination.

The invocation of Frankenstein allows us to make some sense of the earliest iteration of this pattern: a pumpkin carved with the visage of Bec nearly awakens Jade when the reader tries to drop it on her head. 4 points:

John covered his walls with clowns and rude epithets; Rose scrawled frantic permutations of MEOW; and Dave drew SBAHJ. Each instance involves the kids expressing some kind of subconscious fixation or fear: John and his social anxiety, Rose and the echoes Jaspers’s swan song, Dave and the fever dreams within his art. There are no comparable drawings on the wall of Jade’s home, nor in her room on Prospit, but rather than concluding that Jade is an outlier to the trend, I would contend that Jade carved the face of Bec onto the pumpkin in her sleep instead. This again indicates a dread for Bec buried in Jade’s mind -- or rather, that Bec is an expression of some unspoken dread?

The pumpkin drop is echoed in drunk!Rose’s account of Newton’s mythic realization of the law of gravity. Rose says the proverbial strike of apple-to-noggin is symbolic of inspiration, the sudden intrusion of an idea. The same can be said of the pumpkin as a symbol: recall that the gift that inspired Jade to begin gardening in the first place was pumpkin seeds. So that which threatens to awaken Jade is the idea of Bec, again situating the scene

That the “reader” executes the drop is not arbitrary. It is crucial to the structure of the scene that the impetus for this attempted inspiration comes from beyond the fourth wall, for reasons I will elaborate upon in due time.

The inhabitants of dream bubbles are at times referred to as the dreaming dead, invoking the age old metaphor of death as a long sleep. The corollary is that awakening is akin to coming alive. As the allusion to Frankenstein via Johnny 5 might suggest, the flash of Bec-associated inspiration from beyond bears the possibility of no only awakening Jade, but of bringing her to life.

More lightning talk tomorrow.

[5/6/2019] Topic: Grandpa Harley

Let's skip to the end (and sort out the messy filler afterward): Jade's fear of lightning seems to be linked to a sexual assault at the hands of her grandfather.

An early hint comes by way of another reference to Johnny 5. Having alchemized the thunderstruck robot, Jade finds herself swarmed with notifications from the manifest Eridan. The Prince impresses upon her Ahab's Crosshairs, a weapon which had been previously established as a phallic lightning bolt (x). Knowing that the weapon will somehow make it to her grandson* Jake, Jade muses on the question of who she might have kids with. Eridan in turn balks at the thought of "pink wwigglers comin out a your owwn personal torso" -- a turn of phrase that obviously alienates us from childbirth, but also presents us with the image of worms or maggots wriggling in Jade's body. Rot blends with an image of fecundity, like the scarabs in the Mummy. We don't have the tools to make sense of this overlay of death and birth quite yet, but we will return to it. For now, consider this scene as a collage whose elements we cannot yet organize.

The more overt indication comes via Clubs Deuce. Recall when dream!Jade beat the snot out of CD for stealing the queen's ring, only to reveal that back in reality, Jade's dreambot was beating the stuffing out of dead!Grandpa? The juxtaposition suggests that Jade's violence towards CD in her dream is a displacement of some latent aggression towards Grandpa. Much later, just before Cascade, there is a payoff of sorts for this linkage: another lightning aurora hovers in the distance as Jade prepares for the scratch, and it triggers the return of CD. He drops in from the sky and kills Jade with an explosion of foam, knocking the Genesis Frog into the Forge in the process. The foam is ejaculatory, and the depositing the frog where it may gestate prior to its final descent/ascent to Skaia is an insemination. We infer that CD is playing the role of Grandpa in this display.

In response, Jack kills the shit out of CD, just as Bec killed Grandpa. The retaliation has echoes elsewhere. Recall the gag in which Hussie riffs on the end of the Neverending Story: he rides a white dog-dragon and avenges himself upon some bullies with a blast of stupid green dog barf. (Aside: it is out of the current scope, but worth noting that Hussie and Falkor respectively bear emblems of influence by Vriska and Lord English) The sequence is a silly mirror of Becsprite's annihilation of Jade's imminent meteor (the seed) with an immense blast of green fire. Entry sequences tend to involve some esoteric depiction of a character's trauma, and in this case, the meteor directly represents the "bully", Grandpa. (And perhaps to a lesser extent, bullies like Karkat, who in their own way posed a violent, intrusive threat to her (emotional) well being)

The entry meteor's threatened impact with the earth is but one example of the colliding celestial spheres that seem to haunt Jade. In Descend, Jade's reverie in the golden city is cut short as Jack severs the umbilical chain connecting the moon and planet (child and parent), sending the moon careening into the Battlefield below, crushing Jade. As with the meteors that swarm Skaia like sperm upon an egg, the child-status of the moon renders its crash akin to a seeding. A subsequent collision is more direct: Jake's Hope field versus Jade's green fireball. The entire grimbark scenario was triggered by Jade catching a glimpse of Jake's banana hammock (though of course, on a plot level the transformation was triggered by HIC's mind control). To drive the point home, Jade bemoans her inability to detach her focus from Jake's undies as they duel. As Jade is overpowered, the collision of Hope and Space comes to resemble the visage of Doc Scratch -- this unsettles due both to Scratch's pedophilia, and the way that the mind/body blocking of the scene reinforces the sense of domination from Jake to Jade. Adding insult to injury, the defeated Jade is crushed to death by a long white tower.

All this would seem to have been foreshadowed by Dave's comment on the earth being under assault by planet fucking Jupiter; the invocation of Zeus connects his comically absurd doomsday scenario to Jade's fear of lightning.

Next topic -- motifs connected to imbuing inert matter with the breath of life, and how they relate to Jade's sense of agency.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

The Vindication of Venom Part 11: Why did Brock blame Spider-Man?

Part 10

Part 12

Perhaps one reason for why many readers adhere to their criticisms of Venom’s motivations is his choice of Spider-Man as his target. Let’s address that in this penultimate part of the series.

 As before, here Is a little reminder of Brock’s origin and what those criticisms boil down to.

 ·         Eddie Brock’s motivations for hating Spider-Man are weak and make no sense

In previous instalments I’ve spoken a lot about Brock’s psychology in order to illustrate how mentally unhinged he was. However, even if a reader did recognize Brock as delusional, the fact that he targeted Spidey specifically can still seem either illogical to them and/or overly convenient from a creative point of view.

 To address this we need to remember that a major part of Brock’s intentions as a villain was that he was a super villain stalker for Spider-Man. As such the character has to be viewed through that lens and judged in the context of that archetype.

 With this in mind we could counterpoint the above criticism by simply saying that a delusional person by their nature doesn’t need to have a rational reason for their actions. And since the point for the character was to be a delusional psychotic stalker it is thereby invalid to reprimand said character for not having a strong reason to hate the protagonist. That is to say that the point  is that his hatred is irrational and unreasonable.

 This is actually an idea somewhat corroborated by this excerpt from Fettinger’s ‘The Dark Side of the Spider’ essay.

 … in real life, nutcases often don’t need an excuse to stalk or murder someone. I read not too long ago about a serial killer who murdered several people because he just didn’t like the way they looked at him. He stalked and killed one woman because she accidentally bumped into him with her radiology cart at the hospital he was working at and he believed that she gave him radiation poisoning!…

 For myself I actually vaguely recall a story about someone who set their mind to killing a musician because they interpreted their songs to be coded messages about how they wanted to kill him.

And to give a final real life example, let us consider Mark David Chapman, more infamously known as the man who murdered John Lennon of the Beatles.

Putting aside how Chapman’s mother was apparently unmoving towards him (something we later learn was echoed by Eddie Brock’s father) or how both Chapman and Brock (to varying extents) allegedly held strong religious beliefs, Chapman after killing John Lennon was diagnosed with being in a delusional psychotic  state when he carried out the murder. Reportedly the murder was motivated by a desire for notoriety, because Lennon ‘was a phoney’, because Chapman hated celebrities in general, and a host of other reasons. Notice how rationally these also do not make much sense at all.

These examples demonstrate how it is sadly perfectly realistic for unstable individuals to act in an anti-social manner towards people for no sane or rational reason.

However in the case of Eddie Brock his hatred for Spider-Man wasn’t simply arbitrary.

Of course his choice makes a certain amount of warped sense when you think about it from Brock’s point of view, a view which is trying to absolve himself of any blame.

Spider-Man was involved in the apprehending of the Sin Eater who’s capture directly led to Brock’s story being debunked. It wasn’t as though Brock’s downfall was completely divorced from anything to do with Spider-Man and he chose him at random; though again this wouldn’t be unrealistic.

However you do have to wonder why Brock didn’t place any blame onto Daredevil, who was also involved in the capture of the Sin Eater? In fact why didn’t he also blame the real Sin Eater or Emil Gregg who’d deceived him? Why hinge so much of his fall from grace on Spider-Man’s shoulders?

The answer is because Spider-Man was the person who simply stood out the most (even next to another superhero and especially compared to two ‘normal’ people) and was simply the most enticing target for Brock’s unhealthy mind. The reasons for this have much to do with Spider-Man’s appearance, fame and anonymity.

Daredevil might’ve been mentioned in the news reports about Sin Eater’s capture but the reports more than likely placed greater focus upon Spider-Man’s involvement. Partially this is because he was the person who physically incapacitated the Sin Eater and partially because he’d had the most reported history of confrontations with him in the course of the case. For instance he was involved in an earlier street shoot out with Sin Eater where the latter fired a shotgun into a crowd of bystanders.

Spider-Man is also much more famous than Daredevil. To begin with Daredevil mainly sticks to Hell’s Kitchen whilst Spidey tends to roam around NYC more. Unlike DD, he also began his career as a televised celebrity where he became a sensation. After this he became the focus of a lot of news put out by Jameson and his various media outlets. Heck in the Marvel Universe Spider-Man is so famous he even had his own parade float!

Moving on, if we accept that Brock might’ve felt genuine compassion for Emil Gregg when he thought he was a murderer, then he might not have blamed him for his deception. This might’ve had something to do with Gregg’s proven history of mental illness. Similarly Stan Carter’s mental issues were public knowledge and he had had a respected history as a police officer and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, people who to Brock were worthy of respect (see ASM #362). Furthermore as I already mentioned, Carter and Gregg were both men of God like Brock himself, the latter apparently even Catholic. In Carter’s case this is somewhat supported by Brock’s claims that he might’ve wised up and stopped killing since he knew he couldn’t have been caught, demonstrating a leniency for the man.

Further food for thought is provided by the timing of ASM #300. In Spectacular Spider-Man #134-136 Stan Carter had re-entered the public eye as seemingly rehabilitated individual coping with physical handicaps inflicted by Spider-Man’s assault on him. Apologetic for his actions, he’d begun telling his own story to the public before ultimately committing suicide by cop.

The events of this story were published and chronologically occurred prior to ASM #298. They were also indirectly referenced in that issue.

In Spec #134-136 Spidey battled and was defeated by Electro.

In ASM #298 Brock’s wall of news clipping in ASM #298 displays a headline which (like the above image) references Spidey’s encounter with Electro.

Brock likely would’ve been aware of these very public events surrounding Carter, including his crippling at the hands of Spider-Man and (like some other members of the public) might’ve been moved to further sympathy for him. In his own mind Carter’s injuries and Spidey’s public harassment of him thereafter might have even provided further proof of Spider-Man’s malevolence.

Whilst this potentially addresses why Brock didn’t blame Carter or Gregg, it doesn’t quite explain why (beyond him simply being irrational/delusional) he chose Spider-Man as the bearer of his loathing.

To answer that let us consider the nature of Spider-Man himself, particularly in the context of Brock’s role as a stalker character.

Spider-Man in the public eye has simultaneously been characterized as a big time hero (note the TV screen in Brock’s flashback) and/or a major public menace. Many (maybe even most) people in New York seemingly buy into the latter perception of Spidey thanks largely to the years long slander campaign by J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle.

With this narrative being so prevalent it makes a lot of sense Brock as a New York resident (who worked of the Daily Globe, which also slandered Spider-Man) would subconsciously gravitate towards Spidey in his despair and anger. When looking for someone to blame for your problem on ‘that public menace’ Spider-Man would be all too inviting a scapegoat; particularly when you so deeply want anyone but yourself to blame for your life falling apart.

Whether viewing Spider-Man as a hero or a menace the fact is that Spider-Man was immensely famous; and famous for nothing less than having literal super powers.

In terms of his place within the pop culture of New York/America and the degree of his penetration into the public consciousness, Spider-Man was on a similar level to an A-list actor or musician in the real world. Actually that analogy is all too appropriate for Spidey since he first burst onto the scene as a wrestler and television performer, meaning he had a degree of celebrity about him from the get go. In truth given how Spidey is a bright, colourful, mysterious and literally superhuman figure who routinely engages in spectacular battles with equally larger than life colourful characters, he (and other superheroes) probably outshine the regular celebrities of the Marvel Universe.

Spidey also regularly saves lives and has been seen and (sometimes) recognized as the very definition of a hero. This could only further his place in the collective consciousness of the residents of New York as well as make him seem yet larger than the largest life figures of pop culture. Even putting his uncommon altruism and self-sacrifice aside, we have to consider some of the (relative) realities of his being a super powered being.

Forget being larger than life, Spider-Man to the common observer seems to be someone figuratively and literally beyond human and (in more ways than one) above  mere mortals. He literally swoops down from the air, flips around, bench presses a car and suspends crooks upside down all in the blink of an eye. That is going to leave an impression on anyone, hence why Spider-Man photographs in the Daily Bugle and other publications sell so well.

Consider how much news and other such material is printed about the lives of celebrities in the real world. Consider how everyone in the world you and I live in knows who Spider-Man is, even though he isn’t even real. Now consider how much Spidey (one of the first heroes to emerge after the Fantastic Four) would stick in the minds of residents in Marvel Universe New York City. In fact between the Bugle and other news outlets’ efforts, seeing or hearing about Spider-Man and his exploits would be inescapable. He’d be shoved in your face whether you liked it or not.*

Unfortunately as Mark David Chapman and countless other examples prove, celebrities, due to their larger than life prominence in society, inevitably attract the attention of mentally unhinged individuals.

In fact I vaguely recall a story about someone who set their mind to killing a musician because they interpreted their songs to be coded messages about how they wanted to kill him. Sadly celebrities just attract such people. It is a point illustrated through the character of Mary Jane Watson as she has had numerous stalkers due to her prominence as an actress and model, several during the very same run that Venom was introduced during.

Thus it actually makes all too much sense that Spider-Man would similarly draw the attention unstable individuals like Brock who stalk him out of revenge for imagined slights. It all feeds back into the stalker conception and presentation of the character I spoke about back in Part 4. To tweak an earlier assertion of mine, Venom/Eddie Brock as a villain is not just intended as a super powered stalker, but a super powered celebrity  stalker.

Spider-Man would particularly make for an enticing target for anyone inclined towards stalking, and especially for someone like Brock who was looking for a scapegoat. Believe it or not this has a lot to do with his outfit.

Spider-Man’s costume (in this era, his particularly intimidating black suit) covers his entire body, giving no hint as to his identity beyond his general build and to a lesser extent gender. His mask doesn’t even evoke a human face containing no hint of ears, a nose, a mouth; just large white shiny eyes of a distinctly inhuman shape.

 The overall effect of the costume (especially the black one) serves to profoundly dehumanize Spider-Man to the outside observer. It is an effect exacerbated when you consider that he shoots spider-like webbing from his wrists, has the ability to literally crawl on walls and ceilings, can apparently know when you are behind him and can perform feats of strength and acrobatics which are well beyond human capabilities. Putting aside the bad reputation spiders tend to have as creepy crawlies, it’s easy to see how Spider-Man could be unnerving to a lot of people if he really existed. 

As some food for thought consider how the highly religious Eddie Brock outright referred to Spidey as a demon at one point in ASM #300.

Whilst Spider-Man’s costume makes him easy to demonize, his anonymity exacerbates the problem.

  Thanks to his identity being secret and his costume completely obscuring any features of his face Spidey becomes an ideal blank canvas for unstable people like Brock to project their frustrations onto. This is not a dissimilar psychological phenomenon to how executioners (such as World War I gun men) found it a lot easier to kill when the prisoner’s face was covered. The act of dehumanizing them made hating, and by extension hurting, their targets a lot easier.

  Between his larger than life celebrity status, dehumanizing powers and costume as well as his anonymity Spider-Man would make an attractive receptacle for any disturbed individual. In Brock’s case though gravitating towards Spidey was greatly helped by the fact that he was directly involved in the case which brought led to the ruination of his career. This put made him the quickest and easiest scapegoat for the delusional Brock to latch onto when he desperately wanted one?

  In the next and final instalment we look at some tangential points related to Venom along with my conclusion.

  *And wouldn’t having Spidey shoved in your face (say by the TV) be especially irksome if he was being praised in some way (like being called a hero) when you felt screwed over by him? Couldn’t it even exacerbate those negative feelings you’ve been feeling?

P.S. Despite his bright costume (which reveals some of his face) and choice in theme, Daredevil next to Spider-Man seems much more ‘normal’, although he’s very athletic. Whilst his ability to seemingly know where you are no matter what is impressive, he isn’t doing anything obviously super human like crawling on walls, spinning webs or even bench pressing heavy objects.

Anyone who might get a hint that Daredevil has superpowers is probably just a common crook in Hell’s Kitchen. The average person on the street probably has even less clue about his super senses than they do about Spider-Man’s Spider Sense.

Plus a guy running around in a bright red costume with devil horns is realistically probably going to look less scary and intimidating than someone in all black with big bug eyes.

Between all this and his comparatively better public reputation, Daredevil was a lot less dehumanized to Brock and seemed less ‘above’ him than Spider-Man, making him a less attractive receptacle for his frustrations.

Furthermore in the Sin Eater case the news at most might have mentioned DD’s efforts to stop Spider-Man from killing Carter, and later trying to protect the latter from an angry mob. 

If Brock had felt any kind of sympathy for Carter then these actions would’ve more positively inclined Daredevil towards him, making it less likely he’d gravitate to him as a target. In fact DD’s role in fighting off Spider-Man (if that was reported) might have caused Brock to outright like him due to his dislike of Spidey.

Part 10

Part 12

[ukrainianwomenonline]

How to make a long-distance relationship work (international dating advice)

When you pick up the telephone and begin to talk to your girlfriend, even your eyes become slightly dreamy, yet your heart is thinking… if this long-distance relationship will work well or not.

I know this type of pain. It’s more common than you think.

Now I would like to reveal the top secrets to maintain a long-distance relationship. Hopefully you will benefit from the information in this article! 😊

Can a long-distance relationship work well?

Frankly, the answer can be yes or no. Let me explain.

There are 3 pillars in a relationship: intimacy, emotional connection and a shared blueprint. Obviously, in a long-distance relationship, intimacy is absent. Truthfully, a romantic relationship with emotional connection but without intimacy is literally a friendship only. Yet you do not want to friend-zone your girlfriend.

As a result, what must happen is to create a solid shared blueprint. Here are some examples:

Liz and Greg are a couple in a long-distance relationship. This couple run an internet business together. Since their internet business is wildly successful, Liz and Greg have mutual benefits – the profit of their online business. This shared blueprint is to build the biggest eCommerce store in their industry. Their goal is to move to the same city within 2 years.

Betty and Chandler are in a long-distance relationship. They have a 10-year-old son. Both Betty and Chandler love their son so much (unconditional love). As they truly want their son to enjoy a very happy family life, Betty and Chandler are planning to live in the same city within 1 year.

In the above-mentioned examples regarding international dating advice, it can be seen that those 2 couples have straightforward and clear mutual benefits (AKA shared blueprint). Hence, their long-distance relationships work pretty well.

Sadly, a lot of couples do not have a solid shared vision, so lack of a shared blueprint would make their long-distance relationships much harder.

How to make a long-distance relationship work well for you:

Firstly, your relationship needs a solid, strong shared blueprint. It can be a business that you are going to build with your partner or kids from your relationship. Even though you may not want to start a business right now, you might think about something practical and realistic – creating an amazing way of life that you and your lady could share. Maybe you are both movie fans, so you could go to the cinema once a week and start a movie reviews podcast. This activity will surely make you look forward to the excitement each week! Don’t underestimate the power of anticipation and excitement. By the way, Australian singer Darren Hayes has a movie reviews podcast called We Paid to See This which is absolutely hilarious.

Secondly, you should find a way to move to the same location as soon as possible!

Incidentally, if you cannot fulfil your intimate needs in a long-distance relationship, that’s totally understandable. But you can channel your desire into something more productive – writing a blog, building muscles or upgrading your career / business. In reality, when your intimate needs are not really met, you are more able to build something great for yourself. This sounds a bit counter-intuitive, but I can show you a good example which might sound extreme, yet it’s extremely inspiring. Let’s learn something from the true story below:

As the most successful singer in Australia, Darren Hayes used to pray to God each night not to make him gay when he was a teenager because he did not want to have AIDS and did not want to go to hell! When he was a teenager, he had gay thoughts; thus, he checked his HIV status in the late 80s – he was terrified! Due to his homophobia, he married a woman that he met at university when he was only 21 years of age – he just wanted to fit in! In that marriage, he basically used artistic expression (music) to fulfil his real intimate needs as intimacy with his wife at that time was simply a substitute – he is 100% gay. That was how he became so successful – his well-known band Savage Garden literally won ten awards from thirteen nominations at the Annual Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards in the late 90s. Savage Garden’s song Truly, Madly, Deeply is the most played love song on radio in American history.

Darren met Richard after his divorce. Now his intimate needs are clearly met. However, these days he is not very interested in music anymore. I would argue that there is a trade-off!

Typical signs of a failing long-distance relationship:

The first sign of a failing long-distance relationship is lack of excitement / spark. When you evaluate the reason why you chose your partner in the first place, that particular reason is absent now. As a consequence, the relationship has certainly lost its spark / excitement. You cannot really explain why the relationship is not great any longer and that is the most obvious sign of a failing long-distance relationship, for it’s an emotional response instead of a logical response. Lack of spark has already registered in the limbic brain.

Well, you can still address this issue by having a virtual date with your partner every day!

The second sign of a failing long-distance relationship is lack of a mutual direction in life. Perhaps there was a goal that you shared with your partner. Nevertheless, that goal is non-existent right now. I’d like to give you an analogy: every successful organization has a clear vision statement and everybody in the organization is aware of what they work for every day; as a result, they can stay focused. Likewise, a long-distance relationship with a mutual direction in life also makes things much easier. Remember: it is not really about looking at each other’s eyes every day; it’s about two individuals looking at the same direction in life! Without a mutual direction, a long-distance relationship is very, very vulnerable.

So, if this is an issue that you are dealing with now, you should identify what motivates you and your partner & do something about that motivation – Can you start a company together? Can you watch movies on Netflix together?

The most practical international dating advice: working on yourself also benefits your partner!

Since you play a key role in your long-distance relationship, you should totally work on yourself. When you are happy, everything becomes a bit easier automatically, right? Rather than purchasing a gym membership that you almost never use, you would be well-advised to do some exercise in the sun every day. Dr Christiane Northrup argues that working out in the sun can help your body and brain to produce more Vitamin D & improve your sleep. This is especially true if you do some physical exercise in the sun more than 4 days per week between 6:00am and 8:00am. You will surely feel energized as a result. 😊

“Many guys complain about how challenging their love lives are, yet very few guys are willing to invest in their education about female psychology. Don’t be one of them! You should read more books about female psychology and make your knowledge work for you. This is the ultimate international dating advice.”

Ukraine Brides Agency Blog https://ift.tt/2Xw2SHO

[megacircuit9universe]

What Will the 2020s Be Like?

DEC 13 2019

I focus a lot in this blog on technology, because it’s something I understand, and also because it does very much transform society and civilization. The cotton gin made slavery sustainable, and the Civil War, therefore, inevitable.

Tech made WW1 the deadliest war ever, and many believe that the advances of tech in the 1920s (radio, telephone, automobiles, etc) was so disruptive, it made the Great Depression inevitable.

WW2 wasn’t so much brought on by advances in technology, but more than any other event before it (or arguably since) it catapulted technology forward. From the first rockets and computers, to the first atomic bombs. 

I grew up in the 1970s, which was the peak of the analog world... the world of newspapers, and three-network broadcast TV.  There was an antenna on every roof... a pay phone and a mail box on every street corner. Cameras used film, recorders used tape, and electric typewriters had ribbons. 

Your watch and your clock were analog, as was your record player. Your electric guitar had pick ups that fed an analog signal to an amplifier with a tube inside it. And your car... well all the gauges on your dashboard had needles. Any feedback systems it had, such as the automatic transmission, power steering, or the carburetor, relied on fluid dynamics or vacuum pressure. 

Tech-wise, the 1970s wasn’t much different from the 1960s or the 1950s, other than doing all these things more cleverly... as one would expect after several decades of honing techniques.

Politically, however, the 1970s was a lot different from the 1950s, because of all the upheaval and transformation that happened through the 1960s. Civil rights were finally being taken seriously. The Draft had disappeared in favor of an all volunteer military. Social conformity was out the window forever. Secularism was on the rise, abortion was legal, and divorce was becoming more common and more acceptable.

Conservatives have never gotten over these political changes, which is why they have, in every succeeding decade, fought dirtier and more desperately to regain control of society... still dreaming to this day of overturning Roe V Wade, for example, but also longing to bring back racism, the subjugation of women, the persecution of gays, and state sanctioned Christianity to the exclusion of all other religions... and of science.

Not that I want this entry to be a screed about conservatism... so let’s just acknowledge that they’ve always been out there, through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and teens... struggling like hell to claw us all back to the 1950s any way they can... and move on...

Having grown up in the 1970s, I became of teenager of the 1980s.  So I can recall clearly that what made the 1980s different from the previous three decades was the advent of, “electronics.”

I put that word, “electronics,” in quotes to emphasize that this was still a world that did not have computers as we know them now, and nobody thought of their electronic devices as being, “digital”. 

Yes, home computers existed in the 1980s... for hobbyists. I even had a very crude home computer, the Timex/Sinclair 2000 in the early 80s, but there wasn’t much you could do with it, and after it flopped, all support for it vanished. 

This was the story for a lot of home computers in the 1980s. If they were useful for anything, it was teaching you how to program in BASIC, and learn the fundamentals about how these analytical engines worked, but many people saw them as kind of a fad.  

Only super hardcore computer geeks really stuck with them through the 1980s.  The rest of us just kind of lived our lives, knowing they were out there, but not really thinking they would ever matter much.

Electronics, on the other hand, was seen as a different kind of tech that really did revolutionize our everyday lives in this decade before the World Wide Web came into its own.

The term, “electronic,” was for any device from the analog days, that now had a circuit board inside it... with transistors on it... maybe a chip?  People didn’t talk a lot about chips in the 80s, even if they did exist inside our devices.

A Telephone, for example, was an analog thing in the house, with big curly cords.  In the early 70s, they still all had analog dials on them.  By the late 70s, they all had all become, “touch tone,” with a keypad that sounded, “electronic,” tones to do the “dialing.”  But the first truly electronic phones, were the magical cordless phones... with the stubby antenna on the handset that you could amazingly take all the way out to the front stoop! 

This same kind of transformation happened to everything... from digital clocks, to electronic tape decks, cameras, speedometers, and even typewriters with little LCD screens on them, that could save what you were writing to little discs... which they called, “word processors.” :O

There were a million hand held devices... I remember owning an electronic dictionary and thesaurus, about the size of a small tablet today, and twice as thick, with a tiny LCD screen.  It allowed you to play a few shitty word based games like hangman.  It seemed like a modern marvel.

Video arcade games, of course, had a massive impact on our lives in the 1980s, as well as the first home game consoles, for those who could afford them... usually the upper middle class families that also could afford cable TV.

And after video games, the other huge tech that really transformed our lives was the video recorder.  Again, you had to have some money to own one back then, but those giant, klunky camcorders of the day were a massive improvement over the old Super8 film cameras that only recorded video, with no sound.

With a camcorder, you not only could capture both video and sound, but on magnetic tape, rather than film... which meant you could watch it immediately. No need to have it developed... or rent a projector!

I could go on, but the point here is that the 1980s was a time when the analog world of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, was being magically transformed by electronics, and we really felt like electronics were going to allow us to do anything... and  yet nobody imagined home computers, networked together, would be a part of that.

The original Ghost Busters movie from 1984 is a wonderful example of this, because it’s set in the real world... which is beset by the supernatural problem of ghosts, spirits, vengeful gods that range from nuisances, to existential threats, but heretofore have never been tangible, touchable, or provable.

But three, clever, modern men of the 1980s have developed an arsenal of electronic devices to deal with these ghosts.  They can detect and analyze them, track them, attack them, trap them, and hold them in a containment grid... all with state of the art transistorized tech.

The movie really captured the feeling of the times, like no other... that we can use electronics, here on Earth (rather than in a galaxy far far away) to deal with problems in our everyday lives (rather than hacking into NORAD to teach an AI that nuclear war is pointless) and be heroes in our home town.

Young people did take that message to heart, embracing electronics to do what young people like to do... create stuff.  In 21st century parlance we would say they were creating, “content,” but at the time, the big problem was in publishing said content.

Garage bands recorded songs and albums. Others recorded videos, both long, short, and very short form videos.  People wrote poems and prose on their word processors... started, “zines,” which were published using photocopiers, in stapled booklets.

All this stuff we attempted to shop to big publishers, who’s gate keepers ignored it, so we tried to sell zines, and indie tapes in local record stores, or showcase local videos at get-togethers in coffee houses.   We developed an, “underground,” of indie music, video, writing, comics, etc... which relied on a network of high school and college students disseminating copies of content from hand to hand, throughout the country, and across the pond.

Most of the greatest musicians and other artists of the 1980s... the ones who did get signed to indie studios to produce more professional material... were never acknowledged by the mainstream media... which by the 80s was under the control of 30-something baby-boomers whose only agenda was to celebrate their own youth, and crank out cheep garbage pop for commercial consumption.

So, when the 1990s arrived, and the World Wide Web came into being, with cheep, but reliable home computers that had dial up modems to get anybody with a paycheck online... that underground movement from the 80s took it over immediately.

Most of us had at least some prior experience with BASIC, as mentioned above, and knew the fundamentals about computing... even if we hadn’t used that knowledge much for several years.  

Now, those skills were suddenly relevant, and most of us were still young enough (in our twenties now, rather than our teens) to take on the learning curves necessary to do everything from code HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, but learn how to work on and upgrade our machines, how to master operating systems and all the big applications... the word and graphics processors, the animation tools, the video tools, the audio tools... how to get freeware... how to make freeware... you name it.

The teens of the 1980s, including those hard core computer hobbyists mentioned above, who helped build the primordial backbone that would become the WWW a decade later, built the internet.  We pioneered it, formatted it’s culture... of memes, piracy, boundless creativity, and the free sharing of ideas and technology.

And we did it all in the late 1990s and early 2000s before the mainstream media had any real clue that this silly internet thing could be come kind of a threat to their carefully curated analog kingdom.

Flaming and trolling were things back then... conspiracy theories, fake news, and disinformation were problems back then... but they were manageable. Nothing like what they are now, at the end of the twenty-teens.

The problem there, is that in the twenty-teens, the old conservative farts finally left the safe confines of AOL and began to slowly populate places like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter... as did all the AM radio shock jocks they listened to.

At the same time, “Big Media,” began to take the internet seriously as a threat, with YouTube and Netflix stealing so many of their captive eyeballs and earlobes, and launched a hostile takeover of the internet that continues to play out to this day... with Disney buying up every franchise and attempting to shut down Netflix, and net neutrality itself having been destroyed by the Trump administration two years ago now, allowing ISPs to partner with big media outlets and throttle competitors content, as they all attempt to stamp out independent, original content altogether.

YouTube’s on life support, for independent creators. Tumblr is a zombie husk of what it was just two years ago. Twitter is a hellscape.  Facebook is for lifeless mannequins. Vine is dead. Blogger and LiveJournal are forgotten to time. MySpace, Geocities and AngelFire... all ashes now.  All destroyed by blind corporate greed and the same  army of bigoted killjoys we’ve been trying to beat back since the dawn of civilization.

Still, technology continues to evolve, and the internet of 2019 is not the desktop computer based internet of 1999.  Twenty years later, it’s become a wireless internet that’s expanded to include very powerful handheld devices which can do everything every, “electronic,” device of the 1980s did, and much more... all in a thing that fits in your shirt pocket.

This changes the game going into the 2020s, as smart phones settle into their final form factor... and slowly begin to assume their ultimate role as the, “mission brain,” for an individual’s life.

In the 2020s, my phone will not just bluetooth to my watch, and be the thing I bank and shop with, as it is today.  It will talk to my car, if I still own a car.  It will talk to my house, if I own a house.  It will talk to my smart glasses, overlaying my view of the world with augmented reality. It will be even talk to me... and work with me to solve any problem I might have... from finding a dog walker, to complex legal and financial issues.

From a political perspective... it will represent me in polls... the way today’s smart phone and land line phones have never done.  And it will register me to vote, remind me when to do it three weeks early, and clear my schedule, and get me a ride if necessary... meaning voter turnout will be far higher than ever before among the younger demographics... from 18 to 55... or GenZ up to GenX... with aging Boomers still sitting on Facebook at their desktops, paying their bills with paper checks unable to understand why even primaries and midterms are largely decided by the time they show up in their walkers to vote straight Republican down the ticket, like what’s worked in their favor for many decades.

The bigger picture here, if you zoom back... is that, with the form factor of smart phones having been worked out in the twenty-teens, the big advances in the 2020s will be in the AI those devices have.

And that coming level of AI, will allow individuals to continuously circumvent any roadblocks the corporate and political behemoths of old try to lay down for us... from bureaucratic red tape and voter suppression, to monopolization of media and markets, to censorship and the moderation of free speech.

I know all of that sounds idyllic and Utopian... and loudly echoes the original view of what the internet was gonna do for humanity, back in the 1990s... but much of what we have today would have seemed overly-futuristic and impossible just twenty years ago.

I’m sure there will still be a dark political backdrop to deal with, as today’s upsurge of racism and fascism around the world struggles to stay relevant. 

And the effects of climate change through the 2020s will be another big source of darkness and drama like we are only beginning to see at the end of the teens... which will trigger major transformations in the way we all live.

Homes will get smaller and more efficient. Car ownership will dive to new lows. Families will get smaller, and suburban sprawl will ebb backward, creating, “ghost subdivisions,” haunted by the spirits of Karen and Craig.

They will follow the trend of today’s abandoned shopping malls, which will also only get worse.

Meanwhile, weed will come to be legalized nationally... as it is already doing state by state, leading to an eventual end to the War on Drugs, and much of the gang violence related to drug trafficking... as well as an influx of tax money, even before we’ve figured out how to tax the rich at a fair rate.

The 2020s will not be without their tumult and tribulations, but I believe that on the whole, compared to the twenty-teens, they will be a lot less crazy, and a lot more hopeful.

Time traveler traffic... also... won’t be nearly as heavy.... which will ease the craziness considerably.

As for aliens?... well... Trump might just get his Space Force so...  they will probably be taking the brunt of the trolling from the aliens, rather than the Air Force... for whatever that’s worth.

Time for bed.

[tanisisdreaming]

Episode 102: Radio, Radio

Part 1 of 2

Last week, we discovered a bunch of classified ads from the 50s, along with a Craigslist ad from earlier this year. As far as Tanis and the ads from the 50s go, they’re all disguised as adverts for used refrigerators, and they all appear to be guessing at possible locations for Tanis. None of the 75 ads mention the same location twice. It looks like, in 1953, some kind of illuminati Tanis fan club created a secret, global classified ad bulletin board system to try and guess at and discuss possible locations for Tanis. We’re still looking at that material, but the Craigslist ad was far more interesting. And we’re going to get to that. Soon. I promise. But for now, we’re tuning in the radio.

 From the Public Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale, it’s Tanis. I’m Nic Silver.

 [sounds of old radio broadcasts being flipped through rapidly]

I grew up with the radio. I used to sit in front of my tape recorder for hours, fingers poised over the buttons, waiting for my favorite new song so I could record it. I couldn’t afford to buy all the albums I wanted, so this was the only way I could hear these songs over and over again. Something I think is interesting now, looking back at that time, is how often I ended up recording the DJ’s voices as well. It felt like it was just the two of us. But on the radio, that feeling was ephemeral, fleeting. I think that’s why I ended up recording their voices. I wanted to spend more time with these people. They had become almost like friends. That was the magic of radio. For me, radio was personal.

Have you ever stumbled upon something and had the feeling that you’re not supposed to be there? That you’re not supposed to be looking, or listening? Something that feels secret, forbidden? There was a time where you could turn on the radio, twist the dial, and discover something new and exciting. Pirate radio.

There were those famous boats in England, playing unlicensed music just off the coast in the 60s. And more recently, a pirate radio station in London started by a group of 16 year olds in 1994 was granted a commercial license. But for me, it was Hard Harry. Christian Slater’s character in Pump Up the Volume. I loved the idea that maybe I could be a DJ, that I could play music for people like me. People at home with their headphones on, listening to the radio while their parents were asleep upstairs. Instead of Hard Harry, they’d be waiting for me to choose the next song.

But the thing that I love the most about the idea of pirate radio, was that it felt mysterious, free, and authentic. Everything I hoped I might grow up to be in my adult life. How hard could it be? Why couldn’t my voice be the thing people stumbled across, and found comfort in, in the middle of the night?

Well, I never did start my own pirate radio station. And maybe this podcast is my way of making up for that. Speaking of this podcast, what do pirate radio and voices in the middle of the night have to do with the myth of Tanis? Well, like Tanis, pirate radio moved around, a lot. The stations would be raided or warned of a coming raid, and suddenly the signal you received clearly in your bedroom had moved. Now, you’d have to visit your friend on the other side of town in order to listen to your favorite DJ tell it like it is.

We’re going to tune in to what radio has to do with Tanis in just a moment. Last episode I told you we placed a Craigslist ad that read, “seeking Tanis, runner wanted.” We received a response a few days later rom a man named Geoff van Sant. His reply to our ad was brief. Four words of his own: “we need to meet.” So we did.

 [voice of Geoff van Sant]: are you recording already?

 That’s Geoff van Sant. He’s a thin man, about average height. His hair gives you the impression that he just woke up, but his eyes are sharp, no nonsense. You can tell immediately that he’s the kind of man who’s never going to talk about the weather.

 Geoff: did you already get a drink?

Nic: Uh, not yet.

Geoff: Well, we should get that taken care of. What do you want, beer?

Nic: Uh-

Geoff: Couple beers?

Nic: okay, yeah.

Geoff: Couple beers. Be right back.

 Nic: so like I mentioned on the phone, we’re making a documentary podcast.

Geoff: what kind of documentary?

Nic: Well, it’s actually – it’s a podcast? It’s kind of, um, like radio on the internet?

Geoff: I know what a podcast is.

Nic: [laughs sheepishly] oh.

Geoff: What’s the subject of your documentary?

Nic: Right! It’s about something called Tanis.

Geoff: Can you…stop recording for a sec?

 Geoff asked us to stop recording. He went on to explain why. It turns out that his brother Karl is the one that place the original Craigslist ad, or rather, had Geoff do it for him. Karl had been arrested on a hacking charge years ago, and was legally unable to use a computer. Karl passed away last month.

The thing that had Geoff more than a little freaked out about Tanis, and about our placing a similar ad, is that Karl passed away the day after he posted the words “seeking Tanis, runner available” on Craigslist. I ended up sitting in that bar talking with Geoff van Sant for six hours. After a lot of conversation, and quite a bit of Guiness, he decided I wasn’t a threat. And he agreed to let us visit his home in Everett, Washington, where he’d spent the last twelve years living with his brother.

 [sound of a door opening]

[voice of Geoff]: Not much, but it’s home, you know?

Nic: Oh, well thanks for being so generous with your time. I really appreciate it.

Geoff: What else am I gonna do? Come on in. Is this good, do you wanna sit here?

Nic: Yeah no, this is good.

 Nic: So did your brother ever mention the word ‘Tanis’ to you?

Geoff: Uhh, not that I can remember, but you know we didn’t really talk about that kind of stuff.

Nic: Sorry, that kind of stuff?

Geoff: His stuff.

Nic: Right, right. Um, what about the word ‘runner,’ did he ever use that?

Geoff: Well, he wasn’t a runner, I’ll tell you that. He’d get winded going up the stairs to get the mail. Guy loved his conspiracy magazines, he got like, two or three a month.

Nic: So, you and your brother, you’ve lived here for quite a while?

Geoff: Well, Karl didn’t live up here

Nic: Oh, no?

Geoff: This is my place. He, uh, lived in the basement suite.

Nic: Oh.

Geoff: I mean, I don’t go down there really, ever.

Nic: So, would you say your brother was a private person?

Geoff: …I’d say he was a crazy person.

Nic: Oh.

Geoff: Yeah. He moved in after his divorce. She kicked him out because he’s…obsessive. A few months after he moved in I had to let an electrician into the basement suite? That’s pretty much the last time I went down there. Til I had to, uh, take the police there, when he died.

Nic: He…he died here? Or, downstairs?

Geoff: Yeah. He hung himself with his belt.

Nic: Jesus. I’m sorry.

Geoff: Thanks.

Nic: Um…well…so, what was it that Karl was doing downstairs?

Geoff: I don’t know. I didn’t want to know. I mean, to call the guy a hoarder would probably be too kind.

Nic: Oh.

Geoff: Yeah, he was really into electronics, short wave radio, computers of course, but that was before his arrest. He was a naval communications officer. Before he was discharged he spent a lot of time in Russia.

Nic: Russia? Hm…and Karl was older?

Geoff: He was eleven years older, yeah.

Nic: Would it be possible to take a look downstairs?

 Geoff agreed to take us into the basement, after one more beer.

 Geoff: So there’s really no way to prepare you for this, so I’m just gonna open it.

Nic: Okay.

Geoff: [opening door] After you.

Nic: Wow.

Geoff: Yeah.

 It was probably larger than it felt inside. To say it was cluttered would be severely understating it. The first thing I noticed were the walls and ceiling, because they were on the floor, in pieces. Somebody, presumably Karl van Sant, had stripped all of the drywall and plaster from the walls and ceilings, leaving bare wood and wires. What was left of the walls and ceiling was on the floor, or piled into buckets.

The second thing I noticed were the cassette tapes. They were everywhere. Hundreds of milk crates filled with numbered cassettes littered the floor, and the walls were covered floor to ceiling in cassette tape shelving. It looked like there were tens of thousands of them. There were also hundreds of radios. Short wave, AM, FM, radios of all ages, shapes, and sizes. And there was writing on the walls. Maps, numbers, and hastily scribbled notes. It was extremely dirty and chaotic. But it was also fascinating, like stepping into somebody’s secret, and extremely messy, world.

 Nic: This is amazing.

Geoff: Is it?

Nic: [laughing] Yeah!

Geoff: Not the word I’d use.

Nic: Um, what uh, so…what are all these tapes?

Geoff: I don’t know man. Sat in front of his radios, day and night, recording these tapes for years. Never really left the house.

Nic: Um…do you mind if I take a look at some of this stuff?

Geoff: Oh yeah knock yourself out, I’ll be upstairs. You want another beer?

Nic: Thanks, uh, maybe in a bit.

Geoff: ‘Kay.

 I spent just over an hour in Karl’s apartment. Geoff was kind enough to let me take some of Karl’s cassettes home, along with a few boxes of documents. We took photos of the writing on the walls, as well.

We’ve been going through everything, but there’s just so much audio. It would take us fifty years to do this on our own. I asked a new friend for advice.

 [voice of Meerkatnip]: Ninety thousand tapes?

Nic: Yeah, best guess.

MK: Jesus.

Nic: Yeah, it’s a lot.

MK: No shit.

Nic: Um, any thoughts?

MK: Analog’s not really my thing.

Nic: Right.

MK: What’s on the ninety thousand tapes?

Nic: Well, apparently he was recording radio broadcasts from all over the world. A lot of short wave and unlisted, private stations. I’ll play a sample for you, this one’s from Slovakia. He’s numbered the tapes, this is from one of the tapes numbered 47. There are a lot of 47s, for some reason.

[sample from Karl’s cassette tape plays. It’s a woman’s voice, saying numbers in Russian]

MK: Wow, great song.

Nic: Yeah, it’s certainly interesting.

MK: If you say so. Sounds like typical numbers station bullshit to me.

Nic: Numbers station? That…so those were numbers?

MK: Obviously. And they’re Russian, by the way, they’re not Slovakian. …you do know what a numbers station is, right?

Nic: Um, it’s like a cold war spy signal thing, maybe?

MK: That’s one broad theory. You’ve never heard of the Boardman or Bulgarian Betty?

Nic: They don’t ring a bell, sorry.

MK: Wow. Okay. So, these short wave stations broadcast numbers. They’re encrypted messages to somebody, somewhere. There are thousands of number stations in almost as many languages using extremely high powered antennas. They broadcast globally.

Nic: Any idea why they’re doing it?

MK: No, they never say who they are or why they’re doing it. It’s a mystery. You’ll probably love it.

Nic: You may have just found my next show!

MK: [deadpan] Yay.

NIc: [laughs] Uh, so that’s all they do, just broadcast numbers?

MK: Well, normally there’s an interval signal to help tune in. Then there’s the header, which is usually followed by some sound or um, like a series of sounds that let you know the header is over. Then it’s just numbers. Over and over. Like the sample you played me, unless that was the header. I’d have to hear the entire tape to tell you for sure.

Nic: You seem to know an awful lot about numbers stations.

MK: Yeah, well, I know a lot about everything. Numbers stations were part of an unsolvable encryption challenge when I was in high school. These broadcasts are one-time pad cyphers. Totally unbreakable. Each pad is used once and then destroyed. Only the sender and receiver sees the pads. It’s a perfect system.

Nic: Oh, okay. So…?

MK: So what?

Nic: So, did you break the unbreakable cypher?

MK: How could I? I just said it was unbreakable.

Nic: Oh.

MK: But I did win the contest.

Nic: How?

MK: Trade secret I’m afraid.

Nic: Okay, fair enough. I’m guessing you haven’t been able to dig up anything else on Tanis?

MK: Well, I’m working on a few things, I’ve got some leads.

Nic: Great!

MK: So it’ll be later today, maybe tomorrow at the latest.

Nic: Okay, cool. I’ll give you a call later to check in.

MK: Cool. I’ll wait by the phone.

Nic: [laughs] okay.

 It turns out that recording numbers stations is a very common practice. There are a large number of short wave radio fans and conspiracy theorists interested in these mysterious private messages sent over such a public medium. Was Karl van Sant simply recording numbers stations? And, if so, was that recording related to a search for Tanis, in some way?

We found something else. Something interesting in the documents we received from Karl van Sant’s brother. It was a framed letter addressed to a Seattle man named Edgar Haze, asking if Haze had found the SSS, and if so, could he receive he and Anna early next month. It was sent from London and dated March 6th, 1925. It’s an interesting letter, not because of the content specifically, but rather, because of who it was from. It was signed by a man named Charles Fort.

You may or may not be aware, but there’s a well-known American researcher of the same name. The term “Fortean” is often used to accompany the search for anomalous phenomenon. I showed the letter to Geoff van Sant, and he told me that this letter was indeed from that Charles Fort, and that it had been one of his brother’s most treasured possessions. Apparently, Karl van Sant bought it at auction back when he still had a job. Well before he went on disability and moved into his brother’s basement. Well before he began his obsessive recording project. I took the letter to Morris Stevenson, an expert in all things Fortean, to see if it was genuine.

 [voice of Stevenson]: It’s the real thing. Or at least the best forgery I’ve ever seen.

Nic: what about the details, the dates?

Stevenson: All correct. Charles Fort was living in London with Anna in 1925.

Nic: And, what about this, uh, SSS?

Stevenson: The Super-Sargasso Sea.

Nic: Sorry, the Super-Sargasso Sea?

Stevenson: Charles Fort believed, or pretended to believe, or joked, depending on who you ask, that there was a dimension into which lost things go. The name alludes to the Sargasso Sea, which sits next to the Bermuda triangle. Most people believe that Fort proposed this ridiculous theory as a kind of Socratic dialogue, just something to get people talking. But Theodore Dreiser didn’t think so. He believed Fort had been looking for the Super-Sargasso Sea for most of his adult life, and that he proposed his theory as a way of kind of hiding in plain sight. Do you mind if I take a photograph of this letter for my collection?

Nic: Not at all, go ahead.

Stevenson: Thanks.

NIc: No problem. And thank you so much for taking the time out to do this. I really appreciatee it.

Stevenson: Anytime.

 I borrowed a bunch of material on Charles Fort from Professor Stevenson. The only thing I could remember about Fort myself was something about frogs falling from the sky. Some of Stevenson’s research indicated that before Fort died, he’d been working via letters with Dreiser, on a book. Stevenson believes that Fort and Dreiser were convinced they were close to finding the location of the Super-Sargasso Sea. Stevenson also believes, based on what he’s been able to piece together over the years, that Fort’s late period research indicated that the Super-Sargasso Sea wasn’t necessarily located in water, at all.

[kakahut]

Location

I found this song by accident after not sleeping well last night because of some butterfly feelings I have in my stomach. It is such a mellow song to listen on a rainy night.

I got a  text message from Daniel last night. He replied to commenting on my painting I did after our first date.  And three days later,  my mom told me she divorced my dad. It was an interesting period of time, I was both happy and depressed in just 3 days so I made a painting, which was the first one I did after I gave Min a painting. I was happy cuz I never expected I would have such a great date on my bday meanwhile I was depressed cuz my mum was so hurt from her relationship. She told me she wanted to suicide the other day when we were on the phone. I am glad she told me so I kind of know she probably won’t do it. 

I was a bit angry with Daniel “ghosted” me. But I was amazed and excited like a teenager when I finally got his message. Well, can’t say I was not afraid. I felt like I was someone on his “ potential girls I can woo” list. I teased him about the ghosting thing, his reply did sound like an excuse, but I think it is genuine or at least I want to think it is. He was like, I am a private person, I sometimes like to be alone and live in my own world. You also didn’t contact me or call me, if you really want me, you should call, I will pick up.

Interesting. Do I really want him?  What a cool way to “blame” everything on the other person? I suddenly respect his intelligence.

The conversation I had with him reminded me everything happened that night with almost 80% of the details. I took his “advice”( if you want it and come on and get it) and ask him for a coffee the next day, he took it. It was funny when I was looking for places in Boston, I realized the house I am living now was in the same neighborhood he lives. I sort of having a feeling that we might meet again in our life.

Then I started to have the butterfly feelings. It was a high, then I started to have imaginations, inspirations. Expectation, I think that’s the more accurate word. Excited, anxious, excited, excited, also honry?  I have been having dreams about sex recently so I guess that’s why?  It was just a mix of positive feelings, I can feel myself softening, feel like a woman. I am not a stranger to these feelings. I have felt that before, everytime when I have feelings for someone. EXACTLY the same excitement. 

Then, I started to panic.  Min jumped out of my head again. I remember these feelings so clearly and also the decisions I have made based on these feelings.I took risks to go with them, to grab them, to seduce them.  It was the same feeling but a different person. So should I make the same decision? Should I actually trust Daniel’s word “ come and get it”? I don’t know. I want to get something, I cherish my feelings, but this time, I am no longer as brave as I was. Or as impulsive. I miss that girl who can say to Chao, I want fuck you. But this time, I can’t. I have learned to observe. I don’t know if I am improving or going backwards.

Are they really different? I don’t know. That’s scary because I started to think about these feelings with my brain. I started to compare. I started to compare my new crush with my old relationships. I tried to tell myself just enjoy these feelings, they are so not not not not easy to  have!  I have dated couple of people and went through some disappointing dates, these feelings are fucking refreshing. Like summer lime.( Good analogy!)

So I rushed into brunch with Mango and told her about him contacting me. She was so protective and asked me to be careful. Then an immediate thought came out of my mind, shit, I don’t want to be careful. And then, Will jumped in. It sounded familiar. He said the same thing when I told him about Min. Fuck, is my life restarting again? Shit.

So eventually we met. He didn’t change that much, or at least I still remember how he looked like. It was a bit unsettling, since we were pretty much strangers, but my memory still stuck with the part we were intimate. He was hard to read. Our conversation was really random and on the surface. He likes to make ironic jokes and I enjoyed his humor. His body language was distant even when we were sitting on the bench. ( Maybe Sunday was too sober)

I think he is analyzing the situation just like I was. Or he is just lonely need some attention like I do. I remember I saw his okcupid saying he wanted to have a long term relationship, so different from what it was written 3 months ago. He must have went through something. Thats what I thought.  In the end, he was like, don’t ghost me. Well, you ghosted me.

To show him that I am not gonna ghost him, I wrote: Safe trip. Let me know when you get back. I will cook.

Then no reply. I just put myself on the risk of being ghosted again. After feeling shitty for like couple of hours. I was like, whatever. Too bad if I have not had a chance to let someone know how much I enjoyed him, but I don’t feel extremely disappointed. I mean, I have been there. It is risky. Time will give you answer. 

Hmm, what an interesting world we are living. Communication is still so hard even with all the technologies we have.

It gets harder and harder, to tell people what we want. I miss me, I miss me when I could freely tell how much I enjoy Min. I wish one day, that feeling will come back, cuz it makes me feel I am alive.

I wish one day I could go in again, love freely with another free spirit.