#ill always think of this one interview from 2009

[saportuh]

watching patricks in interviews he is sooo adhd he is jus like me for real

[gendercraft]

Outlast: Revisited [Chapter One: Miles]

Synopsis: I’m rewriting Outlast where the first game and Whistleblower are combined, Miles and Waylon are more connected, and also they kiss

Mount Massive Asylum was a silhouette ahead of the setting sun. Against the red and orange and white in the sky, Mount Massive was all dark brick and covered windows. Half of the building had flickering light peeking out from slats and cracked curtains, and the rest was pitch black. 

    Miles opened the car door and planted one boot on the dirt, brows furrowed. He came with only his camcorder, a few spare batteries, a notebook, and the email he was sent: 

     You don’t know me. Have to make this quick. They might be monitoring. 

     I did 2 weeks of software consult at MURKOFF Psychiatric Systems’ facilities in Mount Massive. All sorts of NDA’s I am very much breaking right now but seriously, fuck those guys. 

     Certainly enough to grab Miles’ attention. When most people heard he was an investigative reporter, they treated him with what they thought was respect. All talking in circles and stepping over eggshells. This person emailing him—they had something to say and they were going to make sure Miles was listening. 

     Terrible things happening there. Don’t understand it. Don’t believe half the things I saw. Doctors talking about dream therapy going too deep, finding something that had been waiting for them in the mountains. People are being hurt and Murkoff is making money. 

     It needs to be exposed. 

     A fall breeze brushed by, making Miles shiver under his brown jacket. He flipped the collar up. 

    He was prepared for a facility up and running, for patients and orderlies to interview. This place looked abandoned. 

    Miles poked around the empty building where someone should be there to open the gate from, but the computer was frozen and there was nothing. 

    The gate—for humans, not cars—creaked as it opened. Securing his notebook and the hard copy of his email in the inside pocket of his jacket, he raised his camera and headed inside. Mount Massive loomed over him as he stalked towards the front entrance. Military trucks lined the walkway. 

    What the fuck happened here? 

    He pulled out his notebook and scribbled a stream of consciousness: 

     I start feeling sick just looking at this place. Mount Massive Asylum, shut down amid scandal and government secrecy in 1971, reopened by Murkoff Psychiatric Systems in 2009 under the guise of a charitable organization. Cell phone reception cut off abruptly a mile out, more like a jammer than a lost signal. The Murkoff Corporation has a long track record of disguising profit as charity. But never on American soil. Whatever they thought they could get out of this place has to be big. Might finally be the story that breaks the bastards. 

     The front entrance was locked. He blew out a frustrated breath and looked around to find another spot in the fence, allowing him into a tiny courtyard with a fence and scaffolding up along the walls. He looked through his camera and zoomed in—there was an open window. He grimaced. 

    He didn’t want to go back to when he was a teenager, sneaking into empty buildings through crumbling walls and broken windows, but he didn’t see much of a choice. He had to get inside. 

    He got the same thrill he always had when he was younger to climb and leap over the scaffolding until he reached the window. The second his feet hit the ground, the light exploded. He gasped and covered his head as glass rained on the carpet. 

    Raising the camcorder, he flicked on the nightvision, then winced. 

    What the fuck happened here? 

    The room was empty, the furniture all turned over and piled up. Miles strained his ears, but the asylum was silent. He crept his way over to the door and peeked inside the hallway. Both sides were barricaded, giving way only to the room across the hall. This room was a bit more normal, lit up by the light streaming through the hall and the thin curtains. He looked around for any clue of what happened here, but nothing. There was a second door letting him into the hall past the barricade. 

    He was about to squeeze through a gap between the next barricade, when he faltered. 

    Is that fucking blood? 

    He pulled up his camcorder and zoomed in. Sure enough, blood splattered the wall and stained the carpet. There was no sign of a body. He swallowed and pushed forward. I have to find out what happened here. 

    In one of the rooms, he found a status report for a patient named Billy. Most of the words Miles didn’t understand most of the words, but he could connect it to the email; ‘lucid dream states,’ ‘the blood dreams of Doctor Trager,’ and something called a ‘MORPHOGENIC ENGINE.’ 

    Something Miles found interesting, part of an interview with the patient: 

        Billy asked about the status of his mother’s lawsuit against Murkoff and the asylum...catastrophic breach in security...all orderlies and security personnel must be questioned and video security improved…

        Signed ‘MURKOFF PSYCHIATRIC SYSTEMS PROJECT WALRIDER

    MOUNT MASSIVE CO’ 

     The first sign of life Miles was given was a bathroom door shutting as he approached. He hesitated, then rapped on the wood. 

    “Hello? My name is Miles Upshur, I’m an investigative reporter. May I ask you some questions, please?” 

    No answer. He shifted uncomfortably. “Uh… okay then. I’ll be around if you change your mind.” 

    The next door was locked, but across the hall there was a small kitchen. He did a quick once-over, then stopped at the counter by the fridge—is that a fucking— is that an organ— is that a fucking organ on a tray? Right next to a fucking soda can. Miles’ stomach lurched. It was long and thin, flesh coloured, veins of blood smearing onto the silver tray. 

    I have to find out what’s going on here. I have to expose it. 

    The only way was up, into a ventilation shaft. As soon as he got inside, someone burst into the room, looked around frantically, and ran out. Miles barely caught them with his camera. His heart was ready to beat right out of his chest. 

    “Fuck,” he whispered, panting. “Fuck this.” 

    He got to the end of the shaft and paused. It dropped too far for him to get back up if he decided he had to leave. With the blood, the fucking soda organ, was it worth it? Was this worth risking his life? 

    What if he didn’t have enough evidence? What if he couldn’t convince the police to come? What if the public thought it was a joke? 

    Closing his eyes, he jumped down. 

    Creeping along to the first door, he threw it open and a body hung from the ceiling. He stumbled back with a gasp. It was bloodied and pale, and Miles watched, horrified, as it smacked to the floor. He covered his mouth and forced himself into the library, eyes burning. 

    Keep your camera raised. No matter what you do, keep your camera raised. 

    The library was a maze of pushed over bookcases, the righted ones holding decapitated heads. Their mouths were gaped open, eyes blank and bloodshot. He crept forward. In the light of a window, a body sat impaled on a pole, still slowing sliding down. Blood caked the metal. It smelled of rust and decaying meat, and Miles was quickly losing his resolve. He stepped forward and the body, the man, gasped and reached out, choking on his own blood. 

    “They killed us,” he gasped. “They got out. The… Variants.” 

    Miles watched with wide eyes. A few tears ran down his face, but he kept recording. 

    “You can’t… fight them. You have to hide… can unlock the main doors… from Security Control.” He desperately tried to crawl himself up the pipe. “You have to get the fuck out of this terrible place. Stay away from the north, it’s… it’s chaos.” 

    Miles dropped the camera and leapt forward to help pull him off, but the moment he pushed up, the man lurched, screamed, and fell dead. Miles stumbled back with shaking hands, his palms red and sticky. He wiped his face with the back of his hand. 

    He pulled out his notebook. 

     I’m inside. Bodies everywhere. Blood. Burn marks. Heads lined up like bottles behind a bar, Dead Murkoff scientists hung from the ceiling; their badges say “Murkoff Advanced Research Systems.” Murkoff’s longtime M.O. has been to profit off the exploitation of supposed charity. Fuck the third world and bankroll another billion. 

     How did Murkoff think they would make money off a building full of the mentally ill? 

     There’s some kind of tactical cop pinned like a pig on a spit. Tells me to get the fuck out then dies. Would have been a good thing to hear when I could still leave the way I came. 

     He lowered the notebook. His chest was tight, tight, too tight, he couldn’t breathe. He sucked in a deep breath. He hadn’t had panic attacks since he was a teenager, but he couldn’t blame himself, not this time. 

    He slid his notebook in his pocket and picked up his camera. 

    He left the library. The second floor of the Administration Block was an atrium, one floor wrapped around the carved out middle where reception was below. He got to the ground. He was not safe here. He couldn’t be seen. He switched out his battery and recorded himself moving forward. Another barricade blocked the hall, but there was a gap he could squeeze through if he could just… 

    “Little pig!” 

    A thick hand grabbed the back of his neck like someone picking up the scruff of a kitten. Burning pain ripped through his skin as a hulking figure yanked him out of the gap. Miles barely got a glimpse, but at first, he did not register it as human. His nose was smashed in, and there was a giant chunk ripped out of his forehead. He bared his teeth, a huge row of shark fangs, then threw Miles through the glass atrium. He smacked against the reception floor, and blacked out. 

    xxx 

    “And who are you, then?” 

    He blinked his eyes open, his head pounding, his entire body throbbing. A bald man in vestments stared at him, a flashlight blinding him. His face was full of wrinkles, with full cupid lips and wide set eyes. Miles groaned and dropped his head back to the ground. 

    “I… I see.” The man held Miles’ camera. “Merciful God, you have sent me an apostle. Guard your life, son, you have a calling.” 

    xxx 

    When he woke up again, the man was gone. 

    He tried hard to remember what happened between his blackout, but it was hard, like a dream he couldn’t quite get a hold of. He gripped his throbbing head. All he knew was he had to get to Security Control. 

    There was more carnage in the reception area. A handful of dead bodies absolutely eviscerated, their guts painting the ground. The smell was something worse than Miles had ever witnessed in his life. Some cops had told him you’d never smell anything worse than a dead body, or anything close to it. Miles knew now that was right. 

    It wasn’t until he had explored a little bit that he noticed the big letters written at the base of the atrium, over Miles’ head—Proclaim the Gospel. He hoped it was red chalk. At the receptionist’s desk, he found a document: 

     You are hereby required to grant M.H.S full access to all facilities and surrender complete authority to its agents. By acceptance of this document you (and any surviving relatives) surrender all claims of litigation against the Murkoff Corp. or its subsidiaries for the actions of M.H.S. or the circumstances which required their actions, regardless of responsibility. 

     A status report in one of the storage rooms, about a patient named Chris Walker, observed by Dr. Rudolph Wenicke. It mentioned more of the rumoured Morphogenic Engine. From the interview notes: 

     Walker was interviewed in restraints, following his self-inflicted mutilations. Restraint have had to be altered to accommodate his enourmous size...he claims the skin ripped from his forehead allows for a truer way of seeing...his predominant fixation, amplified by therapy, is a manic exaggeration of military security protocol. 

     It took Miles a minute to realize that was the big fucker who threw him through the window—Chris Walker, an abused patient. The rage in his stomach muted. Did he even know what he was doing? Miles shook his head. It didn’t matter. 

    Coming into the hallway, he stopped. A Variant sat in a wheelchair, staring at the floor. Miles cleared his throat and hesitated, before stepping forward. 

    “H-Hello? My name is Miles Upshur, I’m an investigative reporter. May I ask you some questions, please?” 

    The Variant’s chest rose and fell rapidly as he panted. Miles’ brows furrowed as he came closer. Like Chris Walker, this patient looked horribly unhealthy, and deformed. How many patients came into Mount Massive this way? Could this be a coincidence? 

    The man didn’t respond, so Miles moved forward. He came into a room with three Variants, all bald men, staring with dead eyes at a static television screen splattered with blood. Miles introduced himself again, and nobody answered. He pulled out his notebook. 

     A crowd of broken men watching a dead channel. They look like patients. They survived whatever happened here but nobody’s home. 

     He carried through the room and cautiously explored the Administration Block until he found the keycard for Security Control. He passed the Variant in the wheelchair, only to find his back smacking to the floor, reawakening the pain in his spine, the Variant screaming, “GET THEM OUT! PLEASE! THE DOCTOR IS DEAD! RIP THEM CLEAN! YOU HAVE TO HELP ME!” 

    Miles gasped and shoved at the fucker’s chest, until he finally flew off and hit the ground. The man curled into a fetal position and sobbed into his arms. Miles panted, the anger in his stomach slowly subsiding. 

    “It’ll be okay.” He swallowed. “I’m here to help. Which doctor are you talking about? Rip what clean? How can I help you?”

    Miles raised his camera. The man refused to respond. Miles stepped back, covered in sweat. He hesitantly left as the man crawled away. 

    He made it to the hallway with Security Control, and as he stood at the edge, a Variant at the end of the hall ran forward and pounded into a door until it opened, then slammed it behind him. Miles sucked in panicked breaths. He thought of approaching, of seeing if he could get some information, but shook his head. Maybe it was better to leave the Variants alone, when he could. 

    He couldn’t help himself—he explored what rooms he could. He found several dead bodies, blood splattered almost excessively, and managed to scrounge up some batteries. In the bathroom, a clothed man sat on the toilet, dead and hunched over, with the word ‘WITNESS’ written in blood above him. His abdomen burning with anger, Miles hands trembled over his notebook. 

     I’m already beat all to hell, picking broken glass out of my scalp, coupole cracked ribs. Nearly killed by a deformed giant, looks like somebody tried to fuck-start his head with a cheese grater. He throws me through a wall, knocks me unconscious. 

        I wake up and some doughy old man with a face like an alcoholic kiddy fiddler in a homemade priest outfit calls me his Apostle. Not a job I asked for. 

        There are words scrawled in blood everywhere. I’m getting an ugly feeling in my gut that the priest is writing them, and for my benefit. 

     He kept exploring, looking for anything that could bring this place down, and grinned as he read through a document. 

     The profit potential of PROJECT WALRIDER remains staggeringly high...four fatalities...PROJECT WALRIDER remains a dangerous initiative...certainly be further casualties...family and government interest in the patients is so low as to make any chance of legal actions vanishingly unlikely. Violence among patients is increasing as the Morphogenic Engine Therapy gets closer to producing working models…

     He pocketed the document and headed for Security Control. This is enough. I’m going to bring down Murkoff Corporation. 

    The reader beeped as Miles scanned the keycard and headed for the control panel. A security guard laid crumpled, dead in the corner. He ignored it the best he could and got on the keyboard, only for the priest to appear on screen. Miles watched with wide eyes, his heart racing in his fingertips, as the father yanked down a lever and the lights went out. 

    Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. 

    The screens had said basement. If he could get down there and restart the generator, he could get out. 

    He stood and headed for the door. His hand on the handle, he froze, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. 

    A familiar voice. “We have to contain it.” 

    Miles whipped around and looked in any place he could possibly hide in the tiny room. His heart raced, his breath short, his eyes landed on the locker. He sprinted over and crammed himself inside, slamming the door closed just in time for the room’s door to burst open. 

    Bringing his camcorder up, Miles pressed his free hand to his mouth to hide his breathing. Chris Walker’s own breathing filled the air, short and rabid, as he mumbled to himself. Walker looked around for around, checking the desk, circling the room, mumbling. “You were here, little pig, weren’t you…?” 

    The locker beside Miles creaked open. He bit back a whimper. 

    What do I do? What the fuck do I do? 

    Miles placed his hand on the cold metal, and prepared himself to run.

bls let me know what you think! and reblog <3 critiqued by @dib-leo-pard

[ts1989fanatic]

Taylor Swift, Britney Spears and the media cycle that demands pain from our pop stars

Emma Clifton 08:30, Feb 16 2021

Britney Spears was robbed of her public image during the height of her fame. Taylor Swift was robbed of her music during the height of hers.

Why does our pop culture system seem so intent on punishing the very women who keep it afloat. Emma Clifton looks at a decade in young singers – and the variously terrible ways they get treated while in the public eye.

There was a theory floated on the podcast You’re Wrong About that ‘fame is abuse’ and you’d be hard pressed not to agree if you were one of the many people who saw the recent New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears, and realised just how badly we as a society treated Britney Spears before, during, and after her rise to fame.

The paparazzi, the media, the comedians – and then the fans and look-i-loos who continued to buy all the magazines that ran headlines about what a train-wreck she was, when really she was just someone in her early twenties, trying to raise two children while being one of the most famous – and hounded – people on the planet.

The documentary discussed at length how we as a pop-culture obsessed society love to build up a talented, attractive young woman and then buy popcorn in preparation of when we can gleefully watch them tumble from grace.

(And it’s not just pop stars, of course; the resplendent rise and then the racist fall of Meghan Markle’s position in public opinion is one of the most recent examples we have of when good headlines go bad.)

When I was working at Creme magazine, between 2009 and 2012, our pages were over-flowing with talented young pop singers: Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, The Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Rihanna, One Direction, Justin Bieber.

When you look back on the decade that has passed by since, time has not been kind to any of these people.

Either the showbiz demon took something from each of them – or they had to completely disappear from sight for years at a time in order to survive. Sometimes both.

There have been eating disorders, drug overdoses, rehab stints, broken marriages, abusive relationships, chronic illnesses. These kids – and they were kids – were so young when they started, they’re already on their fourth or fifth reinventions.

Most of them haven’t hit 30 yet.

And when you’re a female pop star, so many of these reinventions revolve around your sexuality.

Heck, when I was at Creme, Demi, Selena and Miley were part of the ‘purity ring’ club, where they all gushed about staying away from sex until marriage while their stylists dressed them in the tightest clothes possible.

The message from the marketing teams behind each of them was very clear: Sell sex, but don’t ever enjoy it.

This is the same battle Britney faced a decade previously – look like a Lolita, but make sure you never have sex with your long-term boyfriend because then you’ll be expected to cry about the shame of it on national television.

This was also the time of paparazzi trying to take up-skirt photos (exactly what it sounds like) of female actresses as soon as they turned 18; 18 – the age where you can legally have sex in America – was a big deal in pop culture.

There was a countdown for when the Olsen Twins turned 18. When Lindsay Lohan turned 18, Rolling Stone ran a breast-focused cover shoot with the headline: ‘Hot, ready and LEGAL’. And it was just fine! Totally accepted. These girls, they were always up for it, right?

And then we get to Taylor Swift.

Taylor is re-releasing Love Story, the song that made her famous, the song that I first heard in the shower (yes, I had a shower radio) when I was 20 and immediately started crying, because it hit me square in the middle of my pop culture diagram: love songs and references to Romeo and Juliet.

It’s from her second album, Fearless, which she wrote when she was aged 16-18 and which won her four Grammys, including Album of the Year. It’s also an album that no longer belongs to her and she can no longer perform, due to some millionaire f...wittery committed by her former manager. But we’ll get to that.

From 2008 onwards, Taylor became a big deal for her music and then, like it always does for women, her love life became the centre drama.

She never talked about a purity ring (thank God) and she sung pretty openly about sex from her third album onwards (Sparks Fly, an iconic song), plus she had the audacity to date a bunch of boys and look happy while doing so. Naturally, her punishment awaited.

To this day, she is still ridiculed about lyrics she wrote in her first couple of albums… songs she wrote herself when she was literally a teenager.

If I had had written an album when I was a teenager, it would have been about my crush who caught the bus, Kevin from The Backstreet Boys, worrying about my thighs, and, I don’t know, my cystic acne.

I’m just saying – we let powerful men get away with s... they pulled when they were young with the old line ‘boys will be boys! They were just kids!’; it just never seems that generosity is never extended to young women and their far more harmless explorations of teenage sexuality.

Because she had yet to have a public mental health crisis or rehab stint, it was clear that Taylor was never going to be the architect of her own media downfall.

Luckily, one was invented for her. After a long-lasting stoush with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, where absolutely no-one (including Taylor) came out looking good, Taylor suddenly because persona non grata in pop culture and the long-awaited comeuppance began.

And so, she disappeared – in a way that celebrities can do these days. (As a side note, can you imagine how different Britney Spears’ life might have been if she had been allowed to disappear for a couple of years?)

It was only when she released her documentary Miss Americana on Netflix that the public got what it had been craving the whole time – the dark side of Taylor Swift’s fame.

An eating disorder, a sexual assault that she ended up being sued for and, then, the poisoned cherry on top, losing the rights to all her past music thanks to her old manager.

Finally, our hunger for bad news had been satisfied. We had seen her scars and so we could allow her back into the spotlight again.

It’s been interesting watching the roll-out of new music from so many of these female artists during a pandemic: Selena, Demi, Miley, Ariana Grande are among the singers who have eschewed the normal long roll-out of publicity in order to release their own music, without much of the media fanfare that typically accompanies it.

Taylor herself released two albums, without any of the (slightly inane) games she normally includes in the lead-up. You can’t help but wonder that – stripped of their endless touring, performances and appearances, these female artists have found some freedom in being able to just get back to the actual work.

If a pop star releases an album in the middle of a pandemic and no-one is around to give a shit about any of the outfits she’s wearing, does it still count? Turns out, yes.

Following the betrayal of Britney, Taylor, Miley et al by the media, you can see the slow change to have total ownership of their voice these artists have taken.

Social media can be a devil for many reasons but it has overtaken journalists and publicists as the middle man when it comes to how these women get portrayed to the public. Beyoncé has been instrumental in this – it was she who first released an album overnight back in 2013; a move that came without warning and changed the entire industry forever.

She who stopped giving interviews almost entirely, choosing to use her own platforms to get her message and music across. As a result, she’s never been more powerful and she’s never been more private.

As an explicit ‘F... you’ to the powers-that-be who bought her music from under her, Taylor has announced she will be re-recording all of her old albums.

Stories about millionaires against millionaires rarely draw sympathy from a reader but it does highlight how little actually belongs to the artist at the end of the day.

They can have limited control over their image, their public appearances, their private life, their work and their songs. And these are the success stories – these are the people whose names we know.

You have to hope that anyone young and female entering the music business has their eyes very wide open as to just what can go wrong – and what can go wrong even when everything goes right.

The first album Taylor is re-releasing is Fearless, the album that is the most chock-a-block with fairy-tale imagery and glittery optimism.

She’s promised that the songs will be new interpretations on the old originals and that seems only fair.

You can’t help but think that those fairy-tale songs are going to sound a whole lot different being sung by a 31-year-old who’s been through the public wringer then they were as a wide-eyed 16-year-old, on the cusp of making her dreams come true.

[dweemeister]

NOTE: This is the first (and perhaps only) film released theatrically during the COVID-19 pandemic that I am reviewing – I saw Wolfwalkers at the Vineland Drive-in at the City of Industry, California. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.

Wolfwalkers (2020)

In interviews prior to and after Wolfwalkers’ release, co-director Tomm Moore has described the film as the last panel of Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych. That triptych (an informal trilogy) began with The Secret of Kells (2009) and continued with its centerpiece, Song of the Sea (2014). The global environment for animated cinema has transformed since Kells, and now – unexpectedly – Cartoon Saloon finds itself a hub for not just hand-drawn animation, but animation that rejects the crass commercialism emerging from mainstream animation studios (mostly from the United States). With the triptych completed (as well as 2017’s The Breadwinner), one can trace Cartoon Saloon’s evolution from their beginning to its present artistic maturation. While the film asserts its own uniqueness in the Cartoon Saloon filmography, there are connecting strands – aesthetic, spiritual, thematic – of the studio’s previous features apparent throughout. Upon a week’s reflection, I think Wolfwalkers is the studio’s second-best film, just behind Song of the Sea. Even at second-best, this level of artistry has rarely been seen in this young century.

It is 1650 in Kilkenny. Robyn Goodfellowe (Honor Kneafsey) is an apprentice hunter and only daughter of Bill (Sean Bean). Robyn and her father are expatriates from England, and some of their Irish neighbors will not let them forget that. Oliver Cromwell (Simon McBurney) – referred to as “The Lord Protector” throughout the film – has invaded Ireland and looks to secure his conquest over the Irish people (Cromwell is a despised figure in Ireland and lionized by some in England to this day). On an ill-advised trip outside the walls of Kilkenny, Robyn encounters and eventually befriends Mebh Óg MacT��re (Eva Whittaker in her first film role; pronounced “MABE”), a Wolfwalker. As a Wolfwalker, the animalistic Mebh can leave her physical body and take the shape of a wolf while slumbering. Mebh’s mother – who is also a Wolfwalker – has been missing for sometime while Cromwell has ordered the slaughter of all of Ireland’s wolves. Things are complicated when Bill is tasked by the Lord Protector to destroy the wolves living in the woods surrounding Kilkenny.

From the opening moments, lead background artist Ludovic Gavillet (2016’s The Secret Life of Pets, 2018’s The Grinch) sets the contrast between the scenes within and outside Kilkenny’s walls. Kilkenny is suffocatingly geometric, with squares and rectangles dominating the background and foreground. Backbreaking work defines life in Kilkenny, all devoted to the residents’ English conquerors, God, and the Lord Protector. Rarely does the average city resident venture outside the looming outer medieval walls (there are two sets of walls in the city). The structure of Kilkenny is inconceivably box-shaped when seen from a distance. It appears like a linocut. In that distance are the countryside and the forests. As one ventures further from Cromwell’s castle, expressionist swirls define the foliage that seems to enclose the living figures treading through. Green, brown, and black figures twist impossibly in this lush environment. Seemingly half-drawn or faded figures suggest a depthless, dense forest – similar in function to, but nevertheless distinct from, Tyrus Wong’s background art for Bambi (1942). In both Kilkenny and the forest scenes, selective uses of of CGI animation capture the dynamism of certain action scenes – two running scenes in particular employ these techniques (once in joy, the other in terror).

So often in modern CGI-animated films, the animators seem to grasp for heightened realism and minutiae. In such movies, too many details are packed into frames that can only be appreciated if prodigiously rewatched or paused mid-movie. It might feel like completing a visual checklist. In Wolfwalkers, the half-finished details amid breathtaking backgrounds, angular (or round) humans, and simultaneously threatening and delightful wolves almost seem to announce that, yes, humans drew this – and they did so with such artistic flare. In keeping with the references to triptychs in this review, the film itself sometimes divides the frame into thirds (a top, middle, and bottom or a left, center, and right) or halves in moments of dramatic weight. The thirds or halves are separated by dividing lines and are used for various purposes depending on the moment: to save the filmmakers from making two extra cuts, juxtapose differing if not contradicting perspectives, and intensify the emotions portrayed. Less utilized in this film but even more radical than the aforementioned techniques is the film’s use of shifting aspect ratios. Wolfwalkers is principally in 1.85:1 (the common American widescreen cinematic standard, which is slightly wider than the 16:9 widescreen TV standard), but there are notable moments which temporarily dispense of these standards. Like the division of the screen into thirds or halves, the shifts in screen aspect ratio help the audience focus and understand what is occurring on-screen. The most memorable screen aspect ratio shift appears before an eruption of violence.

The Secret of Kells, too, was set in a city designed in a perfect, orderly shape. That film, like Wolfwalkers, evokes Christianity for narrative purposes. But where Kells celebrated God and found religion as a source of comfort, Wolfwalkers’ depiction of Christianity – specifically, Cromwell’s Anglican zealotry – is without redeeming elements. Under his breath, the Lord Protector prays to God that he will execute any providential commands by any means necessary. In public, he announces his actions as essential to rid Ireland of the lupine paganism that inhabits the wild. Without saying as much, Cromwell’s orders are nevertheless Anglican England imposing its will on Irish Catholics. Irish cinema, until the late 1990s and early 2000s, was usually deferential in its depictions of the clergy and religious practitioners (almost always Catholic). Though it is not unheard of for an Irish film to be critical in portrayals of religious belief, it remains uncommon. And though Cromwell is Anglican and not Catholic (and despite the fact he remains vilified in Ireland), Wolfwalkers’ cynical depiction in how he wields his religiosity as a cudgel is an extraordinary development in Irish cinema.

Tied to the film’s depiction of religiosity are its undercurrents of English colonialism and environmentalism. The latter will be obvious to viewers, but the former might cause confusion during a first viewing because it seems to be, at once, on the periphery and yet central to Wolfwalkers. Cromwell being referred to as “the Lord Protector” for the film’s entirety is indicative of screenwriter Will Collins’ (Song of the Sea) decision not to provide much historical context within the film. English colonial oppression usually occurs off-screen or is implied. This seems inconsistent with Cartoon Saloon’s work on The Breadwinner. That film identifies and openly describes Taliban injustices.

So what gives? As much as those who admire animated film disdain perceptions that it is solely for children (like myself), animated film is oftentimes a gateway for children to be exposed, eventually, to other corners of cinema. Can children understand Anglican-Catholic tensions in Cromwellian Ireland? Perhaps (especially British and Irish children), if presented with enough care. But the answer probably lies with the fact that the thematic goals of Wolfwalkers are more aligned with Kells and Song of the Sea than The Breadwinner. Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych is concerned with how the Irish are inextricably, spiritually, bonded to the environment. There is a balance between humanity and nature – a mystical connection that, when disrupted, brings harm to all. The Breadwinner, though very much a part of Cartoon Saloon’s filmography, is grounded in recent history and, because of recent developments in the Taliban’s favor concerning the Afghan peace process, present-day concerns. In the film, fantastical stories are used to bring Parvana’s family together as the Taliban tighten their grip before the American invasion. This has little bearing on the folklore-centric storytelling of Wolfwalkers, but Collins, Moore, and Stewart’s editorial decision to downplay the film’s historical basis tempers any messaging they wished to convey.

Wolfwalkers meets The Breadwinner in its depiction of a young girl growing up in a male-dominated society. This film’s lead was supposed to be a young boy. But the story, to Collins, Moore, and Stewart, just did not click with the original male protagonist. As such, the trio made the decision early in the film’s production to switch the protagonist’s gender. Robyn, an English transplant to Ireland, is allowed remarkable freedom to do whatever she wants with her time in the opening stages of the film. This arrangement cannot persist as her father falls from the Lord Protector’s good graces. She is relegated to washing dishes from daybreak to dusk in the scullery – a task that she, in her heart, rejects for its gendered connotations. Robyn wears a Puritan’s frock while at the scullery, a uniform she has no desire for. While outdoors beyond the Kilkenny walls, she wears what her father wears – pants! – while out hunting wolves. Other than her father, few in the city care for Robyn’s intelligence and instincts. Most everybody ignores her protestations and truth-telling about the things she has seen in the forest. By film’s end, she is vindicated, in spite of Cromwell’s (and, to a lesser extent, her father’s) bluster and bravado.

This film also contains potentially queer subtext between Robyn and Mebh. Writers more skilled than I will provide better analysis of that subtext. Nothing explicit is shown, as the two are still children. Yet the nature of their friendship, the themes contained in Wolfwalkers, and some unspoken moments between Robyn and Mebh seem to relate a possible queerness. The film also does nothing to present either girl as heterosexual. Queer or not, Wolfwalkers shows the viewer a blossoming friendship between two girls – not without its tribulations, but rooted in their common earnestness.

Unlike previous films in Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych, there are no notable original songs in Wolfwalkers. French composer Bruno Coulais and Irish folk music group Kíla are Cartoon Saloon regulars and return for Wolfwalkers. The musical ideas for Wolfwalkers’ score are not as apparent as the previous films in the triptych, as they are not quoting a song composed for the film. But the use of Irish instruments in their collaboration lends at atmospheric authenticity that only heaps upon the film’s sterling animation. Norwegian pop sensation AURORA has altered the lyrics and orchestration to her 2015 single “Running with the Wolves” to accompany a running scene that, by the filmmakers’ admission, was inspired by the running scene from The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013, Japan). The scene pales in comparison to the context and music from the late Isao Takahata’s final film, but Wolfwalkers is a movie more than the sum of its parts.

Production on Wolfwalkers was in its final stages as the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Republic of Ireland. When the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, announced a countrywide lockdown on March 12, 2020, Cartoon Saloon had already started preparing for a lockdown contingency three weeks’ prior. Clean-up was divided between Luxembourg-based Mélusine Productions and Cartoon Saloon’s headquarters in Kilkenny. After assessing the needs of the clean-up animators, both studios moved to remote work where the most pressing complication was their Internet bandwidth slowing down upload speeds.

Cartoon Saloon’s Irish folklore triptych is finished. In the last eleven years, the studio has proven itself one of the most interesting and important animation studios currently working. They have even proven they can make quality films without its primary director, as evidenced by Nora Twomey’s The Breadwinner (Twomey’s next project for Cartoon Saloon is My Father’s Dragon, slated for a 2021 release). Though just an indie studio with limited resources, their standing in animated cinema has only strengthened with this, their most ambitious film to date. It might seem like a rehash of the animation from Kells, but Wolfwalkers has improved upon its predecessor, and boasts perhaps the most beautiful artwork of any animated movie released this year. The film’s grandeur belongs on a movie screen, but, understandably, very few will have the opportunity to experience it in such an environment. This latest, ageless triumph will outlast these extraordinary times.

My rating: 8.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[yeoldontknow]

catch up tag 🌸

tagged by beautiful angels @chillingtae and @yoonia to do this catch up tag. thank you so much loves! i hope you guys are having a happy friday <3 <3

1. what do you prefer to be called name-wise?

kat is fine! i introduce myself to people as kat. if youre using my full name youre either upset with me or a member of my family lmao

2. when is your birthday?

jan 23

3. where do you live?

nyc

4. three things you are doing right now?

working (waiting for one of my systems to load which has been bogged down and super slow lately), listening to my spotify release radar (which is....not great today im disappointed), mentally drafting lines and description for the next hero chapter as im in the mood to write today but im absolutely not in a romantic place lmao

5. four fandoms that have peaked your interest?

uhhh ill list fandoms ive written fanfic for! kpop (obviously), merlin, muse, and supernatural (but like really specifically supernatural seasons 2-5)

6. how has the pandemic been treating you?

i mean....50/50. my company is amazing and i know im super privileged. ive been working from home since the end of february and corporate have been extremely generous (giving us additional time off, mental health days, extending summer fridays until end of 2021, compensating for home office needs, restructuring work from home policies to accommodate parents). i got a bonus in june in place of my raise due to financial tensions but was confirmed for another promotion next year - even was offered a new job, literally straight offered didnt even need to interview, to create my own team in a different department. i have a roof over my head and food on my table. my family is healthy, my parents are retired and safe. like...im so so so grateful.

mentally and emotionally and creatively...i am struggling. a lot of my inspiration for fics comes from being out in the city and observing people and their interactions. even architecture inspires me. the act of moving through a city inspires nearly all of my fics (like..i think everyone can sense that lmao asas is in london, light sakura is tokyo, all quiet is movement through spaces, hero was inspired by a building in harlem). not having that kind of motion and observation has made writing really hard. and also just...the news and the onslaught of hyper-reality. its been utterly daunting and ive found myself completely burned out more this year than ever before. usually my burnout hits during new years or the holidays. ive spent part of summer and part of autumn and literally all of november just...vacant.

so yeah. 50/50

7. a song you can’t stop listening to?

Flexibility of Mind - GRoost

8. recommend a movie?

Summer Wars (2009, hosoda mamoru)

9. how old are you?

31

10. school, university, occupation, other?

currently employed at a major company in the arts & entertainment industry

11. do you prefer heat or cold?

cold!!!! its so easy to warm up and bundle. who doesnt love cozy socks and hoodies and slippers <3 <3 its so hard for me to cool down in the summer and i hate sweating lmao

12. name one fact others may not know about you?

uhhh i worked in music supervision while getting my masters and the two degrees i have do not necessarily relate to the work i do now lmao

13. are you shy?

i can be. im definitely introverted and find other people to be way, way more interesting than i am. i enjoy listening to people talk about their passions and what interests them, and this also means that i dont say much or say anything at all about myself, really. im not usually the first person to engage in a group or even to introduce myself first to someone unless i get the sense there is someone uncomfortable (with the energy, the topic, the setting, etc) and then i will put myself in a position of leadership to make them feel safe

14. preferred pronouns?

she/her !

15. biggest pet peeves?

people who react rather than respond to criticism or confrontation; people who instigate drama; really loud groups of people on public transportation

16. what is your favorite ‘dere’ type?

i dont believe i have one

17. how would you rate your life from 1-10, 1 being crappy and 10 being the best it could be?

ill say like...8

18. what is your main blog?

this one - yeoldontknow

@yeoldontknowiread is for ficrecs

20. is there something people need to know about you before they become friends?

i can be pathologically secretive in that i dont really talk about myself or what my day has been like or what im up to unless something happens that is exciting or interesting. being an introvert also means that my regard for our friendship will define it as something sacred and i will likely be more devoted (though quietly so) than you might be if youre an extrovert. im really passionate about things and if i sense that you are not as passionate about those same things i will likely not bring them up again unless i feel like you want to hear about it. it might take me a while to respond to texts or messages, but it doesnt mean i love you less. there could be long periods of inactivity in our friendship but if someone else asks me about you i will say i love you and you are special to me and will call you a close friend even if its been years since weve last talked

tagging: @yehet-me-up @kyungseokie @jenmyeons @jamaisjoons @j-pping @yeolville @loeybeans @ditzymax @imdifferentshadesofpurple @red-exo @iris-somnia @inkedtae @yeojaa @hobi-gif @sahmfanficbts @snackhobi @delhyun @yutacrush @nunchiwrites @blackberrykai @kimtaehyunq @jiminiethot and anyone else who wants to do this. i know i tagged a lot of people but really i just want to check in on you and see how youre all doing. as always please only do so if you wish <3

[thepriceofbeingaroseisloneliness]

The Freedom of Expression #4   18th March (Notes/Translation)

“The survival of the band….it may be exaggerated to say ‘the survival’.... but these will be difficult times...”

Appearance:

 Kaoru (DIR EN GREY direngrey.co.jp/)

 Joe Yokomizo (Writer / DJ)

 Tasai Reporter (Tokyo Sports)

 God ?

You can watch the program here  You can find other translation of The Freedom of Expression here

Notes before reading: This is the 4th program of The Freedom of Expression, uploaded on Wednesday 18th.  Today’s topic is Corona virus and it was recorded on 10th March. Not much context is needed as at this point, we are all familiar with it and are aware of the effects it is causing around the world.  In this program, they are going to talk about Corona virus and how it is affecting Entertainment industry in general and how it is affecting Dir en grey tour schedule itself.

Please don’t forget to subscribe to their channel and watch their actual video to support the program.

Feel free to correct me if you spot any mistake or any confusing parts as they are talking so casually and relaxed that it’s hard to get some parts.  As 5th program is like a sequel of this one, I will  upload soon  before doing any other. --- Kaoru: Hello, this is Kaoru from Dir en grey…The Freedom of Expression is starting today too! Joe-san…. Tasai-san…. Joe: Yes, hello everyone…. Kaoru: This time too…. Tasai: Yes, hello… Kaoru:  And now… it’s really… Joe: Yeah…for real… Kaoru: It has become a terrible thing… Joe: It’s terrible….in the media it seems like that… when you meet people from the industry like us, the talks are about “how are you dealing with the effects of Corona?”, right? Kaoru: That’s true… Joe: Although the days are passing, there is no day without having this conversation…. Kaoru: What about Tokyo Sports? Tasai: Well, almost all the news are about Corona virus… Joe: Just as I thought… Kaoru: Well, it’s like that in almost every other media, right? Tasai: Now, it feels like 80-90% is about Corona…. Entertainment events are getting cancelled one after another….so it feels like places to go for coverage are gone…. Kaoru: Ah, that’s true… Joe:  Is there any way to cut the news about Corona for Tokyo Sports? Tasai: The truth is, a lot of news about Corona are coming out…. like for example these ones…. *he check some papers on the table* Fraud commercial laws, “the virus lies in the sewer”, others about taking money, young entertainers not having any performances, so they are making zero money, the problem of people reselling masks, There are lots of news like this coming out…. Joe: This is a very difficult problem…. God: Hello? Hello? Joe: Ah, someone came…. God: Hello? Hello? Joe: God came… God: Well…When you write articles about Corona, does it sell well? Tasai: Well…. when it comes to selling…. it’s difficult to say. As the economic activities seem to be stagnant, when it comes to selling, I guess it will compensate the minus. It might feel like maintaining the status quo. God: Ah… Kaoru: It’s because you want information, right? Tasai: That’s it. Kaoru: That’s it. Somehow some information…. (cut) There is a lot of information that incites anxiety… Joe: That’s true. There is a lot…...I really think that. Kaoru: Of course, taking precautions….or to encourage to do so… or it’s dangerous to go like this…I don’t know.... but, I want to know that kind of things because I think they are important….or things like the (number) of people who are getting well is raising… Tasai: For sure… Kaoru: That there is nothing like that, it’s a bit….it just make you be scared… Joe: For real… For me, in a way it’s related to work…. for example, I met with newspaper’s reporters related to science and they told me they have been interviewing experts. By the way, nowadays, the coverage is done in a such a  tabloids way  style…..how many people got infected…that there is no toilet paper….I’m just saying that those things fuels anxiety…In fact, from the point of view of a doctor…they are not reporting with composure to what extend there is a threat… *Then he proceeds to talk about Corona virus facts* Joe: Firs of all, Corona virus is a type of virus that infects all kinds of animals. From this group of viruses, there are 7 types that can infect humans, one of them it’s the current Corona Virus. There are other types such as SARS and MERS, so the Corona virus itself has always been around…this one from these 7 types is a new one whose shape  is similar to a Corona, that’s why it always has been called “Corona virus”. Certainly, the fear towards this virus is comparable to SARS or MERS, but if you calmly look down at it, the mortality rate is not that high. At this moment, it is true that around the world there are people infected and some of them are seriously ill but, there isn’t a terrible amount of deaths…For example, there was a new type of influenza epidemic in 2009 in Japan. In this one, for example, more than 10 million people got infected. So, about this new Corona virus…to that extend, when you think about a situation that not the infected people are being reported but the only thing that it’s being reported now is clearly news that make everyone panic.  This is how I see it…If you overlook this news, as there is little information from a scientific point of view, it feels like the reports tend to “dance” for agitation. Surprisingly, when I met a science reporter, they are like “Aren’t they making a fuss?” There are actually many reporters that are doing it calmly. Because you are rightfully scared isn’t it? But there are many reporters overdoing the feelings of fear. God: Well…It’s excessive…. Too much…it’s said that Corona beer is hardly selling… Joe: It’s a different Corona isn’t it? (laughs) God: It’s a different thing but it seems that it’s not selling well…. Joe: Ah, is that so? God: I think they are like “I hate drinking Corona beer”, due to the current mood. Tasai: It suits well Mexican food…. Corona beer… Joe: By the way, Does God like Corona beer? God: I don’t really know (laughs) Everyone laughs. Joe: He really doesn’t know right?

Tasai: I asked a friend who is a doctor, and the most preventive things are to wash your hands and gargling. These are the cheapest methods in terms of cost…. just to wash your hands without hesitation and gargle…

Kaoru: This year, it seems that influenza (cases) are at its lowest.…

Joe: That’s true. That’s because everyone is strictly washing their hands and gargling…. when it comes to masks, WHO already said it but, they don’t necessarily prevent infection, on the contrary, people who are sick don’t transmit the bacteria. Although it might a protection thing, just because you are wearing a mask it doesn’t mean you won’t be infected. This extraordinary buying of them…what about that?

Tasai: Then, Hirabane Monster* is like “I never have caught a cold since I was born!” *Hirobane Monster was mentioned in program #1

Joe: That’s probably because he is an idiot, right? (laughs)

Kaoru laughs

Joe: Because he is an idiot (laughs)

Tasai: He said that’s why it’s ok to not wear a mask…

Joe burst into laughs, Kaoru joins seconds later (6:50, the way he laughs) lol

Tasai: As this is something important…. this way of thinking….

Kaoru: Surely

Joe starts talking about the lives being cancelled and then asks Kaoru about it. Kaoru replies that live houses are now a bad “thing” (In venues, there are a lot of people crowded, which helps the virus to spread) Joe replies that other places are like that too and he mentions Yamanote line and the subway itself as well as parties and those places are still ok. It seems asthere were some cases reported after a concert, the measures were taken against live houses. Joe says this is “such a Japanese thing” to be done, as one thing happened, they applied it to all the rest. Kaoru: Now, at the time of recording this, we still don’t know if we should do something or not… (about Dir’s tour) Even if we do something about or not, as expected, there are some lives that will be reassigned… Tasai: I see… Kaoru: If you think a bit about this, it’s scary right? What’s the best thing to do? Joe: That’s true… something like this…. it’s not a problem that only musicians have to think about… Kaoru: it is not, right? Tasai: That’s true Joe: In the sports world…. the Japanese league (football) and baseball professionals league…Those two (tops) talked to each other, trying to find a solution. It is said that their relationship is like cats and dogs, but sometimes these two genres (of sports) cross and talk to each other. In that aspect, it’s not just music but includes all kinds of entertainment. This time, they have to think about 2 or 3 possible scenarios…. they have to think about a strategy. Tasai: I don’t know about this but, if a live is cancelled, who bears the costs of it? Kaoru: We pay for it… Joe: The organizer… Kaoru: It’s the organizer, right? Tasai: I see. Joe: Most one-man tours are organized by the artist. So that must be covered by the artist. As it is done that way, when you especially play in a big venue, the venue fee is very expensive. Of course, there are other cost besides the venue, in some cases you make stage-sets. Those make the cost go up really fast. If it is a big venue, like a dome or such, it can cost millions of yens. These costs go by the artist. When it’s a tour, as there are many places, it can end in the bankruptcy of privately-owned companies. It’s really a terrible problem. Tokyo Jihen did several lives and got a lot of criticism for it…should people be that angry at them because they did the concerts? Kaoru: Well, I understand the feelings of that people but, even if you go and decide to do a live or an event, the damage is going to be high.  I think people will hesitate about buying a ticket or not and with that happening, it feels really hard for us. Joe: That’s true… Kaoru: That’s how it looks right? Somehow, it feels like you are going in the wrong direction…. Joe: I see, even if the bans are just suddenly lifted, it’s hard to imagine people coming back to the venues the next day… Kaoru: After all, it’s going to be difficult to go again… Joe: For sure! Tasai: After  these things done for prevention, we must think about everyone… Kaoru: Yes, yes…. that’s it. God: If the tour and other things are skipped…. How many tours do you do? Kaoru: We do about two per year in Japan…. God: So, if one of those two tours is gone, the incoming money you would be getting… it would be the half of it? Kaoru: It would be the half……(sudden cut) Joe: It’s not the half of it, because you would be dealing with losses….you can’t easily say how it is going to be.... Kaoru: Or just foccuss in the  money…of course, that’s about it too… Joe: It’s a very difficult problem…. God: For example, if there is a big loss (of income), what would happen to the band? Kaoru: I think it will be hard….it would probably be hard….we are living in a time where the sales of cds or other sound sources are decreasing…doing lives… the sales of some things are related to them too and as expected those sales seem to be decreasing too….if all that is gone….the survival of the band….it may be exaggerated to say “the survival” but it is going to be hard…. Joe: I think it’s going to be a tough time but, there is no government actions against that… Kaoru: There is nothing like that right now….well, at this point, we should be moving into the next part...Today’s program came out a bit of a sudden*, so here it’s the first part....until the next part....please subscribe to the channel. Everyone: Thank you for watching.... *This program was uploaded on a wednesday instead of its regular schedule on Fridays, second part was uploaded on Friday 20th, being a continuation of this program.

[kirstythejetblackgoldfish]

LONG POST:

Met Police comes under scrutiny after one of their cops kills a woman, then this comes out

I am so fucking angry if this is true, given the timing - 'Look at this terrible dictator wife, that'll take the heat off us!'

This is a woman who is currently fighting Covid after having battled cancer - and why are they using a picture of her from when she had cancer, a time when she was clearly highly vulnerable, to portray her as a power-hungry dictator wife - you know, the same narrative they've used for EVERY SINGLE 'dictator woman' for the past 50-60 years

'Encouraging terrorism' erm, it wasn't the 'regime' that attacked its own army for over an hour 'by accident'. It wasn't Assad stuffing his face full of chocolate cake while helping ISIS advance. If it wasn't for Russia's help, then ISIS would've probably reached the Assads' family home within days and... it doesn't bear thinking about

If, in theory, she was extradited to the UK, then probably Bashar and the kids would never see her again and this would be devastating for all of them (but in all honesty, I can't see it happening)

And of course it mentions the old 'chemical weapons' chestnut, as if Asma is somehow making them herself for her husband to throw on schools - remember when they used to claim she was going to leave him? Her 'partner in life' who supported her throughout her fight with cancer and no doubt now as they fight Covid together?

'Around the same time, Asma met her future husband. After a trip to Libya together as a guest of then leader Muammar Gaddafi, she ended her career in London to marry Bashar.

"It was the same thing as going off as a guest of Colonel Gaddafi in those days, it was pretty radical. He was a bit like Assad - a rogue leader - so it was a weird thing to go and do, and nobody could understand why you would give up a promising career in investment banking to go and do that," said Mr Gibbs.'

OK, y'all know that I am truly fascinated by the long-lasting ties between the al-Assad and Gaddafi families, but is there any evidence that this meeting took place? It wouldn't surprise me, but I've never seen any pictures of Asma with Muammar - it always seemed to be a 'Muammar and Bashar, uncle and nephew' thing. I know there's photos of Aisha Gaddafi and Asma at some event for Gaza in Turkey back in 2009(?), but tbh they didn't seem to get on or really talk at all, probably because of their different personalities (Aisha, like her father and her mother to an extent, is probably a fiery, strong personality) and it might've been a bit awkward because 'This is my husband's honorary uncle's daughter'. Asma seemed to far prefer talking to Emine Erdogan at that particular conference - more to talk about, most likely, but alas, that friendship did not last.

Also, throwing in 'crazy evil Gaddafi' who was killed in a truly horrific way after Western-backed intervention in Libya ten years ago

'Her Arabic wasn't good' - In an interview with The Guardian in December 2002, she said Arabic was her family's first language and she didn't even know her parents spoke English until she was seven. Sky News pulling shit out of their ass again

The article also claims Asma has her eyes on the presidency, because all these 'dictator women' from the last 50-60 years, from Eastern Europe to Asia and Africa all have the same cold, greedy, power-grabbing personality, and only care about power and money and designer clothes. It's the same demonisation tactic with each and every one of these women, whether they're perfect or not, it's just lazy journalism

And again, why did they use a photo of her from when she was battling cancer when she beat that cruel illness back in 2019? Couldn't they have at least used a screenshot from the 'recovery interview'? After battling cancer and now battling Covid, being a power-hungry bitch queen is most likely not her priority

Rant over, this has just angered me so much

[boredout305]

Baron of Love: Moral Giant

A chapter preview from Ross Johnson’s upcoming memoir on Spacecase Records. Out late September 2020. 

CHAPTER 30: DICKINSON As in James Luther Dickinson or Jim Dickinson or simply Dickinson as he was referred to by friends and strangers alike. I always addressed him as Jim, but if we were playing a recording session or a live gig we always wondered aloud if Dickinson was going to show up. And often he didn’t for reasons of health or personal ones that were highly private. I often felt Jim wouldn’t show up because he felt something was wrong with the context of the gig or session, that something was unlucky somehow. I never asked him about this, just a feeling I had. If he didn’t show, there was disappointment but no offense taken. If he did show up he always elevated things in what felt like a magical way, for lack of a better term        I will repeat a story here I told in the liner notes of Goner’s Make It Stop! about meeting Jim. I repeat stories verbally all too often, but I don’t like to tell the same story over in print or in filmed interviews. I was working as a sack boy in the summer of 1972 at one of the local Big Star (yep) chain groceries. Jim would usually shop for groceries there mid-afternoon Friday while my drumming idol Al Jackson Jr. shopped at the same Big Star on Friday around dusk. They were the only customers who ever tipped me for carrying their groceries out. One day I got the nerve up to speak to him as I was loading groceries into his car and said: “You’re Jim Dickinson, aren’t you, and you recorded with the Flamin’ Groovies on Teenage Head, didn’t you?” Years later Jim admitted that he thought I was going to ask about The Rolling Stones but was impressed when I mentioned the Groovies instead. We had an extended conversation in the parking lot about the Teenage Head session and he enthusiastically mentioned that he got paid $700 by producer Richard Robinson for one night of work on the record. I got in trouble with grocery store management for staying in the parking lot so long, but the conversation was worth it.         There are so many stories about Jim I could tell, but I’ll relate just a few here. When I started playing with the Panther Burns in 1979 he remembered our parking lot chat about the Flamin’ Groovies. I’ve said it before, but I always considered Jim an unofficial member of the group because he produced and played on several of our recordings as well as joining us on many live performances. Recording with Jim and Alex was not often easy; there was always some tension left over from the Sister Lovers sessions. There was also a lot of attitude on display at Panther Burns recording sessions and I often felt out of my league, musically and emotionally speaking. Jim sensed this and one day he followed me outside Phillips Recording Studio when I was taking a mental health break and he told me I had as much right to be in there as Alex, Tav and the other players. Jim could always sense what was going on psychologically among musicians at a recording session and produced accordingly. My favorite production technique that Jim used was the stories he would tell before cutting a take. Sometimes the stories were oft-repeated, but I loved hearing him tell them over and over. I often asked him to tell stories about the late, great guitarist Jesse Ed Davis. He always obliged. During the last few years we recorded together we would inevitably talk about the Klitz and his early efforts to produce them. He always thought they should have been hugely successful. I agreed.        In 2008, co-producer and Reigning Sound drummer Greg Roberson set up a pro-bono session at Jim’s Zebra Ranch Studio for me to record a number of favorite covers and one original about legendary Arkansas rockabilly singer Bobby Lee Trammell. Greg did a great job of putting a band together, drumming so I could concentrate more on “singing” (almost all my solo rant records were done live with me singing and playing drums at the same time) and co-producing the record with Jim that became Vanity Session by Jeff Evans and myself that was eventually released on Spacecase Records. Rather than using booze and pills as my muse for the session, I opted for a herbal concoction that enabled us to record 13 songs in a little over three hours.         During a break, Jim and I went outside to talk privately. Both of my parents had died not long before the session and I could tell Jim was not in the best of health himself so talk rather naturally turned to death. I won’t disclose what we said that day since the conversation was private, but the topic of death was on both of our minds. A little over a year later Jim would be dead in the late spring of 2009.        Jim was a mentor, father figure of sorts and friend to me as he was to an untold number of other musicians. I was going through a bad patch with depression in the spring of 2009 and Greg Roberson thoughtfully told Jim I was rather down at a time when he was gravely ill. Nevertheless, he penned a very encouraging email to me then which lifted my spirits considerably. He did so during a period when his own life was ebbing away. That was Jim, always involved with what others were thinking and feeling. A few years later I sent that email to his widow Mary Lindsay Dickinson because I wanted her to know how concerned Jim was about other people until his death. Of course, she already knew as did her sons, Luther and Cody, the North Mississippi All Stars. I agree with the title of Jim’s memoir, that he is merely dead but not gone. I always imagine him being onstage or in a studio when I perform live or record since his death. I couldn’t have a better revenant or muse.

[sanikori]

So, i forced myself to watch Leaving Neverland...

And i swear, i've never hated some stangers in my life to the point where i want them dead. I felt my oxygen leave me and i was choking on my fucking tears from all the lies. I felt so sick, that i puked 5 times. But now i've recomposed myself so that i can expose these liars. I didn't want to go back in time and know how in feels to be a moonwalker in 1993. I wanted people to still talk about Michael, but not like this, never like this.

First things first, as Michael Williams, stated on Twitter, Michael has been investigated from the FBI for 13 fucking years.

Here we see 72 officers and 50 FBI agents in the Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara. They searched every angle and interviewed everyone to find evidence and guess what? They found nothing. 

He's been proved innocent at not 1 but 2 trials. To this day, there's still no valid proof that Michael did any of those things.

Even Michael’s fucking bodyguard stepped in to defended him and expose Wade.

Here's some of the bullshit they said in that documentary, Let's start with James Safetruck: James: "I've spent Thanksgiving in 1987 with him at his home" Wrong, Michael was in Australia as a part of the Bad Tour in November 24 1987 James: "Michael didn't want us spending any time with women and cut contact with me after puberty"

Really James? then how come we see you AFTER puberty holding an umbrella for Michael while Michael's ex wife, Lisa Marie Presley, was there with the both of you. James: "I was abused by Michael in New York in 1989 after he performed at the Grammys" Fake. The Grammys were in Los Angeles and Michael didn't perform at the Grammys in 1989. Now let's go with Wade Robson Wade: "I was molested by Michael between ages 7 and 14" Wade is now 36 so it happened from 1989 till 1996. So you're telling me that these "rapes" happend DURING the Chandler investigation and DURING Michael's marriage to Lisa Marie Presley as well? and the FBI found nothing? really? bitch please.

Here comes my favourite lie Then there's the MANIPOLATED footage of Michael begin honoured at the Regent Hotel and he apparently recorded a message for Wade "on his birthday" where Michael "says" "Hello Wade, today is your birthday"

The video at the Regent Hotel was recorded on the 20th February in 1990 while Wade's birthday in on the 7th of September and the original video was meant for Elizabeth Taylor.

Also Wade and James didn't even really grew up with Michael, they didn't even know Michael that well... they BEGGED to have Michael's attention and since Michael is an angel, they got it. Also i'd like to tell you that it’s the same Wade that DEFENDED Michael not only once, but 3 mother fucking times.

If you two are saying that Michael raped you both, then how come that Macaulay Culkin (the kid from the "Home Alone" movie) the one who literally grew up with Michael by his side, who basically lived at Neverland and was a child like the both of you, said that nothing happened between him and Michael and is still defending him to this day?

They change their stories every fucking second too. Wade has changed his story 4 times and James 2 times. Wade's first version of the story: Michael threatened and manipulated him that they'll go to jail if he says anything Wade's second version of the story: He didn't "realize" he's been abused Wade's third version of the story: He felt shame Wade's fourth version of the story: He ALWAYS knew what Michael did but he didn't realize it was bad (because who doesn't have anal sex with kids, right?) Then there's James: James's first version of the story: Michael and his people were threatening him to keep quiet and James refused to testify but he and his mom knew he had been abused James's second version of the story: He didn't realize he was abused till 2014. They're so worthless that they don't even know how to lie. If you gotta lie about a dead man to earn money, do it properly. It's also funny how they don't mention that Michael was around little girls as well and not only boys, whenever it was on the streets or in Neverland. Meanwhile Oprah just said "Fuck you" to 3 generations of Jacksons by backstabbing the man who welcomed her in his house by siding with these little shits. Not only Oprah knew, but she provited the “victims”. Also the reason why Oprah promoted "Leaving Neverland" is because at the Sundance, it was also a documentary about Harvey Weinstein, who is an actual pedophile and has been found guilty. But since he's Oprah’s best friend (yes, you heard that right) they just diverted the attention in media to Michael instead of Weinstein But Wade is the one i hate the most because not only he is a liar but he's also the REAL pedophile... his reputation was so bad that kids at jumpdance called him "Uncle Perv" and the mothers wanted them to stay away from him. Like, there's literally a photo of him side hugging a girl and his left hand is close to her breast while he has his right hand on his fucking dick. 

He cheated on Michael's niece, Brandi Jackson (the two have been in a relationship for 8 years) with Britney Spears which resulted in Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me A River" song and he did hard drugs. Not to mention that he made out with his SISTER ON STAGE! and this bastard has a son which i really feel sorry for... but most of all, he's a crazy ass bitch. Paris Jackson (Michael's daughter) and Taj Jackson (Michael's nephew) are both REAL victims of sexual abuse, stop to think how these two feel about this. Also Taj found texts with Wade in 2009 where Wade is thanking Taj for letting him go to Michael's memorial 

Also Taj recently stated in an inteview that Michael's third son, Bigi (Blanket) Jackson is not talking anymore. And the teachers are worried about him. He literally won't speak, at all.

In conclusion: Michael Jackson is innocent. He’s the real victim.

Please, tell what would lead him to do such a thing? 

You're just gonna forget all the money he gave to charity? the many lives he saved? how he considered his fans as part of his family?

I've been a fan of him since i was 4 and i'll love and defend him till i die. This man saved me with his music in my darkest times, i feel protected whenever i see or hear anything related to him, he's my inspiration, my everything and if i could make a dead celebrity come back to life, it would be him... i was meant to go to his "This Is It" concert in July, meeting him for the first time but... it never happened... because he left... i've been called a pedophile supporter just for defending him... do you know how much this hurts? I've seen "moonwalkers" turning their back on Michael like it was nothing... i've been told that i need to accept the fact that my hero is in reality a bad guy, that i'm protecting him just cause i'm a fan.

They made you belive that he bleached his skin when in reality he suffered from Vitiligo and wasn't confident enough to show it to the entire world.

They made you belive that he changed because he had too much plastic surgery when in reality he suffered from Lupus. But even if the did have too much plastic surgery, why should it matter since half of the celebrities have plastic surgery?

They made you belive that he was gay when in reality he has been married to Debbie Rowe, who gifted him with Prince and Paris, and Lisa Marie Presley, he crushed on Diana Ross and Brooke Shields, was kissed on stage by Taitana Thumbtzen aka the girl in TWYMMF (The Way You Make Me Feel) and how to forget his infamous In The Closet song with Naomi Campbell? but even if he was, he’s still Michael.

They made you belive that he was a Junkie when in reality he had many medical illnesses that needed medication and a lot of painkillers.

But most of all, they made you belive that he was a pedophile when in reality he wanted to create the childhood he never had in his adulthood and there's nothing wrong with that, he couldn’t trust adults because instead of seeing him as a human with emotions, they saw him as a cash machine. If it wasn't for the kids, he would have already killed himself, he wouldn’t care to live and he said that he would rather slit his wrists instead of hurting a child.

It's not about defending my idol just cause i'm one of his countless fans, it's about giving a voice to a man who's no longer here to defend himself.

How am i going to belive them since they're accusing Michael Joseph Jackson, the same Michael that didn't want to step on a bug and called his bodyguard to take it while saying "Don't kill it!" while he was performing on stage? the same Michael that would have died for a squirrel?

This man is dead 

Attacking a dead man isn't brave.

James Gunn is still alive and he signed with a major studio

Where in everyone in the media?

They are a bunch of pathetic cowards.

So guys please, don't watch this so called documentary cause they are calling:

His ex wives liars

His friends liars

The people who worked for him for over 20 years liars

His fans liars

His FAMILY liars

But they want you to just belive the word of two proven liars.

It’s been almost 10 years since we lost him. 

Wake the fuck up.

Can’t belive we’re in 2019 and you decide now that he’s guilty for something he never did. Evan Chandler forced his son, Jordan Chandler, to accuse Michael for money. Then when Michael died, Evan regretted it so much that he hanged himself. I'm waiting for Wade, James, Oprah, Martin, Connrad and everyone who belives them to do the same thing since they're all nothing but a waste of air. But don't you worry cause Taj is making a TRUE documentary that proves Michael's innocence and once it's released, they will watch their lifes crumble into tiny pieces with their own eyes and i will be there, smiling while eating pocorns. Anyone who’s a brain washed moron who don’t belive that Michael is innocent or even thinks of calling me a pedophile supporter needs to fuck off right fucking now because you will be attacked visciously, blocked and reported so DO NOT BOTHER ME

In case you didn’t understand, i’ll gladly repeat in a more vulgar way since it’s the only way you can all communicate with other people

DUMBASS BITCHES DO NOT INTERACT WITH ME! STAY THE FUCK BACK!

You guys don’t bother to do your research, you should hear both sides of the story to come to a conclusion instead of going along with everything they say. You all eat their plate of lies just like you eat your mother’s food at lunch time. You don’t ask yourself “Are they lying to me?” no, you just go along with every single fucking thing they say cause you’re dependent from the Media.

Face it, we are in the right and we’re going to win this battle. Also, these people without Michael in their lifes, would have been nothing. PS: Someone needs to tell Wade that fantazing about having Michael's dick in his mouth at age 11 in not normal.

Now i want you all to blast at all volume the songs Money, Tabloid Junkie, Morphine and Leave Me Alone in honour of these good for nothing liars as you read this post of them begin exposed from head to toe by me

[dailyaudiobible]

08/09/2020 DAB Transcript

Ezra 8:21-9:15, 1 Corinthians 5:1-13, Psalms 31:1-8, Proverbs 21:1-2

Today is the 9th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you as we collectively reach out and twist the knob and throw open the door and step into this new week together, shiny and sparkly, all new out in front of us just waiting for us to write the story of our lives upon as we go through this week. And, so, it's great to be here with you at this threshold as we step into the new week and as we invite God's word to speak into this week and tell us what we need to know as we continue to navigate forward. So, brand-new week, which means we’ll read from a different translation. This week we’ll read from the English Standard Version and we will pick up where we left off yesterday. Ezra chapter 8 verse 21 through 9 verse 15.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for bringing us across this threshold into a brand-new, shiny, sparkly week and we refer to it that way because it's a new beginning, and we just…we have these markers along the way that make up the story of a year and the beginning of each week is one of those markers and we have 52 of those markers and we know this, we gauge our lives kind of around the rhythm of the year and we thank You that we have that and we thank You that we have Your word involved every single day. And, so, as we cross…cross every threshold we are reminded all things have been made new. Every threshold is a new start and here we are at one of them. And, so, we become aware of Your presence, we become aware of Your Holy Spirit's guidance in our lives and we seek to follow Your direction and Your counsel every moment of this brand-new shiny sparkly new week. We need You. We’re not going to navigate this successfully without You. We can't navigate the next five minutes successfully without You. And, so, come Holy Spirit, we become aware of You and we invite You to lead us in every way possible as we move into this new week. Come Jesus we pray. In Your precious name, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and it’s the website – say that every day - and that might get like old…it might get old, but there are new…there are new friends, there are new brothers and sisters every day. And, so, if this is your first day, welcome! Welcome to the adventure of a lifetime. And one of the places to find out what’s going on around here and what this all is is dailyaudiobible.com. So, check that out.

Check out the Community section, that’s where to get plugged in. Check out he resources that are available in the Shop. They are there for this journey.

And, if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you. Our mission collectively, the thing that we call the Global Campfire is to bring God's spoken word to anybody who will listen to it any time of day or night anywhere on this planet and to make a rhythm, a rhythm of our lives, something that speaks into our lives every day and to build community around that so that it’s not like some kind of solitary adventure that we can barely call an adventure because we don't really know what's going on. We know we’re not in this alone. We are in this together. And if that is a life-giving thing than thank you for your partnership. So, there's a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com or you can press the Give button in the app, which is in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top when you dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

DAB family this is Jordan in Texas just wanted to say to Standing Firm in South Carolina your…your kind of confession that when you make calls you in one way or another kind of make it about yourself, you know, recognition or wanting to look important. And I just want to thank you for saying that. It took courage and boldness and you saying that to all those others who may feel that way you’re not alone. And, so, that’s me because I was actually thinking about doing the same thing, saying something. And, so, I do say that now, just confessing that…that like the three or four times I’ve called in to pray for others kind of having that feeling of, “I hope I hear” you know “I hope I hear a little bit of accolades about how cool my prayer was.” And it’s ridiculous and embarrassing and I just want to bring that before you guys and the Lord. And anyways, I…I also want to just by way of you guys getting to know me because I love getting to know you, ask for prayer for my marriage. My wife just had our second son, he’s 16 days old and, you know, just the emotions and hormones kind of can swing one way or another and I lose patience with her and get short with her and even knowing that…that her hormones are kind of up and down and whatever it just…there’s…it’s hard for me to give her grace. And I know that comes from wounding in my life. And anyways if you’d pray for that. And also please my older son he’s 2 ½ and he’s so sweet and so gentle with baby brother Benjamin and…but Caleb is just having a hard time adjusting…

Hello this is All the Treasures from Wyoming and I have an urgent prayer request please for anybody who hears this message. There’s a young lady here who is in our ICU hospital her name is Emily and she developed blood clots and those blood clots broke loose and went into her heart and she almost died. They had to do emergency surgery and she almost bled out and she’s in really bad shape. And anybody who hears this message, if you could please pray for her. I don’t know if she knows the Lord, but I’ve been praying that He would meet her right where she’s at and that she would live to tell about it and have a wonderful testimony of His goodness. Please join me in praying for her. Again, her name is Emily…

Hello everybody this is Tony the Narrator. Michael and Elijah, please let us know how you guys are getting on now. You know, this…we…we your’re…you’re still in many of our prayers, probably the majority of us pray for you. We love you we miss you. Please let us know what’s going on. And a big shout out to everybody else, you all know who you are. Thank you so much for the prayers for my brole life and I promised you my testimony. So, with a minute and 23 seconds here we go. So, on November the 24th, 2009 I was doing 65 miles an hour in a 70 mile or road on my motorbike going for a job interview with an electricity company where I was going to be going door to door going, “do you want to change your electric company?” All right by then…which I was actually really looking forward to. But anyway, so this guy in a van pulled out in front of me and my groin hit the fuel tank at 65 miles an hour, I broke my pelvis in four places, my spine, I broke my wrist in four places, my thumb was hanging backwards, I broke both my hands - various different breaks. I did…I bruised my lungs, I bruise my ribs, I did soft tissue damage in various different places and also brain damage. I should be dead. I was bleeding out and laying there, I ended up having to have four pints of blood that day. I shouldn’t be here and my dad got on the phone and he said, “son, if you don’t become a Christian you’re gonna die!” Just like God’s Smile he’s from Lancaster too. And, so, I became a Christian that day. Praise the Lord. I love you guys, God bless…

Heavenly Father I pray that You would set all those free who are struggling with anxiety, depression, and mental illness. You have the power to set us free, so I ask that of You right now. I also pray You would give direction to those who don’t yet know You and what their calling is in life. I also pray for all those who don’t know You yet and have hardened hearts toward You. I pray that You would soften their hearts and bring people into their lives to speak truth. Allow them to be open to the gospel to hear Your good news and Your powerful news. In Your powerful name.

Hi, so I’ve never done this before, but I thought it was a good opportunity to try it out. So, my parents moved recently and because of that they both had to quit their jobs. And luckily my mom was able to find something again, but my dad has really been struggling. It’s really taken a toll on him. He is a man who needs to feel like he’s doing something, like he’s contributing, like…like he has a purpose. And, so, it’s been really hard for him and for us seeing him like this. And I would just ask that whoever hears this will stand in agreement with me, will pray with me, not just that my dad would get work but that he would get something that he is passionate about, something that is worthwhile and that he would just keep good spirits and keep on praying and keep talking to the Lord about it and that he won’t just isolate himself and, you know, give into that feeling of uselessness. Thank you very much.

Hi this is Teresa from Indiana God bless you all. I just want to mention a couple people. I feel like I’m just growing so close to everybody. I’ve never met one of you but we’re all so connected. Mike…Mike I’m just proclaiming every day. I’m praying for you and am proclaiming that Annie is delivered from drugs. She is whole and that baby is healthy. In the name of Jesus, I’m…I’m…I’m proclaiming it every day. The Bible says to call those things that aren’t as though they were. So, I am doing that, and she is delivered from drugs in the name of Jesus. She’s whole, she’s healthy, she saved, she’s delivered, and you have peace in the name of Jesus. Daniel from Singapore, O, God bless you sweetheart. That’s so precious, so precious. I’ve just listened to that song and your prayer every single day. This is August the 6th. So, it’s been like four days later and I’m still listening to it. I’m going back to it. It’s…it’s so precious. Remember all the things that David the great man of the Bible went through, David and Paul. The Psalms, how many times there was an attempt on David’s life. My husband preached last night so many times someone was trying to kill him he was crying out to God. So many things that Paul went through, you know, being stoned and shipwrecked and all the things that he went through being in prison for so long for nothing just for loving Jesus and proclaiming his good news. And, you know, we have to go through these things I guess because we wouldn’t be who we are without…without the fires and the trials in our life. It makes us closer to God. It brings…we pray more it…it just…it just…it just molds us into who we are. We need that. I love you guys. God bless you.

[atlanticcanada]

What constitutes a second wave in Canada?

Since the start of the pandemic, Canadian officials have continuously used the threat of a “second wave” of COVID-19 infections in order to remind people to adhere to public health guidelines.

The term second wave has been used repeatedly by politicians, economists, and medical experts alike to warn the public of the threat of a resurgence in cases if they’re not careful.

Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam have repeatedly cautioned Canadians about an impending second wave with Tam suggesting there was the possibility for an “explosive” second spike in new infections.

Newsletter sign-up: Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox

So, what exactly constitutes a second wave? And if there is one on the way, can it be prevented? CTVNews.ca spoke to several experts to find out.

WHAT IS A SECOND WAVE?

Epidemiologists have been using the metaphor of waves on the sea to describe the rise and fall in the number of cases, or the “curve” of an outbreak, for years.

During the Spanish Flu of 1918, officials documented three distinct waves of illness beginning in March of that year. The second wave of that pandemic, which was far deadlier than the first, hit in the fall of 1918 before it subsided for almost a year and resurged again in the fall and winter of 1919.

Since then, the metaphor has been used on multiple occasions in reference to other influenza outbreaks throughout the 20th century, including more recently during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

Steven Hoffman, a professor of global health, law, and political science at York University in Toronto and director of the Global Strategy Lab, said a “wave” is an imprecise term that is used colloquially to highlight the overall shape of an epidemic curve in terms of the number of new cases per day.

“There’s nothing so precise about it. It’s more just a helpful communication tool,” he told CTVNews.ca during a telephone interview on Wednesday.

Infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch agreed there is no exact threshold of new daily cases that needs to be reached to be able to determine if a second wave is occurring.

If they are plotted on a graph, for example, Bogoch said the number of new daily infections would be seen rising before peaking and then decreasing again when there are no or few cases for a sustained period of time. The second wave would begin when the cases begin to rise again for continued period.

“It’s as simple as that,” he said during a telephone interview from Toronto on Wednesday. “You’re not going to have an exact definition.”

HOW DO WE KNOW THE FIRST WAVE IS OVER?

Part of the confusion around the usage of the term second wave is determining when the first wave actually ends and a new wave begins. While some countries including Canada, South Korea and Australia saw a fairly obvious increase in new infections that eventually peaked before decreasing again, that’s not always how an outbreak develops.

In the United States, for example, there hasn’t been a dramatic drop in new cases that marks a clear end to the first wave. Since the outbreak began, the country has seen more of a bumpy curve with periodic spikes and no sustained period with few or no cases. Since mid-June, the U.S. has had some of its highest number of recorded cases leading some to believe they’re experiencing a second wave.

However, American health officials including the country’s top infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci have been reluctant to label it as such, because the curve of news cases never flattened. 

“You’re sort of seeing the first wave rolling into the second wave, a much bigger one right now,” Hoffman said. “I mean, did they ever get through the first wave? Not really.”

Bogoch said he doesn’t think the semantics really matter because, whether it’s a continuation of the first wave or a second wave, an increase in cases should elicit the same response.

“Is this a second wave or a blip? Or a spike in our first wave? Like, who cares? Really,” he said. “There might be some academic epidemiologists that don’t agree with me on that, but that's OK. From a practical standpoint, it doesn’t matter.”

Bogoch said countries should focus on whether they have a population susceptible to the virus and if they have good policies in place to prevent further spread.

WILL THERE BE A SECOND WAVE?

No matter the label, Hoffman says a second wave of infections will likely hit Canada.

“We’re almost certainly going to get it because there’s such infectious potential out there, there's so much of this virus that is present around the world,” he said.

Save for a few recent spikes in some parts of the country, Bogoch said Canada is currently seeing low transmission overall, which he said indicates the first wave is coming to an end in this country.

As for the prospect of a second wave on its way, Bogoch said he agrees it will very likely arrive in Canada in the fall. He said a number of factors may contribute to a resurgence in cases at that time, including schools and workplaces reopening, and cooler temperatures keeping people indoors more.

“We’ve really learned a lot about how this virus is transmitted and where it's most likely to be transmitted,” he said. “So any settings where people are in an indoor environment in close proximity for prolonged periods of time, we know that that’s a perfect setup for this virus to be transmitted.”

Hoffman added that it’s really anyone’s guess when the second wave will come, however. He said it will be dependent on public health guidance and people’s adherence to those policies in the coming weeks.

“There’s nothing stopping a second way from happening much earlier if we’re not careful,” he said.

CAN A SECOND WAVE BE PREVENTED?

While both Hoffman and Bogoch are confident a second wave will likely hit Canada, they both said the severity of that surge can be mitigated with the proper response.

Bogoch cited South Korea as an example of a country that had a dramatic spike in cases early on, but they were able to largely suppress it through the extensive use of testing, isolating, and contact tracing.

When cases numbers began to creep back up again in June, South Korea halted further relaxation measures and relied on a program of aggressive tracking, tracing, and testing for the virus to bring the numbers down again in what the government described as the country’s second wave.

Bogoch said that type of speedy reaction will be needed to tamp down on localized outbreaks if Canada wants to prevent a wave of new infections.

“It’s like a game of Whac-A-Mole,” he said. “Infections are going to pop up and we’re going to have to smack them down and the key thing is we have to rapidly identify them and quell those outbreaks as quickly as possible before they morph into larger outbreaks.”

Hoffman said, without the development of a vaccine or treatment for COVID-19 or a scenario where everyone contracts the virus and there is herd immunity, Canadians will have to continue to physically distance from each other, wear masks, and practice good hygiene to avoid devastating second, third, or even fourth waves of infection.

“We need to be ready for when that second wave likely comes and ideally be able to react and stop it so fast that it hardly look like a wave at all,” Hoffman said. 

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/2OMrXv9

[jobrosupdates]

‘We needed to speak our truth – and forgive’: Jonas Brothers on music, marriage and making up | The Guardian

Six years ago, on the back of 17m album sales, the Disney stars split, devastating their fans. Now they’re back with a No 1 single. They talk about family rifts – and why it took so long to patch things up

“Good to see you,” smiles Kevin Jonas, the first of three Jonas brothers to arrive in the back room of an upmarket hotel in Fitzrovia, London. Kevin and I have indeed met before, many years ago, for an interview he has no reason to remember. Between then and today, the Jonas Brothers have split and now re-formed, and for anyone querying just how in sync the newly reunited band are, Joe is the next to join us. “Good to see you,” he says. A few seconds later, here comes Nick: “Good to see you.”

It is three months since they announced their reunion, more than half a decade since a split that was blamed on a “deep rift within the band”. The pandemonium surrounding their getting back together, which has seen Sucker become the band’s first US No 1 single, feels like a mirror image of how fans reacted to the brutality and abruptness of the split in 2013, when, having sold 17m albums and achieved widespread international fame, the brothers ditched a half-made fifth album and cancelled a world tour they were in the middle of. Nick instigated the split, it emerged; there were musical differences, along with the deep rift.

I ask them how being back and once again hurling themselves into full days of press, fan meets-and-greets and invite-only concerts is going. Kevin is the first to respond: “Well, we haven’t wanted to break up yet.”

The Jonas Brothers began life as a standard teen band. Columbia Records had already released solo music by Nick, who had been performing on Broadway since he was seven. (Today, he describes his seven-year-old self as “incredibly driven and focused and not very fun to be around”, which prompts a knowing laugh from older brother Kevin.) The preposterously wholesome New Jersey brothers’ cover of Busted’s Year 3000, in which their vision of the future referenced girls with “round hair like Star Wars” rather than Busted’s “triple-breasted women”, brought modest success. But when their debut album flopped, Columbia dropped the band and around the same time, their father, a pastor whose involvement in the church had a big impact on the family, lost his job. Joe was 17, Kevin was 19; Nick was just 14. “Lost in the shuffle of major label ‘stuff’,” is how Nick puts it now. At the time, emotions ran higher. “We felt like our journey had come to an end.”

But in the words of another sibling pop band, it had only just begun. In 2007, just weeks after leaving Columbia, the band signed with Disney’s record label Hollywood. Disney’s pitch to the Jonas Brothers was simple, according to Nick. “They called and said: ‘You’ve been working with someone who doesn’t know how to market to this audience. This is literally what we do. We see an opportunity and we want to help you grow.’” Disney’s power had already become obvious to the band when the Year 3000 video was played on one of its TV channels. “I saw our Myspace followers go from 100 to 10,000 in just one day,” Joe says.

Only with hindsight is it clear just how effectively the Disney machine made good on its promise. They inserted the Jonas Brothers, albeit not as the Jonas Brothers, into the TV show Hannah Montana, as Miley Cyrus’s favourite band, in an episode that aired directly after the premiere of High School Musical 2. They gave the siblings their own sitcom, Jonas, in which they played a band (again, not the Jonas Brothers). Then came the movie Camp Rock, in which the Jonas Brothers starred alongside Demi Lovato as the band Connect 3. Once again, not the Jonas Brothers, a strategy Joe now recognises as both “genius and confusing”, but the audience joined the dots, thanks in part to another series, Living The Dream – a fly-on-the-wall show in which the band finally starred as themselves.

Those years involved so many of what Nick describes as “pinch-me-I’m-a-Jonas-Brother moments”, such as performing at the White House as favourites of the Obama administration. Joe recalls playing with Stevie Wonder at the Grammys. “The curtains open and there’s Paul McCartney and Chris Martin, and they’re the first ones out of their seats.” They were applauding, not leaving. “Obviously it was for Stevie Wonder, but that felt rewarding.”

Inconveniently, the brothers, being living organisms, got older, and while the Jonas Brothers owe their success to Disney it was inevitable that they would outgrow the channel’s values. Joe wrote a frank assessment of that time for New York magazine in 2013, saying the band were like “frightened little kids” when faced with Disney’s demands for a clean-cut band. Today, he says simply that Disney was “very helpful when we needed it the most”.

Internally, things were also complex. There is a throwaway comment in one episode of Living the Dream in which the brothers discuss their father, who by that point had taken on the role of the band’s co-manager: “The problem is, we’re never sure when he’s just being dad.” Equally, the band realised the line between brother and bandmate was frequently, inevitably, ill-defined. “Sometimes you just want a dad, sometimes you just want a brother,” Joe says today. “There was confusion when it came to family versus band, and what comes first.”

“When the band broke up, he balanced both really well,” Nick says of their father. “Because I had initiated the conversation for the group to break up, he was comforting to me while I spoke my truth. Then when Joe and Kevin’s reaction was complicated, he was a father to them, and managerial to me.”

I ask Joe and Kevin if they can expand on “complicated”. “Sure,” Joe says. “I was mad as hell.”

The split, Joe says, wasn’t something he was expecting, even if the signs were all there: “The music wasn’t as strong as it had been, we weren’t selling as many tickets. And our relationship was unhealthy. We weren’t communicating as we should have been.” Still, Joe remembers thinking that things would work themselves out. “I kind of just assumed we’d get through this bad phase and something great would happen again.”

By 2009, the Jonas Brothers had been releasing an album every summer since 2006 but their fourth album, Lines, Vines and Trying Times, sold less than half its predecessor, and less than a third of the band’s breakthrough album. After that, Nick and Joe released solo albums, which were poorly received. I ask if the failure of those initial solo outings, followed by the ill-fated retreat to the safety of the band, could have fostered resentment that led to the eventual split. Joe nods. “I wanted to at least get that personal win of being able to do something on my own, which I carried for many years, just thinking: ‘I can’t do anything without these guys.’”

After the band’s split in 2013, Kevin spent time with his wife, Danielle, raising their two daughters, starting a construction company and investing in a handful of ventures including a food app called Yood and a service for social influencers called The Blu Market. Nick released two albums, resulting in some decent airplay and chart hits such as the 2014 single Jealous. Joe formed a band, DNCE, whose 2015 billion-stream behemoth Cake By the Ocean was No 1 from Ecuador to Israel. Despite movie roles for both (Nick in Goat and Jumanji, Joe as a voice actor in Hotel Transylvania 3), and a slot judging on Australia’s The Voice for Joe, their projects hit a wall – one of the tracks from DNCE’s latest EP has broken 7m Spotify streams, while Cake By the Ocean stands at 806m.

Although the brothers were hardly estranged during this period, there was a multi-platinum elephant in the room at family events. In 2017 came the idea of a Jonas Brothers documentary, Chasing Happiness, which is out this week on Amazon. The main aim was closure. “We definitely didn’t think we were going to get back together,” Joe says. During one pivotal moment the band took part in a drinking game (the documentary was not being made by Disney), in which residual issues were pulled out of a hat, and each member rated the other on the honesty of their responses. “We all needed to speak our truth, and be able to forgive,” Nick says. “It’s easy. Say the truth, then it’s behind you. Just say it out loud.”

The brothers insist the plan was simply to draw a line under the band, but a full reunion happened anyway. They contacted the songwriter and producer Ryan Tedder, who has worked with everyone from Adele to U2. They knew they needed to update to reflect pop’s new sound, and what Nick describes as “the ever-changing landscape of the way music is released and how people consume it. We were conscious that there would always be a new wave of entertainers you can feel you’re in competition with but rather than be frustrated with how quickly things change, we’ve chosen to lean into it.” Tedder’s early enthusiasm for the project gave the band the confidence to approach other pop overlords such as Greg Kurstin and Max Martin. “Before,” Joe says, “when it was slowing down, we were nervous to reach out to big producers and writers, thinking they would say no to working with us.”

The result is an album, Happiness Begins, that is arguably better than anything the band made in their earlier years. Free from the late-00s shackles of over-enthusiastic hair straightening, the Jonas Brothers rather suit being older. They seem happy that their audiences in 2019 will generally have drinks in their hands and much like the fans who have grown up with them, these brothers seem more like individuals, too, from Nick in his designer bomber jacket to Kevin in an unassuming lumberjack shirt.

The march of age – Nick is 27, Joe, 29, and Kevin, 31 – also means the brothers are no longer synonymous with the purity rings they once wore as a display of abstinence, which quickly became the target of a rather odd media obsession. Nick has since said that the purity rings ended up shaping his view of sex. “They did,” he restates today. How? “The values behind the idea of understanding what sex is, and what it means, are incredibly important. When I have children, I’ll make sure they understand the importance of sex, and consent, and all the things that are important. What’s discouraging about that chapter of our life is that at 13 or 14 my sex life was being discussed. It was very tough to digest it in real time, trying to understand what it was going to mean to me, and what I wanted my choices to be, while having the media speaking about a 13-year-old’s sex life. I don’t know if it would fly in this day and age. Very strange.”

In any case, the band are all now married. Kevin got hitched to Danielle a decade ago while Nick’s wife is the actor Priyanka Chopra, and Joe married Sophie Turner, Game of Thrones’ Sansa Stark, in a Las Vegas ceremony last month. All three significant others feature in the video for Sucker. “Sophie was pretty adamant that she play the love interest in every music video we do from now on,” Joe notes. “I told her I didn’t think that was possible, but we’d give her the first one.” I ask him if there’s been a strange atmosphere, with one major chapter ending for Turner just as a new one begins for Joe. “We’ve definitely spoken about that. It’s difficult to say goodbye to one … But it’s amazing timing that we could be starting our life together right now.”

The couple’s refreshing approach to dealing with paparazzi in New York, where they live – staring them out, giving them the finger – often sees them go viral. “Early on, we were trying to be secretive about our relationship,” Joe explains. The problem? “We like to sit outside. Pulling faces at the paparazzi is sometimes the best way to handle the situation – and then I see myself on the top of Reddit.” He suddenly becomes rather animated. “I love Reddit! I got so excited when I saw that. I went: ‘We made it!’ She wasn’t as excited.” (He adds that he mainly visits Reddit for Gifs, memes and pictures of “any cute animal”.)

I ask Nick how he and Priyanka, who has experienced a similar level of a different type of fame, manage their public lives. “She’s coming up on 20 years in the business, and weirdly, so am I,” he begins. “But she wasn’t really familiar with us, or me, when we first started dating.” One of their first steps, within their first few weeks together, was a show-and-tell session. “We actually sat down and educated each other, playing videos we were both embarrassed and proud of. It was a helpful way to get to know each other.” (Nick adds, ominously, that Chopra “did a little digging of her own and found out some things about my past”.)

The band’s not exactly hermit-like private lives have undoubtedly boosted their comeback, but, along with Sucker being a nailed-on hit, they have also benefited from a curious type of nostalgia. Their return does transport the mind to a time when their music seemed to soundtrack things slowly getting better, rather than rapidly descending into what Nick describes today as “an incredibly negative time across the whole globe”, and what the rest of us might term an international dumpster fire.

“That should be our album title,” Joe decides. “Before The Dumpster Fire. Six years ago was a lot different everywhere, but we like the idea that we can take people out of it and smile and bring some joy to 2019.”

This feels like as appropriate a time as any to bring up the internet theory that Kevin’s appearance on the US version of Celebrity Apprentice was directly responsible for Trump’s presidency. The Jonas Brothers aren’t known for their political views but the theory goes like this: Kevin’s presence gave the ailing show an early ratings boost, but after Kevin attempted to outfox Trump in the boardroom and got himself fired, the rest of the season’s ratings were poor, and now here we are. “You can do the math on it, and it lines up,” Kevin accepts. “It’s plausible, I guess, that the need for attention could have led from bad ratings to the presidency. I hope that’s not the case.” Would he like to apologise to the world? “No. I do not take credit for it.”

I ask Nick if, as he has previously stated, he would still like to run for president himself one day. “Politics is a very tricky thing,” he diplomatically responds. “It’s a very different time to when I first mentioned my desire to be president.”

“He’s practising,” Kevin laughs.

“We’ll take what we can get,” Joe mutters.

With that, it’s time for the band to clear off and perform for fans in Kingston, London. Before they go I ask what Connect 3, the band they portrayed in Camp Rock, are doing now. “I think,” Nick says, “they’re just really jealous that the Jonas Brothers are back.”

Jonas Brothers’ new album, Happiness Begins, is out on 7 June on Polydor/Republic Records

Source: The Guardian

[amphtaminedreams]

We Voted for Murderers

65.2%.

That’s the percentage of people who voted for the Conservative candidate in my constituency, and I feel completely heartbroken. See, things have properly gone to shit. 

If we’re talking numbers?

Local councils estimate the number of people sleeping rough on any given night between 2010 and 2018 has risen from 1,768 to 4,677, a 165% increase. The Trussell Trust, the UK’s largest food bank charity, has reported a 5,146% increase in emergency food parcels being distributed since 2008. An 8% cut in spending per school pupil since 2009. Funding from central government to local government cut by 60% in that same period. £37 billion less spent on working-age social security compared to over a decade ago by 2020. A 90% fall in the number of social homes being built since 2010. A £7,300,000 decrease in funding for women’s shelters between 2011 and 2017. Don’t even get me started on the government’s treatment of the NHS.

I’ve heard stories of individuals applying for PIP due to mental illness being berated about suicide attempts and the likelihood of another as part of a “formal interview” process to see whether they qualify. People collapsing in job centre queues, freezing to death on the streets and the elderly in their homes, suicides whilst on never ending mental healthcare waiting lists. In fact, 17,000 sick and/or disabled individuals have died whilst waiting for PIP payments to come through, and in total, UCL researchers have linked 120,000 deaths to austerity (I’m not going to comment on the irony of my former university that’s notoriously lacklustre when it comes to giving a fuck about the wellbeing of its students publishing this unless...I just did?). 8 years of negligent homicide of the most vulnerable people in our society under the Conservative government and we voted them back in.

So I ask, are people really stupid enough to believe that the politicians responsible for this mess are the ones who are going to fix it just because they make a few characteristically empty promises on TV or does the British public at large really give even less of a fuck about other people than I thought? As in actually not give a fuck about people dying?

I have to tell myself it’s the former. The press’ treatment of Jeremy Corbyn and Labour was scathing. 

Corbyn, a man who has stood by the same principles of fairness, justice, and equality, for the entirety of his career, was criticised by the likes of The Sun, The Daily Mail, and The Telegraph, for being indecisive and a threat to this country whilst Boris Johnson, a man who can barely string a sentence together when he is asked to give a straight answer to something and blocked the release of a report covering Russian interference in British politics, was held up as the one people should put their faith in. 

I know, the press are never going to be completely neutral. But shouldn’t they at least be committed to integrity? And the truth? Isn’t that the WHOLE FUCKING POINT of journalism? I’ve been hearing the phrase “post-truth world” thrown around a lot and it’s probably an indication of my privilege that it was only with this election that I properly understood what that meant; it was found by the NGO First Draft just 2 days before the election, damage way past the point of done, that 88% of the Conservative Party’s Facebook ads (compared to 0% of Labour’s ads) contained misleading information. The repercussions were non-existent. After Boris Johnson’s claim that Jeremy Corbyn wanted to raise corporation and income tax to the highest levels in Europe was publicised, only Channel 4′s Factcheck website published the actual statistics (France, Belgium, Portugal and Greece all have much higher corporation tax rates than Labour’s proposal). Similarly, in many constituencies, the Lib Dems were posting fliers where Labour candidates were, in the previous election, the runner ups to the Conservative candidate, claiming that it was instead THEIR party’s candidate who had the highest chance of unseating the latter. Days before the election, the headline of one of Britain’s most highly circulated papers claimed that a Corbyn government would plunge us into a crisis the likes of which “we haven’t seen the Second World War”, which is kind of wild considering that 130,000 preventable deaths have been linked to austerity under the Conservative government compared to 70,000 civilian deaths in said war. Not that either is good, obviously, and I can’t believe I have to point that out. But then, right-wingers did paint Jeremy Corbyn as a monster for passing up watching the Queen’s Christmas Day speech to volunteer at a homeless shelter, so I thought I’d just cover my back, y’know. 

Shouldn’t there be standards that the media is held to? You know, like not making slanderous statements about some politicians that have no actual basis in fact whilst brushing over the statements of others. Whilst the PM’s father Stanley Johnson was on nation television calling the public illiterate, and Jacob Rees-Mogg was blaming the Grenfell victims deaths on their “lack of common sense”, and Michael Gove was stating that people who needed to use food banks had brought it on themselves because they were not “best able to manage their finances”, it was Jeremy Corbyn who was being called an enemy of the people, accused of trying to plunge us into a “Marxist hell”...I mean, if Denmark and Norway and Finland with some of the highest living standards in the world are “Marxist hell”s  then sure, that’s what he’s doing. But that’s a hell I’m sure a lot of people would find much comfier than a freezing cold pavement. Before Labour had even released their (fully-costed!) manifesto, barefaced lies were being published about how much it would cost and how it would plunge us into trillions of pounds worth of debt, as if it hasn’t increased from £1 trillion to £1.8 trillion in the years since David Cameron took office. Meanwhile, when Labour did publish their manifesto and the Financial Times published a letter signed by 163 prominent economists and academics backing their spending plans? Crickets. Nothing sums it up better than the debate around Jeremy Corbyn’s alleged anti-semitism, discussed ad-nauseam whilst Boris Johnson’s actual racism, islamophobia, misogyny and classism, RIGHT OUT OF THE HORSE’S MOUTH, was completely ignored by most news outlets. 

You know what, maybe people earning £85k just DON’T want to pay an extra £3 in tax a week to make sure children get an education. Maybe everybody IS just as selfish as that one twat on Question Time who got all red in the face over the prospect of having to give up an amount less than the cost of a tub of Ben and Jerrys a week. But if that’s true, this isn’t a country I want to live in at all, or a planet I want to live on, really. I hope it’s not. I hope it’s a case of a need for some kind of collective realisation that the Sun ain’t shit. Merseyside did it. The younger generation are catching on. And look at the results there.

Labour probably couldn’t fulfil ALL of their promises. No political party is perfect. I was told again and again how unrealistic those promises were as if that was enough to make me go ”oh...I guess I’ll vote for 4 more years of people dying in the streets instead”. Yes, in an ideal world, the entire manifesto would be made a reality, but it depended on far too many rich people being good and honest. Let’s be real-the elite will always find a way to avoid paying their fare share on the premise that they “earned it”, as if anybody earns billions by sheer hard work alone and past a certain point, not off other people’s backs. As if there aren’t nurses and teachers and firemen and other public sector workers who don’t put in just as much energy and as many hours and emotional labour as CEOs and business owners and investors. But the point is that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn acknowledged this, and their manifesto aimed to give the power back to the average person, from the vulnerable to the supposedly middle class still struggling to make ends meet, and give them the quality of life they deserve. It was built on the simple premise that the people should use their government, not the other way round, and that everybody deserves the basic human rights of shelter, nutrition, safety and dignity, regardless of their fortune in life. However many of Labour’s policies would actually have been fulfilled, it would’ve been a shift in the right direction. 

Now the election’s been and gone and I’m scared. Already, the narrative is being rewritten by the billionaires in control of this country that a manifesto like the one we saw this year will never sit right with this country, when it is what so many desperately need. The people putting this information out there know the truth: that Labour’s membership trebled in size under Corbyn (more people voted for him than for any Labour leader since Tony Blair), that most of the safe labour seats were lost because of Brexit, and that if the manifesto had been represented accurately, there’s a good chance that Boris Johnson would no longer be our Prime Minister. I’m scared a person like Jeremy Corbyn will never front Labour again. 

Because I do not want a tory painted red who’s friends with Jacob Rees-Mogg behind the scenes, I do not want a war criminal who thinks that bombing innocent people is ever acceptable, I do not want a person who doesn’t see people of colour as part of the working class and indulges in the occasional bit of TERF-ism.

Already, the Conservative party are backpedaling on the few promises they made to increase NHS spending, and I am scared. I am scared for myself, in the event that I need urgent mental health care again, and I am scared for those less privileged than me who don’t have a family to support them, who don't have a roof over their head, who weren’t fortunate enough to be born in a country with relative economic and political stability, who cannot physically go out and work to earn a living. I am worried about the bigots that this election has already emboldened, the Katie Hopkins and the Tommy Robinsons of the world, who think the things that blind luck have graced them with they somehow earned, who pride themselves on ignorance and cruelty and selfishness.

So for now, what can we do? 

Join trade unions. Organise. Write to your MPs. Bring attention to those who are vulnerable. Be vocal with your criticism of the establishment. Call out those in politics for an ego-trip hiding behind “personality”. Do your research. Keep an eye on the numbers. The “it doesn’t matter who you vote for, just vote” sentiment is old, because it does. No “as a feminist, I exercise my right to vote for whoever I want”, because as a feminist, you should care about ALL women, not just the white, middle class, able-bodied ones. 

And if anyone has any more suggestions, let me know. Because I am sick and tired of living under a government who doesn’t give a fuck about the people it’s supposed to protect.

Lauren x

[DISCLAIMER: The photo is not mine. Just devastated and trying to find the words to express it.]

[bbclesmis]

Lily Collins on overshadowing dad Phil, beating anorexia and starring in the BBC's Les Misérables

As one of the defining voices of the 1980s and a man who remains one of the world’s bestselling artists, it would have been easy for Collins to overshadow his multitalented daughter’s success. Certainly, when I first interviewed Lily five years ago for the romcom Love, Rosie, she was still being defined not just by her famous father, but the Audrey Hepburn-esque looks that had won her modelling contracts as a teenager living in LA.

Since we last saw each other, Lily has redefined herself on her own terms. And when UK audiences are treated to her nuanced, poignant portrayal of Cosette’s desperate mother, Fantine, in the lavish new six-part BBC adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, they won’t see Phil Collins’s daughter but a remarkable British-born talent at the top of her game.

‘I had a few friends in the musical version, and I was so keen to play this part in what’s a very different adaptation,’ says Lily of the role that won Anne Hathaway an Oscar – a role she begged producers to be allowed to audition for, so desperate was she to be involved.

That the director, Tom Shankland, had decided against his being a musical adaptation meant the all-star cast – including Dominic West as Jean Valjean, David Oyelowo as Javert and Olivia Colman as Madame Thénardier – were able to return to Hugo’s original characters, she says. ‘And getting to work through the whole arc of Fantine’s life was incredible. Although in fact the death scene was filmed on day two,’ she adds with a side smile. ‘So it was a case of, “Hi, nice to meet you – I’m about to die”.’

Crushed and betrayed by a pitiless society that demands the most from those to whom it gives the least, Fantine’s character is emblematic of so much. During the six-month shoot in Belgium and northern France, Lily found filming in minus-13C Brussels gruelling (‘I grew up in England, so I should know about cold – but this was something else’), but says it helped put her in the right state of mind.

‘My lips started to go blue and I began to shake. Even in my breaks I wouldn’t keep my jacket on for too long because I had to be at a level of discomfort that I hadn’t experienced before.’ And when a degraded and desperate Fantine is dragged through the snow wearing minimal clothing, ‘I was able to let go and be that vulnerable. It’s those parts that are the most fulfilling: that’s when you can see what you’re made of.’

Lily’s early roles were hardly inconsequential. She starred alongside Sandra Bullock in the Oscar-winning 2009 film The Blind Side, and with Julia Roberts in Mirror Mirror in 2012. But it wasn’t until 2013 with her portrayal of Clary Fray in the film adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s bestselling cult fantasy series The Mortal Instruments that Lily seemed to come into her own.

There was a concerted move towards tragic, multi-layered heroines like heartbroken Cecilia Brady in Amazon Prime’s The Last Tycoon in 2016, and recovering anorexic Ellen in Marti Noxon’s To the Bone the following year, and I wonder whether it was the writing of her startlingly honest 2017 memoir, Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me, that marked the start of Lily’s real evolution.

Five years ago a sweet, wholesome and reticent young woman in dungarees and Dr Martens boots had assured me that prudence had ‘always been my natural feeling’. And yet, outing herself as someone real and flawed in her memoir – someone who had suffered from a debilitating eating disorder as well as self-confidence and relationship issues – was anything but prudent. ‘Writing the book helped me let go of things I was holding on to emotionally,’ Lily says. ‘And in order to take on the baggage of the characters that I wanted to play I had to let go of my own.’

That she chose to play a recovering anorexic in To the Bone the same year she’d detailed her own illness in such detail – the diet-pill and laxative addiction, the bingeing and purging that started at the age of 16 and went on into her 20s – could be seen as brave, foolhardy or both. But her parents (Lily’s mum is American socialite Jill Tavelman) didn’t try to stop her, she says. ‘In fact, they were more like, “Wow, you’re writing a book!” And it turned out to be a form of therapy,’ she insists.

‘Luckily, we shot To the Bone in LA, I worked with a nutritionist to prepare for the part responsibly, and my mum was on set with me, so it was a way for me to harness something that had truly controlled my life for such a long time. Being able to turn the tables and really have control was amazing. Finally I could say to myself: “I am living my life and this is not going to be a part of my story from now on.” I’ll be 30 in March and I’m so glad that I dealt with these things in my 20s, because now I can get excited about what’s to come.’

As part of her research she went to an Anorexics and Bulimics Anonymous group, and an LA clinic for eating disorders, ‘where they gave me a lot of the factual information to understand the basics of the disorder’. Does she feel her illness is firmly behind her now – or is it important to remain vigilant? ‘Well it’s never going to be erased because it’s part of who you are, but it doesn’t define how I live my life daily any more,’ she says. ‘When I was going through it, I couldn’t imagine there being a day when I didn’t think about it. So really it’s about seeing myself as a priority.’

She’s in no doubt that doing To the Bone and Unfiltered in the same year was worth it in terms of getting the message out there. ‘We’re all flawed,’ she shrugs. ‘Giving a loud voice to a subject that people are often very ashamed of really inspired me to pour myself into characters that have something to say.’

Her accent may be pure La-La Land, but Lily’s got British steel, our madcap sense of humour – and a love of Topshop. And when she lands at Heathrow and drives out into the country towards her father’s Surrey home, ‘That’s when I feel most myself,’ she says. And yet only-child Lily was just five when her mother moved them back to California, where she was from, and away from the very public fallout of her and Collins’s divorce.

It was the musician’s second marital break-up and the press feasted on every acrimonious detail of the split, from the fax her father reportedly sent Tavelman terminating their 10-year marriage (he denied it) to the reported £17 million he was forced to pay out. But although Lily admits in her book that there was ‘anger’ towards her father and a ‘terrible disconnect’ between them in the subsequent period – Collins went on to marry Swiss translator Orianne Cevey, 20 years his junior, in 1999, whom he later divorced and remarried – she is now very close to the 67-year-old and her four half-siblings. Two of them, Simon and Joely (whose mother is Collins’s first wife, Andrea Bertorelli) live in Canada, and two, Nicholas and Matthew (sons of Orianne), in Geneva, but the family all assembled in London for their father’s 60th birthday.

Lily remembers the advice Phil gave her when she started out: ‘For every positive review you read you’ll probably find two negative ones, so if you’re proud of something, don’t let anyone take that away.

‘And it’s true that being proud of the work matters more than anything,’ she says, adding that growing up immersed in the industry allowed her to ‘see the pros and the cons of it all and really understand what happens when you decide you’re going to be in the public eye. Because of that I feel like I already have this armour built in, which I can use at any moment.’

The armour went on when I asked about her ex-boyfriend, actor Jamie Campbell Bower, and an alleged fling with Zac Efron five years ago – and she’s not about to tell me who she’s dating now. But as well as her book, Instagram – on which Lily has almost 12 million followers – has opened her up in other ways. ‘I used to be quite anti social media,’ she says. ‘But after the book I found that this hugely supportive community was forming around the world.’ Anyone who assumed that the gorgeous LA actress whose circle of friends includes the actors Eddie Redmayne, Jaime Winstone and Sam Claflin couldn’t connect with ordinary people, ‘I wanted to prove wrong,’ she says.

Instagram has also proved to be a great platform for Lily to showcase her love of fashion and photography. The Dr Martens are now long gone and today she loves mixing up pieces by Givenchy, Miu Miu and Chanel with vintage brands and high-street finds. ‘In Brussels there were so many amazing vintage shops,’ she says. ‘I found some incredible old adidas and Fila jackets. But I’m constantly changing when it comes to fashion.’

Many of these experiments have been exhaustively covered by the fashion bloggers who dissect paparazzi pictures of Lily out and about in LA, where she lives – ‘which can be frustrating when I’m just going to the gym’, but is an inevitable part of any coverage involving red carpets.

Asked whether she minds the ‘Who are you wearing?’ question that many A-listers have railed against post #AskHerMore, she deliberates for a moment. ‘Well, I like to give credit where credit’s due, and if I’m wearing something a designer has created, they deserve the credit. One hopes there’s going to be more than one question – and if it is just the one, I’d rather be asked what I’m doing there.’

To see how quickly her industry has changed since #MeToo went viral just over a year ago has been fascinating, she says. ‘And I feel very fortunate that the films I’ve been in have always involved very strong independent women – whether it’s Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock,Julianne Moore, Annette Bening or Jennifer Connelly: they all took me under their wing.’

Watching #MeToo filter down into other industries has been one of the most wondrous things about it, she enthuses. ‘But whereas this year has been about trying to level the playing field, I keep hoping that one day we won’t have to start conversations with, “Well, it’s great because she’s a woman…”’

In her next big screen role, Lily will star as Edith Tolkien – the wife and muse of Lord of the Rings creator JRR Tolkien – opposite Nicholas Hoult in Dome Karukoski’s biopic, Tolkien. ‘And what an amazing experience to shoot in Liverpool with someone like Nicholas, and be able to play a character that really inspired a series of stories I grew up loving.’ But prior to that, and also due out next year – she filmed Joe Berlinger’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, in which she plays the long-term girlfriend of mass-murderer Ted Bundy, Elizabeth Kloepfer – with whom she spent time.

‘The preparation to that – and meeting Elizabeth and her daughter – was so unsettling that I kept being woken up by all these images,’ she says. ‘And I had tried not to read the harshest and most visceral information out there because in truth my character didn’t know anything, and the story is from her perspective. But it’s such a fascinating story – and in the end storytelling is what connects us all.’

Les Misérables begins on 30 December at 9pm on BBC One (x)

[dwightkschrute]

In 2014 and 2015 I did a my year in review kind of thing where I, of course, reviewed it and accompanied it with a picture from that month. I somehow forgot to post 2016 (until now) and forgot to do it at all for 2017 but unfortunately, I am back with a really disappointing year. I was debating not putting myself through the legit pain of “reviewing” this year but I think of how I love going through my 2009-2010 posts and seeing how much I’ve grown so this is for you, successful and cooler future me.

2016 and 2017 were amazing but 2018 was my most promising year. My boyfriend and I were going to move in, I was going to start my dream job; everything was perfect. It definitely started out as one of the best years of my life! Then exactly halfway through the year everything changed and I was left having to pick up the pieces and completely restart, making it one of the worst years of my life.

I started January in Mexico, which was the best, but my family and I got home early in the month. I had quit my job the month before so I dedicated the entirety of this month to job hunting. Our friend (my bf’s bff who became mine and my brother’s bff early on)’s dad got a boat so it was like we got a boat too because despite the cold, we lived on it. (My boyfriend couldn’t go on the trip with us, which he was super bummed about (and that we had to spend like 10 days apart which was killer then), so he was the one to pick us up at the airport and he greeted me with a bouquet of flowers. Out of the many gifts/gestures he gave me, that was one of my favorites.)

February I started my amazing new job so life was back to 40 hour work weeks and not having much time for much else. I was always attached to the hip to my bf so almost every day after work entailed going out with him or having dinner with my family or his. That was my month. My favorite part of every February is Valentine’s Day and this one was as amazing as the rest. I don’t even have enough space (of the allotted space I give myself for each entry at least!) to describe that day. (My bf at our Valentine’s Day dinner. We finished our long day at this restaurant (so, so cool, once popular with Old Hollywood stars) on Hollywood Blvd and it was dreamy and romantic and amazing.) Oh man, I don’t have a lot of interesting things to say about March. Oh, my parents got Influenza (A/B/idk tbh), so it was two weeks of my brother, bf, and I taking care of them. My dad has a serious chronic disease so it was especially dangerous for him so it was a stressful time. Once we weren’t in hazmat suits anymore (no but really, we were gloved and double masked around them and kept them quarantined), I’d be at work or with my bf. I also started to get close with a co-worker, who I quickly became close friends with! (My bf’s two huskies. I’ve just loved that picture since I took it! I’ve never been loved by a dog more than the one in the back of this pic. Not even by my own! He has a special place in my heart.)

April was barbecues at my house or my bf’s, trying every brewery and bar around, hikes, bike rides, beach visits, baseball games, boat rides, late night cooking and baking. It was lots and lots of love and happiness and I would give absolutely anything to go back to those days. (My brother and bf grilling on Easter. This was a familiar scene, I have so many pictures of this exact scenario, yet looking at it just now made me so emotional! Stop! They’re just grilling!) May was so exciting! Very first day I got a new car! I was so happy! It was long overdue because my finicky, expensive Volkswagen had to go and I’d fallen in love with the new Honda Civic (I’ll admit I have basic taste but I don’t care!) so I finally bit the bullet and did it. This month my bf and I, after a long time of “oh wouldn’t it be nice!”, bit the bullet as well and decided to finally get serious about finding a place together. So the apartment search started, but we soon realized our home, Orange County, was super expensive. My bf, in that “ha ha jk but I’m down if you are” way, suggested we pick up and move to Oregon and I immediately agreed. It just felt right and despite us being the most careful and non-spontaneous people ever, we decided to do it! So we began to research, look for apartments but most importantly, jobs. (My car the day I took it home!)

Uhhhhhh, well, June hurts to think about! We went to visit Portland, where we decided we’d want to live because that’s where the jobs were, on a quick trip since it was strictly “business.” Portland was everything I imagined and more. We loved it and I think we loved playing house in our airbnb more than anything about the city. Back in LAX we came to the easy conclusion that though we lived Portland, that’d require a lot and for our first time moving out we’d like to stay close to home and above anything else, we just wanted to live together as soon as possible. We immediately started to look for places in LA, we spent the month apartment hunting, and towards the end of it, decided on one we really liked, one he begged me to please say yes to so we can move in already. I was so, so, so happy this month but what made me happier was seeing my bf, I swear, even happier than me. I seriously felt unstoppable and was beyond excited for our future. (I had a lot of Portland pictures to choose from but my bf and I liked this one because it reminded us of Always Sunny for some reason.)

In July, everything changed. To start, I left my job. I thought, new chapter in my life, new job coming, I’ll live really far, I should leave now. So I did. My last day was an emotional day because I loved my job so much and every single person I worked with. That very same day, my bf and I broke up. For unrelated reasons to my last day, to our moving in, to our relationship, etc. We had an amazing, amazing relationship but he has a lot of demons and issues/insecurities he has to deal with and conquer, and though I was aware and was there for him and would continue to be by his side no matter what, he decided that this was a battle he had to handle by himself and I figure before he got into a more committed situation. It didn’t have to happen, though. I hadn’t talked about the specifics of the breakup on my blog so  sorry for changing the mood of the post, but yeah, July happened and it felt like my world stopped. Really regret quitting my job now, huh? I was hit by two huge losses and changes right at the same time.  (I took this on my friend’s boat 20 tequila shots in, drunk and sad as fuck. Not to get fake deep but how sad. Literally on a boat, beautiful sunset, would rather die.)

August was a blur and I’m still not convinced I didn’t just dream it. God, alright, here we go, the rest of the year is a mess so get ready. I fell into a deep depression fast. It also didn’t help that my dad had to start getting radiation/infusions for his illness shortly after the breakup. I couldn’t believe how much my life had changed. I started dating someone else and then I dated another guy shortly after. I wanted to replace and/or forget and I really thought that’d be the solution. I was miserable when I was with them. I took absolutely any opportunity to get really drunk or high, and the opportunity came often so I spent most of my days desperately trying to not feel anything. The only time I’d feel okay was when I was extremely high and I couldn’t even think. Since I had a lot of savings for my out of state move, I had a lot of money to blow, which I did. I realized I even liked the feeling of the temporary “high” of spending a lot and receiving the stuff. I’d hang out with any friend who offered (out of boredom? loneliness?) and even ended up on a mess of a Vegas trip. Worst month ever. Maybe. (Here’s a positive! I like that bathing suit and my tiddie looks so round!)

When September came I realized two months had passed and all I had done was be a huge depressed mess. I no joke forgot about work. I just straight up forgot. I started to look for a new job, which hurt me so bad because I had to face the fact that it wouldn’t be my Cool LA Dream Job anymore. I stopped dating. Most importantly, I completely stopped drinking and smoking because it’d almost always make me sadder but also it scared me that I had no self control nor did I care. I saw a whole lot of my close friends and they, along with my immediate family, kept me afloat this month because time felt like it was going so fast. I couldn’t believe that at a blink of an eye it was night again and then a new day. Time had no mercy for me, please let me hold on. (Me at a baseball game. Tbh I’m looking at this thinking, did this really happen?)

October started out nice because my best friend of years, who I unfortunately had a falling out with three years ago, reached out to me. I’ll always give her all of the credit for doing that. I can’t begin to explain what this meant to me. It was a nice, bright shine of light that managed to shine through the dark clouds. Having my best friend is exactly what I needed. I’m a big believer in the universe acting in mysterious ways and though I had grown disappointed in its little surprise for me lately, this was the kind I always appreciate. I spent a good part of that month with her, catching up and doing things just like we did back then. It was like nothing had changed. That’s all I remember about this month, and a super fun Halloween! That day was probably one of the best days in months. (My best friend Rylee and me the first time seeing each other in 3 years. We’ve had our blogs for 8-9 years so please follow her for quality content)

November was rough. I was frustrated because surely things should had been better by then. I was still feeling so low, I was going to job interviews to no avail, I “relapsed” and had a high/drunk off my ass on a boat messy moment.. To make matters worse, I accidentally drove up on a cement divider in a parking lot and my airbags deploy, which is so expensive to fix, so my car was out of commission for a month. Then I got so sick and I rarely ever get a small cold. I seriously felt like I was cursed, even the smallest thing felt like an insult towards me. The one good thing is that since July I had been forcing myself to go to the gym five times a week. My mom said exercising was the only thing that’d help her feel that sweet release of seretonin, endorphins, dopamine, and all that good stuff when she was depressed so, though I enjoyed going to the gym before, I did it just for that reason alone. It worked and as another result I got like pretty fucking fit. Revenge body, you’re one of the few good things in my life right now. (I literally had no idea what to choose so I said fine, here’s a pic of the scene of the crime. Whatever.)

In December I turned 26. Which I hate, naturally. I went to a million more job interviews. I’m seriously so embarrassed to admit that but whatever, it’s the truth. (I have a degree, experience, and an awesome cover letter..I’ll keep blaming the curse!) What kept me sane was that we had different family members visiting from the very beginning of the month. Playing with an energetic, adorable baby kept me distracted and happy. Having so much company around also distracted me (slightly, but it helped!) from the fact that the holidays and my birthday would be quite different now. I’m one of those annoying Christmas lovers, usually at least. This year everything just happened and I didn’t care. But I survived December! (I don’t care. This is the appropriate representation of 2018 and how I feel at the end of it.)

Jesus if you’ve read all of this.. I’m sorry you had to read about the mess of my year but really more like the mess that is ME. Yknow those like “people my age I went to HS with vs me” memes? I seriously went from being that bitch with a good paying job, brand new car, a serious, great relationship with a promising future together (Like. We would color coordinate outfits! LMAO. We would have dinners with both of our families together. We were obsessed with each other. You’d roll your eyes if you saw any of this. I can’t get over how perfect we were, it’s hilarious what happened to us.) and then at the blink of an eye I went to not having absolutely any of that, casually dating (something I’d NEVER done) anyone who resembled my ex and sadly and drunkenly puking off the side of a pier. Who is she? I don’t know, I got whiplash. (Queen of parentheses and side notes, I know. But another thing about me is... I’ve never been affected by people leaving my life. I’m used to it. I’ve never been anywhere as affected as I was when my ex and I broke up. This isn’t normal for me, my ENTJ/Capricorn ass doesn’t know what this feeling is.)

Please curse that has been put on me, release me. Whoever is attacking my voodoo doll, calm down! Please! I’ve gone through enough sadness and loss. If 2019 is even slightly as bad, I’m going to be like that pigeon I reblogged the other day that’s like “fuck this I’m just going to sit here.” I can’t even make a cute but corny, hopeful “hope 2019 is great!” comment. I’m literally begging you...pleading you... I don’t believe in karma but after all of this shit, I better have something much better in stock for me. “Good things are coming!” I fucking hope so. Like, I’ll be even more annoying right now and say that it’s not fair that I didn’t get to have the future I was about to have. I don’t care about any cliche you may have for me. One door closes, everything happens for a reason, God has a plan, etc. No. Why did all of this have to happen? What can be better than the future I was going to have? I felt so unlucky. It all feels like a nightmare and I’m just waiting to feel whole again. Oh shit I got really intense. I know I’ll get over it and life will be good again eventually but for now, I am still so mad. I would have never in a million years guessed this is how my 2018 would go. 

So fine, I’ve accepted things now, so now I’m impatient and say please prove me wrong, 2019. I’m THREATENING you to be amazing!

[richincolor]

Interview: Patrick Flores-Scott

Today we welcome Patrick Flores-Scott to the blog. He was kind enough to answer a few questions about his writing life and his newest novel, American Road Trip, which is making it's way out into the world today. I loved American Road Trip and reviewed it here last week.

Summary: A heartwrenching YA coming of age story about three siblings on a road trip in search of healing.

With a strong family, the best friend a guy could ask for, and a budding romance with the girl of his dreams, life shows promise for Teodoro “T” Avila. But he takes some hard hits the summer before senior year when his nearly perfect brother, Manny, returns from a tour in Iraq with a devastating case of PTSD. In a desperate effort to save Manny from himself and pull their family back together, T’s fiery sister, Xochitl, hoodwinks her brothers into a cathartic road trip.

Told through T’s honest voice, this is a candid exploration of mental illness, socioeconomic pressures, and the many inescapable highs and lows that come with growing up—including falling in love.

Have you had any memorable and/or life-changing road trips?

Definitely memorable. My parents drove us—me and my sisters—from our Seattle area home to Wisconsin for a reunion when we were all teenagers. Three hormonal teens squished in the back seat of a Ford Fairmont. Middle of Summer. Vinyl seats. No air conditioning. Two out of the three—mortal enemies. Seventeen hundred torturous miles. We camped the whole way. I definitely drew on that trip as I wrote the book.

I’ve actually been through all of the towns and most of the freeways and highways from American Road Trip. I taught in Los Angeles and would drive home to Seattle for the summer. And I also drove from L.A. to visit my sister and her family in El Paso, Texas a couple times.

I’d have to say that most of my road trips up and down the coast (including a trip to the Rose Bowl with friends in college) were as fast or faster than the trip in the book. It was always about getting there. I still feel that pace and those freeways in my bones. Although those experiences ended up being great for the writing, I’d love to do a slow, touristy version of a trip down the west coast with my wife and kids some day.

American Road Trip delves into the issues facing a family who is welcoming someone back after military service. Is this a situation you were familiar with or did it require a lot of research?

There are no vets in my family. I was inspired to start writing this story in 2009, after the housing bubble burst and the economy collapsed. I’m a big NPR listener and at that time there seemed to be so many stories about vets returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the stories focused on the difficulties of adjusting to civilian life and the tragedy of vet suicide and the treatment vets were receiving at the VA.

There was one story that really launched me into the book. It featured a mom reading a gut-wrenching letter her son wrote to her and his dad before he took his own life. I started researching and listening to all the stories I could. Early on I also was moved by this short movie, Poster Girl. It showed a young vet suffering from PTSD. The thing that got to me—besides watching her battle against the overwhelming demons that followed her back from war—was her support network. This small group of older vets took her in. They counseled her and accompanied her to VA appointments and really seemed to be keeping her alive. Those real-life vets inspired Tio Ed and “The Group” in American Road Trip.

There was a lot of digging through stories online and websites where vets would share their stories, often in search of support and camaraderie. Same with websites for families attempting to find resources to help them cope. I talked to vets and family members and with some folks who work at the VA. My father-in-law is a psychiatrist who has had a lot of experience working with vets so he was a big help as well. I worked on the book for a long time, but there were changes made, even at the last minute, because of feedback I received regarding vets and their care. It was important for me to get that aspect of the story right.

The portion of the experience Manny’s family went through when he came back from war that I connect to personally, is that of being a kid experiencing a family member dealing with mental illness. I feel that in my gut. Also, even though no one dies in the book, the threat of loss hangs over the story like a dark cloud. Much of the time I was writing the book, I was dealing with grief brought on by loss in my family.  So a lot of very real, very strong emotion collided with—and became entwined with—all the new information I was taking in about vets and their families.

I also brought to the writing a profound belief that sending a person to war—whether they go willingly, or not—is the biggest sacrifice you could ask an individual to make, and sending a loved one off to war is the biggest sacrifice you could ask a family to make. So as long as we’re a country that chooses to send people to war, we owe it to them and to our whole society, to meet them with an overwhelming amount of easily accessible care, from the time they return home, for as long as they require it.

I love that you focus on sibling relationships and even go way beyond the nuclear family. How did so many family members become part of this story?

Teodoro is the protagonist. But for some reason, from the very beginning I envisioned Xochitl, the sister, being the person who activates the road trip. She was always the one who believed that Manny—who returned from war unmoored and adrift—could find his bearings via a reconnection to long-lost family. That’s no cure for PTSD, but in the story those re-connections do lead to support that is meaningful for everyone.

Also, at one point, the book was going to be, in part, about the role repeated stories and lore play in unifying families. I made up Avila family stories and wrote them in this heightened style, my attempt at magical realism, and I spread them throughout the novel. Each time I wrote one, it seemed to expand the world of the Avila family. When it became clear that the stories were just too much and I had to nix them, some of the characters from those stories found their way back into the novel. Even some of the stories found their way back in, but in a style that fit the rest of the book.  

Xochitl was a new name for me, but I was happy to find someone online who made a video about her name. It is really beautiful in both sound and meaning. Do you know someone named Xochitl or was this just a random pick related to the family history and culture?

I had a student named Xochitl and I really loved that name. My wife, Emma, picked Xochitl for her confirmation name. You’re supposed to pick a Catholic saint’s name, but she went with Aztec instead. (I think it’s so cool that she did that.) It means ‘flower,’ which is sweet, but the written name looks so strong on the page. I wanted to Xochitl, the character to be STRONG. She needed a name that looked and sounded strong. You say, SOE-cheel. A teacher friend told me she had a student who gave up trying to get folks to pronounce it correctly, so she told everyone, “I am so chill.” Doesn’t quite have the same umph.

The book used to start with Xochitl coercing the guys into the car for the road trip and T describing his sister’s name, telling the reader the pronunciation and saying how that name that starts with an X looks as crazy as his sister is. It was fun writing but eventually it didn’t fit and I’m fine making the reader do a little work to find out how it’s pronounced.

Since writing the book, I came to learn that there is a singer-songwriter, Xochitl, out of Sacramento. She is great. Check her out on Youtube. And Xochitl Torres-Small is now running for Congress in New Mexico. Send her your support, people!

Xochitls are coming on strong. Very soon everyone will know exactly how to pronounce that name.

Change can be a challenge at any time in life even when it doesn't involve trauma. You've made a geographical move and a switch in careers recently. What have you learned about yourself through these shifts?

Wow. It’s been four years since I quit teaching and we moved to Ann Arbor for my wife’s job at the University of Michigan, and I’m still learning. I’ve learned that I need to get out and be social. I have a great and loving little family. But I need to reach out more often to the many people who have opened their arms to us since our move to Ann Arbor. I’ve learned that being a writer and stay-at-home dad seemed to really work for me when my youngest son was in preschool half day. Now that he’s in Kindergarten, it’s a long day and I get stir crazy and I’m feeling like I need to get back to a half day teaching job—mostly for social reasons (but also for added income until this writing thing takes off). I’ve learned that I really need a network of writing friends—and I’m SO LUCKY to have eventually found them here. Don’t tell the whole world, but Ann Arbor is a phenomenal town for connecting with writers.

Do you have a special connection to amazing green chile cheeseburgers?

My wife is from Las Cruces, New Mexico. We go down there with our boys twice a year. About ten years ago, my in-laws took my wife and me to the town of Hatch, and to Sparky’s restaurant, the barbecue and burgers place I write about in the book. That first Sparky’s cheeseburger is what started my addiction to green chile, and specifically, to green chile cheeseburgers. I recommend that everyone travel to New Mexico and eat their way through that state. Enchiladas, gorditas, green chile stew. The use of local chile, green and red, makes it a unique and transcendent regional dining experience. My mouth is watering as I write this. If anything, I undersold the glory of New Mexican green chile—and New Mexican cuisine—in the book. It’s amazing, but you have to go there to experience the real thing.