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buttermybooks · 7 years ago

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Hey guys! I have a somewhat unconventional post for my predominantly book related blog, but it is something that has been highly requested! So without further adieu:

RIOT FEST REVIEW AND FESTIVAL HACKS!!!

Most of you are familiar with how often I travel and how many concerts I go to, so today’s post is going to be a little bit of both. Over the summer, Riot Fest, which is one of the largest punk rock music festivals in the US, announced their lineup for their 2017 festival. At the top of that list was JAWBREAKER. My absolute favorite band that I never thought I would get the chance to see, considering they hadn’t performed together in over 20 years. Needless to say less than 5 hours after finding out that Jawbreaker was the headliner, I had purchased a ticket along with one of my best friends, Benita. Fast forward 4 months and we were FINALLY headed to Chicago!

We arrived on Thursday and were able to get in a little sight seeing as well as spend the day with a mutual friend, @the-book-ferret!!!

Looking back, I am so glad we decided to do most of our sight seeing on the first day because we would have been too tired to do any on Monday, after spending the weekend at the festival. After spending the day at Millennium Park, book shopping at Barnes and Noble (shout out to @the-moon-queen) and eating SO MUCH deep dish pizza, we decided to call it a night and head to bed.

On Friday, I woke up to a myriad of text messages from everyone who felt it necessary to tell me how jealous they were of all the bands I would be seeing over the weekend and, well, they SHOULD be jealous. The Friday lineup alone was enough to warrant spending this much on the riot fest ticket. After printing our tickets in the hotel lobby, we were finally on our way to the first day of Riot Fest!!!

Entry was super easy at Riot Fest. Actually, “easy” was a recurring theme for the weekend. Everything was hella organized and we pretty much had no issues with staff AT ALL. Did I mention the punctuality? No? Literally EVERY band started no more than 5 minutes late. SRSLY GUYS, this fest was SO ORGANIZED. One of my favorite memories of the weekend was watching 2 middle aged drunk dudes get into a fight, knock over a HUGE trash can, spilling ALL of the garbage in it.. and then walking away like nothing happened; only to have a group of millennials band together and clean ALL of it up so that the festival crew wouldnt have to. I think this incident says a lot about the type of people who attend this festival.

We saw tons of bands on our first day at Douglas Park, the most notable were New Order, NIN, and surprisingly A Day To Remember. As someone who isnt a super fan of their music, I gotta give them credit. Their show was WILD. Easily the most interactive of the day. They entire vibe was super fun. We ended our night with corn dogs and nachos from one of the stands. After that we were headed back to our hotel via a 50% off LYFT ride, thanks to the codes that were being handed out at the exit.

Saturday was basically PARTY day haha. We woke up, had breakfast, lounged a bit and then decided to head to the festival. We saw even more bands on saturday, including New Found Glory (who played ALL the old school jams!) and Taking Back Sunday which ended the night for us. This is the only night that we had trouble leaving the park. We ended up just finding a spot and waiting out the LYFT line because SO MANY people were attempting to leave at the same time, it was nearly impossible to find your driver. If you want to avoid this, you can take the REGGIES SHUTTLE which takes you back to Reggie’s for an after party.

Sunday was emotional for me. I woke up an anxious MESS because it was finally the day I was going to see Jawbreaker. I never thought this day would come. Before our trip, when asked who I was excited to see at the festival, I wouldn’t even mention Jawbreaker because I was terrified they would back out at last minute and I wouldnt actually get to see them. ANYWAY, we decided to eat at KUMA’S west loop for lunch. This is THE BEST place to eat at during riot fest weekend. All of the burgers are named after heavy metal bands and the crew caters to a riot fest esque crowd anyway. Plus it was SO GOOD.

Afterward, we took a lyft the few miles to Douglas park and saw SO MANY BANDS. The most notable, aside from JAWBREAKER was Prophets of Rage. It was so fun to be in the crowd with people who werent quite sure who they were and then suddenly see it dawn on everyone that it was members of Rage Against the Machine and Cypress Hill hahaha!! Im not even ready to talk about how amazing Jawbreaker was. I literally dont have the words to describe it. It was an experience unlike anything else. It felt almost religious.. I’ll be chasing that feeling for the rest of my life.

If you’ve kept reading this far, ILY, but if not I will leave a list of pointers that really helped us below!

FESTIVAL HACKS:

Print your tickets before hand

Pack a drawstring backpack

Charge up your external battery packs (these were so handy)

Make sure to bring a PLASTIC refillable water bottle. (refill stations are around the park)

Buy merch AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Things sell out. You dont want to miss out on your size/style

Load up on as many LYFT/UBER promo codes as possible.

Make sure you have a plastic poncho, non aerosol sunscreen and bug spray in your back pack. You will thank me later.

Wear shoes that you arent super fond of. You will absolutely get anything you wear dirty. (even when it doesnt rain!)

Check out the REGGIE’S Party bus! It could save you tons of time/money on car shares.

Download the RIOTFEST app. You can select the bands you want to see and It will alert you 15 minutes before they start peforming and tell you the stage. It is super easy to get caught up in whatever youre doing and forget which bands youre supposed to be going to next.

TOILET PAPER. bring toilet paper. we just grabbed the extra roll from our hotel room but trust me, ,by sunday the TP in the port-a-potties will be SCARCE and youll be so happy you brought it.

Make sure that everyone in your group is on the same page about what your plans should be. **This isnt necessary but I promise you that you will have 10x more fun if everyone is aware of whats going on and when.

HAVE FUN!!!

#RIOT FEST #RIOTFEST #RIOT FEST 2017 #JAWBREAKER #music and lifestyle

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bmyselfandi-blog · 5 years ago

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mom

there was a time in my life where the hardest thing i was going through was a high school breakup. i thought the world was ending, that id never experience a worse heartbreak than that one. i got over it and went back to the guy a few times. it was on and off. that was the beginning of my junior year, around september. come april 21st i received the worst news i could have handled at the time. my mom was diagnosed with cancer. now she never really told us, well at least me, she never told me the stage of the cancer. but it was rectal. they tell you not to look up that kind of shit because it will scare you but me, i dont listen when told not to do something. now, i probably should have, it scared me what i found, but also gave me hope. it said curable. they said long life span. so, in my mind it was all going to be okay. my dad took it very hard. i poften found him crying alone, and i cried too. we all did. my mom was the type of person to help anyone in need, she was amazing, loving, wonderful, generous, warm, any fucking word to describe an angel, that was fucking her. still is. anyways fast forward about a year, end of my senior year. i start dating this new guy, hes amazing, he gave me the world. i couldnt have asked for a better man. stuck by my side through some fucked up shit that was my fault. we had our fights, like every couple. he did some things that i didnt like but i pushed past it because i loved him. thats what couples do right? well, not even a year later i spent less time with my family, more time with him and his. i regret that every day of my life. ill never forget the first day of my new job my dad made me cry because he told me my mom thought id rather spend time with my boyfriends mom than her. i balled my eyes out on my way to work. i never wanted to hurt my moms feelings like that. she couldnt do much, she was weak and it was getting harder for her to do everyday things. that was november. come march 25. it was a saturday. my mom was sitting in her spot on the couch and my dad was downstairs on the computer. i dont remember my sister being home. my mom asked me to look at her eyes and tell me what color the whites were, they were yellow. that meant jaundice. i told my dad, we told her she needed to go to the hospital. she said she didnt feel well and didnt want to go that day and if she wasnt feeling any better shed go the next day. i didnt think too much about it, this wouldnt be the first hospital trip that month or let alone that year. sunday; i went to my boyfriends to hangout and have dinner. after dinner my dad told and said they were going to the hospital. we then drove up to meet them. they took my mom in the back, i went back with her as did everyone else. the crazy thing is, is i dont remember all too much. i remember being back h=there, them asking her certain questions that made me sad, like if she was sad, depressed, thinking about dying. i brought her up some things when we went, i had this pair of ankle fuzzy sicks that i gave to her, she asked me to put them on her feet, i remember there being a hole in the big toe, she thought it was funny. it got later, they ended up admitting her but were trying to find a room. my dad had to work the next morning and i hadnt started my new job so i told him i would stay with her that night so she wasnt alone. they had a room in the pediatric ward so they sent us up. there were two cribs, a bed and a couple chairs in the room. i slept in the chair that turned into a bed. the nurses were very nice. we got some rest after being moved up there. it was very late, almost 4am. the next morning my uncle was up there and my dad came soon after as well. days went by, i started my new job, id go up as soon as i got off to go and see her. she got worse each day but we didnt think anything of it. turns out the tumor was actually starting to quickly crush her liver. she started not being able to talk well. they eventually put her on a heavy breathing treatment. she stopped talking and responding. my dad asked a timeline and the doctor said he didnt like to put timelines. i thought she would get better. they had my dad sign a DNR, we werent going to make her suffer if she didnt have to. it was selfish of us to want her to stay with how much pain i knew she was in. we had family up there always. april 4th. it was a wednesday. by now they had put my mom into hospice care, we had the option of bringing her home but we didnt want to make her uncomfortable by moving her. they gave us the whole room we were in. 315 bed B. we had people come and talk to us about urns and getting things like that. a hospice worker told us that their phone line was always available to talk on, whether it was a week later or a year later. i didnt have workbthat day. i went up to the hospital early. my moms cousin Colleen was there. my boyfriend came up as well. my dad my sister and her cousin kim came up as well. we hung out all day. i told colleen i probably wouldnt end up going to this festival i had in may because i wanted to be there everyday for my mom. colleen said that was almost 2 months away and that my mom may not be here by then. i didnt want to think about that. my mom would always be here right? that night me and my boyfriend ordered chinese. we were going to pick it up but they had delivery. we were also supposed to go to the store but we decided not to for some reason i dont remember. we ate our nasty chinese food. i got shrimp and lobster sauce, my moms favorite. we were all sitting aruond talking. my dad had ran home to let the dogs out since no one had been home in a while. anytime he would leave the room for anything longer than a half hour he would hug my mom and tell her to wait for him. he left. he got to the house. he let the dogs house. we were sitting there when my boyfriend looked over at my mom. her eyes were open. they hadnt been open in days. we instantly went over to her. her cousin got the nurse. me and my sister held her hand. i called my dad crying. all i could muster out was the word “hurry” and the pain in his voice when he said “okay” was enough to break anyones heart. the nurses knew. we all knew. i held my moms hand crying. my boyfriend rubbed my back. i told her i loved her. my sister told her she loved her. kim consoled her. we knew her fight was over. kim closed my moms eyes and like that she was gone. it was 10:15. we had to wait for a doctor to pronounce time of death. time of death was 10:25. my dad got there, tears in his eyes. we called family to tell them. his best friend was up in a heartbeat. his brother came up. i called my best friends. sarah and her boyfriend were up within minutes. my boyfriend held me. everyone cried. my dad hugged me and my sister so tight. the nurses were wonderful and sweet. it was probably 3 something in the morning when we left. i said my final goodbyes and told her i loved her. how could i just leave my mom in this room all alone? i couldnt handle it. i drove home with my boyfriend and let my dad drive alone. i dont know why i did that. i should have went with him. we got home and i couldnt tell you anything after that. i dont remember much about the days that followed. i know the next day we had to make phone calls to change things into our names and take my moms off. we received lots of “im so sorry for you loss”’s. it got sickening. we got flowers, cards, food. my boyfriends family was so helpful. i took that friday off of work and went back monday. got a lot of sorrys there too. her memorial was friday the 13th. i worked that morning. i shouldnt have but i had to go on like normal. how do you just go on like normal? how do you just up and live without your best friend, your fucking mother? she was supposed to be there through everything. she was supposed to live a long happy life with my dad. she was supposed to watch me get married and watch my have her grandchildren. she was supposed to be free of cancer and get better and live happy and healthy. she wasnt supposed to die. she should still fucking be here today. but shes not. months later, not even a year. my boyfriend and i broke up. just shy of a year since her passing, march 2nd. my friend and i had a run in with my ex. she flipped him off while we were driving. he followed us to the gas station and cussed us out. later that night he posted a story on his snapchat. black screen with the words “ your mother would be ashamed of you” written on it. directed towards me. how dare he say that shit. how could the same man that held me while i held my dying mothers hand say some dumb fucking shit like that to me? i dont quite get how he could ever in a million years say that shit. she was liuke amother to him. he was there through everything we dealt with, all the grieving, the sadness and depression in my house. but what bothers me is how a few months later we were getting back together. and how i could forgive him for saying that. i never did forgive him and i dont think i ever will. he said he posted it to hurt me because he was hurt. but how could he stoop that low. later on he brought her up again when he wanted me to stop smoking. “ how would mom feel” i tried kicking him out, ive never yelled at him before until that night, i got in his face and screamed not to talk about my dead mom. he didnt again. we stopped talking about a month later and havent talked since. he never understood what i was going through. what i am going through. i cry a lot. i miss my mom everyday. i think about her every hour of the day. my dad texts her almost every day. he posts on her facebook sometimes. i text her sometimes. i call too to see if someone new has her number. its still disconnected. i dont want someone new to have her number. thats her fucking number. no one elses. i still dont feel like this is all real and here its been a year and a half. christmas is coming up. her birthday is christmas eve. it was her favorite time of the year. we held the party at our house very year for anyone who wanted to come. it was always a full house. everyone loved my mom, she was an amazing person. a family friends words describing my mother to someone were “she had to adjust her halo when walking into a room” and thats always been true. even now, im sure she visits often. i wish so bad that she could be here, that she could see how everything is going. i miss her so fucking much and i just want my fucking mom back. i know everything in life would be okay if she was here. i know it would solve every problem me and my family have if she was just fucking here. she should be here. she should fucking be here right now.

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twohundredandtwentyfourquee-blog · 7 years ago

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why do i keep going back?

[it’s monday afternoon right now]

i went away to marseille with friends last week (sunday to friday) ... i had an incredible time in france, i was completely happy for the entire time that i was there...... mental health was on a million.... not a single worry or care

i got back friday around 7pm.. the last memory i have is from around 11/12 that night, the rest of the night and more-a-less everything that happened up until this morning is a COMPLETE blur. not just ‘oh i cant really remember’ ... i dont remember anything at all.

this is neither the first,second,third,forth or even fifth time this has happened..

for some reason, whenever xanax is within reaching distance i cannot help but consume, consume.. to the point where i do stupid shit, black out and wake up feeling horrific...which poses the question.... **why do i keep going back?**

the thing about this binge that has confused me is the initial reasoning.. i was so so happy on my return from france so why did i feel the need to get soooooo fucked up? usually i do this sort of thing when im already sad about something.. it usually takes a while to turn into REAL excess... but this time was different

i arrived home, people came over, chilled for an hour or 2 and before i knew it i had taken 4 xanax, 1 diazepam and 2/3rds of a tab of acid..

i’m trying to work out if all this was just a matter of xanax taking over once again and making me go too hard or whether it was ME trying to escape from something...

either way that whole night was completely dissolved from my memory so when i found myself waking up on my parents bed the next morning i did what any rational human would do and took another xanax and another tab...

this meant that saturday was also FUCKED, i remember some very, very wild hallucinations but that is all..

i spent the next day in total confusion because 1) i’d spent the past 2 days pounding my brain with drugs 2) my parents were coming back from wales so i had to clean the house...

i somehowwwwww managed to clean the house in time but it was very stressful so...you guessed it.... more xanax...

that knocked me out up until early this morning (monday).. sivce i woke up i’ve been trying my hardest to gain sense of what happened this weekend and desperately trying to remember what i, myself did in all that time..

regardless of the previously mentioned details i’m still asking the same question... i fucking hate feeling like this and being like this and yet i do it so often...

so why am i still doing it???????

am i a drug addict? am i subconsciously self-harming? am i just stupid? i wonder all of these things frequently..

i feel like there are 2 of me inside myself: theres the real me, he’s good/nice/loving/funny/creative

and then theres the subconscious/dark me.. he’s evil/careless/stupid/dangerous/annoying...

sometimes it feels like i really dont have a choice towards which version of me gets complete control, i will do things and wake up with absolutely no clue why i did ‘said’ things... this feeling of lacking control scares me, deeply.

i fear that one day im going to wake up to something i cant fix, or possibly even not wake up at all...

a month or so ago i had a very hard xan binge, i was really sad at the time and in a really bad place so i went on a week-long bender, at the height of which i took 7 bars and carved 9 lines into my left forearm with a gillette razor blade taped to a lollipop stick...

after that i promised myself i wouldnt touch those evil fuckin bars again because i act so recklessly under their influence... in my mind i was so adamant that i wouldnt break that promise because why would i ever want to risk something like that happening again?!?!

so the fact that i’m here again on the shitty end of a binge is both upsetting and really fucking annoying...

i started to write all of this in the hopes that it would bring some clarity to an otherwise confusing mental state but it has yet to do that.. i am not writing for the prospect of a spectacle or sympathy or any of that shit..... twohundredandtwentyqueens is a journal in which i plan to use to work myself out more... i suppose any outside interaction would be welcome but i shall not promote this any more than the 1 tweet i will do for this exact post

if you read all this, cool... i’ll be writing more once i have worked out more... for now, this is simply referencing to fall back on in future posts..

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mavwrekmarketing · 8 years ago

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On Saturday, a woman well call Maya fed her passport into the customs scanner at JFK airport. Maya is a legal permanent resident of the United States whos in the process of applying for citizenship. She, her American husband, Sami, and their two American children had just returned from a family trip to Saudi Arabia, where Maya was born.

But in Saudi Arabia, citizenship is based on your fathers citizenship, not where you were born. Since Mayas father was a Syrian citizen, she is, too which means that even though she was born in Saudi Arabia, shes subject to President Donald Trumps executive order banning Syrians and people from six other majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S. without special permission. In fact, she may have been subject to it even if she had never set foot in Syria. Trumps order appears to be based on nationality, not country of origin.

So when Maya scanned her Syrian passport at JFK on Saturday, the machine spat out a paper with a black X, which indicated she needed to report to a Customs and Border Patrol officer.

CBP agents questioned Maya about her past, about her marriage, and about the address she maintained when studying to be a pharmacist in Syria. They reviewed her social media accounts.

I didnt know if my wife was going to be with me, Sami told The Huffington Post. I didnt know if my kids were going to have their mother. HuffPost is withholding the familys last name and identifying Maya and Sami by pseudonyms so as not to endanger Mayas application for citizenship.

After three hours, CBP let Maya through. Maya and Sami credit an empathetic Customs and Border Patrol agent who, they say, seemed unsure about how the order handed down Friday afternoon should be applied. He eventually asked his supervisors for permission to let Maya go.

But the short-term detention and questioning of a legal permanent resident who wasnt even born in Syria offers an indication that the executive order Trump signed applies much more widely than he initially said.

The order is anything but precisely targeted. Its chaotic implementation Saturday left legal experts confused and Department of Homeland Security officials scrambling to explain who can now enter the country.

I didnt know if my wife was going to be with me. I didnt know if my kids were going to have their mother. Sami, a man whose wife was stopped for questioning due to Friday’s executive order

The order Trump signed bars the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from seven Muslim-majority countries Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and Libya. But that loose wording could encompass many people who dont live in those countries including people who werent even born there. In theory, its possible to be subject to the ban without ever having set foot in any one of the seven targeted countries.

The text of Trumps order bans people from the seven countries from entering the U.S. But the word from can have multiple legal meanings, said Stephen Legomsky, the former chief counsel to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. It could mean someone born in those countries, someone whose parents were born there, or someone who simply passed through, he said although he noted the last interpretation is unlikely to gain traction.

Its terrible wording, Legomsky told The Huffington Post. Theres a big difference between being a national of a country and being born in the country.

The vagueness leaves it up to individual officers of Customs and Border Protection to decide how theyll interpret the order until the Department of Homeland Security sets a policy in writing, Legomsky said.

DHS did not respond to a request for clarification.But State Department officials told The Wall Street Journal that people who hold dual citizenship with any of the seven countries cannot enter the U.S., which indicates the Trump administration is hewing toward a strict interpretation that could affect people well beyond the seven countries borders.Legal permanent residents are also affected, though administration officials have said they will review decisions on a case-by-case basis. Trump advisers Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon pushed to apply the ban to legal residents over DHS officials objections, CNN reported Saturday.

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus offered a contradictory statement Sunday morning, saying in a televised interview that permanent residents wouldnt be barred. Without written guidelines, his comments only added to the uncertainty, as several judges issued rulings blocking the orders implementation.

Millions of people have left the seven countries targeted by the order over the last few decades. All seven have experienced war, civil conflict or political instability in the last 30 years, creating large-scale displacement.Other people have left for more mundane reasons that prompt people the world over to migrate reuniting with family members who left before them, or searching for better economic opportunities.

That leaves open the possibility that those migrants and their children might face hurdles trying to enter the United States over the life of the ban, which lasts for 90 days for nationals of all seven countries. The order also suspends the U.S. refugee program for four months and bars refugees from Syria indefinitely.

Many migrants have made new homes in places that dont automatically confer birthright citizenship. Saudi Arabia has particularly strict rules that extend citizenship mostly to the children of its countrys nationals. Although Maya and other children born to migrants may qualify as permanent residents, the Saudi government views most of them as foreign nationals who must look to their country of origin for passports.

Other countries that are home to large diasporasin both the Middle East and Europe have similar, if less exacting, restrictions on birthright citizenship.

Likewise, many governments do not requireapplicants to returnto the country of their ancestry when soliciting citizenship documents. So the dual citizenship restriction also leaves open the possibility that children of migrants from the seven countries might be denied entry from the United States, despite never physically passing through those countries borders.

Putting the order into effect as the country went into a weekend only created chaos and confusion about whos covered by it, said David Leopold, an immigration attorney who spent Saturday afternoon trying to help a Saudi-born Sudanese national who was turned away from JFK due to the order.

They drop this order at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday, Leopold told HuffPost. Everyones leaving the office. Lawyers are gone. Reporters are leaving for the weekend. But planes are coming into the country. Nobody had any notice whatsoever. Nobody knew this was going to apply to permanent residents.

Like Legomsky, Leopold said the preposition from in Fridays executive order made it unclear who was excluded from the U.S. and who wasnt. Its sloppy, he said. I dont know what it means. … But the object here is to keep Muslims out. They tricked permanent residents into being deported.

That lack of legal analysis might have caused the confusion surrounding the scope of the order, said Ali Noorani, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum.

This executive order is and can be expansive in ways that the administration is only now beginning to understand, much less the rest of us, Noorani said. Its chaos.

Sami is glad his familys ordeal is over, but seething at the prospect that Mayas parents cant visit his family and they cant go visit them. When he was in a bus from the terminal at his final destination, he overheard people saying that those upset about Trumps order should move on and get jobs.

I have a job, Im a physician, Sami said. How am I supposed to move on? This man [Trump] is trying to take away my wife.

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