#in the uk shameless he’s very serious

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

does anybody else think that they dumbed ian and kev down a LOT as the seasons went on for comedic effect

[i-can-read-to-him]

The Wesper Fic Club's Author Spotlight is a post series that aims to feature two to three fic authors a month, randomly selected from a pool of names put forth on our server. The authors are then asked to answer three interview questions, select up to five of their fics for us to feature, and finally, recommend three fics by others in the fandom.

(Note: Our spotlighted fics are not limited to Wesper, though they tend to be a central pairing in most of our authors' featured works.)

This week, we are putting a spotlight on Blackpearl's writing!

Socials: @magicandpizza (Tumblr) | Blackpearl (AO3)

❀

Part One: Author Interview

Q: When did you first start writing? What keeps you going today?

A: I honestly don’t remember when I started writing, but I was very young. I have vague memories of writing some little stories inspired by Beatrix Potter, and at one point I was convinced I was going to write the fifth Harry Potter book. I don’t recall anything else about that one apart from the title - Harry Potter and the Silver Snitch. What was the plot? Who knows.  My first serious fandom was Pirates of the Caribbean, followed by Spooks and BBC Sherlock. I had some of those fanfics published on AO3, but they’ve long since been orphaned. I then didn’t write anything for years and years until I fell into the Six of Crows fandom. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Q: Have you had a chance to interact with the SAB cast? Tell us about your experience(s)?

A: I’ve been lucky enough to meet Jack Wolfe a few times by stage-dooring at Next to Normal, once at the Donmar and three times at Wyndhams. He’s such a genuine, down-to-earth person who really loves his fans. And his eyelashes? Rude. I also met Kit Young after his show Influence. It was about two days after the cancellation announcement and we had a chat about that, as well as what had drawn him to doing a magic show. He was very kind and generous with his time. I’m attending Into The Fold 2 next year - it’ll be my first ever convention so I’m excited for that and the opportunity to meet some more of the cast!

Q: What’s something you wish you could write, but don’t think you ever will?

A: I really wish I was one of those authors who could craft incredible and intricate plot lines, but I never have been and I don’t think I ever will be. I’d love to be able to write a heist or something complicated like that, but all my attempts are half-hearted at best. I should probably just stick to what I do best: fluff and smut.

❀

Part Two: Selected Works

Don't Do Sadness

Mature | 3.1K (Complete) | Wesper 5+1, Wylan Van Eck and his trauma, Violence, Extremely dubious consent (not Wesper)

Blackpearl says: Mind the tags on this one. I really wanted to explore Wylan’s trauma at different ages and how he might cope with it, and also take a step away from the usual stuff I write. I’m very pleased with how this one turned out.

Sky Full of Stars

Explicit | 10.2K (Complete) | Wesper   Famous/celebrity AU, Wylan is a musician, Jesper is an actor, mixed media fic

Blackpearl says: This was an idea I had percolating for a while, and I wanted to play around with writing different kinds of media. I feel this one is a bit under-appreciated but that’s fine, I had fun writing it.

We Keep This Dream Together

Mature | 33.1K (Complete) | Wesper  Coffee shop/university AU, Loosely based on the UK education system, Wesper-centric featuring background Helnik and Kanej, Found Family

Blackpearl says: Who doesn’t love a coffee shop AU? This was very self-indulgent, but I had so much fun with it I’m working on a sequel!

Folding 

Teen | 2.6K (Complete) | Wesper  Jesper’s gambling addiction, Post-canon, Hurt/comfort

Blackpearl says: I don’t think Jesper’s gambling addiction gets addressed enough, and I wanted to explore what it might look like post-canon. 

Tie Me Up

Explicit | 1.7K (Complete) | Wesper Shameless smut, Light bondage, Light dom/sub, bottom!Wylan, top!Jesper

Blackpearl says: It wouldn’t be me without a smut fic, and this is one of my favourites. Featuring slightly subby Jesper and slightly mean Wylan and a tie that neither of them will ever look at the same again.

❀

Part Three: Author's Recs

i’d marry you with paper rings by MaudeAlise

Teen | 11.3K (Complete) | Wesper, Helnik, Kanej Fluff, Established Relationship, Post-Canon, Marriage Proposal

Blackpearl says: Just 11k words of Wylan and Jesper being stupidly in love and wanting to marry each other. This fic makes me grin like an idiot every time I love it. Also just a general shout out to everything that MaudeAlise writes. I’m obsessed with them. 

Obvious Lovebirds by perculiarjuliar 

Teen | 11.6K (Complete) | Wesper, Helnik, minor Kanej POV Multiple, Fluff, Heartbeats, Holding Hands, Hickeys, Kissing

Blackpearl says: Six different outsider perspectives of Wylan and Jesper’s relationship. I love fics like this, and this author did such a great job of getting into the heads of the different characters. 

Keep You Safe by @aphroditestummyrolls

Mature | 42.3K (Complete) | Wesper, Helnik, Kanej, Crows & Colm Post-Canon, Book & Show, Canon Divergence, Protective Crows

Blackpearl says: Six months post-canon in an alternate universe where Jesper took the jurda parem, and Matthias lives. Colm Fahey comes looking for his son. This fic is so so so good and made me feel so many things. I love the deep dive in Jesper and Colm’s relationship, as well as Jesper and Wylan’s. Just perfect.

❀

Please support our authors by commenting and leaving kudos on any stories of theirs you read and enjoy! Don't forget to also reblog this post and check back soon for our next author spotlight to come.

Interested in joining our server and getting to know our community? Feel free to request an invite via the @i-can-read-to-him ask box.

[ifyougoillfollow]

trick or treat!

MWUAHAHA - TRICKS BE UPON YE 😈😈

excuse me while i use this hallowed ween as an excuse to exorcise some demons:

what if rooftop gang Misfits AU

no listen if you've never seen Misfits(UK)(2009) i cannot in good conscience recommend doing so – it is a horrid little show full of horrid little people having a horrid little time and suffering horrid little fates more often than not, but like. it's also ASTOUNDINGLY funny, if you can stomach dated, edgy-with-a-captital-E late-2000's humor –

and boy CAN i, so i've recently made the mistake of starting a casual rewatch and lemme tell ya, the urge to stick our favorite rooftop fools* into this horrid little setting is MIGHTY but i cannot do it i REFUSE !!

anyway here's what i have so far**

* plus emi, because i'm predictable like that **please note i say 'so far' for comedic effect – i am for serious not gonna actually write this thing i cannot emphasize this enough

PREMISE Group of young delinquents sentenced to do community service get caught in a freak storm that gives them superpowers which reflect some important aspect of their personalities. Shenanigans (by which I mean crime) (by which I mean they immediately kill their parole officer (in self-defense!)) ensue. CAST MIC: Loudmouth. Doing time for assault. Talked shit, got hit – hit back hard. Wannabe punk with a chip on his shoulder. Flaming bisexual. Hates Aizawa. Has his sights set on Nemuri. Chill with Oboro. Finds Emi annoying. Power: Same as Quirk. AIZAWA: Buzzkill. Doing time for petty theft. Stole Daddy's credit card. Rich kid loner with a stick up his ass. Repressed homosexual. Hates Mic. Unnerved by Nemuri. Suspicious of Oboro. Finds Emi annoying. Power: Same as Quirk. NEMURI: Vixen. Doing time for shoplifting. Big titty discount fail. Shameless freak with boundary issues. Burgeoning bisexual. Tolerates Mic. Intrigued by Aizawa. Amused by Oboro. Finds Emi annoying. Power: Similar to Quirk, but based on pheromones and more emphasis on others perceiving her as attractive. OBORO: Stoner. Doing time for drug sale/possession. Local weed dealer. Chill extrovert with his head in the clouds. Token straight. Chill with everyone. Giant, obvious crush on Nemuri. Power: Similar to Quirk, except the clouds behave like real clouds, i.e. are intangible. EMI: Clown. Doing time for destruction of property. Prank gone wrong. Cringefail funnyman with a crippling need for validation. Closeted lesbian. Finds Mic hilarious. Likes to harass Aizawa. Giant crush on Nemuri. Chill with Oboro. Power: Same as Quirk.

Hizashi's the last to arrive at the community center.

He wasn't even on time for his court date – why the hell should court-mandated community service be any different? (Fuck the court, is the point.) By the time he's out of the locker room clad in his very own dumbfuck (but also kinda punk as hell if you think about it) mandatory orange jumpsuit, the rest of the clowns he's serving time with have already assembled in a convenient little lineup on the steps out front.

As he gets closer, 'clowns' turns out to be a more appropriate descriptor than he'd bargained for. Two of his four fellow ne'er-do-wells are sporting bad dye jobs in precociously pastel colors – blue for the guy, green for the chick. Bluey has a wide bandage over a nose that looks thoroughly unbroken. The other one has smiley-face stickers plastered over both cheeks and may very well be an actual clown. Both are flashing gap-toothed, paint-huffer-eyed grins. They're either going to be a riot or completely fucking insufferable, Hizashi can feel it in his jimmies.

Before Hizashi has a chance to suss out what kind of freak his other two compatriots in crime might be, a hulking, sentient block of a man steps out to join them in front of the community center. The dude is so jacked he's downright cubical. He's not just beefy, he's the whole goddamn cow – or bull, rather. Hizashi's not entirely convinced the fucker can look at his own reflection without ramming straight into the mirror, what with the red hair and all.

These are all the sorts of observations Hizashi would normally take great pleasure in relaying out loud, but the thing about Hizashi is, he's an asshole, not suicidal.

"Afternoon, everyone,” growls the steroid abuse PSA come to life. “My name is Todoroki Enji. I will be your parole officer for the coming weeks. While you are under my supervision, you do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. If you can manage that until the end of your term, I will sign all necessary forms and you will all be free to continue down the path to lifelong delinquency on your own time. With any luck, next time we can skip this unnecessary step and send you straight to prison where you belong."

"Ah,” says Hizashi, “so you're a Cop cop."

The dark-haired bombshell Hizashi had deliberately stood next to as soon as he’d spotted her snorts. "He's a parole officer, numbnuts – what did you expect?"

"Hot and mean? Happy birthday to me."

Bluey pops up from beside Hizashi’s future heartbreak with a dopey grin. "Oh, hey, happy birthday, man!"

Before Hizashi can tell him off, the clown on Bluey’s other side starts shrieking: “Haaaappy birthday to you, happy birthday to you –”

Hot Stuff snorts again. "It's not actually your birthday, is it?"

Hizashi winks at her over his shades. "For you, baby, it could be."

"Real cute,” she drawls.

"Can you stop that?" someone snaps.

The clown stops her caterwauling. "But it's his birthday!"

"No, it isn't. He’s just trying to get in that one’s pants." There’s a sneer in that voice that sets Hizashi’s asshole-sense a-tingling. When he turns towards the source, he finds a dead-eyed, greasy-haired emo reject with the most potent school shooter vibes Hizashi’s witnessed to date.

"Yeah?” Hizashi shoots back. “And what would you know about getting laid, eh, Columbine?"

"That enough!” Officer Roid Rage thunders. Hizashi swears he feels the earth quake a little. “Your first task for today is to repaint those benches.” He jabs a meaty finger toward some benches across the way. “There are six of them, and six of you. Figure it out. Paint buckets and brushes are over there.” Another meaty finger over yonder. “Questions?"

The clown raises her hand. "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

"Are you for real –” Hizashi turns to the other clowns for help – “is she for real right now?"

"Hey, I'll bite,” says Bluey. “Why'd the chicken cross the road?"

"I dunno – that's why I'm asking!" She doubles over wheezing at her own joke. Probably to make up for the fact that no one else ever will.

"I expect those benches to be painted by the end of the hour,” growls Officer Roid Rage. Then he exercises the freedom Hizashi wishes he currently had himself and walks away. The bastard.

It’s only as the world’s clowniest band of misfits jingle-jangle one by one towards the benches over yonder, bargain bin painting supplies in hand, that Hizashi realizes the headcount is off.

“Hey – didn’t the cop say there were six of us?”

[mariacallous]

This week the UK government has made an order under section 35 of the Scotland Act to veto the gender recognition reforms passed by the Scottish parliament. Tuesday’s announcement by the Scottish secretary, Alister Jack, is harmful to trans people, who have waited long enough for improvements to the gender recognition process as – contrary to some claims being made – this legislation has been long proposed, consulted on and debated.

Indeed, it has been a manifesto commitment in the past two Holyrood elections, and has been overwhelmingly endorsed by the electorate on both those occasions. Being forced to consider the prospect of legal action before those changes can be enacted raises further uncertainty.

At every stage of the bill’s progress and development, the Scottish government kept the UK government informed through normal routes of engagement. At no point did Westminster ask to amend the provisions in the bill – neither during the extensive periods of public consultation nor during the drafting and parliamentary stages. The Scottish parliament equally did not hear from the UK government during the passage of the bill.

Put bluntly, this was a one-way conversation up until the final moments when the bill should have gone for royal assent and become law. So for the Scottish secretary to announce that he was unilaterally vetoing the bill is fundamentally disrespectful to Scotland’s parliament and the MSPs who have been part of its scrutiny, consideration and passing.

Jack says he wants to find a constructive way forward. If he really wants to work together in a partnership of equals, then he should acknowledge that his announcement is completely incompatible with such a partnership – and he should immediately revoke the section 35 order. That would show the UK government is serious about improving the lives of trans people and respecting Scottish democracy.

The UK government’s approach should worry anyone who supports Scotland’s right to make decisions on devolved matters, regardless of their opinions about these reforms. This veto, with its flimsy reasoning, puts us on a slippery slope. Devolution was secured nearly a quarter of a century ago with the overwhelming support of the people of Scotland. It made the Scottish parliament, elected by and responsible to the people of Scotland, responsible for making laws on a range of matters.

The devolution arrangements put in place to protect reserved matters were not intended to enable the UK government to intervene at will in devolved matters, overturning the Scottish parliament’s decisions. But that is what is happening here and, as the first minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, has said, it sets a very dangerous precedent.

The sad thing is that in many ways, the gender recognition reform bill saw the Scottish parliament at its best – MSPs extensively scrutinising a sensitive and important issue, listening carefully to and interrogating a wide variety of views, and working across party lines to amend and improve the bill. Contrast this to the Commons this week, where the Scottish secretary delivered a statement several hours before anyone else had the opportunity to view the underlying statement of reasons, and was unable to answer basic questions about his reasons or about gender recognition certificates themselves.

The bill was passed by a significant majority of the Scottish parliament. I’m confident that MSPs across parties will work together to stand up to the threat of unnecessary Westminster intervention. We’ve heard from trans people from across the UK who are incredibly upset by this decision – and worried about the threat to rights in other areas of life.

The bill passed by the Scottish parliament improves and simplifies the process of applying for a gender recognition certificate (GRC) for trans people. It doesn’t change the effect of having a certificate. GRCs matter to trans people because they allow them to change their birth certificate and be properly recognised in their gender if they get married and when they die. They are helpful but not necessary when applying for a driving licence or passport. That’s what a GRC is for, and nothing in our legislation changes the Equality Act or the rules on access to single-sex spaces and services.

This legislation is designed to make trans people’s lives better by removing an administrative burden. Instead, trans people have been dragged into an attack on devolution that puts them in the middle of a continuing culture war. The UK government must rethink this damaging course of action, revoke its section 35 order and give the Scottish parliament its right and proper place.

[lorirwritesfanfic]

Get To Know Veronica

Mariana Rios as Veronica Dantas

Name: Veronica Dantas Aldridge

Nationality: Brazilian

Birthdate: July 1st, 1993

Hometown: Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Current Residence: Ithaca, NY, USA / County of Edgewater, UK

Occupation: Psychology graduate student

Talents/Skills: playing guitar, playing bass, teaching, multitasking.

Parents: Mariana Dantas Aldridge, George Easton Aldridge III (deceased)

Siblings: none

Grandparents: on her mother’s side, Irene and Miguel Dantas (deceased); on her father’s side, Margot and George Easton Aldridge II (deceased).

Character Background: Veronica Dantas Aldridge (V/Vee for close friends) was born and raised in Brazil and she’s British descendant. She’s the only daughter of businessman George Easton Aldridge III, who left his life of luxury in London behind to marry Mariana Dantas and live in Brazil. He died when she was two during a car accident. She was raised on a ranch by her grandparents and mother and had a happy childhood playing with other kids, climbing mango and guava trees, helping take care of animals. 

She learned how to play guitar at school and begged for months until she finally got her first acoustic guitar on Christmas. She continued her guitar lessons at home and learned how to play electric guitar and bass when she was 14. A few months later, she moved with her mother to Cambridge and had several conflicts with her father’s family because they didn’t accept her not so lady-like manners (though they mostly had a problem with her sexuality). After her grandfather died, she finally cut ties with them.

Her time in Cambridge made her dedicate herself to music and her major Psychology. She joined a band called Killer Doctors while working as a bartender to pay the bills. With Hamid’s help, she got a job as A-level tutor for a few years, which helped her pay for her Cornell graduate tuition. During her tutoring years, she met Daphne, Briar and Bartholomew and became friends with them. 

Best Childhood Memory: Waking up early on weekends to join her grandparents to help with house chores at the ranch (she loved taking care of the animals), swimming on the lakes nearby and playing with other kids.

Height: 5'4’’

Weight: 112 lb

Ethnicity: Latina/Caucasian

Eye Color: Brown

Hair Color: Brown

Skin color: Light beige

Ideal Career Path: Music therapist

Academic Inclination: Arts and Science

How does she dress: Street/casual

Habits: drinking, drumming on things when she’s bored, watching TV and playing guitar at the same time (it’s a mystery to know she does it).

Hobbies: reading, playing guitar, dancing, horse riding, polo.

Religion: she’s more spiritual than religious.

Greatest flaws: overconfident, blunt, audacious

Best qualities: perceptive, open minded, compassionate , independent

Sexuality: lesbian

Relationship status: in a relationship

Love Interests: Annabelle Parsons

What initially attracted her to her partner?

They’ve seen each other a couple of times, but didn’t think Annabelle had noticed her until she came to talk to her. Though Annabelle was drunk, she was astounded by how Annabelle’s gray eyes gleamed when she smiled. She also loves Annabelle's acid sense of humor.

Relationships background: She had several girlfriends, a few groups, but nothing serious.

Close Friends: Hamid Osmanoglu, Yusuf Konevi, Daphne Wang (MC/f!OC), Bartholomew Chambers, Alisha Hastings (f!OC), Briar Daly, Luke Harper, Cordelia Parsons.

How does she express affection?

Very friendly, shameless flirt, very into hugs and kisses on the cheek.  

Does she have/want children?

Yes. But she’d either seek adoption, surrogacy or her partner would bear the child. She doesn’t picture herself pregnant.

Pets: an Arabian horse named Morena.

Does she have a temper? 

No. It’s really hard for her to get mad. 

Does she exercise? 

She goes to the gym sometimes, mostly she likes dancing classes and yoga.

One random headcanon: Veronica had sinusitis and a lot of trouble breathing during cold days after she moved to the UK. When she finally had some extra money, she did a septoplasty and went back to Brazil to rest for a while before she went to the US to enroll in Cornell Psychology Graduate Program. Some of her friends had trouble recognizing her after the surgery.

[benaffleckofcrowdsurfing]

Lazerquest - part 1

Alex Turner x Reader

Chapter 1/? 

Description: you are an impulsive bartender who recently moved to London after traveling across the United States and living on the road for a few years. You befriend Alex, a musician who recently got out of a long term relationship, and you show him the ways of your free-spirited lifestyle in an attempt to help him move on from his ex. However, you become more of a muse than a friend for Alex and all is revealed when he releases his band’s fourth studio album, “Suck it and See”.

Word count: 1.7k 

Warnings: none ;)

**************

“You know, Y/N, this isn’t a terrible place to have to work,” your flat-mate, Tatiana, sighed. The two of you were sat sipping glasses of red wine at the bar of a rather bustling club in London. You couldn’t stop thinking about how six months ago if you had told yourself that you finally settled down in one spot for long enough to get a serious job and a flat with a lease for more than 6 months, you would have laughed in your own face. Although, you could say that about anything you had done as of late. Your recent life decisions had been everything but predictable. 

“I know. I’m just not thrilled to be the only female working the bar. The guys here sketch me out and I’m not too keen on getting womanized in a foreign country. That was on my mind enough as is when I was living in my parents’ house,” you joke. As lighthearted as you and Tati were being, you very much did feel uneasy. After travelling the United States for nearly 3 years after high school, you felt that you needed to move on to something bigger and more exciting, but you had never left the country before and you knew only one person here.

You had always been the spontaneous type. Your parents worried about you most of your life, as you were extremely impulsive and constantly making brash decisions. When you turned 18 and decided to take off across the country on your own instead of going to college, they were absolutely furious. You went nonetheless, what they thought had never stopped you before. Your excursion was originally only going to be a year long, but you absolutely loved being on the road. You had met so many wonderful people and seen so many wonderful things that going home never once crossed your mind. You just kept on sleeping in hotel rooms and on strangers’ couches until you turned 21.

That couldn’t last forever, though. You were getting bored of the lower 48 states, and your parents, still completely livid that you were ‘wasting’ their college money on what they saw as a cross-country bender, cut you off financially. It was an extremely stressful time, you can vividly remember searching for hours on end for roommates and jobs in Europe before meeting Tatiana and getting a bartending job in the UK. 

Now, 2 short months later, you were in London, living alone with a stranger. Luckily, though, you and Tati were getting along famously and your flat already felt like home. You were eager to start this new adventure.

Tati looked over at the clock before pouting a bit and resting her hand on your knee. “Looks like it’s time for your first day of work, love.”

“Shit. I’m nervous. Do I look okay?” You got up out of your seat and did a little spin for Tati. She squealed and gave you a hug.

“You look fantastic, love. Now go make some money!”

You smiled at your new friend and bid her farewell before walking towards the back of the club. Once you approached the door with a sign that read “EMPLOYEES ONLY”, you took a deep breath. Here we go kiddo. New job. New country. New life.

The second you placed your hand on the door, a large man barged through it. The man huffed and began to tell you that you couldn’t go into the kitchen unless you were an employee. He stopped his lecture and just smiled and when he noticed you were in the club’s uniform of a black dress, Mary Jane heels, and a red name tag, though.

“Oi! You must be Y/N, then?” He chuckled. When you shyly nodded he gave you a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “I’m your manager, Chuck. Let’s get you behind the bar, shall we?”

**********************

After an hour or so of Chuck showing you where things were, how to ring people up, how to use the cash register, and making sure you actually knew how to make drinks, he left you on your own to serve customers. There were only a few stragglers left in the club as it was near closing time, and all you had done the whole night was pass out some tequila shots to a group of rowdy middle aged women and make some small talk with a man who reminded you a bit of Frank Gallagher from a show called Shameless that you used to watch back home. You were exhausted and started to clean up behind the bar so you’d have less to do when the bar closed for good. It was nearly 2 in the morning and all you wanted to do was get out of your tight ass dress and your heels. 

“What kind of work uniform is a slutty dress anyway, huh? I look like I work on the corner” you mumbled to yourself as you wiped down some glasses.

“I think you look lovely, miss,” a voice said from the corner of the bar. His accent was unlike most men in Londons’ and his voice was raspy and thick. His sudden presence startled you a bit, making you jump a bit and let out a gasp.

“Didn’t mean to creep up on yah and scare yah like that, I’m sorry.” The man chuckled. When you turned around you saw an attractive man, maybe a bit older than you, smirking at you and smoking a cigarette. He had messy hair and a tee shirt on, you thought he looked like he had just gotten out of bed. 

“You’re alright, it’s my fault for zoning out while on the clock. What can I get for you?” You smiled weakly, partially hoping he’d just order a quick drink and then get out of your hair so you could go home. 

“Well, what are you good at making?” the man asked. “I’ll take anything as long as it’s alcoholic.”

You smiled. Making drinks for friends back home had been one of your favorite things to do, and you were excited to show off your skills to an actual customer. “Well, I’ve wanted a grapefruit daiquiri since the beginning of my shift. How does that sound?”

“That sounds fantastic,” the man rubbed his hands together in excitement, “but first I’d like to know how long you’ve been in London. You sound quite American.”

Oh brother, you thought. The attractive stranger seemed to be here to stay and the idea of making conversation when you were this tired made you want to cry. If you had been any less worn-out you would’ve been more than eager to talk to him, brown eyes were always a weakness of yours and there was something particularly enticing about this boy’s, but right now you just wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep. 

“Well go on then, don’t just stare off into space and leave me hanging,” the boy said.

“Sorry, I’m just a bit tired. I’ve only been here for a few days now.”

The boy was rather amused by this. “A few days? And here you are working the closing shift at one of the best bars in London? I’m going to need some more information, love. You’ve drawn me in now.” 

The boy’s excitement perked you up a bit. You had been rather proud of yourself to land a job at such a well-known club with only over-the-phone interviews, and you weren’t going to miss the opportunity to brag a bit. Especially to a cute boy.

“Yeah, I went to bartending school like right after my 21st birthday back in the states and then when I was looking for jobs here in the UK a few months ago I saw there was an opening here. I was really surprised to even have gotten an interview, especially since we had to do everything over-the-phone,” you beamed, knowing that it was impressive to get a job like this in the way you had. The boy looked at you intently while you made his drink. His eyes focused on your hands gripping the cocktail mixer and when you began to shake he had to do his best to hide a smirk. 

“You know I never caught your name,” the boy cleared his throat and broke the momentary silence. 

“You could’ve looked at my name tag,” you murmured just loud enough for him to hear and rolled your eyes playfully. 

“Well I’m sorry Miss Sassy, I find it impolite to stare at a woman’s chest without knowin’ her. Not my fault that’s where your name tag is,” the stranger chuckled, then looked closely at the red tag pinned to your dress. “It’s nice to meet you Y/N. I’m Alex.”

you did your best to hold in a giggle. Alex sounded good saying your name, his accent was rich like honey and you couldn’t help but think about how it’d sound in…other situations. 

“It’s very good to meet you, Alex, now here’s your daiquiri,” you said after pouring the contents of the shaker into a martini glass and adding a sprig of mint to the top. You slid the glass across the bar and nodded your head in satisfaction when he took his first sip and let out a little laugh.

“My goodness, Y/N, that’s a fantastic drink.”

“Thought you might like it. Now drink it quickly, it’s nearly closing time and I’ve still got to wipe down the counters and walk myself home,” you imitated pointing at a watch in your wrist.

“Walk yourself home? Love I couldn’t let you do that. Why don’t you let me finish this drink while you clean up and I’ll escort you home. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to you,” Alex proposed. If it had been anyone else you would’ve politely declined the offer, you knew that walking with a complete stranger in the middle of the night was just as sketchy if not more so than walking alone. But something about Alex made you want to trust him. Even when he had been checking you out while you were making his drink he hadn’t been creepy, his brown eyes had a sort of innocence to them and his smile was soft. You felt comfortable with Alex, and thought his company might be nice on the walk home.

“Deal.”

“Brilliant. Now get to work, Y/N, I’ll be done with my drink before you know it.”

[phroyd]

Prime Minister  Boris “Dickhead” Johnson has lost power  immediately  after taking office.  GOOD! - Phroyd

LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has staked his job on his ability to deliver Brexit, suffered two major losses in Parliament on Wednesday, leaving his governing authority in doubt and the terms of Britain’s pending divorce from the European Union unclear.

The resounding votes against Johnson capped a dramatic week in which protesters marched across the country and legislators switched loyalty or were excommunicated from their party. Britons of every ideology have been left angry, frustrated and often overwhelmed by a national emergency that won’t seem to end.

At the center of the storm stands Johnson, a bombastic and polysyllabic former journalist, who is seen as a crusading hero for British independence by his fans and an untrustworthy, undemocratic charlatan by his enemies.

After just six weeks on the job, Johnson has lost his governing majority, exiled some of his party’s most honored members and been slapped down by lawmakers three times in 24 hours.

“It’s the shortest honeymoon in British political history,” said Jon Tonge, a politics professor at the University of Liverpool, who said Johnson is essentially in government but not in power. “Boris Johnson is in a terrible mess.”

Things came to a head Wednesday night when lawmakers in the House of Commons, as they had the night before, defied Johnson’s will and, this time, passed legislation seeking to avert a no-deal Brexit on Oct. 31 and effectively delay Brexit another three months.

Opposition lawmakers were joined by more than 20 rebel members of Johnson’s Conservative Party to hand him a humiliating defeat.

The bill still needed to be passed by the House of Lords, which planned to debate all night Wednesday but is expected to give its approval.

Johnson accused lawmakers of voting “to stop, to scupper any serious negotiations.”

“I think it’s very sad that MPs have voted like this. I think it’s a great dereliction of their democratic duties,” he added.

An hour later, the House of Commons served Johnson a defeat on his backup plan: a bill to force an early national election on Oct. 15. Johnson said voters should get to choose whether he or Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn represents Britain at a Brexit-focused meeting of E.U. leaders on Oct. 17.

Johnson needed two-thirds of the 650 members of the House of Commons to support his call for a general election, and he fell far short, with just 298 votes. The Labour Party’s 247 lawmakers abstained from the vote.

“We want an election so we look forward to turfing this government out,” Corbyn said. But he called Johnson’s election motion “a cynical move by a cynical prime minister” who is trying to sneak through a no-deal Brexit.

Before they would back an election, Corbyn and his lieutenants insisted on guaranteeing against an October no-deal Brexit with legislation approved by the House of Lords and signed into law.

Johnson couldn’t resist tweaking Corbyn after the vote: “The obvious conclusion I’m afraid is he does not think he will win.”

Corbyn is a far-left leader who is deeply unpopular among many Britons. But it is Johnson who is in a profoundly weak position — and risks falling into the same quagmire that cost his predecessor, Theresa May, her job.

A defiant Johnson led his first “Prime Minister’s Questions” session in Parliament on Wednesday and demanded, “Let’s get Brexit done.”

Johnson portrayed himself as a “sensible, moderate and Conservative” leader who wanted to “deliver the mandate of the people” by an Oct. 31 deadline, even if that meant a no-deal Brexit without agreements in place to regulate trade and other matters. He accused his opponents of “dither, delay and confusion” that would guarantee more years of debate and uncertainty about leaving the E.U. And he dismissed predictions of the economic harm of a no-deal Brexit as “shameless scare­mongering.”

Johnson claimed that neither he nor the British people want another general election, which would be the third in five years. But his position rang hollow to many observers. On Tuesday morning he had a slim working majority, by only one seat, in the House of Commons. By Wednesday, after defections and excommunications, he was 43 seats short of a working majority, making it nearly impossible for him to pass any legislation, even on non-Brexit bills.

So an election may be inevitable — although maybe not on Johnson’s terms. And he seems to be pursuing a risky strategy.

Johnson has banned from his party the 21 rebels who voted against him on Tuesday. He seems to hope they will be replaced in the next election by candidates more loyal to him and his Brexit vision. But those banned lawmakers include some of the most respected figures in the party, including two former chancellors of the exchequer, or finance ministers: Kenneth Clarke and Philip Hammond.

“There has to be an election, but Boris Johnson has damaged his own party in the run-up to an election,” said Tonge, the professor.

Also banished, remarkably, was Nicholas Soames, 71, former prime minister Winston Chur­chill’s grandson, who has served in Parliament for 37 years. Johnson idolizes Churchill and wrote a biography of him.

Bafflement over that expulsion was summed up by Ruth Davidson, who stood down as the Conservatives’ leader in Scotland last week.

“How, in the name of all that is good and holy, is there no longer room in the Conservative Party” for Soames, she tweeted, using the hashtag: #anofficerandagentleman.

In a debate ahead of a vote on the delay legislation, Soames, who is now an independent lawmaker, urged others to back the bill, which he said “merely seeks to avoid disaster of a no-deal Brexit.”

He said that he believed that the result of the 2016 E.U. referendum had to be respected and pointed out that he backed May’s deal on three occasions, “which is more than can be said for the prime minister, the leader of the House and several members of the cabinet, whose serial disloyalty has been such an inspiration to so many of us.”

In an image from video made available by the Parliamentary Recording Unit, Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the House of Commons, lounges in his seat during a debate in London on Sept. 3, 2019. (EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

The bill passed in the House of Commons on Wednesday would require Johnson, by Oct. 19, to win parliamentary approval for a Brexit deal or a no-deal one, or to write to the E.U. seeking a three-month delay on Brexit. With E.U. agreement, the new Brexit date would be Jan. 31.

In effect, the bill would delay Brexit and forbid a no-deal one next month without Parliament’s approval — which it will not give. It would give London three more months to negotiate Brexit terms, which it has been unable to do in the past.

For years, E.U. diplomats watched May negotiate positions with the organization, then fail to rally Parliament behind her. They briefly hoped Johnson might be more successful, but now they said they believe they were wrong.

E.U. Brexit negotiators said they remain eager to see new proposals from Johnson’s team. But they are bracing for the impact of a possible no-deal Brexit. They have set aside $858 million to help E.U. countries hurt by that circumstance, redirecting money intended to help victims of natural disasters and globalization.

“There’s a real problem with Johnson, and it’s a problem Theresa May didn’t have,” Keir Star­mer, Labour’s Brexit negotiator, said on Sky News. “People disagreed with Theresa May, but when she stood at the dispatch box and said something, she meant it and she was trusted.

“Johnson is not trusted. Even if he says the election will be on the 15th of October, most people in Parliament won’t believe him. This is his central problem.”

At least one person remains fully confident in Johnson. In the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Trump said: “He’s a friend of mine, and he’s going at it, there’s no question about it. Boris knows how to win. Don’t worry about him.”

Johnson won one victory Wednesday morning in one of several legal cases that have been filed over his decision to suspend Parliament for five weeks. A judge in Scotland’s highest civil court ruled that the decision was lawful, but those who brought the case — 75 lawmakers — could appeal. There are similar legal challenges in Northern Ireland and in England.

Phroyd

[h-styles-babes]

Harry Styles Blurb/Request #7

I had a request a little while ago to do some prompts from a list I posted on my blog. I’m not sure if the person who requested them wants me to tag them in this, since they PM’d me instead of sending an ask, so I’ll leave them unmentioned unless they request to be tagged. Anyway, thank you so much for the request, darling! I’m slowly working my way through the other requests I got from that list. Onward!

24. “It’s six o’clock in the morning, you’re not having vodka.” & “Don’t argue, just do it.”

Harry Styles was pretty much a household name. He was famous for his rise in One Direction, then for his extraordinary solo career and his phenomenal performance in an Oscar-winning film. He was seen as pretty much the nicest person in Hollywood—or anywhere, really—and you would be hard pressed to find a person with something bad to say about him. He donated millions to charities, he went out of his way to fulfill as many Make-a-Wish requests as possible, he never said a bad word to anyone, even those damn paparazzi that harassed him on the daily, and he was the first celebrity you’d worked with that always shook hands with everyone present when he walked into a room. You’d never met anyone like him before, and you honestly didn’t want to work for anyone else ever again.

Being his personal assistant, though, you saw a different side to Harry than the general public saw. That didn’t mean you admired him any less, because he’d never done anything or asked you to do anything that was questionable or shady. He was exactly the same as he portrayed himself to the public as he was in his private day-to-day life. Except he was much weirder than anyone who didn’t personally know him would ever expect, she believed. And he was much more the typical early twenty-something male than people probably would like to believe. He certainly didn’t party as much as he used to, but he could still get drunk with the best of them, and he was currently the most drunk Y/N had seen him in a long time.

It was post-tour, and they had just arrived back in the UK from being in Italy for about two weeks. While it had been mostly a vacation for Y/N, since there wasn’t much planning to their trip, aside from when he went on his fancy yacht trip, she had been there to make sure Harry was where he was supposed to be when they weren’t wandering around town or lounging on the beach. Now that they were back on their home turf, there weren’t many obligations Harry had, so there really wasn’t any reason for Y/N to be with him often. She spent most of her day in her own flat, catching up on the shows she’d missed out on while touring the world with Harry and the rest of his crew. Season eight of Shameless had just been released on Shameless, so she had every intention of finishing all twelve episodes in a few days before she was back to searching for something else to do with her downtime. She was positive Harry would be back to filling his schedule within a few weeks, so she was going to enjoy it while she could.

She’d only been out of Harry’s presence for fifty-four hours when she got a phone call from him on a Friday night, or Saturday morning, rather. It was nearing four in the morning, and she was on the last episode of Shameless, and she was determined to finish it. She wasn’t really even tired, since she’d been lounging around all day drinking coffee and sitting in front of a fan while streaming her show from her laptop to her telly.

Y/N paused her show and answered right away. If Harry was calling her in the middle of the night, it must have been something serious, and she had better answer. Or he could be calling to ask her if she wanted to go with him to the taco place a few blocks over that was open until two in the morning because he was craving horchata and cilantro. (He had called her just after midnight after his first show in LA back in July, with a real hankering for King Taco. There were only two in all of California, and while he’d heard the one somewhere in the Inland Empire was good, he knew the original one in LA was the best. It was necessary for his stay in LA. And who was Y/N to deny her boss his craving for Mexican food in the middle of the night? She wasn’t a monster, after all.)

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she’d answered.

“Y/N?” That definitely wasn’t Harry, and Y/N sat up in her seat, suddenly more alert than she had been.

“Mitch? Why have yeh got Harry’s phone?”

“Harry is beyond drunk. I’d take him back to his place myself, but the car’s full. And I don’t want to send him home alone. Who knows if he’d actually even get there.”

That was the most Y/N had heard Mitch utter at once in the entire time she’d known him, so she knew Harry must have been in a state. She could hear yelling in the background that sounded distinctly like Harry, and Mitch shushed him and told him he was on the phone. Harry giggled and made a slurred shushing sound, and Y/N could just imagine him pressing his forefinger to his pursed lips. She smiled.

“Where are you lot at?” she asked, already reaching to slip her trainers on, once that Harry bought for her when they were in America. They were just Vans, but he had a matching pair, and she had been endeared by his excitement when he revealed them to her before one of his shows. He had been so happy that he’d gotten her shoe size correct without even having to ask her.

“Just a pub a few blocks from Harry’s place.”

That was all the information Y/N needed to know exactly where it was that Harry was. It was a low-key, quiet pub that was a lot like the ones he’d gone to in Holmes Chapel, he had told her. He preferred it to the loud clubs that were more popular in London because it was familiar and more his speed than the thumping music and writhing mass of bodies that came along with larger clubs. She’d been to it many times with him, enjoying the ambience of the wooden floors and glossy top of the bar. She knew the location well.

“Be there in ten. Hold tight and make sure he doesn’t do anything to hurt himself. Lord knows he’s a clumsy drunk.”

As promised, Y/N pulled up into the car park of the pub ten minutes later, not having changed out of her pajama shorts and tank top. She hadn’t even thought to put a bra on, and she was regretting it now as she stepped out into the chilly London night. That was the last thing on her mind when she saw Harry, though, leaned up against the side of Sarah’s car, looking like he was giggling uncontrollably as Mitch made sure he stood upright.

When Mitch caught sight of her, a look of relief passed over his face. She jogged up to them and slid Harry’s arm around her shoulder, attempting to take some of his weight so Mitch didn’t have to work as hard.

“I know you’re technically taking time off. I couldn't think of who else to call, though.”

Y/N brushed him off. “I’m his PA, I don’t really have time off.”

“Button!” Harry shouted when he finally opened his eyes enough to spot Y/N talking to Mitch. Apparently, he hadn’t fully realised that he’d had his arm slung around her as she helped Mitch steady him. He tightened his arm around her and squeezed her into his side in a sort of hug-cuddle.

“Hi, H. Had a bit to drink, yeah?” she greeted, flashing him a smile.

Harry raised his free hand and pinched his forefinger and thumb together. “Just a little.”

“From what I saw, he had several shots of tequila and a few mixed drinks. But I wasn’t with him the whole time,” Mitch informed her.

“Fabulous,” she muttered. Telling from how far his lids had lulled, he was incredibly inebriated, more so than she’d ever seen him, as far as she could recall. “Well, thanks for callin’ me, Mitch. Thanks for takin’ care of him. I’ll get him home.”

“Don’t wanna go home. Wanna go to yours.” Harry looked down at her with bleary eyes and pouted.

“Don’t yeh wanna sleep in your own bed?” Y/N enticed, sending a nod Mitch’s way when he gave her a look that asked if she had it handled. When she confirmed, Mitch made his way toward the driver’s side of his car, and Y/N started ushering Harry across to her car.

“Nope. Wanna cuddle up with yeh in your bed. So soft and warm, petal.”

“Oh, boy,” Y/N chuckled. Harry was typically a very affectionate man, but it was at a whole new level when he was drunk.

He was a touchy fellow, too, so the way he was nuzzling his nose into her head was no surprise to her. She couldn’t deny the way her tummy fluttered at his little gestures, but she quickly squashed it down. She was his PA for Christ’s sake. He paid her to be around him and figure out his life. She would deny it to anyone else, but she couldn’t deny it to herself that she fancied him a bit. It was nothing major, she’d convinced herself, just a bit of schoolgirl crush on him, because he was undeniably attractive and she knew how incredibly kind and lovely he was personally. She’d properly dealt with it for years now, so she let little things like his cuddling and hugs and terms of affection slide right off her back. It may have smarted a little, but she did it.

“Please? Don’t wanna go to sleep alone,” he pouted.

“I’ll stay with yeh until yeh fall asleep,” Y/N promised. She’d never slept with Harry before, aside from the odd time or two when they’d fallen asleep on a couch together, and they usually just ended up with their heads on each other’s shoulders. Y/N knew Harry was a cuddler, and she didn’t know how that would go over when he was asleep in a proper bed. Plus, she was his employee. Sleeping in a bed together wasn’t exactly appropriate.

“Don’t wanna wake up alone, either,” he argued. They had finally reached Y/N’s car, and she quickly flung the door open and started guiding Harry into the passenger seat. She glanced around quickly to make sure there weren’t any odd fans or paparazzi lingering about, trying to snap pictures of Harry in his extremely intoxicated state, but the parking lot was empty, and the people who were walking by were uninterested in Y/N trying to get a drunkard home.

“How about I take yeh home, put yeh to bed, and I’ll stay in a guest room?” Y/N offered, knowing Harry wouldn’t quit until he got his way. He was stubborn by nature, and his drunk mind had no way of tampering it down like he did when he was sober.

He huffed as Y/N reached across him to buckle him in. “Fine.”

She smiled at him before shutting the door with a sigh. She had a long night ahead of her.

Y/N figured it would be easy enough to get Harry up to bed, and sound asleep within ten minutes of walking in the door. She had been sorely mistaken.

Harry wanted something to eat when they got to his house, so Y/N had obliged him and made him an egg white omelet with some veggies he already had cut up and topped it with hot sauce. He’d sat with a content little smile on his face as he ate it and Y/N made herself a cup of tea. It had already been a late night and the time she’d been awake for the day was starting to wear on her. She was sure she’d be asleep by the time her head eventually hit the pillow in Harry’s cushy guest room.

She’d began to gather him to go upstairs, but he’d insisted on getting himself something to drink. Thinking he was just going to pour himself a glass of water, Y/N had left him to go in search of a charger for her phone, which was nearly dead. When she came back three minutes later, he had a very large bottle of vodka in his hand, the other trying to steady a glass as he attempted to pour. With a groan, Y/N darted over and grabbed both objects from him, dancing out of his reach as he protested.

“It’s six o’clock in the morning, you’re not having vodka,” she told him, capping the bottle and pouring the bit he’d managed to get into the cup down the sink.

“Oi, that’s expensive liquor,” he protested, trying to grab for it again, boxing her into the counter with his body.

“Don’t care. S’not like yeh can’t afford it.”

“Not the point,” he grumbled, pouting as Y/N filled up the glass with water. She turned in his arm, presenting him with the glass with a smile.

“Drink that down now, then head up to your room and get changed. I’ll bring another glass up to yeh in case yeh get thirsty while you’re sleepin’.”

“I don’t need t—”

“Don’t argue, just do it,” she reprimanded, using her mothering voice. It worked on every man she came across that needed a little forceful direction, and Harry was no different. He pouted, but he did as she said, downing the glass in a few gulps before handing it back to her and turning to head up the stairs.

Y/N took the time to refill his glass and find a few paracetamol tablets and clean up her mess from cooking in order to give him time to get undressed and under the covers in peace. For all the times Y/N had seen Harry in just his pants, it had never been when it was just the two of them in his bedroom, and she really did not want to experience that right then. It was one thing to see him nearly naked while she was helping him get into a suit for a show or a photoshoot, but it would have been entirely different if he was plastered and in his own home, trying to get into bed.

Luckily, when she made it up to his room, he was already tucked under a sheet, only his chest and shoulders visible, nearly asleep. He smiled sleepily when he saw her, and she returned it as she set the pills and his water on the nightstand.

“Don’t need to puke or anythin’, do yeh?” she asked, mostly teasing. She was sure Harry could hold his liquor, but he had consumed quite a bit from what she’d gathered from Mitch, so she just wanted to be sure. She couldn’t have her boss choking on his own vomit and dying in the middle of the night. She’d feel awful, not to mention she’d never get hired again.

“Nope. Feel fine, just fuzzy,” he told her, closing his eyes completely.

“Did yeh brush your teeth?” she asked. “Wash your face?”

He peeked one eye open at her, pouting out his lips. “Yes, mum.”

Y/N smiled. “Good. I’ll be down the hall if yeh need anything. Goodnight, Haz.”

“Yeh sure yeh don’t want to cuddle up with me? M’bed’s comfy.”

While the slur to his words should have sent Y/N instantly scurrying away, afraid of the possible turns this conversation could take, she stayed rooted in her spot beside his bed. His offer was tempting, but Y/N was very aware of their separation as employer and employee. And drunk Harry wasn’t someone who’s suggestions she typically took seriously, because they were often ridiculous. This was the same man who thought jumping into the stream that ran around the bungalow they’d stayed in in Jamaica at nearly two in the morning was a good idea.

Eventually, Y/N sighed and flashed him a closed mouth smile. “Be good, Harry. Go to bed, sleep this off, and I’ll see yeh when yeh wake up.”

Harry pouted and muttered back a goodnight as she flicked off the lights and headed to the guest bedroom that she used when she stayed over. They’d had many late nights planning his schedule together, having powwows with Jeff and Harry’s label trying to nail down touring and a promo schedule and any other events he needed to attend. These lasted well into the night, and Harry was always concerned about people driving back so late, so there were always rooms available to those who wanted it. He was a very thoughtful host, and Y/N was very thankful for it.

The first rays of sunlight were already slotting through the cracked blinds when she settled into the bed finally. She pulled the curtains to ensure nothing would wake her up unnecessarily before nestling herself down into the plushy pillows and bedding the mattress was dressed with. She was so comfortable and so exhausted from the events of the last few hours that she fell asleep only moments after she closed her eyes.

Her last thought was that she hoped Harry would take the pain relievers she left out for him and not remember anything that he suggested tonight in the morning. It was enough that she would have to live with the memory. She didn’t need Harry walking around with it too.

Y/N wasn’t sure what hour it was when she became conscious again. The room was dim from the blinds, but she felt rested enough, so she supposed it was probably early afternoon. She had every intention of reaching out and taking a look at her phone for the time, but she was stopped when she realised there was an extra weight on her.

There was an arm slung across her waist and another one under her neck, acting as a pillow. A warm body was pressed against her back and she could distinctly feel the puff of breath against the back of her head, lightly rustling her hair.

Y/N knew it was Harry. Which was a relief of sorts, but her body also tensed with the realisation. When had he gotten in here? How had she not noticed that he’d curled up in bed with her? Had he realised what he’d done, or had it been executed in a drunken stupor?

Whatever the answers, Y/N wasn’t waiting around to find out. She couldn’t deal with this. She couldn’t deal with whatever awkwardness that would ensure once Harry awoke to find them in the same bed together. Drunk Harry’s wants and Sober Harry’s wants were on two completely different spectrums, she reckoned.

So, as carefully as she could, so as not to disturb Harry too much, she slipped out of bed, put her shoes back on, grabbed her phone, and dashed out of the room. She was in her car back on her way to her house in five minutes, her heart beating erratically and her palms a bit sweaty.

She hoped Harry was drunk enough the night before to block out memories of what exactly happened. Y/N didn’t need this affecting her relationship with her boss. She loved Harry, but her job was more important than her emotions.

[johnnymundano]

Hard to be a God (2013)

Directed by Aleksei German

Written by Aleksei German and Svetlana Karmalita

Based on the novel ‘Hard to be a God’ by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Music by Viktor Lebedev

Country: Russia, Czech Republic

Language: Russian

Running Time: 177 minutes

CAST

Leonid Yarmolnik as Don Rumata

Dmitri Vladimirov

Laura Pitskhelauri

Aleksandr Ilyin as Arata

Yuri Tsurilo as Don Pampa

Yevgeni Gerchakov as Budakh

Aleksandr Chutko as Don Reba

Oleg Botin as Bucher

At the risk of being excessively humdrum it is important to note that Hard to be a God rumbles on in surly, monochrome magnificence for nigh on 3 hours. If you choose to watch it it’s best to factor that in; Hard to be a God is best enjoyed when you can immerse yourself in its outlandish milieu of brutality and filth. Hard to be a God is science fiction, but be warned it isn’t a love story set on a spaceship or a billion dollar toy advert, so maybe factor that in too. Hard to be a God is a thoroughly truculent mind-trip which is wholly oblivious to your comfort or expectations. Hard to be a God is what’s happening in the arse end of the universe far, far away from where all the nice, happy science fiction movies happen. Hard to be a God is opaque, baffling, grotesque, deranged and wholly, insanely, magnificent.

Hard to be a God is the tale of one Don Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik) who is introduced to us as a slob of slobs with a penchant for discordant jazz-flute, who dwells in a castle mired in filth and boiling with scrofulous wretches. It turns out that Don Rumata is in fact the very model of hygiene and cleanliness in comparison to the other fetid inhabitants of this repugnant unnamed planet. It is an earth-like planet, wherever it is, and the society infesting its surface is akin to the Middle Ages. It is not unlike the world of Terry Gilliam’s Jabberwocky (1977), but worse because it’s serious and they like it like that. Unfortunately it has been the Middle Ages for some several hundreds of years and is set to remain so for the foreseeable future, as at some point it was decided to murder all the clever-clogs. Apparently the nascent Renaissance put the willies up them all so much that a collective decision was reached to remain thick; to halt progress. This sounds ridiculous but only if you’ve never heard of Pol Pot. Even recently in the UK a politician (the odious schemer Michael Gove) claimed “This country has had enough of experts.” and was met with approbation instead of opprobrium. Hard to be a God is science fiction as a parable or allegory and as such it’s theme is timeless; the lure of ignorance isn’t going anywhere. But that’s not all, because unusually for a modern science fiction movie Hard to be a God is a movie of many ideas, rather being than a movie of one idea, or no ideas.

Meanwhile, back at the plot, things are not exactly as they seem; Don Rumata is actually Anton, one of a number of earthlings who have travelled to the planet to observe its retrograde ridiculousness. Apparently while it is the Middle Ages on the nameless planet, on earth it is centuries in the future. Exactly what the purpose of this exercise is beyond shameless Schadenfreude is unclear (a lot of things in Hard to be a God are unclear; I’ll swing back to that), particularly as Anton/Don Rumata is prohibited from direct intervention. Stuck in something which is not so much a society as a vortex of filth and degradation barely held in control by the venal rulers, the Don witnesses the various addled factions violently vying for control of what is essentially a planet sized toilet populated by cretins. Due to the fact that the Don is supposedly descended from a God (to explain his oddness; it’s not really clear) all the factions contest for his support, whether it be by force or the promise of change. All are found wanting and it’s clear that the populace is locked into a hopeless cycle of ignorance perpetuated by whoever claws their way to the top of the dung heap. Religion, politics and rebellion are all just mechanisms of, and the masks worn by oppression in the world of Hard to be a God (and our world; that bit is abundantly clear). As a God Don Rumata is condemned to watch, but as the atrocities exceed reason and the temptation to act grows, it becomes harder and harder for him to be a God. 

This central dilemma may explain the oddity of the POV of the camera being acknowledged by the characters. At first you just pick up on the odd glance at the camera as someone disappears round a corner, but soon people are peering in/out right at you and you realise that in the background of scenes, beyond the narrative focus, there’s usually been some lollygagging halfwit eyeing you up. Precisely what this signifies is unclear. I reckon that it’s a device to put you in the same position as Don Rumata: you too are forced to witness the self-imposed degradation of a whole planet, but while you are unable to interfere he is only forbidden to do so. The obvious difference is the option to disobey is his, and by the time he (maybe) does so it should bring the viewer a form of empathetic climax. So maybe it’s a device playing into the movie’s concern with free will or maybe the actors are the most ill-disciplined bunch ever (“Stop looking in the camera, Yuri! It’s staying in! No, Oleg! No!”). I could be wrong, as I say it is unclear. 

Yes, a lot of things in Hard to be a God are unclear. To be honest and in the interests of full disclosure, Hard to Be a God isn’t terribly concerned with delivering a coherent narrative; I wasn’t too sure what had actually happened within it after I had watched it, and had to piece it together in retrospect. So, you know, errors may have been made on my part. But it’s obviously a movie about the value of engaging your brain, so the fact it forces you to do so could well be built in. Yes, Hard to be a God is a gruelling, almost numbing experience made all the more gruelling and numbing due to its tenacious refusal to allow the plot to push entirely past the visual fiesta of faeces. But Hard to be a God is  also a unique experience and that’s a pretty big achievement. Alas, Hard to be a God was also Aleksei German’s final achievement as he died the same year the movie premiered, 2013.

[kiruuuuu]

Echo Chamber Pt 1

The beginning of the Lesion/Echo verse: Lesion convinces Echo to go on a date with him and it’s nothing like he expected. (Rating G, all fluff ♥, ~1.7k words)

.

“A what now?”, Echo asks, incredulous, clutching Yokai for emotional support in case he didn’t mishear. The whole situation is embarrassing enough already, what with the fact he’s got a pretty good idea of what the man in front of him looks like without his clothes now and it’s the kind of thing he could’ve done without knowing, thank you very much.

Lesion’s smile is unwavering, bright and entirely too genuine for someone who caught someone supposedly spying on him only an hour ago – the old man really is shameless after all, too relaxed and having no trouble upholding eye contact where Echo flounders. “A date”, he repeats patiently, “you know? A rendezvous? That seems like adequate compensation to me.”

“You’re kidding, right?” It’s not the worst thing Lesion could demand – after all, he holds a considerable amount of power over him since if word gets out that Echo uses his trusty drone to peep on his fellow operators, it’d be a serious blow to his already shaky reputation of which he’s sure Lesion is aware. However, the thought of going on a date with him is exceedingly weird, especially since they’ve barely interacted in the past. It’s not that Echo dislikes the jovial SDU operator, not at all, he’s always been entertaining even when his sadistic side shows during missions, it’s just… dating him seems absurd.

“Of course I’m kidding.” Lesion grins at him and he almost rolls his eyes – he should’ve expected it, Lesion frequently hangs around with the SAS guys as well as Bandit, so jokes of this nature are far from uncommon. “So, where would you like to go?”

Wait a second. “What do you mean?”

“For our date. Any preferences?”

“But you said -”

“Do you always argue this much when someone offers to take you anywhere you want and pay for everything?”

The bastard is still smiling and Echo can feel himself becoming flustered because it dawns on him the old man is serious after all. “No, but I’m not -”

“Where did you take Ying when you were dating, hm?”

It’s the first time either of the two acknowledges Echo’s romantic entanglement with Lesion’s colleague to each other and it couldn’t have happened at a more inopportune time because Echo can’t help but think Now I’ve seen both of them come and almost drops Yokai on his own foot. “I don’t know, restaurants? To the movies? We went to the zoo once. Oh, and there was this special event where -”

“A theme park? That sounds like a wonderful idea actually, it’s been ages since I’ve been to one. We’re both off duty the day after tomorrow, do you have anything planned for that day yet?”

He does, as a matter of fact. He’s been planning to stay home all day and play video games, order food and take his mind off the job, it’s supposed to be one of those days that restore his energy, let him recharge, clear his head. Visiting a theme park with Lesion of all people sounds exactly like the sort of stress he doesn’t need – even if he has to admit he enjoys roller coasters immensely. It’s off-season, too, no school holidays, it’d be during the week so there would be next to no lines… The more he thinks about it –

“Great. I’ll pick you up in the morning, alright?”

Echo is starting to wonder whether Lesion can read minds. “I didn’t know there were any theme parks nearby”, he voices his next thought out loud and Lesion’s smile grows.

“There aren’t. It’s going to be a day trip.” And with these words and a fucking wink, he leaves. He just. He just walks away without giving Echo the chance to protest or ask what just happened because they went from Did you enjoy the show to Let’s go on a day-long date so fast his head is spinning.

He notices his jaw has dropped at Lesion’s audacity, so he quickly closes his mouth before he ends up yelling something embarrassing into the hallway and turns around to go back to his room and return Yokai to its rightful place.

Come to think of it, he has no idea how it ended up in Lesion’s room in the first place. He certainly didn’t put it there himself.

~*~

Somehow, despite really knowing better, a part of Echo didn’t believe Lesion would actually go through with it. Yet he got up early, showered, had a meagre breakfast in his underwear in front of his computer screen and caught himself pondering his outfit choices as if this was an actual date and he was trying to impress someone. He wasn’t. Still, he’s going out in public so he might as well look his best, right? He brushes his teeth, tames his hair, hums to himself and catches himself pacing restlessly when he’s ready. As if he’s looking forward to this. He isn’t.

Lesion’s car is exactly like he imagined it: tiny, cluttered and old. Echo has to fold himself in half to get in and adjust the seat so his knees don’t come up to his chest but once he’s done all that, it’s kind of cosy. “I bought some food for the drive and coffee if you haven’t had any yet”, Lesion greets him, annoyingly awake and chirpy, let alone suspiciously nice. He’s still insisting that Echo doesn’t spend a penny and when he points out that this was supposed to be a “punishment” of some kind, Lesion just waves his objection aside with a: “Don’t be ridiculous.”

The car ride turns out surprisingly pleasant, even if Lesion is a terrible singer which does nothing to deter him from doing it regardless. As soon as Echo notices that the ancient car radio doesn’t even have the local channels programmed in, he does Lesion the favour while grumbling about old people and technology, somehow amusing Lesion to no end. For most of the drive, Echo plays around on his phone while they chat about everything and nothing like terrible English food, how lucky they are people in the UK drive on the correct side of the road, bits and pieces of their past. Echo is relieved to notice Lesion doesn’t mind his occasionally harsh words even if he happens to disagree – he’s patient, something Echo wouldn’t have expected of him. When they’re nearly there, he’s stir crazy enough to join in as Lesion offers his rendition of Britney Spears and so they arrive giddy and comfortably at ease with each other.

As the day progresses, Echo gets more and more confused.

The theme park is worth its money and chock full of rides that make his adrenaline spike and a childish laugh bubble out of him that he hasn’t heard in a long time, the thrill elating and devoid of the tension, the alertness Echo has become so accustomed to, the dread that accompanies him on missions and that he forces down, channels into cockiness. His joy feels pure and innocent and he genuinely can’t remember when he last allowed himself to not worry about time, not think about all the other things he could be doing, ignore the nagging voice inside that constantly reminds him not to waste the day. But this is not the confusing part.

Lesion is. He continues to baffle him with his generosity, attentiveness and charisma. Echo learns not to point out anything food related anymore because before the words have left his mouth, Lesion has bought it for him and already asks if he wants more despite him not even having tried it yet. Apart from that, he indulges Echo’s every whim, never once complains about going on the same ride five times in a row, makes ridiculous comments about how likely they are to die on each one, even pointing at the children’s rides and listing possible ways to perish with a grave face (“pissing your pants in public – that’d be societal death, almost worse than the real thing”) until Echo almost cries laughing.

He doesn’t know what he expected but it wasn’t this. It’s almost like spending a day with an old friend, re-discovering mutual interests and enjoying each other’s company, only they’ve never been friends and he’s certain Lesion has some kind of ulterior motive, judging by the way he keeps watching him out of the corner of his eye. Whether he wants to fuck with Echo or something else entirely is not completely clear.

On the way back, Echo dozes off to Lesion humming along to Taylor Swift and is woken up by a gentle touch on his shoulder, a thumb rubbing over the exposed skin on his neck, then knuckles brush his cheek, ticklish, and when fingertips start carding through his hair, he stirs and makes the hand withdraw, stretches and yawns before blinking at Lesion who somehow always regards him with this one specific expression: an open smile, a curious look, almost expectant. Echo realises this was the first time Lesion has touched him deliberately and he doesn’t know how he should feel about the fact he doesn’t mind it.

Still. The confusion stays with him. “What… exactly was this?”, he asks, hesitating, averting his gaze again.

“A good time, I’d hope”, is the cheery reply.

“No, I mean”, Echo starts again and has the feeling Lesion knows exactly what he means. “I don’t get it. This was what you wanted?” Ultimately, what he wants to know is whether their “deal” is concluded.

“Yes”, Lesion says simply. There is more to it. There has to be more. “If you like, we can conclude this date with a kiss?” And before Echo can protest, he leans over a little and offers his cheek.

Well. It’s so little to ask that Echo would feel bad if he refused, so he complies, leans in and – and then there’s movement and Lesion is too fast, plants a kiss right on Echo’s lips and he actually jumps. This wasn’t -

“You drool when you sleep”, Lesion tells him, his smile now of a decidedly smug quality, “it’s cute.”

“Okay. I’m out. Bye.” Echo unfolds himself out of the car as fast as possible and can somehow hear Lesion’s chuckling follow him all the way to his apartment door that he unlocks with burning cheeks.

[ironbound-praetorium]

Interview with the Ironfist

1. What is your name?

“Raelin… Rae… Ironfist… that asshole…kinda answer to them all.”

2. What is your real name?

“Captain Raelin Michael Dawnsorrow. Yeah, I got credentials and everything.”

3.Do you know why you were called that?

“Cause my parents liked it? Fuck if I know… there were five of us, so I’m guessing they just wanted something that sounded good while they were yelling for all of us to come in and sit proper at the table… newsflash… we never did.”

4. Are you single or taken?

“That is a complicated as fuck question. M’Rose is waiting for me on the other side, so… technically taken….but I mean…she’s dead…I’m still breathing, and it’s not like she would care who was in my bed.”

5.Have any abilities or powers?

“I can go from zero to ‘fuck you’ in .5 seconds…and at .6 I’ve generally already thrown the first punch. Let’s see…I can make a keg of dwarven ale disappear in under an hour…I’m shameless, and while that might not be some super awesome power… it allows me to give no fucks, which is just how I like it. I can also heal…ya know, the Light works in mysterious ways…”

6. Stop being a Mary Sue.

“Well fuck you too!”

7. What’s your eye color?

“Blue..” he said, widening his eyes and blinking comically.

8. How about your hair color?

“You ain’t exactly the observant type are ya? Shit’s red as Alexstraza’s ass…damn and what an ass she has… whew!”

9. Have you any family members?

“Got th’Silverfalls… and while they ain’t family by blood, they are all I have left.”

10. Oh? What about pets?

“Yeah, cause I’m going to admit that a dragon is a fucking pet? You out of your mind? I’d rather not end up as flambé, thank you very much!”

11. That’s cool I guess, now tell me about something you don’t like.

"People who hurt kids. Man, just let them be little beasts and get messy...only innocent for so long, let them have that shit for as long as they can!”

 12.  Do you have any hobbies/activities you like doing?

“Fucking, fighting and drinking…and smelting. Mmm, I do love the smell of molten metal…”

13.  Ever hurt anyone before?

“Is this a serious question? Did I not just state I like to fight? Titans balls, you’re dense as fuck…”

14.  Ever… killed anyone before?

“Yeah, don’t much like to think on it…and I don’t make a point of being a bloodthirsty ass like that… those fuckers deserved it.”

15.  What kind of animal are you?

“The scaly kind…”

16.  Name your worst habits.

“Probably drinking and swearing… but let’s be honest here, the word ‘fuck’ is fantastic and should be used more often.”

17.  Do you look up to anyone at all?

“Maladir. I don’t know how he remains so steadfast even after everything he has witnessed…you would think after so many wars and loved ones lost, that the man would crumble under the weight of his sorrow… but there he is, day in and day out… doing what he can to make those around him better.”

18.  Gay, straight, or bisexual?

“Been awhile since I’ve had a man in my bed, but I’m not opposed to it… or really anyone else. Could say I’m an equal opportunity sort…”

19.  Do you go to school?

“Ugh, yes. So many damned years of books and training sessions. Hated every second of it… much prefer to learn while out in the world and through discovery, not some professor who hasn’t even been outside his classroom in fifty years!”

20.  Do you ever want to marry and have kids one day?

“Only person I was ever going to marry was Vinnie. She ain’t here anymore… so none of that wedding nonsense for me. Kids? Eh…kinda old fashioned in wanting children inside wedlock…so likely not in the cards. Besides, I got dozens of tiny little patients more than happy to sit and color with me, be amazed by my dumb magic tricks and who need all the piggy back rides.”

21.  Do you have any fanboys/fangirls?

“I got a whole fanclub…no really, it’s a running joke in the Praetorium. Bri’s the president…”

22.  What are you most afraid of?

“Not getting to Vinnie on the otherside…”

23.  What do you usually wear?

“Armor…chain, leather… boring ass knight stuff. Not one for fashion, though I do clean up nicely..”

24.  Do you love someone?

“The Praetorium… Mal, Pixie… my Rose.”

25.  When was the last time you wet yourself?

“Doing it right now.” The shit eating grin made it hard to tell if he was serious or not.

26.  Well, it’s not over yet!

“Oh good, I love wasting time with idiots.”

27.  What class of society you belong to?

“The ‘Fuck What You Think’ Class…”

28.  How many friends do you have?

“Enough? Hell… I don’t keep count, which seems like a shitty thing to do to stroke your own ego. No thanks…”

29.  What are your thoughts on pie?

A devious grin crosses the Ironfist’s face, crinkling the corner of his eyes with amusement. “Which kind?”

30.  Favorite drink?

“The alcoholic kind.”

31.  What’s your favorite place?

“The sparring ring with Pixie on the opposite side!”

32.  Are you interested in someone?

“People in general interest me, so…. Everyone?”

33.  What’s your bra cup size and/or how big is your willy?

“Well, I mean the only way you’re truly gunna get that answer is if I show ya..”This was followed by the distinct sound of a zipper being undone.

34.  Would you rather swim in the lake or the ocean?

“I’d rather fly.”

35.  What’s your type?

“Breathing?”

36.  Any fetishes?

“I do love me some lingerie...though I don’t know as that counts as a fetish.”

37.  Seme or uke? Top or Bottom? Dominant or Submissive?

“I can do it all…whatever strikes the mood or moment. Got no issues taking what I want.. with consent of course… or being taken.”

38.  Camping or indoors?

“Outdoors. Shit’s too stuffy when ya add walls…”

39.  Are you wanting the interview to end?

“Happy ending?”

tagged by: @redroxwra  ((Thank you!)) Tagging: whoever hasn’t done this yet!

[seotipsandtricks-me]

As the year comes to an end here at Screaming Frog we thought we would add to the inevitable roundups posts with our own. But instead of just bragging about the work we do or making pointless ‘SEO predictions for 2019’, we also want to celebrate the people that make the company what is it (we are also bragging, but we’re not just bragging). So take a look at what your favourite frogs (sorry Kermit) have been up to this year! Conferences & Community With so many fantastic conferences available to us in digital marketing, we’re spoiled for choice to choose which one to have some time off work learn from the industry’s best and brightest. BrightonSEO For the first time ever Screaming Frog had a stall this year, helping the community at our crawl clinic with Spider conundrums. We had a great time so expect to see us with a stall at more BrightonSEOs in the near future, now we’ve mastered SEO (Stall Engineering Optimisation)! Reminder to self – bring more swag. We also like to get involved in other ways – our resident Strategist Charlie has also been running the Crawling and Indexation Indexing sessions at BrightonSEO (shameless plug – we’re running a similar SEO Spider training workshop in January!), and be sure to check out Oliver Brett’s talk next April! Not to be missed! SearchLeeds SearchLeeds was where Oliver, rumoured to be the mastermind behind Twitter’s favourite SEO meme account Lord of the SERPs, made his speaking debut this year and a fantastic conference held in a great city. How he managed to keep the topic of “Why SEOs are weirdos” down to just a few slides is testament to his speaking prowess. HeroConf Determined to show the SEO team they do more than just “set it and forget it”, the PPC team headed up to London for HeroConf. Despite rave reviews about the conference, the SEO team remain unconvinced by the PPC team. Information Is Beautiful Workshop Being the creative force behind almost everything we produce, and after seeing the SEO team heading out for ANOTHER conference, the design team headed up to London for an inspirational masterclass from the man behind some of the best content on the web – Information Is Beautiful. They brought their knowledge back to share with the SEO team, which resulted a creative boost that can only be compared to a strong coffee on a Monday morning. OutREACH Having launched a couple of years ago OutREACH conference has fast become one of the must-attend conferences at Screaming Frog. The team returned with fresh ideas for the ever more difficult task of outreaching, from quality speakers and we’re looking forward to seeing what next year has to offer! SearchLove Another conference held in very high esteem around the Screaming Frog office is Distilled’s SearchLove. A couple of our team headed up to London (we’ll hit the US iteration one of these days!) and were once again blown away by the expertise on offer. Search Elite During June we ventured into London for the popular Search Elite conference, which fully delivered on its promise of in depth presentations from expert speakers hailing from both sides of the Atlantic. Look out for the 2019 edition which has been rebranded to Digital Elite Day, combining the best from the worlds of search and CRO. Nudgestock Perhaps a little less SEO focussed, but no less interesting was Nudgestock. Full of behavioural ideas that can be applied to a whole range of settings, a highlight was the behavioural nudges that can be used to increase conversion rates. BrightonSEO/Deepcrawl 5-a-side And how could we forget the 5 a side tournament hosted by BrightonSEO and Deepcrawl. The game on everyone’s lips was “El Crawlico” as we took on Deepcrawl to determine once and for all the superior crawler result which has no further implications on the quality of each respective tool. Without wanting to dwell on the matter 9-2 much, Screaming Frog came away victorious! Looking forward to the battle next year! UK Search Awards One of the big events at the end of the year is of course, the UK Search Awards, celebrating the great work that’s been done by our industry. With only 35 awards up for grabs in a hugely competitive industry we had the honour to be shortlisted in 3 categories… …And took home the prestigious award of “Best SEO Campaign” for our client Spotahome, a testament to the fantastic work put in by everyone at the company. A fantastic evening to round off a brilliant year. Giving Back We’re always looking to support charities that mean a lot to the people that work at Screaming Frog and if they involve eating copious amount of cakes, muffins, and brownies then that’s just what we’ll have to do! Macmillan Coffee Morning Over £200 raised toward a great cause, but some tell-tale signs that not everybody was upfront about what they made themselves…! Cakes, cakes and more cakes A further £250 was raised from another cake sale earlier in the year, with Aaron insisting he hasn’t been part-timing as a baker whilst taking the title for the best bake. Henley Toad Patrol Despite what our our robots.txt might suggest we care about all animals in the Anura order! Which is why we helped to support a local team protecting toads from local traffic. First Aid Training To make sure we’re safe both in and out of the office, a number of the team received First Aid training. So, if you spot us at a conference you know you’re in safe hands… despite what the below might suggest! Sports Throughout the year many of the team have taken part in sports events, particularly of the endurance running kind. A better person would ignore the tempting comparison between a grueling slog with the end never quite coming into sight as your endurance ever more depletes, and that of running a marathon. I am apparently not that person. Run-Club Takes on Reading (Nearly) The Screaming Frog team took to the pavements en-masse as a weekly Run Club was set up to train for Reading Half Marathon. Under the expert guidance of Coach Euan Brock the team was fit and raring to go. Unfortunately, the weather was not. With heavy snow the night before the race, the event was cancelled and Run Club never got to put training into action. Some were more savvy about this than others… Expecting a late race cancellation tomorrow pic.twitter.com/v8u4aT6iuB — Matt Hopson (@matthopson) March 17, 2018 Running on Home Turf And how could we show our faces in our town of residence, Henley-on-Thames, unless a member of the team also took on the hilly half-marathon here! Our Office Manager Ewa took up the mantle and smashed the course with such running prowess that she has become the official new coach of Run-Club. Paris Marathon Undeterred by the Reading setback Coach Brock and I set our sights to warmer months and a longer distance, running the Paris Marathon in April beside a strong support team from a cohort of Screaming Frog employees past and present. The pictures below represent the reality of the event  versus how we describe it to other people. Taking things a step further – Endure24 As if a marathon wasn’t enough, Matt Hopson, our Senior SEM Manager took things one step further (pun certainly intended), running in a team 24 hour ultra-endurance race for the second year running. In the Octagon Most people would run for the hills if asked to step into the octagon for an MMA fight, but our Digital Designer Mike is not one of them. He stepped up for 3 months intensive MMA training culminating in a fight night to raise money for charity. He insists this wasn’t just a way to take out his frustrations about the SEO team asking yet again for “just a few more changes”. Making Sweet Music We don’t just play to Google’s tune. Among our search specialists, we also have a variety of talented musicians that this year took to the stage. Our Head of SEO Pat Langridge, guitarist for Reading-based Las Nova caught here performing Ricky Gervais’ Free Love Freeway, was so accomplished that they even caught the attention of the man himself on Twitter. Not to be outdone, James McCrea, formerly touring worldwide on a cruise-ship before switching to the rockstyle lifestyle at Screaming Frog, hit up Oakford Social Club as the guitarist of Nobodies Birthday. Austrian Techno But we don’t just limit ourselves to the more traditional instruments. Faisal headed over to Austria to perform his own brand of electronic music which he describes as: “One Hand Clap, a part generative performance piece that analysed player controller data and the spectromorphology of acousmatic soundtracks to generate it’s own soundscape.” An impressive feat, but we’ll stick with techno… Podcast You don’t need an instrument to hit the airwaves. Sam, one of the dev superstars working on the SEO Spider, has been working on Spinnerproof – a podcast dedicated to Robot Wars coverage among other things. If his robot making skills half as good as his dev skills, we’re all in serious trouble! Heading out as an Army A group of frogs is known as an army, which feels rather appropriate for when the team step out into the wider world on a company social. Henley Royal Regatta The normally sleepy, quaint town of Henley-on-Thames in which we are based becomes a bustling hive of boats, visitors, and 7 ft rowers during the regatta season. Never wanting to be left out, our summer social now happily coincides with the regatta. This year was beautifully sunny and hot, so we headed down to the river armed en-masse with suncream and shades.   Oktoberfest We embrace all cultures at Screaming Frog, so felt it our duty to support the German tradition of Oktoberfest, which has become a yearly occurrence. Although Bavaria is admittedly a long way from our meeting point in nearby Reading, a great stein was had by all that attended. Enjoying Henley Whilst being outside of London has made us very familiar with the Henley train branch line and the Twyford to Paddington route, which stops at every conceivable location South of London, it also offer some lovely views and friendly faces, which we like to take advantage of. This year we’ve hit the town to enjoy some wine and cheese, and quenched our thirst riverside in the Summer evenings for work socials. Christmas Party Would any workplace be complete without an office Christmas party? We maintained the yearly tradition of heading into town for some pool, darts and fun, before the office Secret Santa and heading to the local pub for a 3 course dinner – Merry Christmas!   Working hard or hardly working? If you read this far, you may be wondering how we fit in being a pioneering SEO crawler and award winning SEO team (told you the bragging would be in here). Well we couldn’t have beers and bakeoffs without our bread and butter of SEO. We’re proud of the work we do with our clients, (including the piece that won a UK Search Award, have we mentioned that?). Come and work for us! We’ve welcomed a whole host of new team members to Screaming Frog this year and we’re still on the look out for more. This post wasn’t a thinly veiled attempt at convincing you to join (promise), but if you like what you see, check out what we’ve got to offer! Roll on 2019…! The post Screaming Frog 2018 – A Year In Review appeared first on Screaming Frog.

[katchwreck]

Ignorance is the most potent weapon in the vast armoury of the privileged and powerful. The use of force and prisons to oppress citizens and deny them basic human rights is effective but tends to cause a reaction. People physically oppressed feel the pain and often resist and revolt against their oppressors.

But the locks and chains of mental imprisonment through imposed ignorance are invisible and much more effective. For those detained within prisons of ignorance do not even recognise their enslavement. Information is power and those who control the flow of information are very powerful. Keeping the populace ignorant or ensuring they are only partially informed or misinformed is how the rich and powerful maintain control.

The statement above swirled around my brain last week as I struggled to contain my anger and rage at the treatment of Venezuela and her people by Trump's American gangsters and their hired liars and lickspittles who daily pollute our screens and newsstands with tales designed to misinform, half inform and conceal completely the motives of the mobsters in smart suits and ties who flash smiles and issue soundbites in public but who are responsible for carnage, extreme poverty and premature deaths in private.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo displayed the self-assured shamelessness of the arrogant crook he is by labelling the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and others who dare to support the democratically elected President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, as "disgusting". He did so a few days ago as he sat appropriately alongside the dishonourable multi-millionaire UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP, so powerful he can flaunt laws and tax bills everyone else is compelled to obey and so rich he forgets to declare the purchase of seven luxury flats:

“It is disgusting to see leaders, in not only the United Kingdom, but the United States as well, who continue to support the murderous dictator Maduro. It is not in either of our country's best interests for those leaders to continue to advocate on their behalf”.

The only thing that is “disgusting” is the dishonest, deceitful display of hypocrisy by Pompeo on behalf of America as they implement a vicious economic war against the people of Venezuela in pursuit of control over their vast oil reserves, the largest reserves on the planet.

Pompeo represents the biggest bully nation in the world. The suggestion they are concerned with the human rights or welfare of the Venezuelan people is an outrageous misrepresentation of reality. The truth of the situation is crystal clear but you will only find it if you look beneath and beyond the cacophony of sneeringly dishonest media coverage that disgracefully disguises itself as news output.

Last week I listened to and watched bulletin after bulletin glowingly report the attempt of US imposed puppet Juan Guido to encourage a violent overthrow of a democratically elected President in Venezuela.

Guido was given hours of coverage and acres of newsprint to proclaim the end of the elected Maduro "regime" without a hint of critical context or a sniff of journalistic questioning of the legitimacy of a self-appointed President in preference to one who attracted over 6.2 million votes in a democratic election less than twelve months ago.

Even Jon Snow and Channel 4 News have joined the ranks of the disgraced purveyors of US friendly lies and half-truths. Snow referred to Maduro, the guy re-elected President with over 6.2 million votes in a field of several candidates, as the "failed President". The display of bias and prejudice against Maduro was sickening and nauseating.

The very same so-called 'news' stations like BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky and CNN who promoted and encouraged an illegal, undemocratic and violent overthrow of the Maduro government then had the brass necks to condemn that government's police and security services for quelling the isolated malcontents who threw missiles and even fired live ammunition at the legitimate police force of Venezuela.

If only they displayed such concern for 'protesters' when reporting the shooting of children with flags and placards in the West Bank and Gaza strip by the illegally occupying Israeli Defence Forces?

What is withheld from public view and given no or cursory coverage is the fact that Venezuela has been deliberately targeted by the US for regime change and the economic sanctions imposed have been illegal under international law and deadly to the poor of Venezuela.

Consider the Executive Summary of the devastating Report from the American based Center For Economic And Policy Research (CEPR) published last month:

"This paper looks at some of the most important impacts of the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the US government since August of 2017. It finds that most of the impact of these sanctions has not been on the government but on the civilian population.

The sanctions reduced the public's caloric intake, increased disease and mortality (for both adults and infants), and displaced millions of Venezuelans who fled the country as a result of the worsening economic depression and hyperinflation. They exacerbated Venezuela's economic crisis and made it nearly impossible to stabilize the economy, contributing further to excess deaths. All of these impacts disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable Venezuelans.

Even more severe and destructive than the broad economic sanctions of August 2017 were the sanctions imposed by executive order on January 28, 2019 and subsequent executive orders this year; and the recognition of a parallel government, which as shown below, created a whole new set of financial and trade sanctions that are even more constricting than the executive orders themselves.

“We find that the sanctions have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017-2018; and that these sanctions would fit the definition of collective punishment of the civilian population as described in both the Geneva and Hague international conventions, to which the US is a signatory. They are also illegal under international law and treaties which the US has signed, and would appear to violate US law as well”.

This rigorously researched academic report finds the US Government guilty of imposing illegal economic sanctions amounting to a form of collective punishment costing 40,000 Venezuelan lives and the fact is that most if not all readers of this column will be learning of this shocking fact for the first time.

America is guilty of breaching the Geneva and Hague Conventions designed to defend human rights; breaking international laws designed to protect the national sovereignty of nations; and causing the premature deaths of more than 40,000 Venezuelan citizens, and you are only just learning about it?

If this does not enrage you and alert you to how ill-informed we are collectively about the actions, motives and consequences of US actions you are on the side of the oppressors in the world and don't care about such atrocities.

At the start of February I watched BBC anchor-man Andrew Neil on one of his many BBC provided platforms attack Ken Livingston for suggesting many of Venezuela's economic problems were caused by US economic sanctions. Neil aggressively challenged Livingston to name any sanctions and suggested the only sanctions that existed were from 2015 under Barack Obama and they were "aimed solely at Venezuelan regime members".

According to Mr BBC, Andrew Neil, there were ‘no economic sanctions by the US against Venezuela which could cause any economic damage'. The exchange is promoted by the ‘Voice of Reason' website under the headline: ‘Andrew Neil demolishes left wing myth that Venezuela's demise was caused by America'.

Andrew Neil and the British Biased Corporation are no strangers to the peddling of biased, misleading and unfounded views and news of course. They do it consistently and professionally. Sometimes they are caught out and reprimanded but often the damage is done in the artificial influencing and manipulation of public opinion.

Two years ago during an interview with former First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, in the run up to the Scottish Parliament elections Mr Neil used out of date data and biased Tory propaganda to suggest primary school children in Scotland were “functionally illiterate”.

It was a woefully inaccurate and politically biased claim. The toothless and inadequate watchdog, Ofcom, has now found the interview to be misleading and inaccurate but a full two years after the broadcast took place.

So we know how biased the mainstream media can be and should not be surprised that an academic report so damning of the US economic sanctions and involvement in undermining Venezuela is repressed. However what about the Human Rights Council (HRC) of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly? Would you expect a similar report from such a respected and esteemed body to be ignored?

In September last year a detailed and comprehensive report was submitted to the HRC by the independent expert appointed on behalf of the HRC of the United Nations to examine the economic and democratic situation within both Venezuela and Ecuador. After months of interviews, examination of evidence, visitations across Venezuela and independent evaluation of contributions from all sides of the political divide within Venezuela Alfred de Zayas published his Report.

The methodology he used in compiling his report followed the principle audiatur et altera pars, listen to all sides. He stringently adhered to Article 6 of the Special Procedures Mandate Holders of the HRC which requires mandate holders to establish the facts based on objective, reliable information emanating from relevant credible sources that have been duly cross-checked to the best extent possible.

The outcome was a damning indictment of the US and its illegal use of economic sanctions to engineer a politically desirable objective. The recent academic report referred to above only underlines the accuracy and truth of this report from the HRC Independent Expert.

Several direct quotations are appropriate.

In relation to Venezuela's achievements:

“The Independent Expert noted the eradication of illiteracy, free education from primary school to university, and programmes to reduce extreme poverty, provide housing to the homeless and vulnerable, phase out privilege and discrimination, and extend medical care to everyone.”

In connection with the history of US interference in other sovereign nations through economic warfare to cause humanitarian disasters to justify military interventions:

“The Charter of the United Nations rests on the philosophy of multilateralism, a commitment to international cooperation, and the sovereign equality of States. Countries must not be isolated and boycotted, but helped in strengthening their democratic institutions. Over the past sixty years, non-conventional economic wars have been waged against Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, the Syrian Arab Republic and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in order to make their economies fail, facilitate regime change and impose a neo-liberal socioeconomic model. In order to discredit selected governments, failures in the field of human rights are maximized so as to make violent overthrow more palatable. Human rights are being "weaponized" against rivals. Yet, human rights are the heritage of every human being and should never be instrumentalized as weapons of demonization”.

On the unilateral and illegal economic sanctions imposed and supported by the US, Canada and, shamefully, the EU:

“The effects of sanctions imposed by Presidents Obama and Trump and unilateral measures by Canada and the European Union have directly and indirectly aggravated the shortages in medicines such as insulin and anti-retroviral drugs. To the extent that economic sanctions have caused delays in distribution and thus contributed to many deaths, sanctions contravene the human rights obligations of the countries imposing them. Moreover, sanctions can amount to crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. An investigation by that Court would be appropriate, but the geopolitical submissiveness of the Court may prevent this.”

The US, Canada and the EU are guilty of ‘crimes against humanity' but the Independent Expert doubts the International Criminal Court will investigate because of the identity of the powerful nations who are the perpetrators of the crimes.

Most damning but prophetic of all the words submitted by the Independent Expert in his Report were contained in Paragraph 37. Please read the whole Report but consider, reflect on, share and re-read this essential paragraph:

“Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns with the intention of forcing them to surrender. Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees. A difference, perhaps, is that twenty-first century sanctions are accompanied by the manipulation of public opinion through "fake news", aggressive public relations and a pseudo-human rights rhetoric so as to give the impression that a human rights "end" justifies the criminal means. There is not only a horizontal juridical world order governed by the Charter of the United Nations and principles of sovereign equality, but also a vertical world order reflecting the hierarchy of a geopolitical system that links dominant States with the rest of the world according to military and economic power. It is the latter, geopolitical system that generates geopolitical crimes, hitherto in total impunity. It is reported that the United States is currently training foreign lawyers in how to draft legislation to impose further sanctions on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in an effort to asphyxiate Venezuelan State institutions.”

Open your eyes to the reality of US involvement in Venezuela and recognise it as the criminal enterprise that it is. Don't accept the prison of ignorance built for us by the powerful. Break out and condemn them for their conscious breeches of international law and crimes against humanity.

Hands Off Venezuela. No To Economic Sanctions. Yes To Maduro & Democracy.

[geeksperhour]

via Screaming Frog

As the year comes to an end here at Screaming Frog we thought we would add to the inevitable roundups posts with our own. But instead of just bragging about the work we do or making pointless ‘SEO predictions for 2019’, we also want to celebrate the people that make the company what is it (we are also bragging, but we’re not just bragging). So take a look at what your favourite frogs (sorry Kermit) have been up to this year!

Conferences & Community

With so many fantastic conferences available to us in digital marketing, we’re spoiled for choice to choose which one to have some time off work learn from the industry’s best and brightest.

BrightonSEO

For the first time ever Screaming Frog had a stall this year, helping the community at our crawl clinic with Spider conundrums. We had a great time so expect to see us with a stall at more BrightonSEOs in the near future, now we’ve mastered SEO (Stall Engineering Optimisation)! Reminder to self – bring more swag.

We also like to get involved in other ways – our resident Strategist Charlie has also been running the Crawling and Indexation Indexing sessions at BrightonSEO (shameless plug – we’re running a similar SEO Spider training workshop in January!), and be sure to check out Oliver Brett’s talk next April! Not to be missed!

SearchLeeds

SearchLeeds was where Oliver, rumoured to be the mastermind behind Twitter’s favourite SEO meme account Lord of the SERPs, made his speaking debut this year and a fantastic conference held in a great city. How he managed to keep the topic of “Why SEOs are weirdos” down to just a few slides is testament to his speaking prowess.

HeroConf

Determined to show the SEO team they do more than just “set it and forget it”, the PPC team headed up to London for HeroConf. Despite rave reviews about the conference, the SEO team remain unconvinced by the PPC team.

Information Is Beautiful Workshop

Being the creative force behind almost everything we produce, and after seeing the SEO team heading out for ANOTHER conference, the design team headed up to London for an inspirational masterclass from the man behind some of the best content on the web – Information Is Beautiful. They brought their knowledge back to share with the SEO team, which resulted a creative boost that can only be compared to a strong coffee on a Monday morning.

OutREACH

Having launched a couple of years ago OutREACH conference has fast become one of the must-attend conferences at Screaming Frog. The team returned with fresh ideas for the ever more difficult task of outreaching, from quality speakers and we’re looking forward to seeing what next year has to offer!

SearchLove

Another conference held in very high esteem around the Screaming Frog office is Distilled’s SearchLove. A couple of our team headed up to London (we’ll hit the US iteration one of these days!) and were once again blown away by the expertise on offer.

Search Elite

During June we ventured into London for the popular Search Elite conference, which fully delivered on its promise of in depth presentations from expert speakers hailing from both sides of the Atlantic. Look out for the 2019 edition which has been rebranded to Digital Elite Day, combining the best from the worlds of search and CRO.

Nudgestock

Perhaps a little less SEO focussed, but no less interesting was Nudgestock. Full of behavioural ideas that can be applied to a whole range of settings, a highlight was the behavioural nudges that can be used to increase conversion rates.

BrightonSEO/Deepcrawl 5-a-side

And last but certainly not least was the 5 a side tournament hosted by BrightonSEO and Deepcrawl. The game on everyone’s lips was “El Crawlico” as we took on Deepcrawl to determine once and for all the superior crawler result which has no further implications on the quality of each respective tool.

Without wanted to dwell on the matter 9-2 much, Screaming Frog came away victorious! Looking forward to the battle next year!

UK Search Awards

One of the big events at the end of the year is of course, the UK Search Awards, celebrating the great work that’s been done by our industry. With only 35 awards up for grabs in a hugely competitive industry we had the honour to be shortlisted in 3 categories…

…And took home the prestigious award of “Best SEO Campaign” for our client Spotahome, a testament to the fantastic work put in by everyone at the company.

A fantastic evening to round off a brilliant year.

Giving Back

We’re always looking to support charities that mean a lot to the people that work at Screaming Frog and if they involve eating copious amount of cakes, muffins, and brownies then that’s just what we’ll have to do!

MacMillan Coffee Morning

Over £200 raised toward a great cause, but some tell-tale signs that not everybody was upfront about what the made themselves…!

Cakes, cakes and more cakes

Another £250 was raised from another cake sale earlier in the year, with Aaron insisting he hasn’t been part-timing as a baker whilst taking the title for the best bake.

Henley Toad Patrol

Despite what our our robots.txt might suggest we care about all animals in the Anura order! Which is why we helped to support a local team protecting toads from local traffic.

First Aid Training

To make sure we’re safe both in and out of the office, a number of the team received First Aid training. So, if you spot us at a conference you know you’re in safe hands… despite what the below might suggest!

Sports

Throughout the year many of the team have taken part in sports events, particularly of the endurance running kind. A better person would ignore the tempting comparison between a gruelling slog with the end never quite coming into sight as your endurance ever more depletes, and that of running a marathon. I am apparently not that person.

Run-Club Takes on Reading (Nearly)

The Screaming Frog team took to the pavements en-masse as a weekly Run Club was set up to train for Reading Half Marathon. Under the expert guidance of Coach Euan Brock the team was fit and raring to go. Unfortunately, the weather was no. With heavy snow the night before the race, the event was cancelled and Run Club never got to put training into action. Some were more savvy about this than others…

Expecting a late race cancellation tomorrow pic.twitter.com/v8u4aT6iuB

— Matt Hopson (@matthopson) March 17, 2018

Running on Home Turf

And how could we show our faces in our town of residence, Henley-on-Thames, unless a member of the team also took on the hilly half-marathon here! Our Office Manager Ewa took up the mantle and smashed the course with such running prowess that she has become the official new coach of Run-Club.

Paris Marathon

Undeterred by the Reading setback Coach Brock and I set our sights to warmer months and a longer distance, running the Paris Marathon in April beside a strong support team from a cohort of Screaming Frog employees past and present. The pictures below represent the reality of the event  versus how we describe it to other people.

Taking things a step further – Endure24

As if a marathon wasn’t enough, Matt Hopson, our SEM Senior SEM Manager took things one step further (pun certainly intended), running in a team 24 hour ultra-endurance race for the second year running.

In the Octagon

Most people would run for the hills if asked to step into the octagon for an MMA fight, but our Digital Designer Mike is not one of them. He stepped up for 3 months intensive MMA training culminating in a fight night to raise money for charity. He insists this wasn’t just a way to take out his frustrations about the SEO team asking yet again for “just a few more changes”.

Making Sweet Music

We don’t just play to Google’s tune. Among our search specialists, we also have a variety of talented musicians that this year took to the stage. Our Head of SEO Pat Langridge, guitarist for Reading-based Las Nova caught here performing Ricky Gervais’ Free Love Freeway, was so accomplished that they even caught the attention of the man himself on Twitter.

Not to be outdone, James McCrea, formerly touring worldwide on a cruise-ship before switching to the rockstyle lifestyle at Screaming Frog, hit up Oakford Social Club as the guitarist of Nobodies Birthday.

Austrian Techno

But we don’t just limit ourselves to the more traditional instruments. Faisal headed over to Austria to perform his own brand of electronic music which he describes as:

“One Hand Clap, a part generative performance piece that analysed player controller data and the spectromorphology of acousmatic soundtracks to generate it’s own soundscape.”

An impressive feat, but we’ll stick with techno…

Podcast

You don’t need an instrument to hit the airwaves. Sam, one of the dev superstars working on the SEO Spider, has been working on Spinnerproof – a podcast dedicated to Robot Wars coverage among other things. If his robot making skills half as good as his dev skills, we’re all in serious trouble!

Heading out as an Army

A group of frogs is known as an army, which feels rather appropriate for when the team step out into the wider world on a company social.

Henley Royal Regatta

The normally sleepy, quaint town of Henley-on-Thames in which we are based becomes a bustling hive of boats, visitors, and 7 ft rowers during the regatta season. Never wanting to be left out, our summer social now happily coincides with the regatta. This year was beautifully sunny and hot, so we headed down to the river armed en-masse with suncream and shades.  

Oktoberfest

We embrace all cultures at Screaming Frog, so felt it our duty to support the German tradition of Oktoberfest, which has become a yearly occurrence. Although Bavaria is admittedly a long way from our meeting point in nearby Reading, a great stein was had by all that attended.

Enjoying Henley

Whilst being outside of London has made us very familiar with the Henley train branch line and the Twyford to Paddington route, which stops at every conceivable location South of London, it also offer some lovely views and friendly faces, which we like to take advantage of.

This year we’ve hit the town to enjoy some wine and cheese, and quenched our thirst riverside in the Summer evenings for work socials.

Christmas Party

Would any workplace be complete without an office Christmas party? We maintained the yearly tradition of heading into town for some pool, darts and fun, before the office Secret Santa and heading to the local pub for a 3 course dinner – Merry Christmas!

  Working hard or hardly working?

If you read this far, you may be wondering how we fit in being a pioneering SEO crawler and award winning SEO team (told you the bragging would be in here).

Well we couldn’t have beers and bakeoffs without our bread and butter of SEO. We’re proud of the work we do with our clients, (including the piece that won a UK Search Award, have we mentioned that?).

Come and work for us!

We’ve welcomed a whole host of new team members to Screaming Frog this year and we’re still on the look out for more.

This post wasn’t a thinly veiled attempt at convincing you to join (promise), but if you like what you see, check out what we’ve got to offer!

Roll on 2019…!

The post Screaming Frog 2018 – A Year In Review appeared first on Screaming Frog.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Jonathan Freedland’s ‘committed denialists and conspiracists’, and Paul Mason’s victims of Putin’s ‘global strategy’ clutching at ‘false flag theories’, presumably include Lord West, former First Sea Lord and Chief of Defence Intelligence. In an interview with the BBC, West commented: President Assad is in the process of winning this civil war. And he was about to take over and occupy Douma, all that area. He’d had a long, long, hard slog, slowly capturing that whole area of the city. And then, just before he goes in and takes it all over, apparently he decides to have a chemical attack. It just doesn’t ring true. It seems extraordinary, because clearly he would know that there’s likely to be a response from the allies – what benefit is there for his military? Most of the rebel fighters, this disparate group of Islamists, had withdrawn; there were a few women and children left around. What benefit was there militarily in doing what he did? I find that extraordinary. Whereas we know that, in the past, some of the Islamic groups have used chemicals [see here], and of course there would be huge benefit in them labelling an attack as coming from Assad, because they would guess, quite rightly, that there’d be a response from the US, as there was last time, and possibly from the UK and France… We do know that the reports that came from there were from the White Helmets – who, let’s face it, are not neutrals [see here]; you know, they’re very much on the side of the disparate groups who are fighting Assad – and also the World Health Organisation doctors who are there. And again, those doctors are embedded in amongst the groups – doing fantastic work, I know – but they’re not neutral. And I am just a little bit concerned, because as we now move to the next phase of this war, if I were advising some of the Islamist groups – many of whom are worse than Daish – I would say: “Look, we’ve got to wait until there’s another attack by Assad’s forces – particularly if they have a helicopter overhead, or something like that, and they’re dropping barrel bombs – and we must set off some chlorine because we’ll get the next attack from the allies….” And it is the only way they’ve got, actually, of stopping the inevitable victory of Assad. Another senior military figure, Major General Jonathan Shaw, former commander of British forces in Iraq (his responsibilities have included chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear policy), was shut down by a Sky News journalist 30 seconds after he started saying the wrong thing: The debate that seems to be missing from this… was what possible motive might have triggered Syria to launch a chemical attack at this time in this place? You know, the Syrians are winning… Don’t take my word for it. Take the American military’s word. General Vergel [sic – Votel], the head of Centcom – he said to Congress the other day, “Assad has won this war, and we need to face that”. Then you’ve got last week the statement by Trump – or tweet by Trump – that America has finished with ISIL and we were going to pull out soon, very soon. And then suddenly you get this… At which point Shaw’s sound was cut and the interview terminated. Peter Hitchens asked: Can anyone tell me what was so urgent on Sky News, which made it necessary to cut this distinguished general off in mid-sentence? Sky News gave their version of events here, claiming they had to take an ad break. Also taking a more cautious view than Tisdall, Freedland, Rawnsley, Lucas, Mendoza, Monbiot, Mason and the Guardian editors (see Part 1), is James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, the US Secretary of Defence, who said: I believe there was a chemical attack and we are looking for the actual evidence. Only ‘looking’ for actual evidence? As each day goes by — as you know, it is a non-persistent gas — so it becomes more and more difficult to confirm it. The evidence clearly, then, had not yet been found and the claims had not yet been confirmed. Peter Ford, former British ambassador to Syria, voiced scepticism: The Americans have failed to produce any evidence beyond what they call newspaper reports and social media, whereas Western journalists who have been in Douma [see below] and produced testimony from witnesses – from medics with names so they can be checked – to the effect that the Syrian version is correct. Before Trump’s latest attack, Scott Ritter, former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, made the point that mattered: The bottom line, however, is that the United States is threatening to go to war in Syria over allegations of chemical weapons usage for which no factual evidence has been provided. This act is occurring even as the possibility remains that verifiable forensic investigations would, at a minimum, confirm the presence of chemical weapons… Even a BBC journalist managed some short-lived scepticism. Riam Dalati tweeted: Sick and tired of activists and rebels using corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption. Then they wonder why some serious journos are questioning part of the narrative. ‘#Douma #ChemicalAttack #EasternGhouta’ The tweet was quickly deleted. Craig Murray wrote: For the FCO, I lived and worked in several actual dictatorships. The open bias of their media presenters and the tone of their propaganda operations was – always – less hysterical than the current output of the BBC. The facade is not crumbling, it’s tumbling. Robert Fisk – Hypoxia, Not Gas Veteran Middle East journalist Robert Fisk visited Douma and reported his findings in the Independent. He spoke to a senior doctor who works in the clinic where victims of the alleged chemical attack had been brought for treatment. Dr Rahaibani told Fisk what had happened that night: I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning.’ Not gas poisoning? Why was this not immediately headline news in the ‘mainstream’ press and on BBC News? In fact, almost throughout the ‘MSM’, it was quietly buried. The glaring exception was an article in The Times with the pejorative headline: Critics leap on reporter Robert Fisk’s failure to find signs of gas attack The piece suggested that there were big question marks over Fisk’s record: Fisk is no stranger to controversy. A list of Fisk’s ‘controversies’ followed. There was no mention that, among many accolades, the Arabic-speaking Fisk has won Amnesty International press awards three times, the Foreign Reporter of the Year award seven times and the Journalist of the Year award twice. In an article published by openDemocracy, Philip Hammond, professor of media and communications at London South Bank University, observed that: In seeking to close down such dissident thought, Times journalists are acting, not as neutral defenders of truth, but as partisan advocates for a particular understanding of the war. A Guardian article by diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour and world affairs editor Julian Borger commented of Douma: A group of reporters, many favoured by Moscow, were taken to the site on Monday. They either reported that no weapon attack had occurred or that the victims had been misled by the White Helmets civilian defence force into mistaking a choking effect caused by dust clouds for a chemical attack.’ Not only was Fisk not mentioned by name, he was lumped in with reporters ‘favoured by Moscow’. Jonathan Cook’s observation said it all: They managed the difficult task of denigrating his account while ignoring the fact that he was ever there. In The Intercept, columnist Mehdi Hasan wrote an impassioned open letter addressed to ‘those of you on the anti-war far left who have a soft spot for the dictator in Damascus: Have you lost your minds? Or have you no shame?’ The piece began: Dear Bashar al-Assad Apologists, Sorry to interrupt: I know you’re very busy right now trying to convince yourselves, and the rest of us, that your hero couldn’t possibly have used chemical weapons to kill up to 70 people in rebel-held Douma on April 7. Maybe Robert Fisk’s mysterious doctor has it right — and maybe the hundreds of survivors and eyewitnesses to the attack are all “crisis actors.” So, Fisk’s evidence with its ‘mysterious doctor’ was clearly worthless, something shameless ‘apologists’ were using to try and convince themselves of an absurdity. Hasan named no other names, but readers could guess from the many smear pieces in The Times, Huffington Post, on the BBC, and spread by the likes of Oliver Kamm, George Monbiot and Alan Mendoza. Hasan portrayed Assad as a satanic figure while the US and its allies – countries that have sent 15,000 high-tech anti-tank missiles, as well as billions of dollars of other weapons and training to fighters in Syria – are mere ‘meddlers’. The jihadists are ‘rebels’ (a generally noble term), not fanatical invaders from Libya and Iraq. Hasan referenced biased sources including Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch, Martin Chulov of the Guardian, and the White Helmets. The Intercept’s co-editor, Glenn Greenwald, defended the piece: There is a meaningful debate to be had on Syria and, as I’ve said before, most media outlets (including us) have been quite one-sided about it. That said, Mehdi’s article, well-documented though it was, didn’t name anyone who guilty of loving Assad so I’m not sure who is offended We replied: Mehdi’s article, well-documented though it was, didn’t name anyone. That’s the problem. Hasan’s article arrives in the context of a cross-spectrum, name-and-shame smear campaign making similar points We linked to three high-profile examples from the BBC, The Times and Huffington Post. Political analyst Ian Sinclair declared Hasan’s article a ‘Necessary and important piece’. It certainly wasn’t ‘necessary’ to damn Assad yet again – the world’s corporate media have been packed with news and comment pieces doing exactly that for years. As for the need to expose left ‘apologists’ – as we have seen, corporate media are currently mounting a fierce campaign targeting leftist university academics, apparently with the intention of getting them fired. The question of importance is less clear-cut. The piece will, of course, have no effect whatsoever on Assad, whom Western ‘apologists’ on ‘the anti-war far left’ would be powerless to influence even if they came round to Hasan’s view. On the other hand, as a purported ‘leftist’, Hasan’s piece is important as ammunition for foreign policy warmongers, neocons and others. Thus, Jonathan Freedland tweeted: Strong piece from @mehdirhasan George Monbiot: To all those who have been trying to persuade me that the Assad government is simply maintaining order, please read this excellent article by @mehdirhasan #Syria’ Oliver Kamm of The Times: Is this atrocity denial really necessary?” Well said by Mehdi on the extraordinary, scandalous spectacle of people purporting to be anti-imperialists while denying the crimes of Assad. Hasan, of course, knew his article would receive this kind of favourable attention, and he has form in reaching out to this audience. In 2010, whilst senior political editor at the New Statesman, he wrote a letter offering his services to Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre: I have always admired the paper’s passion, rigour, boldness and, of course, news values. I believe the Mail has a vitally important role to play in the national debate, and I admire your relentless focus on the need for integrity and morality in public life, and your outspoken defence of faith, and Christian culture, in the face of attacks from militant atheists and secularists. I also believe… that I could be a fresh and passionate, not to mention polemical and contrarian, voice on the comment and feature pages of your award-winning newspaper. For the record, I am not a Labour tribalist and am often ultra-critical of the left – especially on social and moral issues, where my fellow leftists and liberals have lost touch with their own traditions and with the great British public… I could therefore write pieces for the Mail critical of Labour and the left, from “inside” Labour and the left (as the senior political editor at the New Statesman). Because, as we all know, being ‘ultra-critical’ of the left ‘from “inside” Labour and the left’ – for example, asking ‘the anti-war far left who have a soft spot for the dictator in Damascus: Have you lost your minds? Or have you no shame?’ – carries enormous weight. In his piece for The Intercept, Hasan commented: And, look, we can argue over whether or not to support… regime change in Damascus (I don’t). And yet, in 2013, he wrote: I want Assad gone and I believe him to be a brutal and corrupt dictator. Hasan’s angry mockery of doubters on Douma is ironic indeed, given his own record on Libya. At a crucial time in March 2011, with NATO jets bombing Gaddafi’s troops, Hasan commented: The innocent people of Benghazi deserve protection from Gaddafi’s murderous wrath. The reality, as we saw in Part 1, is that the claim was ‘not supported by the available evidence’. Fisk’s account, irrationally scorned by Hasan, was backed by on-the-ground testimony from reporter Pearson Sharp from One America News Network: Not one of the people that I spoke to in that neighbourhood said that they had seen anything, or heard anything, about a chemical attack on that day… they didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary. As far as we could tell, there was nothing on the flagship BBC News at Six and Ten about any of this testimony from doctors and residents claiming that there was no evidence of a chemical attack in Douma on April 7. It is shocking that the BBC ignored evidence supplied from Syria by Fisk – one of Britain’s finest journalists – when it has cited hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times evidence supplied by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is run by a clothes shop owner in Coventry who supports regime change in Syria. On BBC News at Ten on April 15, presenter Mishal Husain, Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen and political editor Laura Kuenssberg discussed the missile strikes on Syria and the political fallout here at home. There was no mention that the strikes had taken place just as OPCW inspectors had arrived in Damascus. Nor was there any discussion of expert opinion from international lawyers contradicting the government’s assertion that the attacks were legal. A group of international law experts warned: We are practitioners and professors of international law. Under international law, military strikes by the United States of America and its allies against the Syrian Arab Republic, unless conducted in self-defense or with United Nations Security Council approval, are illegal and constitute acts of aggression. Meanwhile, the BBC joined the McCarthyite witch-hunt against anyone challenging the official narrative. In a piece titled, ‘Syria war: The online activists pushing conspiracy theories’, an anonymous BBC journalist commented: Despite the uncertainty about what happened in Douma, a cluster of influential social media activists is certain that it knows what occurred. Of course, the irony is that an incomparably bigger and better funded ‘cluster of influential’ state-corporate media has been vociferously claiming certainty about what is happening in Syria; not least 100% conviction of Assad’s guilt for a string of chemical weapon attacks. We have no idea who was responsible for the event in Douma – we don’t know even if there was a chemical weapons attack. Our point is not that credible, sceptical voices are right, but that they should be heard. On April 12, novelist Malcolm Pryce sent us this poignant tweet: I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War a friend I had known all my life suddenly said to me, “We must do something about this monster in Iraq.” I said, “When did you first think that?” He answered honestly, “A month ago”.’ This is the power of the corporate media to shape the public mind it is supposed to serve. But to achieve this effect, it must present a black and white view of the world – ‘we’ are ‘good’, ‘they’ are ‘bad’; ‘we’ are ‘certain’, ‘they’ are morally bewildered ‘apologists’. When reality threatens to get in the way, when there is no choice, an increasingly extreme ‘mainstream’ will resort to deception in plain sight. • Read Part One here http://clubof.info/

[dwestfieldblog]

2018 - NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

(Solve et coagula)

Untying the Not and Never Was...back from Britain...Hello pagan heathens, welcome to the 14thyear of the blog and variations on the theme of transcendental dystopia in the key of F sharp. Feeling positivelypriapic today...with a private new list of  ancient sins that would make even a priest blush...in joyous celebration of Bacchus, Aphrodite and Apollo... I have my own morals, but morals they are and are followed as such. I don't remember what I am taught, I remember what I learn.

Within two minutes of walking past airport customs into the English speaking world, see a display of Newsweek magazines with the front cover blarting 'Putin is preparing for World War 3 -is Trump?' So good to be back so fast into the feculant nightmare. Great to hear the baldhead is running for yet another presidential term and barring his most serious rival from taking part in the lip-service of democratic process. And threatening him with imprisonment for daring to suggest the polls be boycotted. Wonder who will win? Here's hoping today's pig is tomorrow's bacon.

I watched no TV news at all but of course read the Daily Horrors with my breakfast every morning for three weeks...The Golden Reptile in the mickey mouse white house...he doesn't believe in exercise because it is unhealthy for the body and has a Very busy working day from 11am to 5pm...with 'executive time' between the hours.... a separate bedroom with 3 TV screens and cheeseburgers to lull him to sleep until he awakes to tweet his dawn chorus of mindless excremental bilge. Direct quotes from his twitter feed –'My two greatest assets have been mental stability andbeing, like, really smart'... 'a very stable genius...' America....truly serving as a genuine example to the world. How does it feel to be pitied by those you despise and despised by those you pity?

Trump has a 'much bigger and powerful' nuclear button on his desk than Cheese Boy in North Korea... 'and my Button works!'. (How would he know? Hard to test.) Penis measuring across continents. Mentally unstable is a very generous description of these child presidents....And speaking of dumber than paint leaders with bad hair (nice segway eh?) I heard a wonderful description of the lying wannabe UK prime minister Boris Johnson... 'like an arsonist pretending to be a fireman', returning to the Brexit crime scene to save the day...

Another foul/fowl pretender to the throne of PM in the UK, Mr Gove, coming out in sudden favour of chlorinated chicken from the USA and GM crops via the ever popular Monsanto corporation. Follow the lobbyists, follow the money trail. Ignore (or defenestrate) those who speak for corporate interests until you have checked whether their words are actually an opinion based on long running verifiable tests of good health or sound bites paid for by a wedge of serious wonga/moolah/cash into their bank accounts... and/or a future job when they leave politics. Shameless filth. Eg. David Cameron now accepting a role with the Chinese government's one and a half billion pound infrastructure programme.

China said recently that the 1989 British ambassador's claim that 10,000 students were murdered in Beijing is a little extreme. Well it was. Running tanks over unarmed students cannot said to be anything else. 200 has been given as a more realistic death toll. It took them 28 years to come up with this number.

'Oh Lord make my enemies ridiculous'. (Voltaire) Thank you lord...thank you lord.Hallelujah, to coin a phrase...

Pope Francis used his Christmas message to advise his masses to drop 'all sorts of useless baggage'...'the banality of consumerism, the blareof commercials, the stream of empty words and the overpowering waves of empty chatter and loud shouting'. This is the sort of stuff which should indeed be spoken by spiritual leaders but shame he didn't mention talking snakes, pregnant virgins, burning bushes, self inflicted guilt over original sin or the endlessly Unchristian behaviour by his flock. (And there is a special circle in Hell for priests of any faith who rape children.) 'Useless baggage' almost covers it all. As Francis said; '...rediscover what really matters'... Or discover what reality matter is made of..

.'A cross on every hill, a  star, a minaret, so many graves to fill, Oh love, aren't you tired yet?'Cohen, The Faith. Why not not eat pigs together?

The same evil government shit as ever after a massive storm destroying homes... Hurricane Irma wiped out almost every home on Barbuda (Caribbean) and as in New Orleans and dozens of similar cases after a force of nature, the greedpigs move in fast. Deals between the politicians and land developers overpower the rights of those who lived there, such is the freedom of a life without morality. Rebuild and replace communally owned land with dwellings for the wealthy and push aside all former residents. If ever a group of men deserved the force of nature/an act of the Goddess against them and their property, it is these swinefeed.

The West and the East, the East and West, condemning each others' subversions... What came first, the pot or the kettle?

Demonstrations in Iran by the lower classes of all generations across more than 100 cities and towns against the endless drift of power upwards to Khameni and the mullahs...and money outwards to various non charitable organisations (fill in the blanks with live ammunition, missiles, rocket launchers, suicide bombers etc.) the lack of hospitals and social support, the lack of aid after natural disasters, corruption and price rises. 40 percent of young people are unemployed and starting to wonder where the billions are going...or else knowing where. Most, if not all of the above bullet points (ha) are strong factors in the West too...but in America the tension implodes and is directed against ethnicitiesrather than those actually responsible.. and in Britain/ Europe... hmm...Civil unrest is contained in blaming foreigners, thus encouraging Nazi opportunist populists to manipulate the easily persuaded angry mass into voting for them. And the suckers fall for it everybloody time.

Issues of utterly irrelevant social media opinion, autistic entertainment saturating the global human mind to applaud the lowest common denominator, rocking back and forth with glee at the latest exploits of the hollow kardashians and their foul ego stroking ilk, famous only for being famous...a mass debate on the meaningless, billions of people being trained to focus their tiny, blurred attention deficit spans on a multitude of soul numbing emptiness. All looking in the absolute wrong directions while meanwhile....

The strong and immoral arise and laugh their arses off, stirring, provoking, initiating... and they prepare...America and Europe are weaker and weaker. A few computer viruses here and there, shared passwords, blackmail via disinformation,  man made disasters, plenty of random shocks, a constant underlying panic, threats and needling rhetoric result in.....on one side, an aggressive focused mobilisation of forces with intent and on the other, half a billion people with the spiritual bravery and intelligence of a pillow. At some Rubicon of a breakpoint, paranoia becomes common sense. The clock is now at two minutes to midnight. Be aware.

BE AWARE.

'The universe is a total construction of waves and vibrations whose inner content is 'Meaning', and Man is a micro system of the same vibratory nature, floating at some depth in the universal and meaningful wave system. The universal wave system is qualitative or value structured according to its vibration rate spectrum (faster frequencies have more informational capacity).David Foster

'Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music, music is the best'.... speaking of which...Sufferers of schizophrenia with audio and visual hallucinations could be aided by learning an instrument or by listening to music, says new research... Musical aptitude has a strong effect on 'the white matter integrity of the corpus callosum', which protects against the disorder. Quite tempting to comment on the plethora of musicians of all creeds who are obviously unbalanced, unstable and dangerous to themselves and others. Maybe too much music eh? Arf. Never. Anyway, Love IS music and music IS love Sorry Frank.

'All lovers young, all lovers must, consign to thee and come to dust'. Shakespeare -Cymbeline.

'Micro dosing' is one of the 'new' trend things...(as opposed to non functioning overdose situations) brought to you all the way from Silicon valley. That's right... just one tenth of 150 micrograms of LSD will aid you in your chosen field (no pun intended, almost) to break through, focus, go within, go OUT and open neural pathways blocked by the mundane and logical. I have not tripped on acid since 1985 (and that last trip was just over 21 hours long before I took sleeping pills to make the galaxies stop flowing through my brain.) Have been very tempted over the years but truly didn't want or need such an eternity of multidimensional senses while still in flesh...(once the doorway is opened, it stays opened.) This micro dosing is highly interesting however and I will do this this as soon as the first possibility appears. Still think I prefer October mushrooms....Where the Heart Is, in a Halo of Stars.

Picked up a leaflet yesterday...Non stop erotic massages and hotel escorts in Prague... 'Your imagination has no limits'...ermmm...ahhh..hmmm...probably not, but there are laws and only so much available cash this evening..Or, as Alien Sex Fiend sang, 'Everybody's got what everybody wants and everybody wants what everybody's got.' Well, almost.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.' So sayeth (saideth?) George Orwell. Doesn't seem to apply to British and American universities where the mind fecking 'Safe Space' ethic is rigidly enforced by the twenty something brain police. Anything which could be offensive or disagreed with, is banned.....That comedian who once made a joke ridiculing transgenders... REMOVE him from the list of those who should speak... that woman who said the holy land is bollocks because the old testament was just some non verifiable book which told the Hebrews what they wanted to hear? No platform for her, no stage for them unless it has a gallows pole upon it. (Yeah, self fulfilling propaganda works like a dream every time. Bullshit is half of the charm.) You university morons. You MORONS, working for the enemy, for ones who seek to bring YOU down. Who seek to cage and contain thee. To limit the horizons of creative expression and put a sterile tank around truth. Poor little fragile youth, too delicate to be offended, WHY AREN'T YOU ANGRY? The ancient schools of Sumeria and Greece would be disgusted at your level of human intelligence. 

You cannot make up your own mind until you have exposed yourself to all shades of opinion and distilled all. Read what you disagree with with, it is a fascinating comedy...and very often reveals that what you thought you know, you do not Feel.

The man of the crowd is a weakling; people who need people are the stupidest people in the world. Evolution requires individuals, a union of outsiders working in random harmony...or...'Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see'. Schopenhauer. I know some of this may seem like nonsense. But it's a discipline and I do it with purpose.

Meanwhile, remaining emotional attachments to the socially acceptable drugs...I Want a cigarette or a Strong Drink, or at least, at long last, a painkiller that actually works. Arnica Montana and DL-Phenylalanine don't quite cut the mustard. Thirty minute pause while I go for a walk in the cold dark park, come back home and cut my own hair for the second time in my life. (Not bad at all, just as good as all my last cuts by semi professionals...) One side is half an inch longer but WT actual F? Who cares? Fate is gonna find you with a glass of champagne? Make it a triple espresso and half a bottle of good whisky and then we can talk. And a cigarette...my lack of smoking is making me want to claw and bite this wood table into splinters. There...a normal paragraph of usual life...just in time for the end of a page.

Favourite depressing headline from the new year...'Couple who left son to drown in lake were poor parents, judge concludes.' The wisdom of Solomon. My favourite headline from last month has to be ;A fried egg has no place in the nativity, say 77 percent of parents”\ My first thought was, uff, so 33 percent think it is ok?? My second thought was, well, why not eh? Makes as much sense as anything else in that twisted story....I read a useful column in a newspaper last month, called 'Failsafe ways to spot a Liar'. Glad to see my instincts were right according to researchers and clinical psychologists. Some humans are bereft of as much emotional intelligence and morality as AI machines. Blame it on childhood trauma,always an easy way out. How was the first year of your life? Use trance hypnotism recall, recall and release.

'The key task of a muse is to allow the artist to see his own feminine aspect that is otherwise invisible to him and to be a screen that fits the artist's projections. What completes the artist isn't the intrinsic qualities of the romantic interest but the artist's own feminine archetype. So, to the extent that the artist's projections dominate or replace the muse's own qualities, the muse's soul is dissipated.' Allan Showalter, psychiatrist.

Time to go back to being oblivious to the 'news' again, in the two minutes which are left, there is space to become plenty of nothing and locate your Will. See you in a few weeks after my probable final birthday, which falls upon an Easter Monday this year. Too late for a resurrection (well, there are pills for that anyway) but in time for the beauty of rising Spring with the binary healing of cabala chakras...every man and woman is a star...Stay well....