#innumerable stars 2017 letter

[shewhodoesnotexist]

Innumerable Stars 2017 letter

Hello, dear Innumerable Stars Author!

I am kim_onka at AO3 (I don’t keep very consistent with usernames, but don’t let it confuse you), and I’m already looking forward to what you  up for me! I’m sure I’ll enjoy it, and in the meantime, here is a letter to help you. (For fandom-specific: I don’t have prompts for everything, but even if don’t mention it here, it doesn’t mean I don’t want it!)

What I like in general:

Exploration of a character’s situation, motivations, relationships with other characters

Internal conflicts, conflicted loyalties, regrets directed towards another person

The power of love and friendship, but also how sometimes it’s not enough

Family drama, complicated relationships within family

But also how even so, it’s important and leaves a lasting mark

Formality/courtesy/fealty/power plays in personal relations, especially contrasted with strong feelings

Canon filler, elaboration of minor incidents

Beautiful romance

AUs are fine, especially if it’s canon divergence/what-if scenario; for full AUs, avoid High School AUs and most types of modern AUs unless you have a truly great idea

Kidfics are appreciated

Eucatastrophe

The general “high note” of the Tolkien works

Hope in an apparently hopeless situation

Really good, witty comedy (think “A Practical Guide for the Courtship of Elves, by Beren son of Barahir” by Nerdy Nell or “Siege Mentality” by Insomniac Luddite; in any case, you should enjoy them); I hold this type of writing to be among the most impressive and the most difficult, so this is only if you feel up to it

Art-specific: details! Elaborate hair and clothes, jewellery, symbolism, flowers, emotions, weaponry… pointed elf ears ;) I admit I don’t have much of a visual imagination, so I’m not fully sure what I want from art, but for similar reasons I tend to be amazed at art, so I’m sure I’ll like it.

What I dislike:

Sexual violence

Slash

Overly sexualised content in general

Character bashing/demonisation

Sacrilegious/blasphemous content

Overly politicised content

The Silmarillion

Celebrimbor: all of his conflicting loyalties, his relationships with his grandfather (how much does he remember? To what extent is he shaped by Fëanor’s legacy?), his grandmother, his parents, his uncles – do they keep in touch, what do they think of his actions regarding Curufin? Also, in my headcanon he was friends with Finduilas

Maglor&Elrond&Elros(&Maedhros): how much did it cost them to learn to love each other? How did it happen? How much conflict did it create in each of them? How did it affect the boys’ later years? Truly, anything about that

The wives of the Fëanorians: who were they? How did they meet? How did they feel about marrying into the House of Fëanor? What made them decide to stay/leave?

Annael&Tuor: there’s so little about them! What was their life together like?

The Gondolin royal family: Turgon – what kind of father was he, what kind of grandfather? His relationship with Idril after Elenwë’s death, him being a loving grandpa to little Eärendil, all against the overall dilemmas facing Gondolin

Eärendil’s relationship with his parents, especially as he grew up and they sailed away, the way he searches for them, at the expense of his own family

Maeglin/Idril: either canonically one-sided or reciprocated (for reciprocated: preferably Idril is at once drawn to Maeglin and repulsed by him, and conflicted because of that)

Fëanturi&Nienna: Irmo’s powers related to dreams, all of theirs powers related to the soul

The Sea: who/what lives there? Let your imagination go wild!

The elusive nature of Elven magic

Elven marriage: the practical consequences of a marriage bond, how does it feel, do you feel your spouse die, etc., one thing: please refrain from portraying the LACE in a decisively negative light, or negating it

Elf ghosts: why do they stay? The ones that try to take over the bodies of the living, the ones that turn to evil despite their intentions… you can make a canon character remain as a ghost or make up stories to exemplify how it happens, as you like

The Lord of the Rings

Imrazôr/Mithrellas & their kids: how did they get together and why did she leave? I am fascinated by this story and would love to see your take

Elrond/Celebrían & their kids: the story of their courtship, their parting and reunion, daily life at Imladris, relationships between them

Rohan: Éomer and Éowyn growing up; as kids with their parents, with Théodred; how it all develops during the war and afterwards; how does Éowyn like Lothiriel?

(Here I need to note one thing: I love Éowyn’s story, and to me the main and most beautiful part of it is her learning to appreciate life again after having sought death. I’ve seen people treat this character development as negative or sexist; please avoid this interpretation.)

Gondor: the relationship between Denethor and Finduilas, their kids growing up

Faramir/Éowyn: how do they help each other?

Smith of Wootton Major

It’s such a beautiful story

I would love to see an elaboration on the Land of Faery and its connection to our world, the attitudes of the Queen and the King

Farmer Giles of Ham

Preferably something funny, as the story itself – but really, anything (that doesn’t violate my DNWs, of course)

Roverandom

Here I’m mostly interesting in worldbuilding – the Moon, the dreams, the spiders, the Sea realm

But I’d also love to read about Artaxerxes and his wife

The Hobbit

The Fairy Wife of the Took ancestor, there may be an interesting story there

Elves, as they’re shown in The Hobbit, and how it connects with the image of Elves in other books

Elrond and his view of the quest, his attitude to other characters, especially Bilbo

[blondrichclosetwitch]

(The faculty of the new world, arranged by astrological sign, March 2017)

One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter

One day I'm gonna get the faculty together

“God?”

Just “God?”

Do you want me to do olive oil with Psalm 23? OK.

(Says psalm 23)

Do you want me to say anything over it? What? The poem in the letter?

(She goes and gets the letter)

“Little months little smokes

and oblivion in a wool dress

A door opens tenderly near a wall where the wind is born

Near the Jolly Garden

where Saints and angels are afraid of the seasons

the alleys have no names

they are the hours or the years

I stroll leisurely dressed in a cement overcoat and a hat of black straw

I don’t remember if it’s nice out

I walk smoking

and I smoke walking

easily every once in a while I tell myself

it’s time to stop

and I continue walking

I tell myself I have to get some air

I have to look at the clouds and breathe in a lung full

I have to see the flies fly

and take a little exercise

I shouldn’t smoke so much

I tell myself also

calculate

I tell myself again I have a headache

my life is a drop of water on my island and I’m no longer 20

continue

the songs are songs and the days days

I no longer have one shred of respect for myself

but I see hoodlums who smoke the same cigarettes as me and who are just as stupid as me

I’m pretty content without really knowing why

it doesn’t suffice to speak of the sun

the stars

the sea and rivers

blood eyes hands

it is necessary quite often to speak of other things

we know that there are very beautiful countries with very handsome men

with no less charming women

but all that isn’t really sufficient

the dizzying void which rings and bays

Makes the heart bow

we look and see again many other things which are always the same

innumerable

identical

And over there simply someone goes by, simple as hello

and everything starts all over again

I read in the stars the goodwill of my friends

in a river I love

one hand

I listen to the flowers sing

there are the goodbyes of birds

a cry falls like a fruit

my god my God

I will be accordingly always the same…

My head in my hands, and my hands in my head. “

(To Stella’s picture) I think that was my best one yet…wasn’t it? Yes.

(End tape. )

(From the tarot reader’s curse lifting 5/2/17)

[onlycelebsinfo]

Samantha Bricio Net Worth, Biography, Age, Weight, Height

Samantha Bricio is feisty, bold, and powerful. More than that, cut-straight to her appropriate identity, Samantha Bricio is a professional volleyball player for the Mexico national team.

Not simply an outside hitter, but she acts as an idol to many young women as she herself stood the youngest player to wear the Mexican national team uniform.

And why not see her as an idol? Samantha won gold at the Mexican National Games as a thirteen or fourteen-year-old kid. And truly, no pun intended here.

After traversing the world with different units and seniors, she joined the University of Southern California and garnered distinctions including Volleyball Magazine’s NCAA Freshman of the Year.

Samantha has represented Mexico in lot of events and has garnered innumerable awards, and established many records. She is tough when you look at her from the eyes of a competitor. Other than that, she is a healthy, pure, and pleasant soul.

Samantha racks up points like a pro in whatever league she joins. It’s as though she needs to be present and demonstrate her worth. She is a fan favorite, and fans congregate around her in order to obtain her autograph. And this appears to be significantly more than the net worth itself.

We will need to compute her net worth and pay in numerics as a prerequisite, so let us do the honors.

Samantha was born on November 22, 1994, to his dad Guillermo Bricio and Mother Estella in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.She also has brothers, 10 years older than him, named Nijinsky and another named Irving.

Samantha is Mexican by nationality and has multiracial ethnicity. She always stood a fighter from within and out; she could play from the day she walked.

Not only that, she belongs to a family that retains a true, authentic sense of athleticism.

Well, it all started formally when she reached 13 and joined the national team. But certainly, there a period in her life when Samantha was bored with volleyball and wanted to play something different.

She mentioned this to her parents and elected to play badminton for a week. Eventually, she felt badminton was too sluggish and got bored.

Samantha also realized that presently there exists no other sport that she would play.

Talking about her close-knits, Samantha’s father is a retired banker who almost participated in China with the Mexican national basketball club.

Her mother is a retired physical education teacher who still competes with her age league.

Moreover, her brother Irving aged 35, works as a budget analyst with PEMEX petroleum and has played for the national basketball team and had a pro in Switzerland. He also took the 2007 Pan-American Cup and Mexican sports award home.

Samantha’s second oldest brother Nijinksy Bricio aged 31, is also a banker like their father. It’s a separate thing because even he also played volleyball and basketball throughout his college days. And no wonder he still plays rugby in Guadalajara.

Samantha’s grandfather, uncle, nephews, and all other cousins are all sports and extreme athletes.

To bring on, there is just one sport that the family has resided apart, Soccer. They loathe soccer to a level where they even dislike handling soccer balls.

As per sources, Samantha even tried playing club beach volleyball in Mexico for a year, but she could not continue more than a year. She was just too afraid of sand and mud and constantly wanted to keep her steady clean.

She constantly had to hold a towel in her hands to clean up and sit on a towel or chair. Samantha had a shower every single time; she left the game on the beach.

She went on attending the University of Southern California. Already remarked but let’s pardon this again.

She won the gold medal in the Mexican National Games in the 13–14-year-old group and later got silver in the NORCECA U-18 Championship. Following that, she got certified for the 2009 U-18 World Championships.

Samantha ranked sixth in the 2008 NORCECA U-20 Championship with her national junior team and garnered the Rising Star award for her exceptional playstyle.

She also played in the 2009 FIVB Girls Youth World Championship and was greatly acclaimed for her performance. She, together with her brother, Irving, got a honor from the Guadalajara city council.

Samantha has also won the best scorer and Best Server honors at the 2010 Central American and Caribbean Games. In same fashion, she has made innumerable achievements in her name.

Samantha played in the Junior Pan-American Cup, Girls’ Youth Pan-American Cup, where she won a silver medal. She represents Mexico in the 2011 Girls Youth World Championship.

She also led her team to win the Private High Schools National Championship and was picked for the All-Star Team.

Samantha chose USC after receiving nearly 12 offers. She led her team, the Trojans, to a Texas A&M Invitational victory in her first year and was named Most Valuable Player. Additionally, she was named the NCAA Freshman of the Year by Volleyball Magazine.

Samantha was a member of the Pac-12 All-Conference Team, Pac-12 All-Freshman Team, and Pacific Region All-Pacific Region Team. Additionally, she was named the team’s Best Scorer and Best Server.

Not to mention, Samantha was named #60 on Smartasses Magazine’s list of the Top 100 Sexiest Women. She also won the 2016 Honda Sports Award for best collegiate female volleyball player in the country.

Samantha rapidly grasped the pro game after graduating from USC, joining the Italian league champion club for two years. She was named the team’s Most Valuable Player after scoring 24 points.

Samantha Bricio’s life took a dramatic change following that when she went down with pain in her ankle. The story begins in 2017, when she had an ankle injury prior to the commencement of the Italian Cup in February.

Samantha was in discomfort following the second set of the Conegliano – Firenze encounter, which ended 18:14. Fortunately, the medical personnel determined that she did not have any bone fractures.

Samantha played for Fenerbahçe in Turkey in 2018-19 and was named the European Champions League’s top server. She was instrumental in the team’s bronze medal victory.

She returned to Italy last season to play for Savino Del Bene Scandicci. Additionally, she played for the Russian League following that venture.

When it comes to her personal life, many would be willing to learn a great deal about her. Even words are insufficient to justify who she is. Samantha stands at 6 feet 2 inches tall and is the epitome of a brave and beautiful soldier. She is unadulterated and unique.

It makes no sense to suggest Samantha is single. Alternatively, is she? Let’s find out who this wonderful guy must be to have such a young and courageous girl in his life.

After a quick scan through her Instagram pictures, we discovered that the lovely Samantha is not officially engaged but is casually engaged to her long-term lover.

The duration of their partnership is not revealed, but they appear to have a pretty lighthearted relationship.

Additionally, here is a tweet sent by Samantha in which she expresses her feelings about her boyfriend and also pins her boyfriend, Joey Sanchez.

The pair appears to be traveling together, as they have dinner dates and outing arrangements. Samantha also wishes her partner a happy 30th birthday in one of her Instagram postings.

Additionally, Samantha is a true gem when athletics, athleticism, and her love life are separated. Bricio holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Southern California’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. She spoke only a little amount of English.

All thanks to her few pals who spoke only English; as a result, she communicated in English as well. Of course, her binge-watching of American television piqued her interest in English.

Let us begin by discussing her preferred course, Psychology 363: Criminal Behavior. She also recalls the lecturer vividly; Alex Yufik was an excellent instructor who brought in prosecutors to the lesson.

They would discuss actual cases, which captivated her greatly. Blessed with excitement and pleasure.

She is simply murdering in one of her images with her amazing athletic body and long hair in a bikini.

Samantha Bricio Biography :

Full Name  :  Samantha Estephania Guadalupe Bricio Ramos

Birth Date  :  November 22, 1994

Birth Place  :  Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

Nick Name  :  Samy

Religion  :  Roman Catholic

Nationality  :  Mexican

Ethnicity  :  Multiracial

Education  :  University of Southern California

Horoscope  :  Sagittarius

Father’s Name  :  Guillermo Bricio

Mother’s Name  :  Mother Estella

Siblings  :  Nijinsky, Irving

Age  :  26 years old

Height  :  6 feet 2 inches (1.88m)

Weight  :  58 kg (128 lb)

Hair Color  :  Black

Eye Color  :  Dark Brown

Hobbies  :  Listening to music, gym work-out, traveling, photoshoot, and swimming

Build  :  Athlete

Marital Status  :  Single

Boyfriend  :  Joey Sanchez

Position  :  Outside Hitter

Profession  :  Volleyball Player

Net Worth  :  more than $5 million

Salary  :  $2,50000 as of June 2019

Currently Plays  :  for WVC Dynamo Kazan

Number  :  12

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Banned Horror Comics Rise from the Dead

Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s (all images courtesy of Fantagraphics Books)

The charges that Fredric Wertham made in 1954’s Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth — that a relationship existed between comics reading and “violent forms of juvenile delinquency” — didn’t materialize out of thin air. The oft-vilified German-born American psychiatrist gets a lot of credit for a censorship campaign that had legs long before his articles and book were pinned to it. Critics and clergymen were blasting all kinds of comics as “objectionable” for years, singling out depictions of gun violence, gore, and a broad range of fare they deemed offensive. Church bulletins and hyperbolic magazine features laid the groundwork for a national panic over comics, but the war on the medium gained steam in postwar America, just as some comics became increasingly violent and grim.

“The debate over comic books hopped from the back of the newspaper to the front, section by section — from the book reviews and religious columns to the ‘women’s’ department to the hard-news pages,” writes David Hadju in The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. Ordinances criminalized newsstand comics sales in the late 1940s in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and more. “Comic Books Banned in Detroit as ‘Corrupting'” blared a headline in The Washington Post in 1948, when somewhere between 80 and 100 million comics were being sold monthly.

Wertham scored a seat before the Senate Subcommittee Hearings into Juvenile Delinquency in April 1954. When governmental regulation loomed, the self-regulatory Comics Code Authority emerged that fall. A problematic and sweeping set of vanilla rules instituted to police comics’ subject matter and art, the Code sank publishers and killed off the kind of crime and horror books for which readers crowded newsstands. Hadju reports that by the early “pre-Code” 1950s, horror comics in particular had grown “ever more gruesome and lurid.” And they were everywhere.

“By the end of 1952,” he writes, “nearly one-third of all the comics on the newsstands were devoted to the macabre.”

From Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s

Swamp creatures and animated but still-rotting corpses swarm the 40 stories collected in the new edition of Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s, a survey of grisly pre-Code comics that hasn’t been in circulation since 2011. While reprints of the prestigious and oft-imitated EC Comics titles over the years have cemented a sterling reputation for series like Tales from the Crypt, scholars Greg Sadowski and John Benson mine less-well-known ten-cent anthologies like Black Magic, Weird Adventures, and more, heralding a time when cheap four-color printing processes meant that an easily reproducible palette would be manufactured from hand-separated colors. These comics feel like dessert, and they should. Benson, an EC aficionado with his own fanzine to prove it, suggests we make-believe we’re adolescents of the era, “reading these stories slowly to savor every chilling moment.”

Yarns excerpted from Beware Terror Tales and others will read like nonsense to most folk. Their smudgy aesthetic will confound today’s devotees of Marvel’s digitally polished relaunches, too, while racist caricatures like the brown-skinned people and Haitian “voodoo” in 1952’s “Drum of Doom” haven’t aged well, either. But for every predictable zombie plot, there is a hallucinatory murder mystery like “Colorama,” penciled by artist Bob Powell in 1953.

Authored by Harvey Comics editor and admitted EC fan Sid Jacobson (who reportedly directed Chamber of Chills artist Howard Nostrand to just “copy” the work of EC’s illustrators), “Colorama” has Powell playing generously with perspective and color. The direction is clever for a disorienting first-person narrative about a colorblind killer, in which the cosmic swirls representing his protagonist’s blurred vision bump up against Powell’s realist urban backdrops and assured landscape drawing. Elsewhere, MAD cartoonist Basil Wolverton, whose absurdist productions had a clear impact on underground comix artists, crafts nasty bald-headed gargoyles for Weird Tales of the Future, their leathery olive-green skin flecked with innumerable short dashes that lend a convincing illusion of ripples of movement.

From Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s

Ludicrous storylines aside, Four Color Fear‘s selection and archival research add critical context to a fascinating age for comics in North America. Benson’s insights reveal that the book’s frequent nondescript Iger Studio credit (an outfit founded by Will Eisner and Samuel “Jerry” Iger) likely refers to the sole work of an editorial powerhouse named Ruth Roche, who cranked out horror scripts and lots more for the publisher. Roche’s framework subsequently went to pencilers and inkers like New Jersey–born artist Jay Disbrow.

In an interview with publisher Craig Yoe that prefaces Jay Disbrow’s Monster Invasion, Disbrow connects his comics career to a consumption of Sunday supplements as a kid and remembers tiring of commuting from Asbury Park into Manhattan for inking and penciling gigs at Iger in his 20s. After a year, Disbrow traded up for freelance assignments as a writer, artist, inker, and letterer of horror and romance for Star Publications editor Leonard “L.B.” Cole. Jay Disbrow’s Monster Invasion culls mostly from this pre-Code horror work, specifically the creature-centric stories he did for supernatural- and suspense-themed anthologies Ghostly Weird Stories, Blue Bolt Weird Tales of Terror, and more.

“Cole wanted ghost stories,” explains Disbrow of his Star comics tenure. “I said to him, ‘That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. What we oughta be doing is monster stories!'”

Jay Disbrow’s Monster Invasion images( © 2017 Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc.)

There’s no supplementary material aside from the interview here, and unforgivable book design decisions give way to tacky fonts and fake blood splotches in the margins. But Jay Disbrow’s Monster Invasion adds weight to the legacy of an artist best known for “jungle comics,” science fiction such as The Flames of Gyro, and the gorgeous, full-color “syndicate-type” webcomic called Aroc of Zenith that he started in his 70s.

Like a lot of Golden Age creators, Disbrow could’ve used a watchful editor. Loads of copy swallows up word balloons and captions, and lines and lines of the artist’s hand-lettered text are given little room for legibility. His figure drawing needed practice, too. The often wooden movements and overlong, flat-looking limbs rendered his humans even less likely to succeed in battle with the monsters he loved to draw. But the inventive layouts, sinister terror, and wealth of beasts here are things of beauty.

Jay Disbrow’s Monster Invasion images (© 2017 Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc.)

Panels dart inward at strange angles in “A Stony Death,” allowing for worming gutters and the provocative inclusion of an odd center panel. “The Ghoul of the North,” like every creature here, is enormous amid puny mortals. Giant fanged ogres from “the bowels of the earth” terrorize a novelist in “The Insider,” while a red-eyed specter towers over his prey in “The Unknown Presence.” Cinematic shadows blanket caverns and crime scenes, and action bursts out from under audacious type in title-page headers as graphic design and vintage movie posters figure into these pages as frequently as Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon strips do. Disbrow’s action sequences are explosive, with hulking abominations reaching out from the back corner of a panel toward a helpless character in the foreground. All of your pre-Code goods are here: blood and guns and tentacles and stranglings and hell demons.

And then … nothing.

Fredric Wertham took aim at Star’s Spook and more in his book, and the company shuttered shortly after the Senate Subcommittee hearings on comics. In Disbrow’s talk with Yoe, he recalls the “comic book crash of 1954,” owing to the good Christians who gathered around bonfires to torch comics in Wisconsin and New York, and the tarring of publishers as Communists and smut peddlers. Although University of Illinois professor Carol Tilley would find that Wertham’s “research” relied on omissions and manipulated data, the campaign to censor comics took a terrible toll on the industry. Awash in publicity, the hearings and resulting Comics Code effectively crippled then-thriving studios. Publishers killed titles deemed disagreeable and sent their staff home. There were other factors, but suddenly, hundreds of comics professionals in the late 1950s would never work in the medium again.

“Unlike their rough counterparts in the Red Scare, the artists and writers caught up in the comic-book controversy were never charged with espionage, treason, contempt of Congress or court, or obstruction of justice,” writes Hadju in The Ten-Cent Plague. “What they did was tell outrageous stories in cartoon pictures, a fact that makes their struggle and their downfall all the more strange and sad.”

Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s is available from by Fantagraphics Books. Jay Disbrow’s Monster Invasion is available from Yoe Books.

The post Banned Horror Comics Rise from the Dead appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[mikethepoetla]

Lineup Bios for July 24th

Lineup Bios for July 24th Letters to Our City

Host/Producer/Organizer: Mike Sonksen

Mike Sonksen aka Mike the PoeT is a 3rd-generation Los Angeles native. Poet, professor, journalist, historian and tour-guide, he teaches at Woodbury University. His latest book Letters to My City was just published by Writ Large Press.

Featured Storytellers

Lee Boek

Lee Boek is the Artistic Director of the Public Works Improvisational Theater Company. The California native, born in 1941, has had successful careers as a Fundamentalist Evangelist preacher, radio host, actor, writer, producer, union organizer, husband, father, grandfather to many & champion for the under-served & wronged. Boek continues to be on the forefront of accessible, socially-relevant performing arts productions and he has also been seen on television on Mama’s Family, Webster, Home Improvement, and MADtv. Before moving to Los Angeles, Boek was a well-known performer and radio personality in northern California, where he was known as Brother Lee Love of the Survival Revival Hour on KZAP-FM radio in the late sixties.

Sara Borjas

Sara Borjas is a Xicanx pocha and a Fresno poet. Her debut collection of poetry, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff was published by Noemi Press in 2019. Sara is a 2017 CantoMundo Fellow, the recipient of the 2014 Blue Mesa Poetry Prize and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Los Angeles but stays rooted in Fresno.

Rocío Carlos (she/they) is a poet from Los Ángeles. Her books include (the other house), Attendance and A Universal History of infamy: Those of This America . Her poems have appeared in Chaparral, Angel City Review, The Spiral Orb and Cultural Weekly. She was selected as a 2003 Pen Center “Emerging Voices” fellow.

Natashia Deón is an NAACP Image Award Nominee, practicing criminal attorney, law professor, and Creative Writing Professor for Antioch University and UCLA Extension. Author of the critically acclaimed novel, GRACE, which was named a Best Book by the New York Times, Deón is also a wife, mother of two, and founder of REDEEMED, a criminal record clearing project that pairs writers with and those with a criminal past. A Pamela Krasney Moral Courage Fellow and recipient of a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship, she’s been awarded fellowships around the world, including Dickinson House in Belgium. Deón was a 2017 U.S. Delegate to Armenia as part of the U.S. Embassy’s reconciliation project between Turkey and Armenia in partnership with the University of Iowa.

Daniel Hernandez is an award-winning journalist, editor, essayist, documentary host who's worked across the spectrum of news media. He is author of Down & Delirious in Mexico City (2011), a nonfiction exploration of urban youth subcultures. He's appeared in multiple documentaries ("The Day I Met El Chapo," Netflix; "The Munchies Guide to Oaxaca," VICE) and is a frequent guest on regional and national radio programs. He is currently editor of L.A. Taco.

Poetry is a part time snack for the Los Angeles born artist, Armond Kinard. But he always has something different to present on a stage, where most of his poetic sharing takes place. His two most successful projects so far are "Hard Money (short film)" and his intensely sensual poetry series, "The Book of Sultry". He can make you think, laugh, cry or turn you on all in one body of work. Be on the lookout!

traci kato-kiriyama is: a writer/actor and one half of the award-winning PULLproject Ensemble; director/co-founder of Tuesday Night Project - presenter of the Tuesday Night Cafe series (currently the longest-running Asian American-produced mic series in the country); and Writ Large Press author of a new book still in the birthing process. She has been presented as a performer, poet, theatre deviser, guest lecturer, speaker, facilitator, emcee, and Artist-in-Residence at innumerable venues from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington and Hawai'i to Philadelphia, Florida, New York and Toronto.

A native of Inglewood, California, Dante Mitchell aka 'Prince of the Ghetto' is a writer, performance, and recording artist based in Los Angeles, California. His published works have been featured in anthologies, newspapers, magazines, and audio recordings. Dante started performing at local open mics across Southern California at age 17 as a spoken word artist with his creative writing teacher, Mike the Poet. He later joined an organization called GetLit, a youth literacy advocate group. Dante has performed across the United States in states such as Virginia, New York, and Georgia. He has also been a guest speaker at numerous high schools and college campuses performing and promoting literacy. The Prince of the Ghetto Is one half of the hip hop duo Ciph3rCompl3t3 featuring his cousin Zo3rd.

Monique Mitchell is a poet and community organizer + activist. She was invited to perform for the California State Senate in defense of SB 933, which secured $50M for arts education across California. She has collaborated with the likes of Cass Bird, Cara Delevingne, Maria Shriver and Puma and has been published by The New York Times, Cultural Weekly, and various print publications across Los Angeles. She has performed and led workshops for museums, colleges, classrooms and conferences globally and believes that to liberate the world, one must first liberate themselves.

Adrian Ramon is a saxophonist and actor well established in the music community, working 20+ years with top producers in the industry such as Multi Platinum recording artist and Grammy nominated R&B star Jon B. This Los Angeles local talent has traveled through the ranks of life to pursue his passion for the creation of sound and music.

Luivette Resto, a mother, teacher, poet, and Wonder Woman fanatic, was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico but proudly raised in the Bronx. Her two books of poetry Unfinished Portrait and Ascension have been published Tia Chucha Press. She is a CantoMundo fellow. Some of her latest work can be read in Cultural Weekly and in a forthcoming anthology titled What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump published by Northwestern University Press. Currently, she lives in the Los Angeles area with her three revolutionaries.

Terry Robinson is an experimental poet and native of Los Angeles. A Zen student with an MA in Psychology, he brings meditation and the science of the imagination into his writing practice. When he is not reading fellow writers he is working with kids, pursuing social justice, or recording hip-hop music.

Esther Tseng is a writer covering food and culture in Los Angeles and beyond, while based in East Hollywood. She has contributed to the L.A. Times, Food & Wine, Eater, VICE, and appeared in programs such as Mind of a Chef. A Midwest transplant, she has spent over twenty years in Los Angeles finding her voice.

[oldguardaudio]

Caitlin Johnstone Explains -> A Year Ago, Rachel Maddow Explained How MSM Will Use Russiagate To Escalate Cold War

Caitlin Johnstone Rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper. at HoaxAndChange.com

Caitlin Johnstone

Rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper.

Jan 23

A Year Ago, Maddow Explained How MSM Will Use Russiagate To Escalate Cold War

Russians POOPED in the hallway! at HoaxAndChange.com

Russia Hacks the Oscar’s – Is it Beatty or Kimmel? At HoaxAndChange.com

Crooked Hillary to Vlad, I could use a couple more Million for my Foundation – at HoaxAndChange.com

I was just reminded by a reader that a few days ago marked the one year anniversary of Rachel Maddow announcing on MSNBC that Democratic party-aligned media outlets intended to use Russiagate and the infamous Steele Dossier to pressure the incoming Trump administration into escalating the new cold war with Russia. A year into the Trump administration and we can see plainly that this new president is already demonstrably more hawkish toward Russia than his predecessor.

Before I get into recapping Maddow’s seething neocon sleaze fest, please allow me to direct your attention to this excellent Truthdig article titled “How ‘Russiagate’ Helped Secure a Dangerous Arms Deal” by Max Blumenthal, which details the way neocons and Russia hawks on both sides of the political aisle have successfully used the Russiagate scandal to pressure this administration into selling weapons to Ukraine. As Blumenthal notes, this is an agenda these military-industrial complex lackeys have been aggressively pushing for years and one the Obama administration refused to bow to for fear of the dangerous escalations with Moscow that it would cause.

This administration has escalated cold war tensions with Russia in various other ways beyond that, forcing first RT and then Sputnik to register as foreign agents, expanding NATO with the addition of Montenegro, establishing a permanent military presence in Syria to effect regime change, assigning neoconservative Russia hawk Kurt Volker as special representative to Ukraine, shutting down a Russian consulate in San Francisco and throwing out Russian diplomats as part of continued back-and-forth hostile diplomatic exchanges, selling an anti-ballistic missile system to Japan in what Moscow has been calling a violation of international missile treaties, and signing the Russian sanctions bill despite loud protests from the Russian Federation.

Now back to Maddow.

Two days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Rachel Maddow did one of the innumerable tinfoil hat Russiagate conspiracy segments that have become the singular distinguishing feature of her career — but this time with a little twist. In an elaborate monologue that was only believable to people who desperately wanted to believe it, Maddow paced her audience through some information about the way the Soviet Union’s KGB used to gather compromising footage of rivals in order to sabotage them politically or blackmail them. Using the hilarious argument that the FSB is only two letters different from the KGB, the fact that Vladimir Putin was in the KGB, and the incredible allegations in the Steele dossier about Trump’s erotic romp with a gaggle of well-hydrated Russian prostitutes, Maddow attempted to make it seem perfectly plausible that this same president whose alleged affair with a porn star is being dismissed with a shrug by most Americans could be blackmailed into treason with a sex tape.

She then launched into the chorus of her song.

Maddow��lit up with glee when talking about how much Russia hates the fact that Obama amassed troops along its border in the final days of his administration, and then made the claim that if Trump ever withdraws those troops, it will prove that Russia “has something on” him and is using it to blackmail him into compliance.

“And here’s the question,” Maddow said. “Is the new President gonna take those troops out? After all the speculation, after all the worry, we are actually about to find out if Russia maybe has something on the new President? We’re about to find out if the new President of our country is going to do what Russia wants once he’s Commander-in-Chief of the US military starting noon on Friday. What is he gonna do with those deployments? Watch this space.”

Maddow spoke these words with an all-caps “WE’LL BE WATCHING” graphic displayed on the right side of the screen, plainly telling her audience (and the incoming administration) that if Trump doesn’t maintain Obama’s lame duck cold war escalations, it will be taken and reported as a sign that Trump is a treasonous Kremlin puppet, with no further evidence required.

A year has gone by and the neocons and Russia hawks on Capitol Hill have gotten the new cold war their military-industrial complex donors have so desperately craved, as have the oligarchs who own America’s mainstream media. Stephen Cohen, the renowned scholar on US-Russian relations, says that Russiagate has been used to escalate tensions with Russia to what could possibly be their most dangerous point ever due to the political pressures on the Trump administration to never back down against Moscow for any reason.

If Trump is indeed a treasonous Kremlin puppet, he is the very worst in history, and certainly not worth the billions of dollars in investment the Steele dossier alleges were spent on him. Believing the allegations of the Steele dossier (which even its MI6 author claims is 10 to 30 percent crap) is to believe that the Kremlin had the genius and foresight to predict years in advance that Trump would one day become president back when nobody else imagined such a thing was possible and invest unfathomable amounts of money and resources accordingly, but not enough genius and foresight to imagine that that investment might result in what has ultimately happened.

The US oligarchs do not believe that Donald Trump is a Kremlin asset. Rachel Maddow does not believe that Donald Trump is a Kremlin asset. The neocons on Capitol Hill do not believe that Donald Trump is a Kremlin asset. The only people who believe that are the victims of the mass media propaganda machine who have been paced into collaborating with the manufacture of public support for new cold war escalations, using a moral panic caused by that same mass media about a president they were told is somehow simultaneously a treasonous double agent, a secret Nazi, an incompetent moron, and a raving lunatic.

There is no Trump-Russia collusion. There is a world-threatening and continually escalating the cold war with many unpredictable moving parts which have more and more probability of going catastrophically wrong the further things escalate.

Congratulations, Rachel.

______________

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Caitlin Johnstone Explains -> A Year Ago, Rachel Maddow Explained How MSM Will Use Russiagate To Escalate Cold War Caitlin Johnstone Explains -> A Year Ago, Rachel Maddow Explained How MSM Will Use Russiagate To Escalate Cold War…

[maitimiel]

Innumerable Stars 2017

This was supposed to be a very quick letter with half a dozen characters and stuff but then! Worldbuilding tags? Why must you do this to me, Amy? You evil. I want all. But I HAVE SELF CONTROL. I tried to tag only worldbuilding tags that had something to do with my requested characters, but I'm gonna be upfront: You can focus as much on them as you wish. If you don't care for that kind of thing and wish to ignore it: totally cool. If you wish to write super meta-y fic, with so much worldbuilding that there's barely any plot: Awesome. Cause I love everything that I've requested and will be thrilled with anything involving any of these.

I love outsider pov fics, or fics that involve people thinking or remembering about characters, or even fics who are from a historian trying to figure out the character from the past. I also love fics which explore a character's relationship with people we don't usually associate with them, or typically "background" characters, such as messengers, handmaidens, cooks, random soldiers, tailors, Mariners, etc.

I also really like stories that twist the traditional characterization of a character, so if you have any unusual headcanons that you'd like to experiment with, I'm your girl.

I like strong sibling bonds and strong friendship bonds between characters of any gender. When it comes to elf culture, the more casually alien to ours, the best.

I have no triggers. Any warnings and any ratings are fine.

Farmer Giles of Ham - J.R.R. Tolkien  

The King's Cook - I have no idea why do i like this character who barely appears so much, but I do. If you do shippy, i ship him with the king, and if you don't, any exploration on why does he get so much leeway around the castle and why people bother so much not to offend him will do.

The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien  

Daurin Tórin & Míriel - You know, i was first made aware of Daurin Tórin's existence in Innumerable Stars last year, for which i'm very grateful. I usually headcanon he and Míriel to be extremely close and dependent on each other until the moment she decided to marry Finwë. I also like to hc him to be against the whole going to valinor thing, but following her anyway. There is so little fic that'd i'll be happy with any kind of setting, from teenage years in cuivienen to late in Míriels pregnancy. I'd love to see how they evolved through different events in their lives and how did they grow closer/apart. As usual, i'm fine with angst, and quite happy with some bittersweetness, though humor and hopeful moments are also lovely.

Meássë - There is so little info about her that there's space to expand on everything. Her relationship with Makar, her status as a "warrior goddess", her early alignment with melkor, her opposition to the bringing of the children of Eru to Valinor. We know she lived near Mandos, so what kind of a relationship did she have with him and/or Vairë? I put the "Concept of Gender Among the Ainur" in here thinking about her, though obviously you don't have to include that. I was thinking, though, since in most sources of the legendarium the Valar do not seem to bear children, what is that differentiates male from female? And i'd kind of see Meàssë dismissing all and any typically female parts, but perhaps embracing a more wild relationship with her own body.

Worldbuilding:

I've included a bunch of tags just to give an idea of what i like. As I said earlier, i'm not committed to one single hc about anything. I LOVE seeing different interpretations of these elements. however, i would prefer things not to be overly "medieval europe" style. I'd love to see other sources used and combined in a way that makes sense to you. If you can see it, i will too. I particularly like things that have a more pagan tone, or, alternatively, an eastern aesthetic.  For the more spiritual elements, anything that separates elves/ainur from humans is awesome.

I have selected these tags from the tagset, but really, any kind of worldbuilding is A+ for me:

Laws and mores surrounding death threats in post-Darkening Valinor

Religion and Belief

The Bond of Marriage

Trade in First Age Beleriand

Valinorean Fauna

Worldbuilding: Fashion in any culture or time period (Silm)

Worldbuilding: Healing/Medicine

Worldbuilding: Holidays or Festivals

Worldbuilding: The Concept of Gender Among the Ainur

The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)  

Thranduil/Legolas - I don't like stories where Legolas is overly submissive to his father. I'd like to see them playing in more or less even conditions. But otherwise, i'll take anything. I like to see Legolas standing up both for and against his father's decisions, and challenging him. I don't mind a bit of manipulation and or political issues brought into their personal lives, but I also like the idea of them closing themselves behind doors and leaving problems outside. I would love some hurt/comfort between them, or wine fueled philosophical discussions (gossip) about life, culture, courtiers, anything.

Tauriel & Thranduil - I'd love to see some Tauriel backstory! I like the idea of her parents being killed in battle or something and Thranduil raising her, but even if that's not the case, how did their relationship work? How did they treat each other? Are they family, or friends, or simply king and subject, and why? Tauriel being somehow related to Thranduil's wife is also interesting to me.

Worldbuilding: Orc Culture - Elves studying Orcs and finding out they're not as uncivilized as previously thought? Or elves wanting to study orcs, lacking any real basis, and having endless discussions/arguments about what is and what isn't, how can you even know, Imma fight you! kind of stuff. I could be into both the silly and the more complex sides of this, so enjoy yourself :)

the relationship between Thranduil's wellbeing and Mirkwood's - having any character notice this, and try to poke/investigate at it. Legolas or Tauriel being concerned about Thranduil, especially if Thranduil is defensive and doesn't want to talk about it.

Smith of Wootton Major - J. R. R. Tolkien  

Tim of Townsend/Ned Smithson - I think that Ned, being the Smithson, would be in the best possible position to truly understand Tim and his life. I think he wouldn't ask many questions, and would support him regardless of any weirdness. On his side, I presume that to Tim, Ned would be a very solid, very comforting presence. I think I'd prefer a fluffy fic here, but it's fine to have a bit of angst if you'd like to portray a getting together story. but both getting together and established relationship work fine, and long night drinking tea and talking, or walks through the forest, or Tim ogling Ned while he works. Eh, have fun.

Thanks for your patience!

[bcstudentservicesblog]

Some Excellent Advice For Property Investors

Another way to discover public auctions to get confiscated properties is to call or compose your county court house. By doing this, you will certainly have the ability to prevent legal problems. Yancey provides workshops for real estate capitalists.

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Beginning your very own home investment company is one of the innumerable opportunities that enable you to be your individual supervisor nonetheless it’s among the ones that are better. Additionally, you can find numerous property investment lessons possible that you bring. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250677 To be an effective real estate investor, you ought to have a wonderful work values. You can find the local earnings levels, joblessness prices and population numbers prior to choosing if this is a good location to relocate your family. Not everyone has to do this yet it reveals customers you are a more significant real estate specialist and have a lot more education and learning in the market. Keep in mind that you get just what you spend for with a seized home. buying foreclosed properties is rather various from a normal purchase. Only one real estate professional will certainly be entailed, and also the vendor will certainly require a pre-approval letter prior to agreeing to the sale. Your advisor or coach will certainly also assist you with your comfort level on making your initial steps. An additional option would be buddies in business. You could appreciate a positive capital depending upon the sort of home you purchase. As high as possible, these must be the prime focus of the restoration procedure. No problem, that’s exactly what the sell residence fast real estate education collection was made for! I have actually established the practice of thinking concerning this and also utilize exactly what I find to position myself to make sure that I may be in a beneficial position. The real estate is a large sector and without detailed knowledge, you will certainly wind up losing a significant quantity of cash. You could additionally decrease the danger by spending little, particularly if you are a novice. Prior to investing your hard-earned cash, you have to do an extensive research making sure that everything is visiting be alright. Scott Yancey is the individual who can assist you do well.

Scott Yancey Real Estate Investment And Exactly What You Required To Know

Any kind of info they have is public document. His other half, Aimee is his co-star in the program. They are accumulating a lot more day-to-day and they are a worry on the financial institutions themselves.

  Check out more from Scott Yancey to see how to flip houses.

from BC STUDENT SERVICES https://bcstudentservicesblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/26/some-excellent-advice-for-property-investors/