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bi-dazai · 5 years ago

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ok my bsd predictions for major plot points in the future

If dazai were to be killed off in bsd, chuuya would probably be killed with him in a final act of coded symbiosis.

Tbh tho that's such a major thing that it probably wouldn't happen until when the manga is finishing up so

Chuuya will either become the PM Boss or he'll join the ADA.

So chuuya is strongly suggested in two ways for his future which is HM INTERESTING. So the way that Mori clearly recruits him not just for his ability but for his leadership skills, plus the how chuuya has been developing those skills, is something I was thinking about a lot in S3. Mori is very clearly not happy with Dazai being the heir, even though he was the best choice. Dazai would have probably killed Mori and taken his place by the time he was 20 if odasaku hadn't died. Chuuya has loyalty to the mafia plus the fighting and leadership abilities. He's also got a certain obedience and controllability that if Mori was to step aside and not die he would like. Also something ppl forget is that chuuya is actually good at negotiation and staying calm under pressure, it's suggested that dazai particularly triggers his anger because dazai is an annoying shit who seems to be in canon attached to him whenever they're in the same room.

HOWEVER. Now I don't think I've ever said this on this blog despite me constantly thinking about it but Fukuzawa's ability is the perfect thing for Chuuya, as it has the possibility of actually reigning in corruption. If chuuya joined the ADA he would actually be able to use corruption's ability of throwing black holes without losing control of himself. Arguably that would also get rid of the need for dazai's intervention although it's been established that skk were thought of as a perfect fighting duo for a year before corruption even first manifested in a fight, so I don't think this would kill skk. And chuuya joining the ADA would mean that he and dazai have to interact on the daily. It also means that the mafia is left without any clear heir. People have vouched for kouyou in this situation but I think it's clear that kouyou is being forced to be in the mafia, she's given up on leaving and doesn't want to be there actively.

I don't think the second outcome is very possible plotwise for a few reasons. These are all totally writer's arguments so appeals to logic and plot aren't exactly going to work here, but as a writer myself these are the planning issues that stick out extremely badly if we get chuuya to defect:

- it would have to take something extremely major to get chuuya to leave the loyalty of the mafia

- chuuya becomes even more OP. asagiri kafka has said that though he really likes chuuya (as evidenced by the amount of goddamn times chuuya comes up in the novels), he avoids putting him in the manga because chuuya is extremely overpowered. If he and dazai were logically paired together for each issue every arc would be solved far too quickly for things like character development, or like...story...to take place. This is why chuuya is constantly sidelined. You have to actively make it so that chuuya isn't on people's minds constantly, or get him out of the picture immediately, so that your narrative can actually develop. Chuuya is honestly a mistake in a writing sense. But he's a strong character and he and dazai were written in tandem to each other so he's absolutely unremovable. A character like chuuya NEEDS to exist. So the way chuuya has been toned down is Corruption. Chuuya's ability by itself is just...incredibly powerful. He's virtually indestructible. However Corruption, the ultimate form, is shown to actively kill chuuya. The only times we've seen corruption used is cthulu, shibusawa, and shibusawa big dragon, all extreme threats. So chuuya's life when he's pulled out as the deus ex machina is tied to dazai. This makes chuuya's unchecked OP a little less unchecked and a little less OP. Chuuya is actually a fantastic example of why you CAN have OP characters, you just have to write them a certain way.

However in writing them a certain way, the most stupid thing you could do for your narratives would be to bring corruption under control, and to bring chuuya into the group of protagonists. you have to find excuses in every problem to why chuuya can't just come out and handle this himself, like you were before but now dazai's absence isn't an issue PLUS your readers are paying more attention to chuuya because he's around all the time.

So yeah, chuuya being in the ADA would be a bad choice narrative wise unless it was for like...one arc or smth. Chuuya becoming the next boss of the port mafia is wayyyyy more likely to me. I don't think chuuya would like it but he's really the most obvious choice

Dostoyevsky/rat arc is going to be mega arc/s.

one of the exciting things abt this series is that I have no idea how long this conflict with the rats will go on for. At first I thought it would be an occasional and ongoing plotline that is explored not as one big set arc but interspersed with other non-rat arcs. However by the way it's going it looks like we have two options, either 1) the rat issue is being dealt with across one mega-arc or 2) rat issues will still be dealt with like I thought, interspersed, but each time they pop up it will be a mega-arc like it has been so far. I genuinely don't know how this will be resolved, and I'm actually kind of wondering if the characters will finally leave kanagawa prefecture and maybe head to Russia to defeat the rats. I think this could be a good start to travelling the characters to settings outside yokohama.

Agatha Christie is going to be matched up to Ranpo.

Like Dostoyevsky is dazai's foil because their works IRL were similar in tone, Agatha Christie and Ranpo match up in that way perfectly. We've already met the trick foil (we thought he would be, but he wasn't) for Ranpo in Poe (IRL Poe actually did write mystery at times, and his works do contain elements of suspense and unknown). Ranpo is clearly going through hell in this arc which makes me feel like he's going to start being a much more major character in the future.

Agatha Christie and Edogawa Ranpo's works both fit in the mystery genre and were both alive irl around the same time. They both played historic roles in developing the mystery genre of their language's literature and are pretty well-known in non-literature circles because mystery often has a pulp, mass-consumable aspect to it. It was actually surprising to me that they were made into characters considering the other characters are named after authors of much "higher grade" Literature, as in Literature capital L. Mystery authors especially like Agatha Christie don't fit that bill, but they've played a central role in developing the fiction industry so I don't find it odd. Plus there's a bit of a debate what counts as Literature and every person has different opinions. Mine differs to asagiri kafka's which evidently seems to be that if the author has had a significant impact on the literary field then their works become Literature, thus they become 文豪 (Literary masters), thus they become a bsd character. I think that's fair, even if it isn't what I would personally say Literature is. This is par for the course tho lol, p sure any person who is into Literature will have a different thing to say about what gets that capital L.

But yeah, I think Ranpo and Christie are clearly going to be each others foils.

Christie is going to be cold. Like. COLD.

Dostoyevsky is more obvious evil, it shows on the surface. But Christie will have a polite veneer, a charm to her. We've seen her in a shot, and she sits tall, she enjoys tea, she dresses expensively and lives in colourful rooms. But she had no hesitation to destroy Yokohama if a situation wasn't dealt with within half an hour in the cruelest way possible. Christie was actively ready to incinerate Yokohama alive, that was her first instinct when contacted for help. Christie very clearly has a lack of care for the lives of others, OR she wants to destroy Yokohama in particular. However considering this is the goal of Dostoyevsky and Christie will probably be the next major villain after Dostoyevsky, repeating that goal and motivation is pretty boring and not very bungou stray dogs.

The order of the clock tower will not come to yokohama first.

The Guild were the ones to come to yokohama and threaten it up close. The order of the clock tower was a major threat to yokohama from across the continent. That's terrifying. The ADA/Mafia will have to work proactively

The end of the clock tower will have major repercussions.

The order of the clock tower seems to have its claws in everything and has a tight maintenance of leadership and control over almost every gifted organisation we've met. The Order seems to literally keep order. But they've clearly got a goal with sending the guild and the rats after the book. If the order is destroyed then certain aspects of gifted society slip loose and create new problems. This will probably be the creator of an arc or two after the order arc is over.

Chuuya's backstory is linked to Dazai's.

Chuuya was used by the military and experimented on until he could contain a god of destruction, after which he went haywire, blasted a huge crater in yokohama, and became a feral child.

Dazai was...we don't know. The furthest back we can tell is that some time in his early teens he was taken in by Mori. Before that he was apparently wandering around trying to find some kind of emotion, something to make him feel. He eventually found that with the violence and adrenaline rush of the mafia.

Now I don't think that dazai is a psychopath. It's easy to say he is with the way he seems to talk about the hole in his heart and the absence and emptiness. However dazai very very clearly cares. He cares about odasaku, he cares about atsushi, he cares about the ADA, and he even cares about chuuya (this is not my shipper brain talking, I am literally talking about canon). Dazai very clearly CARES. He isn't a psychopath.

My belief is that dazai is the most clear argument for my case that the series is about mental illness and self worth. Dazai very clearly has a major depressive disorder.

I also think that dazai is extremely traumatised. Obviously he's traumatised by being in the mafia at 15 and by odasaku's death, but I also think dazai may have been traumatised even before then.

Atsushi is dazai's mentee, the half of shin soukoku. He's shown to have childhood trauma. Akutagawa also has childhood trauma. Chuuya has childhood trauma. This may be a coincidence but almost every main character in this series has some form of early trauma.

Dazai IRL was not called Dazai Osamu. Dazai Osamu is actually a very sad name but Dazai's birth name is Tsushima Shuuji. IRL dazai/Tsushima was the son of a rich family that lived in Aomori prefecture (which is very rural lol). Dazai had an absent father and a sick mother and wasnt raised by his parents but rather by servants and his aunt. His father died when he was young (not that he got very old) and his life was plagued by constantly running off with girls, getting his allowance cut for being a marxist, and, yes, suicide attempts.

So my ideas for how this may translate into bsd dazai is this:

- dazai ran away from home when he was young

- dazai never had a good parental figure

- dazai is from a rich family in a rural area very far away. Like for those who don't know Aomori is at the northern tip of Honshū, just below Hokkaido. Yokohama is just south of Tokyo. The region in between is mostly forest and smaller cities. Most of Japan's (major) cities are cloistered around Tokyo and Kyoto and Fukuoka which are towards the south. So dazai is a country boy who has wandered japan after running away from home.

- dazai's real name is Tsushima Shuuji and there's a personal reason he's distanced himself from that. This one im not sure about but yeah

- thus follows that why would dazai be so fucked up if he isn't a psychopath and he did come from a rich family? Dazai to me reads that something major happened. In shin skk it's clear that atsushi and alutagawa share a past of abuse at the hands of parental figures and loneliness. With all the similarities and parallels drawn between the characters in skk and shin skk it seems logical to me that chuuya's past of torture may be similar to Dazai's in a way. It would be disappointing to me if dazai's past was covered and it didn't in some way affect him. The clearest parallel between skk is that they both lacked parental figures most if not their entire lives.

There's also this comment that dazai makes when the head of atsushi's orphanage dies. It's that relationships with fathers are messy and even if they were terrible it's natural to cry. This seems like bsd dazai may share irl dazai's father's death early in his life. It's hinted therefore that dazai's father was either abusive or neglectful and died when dazai was younger.

Anyway this went longer than I thought it would but I invest far too much brain time into bsd so it's gotta seep out at some point lol

#long post #bsd

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404fmdhaon · 4 years ago

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self para — first time meeting

summary: he meets yeseul inside a club, too young to know better. too innocent to see anything else. dated: 2008, mapo-gu. (yes i will never stop writing about this npc bc she is my favorite npc) warnings: none (ig alcohol tw? but none of the listed triggers on the trigger page!) wc: 1045

fifteen.

and he’s lucky the contours of his face haven’t deepened since age eight. baby faced, it’s what the bouncer does in a double glance and narrowed eyes — a check back into the fake id. the bouncer flashes him a smile, a mutual agreement in the last week they’d down the shots sweet of soju. gyujeong dips his head, fingers run through his hair.

a call back over for his friends already behind the bar. they’ve got his favorites poured and ready — jagerbombs, loaded and he downs one quickly. and maybe it’s the warmth simmering underneath his skin and the thrums of the beat blasted through the speakers. he’s alive, more than he has been when he’s thrown out the repercussions of a staged life. a house sitting somewhere in yongsan gone and out of mind, and a heart that breathes the beginnings of right now.

he slips to the back, palms slapped against those of old faces and new. he laughs, a rattle of the typical “you looked so fucked up right now”, and then, he laughs again.

yet, his eyes wander to a new face. coy smiles, a dimple pressed when her mouth breaches across her face shattering the illusion of beauty. her hair in coal black wave, one not meant for salons nor the press of some styling — it’s natural, just like her laughter.

“who invited this fucker.” it’s english, the way her voice tapers down into a husky laugh. there’s a glass weaved in her hand, filled with a sapphire-stained drink (he knows, it’s bombay. he learns, that’s her favorite when she’s on the hunt to kill).

gyujeong mirrors the contagion thats embeded in her laughter (she smirks right back — dead-on eye-contact lingering long), lets the facade of some sort of sanity keep his peace. tongue in cheek, he dips his head. “you’re a bitch — not even that pretty, you know that?” it’s a return in english when he reaches for her drink, lips pressed to the rim inside a smoldering smirk.

“you think i’m pretty.” her hands snatch it right back, yanking it out of his hand for only the remnants of droplets to flood onto a shirt worth more than the dj’s monthly pay.

he shakes his head, slowly then all at once. his eyes never move past the way she forebodes danger like he’s entrapped in a pre-destined fate upon first glance. “no.”

tantalization at its finest — he moves, takes the vacant seat next to her. spine feigning a sort of relaxed the way he curves uneasy into the seat, and a gaze that pins her straight-on. she doesn’t fidget — instead, she laughs again (this becomes the soundtrack to his greatest downfall).

“you don’t fool me. not at all when you’re wearing hedi’s first season in dior homme.”

he nods again — a match, he’s met. lost, felt himself reaping in the riptide of her destruction. “and you don’t fool me when you say hedi slimane, rich bitch.”

what he assumes is a claw back in a cuff against his face, but when the same simpering curve of her ruby stained lips come across her face, he knows — he’s stepped foot into no man’s land, and now, there’s no way out.

“lim yeseul, year 1994. rich bitch in hannam hiding away inside some club next to sangsu station — and let me guess, you’re 1994 same rich bitch in hannam hiding next to me?” she puts her hand out, and he sits there completely still. at loss, a mouth agape with uncertainty tainting the words he doesn’t know what to say.

instead, he nods. once more, slipping back into the drink inside her other hand. it’s the first instance of skin on skin contact, and her skin’s soft. warmed from the rouge layer painted over her face, focused on her nose. “you’re underaged.” it’s a blurt, an aftermath slipping past with no hesitation (drunkenness is a curse, and she’s holding it down better than he knows he ever could).

“you don’t fool me.” she whispers, a repetition hitting like dejavu of minutes prior. “tell me your name, 1994 rich bitch from hannam.”

“haon.”

“i said, tell me your name.”

“chung gyujeong.” he recedes, downing the last droplets of her drink. his gaze wavers steady, picking apart the thick brows and the face wrapped in mystery. intoxicated, it’s her he’s drunk off of.

“when’s your birthday?”

“april 22.”

“call me noona, i’m april 13.”

—

it’s five in the morning — the sun steadily coming up to the horizon. his vision blurred, yet it doesn’t take more than the same anchored laugh to paint each divot inside her features and the robustness of her voice to cover him whole in visions of her mangled hair and roguish grins when she’s quizzing him on the theories of kafka and the magnetic attraction of rosenberg (in hindsight, he knows nothing, mind blank when her fingertips graze the surface of his hand in an accidental mishap guised purposeful).

his feet teeter on the edge of the sidewalk, balancing back and forth with a cigarette tipped between his mouth — for a minute, he stares. tilts his head when he sees her head high up in the clouds, eyes closed (the first time he sees her as human).

teeth pressed onto his bottom lip, his heart beat drums woven into the what-ifs of throbbing insecurities. he takes a step closer.

“야 임예슬 (yah, lim yeseul).” he calls out, voice faltering at the push of the first step. “번호 좀 줘. (give me your number).”

her footsteps come in worn out converses stepped across the concrete, fingers in the air hailing for the next exhausted taxi driver. “같이 타자, 돈은 네가 내고, 아저씨 고생하니까 잔돈 까지 챙겨줘라." (let’s take this together, you pay. since the taxi ajusshi is working hard, don’t forget to tip). and she steps in, fingers laced around his wrist yanking him to follow. he complies, and he turns to her before the next words become muffled with a simple scrape across his lips — burning, scathing. all encompassing, electrifying.

(he gets her number when they’re drunk in staggered steps inside the home of their neighborhood -- her arms out, his trailing behind.)

#i was Inspired ㅠㅡㅠ #i will get to replies soon ~_~#머리속에 — 생각

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laughingpinecone · 5 years ago

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659w, General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, POV First Person, Surreal News Report, Aftermath, 10 is the number of completion, Silence, Mysticism Yuletide treat for Gammarad! Summary:

As I dozed off during the flight, I dreamt of a place where shadows were not pushed in a corner by the presence of light, but went out on their own to make themselves known, to let people meditate on the comforts of darkness, on indeterminate possibilities, formless potential. The dream (which I now suspect lasted little less than five minutes) ended with the realization that its subject matter would be a good fit for a canvas, but I soon discovered that reality had beaten me to the punch.

I was on an intercontinental flight on the day when statistics gave up. One of the unlucky ones, as history would come to call us, barred from the full weight of the miracle by the soft, steady roar of jet engines.

I learned of the silence as soon as I landed. Twitter, Youtube, Instagram spread evidence of the event before news anchors on TV had to struggle to find the words to describe it (others will – poets, I hope, in dark and soundless writing, never to be read out aloud). What could they report? They let the silence play on our screens over and over. A couple of minutes from San Francisco, three from Hong Kong, not a leaf rustling in the middle of the Schwarzwald: for a brief time, wherever it was possible, no matter how improbable, the world had gone silent at once.

The internet raced to find the longest recording of the silence. 4’32’’, Reddit declared after a spell, a Vimeo upload filmed in Milan’s crowded main square by a baffled tourist. Still unaware of the global reach of the phenomenon, and of the relative banality of his coincidences compared to those that had brought silence to concerts, cinemas and train stations, the man explained in the video’s description that he had received six notifications as he recorded the full, all-encompassing silence that had fallen over the piazza and could not for the life of him explain what had made him, self-professed social media addict, put his phone in silent mode for the day. The video was cut to the last moment before a sneeze from the other end of the square, however faint, had broken the enchantment.

Having missed the event itself does not bother me. The silence existed. It is enough. There is something sacred in recordings: they create a discrete space I can enter without the shackles of nostalgia or misplaced competitiveness, as discussions flourished on whether it was luckier to have taken in the silence at night from the window of one’s home, or in the middle of a mall, or by the sea, which was too vast, it seemed, to be touched by this probability collapse, but free for a time from the clamoring of birds and men, and whales down below.

I see no point in such chatter. Nor in the doctrines and hypotheses, nor all the philosophical and literary frameworks they’re trying to nail on this thing, tracing lines from Kafka to Keats to Baudelaire and all the way back to Sophocles. There may be accidental convergences, much like Shakespeare has something to say for every occasion (the rest, after all, is silence), but none of these fine fellows were around to witness this. Their silence was different.

The synchronous videos I can appreciate, superimposing the recordings of the same seconds of silence in Paris, in Khenifra, in Balikpapan. Some feel that such triangulations can offer a glimmer into infinity. They may be right. It is not my way.

My winding road to reach that glimmer goes like this: I have listened to thousands of recordings, but I keep coming back to that 4’32’’. It plays over and over again, on my computer, my phone, in my dreams. I long to let it permeate me completely. At times, it almost becomes a physical sensation, the way one slips in dreams – I know I am reaching further and further down through inaction and stillness, until I can almost feel, with the tip of my toes, a deep, vast and wondrous surface, a different state of the self like an uncharted ocean. If I could reach it, it would embrace me and swallow me whole. Every time, unfailingly, the inevitability of that faint sneeze beyond the end of the file tears me away from my destination. And I long for another recording to be found, against all hopes, to give me the time of one more silent heartbeat, one more second...

#fanfiction #4'33''#I love all the diverse takes on the non-song! There was so much creativity!#belated crosspost

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rhetoricandlogic · 5 years ago

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Paul Di Filippo reviews

The Book of Hidden Things

by Francesco Dimitri

July 13, 2018

Paul Di Filippo

Authors who write splendid books in languages other than their native tongue must all be rounded up and stopped, so they don’t make us struggling monolinguists look bad. Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov–well, they’re already canonized. But we still face Salman Rushdie, Hannu Rajaniemi, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, and Lavie Tidhar, among others. Their excellent prose in their secondary languages stands as a rebuke to us limited slackers.

Of course, such a program of imaginary suppression would not really lessen our shame, and so we must reluctantly abandon it. These polylinguists are just too awesomely unstoppable. And they arise in our midst at a steady, albeit not multitudinous rate. The latest is the Italian author Francesco Dimitri. The language in his new novel is eminently colloquial (almost entirely; I don’t think a native speaker would ever call a professional photographer a “snapper”); keenly revelatory of the narrators’ personalities; and contributory to the swift galloping suspense of the book. And the text is also funny, brutal, evocative and tragic by turns. I defy any writer to demand more of his prose.

The novel’s premise and plot and pacing are likewise superior, and the whole experience of reading The Book of Hidden Things is an affable and memorable one. It has elements of Ramsey Campbell and Stephen King, Lev Grossman and Haruki Murakami, blended into a unique gestalt.

The book’s time and place is our contemporary era and the country of Italy, district of Puglia. To be specific, an amiable nowheresville town of some thirty-five thousand inhabitants named Casalfranco, a minor resort without much to amuse its citizens. At this juncture, I must pause to commend Dimitri’s portrait of the land, its inhabitants and its institutions. The hot winds, the light, the fauna and flora, the landscape–all are sensually tangible. The effect is like being on vacation in Italy, like watching a fine Italian neorealist film–but without the portentousness of some, rather a lightly comedic outing, yet one with inescapable overtones of, well, more dire hidden things.

The sun is setting, but it is still high enough to trace the contours of the olive trees with razor-sharp clarity. This sort of light simply doesn’t exist in England; even on the brightest days, the English landscape has a mellowness, a misty blurring on the edges which makes features merge into one another. Here, boundaries arc defined, and each object is very much itself. That tree is only that tree; it has nothing to do with the earth it grows upon or the rocks surrounding it. This light has no patience for ambiguity.

This description occurs in the voice of one of our four protagonists, Fabio. He and two others–Mauro and Tony–alternate sections of the tale. What of the fourth man? That would be Art, who does not get to narrate because he has gone missing. (His nature emerges in rich backstory anecdotes, however.)

The four pals made a vow upon their secondary-school graduation, when they were all ready to leave Casalfranco for wider pastures of adulthood, that they would return once a year to renew their friendship. That was seventeen years ago. But at this newest anniversary, something is very wrong. Art–who came back to Casalfranco some time ago to settle in his ancestral home–has disappeared without explanation. This would be alarming enough without one earlier parallel: as a teen, Art disappeared for seven days, and resurfaced with an explanation that satisfied no one, and obviously concealed some enigmatic truth. Is his current absence related to that first disruption?

The three buddies set out to find their lost pal, their “mate,” in the UK parlance, because, as Tony opines, “Family and mates, they’re all that matters. Whatever they become, they’re all that matters.” This theme–the sanctity and bonds of blood and companionship–resonates throughout.

In a kind of mystery-cum-conspiracy-novel vibe, what they gradually discover about Art is that, while he was always a bit of an eccentric, a wild man, he has gone seemingly off the deep end. He is involved with dealing marijuana, with strange sexual and practices and possible vivisections. The occult too. Into the mix comes the local Mafia, an organization dubbed the Corona, whose scary, violent boss, Michele, is likewise looking for Art. Also in the unstable cauldron, along with a host of lesser characters, all very colorfully limned, are: Tony’s sister, Elena, and her husband Rocco, who are now part of the Corona; Fabio’s ailing father; Art’s several ex-lovers and customers; and Mauro’s family, wife Anna and two daughters, who have accompanied him to Casalfranco for a vacation. The fact that Fabio has long been in love with Anna does not exactly facilitate their investigations.

Over the course of just a few days, the buddies will experience awe and boredom, shock and confirmation, fear and grace. And where they discover Art’s manuscript, “The Book of Hidden Things,” revealing the truth of his teenage disappearance and much else, the action will shift into high gear. Ultimately, the tale will reveal itself to have an existential side, causing all the characters to reassess their lives: “Dying is a progressive shrinking that brings you from vastness to nothingness.”

My earlier references to a group of precedent-setting authors should be supportable now that you know this much about the book. The setup of the childhood pals unraveling a mystery is an homage to King’s Stand by Me (and that song is explicitly quoted by Dimitri). The uncanny incident from childhood that contours the adult life is a riff in Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. The town that is mundane on the surface but laden with geographically and topographically linked magic is something out of Ramsey Campbell’s playbook. And the depiction of Art as a magician weighing the price of his soul against a possibly spurious paradise strikes me as a Lev Grossman motif. Lastly, I might allude to a modicum of Whitley Strieber-style paranormal influence.

But as I also said, Dimitri’s voice and his treatment of these components is uniquely his own. A certain pop culture sensibility and Mediterranean brio, as well as a groundedness in Italian cultural traditions, infuse this tale in a manner not often found in works by Anglo writers. Also, Dimitri keeps us guessing about the true nature of events more than these other writers. Truly supernatural or not? You’ll know for sure only on the final page, which offers a great kick.

Dimitri has a fine reputation and CV in his native land for at least four novels and other works. This book should see him firmly established in the English-speaking world as well.

#Francesco Dimitri #The Book of Hidden Things #mahreviews #long post

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reactingtosomething · 6 years ago

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If They Liked This, They May Also Like...

Holiday Shopping with Reacting to Something

stock photo shamelessly lifted from

We know we haven’t generated original content in a very long time, but we wanted to get into the holidays in a way that was more or less on brand. So in the spirit of a Netflix recommendation algorithm, here are some suggestions for what to buy friends and family who liked some of the movies we saw in 2018 (including a couple that premiered in late 2017).

It’s probably obvious, but just to be super clear, the format below is --

If they liked this: They may also like this

Miri’s Gift Guide

The Shape of Water: I shouldn’t say a day pass to an aquarium because it’s a terrible, easy joke BUT I AM WHO I AM.

If you’re not a garbage person, maybe consider the rest of Del Toro’s creature filmography, anything related to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or a collection of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen. Dark and gritty originals, not the tidied up versions.

Call Me By Your Name: NO, I WILL NOT SAY ANYTHING TO DO WITH PEACHES BECAUSE EVEN I HAVE LIMITS. APPARENTLY. The book is a lovely, lyrical, tragic read (or listen, if you go with the Armie Hammer audiobook as I did), and I would also recommend giving a gift of solitary artistic pleasure in whatever way speaks to your intended recipient—a CD, a ticket to an art exhibit, a coffee table book of a painter you think they will love. Something beautiful that requires a little bit of space to enjoy privately.

Black Panther: The new Shuri comic! (I am a hypocrite because I haven’t read it yet but it looks so awesome!) Also, there are some choice funko pops for Black Panther, which are a nice, reasonable price and make a great desk or bookshelf addition.

Annihilation: A DVD of Arrival and a book on fascinating genetic mutations. (The photo above is from the first linked book.) Also, tell them about the Twitter account Tessa as Goats, which is a true gift to us all.

Game Night: A murder mystery game! Or whatever game you think most appeals to them, but I personally think the immersive nature of a murder mystery is a true delight. Also, something Olivia the Dog themed because she’s awesome.

A Wrinkle in Time: For the actual child: one of the books published under the Rick Riordan Presents banner.

For the child in all of us: a soothing and/or empowering adult coloring book and some nice colored pencils.

Thoroughbreds: Really cool sunglasses.

Love, Simon: Tickets to the upcoming Clea DuVall helmed queer rom com starring Kristen Stewart and YES this is a request for myself, obviously.

Blockers: Make them a dance music playlist on Spotify!! (Or burn an actual CD for peak nostalgia/those who enjoy physical media.) And if you have some time together, have your own dance party with as many or as few people as you want.

photo illustration by

Ocean’s 8: LEVERAGE! BUY THEM A SEASON OF LEVERAGE!!! Give them the gift of even more cons and fun!

Incredibles 2: If they are parents: a night out without the children (this could mean a gift certificate or an offer to babysit). If not, try something heroic like these ornaments, or something that helps them learn to be their own hero, like a self defense or kickboxing class.

Tag: LASER TAG! It’s so fun, even if you’re bad at it! Give a gift card or book a session together and enjoy chasing each other around like giant, fun-loving idiots.

photo illustration from

Set It Up: A massage. Anyone who related to this movie too much is likely very much in need of stress relief. Also, a large quantity of popcorn to be eaten in whatever manner they wish with no shame at all.

Hotel Artemis: A Swiss army knife and a couple of airplane bottles of booze.

Sorry to Bother You: An Oaktown t-shirt (I have been told by someone from the area that this is A Thing but I don’t actually know and I’m sorry for that) and a copy of Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

Crazy Rich Asians: Ideally, a whirlwind food tour of Singapore. If that’s not feasible, a Hulu subscription so they can enjoy Constance Wu’s full comic potential in Fresh Off the Boat. And a really nice candle, because it’s a small decadence that can really go a long way.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before: The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory (if they like a steamy read), tall socks (if they like to be cozy and cute), and custom stationary (if they like to live dangerously).

A Simple Favor: A cocktail shaker, fancy bitters, a really good mystery novel.

Widows: Tickets to go see Widows again because it’s amazing and is probably even more amazing a second time.

Kris’s Recommended Reading

Wildlife or Widows: The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness

As I say in my Amazon review, this is the best applied ethics text I was never assigned. In fairness to my professors, attorney-turned-journalist Jill Filipovic hadn’t written it yet when I was a philosophy student. Filipovic is also not a philosopher. But she is a brilliant writer and a rigorous thinker, and The H-Spot is fundamentally and explicitly an Aristotelian ethical project. That is to say, it takes the starting position that political organization should be aimed at the goal of human flourishing (as opposed to, say, economic growth). From there Filipovic builds a case, or maybe it's better to say several cases, for specific ways in which American policy fails women and disproportionately women of color in this aim, and concrete ways in which it could address this failure. She does so largely through first-hand accounts of several women across America, in a wide range of socioeconomic circumstances. Although the institutions and less formal systems in play are complicated, the questions at the heart of all this are simple: What do women want? What do women need?

Filipovic asks these questions without pre-judgment, and without assuming that any answers are too unrealistic to consider. Not that anyone she talks to asks for anything "unrealistic." Partly this is because they often speak from too much experience for the unrealistic to occur to them as something they deserve to ask for, but also, the idea that woman-friendly policy is unrealistic is a Bad Take to begin with. Filipovic doesn't need to be pie-in-the-sky utopian to show how things could be much better for women (and by extension, it should but still doesn't go without saying, for everyone).

I left academic philosophy over five years ago, but I really think each chapter (built around topics like friendship, sex, parenting, and food) is brimming with potential paper topics for grad and undergrad students of ethics and/or political philosophy. Whether you’re philosophically inclined or not, if you think “women should be happy” and “the point of civilization is to make happiness easier for everyone” are uncontroversial claims, The H-Spot is the book for you -- and for your friends who loved the several underestimated women of Widows, or Carey Mulligan’s captivating portrayal in Wildlife of a woman doing the best she could within the restrictions of her era.

Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet

Though it helps to have some familiarity with the Avengers storylines that led up to Ta-Nehisi motherfucking Coates’s first year on the Black Panther comic -- as well as with the excellent opening arc of Matt Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man -- here’s all that even a new comics reader really needs to know before jumping into Nation: King T’Challa, the Black Panther, was recently unable to prevent several consecutive disasters in Wakanda. Both as a cause and as a result of these disasters, T’Challa worked with the so-called “Illuminati” (Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Stephen Strange, and other intellectual and strategic heavyweights) to prevent the end of the multiverse itself. That crisis averted, T’Challa has returned to Wakanda to resume his royal duties.

Coates takes as a starting premise that Wakanda, the most advanced nation on earth, would only still have a hereditary monarchy if the monarch was uniquely suited as a protector of the people. In the wake of the Panther’s failures in this regard, Nation opens with a rebellion against T’Challa’s rule on two fronts: domestic terrorists with an unknown agenda on one hand, and on the other, former officers of the Dora Milaje (the all-female royal bodyguard corps beloved by fans of the movie) rallying Wakandan women who have suffered great injustices unaddressed by the crown. The leaders of the latter, lovers Ayo and Aneka, are nominally antagonists to T’Challa, but to the reader they’re parallel protagonists. You root for both T’Challa and the Dora Milaje, even though their agendas are in tension, not unlike the way one might have rooted for both Tyrion Lannister and Robb Stark in early Game of Thrones. (Shuri’s around too, though she’s quite unlike her movie counterpart.)

When he’s not fighting or investigating, T’Challa does a lot of soul-searching and debating about his responsibilities as king, the ways it conflicts with his career as a globetrotting superhero, and whether and how the government of Wakanda must evolve. Though Wakanda is too small to be considered a superpower, the domestic terror angle, an interrogation of historical injustice, and the struggle between moral idealism and political reality make Wakanda a proxy in some important ways for modern America. (You may have noticed that Ryan Coogler did this too.) Coates’s meditation on leadership and political power made A Nation Under Our Feet not only a great superhero comic but -- this is not an exaggeration or a joke -- my favorite political writing of 2016.

Nation is illustrated mostly by Brian Stelfreeze and Chris Sprouse, with colors by Laura Martin; some of Stelfreeze’s designs clearly influenced the movie.

Thoroughbreds: Sweetpea

When a clever, mean-spirited would-be journalist with airhead friends learns that her boyfriend is cheating on her, old traumas bubble to the surface and she becomes a serial killer who targets sex offenders. Darkly, often cruelly hilarious, Sweetpea is what you’d get if American Psycho was set in southwestern England and for some reason starred Amy from Gone Girl. Protagonist Rhiannon is a self-described inhabitant of an Island of Unfinished Sentences, de facto Chief Listener of her “friend” circle, and a maker of lists. Lists of the things her friends talk about (babies, boyfriends, IKEA), signs she’d like to put up at work (please close doors quietly, please do not wear Crocs to work), and oh, the people she wants to kill. Like her boyfriend, at the moment. Or ISIS, when news coverage of a terror attack pre-empts her beloved MasterChef.

Author C.J. Skuse smartly chooses not to have Rhiannon wallow in her traumatic past as many superheroes do. We get glimpses for context, but Rhiannon is committed to moving forward, to escaping her demons rather than being defined by them. It matters that she wants to get better, even if she also hates that she’s bought into society’s definition of “better.” (#relatable)

It’s worth noting that Sweetpea leans seemingly uncritically into a lot of dated gender tropes, in Rhiannon’s assessments of the women around her. (Body positive she is not.) Then again, she’s an unreliable narrator -- one of the best demonstrations of this is a scene in which she’s convinced of her ability to fool the world into believing she’s normal, then overhears her dipshit co-workers talk about how unsettling she is -- so arguably we’re supposed to laugh at how terrible she is without necessarily agreeing with her. This is, I think, a perfectly legitimate approach to a protagonist, even if some find it unfashionable.

The book is not quite as thematically rich as it first appears, at least on the topic of sexual violence; it indulges a “stranger danger” picture of rape that doesn’t feel entirely contemporary. (For a more nuanced treatment of rape culture, see the sadly short-lived but wildly entertaining vigilante dramedy Sweet/Vicious.) But as a portrait of a vibrant, layered, genuinely Nasty-and-you-kinda-love-her-for-it woman -- given Oscar-caliber-portrayal-worthy life by Skuse’s wickedly sharp voice -- Sweetpea is too fun to pass up.

Upgrade or Infinity War: The Wild Storm

Castlevania showrunner Warren Ellis helped redefine superhero comics with 1999’s The Authority, which at DC’s request he's given a Gritty Reboot (along with the WildCATS, whom some of us remember from this extremely 90s cartoon) in The Wild Storm. Ellis has always been interested in The Future, both its potential wondrousness and its probable horror. Fans of Upgrade’s refreshingly unsanitized (and unsanitary) take on human enhancement through body modification will find much to like in Ellis’s spin on the trope of second-skin powered armor. (He semi-famously wrote Extremis, one of the comic arcs that inspired Iron Man 3.)

art by Jon Davis Hunt, from The Wild Storm #1

Angela Spica, a reimagining of Ellis’s old Authority character The Engineer, is a cybernetics expert who stumbles onto a sort of shadow government conspiracy related to her employer, and goes on the run with the armor she’s designed for them. (When not deployed, the armor is stored inside her body.) Angela is quickly targeted by multiple covert organizations, one of which rescues (?) her and brings her in on a secret history of technological arms races and contact with extraterrestrials. The Wild Storm is full of big action and bigger ideas, and for smart, generally curious superhero movie fans who find the decades-long continuities of the DC and Marvel universes intimidating, it’s a great entry -- with a blessedly planned ending -- into sci-fi-comics.

Happy holidays, and have fun gift shopping!

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malavikasphotography · 4 years ago

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Research Provided by Neil for My MP2

First Research:

The “Uncanny” - Sigmund Freud

The essay “Uncanny” really inspired me because of the elaborate discussion on the hidden aspect of the mental state of reality.

Second Research:

Shadows of Wormwood

The above shows ‘Shadows of Wormwood’ by Arthur Bondar. These photographs all have a mystery to them and they are all in black and white. They show very mundane looking places with nearly all of them being shot in nature. My project can relate to these scenes because they are dark in nature and Kafka’s stories used to reflect his way of seeing the world. The second photograph of the silhouette of a man against a light in the darkness adds to the loneliness of Kafka and the horror of having such a mindset.

Third Research:

The Dogra Magra Series:

This series is about the mental state of the protagonist’s mind where he wakes up in a hospital with Amnesia, realizing that he has been part of an experiment. The doctors are trying to bring back this man’s memories back to the surface. It is a bit of an unsure scenario because it is not clear if this man was a psychotic killer or part of a peculiar psychological experiment even though it is mentioned that he killed his mother and his wife and that his strange personality was inherited from an ancestor who was also mentally unstable. This novel is influenced by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. Freud’s theory focuses on the unconscious mind which drives humans to the behaviour that they emit and the mind’s involvement which results in both conscious and unconscious decisions. The combination of both the mind and behaviour creates a link with that of Franz Kafka. Kafka’s mind resulted in his disoriented way of thinking which led to his interestingly unusually ambiguous stories.

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kookiesbadhabits · 7 years ago

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overdue (M) | one

gif by hoshikio

Ship: jungkook x reader

Summary of Part 1: You meet Jungkook in the library, and he asks you to keep his gift in exchange for your overdue book under the rug for the time being. You end up being his personal plaything when you learn he has complete control over your pleasure upon obeying his demand that you keep his gift somewhere special. Hint: the gift is a small vibrator you place in ya pants.

Genres: smut, a little fluff, mostly smut

Warnings: dom-jungkook, sex toys, exhibitionism, edging, over-stim, multiple orgasms, choking

Part 1 / Part 2

Word Count: 3.6k

This was your usual sanctuary, whether you had a spare or had to stay late after school: the library. When you didn’t feel like socializing or just breathing people’s air, this place was where you would retreat. It was always quiet here, the friendly old librarian knew your face out of the hundreds of students that had come and go by now. You even started helping her with the book returns, which was the least you could do.

The massive bookshelves lined the library like pantheon partitions, each strewn with worlds you could escape into. You lightly smiled as you ran your fingers down the spines of the new books of the literature section as you thought, ‘do I feel like the classics today?’ taking slow steps between two shelves.

A figure walked past the shelves in your peripherals and you reflexively glanced towards the movement. For a split second, you saw a new face and met eyes, ‘never seen him around here before’, you wondered. He was lackadaisically pushing a wooden cart of books slowly assessing the signs when he made eye contact with you, his eyes lighting up for a moment before turning away to his path down the aisles. You couldn’t deny his uniform suited him well, and you were almost interested enough to want to go and speak to him. He had an intriguing aloofness that drew you to him, an impressive talk in his walk, as if every breathing entity worshiped the ground he walked on and more.

You shrugged the thoughts off and went back to perusing through the shelf, where you finally came across a potential book: Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka in hardcover. You reached for it excitedly and began to tug it out when you noticed some unusual resistance. You tugged at it a little harder but the book wouldn’t budge. In fact it was being pulled further the opposite direction–someone else was trying to grab it.

With minimal effort, the opposing force finally yanked Kafka out of your grasp.

“Hey!” You sharply whispered at the person on the other side of the shelf. You could only see a glimpse of a person’s broad chest shifting lower until you came face to face with him, the gap between the bookshelf being the only distance, ‘wooden cart guy’. You felt red in your cheeks for a moment from his handsome features being so close, but reverted back to frustration for your book. His doe eyes just stared back at you, eyebrows slightly in a curious raise, waiting. He knew what he was doing though, the game of cat and mouse had already begun for him. You just thought he grabbed the book by chance, despite your taking hold of it first.

“I’m sorry, did you want this?” he asked with a smug tone, a subtle smirk forming on his lips before relaxing again. You rolled your eyes and felt your shoulders tense, 'someone hold me back from this boy’

“Yeah, so if I could have it back now,” You whispered with a hiss before giving him your best intimidating glare, “that’d be great.”

His mouth merely paused, then spread into a big smile, exposing his bunny teeth, before cracking up in a cheeky giggle with crinkles forming around his eyes, “Cute. Was that supposed to be your serious face?”

“Well—” The red came back to your cheeks and you darted your gaze away, straightening up from the book shelf as well. You crossed your arms impatiently, unsure of what to say until you held out your hand across the gap and mumbled out the words, “Just– can I–may I please have the book?” Who were you kidding? You were never any good at confrontation, why else would you spend time in the library with every chance you got. This was your safe place, your routine, calm and quiet. Not to mention, the person you’d run into was this mysterious and attractive new character in your domain; otherwise your comfort zone.

Expecting the cool surface of a paperback to touch the palm of your hand, you’re taken aback when you receive something much smaller, rounder. You pulled your hand back to find a peculiar gadget in your hand, no bigger than an inch, black and oval-like. You examine the thing, perplexed, keeping your hand open, fixated and confused as to why this stranger would hand you the thing. You looked back at him through gaps of the bookshelf and were about to ask what is was when he suddenly cleared his throat and fixed his posture. His voice was a murmur beyond the book shelf, complacent and smoothly averting you from your curiosity, “Alright, how 'bout I check you out?”

“Pardon?!” your voice remained in a whisper with your face scrunched from a mix of panic and confusion. 'I get it brain, he’s cute, and his low voice to keep from disrupting the serenity of the library was a little to-die-for, but get it together.’ your mind flooded with yellow flags.

“The book. Let’s check it out.” His voice was both firm yet polite but his playful smirk kept you on guard. He was pleased to see you stumbling over your words, unsure of your next move. He disappeared from the bookshelf gap, and so you quickly followed.

'He totally meant for me to take that the wrong way,’ disinterested, you slumped along before halting at the wooden semi-oval counters of the main library desk. This boy was definitely trying to tug you out of your comfort zone, and you weren’t having it.

“Mrs. Kim never had an assistant besides me in here,” You said as you idly rolled a pencil back and forth, trying to make up for the previous weakness in your manner by making small talk.

“I’m what you’d call a-–compulsory volunteer,” he said casually giving you a smile that flaunted more flirtation than a usual approachable geniality. “You’ll be seeing me around for a while, so I’m Jungkook. You are?”

'So you caused too much trouble, and now you’re being forced to work here,’ you thought to yourself before replying with your name bluntly. Your eyes wandered as he typed your name into the system. The computer buzzed and beeped, finally an error window popped up on the screen. Jungkook hid a slight curve of his mouth to the side, 'Just according to plan’, he thought. You were too focused on appearing nonchalant that you didn’t catch it.

“Ah tsk tsk, Ms. Y/N, I can’t check you out,“ he started,'stop wording it like that’ your inner voice fumed, and you could hear an exiguous enjoyment in his voice. "You have an overdue book: Demian.”

You were dumbfounded, you could have sworn you had returned it just before your spare ended the other day. You jerk your bag over your shoulder, rustling through it, your brows tinged with concern. It wasn’t in there. All the while, Jungkook watched on leaning back on the chair with arms crossed behind his head, amused by how easily unsettled you had become over a negligible matter. He couldn’t help but feel compelled to play with you more.

You looked back up to the boy, who smiled like a toddler hardly containing a secret. You immediately grew skeptical.

“I mean, I could just get the system to think you gave it back so you can take this book out and you could find the real book later,” He talked like a pompous businessman making a proud pitch but you listened anyway. “That is if–” He dragged the last word.

'Don’t say it’, You thought raising your brow tapping a finger incessantly on the counter and braced yourself for the incoming request for a date or even sleazier.

“You keep the gift I gave you,” he ended his note with a bright goofy smile, awaiting your response.

You were caught off guard by the unexpected offer. You let out a deep breath to keep your cool before you gave him a casual smile with undertones of confusion and reluctance. It sounded like a harmless request to you so you immediately wanted to agree but something in the pit of your stomach rolled with doubt, “That’s it?”

He nodded coolly before turning the chair back to the screen, looking like he was attending to other "compulsory volunteer” work. You stood there, feet rocking back and forth from heel to toe, unsure of why the request seemed dangerous. Deep in contemplation, you gave the corner of your bottom lip a little tug with your teeth. You had no idea of what the little device was, was it safe to just accept it for a book? Jungkook cleared his throat, eliciting you to lift your gaze back up to him. You couldn’t tear from Jungkook’s gaze, he seemed to be reeling you effortlessly out of your comfort zone, putting you in a trance strong enough for the word to escape easily from your docile lips “Okay.”

You didn’t know why but your heart pounded against your chest after uttering the one simple word, and you felt your throat had dried a bit. Maybe because part of you did know what it was, what it could be, and part of you wanted out of the comfort zone you had so meticulously carved for yourself through the library. Jungkook smiled before handing you his phone, earning an “Eh?” from you, some releasing some tension from the precedent silence.

“I’ll need your number for affirmation that you still have it,” he joked but something in his voice made it sound like more of a command. You submitted, because the request seemed admittedly harmless enough. What’s the worst that could come from giving this guy my number? You pick up the phone from the counter, your movement almost painfully slow in not wanting to show how much your hands were shaking. When you glanced at Jungkook, a cheeky innocent smile was plastered on his face, encouraging you to follow through.

*Save Contact*

Your phone screen blinked on, new message. It was already five past midnight, your friends knew your nose was deep in a book at this time and knew not to bug you so it captured you attention. You stopped your reading and unlocked the phone to see that it was from an unsaved number.

(555)-221-2858 - 12:05 AM - : Taking good care of my gift? -JK

You glanced over at your bag, you hadn’t taken it out since your exchange at the library, and suddenly the pit in your stomach that had vanished upon leaving the library came back. The strong sense of uncertainty and willingness to your adhere to your new acquaintance was foreign to you. Finally, you typed a reply,

(Y/N) - 12:06 AM : still in my bag, safe and sound i guess?

You stared tantalizingly at the three dots as he began typing moments after you had sent your text.

Jungkook - 12:06 AM : that’s not where a gift should be kept you know :(

Your head tilted with intrigue, 'And what could you be inciting, Jungkook?’

(Y/N) - 12:07 AM : so where do you suppose i should keep it?

This time the three dots took a little longer to appear, and you were annoyed at yourself, caught waiting for some strange boy’s text. He seemed to be typing forever but really, not more than a minute had passed. Part of you was craving any kind of conversation with him, and you couldn’t place why.

Jungkook - 12:10 AM : only the rightful place that specific gift should be

Jungkook - 12:12 AM : your panties

Your body tensed up in reading his last text, but you oddly weren’t disgusted. This wasn’t coming from some greased up, saggy-jeaned, prepubescent, axe-reeking teenage boy. This was coming from Jungkook, the compulsory volunteer with the bright bunny smile, an assertive walk in his talk, and apparently an authoritative hold of your inhibitions. This was what part of you guessed the gift was for, but it was such a small (hopeful) voice, it may as well had not been there at all. You type and barely construct a reply with enough sense to knock down this boy’s smug demeanor.

(Y/N) - 12:15 AM : i don’t understand why a gift should have business anywhere near there.

Jungkook had a small smile at the corners of his lips as he read your replies, 'Even through your texts, I can see right through you, (Y/N)’

Jungkook - 12:17 AM : come to school with the gift the way i want it and i’ll make you understand.

In pressing send, Jungkook was already certain of your next mood, he could feel your curiosity, your wonder, your desire to be driven out of your sanctuary away from the safety of peace and quiet, and he was more than happy to be doing the driving. Meanwhile, you were succumbing to the insane suggestion, something about the words “i’ll make you” staring back at you from the brightly lit screen. You replied nearly five minutes later after being torn between putting down and picking up the phone to type.

(Y/N) - 12:22 AM : i’m going to sleep gnight

At nearly 1 am, you hopped onto your bed, your bag at your feet, the gift still waiting for you. You needlessly look to your door to ensure lights were off, and that everyone was asleep. Before you knew it, your hand reached for the bag.

Between classes, you returned the book after realizing you’d placed it back in its shelf instead of turning it in the book-return bin. Having no time left, you caught yourself scanning the library for a familiar tall, brown-haired figure. You shook your head and rushed to your English class.

To your surprise, Jungkook was the first person you saw upon entering the classroom. 'I would have noticed you before,’ you thought as you watched him walking over to his desk after talking to a friend. He seemed like any regular student, approachable and humourous. That is, until he looked over to you, and the familiar glint was back in his eyes, and he gave you a casual knowing smile and nod. His eyebrow seemed to raise as if to ask you if you had the gift as he directed. You licked your lips subconsciously, noticing they had dried and swallowed, about to nod, before stopping yourself to walk to your seat instead.

You begin pulling out the essentials, when your phone lights up in your bag, and you take it out to find a new message notification. You swiped with little hesitance.

Jungkook - 10:23 AM : I can find out for myself you know

A stubborn nature grumbled in you, or more just the urge to challenge the boy to push you further.

(Y/N) - 10:24 : I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.

Jungkook looked up from his phone to look over to you. You were in the second row, in the middle of the room, and he was only a row behind, a few seats down from you. He could find out with a clear viewpoint of the show. He began typing again.

Jungkook 10:28 AM : pay close attention in class, (Y/N)

After reading his last text, your brows furrowed and you put the phone away as your teacher walked in.

With a keenly hidden smirk, Jungkook reached into his pocket, the teacher’s lesson was the last thing on his mind.

Your phone lit up, and you reflexively hide it under the table, to check what Jungkook could possibly be up to now.

Jungkook - 10:55 AM : :)

'A smiley face? What kind of–’ *Click*

'What is this?’ your entire body flexed, you instantly sat up straight, your hands gripping at the edges of your desk. Your legs coiled around the legs of your chair. You felt your chest having to rise and fall noticeably, as the room seemed to be getting warmer. The pencil in your hand trembled and you blinked a long two seconds as your mind processed the sensation between your thighs. Your breathing, labored, as you struggled to keep your voice in check and your expression stoic. All the while, Jungkook tilted his head to better see your newly discovered distress. He bit his lip to see the way you squeezed your thighs together, desperately crossing your ankles; the way you gripped on the desk like your life depended on it; and the way your lips slightly parted to reveal the most subtle pant. He licked his lips at the sight, and stealthily wrapped his hand over his bulge, squeezing slightly before adjusting it.

Jungkook’s gift was nestled in the middle of your lining, pressing, no, vibrating against your clit, at an unforgiving fervent pace. The sudden stimulation had you almost jumping out of your seat, catching you completely off guard. Your felt your lungs cave in upon realizing the teacher had been calling your name, directing you to the projector, repeating his question,

“What does the glass ceiling represent, (Y/N)?” he didn’t look impressed by your getting distracted from the lesson.

Jungkook’s devious smile peaked the surface once more with a slight chuckle as he looked over at what you’d do. You squinted at the screen, composing yourself, pushing yourself to pretend that the rush of pleasure wasn’t coursing through every nerve in your body, emanating from your core.

“The glass ceiling,” you began sounding more shy than vulgar, “is an abstract barrier that prevents–” *Click* You gasped abruptly, catching more of your classmates’ attention, and receiving concerned stares. The vibrating grew more intense, pushing you closer to the edge. Your could barely hide the frantic look in your eyes as you attempted to continue.

“Prevents women from attaining higher positions in a hierarchy,” You practically had no spaces between the words as you tried your hardest to finish your answer in one breath. Some slight relief washed over you, lifting some pressure off your shoulders. ‘Goddammit Jungkook’

The teacher raised a skeptical brow at you, cleared his throat, and returned to the lesson after affirming that your answer was correct. The class proceeded to slowly revert back to the regular classroom atmosphere, their attention no longer on you, excluding the few lingering looks. You proceeded to look as normal and unfazed as you could until the last of the stares and murmurs had died down.

You glanced at Jungkook who flashed you an innocent smile, and your panicked glance turned into a glare.In an instant, the innocent smile had vanished, and you felt your pussy quivering at the sight of his tongue gliding along his bottom lip, and biting down, adding a tint of red in his lips. He batted his eyes, inviting, challenging you, before reaching his hand into his pocket again. *Click*

You’re flooded with waves of impassioned gratification, you could swear that if you weren’t in the middle of a classroom, your eyes would be rolled up to a close by now. Your converse scuffled against the tiled floor, toes curling and feet sliding to straighten your legs. You bit harder on your lip, a quiet moan escaping the restraints of your willpower. You looked back at Jungkook, to beg him to stop the agonizing bliss. At this point, you were getting so close to an extreme high that you’d an impatient longing for, you didn’t know whether you wanted him to stop or turn the intensity of the convulsions even more.

His eyes were glued to you, getting more and more turned on with the way you were getting off to his gift. He longed to kiss that flushed face, bury his face between your legs, and pull your hair as he pounded mercilessly into you while the toy vibrated against your clit. He wanted to hear the greed in your moans after giving you orgasm after orgasm until you became addicted to his touch; until you wanted nothing more than to have him inside you.

As he fantasized, keeping his eyes fixated on you with his bulging becoming increasingly visible, you kept his gaze. You imagined his strong hand pinning your arms over your head against the wall, his other hand wrapped around your throat with a grip rough and gentle enough to allow a generous breath in and out of your lungs, as he ravaged your dripping heat. The vibrator was so intense and you had become so wet, you could feel it slipping between your lips and touching your clit directly. The rush made your entrance quiver and your grip on the table made your knuckles white. Your breathing became choppy, stopping completely as you felt you were only a moment before reaching the carnal climax. Being in the middle of a classroom with the high risks of being noticed only added to the thrill. You closed your eyes, jaw dropped ajar, keeping your pants light and silent. Just a little more, the friction against your clit drove you over the edge, you were going to come, so your eyes fluttered open to look over at Jungkook again. Whatever resolve you had before was no where to be found. All that mattered to you was the sweet release, and Jungkook gave you a knowing look before slowly inching his fingers to his pocket one last time.

You stared, bracing yourself, biting your tongue, anything you could do to prevent letting out a most embarrassing moan as you climaxed in the middle of all your unsuspecting classmates.

*Click*

“Eh?” you freeze, you could feel your body wincing in disappointed. The vibrating came to a complete stop, the sensation gone leaving you in a whole other level of hopeless torment. So close, small tears had welled up in your eyes as you looked over weakly to Jungkook, who gave you only a wink.

“That son of a bitch,” you cursed under your breath that you couldn’t deny sounded more like a sensual whine.

A/N : I may have completely changed the direction of this story as well as the theme. Idk i just didn’t feel the the original had enough sexual tension, not enough sin at all. Decided to fix that, hope you enjoyed, I’ll be here washing off with a dab of holy water because this is just the tip of the iceberg

#jungkook #smut #jungkook smut #jungkook fanfic #kookie #jeon jungkook #jeongguk #jungkook x reader #jungkook x you #bts scenarios #jungkook scenarios #jungkook imagines #fic #fanfiction #bts fanfic #bts smut #bts jungkook #rj is bangtan scum

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biointernet · 5 years ago

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Hourglass - Masonic Symbol

He or she who admits the possession of a secret, has already half revealed it; certainly, it is a great deal gained toward the acquisition of treasure, to know exactly where it is. WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS, Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside As the spider is not seen in his web, so are the secrets of a man concealed in his heart. WAUKATAUKI, attributed, Day's Collacon A secret is powerful when it is empty. People often mention the "Masonic secret." What on earth is the Masonic secret? No one can tell. As long as it remains empty it can be filled up with every possible notion, and it has power. UMBERTO ECO, The Paris Review, summer 2008

Hourglass - Masonic Symbol Exhibition

Hourglass with Wings - Masonic Symbol Masonic Hourglass – a symbol of the third Degree of Freemasonry peculiar to the American Rite. More about Masonic Hourglass

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Time, you’ll be pleased to know–and since one must start somewhere–was created in creation. The question What was there before creation? is meaningless. Time is a property of creation, therefore before creation there was no before creation. GLEN DUNCAN, I, Lucifer Hourglass 267, post card, Hourglass with wings, masonic hourglass Hourglass post card, Hourglass with wings,…

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433 Criminal Courts Fund Bulgaria

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420 Hourglass Angola Stamp

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419 Nicaragua Post Stamp

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Masonic Hourglass Masonry is a unique institution that has been a major part of community life in America for over 250 years. Masonry, or more properly Freemasonry, is America’s largest and oldest fraternity and one that continues to be an important part of many men’s personal lives and growth. Many years ago in England it was described as “a system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.” It is a course of moral instruction using both allegories and symbols to teach its lessons. The legends and myths of the old stonecutters and Masons, many of them involved in building the great cathedrals of Europe, have been woven into an interesting and effective way to portray moral truths.

Hourglass 239 post card

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Hourglass 146, Johannes Lassenius

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Hourglass 8

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Hourglass 121 Swarovski

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Hourglass - Masonic Symbol Exhibition

Hourglass with Wings - Masonic Symbol Masonic Hourglass – a symbol of the third Degree of Freemasonry peculiar to the American Rite.

Hourglass 267, masonic hourglass wings

Hourglass Collection Website: https://hourglasscollection.org Read the full article

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infpisme · 8 years ago

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Understanding INFP Feeling

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery, an INFP

INFPs are some of the most complex individuals you will ever meet. On the surface they may seem quiet and unassuming, while inside they hold vast, imaginative worlds and intense emotions. They are highly individualistic in nature, holding firm to an independent set of values. They may seem sensitive, even shy, but they will stand up against any demon to hold to their cause. Joan of Arc, George Orwell, Vincent Van Gogh, and Franz Kafka were all INFPs.

Their voice, their courage to express their beliefs and values make INFPs a force to be reckoned with.

If you know an INFP, what you’ll see is their auxiliary function, Extraverted Intuition (Ne). They will see possibilities and imaginative ideas everywhere and will want to find ways to inspire people with these ideas. Yet what really drives the INFP is their dominant function, Introverted Feeling (Fi). Fi gives the INFP an unwavering set of internal morals that they seek to understand and mold in a deep, holistic way.

On the outside INFPs seem open-minded and thoughtful, but inside their values and beliefs are impenetrable. They may make modifications to their values as they understand themselves in a deeper way, but they will strive to be true to themselves no matter what peer pressure, orders, and demands are made for them to “fit in” or conform.

Understanding Introverted Feeling

Introverted Feeling (Fi) types have complex, intense, and personal emotions. They live their life striving to understand themselves deeply, to express their beliefs, and above all, to remain authentic.

Being honest and sticking to their personal code of ethics is their highest concern. Because Fi is introverted in nature, it is guarded from the outside world and INFPs will only show their feelings to those they feel they can trust implicitly. This is why when you get to know the INFP in a deeper, more intimate way, they may reveal a side of themselves you didn’t know existed.

As they form deeper relationships they will reveal more of their dominant feeling, and it often comes as a surprise. Suddenly, friends and family realize that underneath their open-minded demeanor the INFP has very strong judgments and morals that they will not compromise.

Introverted Feeling is often called “subjective feeling”. This is because Fi-users seek to live in accordance with their own personal values, beliefs, and morals. They are very aware of their own emotions and strive to have internal harmony.

A good way to understand Fi is to compare it to its opposite, Extraverted Feeling. Extraverted Feeling (Fe), or “objective” feeling, distributes its feeling across a wide breadth of people; looking for external harmony and often sharing its feelings more readily with others.

Fe users are skilled at picking up instantaneously on other people’s emotions and values, while Fi-users instantly know how things impact themselves emotionally. Fe users may seem like social chameleons, modifying their countenance based on who they’re with, while Fi-users are intensely individualistic, and while private, will not change their feeling presence based on who they’re with.

Fi users funnel their empathy and passion into a select group of individuals. They are especially concerned with the “underdogs”; children, the disabled, disadvantaged groups of people, or even animals. They will pour their energy into these groups of people, helping in any way they can. They will remain loyal to their cause or “their group” no matter what arguments or opposition they face.

This outpouring of energy into a select group of people is often why Fi is called “intensive” whereas Fe is called “extensive”.

Introverted Feeling inspires the INFP to seek out experiences that arouse their sympathy, passion, and inspiration. They often find this kind of inspiration in music, writing, travel, artwork, or charity work.

The Mysterious Feelers

Introverted Feeling is so private that on the outside INFPs may look somewhat unemotional. Because they don’t readily share their feelings, yet are deeply affected by them, they may appear calm on the surface while inside they may have an intense emotional response to what is happening.

When many people think of Feeling types, they think of readily expressed external emotions. INFPs may seem like feelers in disguise. They may not exude emotion and enthusiasm all the time, but they care deeply and intensely. They may not open up to most people about how they feel, what they feel, or what impacts them, but they know and that’s what matters to them.

The intense emotions of the INFP become more apparent when they are emotionally affected or hurt. They tend to cry easily, and this is somewhat of a curse to them. They usually dislike showing their emotions because they are so private. They feel exposed and will often try to get away to a place where they can shed their tears without feeling the prying eyes of others upon them.

“If you looked down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand fully the source of my longing and pity me. Even the open, transparent lake has its unknown depths, which no divers know.” – Hans Christian Andersen, an INFP

Characteristics of INFPs:

They value internal harmony above all else.

They are imaginative and creative.

They have deeply held yet seldom expressed feelings and emotions.

On the outside they seem reserved, yet inside they have very passionate and intense feelings and values.

They are loyal and faithful to their beliefs and the objects of their passion.

They are less concerned with what others think or “impressing” others.

They are highly idealistic.

They are usually very sensitive.

They excel in fields that deal with possibilities for people; counseling, teaching, art, literature, science, and psychology.

They usually have a gift for language and literacy.

The Neuroscience of Introverted Feeling

According to Dario Nardi, a UCLA professor and expert in the field of neuroscience, INFPs (and ISFPs) are the “consummate listeners”. Nardi explains in his book Neuroscience of Personality: Brain Savvy Insights for All Types of People, that INFPs “thoroughly engage all brain regions that process voice, words, and sounds; moreover, they may easily enter a unique and whole-brain state when listening to other people, whoever those people might be.”

Nardi goes on to say that INFPS are attentive to information withheld by other people. “They hear with precision and insight, and also carefully compose their own speech, attending to both content and delivery, for the desired impact.” He explains that this process helps them to weigh other people’s intents and motivations and also allows the INFP to speak with eloquence, grace, and carefully-selected words to understand others deeply and express themselves creatively.

Nardi found that INFPs are left-brained when they make decisions, and that while they come across as open-minded, they are actually “quite definitive about decisions.”

INFPs and Artistry

INFPs are driven to express their innermost values in a creative way. While their feeling function is more private, they like to express their feelings through writing, art, music, or even acting. According to the MBTI® Manual, INFPs crave jobs that feature creativity and originality. They also show occupational trends in writing, counseling, and the arts.

Why Are INFPs Drawn to Artistry?

INFPs combine Fi and Ne to see ideas everywhere for self-expression. While Fi cultivates a unique inner value system and a passion for a select cause, Ne sees possibilities of expression in the external world that it hopes to see realized.

Intuition and even the INFPs inferior Extraverted Thinking (Te) are what brings those inner values to life. If you look at the works of many INFPs, you’ll see that their creations are filled with the passion of their cause.

Albert Camus wrote in opposition to nihilism while delving deeply into individual freedoms. George Orwell spoke out against totalitarian and authoritarian social practices in Animal Farm and 1984. Vincent Van Gogh poured his emotion and imagination into his paintings, using application of paint and symbolic colours to express his own subjective emotions.

If you look through history you will see how INFPs have drawn, written, painted, or expressed their true values and nature in their work. It is fascinating to see the passion and fervor of the INFP so eloquently and beautifully expressed.

Some Fun Facts About INFPs:

INFPs have a general advantage in foreign language learning.

In a national sample that studied type and leisure activities, INFPs preferred writing, appreciating art, reading, and listening to music.

Academically, INFPs prefer art, English, and music.

When it comes to the work environment, INFPs prefer independence & achievement, variety of tasks, and clear structure. They also prefer a job that fosters their creativity and originality.

Source: Written by Susan Storm, http://www.psychologyjunkie.com/2017/02/20/understanding-infp-feeling/

#susan storm #infp #infp feelings #infp personality #mbti

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networkingdefinition · 5 years ago

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Insects Quotes

Official Website: Insects Quotes

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• “Are you okay?” he says, still looking at me, and I feel my smile slip, fade, and the silence that falls over us then is so total I can’t hear anything, not the rush-hiss of my heart pounding in my chest, not the sounds all around us; insects, wind, and the distant clatter of others’ lives in houses built close but not too close because when we look out our windows we all like to pretend that everything we see is ours. But Ryan is not mine. – Elizabeth Scott • a country encapsulates our childhood and those lanes, byres, fields, flowers, insects, suns, moons and stars are forever reoccurring. – Edna O’Brien • A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still. – Samuel Johnson • A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. – Robert A. Heinlein • A net set up to catch fish may snare a duck; a mantis hunting an insect may itself be set upon by a sparrow. Machinations are hidden within machinations; changes arise beyond changes. So how can wit and cleverness be relied upon? – Zicheng Hong • A refuge is supposed to prevent what? The genes from flowing out of sight? This refuge idea won’t stop insects from moving across boundaries. That’s absurd. – Jeremy Rifkin • A single swallow, it is said, devours ten millions of insects every year. The supplying of these insects I take to be a signal instance of the Creator’s bounty in providing for the lives of His creatures. – Ambrose Bierce • A standard saying among fly fishermen is that trout spend anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of their time feeding below the water’s surface on the immature forms of aquatic insects. Some anglers are even more precise, but whatever the exact percentage , it’s safe to say that to fully appreciate any tailwater fishery you will have to learn the fine art of nymphing. – Ed Engle • A stray fact: insects are not drawn to candle flames, they are drawn to the light on the far side of the flame, they go into the flame and sizzle to nothingness because they’re so eager to get to the light on the other side. – Michael Cunningham • A tree is a thought, an obstruction stopping the flow of wind and light, trapping water, housing insects, birds, and animals, and breathing in and out. How treelike the human, how human the tree. – Gretel Ehrlich • A worm tells summer better than the clock, The slug’s a living calendar of days; What shall it tell me if a timeless insect Says the world wears away? – Dylan Thomas • Ah, Meese has brought us her finest goblets! A moment, whilst Kruppe sweeps out cobwebs, insect husks and other assorted proofs of said goblets’ treasured value. – Steven Erikson • All of nature talks to me – if I could just figure out what it’s saying – trees are swinging in the breeze. They’re talking to me. Insects are rubbing their legs together. They’re all talking. They’re talking to me. – Laurie Anderson • Although you should respect venomous snakes and approach them with caution, most snakes you encounter in an urban environment are harmless and beneficial because they eat insects, mice and other rodents. – Robert Pierce • An innocent bird is not innocent from the insect’s point of view! Only man can attain the rank of innocence through becoming a peaceful vegetarian! – Mehmet Murat Ildan • An insect is more complex than a star..and is a far greater challenge to understand. – Martin Rees • Around the steel no tortur’d worm shall twine, No blood of living insect stain my line; Let me, less cruel, cast the feather’d hook, With pliant rod athwart the pebbled brook, Silent along the mazy margin stray, And with the fur-wrought fly delude the prey. – John Gay • As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. – Franz Kafka • At seventy-three I learned a little about the real structure of animals, plants, birds, fishes and insects. Consequently when I am eighty I’ll have made more progress. At ninety I’ll have penetrated the mystery of things. At a hundred I shall have reached something marvellous, but when I am a hundred and ten everything I do, the smallest dot, will be alive. – Hokusai

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Insect', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_insect').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_insect img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Be able to recognize the dangerous snakes, spiders, insects, and plants that live in your area of the country.- Marilyn vos Savant • Beasts, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on. – Robert Southey • Because there is something helpless and weak and innocent – something like an infant – deep inside us all that really suffers in ways we would never permit an insect to suffer. – Jack Abbott • Ben: “Gorog’s no assassin! She’s my best friend.” Mara: “She’s an insect, Ben.” Ben: “So? Your best friend’s a lizard.” Mara: “Don’t be ridiculous. Aunt Leia is my best friend.” Ben: “Doesn’t count. She’s family. Saba is a lizard.” Mara: “Okay, maybe my best friend’s a lizard. – Troy Denning • Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy. – Emile M. Cioran • Bird taxonomy is a difficult field because of the severe anatomical constraints imposed by flight. There are only so many ways to design a bird capable, say, of catching insects in mid-air, with the result that birds of similar habitats tend to have very similar anatomies, whatever their ancestry. For example, American vultures look and behave much like Old World vultures, but biologists have come to realize that the former are related to storks, the latter to hawks, and that their resemblances result from their common lifestyle. – Jared Diamond • By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions and tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad’…By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. – George Orwell • By the River Piedra I sat down and wept. There is a legend that everything that falls into the waters of this river — leaves, insects, the feathers of birds — is transformed into the rocks that make the riverbed. If only I could tear out my heart and hurl it into the current, then my pain and longing would be over, and I could finally forget. – Paulo Coelho • Cats are like insects. They should be left outside to clean up the garbage. – Michael Mewshaw • Compassion is an emotion of which we ought never to be ashamed. Graceful, particularly in youth, is the tear of sympathy, and the heart that melts at the tale of woe. We should not permit ease and indulgence to contract our affections, and wrap us up in a selfish enjoyment; but we should accustom ourselves to think of the distresses of human, life, of the solitary cottage; the dying parent, and the weeping orphan. Nor ought we ever to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty. – Hugh Blair • Each moss, Each shell, each drawling insect, holds a rank Important in the plan of Him who fram’d This scale of beings; holds a rack which, lost Would break the chain, and leave behind a gap Which Nature’s self would rue. – Benjamin Stillingfleet • Each particle of matter is an immensity, each leaf a world, each insect an inexplicable compendium. – Johann Kaspar Lavater • English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled. – Bill Bryson • Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. – Francis Bacon • Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so amazingly know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves. – Fyodor Dostoevsky • Every living being on earth loves life above all else. The smallest insect, whose life lasts only an instant, tries to escape from any danger in order to live a moment longer. And the desire to live is most developed in man. – Hazrat Inayat Khan • Every man has the basis of good. Not only human beings, you can find it among animals and insects, for instance, when we treat a dog or horse lovingly. – Dalai Lama • Everything is a hero: A lighthouse which gives light to us; weeds that provide shelter to little insects; a water drop which quenches a thirsty ant! Everything that helps us to live is a hero! • Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. – Albert Einstein • Everything is important. To the smallest insect, even the mouldering tree, the deepest stone in the drift. – Marlene van Niekerk • For us, a pretty bird is a pretty bird; for an insect, pretty bird is an ugly enemy! – Mehmet Murat Ildan • From inanimate object, to microorganism, to plant, to insect, to animal, to human, there is an evolving level of intelligence. – Bryan Kest • From my earliest memories I was fascinated by animals. I would explore my backyard for insects and gaze at anthills until my elbows became sore. When I was 8, my mother bought me a book of North American birds and I’ve been keen on birdwatching since. – Jonathan Balcombe • Garden: One of a vast number of free outdoor restaurants operated by charity-minded amateurs in an effort to provide healthful, balanced meals for insects, birds and animals. – Henry Beard • Happy insect! what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning’s gentle wine! Nature waits upon thee still, And thy verdant cup does fill; ‘Tis fill’d wherever thou dost tread, Nature’s self’s thy Ganymede. – Abraham Cowley • Herein lies our problem. If we level that much land to grow rice and whatever, then no other animal could live there except for some insect pest species. Which is very unfortunate. – Steve Irwin • Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days. – Terry Pratchett • How describe the delicate thing that happens when a brilliant insect alights on a flower? Words, with their weight, fall upon the picture like birds of prey. – Jules Renard • How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, how complicate, how wonderful is man! Distinguished link in being’s endless chain! Midway from nothing to the Deity! Dim miniature of greatness absolute! An heir of glory! A frail child of dust! Helpless immortal! Insect infinite! A worm! A God! – Edward Young • How would you like to have a thousand brilliantly colored cliff swallows keeping house in the eaves of your barn, and gobbling up insects over your farm at the rate of 100,000 per day? There are many Wisconsin farmsteads where such a swallow-show is a distinct possibility. – Aldo Leopold • Human beings ought not to draw in their antennae at every ungentle touch, like supersensitive insects. – E. T. A. Hoffmann • I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We’re all looking at the wrapping. But we won’t tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath. – Tom Waits • I craved your warmth. I hugged myself, rubbing my fingers up and down. I guess people are like insects sometimes, drawn to heat, A kind of infra-red longing. – Lucy Christopher • I do not see why men sheould be so proud insects have the more ancient lineage according to the scientists insects were insects when man was only a burbling whatisit. – Don Marquis • I fear no man, no woman; flower does not fear bird, insect nor adder. – Hilda Doolittle • I got a little studio in Chicago and practiced. I realized I had to earn some money. So I went to work for an advertising agency where my job was mostly drawing insects for a company that sold an insecticide spray. – Claes Oldenburg • I had that trapped feeling, like some sort of a poor insect that you’ve put inside a downturned glass, and it tries to climb up the sides, and it can’t, and it can’t, and it can’t. – Cornell Woolrich • I hate banana bread. It’s too suspicious-looking. I always thought the cooked banana looked like insect legs. – Elizabeth Berg • I hated the words. Each one was like a big live insect in my mouth. – Glen Duncan • I have always found thick woods a little intimidating, for they are so secret and enclosed. You may seem alone but you are not, for there are always eyes watching you. All the wildlife of the woods, the insects, birds, and animals, are well aware of your presence no matter how softly you may tread, and they follow your every move although you cannot see them. – Thalassa Cruso • I listen to the summer symphony outside my window. Truthfully, it’s not a symphony at all. There’s no tune, no melody, only the same notes over and over. Chirps and tweets and trills and burples. It’s as if the insect orchestra is forever tuning its instruments, forever waiting for the maestro to tap his baton and bring them to order. I, for one, hope the maestro never comes. I love the music mess of it. – Jerry Spinelli • I love insects. They are amazing. – Andrea Arnold • I never kill insects. If I see ants or spiders in the room, I pick them up and take them outside. Karma is everything. – Holly Valance • I personally feel that parachute files give a more realistic impression of an insect to the fish that views the fly, since the hackles are in the same position as the insect’s legs, and when tied with brightly colored hackles, these flies are easier to see on the float. A final advantage is that in rough water, a parachute-hackled dry fly will float longer and better than a conventional one – Lefty Kreh • I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness — a real thorough-going illness. – Fyodor Dostoevsky • I think it’s so archaic that cosmetic companies are still using animal by-products and insects in their products! It’s 2016, why is anyone still doing that? – Jeffree Star • I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity. – Percy Bysshe Shelley • I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing. – John Fowles • I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better. – Mary Oliver • I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life – but there was no one to tell me. – George Washington Carver • I was really interested in collecting insects. – Satoshi Tajiri • If all insects disappeared, all life on earth would perish. If all humans disappeared, all life on earth would flourish. – Jonas Salk • If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. – E. O. Wilson • If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish. – Jonas Salk • If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect. – Jacques Yves Cousteau • If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months. – E. O. Wilson • If you had an alien race that looked like insects, then they would build robots to look like themselves, not to look like people. – Kevin J. Anderson • If you see a thing that looks like a cross between a flying lobster and the figure of Abraxas on a Gnostic gem, do not pay it the least attention, never mind where it is; just keep quiet and hope it will go away – for that’s your best chance; you have none in a stand-up fight with a good thorough-going African insect. – Mary Kingsley • If you want to study one of these strange organisms, you had better have a good justification. It’s not good to say I want to study gene organisation in some obscure insect that no one’s ever heard about. – Thomas Cech • I’m always very interested in breeding. Raising cacti is breeding. My lotus plant collection is breeding. The insects are breeding. – Takashi Murakami • I’m writing a film called ‘Bug.’ It’s an original script, and it’s not about killer insects. It’s a thriller set in a high school. The bug of the title refers to a surveillance device. – Wes Craven • In handling a stinging insect, move very slowly. – Robert A. Heinlein • In my grandparents’ time, it was believed that spirits existed everywhere – in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything. My generation does not believe this, but I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything. – Hayao Miyazaki • In my life outdoors, I’ve observed that animals of almost any variety will stand in a windy place rather than in a protected, windless area infested with biting insects. They would rather be annoyed by the wind than bitten. – Tim Cahill • In my youth, I spent my time investigating insects. – Maria Sibylla Merian • In summer the empire of insects spreads. – Adam Zagajewski • In the future, I mean to be a fine streamside entomologist. I’m going to start on that when I am much too old to do any of the two thousand things I can think of that are more fun than screening insects in cold running water – Thomas McGuane • In the vast, and the minute, we see The unambiguous footsteps of the God, Who gives its lustre to an insect’s wing And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds. – William Cowper • In time they sank and decayed, and nothing is left of them except an occasional impression in stones, in stones now found in deserts and on high mountain peaks. Birdless forests block the sun in uninhabited lands. Insects swirl in the air. And then, in a majestic, bloodthirsty, and mighty heave, the spinal columns of the vertebrates rise as monstrous lizards and fabulous creatures; dragons flinging their fearful bellows up to a steaming sky… Slowly they become birds, birds as light as undreamt dreams. The searing roars become birdsong, whimpering flutes on warm nights. – Erik Fosnes Hansen • Insect life was so loud that when you parked the car and got out it sounded as if you had suddenly tuned into a radio frequency from another planet. – David Samuels • Insect politics, indifferent universe. Bang your head against the wall, but apathy is worse. – Don Henley • Insect resistance to a pesticide was first reported in 1947 for the Housefly (Musca domestica) with respect to DDT. Since then resistance to one or more pesticides has been reported in at least 225 species of insects and other arthropods. The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds. – Francisco J. Ayala • Insects are my secret fear. That’s what terrifies me more than anything – insects. – Michael O’Donoghue • Insects are not only cold-blooded, and green- and yellow-blooded, but are also cased in a clacking horn. They have rigid eyes and brains strung down their backs. But they make up the bulk of our comrades-at-life, so I look to them for a glimmer of companionship. – Annie Dillard • Insects are what neurosis would sound like, if neurosis could make a noise with its nose. – Martin Amis • Insects have their own point of view about civilization a man thinks he amounts to a great deal but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat. – Don Marquis • Insects leave (Madagascar periwinkle) Catharanthus roseus out of their diets. So, for that matter, do deer. The reason is that the plants are loaded with alkaloids so potent that they are the source of vincristine and vinblastine. These are drugs important in routines of chemotherapy for treating Hodgkin’s disease and certain forms of leukemia. – Allen Lacy • Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought Mosaic; underfoot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of costliest emblem: other creature here Beast, bird, insect, or worm durst enter none; Such was their awe of man. – John Milton • Is it reasonable to suppose that we can apply a broad-spectrum insecticide to kill the burrowing larval stages of a crop-destroying insect … without also killing the ‘good’ insects whose function may be the essential one of breaking down organic matter and maintaining healthy soil? – Rachel Carson • Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit. – Henry David Thoreau • It began as this desire to do this science fiction movie about perhaps one of the last insects left that nobody’s done anything on, which is the cockroach – and truly one of the most frightening insects. – Michael O’Donoghue • It skims in through the eye, and by means of the utterly delicate retina hurls shadows like insect legs inward for translation. Then an immense space opens up in silence and an endlessly fecund sub-universe the writer descends, and asks the reader to descend after him, not merely to gain instructions but also to experience delight, the delight of mind freed from matter and exultant in the strength it has stolen from matter. – John Updike • It was the hour when gauze-winged insects are born that only live for a day. – Lord Dunsany • It’s time to stop pretending I’m ok with things I’m not ok with like all insects and Foster the People. – Greg Behrendt • It’s very easy to make insects move. Because they do move mechanically without the rippling of flesh as you mentioned. They move more like real tinker toys and you can make models of them quite easily. – Michael O’Donoghue • I’ve always gone with Kafka’s model of establishing the world from the first line, as in Kafka’s famous line from Metamorphosis, “Gregor Samsa woke up from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect” (or beetle or cockroach, depending on the translation). I have to have that first line before I can go further. – Laurie Foos • I’ve become a much more serious young insect. – Andrew Denton • I’ve come to realize that the mark is the primal gesture, the internal connection of the caveman to the cosmos; an impossibility similar to an impulse in an insect’s nervous system that it could somehow reduce to dust a steel beam by endlessly crawling over it. – Joel-Peter Witkin • Large flocks of butterflies, all kinds of happy insects, seem to be in a perfect fever of joy and sportive gladness. – John Muir • Life is hard for insects. And don’t think mice are having any fun either. – Woody Allen • Little soldier, little insect You know war it has no heart It will kill you in the sunshine Or happily in the the dark Where kindness is a card game Or a bent up cigarette In the trenches, in the hard rain With a bullet and a bet. – Conor Oberst • Lobsters displays all three of the classic biological characteristics of an insect, namely: 1. It has way more legs than necessary. 2. There is no way you would ever pet it. 3. It does not respond to simple commands such as “Here, boy!” – Dave Barry • Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside. – Honore de Balzac • Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of men will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet – Mary Wollstonecraft • Many of the earth’s habitats, animals, plants, insects and even micro-organisms that we know to be rare may not be known at all by future generations. We have the capability and the responsibility to act; we must do so before it is too late. – Dalai Lama • Men should stop fighting among themselves and start fighting insects. – Luther Burbank • My 10th Sonata is a sonata of insects. Insects are born from the sun… they are the sun’s kisses. – Alexander Scriabin • My painting is not violent, it’s life that is violent. Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves, the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. We are born with a scream; we come into life with a scream and maybe love is a mosquito net between the fear of living and the fear of death. – Francis Bacon • Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world. – Henry David Thoreau • Natural selection certainly operates. It explains how bacteria will gain antibiotic resistance; it will explain how insects get insecticide resistance, but it doesn’t explain how you get bacteria or insects in the first place. – William A. Dembski • Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. – Henry David Thoreau • No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity. – Edith Wharton • No one knows, incidentally, why Australia’s spiders are so extravagantly toxic; capturing small insects and injecting them with enough poison to drop a horse would appear to be the most literal case of overkill. Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space. – Bill Bryson • No poetic phantasy but a biological reality, a fact: I am an entity like bird, insect, plant or sea-plant cell; I live; I am alive. – Hilda Doolittle • None of God’s Creatures absolutely consider’d are in their own Nature Contemptible; the meanest Fly, the poorest Insect has its Use and Vertue. – Mary Astell • Now summer is in flower and natures hum Is never silent round her sultry bloom Insects as small as dust are never done Wi’ glittering dance and reeling in the sun And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee Are never weary of their melody Round field hedge now flowers in full glory twine Large bindweed bells wild hop and streakd woodbine That lift athirst their slender throated flowers Agape for dew falls and for honey showers These round each bush in sweet disorder run And spread their wild hues to the sultry sun. – John Clare • Of all the systems of the body – neurological, cognitive, special, sensory – the cardiological system is the most sensitive and easily disturbed. The role of society must be to shelter these systems from infection and decay, or else the future of the human race is at stake. Like a summer fruit that is protected from insect invasion, bruising, and rot by the whole mechanism of modern farming; so must we protect the heart. – Lauren Oliver • Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths? – George Eliot • One cannot overestimate the power of a good rancorous hatred on the part of the stupid. The stupid have so much more industry and energy to expend on hating. They build it up like coral insects. – Sylvia Townsend Warner • One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised. The first line reads, “As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. . . .” When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing short stories. – Gabriel Garcia Marquez • One of the really remarkably beneficial aspects of genetic engineering is that much of the previous methodology for controlling pests and so forth is through chemicals that affect a very broad spectrum of insects, for example, or fungicides that control fungi. – Nina Fedoroff • Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind. – Friedrich Nietzsche • People have this idea that nature dictates a sort of 1950s sitcom version of what males and females are like. That is just not the case in the insect world. – Marlene Zuk • Perfect hexagonal tubes in a packed array. Bees are hard-wired to lay them down, but how does an insect know enough geometry to lay down a precise hexagon? It doesn’t. It’s programmed to chew up wax and spit it out while turning on its axis, and that generates a circle. Put a bunch of bees on the same surface, chewing side-by-side, and the circles abut against each other – deform each other into hexagons, which just happen to be more efficient for close packing anyway. – Peter Watts • Plant consciousness, insect consciousness, fish consciousness, all are related by one permanent element, which we may call the religious element inherent in all life, even in a flea: the sense of wonder. That is our sixth sense, and it is the natural religious sense. – D. H. Lawrence • Politics is made up of two words: “Poli,” which is Greek for “many,” and “tics,” which are bloodsucking insects. – Gore Vidal • Primates need good nutrition, to begin with. Not only fruits and plants, but insects as well. – Richard Leakey • Say, will the falcon, stooping from above, Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove? Admires the jay the insect’s gilded wings? Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings? – Alexander Pope • She was afraid of all that and so much more, but what terrified her most was inside of her, an insect of unnatural intelligence who’d been living in her brain her entire life, playing with it, clicking across it, wrenching loose its cables on a whim. – Dennis Lehane • Shrimp are the insects of the ocean. They’re bottom feeders. So they’re delicious, but they’re the bugs of the sea. – Baron Vaughn • Since I turned the fields back to their natural state, I can’t say I’ve had any really difficult problems with insects or disease. – Masanobu Fukuoka • So important are insects and other land-dwelling arthropods that if all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few months. – E. O. Wilson • So there you have it: Nature is a rotten mess. But that’s only the beginning. If you take your eyes off it for one second, it will kill you. Thorns, insects, fungus, worms, birds, reptiles, wild animals, raging rivers, bottomless ravines, dry deserts, snow, quicksand, tumbleweeds, sap, and mud. Rot, poison and death. That’s Nature.It’s a wonder you even step outside of your cabin, I said.My bravery exceeds my good sense, he said. – Lee Goldberg • So, when I say ‘match the hatch’, if the fish are taking the nymph, and you’re actually producing a replica of a flying insect, you’ll catch fresh air. – Rex Hunt • Sometimes human beings are very much like bees. Bees are fiercely protective of their hive, provided you are outside it. Once you’re in, the workers sort of assume that it must have been cleared by management and take no notice; various freeloading insects have evolved a mellifluous existence because of this very fact. Humans act the same way. – Neil Gaiman • Specialization is for insects. – Robert A. Heinlein • Specialization is for insects… The race of man? He’s a whole other creature. – Robert A. Heinlein • Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes. – Larry Niven • Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas. – Samuel Smiles • Suppose that insect wings developed primarily as thermoregulators and then were used for skimming and finally flying, evolving along the way. What would they be “for”? Or what is the skeleton “for”? For keeping one upright, protecting organs, storing calcium, making blood cells…? – Noam Chomsky • The air was calm and insects had not yet risen off the water, that crisp time of morning before the sun strikes, when it is still cool enough to work out solutions to sticky problems. – April Smith • The best gardener is a baby killer. Baby insects are much easier to kill than adults, and haven’t yet developed the big mouths and voracious appetite of the adolescent. – Janet Macunovich • The careful insect ‘midst his works I view, Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew, With golden treasures load his little thighs, And steer his distant journey through the skies. – John Gay • The clearest window that ever was fashioned if it is barred by spiders’ webs, and hung over with carcasses of insects, so that the sunlight has forgotten to find its way through, of what use can it be? Now, the Church is God’s window; and if it is so obscured by errors that its light is darkness, how great is that darkness! – Henry Ward Beecher • The colours of insects and many smaller animals contribute to conceal them from the larger ones which prey upon them. Caterpillars which feed on leaves are generally green; and earth-worms the colour of the earth which they inhabit; butter-flies, which frequent flowers, are coloured like them; small birds which frequent hedges have greenish backs like the leaves, and light-coloured bellies like the sky, and are hence less visible to the hawk who passes under them or over them. – Erasmus Darwin • The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, . . . when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man . . . . It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth. – Rachel Carson • The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives – all that was over. – H. G. Wells • The deeper men go into life, the deeper is their conviction that this life is not all. It is an unfinished symphony. A day may round out an insect’s life, and a bird or a beast needs no tomorrow. Not so with him who knows that he is related to God and has felt the power of an endless life. – Henry Ward Beecher • The eye sees the physical body, other individuals, even insects, worms and things. It sees everything that is within its range. The body too is a thing that the eye sees, along with the rest. So, how can we conclude that the body is the I? – Sathya Sai Baba • The German passion for bureaucracy — for written and signal forms . . . to move about, to work, to exist — is like a steel pin pinning each French individual to a sheet of paper, the way an entomologist pins each specimen insect . . . – Janet Flanner • The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the color, and show its food in every … minutest fiber. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge • The insect-youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied spring, And float amid the liquid noon! – Thomas Gray • The instinct of brutes and insects can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever-living agent. – Isaac Newton • The jungle looked back at them with a vastness, a breathing moss-and-leaf silence, with a billion diamond and emerald insect eyes. – Ray Bradbury • The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects. – Chanakya • The mortal enemies of man are not his fellows of another continent or race; they are the aspects of the physical world which limit or challenge his control, the disease germs that attack him and his domesticated plants and animals, and the insects that carry many of these germs as well as working notable direct injury. This is not the age of man, however great his superiority in size and intelligence; it is literally the age of insects. – Warder Clyde Allee • The only clear thing is that we humans are the only species with the power to destroy the earth as we know it. The birds have no such power, nor do the insects, nor does any mammal. Yet if we have the capacity to destroy the earth, so, too, do we have the capacity to protect it. – Dalai Lama • The only sensible approach to disease and insect control, I think, is to grow sturdy crops in a healthy environment. – Masanobu Fukuoka • The Planet drifts to random insect doom. – William S. Burroughs • The poor dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend, Whose honest heart is still the master’s own, Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone, Unhonour’d falls, unnoticed all his worth, Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth, While man, vain insect hopes to be forgiven, And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven. – Lord Byron • The positive evidence for Darwinism is confined to small-scale evolutionary changes like insects developing insecticide resistance….Evidence like that for insecticide resistance confirms the Darwinian selection mechanism for small-scale changes, but hardly warrants the grand extrapolation that Darwinists want. It is a huge leap going from insects developing insecticide resistance via the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation to the very emergence of insects in the first place by that same mechanism. – William A. Dembski • The rain water enlivens all living beings of the earth both movable (insects, animals, humans, etc.) and immovable (plants, trees, etc.), and then returns to the ocean it value multiplied a million fold. – Chanakya • The Reproductions of the living Ens From sires to sons, unknown to sex, commence… Unknown to sex the pregnant oyster swells, And coral-insects build their radiate shells… Birth after birth the line unchanging runs, And fathers live transmitted in their sons; Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds, The same their manners, and the same their minds. – Erasmus Darwin • The rhythms of nature – the sounds of wind and water, the sounds of birds and insects – must inevitably find their analogues in music. – George Crumb • The souls you have got cast upon the screen of publicity appear like the horrid and writhing creatures enlarged from the insect world, and revealed to us by the cinematograph. – James Larkin • The spider is an animal who eats mosquitoes. That’s why I love the spider – it is the only way we have to deal with these insects. – Louise Bourgeois • The transformation scene, where man is becoming insect and insect has become at least man and beyond that – a flying, godlike, shimmering, diaphanous, beautiful creature. – Michael O’Donoghue • There are men from whom nature or some peculiar destiny has removed the cover beneath which we hide our own madness. They are likethin-skinned insects whose visible play of muscles seem to make them deformed, though in fact, everything soon turns to its normal shape again. – E. T. A. Hoffmann • There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death. – Soren Kierkegaard • There’s no denying that the way horror has been packaged in the past has done it no favours. Lurid black covers adorned with skulls, corpses crawling with insects and scantily clad maidens being chewed into by vampires — all good clean fun, but it doesn’t do much to give the genre an air of respectability or seriousness to the casual browser. – Tim Lebbon • There’s this shop in New York I go to; it has bones and fossils and insects that are like works of art. I have a few on my wall. – Eva Green • These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes-nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad,’ to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil-all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called ‘insecticides,’ but ‘biocides.’ – Rachel Carson • Things without defense: insects, kittens, small boys. – Paul Fussell • Thousands of men breathe, move, and live; pass off the stage of life and are heard of no more. Why? They did not a particle of good in the world; and none were blest by them, none could point to them as the instrument of their redemption; not a line they wrote, not a word they spoke, could be recalled, and so they perished–their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than the insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man immortal? Live for something. – Thomas Chalmers • Today I am sure no one needs to be told that the more birds a yard can support, the fewer insects there will be to trouble the gardener the following year. – Thalassa Cruso • Too many creatures both insects and humans estimate their own value by the amount of minor irritation they are able to cause to greater personalities than themselves. – Don Marquis • Tourists moved over the piazza like drugged insects on a painted plate. – Shana Alexander • Travel is said to be broadening because it makes us realize that our way of doing things is not the only one, that people in other cultures live differently and get by just fine. Insects do that, too, only better. – Marlene Zuk • TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n. An African insect (“Glossina morsitans”) whose bite is commonly regarded as nature’s most efficacious remedy for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American novelist (“Mendax interminabilis”). – Ambrose Bierce • Unwittingly, every event and every microorganism – insect, fish, bird, animal, etc. – is playing a role that maintains a perfect balance to our ecosystem, which also includes our atmosphere. Have you ever considered that we, you and I, are also apart of that? – Bryan Kest • Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee, From Thee to nothing. – Alexander Pope • Very little makes me feel vulnerable these days. I hit my absolute apex of vulnerability when I returned to my home state of Louisiana, during the Gulf oil spill disaster, and witnessed mass devastation to every demonstration of life surrounding me – from grass, trees, bayous, insects, to animals and people – we all felt demolished. – Ian Somerhalder • war with poison and chemicals was not so rare in the ancient world … An astounding panoply of toxic substances, venomous creatures, poison plants, animals and insects, deleterious environments, virulent pathogens, infectious agents, noxious gases, and combustible chemicals were marshalled to defeat foes – and panoply is an apt term here, because it is the ancient Greek word for ‘all weapons. – Adrienne Mayor • We blame Walt Disney for goldenrod’s undeserved bad name. Despite Sneezy’s pronouncement, plants such as goldenrod with heavy, insect-carried pollen rarely cause allergic reaction. – Janet Macunovich • We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act. – Charles Darwin • We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics. – Bill Vaughan • We know of no behavior in ants or any other social insects that can be construed as play. – Bert Holldobler • We ought never to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty. – Hugh Blair • We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts. – Rachel Carson • We’ve got a good inspection system in Arizona managing products that come from other parts of the county that could carry insects that could become problematic. – Carl E. Olson • What a difference that extra 120 ppm has made for plants, and for animals and humans that depend on them. The more carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the more it is absorbed by plants of every description – – and the faster and better they grow, even under adverse conditions like limited water, extremely hot air temperatures, or infestations of insects, weeds and other pests. As trees, grasses, algae and crops grow more rapidly and become healthier and more robust, animals and humans enjoy better nutrition on a planet that is greener and greener. – Paul Driessen • What is more obscene: the idea that one can apologize for the hubris and deceit that is Obama and his health care, or the actual need some have for an apology from an entity so evil that he would toy with the lives of millions as though they were insects and he God? This is hard to tell. – Ilana Mercer • What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his? – Emile M. Cioran • When harvests are exuberant, joy and health follow in their train; but let delusive prosperity draw industry from agriculture; let an insiduous disease attack one of its important products; let an insect, or a parasite, fasten on a single esculent, and mark the effect upon commerce and human life. Upon such an event all business is deranged. – Elias Hasket Derby • When I see nature, when I look into the sky, the dawn, the sun, the colors of insects, snow crystals, the night stars, I don’t feel a need for God. Perhaps when I can no longer look and wonder, when I believe in nothing – then, perhaps, I might need something else. But I don’t know what. – Michelangelo Antonioni • When the moon shall have faded out from the sky, and the sun shall shine at noonday a dull cherry red, and the seas shall be frozen over, and the icecap shall have crept downward to the equator from either pole . . . when all the cities shall have long been dead and crumbled into dust, and all life shall be on the last verge of extinction on this globe; then, on a bit of lichen, growing on the bald rocks beside the eternal snows of Panama, shall be seated a tiny insect, preening its antennae in the glow of the worn-out sun, the sole survivor of animal life on this our earth – a melancholy bug. – William Jacob Holland • When we mistake what we can know for all there is to know, a healthy appreciation of one’s ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature as a machine. Once that leap has been made, one input follows another, so that when the synthetic nitrogen fed to plants makes them more attractive to insects and vulnerable to disease, as we have discovered, the farmer turns to chemical pesticides to fix his broken machine. – Michael Pollan • When we seed millions of acres of land with these plants, what happens to foraging birds, to insects, to microbes, to the other animals, when they come in contact and digest plants that are producing materials ranging from plastics to vaccines to pharmaceutical products? – Jeremy Rifkin • When we usually think of fears, in comics or in films, it’s most often fears on a relatively superficial level: fear of murderous insects, of ghosts, of zombies, or even fear of dying. – Boaz Lavie • While an ant was wandering under the shade of the tree of Phaeton, a drop of amber enveloped the tiny insect; thus she, who in life was disregarded, became precious by death. – Martial • Who has the right to decide that the supreme value is a world without insects even though it would be a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight. The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power. – Rachel Carson • Winding her arms close around his neck, she closed her eyes. To be embraced, safe in a man’s arms when she had never expected it to happen again, this would be enough.Time sheltered their embrace, enfolding them within a summer scented capsule that felt endless and theirs alone. The fragrance of grass and sunlight and nearby water sweetened each breath. Theirs was the music of birds ans the lazy buzz of insects and the beating of two hearts. Yes, she thought, she didn’t need more. This would be enough. – Maggie Osborne • Words can enhance experience, but they can also take so much away. We see an insect and at once we abstract certain characteristics and classify it – a fly. And in that very cognitive exercise, part of the wonder is gone. Once we have labeled the things around us we do not bother to look at them so carefully. Words are part of our rational selves, and to abandon them for a while is to give freer reign to our intuitive selves. – Jane Goodall • You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, the creature of a season. – Zhuangzi • You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying or inquisitive, not bent on seeing things. Throw away a whole day for a single expansion, a single inspiration of air. You must walk so gently as to hear the finest sounds, the faculties being in repose. Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. – Henry David Thoreau • You shall find books and sermons everywhere, in the land and in the sea, in the earth and in the skies, and you shall learn from every living beast, and bird, and fish, and insect, and from every useful or useless plant that springs from the ground. – Charles Spurgeon • You were just a boy on a bed in a room, like a kaleidoscope is a tube full of bits of broken glass. But the way I saw you was pieces refracting the light, shifting into an infinite universe of flowers and rainbows and insects and planets, magical dividing cells, pictures no one else knew. – Francesca Lia Block

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equitiesstocks · 5 years ago

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Insects Quotes

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itsworn · 7 years ago

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Everything You Need to Know to Learn Pinstriping

Pinstriping – at its roots – is as old as mankind and cave drawings. For hot rodders, those roots stem directly from the decoration of Roman chariots, through the transition of horse-drawn carriages to the steel bodies of the earliest locomotives, automobiles, and fire trucks. Even Henry Ford, who mandated every Model-T be painted black to save a few bucks on materials, spent the time to detail his mass-produced Tin Lizzies with hand pinstriping. While there were no shortage of creative minds and hands in this era, it was the explosion of Kenny “Von Dutch” Howard’s technique that paved the road for what we know today after he was challenged to hide some scratches on the poorly paint-prepped nose of a customer’s car.

Our Art Director, Ryan Lugo, was a natural candidate for this (we’d be stuck on straight lines past this story’s deadline), and so we introduced him to friend of HOT ROD and legendary pinstriper, Jeff Styles.

Materials Needed

Just about everyone agrees that 1-Shot is the only paint to grab.

Just three key tools are needed: a brush, some paint, and a can of paint thinner. “I’m going to say 1-Shot is the only paint out there you want to use, because it’s an oil-based enamel. It was developed for the industry — pinstriping and lettering – it’s real user friendly,” Styles explained. Paint for sign making and pinstriping lays on relatively thick and dries slowly to allow the brush strokes to flow out and minor corrections to be made. It skims over quickly enough to allow for multiple colors to be layered on top of each other in a session without smearing. The paint thinner can be anything on the shelf, but Styles sticks with his 1-Shot reducer.

Every brush has its own use. The narrow, needle-like brushes are for scrolls or details, the sword-like brushes are excellent for long, flowing lines and most of what you’ll stripe, and the chiseled-edge brushes are for lettering and filling large amounts of color.

Things aren’t so simple when it comes to brushes. Styles whipped out his brush kit like 007 deploys a new gadget, and in it were tools that were just about as mysterious to us. “You never throw away a brush, that thing will come in handy for something,” he exclaimed, while holding a well-worn Mack brush that had the belly of the brush whittled down while the handle was shortened even further, creating a unique detail brush.

“You may go, ‘Man I really like this brush.’ But the other guy might not like that brush, you know. And that’s why there’s the Von Dagos, the Kafkas, and the Jensens and everybody else who make their own brush, because there’s a lot of different people out there that have different techniques, and it may be right for one person but it may not be right for you,” said Styles.

“What you’ll usually be working on is a Series 10 Mack. Good for flames, good for designs good turns – a good overall brush. However, if you were to do circles with a Kafka, a Jensen, or a Von Dago, you’ll go ‘Why didn’t he give me that in the first place?’ They’re scrolling brushes, so you don’t have to spin them in a curve. There’s also a lettering quill, they come in all sizes — 1 through the big-giant-mop called a 179 – a nice chiseled tip. You’re going to get a really nice lettering technique, block style, cursive letters, all of those.”

Foundations

First thing’s first: the real secret of pinstriping steady lines and flowing curves is all in how you hold the brush. Don’t sweat the technique too hard, ultimately you must adjust for what’s comfortable, but the key is two-fold: for long pulls of lines and arcs, you’ll want the brush at a slight angle relative to the work piece, allowing the brush hairs to act like a “shock absorber” for your hands, but for curves and tighter circles, the brush is held more upright.

“The way that I like to explain it is to say, OK, everybody knows how to make an OK-sign but everybody picks this brush up and they want to hold a pencil, you know? But when I go to North Carolina, where the NASCAR guys are, it’s Three for Dale – I got to give them the credit for that,” Styles jokes, holding up a “three” with his pointer finger and thumb pinched. The pocket created by your thumb and pointer is where the brush handle should sit, while your three remaining fingers are used to stabilize the brush against your work.

“You’re going to take this brush belly side down, you’re going to take your Three for Dale, pinch it on either side of the ferrule (the wrapping that ties the bristles to the handle). And the reason that you want to pinch that is so you can rotate the brush.”

Ryan, our Art Director, was quick to pick up the minutia, like keeping the brush palatted and loaded with paint.

Next, you’ve got to load the brush with paint. The paint’s consistency is important because it affects the coverage of the line you pull, along with the drying time when working through a multi-color design. “It gets heavy when you load it with paint,” Ryan mentioned. “And when you’re thinning it, you can feel when it’s right because it’ll pull smooth – if it’s too thick, it feels like it hops as you pull,” Styles continued.

This will take practice and experimentation, but Styles elaborated: “If it gets too dry, what’s going to happen is the brush is just going to skip. If it’s too wet, it’s going to bleed out. This is really one of the major, major things that you have to master.” The last top-trick is to use two containers for your thinner, one to wash while the brush is dirty, and one to deep clean the brush before reloading it with a new color or when putting it into storage. Not unlike the two-bucket method of car washing, you want to reduce contamination as much as possible.

Practice Makes Pinstriping

Here’s where the rubber meets the road, err – the squirrel hair meets the metal, rather. It’s time to start stripin’, and we’ve given you a variation of Styles’ practice guide to start on yourself on the last page of this story. We’ll first talk a little about brush technique before going into design.

Ryan, our Art Director, was quick to pick up the minutia, like keeping the brush palatted and loaded with paint.

Then lay the belly of the brush into the work piece, and begin pulling your line.

Once you’ve got the brush pinched in your Three-for-Dale grip, you’ll first position the tip of the brush where you wish to start your line, and settle your pinky, ring, and/or middle finger on the panel where needed to help stabilize your hand. It helps to do a dry run to ensure your body position is where it needs to be for the line you’re trying to pull. Once ready, you simply lower the tip of the brush onto the surface, like a record needle, and start pulling. “If you can hear your hand squeaking, that’s going to prevent you from moving smoothly. Put a little baby powder on the end of the hands because it’s going to affect your lines,” Jeff recommended before pulling a laser-straight line. Styles’ class uses three basic practice lines to build the individual techniques of pulling a full design. Straight lines, lazy esses, and horseshoes are the building blocks of everything, he says.

Lines, lazy esses, and horsehoes – the elements of pinstriping.

Using a straight reference line, tape or a guideline, Styles’ first lesson is just repeating straight lines over and over, like an apprentice welder practices laying beads. Von Dutch once said, “It’s got to become an obsession, it’s got to become the most important thing – to make an absolutely perfect, straight line like a machine man. You’ve got to imitate a machine, and you’ve got to put your head into that. It’s very much like yoga, you can go deep into striping and meditate while your body is striping.”

The important thing to internalize here is how to set-down and remove the brush, and where you’re placing your eyes. Like in racing, target fixation is the enemy, so keep a focus on where you want to go instead of where you don’t.

First, the line is dragged over the tape.

Then the tape is pulled to remove a perfectly flat edge.

You can also take a bit of thinner in a towel, and wipe the line to give it a hard edge.

When it comes to finishing a line, you have a couple options: gently lift pressure or flick the brush to create a teardrop tail; abruptly stop and lift to create a blunt end; or you can lay a piece of tape where you want the line to end, drag it down over the tape, and then remove the tape to create a hard-edge, which is great for block-lettering and outlining.

Notice the position of the brush as Ryan enters the next arc…

…a slight rudder effect happens when you twist the brush into the curve.

Next up are lazy esses — the long, gentle curves that make the licks of flames and those long, flowing whiskers you see on any traditionally-striped rod. This is when you start to treat the brush like a rudder, steering it into the curve so that the bristles don’t splay and twist.

Horseshoes help practice the inside licks of flames, shark curves in designs, and even some lettering.

Using his guide fingers like a protractor, Styles shows how to churn a circle.

Lastly, horseshoes and circles, the trickiest of techniques. The lazy esses give you the practice to the brush-twisting technique of drawing tight curves and circles. The circle is the torture test of this – pivoting around a single finger, and twisting his Mack to steer it into the complete circle. Think of it like a human protractor, using the placement if his fingers and the brush to draw a radiused line.

Scrolling brushes make quick work of circles and tight curves.

The handle of a brush can be dipped in paint and used to create precise dots.

Lining it All Up

To help proportion a teardrop as you’re starting a design out, Styles recommends using guide tapes to help keep things consistent when establishing the bones of a design.

Now that you’re skirting carpal tunnel after practicing those three lines, it’s time to bring it all together and start designing.

“If you’re right handed, you’ll want to work left-to-right [on each half of your design],” that way you can easily mirror the opposite side while preventing your hands from dragging through wet lines, he said. Start with your first line on the left-hand side of the V, and your second – mirroring it – on the right-half of the V. From there, just line it up as you go, and replicate each line on the other half of the design.

When starting out, there are a number of methods to practice designs. Grabbing designs from books like Bobbo’s Little Book of Pinstripe Designs, Kafka’s practice kits, or through an online image search, you can lay them behind transparent surfaces (like glass), or use Saral transfer paper to lay down a guide to practice over. Glass is advantageous because you can just let the paint dry and scrape it clean with a razor. The idea, again, is repetition; you’ll only start to find your own flow and style with practice, failure, and more practice.

A transparency sheet is laid over a practice design, and then traced – this isn’t to give you an easy-way-out on a final design, but helps to practice different proportions, layouts, and styles.

Saral transfer paper can also be used by lightly tracing the design onto the paper, between your work surface and the template, which transfers temporary guide lines onto the surface.

From here, you just cover every bit of Saral you can with paint!

If you’re thinking about doing your own artwork, you can smear paint around…

… and even pat the whole panel in that same towel to give it a trippy effect. Styles will also over-thin paints and mix them up like tie-die, create wood grain panels, and so-on.

Also, Don’t do This!

Styles keeps a small jar of motor oil with him to recondition the natural hair brushes before storing them.

Brush care is vital for your pocket book as much as your portfolio, according to Styles. “You got to take care of these precious brushes. Oil them up put them back in your nice case,” he said, pointing that it’s paramount to store the sword-shaped brushes, like the Mack, vertical. If the bristles take a set to an odd-angle, the brush can be forever ruined. Oh, and his choice of brush oil? “Plain ol’ motor oil. You could go get some off the dip stick if you had to!”

“This is the brush I bring out all the time, because it means a lot to me,” says Styles while holding a crusty, paint-dried brush. “And the reason it does is because a very well-known builder in Southern California decided he wanted to pinstripe with me at Disneyland. Chip Foose comes and says, ‘Hey, set up this brush for me.’ Well Chip, that’s the way you left my brush! [he says jokingly] So it’s a good example that if you leave it, walk away and we go to lunch and it’s 100 degrees on a summer day, you’re going to come back to that.”

Get out There!

Take this practice page, buy a few cans of 1-Shot, a Mack 0 or 00 sized brush to start, and get at it. Styles told us, “One of the hardest things in striping to get started is just getting a break. What you have to do is practice, practice, practice, but where do you practice to get the long-line?” Styles took the “pushing brooms before building race cars” shop mentality to pinstriping, heading to body shops to restripe cars after they were repaired and painted. He used this as a way to work on as many live canvases as he could to pull those mile-long beltline stripes and other details once popular on new cars. “All that long-line, day after day, for free for about a year and a half,” he continued. “Turns out, I’m one of the best long-liners out there. The reason being is I taught myself to do it. You can go out in the parking lot, stripe a bunch of cars and run, but I was doing it for free and they were making the money. They finally told me you need to start charging.”

The post Everything You Need to Know to Learn Pinstriping appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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