#one major thing is that the zeniths even existing takes away the fact that up to that point there was absolutely nobody left

[lesbianshadowheart]

the lack of fandom insanity about aloy hzd is crazy to me.....she was literally born of immaculate conception to be the saviour of a world that doesnt want her. she was the loneliest girl in the world the first and last of her kind. while gay

[butterfly-winx]

Things about each other’s cultures that the girls find most difficult to understand/cope with (pt2)

Zenith

Musa and Stella: National gene bank

Being mixed children, Musa and Stella find it very difficult to reconcile the existence of one unified central library of genes that all babies are born from on Zenith. For one there are people in both of their cultures who would have objected to either of them being born (the Rai/Selenite conflict on Solaria and Musa being human/elf mixed) they find the gene bank to be a huge risk for cultural feud and eugenics driven bad intentions. Zenith claims not to filter for disabilities aside from congenitally lethal ones, but with little independent control of their proceedings, the purity of their actions is often hard to control

Layla: Religion

Everyone believes Zenith to be such a proponent of science over everything else, it is often forgotten that the majority of the planet’s countries are religious monotheists. But monotheists of different singular gods! Layla coming from a culture based on natural religion finds the concept of a “one man show” strange to begin with, but when you tell her they all have a different one true guy whose precepts they follow she is out.

Bloom and Flora: Public information channels

In theory, whole dedicated channels or airtime slots filled with facts and scientific information rather than mindless ads is an excellent idea. It aids the education of the population and reduces the amount of populist or fearmongering misinformation taking root. Flora and Bloom are just a bit apprehensive about how easy it is to slip half-truths into a stream of factual truth, seeing as the information stream is ever so slightly different between the Zenithian countries, each finding some other aspect of a scientific discovery important, or advocating the involvement of their countrymen in a project over everyone else’s.

---

Andros

Bloom and Tecna: High mortality

It is not that mortality rates are very high, it’s just that the proportion of /water/ related deaths among them is high. Technically this is not that unusual, seeing as 90% of the planet is water, but maybe exactly because of this, Bloom and Tecna would expect people to be more careful around the elements. Androsians, like any regular god fearing nation, respect the Sea over everything else. Their hubris mainly comes from an overall acceptance that the Sea can claim about anybody if it wants. People don’t tend to struggle against it when they think their times has come. (See King Teredor and Niobe just huddling in the flooding castle instead of escaping) What adds to it is also that the royal family are of course not the only ones with mer cousins, and especially young people will overestimate the capacity of their lungs while playing in the waters. 

Stella: Animism

In Androsian cultures objects made from natural resources retain their soul stemming from having been living things once, even after they are shaped into an object for human use. To Stella this is difficult to comprehend. Like sure wood is wood, it has been a plant once and its origin should be respected, but for her once wood becomes a bowl it becomes a thing, with no spirituality attached.

Musa and Flora: Blood feuds

No one is a stranger to historical conflicts, sure. Androsian blood feuds however have morphed into conflicts that are still “honoured” in modern days. Local kingdoms can claim feud rights to claim land and people from neighbouring regions, functionally enslaving residents. On a personal level people still get ostracised from communities for marrying wrong, upsetting elders or for the ever effusive reason of doing gender wrong. (Neither of them really understands this part of Androsian culture.) Musa is solidly in camp “you owe your parents piety” while Flora is a general opponent of the sentiment, they both feel that this goes a little bit too far. People need a community that won’t self-destruct over to their eyes minor infractions.

---

Domino

Layla and Tecna: Horse culture

Dominians love their horses and elks they keep for riding, select animals are kept as revered pets even. Coming from an island world, Layla never really saw a purpose in those animals. What does weird her out about this is that a good 40% of Domino’s population are centauri, who are - no matter how you look at it- half horse essentially. So how can Dominians be that enamoured with their equines while their neighbour could be equally hooved?

Musa and Stella: Cultural homogeneity

It goes without saying that all girls, including Bloom, stagger at the thought that the Dominian Empire enforces unity through extreme measures, not having shied away from extermination wars in their past. Once one dares to descend planetside despite that, the most staggering thing is that Domino truly... is like that. You get the same language, same customs and same products from one coast to another. It is staggering for Musa and Stella, whose homes have also at some point been empires encompassing several planets even, but the former members 

Flora and Bloom: Military culture

Domino operates on a dual leadership structure in which has legal head of the state and the leader of the military reigning beside each other with equal power. Complicating the situation, the Vazul, head of the armies is also the spiritual leader of the Church of the Dragonspirit, melding religion and military culture into a dangerous mix. Flora has never encountered anything like this before, while to Bloom this reeks like the worst parts of her adoptive home. It doesn’t feel like a good combination, less so seeing as in the current generation both positions are filled by Bloom’s parents, which isn’t really supposed to happen and is a rightfully criticised controversy.

Special mention: Earth

So many countries! 

That is probably what all the visiting girls were hung up about. Earth is unique even within the wide breadth of the Magic Universe, having an enormous habitable zone that spans almost the whole planet. The only other place that comes even near that title is Lynphea, but Lynphea is several times the size of Earth and houses slightly fewer inhabitants. The girls loved spending time visiting different parts of the planet and learning about the different cultures and languages spoken, (tho if you asked them, neither could name more than 5 countries from the top of their head. This also made assimilation and staying under cover in Gardenia difficult, bc Bloom, conscious of the girl’s home cultures and habits has given them different fake home countries. The other five of course got immediately confused, which resulted in situations like Tecna proudly claiming they were Chinese and Stella inexplicably saying she was Roman)

[tonyhightowerv1]

The NHL, Boxing, & Ignoring The Right Thing To Do

Some days I wake up & pay attention to the news a bit, just to see what's happening.

The NHL Draft was last night, and I shouldn't have bothered with it, because I'm still angry at my Leafs for shitting the bed, again, in the playoffs (it's been 17 years since we last won a playoff round, and they've not won the Cup in my lifetime), but apparently the Montreal Canadiens, the most storied team in the sport, a team currently managed by Marc Bergevin, a guy who 10 years ago, when he ran player personnel for the Chicago Blackhawks, was somehow (it isn't clear) involved in hiring and/or protecting a video coach who sexually assaulted a bunch of teenaged players, the facts about which are only coming out now, and which look pretty damning for everyone involved, Marc Bergevin is now the General Manager of the Canadiens, and in the first round, they picked a guy who's been found guilty of sexual assault.

He apparently circulated pictures of a girl without her consent or knowledge while playing minor hockey in Sweden, and was found guilty under Sweden's assault laws. Now, he's expressed remorse, sure; he specifically asked the NHL to not draft him this year, so he could spend time and focus on improving himself and atoning for this in some way. And he's not some ultra hotshot phenom kid that people couldn't keep their hands off.

He's a guy, and even if you just think he made some kind of youthful mistake -- that would be a very bad take, which says a lot about you, not much of it good -- there's no need to reward him with getting picked, especially when he specifically asked not to.

But Bergevin, with the Blackhawks scandal hanging over him, chose this guy anyway. In the first round.

Not only that, the Canadiens had a statement about him pre-loaded & ready to go. Shareable graphic and everything.

https://twitter.com/CanadiensMTL/status/1418780212469411841

But no, instead, it's about this guy. Not even the girl he victimized. Him.

He tried to warn everyone off drafting him, which is to his credit, I guess. But Bergevin saw this kid, and decided, we need him in our organization. As is.

How good is he? Not that it matters in the slightest, but... he's a late 1st round defenseman. If he continues to develop, he'd basically make the show in 5 years or so. No one's projecting him to be an all-star or anything. There was no urgency; he was never going to make the cover of a Wheaties box or carry the flag at the Olympics. Even without the sexual assault conviction.

Marc Bergevin is a Hockey Guy, to the bitter end. But he's got a history -- and, apparently, a present -- of ignoring sexual abuse. There's no place in the sport, or in polite society, for that mindset. Certainly not now.

* * *

So, all this made me think about boxing.

For most of the 20th century, boxing was the biggest sport in the world. Fights filled arenas and stadiums around the world. The Heavyweight Champion was treated like a Head Of State; they'd dine with royalty, speak at major world events, their fights would be recorded and shown in theaters (and run for months), and then when television appeared, fights would be shown in prime time, and draw ratings better than any other sport.

In the early 1970s, Muhammad Ali was known, famously, as the most famous human being alive. (And Neil Armstrong and Chairman Mao were, like, right there.)

But boxing was deeply corrupt, and many of its stars were more than merely flawed, and every once in a while, someone would die in the ring, and so they stopped showing the fights in prime time, and the champions didn't really add much to the global conversation, and the promoters were ignoring a lot of bad things their star fighters were doing, because they were more focused on getting their cut of the gate receipts than they were in maintaining a product that kept new fans coming through the turnstiles.

And sometime in the mid-1980s, boxing's popularity started to wane. After Ali & George Foreman retired, there was a bit of a charisma vacuum at the top of the sport (I mean, Holmes & Holyfield seem like relatively decent guys, but the Crown Prince of Monaco isn't inviting them to a state dinner anytime soon); the welterweights & middleweights (Hagler, Hearns, Leonard, Duran) were compelling in the ring, but aside from Sugar Ray Leonard, none of them were particularly interested in being terribly showy.

And then Mike Tyson showed up at the end of the decade, and everyone was excited again, until he raped someone & went to prison for it, and got a face tattoo, and the slow decline of the sport became clear to everyone, and that was pretty much it for boxing as a major global sporting concern.

Sure, it still exists, but it's nowhere near what it was. If you want to watch boxing somewhere, you need to find a stream from somewhere on the other side of the world. Fans of hand-to-hand combat sports have gravitated to UFC & MMA, sports that 40 years ago literally no one outside of Brazil or Thailand had ever heard of; fans of the spectacle of fighting, the weigh-ins & pre-fight braggadocio, the As The Buckle Turns, well, they'll always have WWE & the other Steroid Soaps.

Boxing is irrelevant now. They took the biggest sport in the world, and through neglect and ignoring the serious problems at its core, they just... pissed it away.

I'm not usually the kind of person to bemoan moral depravity. (I actually like GG Allin's music. I think it's kinda funny.) But sports are entertainment that uses actual people instead of actors. Like entertainment, you want a compelling story, or at least some kind of ethos, or a thought-shape, that keeps people interested and wanting to come back. You can be heroic, or villainous, but you don't want people to see your product and think, eww, yeah, no.

With actors or songwriters (or pro wrestlers), you can build a storyline out, write a script, point the lights in a certain direction. Each game lasts this long, it builds to a crescendo in this way, when our team scores, we shoot off this cannon, when Mariano Rivera enters from the bullpen we play Metallica; the crowd expects those beats, and they're all part of the drama build. But the players are actual people, and there is no script, so you want to start with a cast that people will want to cheer for (or against) without feeling awful.

If you deny people that basic pleasure for long enough, they'll start looking elsewhere.

I've been a serious hockey fan my whole life. It's been my favorite sport since I was old enough to have an opinion. I've gone in & out on baseball, and over the years, the NFL has lost me to their CTE issues & their tone-deaf billionaire owners treating their players like chattel. But hockey, despite having some of those issues, and my Toronto Maple Leafs, as historically disappointing as they have been, have stuck with me. And I with them.

But the way the Blackhawks have dealt with these abuse allegations, and Montreal choosing this convicted assaulter with their first choice (and there've been a couple of other events; last year, Arizona chose a guy who repeatedly & publicly harassed a disabled person of color, and who has never apologized; they later rescinded their pick), I'm starting to wonder if hockey, a sport that doesn't have the mass momentum of boxing or football in their heydays, has already seen its zenith.

And that thought just makes me so very sad.

[scarletarosa]

Regarding Natal Astrology and the 15 Star Signs - Why 15 is more accurate than 12

You are called not to become similar to the star sign description, but to overcome it. Just as each “heaven” or planetary sphere has challenges that need to be overcome, similarly you must face your zodiac challenge, in other words to overcome the limitations imposed according to the star sign in which you were born, using the ascendant as a ladder for this reason.

The natal star signs are defined through most certainly Gaian (of the Earth) influences due to seasonality. Tropical Zodiac System examples may be useful for defining a typology of characters, but they are lacking any grounding in logic due to the well-known phenomenon of precession of equinoxes (and so moving of zodiac star signs, lunar mansions etc as a result) which the Sidereal Zodiac System would support.

Therefore the so-called star signs have nothing to do with reality due to the three factors: 

The precession of the equinoxes/ signs changes in fact the actual sign – in being the adjacent one position backwards. 

The Equal House System (for all signs to occupy 30ο ) is totally arbitrary since the constellations are in fact unequal. 

The constellations passing through the ecliptic are 13, not 12 (they tend to forget Ophiuchus).

Therefore whatever “truth” there is in natal astrology has mostly to do with matters on Earth, and not the skies.

However, if we intend to use the star signs for magick (any type, including talismans) we should take account of the sidereal system, astronomically defining the signs and not astrologically. So this is about constellations, not star signs. Even this is problematic of course, because the so-called constellations visible to the eye not only alter their shapes in the passing of millennia, but also arbitrarily each civilization connects with lines totally unrelated and irrelevant to each other stars. Also, some civilizations take into account more and some less stars.

The fact that they are unrelated is clearly shown when considering that the visual image we have for a constellation is its “projection” onto a plane (flat surface), as if all its stars belong to that plane. However the truth is that they are totally unrelated to one another, despite being connected for easy identification by the eye. For the sake of convenience, we tend to forget that the stars vary so much with regards to distance, that each “constellation” is in fact a totally arbitrary representation that lacks any kernel of objective truth. So it is wiser to take into account individual stars and not constellations when intending to use them in our magickal practice. Some of them can be useful indeed.

It is well known that each planet has its own planetary spirit which Watches over it, so each sun/star has a powerful solar Intelligence which also watches over it. Since stars are suns, we should approach their star spirits; in order to avoid confusion with the so-called “astral space” we will mention these entities as solar spirits, also known as Stellar Intelligences (SI).

It is also of great importance to see what is on the Zenith in the sky at the hour of birth (or in another important magickal work). We don’t take into account the astrological MS but what astronomically is on the Zenith on Azimuth. This can be found using an astronomy program (there are some free ones on the net which are just as good) and it is important. For example I located 26 constellations apparently passing over the sky through the Azimuth disc 70-75ο where I reside. Their hours change in the year bit by bit, so while these are very particular, they do not reach zenith each hour each day and over the same place.

Nevertheless, if you are certain to use some type of Zodiac system, let it be with Unequal Houses, and of 15 “signs”. These are the 13 already mentioned and also Orion and Cetus which interject only barely in the ecliptic. One may also wish to include Lunar Mansions in their system. It is of great interest to note the governors of the natal days, and this can be done using the Egyptian netjeru (deities), Angelic systems, etc. and can also be included to add even more precise guidance.

Circumpolar Constellations do not rise and do not set. Remember them because they are important. In the Northern Hemisphere, the main ones are six: Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Draco, Camelopardalis, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Take into account that depending on where you live, there can be more additions to the list, but also some changes too. This can easily be found online. Refrain from seeing them as animals or using specific mythological context, regardless how tempting it might be, to avoid being deceived. Focus on their main stars and what these do and how they matter for each hemisphere, if they are used as reference points.

Try to avoid believing as astrologically important whatever is unseen by the naked eye. Astrological systems that take into account distant objects too far away are lacking any sense. From a metaphysical standpoint, yes, we are connected to everything and everything is connected to us. Some very subtle influence may indeed exist. If, however, we think all the things we come in contact with, we should realize that these are all that we see and all that we sense with one or more of our senses. I even include intuition or extrasensory perception in this…

For occult use in natal astrology we should take into account the ancient celestial spheres and we should forget Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and all the small planetoids. With regards to actual influences on our daily lives and not during some delicate magickal experiment or working, we are not influenced by anything apart from the Sun and the Moon. The Sun is the defining factor and we should be interested as to which stars or planets the sun appears to “pass through” (Ascendant, conjunction with planets etc). The Moon exerts a significant gravitational pull upon us; one witnesses this through the tides. Since we are made up from 70% water, it is reasonable to assume we are affected enough as to the fluid micro-pressures in our brain systems inside our skull, and other parts of the body in general. The closer to earth its orbit brings it, the more we are affected. Also its luminosity seems to exert some influence upon us, which is why the full moon and the eclipses affect us so.

Resuming: 

Specific stars, not star signs: the brightest / most visible to the eye

Sun, Moon are the most significant celestial bodies. Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn are of secondary importance. Celestial spheres which have symbolic meaning and major significance on the Tree of Life are not to be mixed with the gravitational and other planetary influences. 

Azimuth rather than classic astrology MS. 

Of secondary importance and only for specialized workings (for example manufacturing a talisman or doing a ritual that demands very specific things) are the Lunar Mansions and the Unequal House of the 15 “signs”. In general these can be ignored for most daily workings. The same goes for the detailed Planetary Hours’ tabulations that give advice as to what types of work/tasks are well-suited in that planetary hour of the day and night. 

Natal governors, yes, within reason. Take into account their aspects and influence but also their challenges.

In conclusion,

Experiment with the 15 signs of the Zodiac and the sign you are given from this more accurate chart. It may likely suit your energy/temperament better and perhaps even show things you must overcome. Additionally, this sign may fit in with your Egyptian and Celtic signs better than the “original” sign from the 12 Zodiacs Natal Chart. Though it is best to keep in mind that the descriptions of the Zodiac signs are based on typical divination meant for entertainment rather than an actual mystical science. Take the descriptions with a pinch of salt and do not use the Zodiac to judge others. 

(Additional credit to @melias-cimitiere​ for help with the research)

Read here for your sign/description from the 15 star signs chart

[watusichris]

My Brilliant Career in Chicago Pro Wrestling: A True Story

Damn, I could have sworn I’d posted this 2015 Night Flight story, which remains the funniest thing I’ve ever written. Every word is true. ********** In the early 1970s, before Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation (today World Wrestling Entertainment) turned professional wrestling into a pay-per-view cash cow, pro grappling was a wide-open game run by maverick regional promoters and catering to lunatic fans. I got to experience this incredible world intimately: For two years, I served as “publicist” for the promoter in one of the biggest wrasslin’ towns in the country, Chicago.

I was fresh out of college back in 1972, and returned to my old room in my mother’s apartment in Evanston bearing a seemingly worthless bachelor’s degree in English and no immediate prospects for gainful employment. Fortunately, my father believed in nepotism.

After a long career as a TV executive that had garnered him two Peabody Awards, my dad was then the general manager of WSNS, a Chicago UHF station that broadcast on Channel 44. It was a low-rent operation that my old man helped legitimize by securing telecasts of White Sox games. (He loathed Sox announcer Harry Caray, who would get hammered out of his skull while working in the booth, and rightly thought major league screwball-turned-color man Jimmy Piersall was out of his mind.)

Though such questionable WSNS programming as a daily late-night weathercast delivered by a buxom negligee-clad blonde stretched out on a heart-shaped bed was a thing of the past, colorful holdovers from the old schedule remained. And thus my dad called me one day to say he could get me some part-time work doing PR for Bob Luce, the local pro wrestling promoter, who mounted the weekly show All Star Championship Wrestling on the station.

Naturally, I was hired on the spot at my first meeting with Luce, who was something of a legend in Chicago sports circles at the time. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bob Greene captured had him perfectly in a famous column in which every sentence ended with an exclamation point.

Stocky, florid of complexion, and as loud as his off-the-rack sport coats, the outsized Luce was the dictionary definition of the word “character.” You’d sit down with him in a restaurant, and the other diners would duck and cover. Constantly agitated and gesticulating wildly, his stentorian conversation was a manic torrent of hype and madness, punctuated by explosive laughter than sounded like a machine gun going off next to your ear.

Fittingly, before joining the wrestling biz, Luce had edited a tabloid, the National Tattler. Like the National Enquirer of that frontier era, the rag made its bones with totally fictitious “news” stories featuring lots of cleavage and outré bloodletting. At one lunch, to the very evident embarrassment of the neighboring clientele, Luce regaled me with the tale of one inspired Tattler cover story, which I will recount Greene-style. Imagine it at full volume: “I got this idea, see, for a story about a sex orgy! [He pronounced “orgy” with a hard “g,” as in “Porgy” of Porgy and Bess.] But it had to be a different kind of orgy! So I got my wife Sharon to take her clothes off and covered her with peanut butter! And we took some pictures, and the lights were HOT, and the peanut butter melted all over her! They were great pictures! We called it – ha ha HA! – ‘PEANUT BUTTER ORGY!’”

Luce had graduated to promoting pro wrestling events in Chicago and other Midwestern markets, in partnership with the American Wrestling Association’s star attractions, Verne Gagne and Dick the Bruiser, of whom more in a moment. (His sweet, funny, but definitely tough wife knew the business: She had wrestled under the name Sharon Lass.)

As the noisy host of All Star Championship Wrestling, Luce would interview the stars of his upcoming promotions, show footage of recent contests, and pump the next matches. Thrusting a finger at the camera in one of his windups, he would shriek, “BE THERE!!!” Ever the sales impresario, he also served as the show’s principal pitchman, appearing in tandem with some of his hulking charges -- and occasionally with special guest hucksters like former heavyweight champ Leon Spinks -- to spiel for a long line of sketchy local advertisers. They are among the greatest and most hilarious commercials ever made.

As Luce’s publicity rep, commanding a monthly paycheck of $200, I was charged with lightweight duty: writing and mailing press releases promoting the bi-weekly Friday night matches at the Chicago International Amphitheatre, assisting the WSNS camera crew at the gigs (sometimes by protecting their extra film magazines from flying bodies at ringside), and calling in the results of the matches to the local papers. (The last task proved to be the most onerous. I’d ring up the local sports desks late on the nights of the matches and harangue some half-drunk, bored assistant editor whose interest in the “sport” could not have been more infinitesimal. When I finally managed to get the Sun-Times to print the results of one match, I felt as if I’d qualified for a Publicists Guild award.) I also performed certain functions for Luce when he was out of town or too busy to handle them. One weekday afternoon I accompanied Superstar Billy Graham, later a big WWF name and a sort of proto-Hulk Hogan, to Wrigley Field, where he was interviewed by nonplussed announcer Jack Brickhouse between innings of a Chicago Cubs radio broadcast.

Every other week for nearly two years, I’d take the El down to the Amphitheatre, located on Halsted Street on the far South Side, adjacent to the old Chicago Stock Yards. (I held onto the job even after I secured a similarly nepotistic but full-time position – writing about cheap component stereo systems for Zenith Radio Corporation.) The antique, immense Amphitheatre had hosted big political conventions, auto shows, circuses, rodeos, and concerts by Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin, but Luce’s dates at the venue, as you will see, attracted a distinctly different class of customer.

The pre-match staging area, where I’d meet Luce and the crew, was the Sirloin Room of the adjacent Stock Yard Inn, not far from the site of the old South Side cattle slaughterhouses. This is where Luce’s employees and pals would also convene before the night’s entertainment began to swill a couple of cocktails and shoot the breeze. It was a cast worthy of a Damon Runyon story.

Luce employed a bodyguard, a towering ex-Chicago cop named Duke, who had reputedly shot six men before being relieved of duty by the PD. He stood about six-four and dressed exactly like John Shaft. He emanated an aura of extreme menace. Once, when I asked him what he would do if someone actually started any serious trouble, Duke wordlessly pulled back the lapel of his full-length leather coat to reveal a shoulder holster bulging with a .44 Magnum.

The promotion’s bagman, charged with collecting the night’s cash receipts, was a diminutive cat everyone called Bill the Barber. I never knew his last name, but he did in fact run a South Side barbershop. He’d invariably show up dressed in a sport coat that looked like a TV test pattern and a skinny-brim fedora, with watery eyes that sometimes flicked nervously above his pencil-thin mustache. He kept a .38 strapped to his belt.

Many nights, a mysterious character referred to only as “Carmie La Papa” would put in an appearance. This elderly Italian gentleman was always treated with great deference and ate on Luce’s tab. I never found out exactly what he did. But he looked a lot like the mobster played by Pasquale Cajano in Martin Scorsese’s Casino, and I thought it wise not to inquire about his line of work.

There were also bona fide wrestling groupies, well-stacked, slightly haggard old-school broads who draped themselves on the bar, sipping pink ladies. One night, Luce leaned over to me in the Sirloin Room and said, in a whisper that could be heard 20 feet away, “After the matches, these girls and the guys go to a motel up in Prospect Heights, and they have orgies.” (Again, pronounced with a hard “g.”) The most popular of these was reportedly Gloria, a tall, pneumatic redhead of uncertain but rapidly advancing age; Luce confided, “She will do anything.”

The matches themselves were something to behold. I’d usually watch them in the company of WSNS’s young, jaded camera crew, from the dilapidated press box high above the ring in the center of the Amphitheatre. The crowd – thousands of poorly dressed, myopic, malodorous, and steeply inebriated men – was a product of what may be called the pre-ironic era of pro wrestling. There was no such thing as a suspension of disbelief among these spectators. Disbelief did not exist. Though the matches were as closely stage-managed as a production of Richard III, these rubes accepted every feigned punch and bogus drop kick as the McCoy.

Pro wrestling is the eternal contest between virtue and evil, and the wrestlers were identified in equal number as good guys and heels. Most of the good guys on the undercard – there were usually half a dozen matches, with one main event – were young “scientific” wrestlers whose Greco-Roman moves were no match for the brazenly illegal play of the dirty heels, who almost invariably won their bouts with tactics that would not pass muster with an elementary school playground monitor, let alone a legitimate referee. About the only one of these “babyfaces” (or, alternatively, “chumps”) who was vouchsafed an occasional victory was Greg Gagne, son of the promotion’s star attraction and part owner.

By the early ‘70s, Verne Gagne had been wrestling professionally for more than two decades; drafted by the Chicago Bears and then rebelling against team owner George Halas’ prohibition of a sideline on the mat, he had chosen the ring over the gridiron. He was 46 years old when I started working for Luce; he was still in decent shape, and, unlike almost all of his opponents, he still had all of his teeth.

I only managed to spend time with him once. For some reason now lost in the dense fog of time, Luce dispatched me to meet Gagne at the elegant Pump Room of the Drake Hotel near Lake Michigan. There, as cabaret star Dorothy Donegan serenaded us on the piano, the 16-time world heavyweight wrestling champion of the world got me brain-dead drunk, and then poured me into a cab home. He was an excellent guy.

Many of the other good guys on Luce’s undercards were reliable patsies for the baddies. Pepper Gomez, one of the domestic game’s few Mexican stars, was a venerable attraction who was allowed the rare triumph; billed as “the Man with the Cast-Iron Stomach,” he once allowed a Volkswagen Bug to be driven over his gut on Luce’s TV show, where he was a frequent guest.

One of my favorites was Yukon Moose Cholak. Then a veteran of 20 years on the mat, Moose owned a bar not far from the Amphitheatre, but he still worked regularly for his close pal Luce in the AWA. Huge, pot-bellied, and benign, he boasted a ripe Sout’ Side accent rivaled only by Dennis Farina’s. He was hardly an exceptional combatant: He moved around the ring with the fleetness of a dazed sloth. He was a regular on Luce’s show, and often appeared with the host in his TV spots.

The only time I appeared as a guest on All Star Championship Wrestling, Moose was the victim of the on-camera carnage that was a requisite feature of the show. At the time, conflict of interest be damned, I was writing a column about wrestling for a short-lived local sports paper called Fans, and was brought in to lend something like legitimacy to the proceedings. Luce offered me a chair on his threadbare set to push a forthcoming match between Cholak, who appeared on camera next to me, and Handsome Jimmy Valiant, a new heel on the rise in the market.

I figured something ugly was going to happen, but I went about extolling the virtues of Moose’s nearly non-existent mat skills in the front of the camera. Suddenly, Valiant crept up from behind the black scrim behind us and whacked Cholak over the head with a metal folding chair. To this day, I believe my expression of outraged surprise was worthy of a local Emmy, but a nomination eluded me.

I was actually very fond of Valiant, whom I interviewed with his “brother” and tag team partner Luscious John Valiant for Fans. Jimmy was a peroxided, strutting egomaniac in the grand Gorgeous George manner, and he had some classic patter: “I’m da wimmen’s pet and da men’s regret! I got da body wimmen love and men fear! And you, you’re as useful as a screen door in a submarine, daddy!” A rock ‘n’ roll fan, he went on to a very successful solo career, appropriately enough in Memphis, the capital of all things Elvis.

After Gagne the elder, the AWA’s biggest attraction was the tag team of Dick the Bruiser and the Crusher. Bruiser had gotten his competitive start as a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, but had been a top wrestling draw since 1955. Somewhere along the way, he had been converted from heel to hero, and the Chicago fans adored him. Among the merch sold at the Amphitheatre were Dick the Bruiser Fan Club buttons; measuring six inches in diameter, they could either be pinned on one’s chest or, with the aid of a built-in cardboard stand, be displayed as a plaque. I kept mine on my desk at my straight job to freak out my co-workers.

Early in my gig with Luce, I was taken to meet Bruiser in the locker room. He sat on a table smoking a huge cigar. When I was introduced to him, he exclaimed, “Hey, you’re Ed Morris’ kid? You got more hair than your old man!” My father, who was in fact almost completely bald, had been known to associate with winners of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes. I was a little surprised that he ran in Bruiser’s circle.

The Crusher’s career in the squared circle dated back to the late ‘40s. I was even more impressed by him than I was by the Bruiser, for he had been the inspiration of the Novas’ wrasslin’-themed single “The Crusher,” a huge 1965 radio hit in Chicago for the Minnesota garage band the Novas (and later eloquently covered by the Cramps). Bruiser and Crusher were a unique combo: They were “good guys,” but they earned their keep by being badder than the “bad guys” they gutter-stomped.

The villains in that era of pro wrestling were often the object of atavistic xenophobia and hatred. Long before the U.S.’s conflicts in the Middle East, the Sheik (né Ed Farhat in Lansing, Michigan), who took the ring wearing a burnoose, was among the most reviled of heels. Some of the older fans were World War II vets, and they lustily booed Baron von Raschke, who climbed through the ropes with a monocle in one eye, draped in a Nazi flag. He was actually a U.S. Army vet born Jim Raschke in Omaha, Nebraska. His fake German accent was utterly feeble.

The AWA’s all-purpose villain, who would go on to bigger things as one of McMahon’s first WWF stars, was “Pretty Boy” Bobby Heenan, dubbed “the Weasel” by the Bruiser. Heenan was featured in his own matches, but he was most reliably entertaining as a manager, of the most duplicitous and cowardly variety, in another villain’s corner. You didn’t need a script to know what was going to happen: Just as it looked like the good guy was going to triumph, Heenan would leap into the ring and smash the apparent victor’s head into a turnbuckle or hit him over the skull with a water bucket.

Heenan featured in the most outrageous story I heard during my brilliant career in wrestling. One night I was sitting with the film crew when Al Lerner, the mustachioed, shaggy-haired, bespectacled WSNS sports reporter, entered the press box with a portable tape machine on his shoulder and a stunned look on his face. “I’ve interviewed people in front of burning buildings,” Al said. “I’ve interviewed people as they were jumping out of airplanes. But I’ve never interviewed anyone while they were getting a blowjob.”

It seems that while Al was in the locker room recording some audio bites from Heenan, a voluptuous girl standing nearby walked over to the wrestler, kneeled down in front of him, pulled down his trunks, and began giving him the kind of pre-match service Mickey Rourke probably dreamed of but never received. As she went about her business, Heenan continued to spout invective to Al as if nothing extraordinary was transpiring. With that moment alone, Bobby Heenan earned his place in the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.

I visited Heenan in the locker room on a somewhat less eventful evening, but that night I learned the secret of many pros’ mat success. As I was talking to him, I noticed that his forehead was crosshatched with tiny scars, some of them new and still livid. I later mentioned this to one of the crew, and was told that these wounds – referred to as “juicing”  -- were actually self-inflicted, so that the wrestlers could easily draw blood during critical moments of violence in their matches.

As Heenan said in a later interview, “If you want the green, you gotta bring the red.” Gore was a staple of pro wrestling, and there was nothing like sitting in an arena filled with 10,000 or 15,000 crazed spectators and hearing a drunken chant go up as a good guy pummeled a heel to the mat: “WE WANT BLOOD! WE WANT BLOOD! WE WANT BLOOD!”

My last hurrah in pro wrestling was one of Luce’s rare alfresco promotions, a multi-bout 1974 card at old Comiskey Park, the White Sox’s stadium, which climaxed with a 16-man battle royal. I don’t remember who triumphed in the main event, but I do remember that someone on the crew brought a bat and some softballs along, and we ended the evening shagging fly balls under the lights where Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio once played.

The outlaw era of regional pro wrestling is a dim memory for most. The racket would get wilder after I left it: In an interview with Nashville wrestling figure Jimmy Cornette, Heenan said that a fan at a 1975 Amphitheatre match pulled out a pistol and began firing at him, but the shooter only managed to wound four people in the rows in front of him.

McMahon’s WWF brought the regional promoters’ day to a close, pillaging most of the big names in the game in the process. Today, the WWE has been displaced in popularity by the even gaudier UFC contests. Most of the stars I met – including Bruiser, Crusher, and Cholak – are dead now. Heenan, a throat cancer survivor, has been in poor health for more than a decade. Verne Gagne died this April; in 2009, suffering from dementia, he accidentally killed a 97-year-old fellow resident in a Minnesota assisted living facility. Even the old stomping grounds are gone: The Chicago Amphitheatre was razed in 1999.

Bob Luce passed away in 2007, but his wild-ass legacy may live on via an unlikely champion. There are many analogs between pro wrestling and rock ‘n’ roll, and this April, mat mega-fan Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins announced on Twitter that he had bought Luce’s memorabilia and an archive of 9,000 vintage wrestling photos. Maybe he and former Hüsker Dü front man Bob Mould, a fellow wrasslin’ aficionado who once worked for McMahon as a writer, can make something of it. That would rock. 

[quasithinking]

Gravity’s Rainbow: Part VIII

This book has so many sections that I'm going to have to contact my twelve year old self for help with the Roman numerals. I would do it via time phone over time machine because that kid smelled bad. This section begins confusingly from the point of view of a dog and ends hilariously with Pointsman's foot stuck in a toilet and hanging out the side of the car as they drive away. It's a good thing history books exist because if I had to judge World War II by Catch-22, Gravity's Rainbow, and Slaughterhouse-Five, I'd have to assume the war was 85% soldiers slipping on banana peels and depraved sex acts. I wonder if I should apologize to Vonnegut for remembering Slaughterhouse-Five as more Three Stooges than it probably was? It's been awhile but he's the guy who invented Kilgore Trout, interrupted his own book while talking about Vietnam to simply say, "Losers," taught me that an asterisk looked like a butthole, and concluded the whole point of evolution was to create beings that laugh at their own farts. I'm pretty sure I got all of that right. Roger Mexico and Jessica Swanlake have finally found Doctor Pointsman in a wrecked part of London. Pointsman is hunting for dogs to use in his experiments. He's a Pavlovian and his research on stimulus will somehow help the war effort. I'm not sure how it's supposed to but eventually he takes an interest in Slothrop and the mystery of Slothrop's hard-ons. At that point, I stopped wondering how experimenting with Pavlovian stimuli was supposed to help defeat the Germans. Pavlovian experimentation looms large on the themes of this book but I haven't yet grasped why they're part of The White Visitation's experiments. I suppose that should be the least of my worries when The White Visitation is also dealing with telekinesis and clairvoyance and talking with the dead and promoting racial strife and there's also some guy who can change his skin color or something? Anyway, this whole section is called "Beyond the Zero" which, and I know I'm getting ahead of the story here, has something to do with removing the reaction to the stimulus from the patient. See, if you train a baby to get a hard-on from an indirect stimulus, as a medical professional, you're supposed to also untrain the baby. So you have to get it to stop getting hard-ons from the indirect stimulus. But when you do that, you can't stop at the baby just not getting a hard-on. That's the zero point. But just because he doesn't get a hard-on doesn't mean the stimulus isn't still affecting him somehow, you know, to just to the point where it's about to get a hard-on. So removing the stimulus even further is going "beyond the zero." But why that's the title and a major theme of this chapter would take a smarter person to explain it to you. Maybe I'll figure it out by the time I get back to the section that discusses the whole "beyond the zero" part. Where was I? Oh yeah! Pointsman was hunting a dog and had just gotten his foot stuck in a toilet! If a reader hadn't noticed this book was funny in the previous forty pages due to the fact that nobody told them it was funny and Pynchon's writing can be a bit opaque, this section leaves no doubt about it. The physical comedy with the toilet bowl on the foot would be a big hit with the type of person who would never fucking read this book (and also me) but there are some other bits that really make me smile. Like this part with Jessica moaning about hunting dogs with the boys: "The night, full of fine rain, smells like a wet dog. Pointsman seems to've been away for a bit. 'I've lost my mind. I ought to be cuddling someplace with Beaver this very minute, watching him light up his Pipe, and here instead I'm with this gillie or something, this spiritualist, statistician, what are you anyway—'     "Cuddling?" Roger has a tendency to scream. "Cuddling?'" Okay, maybe that's not ha ha funny like a joke but I fucking love Roger's oversensitivity to any possible intimate interactions between Jessica and her serious boyfriend, Beaver. There's a bit of foreshadowing in this early section about Pointsman moving on from experimenting on dog's to experimenting on Slothrop. "'What will you do for a dog, then.'     They are under way again, Roger at the wheel, Jessica between them, toilet bowl out a half-open door, before the answer. 'Perhaps it's a sign. Perhaps I should be branching out.'     Roger gives him a quick look. Silence, Mexico. Try not to think about what that means. He's not one's superior after all, both report to the old Brigadier at 'The White Visitation' on, so far as he knows, equal footing. But sometimes—Roger glances again across Jessica's dark wool bosom at the knitted head, the naked nose and eyes—he thinks the doctor wants more than his good will, his collaboration. But wants him. As one wants a fine specimen of dog. . . ." I've probably already quoted too much of this section to include a somewhat confusing bit near the end but the bit seems more important than an actual description of the building where Doctor Spectro works. Pynchon describes a building built to house patients with colonic and respiratory illnesses. He describes the necessity and drive to build this building as the Victorian equivalent of what drove the people of an earlier age to build Gothic cathedrals. It feels very much like a writer describing the similarities and quite obvious differences between postmodern literature and literature from earlier centuries. What once drove mankind to write and think and ponder was almost exclusively God and religion and spirituality. But in a time when there is "a doubt as to God's actual locus (or, in some, as to its very existence)", the drive must come from another source. Pynchon's "joke" is that the new source is colonic and respiratory diseases. He says it much better (if not so mundanely): "They are approaching now a lengthy brick improvisation, a Victorian paraphrase of what once, long ago, resulted in Gothic cathedrals—but which, in its own time, arose not from any need to climb through the fashioning of suitable confusions toward any apical God, but more in a derangement of aim, a doubt as to the God's actual locus (or, in some, as to its very existence), out of a cruel network of sensuous moments that could not be transcended and so bent the intentions of the builders not on any zenith, but back to fright, to simple escape, in whatever direction, from what the industrial smoke, street excrement, windowless warrens, shrugging leather forests of drive belts, flowing and patient shadow states of the rats and flies, were saying about the chances for mercy that year. The grimed brick sprawl is known as the Hospital of St. Veronica of the True Image for Colonic and Respiratory Diseases, and one of its residents is a Dr. Kevin Spectro, neurologist and casual Pavlovian." See? It's practically a definition of postmodern writing! "Remember when we could look to an Almighty creator for hope and salvation?! But now it's like, man, that Guy can't exist, right? I mean, the fucking A-bomb, man! What the hell is going on?! How do we get out of this mess?!" Or maybe it isn't a definition of postmodern literature at all and it just speaks to me! Who can tell? Not God! Just...what a great section. Mostly because it's so comprehensible! But also funny! And charming! And a bit melancholic by the end. This is the first chapter that mentions Pointsman's mysterious "Book" with a capital "B". It was expensive and seven of the doctor's at The White Visitation had to chip in to buy it, so it makes the rounds, spending one week at a time with each different owner. Or wait. Was The Book already mentioned?! I can't remember since I'm reading this book so many times at once! Anyway, The Book is one of only seven copies (or something?) of Pavlov's notes. I'm not sure if it's ever named but one of the chapters is named later and I did a Google search back then to discover what book exactly they were discussing. I don't remember it exactly but it was Pavlov's notes and crap. More on The Book later, I'm sure!

[princess-of-france]

Hi! I'll ask the same for you: Multiples of 5 for Edmund, please! Here's to our Gloucester boys :) Thank you!

Oh boy, oh boy, it’s my favorite god of hell. Thanks, friend! :)

I’m going to use Edmund as he exists in the L.E.A.R. universe, because that’s the version of him I know best. Hope that’s okay! xx

5. Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)?

While he’s not the type the whip out the Windex or the pull out a vacuum at the drop of a hat, Edmund is an abnormally tidy 27-year-old man. His natural instincts for strategy, secrecy, and careful preparation have endowed him with a keen sense of organization (both in his head and in the places where he lives and works). Obviously, his father’s law office has its own set of cleaners and he can pay for housekeeping whenever he likes, but the basic arrangement of all his belongings is always the same, and always neatly coordinated. 

Another way of saying this is that the only messy thing in Edmund’s life is his heart. Loving people renders them uncategorizable, which is why he fights so hard against it. Kessa, Edgar, Cordelia… He cannot file these people away in his mind. They are the mess.

10. Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?

Edmund has the irrevocable urge always to be the smartest person in the room, which is possibly a neurosis and possibly just a sign of colossal ego. (And he usually gets what he wants in this regard, because the twat has an IQ of like 180. Only one other person in his life can give him a run for his money, intellectually, and she hates his guts.)

15. Biggest and smallest short term goal?

I’m going to answer this question for Edmund at the beginning of the play:

Smallest short-term goal: to ingratiate himself with all the Anglia board members at Goneril’s engagement party.

Biggest short-term goal: to convince his father, Caleb Gloucester, to leave him Anglia as a client in Caleb’s still-unfinished Last Will and Testament.

20. Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?

No major illnesses beyond the ones that most (vaccinated) children experience. But I’m sure he’s given UTIs to at least a dozen women since the age of 16.

25. How do they see themselves 5 years from today?

At the top. 

Whether he’s serving on the board of Anglia, or serving as Anglia’s chief legal counsel, or serving as husband to a divorced/widowed Goneril (CEO) or Regan (CMO), or serving as Lear’s interim replacement while the patriarch is in the hospital…it really doesn’t matter to Edmund what role he takes, so long as it belongs to him and him alone. He just wants the power, glory, money, and fame that has lain at Edgar’s feet since the day he was born. Within 5 years, Edmund feels he should be able to con himself into a position at the head of the Anglia Corp. food chain.

Except, he thinks sometimes, lying in bed with his hands over his face and the memory of fresh violets in his nose, he might be willing to give up on all of that if she wasn’t so determined to give away her inheritance…

30. Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (e.g. a close family member suddenly dies)?

This is a bit of a spoiler, but I doubt anyone will care (especially since I’m writing a prequel): when Kessa commits suicide, Edmund really does go off the deep end. It honestly breaks my heart just thinking about it. His mother was the only person in the entire world who always loved Edmund unconditionally, who put him first, believed in his worth, championed him in the face of overwhelming antagonism, fought for his rights as a natural son of Caleb Gloucester, and made it her mission in life to ensure his happiness. Her depression was the kind of obstacle Edmund always thought she could overcome, since Kessa was pretty much the strongest woman who ever lived, and it absolutely destroys him when he realizes there are some battles even goddesses cannot win.

He weeps when he gets the call. It is the one and only time he sheds any tears in my play, and he does it in front of Cordelia, who holds him as tightly as Kent held her when Marianne died, all those years ago.

The next time Edmund will cry is when Lear enters at the end of Shakespeare’s play, carrying the corpse of a hanged girl.

35. What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?

Golf. To this day, Edmund doesn’t understand why businessmen are so obsessed with chatting idly about multimillion-dollar deals over 4+ hour rounds of golf. There’s nothing inherently wrong with playing the sport, of course, but using it as a backdrop for business that could be completed in 15 minutes in an office is beyond him. It’s just such a complete waste of time??

40. Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?

I think Edmund is in the worst position of all: he has both.

His genius-level intelligence, natural good looks, inborn ability to charm women, and male privilege have definitely given him an unbearable superiority complex which Cordelia has made it her mission in life to puncture like a balloon.

On the other hand, Edmund also secretly suffers from an acute, infuriating sense of inferiority that just will not be scoured away by either money or success. His mixed race identity (in an overwhelmingly white world of blue-blooded New York business); his tawdry family history (as the bastard son of an ex-stripper); and the fact that Caleb obviously favors his legitimate son, Edgar, both emotionally and occupationally…all these things make it very difficult for Edmund to value himself as highly as he wants to.

I think a large part of his superiority complex is overcompensation for these feelings of inadequacy, as well as righteous anger than he has been made to feel inadequate about them in the first place.

45. Superstitions or views on the occult?

God is dead. God has always been dead. There is no such thing as fate or divine justice or cosmic intervention. Humans have free will and are inherently self-interested. There is no such thing as good or evil, only people who are brave enough to reach for what they want and people foolish enough to try to bat their hands away. The stars are cold. The universe doesn’t care. We are always, always alone.

50. Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not?

I don’t think death scares Edmund one bit. Everyone dies, at one time or another. Even Kessa’s unexpected demise doesn’t make him “afraid” of death; it just makes him catastrophically angry and sad. 

What does frighten Edmund to his core is the idea of dying BEFORE he has time to ascend to the zenith of power to which he feels entitled. Succumbing to death before he takes his place at the top of the world scares Edmund shitless, especially in light of his mother’s passing, because it would mean Kessa’s entire life had been for nothing. Worse still, it would mean his own life had been for nothing. If he’s not fighting, tooth and nail, every day, for the inheritance that he deserves so much more than his cocky, careless, lovesick older brother, then what is he going to have to show for himself when he’s his father’s age? How is he supposed to be content living the rest of his life within spitting distance of socioeconomic domination and never owning even a piece of it?

And then there’s fucking Cordelia, who has that entire legacy lying stagnant in a dusty bank account, just waiting for her 25th birthday so that she can give it all away to charity. If she would just change her mind…if she would just consider being Lear’s daughter for one single solitary second…if she could just try to envision a world in which she actually kept what the stupid universe has hurled at her doorstep…he would — damn her soul to hell — marry her tomorrow.

But then again, a cruel voice tells him softly, if Cordelia was the kind of woman to take the money, you wouldn’t want her half as much as you do. 

Edmund was born to want the thing he cannot have. And she was born to be it. 

[brynprocrastinates]

Like... a bunch of questions.

I’m answering most of them super abruptly, because there’s so many. I apologize in advance x-x

From @morrigans-ink-0124:

What are your current writing goals?

Finalize Pearl, get it to an editor, and then publish it. 

When did you first discover your love of writing?

As a small child writing Nancy Drew fanfic.

What motivates you to keep writing?

I’m a writer. I would die if I didn’t write. (This sounds over-dramatic, but it’s pulled me through a lot of my depressive episodes, and I don’t know what I’d do without it.)

How important is world building for your writing? (For example, do you need to have your world completely established & mapped out before you can start writing? Or, do you not need a set world/environment in order to write your story?)

I usually have the world building first and form my plot and characters around it.

Pen on paper, or typing everything up in a word doc of some sort?

Always typed up. Dyslexia is not good for transferring paper to computer.

Favourite author?

Rick Riorden, Terry Pratchett, Leigh Bardugo, some others I can’t think of right now...

Something you do to get the creative juices flowing to start writing? (music, atmosphere, a particular article of clothing or lack there of…I mean what? I don’t do that. Ahem.)

I just write. Creativity is for armatures.

Do you write better at night, or first thing in the morning?

Any time I’m awake, honestly. So right in the middle of the day.

How do you take your coffee/tea? (And if you don’t drink coffee/tea, how do you even function? Weirdo.)

Black.

You have to spend the rest of your life with only one season, which one do you choose and why?

That moment right between summer and fall, when it’s still warm but the nights are nippy.

From @raiswanson, excluding questions I already answered:

2. What’s your favorite genre? (for writing or reading) Is there a particular aspect that draws you to it?

The punk aesthetic, but the fantasy feel.

3. How many projects do you have? Are they connected, or do they stand apart from one another?

Four projects, none connected in any way.

4. Do you have a favorite “type” of main character to write with?

Nope! Each of my main characters seem to be created by my subconscious trying not to write the same main character as last time...

5. What kind of scenes do you enjoy writing the most? Do you find them harder or easier to write?

Bittersweet emotional scenes 8D

6. What tends to come first when you start a story, characters, world, or plot? A combination of two? Or do they all come as a package deal?

The wold or the characters. (But if it’s the characters they always come with a world.)

7. How much do you know about the worlds you create? Do you plan put everything down to the finest detail, or make it up on the fly as it becomes relevant?

I know nothing, but the details all exists already. It’s a paradox. 

8. What kind of characters do you usually have front and center? Humans? Elves? Aliens? Dragons? Dogs? Sentient trees? (if you primarily write non-fic, what kind of job/station in life do your characters usually have?)

It’s pretty mixed between humans and non-human sentient humanoids.

9. If you could pick one OC to drag out into the real world with you, who would you pick and why?

Dejean.

10. What is your current project? Tell us about it!

Pearl! 

From @summerkiska, excluding questions I already answered:

1. What’s a line in your current WIP that you’re proud of (or just like a lot)?

How about this one I’m posting soon for Pearl: “Within his chest, his heart pounds a frantic rhythm. A heart so near, so vulnerable, I could rip it free between beats.”

2. What’s a question that you wish people would ask you about your writing? (And what’s the answer??)

Not particularly.

3. What’s your favorite part of the writing process?

The first draft! Anything goes and there’s no pressure =D

4. What song best fits the theme of your WIP main character? (And why?)

Vasha’s is King by Lauren Aquilina

5. What habits or rituals do you have for writing sessions?

Having a goal to get to and completing it before I move onto other things.

6. What’s one piece of advice you wish you were given when you first started your writing journey?

Don’t listen to any writing advice unless you can figure out for yourself why it works for your story.

7. Who was your first book character crush? (Or if you can’t remember, who’s your favorite book character crush?)

I don’t crush on fictional characters? I’m weird, I guess.

8. What’s one of your writing pet peeves?

EXCESSIVE ELLIPSIS (@byjillianmaria knows this)

9. Who’s your favorite character in fiction that you loved to hate?

Any version of Loki ever.

10. What are you currently trying to work on when it comes to growing as a writer? (And how’s it going??)

Outlining solid plots before I start writing. (I’m not sure yet, I’m still in the outlining phase...)

From @my-words-are-light:

What do you look for in picking out stories?

Something I enjoy reading?

What fads rub you the wrong way in contemporary novels?

Basically every YA trope ever.

Have you ever made a character who was your hero?

Nah, my characters are all idiots and most of them wouldn’t know what morals were if you hit them over the head with ‘em.

Why did you make your favourite character?

Their dad appeared in my head one day because he liked a song, and then Vasha swooned over their dad, so I made them... (I can explain in more detail but I promise this is as much sense as it makes.)

What’s the pettiest reason for a decision you’ve made in planning or writing?

I’m about to write a sci fi novella purely because I hated both Zenith and Valarian and the city of a thousand planets, so that probably.

Who are your fictional role models for your characters?

I don’t have any?

What makes a good romantic subplot, or romance?

Me actually shipping the damn characters for once.

Do you actually enjoy killing your characters like lemmings and, if so, should I wash my hands before shaking yours?

I refuse to kill any of my characters unless it’s the only direction the story could possibly go.

Have you ever had Tim Tams?

Nope.

What do you hope people take away from your writing? A grand message? Invigoration? Maybe even just a chuckle or two?

Laughter and tears. I want to make them feel things.

From @theguildedtypewriter, excluding questions I already answered:

What character pisses you off the most?

ILYA DAMMIT. (I love him, but he fucks everything up, the trash child.)

Which scene do you think will make people cry, or laugh?

I know for a fact that over half my readers cried during a certain scene in TWLC.

What’s your worst writing habit?

There are narrator no emotions in the first draft! And if there are, then every emotion is a feeling in the stomach or the chest! 

Do you follow your outline?

More or less. I write hit all the major points but mix things up on a scene level.

Which character makes you laugh the most?

I don’t laugh. I just cringe.

Do you like a good love story?

A good one yes. Good love stories are hard to find.

Do you like a good horror story?

Horror for the sake of horror isn’t my thing, but I like a good story with horror elements. 

What trope/stereotype is your least favorite?

Literally all the ones popular in YA fiction.

What fairy tale is your favorite?

Beauty and the beast.

From @inkspll, excluding questions I already answered:

Where is your favorite place to write?

I don’t really have one? Anywhere quiet honestly.

What is your least favorite part to write?

Those damn emotions.

Are you a “kill all the characters you love” Kind of writer or a “ Everyone deserves a redemption arc” Kind of writer?

Neither. I give my villains a chance to redeem themselves and they make the choice themselves. 

What’s a recurring trait in your stories and/or characters?

I don’t know if there is one? A lot of my characters are morally grey though, and diversity is a big deal.

From the characters you’ve created who is your least favorite?

Least favorite characters generally mean not-fleshed-out-enough characters. Suuki was my least favorite for a lot of drafts because her character was very bland originally.

What word do you use too much when writing?

Soft.

Do you write outlines and plan things out before you write?

Yup!

Favorite story idea you never got to write?

I write down all my favorites in case I ever want to write them someday, and I don’t cross any of them out ;)

From @rebeckaomalleywriter, excluding questions I already answered:

How do you feel about midnight epiphanies?

I don’t often get them, because I’m asleep xP

Did any of your characters ever materialize in your mind with no prompting?

The better question to ask is: have any of them not appeared that way?

What is the most surprising thing one of your characters has done that you weren’t planning?

I was pretty surprised when Perle caught the blood dripping form the ceiling in their mouth in the second page of Pearl. I hadn’t know who they were as a character when I started writing and that really set the ton of who they were.

Do you listen to music while you’re writing?

Always.

Do you snack while you’re writing?

Not generally.

Do you consider reading to be an important past time for a writer?

Yes, but I think consumption of all kinds of stories is incredibly useful, so you don’t need to be reading very many books as long as you’re analyzing stories of some kind on a regular basis.

How many completed works, and WIPs do you have under your belt currently?

Completed...? (I have the Marshmallow Aesthetic.)

Which of your characters has the most tragic backstory?

Kleos and Kian both have very tragic backstories which they didn’t deserve in the slightest.

Which has the happiest?

No one has an incredibly happy backstory... I suppose Simone’s was pretty normal, and considering how things could have gone, Vasha, Ilya, and Suuki all had a nice childhoods. 

[mypkshop-blog]

Top 10 Quartz Gold Watch | Best Quartz Gold Watches in Pakistan

Buy Online Quartz Gold Watches in pakistan from company website in lahore in all over the world country brand in karachi for men and women in Pakistan.

When pondering watches it's anything but difficult to become involved with the sentiment of a complex mechanical timepiece. Brands like Bulgari, MB&F, and Zenith are secured a fight to create progressively unpredictable and expand watch developments, while even standard players like Rotary demand flaunting the programmed development of their watches with glass backs and skeleton instruments.

The majority of this can make the modest quartz development feel somewhat lacking. In any case, dread not, on the grounds that where self-winding developments win the prize for unpredictability and craftsmanship, quartz watches battle back with their low costs, expanded exactness, and just about zero upkeep.

It is these three variables, led by  Best Quartz Gold Watches japanese brands like Casio and Seiko, which neigh-on obliterated the customary watch industry, harking back to the 1970s, during a period the Swiss called the Quartz Crisis - and the remainder of the world called the Quartz Revolution.

Today, Quartz watches are commonly less expensive than their increasingly mechanical relatives, however the absolute greatest Swiss names offer some four-figure choices of their own. For instance, both Omega and Tag Heuer have quartz choices in their present lineup.

1. MONDAINE STOP2GO

Motivations TO BUY

+Crisp and straightforward structure

+Two second delay a fun trick

+Optional red lash includes some flare

Motivations TO AVOID

- Less expensive Mondaines look fundamentally the same as

Get Online Quartz Gold Watches in pakistan from company website in lahore in all over the world country brand in karachi for men and women in Pakistan. Mondaine is the official supplier of tickers over the Swiss railroad organize. Situated on station stages, these timekeepers stop for two seconds toward the finish of consistently, at that point all start the following moment at definitely a similar time, to guarantee all tickers over the system remain in a state of harmony.

To emulate this, the 41mm Mondaine Stop2Go delays for two seconds toward the finish of every moment, at that point the moment hand ticks into spot before the recycled beginnings once more. It's a fun trick for watch sweethearts, however implies the second hand can't be trusted for exact timekeeping - in light of the fact that it really takes 58 seconds to clear its way around the dial.

Regardless of that, we cherish Mondaine's straightforward, notable plan and think the Stop2Go makes an extraordinary expansion for any gathering.

2. TAG HEUER FORMULA ONE

Motivations TO BUY

+Diverse scope of timepieces

+Water impervious to 200 meters

+High precision

Motivations TO AVOID

- Some models are somewhat gaudy

This 41mm watch from Tag Heuer is accessible in a scope of various arrangements and plans, the vast majority of which speak to a gesture to the organization's association with engine sport - thus the F1 name. Tag accepts its battery-fueled quartz development is one of the most precise in Switzerland, and cases it will just pick up or lose an error of a couple of moments every month.

This specific model has a brushed blue dial and rhodium plating on the hands and hour and moment markings. The case is brushed steel with a level sapphire gem and screw-down case back. Water opposition is 200 meters and the lash has a twofold wellbeing framework with jumping augmentation.

3. OMEGA SPEEDMASTER SKYWALKER X-33

Motivations TO BUY

+Tough yet lightweight

+Extra highlights by means of advanced showcase

+Quartz development tried by the European Space Agency

Motivations TO AVOID

- Expensive for a quartz

- On the enormous side

This watch has an enormous 45mm case produced using lightweight titanium with a coordinating lash. It includes a dark fired bidirectional bezel and dark dial with an incorporated LCD show. This gives the Skywalker X-33 something of a split character, where an ordinary case, bezel and set of hands is mixed with an advanced showcase.

The showcase offers up a few highlights, similar to a stopwatch, up to three distinctive time zones, three cautions and an interminable schedule. The Skywalker is water impervious to 30 meters and Omega asserts the battery has an existence of two years. The quartz development was tried and qualified by the European Space Agency.

4. BRAUN BN0035

Motivations TO BUY

+Sharp plan

+Three-dial chronograph

+Available in dark or white

Motivations TO AVOID

- 40mm case and 20mm tie may feel unreasonably little for a few

A structure great, the BN0035 investigates and includes a three-dial chronograph. The watch has a 40mm case so is genuinely reduced by present day benchmarks, and is likewise generally thin at 9.4mm; it's worked from hardened steel and is water impervious to 5 ATM (50 meters).

The case is worked from treated steel, while the tie with conventional clasp catch is cowhide. The watch is offered taking all things together dark with a coordinating lash, or with a silver case, white face and dark tie.

5. TIMEX WATERBURY UNITED

Motivations TO BUY

+Compact measurements for slimmer wrists

+Indiglo night-light

Motivations TO AVOID

- Small size won't be for everybody

This smaller quartz watch by Timex is ideal - fit to slimmer wrists with its 38mm case and 18mm tie. The tempered steel case houses a dark dial with 12-hour and 24-hour markings, in addition to a date entanglement at three o'clock.

The Waterbury United is roused by military plan and is planned as a watch fit to nature. The unmistakable dial with red and white numbers, in addition to the stone washed cowhide lash help make this vibe like an outdoorsy timepiece, instead of one to be combined with your supper coat. Additional highlights incorporate water protection from 50 meters and Timex's Indiglo backdrop illumination.

6. TISSOT PRC200

Motivations TO BUY

+Available in a wide range of arrangements

+Water impervious to 200 meters

+Classic sports watch plan

Motivations TO AVOID

- Quite a caught up with looking dial

The Swiss-made Tissot PRC200 is offered with a wide scope of ties and faces to suit any style. All models are water impervious to 200 meters and highlight a three-dial chronograph with stopwatch precise to 1/tenth of a second. The case is 42mm wide and 12mm thick, produced using treated steel, and uses a screw-down crown and case back.

Different choices for the PRC200 incorporate treated steel lashes, and distinctive shading alternatives for both the dial (dark, blue, silver) and the second hand, which can be had in differentiating red or yellow, boosting the watch's energetic nature.

7. LONGINES CONQUEST VHP

Motivations TO BUY

+A cook's dozen of various arrangements

+Classic plan

Motivations TO AVOID

- Some alternatives excessively dull

There are at present 13 distinct adaptations of the Longines Conquest VHP, so you should discover precisely the correct model for you. Lash choices incorporate hardened steel and elastic, and dial hues incorporate dark, white, blue, and a wrap up the weave of carbon fiber.

The case is 41mm in distance across and is water impervious to 5 ATM, while the face is secured by scratch-safe sapphire precious stone and incorporates a few layers of against intelligent covering applied to the underside.

8. Resident NIGHTHAWK

Motivations TO BUY

+Solar-controlled - never needs a battery

+Chronograph

+Water impervious to 200 meters

Motivations TO AVOID

- Quite a thick structure

Resident's Eco-Drive framework takes light - characteristic or fake - and transforms it into vitality, which is put away in the watch and conveyed step by step. This implies the battery never needs supplanting, and enough vitality is put away to control the watch for a half year, even in complete obscurity. Not supplanting the battery is helpful, yet in addition implies the watch's 200 meters of water opposition is never messed with by opening up the treated steel case.

This specific model of Nighthawk includes a blue dial and a dark steel case with is 43mm wide and 12.5mm thick. The date is shown at the four o'clock position and the face incorporates a two-dial chronograph with a stopwatch precise to 1/fifth of a second.

9. SINN UX

Motivations TO BUY

+Water impervious to 5,000 meters

+Improved submerged intelligibility

+Rotating jumping bezel

Motivations TO AVOID

- Expensive for a quartz development

- Fairly enormous at 44mm

This jumping watch by Sinn is water impervious to a huge 5,000 meters and is intended to remain flawlessly intelligible submerged and in any conditions. A lithium-particle battery implies a long life, yet in addition guarantees the Best watch in Multan keeps on working in outrageous temperatures - down to less 25 Celsius and up to in addition to 60C.

The basic dark dial with white hours markings has a date complexity at four o'clock, differentiating red second hand, and a turning plunging bezel with radiant markings. A genuinely huge watch, the case estimates 44mm crosswise over and is 13.3mm thick, while the band carry width is 22mm.

10. ENCLAVE PILOT 41

Motivations TO BUY

+Well evaluated

+Two-dial chronograph

+Two shading choices

Motivations TO AVOID

- Suede ties will in general show wear all the more rapidly

The Pilot 41 by Enclave has a 42mm case which is simply 7mm thick. The watch takes standard 20mm ties in the event that you need to jazz things up from the standard-issue dark colored softened cowhide, and the hardened steel case is water impervious to 5 ATM.

The enormous, clear face includes a two-dial chronograph with stop-stop-star and reset catches, in addition to a date inconvenience a the three o'clock position. Enclave sells the Pilot 41 with a naval force face, as observed here, and ivory. Both are ensured by sapphire precious stone and should make an alluring, strong explanation on any wrist.

[dallasareaopinion]

Fighting negativity and making America better

Well, you could probably write a bookshelf full of books on this topic from many different viewpoints and opinions. Tonight though, we are going to focus on a few general ideas and hopefully not step on too many toes. Right now, there is some general hatred in our country and much misinformation and confusion. Unfortunately, this means to even get started you have to call out some things and I won’t say some people, so let’s say some general groups and hopefully dear reader you realize there are some generalizations that must be done to get down to some points.

So where does a person begin. In this situation, the writer gets to choose and I choose the what use to be called the Eastern Establishment. Wait let me back up a moment. For America to be successful many different groups or relationships need to have I guess a symbiotic relationship. For example, and I have talked about this before; liberals and conservatives (true open minded liberals and conservatives) need each other not for themselves to be successful more for the country to be successful. Sometimes we forget events will dictate what is the best course of action to take. We cannot let our closed minds push aside better options just because it does not fit in our worldview.

 And this is where I start with the Eastern Establishment. And now this group has evolved from when this label first became used. Taking this in a general context, many liberals of the Eastern Establishment would pounce immediately and say it is the modern conservative who is thoroughly closed minded, not us. Why can you accuse us of the same label, when we have known for decades what is better for the country? And oops maybe you don’t. For example, the high handedness of this group comes from their education and granted most people who fit this mold have gone onto higher degrees in general than the average American. Yet they do not know middle America, nor have a general understanding of how middle America feels right now. First example and it is a disastrous one is the election of Mr. Trump.  The current liberal mindset is just shocked that Mr. Trump was elected. Pretty much the way the liberal news has reported for the last three months is the proof in the pudding for this thought.

 Now I once proposed that he was elected because of a few smart people who knew the electoral count going in and made a play at the end to pull the rabbit out of the hat. And yes, that is partly why he won.

 The bigger picture is something most people do not talk about anymore. Older white middle America is lost. Yes, I said white and white for a reason. Truth be told back in the 50’s and 60’s white middle class America had it better than other races, creeds etc.. that is a different topic for a different day. And I will touch on it as I go along, for now though let’s focus on where we are now with middle America as a whole. And again, yes this is different from middle white America of the 50’s and 60’S. And try to address how we got here today.

 The modern “well educated” liberal has forgotten one extremely important fact. And I suggest if you are insulted by my labeling coming up, go back and read what Adlai Stevenson, II was saying in the 1950’s. You have missed some large boats.  Anyway, in the 50’s and going into the 60’s white middle class America had reached a zenith in the history of mankind. In the minds of white middle class America, the world was their oyster. Yes, there was many underlying problems from race relations to bad foreign policy to the ultra-pollution of our air and water, yet on the surface no group of people in the history of the world had the opportunity the children of the 1950’s had. None. Public education was available to all, when people said if you worked hard and applied yourself you could be anything you want it was true. Think of all the opportunities that came about with the space race, computers, military buildup, the interstate highway system just to name a few… degrees in engineering, science, accounting, law, education built up the next generation and created what is now known as the upper middle class or the height of this opportunity. And most of these people came from white middle class, all their values, beliefs, status etc. are a byproduct of this time. And even some Eastern Liberal establishment members have some roots with this same mindset. The federal government grew and a whole slew of programs and departments grew to handle all our problems. We fought a war in Vietnam and we fought the war on poverty. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have won either and this is just one statement that shows where we went from the 1960’s.

 The so called Eastern Establishment never realized middle America enjoyed being middle America and resented the Eastern Establishment laying much blame about all the bad things that came about in the 60’s and 70’s on them or just that they didn’t know any better; hence Richard Nixon could say with great confidence the silent majority was for him. He was right. Yes, there were problems that needed to be addressed and more were developing, but the Eastern Establishment began an attack on middle America that leaves us in a very precarious situation today. Now I am not saying this is the Eastern Establishment’s fault or whatever modern version of this group that exists today. I am saying they are part of the same problem on the opposite side of the coin that produced Donald Trump. I will be fair; you are going to hear about the closed minded, Republican establishment also.

 Okay so what does Donald Trump’s statement I am going to make America great again mean. Well to many in white middle America, they remember opportunity, they remember kids being able to play outside all day during the summer, there were no bogeymen except as parental threats, they remember the concept of you are supposed to respect certain people just because of the job title whether it be teacher or policeman, they remember people want to be astronauts or Presidents or owners of businesses. Middle America sees this as why America was great. This is good and now it is gone. (not really, this is how we make America better). To middle America, something happened over the last 30 or 40 years and now we live in an ugly country where all these people are destroying everything they grew up to believe.  Are they racists and bigots and horrible people? There are a few that are, for many though they are lost. Maybe some inherent racism just because they are white, in most people of all races it will exist some, but not because they are evil people who want to shut down everyone and hate everybody. No, they want everyone to assimilate. Why,,,,, well Eastern Establishment because what they grew up with… was great.. they didn’t realize they reached a zenith of humanity, they just realized life is good.

 And then along came the modern Republican party establishment and what is rather ironic, it grew post Nixon. Yes, the greed mongering and self-righteous came after the worst Presidential debacle in our history. Nixon was smart, calculating, very politically aware, and at the same time very paranoid and well just afraid. He knew what he wanted. He grew up believing that if you worked hard you could be whatever you wanted. In his mind, Kennedy took that away from him, so he had to fight back and fight back hard to get what was his, which led to some of the most stupid political decisions in our history. When I was young I use to think Nixon was evil. He was not evil. He just made himself a trap and jumped right into it. A smart calculating politician, went overboard and made some very dangerous to our country decisions. And he got caught. And we should be glad he did. Eventually we made need to rely on our strength as a country to get past future problems of this nature. That will be part of making America better somewhere down the line.

 Post Nixon though the original generation of what we know call the 1 percenters realized they needed to get better control of this nation or people might step up and take away what they have “accomplished”.  This led to the Republican party post Nixon becoming more outright about taking away advantages to other people and lying to their base to make sure they had what they wanted and no one else was going to interfere. Unfortunately, at this point the Eastern Establishment starting devolving in their own world while the Modern Republican Establishment came to be and starting devolving themselves.  Yep not a pretty picture, yet at the time, both sides were becoming so self-absorbed they didn’t realize how much the other side was falling.  The modern Republican is not conservative anymore though, nor is the Eastern Establishment or whatever you might want to call their devolution is liberal. Both sides have agendas that benefit their noise, not the rank and file liberals or conservatives. In fact, a really decent liberal or conservative agenda is not going to be passed through our government right now since the self-serving leaders of both sides cannot give up one iota to the other side no matter how far they take this country into the trash. Yes, liberals you act like you will work with conservatives, but in fact all you do is state how superior you are and that conservatives do not know anything. Well since the Republican Establishment call themselves conservative I can see why you would go down this path, yet the truth is, since they are not conservative (just self-serving greedy pricks), you throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater.

 And after 20 or 30 years of this, we have the extremes of both sides so separated from the rest of the country they are leading the noise of hate at each other. The good thing is this is still the minority of both sides. The noise they are making though sounds like there is much hate in this country. Yet if you really watch people, most want to go to work, work with the people they do, come home and hide away from all this grief being thrown at them by the extremes on both sides.

 And that is where we start to make America better. This country still has the potential to lead the world into the next zenith of humanity. (or unfortunately drag down the whole planet). The change though must come from the people. Think about my earlier statement that in the 50’s leading to the 60’s there was so much opportunity for white middle America. Our task is to create the same opportunity for all. And that is so possible. There is new technology for people to work with to create so much. There is an opportunity for a whole new space race that encompasses the whole world.  We can use new technologies to solve age old problems like how do we feed everyone? Over the years, I have proposed many ideas and I know if I can sit here in my living room and just dream up new economic development plans and ideas to better EDUCATE our children others can also. And then we can sit down and choose the best of the ideas to move forward. The world is still our oyster. Let us not be dragged down by the hate and ignorance of a few. Let us fight this tyranny of thought, remove the self-serving interests that hamper our growth. Businesses can still flourish, people can still dream, new products and new ideas and better government can be done, yet only if we take back the mindset that we can do it.

 Like I said at the top, there could be books written on my title and all I wanted to do was throw out some general ideas and here I am lost in the myriad of possibilities, trying to avoid the hate that dominates the media noise. America is great from Constitutional writing and on. It is time for us to take the next steps to continue our greatness. We are not perfect, but we can continue to become better. And to do this, we need the Eastern Establishment and Middle America to realize they need each other. When one is successful, the other is also. They are not always going to move in lock step. That is okay. As long as both realize they are working towards a better America and then let the best path at the time be chosen then all will be well.

[ecotone99]

[SF] The Switch - Part 2

Data is missing here

The ancient craft of the story-telling was used to conceal the truth, yet to convey the message to those who are experiencing the circumstances under which the message can be understood. To understand the meaning of the message is to understand who the enemy is. To conceal the message is to deceive the enemy. The most dangerous lie comes in the form of a metaphor, so metaphor has to be carefully avoided.

Data is missing here

The enemy has conquered and taken away parts of our lives that we have held as innocent and holy to our existence, however, they have not taken away our stories. No one should know about the enemy, as he has shaped societies over the centuries. As long as the story is there to remind us, it's important to remember that we have a right to protect our stories, and that we need to be able to get access to them freely.

Taking away stories would be a clear remark of what we feared most, and that is the existence of an enemy. The fear, on the other hand, is how the enemy has acquired our possessions. Nevertheless, sometimes it happens that the enemy reveals itself to some individuals who would pass the stories, but only to learn about the craft of the story-telling and how to gain a possession of its power. Now, the crafts can be sold, as all crafts are sold. Therefore, according to this reasoning, we should say:"A person's wealth is the possession of the crafts, and not that of the craftsmanship".

My style of writing is easily detectable and recognizable by those who watch day and a night for any interpretations or new stories thay may contradict the ideology of the switch. The only reason I don't fear the enemy is because they took too much from me activating the switch, and now I have nothing to lose. Nevertheless, I am not asking to be trusted, and I am not asking for this story to be carried on.

My life is my own story with my own point of view. It is not a craft. It is as a statement against those who believe that a story must be told in the strict confines of the story's structure. If it does not remain simple, they believe it can always be shut down. I am no longer a reader of other's stories. I don't need those to convince me that I should be proud of myself and my intelligence. I do not wish to frighten, confuse, or act on behalf of an enemy. All I want is to take away the burden it has placed on me. In was the day a van with the blue-light took me in the middle of the night. It happened 20 years ago. My mother and sister were murdered and my friend was raped by them. I am a member, a friend of the humankind whom the United Governments continue to call evil and criminals.

All of this time I spent trying to forget the shower, questioning, the masks they carried, and the way people acted like I have never gone missing. What bothers me the most is that even if I got murdered in the middle of the busy street, on a clear sunny day, nobody would even look over their shoulder or feel even a molecule of adrenaline in their system... It would be as if I never existed.

After 30 years of searching, I had finally gotten back the part of my new world, but now I can't find it anymore. I know that there is a story about the new world behind the door, but it's too late to open it without being attacked. Now, I don't know how much time is left, and there is no time to even start writing a story. I only hope that one day, in the future, I will wake up from this nightmare and realize that I only have to remember what the story was all about. It's still so dark, though, and I don't sleep very well. I just hope that one day my world will awaken. I hope one day that it comes to me, and this nightmare will soon soon end.

Data is missing here

All of the confusion, thoughts, and feelings were there to tell me that I was the chosen one. I was on the spaceship to the new world, and that is all that mattered to me. Finally, this is my chance to visit a paradise. I'm going to call this place "The Planet Earth" so I could easily forget the Earth I am leaving behind.

An ominous voice occurred from nowhere. It was occurring together with other sounds and it felt like something very important. Turning on the tap-water helped create some noise so I could listen to this voice. The voice clearly said:"You were enslaved by the black-market traders who are using your body for the prostitution. We will transport you back to reality when stable". One of the crewmen entered and said:"I see, you were also affected by the switch". "Yes, I believe I was... What do you know about the switch?". "A great deal"-he said, while giving me some kind of a book to read from.

The first chapter read: "As the ancient stories told, we are all given the predisposition in life to like certain foods, enjoy certain kinds of music and arts, and prefer to have certain professions. Those are the things deeply encoded in our genetic makeup, and our task is to fulfill the code while passing on the same genes onto the next generations. In short, our task is to pursue our own personal goals, to pursue them or to avoid them to some degree. The purpose of the switch, on the other hand, is to make sure that those who have obtained the higher rank or a status in a society remain undisturbed. The power and wealth is finite. The switch is a device which monitors individuals and it works simply by allowing or denying the access to information, services, education, health, social interactions,... pretty much anything that may lead to individual's genetic imprint taking away the power from the higher ranks.

The switch usually occurs between the middle and lower ranks. This is accomplished by making sure that even in the middle ranks, when the individual is a member of the upper levels, they are not always exposed by the access to material necessities. These lower members are typically very sensitive to the changes in environment and often avoid the information to help improve their own status by acquiring some material benefits. This could possibly make the members of these lower ranks more powerful. In order to overcome this issue, information and services are always available from higher ranking members if the individuals need information but only when it might mean the loss of their status or their own reputation. All this is controlled by the switch. So in reality, for some people, their genes are already programmed, but to complete their genetic programming, they need to continue to move up through the ranks and get promoted. They make sure to avoid the situation when they're not in the majority or when their genetic imprint is not strong enough to handle the changes. In such cases, the switch might be used to provide the option of keeping their gene switched within the future generations. So, while the concept is not new to our society, it is the fact that the switch can be used to provide an option of staying low down the career ladder of society, and not necessarily to make people ascend. The theory is not new. It comes from ancient civilizations who also practiced the switch - one can read about it here The theory of the Genetic Governments. It says that all of us, including our genetic imprints, can be changed by a few simple steps.

The following steps would have to be followed to achieve such a change by some society.The first step would be the switch itself. It would require you to first switch off one of the two layers of energy known as the yin-yang energy. As explained above, the yang is the highest level of energy, and is in the same orientation as the negative axis, and the reverse is true for the zenith and yin. The switch is in a state of active development. The two elements in the yang, the negative and positive, rotate at the same speed at which they move from bottom up. This would allow the switch to become dormant and allow the yin-yang energy to be in a dormant state, which in turn helps regulate the switch as we know it today. At that point, the switch could be used to alter the nature of the current life cycle from the viewpoint of the society or individual concerned. In this case, the switch could provide a second layer of energy..."

The book continued about how the switch evolved from targeting the certain individuals over the ancient database called the Internet, to manipulating the large quantities of information to adjust the path of the same kinds of individuals to benefit the foreign relations with the countries of interest. The switch has then evolved into a social entity where people are conditioned to act in a way that would suggest the existence of the switch. The switch was nothing material and it cannot be detected by any scanners. It is a simple manifestation of the manipulated populations with the carefully selected data and knowledge.

The ominous voice appeared again... "We will get you out of there" it said. "Please, don't panic! The reality may flicker". As soon as the words were spoken, the spaceship I was in got replaced by some kind of a room. The room had several people, some kind of a device, and a woman sitting in front of to it. The woman seemed familiar, while the vision was still blurry. The vision returned, and it was me, sitting in front of myself, hooked up to some device. If I am not dreaming and if this is the reality, how can I see myself? What is happening here? One of the figures started talking explaining that I was to be sold on a black-market, that I am looking through a device on wheels they now use for the patients in comas to keep their brain from degrading while being able to interact with the real-world, remotely.

Data is missing here

A fire alarm sounded, and there was smoke everywhere in the building. I wanted to run away, so I ran away from that room with a monster that looked like me. I started feeling the burning pain everywhere, although I was not in the building anymore. I wanted to run but then I couldn't breathe and I felt cold and everything froze in some kind of a darkness. The feeling of space in this darkness wasn't there anymore. I tried reaching out to my newly discovered Earth, the virtual world I have created in my mind but there was nothing. I felt that my whole life became a missing and a cut-off frame in some kind of a film. These must be my last thoughts.

Data cannot be interpreted into language from this point

The End

submitted by /u/Goat-Leather [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/3kE0Il2

[chanyikelly-blog]

Ashley Williams and Yohji Yamamoto

Kelly Yi 1605713

                                           Ashley Williams

Ashley Williams Getting to Fashion Industry

London is known for its fashion class among the known international fashion weeks. London fashion weeks are supported by its sense of humor, raw energy, young talent and directional design. As such, London significant as far as international fashion weeks are concerned. Significantly, Ashley Williams stands as the brightest star in the London international fashion week shows. Ashley Williams is just 28-years-old but she is exploding London fashion shows. Success in fashion results from passion and creativity, to outstand among competitors. Fortunately, Ashely Williams is best in her work of fashion. Her first explode was in 2013 (Williams & Ervin, 2016). In just four years’ time, Ashely Williams is among the best coolest girls in the fashion industry. With her take on girly silhouettes and tailoring, streetwear, she is a focused lady who knows how to enter into a business and attract as many customers as possible

Beginning crisp out of college She didn't have much involvement, which as an inseparable unit was an assistance and prevention. On the off chance that she'd have comprehended what beginning her own particular image completely involved, she would have been a bit went nuts and it possibly would have held her again from simply getting on with it. She learned a great deal by experimentation, which isn't exceptionally gainful. She doesn't lament anything, however, that is the manner by which She know how to maintain a business and has learned a great amount about mold as a business. She is as yet adapting constantly. The absolute starting point was being drawn closer by Fashion East to participate in the demonstrate that coming February. She was so energized on the grounds that she didn't expect it at all and she'd truly delighted during the time spent making her graduate accumulation. What she has acknowledged she jumps at the chance to do is have a thought in my psyche and have it emerge it's so satisfying and charming to have your creative energy arrive as a general rule. It all just went from that point truly, and I've quite recently continued onward.

Face to face, Ashley Williams is a very smart lady, which is fitting for an architect who has overwhelmed the London form scene since her graduate show in 2012. That show, the zenith of her BA learns at Westminster included turns on the catwalk from her companions Pixie Geldof and Chanel display Alice Della. While such VIP models were no uncertainty an accommodating promoting instrument, it was the pop hues and illustrations that truly got the attention. Presently, after three seasons on the program of Fashion East Lulu Kennedy's hatchery conspire for rising ability this season sees Williams remaining solitary interestingly (McGinnis at el., 2017). It's ordinarily messier more than cleaner. I mean cleaner, I guarantee shouts Williams as she invites finds into her edge of a mutual studio space in east London. The dividers are papered with visual motivation for her spring or summer gathering, moves of texture are propped against a workbench and a garments rail bows under the heaviness of new season tests and stock.

Williams has been in this studio since graduation, beginning with only a work area and step by step asserting more space as her business has developed (Pergolotti, at el., 2017). Only three seasons in, she has a great rundown of stockiest that incorporates boutiques Colette in Paris and Machine-An in London and in addition stockiest in China, Japan, Russia and the US. A month ago, she worked together with Selfridges on a restricted release denim gathering. It's sheltered to state, at that point, that Williams' star is in the ascendant, and keeping in mind that those VIP models did no damage there's bounty more to her prosperity (Williams & Ervin, 2016). Clearly, she realized that it would help significantly more than not having them, in the event that you have openings like that, it merits taking them, says Williams. In any case, they're her companions and when you do a graduate gathering and your companions are great at things. she had another companion assisting with my prints since he was a visual originator.

Creative Innovations

Williams is one of those individuals who is continually making new companions. Her chipper nature must offer assistance. In any case, there's a genuine side to her as well: while, at first glance, her accumulations appear to be camp, kitsch and carefree, there are profundities which, while not shrouded away, are surely uncertain on first sight. Take spring or summer 15, which was displayed as a component of Newgen, the British Fashion Council supported emotionally supportive network. She began taking a gander at Vietnamese attire in the Seventies, around the season of the war, she clarifies, signaling to the high contrast photos of South-east Asian ladies over her work area (McGinnis at el., 2017). The calling of the young ladies portrayed makes even the most honest appearing picture intense (Williams & Ervin, 2016). Williams needed to investigate: How they have been affected by American culture, their understanding of American, Western style. Since it's their elucidation, it's not exactly valid, it's somewhat of that is the thing that makes it intriguing.

As references go, Williams perceives this is a politicized one as well as one that may come as an astonishment to the individuals who just know the Dreamboat and Upbeat Ashley trademarks and cartoonish designs of her past accumulations. The Americans were there to battle against socialism, yet despite everything they're united and are impacting each other and having a relationship which most likely shouldn't occur The message of it is fascinating, and that they are getting tied up with it, are keen on imitating America and the Western world (Pergolotti, at el., 2017). Ashely Williams observed that division plays out in the innocent gathering in dresses decorated with Coke-bottle illustrations and Asian-roused meshes. There have been more inside and out thoughts behind this accumulation. In any case, she does feel that individuals took past accumulations a lot at confront esteem. It's not exactly what's at first glance.

Explored Areas

The path in which imported standards pose a potential threat in specific societies is specifically noteworthy to Williams, who was conceived in the United Arab Emirates and lived there until the point that she was 12: She cherished it, she truly adored growing up there. Presently it's a totally better place, it's gone starting with one extraordinary then onto the next. When she grew up there was one little expat group and everybody knew each other somehow, everybody was associated. There was regard between local people and the expats she got the chance to be a piece of heaps of various societies.

One of those, shopper culture, was nearly fetishized: she recalls when the main McDonald's opened in Dubai, it was such an occasion, and when Toys'R'Us and Marks and Spencer opened. She got a Furby – that was a major ordeal. The criticalness of that youth toy appears to be still to be with the fashioner, who has made toy sacks hammerhead sharks for spring/summer 14, felines for fall/winter 14, into something of a mark. While Williams plainly savors the chance to have some good times that have been stood to her, she's likewise quick to have the capacity to develop and trusts that as she develops, her accumulations will, as well (Pergolotti, at el., 2017). While Williams stresses that her childhood can cloud individuals' point of view of her work and propose she's "simply doing it for a snicker," she concedes that taking care of the business side of her mark has been a training, and troublesome now and again. "The hardest piece is the general population administration stuff needs to complete and it needs to compete legitimately. She would prefer not to be ghastly, in the event that she demonstration agreeable at that point nothing completes.

Existing Products

As a major aspect of her investigations at Westminster, Williams finished a module on business which, she says, didn't set up her for the truth of beginning her own in spite of the fact that, by her own confirmation, she most likely ought to have gone [to class] more. By then, she was uncertain whether she needed to be a fashioner, thinking rather that she may be a mold purchaser or a beautician.

Having interned with beauticians Francesca Burns and Max Pearmain and planner Nasir Mazhar amid her examinations, Williams understood that the universe of magazines wasn't for her and that, in a perfect world, she'd work for herself. "I do feel autonomous, yet perhaps that is on account of I'm permitted to be on the grounds that I have such a decent, pleasant gathering of individuals around me. That word, pleasant, peppers our discussion and it's positively fitting for the originator's sweet air. In any case, there's something all the more, as well, something that clues at a many-sided quality and quality underneath the surface. I wouldn't fret getting terrible surveys. The main thing I'm terrified of is not doing all that I could.

Fortunate, at that point, that she leans towards attempting to go out, regardless of being a piece of the part of society worthy of anyone's attention. She doesn’t really go out that much She either in the studio or in bed. She like all the more available time, however, I have a rundown of stuff. She figures out how to drive, go to India and do some washing [and] at last overcome my washing heap (Green at el., 2014). Beginning new out of Campus she didn't have much understanding, which as an inseparable unit was an assistance and impediment. On the off chance that she would have recognized what beginning her own particular image completely involved, she would have been a bit blew a gasket and it possibly would have kept her away from simply getting on with it. She learned a considerable measure by experimentation, which isn't exceptionally profitable. She doesn’t lament anything however, that is the means by which she knows how to maintain a business and has learned such a great amount of form as a business. Despite everything, she is adapting constantly.

The earliest reference point was being drawn nearer by Fashion East to partake in the demonstrate that coming February. She was so energized in light of the fact that she didn't expect it at all and she would truly have delighted during the time spent making her graduate gathering. What she has understood she jumps at the chance to do is have a thought in her psyche and have it emerge it’s so satisfying and agreeable to have your creative ability arrive in actuality. It all just went from that point truly, and she has quite recently continued onward (Green at el., 2014). She presumably doesn’t know the full degree of the work that has been put into bailing me out, with sponsorship or perhaps she was excessively occupied with, making it impossible to acknowledge exactly how far out of their way my companions would offer assistance. It isn't conceivable without an abnormal state of help from the general population around her, particularly when she was beginning.

She would prefer not to begin naming names, as the rundown is so long she wouldn't have any desire to leave anybody off it by botch. However, she wouldn't have possessed the capacity to do half as much as she has without them. You can't request considerably more than working with your companions what a benefit. She figured out how to worry with some restraint (which isn't simple). At the point when an issue emerges or something turns out badly, she needs to address: Also, to place it into the setting (Williams & Ervin, 2016). You can escape with agonizing over all that you need to manage; she would state that is my greatest work and individual test. Additionally, such huge numbers of things she like has been upbeat mishaps so simply move with the punches. In any case, she ought to presumably include a disclaimer that is simpler said than done. To make sense of what your inspiration is and if that will make you cheerful.

References

Green, A., Markham, S., Williams, J., Graf, J., Morgan, A., Brooke, M., & Harken, A. H. (2014). The ladies need more attention. Surgery, 156(3), 517-518.

McGinnis, R., Steinthorsdottir, V., Williams, N. O., Thorleifsson, G., Shooter, S., Hjartardottir, S., ... & Kemp, J. P. (2017). Variants in the fetal genome near FLT1 are associated with risk of preeclampsia. Nature Genetics, 49(8), 1255-1260.

Pergolotti, M., Deal, A. M., Williams, G. R., Bryant, A. L., McCarthy, L., Coffman, E., ... & Muss, H. B. (2017). A randomized control trial of outpatient occupational and physical therapy for older adults with cancer: The CARE program. b

Williams, A., & Ervin, D. A. (2016). Integration of Mental and Behavioral Health in Primary Care. In Health Care for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities across the Lifespan (pp. 1699-1707). Springer International Publishing.

                                             Yohji Yamamoto

Yohji Yamamoto is a Japanese designer based in Tokyo and Paris. He has always been considered as a master designer in the fashion industry, not just because of his unique fashion design style but also his personality. Yamamoto has won notable awards in his contributions to fashion, including the Chevalier of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon, the Ordre national du Mérite, the Royal Designer for Industry and the Master of Design award by Fashion Group International. He has studied in Tokyo in his early life and afterward, he went to Paris to study fashion design.

In the old times, the social status of the Japanese was very low, if they wanted to make a living out of it, they have to pay a visit to the customers and being very careful about what they do. The old-time trailer also has to make garments by learning how the western garments are made. This is where Yohji is tired of.

Since Yohji came back from Paris, he has made up his mind that he wanted to change something in this world. Therefore he started his Yohji Yamamoto brand in 1972 and held his personal conference in 1976. After that, he has gained more and more fans who like his works very much.

Yohji Yamamoto has a different concept and fashion design style. Yohji always likes using big shape design to cover the body curve. He likes to make womenswear by thinking the way to make menswear’s thinkings.

The differences between Ashley Williams and Yohji Yamamoto is that Ashley Williams’s style is for long girls, by using bright colors and prints to present an image of  “fun, bad mood, rebellious” girls, which succeed in catching some celebrities eyes. However, Yohji Yamamoto has a deeper concept,  he used western culture and eastern culture, by combining them together as his designs and his unique style. He wants people who wear his designs to feel comfortable and deep. Their customers come from different sources. Ashely Williams’s customers are more likely in the age of 19-29, who wants to look cool and stylish. Yohji Yamamoto’s customers are male and female, which age is likely from 20-45. Probably works in the fashion industry and have a good sense of fashion.

I personally like Yohji Yamamoto more, I consider him as a master who has so much that I can learn from.

[alanajacksontx]

Facebook kills off news: Publishers panic, try to remember how to do SEO

By now you’ve no doubt heard the news that’s been shaking up the internet since late last week.

But in case you just came back online after a week-long internet blackout, here’s what’s happening: on Thursday 11th January, Facebook announced a major change to the way posts are ranked in News Feed.

In order to promote more “meaningful” interaction with friends and family, Facebook said that it would “prioritize posts from friends and family over public content … including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses”.

In general, brands have not tended to rely on Facebook for traffic since it dramatically reduced the organic reach of branded content a little over three years ago, forcing brands to pay for reach or go elsewhere for traffic. However, publishers have long been the exception to that rule, with Facebook acting as a huge – and vital – source of referral traffic to publishers’ websites.

This has led many publishers to plan their strategy and output directly around Facebook (see: the much-derided media “pivot to video”, which was driven in large part by Facebook). But Facebook’s announcement of Thursday has put paid to all of that – or at least, put a big dent in the potential traffic that publishers can earn from its platform.

Deprived of referral traffic from Facebook, will publishers be turning en masse back to SEO to restore their fortunes? Let’s look at some of the broader industry shifts underpinning this change, and what it means for the importance of search for publishers.

Trading places: Google is back on top for referral traffic

The truth is that Facebook’s referral traffic to publishers has been in decline for some time now. According to data from digital analytics company Parse.ly, the percentage of external traffic that Facebook provides to publishers decreased from 40% to 26% between January 2017 and January 2018, while Google’s rose from 34% to 44% over the same period.

This means that in a direct reversal of 2015, when Facebook rocked the industry by overtaking Google as a source of referral traffic for publishers, Google is now back in the number one spot. And this all happened before Facebook’s News Feed announcement even took place.

Publishers have also been seeing more traffic from Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) than Facebook equivalent Instant Articles, another situation that reversed itself over the last year. According to Parse.ly, publisher traffic from AMP increased from 4.72% in January 2017 to 11.78% in November 2017, while Instant Articles declined from 10.31% of publisher traffic in January down to 8.54% in November.

When Facebook overtook Google for referral traffic back in 2015, this seemed to herald the dawn – or perhaps the zenith – of a new age of social sharing and publishing, in which social media was the new search.

At a Content Marketing Association Digital Breakfast in June 2016, veteran digital journalist Adam Tinworth remarked that social networks had taken over the search engine’s traditional role of “finding something to read” online. As a result, Google and other search engines moved into more of an “answer engine” role, moving away from search towards a single, definitive answer to users’ queries.

So with Google back on top for referral traffic, are we seeing a return to the status quo?

The Google-Facebook merry-go-round

In fact, Google and Facebook’s continual back-and-forth is the status quo. They have been chasing each other around in circles for years now, each taking it in turns to try their hand at the other’s specialist area.

Google experimented with social networking; Facebook became the go-to place to find content. Both launched lightning-fast takes on the mobile web – Accelerated Mobile Pages and Instant Articles – in 2015 with a global roll-out in 2016. Now, Facebook is returning to its “roots” of showing you what your family and friends are up to, while the latest updates to Google’s smart assistant indicate that Google is moving back into surfacing content.

Google and Facebook: Destined to chase each other in circles for eternity (Image by monstreh, available via CC0)

In other words, this is just the most recent step in a dance that has been going on for more than 10 years. Facebook might have ceded some ground to Google in the realm of referral traffic to publishers, partly in a bid to rid itself of the fake news scandal that has dogged it since mid to late 2016.

However, the two continue to vie for dominance in countless other areas, such as artificial intelligence, smart home hubs, digital assistants, and advertising. Facebook continues to drive its investment in online video, encroaching on Google-owned YouTube’s territory, while Google recently announced a new foray into social publishing with Google Stamp.

At the height of the fake news controversy, Google and Facebook’s names frequently appeared side-by-side, with both companies accused of peddling false information to their users and perpetrating the “filter bubble” that allows fake news to thrive.

As a result, some have speculated that Google might now follow in Facebook’s footsteps and take steps to distance itself from publishers.

However, Google is already taking action – or at least appearing to take action – against fake news on its search engine by implementing ‘fact-checking’ labels, partnering with the International Fact-Checking Network to combat misinformation, and purging questionable overseas websites that mask their country of origin from Google News.

Unless there is another significant wave of backlash over fake news to force Google’s hand, it seems likely that Google will take the “win” over Facebook and avoid jeopardizing its relationship with publishers – particularly given its recent moves to become more publisher-friendly by supporting paywalled content.

Meanwhile, publishers need to work out how to reconfigure their online strategy with Facebook much less in the picture. Will we be seeing a newfound reliance on SEO and search marketing?

Publishers: time to learn from SEO

Publishers are about to find themselves in the very same position that brand marketers found themselves at the end of 2014, when Facebook announced that it was killing off organic reach for brand Pages. Just like publisher referral traffic now, brand Page reach had been in steady decline for some time, and the Facebook announcement only confirmed what many already suspected was coming.

At the time, brands were forced to abandon a marketing model that relied on free promotion from Facebook pages with hundreds of thousands of Likes, and instead pay for advertising or go elsewhere for their traffic. Sound familiar?

The situation with publishers is therefore nothing new, but is still a huge blow for media organizations who have developed a “social-first” strategy over the years and rely on Facebook as a primary source of traffic.

Following the news that Google had overtaken Facebook as a source of referral traffic, Adam Tinworth blogged: “Business models dependent on Facebook growth are dead in the water, unless you can afford to buy that growth.

“Publishers will need a renewed focus on SEO — especially those that have been social-first.”

Writing for The Drum, founder and managing director of 93digital, Alex Price, observed that Facebook was following Google in “placing its long-term bet on quality [content]”, singling out Facebook-driven publications like 9GAG, Unilad and The Lad Bible as most likely to suffer from the change.

“If I were them, I would be thinking hard about the teams of people I employ to churn out social media content and how sustainable that now is.”

He added that publishers would need to focus on retention and repeat visits to drive long-term value, and optimize the experience of their website, particularly on mobile, in order to build a sustainable source of revenue in the post-Facebook age.

Publish quality content, increase engagement, optimize for mobile… if you’re in SEO, this list will be starting to sound very familiar. It’s a mantra that the search industry has been repeating for years.

High-quality publishers are likely doing most of these things already, so their task will be to ramp up those efforts while diversifying their sources of traffic beyond Facebook. This will stand them in good stead on the search engine results page and beyond.

For lower-quality social publishers, things might not be so easy. After all, these publications evolved specifically to cater to a social sharing environment, which will soon no longer exist.

Much like the brand Pages of yore with hugely inflated Like counts, publishers will need to figure out how to deliver a message of real value to consumers, or risk disappearing altogether.

from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/01/17/facebook-kills-off-news-publishers-panic-try-to-remember-how-to-do-seo/ from Rising Phoenix SEO https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/169809957615

[kellykperez]

Facebook kills off news: Publishers panic, try to remember how to do SEO

By now you’ve no doubt heard the news that’s been shaking up the internet since late last week.

But in case you just came back online after a week-long internet blackout, here’s what’s happening: on Thursday 11th January, Facebook announced a major change to the way posts are ranked in News Feed.

In order to promote more “meaningful” interaction with friends and family, Facebook said that it would “prioritize posts from friends and family over public content … including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses”.

In general, brands have not tended to rely on Facebook for traffic since it dramatically reduced the organic reach of branded content a little over three years ago, forcing brands to pay for reach or go elsewhere for traffic. However, publishers have long been the exception to that rule, with Facebook acting as a huge – and vital – source of referral traffic to publishers’ websites.

This has led many publishers to plan their strategy and output directly around Facebook (see: the much-derided media “pivot to video”, which was driven in large part by Facebook). But Facebook’s announcement of Thursday has put paid to all of that – or at least, put a big dent in the potential traffic that publishers can earn from its platform.

Deprived of referral traffic from Facebook, will publishers be turning en masse back to SEO to restore their fortunes? Let’s look at some of the broader industry shifts underpinning this change, and what it means for the importance of search for publishers.

Trading places: Google is back on top for referral traffic

The truth is that Facebook’s referral traffic to publishers has been in decline for some time now. According to data from digital analytics company Parse.ly, the percentage of external traffic that Facebook provides to publishers decreased from 40% to 26% between January 2017 and January 2018, while Google’s rose from 34% to 44% over the same period.

This means that in a direct reversal of 2015, when Facebook rocked the industry by overtaking Google as a source of referral traffic for publishers, Google is now back in the number one spot. And this all happened before Facebook’s News Feed announcement even took place.

Publishers have also been seeing more traffic from Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) than Facebook equivalent Instant Articles, another situation that reversed itself over the last year. According to Parse.ly, publisher traffic from AMP increased from 4.72% in January 2017 to 11.78% in November 2017, while Instant Articles declined from 10.31% of publisher traffic in January down to 8.54% in November.

When Facebook overtook Google for referral traffic back in 2015, this seemed to herald the dawn – or perhaps the zenith – of a new age of social sharing and publishing, in which social media was the new search.

At a Content Marketing Association Digital Breakfast in June 2016, veteran digital journalist Adam Tinworth remarked that social networks had taken over the search engine’s traditional role of “finding something to read” online. As a result, Google and other search engines moved into more of an “answer engine” role, moving away from search towards a single, definitive answer to users’ queries.

So with Google back on top for referral traffic, are we seeing a return to the status quo?

The Google-Facebook merry-go-round

In fact, Google and Facebook’s continual back-and-forth is the status quo. They have been chasing each other around in circles for years now, each taking it in turns to try their hand at the other’s specialist area.

Google experimented with social networking; Facebook became the go-to place to find content. Both launched lightning-fast takes on the mobile web – Accelerated Mobile Pages and Instant Articles – in 2015 with a global roll-out in 2016. Now, Facebook is returning to its “roots” of showing you what your family and friends are up to, while the latest updates to Google’s smart assistant indicate that Google is moving back into surfacing content.

Google and Facebook: Destined to chase each other in circles for eternity (Image by monstreh, available via CC0)

In other words, this is just the most recent step in a dance that has been going on for more than 10 years. Facebook might have ceded some ground to Google in the realm of referral traffic to publishers, partly in a bid to rid itself of the fake news scandal that has dogged it since mid to late 2016.

However, the two continue to vie for dominance in countless other areas, such as artificial intelligence, smart home hubs, digital assistants, and advertising. Facebook continues to drive its investment in online video, encroaching on Google-owned YouTube’s territory, while Google recently announced a new foray into social publishing with Google Stamp.

At the height of the fake news controversy, Google and Facebook’s names frequently appeared side-by-side, with both companies accused of peddling false information to their users and perpetrating the “filter bubble” that allows fake news to thrive.

As a result, some have speculated that Google might now follow in Facebook’s footsteps and take steps to distance itself from publishers.

However, Google is already taking action – or at least appearing to take action – against fake news on its search engine by implementing ‘fact-checking’ labels, partnering with the International Fact-Checking Network to combat misinformation, and purging questionable overseas websites that mask their country of origin from Google News.

Unless there is another significant wave of backlash over fake news to force Google’s hand, it seems likely that Google will take the “win” over Facebook and avoid jeopardizing its relationship with publishers – particularly given its recent moves to become more publisher-friendly by supporting paywalled content.

Meanwhile, publishers need to work out how to reconfigure their online strategy with Facebook much less in the picture. Will we be seeing a newfound reliance on SEO and search marketing?

Publishers: time to learn from SEO

Publishers are about to find themselves in the very same position that brand marketers found themselves at the end of 2014, when Facebook announced that it was killing off organic reach for brand Pages. Just like publisher referral traffic now, brand Page reach had been in steady decline for some time, and the Facebook announcement only confirmed what many already suspected was coming.

At the time, brands were forced to abandon a marketing model that relied on free promotion from Facebook pages with hundreds of thousands of Likes, and instead pay for advertising or go elsewhere for their traffic. Sound familiar?

The situation with publishers is therefore nothing new, but is still a huge blow for media organizations who have developed a “social-first” strategy over the years and rely on Facebook as a primary source of traffic.

Following the news that Google had overtaken Facebook as a source of referral traffic, Adam Tinworth blogged: “Business models dependent on Facebook growth are dead in the water, unless you can afford to buy that growth.

“Publishers will need a renewed focus on SEO — especially those that have been social-first.”

Writing for The Drum, founder and managing director of 93digital, Alex Price, observed that Facebook was following Google in “placing its long-term bet on quality [content]”, singling out Facebook-driven publications like 9GAG, Unilad and The Lad Bible as most likely to suffer from the change.

“If I were them, I would be thinking hard about the teams of people I employ to churn out social media content and how sustainable that now is.”

He added that publishers would need to focus on retention and repeat visits to drive long-term value, and optimize the experience of their website, particularly on mobile, in order to build a sustainable source of revenue in the post-Facebook age.

Publish quality content, increase engagement, optimize for mobile… if you’re in SEO, this list will be starting to sound very familiar. It’s a mantra that the search industry has been repeating for years.

High-quality publishers are likely doing most of these things already, so their task will be to ramp up those efforts while diversifying their sources of traffic beyond Facebook. This will stand them in good stead on the search engine results page and beyond.

For lower-quality social publishers, things might not be so easy. After all, these publications evolved specifically to cater to a social sharing environment, which will soon no longer exist.

Much like the brand Pages of yore with hugely inflated Like counts, publishers will need to figure out how to deliver a message of real value to consumers, or risk disappearing altogether.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/01/17/facebook-kills-off-news-publishers-panic-try-to-remember-how-to-do-seo/ from Rising Phoenix SEO http://risingphoenixseo.blogspot.com/2018/01/facebook-kills-off-news-publishers.html

[sheilalmartinia]

Facebook kills off news: Publishers panic, try to remember how to do SEO

By now you’ve no doubt heard the news that’s been shaking up the internet since late last week.

But in case you just came back online after a week-long internet blackout, here’s what’s happening: on Thursday 11th January, Facebook announced a major change to the way posts are ranked in News Feed.

In order to promote more “meaningful” interaction with friends and family, Facebook said that it would “prioritize posts from friends and family over public content … including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses”.

In general, brands have not tended to rely on Facebook for traffic since it dramatically reduced the organic reach of branded content a little over three years ago, forcing brands to pay for reach or go elsewhere for traffic. However, publishers have long been the exception to that rule, with Facebook acting as a huge – and vital – source of referral traffic to publishers’ websites.

This has led many publishers to plan their strategy and output directly around Facebook (see: the much-derided media “pivot to video”, which was driven in large part by Facebook). But Facebook’s announcement of Thursday has put paid to all of that – or at least, put a big dent in the potential traffic that publishers can earn from its platform.

Deprived of referral traffic from Facebook, will publishers be turning en masse back to SEO to restore their fortunes? Let’s look at some of the broader industry shifts underpinning this change, and what it means for the importance of search for publishers.

Trading places: Google is back on top for referral traffic

The truth is that Facebook’s referral traffic to publishers has been in decline for some time now. According to data from digital analytics company Parse.ly, the percentage of external traffic that Facebook provides to publishers decreased from 40% to 26% between January 2017 and January 2018, while Google’s rose from 34% to 44% over the same period.

This means that in a direct reversal of 2015, when Facebook rocked the industry by overtaking Google as a source of referral traffic for publishers, Google is now back in the number one spot. And this all happened before Facebook’s News Feed announcement even took place.

Publishers have also been seeing more traffic from Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) than Facebook equivalent Instant Articles, another situation that reversed itself over the last year. According to Parse.ly, publisher traffic from AMP increased from 4.72% in January 2017 to 11.78% in November 2017, while Instant Articles declined from 10.31% of publisher traffic in January down to 8.54% in November.

When Facebook overtook Google for referral traffic back in 2015, this seemed to herald the dawn – or perhaps the zenith – of a new age of social sharing and publishing, in which social media was the new search.

At a Content Marketing Association Digital Breakfast in June 2016, veteran digital journalist Adam Tinworth remarked that social networks had taken over the search engine’s traditional role of “finding something to read” online. As a result, Google and other search engines moved into more of an “answer engine” role, moving away from search towards a single, definitive answer to users’ queries.

So with Google back on top for referral traffic, are we seeing a return to the status quo?

The Google-Facebook merry-go-round

In fact, Google and Facebook’s continual back-and-forth is the status quo. They have been chasing each other around in circles for years now, each taking it in turns to try their hand at the other’s specialist area.

Google experimented with social networking; Facebook became the go-to place to find content. Both launched lightning-fast takes on the mobile web – Accelerated Mobile Pages and Instant Articles – in 2015 with a global roll-out in 2016. Now, Facebook is returning to its “roots” of showing you what your family and friends are up to, while the latest updates to Google’s smart assistant indicate that Google is moving back into surfacing content.

Google and Facebook: Destined to chase each other in circles for eternity (Image by monstreh, available via CC0)

In other words, this is just the most recent step in a dance that has been going on for more than 10 years. Facebook might have ceded some ground to Google in the realm of referral traffic to publishers, partly in a bid to rid itself of the fake news scandal that has dogged it since mid to late 2016.

However, the two continue to vie for dominance in countless other areas, such as artificial intelligence, smart home hubs, digital assistants, and advertising. Facebook continues to drive its investment in online video, encroaching on Google-owned YouTube’s territory, while Google recently announced a new foray into social publishing with Google Stamp.

At the height of the fake news controversy, Google and Facebook’s names frequently appeared side-by-side, with both companies accused of peddling false information to their users and perpetrating the “filter bubble” that allows fake news to thrive.

As a result, some have speculated that Google might now follow in Facebook’s footsteps and take steps to distance itself from publishers.

However, Google is already taking action – or at least appearing to take action – against fake news on its search engine by implementing ‘fact-checking’ labels, partnering with the International Fact-Checking Network to combat misinformation, and purging questionable overseas websites that mask their country of origin from Google News.

Unless there is another significant wave of backlash over fake news to force Google’s hand, it seems likely that Google will take the “win” over Facebook and avoid jeopardizing its relationship with publishers – particularly given its recent moves to become more publisher-friendly by supporting paywalled content.

Meanwhile, publishers need to work out how to reconfigure their online strategy with Facebook much less in the picture. Will we be seeing a newfound reliance on SEO and search marketing?

Publishers: time to learn from SEO

Publishers are about to find themselves in the very same position that brand marketers found themselves at the end of 2014, when Facebook announced that it was killing off organic reach for brand Pages. Just like publisher referral traffic now, brand Page reach had been in steady decline for some time, and the Facebook announcement only confirmed what many already suspected was coming.

At the time, brands were forced to abandon a marketing model that relied on free promotion from Facebook pages with hundreds of thousands of Likes, and instead pay for advertising or go elsewhere for their traffic. Sound familiar?

The situation with publishers is therefore nothing new, but is still a huge blow for media organizations who have developed a “social-first” strategy over the years and rely on Facebook as a primary source of traffic.

Following the news that Google had overtaken Facebook as a source of referral traffic, Adam Tinworth blogged: “Business models dependent on Facebook growth are dead in the water, unless you can afford to buy that growth.

“Publishers will need a renewed focus on SEO — especially those that have been social-first.”

Writing for The Drum, founder and managing director of 93digital, Alex Price, observed that Facebook was following Google in “placing its long-term bet on quality [content]”, singling out Facebook-driven publications like 9GAG, Unilad and The Lad Bible as most likely to suffer from the change.

“If I were them, I would be thinking hard about the teams of people I employ to churn out social media content and how sustainable that now is.”

He added that publishers would need to focus on retention and repeat visits to drive long-term value, and optimize the experience of their website, particularly on mobile, in order to build a sustainable source of revenue in the post-Facebook age.

Publish quality content, increase engagement, optimize for mobile… if you’re in SEO, this list will be starting to sound very familiar. It’s a mantra that the search industry has been repeating for years.

High-quality publishers are likely doing most of these things already, so their task will be to ramp up those efforts while diversifying their sources of traffic beyond Facebook. This will stand them in good stead on the search engine results page and beyond.

For lower-quality social publishers, things might not be so easy. After all, these publications evolved specifically to cater to a social sharing environment, which will soon no longer exist.

Much like the brand Pages of yore with hugely inflated Like counts, publishers will need to figure out how to deliver a message of real value to consumers, or risk disappearing altogether.

from Search Engine Watch https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/01/17/facebook-kills-off-news-publishers-panic-try-to-remember-how-to-do-seo/

[ralphmorgan-blog1]

A Letter Of Resignation: What Its Like To Hit Rock Bottom

Tomas Chevalier

This is Spaceship Earth. It is, to the day, exactly as old as I am. We were both born October 3, 1982. We’ve been alive for 34 years, 10 months and 17 days. Earlier this year, I ran past it on my way to completing the very first marathon I’d ever run … a quite literally unbelievable feat for someone who was born with lungs that function at 53% capacity. The race took me 6 hours, 42 minutes and 25 seconds. Upon completion, I had a glass of champagne. I deserved it. This story is only tangentially about that.

Exactly half my life ago, some 17 years, 5 months and 8 days ago, I started a career which has been well documented — yet hidden in plain sight. It was an illustrious career, which netted me a great deal of satisfaction and joy. I am here today to announce my retirement from it. I’ve held a lot of jobs during that time — waiter, bartender, writer, musician, branding “guru”, marketing manager, mathematician, weatherman, sports columnist, podcast host — but none of them were my real career. I’m holding onto the jobs I still have. Today, I am firmly, unequivocally retiring from the sport of professional drinking. And, so I am clear on this, let me say the words that will haunt you, so that I may no longer be haunted by keeping them secret: I am John Gorman. And I am, in no uncertain terms, an alcoholic.

It’s almost my brand at this point, but, in case you’re new: I’ve spent the past year or so in a spectacular downward spiral. I am, by all metrics, less healthy and happy than I was in the Spring of 2016, when I was at my absolute pinnacle. The decline was so gentle, and the zenith so high, that I barely felt real ramifications even though I knew things were getting wobbly at the top. I still (thankfully) have my job. I still have (most of) my friends. And only very few people pointed out to me that I had “changed.”

But I, myself, could tell what was happening. So I went running for answers. I traveled the country, hoping to find them. I visited old friends in old cities. I visited ex-girlfriends. I saw baseball games. I saw concerts. I drank in dimly lit bars. I pillaged my past —���the people and places and activities from it — to try and rediscover myself. Often, I didn’t find what I was looking for. Even if I had a helluva lot of fun along the way. This was piece and parcel of my life writ large — a never-ending party, a show designed to entertain those who dared to watch, at the expense of myself and my health.

In April in New York, on a very long, dimly lit night, I drank in Astoria with one of my best friends, and a woman I hadn’t seen in seven years. I had been cataclysmically drunk the entire weekend to that point, and I would continue to be right up until the morning after I’d returned to Austin. But, while at the bar, I said, frankly, “Follow me down the black hole.” I knew where I was headed, because I had already been there. Aided by cognac and fernet, I found I could be refreshingly candid with them, even if that meant being unusually dark and nihilist. And that was the easiest thing to notice: my darkness. That was new. That didn’t exist before — at least not outwardly. And that was my first warning sign that it was time for me to walk away. (The dozens of empty champagne bottles in my pantry that had been building up since Christmas of 2015 didn’t ring the alarm, but the inability to hide my sadness apparently was a bridge too far.)

My most recent ex used to compare me to Mr. Peanut Butter from for my relentless positivity. And, at the time I had met her, it was hard not to be clear skies and warm sun all the time. Everything was going my way: I was in the best shape and health of my life, my career was in the perfect spot, I had some money saved up, I had a ton of good quality relationships with friends and family, and I generally spent most of my day doing things I loved to do — music, writing, running, biking, reading and learning things. I did this, I think, because I had spent a good majority of the previous year sober. You see, I knew I had to stop drinking in the fall of 2014. And I had.

I was already out of control by that point, a man so enamored with whiskey and gin that I’d blacked out on my 32nd birthday after making out with five women — none of women were the one I was dating at the time, and, frankly, she was probably the greatest woman I’d ever dated, and, yes … she left me for good the following day — and, to quote an observer, I spent a solid hour “flopping around on the ground like a dolphin out of the sea.” I quit then. And I mostly didn’t drink for over a year thereafter. I did it without broadcasting it to the world. (Mostly.)

But I remember the day I re-started in earnest — it was the day I met the woman I couldn’t bare to be without. It was an innocent sidecar on our first date, on November 8, 2015. We broke up the week before I went to New York. And, yes, I went to New York because we broke up. I drunkenly cancelled the trip I had planned for us to go to Cuba, since that was no longer in the cards, and used that money to fly to the concrete jungle where dreams are made of. And, for the first time, I was forced to reconcile with who I’d become while making peace with a past that, while wonderful, was tinged with regret. I met an ex-girlfriend to see Waitress. I met another one at a dive in Brooklyn, where I sucked down Tito’s and Soda until I was blue in the fucking face.

My darkness was suddenly front-and-center. I was confronted with it, with nowhere left to turn, because how can anyone escape themselves. I was now completely unhinged, detached from time and space and reality. I turned my drinking — as I often have, but never to the extent that I did now — into a cloak of invincibility; shielding me from consequences for my actions. Now that my tank of fucks left to give was dry, I didn’t have to give any. I started behaving … erratically. Drinking more, and more often, than usual. On an average night, some five-to-six nights per week, I would put away somewhere between 10 and 20 shots of alcohol. This has been the case for the past year. That’s not a misprint.

I was losing interest in things I once loved, and taking a liking to pursuits that could kill me if I did them long enough. Pursuits like finding my way to the bottom of a bottle — every day, many times per day. I also began numbing myself through sex, Netflix, rich foods, travel and experiences. And those were all great, because, well — what isn’t great when you’re hashtag living your best life? My behavior was Instagrammable. When I would tell people “all I do is drink until I black out, smoke until I can’t breathe, eat pizza until I can’t walk, and fuck anyone and everyone,” people complimented me on my fierce independence and brash silliness. And although I was broadcasting my sadness and self-cruelty to the world, no one seemed to get the message.

And, when those wells of distraction had run dry, or I couldn’t muster the energy to go out into the world, I began to mindlessly scroll my social media feeds — not even for the sake of connecting with people or commenting, but merely to pass the time. And I fell into a rut. And even more drinking. The quest to find the answer for the darkness became an imperative, and, arguably, the actual answer to the darkness itself. I was becoming sick and sad, cynical and weird, lazy and fearful. The walls began to close in — and then they collapsed.

I spent a morning that lasted all afternoon holed up in a hotel room in Phoenix, pounding bottles of champagne and staring into my phone hoping the meaning of life would magically appear. I was paralyzed, crippled by fear and darkness and anxiety. What’s wrong with me? And I began to think with a very specific, urgent purpose. I was going to lean into this feeling and find my way out.

I reasoned, with unusual clarity, that at the root of my drinking and my suffering is a pathological desire to not be alone. To be wanted, needed, validated and rewarded. This checked about 80% of the boxes: My steady stream of “content” I put out on my Facebook feed. My inability to say no to smoking or drinking if someone asks me to, my pathological willingness to take on more work, go to more events, and do more favors than I can realistically handle. My propensity for flirting with almost everyone. My insatiable messiah complex. My hyper-sensitivity to criticism from friends, peers and lovers. But that did not quite cut to the root of it. The question I then proposed: why can’t I be alone?

Initially, I thought I did not like myself. But as I reasoned objectively, that wasn’t always the case. There were times when I *did* like myself very much. 2015 was a prime example. In fact, I can look back at most of my life and say, yes, I was someone I would find interesting, and decent to hang out with. But I realized I felt that way in times when I was very busy — being with people, experiencing new things, accomplishing goals, performing well at tasks, making and creating. And I like all those things about me. But baseline?

I then went to baseline. I decided to drown myself in … myself. And more champagne. I ghosted social media for two weeks. I went off-grid. And I was, unsurprisingly, miserable. But I kept thinking. And kept listening. It was quiet on the outside — and loud as hell in my head.

In the midst of that quiet, that’s when I heard it: My hyper-critical, rude, caustic and abrasive internal dialogue. The voice in my head that kept directing me: You should be doing something. You shouldn’t be 34 and single. You should be farther along in your career. You shouldn’t be such a whore. You shouldn’t drink so much. You know you shouldn’t be smoking that. When are you going to get off anti-anxiety meds? Why are you so fat? Don’t eat that. Don’t drink that. That’s bad for you. You’re unhealthy. You’re weird. You’re lazy. You’re careless. You’re a fuck-up. You’re going to ruin your life. You’re going to die. No one will remember you. No one’s going to love you. You’re nothing. You should kill yourself.

And that’s when I learned. Everything I do is an attempt to silence, or escape, the impossibly cruel and exacting voice inside my head. Sometimes this manifests itself in a good way: Travelling, pouring myself into my work, learning new things, creating music, writing, rock climbing, other novel experiences. These only temporarily silence the voice. But, at my core, I realized that’s why I drank. To shut the mouth of the asshole who lives inside my head.

I swam back up to the surface and took a deep breath. There would be no deeper insight. I finally understood why I am who I am. And, the way I’d been coping with it, was not respite — it was fanning the flames.

Let’s talk for a minute about what being an alcoholic is really like. I sleep on an un-made bed, with no sheets on it, sheets that are balled up in a laundry basket, covered in cat vomit. That’s if I make it to bed. Most days I black out on the couch, watching Cold War documentaries for the sake of self-edification and yet almost nothing stays with me overnight. I mostly wake up wondering what year it is.

I started smoking a pack a day, for whatever reason, as if it’s not stupid enough to smoke anything at all while I — again — have 53% of a human lung. Imagine being born with COPD and then being like “nah, fuck it, I don’t care how I die, so I might as well die in the most obvious way possible, as soon as possible.”

I have, to the best of my knowledge, slept with over 200 women — 30 in the past six months. I do not know why. Maybe to beat back the inescapable loneliness. Actually, only for that reason. Had I been capable of loving myself, I probably wouldn’t need so many people to love me.

I’ve gotten too drunk on two dates in the past month — both of which were with people I actually, truly, adored, and still do. There were no second dates. Imagine, being able to find love and punting on it because fernet shots are so much more desirable than potential life-long companionship.

My house is a certified sty. Dishes piled on the counter-top. Nacho debris littered all over the rug. I should probably be vacuuming instead of writing this. I’m not. Imagine, coming home, wading through a pile of bottles and bullshit, and thinking “nah, that’s fine. The minefield is just the price I pay for living with myself.”

I have eaten five meals this week. Three of which were (full, large) pizzas. One of which was a pasta salad that had been sitting out at room temperature for 24 hours, but, I didn’t have the self-discipline to throw it out and eat something else. Imagine being so in the realm of not giving a shit that you willingly say to yourself “there’s definitely bacteria in this and this smells like dead squirrel, but, fuck it, I’m hungry and this tastes fine.” I’ve lost 10 pounds in the past six months, subsisting only on carbonated liquids that range from IPA to bourbon. Only eating when my body was literally craving a vegetable. (BTW, if you ever think, “Fuck, that salad looks delicious,” you’re probably farther down the path of an unhealthy lifestyle than you think you are.)

And so, now, here I stand: at the precipice, staring into the abyss, and realizing the time is now to turn the car around before it careens over the cliff. 17 years, 5 months and 8 days was just long enough to be at the peak of my powers. Or, more accurately, to be actively sabotaging me from being at the peak of my powers. I plan on spending the next 17 years, 5 months and 8 days — yes, until I am literally 52 years old, should I make it that far without dying from what I’ve already done to myself — sober. I am calling it a career. And, while, it had been a helluva ride to be sure, I want to stop the coaster and head to another amusement park.

I am, currently, drinking — one last set of drinks. Yes, I’ve written this drunk. I started at noon with a 512 IPA — the beer that I drank when I wrapped my car around a tree. I continued with champagne — the drink I never loved until I met the woman I thought I’d finally found everlasting love with, the one who I, inadvertently, drove away because my personality changed so very much after I began guzzling alcohol like it was oxygen. I, then, stopped at a bar to enjoy a shot of whiskey and a shot of fernet, just to say goodbye to the two spirits that put me in the highest of spirits. And, now, two beers: Avery Brewing Company’s Maharaja, the first craft beer I was ever given for free, the one that kickstarted my writing career (I started as a beer blogger), and La Fin du Monde, which is my favorite beer of all time, and which literally means “The End of the World” in French. It feels apt. Tomorrow, I go to the doctor, and I talk to her about the things I’ve done and where is left to go from here. Who knows what comes next.

Most people only write about getting sober after they’ve been at it a while, and it’s an inspirational story about self-discipline and perseverance. This is not that. This is a story about being the very bottom, holding onto the last blade of grass before you fall off the face of the Earth. This is a story that, while disjointed, and poorly written, is as accurate and raw of an account of where I am today as any of the most articulate theses I’ve written in my many years of writing. Actually, more so. This is, truly, me. Unvarnished. Unedited. Finally present. I am a fucking mess. A fraud. Not a failure, no, there is no such thing, but someone who can no longer be trusted to fix things on his own. Maybe I was never that person. I do not know.

I mention Spaceship Earth because on the day I ran by it, at the pinnacle of my athletic career, I was 205 pounds (I typically tip the scales at about 170) and drinking and eating myself to death. The night before, I had unpacked a bottle of champagne, and pounded it to fall asleep that night. I did this at 9 p.m. I needed to be awake in six hours. I ran that marathon hungover, sweating out booze as I ran through every excruciating minute of those 26.2 miles. I did it as a sort of penance, but also as a sort of call-to-action: “If I can do this in the state I’m in, what can I do if I actually tried?” I thought about that for a while, and realized I’d never truly tried at anything. The only thing I’d ever put my heart and soul into was the relationship I started drinking again for. Everything else has been a happy byproduct of just being alive and good at whatever the fuck I was doing at the time.

I don’t know what trying feels like. I don’t know what happiness feels like. I, increasingly, don’t know what sobriety feels like. I don’t know what I feel like. And, to be clear, now I want to know. I’ve spent half my life drinking — nearly every day, some days more than others — and now I wish to stop. This is my letter of resignation. I do not know what the future holds for me. I am scared. I am lost. I am unsure what my next career will be. I can only hope that it leads me to a place that isn’t where I am right now, because where I am right now feels like the literal Fin du Monde. And at 34 years, 10 months and 17 days old, that’s just too goddamn soon to say goodbye.

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