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kolbisneat · 5 years ago

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MONTHLY MEDIA: July 2019

I’ve really stepped up my comics reading having fully embraced my local libraries. You can just borrow them whenever you want! Also saw lots of movies and watched a lot of the Bachelorette. It’s been a good summer.

……….FILM……….

Midsommer (2019) Oh wow. I’m not one for scary movies but this never felt like a scary movie. Sure it was definitely “horror” in the sense that so much of it is horrific, but it never relied on the typical “scary movie” tactics. For this, I am grateful.

Paddington 2 (2017) The perfect counterpoint and emotional reset after our matinee screening of Midsommer. This video does a better job of explaining why I love these movies, but if you haven’t got the time then know that the Paddington movies are a masterclass in efficient storytelling, visual comedy, and good natured entertainment for all ages. It’s not quite the same as Pixar sneaking in jokes that only adults will get, it’s more that it tells a universal story with familiar characters that land at any age. Just beautiful.

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) Okay so I get that illustrating a tie-in book for this movie means I likely can’t be objective, but I really dug the film. Solid themes that carried through to most of the characters and their arcs, as well as some of the most comic-book accurate visuals I could have hoped for. And I really dig the Parker/MJ dynamic here. Ugh it’s just all so good.

Alien (1979) I don’t need to tell you how well this holds up. Still as subversive and terrifying as it was 40 years ago. Still not sure what the alien was doing in the escape pod before Ripley shows up.

The Dead Don’t Die (2019) This was a weird one. Meta zombie movies already exist. Zombies as social commentary already exist. Zombie comedies already exist. I suppose I was just hoping for something...new? It was all of these things, but it didn’t seem to push any individual element into unexplored territory. The cast seemed like they were having a good time, but I don’t think it quite translated to the screen. I’d recommend Shaun of the Dead, Fido, or Zombieland instead.

……….TELEVISION……….

Instant Hotel (Episode 2.01 to 2.06) A 6-episode season of Australian reality tv judging Airbnbs? A cast that includes an 80 year old trying to look 20 and perfect couple who find each other hilarious? Sign me up. It’s available on (Canadian) Netflix but if you can find it, check it out.

Stranger Things (Episode 3.01 to 3.08) Without spoiling too much, I’ll say that this season was on par with the first, and felt better than the second. It’s not as moody and contained, but it really embraces what I take to be the spirit of 80s media. I feel like the early eps were setting up more of a zombie/body-snatchers plot but I don’t think the series likes to stray too far from the core of that first season. Super fun, wildly silly, and once I embraced the lighter tone it really delivered.

Queer Eye (Episode 4.01 to 4.08) This season really seemed to focus on philanthropic and independent businesses and I’m here for it. There was a Wayfair product placement towards the end which...felt out of place given the politics of the show, but dang if this series isn’t a light in the darkness!

Neon Genesis Evangelion (Episode 1.01 to 1.03) What a mood. It’s a slow burn but I’m really digging that the world feels established and that we’ve come into something well after all the big revelations happened. Now that the crazy has settled, we get to spend more time seeing how the crazy affects the day-to-day. Or what the day-to-day looks like in a new, wild world. Digging it.

The Bachelorette (Episode 15.08 to 15.13) Just wild. Watching that rollercoaster with Luke P was excellent television and terrible dating but that finale was *chef’s kiss* perfect.

……….READING……….

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (Page 230 of 406) Fun so far! There’s far less of the angel/demon relationship than I expected, but that’s only because I’m going off of what the Amazon show has been promoting. I need to do more research into how they shared the writing because the humour and meandering chapters really feel like Pratchett. I’m keen to see where it all goes!

Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt (Abandoned) I read half the novel before deciding this one wasn’t for me and it’s not because it wasn’t well-written or an engaging story. I found this on a list of good reads for those who like Wonderland and Alice’s adventures, but I’d say the links between the two were...thin...at best. When you’re expecting fanciful worlds and exaggerated characters, but get far more human (and all too real) trauma then it’s a jarring experience. I read a synopsis of the last 100ish pages that I missed and admit that I think I would’ve been satisfied with the conclusion, but it’s a bummer that the first 60% of the book felt like a holding pattern to get to the good stuff.

Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 5 by Ryoko Kui (Complete) Still one of my favourite fantasy comics. The characters are nuanced and are continuing to get developed, as is the setting and supporting cast! Every so often it’ll break format, but I appreciate that the gimmick (including a monster-based recipe in each chapter) isn’t getting in the way of good storytelling. I love everything about this and you should be reading it.

Superior Spider-Man Vol. 1 & 2 by Dan Slott, Ryan Stegman, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Humbero Ramos, and so many more (Complete) I wasn’t sure about this before picking it up but it’s a fascinating study of Spider-Man. It feels like an answer to all those that focus on plot holes and logic. Doc Ock has taken over Spider-Man’s body and he, as the epitome of troll, is just going through and “fixing” what Peter Parker gets wrong. It’s an interesting study in learning more about someone with opposing views. It even keeps Parker’s spirit around to dramatically and comedically respond to his life being taken over by a villain. It’s good! Not the first Spider-Book you should pick up, but worth reading if you want a spider-change.

Saga of the Swamp Thing Vol. 1 by Alan Moore, John Totleben, & Steve Bissette (Complete) After hearing good things about the TV series based on this character (still haven’t watched it) I figured I’d check this out. Knowing very little about the character going in, I loved every second of it! It’s a little bit horror, a little bit classic superheroics, and just a touch philosophical. Can’t recommend this enough.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 2: Squirrel You Know It's True by Ryan North, Erica Henderson, (Complete) I can’t (and won’t) stop praising this book. It’s fun, creative, and funny! Pitting Squirrel Girl against an evil Squirrel just makes sense and is a fun break from the classic Marvel villains. Hopefully we get back to more of the classics, as that’s what I enjoyed most about volume 1, but it’s good to see that the book doesn’t shy away from variety.

Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff (Complete) Such a great adventure comic! Set in the early 1800s, it’s like a Female Indiana Jones adventure with all the swashbuckling and plundering that you’d want out of a treasure hunter. Mature in its handling of a number of topics, but done in a light tone and without heavy violence. I think it was sorted as a young adult graphic novel in my library, and that feels fitting. Stellar art and charming characters.

The Undertaking of Lily Chen by Danica Novgorodoff (Complete) Very character driven and an interesting foundation for the story (set in northern China when tradition demanded men be married even after they’ve died). There are really inspiring moments with the watercolour artwork and while it didn’t always resonate with me, it really served the story.

……….GAMING……….

Maze of the Blue Medusa (Satyr Press) We very nearly had our first character death! Almost multiple! But they’re playing with level 9ish characters and with quick wits it’s proving difficult to defeat them. They’re still kinda wandering around this maze, but I think it’ll all start to come together soon!

And that’s it! As always, feel free to send me anything you recommend to see, read, hear, play, and so on.

Happy Wednesday!

#Monthly Media #Rambles #Kolbisneat #Andrew Kolb

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fortunatelylori · 6 years ago

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Why the Jon/D*any romance doesn’t work (Part 5)

Hey, guys! This last part of my “Why the Jon/Dany romance doesn’t work” series was taken down in the great Tumblr purge and I am now reuploading it. I got a few messages from people wanting to read it and I’m really sorry it’s taken this long to get it back up again. But here it is! :)

This is actually the second part of the “More than 2 is a crowd” section of the series but since it got very, very long I split it up.

Welcome to Days of GOT, the soap-opera where your captor turns into your lover only to turn into your aunt:

The “we’re fucked but not in a good way” scene

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As a general rule, I’ve decided not to take into consideration what any of the people involved in this TV show say in interviews or behind the scenes. They very willingly and intentionally mislead the audience and lie to our faces. I don’t hold it against them but I’m not going to spend my time analyzing and commenting on something that may very well be the writers screwing with me.

However, I find it very interesting that Kit Harrington said that he thought this was the scene where Jon and Dany started liking each other. Because this is, by far, the nicest, friendliest conversation they’ve ever had. It’s almost, dare I say it, human-esque.

Here, I’ll even give you some examples:

Jon: No one is less happy about this than I am.

Dany: I know. I respect what you did. Wish you hadn’t done it but I respect it.

Wow! Appreciation and respect … where have you two been for the duration of this plot?

Dany: […] We weren’t extraordinary without them (dragons). We were just like everyone else.

Jon: You’re not like everyone else.

Hello, validation! Nice to see you again, old friend.

See? Even I’ve been generalized into submission. He’s lucky he’s cute. That’s all I got to say.

Dany: I can’t have children.

Jon: Who told you that?

Dany: The witch who murdered my husband.

Jon: Has it occurred to you she might not have been a reliable source of information?

Dany, you lucky girl! You’ve just been struck by the ever elusive Jon Snow joke! Revel in it for it only comes out to play once a season.

So, all of this is very touching … I mean, I say very …. Mildly, in the near vicinity of touching. It would have been even better had this happened earlier and not in their last private conversation but at this point, beggars can’t be choosers.

However, once you strip away this veneer of friendliness, you do find some quite troubling things in this scene.

Firstly, there’s the main issue they are discussing:

Dany: This place was the beginning of the end for my family. […] A dragon is not a slave. They were terrifying, extraordinary. They filled people with wonder and awe and we locked them in here. They wasted away. They grew small and we grew small as well.

The problem with this speech is that it creates a conundrum for both the audience and Jon. Because Jon’s already heard the flip side of this particular coin, directly from his BFF, Jorah:

Missandei: Why did they build it? (the Dragonpit)

Jorah: Dragons don’t understand the difference between what is theirs and what isn’t. Land, livestock, children … Letting them roam free around the city was a problem.

So how does Jon resolve this issue? He doesn’t. He simply listens to Dany, looks around the Dragonpit and keeps his mouth shut.

Are we to understand that Jon Snow simply doesn’t care about children being burned alive because he wants Dany and her dragons to be as terrifying and awe inspiring as possible?

Isn’t it more likely to assume that Jon simply does what he’s always done in conversations with Dany, essentially keep his thoughts to himself and allow her to think whatever she wants? Which can only mean that despite their pleasantries, their dynamic is essentially the same it’s been since the cave scene. Which, by extension, means we’re just going round and round in ever increasingly polite circles.

Great! I got all excited with no rose petal covered way to go.

Then there’s this:

Dany: You were right from the beginning. If I trusted you, everything would be different.

Jon: So what now?

Dany: I can’t forget what I saw North of the wall. And I can’t pretend Cersei won’t take back half the country the moment I march North.

Remember when I said that Jon had no reason to bend the knee because Dany had already promised to help him defeat the Night King?

Tin foil hat: You know nothing, fortunatelylori!

Shut up, you!

Yes, Jon! You heard that right! A near death experience by either zombification or drowning, a dead uncle and a bent knee later and all you have to show for it is a better placement on Dany’s list of priorities. It used to be -100 before but now the goddamn apocalypse is neck and neck with Dany and Cersei’s competition for a piece of furniture. Enjoy!

The “what is fear of assassination anyway when my hormones are out of wack” scene

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I could analyze every line in this scene but I prefer to cut through all the boring travel arrangements that no one paid attention to and cut to the chase:

Jorah: My queen, love of my life, end all be all of my existence, your safety is paramount to me. Please fly to Winterfell and not risk getting blood all over your pretty blond wig.

Jon: Aaa ... I mean it’s your choice, obviously, but ... would you rather fly and be safe or get on a boat and possibly have sex with me?

Dany: Sex with Jon on a boat, definitely.

However, I will say this is a very interesting line:

Jon: It’s your decision, your Grace. But if we’re going to be allies in this war, it’s important for the Northerners to see us as allies.

It sort of feels like Jon is not giving Dany a choice at all. It’s more of a “my way or the highway” type of proposition but again Dany’s too far down the rabbit hole to notice the difference.

The “this better be good, guys! The whole of Westeros is watching” scene

I’d love to link to b0atbang here but Tumblr hates that scene as much as we do. So for your convenience, I have decided to put my considerable artistic talents to good use and I have drawn what I believe is almost an exact representation of it:

Guys, I spent almost 30 seconds in Paint doing this so please show me some love. Tread carefully, Tumblr, for you are treading on my dreams!

We started this section of the series talking about the “more than 2 is a crowd” rule so it seems only fitting that we should end with this: the most crowded sex scene since whatever porno film you watched last night.

There are 6 people involved in this scene and that’s excluding the actual two people that are having sex! Six people, most of them related to one or both Jon and Dany.

We have Jon’s mother but also Dany’s sister in law, Jon’s uncle but also adoptive father, Jon’s real father but also Dany’s brother, Jon’s brother who is actually his cousin, Jon’s best friend and also family member to the victims of Dany’s latest dracarys incident and lastly Dany’s closest adviser and also ex-husband to Jon’s sister/cousin/the current possessor of a “part of him”. This is Days of our Lives gone terribly, terribly wrong.

I don’t think I have to explain why this is romantic plot suicide. A sex scene between a romantic couple is supposed to be intimate, tender, sometimes steamy. It not supposed to be the smallest part of an elaborate montage designed to tell us that the people currently engaged in the devil’s mambo number 5, are actually related as well as de facto rivals for the Iron Throne.

A lot of people have commented on the inherent issues with the set-up of this scene, from the lack of a first kiss (an absolutely crucial part of any romantic pairing), to the lack of conversation before or after , to the horrible transition from a dying, blood soaked Lyanna to Jon and Dany in the midst of physical abandon and up to Jon’s strange expression:

Jon: I don’t think Tinder is working out for me.

What I would like to do instead is show you a scene that has quite a similar setup to this: it starts off in a bed and also includes the dreaded body flip. This is incidentally one of my favorite sex scenes. I am, of course, talking about the sex scene between Achillies and Brisies in 2004’s Troy. When I uploaded this the first time, @lostlittlesatellites mentioned in the comments section that this film was actually written by David Benioff, which I had forgotten. So not only did the D reuse this set-up for the Jon/Dany scene but actually is well aware of the salient differences between the two scenes, since, you know, he was involved in writing both of them. Another nail in the “Ds suck at their job which is why they couldn’t write a better romance” coffin, I guess.

I would love to put this scene up here in all its glory. However, since Tumblr is a prude that can’t handle the gorgeous physique of one Brad Pitt, I can’t. Just type Achillies and Brisies into youtube because it’s a more liberated platform, incidentally with far fewer Nazis lurking around. Also here is a pic of Brad’s gorgeous abs. Tumblr, eat your heart out!

The body flip:

The body flip in the Brisies/Achilles is counterbalanced by the knife. These kinds of flips are awkward when filmed in a wide shot but the fact that she’s holding a sharp object to Achilles’ throat moves our focus towards the character’s faces and not the awkward body movement.

Focus on details:

When you watch this scene, you’ll notice that a large portion of it is Achilles pulling up her dress and slipping his hand underneath the material. That becomes a very intimate movement that, in turn, creates expectation … And expectation creates interest. It has a much slower build-up than what we get with Jon/Dany and it’s that prolonged moment that makes it sexier.

It tells a story:

This is very important. Words in scenes aren’t there just to make the writer feel important. They set the tone, the level of intensity and make the audience feel like they’re a part of it, instead of being kept at arm’s length because they don’t have access to the character’s thoughts.

The Troy sex scene is a whole story in itself: We start with Brisies trying to kill Achilles but hesitating. We have Achilles admitting he will kill more men and daring her to go through with her plan. We have him flipping her and then tentatively kiss her as she finally gives up and drops the knife to the floor. This is an intimate, character driven scene that marks the transition of these two from enemies to lovers.

That’s not to say that Jon and Dany’s scene isn’t telling a story. The difference is that the story it tells is plot driven, not character driven. What makes their scene inherently interesting are the revelations we receive about Jon and how that will affect the plot moving forward. In that sense they become secondary characters in their own sex scene, just gilded cogs in a much larger plot wheel and far from breaking it, their sex scene is advancing it. To what end, I guess we’ll find out in season 8.

And that’s it, you guys! Hope you enjoyed this series. I do have a few ideas on what to write next but if there’s something in particular you’d like me to cover, let me know.

In case you haven’t read the other 3 parts of the series, you can find them linked below:

Part 1: Are D&D really idiots?

Part 2: Repetition and generalization are the death of romance

Part 3: When everyone and their mother has a different take on the same line of text

Part 4: More than 2 is a crowd

PS: none of the artwork in this meta belongs to me. Except for b0atbang which is the only piece of art worth mentioning anyway and which shall be hanging in a museum near you very, very soon.

#asoiaf #got meta #got s7 #anti-jonerys #my got meta

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allianceinternational-blog · 6 years ago

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bloojayoolie · 6 years ago

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Being Alone, Cats, and Children: At Manhattan ACC waiting 4 LOVE CO 33393-3 year old, 43 lbs Cute, sweet, petite, gentle & loving Hasn't had the best life but we want to change that for this wonderful little girl TO BE KILLED 1/4/2018 I have been returned to the shelter due to landlord issues :( 12/22/18. Aurora is named COCO now! She is good with KIDS and other DOGS. STEALER OF ALL HEARTS <3 A volunteer writes: They say it's darkest before the dawn. Well my days are certainly now brighter. Thanks to a 3 year-old sprite, a bunny-eared girl in a cinnamon-cream coat, with bright green eyes like the Bahamian sea. Aurora is quick to greet me from her kennel, and right away she seems so out of place. Such a bright beam of light, like the sun kept quiet behind a cloud, but one who can't help but make all in her company feel warmer. She hops down to the ground and I notice a bit of a limp as she ambles along with me towards the door. And while the stairs give her delicate paws pause, she quickly bucks up and skips up them, all on her own. A pretty sailboat that will not be sunk. We don't know much about Aurora's past but, as with all new friends who transfix us in an instant, we can let our minds do their wondering. I run my fingers through her coat, snowy white underneath a layer of dust, rub her ears, one clipped like a stem missing its rose, and let my eyes count cuts and scrapes, note paw pads red and swollen, and I make my own assumptions. But whatever the past, it's not important. Not to Aurora anyway. For while I've been putting together puzzles, she's gently lowered her vanilla frame onto my lap and closed her eyes, resting her chin atop my feet. Aurora is a magical girl who can be a bit shy with strangers, so would do best with an experienced family who'll give her plenty of TLC and room to always shine. They say it's darkest before the dawn, well let today be that for Aurora. And with tomorrow's sun, the first day of forever, and a love that will fill up her lifetime. Aurora is waiting in adoptions at Manhattan ACC. MY VIDEOS: COCO@MANHATTAN ACC Hello, my name is Coco My animal id is #33393 I am a desexed female white dog at the Manhattan Animal Care Center The shelter thinks I am about 3 years 5 months old, 44 lbs Came into shelter as a owner surrender Dec. 21, 2018 Reason Stated: LANDLORD won't allow Coco is at risk due to behavior concerns. She currently has a low threshold for arousal and her leash biting has become a safety concern in the care center. She should go to an adult only family prepared to manage this behavior through positive reinforcement based training. There are no medical concerns for her at this time. You may know me from such films as... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUXYbD7RMX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFNOPaHMW0 My medical notes are... Weight: 44.4 lbs Vet Notes Post Surgery Note Medical Assistant L V T Notes 5/07/2018 DVM Intake Exam Estimated age: 3 Microchip noted on Intake? n Microchip Number (If Applicable): n History : stray Subjective: BARH Observed Behavior - gentle timid Evidence of Cruelty seen -n Evidence of Trauma seen -n Objective T = - P = wnl R = wnl BCS = 5/9 EENT: Eyes clear, ears clean, no nasal or ocular discharge noted Oral Exam: teeth in good cond PLN: No enlargements noted H/L: NSR, NMA, CRT < 2, Lungs clear, eupnic ABD: Non painful, no masses palpated U/G: INTACT – externally normal MSI: Ambulatory x 4, skin free of parasites, no masses noted, healthy hair coat CNS: Mentation appropriate - no signs of neurologic abnormalities Rectal: externally normal Assessment: Healthy Prognosis: Excellent Plan: Complete intake and Spay/Neuter SURGERY: Okay for surgery 13/07/2018 S/O - Reported 24 hr history of diarrhea including hematochezia. Pt. BARH in kennel, eating and drinking Parvo SNAP test NEGATIVE A - Diarrhea R/O Early signs of CIRDC vs stress colitis vs dietary indiscretion P - Place on Metronidazole 15 mg/kg PO BID for 5 days 23/12/2018 Reported by behavior to require trazadone for increased shelter anxiety Trazadone 10 mg/kg BID for 14 days 28/12/2018 DVM Intake Exam Estimated age: 3 Microchip noted on Intake? y Microchip Number (If Applicable): 985113001876493 History : stray SO Observed Behavior - hard barking at kennel front. Visual exam performed Evidence of Cruelty seen -n Evidence of Trauma seen -n Visual Exam only BCS = 5/9 EENT: Eyes clear, ears clean, no nasal or ocular discharge noted Oral Exam: DC 1/5 PLN: No enlargements noted H/L: did not auscultate U/G: spayed female. MSI: Ambulatory x 4, skin free of parasites, no masses noted, healthy hair coat CNS: Mentation appropriate - no signs of neurologic abnormalities Rectal: externally normal Assessment: dental disease Prognosis: Excellent Plan: ok for placement SURGERY:spayed Details on my behavior are... Behavior Condition: 3. Yellow Behavior History Behavior Assessment During intake, Coco was loose bodied and wiggly. Coco became a bit tense when scanning but when allowed to sniff the scanner, became loose bodied and coordinator was able to resume the scanning. She allowed to be collared and leashed with no further change in body posture. Date of Intake: 12/22/2018 Spay/Neuter Status: Spayed Basic Information:: Coco is a medium white and tan mixed breed. The owner has had Coco for two months and is being surrendered due to landlord issues. Previously lived with:: 1 adult How is this dog around strangers?: Coco is reportedly friendly with strangers. How is this dog around children?: Coco has interacted with children of various ages and was very friendly and playful. How is this dog around other dogs?: Coco has not lived or interacted with dogs. How is this dog around cats?: Coco has not lived or interacted with cats. Resource guarding:: Coco has no reported resource guarding behaviors. Bite history:: Coco has not bitten a person or another animal. Housetrained:: No Energy level/descriptors:: very high Has this dog ever had any medical issues?: No Medical Notes: The owner has not taken her to the vet. For a New Family to Know: Coco is described as a friendly and excitable dog. Her favorite toys are squeaky and rope toys. The owner has not given Coco a bath, brushed her out, or trimmed her nails. She was kept indoors only. Coco was fed Pedigree wet and dry food. She was not house broken but was not kept on a walking schedule. When left alone, She would bark, chew up walls and doors. The owner states Coco was left alone for days on end. She was not crate trained. She loves to go running and pulls very hard on leash. When walked outside without a leash, she does wander off but comes when called. Date of intake:: 12/21/2018 Spay/Neuter status:: Yes Means of surrender (length of time in previous home):: Owner Surrender (In home for 2 months) Previously lived with:: An adult Behavior toward strangers:: Friendly Behavior toward children:: Friendly and playful Resource guarding:: None reported Bite history:: None reported Housetrained:: No Energy level/descriptors:: Coco is described as friendly and excitable with a very high level of activity. Date of assessment:: 12/24/2018 Look:: 1. Dog's eyes are averted, with tail wagging and ears back. Allows head to be held loosely in Assessor's cupped hands. Sensitivity:: 1. Dog leans into the Assessor, eyes soft or squinty, soft and loose body, open mouth. Tag:: 1. Dog assumes play position and joins the game. Or dog indicates play with huffing, soft 'popping' of the body, etc. Dog might jump on Assessor once play begins. Paw squeeze 1:: 1. Dog gently pulls back his/her paw. Paw squeeze 2:: 1. Dog gently pulls back his/her paw. Flank squeeze 1:: Item not conducted Flank squeeze 2:: Item not conducted Toy:: 1. Minimal interest in toy, dog may smell or lick, then turns away. Summary:: Coco approached the assessor with a soft body. She was social during the assessment and allowed all handling. During tag, she grabbed the leash in her mouth, but easily relinquished it. Summary:: Coco's in-home history around other dogs is unknown at this time. In the care center, she has displayed interest in exuberant, pushy play and has been observed to become vocal. Coco may be most comaptible with other playful dogs who are tolerant of pushy play styles. Summary (1):: 7/6: When introduced off leash to male and female dogs, Coco greets politely and wanders. Summary (2):: 7/7: Coco greets all dogs politely and wanders the pen. Summary (3):: 12/26: Coco appears neutral, turns away when greeting at the gate. Summary (4):: 12/27: Coco is introduced off leash and uses paw slaps, jumps on dogs playfully to solicit. Summary (5):: 12/29: Coco engages is rough play with a similarly playful dog. She will begin to vocalize when play becomes more exuberant. Date of intake:: 12/21/2018 Summary:: Loose body, allowed handling Date of initial:: 12/23/2018 Summary:: Jumping and lunging at kennel door. ENERGY LEVEL:: Coco is described as having a very high level of activity. We recommend long-lasting chews, food puzzles, and hide-and-seek games, in additional to physical exercise, to positively direct her energy and enthusiasm. BEHAVIOR DETERMINATION:: ADULT ONLY HOME Behavior Asilomar: TM - Treatable-Manageable Recommendations:: No children (under 13) Potential challenges: : House soiling,Leash-biting,Kennel presence,Low threshold for arousal Potential challenges comments:: House soiling: Coco is noted to have accidents in the house, and will likely need guidance with house training. We recommend positive reinforcement, reward-based training only. Leash-biting: Coco is quick to grab the leash in his mouth. We recommend walking her with a toy to dissuade her from grabbing the leash. Positive reinforcement, force-free training is advised to teach her to focus on you rather than grabbing the leash. Kennel presence: Coco has at times been reactive in her kennel, jumping up high and snapping at hands that approach the kennel. She has not displayed this behavior outside of her kennel, but we cannot be certain if this behavior will appear in any other contexts. In highly emotionally charged or stressful environments Coco may show behavior similar to what she is currently demonstrating in her kennel. We recommend potential adopters be comfortable managing this behavior and keeping themselves safe in any similar future situations. Low threshold for arousal: Coco has displayed a low threshold for arousal, jumping up and grabbing clothing and people's hands, applying a moderate-hard level of pressure. Consultation with a qualified behaviorist/professional trainer is strongly recommended to aid in addressing this issue to prevent further behavioral concerns that may appear in the future if not treated right away. We recommend only force-free, reward based training when introducing or exposing Coco to new and unfamiliar situations. * TO FOSTER OR ADOPT * HOW TO RESERVE A “TO BE KILLED” DOG ONLINE (only for those who can get to the shelter IN PERSON to complete the adoption process, and only for the dogs on the list NOT marked New Hope Rescue Only). Follow our Step by Step directions below! PLEASE NOTE – YOU MUST USE A PC OR TABLET – PHONE RESERVES WILL NOT WORK! * STEP 1: CLICK ON THIS RESERVE LINK: https://newhope.shelterbuddy.com/Animal/List Step 2: Go to the red menu button on the top right corner, click register and fill in your info. Step 3: Go to your email and verify account \ Step 4: Go back to the website, click the menu button and view available dogs Step 5: Scroll to the animal you are interested and click reserve STEP 6 ( MOST IMPORTANT STEP ): GO TO THE MENU AGAIN AND VIEW YOUR CART. THE ANIMAL SHOULD NOW BE IN YOUR CART! Step 7: Fill in your credit card info and complete transaction HOW TO FOSTER OR ADOPT IF YOU CANNOT GET TO THE SHELTER IN PERSON, OR IF THE DOG IS NEW HOPE RESCUE ONLY! You must live within 3 – 4 hours of NY, NJ, PA, CT, RI, DE, MD, MA, NH, VT, ME or Norther VA. Please PM our page for assistance. You will need to fill out applications with a New Hope Rescue Partner to foster or adopt a dog on the To Be Killed list, including those labelled Rescue Only. Hurry please, time is short, and the Rescues need time to process the applications.

#funny #lol #humor #memes #meme #memehumor #dank memes #funny pics #rolf #lmao #Being Alone #Cats #an

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obfuscobble · 8 years ago

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A comparison of three out of context anime movies, “Fate / Grand Order,” “Rockman.EXE: Program of Light and Dark,“ and “Black Jack the Two Doctors of Darkness.”

All three of these movies I have watched in the past 12 months, all three are attached to larger series, and all three therefore have a certain entry hurdle to enjoyment. Yet they are easily appreciated and ranked by how high this hurdle is. I am spurred to do this mostly by the Fate movie because hoo boy do I have words. I will be ranking these by the questions the viewer asks when watching them out of context or after only one or two episodes of the larger series they’re attached to. Which is what I did for each of these. I experienced them with almost no context and I believe that Every Movie Should Be Appreciable Out of Context. The ranking goes from 1-5, in answer to how often the question is asked, thus making low sores better, with a bonus section on what the average viewer easily learns about the movie’s plot.

Black Jack the Two Doctors of Darkness

What’s Wrong with This Animation: 2 Good solid movie animation here based on Tezuka’s style with obvious love for his work and Star System. Not Ghibli or Kon quality [that’s a 1 on this scale], but nothing to complain about.

What the Heck is Going On: 1 It’s pretty obvious exactly what is going on because the movie takes the time to establish its characters, their motivations, and the stakes of the conflict in detail. All this is done early in the movie in obvious and helpful ways. In fact, a lot of the movie is spent on long character establishment and development scenes, such as the opening where Black Jack rescues a boy from a collapsing building, and the time spent unravelling secondary hero Rock’s backstory and romantic motivation.

Why Do I Care about These People: 2 It’s obvious that you’re going to care about whether Satan is cured, especially since there’s a nice love story between two patients, and the doctors are held on the island by force. Hostage situations and terminal illness lead to immediately comprehensible and sympathetic situations. There are many supporting characters ported over from the larger attached series, some of whom can be annoying [erhem, Pinoco] or confusing [like entirely Pinoco here, if they’d left out her wife line there wouldn’t be any problems], but overall their inclusion does not distract from the plot or grate the senses.

Exactly Where are We: 1 The anime does a great job of establishing where the characters are at all times through establishing shots and consistent interiors. Being based largely in the real world, there’s no hurdle to understanding locations.

Why Am I Still Watching: 1 Movie maintains a constant and satisfactory entertainment level with character development and clever but not illogical plot twists.

Outsiders Quickly Appreciate: “there is a talented doctor named Black Jack who has been summoned to an island in order to find the cure for Satan which is a highly deadly disease.”

See, that’s not difficult.

Rockman.EXE: Program of Light and Dark

What’s Wrong with This Animation: 3 Significantly better animation than the series it’s attached to; but if you haven’t seen the attached series, it’s still perfectly fine, and get beautifully fluid during the fight scenes, which is gratifying.

What the Heck is Going On: 5 Don’t come into this movie expecting to know anything about what’s going on, especially since time travel, human consciousness uploading,retinal data storage, and aliens are plot points that just get thrown in willy nilly and... it’s just madness. Then there’s this scene.

Why Do I Care about These People: 2 That said, the characters in the movie are simple enough that they and their general situation are easily understood on an emotional level. In their brief time on screen, the characters are quickly communicated in broad strokes and remain likeable. Incomprehensible, but likeable.

Exactly Where are We: 3 With its cybernetic settings contrasting with a near-future real world, there is a good amount of wondering exactly where characters are in the world and how, but this is greatly offset by the fact that cyberspaces are obviously cyber-spaces. Characters exposit about where they are in the cyber-world, and their goals are also constantly reinforced. This movie doesn;t rely on knowing exactly where peopel are either; it boils down to “on the way to boss fight” and “at boss fight.”

Why Am I Still Watching: 1 Once you start watching, you can’t stop watching, largely due to some mesmeric effect. Enough bright colours and strange things are happening that the brain becomes entranced. You know why you’re still watching: to find out what the heck could possibly happen next in this trainwreck.

Outsiders Quickly Appreciate: “Okay the internet is alive and trying to destroy Earth, so a task force of people who can merge with their net-avatars go into the internet to stop the evil Nebula. I don’t understand anything else, but I understand that.”

ALSO THERE WAS DUEL MASTERS FOR SOME REASON???

Fate / Grand Order

What’s Wrong with This Animation: 2 Perfectly passable modern animation with focus on subtle effect gradients. Animation quality stays constant, if uninspired. Special effects often used to obscure action, although there are stand out scenes especially concerning the Caster’s vine bodies.

What the Heck is Going On: 5 The viewer is overloaded with jargon, obvious but opaque callbacks to a larger series, confusing relationships, and an ill-defined magic system. If you don’t know anything about the larger Type-Moon universe, you will be out of luck for following this setting in the slightest. On top of that, the motivations that drive the plot are obscure. Protecting the human race is laudable, but there are exposited to be other races involved as well, not that anyone looks inhuman in the slightest, so what makes humans so special? The Holy Grail plot is exposited in its lightest form, making it completely incomprehensible and emotionally distant. The exact stakes are only fleshed out enough to raise infinitely more questions about the world which are never, ever answered. Nothing is ever answered. The viewer is left with painful questions about the movie’s most basic worldbuilding until the end. The movie even starts off in a way that guts its worldbuilding and emotional impact. I hate to say it, but some well placed exposition would seriously have helped.

Why Do I Care about These People: 5 Having simple characters works in many stories, such as Rockman above. But in Fate, these characters are simple clichés meant to arouse otaku feelings, and nothing more. Would you like to care about tsundere girl? What about helpless moé? What about bland protagonist who doesn’t seem to care or ask vital questions but of course is supr speshul? What about bland guardian character who will obviously never be a romantic rival and exists only to support the main character and give cute banter? What about cocky and somewhat ecchi warrior with a supposed heart of gold? What about SPEED WEED EXPY? Yeah guess which was the only character I cared about, and it was SOLELY because his character design was Brunette Speedwagon; if you’re expecting him to have any actual character depth or obvious motivation then you’re out of luck. Plot twists come unexplained as well, and leave no impact on the viewer. In fact when Brunette Speedwagon turns out to be Evil Speed Weed, I had absolutely no reason to care, and wasn’t even surprised because surprise would require me to have had an opinion on the morality of the character in the first place. Multiple sets of characters are killed off without even proper establishment, but of course they get mentioned because... death? The main love interest Moé Girl calls the Bland Hero “sempai” even though she’s older than him, has trained at Chaldaea longer than him, and is more powerful than him, because god forbid a romantic interest not be your dream imouto uguu who worships the main character and puts herself beneath him.

In fact, I can sum up the movie’s empty emotionality thusly: Our Bland Hero is transported to magical world without any scenes establishing who he was in his previous life, and he continues through the story with his reaction to every situation amounting to “well okay.” When the main character acting as teh audience surrogate has no strong reaction to what’s happening around him, how are we, the viewers, supposed to?

Exactly Where are We: 4 I have no idea where Chaldea base is. I don’t even know if it’s on Earth or in some magical realm. Or the future. The town out of time is just a burning ruin of repetitive apartment blocks, streets, and one temple. All are lit SO DARK that navigating every scene becomes a chore. Characters lose their placement in fight scenes, often obscured by magic effects, explosions, or rapid cute. The most I can say for where a character is is “behind a shield” or “off to the side” in many instances. Just terrible telegraphing of character location.

Why Am I Still Watching: 5 I wanted to give up or fast forward so often. Lack of emotional investment paired with confusion about the setting, confusion about charater motivations, and a truly drab colour palette to make the movie a slog to watch. Even the fights weren’t so great with the Caster offscreen, amounting to “oh wow look a magic sword, a magic bow, a magic shield. going pew pew at one another.” This is not engaging.

Outsiders Quickly Appreciate: “Some unexplained time anomaly happening in southern Japan is going to make humans extinct, so some magical people with undefined powers from a snowy mountain somewhere are going back in time to fight other magical people for a Grail with undefined powers.”

SO, overall, what does this tell us? That the Fate movie seriously dropped the ball on even TRYING to get people accustomed to its franchise, and backed that up with terrible plotting and character development. So I’m supposed to play the game. SO I’m supposed to know the rest of the franchise. So what? That shouldn’t be required. If a movie is going to be confusing and impenetrable to outsiders, then it darn well better at least be weirdly entertaining like Rockman. And the best of all world was upheld by Black Jack by explaining its world fully and presenting a compelling story on top of that.

TLDR; Fate Grand Order made me really salty.

#analysis #black jack #mega man battle network #fate grand order

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cuban-feminist-that-gives-a-hoot · 8 years ago

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It has been beaten

I beat Final Fantasy XV and hooboy is this game a doozy. Let's start with the positives: 1. Chapter 13. Even with my own music on instead of the game's music, the atmosphere in the first half is very creepy. It got me quite a few times and made me jump. You're completely on your own, your weapons sealed, and for half of it, you are solely dependent on the Ring of the Lucii as your main form of attacking. Even once your friends join you, there's still this unnerving dread throughout. Good job, Chapter 13, you actually are a good chapter, as far as game play goes. 2. The ending. Was it satisfying? A bit, if only for reasons that I can't say unless I want to spoil it. But there is one thing I want to mention: Right before the very final fight, Noctis asks to go through the photos to have one on him before the fight. Whichever photo you pick will wind up in the final scene in the ending. I think that is pretty cool, honestly. 3. The graphics: This is a very pretty, very gorgeous game. It's clear that Squix spent all their time on bringing the realism to this game and it pays off in that aspect, I suppose. And now, the negatives: get ready people, this is going to be looooong... 1. The plot: What is with all the telling and not showing?!? At the end of Chapter 9, something happens to one of your party members and we're told it happened by said character and he's got the injuries to show it, but we don't see HOW it happened. What happened with the Emperor? The last time we see him, he was well and alive, but by the time we hit Chapter 13, everyone in Gralea is dead for some wtf reason. What the fuck happened between Chapter 9 and Chapter 13 on the villain's side that we did not see?! Yes, there's notes scattered all through out in Chapter 13, but it should be SHOWING it, not just TELLING it. For all of FFXIII's bullshittery with the plot, at least it was kind enough to give you datalogs for you to read it if you missed anything or if something confused you. In FFXV, if you didn't catch something, oh well, too bad, so sad, maybe you should be paying attention. Like, fucking really, game?! Really? 2. The characters: Oh dear, are these characters got no personality outside of their stereotypes. I went into this game thinking I could ship Noctis/Prompto, but it's hard to ship it whem I fucking do not like Noctis in the slightest. He has earned the nickname King Bitch for a reason. When something goes wrong, his way of handling it is to mope. The other three are okay, but once again, a lot of telling and not showing. What the hell, game? I can't give a fuck about them and the other characters if I am not seeing what is being said. Also, who thought those pants were a good idea for Noctis? With those boots? The fuck? That's some horrible clothing design there, Squix. The only character I am interested in knowing more about is the villain. His back story is interesting and I honestly wanted to see more. You know, like flashbacks, etc. Also, lady dragoon lady is cute, but once again we don't know much about her beyond her mercenary ways. As for Lunafreya, poor girl, you have no personality either. I feel sorry for her because she's supposed to be our main female lead and she's barely in it. Hell, most of the villains, except for the main one, has nothing going for them. They're unremarkable. It says something when the Regalia, a.k.a. the car, has more personality than just about all the cast and you can customize it to give it even more personality. Like, damn Squix, what did you spend ten years on?! 3. The music: It was so unremarkable and blah that early on, I switched having Spotify on while playing. I will say that it's funny watching them drive around in their car while Barbie Girl is playing. But for a first playthrough, I shouldn't have had to turn the music off to put my own in there to liven things up a bit. 4. Fishing: I hate the fishing mini-game and it can get bent. Now those are some trophies I'm never gonna get. 5. Product placement: The fuck?!?! Really?! And now, the meh parts of the game: 1. The gameplay/combat system: It's whatever. I knew going in that it was going to be more action-rpg, so I wasn't surprised at what I was getting into. And crafting spells/recharging them was kind of fun. 2. Driving: I let Ignis do 95% of the driving, but I will say that I hate that I can't just drive the car off-road and crash it into some rocks. It's like this game refuses to let me be a bad driver or something. Maybe if I decide to get the last part to update the Regalia so that she can fly, I may be able to succeed at crashing it and causing a game over that way? Either way, it's autopilot, so whatever there. 3. The side-quests. Some were fun, some were hair-pulling, others were just typical. I will say that I have Costlemark Tower in sight next because I do want that trophy where I get all 13 of the Royal Arms. Though, that might take me a while. ^^;;; Overall, it's not a game that I'd play from start again. I honestly am appalled that some people are rating this as a good game. It's average at best and insultingly bad at worst. It's the kind of game that would rightfully piss any longtime FF fan off because of how slipshod it all is. It's a time killer, nothing more. There is nothing engaging or anything about it that stands out. I played and beat it because I refuse to not finish a mainline FF game that isn't an MMO (Someday, I will get around to playing FFXIII-2 & 3). As it is, maybe the fanfic writers will do something better with the world of Lucis than the developers did. -____-;

#ffxv #long text is long #no read-more for you

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theamazingstories · 5 years ago

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(Note: voting closes in a bit more than ten days from now on 7/21/19. Membership sales (required for voting rights in most cases) also close soon. Visit the Dublin in 2019 website for more information.)

This being a Monday, and Mondays being slow, I figured it was about time to share my 2019 Hugo Awards Finalist Ballot, which ballot will be used to help tally the vote for the 2019 Hugo Awards, which will be presented – for the first time ever – in my ancestral lands of Ireland.

(Start at 30 seconds in; the important part comes at 54 seconds)

Sadly, I will not be in attendance, but I am a supporting member and therefore, get to vote.

Below are screen captures of the individual categories and my placements (the Hugo Awards use a preferential voting system where you rank your picks).

The Retro Hugo Awards follow the contemporary Hugo Awards.

Some general comments: I don’t vote for works I’m not personally familiar with, which happens for one reason and another; I also don’t consider reading an excerpt from a longer work to be sufficient exposure to judge it properly.

This also means that I don’t necessarily rank everything in a category.

There are a handful of categories I didn’t vote in or opted to select No Award for – excercising my Ghu-given right to “vote” by not selecting anyone or picking No Award to indicate that I disagree with the inclusion of the category in the awards.

This is not pique over disagreeing with a categorie’s inclusion when I campaigned against its inclusion but lost the vote. It’s actually three reactions: 1. I really don’t think that it should be an award category, find it problematic for various reasons and see it as more (eventual) trouble than it is worth – which gets a “No Award”; 2. I disagree with the category but don’t care enough – or think it harmful enough – to bother with it and 3. I’ve no interest in the category and therefore can’t vote because I really don’t engage with it. Let those who do decide who should win without interference from me.

Note: the screencaps are a bit difficult to read, so the email summary of my ballot is included after them. I’m showing the screen caps first because the summary only includes those Finalists that I actually voted for.

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This category, over time I think, is going to cause problems, what with the possibility that a “series” can find itself up for the award in multiple years; not to mention some possible entrants getting short shrift because of availability & etc.

Hoo boy. I completely disagree with the Administrators on the eligibility of Archive of Our Own – not because it showcases “fan fic”, but because it is not a “new” work and has not been updated sufficiently broadly enough to be eligible. Making a website that updated some back-end capabilities eligible is like making The Moon is a Harsh Mistress eligibile again because they changed the type font in a new edition. Further, I am deeply concerned about A: AO3’s members deliberately misconstruing their individual status AND B. even more concerned about large internet “tribes” being able to sway the vote and using their numbers and reach to possibly negate the regular membership’s vote*. And, finally, this category needs to be refined in future to refocus it on academic and critical work within the field.

As stated earlier, if I don’t engage, I don’t vote – but, while I have mild reservations about this category’s inclusion, they’re not strong enough to want to deny others their fun.

It’s really, really difficult to figure out who did what in this category. I believe that editorial work should be awarded, I just think we need a better way to do it. What that might be, I’ve no idea,. so, therefore, I stay mum.

Another category whose inclusion I heartily disagree with. I am PERSONALLY far better off because when I began reading science fiction, there were no distinctions made over what was or was not appropriate for me to read. I believe this is an artificial, marketing-based divide, is detrimental to young readers by suggesting limitations and that we should not be basing awards on marketing categories.

*I’ve been vocal on the AO3 “controversy”. Early on I asked that they detail the “sufficient” changes made to the site that would make it eligible in a year in which it was not first produced. (In fact, I think its TEN years AFTER it was first created that we are being asked to vote for it. As if The Martian appeared on the ballot AFTER the film rolled out, in a year in which the novel itself was not first published in English.)

I am not objecting to “new voters” coming into the fold here. We absolutely want that. What I am finding issue with is an internet community that does not normally engage with the awards doing so to get their “thing” a win. Just like the gamer gaters that were recruited by the Sad and Rabid puppies. (No, they are not pups; some of their actions are ‘puppy-like’.)

If this kind of thing becomes common (and I suspect it may), the awards turn into a defacto “popularity” contest: how many people who never heard of the Hugo Awards before can we get to vote because their “friends” are up for an award?

But putting that argument aside for a moment: the public display on the part of AO3 members (yay, all of my fan fic works are now Hugo Nominees: I’m a Hugo Finalist author – gonna put that right up on my website!) AFTER being informed that they are not entitled to such honors individually, is, to me, more than enough reason to not vote for it.

Prior coverage of this debate here

Finalist Vote Summary:

Novel:

The Calculating Stars

Trail of Lightning

Space Opera

Novella:

Artificial Condition

The Tea Master and the Detective

Binti: The Night Masquerade

Novelette:

“The Thing About Ghost Stories”

The Only Harmless Great Thing

Short Story:

“The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat”

“The Court Magician”

“The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington”

Related Work:

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction

An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards

Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing

http://www.mexicanxinitiative.com: The Mexicanx Initiative Experience at Worldcon 76

The Hobbit Duology (documentary in three parts)

No award

Dramatic Long:

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Sorry to Bother You

Black Panther

Avengers: Infinity War

Annihilation

A Quiet Place

Dramatic Short:

The Good Place: “Janet(s)”

The Good Place: “Jeremy Bearimy”

Editor Short:

Gardner Dozois

Neil Clarke

Semiprozine:

Strange Horizons

FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction

Fireside Magazine

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Uncanny Magazine

Shimmer

Fanzine:

Rocket Stack Rank

Galactic Journey

Journey Planet

nerds of a feather, flock together

Fan Writer:

Foz Meadows

James Davis Nicoll

Alasdair Stuart

Fan Artist:

Spring Schoenhuth

Series:

No award

New Writer:

Jeannette Ng

Lodestar:

No award

The Retro Hugo Awards

(The older I get, the closer the Retros come to being THE Hugo Awards….)

Yes, seems that this year I have a ‘thing’ for Don Wollheim, Eric Frank Russell and C. L. Moore.

(Pretty sure I’ve always had a thing for them.)

Symbiotica (EF Russell) makes me laugh. Every. Single. Time. I think it takes the prize for most vomitous novelette in the history of the genre (though Sturgeon’s The Girl Had Guts comes a very close second). And by vomitous, I don’t mean on the part of the reader. I mean, more people vomit in that story than in any other.

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Summary

Retro Novel:

Conjure Wife

Earth’s Last Citadel

The Weapon Makers

Gather, Darkness!

Perelandra

Retro Novella:

“Attitude”

“Clash by Night”

The Little Prince

“We Print the Truth”

Retro Novelette:

“Symbiotica”

“Mimsy Were the Borogoves”

“The Proud Robot”

“Citadel of Lost Ships”

“The Halfling”

Retro Short Story:

“Q.U.R.”

“Yours Truly – Jack the Ripper”

“Doorway into Time”

“King of the Gray Spaces” (“R is for Rocket”)

“Death Sentence”

Retro Graphic Story:

Flash Gordon: Fiery Desert of Mongo

Buck Rogers: Martians Invade Jupiter

Wonder Woman #5: Battle for Womanhood

Retro Dramatic Long:

Phantom of the Opera

Münchhausen

Heaven Can Wait

Batman

Retro Dramatic Short:

Super-Rabbit

Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman

The Ape Man

Der Fuehrer’s Face

Retro Editor Short:

Donald A. Wollheim

Mary Gnaedinger

Dorothy McIlwraith

John W. Campbell

Raymond A. Palmer

Retro Pro Artist:

Margaret Brundage

Hannes Bok

J. Allen St. John

Virgil Finlay

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

William Timmins

Retro Fanzine:

The Phantagraph

Le Zombie

Futurian War Digest

Guteto

Voice of the Imagi-Nation

Retro Fan Writer:

Jack Speer

Morojo (Myrtle Douglas)

Wilson “Bob” Tucker

Donald A. Wollheim

Forrest J. Ackerman

Art Widner

The 2019 Hugo Awards – Publisher’s Picks (Note: voting closes in a bit more than ten days from now on 7/21/19. Membership sales (required for voting rights in most cases) also close soon.

0 notes

battleofmind · 7 years ago

Photo

New Post has been published on http://blog.battleofmind.com/international-womens-day-woman-inspired-founder-seekatherapy-battleofmind/

International Women's Day - The woman who inspired the founder of Seekatherapy and BattleofMind

Today is International Women’s day and I want to tell you a story about a woman ( and a mother ) that inspired this very website and seekatherapy.com. In this blog post we discuss John Wilson, the founder’s story and why he was inspired and influenced by the woman that is his mother to try and make a positive difference for the world.

John’s experience and direction to depression

Five years ago, three years before John founded the website battleofmind.com and seekatherapy.com he had trained as an architect to graduate at the foot of the recession. There was no opportunity for architecture in his locality and he couldn’t move away as he was engaged to a teacher who worked in the area and so, he retrained as a teacher of IT. Unfortunately, he found that that profession was full of bullying within the staff room and even became a victim of it in his second placement due to jealousy and the teachers being very stressed.

6 years of higher education led nowhere but instead, he accumulated a large debt and a feeling of hopelessness and despair, to the point of suicide. He was diagnosed by his GP at very high risk of acting on his actions and was only 2 points away from being sectioned in a mental health ward. At the time, there was little my GP could offer in help but they gave me antidepressants of a high level and put me on a waiting list for CBT ( of which was 5 hours and a wwaiting time of 4 months). Fortunately, the one thing that kept John going was that he didn’t want to pass on his pain to his family and instead began his journey to healing.

Holistic’s and health specialist woman

When my mother knew I was in such a bad way of course, she was very concerned. When I was in a bad place, shaking on the floor, in a cold sweat, in total panic and hopelessness I rang home saying ‘i don’t want to be here anymore’, I can remember that moment quiet clearly, my mother advised me to write down everything I was thinking and feeling and so I did. This helped because when we go to a doctor we tend to put on a mask of how we truly feel, some kind of subconscious social way to behave, this letter ensured that my wounds were laid bare.

My mother is a reiki master, reflexologist, indian head masseuse and also knows a lot about nutrition, crystal therapy and various other healing methods. Her knowledge and understanding about the ‘whole’ human experience and health gave me a helping hand that so many people just don’t receive when they go to their GP or the NHS. My mother, Christine, was my personal therapist and guide to healing and helped a great deal. Below are just a few things she helped me with : –

Advised I keep a journey journal, writing in it daily about everything I thought or felt so, as time passed, and the tablets began to take effect and I did other things, I could see that I was beginning to heal.

Sleep. The first 2 months on my road to recovery she advised I move back in with my family and sleep. I did this a lot for the first 2 months, just resting my mind.

Start walking and exercising. My family had recently bought a dog so I pushed myself to go out and walk him as it helped improve my mood and also, began to excercise on the wii fit, loosing 2 stone in 3 months.

Set goals. My mum advised me to think about setting goals , what would I like to do? What did I used to enjoy? I entered an art competition and started learning spanish.

Try therapy. She knew about lots of therapy, she was the one who advised me to try EFT ( moderately successful), Homeopathy, counselling, CBT, reiki, floatation tanks and finally hypnotherapy, of which was my ultimate benefactor. This knoweldge and experience of trying different therapies where a GP would not advise, is what inspired seekatherapy.com, currently at 830 therapists but intending to grow it much much larger.

Start meditating. I used a guided meditation cd which would clear my thoughts and give me a small sense of peace although my heart would remain heavy.

Look at what I am eating. She made me become more conscious of what I was taking in and often cooking for me instead of eating junk which would just re-enforce my depressive moods.

Keep a gratitude book. Write down 10 things every night that you are grateful for no matter how small it is.

Play. Started to relax and play games and take my attention away from my mood and feelings for a time.

Encouraged me when I was feeling better, even to the point of moving away for a job, as hard as it was for her, as she knew it was an important part of my healing.

These are just a few of the things she advised me on and why I wanted to do the same but for everyone who didn’t have the support and direction she gave me. Battleofmind.com was the blog I created to be the advice and seekatherapy.com the website to help people find local therapy and explore them easier.

It wasn’t just me, all of her children fell ill…at the same time

A couple of months previous to my breakdown my older sister had also broken down due to unprofessional and unlawful behavior of a particular employer she used to work for. They realised how they had treated her was unfair and in the end, was given a monetary handshake to apologize and also not take it further. This whole experience gave her post traumatic stress disorder for several years later and put her off the profession she was in, finding it very difficult to reenter it.

My mother had supported her through her journey whilst she saw her son also on his knees after 2 failed degrees and vast levels of debt nearly took him away from her for good.

Youngest also broken

My younger sister was still at secondary school. She was a fairly quiet young girl, seemed happy all the time but secretly, she was also suffering and struggling inside. She was being victimized at school in an all girls school and the teachers were not acting on information she had been given. She had been accused of harassing and treating another girl with a knife when, (if you truly knew my sister she’d never do this. she was always the kindest and warm soul you could meet). This girl spread rumors about her due to jealousy even though she always tried to include this girl who bullied her in her group of friends because she felt sorry for her. There was also a few girls that would always pick on her for a long time as well due to her placid and kind nature.

John, the founder of battleofmind.com and seekatherapy.com was always seen as quiet strong, funny, easy going older brother that always made people smile but when she saw him collapse and she was already struggling at school she couldn’t cope anymore and also broke down a day after John came back to the family home. At 15, she never returned to school to finish the year properly but she still managed to get her gcse’s even though her situation had deteriorated.

Coping with 3 ill children

Christine, my mother, must have felt her world had collapsed when all three children where so unhappy with their lives but maintained her strength and support for all of us.

The youngest child became the most worrying as she became anorexic to the point of almost dying only 2 years ago as the illness got its grip on her. Fortunately, she came through that and is now making great recovery but is still challenged even 5 years on.

Contracting cancer

My mother also contracted breast cancer only a few years ago whilst all this was happening. If she could have had any more challenges then they were all coming all at once. It was so difficult for her but she fought on with the support of her husband, John’s dad and also, using her holistic knowledge, began doing things to help treat herself like reducing dairy product intake, using turmeric and more. Eventually, she had to have an operation but she did keep the cancer at bay and fortunately, it seems it has gone.

Appreciate women

I think what this personal story and international women’s day should teach us is that we should be thankful for all the women in our lives and they all deserve our respect and we should attempt to show our appreciation more often. My mother is probably the most important woman in my life but she is incredibly special because she isn’t just a mother, but a friend, advisor, a healer, a motivational coach and an inspiration.

Thanks mum for the inspiration and thanks mum for helping me heal and keep believing!

Here is to every woman on the planet! Have a great happy international women’s day!

John

Founder of battleofmind and seekatherapy.com

#international womens day #mental health #seekatherapy #womans health #Annorexia #Mens Mental Health #Relationships #Womens Mental Health

0 notes

neechoudai · 7 years ago

Note

All of the questions for the end of the year meme, all of them.

(Heck thank u anon)

1. First things first, did you have a good year?

It’s been a year, but in the end so much good stuff happened that it’s hard to say it wasn’t a good year. Despite some of the rough current events, personally I’ve had a good year both in terms of fun stuff and in growth as a person!

2. How old did you turn this year?

22! *i am tackled by taylor swift’s legal team*

3. Do you feel your age?

Oh, hell no! I am absolutely younger than 22 what is going on I’m still a kiddo help

4. Did your appearance change in anyway?

I don’t think so. I’ve been wearing a bit more makeup occasionally, though!

5. Post your favorite selfie.

Gotta be the one I took in my first homemade cosplay with Creep-P, one of the songwriters of the song I cosplayed and all around cool dude! It just meant everything to me. And he’s the one who asked for a selfie first! Y’all have probably heard the tales already but Castle Point was the highest of high points.

6. If you traveled, where did you go?

Nowhere super far. Castle Point, a Renaissance Fair, and a few times to New York City! It was my first time staying in the city and it was very fun!

7. Which fashion trends did you love?

I don’t really follow fashion trends much, so I’m not sure. Wait, do onesies count? Or the continuing increase of foxes in fashion?

8. Which fashion trends did you hate?

Once again, can’t think of anything, really.

9. What was your favorite article of clothing this year? Post a pic if possible?

Once again. This dress is absolutely my proudest achievement. (This is the only full pic I can find from this year)

Hmm… If the Karma Rin cosplay doesn’t count… I’m getting some nice dresses for Belated Christmas! Some Spirited Away and the official Symmetra dress :D

I also love my suspender skirt and my Sailor Moon dress… Too much to really show a picture of.

10. What song sums up this year for you?

Would You Rather, by Crusher-P! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtF0Jwf5vqQ

I’ve done a lot of healing and growing this year, and I’m trying my best to be my own best friend instead of my worst enemy! And, I’m always getting one step closer to being who I want to be!

11. What album came out and has been on heavy rotation since then?

The RWBY Volume 4 Soundtrack!! And special mention to Circus-P’s 715

12. What was your favorite movie of the year?

New movie? Wonder, Wonder Woman, and Captain Underpants are all great. In general? Always gotta be Spirited Away. And I got to see them all in theaters this year!

13. Did an actor/actress catch your attention for the first time this year?

Hm… The RWBY voice actors kind of sparked my interest lately, though not for the first time. Same with the Aqours (Love Live) girls! I can’t think of many more.

14. Favorite new TV show?

I don’t have cable, and forget to stream things. I watched the new Bill Nye show (is that 2017? i dont even know anymore) and I’ve heard a lot of good things about shows with good autistic representation! I just haven’t done the tv thing in a while, or have been watching older things.

15. Which new ship/fandom has taken over a lot of your time, attention, and tears?

Not new, but I’m now a lot more passionate about BumbleBY in RWBY! I kinda have the same ships and things as last year tho. Special interest life.

16. What food did you try for the first time?

I got to try kitsune udon!!! I loved it! Also dangos.

17. Did you make any big permanent changes this year?

I started taking anxiety medication! I’m not sure how permanent it is, but it’s going great and I am so proud of myself for taking that step.

18. What was one nice thing you did for someone else?

I adopted a kouhai! She’s a freshman. I met her at an open house before she was actually going to my college, I introduced myself and complimented her Sailor Moon backpack, and I told her about Castle Point! Now she’s my kouhai. I’ve been introducing her to a lot of cool things and I’ve become a mom friend kinda!

19. What was one nice thing you did for yourself?

I started taking steps to improve my mental health! And I bought some bath bombs. And a lot of amazon stuff.

20. Did you develop a new obsession?

When do I not develop new obsessions, is the question. Overwatch is probably the main one. I loved watching it, but now I can play and I love it!

21. Did you vote?

I was really busy with back-to-back classes that day, and too anxious to try, unfortunately. But I learned more about different ways to be engaged in causes I care about! I helped my class with a campaign to get a bill passed, and it was successful!!

22. Did you move?

To and from college.

23. Did you get a job?

I had a job! Work study in the library has worked perfectly, and they let me have more hours over the summer until July. Then I let myself have a break. I also have my social work field placement, which is great even if I don’t get paid!

24. Did you get a pet?

I got some plushies! But no, my mom would scream if we had another pet. Puss stresses her out.

25. Do you regret not doing anything?

I try not to regret things. There’s nothing I can do about the past. So while I constantly regret, I try and move past it instead of focusing on it.

26. Do you regret doing something?

See above.

27. Have you done anything that scared you?

Taking that step to start anxiety medication! And then telling mom!

28. Did anyone/thing make you so mad it stayed with you for days?

Not that I can think of right now.

29. Did you lose anyone close to you?

Don’t think so, but I feel like I’ve lost contact with some people. Probably because they’re busy (BACK ANXIETY DEMON BACK)

30. Did you fall in love?

Not really, except I keep having platonic squishes on people who are already my friends! I love my friends so much more every day.

31. Did you fall out of love?

*laughing intensely* can’t fall out of what you were never in!

32. Did you start a new relationship?

I made some new friends!

33. Did you go through a break up?

With who? My invisible boyfriend Len Kagamine from high school? Again, can’t break something that never existed.

34. Did you have to cut ties to someone?

No. Thank goodness.

35. Who was important to you this year but wasn’t important last year?

All of my friends are important to me and have been and always become more important with time! I don’t really like calling people out. And I think it’s probably hella hurtful to say someone wasn’t important. So even if I could think of someone, I don’t think I’d answer

36. Who wasn’t as important to you this year as they were last year?

See the second part of the above answer.

37. If you could have a do over on one thing you did, would you take it?

Nothing that I can think of. Everything happens for a reason, and it doesn’t do well to overthink the past.

38. What was the best moment of the year for you?

Castle Point!!! I could gush forever lol

39. What was the worst?

Other than Current Events, there was a certain few days when something really really painful from my past came up in a really big and scary way. I don’t like going into specifics, but it blew over and I hope it doesn’t come back.

40. Did anything happen that you were sure would change you as a person but it really didn’t?

Hm. I don’t know. Kind of taking anxiety meds, since it’s working but it’s not a magic anxiety poof pill?

41. Did anything happen to you that you were sure wouldn’t change you as a person but it did?

Strangely enough, the anxiety meds again. I didn’t think there would be any change, but whenever I look back, I keep seeing new ways it’s improved my mental state! I’m becoming more responsible for myself, less quick to go into anxiety spirals, and just slowly improving. I don’t know what I expected, but it’s a happy medium between changing my mind but taking it slow.

42. What are you most proud of accomplishing?

Getting started on meds, meeting some of the people I admire and starting to be less of the type to put them on pedestals, and meeting an internet friend irl for the first time!! (well, planned for the first time.)

43. What have you learned about yourself this year that you didn’t know in the years prior?

I am more empathetic than I realized, and that’s one of my biggest strengths.

44. Did your opinion of anyone change for the better?

I don’t know. Probably?

45. Did your opinion of anyone change for worse?

Not really. Except some of the gross things that happened with famous people. But nobody I actually know.

46. If you make resolutions, did you complete them this year?

I don’t really make resolutions, but I wanted to improve myself aand I think I did well!

47. If you make resolutions, what will your resolutions be for the coming year?

To continue to improve myself! To get a bit tidier on my own terms. And to become more independent and confident! And to talk to more people again without letting my brain get the better of me and tell me they don’t really want to talk.

Also to go to the mall alone for the first time. ^.^;

48. If you could go on an adventure during the remaining days of the year, where would you go and what would you do? Who would you go this?

With the one day. I have. More like Nine Hours. I don’t know? But if I had more time and unlimited possibilities and funds, I would love to take a trip to visit all of my friends!

49. What do you wish for others for the coming year?

I wish that the world is kinder. I wish that even if things don’t become perfect, that you continue to get closer and closer to where you need to be. I wish that you can start to love yourself even more in the coming year.

50. What do you wish for yourself?

I wish that I can continue to improve my mental state and start to talk to others more often again. And that I survive graduation wwwww holy heck how am I graduating college.

And I wish that my anxiety continues to lessen so I can have more enjoyment in life.

#ask #anonymous #thank you for asking! this was fun! but now i need food.

0 notes

tgaoe · 7 years ago

Text

Andy’s 2017 Music Report

Favorite Albums, Favorite Songs, and other assorted temporally-specific ramblings.

Preamble

I. Dearth I listened to less music this year than I did last year, partly due to the immense amount of time required to finish my Master’s Degree, and also because I slept better. You may recall from last year’s treatise that I experienced something of a listening renaissance late in the year, turning to music during nights spent sleepless for work-related anxiety. 2017 marked my fourth year in my current job, and the first during which I began to feel confident in my own professional competence. Hence, less anxiety, fewer sleepless nights, less music. So it goes.

II. Duplicity, Disaffection Another reason. Prior to November 21st, I spent an inordinate amount of time listening to a single band, the band that made my #1 record from 2016. They were also my most-listened to band of 2017. I went deep into their back catalogue, full immersion, and I found such joy and pleasure in doing so. The band helped me through a fraught, life-altering personal ordeal. I traveled to see them play and it was cathartic. However, on 11/21 it was revealed that the leader of that band may have betrayed much of what he/they claimed to have stood for as steadfast advocates for kindness, equity, and empathy. The woman or women he hurt are the primary victims, but secondarily his hypocrisy destroyed a community of people who connected strongly with his music. I believe in rehabilitation. But I also doubt I’ll ever be able to listen to this band the same way again, if at all. I share this troubling information because it undoubtedly colors this list. For weeks after the revelation I only listened to songs sung by women, maybe to offset the damage somehow, maybe to avoid connecting with another secretly awful man.

III. Disappointment Last year I wrote extensively about how the absence of releases from legacy acts resulted in my exposure to an unusually large number of new/emerging artists. That trend of exposure continued this year, for unfortunate reasons. Most new releases by old favorites proved little more than pleasant. Though something like 20 albums from 2017 fall into that category, only five or six made my list of favorites, and even some of those did so despite caveats. I suspect this may have to do with the current circumstances of my life more than with the music itself, at least in some cases. For instance, Sleep Well Beast will not appear below, but I am the only National devotee I know who doesn’t love it as much as their previous records. Time will tell, I suppose.

IV. Derelict I devoted significantly less time to this project this year than I did to its previous iterations, probably 20 hours vs. the usual 40-60. I usually track favorites all year and begin writing in October. This year I was much less diligent, not commencing writing until mid-December. It shows, I’m afraid. I did not keep an actual Favorite Songs list, nor did I keep a running record of micro-moments.

Blame the Master’s. Over five months of work my research project ballooned to 18,415 words spanning 118 pages—characteristically about twice as long as it needed to be. It’s a mystery how I mustered the energy to eke out another 6000 words for this thing after all that.

V. Dingus As always, forgive my assumption that readers of this monstrosity possess a certain level of familiarity with prevailing music culture. The writing reads better that way. Also as always, please forgive the preposterous pretense that anyone would want to read this, the bloviations of yet another obsessive 30-something white man desperate for your attention.

My 19 Favorite Albums of 2017

19 favorites because 19 was how many favorites I had.

19 The World’s Best American Band White Reaper Big, stupid, shameless riff rock; a record as fun as its title is ridiculous. The band almost has the chops to live up to it too, blazing through ten hook-dense, hedonistic rockers with fatalistic abandon. No introspection here, folks. The only lesson White Reaper has to impart is, “If you make the girls dance, the boys will dance with ‘em.” Noted, dudes.

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18 Cigarettes After Sex Cigarettes After Sex How to Make the Sexiest Music Ever, Apparently

1) Start with early Interpol. 2) Slow it down. 3) Tighten it up. 4) Strip away the fuzz. 5) Replace Paul Banks with Greg Gonzalez, a man whose smoky, sultry voice I mistook for a woman's until just now. 6) Drop the nonsense lyrics in favor of straightforward stories, proclamations, and invitations, all specific and intimate like the first xx record.

The result: a collection of variations on "Fade Into You" sans twang. Almost unfathomably sexy. The sexiest.

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17 The Nashville Sound Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit I don’t love this album, but I do love all its songs. The Nashville Sound should have been a solo record with an accompanying full-band live release a few months later. The 400 Unit is so talented, so utterly professional that they can’t help but sound canned, over-produced, in a modern studio. Any old band off the street can be made to sound that way. What makes the Unit special is that this is how they sound live. They sound perfect. Perfection on record isn’t much fun.

Jason Isbell is the best songwriter of his generation. Case in point: Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” his best song and a contender for best song by anyone, famously concludes with the couplet,

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel That's all, I don't think of you that often

Isbell manages to casually convey the same sentiment through implication on Sound’s “Molotov”:

Another life but I still remember A county fair in steamy September In the Year of the Tiger, nineteen-something

He remembers, but not that well, not the year. He doesn’t think of her that often.

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16 Need Your Love Sheer Mag The opening salvo of “Meet Me in the Street” and the sort-of title track tells you everything you need to know about Need Your Love, the surprising segue of anthemic nails-hard rebel rock into heartfelt, slinky soul-funk. Sheer Mag is everything 70s rock, all facets, plain and simple, in timbre, tone, and demeanor, fitted to modern pop structure and sensibility. Massive riffs, throaty hollers, cavernous sonics, never not danceable. The last 40 years never happened.

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15 Something to Tell You Haim Four years ago I passionately engaged in a pointless internet debate on the false premise of the superiority of Haim vs. Lorde. Of course this was less about the actual artists than it was the debaters’ desperation for validation of our own tastes and preferences at the expense of others’, which is a stupid thing insecure young white men do for some reason. However, looking back now and comparing the two entities’ work and public personas does reveal fascinating differences in their approaches and cultural placements, especially considering the rollouts and receptions of both artists’ follow-up records. I’ll write more about Lorde later (spoiler), but she crafts songs that achieve timelessness and universality seemingly unintentionally, through trope subversion and highly specific and personal writing. Haim achieves the same through something like the opposite approach.

Every Haim song feels like a glossy new product behind a high-end shop window, displayed uniformly, calculated and designed for maximum value and mass appeal. I’ve said this before, but Haim recordings sound like money, sound expensive. Because they are. Haim recordings are light, airy, sleek, tight, and huge. The lyrics strive for universality by exploring standard romantic emotional states in the most vague, impersonal, situationally unspecific possible manner. We do not know the identity of the “you” in these songs. Hell, we don’t really who the “I” is. We can project whoever we want. These songs are perfect manufactured products. That may read as negative criticism, but it is not. The total orderliness of Haim songs forces order on anarchy. Haim songs make the world simple, make it make sense. Every question has an answer, every problem a solution.

There is an exception that proves the rule here, a more experimental Haim song that towers above the others by subverting those established expectations of order, transcends them to depict in actuality the true messiness of love. That song is “Right Now,” and it is a monster jam, likely the best song Haim has ever written. The structure is confounding, the melodies don’t time out naturally, nothing musically makes sense, is rational, in the same way feelings don’t and aren’t. There is a call-and-response with which it is almost impossible to sing along because the response comes in like half a beat later than every other pop song has trained us to expect. Feedback blares, clicks click, hums hum. “Right Now” is imperfect, and in that it is the most perfect Haim song. It came not from an assembly line, it came from a soul. Or souls. “Right Now” even allows a single reference to an actual specific event, a quiet conversation overheard through a window, which, even though still somewhat vague, gives the song a level of personal meaning to the narrator missing from, you know, every other Haim song. More like this please.

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By the way, this short PTA-directed performance film is incredible, and suggests that everything I wrote in that second paragraph may be negated when the band plays live.

14 Graveyard of Good Times Brandon Can’t Dance Brandon Ayers's collection of mom's basement DIY songs plays as much like a friend's great mix cd as it does a solo artist's album, intuitively-sequenced and formally experimental in the sense that the dude seemingly tries any musical idea that occurs to him, and there are so many here: stoned weirdo neo disco, 80s soft rock, wall-of-sound shoegaze, earnest folk, synthy dance rock, 90s industrial and more, all effortless, catchy and united aesthetically by competent use of limited production resources. Ayers's lyrics are always either smart or hilariously, knowingly dumb as he explores a kind of mundanity inherent to a life of low-budget hedonism, as well as how much he loves his dogs, mom, sister, and grandma. Can't go wrong with that.

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13 Villains Queens of the Stone Age Josh Homme and Britt Daniel have much in common culturally, both mid-40s men who have spent nearly two decades each as highly unlikely sex symbols, sustaining multi-decade rock careers, stalking stages with maniacal, borderline-predatory confidence. But musically they’ve shared few qualities until now. Villians has airless, precise grooves similar to some Spoon records, but, you know, with that Queens menace and evil. The QoTSA has always been a band about perfect playing, but this time Homme brought in preeminent funk racketeer Mark Ronson to help shape Villains. The result is the shortest, most accessible record the band has ever made. Actually, it is not the shortest—it just feels that way. Villians cooks, showcasing the same old Queens, aggressively showy and prone to extended digressions, but with arrangements more focused, lightweight, and compressed than ever before.

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Make sure you stick around for the entire song. Trust me.

12 I Love You Like a Brother Alex Lahey What is happening in Australian that the country keeps producing these witty, confident female punk singer/songwriters? Alex Lahey’s style certainly mines a similar humorous vain to Courtney Barnett, but her approach is more energetic and less erudite. I always feel held at a distance by Barnett’s music; listening to it is almost a purely intellectual exercise. Lahey’s, however, has a casual immediacy that makes me want to smile and laugh and dance.

The title track is both punk as hell and sticky-sweet, a genuine love song from a sister to a brother, insanely catchy and refreshingly sincere. I am no one’s sister, and my brother and I, though we love each other, have never had a connection quite like the one Lahey documents here. Still, I so feel this jam. It follows the album’s opener, “Every Day’s the Weekend,” an actual love song, albeit one about having fallen for a broke, emotionally elusive charmer. “Fuck work, you’re here, every day’s the weekend,” is lyric of such powerful brevity, so effectively conveying the feeling during those times when someone exciting has unexpectedly exploded into your life. The hilarious “Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder,” another gatestormer, follows, and then the album starts to mutate into something more complex and interesting.

I Love You Like a Brother begins as an aggressive punk record, but slowly warps into atmospheric, radio-ready stadium rock. On a couple occasions this may be to its detriment, but as a whole the album serves as a solid testament to Lahey’s versatility as a writer. The lyrics of “Awkward Exchange” are comparatively anonymous to the earlier tracks, but the open sound, dynamic structure, and wordless chants beg for massive festival singalongs. It might happen. It should happen. The two approaches combine on “Lotto in Reverse,” perhaps Lahey’s greatest triumph here, an inward-focused dirge grafted onto a massive, hooky rock song that more than earns its prominent placement on Spotify’s Badass Women playlist.

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11 Go Farther in Lightness Gang of Youths Christian music is terrible, almost all of it. Not just because it all still sounds like U2, but because none of it deigns to explore actual life as a flawed human who happens to be Christian. This is so intentionally. The Christian music industry is insidiously Randian; cynical and deplorable. Gang of Youths is fighting back, hard.

Singer/songwriter David Le'aupepe is a vulgar spiritualist, kind of a like an Australian David Bazan or Sufjan Stevens in the way he publicly struggles to reconcile his faith with his human proclivities. His studious lyrics often recall very early Bruce Springsteen, with their expansive vocabulary and wide-ranging cultural literacy. The band met in church (like U2!), yet the man swears with relish and documents his perceived failings as well as his issues with the spirtual institution to which he belongs. Get a load of this, from “Perservere,” which is actually my least favorite song on the album:

But God is full of grace and his faithfulness is vast There is safety in the moments when the shit has hit the fan Not some vindictive motherfucker, nor is he shitty at his job What words to hear, and I’m a mess by now 'Cause nothing tuned me in to my failure as fast As grieving for a friend with more belief than I possessed

Imagine that at Sunday service! If all Christian music was this nuanced and genuinely introspective then, well, Christian music wouldn’t be a ghetto. It would just be more music.

This album is long, almost feature-length, most of its 16 songs stretching beyond five minutes. Fortunately, the wealth of ideas and arrangements sustain the length, if only just barely. Gang of Youths are adventurously egalitarian in their consummate unoriginality, adamantly subscribing to the notion of Ecclesiastes 1:9, content to let Le’aupepe’s compelling narratives give the band identity as their arrangements freely pillage ideas from the most successful indie rock bands of the last decade, mostly those who can now fill arenas; the Killers, the National, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, LCD Soundsystemm Bloc Party. My favorite songs here pound forward relentlessly like Titus Andronicus. On some songs Le’aupepe’s words tumble out uncontrollably like Gareth Campesinos, on others his voice could be mistaken for Matt Berninger’s low growl.

Also, I’d be remiss to not mention how appealing I find it that there are no white people in this band. It’s rare and refreshing to hear this kind of massive music from a cultural perspective so different then my own.

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10 Hot Thoughts Spoon Spoon is a band of consummate constants and variables. The band knows exactly what defines it, what listeners like, and they always deliver while also changing just enough to surprise. Every record, every song, reliably has three particular elements: an airtight hard rhythm groove, simple, catchy, repetitive; a masterful command of pop structure; and Britt Daniel’s enigmatic brand of ultracool, vaguely sexual vocal swagger. The other sounds around those elements, the atmospheres and tones, change with each record. Hot Thoughts delves deeper into the psychedelic G-funk timbres the band played with some on They Want My Soul, as Daniel continues to explore nonthreatening, acceptable ways to express desire. In short, it’s another Spoon record, and it rules.

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9 Strangers in the Alps Phoebe Bridgers I keep coming back to lyrics. Lyrics draw me in like nothing else, the more smart, personal, and specific the better. Lyrics don’t come more specific and personal and smart than Phoebe Bridgers’s. She tells vivd stories, recounts memories of events and emotions by conjuring indelible, detailed settings and images with devastating depths of feeling, mostly over quiet, close-miced acoustic guitars underlaid with noninvasive strings and other atmospherics. Prepare to be haunted.

Though she sometimes doesn’t bother and the songs don’t suffer for it, as on the incredible “Smoke Signals,” Bridgers can also write the hell out of a chorus. Try not to get “Motion Sickness” stuck in your mind.

Strangers in the Alps does take a production risk I would understand some finding off-putting. Sometimes sound effects supplement and/or match lyrical events; a plane flying overhead, a boot crunching leaves, the kind of thing. It’s strange at first, but ultimately sets the album apart from others by similarly earnest stool-seated strummers.

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8 Near to the Wild Heart of Life - year’s best title Japandroids I’ve seen this band play three times. The third was this year. Those previous had been with friends, and before the shows we drank and goofed around, celebrating our affection for each other and getting just the right level of lit up. This year I took a vacation day from my professional job, drove to St. Louis alone, and waited in line alone while reading a screenplay by one of the guys I used to go to shows with, eventually watching the show alone while nursing a single beer. It wasn’t the same. But it was still good.

Japandroids write what they know. Seven years ago what they knew resulted in a masterpiece, an album more relatable to me at the time than any other. Indeed, Celebration Rock remains my all-time favorite record, its ragged, propulsive riffage and emotional narratives of kinetic nights with close friends still have the power to take me back to that time, when I had more energy and a will to wildness. However, over the long interim between albums, the Japandroids’ lives and mine ceased to resemble each other. My closest friends moved. I have bills and a career and a generally pleasant, stable life—one distinctly not wild. Meanwhile, those dudes are evidently still globetrotting, every night out there swilling top-shelf tequila to nurse the heartache of intercontinental romance, living hard and loving harder. I no longer relate. As a listener I’m an observer now when I was once a participant. However, while I don’t connect with latter day Japandroids experientially, in a way the fact that Wild Heart still plays great for me despite that suggests that Japandroids is a legitimately great band on a musical level, rather than one just great for its ability to bash out messy, meaningful feelings..

These dudes are not shy about their laziness as songwriters, at least in terms of prolificacy. They release music as soon as they’ve reached the requisite minimum quantity of great songs, and it takes them forever to do so. Like the two previous Japandroids records, Wild Heart has only eight tracks, and they cheat even to amass that many. While Celebration Rock included a (totally awesome, raucous, thematically-appropriate) cover song, this time one Wild Heart track is an interlude, barely a song (“I’m Sorry [for Not Finding You Sooner]”), and another is just bad, sounding like a high school garage band trying hard to write a Japandroids song (“Midnight to Morning”). They really shouldn’t have let that one through. But man, the other six songs still kill with the same ferocity as before, some with an increased sense of melody and hook, and they all sound great live and feel great to shout along with, which, let’s be honest, is mainly what this band is for, and has always been for. The shouting just means a little less to me now.

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7 Don’t Be a Stranger Nervous Dater Rachel Lightner has the gift, my favorite gift. She expels what she considers her worst qualities, and she does it through great songs; extremely catchy, smart, driving, dynamic punk songs. She does it publicly, with casual confidence. She makes it look easy and, most importantly, normal. Feeling how she feels is not unique. Sharing those feelings legitimizes them, creates a community around them. I mean, look at these lines:

Cause when things get quiet I feel uneasy I need my friends or at least just the sound of the TV To keep these things in my head from screaming “You’re inadequate! You’re a piece of shit! You could run forever but you’d never get away with it! And if people really knew who you were, They’d probably cover up the ground that you walk on with spit!”

If you can’t relate, then I envy you. If you can, and if you like punk, you need this band.

The players behind Lightner are also great, building arrangements that match incidental turns in the lyrics. The lines above are from the title track. Listen for how the song bends and nearly breaks as the narrative does the same, then recovers before almost breaking again. The band follows a formula, each instrument doing a specific job. Drums, bass, and one guitar lock into rhythm, while a lead guitar incessantly plays highly-involved tasto solo hooks. The band rarely veers from its set aesthetic, and when it does, it does so with purpose.

Occasionally a male member of the band will cameo, supplementing Lightner’s self-excoriations with early-2000s emo-screaming in the background. It’s a signifier that, intentionally or not, effectively ties Lightner’s music back to that era, an era that very intentionally excluded and delegitimized women’s voices. As has been proven time and time again in recent years, that was stupid. Women do it better. The contemporary women making emotional, personal punk music are doing it so well that nobody’s come up with a term like “emo” to dismiss it. I love being alive right now.

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6 Big Fish Theory Vince Staples For when people ask what kind of music I like, that impossible question almost only asked by those who do not share the obsession, I have developed a stock answer of surprising accuracy. The smartest versions of punk, rap, and country. Country is a fudge, designed to open up a conversation about what “smart” country is. Dorks call it “alt-country.” Anyway. That’s a separate essay. You may have noticed that Big Fish Theory is the first rap record on this list. I am not tapped in to most contemporary rap. The slow, repetitive codeine scene doesn’t do it for me, and rap is more about single songs and premium playlist placement than it is about albums now. The album-focused rappers are dinosaurs. Four fossil-rap acts made solid records this year, and three made my list. Ranking them was difficult, and I am not at all confident in my final assessments. Vince Staples could have ranked highest another day.

Some days I like Big Fish Theory more than DAMN. Vince Staples’ world is less complicated, more concentrated and angry. Some days unnuanced anger is what I want. For fuel. Case in point, compare the two’s thoughts on the President and the country. First, Kendrick, hinting and contemplative:

Homicidal thoughts; Donald Trump's in office We lost Barack and promised to never doubt him again But is America honest, or do we bask in sin?

And Vince:

Tell the President to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the one percent to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the government to suck a dick, because we on now

And, of course, both men appear on “Yeah Right,” every bit as glorious a linguistic whirlwind as could be expected.

Also, I don’t know another rapper more musically experimental, forward-thinking, and adventurous than Vince Staples, including Kendrick. Vince is admirably without ego here (humble!); often letting the music overtake his voice, having faith in listeners to look up his words if they so desire. Much of Big Fish Theory is essentially modernized Chicago house with rapping, while also proudly West Coast. And it bangs, hard.

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5 Melodrama Lorde This one took time. It took reading younger people’s perspectives to appreciate, grow to love. The first listen felt cold, staid. Pure Herione had been an instant rush, a loud announcement of a new, exciting pop personality, fully steeped in enthusiastically appropriated pop tropes of the time and letting Ella Yelich-O'Connor’s novel personality shine atop it all. Melodrama is different. She doesn’t shine, she seethes and writhes. She’s growing up in front of us, with surprising, precocious wisdom and emotional maturity.

There is nothing particularly contemporary about the sound of Melodrama. It’s less jokey, more earnest than Pure Heroine. And ultimately, despite that it does not provide the same sugary pleasure rush of its predecessor, Melodrama is far superior. It doesn’t sound like a time period, it sounds like first love and first heartbreak, because it is the manifestation of those. It sounds timeless, orchestral without an orchestra, because it is those things.

One track is a notable exception to the timelessness, and that makes it almost impossibly special. I will elucidate later in the Favorite Songs section.

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4 DAMN. Kendrick Lamar Has there ever been an artist so deft at balancing/blending pure creative expression with commercialism? Until DAMN., Kendrick had achieved that balance through compartmentalization, by creating knotty, esoteric records, masterpieces, while also featuring on the most crass chart-bait singles imaginable. Another case in point: Kendrick made “For Free?” and appeared on the “Shake it Off” remix the same year. DAMN. inextricably fuses the two compartments without compromise. Almost every second of the album is both at once. Every song has earworm hooks and brain-breaking lyrical density. The record is jammed with potential singles, yet still works as a whole… even when listening to the tracks in reverse order. All hail. DAMN. is unquestionably the best album of the year, but even so, and even though I flew 1500 miles to see him play it live his hometown… it is not my favorite this year. DAMN. somehow isn’t even my favorite rap record, a late-breaking change-of-heart that took me by surprise.

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3 RTJ3 Run the Jewels It’s too long. Let’s get that out of the way. But it’s all essential. For months I said that cutting “Hey Kids” and “Thieves!” would have made a better record. I was wrong. “Hey Kids” is the weakest track, for sure, but Killer Mike’s verse is straight up canonical, despite the relative frivolity of El-P’s bars and the idiocy of Danny Brown’s feature. “Thieves!,” on the other hand, after some close-listening and Genius deep-diving, is one of RTJ3’s best tracks, a massively ambitious dystopian sci-fi narrative that subtly riffs on Hamlet. Part of that ambition is manifested in a structure quite different from the straightforward presentations we’re used to from these guys; listening without the proper context doesn’t provide the furious pleasure typically associated with Run the Jewels.

Killer Mike & El-P were in an unenviable position prior to releasing this album. RTJ1 surprised everyone, even its makers; a no-stakes lark that happened to be much better and more special than that due simply to the sheer volume of talent involved. Expectations for RTJ2 had been high as a result, and they were exceeded as the band chose to treat the project with seriousness and gravity, leveraging their newfound fame and cultural relevance/reverence for conscientious advocacy. The result, RTJ2, is an unimpeachable classic, one I will listen to for the rest of my life. How could they top it, or even match it, without repeating themselves? By ratcheting up the ambition even further, and with it the risk.

Run the Jewels had been many things on their first two records; angry, funny, aggressive, stoned. Introspective was rarely one of those things. On RTJ3, the duo turn their focus inward, exploring feelings, emotions, and motivations as they apply to the external world in a manner they had never done previously. They also continue to make hilarious dick jokes.

The first and last four tracks are the best work they’ve ever done, the bookends especially. I didn’t appreciate just how great “Down” is until seeing the group close a couple live sets with it. The friends with whom I saw those shows and I were confused by that choice, but it caused us, or me at least, to listen to the song differently, to consider it as the type of song to close a set. Turns out, the choice was a great one. This band has become a band about hope manifested as anger and action, and no track conveys that notion better than “Down,” no RTJ album does it better than their third.

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2 Turn Out the Lights Julien Baker Julien Baker creates stadium soundscapes using only a clean electric guitar and/or piano filtered through looping pedals. Many artists try this and fail. Especially in a live setting, it’s a cynical trick often deployed to impress perceived plebes, as I’ve seen Ed Sheerhan and, sadly, Elvis Costello, do in person. But for Julien Baker it is not a trick. It is seamless, unnoticeable; technical mastery not for its own sake, for impressing an audience, but for empowering expressions of deep feeling.

Turn Out the Lights is so much more than its production and arrangements, however. Baker is one of the most talented living writers, singers, and performers. Her percussion-less, entirely solo arrangements exist only to serve the themes of her songs. She’s one woman, onstage or on record, alone with the power of a full orchestra as she looses her interior on the world, her battles with addiction and depression, her fight to square an existence as a Christian and queer person, and her longing search for love and meaning through it all, the constant quest to hurt less.

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1 After the Party The Menzingers If this were a list of “best” rather than “favorite” albums of the year, After the Party would be much lower, possibly not even included. There’s nothing innovative or original happening here, nothing generation-defining, no new ideas or calls to revolution. But there is an endless well of energy, feeling, and hyper-competent rock musicianship. The Menzingers have one of the most able rhythm sections working, serving the songs of two extraordinary writers, who seem incapable of picking up guitars without creating stadium punk hooks as indelibly catchy as they are heavy. This is smart, pure, meat-and-potatoes rock music, the meatiest and starchiest.

Beyond the wholly satisfying drive and force of the band on a primal musical level, these dudes have a real working-class, post-religious Midwestern mentality, despite hailing a little too far east to fully qualify. Many of these songs deal with how to gracefully age and settle while maintaining an uncommon resistance to traditional values. It should come as no surprise how strongly I relate. Earlier I mentioned Japandroids, how their initial records depicted the romance of early-20s debauchery and intense friendship. The true triumph of After the Party is how the The Menzingers manage to write about moving forward, building lives with partners, embracing careers and domesticity while also looking back fondly at bygone wild days without romanticizing them, fully owning that a calmer life is a better one, but allowing that the past was pretty damn fun.

After the Party may not become a timeless classic like other records on this list might, but this year it was the album to which I connected most. It was, and is, mine.

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A Few of My Favorite Songs of 2017

8/7 “Truth Hurts”/“Water Me” Lizzo Lizzo should be a huge star. She’s like André 3000 good. She’s my Beyoncé.

Including these songs here is like an honorary Favorite Album spot. I listened to the two singles back-to-back more times than I did most albums this year. Lizzo has talent in excess of her excess of confidence and swagger.

Music journalists could not shut up about the two times Rihanna rapped on record this year, a little on the Kendrick album and on the only good 45 seconds of the N.E.R.D. album. Both instances earned effusive and universal praise. It bothers me that Lizzo doesn’t get that type of attention. She raps, sings, and writes far better than Rihanna, better than most pop stars working, really, and she often does it all in the same song, the same line.

“Truth Hurts” is a total kiss-off rap banger, insidiously catchy as it deconstructs and rebuilds the chorus of “Black Beatles” into something much better and exponentially more driving than its lugubrious origin. “Water Me” is an aggressive funk jam that Lizzo goes nuts over, showing off the full range of her voice, trying about a hundred different modulations and weird ideas. They all work, and together form some truly transcendent pop.

Check out her older stuff too, including a couple unlikely collaborations with Sadie Dupois from Speedy Ortiz (!) for my punk friends.

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7 “What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” Gang of Youths This isn’t another “Younger Us,” a song that so fully represents a period of my life that the opening chords still sometimes have the power to make me tear up. But it does take me be back to another time, and moves me in a similar way to the Japandroids classic. I haven’t told many people about this, but though I didn’t openly quit the church until a few months after graduating high school, I had struggled to maintain faith for a few years, even while playing in a devoutly evangelical Christian rock band.

“What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” takes me back to a specific morning, a bone-cold, see-your-breath morning, driving to school my sophomore or junior year, listening to the first song from the second Spoken album and weeping at the lyrics’ longing prayer for help and guidance. In hindsight, Spoken made objectively bad music; comically derivative and poorly-structured. Throughout the Gang of Youths album, and especially on “Fire,” similar sentiments are explored and depicted more articulately, with far superior musical acumen. I’ll never believe again, but it’s nice to be made to have those feelings again, to experience unforced sympathy for another’s spiritual struggle.

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6 “Right Now” Haim See the last paragraph of the Haim album entry above.

5 “Even” Julien Baker Julien at her most simple, most distilled, uncharacteristically just 4/4 quarter-note strumming an acoustic guitar, showing us that her layered productions would be nothing without the powerful songs beneath them. And what a song, karmic allusions and memories of conflicts.

It's not that I think I'm good I know that I'm evil I guess I was trying to even it out

Yeesh.

4 “Supercut” Lorde That word, and its power. Until recently no expression or single word existed to describe that wistful wash of isolated, curated romantic memories, warm-tinted flashes of the loveliest tiny moments of a lost relationship, ignoring fights and infidelities, only seeing sunshine. The good parts. And knowing its nature, indulging it with caution, recalling fondly and reliving without desire to return or recreate. “Supercut” could not have existed at any other time, on any other album, by any other artist. Lorde took the most modern of language and forged a work of art of crushing emotional truth; timeless, indelible, perfect.

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3 “HUMBLE.” Kendrick Lamar I saw Kendrick play his first ever solo headlining arena show in his hometown. When it came time for “HUMBLE.”, the music dropped out after the initial “Hyeuh, hyeuh!,” and Kendrick let the crowd rap the entire song acapella while he just gazed around, observing in awe. The moment was magic.

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2 “If We Were Vampires” Jason Isbell I’ll be honest. I don’t know how to write about this one without getting inappropriately personal. It’s been a hard year for me in certain relevant ways, and this incredible song has not helped matters.

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1 “God in Chicago” Craig Finn The adjective “cinematic” doesn’t do justice to “God in Chicago,” which, despite lasting a mere four minutes and forty-five seconds, and not being cinema, is one of the best films of the year, a devastating, seedy road trip romance with a tight plot, loveable flawed characters, and an ambiguous ending. Craig Finn fronts my favorite band of over a decade, and yet this is the best thing he’s ever done. Every detail matters, every word and phrase considered and intentional. It’s Craig’s “Chelsea Hotel No 2,” a quiet meditation towering over an oeuvre of louder, more sensational and populist work. I love this man.

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Appendices

I. Albums I enjoyed and/or listened to often but did not become favorites for whatever reasons Allison Crutchfield, Tourist in this Town Arcade Fire, Everything Now Big Thief, Capacity Broken Social Scene, Hug of Thunder Bully, Losing Charly Bliss, Guppy Cloud Nothings, Life Without Sound The Dirty Nil, Minimum R&B Drake, More Life Fat Joe/Remy Ma, Plata O Plomo Father John Misty, Pure Comedy Feist, Pleasure Craig Finn, We All Want the Same Things Japanese Breakfast, Soft Sounds from Another Planet Jay-Z, 4:44 Jens Lenkman, Life Will See You Now LCD Soundsystem, American Dream Migos, Culture The National, Sleep Well Beast Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, The French Press Ryan Adams, Prisoner Sampha, Process Sylvan Esso, What Now Tigers Jaw, spin The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding Waxahatchee, Out of the Storm Wolf Parade, Cry Cry Cry Worriers, Survival Pop Yaeji, EP2 Yr Poetry, One Night Alive

II. Albums with which I was simply unable to spend enough time So many. Basically any album on any list covered on this site—the ultimate resource for end-of-year music dorkery--that I didn’t mention in my document I would have at least given a cursory try. That’s my normal process. There just wasn’t time.

III. A vain attempt to string together some final thoughts I’m exhausted, too exhausted to force a cute unified narrative onto my experiences with music this year beyond what I already have. As for the future… I’m excited, in a different way than normal. I don’t know what’s coming out next year. I haven’t done the requisite research. I’m into the idea of just letting it happen, letting New Music Fridays reveal themselves week-to-week.

Haha, just kidding. As soon as I post this I’m jumping in headfirst, making a 2018 Most Anticipated List. Sayonara suckers.

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romancevsreality-blog · 7 years ago

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the bachelorette, season thirteen, episode eight: someone put me in charge of television programming

Hometowns, oh, hometowns.

How I wish you were better than you are.

We’re first in Baltimore for Eric’s date. All I know of Baltimore is that it’s a 45 minute train to DC from there, Deray, and John Waters. If you do not know John Waters, please exit this blog immediately and gain some perspective. Who ARE you? Rachel is in her best “Meeting The Parents” chic, a plaid button-down and jeans. I cannot wear jeans. I’m jealous of Rachel. We get to see some poverty porn - I’m from Detroit1, I can call it as I see it - and Eric takes Rachel to a basketball court. Rachel is astonishingly bad at basketball, and I can dribble once or twice before I give up.

Then Eric’s cousin Ralph shows up, and I immediately like Cousin Ralph for some reason. I love a dude who wears glasses and also slouches. Cousin Ralph reveals that this is the first time Eric’s brought a girl home since his prom, and talks about how proud he is of Eric. Eric describes himself as a “cool square”, which seems to be rather true. Cousin Ralph has nothing but nice things to say about his cousin, though, which I love2. Rachel and Eric have a seat and talk about the purposeful choices he had to make to not get into trouble in his life by learning from the mistakes of the people he loved. Errrrric, I get it. He talks about how his mother was strong almost to a fault, strong to where she couldn’t accept help from others, and how he did the same thing.

Uh. Yeah. I get that. I get that a lot. It took me a long time - and oftentimes, a lot of reassurance - to realize that the strongest people are the ones who know when to ask for help. I was so used to floating off into the sea by myself and struggling to stay afloat that I forgot to see if anyone would toss ya girl a life raft.

They head to Eric’s aunt’s house, and Rachel is suddenly nervous af because she’s the first girl he’s ever brought home. They all rise to their feet and go “heeeeeEEEEEEY” as soon as the two of them enter the room, and I’m dead. They’re squished all on what looks to be a chair and an L-shaped couch, and I feel like I’m at home. Auntie Renee is the first to take Rachel aside.

Y’all.

I love Auntie Renee.

Someone give Auntie Renee her own god damn talk show.

Auntie Renee reminds me of my two favorite aunts3 combined. Yas, Auntie Renee.

She immediately asks Rachel how it feels to be the #FirstBlackBachelorette, and Rachel goes deep about how she’s feeling all kinds of pressure from all sides. And this is why I’m happy I’m not the #FirstBlackBachelorette, tbh. It sounds awful other than the money and the clothes and… the love, I guess? But Rachel talks about how she’s being selfish for the first time in her life, and how it’s working out for her. Good for you, Rachel! They discuss whether or not Eric is ready to get married and fart out a lot of kids - Auntie Renee gives an enthusiastic yes - and Rachel’s relieved by that.

We see Eric chatting with his mother, and while their relationship definitely isn’t cuddly wuddly, she talks to her son with genuine advice and seriousness in a way only a mother can. She basically tells him she didn’t want him to grow up to be a fuckboy who relies on his mother or whatever female companion he has because doing that can prevent you from growth or being a better person. This literally is a discussion about emotional labor and the weight black women take on from black men who don’t demand it, but expect it, and will blame those black women for their own personal failures. Karen is pretty great. She’s cold, but great. They tell each other they love each other and it’s pretty nice, honestly. I feel Eric is being serious for once.

Rachel sits down with Eric’s mom and they talk about her feelings for him. She likes that he holds her accountable and vice versa. She likes that they’re playful. Meanwhile, Eric’s talking to his dad about how Rachel is defintely the one, despite the fact that they grew up differently, but… “[Rachel] is everything [Eric] wants out of a female.”

STOP USING THE WORD FEMALE OH MY GOD. FEMALE IS SAVED FOR FORMS ONLY.

They give toasts to Rachel, to love, to family, etc. etc. And then Eric walks Rachel out, they’re making small talk and - oh, Eric loves her.

He was thinking he loves her. He’s not sure, but he was thinking about it. Eric doesn’t QUITE say it, but he does. Kind of!

Ugh, we’re in Miami next. Miami, where douchebags move to thrive after their gestational period at the University of Arizona4, and smells like desperation, cocaine, and flat Dom Perignon. No, Miami. I am not a fan of you, and I am definitely not a fan of Bryan for being from you. He’s literally wearing an ombre polo that looks like one of those Microsoft Word gradients you loved in the third grade until your mom yelled at you for wasting all of the color ink because that shit was and IS expensive as hell. Bryan literally says "Bienvenidos a Miami" and I am brought back to 1997, when even then I knew it was a bad song.

I hate Bryan.

It’s raining, and they’re going into Domino Park to play dominoes. I will be genuinely shocked if there isn’t some product placement for Domino’s Pizza somewhere in here, and if there is not, I would like to speak to the producer who lapsed on this golden opportunity. You couldn’t even put in a Noid?!5 Bryan talks around Rachel in Spanish to old men, a feeling women really love when they don’t understand the language. Rachel describes Bryan as Miami through and through, and that’s not incorrect. They’re both gross and full of plastic surgery.

Those arepas they ate looked delicious, though. But their relationship lacks the substance those arepas probably have. Damn, I’m hungry.

Bryan is very close to his family, his mother in particular, which is worrisome for pretty much everyone. Including me. Bryan’s mother literally leaps into his arms when they first arrive, and seems on the verge of tears the entire time.

Y’all, I think Bryan’s mom might have been the inspiration for Charlie’s mom on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Rachel’s talking to Bryan’s mom, who basically tells her that as long as he’s happy, she’s happy, but if Rachel makes him unhappy, she’ll kill her. Oh, god. This is such a cliche and not even a good one at that. Rachel, RUN. RUN FAR FAR FAR AWAY. Like, dear god, lady. Your son is 37 years old. He probably owns property and has a passport and literally all the other things a 37-year-old man should have and here you are, sobbing because someone might take your son away. I don’t trust this woman as far as I can throw her, and I have weak arms. Rachel lets out that fake “are you kidding or not” laugh when Bryan’s mom threatens her. It’s an accurate response.

Bryan and Rachel leave his family, and you can just tell that the minute that door slammed his mother was throwing all kinds of shade around the house. Bryan does that weird possessive-full-face-grab kiss, and tells her he’s falling in love with her. Eh????? I hate that Bryan is probably going to win this show.

We’re back in Madison, Wisconsin, Peter’s hometown. I’ve never been to Madison or Wisconsin but what I’ve seen on it on two different franchises of this show… I’m not interested. I don’t like cheese or badgers6 but I do like Chris Farley and Bradley Whitford, so. You can still turn me, Wisconsin. Peter introduces Rachel to his Black Friends, because of course, and I’m glad they didn’t just shovel us off to his family. Not that I don’t want to meet his family, but it’s nice to see something else. His friends have good things to say about Rachel, but who doesn’t?

Peter brings a case of PBR over to his family’s house instead of flowers and I immediately love Peter’s family because of it. Peter’s good with kids, of course. Is there anything wrong with Peter? Oh, we know what it is - he’s hesitant and practical. He’s never been engaged before and only wants to do it once - so he’s unsure if in the end of this he’s gonna get down on one knee. I get that.

But dude: READ THE FUCKING ROOM.

You signed for a reality show where the expectation, unfortunately, is that if you make it to the end, you’re going to get down on one knee and ask someone to marry you. It’s part of the whole experience. You’re on the wrong show if you don’t think that’s what is expected of you. And unfortunately, you’ve impressed the girl so much that now you have to come to terms with that. Rachel’s afraid that she’ll leave with a boyfriend instead of a fiance, but GIRL. THERE AIN’T NOTHING WRONG WITH GOING BACK TO DATING AFTER THE SHOW IS OVER. Do the whole shebang for the cameras and then… date each other for a while. See how it goes. Feel no pressure to rush into marriage. But of course, Rachel can’t say that. That’s Fanty Sweet discussion. Peter doesn’t tell her he loves her, but you know what?

Peter’s good with kids. I’ve expressed in my blog several times over what that does for me, and apparently it works fo Rachel. Good girl.

Dean’s from Aspen, which looks gorgeous. Rachel is wearing a duster and managing to pull it off. Maybe Lisa Rinna is really onto something. Dean is wearing red jeans. God, Dean has grown on me. I’m so sad the producers and editors are about to savage his soul. Dean and Rachel ride ATVs and whoever put a camera on the dash clearly wants to give me vertigo. Apparently this hometown date is the first time Dean’s family will all be under the same roof in eight years, and then I thought about it, and… same. I get it, Dean.

And the last time the five of us were in the same room, it was tense and awkward - awkward to the point where I literally don’t think it will ever happen again. I would have hated to have it on TV. Oh my god.

Dean’s doing this so Rachel knows where he’s at his in life and in their relationship. I get why he’s doing this - the conventional idea of a family is appealing - but… maybe I’m just too far removed from my dad to understand why your significant other needs to meet them. I don’t think my boyfriend ever will meet my dad and I’m okay with that. I’m sure he’s okay with that. He’s met the people who are important to me in my life and who I consider my family, and that’s what matters most. Meeting my dad won’t shape my boyfriend’s image of me. I do a poor enough job of that as it is.

Dean’s dad has converted to Sikhism six years prior, and he hasn’t talked to his dad in two years. He makes the point that it’s not the child’s responsibilty to maintain a relationship, and I got up and applauded. I was laying flat in bed, and that’s how much effort I was willing to make for something no one would see. It’s never the child’s responsibility to make sure that a relationship is maintained. It’s 50/50, yes, but if the parent shows no interest, then keep stepping. Blood relation does not mean you have to maintain a relationship. My dad thought that because I share half of his DNA it meant we were automatically going to have a great relationship, the same relationship I have with my mother, with zero input on his end.

Isn’t it amazing how my mom did literally all the work - carried me in her uterus for nine months, LITERALLY EJECTED ME FROM HER BODY, took care of me, slept next to me when I was thirteen, suicidally depressed and terrified, and loved me unconditionally - while my dad has one orgasm and thinks that’s enough to deserve a lifetime of affection? The level of entitlement is unreal. I had to accept that not only does my father not like me as a person - he would never be content with the fact that I became that person in spite of him, not because of him. My dad is horrified by the fact that I’m a Strong Black Woman because that means he gets held accountable and called out for things no other black woman has dared to. I’m not afraid of him like he wants me to be. I think he talks a big game, but he’s not nearly as intimidating or powerful as he used to be. He used to command respect, now he just expects it without doing anything to deserve it7.

No, you do not have to have a relationship with your parents. Your parents are people, just like you. You don’t have to like everyone - not even your mom or your dad. I’m heavy on Team Dean on this one and I don’t like that Rachel seems to think that years of emotional damage can be fixed in one night on a television show. Or that Dean telling his dad he loves him would fix anything. My dad has told me he loved me before. It doesn’t mean he likes me. It doesn’t mean he has my best intentions at heart. Love doesn’t mean shit if it’s not followed by acting accordingly. I don’t think if my dad called me on the phone and said he loved me would have any positive effect. In fact, I’d honestly be like, “Are you dying? Do you have cancer? What do you want?”

The pair tentatively head over to Dean’s house, where the family is gathered seated on the floor. There is a Sikh ceremony with a gong that’s portrayed with a shocking amount of sensitivity considering the source, and Dean’s dad talks beautifully about the love Dean’s mother provided for the family before she passed away. Dean’s tension is palpable because he feels like his family is just pretending to be okay and like they’re a content family when they’re really not. Dean’s dad asks for some private time, and Dean is NOT EXCITED.

Dean’s sister and Rachel sit and have a conversation about how much Dean’s sister admires Dean becuase of his strength in spite of everythnig he’s been through. Meanwhile, Dean’s dad is trying to take credit for how good of a person Dean is, and Dean’s like, “nuh uh, motherfucker.” Dean’s dad basically tries all the tricks to absolve himself from blame - I don’t know what it’s like to be you so how can I understand your experiences, I was there for you monetarily8, etc, etc. Dean doesn’t let that fly, though, and asks his dad for the two of them to come together like adults and have a real conversation about how awful it was for the both of them.

My heart is breaking for him. Dean just wants him to acknowledge that his dad disappeared and wasn’t there for him when he needed him to be, and Dean felt abandoned because of it. His dad basically tells him, “Well, I didn’t know how, so I didn’t do it at all.” At one point, Dean even says "How the hell you find religion and come out more selfish?" I have a few members of my family who I would love to introduce Dean to if he doesn’t get that concept. Some people use religion for good, some(most?) people use religion to get away with bad behaviors.He refuses to acknowledge that he did anything wrong or that he didn’t take the correct approach.

All Dean wants is an apology, a recognition somehow that this man knows what he did was unacceptable.

Dean will never get that, and no camera crew or production team can make that happen. His dad fundamentally sees nothing wrong with his behavior and thus cannot acknowlege it. He even tries to push it back onto Dean. His dad seems to think Dean’s just going to move past it. It’s not something you just “move past.” Dean tells his dad he loves him, and his dad just says “whatever”9.

I wish Dean got the “Let’s Hang With My Black Friends” treatment Peter did.

Dean’s dad sits down with Rachel and he thanks her for the fact that he’s been forced to see how Dean felt. He hopes it’ll work out between the two of them. Dean’s still inside, laying on the ground, crying. Dean apologizes to Rachel and tells him he’s falling in love with her, and she says it back. Even though Rachel took the classic “My Parents Are Happily Married So I Have A Great Relationship With Communication and No Abandonment Issues” path, I still feel for her. I get it.

We’re in Dallas, where Rachel’s getting ready for the rose ceremony. Rachel loves a pewter metallic gown. Can we stop matching her eyeshadow to her gowns, please? Rachel sits down with Chris Harrison in what MUST be his first appearance since the opener, and they just discuss her Hometown dates. It’s literally a regurgiation of the last hour and a half that we just watched.

Bryan gets a rose.

So does Eric.

And Peter gets the final rose, and Dean went through all of that emotional anguish for nothing.

Fuuuuck you, production team. This is exploitation. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

Dean gets the Can I Walk You Out exit, and he and Rachel sit down while you can tell Dean is pissed. He rightfully asks her why she said she was falling in love with him only to send him home, and she says she meant it. There’s a part of me that wonders if she only said it because… you know, crying on the floor. What she’s not saying is that he’s 26, she’s 32, and she’s ready to get married and fart out a few kids and he might not be quite there yet.

Dean, it’s not you, nor your shitty dad. It’s just not good timing. I still got mad love for you, though.

Next Week: Spain! Rachel’s ready to get engaged! Rachel’s introducing all the guys to her family, and her sister’s skeptical. Peter’s tentative. Bryan can’t handle the tension with her family.

Random Assessments from the Desk of Amanda:

I’m so glad I’m not on this franchise because oh my god they would totally try to do what they did with Dean and his dad with me and my dad. NO FUCKING THANK YOU. TELEVISION IS NOT A MEDIUM FOR FORGIVENESS OR EVEN FOR THAT CONVERSATION TO BE HAD.

I apologize for the lateness of this blog, as per usual.

The recepient of the Last Hometown Date is usually the one to go home, right? Does anyone have these numbers?

Can we please start a Change.org petition to replace Chris Harrison with Aunt Verna?

I love whatever makeup artist that insists on matching Rachel’s eyeshadow to her outfit.

I love that Peter naturally has glassy eyes. He always looks stoned.

Since this blog is two weeks behind, I’m not covering MTA or the penultimate episode. See you in a few minutes for the finale! If Bryan wins I will kill myself!

Outside of it in the Mitt Romney suburbs, but STILL. ↩︎

Shout out to all my cousins, who probably aren’t reading this blog! ↩︎

I have enough aunts to have a favorite, so what? ↩︎

Is it still a thing to make fun of schools? Remember that brief period? ↩︎

I only know of Avoid the Noid from Michael Ian Black and Hal Sparks on I Love The 80s, a franchise that should play on television 24 hours day. VH1 should just be I Love The 80s/90s/The New Millenium, a revamped Surreal Life, Candidly Nicole/Barely Famous, and RuPaul’s Drag Race 24/7. VP OF PROGRAMMING, GET @ ME. ↩︎

I had to google “What is Wisconsin Famous For?” for this. ↩︎

Read: My dad has a white man’s entitlement. ↩︎

My dad used to pull the “I put you through college” card too and get mad when I only reached out to him to make sure my tuition was paid, and one time got angry with me because I didn’t tell him what book I was reading on my Kindle that he paid for. He actually said to me, “I paid for it, and you’re not telling me what you’re reading?” BITCH I WAS READING ROOM BY EMMA DONAGHUE, ARE YOU HAPPY? That was the last time I was in the same room as my father, and I responded by taking 3 Vicodin, crying for 3 hours on the flight home, and then throwing up in my driveway. I hope it’s the last time I ever see him. ↩︎

My father said to me, “You are no longer a priority”, and that was the day I realized who exactly he was. Dean realized in that moment exactly who his dad was. ↩︎

#the bachelorette #tv recaps #recap #reality tv #oh my god why can i never do things on time #oh wait i had a dark period and basicaly shut down for two weeks LOLOLOL

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bloojayoolie · 6 years ago

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Being Alone, Andrew Bogut, and Cats: At Manhattan ACC waiting 4 LOVE CO 33393-3 year old, 43 lbs Cute, sweet, petite, gentle & loving Hasn't had the best life but we want to change that for this wonderful little girl **** TO BE KILLED - 1/3/2019 **** I have been returned to the shelter due to landlord issues :( 12/22/18. Aurora is named COCO now! She is good with KIDS and other DOGS. STEALER OF ALL HEARTS <3 A volunteer writes: They say it's darkest before the dawn. Well my days are certainly now brighter. Thanks to a 3 year-old sprite, a bunny-eared girl in a cinnamon-cream coat, with bright green eyes like the Bahamian sea. Aurora is quick to greet me from her kennel, and right away she seems so out of place. Such a bright beam of light, like the sun kept quiet behind a cloud, but one who can't help but make all in her company feel warmer. She hops down to the ground and I notice a bit of a limp as she ambles along with me towards the door. And while the stairs give her delicate paws pause, she quickly bucks up and skips up them, all on her own. A pretty sailboat that will not be sunk. We don't know much about Aurora's past but, as with all new friends who transfix us in an instant, we can let our minds do their wondering. I run my fingers through her coat, snowy white underneath a layer of dust, rub her ears, one clipped like a stem missing its rose, and let my eyes count cuts and scrapes, note paw pads red and swollen, and I make my own assumptions. But whatever the past, it's not important. Not to Aurora anyway. For while I've been putting together puzzles, she's gently lowered her vanilla frame onto my lap and closed her eyes, resting her chin atop my feet. Aurora is a magical girl who can be a bit shy with strangers, so would do best with an experienced family who'll give her plenty of TLC and room to always shine. They say it's darkest before the dawn, well let today be that for Aurora. And with tomorrow's sun, the first day of forever, and a love that will fill up her lifetime. Aurora is waiting in adoptions at Manhattan ACC. MY VIDEOS: COCO@MANHATTAN ACC Hello, my name is Coco My animal id is #33393 I am a desexed female white dog at the Manhattan Animal Care Center The shelter thinks I am about 3 years 5 months old, 44 lbs Came into shelter as a owner surrender Dec. 21, 2018 Reason Stated: LANDLORD won't allow Coco is at risk due to behavior concerns. She currently has a low threshold for arousal and her leash biting has become a safety concern in the care center. She should go to an adult only family prepared to manage this behavior through positive reinforcement based training. There are no medical concerns for her at this time. You may know me from such films as... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUXYbD7RMX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFNOPaHMW0 My medical notes are... Weight: 44.4 lbs Vet Notes Post Surgery Note Medical Assistant L V T Notes 5/07/2018 DVM Intake Exam Estimated age: 3 Microchip noted on Intake? n Microchip Number (If Applicable): n History : stray Subjective: BARH Observed Behavior - gentle timid Evidence of Cruelty seen -n Evidence of Trauma seen -n Objective T = - P = wnl R = wnl BCS = 5/9 EENT: Eyes clear, ears clean, no nasal or ocular discharge noted Oral Exam: teeth in good cond PLN: No enlargements noted H/L: NSR, NMA, CRT < 2, Lungs clear, eupnic ABD: Non painful, no masses palpated U/G: INTACT – externally normal MSI: Ambulatory x 4, skin free of parasites, no masses noted, healthy hair coat CNS: Mentation appropriate - no signs of neurologic abnormalities Rectal: externally normal Assessment: Healthy Prognosis: Excellent Plan: Complete intake and Spay/Neuter SURGERY: Okay for surgery 13/07/2018 S/O - Reported 24 hr history of diarrhea including hematochezia. Pt. BARH in kennel, eating and drinking Parvo SNAP test NEGATIVE A - Diarrhea R/O Early signs of CIRDC vs stress colitis vs dietary indiscretion P - Place on Metronidazole 15 mg/kg PO BID for 5 days 23/12/2018 Reported by behavior to require trazadone for increased shelter anxiety Trazadone 10 mg/kg BID for 14 days 28/12/2018 DVM Intake Exam Estimated age: 3 Microchip noted on Intake? y Microchip Number (If Applicable): 985113001876493 History : stray SO Observed Behavior - hard barking at kennel front. Visual exam performed Evidence of Cruelty seen -n Evidence of Trauma seen -n Visual Exam only BCS = 5/9 EENT: Eyes clear, ears clean, no nasal or ocular discharge noted Oral Exam: DC 1/5 PLN: No enlargements noted H/L: did not auscultate U/G: spayed female. MSI: Ambulatory x 4, skin free of parasites, no masses noted, healthy hair coat CNS: Mentation appropriate - no signs of neurologic abnormalities Rectal: externally normal Assessment: dental disease Prognosis: Excellent Plan: ok for placement SURGERY:spayed Details on my behavior are... Behavior Condition: 3. Yellow Behavior History Behavior Assessment During intake, Coco was loose bodied and wiggly. Coco became a bit tense when scanning but when allowed to sniff the scanner, became loose bodied and coordinator was able to resume the scanning. She allowed to be collared and leashed with no further change in body posture. Date of Intake: 12/22/2018 Spay/Neuter Status: Spayed Basic Information:: Coco is a medium white and tan mixed breed. The owner has had Coco for two months and is being surrendered due to landlord issues. Previously lived with:: 1 adult How is this dog around strangers?: Coco is reportedly friendly with strangers. How is this dog around children?: Coco has interacted with children of various ages and was very friendly and playful. How is this dog around other dogs?: Coco has not lived or interacted with dogs. How is this dog around cats?: Coco has not lived or interacted with cats. Resource guarding:: Coco has no reported resource guarding behaviors. Bite history:: Coco has not bitten a person or another animal. Housetrained:: No Energy level/descriptors:: very high Has this dog ever had any medical issues?: No Medical Notes: The owner has not taken her to the vet. For a New Family to Know: Coco is described as a friendly and excitable dog. Her favorite toys are squeaky and rope toys. The owner has not given Coco a bath, brushed her out, or trimmed her nails. She was kept indoors only. Coco was fed Pedigree wet and dry food. She was not house broken but was not kept on a walking schedule. When left alone, She would bark, chew up walls and doors. The owner states Coco was left alone for days on end. She was not crate trained. She loves to go running and pulls very hard on leash. When walked outside without a leash, she does wander off but comes when called. Date of intake:: 12/21/2018 Spay/Neuter status:: Yes Means of surrender (length of time in previous home):: Owner Surrender (In home for 2 months) Previously lived with:: An adult Behavior toward strangers:: Friendly Behavior toward children:: Friendly and playful Resource guarding:: None reported Bite history:: None reported Housetrained:: No Energy level/descriptors:: Coco is described as friendly and excitable with a very high level of activity. Date of assessment:: 12/24/2018 Look:: 1. Dog's eyes are averted, with tail wagging and ears back. Allows head to be held loosely in Assessor's cupped hands. Sensitivity:: 1. Dog leans into the Assessor, eyes soft or squinty, soft and loose body, open mouth. Tag:: 1. Dog assumes play position and joins the game. Or dog indicates play with huffing, soft 'popping' of the body, etc. Dog might jump on Assessor once play begins. Paw squeeze 1:: 1. Dog gently pulls back his/her paw. Paw squeeze 2:: 1. Dog gently pulls back his/her paw. Flank squeeze 1:: Item not conducted Flank squeeze 2:: Item not conducted Toy:: 1. Minimal interest in toy, dog may smell or lick, then turns away. Summary:: Coco approached the assessor with a soft body. She was social during the assessment and allowed all handling. During tag, she grabbed the leash in her mouth, but easily relinquished it. Summary:: Coco's in-home history around other dogs is unknown at this time. In the care center, she has displayed interest in exuberant, pushy play and has been observed to become vocal. Coco may be most comaptible with other playful dogs who are tolerant of pushy play styles. Summary (1):: 7/6: When introduced off leash to male and female dogs, Coco greets politely and wanders. Summary (2):: 7/7: Coco greets all dogs politely and wanders the pen. Summary (3):: 12/26: Coco appears neutral, turns away when greeting at the gate. Summary (4):: 12/27: Coco is introduced off leash and uses paw slaps, jumps on dogs playfully to solicit. Summary (5):: 12/29: Coco engages is rough play with a similarly playful dog. She will begin to vocalize when play becomes more exuberant. Date of intake:: 12/21/2018 Summary:: Loose body, allowed handling Date of initial:: 12/23/2018 Summary:: Jumping and lunging at kennel door. ENERGY LEVEL:: Coco is described as having a very high level of activity. We recommend long-lasting chews, food puzzles, and hide-and-seek games, in additional to physical exercise, to positively direct her energy and enthusiasm. BEHAVIOR DETERMINATION:: ADULT ONLY HOME Behavior Asilomar: TM - Treatable-Manageable Recommendations:: No children (under 13) Potential challenges: : House soiling,Leash-biting,Kennel presence,Low threshold for arousal Potential challenges comments:: House soiling: Coco is noted to have accidents in the house, and will likely need guidance with house training. We recommend positive reinforcement, reward-based training only. Leash-biting: Coco is quick to grab the leash in his mouth. We recommend walking her with a toy to dissuade her from grabbing the leash. Positive reinforcement, force-free training is advised to teach her to focus on you rather than grabbing the leash. Kennel presence: Coco has at times been reactive in her kennel, jumping up high and snapping at hands that approach the kennel. She has not displayed this behavior outside of her kennel, but we cannot be certain if this behavior will appear in any other contexts. In highly emotionally charged or stressful environments Coco may show behavior similar to what she is currently demonstrating in her kennel. We recommend potential adopters be comfortable managing this behavior and keeping themselves safe in any similar future situations. Low threshold for arousal: Coco has displayed a low threshold for arousal, jumping up and grabbing clothing and people's hands, applying a moderate-hard level of pressure. Consultation with a qualified behaviorist/professional trainer is strongly recommended to aid in addressing this issue to prevent further behavioral concerns that may appear in the future if not treated right away. We recommend only force-free, reward based training when introducing or exposing Coco to new and unfamiliar situations. * TO FOSTER OR ADOPT * HOW TO RESERVE A “TO BE KILLED” DOG ONLINE (only for those who can get to the shelter IN PERSON to complete the adoption process, and only for the dogs on the list NOT marked New Hope Rescue Only). Follow our Step by Step directions below! PLEASE NOTE – YOU MUST USE A PC OR TABLET – PHONE RESERVES WILL NOT WORK! * STEP 1: CLICK ON THIS RESERVE LINK: https://newhope.shelterbuddy.com/Animal/List Step 2: Go to the red menu button on the top right corner, click register and fill in your info. Step 3: Go to your email and verify account \ Step 4: Go back to the website, click the menu button and view available dogs Step 5: Scroll to the animal you are interested and click reserve STEP 6 ( MOST IMPORTANT STEP ): GO TO THE MENU AGAIN AND VIEW YOUR CART. THE ANIMAL SHOULD NOW BE IN YOUR CART! Step 7: Fill in your credit card info and complete transaction HOW TO FOSTER OR ADOPT IF YOU CANNOT GET TO THE SHELTER IN PERSON, OR IF THE DOG IS NEW HOPE RESCUE ONLY! You must live within 3 – 4 hours of NY, NJ, PA, CT, RI, DE, MD, MA, NH, VT, ME or Norther VA. Please PM our page for assistance. You will need to fill out applications with a New Hope Rescue Partner to foster or adopt a dog on the To Be Killed list, including those labelled Rescue Only. Hurry please, time is short, and the Rescues need time to process the applications. Shelter contact information Phone number (212) 788-4000 Email [email protected] Shelter Addresses: Brooklyn Shelter: 2336 Linden Boulevard Brooklyn, NY 11208 Manhattan Shelter: 326 East 110 St. New York, NY 10029 Staten Island Shelter: 3139 Veterans Road West Staten Island, NY 10309

#funny #lol #humor #memes #meme #memehumor #dank memes #funny pics #rolf #lmao #Being Alone #Andrew B

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bloojayoolie · 7 years ago

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Andrew Bogut, Animals, and Cats: Adorable little girl. A bit shy. Friendly and sweet. Does well in doggy playgroup. Bounces along with the volunteer, doing little bunny hops and wagging her tail. 3 yrs old, 37 lbs Waiting on Love Manhattan ACC Chloe i8429 ** Adorable Medium Size Chloe would love to find a new home at Manhattan ACC ** A volunteer writes: Chloe joins us when her family moved to a dwelling not allowing pets. Having lived with two children, and used to playing tug with her family and spending time with human friends, Chloe is, at the moment, understandably shy and a bit confused as to her change in circumstance. She's doing a great job, and we fell in love with this little morsel at our first 'hello'. Although we're told that she needs help with her housetraining skills (but we don't know how often she was walked), she pottied as soon as we were outside and walked nicely on leash. Off leash, after greeting a dog in an adjoining pen, Chloe and I played 'run', and she happily bounced along with me doing little bunny hops as her tail wagged. She's so cute! We're told that she doesn't guard her things, can play a little rough sometimes, enjoys baths and being brushed, and is "always looking to play tug of war". The name Chloe is Greek in origin meaning 'blooming" or "new growth", and is perfectly fitting for this little girl who will bloom with her new family, growing into a cherished and love companion. Meet her and make her name come true; it's such a perfect name. VIDEO: https://youtu.be/EvDXVz5fBVc CHLOE 18429 MANHATTAN ACC Estimated to be 3 yrs old, 37 lbs GRAY / WHITE FEMALE Intake Date: 01-16-2018 My health has been checked. My vaccinations are up to date. My worming is up to date. I have been microchipped. Chloe was brought to MACC because her owner is elderly and moving to a shelter where she can’t take Chloe with her. As per her owner, she has been good with children and does well in dog playgroup SHELTER ASSESSMENT: no children under 13 (Due to how uncomfortable Chloe is currently with touch and novel stimuli) This behavior note was written by the previous owner of this pet. Animal Care Centers of NYC provides this as a guide for optimal pet placement. Please use these notes in conjunction with the information provided by NYCACC. This animal came from: Friend Basic Information: Chloe is a female gray and white medium mixed breed dog that is estimated to be 3 years old. Herr previous owner got her from a friend over 2 years ago and stayed with them until they had to move to a new home that did not allow animals. Previously lived with: 1 Adult, 2 Children (Ages 7,9) How is this dog around strangers? Chloe is friendly around strangers and will jump up to greet them. She does like to bark at people when they approach her. How is this dog around children? Chloe lived with 2 children and was very playful with them. At times she would play somewhat rough pulling on their shirts and jumping around. How is this dog around other dogs? Chloe was not around other dogs in her previous home. How is this dog around cats? Chloe was not around other cats in her previous home. Resource guarding: Chloe is not bothered by people going near her food or toys. Bite history: Chloe has no history of having ever bitten another person or animal. Housetrained: Partially Energy level/descriptors: Medium Energy, Excitable, Affectionate Other Notes: Chloe is not entirely house trained and still has accidents at home a few times a week. She does tend to bark a lot if she hears someone coming to the door. she enjoys baths and being brushed. She has never had her nails trimmed and does not like having her paws touched. Has this dog ever had any medical issues? No For a New Family to Know Chloe is an excitable dog that will follow you around the house an will try to play with you all day. She likes to play with rope and is always looking to play tug-of-war. She eats both wet and dry food. She is partially house trained and will have accidents at home a few times a week. She does pull a lot on the leash and will want to run most of the time during walks Behavior Assessment Date: 1/18/2018 Spay/Neuter status: No Means of surrender (length of time in previous home): Owner Surrender (In home for 2 years) Previously lived with: Adults and children (ages 7 and 9) Behavior toward strangers: Friendly, jumps up to greet them. Will bark when they approach Behavior toward children: Playful and somewhat rough Resource guarding: None reported Bite history: None reported Housetrained: Partially Energy level/descriptors: Chloe is described as excitable and affectionate with a medium level of activity. Date of assessment: 18-Jan-2018 SAFER SCORES: Look: 2. Dog's eyes are averted, body posture is stiff and fearful, tail is low and not moving. Dog allows head to be held loosely in Assessor's cupped hands. Sensitivity: 2. Dog stands still and accepts the touch, eyes are averted, tail is between legs, body stiff, mouth closed, lip long, ears likely back, may lip lick. Tag: 3. Dog repeatedly turns quickly away when touched, or repeatedly spins toward the touch, and repeatedly tries to exit. Dog may be crouching, tail is tucked, mouth closed, body stiff. Paw squeeze 1: 1. Dog does not respond at all for three seconds. Eyes are averted and ears are relaxed or back. Paw squeeze 2: 1. Dog does not respond at all for three seconds. Eyes are averted and ears are relaxed or back. Flank squeeze 1: Item not conducted Flank squeeze 2: Item not conducted Toy: 1. Minimal interest in toy, dog may smell or lick, then turns away. Summary: Chloe very cautiously approached the assessor in the assessment room. She was tense and whale eyed throughout the assessment, displaying very fearful body language, and spun repeatedly towards the assessor's hand during tag. Summary (1): 1/17: When introduced off leash to the male greeter dog, Chloe greets with a tense body and high flagging tail. When the greeter moves away, Chloe bounds after while vocalizing, though is easily interrupted. Summary (2): 1/19: Chloe greets male and female dogs politely, opening up and soliciting brief bouts of running, bouncy play. Summary (3): 1/20: Chloe engages in soft bouncy play with select male and female dogs. She greets all dogs politely. Summary (4): 1/21: Chloe engages in pushy, vocal play and vocalizes and jumps on dogs to solicit play. Date of intake: 16-Jan-2018 Summary Chloe had a loose body and allowed handling. Date of initial: 16-Jan-2018 Summary: Chloe was wary and tense. ENERGY LEVEL: Chloe's previous owner described her as having a medium level of activity. BEHAVIOR DETERMINATION: ADULT ONLY HOME Recommendations: No children (under 13) Recommendations comments: No children: Due to how uncomfortable Chloe is currently with touch and novel stimuli, we feel that an adult-only home would be most beneficial at this time. Potential challenges: House soiling Fearful Potential challenges comments: House soiling: Chloe is noted to have accidents in the house, and will likely need guidance with house training. We recommend positive reinforcement, reward-based training only. Fearful: Chloe gives clear warnings when she is uncomfortable and does seem to choose to avoid or retreat when given the opportunity, but if prevented from moving away there is a potential to escalate to higher-level warning behaviors and possible fear-based aggression. It is important to move slowly with Chloe, to build positive associations (treats/toys/praise), and to allow Chloe to initiate interactions with new people. She should never be forced to greet or to interact if she is not comfortable and soliciting attention. MEDICAL EXAM NOTES 17-Jan-2018 DVM Intake Vet Notes: 4:10 PM Estimated age:reported 3, may be older based on teeth--; Microchip noted on Intake?n Microchip Number (If Applicable): History :o surrender Subjective: Observed Behavior -wary, allows exam; Evidence of Cruelty seen -n; Evidence of Trauma seen -n Objective T =; P =60; R =wnl; BCS 5/9 EENT: Eyes clear, ears clean, no nasal or ocular discharge noted Oral Exam:heavy tartar seen, chipped rigth upper canine. complete exam not performed PLN: No enlargements noted H/L: NSR, NMA, CRT < 2, Lungs clear, eupnic ABD: Non painful, no masses palpated U/G:no SS MSI: Ambulatory x 4, skin free of parasites, no masses noted, healthy hair coat CNS: Mentation appropriate - no signs of neurologic abnormalities Assessment: dental dz Prognosis:good Plan:ohe, dental in future SURGERY: Okay for surgery VET-P 991027 16-Jan-2018 LVT Intake L V T Notes: 1:15 AM BARH scan negative, female intact, very nervous, tense, 3 yrs old reported, mild tartar, clean EEN skin tag on chest near left shoulder, clean coat, BCS 5/9, NOSF We want to get the dogs seen early to better their chances of survival, we will no longer wait for detailed information like owner surrender notes, Safers and volunteer write ups - but please check back frequently as we will add all if this information as we get it. THANX IN ADVANCE! PLEASE MESSAGE US FOR INQUIRIES AND FOR ASSISTANCE. PEOPLE WHO WANT TO FOSTER A DOG, PLEASE PM US SO WE CAN PRE-SCREEN YOU IF YOU QUALIFY AS A FOSTER. ADOPTERS WHO CAN GO TO THE ACC IN PERSON, CAN CONTACT THE ACC DIRECTLY., THOSE WHO NEED HELP WITH TRANSPORT, OR CANNOT GO TO THE ACC IN PERSON, PLEASE PM US FOR ASSISTANCE. KEEP IN MIND THAT NEW HOPE RESCUES WILL ADOPT DOGS ONLY TO NY, NJ, PA, CT, RI, DE, MD, MA, NH, VT, ME, AND NORTHERN VA. BEYOND THESE STATES, YOU MUST GO TO THE SHELTER IN PERSON TO ADOPT. We are not the ACC, and we did not make these rules. We only help these dogs get seen and help people to save them. If you would like to foster or adopt a NYC ACC dog, and can get to the shelter in person to complete the adoption process, you can contact the shelter directly. We have provided the Brooklyn, Staten Island and Manhattan information below. Adoption hours at these facilities is Noon – 8:00 p.m. (6:30 on weekends) If you cannot get to the shelter in person, but you live in NY, NJ, PA, CT, RI, DE, MD, MA, NH, VT, ME or Norther VA, please PM our page for assistance. You will need to fill out applications with a New Hope Rescue Partner to foster or adopt a NYC ACC dog. Shelter contact information: Phone number (212) 788-4000 (automated only) Email [email protected] Addresses: Brooklyn Shelter: 2336 Linden Boulevard Brooklyn, NY 11208 Manhattan Shelter: 326 East 110 St. New York, NY 10029 Staten Island Shelter: 3139 Veterans Road West Staten Island, NY 10309

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