#or MAYBE I’m about to have a full CVS episode and I’m gonna have to clear my schedule to be in the hospital for the next 1-2 business days

[oceanmonsters]

episodic chronic illnesses are so mentally exhausting

[nat-20s]

Part 5 of Wonderful! Au. *boyband voice* banter’s back alright!

Also on AO3

~*~

Jon: Hello everyone, and welcome back to our regular format. If my husband being horribly soppy-

Martin:-hey!-

Jon: -turned you off the how, this should be a refreshing return to formula, though I can’t guarantee there won’t be further horrible soppiness-

Martin, performatively under his breath: -most people thought it was charming-

Jon: -as that tends to happen when one is recording with the love of their life. If last week’s episode is the only one that you like, too bad, I’m back in full form, and should be at least through the rest of the season.

Martin: This show doesn’t have seasons? Due to the whole lack of a narrative thing?

Jon: I was referring to spring.

Martin: Oh, right.

[A beat passes.]

Martin, flatly: Oh. Great goof hon.

Jon, smug: Thank you.

Jon, sincere: Also, before we get properly started, I did want to actually thank everyone who sent well wishes.

M artin: Yes! We got positively inundated with lovely messages, it definitely brightened both of our days. I would even say it was wonderful.

[Jon groans.]

Jon: I am..not proud of the energy we’ve created for this episode so far, and we haven’t even hit the small wonders. Speaking of, do you have a small wonder this week?

Martin: Mine’s bad action movies.

Jon: Really? I had no idea you even liked them, let alone consider them wonderful.

Martin: Okay, so, saying I like them is a bit of a misnomer? It’s more that I like what they can do more than the movies themselves?

Jon: Elaborate?

Martin: It probably comes as a surprise to no one that I’ve tried my hand at a fair amount of mindfulness and mediation techniques. I’ve found poetry and journaling have been helpful for actually processing life events and whatnot, but when it comes to giving your brain a hard wipe and reset, nothing is half as quick and effective as a shitty shoot-em-up. Somethings about 2 hours of cartoonish, pg-13 violence held together with the absolute loosest of plots brings me to a state of mental blankness that would make a monk jealous.

Jon: How have I never witnessed you doing this? When are you sneaking off to go see Micheal Tarantino or who ever films?

M artin: That’s definitely not the right name.

Jon: Martin, dear, I don’t care. And you’re dodging the question.

Martin, fond: I’m not dodging anything. Since apparently we’re getting into it, you haven’t caught me cavorting with a movie involving more explosions than character development lately because I haven’t been. Haven’t needed it, in recent years. Turns out when you’re not crushingly lonely and working a literal nightmare of job, there’s less of a drive to try and escape your own thoughts. Shocker, I know. Still, to anyone out there that feels like their brain is on fire, go try watching a fast and furious. Any of ‘em, it doesn’t matter. Or even better, Chronicles of Riddick. I can’t remember a single goddamn detail of that movie, which makes it perfect for what I’m talking about.

Jon: I have the strong feeling that th is is a “mileage may vary” scenario.

Martin: Well, yeah, that’s this whole podcast. Plus, I imagine that movies like this would cause more stress to someone who cares about, say, world-building or rules consistency.

Jon: I wonder who you could possibly be referring to.

Martin: It’s a purely hypothetical person, love, don’t worry about it. Any small wonders?

Jon: Yes! Particularly relevant to the last week, my small wonder is stripping the sheets from your bed when it’s been too long between washes.

Martin: How very specific. M ost people would just say ‘clean sheets’.

Jon: Well, for one, I’m fairly certain that we’ve already covered clean sheets-

Martin: Shit, have we? Thank god other people keep track of this, otherwise this show would be unbearably repetitive.

Jon: Christ, yes. I typically check the website a good three times while prepping, and every about one out of those three times I find I’m trying to do an topic we did 30 episodes again. Anyway, um, it’s just nice, I think. When you’ve been too busy or sick or away for awhile, tossing the sheets in the wash makes a room instantly seem nicer. Of all the chores out there, this one, at least for me, has the highest reward to effort ratio.

Martin: Hard agree. Especially when the y have that slight funk of having been around to long, getting rid of that is such a relief. Speaking of, we need to change our sheets soon.

Jon: We can do it after the episode. Who goes first this week?

Martin: Considering last week was only me talking, I’m gonna say it’s you.

Jon: Alright, then. My first thing this week is Martin K. Blackwood.

Martin: Absolutely not!

Jon: Oh, you can do a whole episode on me, but I can’t do one little segment on my husband, whom I love very dearly?

Martin: Not while I’m sat here, no!

Jon: So you’re saying you don’t want me to tell the internet that your resolve to be kind even in the face of indescribable cruelty is one of the mot breathtaking things I’ve ever witnessed, or how I find it incredibly endearing when you get so emotional that your voice comes out as a squeak, or even that, on a more base level, you’re very physically attractive, and I could lose entire days thinking about your arms alone?

Martin, audibly blushing, voice the aforementioned squeak: Oh my god, Jon!

Jon, laughing: Then it’s probably for the best that my actual first thing is best friends.

Martin, peaking the audio levels: Oh you absolute bastard! Do you enjoy this? Do you get some sort of perverse sense of entertainment from riling me up?

Jon: Oh, don’t you start. As if you’re not as bad as I am. Maybe even worse.

Martin: That’s not…

Jon: Yes?

Martin: Okay. Maybe it’s slightly true. Really, what is romance for if not flustering your partner with compliments?

Jon, teasing: I certainly can’t think of anything.

Martin: Hush, you.

Jon: No, I don’t think I will.

Martin: Fine. I suppose you can tell our delightful audience about the power of friendship or whatever.

Jon: I would’ve assumed more enthusiasm, considering this segment is still, indirectly, about you.

Martin: In what way?

Jon: In the way that, to the shock of all, you’re my best friend.

Martin, pleased: Oh, is that what I am?

Jon, exasperated: Yes, dearest husband, I wouldn’t have married you otherwise. Though, upon reflection, I knew you were my best friend before I knew I held romantic feelings for you.

Martin: When was that?

Jon, letting out a breath that vibrates his lips: God it was...2016? I think it might’ve literally been the day after you told me about your CV.

Martin: That early? Huh. I wonder if that’s what people were picking up when they said they we were close.

Jon: What people?

Martin: I don’t know specifically, that’s just what Daisy told me.

Jon: Daisy? When the hell-?

Martin: It...was when she was interrogating me? And, because sometimes I have to be a parody of myself, pretty much my only take away from that interrogation was “people think me and Jon are close”.

Jon: Well then. It’s not like they were wrong.

Martin, smug: No, no they weren’t.

Martin, sincere: And you’re my best friend, too.

Jon: I was certainly hoping that you’re in this relationship for more than my good looks and incredible fortune, both in the monetary and luck sense.

Martin: You say that as if you aren’t good looking, which we all know is patently untrue.

Jon: You’re biased. You’d say I was good looking if I were nothing more than some primordial ooze with thoughts about its station.

Martin: I’m being completely objective. If you were primordial ooze with thoughts above its station, you’d be the cutest ooze of them all. That’s just scientific fact.

Jon: I’m starting to think we might be insufferable.

Martin: Starting to? Might be?

Jon:…

[Jon clears his throat]

Jon: What I find wonderful about the concept of best friends is, to me, they’re the closest thing real life has to soulmates. I don’t personally believe that there’s some..grand mystic force that drives people to be tied together in the manner that narrative typical soulmates are, and if there was I don’t think it would necessarily be the kind of emotional, heartfelt bond one would hope for, but I do believe that there’s individuals that get to know one another, and because of that knowledge, they chose to stick with one another. It doesn’t have to be a romantic, which is why I say best friend rather than specifically ‘spouse’, but I would argue that the basis of a strong romance like you and I have, is very much rooted in that connection. A true best friendship is an equal partnership, and there’s a sense of..matched sensibilities and understanding that can be utterly incandescent when it happens.

I also think that having one or more best friends makes living life on a day to day basis both better and just flat easier. The dark times aren’t as dark, and the bright times shine even more. I know from my own personal experience there are events that I..that I don’t know how I would’ve made it through without you. Hell, last week my..recovery period would’ve taken much longer if you hadn’t been there.

It’s an amazing thing to have someone to share things with, both triumphs and burdens. Um, also, according to Dictionary.com, the term best friends in English has been around since the 1200s. Something about that delights me, like, yes, we’ve had this casual way of referring to a Favorite Person for roughly 800 years. That makes it a hold-out from early Middle English. I dunno, it’s one of those things that make me feel overall very charmed by humanity.

Martin, audibly smiling: No, yeah, hard agree.

Jon: What’s that look for?

Martin: Nothing. Just. I love you a whole lot, you know that?

Jon, voice soft: I may have heard you say that once or twice. Per hour.

Martin: Only that often? I really need to be more diligent about that.

[There’s a bet of silence, presumably where they’re making doe eyes at each other.]

Jon: What’s your first thing?

Martin: Oh, um, right. Rats!

Jon: The expression or the animal?

Martin: Jon, have you ever once heard me say “rats” as an expression? Obviously I’m referring to the animal.

Jon: Ah. Should’ve known, considering that what, a third?, of all your segments have been on animals.

Martin: Yeah? And? You got a problem with critters? With creatures? With lil guys?

Jon, laughing: No, no, it’s very sweet. I’m just surprised you never became a vet.

Martin: Oh believe me, I wanted to. But then I learned that it was not, in fact, a job composed entirely of getting paid to play with other people’s pets.

Jon: You had that job, though, didn’t you? I thought I remembered you mentioning a month long stint at a doggie day care.

Martin, sighing dreamily: Best job I ever had. Too bad that place was shut down after it was revealed to be a money laundering front.

Jon: Good lord.

Jon: Martin did you...did you know it was a money laundering front at the time?

Martin:

Martin: Would it make you feel better if I said no?

Jon: Martin!

Martin: I figured it out like a week in, but, like, who cares? The pay was decent and the floor was super easy to clean, which is very much a plus for even a front of a doggie day care.

Jon: That’s...rather a lot. How about instead of getting into that any further, you tell me about rodents.

Martin: I would love to. But first, we have a shoutout!

Jon: Ooo, a shoutout. Does it specify who should read?

Martin: Let me check. It...does...not…..

...

Jon: Martin?

[A beat.]

Martin: Right! Sorry, um. This week’s shoutout is from Tim, to Danny. It says, “Danny! My favorite person who shares genetic material with me! I wanted to say thank you for your podcast obsession from 4 months ago, and specifically for telling me about these marrieds. They’ve gotten me through many a dull hour at the publishing house. Also, with this shoutout, I’ve officially gotten ahead on the Superior [Last Name Redacted] Brother scoreboard, so suck it. Love you lots, and looking forward to your visit next month, Tim.”

Jon: Oh.

Jon: Um. That’s very..sweet? I think? Mostly?

Martin: Yeah, I’d say so. Uh. We have to take a quick break because, uh, someone is..at our front door! Be back with you all in, from your side of things, just a moment.

[daantaat]

twu s2 thoughts even though nobody asked <3 just a brain dump and it’s quite long so I tried to separate my commentary by categories but it’s still a mess unfortunately. Spoilers under the cut!

General

Overall, I enjoyed season 1 more than season 2. I’ve watched season 2 three times now, and I do think it had some good parts that I definitely overlooked during my first watch (probably because I was preoccupied with Charlotte x Shona 😶😅). My initial reaction to this season was like ‘hmm so that happened and I’m not sure what to think’ but then I rewatched it and tbh I think my complaints are mostly to do with the time jump between seasons and the pacing...

Like yeah there’s only so much to touch on in six 25-minute episodes but!!! I finished the season wanting a bit more, because I thought that some of the things that were introduced were either not explained fully/well or they just dropped off completely and didn’t really have an effect other than me asking questions after the season was over, like it felt as though there were missing scenes— more on that later (though maybe they will be addressed in season 3??? If there is one? How soon do shows get renewed? Idk). Though I guess the audience does have to do some interpretation of their own but still... Idk! Idk. And the assumption that certain events/plot points mentioned in a character’s dialogue would be enough for context had me kinda “:///” y’know? Like don’t tell me, show me?? I’d like the full course please!!

Charlotte x Shona (+ Vish I guess)

I think it was really jarring to see their relationship grow from colleague/business partners to friends and then finally to something more in season 1 only to see them awkwardly handle their unresolved feelings in the workplace with nothing to show for their actual relationship besides a mention of “a week-long gay safari” + the brief flashes of a sex scene that was intermingled with Shona and Vish’s cyber sex session, which in itself is 😐😐😐 like yes it shows that Shona still thinks about/fancies Charlotte in some capacity, but if I were to choose between that sex fantasy/flashback or a flashback of Charlotte and Shona together (like Charlotte telling Shona she was falling for her!!!!)... I think I’d choose the latter? I was just disappointed that we didn’t really get to see Charlotte and Shona being all cute and romantic with each other this season :(

ALSO I wished we got to see more of jealous!Shona; I was super hyped to see that since that scene was included in the trailer. It was nice to see her want the best for Charlotte because she’s “great” but the jealousy part of knowing Charlotte is dating someone great got settled pretty quickly and instead we got Shona evaluating her commitment to Vish and considering the idea of having kids after learning she has a womb of a 39-year-old (😐) and it felt.... like a lot!! It was definitely different from season 1 Shona (”I actually don’t want kids” “I genuinely, I genuinely don’t, you know, it’s not a big deal. Just never have” in 1x04) but if this was to show her dealing with comphet or internalized homophobia or just simply running away from her feelings then... idk what to think of it! I really don’t. I think this is where things could have been written differently because using an affair with Charlotte like that (an affair that we didn’t even get to see besides the stolen kisses at the finance event) was so... ugh, I’m suffering here

Anyway, I think their office scenes were definitely highlights of the season, like Indira and Sharon really gave those scenes their all!! Even though it hurts to see Charlotte so heartbroken and Shona running away from her feelings and hurting Charlotte in the process, I live for the angst lol. I will say though, the 180 that happened after their convo outside Charlotte’s office was a bit “🤔” considering Charlotte had talked to her therapist about Shona for 4 months. Like one hungover feeling dump from Shona and they can move on? Hmm communication is connection, huh. And I guess they were just excited that the article got good results? But how cute that they got each other gifts of their picture in the article??? Wtffff I love my “unfunny and obvious” gal pals even though I’m in pain

As for the voice note... omg, so many questions. Like did Charlotte try to reach out to Shona after she abruptly ended their call to check if she sent the voice note to Vish?? Was that gonna be the first time Charlotte heard Shona say “I love you” to her? What was the reason Shona said “I love you” anyway??? Is she, you know 👀 Also do y’all think Vish will listen to the entire voice note since it was clear it was meant for Charlotte? And who knows maybe Vish’s phone died and he can’t turn it back on or check his WhatsApp or whatever. I’m in denial lmao. But also I think he's a pretty good guy, like when he sent biscuits over to the house when Shona wanted some and him saying what’s the point of having fun in New York when she's not there with him... :/ but he was also a bit weird about her putting a nail in a wall or leaving out the egg duck or whatever as a display item in their house though I suppose that’s not a huge problem so like idk man idk!!! I'm just saying season 3 better not have a time jump I need to see what happens and not just in exposition

Shona and Aine

Love them :) I wish they had more scenes together (if that's possible??) but I liked the somewhat change in dynamic seeing Aine a bit worried about Shona (asking her if she’s okay when she mentions she’s thinking of getting a fringe lmao and again asking if she’s okay when they’re unpacking in Vish’s house). And of course Shona is still very protective and worrisome but seeing Aine just miserably lounging around her apartment over the weekend and getting in her bike accident after Shona wasn’t too supportive of her and James’s business idea made me so sad :( like Shona was so shitty about her not typing up everything in the notes for the meeting! And not even reading James's CV... big yikes. Anyway I thought it was odd that we didn’t get a follow up on the voice note Aine left Shona after getting into the bike accident... like she sounded soooo shaky and out of it :((( what luck Shona was sick and didn’t see Aine with a missing tooth before she got it fixed

Anyhow, Aine was right when she said Shona needs to talk to her and talk about her feelings more!! AND this is part of where my complaint about the pacing and the missing scenes comes into play! I think we should have seen Aine and Shona fighting about Shona’s affair and leaving Vish the voice note. The audience knows Aine cares about Vish and I’m not entirely sure where her relationship with Charlotte stands since Charlotte told Freddie about her being in rehab (on the assumption that he knew, as Aine’s ex-boyfriend) but!!! Just cutting to them on the floor waiting for Vish’s flight to land was not as hard hitting as it could have been

Aine x Bradley (+ Richard)

OKAYYY. Cute!!! I definitely overlooked the signs during my first watch here but yeah they were definitely there during my rewatch(es)!! I quite liked seeing Bradley try to get Aine to stop talking negatively about herself and just try to treat herself better in general like exercising and actually eating off of a plate :’) and the comparisons between Bradley and Richard have me like 👀📝 Bradley saying he likes how much Aine talks vs. Richard’s friend Mark saying she talks a lot and how he wasn’t expecting a whole show to which Richard replies he thought that at first too but she “calms down” like brooo... alright. Anyway Bradley going with her to Tom’s funeral/service made sense since he actually met Tom (though Aine did vaguely talk about him and his drinking problem to Richard in 1x05) and the fact that she told Bradley about PACT and her time there but she didn’t tell Richard (to be fair she was thinking about telling him) hmm 👀 Also Bradley saying “Sometimes it would just be nice to be with someone you could just relax with as yourself” yeah I’m on board with them

Loneliness, COVID, Communication is Connection

Initially I thought these themes could have come across a little stronger but after rewatching... hmm. Yes, Shona was lonely in the house by herself; she even asked Anil to stay for dinner, had her own “pile of shit” boyfriend on her bed (which she did clear off), and told Vish that nobody had time for her. Also after the business meeting she asked Aine what she was doing during the weekend (which Aine also spent alone anyway), but I dunno... oh yeah her hen/bachelorette party was a bit lonely since places were starting to go into lockdown and not everybody could attend, but I think the COVID element entered a bit too late into this season? I’m not sure it really added much in terms of the loneliness. Maybe it did add to the uncertainty of things though

“Communication is Connection” was there but I thought it kind of fell flat as well, but maybe that was the intention— to highlight the mess that a lack of communication can cause? Shona apparently writing off Charlotte’s feelings and them not necessarily talking about their relationship/feelings until their convo outside Charlotte’s office... Shona talking to Seema saying she’s never really asked what Vish wanted (regarding kids) and Seema saying that’s a convo for her and Vish to have... Aine not telling Richard she overheard him and Mark talking about her... Richard not consulting Aine about telling Etienne about them and just getting a new tutor for him... hmm. What does it mean. What does it all mean

Other stuff I’m still thinking about/have questions about

Shona mentioning it’s “annoying” how Aine talks like she’s the only person to ever get sad in episode 1 but still telling Aine she’s fine and then in episode 6 Shona saying she only has two emotions or whatever so she doesn’t need to talk to Aine about her feelings as much -____- istg we need to get Shona to talk to a therapist in season 3!!!

I also liked that Shona, Aine, and Eileen talked more. I’m still a little disappointed that the fact Eileen leaving Shona for three months when she was a baby was not mentioned at all. Yeah it was a secret but when Eileen said “well, you should never lie. You’ll always get caught out.” I— HELLO? If anything, that secret seeing daylight could have had something to do with Shona's sadness + loneliness this season. Also could you imagine that becoming a fear of Shona’s, like what if she doesn’t want kids because she’s afraid of doing the same thing to hers if she has any??

Jim asking Charlotte if she’s straight and Shona immediately going “what does that have to do with anything” or something like that and apologizing to Charlotte after Jim left— I’m not sure how I should have read that??? Did Shona mention to Jim that Charlotte is a lesbian?? When he started to ask, he was still looking at Shona (yeah I’m reading too much into this I know)

Marcia figuring out that Aine and Richard were seeing each other (after he touched her hand on his way out to get a taxi)— what was the purpose? Other than Marcia obviously feeling bad for Etienne, whom I assume she sees as a son of her own (based on the Mom Instinct™ snooping when she was doing housekeeping + her convo with Aine when he came back from France). She didn’t talk to either Aine or Richard about it, just told Aine to have a good time when they were leaving the house to go to their “separate” events. I guess it wasn't her place to say anything, but hm. Speaking of Etienne, it was obvious he had a schoolboy crush on Aine (or at least he was vying for her attention) in season 1 and it’s really too bad we didn’t get to see his reaction to suddenly getting a new tutor or dealing with Aine and Richard’s relationship other than him looking at them hugging while the new tutor was teaching him. He deserved some more screen time this season :(

Hmm so that was all very incoherent but if you made it this far thank youuu <3 here are some last silly comments:

Absolutely loved Julie!! I want to know what she knows about Charlotte and Shona 👀 girl give me the scoop on the last 4 months at the office

Super sad we didn’t get to see Charlotte’s cat (I’m always gonna be vocal about this 🗣🗣🗣) or know who her new girlfriend was but at the very least we were introduced to one of the most important side characters of all: Charlotte’s stompy boots <33333 she really wore those around the office with a blazer/blouse/leather skirt! We love that lesbian attire

[herewegobacktomoon]

Freaking out

Hi everyone, this is the first time I write a fanfic. I did because after watching 4x03 episode, I had some thoughts about how I would have liked to see Maya and Carina dealing with the freaking out. So, in order not to get crazy, I decided to note down my ideas, hoping that you may like it or interact with me, about what you were expecting or about your ideas about the episode!! I hope you all enjoy the reading. 

“So Carina moved in, this morning she made me French toast and I... I know “how nice”, “what a lovely gesture”: my super, super hot Italian girlfriend got up earlier to make this gourmet breakfast and I sat there nearly breaking out in hives because it was so... it was so nice. I mean, too nice? I kept looking around my apartment at her things on my bookshelves and her vagina art, and her bras drying in my bathroom, and I was like “Is this my life now?” I mean... I'm allergic to monogamy, and I moved in with my girlfriend during a pandemic, and there's something wrong with me because she's perfect and I want to be with her.I want to live with her, but it's like my body has a security system that goes off at all the wrong times. Or maybe it's just that Carina is light and lovely and I'm not. I'm dark and messy as hell.”

Maya was heading back home from work, with all these words floating in her head.

It had been an overwhelming day, with all the Sullivan's related stuff, the report, Dixon who did nothing but throwing up roadblocks, Warren who had lost his PRT, and last but not least the call, which had been unpredictably scary, above all for Miller.

The only good thing was that, with Andy, they had started taking one step towards each other, trying to acknowledge some of the mistakes they had made and led them to have their friendship hanging by a thread.

Although apparently she didn't have time to think, all day she couldn't help but thinking about Carina and what had happened that morning.

She thought about her words and couldn't figure out how she was feeling; guilty for what she had said to Andy, angry at herself for not having been able to talk to Carina, or just messy, but it was probably all of them.

She took a deep breath, trying to control her emotions, trying to establish some kind of order between all that chaos she had in her head, and stepped inside.

A warm and soft voice immediately welcomed her “Hi bella, how was your day?”.  

Before Maya could answer, Carina had already placed a gentle kiss on her lips, smiling widely but with her eyes not as bright as usual.

Maya felt her heart thudding, a feeling only Carina was able to provoke: “Quite long and tiring, but at least, it all went good. What about you?” she said, walking towards the couch, both to relax a bit and to avoid eye-contact with her girlfriend.

Carina hesitated a little, and then answered, with her voice struggling to sound confident “My day was quite tiring too, I've picked up all my stuff from the boxes and cleaned the house. Now you can sleep well, no more mess around!” she added, smiling, trying to push away what was bothering her.

Maya hinted at a smile, a faded but sincere one, and she went towards the bathroom to take a shower, as if it would have washed away all her insecurities.

Meanwhile, Carina started making dinner, to switch her mind off, but the attempt turned out to be quite an awful solution.

Her head brought her back to that look on Maya's face, to those beautiful warm eyes who seemed to be actual ice that morning. She could tell Maya was absent-minded, but she could only speculate about it as she didn't say a word.

She hadn't said anything to her girlfriend, but as a 100% Italian woman, she had been thinking about it all day, trying to understand what could have been the reason for her reaction, making assumptions which were not helping at all. Her mind started wandering in the darkest places possible and she couldn't stop it from doing so. She had strongly tried to keep herself busy, but it hadn't been that useful.

She wanted to talk to Maya about it, but she was also afraid that a wrong word may have caused a new storm that she had no strength to handle alone right now.

When Maya came back to the kitchen, the situation wasn't that different: she had washed away the sweat, the smog, all the dirt her skin had absorbed in a full-day of work, but her own words, each doubt, every single fear kept stuck to her.

“The dinner's ready, I made you my specialty: panzanella di farro and then, there's also a surprise baking in the oven!” Carina said, getting closer to the table and to Maya, leaning to kiss her forehead.

“I don't deserve you. You're perfect.” the blonde replied, caressing her girlfriend's face, staring at her for a whole minute, as she was a creature who came from another world.

If she could see a light, a stable one, in that storm that had engulfed her that morning, it was her love for Carina: she had no doubt about it, about what she felt for her. It was just that she had to find a way to live that feeling free from anxious thoughts and fear.

They both sat at the table, having dinner quite silently, exchanging just a few words, the necessary ones to keep a conversation going without actually having it.

Half an hour later, between some sips of white wine and some bites of an extremely well-cooked meal, Carina got up to take a sweet-smelling pie. As Maya saw it, she rolled her eyes and claimed:

“Oh God, I'm gonna get sooo fat. Baby, my sweet tooth will undoubtedly thank you later: you know me too well.”

Without even thinking about it, with a soft voice which followed a deep sigh, Carina let these words come out of her mouth: “I wish I would...”

Maya froze: her whole body stopped responding after hearing these words. She knew Carina's tone was warm, with no angst in it, but it was as if her words had switched on something inside her.

With insecurity biting her tongue, Maya asked “Hey babe, is there something wrong?”

Carina's expression suddenly changed, making Maya feeling concerned, as she didn't see it coming at all.

The Italian's eyes got wider, but not with joy: they were teary, struggling to look straightforward as she lowered her head, not to show that she was feeling like the world was crumbling down.

Maya took a step closer, cupping her girlfriend's face in her hands and kissing her softly:“I'm here for you. Tell me, what's going on?”.

“I don't know... I, I don't know how to explain it...” Carina said with her broken voice, in the attempt of keeping her tears in.

Maya took her by the hand and led her to the couch, where they sat, with Carina resting her back on Maya's chest, wrapped in her arms as she tried to calm down.

When they were all cuddled up, probably feeling safer, Carina tried to continue: “ This morning, while we were having breakfast, there was this look you made that...that worried me. I have been thinking about it all day...”

Maya immediately realized: she wasn't the only one who had had to face a storm that day.

Although it was hard for her, to explain her feelings, she decided to try, to make an effort to show Carina it wasn't about her.

“I know...” she said breathing heavily “I freaked out...”

Unconsciously, she tightened her grip on Carina, as if she was afraid to lose her, to make another false move.

The Italian noticed it, but she didn't move, she felt safe. She just took Maya's hand, stroking it softly, to let her girlfriend know she was there, listening to her.

“Why?” she asked warmly.

“Because I don't know how love works... And the table time, was it breakfast or lunch or dinner, never felt like something good to me since I was a child. It was a time for rewards or punishments: there were no in-between, no emotions to be showed.”

Carina's heart started beating faster, as if it was following the pace of Maya's.

“Oh Maya, I'm sorry... I didn't think of it as a possible trigger for you, I didn't want to upset you.”

She turned towards her, for another kiss, before Maya could add “Carina, it's not your fault. Actually you didn't upset me at all: I think that French toast made me orgasm”.

Carina giggled childishly, also quite proudly, and then asked “Why didn't you tell me that? You know that I'm here for you, and I hope you can trust me enough to open up with me. It's hard, I'm aware of it, but we can do it together, one step at the time.”

Maya nodded and squeezed her hand, trying to find the right words to not mess everything up again.

She didn't want to hurt her girlfriend, but she feared not being capable of it: she knew each word as a huge power that can either save you or destroy you.

She hesitated and Carina got up from her chest, now sitting right in front of her, their hands still intertwined: “You can talk, directly, I can handle this. What matters now is that your feelings find their way out, so that you can feel lighter and free.”

Maya was looking at her admiringly: with Carina, everything was different. Everything had always been different, since their very fist meeting, at the bar. It was as if her eyes could read Maya's soul, in such a pure way she didn't think it was possible.

Then, she let out a deep sigh and said: “The more I get to spend time with you, the more I think I'm the luckiest person on this world.” a very much needed kiss interrupted her speech again, but it was worth it. It gave her enough confidence to keep talking.

“Well, you know... I feel like it's kinda weird having this conversation with my girlfriend, but I need to, so...as you probably know, in my CV, just right after gold medalist champion and Firefighter captain, you can find “queen of monogamy”, I mean you could have found it if you had read it before I had met you. Ok this is quite awkward...” Maya was twisting her tongue, but Carina smiled at her, with a smirk which somehow reassured her. “Keep going, this story caught all my attention, Miss Maya – monogamy is for the weak- Bishop”.

Maya couldn't help but smile “I keep wondering why Vic can't just keep her mouth shut sometimes, my position is quite embarrassing at this point. Anyway...all this just to say that this was my life before you: occasional hook-ups which were nothing but an enjoyable night of self-care. But I've never known what loving someone feels like...I mean, most of my relationships, with my father, my mother or even my brother had always let me down, because of them or because of me, I don't know... but what happened is that I decided to throw away my feelings, shutting them up so that I didn't have to face disappointments anymore...”

Carina stared at her, listening carefully to every single word the blonde was saying and never loosening her grip on Maya's hand, delicately rubbing her thumb over it, to remind her that she had no intention to leave.

Maya's heart fastened her pace, causing her little trouble breathing, but she continued: “With you, it's different. Everything is new, my life has completely changed. To make things clear, it's not my “monogamy queendom” that I miss, because I love you so freaking much you have no idea. What I'm lacking of is a start point, a path to follow. I do truly love you like I never loved anyone else, but it feels like my body has a security system that doesn't allow me to do what I'd like to.

I fear that I could hurt you and that freezes me, every time...”

As Maya's eyes were starting to become sadder, Carina noticed it and took her into her arms.

Between a light kiss on the shoulder and a deeper one on the neck, Carina says “I know, it takes time to learn new stuff, above all where it's a totally new experience. But I want you to remember this: if I'm here, if I stayed, it's because I love you. It's true, people can hurt each other, but that doesn't mean they can't also heal each other. You made a mistake, it's true, but I forgave you and every day that goes by, your presence and your love are able to mend my scars.

I love you Maya and if you don't know the path to cross, it's not a big deal: we'll build one of our own and we'll find out how love works.”

Maya knew, in that precise moment, that asking Carina to move in with her, was the best choice she could have ever made: her words had made the storm in Maya calm down, leaving a little fire lit up, one of those fires which only ignite happiness.

Out of the blue, without saying a word she stood up, Carina looking at her with no clue of what was happening, and she grabbed her by the hand, pulling her in for a hug. Carina couldn't help but smile, kissing her girlfriend lips, lowering to her neck, and then finding her way to her collarbone.

With a smirk and her eyes full of both happiness and love, Maya said “I may not know what path to follow, but if we have to build our own one, I'm sure our first step is towards the bedroom.”

Carina nodded with a smirk “No doubts, Captain. I'll follow your lead”.

[thatbloodymuggle]

oh, darling (1)

summary: JJ and Y/N’s fooling around comes with consequences. one of those consequences just so happens to have a heartbeat.

pairing: JJ x Reader

word count: 2.3k

warnings: implied smut, pregnancy, cursing?

masterlist

-

If there was one thing you prided yourself on, it was your ridiculously strong immune system. The last time you had a fever, the chills, or a sore throat was in the 3rd grade when your entire class had strep throat. ‘Being sick’ just wasn’t a part of your vocabulary. So why the hell were you leaned over the toilet puking your brains out for the third time in four days in the middle of summer?

You groaned and wiped your mouth with the back of your hand. You lazily reached up and flushed the toilet, too weak to stand. You leaned her head back against the bathroom wall and stretched your bare legs along the cool marble underneath. A guttural groan escaped your lips.

You mulled over a multitude of possible causes for your sudden illness in your head, but were coming up short. You initially thought you’d gotten food poisoning from the outdated milk in John B’s fridge, but it would have been out of your system by now. Then, you thought you’d caught the stomach bug, but your temperature was a healthy 97.3, your throat was clear, and the sick feeling would only last an hour or so each time.

Maybe this is Karma catching up to me, you thought to yourself, for eight healthy years.

Just as you had exhausted nearly all possible options, you looked down at her stomach, which was no longer churning. Your eyes widened as you stared at your bellybutton. There was one option you hadn’t considered. Were you—? No, you couldn’t be. You’d never failed to use protection. Well, as far you could remember.

And it was quite unfortunate that there was one night you couldn’t remember with a messy, blond-haired boy.

Your face paled. The night you’d pushed to the back of your mind came flooding back. It was a drowning feeling—like getting pulled under the tide. It was all a blur, but you definitely woke up the following morning without your clothes, wrapped in JJ’s arms.

Before pure and total panic began to set in, you reminded yourself that you two had never failed to use protection in any of your previous hook-ups. Not only had you likely used a condom, but even if you hadn’t, the chances of that one night resulting in a pregnancy were so low. There were couples out there who tried for months, years even, with no success. You regained her composure, and hauled yourself up from the cool floor.

You brushed her teeth twice to rid yourself of the acid-breath. You washed your hands, nearly scrubbing them raw.

You gripped the counter, and stared at your reflection in the mirror. Blood-shot eyes stared right back.

“No fucking way.”

-

About a week had passed since your incident in the bathroom. Much to your pleasure, you hadn’t had another episode of sickness in three days. Whatever virus you’d gotten must have passed through your system.

With a newfound bounce in your step, you hopped aboard the HMS Pogue for a day out on the water with your closest friends.

“There she is,” John B grinned at you.

“I present to thee, Lady Y/L/N of The Cut,” JJ spoke with an exaggerated British accent, beer in hand.

You played along with a deep curtsy and a light giggle. You fell into the empty space between Kie and JJ with a sigh of relief. You’d been longing for a boat day for a while now that you’d gotten over your internal crisis.

John B pulled the boat out of the marina, and zoomed into the open water ahead. The salty breeze combing through your hair felt like heaven. You threw her head back in relaxation and smiled.

“Haven’t seen you around in a while,” JJ leaned closer to you.

You averted her eyes to meet his baby blues. The ones you knew oh-so-well. The ones you always seemed to get lost in.

You shrugged, “I was sick. I’m better now though, so don’t you worry your pretty little head,” you teased him, ruffling his already messed-up hair.

Pope let out a booming laugh, “You got sick?! Well it’s about fucking time!”

“Yeah, it’s good to know you’re actually human and not a robot,” Kie added.

You rolled her eyes at her friends’ teasing, and gave them the finger.

The boat continued out into the water for a little longer before John B cut the engine. Kie pulled out her cooler full of beer and sandwiches. She passed the pre-packaged lunches around, and the teenagers all accepted them gratefully.

You were starving from skipping breakfast, so you didn’t hesitate to take a massive bite of the loaded sandwich.

But your taste buds weren’t absorbed with the usually delicious sensation. The taste was nauseating, and you felt her body trying to reject it.

“What’s in this?” you mumbled through a mouthful of food.

Kie frowned at her friend’s paling face, but began listing off the contents of the sandwich, “The usual, I think. Just some turkey, lettuce, tomatoes…”

You didn’t get a chance to hear the rest of the ingredients as your body lurched forward. You hauled herself over the edge of the boat just in time to empty your stomach.

“Woah!”

“Shit, Y/N. Are you okay?”

You felt a hand gather her hair and hold it out of the way, while another rubbed your back soothingly. You groaned as you felt the nausea subside. You wiped her mouth and situated yourself in the boat. Kie dug out a packet of gum, which you didn’t hesitate to unwrap.

“What happened?” Pope asked.

“I thought you said you were feeling better?” John B added.

You sighed and popped the piece of gum into your mouth. “I dunno. Guess I got sea sick or something,” you tried to dismiss them.

JJ furrowed his brows, “Y/N, you never get sea sick. You’re on the water, like, 24/7—“

“Well clearly not. Can you just drop it?” you snapped at him with a glare. You watched as his frown deepened and his eyes hardened.

“Fine.” JJ removed his arm from around you and moved to the driver’s seat of the boat.

You immediately regretted snapping at him, knowing JJ was very reactive. Pope and John B reluctantly their diverted attention away from you, and returned to their previous conversation.

“Y/N,” Kie whispered next to you. You turned to make eye contact with your friend. Kie gave you a knowing look, which made you tense.

Annoyance clouded your eyes. You shot up out of your seat and made your way to the front of the boat, isolating yourself from the rest of the group. You could feel their watchful stares, but ignored them. Instead, you laid yourself down to tan underneath the beating sun. Your mood had been killed. The worry you’d had a few days earlier was back, but 10 times stronger. You felt tears of frustration prickling at your eyes, so you covered her face with your sunglasses. You stayed like this for the rest of the trip: in isolation, doing everything she could to distract yourself (but failing).

You sighed in relief as John B finally re-docked not a minute too soon. You were the first to hop off the small boat.

“Well, this has been fun. Better get going!” you plastered on an overly fake smile and waved at your flustered friends. You caught JJ’s brooding eyes. He was clearly still pissed. You set off down the dock at a rapid pace, pretending not to hear John B’s protests.

Just when you thought you were in the clear, someone grabbed your arm. Your head shot to the side to see Kiara. You forced another false smile, “What’s up Kie?”

“Just giving you a ride home.”

You opened her mouth to protest, but Kie shot you a look. Te two of you continued walking side by side in discomfort. The second you’d piled into her car and shut the doors, the silence was severed.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Kie stared at you with hard eyes. You forced down the anxiety.

“Nope!” 

Peppy exterior to balance the crumbling interior.

Your smile may have fooled the boys, but the broken look in your eyes was painfully evident to Kie.

“Y/N, you’ve been throwing up for days,” she started but was cut off.

“Yep. Stomach bug.”

Short replies were better. Made it easier to hide trembling voice.

Kie placed her hand on your forehead, “You don’t have a fever. And you’re always fine immediately after.”

“Some weird strain, huh?” you laughed. Your smile grew bigger. Your eyes cracked further.

Kie’s heart ached for you. The more you tried to convince her, the more evident it became.

“Y/N…” she barely whispered.

The sadness in your eyes was peeking through. Smile happier. Fool her. Fool them all.

The smile grew bigger in the same instant it was completely wiped. Anger. You was fucking mad.

“I’m fucking fine! Everything’s fine!” you snapped.

The barrier broke. No more pretending. Face it. Be brave.

But you weren’t brave.

You swung the car door open. You jumped out and ran. Just ran. Like a coward. Because that’s what you were—a coward.

But you didn’t make it far as a pair of arms wrapped around you.

The barrier crumbled. Tears spilled.

You sobbed into Kie’s shoulder. You held onto her for dear life, afraid that if you let go she might lose her. Lose yourself. Kie tried to maintain her composure, but the sobs wracking her body were too much. She pulled you closer and blinked back her own tears.

“Shh, shh,” she stroked your hair. “It’s gonna be okay. I’m here.”

You weren’t sure how long you stood in the empty parking lot clinging on to each other. Eventually, your cries subsided. Kie slowly lead you back to the car, not letting go until you were in the passenger seat. She hurried to the driver’s seat and revved the engine. Kie pulled her car out of the lot. The two of you sat in relative silence, with the exception of your occasional sniffle.

“Where are we going?” your voice scratched your throat.

“CVS.”

You nodded and leaned your head against the car window in acceptance. You stared at the road ahead. You didn’t move as Kie pulled into another parking lot. You didn’t move when she left the car. And you didn’t move when she returned five minutes later with a plastic bag containing a rectangular box.

“Is your mom home?”

You shook her head no.

Kie took the car out of park, and set towards your home. You sat in silence again, but this time not even your sniffles filled it. Kie pulled into the gravel driveway outside of the small wooden house you reluctantly called ‘home’. The two of you continued in silence as you got out of the car and went inside the empty house.

You sat in the hallway outside of the bathroom. You were yet to make eye contact with Kie since her breakdown. You focused on Kie’s hands as she pulled the box out of the bag and ripped off the packaging. A large paper of instructions came tumbling out. You watched as your friend read them in silence for a moment, examining the two small sticks that came along with it.

“All you have to do is pee on this side,” she flipped the sticks over, “of both of these. Then you can set them down right-side up on the counter, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Kie offered you an encouraging smile, but you didn’t look up enough to see it. Your hands shook as you gingerly took the items from yuor friend, as if they might break.

Your hands continued to shake as you did what you were supposed to in the bathroom. They shook harder as you placed the sticks right-side up on the counter. You stared absently at the little blank circle on the front of each. You exited the bathroom and sat across from Kie again.

“Done?”

You nodded.

Silence.

“Whose would it be?” Kie asked cautiously, with the softest voice she could manage.

Your eyes moved to meet hers for the first time in nearly twenty minutes. You opened your mouth to speak, but your throat tightened. You forced yourself to clear it and muster up the courage.

“JJ”

Kie merely nodded, masking her shock.

You and JJ had been extremely careful about keeping your occasional hookups a secret. You had a consensus that it was better left separate from the group since it wasn’t anything serious. But the guilt of hiding it from your best friend suddenly hit you.

“30 seconds,” Kie whispered.

You took a deep breath and shut your eyes, but nothing would prepare you for what you were about to see. You slowly pulled yourself up from the ground and tentatively pushed the door of the bathroom open. The two sticks glared at you.

You looked at her reflection in the mirror. Puffy eyes, red nose, matted hair. Color drained from your face. You already knew. Why even bother looking? You already knew.

+     +

You already knew.

A waste of $24.99.

You stared unbothered for a split second.

Then you crumbled.

Down you went onto the dirty floor. Down went your future. Down went your hopes of being different than your mother. 

Down.

A scream of agony ripped through your throat with no tears left to cry. Your body had exhausted them all.

Kie rushed in and held you impossibly close, already knowing the result. She rocked you back and forth. Your voice was small,

“Don’t let go”

“Never.”

-

first JJ x reader imagine. let me know what you think! part 2 coming soon :)

[numinousnic]

This episode would have been. SO helpful to have when I was plotting fanfiction, but hey! I have this now, and I am s u f f e r i n g

[Spoilers for MAG 162 under the cut]

Yikes, condescending much, Gertrude?? (Like, she tempers it with banter, but still.... it’s really evident the kind of regard she had for Gerry, which is to say: probably not a lot.)

Gerry, you deserve better! In general! And people in your life who don’t see you as a means to an end!

“And taxes?” I SHRIEKED

Institute has a back courtyard! Good to know!

GOD I STILL MISS TIM AND SASHA

So Sasha knew Gertrude?? (Or at least knew of her?) And thought that she, not Jon, would be getting the Archivist position? OOF

(I mean, given that Elias is actually a 200-year-old British aristocrat, I don’t doubt there might have been casual sexism at play? It just wasn’t the sole motivator here given Jonah/Elias’ whole................. plan.)

Sasha’s been in academia for about a decade! Also good to know!

TIMSASHA REAL!!! TIMSASHA REAL!!!!!!

(Or, at least, it was in the past. And Tim maybe still has feelings for her? But this actually fits in nicely with my headcanon about Tim and Sasha having a relationship pre-Archives, but ultimately figuring out that they worked better as friends.)

Wait, just how much does Sasha know about Danny? Is it the full story, or did Tim just tell her Danny was dead and leave it at that? I have questions

But they both know that Martin’s CV is fake as fuck and I’m dying

Every single throwaway line about identity and memory re: Sasha had me like :’(

AND THEN THE TRANSITION TO JON’S STATEMENT HAD ME LIKE D: D: D:

MARTIN’S PACKED AND READY TO GO!! THEY’RE HITTING THE ROAD AND THEY’RE GONNA DO THEIR BEST OH BOY

[theangry-ace]

Wotaku ni koi wa muzukashii

just watch it out of curiosity but I’m so glad to hear Sawashiro vs. Sugita. but I had to drop it. it’s a good theme of the life of adult otaku but.... there’s something about it that can’t really click with me. maybe just one more episode?

Kakuriyo no yadomeshi

I watched it and it immediately gives the same aura as Natsume Yuujinchou. Aoi is a pleasant character with a will that can’t be put down. but the main guy ticks me off with his arrogance. I really don’t know how to like a character that you got to have ~effort~ and ~patience~ to get to his good side. I’m dropping this... though I really really want to know how Aoi would pull through.

Akkun to kanojo

too short, but cute. Nontan is really like an angel♥

Chii’s sweet adventure

wow I never thought they’d give this one another season. not to mention it’s in 3D! I was surprised to see Sakamoto Maaya as the mom though. actually, they changed the entire CV except for Chii this time around. I guess another company bought the rights to the anime?

Full metal panic! Invisible victory

reminded me the good times of the original. Satsuki Yukino♥

Nil admirari no tenbin

I’d probably never gonna get to play the game so the anime will do. so far so good.

Isekai izakaya

pretty sure this is an advertisement in anime form. definitely made me hungry. and definitely made me interested of the drinking culture. they got a whole different world of food.

[gethealthy18-blog]

319: Everything You Need to Know About the Keto Diet With Dr. Dominic D’Agostino

New Post has been published on https://healingawerness.com/news/319-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-keto-diet-with-dr-dominic-dagostino/

319: Everything You Need to Know About the Keto Diet With Dr. Dominic D’Agostino

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

This episode is brought to you by Beekeepers Naturals – superfood products from the hive that help support your family’s health. Right now, their Propolis has been a lifesaver with all of the sniffles and coughs going around where we live. Propolis is a resinous mixture that bees make in the hive and contains over 300 compounds including polyphenols and compounds that are antibacterial and a compound called pinocembrin that acts as an antifungal. Some studies have shown that propolis can speed wound healing. It’s natural antibacterial and antifungal properties also make it great for fighting the sniffles. At first sign of any sniffles, sore throat or coughing, I spray propolis in the throat and it almost always helps us bounce back quickly. I also use propolis before flying to avoid picking up anything on the plane. You can save 15% on propolis and all beekeepers naturals products at beekeepersnaturals.com/wellnessmama with the code wellnessmama

This podcast is brought to you by Four Sigmatic – my source for superfood mushrooms. Four Sigmatic makes delicious mushroom infused coffees, teas and elixirs that I use daily. From their lower caffeine coffee and coffee packets infused with lions mane that I drink in the morning, to chaga and cordyceps for focus while I work and Reishi to wind down at night… these products are a regular part of my routine. Here’s a tip… I’ve found that for deep sleep, a packet of reishi with a splash of macadamia milk and a tiny sprinkle of salt and a drop of stevia helps me get more deep sleep and I’ve seen this consistently and measurably in my sleep tracking. As a listener of this podcast, you can save 15% by going to foursigmatic.com/wellnessmama and using the code “wellnessmama”

Hello, and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and this episode is everything you need to know about the ketogenic diet and everything that goes with it, including if it is safe for women or not, its practical applications, how to know if you’re doing it correctly, and what the emerging research says about it. I am here with one of the top experts in the world, whose research I have followed for a very long time, and it was an honor to talk to him.

Dr. Dominic D’Agostino is a professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of South Florida, and a research scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, the IHMC. His laboratory develops and tests metabolic-based strategies for neurological disorders, cancer, and for enhancing safety and resilience of military personnel in extreme environments. He was both a researcher and a participant in NASA’s NEEMO project, and his research is supported by the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Defense, private organizations and foundations, and many of us in the health community who value what he does.

And I’m gonna talk about it in a little bit in the episode, but he also very much walks the walk when it comes to health. In fact, he broke the world record for the most weight squatted in a 24-hour period, and he has also deadlifted 500 pounds on day seven of a fast. So he is both academically and physically an incredible human being, and it is an honor to join him today. So, without further ado, let’s jump in with Dr. D’Agostino.

Katie: Dom, I’m so excited to chat with you. If what I read is true, you broke the world record for the most weight squatted in a 24-hour period and who have lifted 500 pounds after fasting for a week. Which is astounding to me. And I have fasted for that many days but I have not ever tried to work out on the last day. And you obviously walk the walk when it comes to health. You are well known for your research in the ketogenic diet and I want to go deep on the practical and scientific applications of that today. So to start broad and then narrow down, what are some of the emerging applications of the ketogenic diet that you’re finding in your research?

Dr. Dominic: Yeah, so the ketogenic diet started as a medical therapy for epilepsy 100 years ago, and not a lot of people know that. But over the last decade, the use of dietary ketosis has been applied to a wide range of disorders and that includes a number of neurological disorders, metabolic disorders, and even psychological disorders too. In our lab, we study a broad range of things. I would say half of what we do is cancer research, and we do that at the Moffitt Cancer Institute. It’s a very large cancer treatment center near the University of South Florida. It’s its own separate entity. But I would say that in our lab, that’s probably one of the biggest emerging applications and probably more controversial applications of nutritional ketosis is this idea of using food as medicine to treat something as serious and as complex as cancer.

And when I got into this field, there was maybe two clinical trials on clinicaltrials.gov, registered clinical trials, and now there is about 38 or 39 clinical trials I think the last I checked using the ketogenic diet as a therapy for cancer treatment in most cases as an adjuvant to further enhance or augment different forms of therapy. And in some cases when the standard of care has failed, the ketogenic diet is used. So we’ve studied in the past Alzheimer’s disease and different animal models of Alzheimer’s disease and the biggest project we actually have going on in the lab is developing a ketogenic strategy for dietary ketosis or supplemental ketosis to delay oxygen toxicity seizures which limits the Navy SEAL operations because they use a closed-circuit re-breathing device in their covert operations.

So what we do is with the various technologies we have in the lab, we can simulate what a Navy SEAL will experience under certain conditions. And then we test everything from the perspective of a cell to tissues, we’ve used various animal models, and we have human clinical trials at Duke University right now where we dive subjects inside of conditions and push them to the edge of the seizure in and out of ketosis. So that’s kinda like the main projects we have going. We have like a lot of little pet projects on the side, like targeting glucose control, which has implications for Type 2 diabetes, which I think is a very big emerging application of dietary ketosis.

Katie: That’s so fascinating. And before we go further, I’d love to have you define what is the ketogenic diet as there’s thousands of different definitions floating around, and recipes. So what definition are we using for this podcast?

Dr. Dominic: Yeah. I think that’s part of the problem too is that nutritional ketosis is a term used by people marketing different books to food supplements to bars, which are essentially candy bars. The ketogenic diet is the only diet to my knowledge that’s defined specifically by an elevation of a biomarker that we can actually measure with commercially available technology. And you can buy a blood ketone meter at a CVS or Walgreens or you can go on Amazon and buy one. You can get it at Walmart. These devices will typically measure blood glucose and also measure the ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate. So if you decide to do a ketogenic diet or medical management of, you know, whether it be epilepsy, which was the original application, or weight loss, which is a really popular application in the ketogenic diet for Type 2 diabetes, which has actually over the last five years been very well documented.

You can go to a drug store or online and buy a blood ketone meter and implement, start the ketogenic diet. There are many different…there’s tons of resources online that did not exist at all when I first started studying this over a decade ago. And they tell you there’s recipes on how to, you know, develop, you know, put together meals for a ketogenic diet. So you can start the ketogenic diet and monitor your blood ketone levels and that can guide you on how to best plan your meals and construct your meals with the different types of foods and ratios of fat to protein to carbohydrates, and it’s really that macronutrient ratio that defines the ketogenic diet.

We know if we eat a certain ratio or fat to protein to carbohydrates, which the fat level has to be between 90% to 65% fat and protein levels typically range from between 10% to 25% or 30% with carbohydrates being restricted 10% or below of non-starch, non-sugar, fibrous carbohydrates that essentially have a very low glycemic index. When a diet is constructed in this way, it will produce some degree of ketosis depending on the individual and depending on how those ratios are calculated.

Katie: That makes sense. So some versions of the ketogenic diet can be considered unhealthy. Are there things you can watch out for or guard against when trying a keto diet?

Dr. Dominic: Yeah, for sure. There’s a lot of, you know, ready-made ketogenic meals on the market. There’s a lot of recipes out there that claim to be ketogenic and they may be low in carbohydrates but they deviate from what I would call a clinical ketogenic diet. And to get the full benefits of dietary ketosis, an individual typically has to elevate their blood ketone levels within a range that’s characteristic of being in dietary ketosis. And there’s a little bit of confusion and I think people are using the term ketogenic diet and they’re really just marketing a low carbohydrate diet, which actually has a lot of benefits in regards to controlling your blood glucose, perhaps weight loss, it has an appetite suppressing effect.

Many people believe that a high protein diet is a ketogenic diet and that’s really not the case because if you eat too much protein, the protein can convert to glucose and it can also stimulate the hormone insulin. And this can push you out of the state of ketosis or basically prevent you from making ketone bodies, which we know are beneficial for our brain and our heart and a number of other organs. And it’s that level of ketones, which is indicative of the suppressing of the hormone insulin. And once you stabilize and lower the hormone insulin, that puts your body into a fat-burning mode and it’s the excess burning of fat that actually contributes to elevated ketones.

So your ketones are actually like, sort of, a surrogate marker that can predict how much body fat you’re burning. And I think, from a general perspective, a lot of people are interested in the ketogenic diet for weight loss. And so I think dietary ketosis monitoring that is a very effective tool to basically inform the person how efficiently they are burning fat for energy and their own body fat. As they restrict overall calories, they’ll be liberating, you know, their own body fat but also it’s a combination of the dietary fat because you’re eating more fat too. So that is making ketones, but when you restrict total calories, which it’s easier to do on a ketogenic diet and that’s a big advantage of it because of the appetite suppressing effect, then you’re really tapping into your own fat stores too.

Katie: That makes sense. Is there an ideal range for ketones in something like weightl oss and is that different from, for instance, in the ketone levels in something like fighting cancer?

Dr. Dominic: Yeah, that’s a good question. And we don’t know really all the answers but, generally speaking, if your blood ketones are between…from feedback that I get, anywhere between 0.8…if you’re above 0.5 millimolar, and that’s little m big M, it’s also represented as mMol over liter, millimole per liter, and that’s the units that you’re measuring typically in these devices. If you’re above 0.5, you’re clinically in a state of ketosis and it would be difficult, very difficult to achieve that eating a standard diet, if not impossible, you typically have to fast, you know, about 18 to 24 hours to get your ketones into that level. So if you can formulate a diet where you’re in a state of ketosis 0.5 to typically 3 or 4 millimolar max, my belief is that that’s kinda like the optimal level.

For me, if I stay between 1 and 2 millimolar ketones, I feel like I have the most energy, the most mental clarity, my inflammation is lowest and if my ketones get a little bit higher, I typically have to do things that I have to have follow a diet that’s more restricted in carbohydrates. And I feel better having a little bit of carbohydrates in my diet from things like a little bit of berries, vegetables and, you know, have a little bit of dark chocolate every day. So you can have these things on the ketogenic diet. The more carbohydrates you put in, it can knock you out but the more you experiment with the diet, the more you begin to realize like how much you can add in. And I think there are a lot of benefits to some of these, you know, plant-derived foods and I like to incorporate some of them into the diet.

And some ketogenetic diets eliminate that completely. And I know the carnivore diet has been a big thing and a lot of people are advocates of that and I’m not fully convinced that that diet really is superior to a well-formulated ketogenic diet which would have vegetables. A lot of people with autoimmune disorders, you know, whether it be skin disorders or things like Hashimoto’s disease or other things have emailed me and basically said that a ketogenic diet that’s devoid of plants, that’s more of a keto carnivore diet has been the only thing that has worked to cure their autoimmune disorders. So I think people need to look into this and it’s just not studied enough.

There’s a group in Hungary called Paleomedicina and they have treated like thousands of patients with autoimmune disorders and everything from epilepsy to cancer with a paleolithic ketogenic diet and we’ve recently visited Hungary and saw some of the patient records. And I have to admit that, you know, a paleolithic ketogenic diet, which is basically just all animal products and no vegetables at all, seems to be very effective for certain autoimmune disorders. But from my perspective, I’m still not completely sold on it for like the person who just wants to implement a ketogenic diet as a lifestyle. I think incorporating a more well-formulated balanced ketogenic diet that has vegetables and fruits into it would be ideal. At least I feel it is for me.

Katie: What does that look like? Based on your experience your research, what would you consider the best version of keto diet and can it be done with low saturated fat? I ask because I have the APOE4 gene, and so I’m cautious with consuming saturated fat. And I tend to lean towards mono-unsaturated fat. So can you do ketosis without the saturated fat?

Dr. Dominic: Yeah, that’s a really good question and one I get quite often. Yeah, you can definitely do a ketogenic diet that’s low in saturated fat. So what you want to do in that case is really get more monounsaturated fat. And one way to do that is to probably limit dairy because the biggest contributor to saturated fat in a ketogenic diet is dairy. The early ketogenic diets developed by the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins were almost a dairy-based ketogenic diet because it made it palatable for kids. They were able to get in the calories required for growth. But a ketogenic diet that’s lower in saturated fat would include things like eggs. The fat in eggs is mostly oleic acid so that’s more of monounsaturated fat. So you have, you know, eggs and fish and nuts and nut butters, olive oil, of course.

And then you want to have…you know, if you have APOE4, then you’re right, saturated fat is something you may be concerned about. It does contribute to factors that could negatively influence, you know, your outcomes. But the science is kind of unclear. So shifting from more of a dairy-based ketogenic diet to fish, eggs, and I’m kind of of the opinion that steak is also okay although it does have saturated fat, but you know, steak that’s from grass-fed animals. Pork and poultry would probably be okay too. But from my perspective, and I did follow a dairy-based ketogenic diet when I started this like 12 years ago and some of my markers got really high different fractions of LDL and I got a little bit concerned and I did kind of minimize the dairy to a certain level. I still have it in and I do have dairy every day, but I significantly decreased it and fill the gap, the core gap from fat mostly derived from monounsaturated fats and that made a big difference.

So typically like today, for example, I don’t always do this but I skipped breakfast and had my first meal around noon, which was salmon, and I tested various products people send me were cookies that were made from almond flour and they were lightly sweetened, and that was like my first meal. And that’s kind of all I had eaten today. And then tonight we’re having grass-fed beef by a company called ButcherBox that only sells like grass-fed beef. It’s a service that we subscribe to. They have an excellent selection of meats. And typically a salad and, you know, cauliflower mash or broccoli or something like that. We usually have some kind of beef, fish, and vegetable for dinner and pretty much always have a salad with little amounts of fat.

Katie: Got it. Thre is a lot of opinion on this as well, but what about the need for an occasional carb refeed or if people should eat carbs once in a while to keep the body from adapting to not having carbs, is that something you’d do and what does the research say?

Dr. Dominic: Yeah, I think people really need to experiment with what diet works best. And you know, I’m an advocate of the ketogenic diet or nutritional ketosis, that could also mean supplemental ketosis, for a wide range of things. And if, you know, for cultural reasons and people have different metabolisms in different body types, where like everybody’s like an individual metabolic entity and various food choices associated with the ketogenic diet, they might not be able to tolerate. And I’ve met people who just cannot tolerate the fat content associated with the ketogenic diet. But for me personally, I tend to feel best and I do my best work, whether that be writing or just, you know, cognitive tasks, and even physically, I tend to feel better in some degree of ketosis and not…I don’t follow the level of a medical ketogenic diet, which is like anywhere between like 80% to 90% fat, but I’m typically somewhere around 60% fat.

And just as an example, yesterday I probably had a little more carbohydrates than normal. We have fruit trees on our property so I had a grapefruit at night and I had some blueberries and a pretty big salad and some stir fry vegetables too and like one or two pieces of dark chocolate. So my carbohydrate for the day yesterday was probably about 100 grams of carbs and probably about a third of that was fiber and I was still in a state of mild ketosis because I was fairly active like throughout the day. And now, that may not be the case for everybody. I know some kids that follow the ketogenic diet for epilepsy or other things, the amount of carbohydrate they could have is maybe like one strawberry throughout the entire day. Strawberries are very high in fiber, like, you know, a minimal glycemic response.

But I’m in contact with many different parents, I’ve seen, you know, hundreds if not thousands of dietary plans and I’ve seen the blood levels of different people from kids to adults and I have to say that there’s a lot of variability. And I’ve also conversed with some elite-level Olympic athletes who follow nutritional ketosis and they can stay in a state of ketosis eating about 200 to 250 grams of carbohydrates a day, but they’re also exercising like four to six hours a day and they’re probably at a caloric deficit too. So you have a lot of extremes in this and it really comes down to food preferences.

So figure out what kind of food you like and incorporate more of those foods and that could be…you know, typically most people like fish and chicken and beef and pork things like that, and eggs. And if you are baking, you can use different types of flours that are on the market now. Some of them are nut flours and you can make muffins and cakes, and we make pancakes in our house occasionally. So you can have the comfort foods too. And there are a lot of entrepreneurs scrambling to really enter this space and they’re developing everything from low-carb ketogenic brownies to cookies, to hamburger buns, to barbecue sauce. I mean, there’s so many different products.

We hosted the Metabolic Health Summit just like a few weeks ago and the amount of stakeholders in this space is growing like exponentially, and that’s in academia to clinical medicine, to industry, to media, to just general public. So this space is growing quite rapidly and a lot of these companies are developing products that are really serving the community that I’m networked in. And that includes the epilepsy community, which is like the diet it has a very good track record for, and a number of these other emerging applications, Type 2 diabetes being one of them.

And there’s a lot of different…you know, not one ketogenic diet. It’s not a one size fits all so when you read a study about a ketogenic diet produced a positive effect or a negative effect or no effect, most importantly, the most important thing is to figure out what kind of ketogenic diet this study used. I mean, there’s an infinite amount of ketogenic diets. The early ketogenic diets were heavily based on hydrogenated fats, believe it or not, or even Crisco. And we’ve just, we know a lot more about nutrition now and I believe there’s ways to formulate a ketogenic diet that could be healthy for everybody but it may not be for everybody depending on your dietary preferences, I would say.

Katie: So what about exogenous zones? This is something I actually have not personally experimented with but I actually have some on their way to me now and I am really curious about and I know you’ve done some research on. So what is the role of exogenous zones in a keto diet and what do we need to know about using it?

Dr. Dominic: Yeah, that’s maybe what I’m known for because when I first started studying the ketogenic diet, my goal was to use the ketogenic diet for oxygen toxicity seizures, which are sort of a military problem. The program officer in the military at the time did not like the idea of putting someone on a high-fat ketogenic diet. It was too restrictive and they knew people just wouldn’t do it. So they asked me to develop kind of a ketogenic diet in a pill. So many years ago, you know, I started developing different strategies and one of the strategies would be a ketone ester and the development of ketone mineral salts, which is basically taking a ketone body that your body makes naturally, like a bioidentical molecule, and then combining that with an electrolyte like sodium, potassium, or magnesium.

And then you can actually make these things in a laboratory and develop a powder out of it and then you can consume this orally in a shake or a drink and it can elevate your ketone levels. Beta-hydroxybutyrate is what we measure with a meter. And then that is clinically the state of nutritional or what we call therapeutic ketosis. So it’s elevating an energy molecule in the blood that kind of has a superior energetic value. If your body can make more ATP, which is the energy currency that our cells use, it can make the ATP more efficiently with ketones. And we also know that these ketone bodies have hormone-like effects and their sigma [SP] molecules that can influence certain pathways, for example, inflammation. They can suppress the levels of inflammation, kind of, in the body.

So there are many different types of exogenous ketones on the market. We test them but, you know, we do not sell them. I think some people out there market things like my supplement. So just for the record, I do not have any ketone supplements myself. We do develop various patents and certain companies have gotten those patents. I do like to test the ketone products that are on the market if I know they’re safe and from a reputable company. And then some of those products I’ve put on the website, ketonutrition.org, just to direct people to reputable companies that are making ketone supplement products that at least have a very good certificate of analysis that are clean products that will actually elevate your ketone levels more or less.

So the benefits of these supplements are that when you consume them, they can give your body energy and I view them as just a ketogenic food. They’re calorie-containing food supplements that when you consume them with a ketogenic diet, they can further elevate your ketones and probably further augment the therapeutic efficacy of the ketogenic diet. Now, there are some situations where someone is unwilling or unable to follow a ketogenic diet. For example, some of the disorders that we study in the lab, you know, kids with different disorders like Angelman syndrome or autism or Kabuki syndrome. That’s another thing.

And I don’t have to get into explaining, you know, these disorders but the kids who have some of these disorders, it’s difficult for them to follow certain types of diets. So a ketone supplement that is formulated, and the flavoring agents can make it to taste good, can offer a lot of benefit to kids with these disorders. And you want to target disorders where the ketogenic diet has already shown to be efficacious, where there’s clinical trials and published studies to share, for example, that a ketogenic diet can treat glucose transporter deficiency syndrome, which is something that we study.

So, many kids, they find it hard to follow that diet. So a supplement which elevates ketones, which is therapeutic molecule that can help individuals who have glucose transporter deficiency, that supplement really maybe almost, I’m not going to say the magic bullet, but it can be the therapeutic thing that can help to manage that particular metabolic disorder. And that’s where we really try to direct a lot of our energy and time and effort into not only working on military applications of these ketone supplements but using that science to really develop things that can be used in the clinical field too. And we have a study, there’s an ongoing study at Vanderbilt University that uses ketone supplementation for Angelman syndrome, which is a rare genetic disorder that just happens to be responsive to the ketogenic diet. So there’s an ongoing study right now in kids with Angelman syndrome that’s using ketones supplements.

Katie: That’s fascinating. And speaking of electrolytes, is that something that we need to be aware of and supplement with on keto diet long term, I know there are some sources say you need more electrolytes if you eat low carb and are keto and are there other supplements that we should know about as well?

Dr. Dominic: Yeah, that’s a good point because when you’re in a state of nutritional ketosis just by adjusting the macronutrient ratios, we know that you’re suppressing the hormone insulin. And when you do that, you tend to excrete more water and more electrolytes with that, including sodium and maybe potassium and magnesium, so you tend to maybe get a little bit dehydrated in the beginning. And at the same time, a lot of people go through what they call the keto flu. And the keto flu is feeling a little bit of a headache, you might be a little bit lethargic, and you just don’t feel great. That could be dehydration and what we call hyponatremia, which is low sodium. So it’s actually really important to stay well hydrated and actually make sure you’re getting enough sodium, which there’s initial sodium loss, especially the first two or three weeks.

You don’t necessarily have to, you know, go buy electrolyte supplements. They may help some people but what I tell people is to have like a good quality bone broth or make your own bone broth. You might want to literally salt your food, whether that be a salad or beef that you’re cooking, and that should be more than enough. The diet tends to suppress your appetite and also your thirst so you want to make sure that even if you’re not thirsty that you’re consuming enough water, especially during the initial two to three weeks of the diet because you’re probably gonna be a little bit dehydrated and you might get some cramps and feel a little bit lethargic. So it’s extra important to get, you know, water and electrolytes during that first few weeks.

Katie: Gotcha.

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Katie: And now for a somewhat controversial question, there are a lot of opinions about whether or not women should do a keto diet at all and if we can modify it in certain ways based on our hormones. I know personally I feel like I can do it fine especially if I cycle it and I test a lot of different markers and I handle it well, but I also handle fasting really well and some women don’t. There’s a very personalized aspect to this. So based on your research and experience, do you think that the keto diet is also effective and/or safe for women?

Dr. Dominic: Yeah, I can’t make that recommendation. I’ll give you my opinion. But so you may have trained your metabolism to be…and I think what I’ve observed is that there are women who simply initially they cannot fast at all. They get lightheaded and I mean, we’ve had individuals like almost faint in the lab, if not, you know, faint and just like can’t stand up after fasting. Women, their physiology is very responsive to changes and they could have orthostatic hypotension. They could have, you know, changes in just their brain energy levels. The female physiology, in my opinion, is that it’s much more reactive to low levels of glucose and insulin. So if your glucose gets low, that may have sort of a greater exaggerated response in a female compared to a male.

Males maybe tolerate fasting a little bit better. I don’t know if it’s a male thing to just kind of power through it but I definitely feel that there are physiological differences between females and males that make it harder for females to become robustly fat adapted. And one way to train your metabolism to be more fat adapted or keto adapted is to do things like intermittent fasting and then transition more gradually to eating low carbs and over time I feel like you could train your metabolism. But many women just tend to feel better adding some form of carbohydrates to the diet and I would say I’m of the opinion that a lower-carb diet would just be much healthier long term than a high carb diet and women who just cannot do the ketogenic diet for any reason I would advocate for them to at least do a lower carb diet or lower glycemic index diet and then capping carbs at like, you know, a one gram per pound, you know, or less if they really want to get metabolic benefits.

But I think people…I’m a big believer in self-experimentation. So I think people need to try the diet and see if it’s for them, and to honestly try a ketogenic diet, you have to stick with it for really six to eight weeks. A lot of people don’t want to hear that but you really have to honestly stick with it for six to eight weeks and measure your ketones to validate that you’re actually in a state of nutritional ketosis because once that blood ketone level gets elevated, that’s giving your brain an alternative form of energy and that’s where you really start to…the lights kind of come off and you start to feel a lot of the benefits of the ketogenic diet.

And for me, I went through, sort of, a learning curve to this and it probably wasn’t until the third month where I was like really myself totally, because I started with the Johns Hopkins protocol of like more of a dairy-based ketogenic diet and then I started transitioning off of that and was just doing more like whole foods and less dairy and I just had to find not only the macronutrient ratios but the types of foods that were working best for me. And also, it was kinda hard to get the calories. My metabolism was pretty fast, so it was kinda hard for me to get all the calories that I needed and that initial calorie deficit caused me to lose weight over time, especially the first…I think I lost about 10 pounds the first…without trying. I was actually trying not to lose weight. It was almost impossible not to lose weight.

So that side effect may be a benefit to a lot of people. They like the idea that they can eat and feel fully satiated and still continue to lose weight. And I don’t know of any other diet that can really allow you to do that unless you’re doing like a raw vegan diet, and that’s really hard to do, but a ketogenic diet I think has greater weight loss benefits than a raw vegan diet and it’s actually more practical from my perspective.

Katie: That brings up another point that I’m just personally interested in right now. Well, obviously the keto diet assists in weight loss and I have lost a significant amount of weight in the last year, not from only low carb, I’ve used a variety of methods and eat more food that I previous had. From your own experience, do you have any research or tips on how to gain muscle while still either losing fat or maintain fat loss? This is a balance a lot of people have trouble finding the sweet spot for.

Dr. Dominic: Yeah. So you are hitting on all great questions. So that’s a topic of debate, especially on social media in the fitness forums. Like, can you gain muscle on a ketogenic diet? There’s absolutely…I mean, we published a paper with our Italian colleagues back in 2012, I believe, and it was elite-level gymnasts that used a ketogenic diet and they were able to maintain their strength and they had more remarkable body composition alterations over time. So basically, you know, at the end of the study, they preserved their muscle and they lost more body fat. They did not gain any more muscle than the gymnasts that were following their standard dietary protocol, but so they had a very intense training routine and the amount of muscle that they gained was the same, actually they just maintained. So being able to maintain your muscle while you’re losing body weight and losing fat, like that’s actually a gain because, you know, if you lose weight but still have the same amount of lean body mass, that’s actually pretty significant.

So we established that early on and what we’ve learned over the years is that protein is actually really important. So the standard ketogenic diet requires, you know, a level of protein that’s restricted and in athletes, that’s probably not the best thing to do. So the data, as I understand it right now, from all the data that’s available, suggests that, you know, from a clinical ketogenic diet perspective, they tell you to have one gram per kilogram of body weight and you don’t need more than that. But for an athlete, you definitely need more than that, not only to maintain weight but if your goal is to gain muscle and strength, I would say 1.5 grams per kilogram at least, especially if you have a fast metabolism.

So I’m kind of heavy. I’m 100 kilograms, so for me, that’s 150 grams protein per day. And if someone, a clinical practitioner of the ketogenic diet, was to look at my diet and see me getting 150 grams of protein a day, well they would say, no, you’re nowhere near a ketogenic diet. But I am doing a ketogenic diet because my ketones would be elevated. So I think if someone’s a bit heavier and has more muscle and body mass, they can get away with more protein and they’re actually gonna need more protein to be able to retain that muscle and their need to increase protein higher than what would be a normal ketogenic diet to gain muscle over time.

So proteins are very, very important, obviously, for gaining muscle and the amount of protein you need. If your goal is strength and performance, if you’re an athlete, the amount of protein you need would probably be into that 30% of your diet range as opposed to a clinical ketogenic diet, which is like 10% to 15%. Like you literally need about double the amount of protein. And this gets into, you know, what is a hot topic now even in clinical medicine is the modified ketogenic diet. And that was actually advanced by Dr. Eric Kossoff at Johns Hopkins and the modified ketogenic diet, also called the modified Atkins diet, but the modified ketogenic diet is actually used for adults with epilepsy. And that’s like double the amount of protein than the diet that’s used for kids. And like I said, it’s much higher in protein, about 20% to 30% protein, relative to the pediatric epilepsy diet, which is like 12% to 15% protein.

Katie: Okay. That’s good. And I think that raises another question is what about fasting? I mentioned this earlier in the episode, and again, of course, with the caveat that some women will not handle this well. I feel like I do. I’m actually on day three of a water fast right now and my ketones are about 3.5 and I also pole vaulted this morning. But I’m curious, I know that you intermittent fast and you’ve also done longer fasts from what I’ve read. So what is your take on fasting for overall health and also for things like cancer prevention and all the other applications?

Dr. Dominic: Yeah. I’m a fan of fasting for many years. When I was really into weightlifting and strength training, I was eating like six meals a day and I would get anxiety if I went more than like three or four hours without a meal. So thinking that my body needs energy for growth and repair and that I would be taking a step backwards if I didn’t have that meal. But over the years, I’ve learned that once your body is adapted to burning fat and ketones for fuel that the ketones are very protein sparing and that has resulted in the whole area of science that we’re really focused on now with cancer cachexia, so muscle-sparing effects of ketones.

So my Ph.D. student that just graduated did a whole Ph.D. dissertation studying the anti-catabolic effects of ketones. So what that means is that, you know, if you are following a low-carb diet or doing a ketogenic diet and you do periodically fast, whether you do intermittent fasting or short-term fast or even long-term fast like a week or more, your body is more metabolically tuned to spare that muscle protein. And I think there’s clinical evidence to support this. And also, well, we have some work to be published, once you fast and once you do it a few times, you can actually enter the state of ketosis faster. So if you do fasting or you did the ketogenic diet and get off of the ketogenic diet, do like a standard diet and go back to fasting or go back to a ketogenic diet again, your body will make ketones much faster.

It’s almost like you know when you work out, you have muscle memory and you work up to like a certain level of bench press, you take time off…it may take you two or three years to get up to 200-pound bench press, but if you take a couple of months off, you’re going to lose a lot of that strength but if you start back up again, instead of two years, you can get back up to that level in like two months. Your metabolism is the same way. If you train your metabolism to burn fat and make ketones and burn ketones and you do it over time, the more you do it, the easier it gets and the more benefits you derive from it but also the faster your body jumps back into that fat-burning mode when you start fasting again or when you do a ketogenic diet. So that has pretty important practical implications.

I’m a fan of fasting. In the beginning, I was not. I had to be sold on it. And it was actually the scientific literature, reading paper after paper of the benefits of periodic calorie restriction, intermittent fasting, and ketones, which got me thinking as an academic scientist, you know, I’m doing this in the lab and I’m seeing the benefits. We solve very real benefits in the lab, even survival from things like metastatic cancer that I had to do this myself and I had to experience it myself and I’m kind of a self-experimenter. So over the years, I’ve done up to a seven-day fast, you know, and periodically, I like to do it when I’m traveling, and my wife and I travel together most of the time, but if I’m traveling alone and I know she’s not with me and having to eat because she doesn’t really do a lot of the crazy things I do. If I’m traveling alone, I like to just fast occasionally and traveling, that can be kind of convenient.

So I personally do it, I’ve experienced benefits from it that I’ve documented, and I’ve been in touch with many other people who do this. And I think it really does have real benefits. I think some people take it a little too far, but if you were to do a short-term fast for a couple of days, you know, every few months, I think that’ll really translate to real-world benefits.

Katie: As we get close to the end, I’d actually love to do a round two with you one day, I know that you’re very much in the research and a lot of people listening are women, but I’d love if we could talk about some practical takeaways that we can all learn from your research. So moms, parents, those of us who may not be lifting heavy weights, what are some of the things you’re seeing in the data right now that we can all learn from and adopt and benefit from doing?

Dr. Dominic: Yeah. Well, for women specifically, I think it’s really important for women when they start a ketogenic diet or they do intermittent fasting, a lot of times this scenario presents that women will start a new exercise routine so they’ll bump up their exercise, they will calorie restrict, and they’ll start the ketogenic diet all at one time. And so you have a lot of variables contributing to things that could potentially slow down your metabolism and decrease YOUR thyroid level. So if you are experimenting with a ketogenic diet, I would say keep all variables sort of the same and do not restrict your calories. So just adjust the macronutrient ratios to ratios that would be ketogenic and keep your training the same and see how it affects your body and let your body adapt to that because there’s gonna be some initial stress, you know, associated with the adaptation. And once your body adapts to that, then start, you know, adjusting the calories or ramping up your training and things like that.

So I think that’s really an important practical takeaway because it seems like so many women who start a ketogenic diet or start intermittent fasting also start, you know, they do it for contest preparation or they do it for a sport or to just to lose weight for a particular event. They like shotgun a lot of things at once. So they do ketogenic intermittent fasting, calorie restriction, and overexercising, and simply just overexercising can, sort of, drop your metabolism if you’re over-trained. So I think it’s important to kind of ease into this, more important for women than for men. So kind of say that off the bat. And also the exogenous ketones that are on the market right now really can help people transition into that, help people get through that initial keto flu, as some people call it, or that transition from a carbohydrate-based metabolism to a ketone-based metabolism.

So for intermittent fasting, for example, they may want to break the fast not with a big protein meal, but maybe with a ketone supplement and they can extend the benefits of the fast I believe because your glucose level would still stay low and your ketones would be elevated. And then maybe, you know, two or three hours later, have a balanced meal or a ketogenic meal, you know, for example, they may want to do that. And that has made transitioning into these things a little bit easier for them. And there’s so many resources that are available too online whether it be recipe books, even snacks.

So I do have the opportunity to test a lot of foods that are emerging on the market. Some of them are not on the market yet, but I can tell you there are a lot of, you know, ketogenic chocolates that are coming out, ketogenic brownies, ketogenic cookies, and some of them are ketogenic and some of them are not. But the good thing is that there are legitimate forms of chocolate bars and brownies and cookies and things that are entering the market. I’m a big fan of just whole food nutrition, but some of these snacks are really…these comfort foods are important to have time to time because otherwise a lot of people may feel deprived. And I know it certainly helps for kids because some kids that follow the diet kind of feel ostracized if they’re not able to eat certain foods. So that has made the transition for kids who need to follow it for a medical reason, it has made it much easier for them.

So there’s a lot of practical things that we’ve sort of garnered over the years, knowledge that we’ve learned, and also companies are developing technologies that are making the diet easier to implement and also easier to monitor. For example, Readout Health has a device that’s a breath acetone meter that I used all day today to check my own ketone levels. So BioSense is the device and instead of having to prick your finger and draw blood, you just simply blow into this device and it tells you your breath ketone levels. And I could blow into it hundreds of times and not have go buy strips. You just buy the device and it’s super easy to use. You can download the app and it tells you, it tracks all your ketone levels, and breath acetone is a very good marker of fat oxidation. So the higher that breath ketone level, you know you’re really cranking out, you’re really burning lots of fat if that level gets higher.

So for people, you know, the everyday person, and I know many people are looking at, you know, this approach to burn fat, something like the breath acetone meter by BioSense, you know, without having to stick your finger and pay for all the strips would be a very useful practical device for people.

Katie: Got it. I’m curious, what are you excited for in the future of research? Are there trends that you’re seeing right now that you think are up and coming that we should be excited about in this area of research?

Dr. Dominc: Yeah, there’s a lot of activity in this area and it’s kind of surreal to see because when I started studying this, it was pediatric epilepsy was the only application and it was very marginalized even at the American Epilepsy Conference, but now there’s just so much buzz all over. And the things that I think are gonna be most important in the future are like big health issues. Obesity we know is kind of a big problem but Type 2 diabetes is like a huge problem, especially in the over-50 crowd and it’s a huge healthcare burden. So Virta Health is doing a lot of work and the Virta Health website really documents all the studies that they’ve published.

And you know, a lot of people when they hear that a ketogenic diet can treat Type 2 diabetes, of course, they become skeptical that you can get patients off insulin or their medication but they do and, you know, they’ve proven this. And that’s been really interesting to see that science evolve. And we’re in a completely opposite direction. We’re working with the military and our company, Ketone Technologies, we sponsor research, working with NASA on various projects. And at this point now, it’s really understanding extreme environments and ultimately, you know, trying to formulate metabolic-based strategies including nutritional strategies that can optimize performance and safety of the warfighter, but also the astronaut.

So my wife and I had the opportunity to participate in the NASA extreme environment mission operations where we’re on a crew with astronauts and we’re under the Atlantic and we actually do research for a week or more underneath the water. We were living in a hyperbaric environment and I had the opportunity to do the ketogenic diet for 10 days submerged underwater. And if it was…you know, we’re still analyzing the data from that a couple of years later and we’re preparing for more space analog missions, you know, with NASA this year.

So that’s a big part of what we’re doing now and a lot of time, effort, and money and resources are being kind of channeled into understanding these extreme environments and developing what we think could be a ketogenic strategy for optimizing performance in these environments.

Katie: Definitely. I follow your research really closely and I think it’s amazing just to see everything that is coming up right now, and I’ll definitely keep watching in the future. Like I said, I’d love to do a round two one day if you’re willing, but I’m really grateful for your time today and sharing your expertise.

Dr. Dominic: Absolutely, I will. Thanks for having me on, Katie. Appreciate it.

Katie: And as always, all of you for listening and sharing one of your most valuable assets, your time, with us today. We’re so grateful that you did and I hope that you will join me again for the next episode of the “Wellness Mama” podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/dominic-dagostino/

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

negative as hell and i’m sorry but i just. need this written down. (.......this stomach issue is killing me. maybe literally. maybe just mentally and i’m killing myself over it [bad choice of words, but also apt because hey guess what there’s also suicide ideation below the cut]. this is just... this is too much........)

...i’ve always known something was Chronically Wrong with my stomach (at least, i have since i had a miniature episode on my bed right after breakfast in 6th or 7th grade, right before we had to leave, but didn’t tell anyone because i was too afraid to talk about it, and i didn’t Feel Sick besides in the stomach)....

...after everything I’ve tried to do to soothe my stomach, trying to console it with teas and icewater and peppermint candy, to cut out the endless nausea, to confine it to a few intermittent midnight episodes, to take meclizine every single goddamn day (because I started taking it for the hour-long busrides when I was turning 20, and I realized I actually had a little appetite on those days), and now I hate my body when I forget, and cutting out so many foods from my diet that I’m now awful to go out to eat with (because ordering is a stressful ordeal everyone wants to help with, but only I know the full list of what’s Going to Make Me Sick, and it’s basically EVERYTHING). and after spending $80/month out of pocket just so I don’t lose a meal immediately after eating it (and what doctor is going to prescribe me digestive enzymes and licorice?), after having to call off 8+ days of work in a year for vomiting episodes and being too pathetically weak to face it and just EAT and DRINK and subsequently become so weak I can’t stand and breathe properly, after going through all this hell and these long, long lists of Avoidance Factors and tailoring my diet and my meal times and my behavior within two hours after eating and researching and hoping and praying and meditating and introspecting and factoring in empathy and doctors and every goddamn bloodtest and urinalysis and ultrasound telling the doctors There is Nothing Obviously Wrong with Me....

...after all of that, and it still comes back just when I think I might be healing from whatever hell-problem my stomach has...

...i think, after last week, after being in the hospital twice in one week, because I couldn’t eat, or drink, or I could try but my body would refuse to accept it, I think I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that, whatever’s wrong...

...I think I have a chronic illness.

And it’s... It’s scary. I don’t want to have to fight every day. Just to... eat. Something as basic as putting food in my body, so I can survive. I don’t want every goddamn day to be a struggle. I don’t want to keep obsessing over my stomach, my eating, my hydration, my supplements, all because my stomach doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.

It was okay when I thought it was just food sensitivity. It was okay when I thought, my digestion’s just slower, I just need help breaking things down. It was okay when I thought, it was a bloog sugar thing; a thyroid thing; maybe an empathy thing. Maybe I had diabetes. Maybe it’s an autism thing. Gastic distress and ADD aren’t commonly comorbid but the brain’s “do things” signal probably has issues so maybe it’s a cns/hormone thing, maybe if I treat the add the stomach thing will fix with it--

But so far, nobody has found anything wrong, with any of those. Ultrasounds and CATscans and hands-on and bloodtests and everything else they’ve done, they can’t find anything wrong with me.

But I think it’s chronic.

It’s... it’s not going to go away.

I don’t know what they can do about it, if it’s something like-- like, gastroparensis, or gods forbid, cvs. (I will probably commit suicide if a doctor looks at my list of dates It Happened and the details of How and lack of reasons Why, and tells me it’s cvs.)...

...I don’t know how to fight that. I don’t want to have to keep fighting my body like this. I don’t want my stomach to keep WINNING, and hurting the rest of me like this. It’s horrible, it’s draining, it’s not WORTH it. This life isn’t fucking WORTH enduring that kind of hell.

I swear, it is literally only my friends and family that are keeping me from finding a way out.

I may have worlds of “potential” inside me. But that potential means nothing, when I am literally to sick to leave the house. Just because my stomach randomly decides, “We’re not gonna keep any food down today.”

i just... needed to chronicle the day i figured out that it’s not going to stop and it’s not going to go away.

[hotokeiki]

Week 127: J-pop              (St. Patrick’s Day special – IRISH~ish)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj-6P-jMT_g

Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

I’m not gonna throw in the minna this time. That was weird…. yes it was.

Anyway, it’s now been over a month since my last post. Cuz that was Valentine’s Day, and White Day was Tuesday. Mou~ Kurisu no BAKA!!

I don’t feel like I’m obligated to explain, but I want to, so I’m gonna. Basically, I’ve been super stressed lately, and feeling overwhelmed by all the things I have “to do”.

My mind set hasn’t been great, and I’ve just felt like I don’t have time to do anything, which isn’t true. I’ve had a lot of time, but I tried to take my mind off my stress by watching Youtube videos, and then I ended up binge-watching. I wasn’t watching much anime, because those are longer than most of the videos I was watching. The problem is that when you binge-watch Youtube, it takes more time than watching a couple episodes of an anime.

I probably shouldn’t have gone on that road trip for Spring Break. My thinking for Spring Break was that I needed to catch up on school work and sleep. Josh has kept me on campus later more times than I care to count. We left campus when they were closing the buildings at 11:30 pm! So, I thought a change of scenery would be good, and I’d be able to catch up on sleep and school. Yeah, I didn’t know what I was getting into.

I’m in the process of making an update that will explain the whole trip in detail (look out for that), so I will summarize here.

I thought that we were going to drive down to Kansas City, and stay there for the duration of the trip. A couple of days with some intermittent activity, and time for me to catch up on sleep and do some homework. The details were a little fuzzy for the whole thing, and he said that we would play it by ear to a certain extent, which we did.

It was by no means a bad trip. I had a good time. It was kind of hectic at times, but a refreshing change of scenery.

We spent one night in each hotel, and spent a lot of time driving. And in some cases, we ended up at the hotel fairly late, so I slept in as much as I could. We also didn’t spend much time in any of the hotels, so I didn’t really have time to do any homework. We left on Saturday and got back on Thursday night.

When I got back, I ended up doing what I had done previously, and didn’t get anything done over the remainder of the break.

Anyway, long story short (Linda: Oh, we’re WAY past that point ;p)

.. shut up, Linda XD

I haven’t been very productive, but I’m doing better now. I feel like I actually have time to do this post, and get my homework done. Plus, this blog is important to me, and I think it helps me resolve things. It’s just good to get my thoughts out.

Anyway, it’s St. Paddy’s Day. Oh boi George, it’s that toym again.

As Oi’ve mentioned before, Oi’m a wee bit’Irish. O’Costelle on me mother’s mother’s soyd.

(I just watched this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwf08LmchUY&feature=share)

So, I kept the Irish and the Japanese separate this time. XD

Or did I?

Linda: Oh no..

So, let’s get to the post, let us.

XD

Clover♣Kakumation by Triple♣Feeling is the first opening to Sansha Sanyou.

I haven’t watched the show, so here’s a summary from the Wikipedia article:

 The story revolves around the everyday life of three high-school girls who all have a kanji "葉" (literally "leaf") in their names, and have different features - hence the translation of the title, "three leaves, three colors".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Leaves,_Three_Colors

 (Not much to go by, but I’ll definitely watch it at some point.)

 So, just like my first post this year (Week 126: PUNCH☆MIND☆HAPPINESS), I found this song on that really long list video of kawaii anime openings.

 Here’s the link again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAFwFJ9gJnk (It’s number 26)

 Seeing that little bit from the video was really exciting, because I’ve never heard anything like that before. It had quite an impact, so I found the full version, cuz that’s what I do.

 And after listening to the full version, I said I am going to post this for St. Patrick’s Day!

I was actually plannin’ to post this next week, since I missed the Monday-to-Wednesday window, but I can post on a Friday if I want. Especially if it’s St. Paddy’s Day, by jaysus!

 The beginning of the song and the verse have a quicker feel, and some of the singing has a fast rhythm. The chorus also has the same feel. Parts of it remind me of river stomp. And the instrumentation also has bit o’v an Irish feel to it, ya know? It just sounds like Irish J-pop to me, and I love it.

 While keeping the Irish feel, this song also switches feels. The verse has a completely different feel to the lead up to the chorus, which both have a different feel than the chorus. And the bridge sounds completely different, and sounds the least bit Irish, but it works so well (fusawashii~) and is so refreshing (sugasugashii~). The voices also blend very well with each other while being quite different.

 The transitions are flawless, and my main complaint is that it’s too short! It’s just a really fun song that’ll keep your attention with its great instrumentation, good harmonies, and rhythmic melody.

 Have I mentioned that I really like this song?

 Linda: Yes.

 (*sigh* that was supposed to be rhetorical, Linda.)            

 Now, as the Wikipedia article mentioned, the three girls have the kanji "葉" in their names.

 “Sansha Sanyou” in the original kanji is 三者三葉

 breaking it down:

 三 - Onyomi: “san” (three)

 者 - Onyomi: “sha” (person)

 葉 - Kunyomi: “ha”, Onyomi: “you” (leaf)

 (I don’t see anything about 者 meaning color. So it could be very seldom used, or it’s another case of English titles making no sense. I hope it’s the former.)

 The (sansha) “three people” (and the members of Triple♣Feeling) are:

 1. Futaba Odagiri (小田切 双葉) -> Odagiri Futa(ba): 小田切 双(葉)

- Onyomi: “ba”, which is how you pronounce “ha” when preceded by a vowel.

 2. Teru Hayama (葉山 照) -> (Ha)yama Teru: (葉)山 照

- Onyomi: “ha”

 3. Youko Nishikawa (西川 葉子) -> Nishikawa (You)ko: 西川 (葉)子

- Kunyomi: “you”

 (Switched to family name followed by given name to relate to the kanji.)

 I think it’s cool that they all have the same kanji in their names, but it’s pronounced differently in each!

 And also, incorporating that into the title. Well done, Arai Cherry! Up ya boyo! XD

 I’m definitely gonna check this out at some point.

 Oh, right. Here’s the full version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evEV3IzWJfA

 You thought I forgot? Nah, I’ve been listening to it on and off for the last hour or so. That’s usually how these posts go. It’s really fun! XD

 I also think it’s really cool that they worked every aspect of the full song into the opening, including the bridge. It perfectly captures the song!

 Also, if you want lyrics, THAT ARE WRONG, here you go:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRsh_vbaVvY (WRONG LYRICS)

 Did I mention THESE AREN’T THE ACTUAL LYRICS? I can’t stress enough that THESE LYRICS ARE WRONG!!

 After watching it through and racking my head, because I knew, with the little Japanese I know, that the lyrics were wrong.

 I was so confused that I looked up the lyrics. There isn’t really an English translation of the lyrics that I was able to find. Let me know if you find any, but I was surprised to see that the word SATAN is in the lyrics.

 … Maybe, I shouldn’t’ve posted this on SAINT Patrick’s Day. XD

 And Kissanime doesn’t appear to have subs on the opening, so we’re doomed. XD

And here’s a really cool orchestral version that I found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewt7ldiufhc

 This guy does some really cool stuff, and I found out that two of the songs that had been reposted on SoundCloud were from his channel! Both songs were arrangements of songs from Madoka Magica.

 It’s been a really interesting day. XD

 Album: TV Anime “Sansha Sanyou” Opening Theme Clover♣Kakumation Track: 01 Lyricist: Ogura Asuka Composer: Ogura Asuka Arranger: manzo Artist: Triple♣Feeling

- Futaba Odagiri (CV: Mai Kanazawa)

- Teru Hayama (CV: Ayaka Imamura)

- Youko Nishikawa (CV: Yuu Wakui)

 (I just wrote the kanji for Lyrics, Composition, and Arrangement in Google Translate, because the words were embedded in the page. The things I do for J-pop.)

 Well, I thought this was going to be a short post.

 Haha XD, I’m naïve

 Well, it feels good to get back in the swing of things. And I will make an asserted effort to post on the regular schedule, as well as just make better use of my time and stress out less.

 It’s been a while, but you know the drill. If you have any questions or requests, please let me know.

 You have oodles of ways to find me… and kill me.

Never mind, this isn’t Taken. XD

 Alright, I’ll catch ya next week.

 Ja!

 (Note: It is now after midnight, so this is not goin’ up on St. Paddy’s Day. XD)

 (By jaysus, did I make a right hayms o’ this post? XD)

 - Chris  ——————————————————————————- Minna, gokitai kudasai!!

[fantasysuiteleague]

Week 5: Swamp Ass or Stank Face?

The main plot of this week’s episode is The Battle of the Bayou starring: Taylor, the calculating analytical elitist who knows what she’s talking about most of the time but comes off as unapproachable and rude as she constantly reminds us she has her Masters; and Corinne, the obnoxious narcissist whose every statement is so ridiculously and hilariously false you can’t tell if it’s all a strategic act or if she’s actually just a dumb, spoiled psychopath. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We once again pick up in the middle of last week’s episode where Taylor is still trying to reason with an unreasonable fame whore, and said fame whore continues to be the absolute worst. 

Interestingly enough, none of the girls actually know what they’re fighting about and no one really cares. Even Alexis, the girl who allegedly wears a sumo suit to go to CVS just for kicks, thinks the two of them need to grow up because we’re not in high school anymore. Someone aptly points out that Corinne has done nothing to Taylor, and Taylor has done nothing to Corinne, yet here we are, watching them talk in circles about nothing. After firing off a few one-liners about Taylor’s stank face, Corinne takes it a step farther and tells Nick that she’s scared of Taylor because she’s not here for the right reasons and “that hurts her...for Nick.” Once she’s finished telling Nick all about Pizzagate and Taylor’s evil ways, Corinne is convinced that Taylor is going home and that she is “hashtag winning,” because nothing is more topical than a 5 year old Charlie Sheen quote. 

And if Corinne hadn’t started this drama Taylor might have actually gone home that night because Nick has never seemed interested in her, but it’s the 2-on-1 week so Taylor lives to see another day. Great.

The Next Bachelorette

After being made to suffer through almost an entire rose ceremony before actually getting her rose, Rachel is *blessed* with this week’s 1-on-1 date which actually seems fun compared to poor Raven who was stuck hanging out at fucking Bella’s soccer game. As they pal around New Orleans eating oysters and beignets, Nick preposterously claims that of all the girls in the house he has the “most explosive chemistry” with Rachel ...

After Nick and Rachel lead a Second Line through the streets of New Orleans, Rachel tells a a story about how the last time she was in NOLA she participated in a parade but it was for a funeral, which is when she decided to live her life to the fullest and...go on the Bachelor? This story, as well as the background on her intimidating federal judge of a father and how Rachel is not used to being vulnerable despite being very emotional (or something like that), serves as the perfect set up for Rachel to be the next Bachelorette. It’s a NO BRAINER at this point, and I’m 100% confident that this is what ABC was hoping for when they “cast” Rachel to be on the show. ABC really wants a diverse star to prove they don’t have a race problem, but she has to be likable (code: not too black), smart (code: have a real job), and beautiful. Coincidentally, Rachel has all of those characteristics and Nick seems into Rachel enough for her to make it to hometowns, leaving me with the hope that, maybe, just maybe, we’re finally going to have a Blachelorette.

Do you believe in ghosts?

The group date this week presents us with a chance to identify the women who say things like “the energy in this room” by taking the girls to the Houmas House, one of the most haunted houses in America that also happens to come with a full bar and a Norman Bates caretaker who goes by the name of Boo. Boo takes the girls on a tour of the old house that is apparently haunted by a young girl name Mae who gets real pissed when you fuck with her dolls. I can’t tell if it’s the fake painting of Mae or the fervor with which Boo demands that no one touch these dolls, but I’m 99% sure that these dolls all belong to Boo, and Mae never existed. A few minutes of research reveals that the house, also known as Burnside Plantation, once housed 750 slaves and was the center of the largest slave holding in Louisiana. 

So it’s pretty safe to say that if any ghosts actually haunted this plantation they wouldn’t be of a little girl worried about her goddamn dolls, but one of the countless slaves that lived and died in captivity. Curiously, nothing about slaves or the plantation are ever mentioned as Boo continues to make a big deal the girls not touching his dolls. 

Once the girls are forced to hang out alone with Nick after Boo takes his leave to try on some of his dead mother’s clothes, they play with an Ouijia board to distract from the crushing reality that they are all wasting their time (and losing money) while looking for love on this show.  And then coincidentally, after Jasmine the vocal non-believer of ghosts touches a statue, a chandelier falls and things start getting spooky! While the girls take turns playing Ghost Hunters, Nick has empty conversations with everyone except Raven*, who accidentally lets slip that she fell in love with Nick while he was rollerskating. This is dubious for many reasons, including the fact that she’s spent maybe 6 hours in total with Nick, and also, it’s Nick. But Raven seems pretty genuine and Nick very surprised, so I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately for Raven, however, Nick and the producers already decided he needed to give the rose to the girl next door, neonatal nurse other video vixen, Danielle M., to reaffirm his intention to continue to string her along. I’m sure Boo was thrilled to see them leave so he could get back to his tea party.

Battle of the Bayou

And now, for the “main event” of the episode: the rumble in the jungle between Taylor and Corinne! In the blue corner, coming in hot with a Masters from Johns Hopkins and a “stank face on her face,” Taylor!! In the red corner, trying so desperately to make every in-camera interview into a gif, Corinne!! Throughout the episode both sides are given their chance to present their case to the Nation of Bachelor. According to Corinne, she is exactly what Nick needs and Taylor is a bitch who thinks shes better and smarter than everyone. According to Taylor, she has her Masters, is more qualified to be a wife, and Corinne is a lying manipulative clown. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Once they reach the depths of the bayou, Nick and the girls are met by the best voodoo priestess ABC could find, Rachel Dolezal 2.0. I was hoping for either an old black blind woman or an Angela Basset type, but beggars can’t be choosers in the swamp I guess. They are soon directed to Ms. Cleo, who reads Taylor’s fortune first and warns her that it’s best not to engage with the evil spirits but to take the high road and rid herself of all this negativity. Now since Taylor has her Masters, she knows that when trolls go low, you go high, but that’s only the right call 71.4% of the time, or when you aren’t living in this alternate reality where nothing is real and everything is upside down. Unfortunately for Taylor, we’re in that alternate reality and even Ms. Cleo can sense what’s coming because the cards don’t lie.

And sure enough, as soon as Corinne gets Nick alone, she starts twisting the truth and painting a false narrative of Taylor as the aggressor and Corinne as the victim. Taylor tries ineffectively to reverse the damage Corinne has done with her fake news and alternative facts, but in this alternate upside down reality, alternative facts are the facts, and we know how this story ends. Instead of picking the girl who is at least a qualified and rationale choice for a wife, he picks the obnoxious train wreck who’s only doing this for fame. Even though I’ve been a Taylor Hater since Day 1, this move is preposterous, and everyone involved knows it. Even Nick is blushing with embarrassment as he and Corinne awkwardly climb back into their boat leaving Taylor to reassess her life choices and the meaning of the world alone in the woods. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Did you notice . . .

** We don’t get to see this until the credits, but Nick’s conversation with Alexis on the group date, centering around her legitimate fear of Nicolas Cage, is amazing. WHY are they showing me clips of Danielle L. telling Nick she maybe is falling for him, or of Danielle M. barely talking at all, and putting these Alexis nuggets of gold at the end of the episode!?! The producers and editors really fucked this season up by not giving her more screen time because she is so much funnier and better in all respects than anything that comes out of Corinne’s mouth. #JUSTICEFORALEXIS 

“Realistically, I don’t see Nick and Corinne getting married at the end of this” is the understatement of the century. 

“If I see a ghost I’m gonna rebuke that thing in the name of Jesus.” 

Of course Danielle L. believes in and is afraid of ghosts. I actually LOLed when she said this date was going to be “a challenge” for her. 

“I had a great time. I did not squeal.” - Nick ....

The real loser in the Battle of the Bayou is Rachel, who is forced to spend an entire day alone in the house with Taylor and Corinne.

Nick is fucking terrible at being the Bachelor. I know I’ve gone on and on about how disingenuous he is, but it’s driving me nuts. Sure, every Bachelor has to say dumb shit like “From Bourbon Street to the Bayou, I can’t imagine a better place to fall in love.” but literally every single time he addresses the girls and in most of his 1-on-1 conversations it feels like he’s reciting Bachelor Canon because he couldn’t be bothered to think of anything real to say at any point along the way.

They say if you get close to the woods you can still hear Taylor whispering “but I have a Masters ...”

Minority Report: Interestingly enough, and despite the fact that they don’t appear to have any connection with Nick whatsoever, Jasmine and Jaimi are still around. I know this is cynical, but between Nick’s lazy approach and coziness with the producers, it feels like he agreed to make sure a few black girls stuck around long enough until the producers / Bachelor Nation could pick one they liked and move forward with the whole Blachelorette campaign. Now I know what you’re thinking: c’mon Jen, that’s racist. Well ... so is The Bachelor.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[dinoalexander]

The Semi-Quotable 2017 Part 4

I never had his problem with Livejournal. I’ve had several problems but never this... Part 4.

——

"Note to terrorists: During WWII, London endured this thing called 'The Blitz'. Google it. They will endure your petty stupidity. Note to Trump: During WWII, London endured this thing called 'The Blitz'. Google it. They will endure your petty stupidity. Keep calm and carry on." -Kevin

"When you scroll to find your name, don't see your name for a really long time, and wonder if you could have squeezed just a couple more fucks in there. Missed fucking opportunities!" -Laura

Jay: "Who doesn't love a Brazilian steak?"

Joe: "Who doesn't love a Brazilian ass!"

C: "Who doesn't love a Brazilian?"

"As soon as American Idol came to America, we were all fucked." -Jenna

"This isn't football, it's boy bands!" -Q

"To quote the great philosopher Cornell Haynes Jr., it's getting hot in herre." -C

"I'll always love UNC but Gonzaga destroyed Tokyo." -Austin

"Make chicken salad out of that chicken shit!" -Q

"If one more person adds me to LulaNotLemon group without asking me, I swear I am going to find every pair of leggings on this island and burn them in a huge bonfire at Bayview Park. #YouveBeenWarned" -Shannon

"Stranger at Walmart just coughed in my face. So I have two, maybe three days to live." -Q

"I got some antibiotics for the bug I've had for over a week. I think it's adorable that CVS colored the antibiotics green for St. Patrick's Day and they taste like mint. I think those lazy bastards just gave me a container of Tic Tacs." Klauss

"I used to date somebody with lazy eye, but she was seeing someone on the side." -Rammson

"Is that a thing? Because I just made it a thing." -Jordan

“What is the current bar for "most awkward human on the planet" in the Guinness Book of World Records? Cause I wouldn't mind getting something back for all my suffering.” -Christina

“You’re like a WetJet with a lab degree!” -Q, on cleaning up the ER doc’s messes

“Supporting my husband’s love for this awful team.” -Kyle

“THANKS FOR NOTHING, CRABTREE!” -Robin

"Had homey on some Globetrotter shit." -Jabari

"NBC: Where Every Night at 8 PM is Fuckin' Christmas." -Klauss

“Diane, it’s ‪Tuesday, August 1st‬ and I’ve stumbled upon quite a few mysteries here at Fashion Peaks. Tully the horse has been sent to the glue factory, The Ascension has a very peculiar taste in music, and my partner, Deputy Dango, has been abducted - possibly by extraterrestrials. That leaves me with two questions: One, who kidnapped Fandango? Two, why didn’t I just call you instead of record this?” – Tyler Breeze

“Wait, so that giraffe still hasn't given birth? Have we explored the possibility that the zookeeper just overfed her a few months ago and lied instead of admitting the mistake?” - Nedeff

“Just finished watching ‪Die Hard‬ for the first time (we can discuss later). ‪Die Hard‬ is 100% not a Christmas Movie. Just because it ends with Christmas Music doesn’t make it a Christmas Movie.” – Dan O’Toole with the most wrong hot take of 2017

“We're still gonna get near-daily articles trying to Understand The Le Pen Voter though right” @pattymo

“Of course any portrayal of a real-life figure is about so much more than physical resemblance, but come on guys: how did they NOT cast Christopher Plummer as J. Paul Getty in the first place?” – Richard Roeper

“Danny Ainge the only American who can outsmart a Russian.” – David Dennis Jr.

“The Yankees haven’t been in the playoffs in a while so I forgot how punchable Brett Gardner’s face is” – Brad Rutter

“HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” – Dougie Jones

“There’s no fucking way he sold 200 Streamdaddy’s” – Prez on IYH

“By far the most bizarre trivia fact about Dean Stockwell to me is that he’s a trained martial artist.” – Allison Pregler

“Don’t Worry, We’ll Let You Know When The Last Surviving World War II Veteran Dies” - ClickHole

“And I thought Ashley Judd’s sleaziest boss was Benjamin Horne.” – Ken Jennings

“Because hey, if you lose $35 Million one time, try try again!” – Scott Keith on Vince McMahon relaunching the XFL

“I don't recommend going to Wal-Mart 2 days before Christmas. And by "2 days before Christmas", I mean ever.” – BFG

“Pepsi: That was the biggest PR blunder of the week, year maybe.

United: Hold My Beer

Sean Spicer: LEEEEEEEEEERROOOOOOOY JEEEENNNNNNKINS!” - @Lance_Bradley

“IF THE TITANIC HAPPENED TODAY: “Sir, we’re heading straight for that iceberg. / That’s a fake iceberg. / Sir, it’s a mountain of ice and it’s right in front of us. / Full speed ahead! / Sir, we just hit the iceberg and now we’re sinking...Sir?...Women & children first, Sir...” – Jeff Daniels

“Hot on the heels of his triumphant rebranding of MySpace, Justin Timberlake brings sexy back to the NFL.” – Kevin M.

“Derek Jeter is so freaking hot. I hate the Yankees!” – Greg’s friend Kat’s mother

"Marty Jannetty couldn't buy a date..." thankfully 24 years later Marty will make sure his dates don't share his DNA...” - Dane

“Next year's State of the Union should have an In Memoriam montage with everyone who's been fired.” - Nedeff

“What can bring an end to an angry dance montage? FUCKING ‘NAM!” – The Cinema Snob

“IT’S NOT ABOUT THE BUNNY! ………… Is it about the Bunny? ………. No, it’s not about the bunny.” – Tommy “Hawk” Hill

“WARREN WHAT DID YOU DO!?!?” -Jimmy Kimmel after the Oscar Best Picture fuckup

“GOODBYE AOL INSTANT MESSENGER GO FUCK YOURSELF” – The Iron Sheik

“A producer pitches a show to an NBC executive.

"Wow me."

"Okay- it's The OJ Simpson Trial... but wacky!"

"Go on..."

"It's a procedural comedy where we don't know whether he did it until the end of the season!"

"But... this is a murder, right? Someone dies?"

"Oh, yes- good 'n' dead."

"I see... and who were you thinking would play the role of the is-he-isn't-he murderer?"

"The Trinity Killer from Dexter, John Lithgow."

"Dick Solomon?! GREENLIGHT THAT ISH" - Fard

“EVERYTHING TRUMP TOUCHES DIES!” – Rick Wilson

“Can’t believe Weinstein didn’t go with the old “locker room talk” defense.” – Matthew Yglesias

“So here's what we're gonna do. Without my knowledge, my husband came to you for a loan of $20,000. You were nice enough to give it to him. But he should never have been gambling like that. I'm gonna pay you back. Now, at my bank, where we make less than one percent interest on what little money we have, people would be turning cartwheels just to get 25 percent interest on any loan, and that is what I'm generously gonna give to you right now, $25,000. That is my first, last, and only offer to you. What kind of world are we living in where people can behave like this? Treat other people this way without any compassion or feeling for their suffering? We are living in a dark, dark age, and you are part of the problem. Now, I suggest you take a good, long look at yourselves because I never want to see either of you again.” – Janey-E Jones

“If professional wrestling isn't real why have I spent the past hour watching Bobby "The Brain" Heenan videos quietly alone in my hotel room?” – Tom Arnold

Gordon Cole: “We’re not anywhere near Mount Rushmore.”

Albert Rosenfield: “I brought a picture for you.”

Gordon Cole: (Looks at picture) “There they are Albert, faces of stone.”

“This is pretty exciting to be apart of this nomination for @VeepHBO especially since my mom watched the entire last season of Madame Secretary and was confused why I was never on it.” – Paul Scheer

“Nice to know that while other industries are turning to tablets and screens, game show hosts are still plugging away with those little cards.” – SC Duncan

“We will remember the unappreciative, ungreatful, evil, awful, Anthem owl men and the man who’s fond of slapping nuts on how they treated us on our exodus from Impact Wrestling YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!” – Matt Hardy shooting on Double J’s business practices

“Steve Bannon gets tonight’s Last Word – which for him, is the complete silence of utter humiliation” – Lawrence O’Donnell

“SHOVEL YOUR WAY OUT OF THE SHIT!” – Dr. Lawrence Jacoby

“Sorry I took your suit. I mean, you had it coming. Actually, it turns out it was the perfect sort of tough love moment that you needed, to urge you on, right? Don't you think? Let's just say it was. Look, you screwed the pooch hard. Big time. But then you did the right thing: you took the dog to the clinic, you raised the hybrid puppies... alright, not my best analogy. I just wanted to mention that I think with a little more mentoring, you could be a real asset to the team. There's about 50 reporters behind that door, real ones, not bloggers, so when you're ready...” – Tony Stark

“In the Alabama Senate Race, the predicted result among many pundits was a narrow margin of victory. Roy Moore himself, however, was hoping for a shocker in the teens.” – Nedeff

“Sports Illustrated called and said I was probably going to be Sportsman of the Year, but it was going to take a long photo shoot and interview. I’m not proud of my recent perm and have a interpretive dance class at the interview time so I turned it down! No Thanks SI!!” – Noah Syndergaard

“Wow, if I had invested $1,000 in Bitcoin last week, today I would have... still no idea how Bitcoin works.” - @StephenAtHome

“In a confusing twist, Han Solo's name will be revealed to be Luther Campbell.” – Jeff Gerstmann

“Lordy, I hope there are tapes!” – James Comey

“This is the water, and this is the well. Drink full, and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within.” – The Woodsman in Episode 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return 

“We need some loving profiles of a small town in northern Alabama that thinks obstruction of justice is fine because Drumpf respects cops.” – Matthew Yglesias

“Why are Greg Gumbel and Seth Davis sitting at a desk for ants?” – Andrew Bucholtz

How many more of these things will Tumblr tolerate? Stay tuned...