#pander to the locals i beg you

[nemospecific]

I hope Buoy gets a shout out when the Quangle comes to Climate Pledge arena.

[fredwmain]

There's been a few posts like this so far, but here's my two cents:

To these people (Trump, Putin, Orban, Meloni, Milei, Modi, etc.) we are all faggots. We are all freaks, all queers, all degenerates, undesirables, pedophiles, predators. There is no way for us to package our existence in a way that will not, eventually, make them try to eliminate us.

It does not matter how upper middle class or white of a faggot you are, how much you pander to them, whether you wear the pink triangle like a good queer. When they decide we are the enemy, they will come for you and me like they are coming for our trans siblings and for the refugees begging for our help. Authoritarians need an enemy to destroy.

But this is just one moment. I beg you all to spread love. Build resilient community. Care for each other and do it radically and freely. Go to protests, get involved with local politics, make as much noise as you can so the fascists know you will not go quietly. But at the same time, build a life based on love and solidarity.

Until there are no more elections, vote. If you have enough, give. If this is all too much, take a break. Take joy like being happy is an act of resistance, because it is. Authoritarianism thrives on our despair and our isolation, and it falls when faced with radical solidarity and hope.

I love you. I want you to be safe and happy and loved. I want you to tell that to at least one person today and every day, because loving freely, radically, and openly is what will make the world better.

[survivalist-anon]

Log 2: Living Under a Rock

It's been a week since my drop-off at the hospital....no surprise I've been having trouble sleeping, I got some work leave from my boss at the nature reserve.....god damn I'm fucking tired.

Local folks both new to the town and old friends have been pandering for questions.

Some of the local middle schoolers kept fallowing me to my work place asking me about the metal guy. I simply told them I shot him in the eye, than he exploded.....I wasn't expecting those annoying brats to tell other kids about it. Obviously the local pastor (Mark) has been sending his goons to come to my cabin to convince me to come to church for the sake of saving my soul and all that "lovely" jazz. I told them I literally may have met the devil, shot him in the eye, exploded , and now he's dead and thus to leave me alone.

Some folks are a little more respectful and just ask me about more personal things. Got recommended a therapist who just moved to town named Miss Jenny Oakley, nice lady, smiles all the time and has an impressive 3 PhDs in psychology and mental health medication. She's been helping me get through the whole thing and believes I'll be able to make a speedy recovery. She trusts my resolve and that's good in my book.

....now "Newly appointed Deputy" Jeff (my ex-boyfriend) apparently thinks he can just give me the presidential treatment. He keeps following my car EVERYWHERE. I feel like nuisance now this has happened, people keep staring at me when Jeff just follows me at this point. You'd think after our falling out he'd have the self respect to be a little less...creepy about it. He's stopped by my cabin to keep checking up on me....I wonder if he thinks it's going to be like in the movies where estranged lovers get back together if something happens....jokes on him... I do not need a guy who has tried to convince me to move to Ohio and insult my family's cultural background to boot. Asshole.

Anyways, I've been hanging out at this new coffee shop that's just opened up...it's cozy, sells actual homemade pastries and the coffee is pretty good. Finally, a nice third place. I've noticed more people around my age go there too .... however I've noticed one group constantly eyeing me from across the shop every time I go...they call themselves the "Marine Spotters"...I have no fucking idea what that intels, one of them came up to my table, had the audacity to sit down in front of me like he knew me.....

"So..........you saw one?", the unshaven neck beard asked.

".......you know you could have asked to sit down and I would have said yes but fine go off Gabe Newell.", I'm not usually this hostile but things have gotten tense for while....I wouldn't blame anyone for being upset at me for it either.

"heheh very funny, anyway, my name is Benedict Grabowski. I'm the local expert in these "big metal men "....I see based on your description you've seen a "Black Legion" marine. A level 3 on the danger scale and are quite rare in these parts.", he adjusts his glasses. "The fact you even survived a harrowing encounter with one is without a doubt a life achievement and a free ticket admission to our organization!", handing me a business card with some edgy cartoon spaceman, it had his phone number, email address and an actual address...it was the abandoned mineral mine not too far from the animal reserve I work at....

"I hope your membership will prove to be of great use to us.", concluding with a smug look on his jolly face.

I sat there ready to throw this guy from window I was seated next to....but I'm certain the shop owners wouldn't be too pleased.

".....why the .org?"

He acted confused, "I beg your pardon?".

"...the .org....on your email address....you don't work for the Tillamook station do you? I told them I don't know shit.", took a frustrated sip of my coffee.

He laid back, "well...I...what one would call....a "white hat hacker"....my services in online server hacking, government surveillance and hehe...not to brag...a national code cracking champion of the Tokyo Code Breaker competition. I actually am...not a huge fan of our corporate federal overlords and I only desire for their inevitable downfall through me tanking their stocks."...

I literally was sitting across to a felon....

"so ..with your epic survival skills, my tech mastery and my collaborators", he points to his original table of collected individuals; a heavyset goth girl, the kid of one of the local beef farmers and one creepy guy I remember being the weird kid in highschool.

"Hi Steven.", I wave to him.

"Hi Lorey!", he waves and gives his creepy grin that in through literally means nothing to me. He does it for a cheap bit that I'm certain Jeff already knows and is dieing to catch him for something.

By this point Benedict was actually shocked I knew Steven. "What?! I thought you just moved here!"

I chuckled a little, "I use to live here, I know the area rather well but it's changed a bit since I was last here back in 2003. Also....what the shit is this all about?". I point to the business card.

His shocked expression transforms back into that stupid 'big shot cool guy' look. "Well, we spot those big metal men. Turns out....these anomalous entities are actually appearing throughout the whole planet. All of them of variety and....motives....". He looks around, takes out a folder of the ever lovable 'blurry photographic evidence' one would expect looking for cryptids. "Behold. Humanoids who walk amongst us!".

Im staring at the photos, one struck me to my core ....the big black and bronze one I saw being blown to chunks...the one that killed Grandpa.

"ah...I see...so it was that one.", leaning towards me closer....I can smell the fucking butter from his croissant he ate at his table. "If you need us...call us....", he decided to leave a second card....ok....."anyway, surprised?"

I was a lot more than surprised....I must have been living under a rock...."yeah....I am."

After that I decided to go home. On the ride back, I couldn't help but wonder if Benedict was telling the truth... about them being everywhere...that's a scary thought in all honesty.

I get out my car and took one long glance at my Grandpa's cabin. His only inheritance to my mom. When I said the funeral was a mess, it was an absolute garbage fire because on the same day we had his will reading. His most valuable possession in his will was this cabin, and boy was my aunt pissed she didn't get the property. At least Mom had the last laugh, anyway....as I was remembering that day....I noticed something that sent shivers up and down my spine.

A blood trail....it looked like it came from the forest behind the property, up the steps and on to my doormat. I get out of the car, cautiously, for I all know whom ever left this bloody mess is close by.

It was a huge leather sack, sealed tight with...a red wax in the opening. It was leaking a lot, I was hesitant to open it, but the blood smelt familiar. "....it can't be....", I tore off the hard wax, the gamey stink of deer was permeating throughout the porch. Opening the sack, I saw what could be weeks worth of meat. I was stunned! All nicely cut and cleaned ...I tried lifting the sack without getting some blood on me...failed...and brought it to the cellar freezer. As I placed the meat in the freezer, I saw there was a note on the bag I hadn't noticed....it was a handwritten note for certain....but I had no idea what was written on it. Again, Nordic ruins were present...but it was mixed with another language...I took medieval history a short while back and had the privilege of almost learning how to read medieval texts....it was close to it...and yet... completely unreadable for me.

I set the note on a table and save it for later.

Everything has been so strange lately.

The hours pass, and I finally decided to do some digging....this has to be some...real life ARG or something....it's either a dedicated group of cosplayers....or... something is really out there...it's so uncanny....

End of log 2

@kit-williams

[the-sage-libriomancer]

actually re: that last reblog, i think you could have a lot of comedy potential with the ex-zodiacs having a basic affinity for their respective animals even after the Curse breaks.

-Tohru finds a stray dog in need of medical attention but can't get close to it bc it's so scared of humans, so she calls Shigure and begs him to help. Shigure ends up driving several hours just to coax the dog into visiting a vet, then has to stay for several more hours bc he's literally the only human being the dog will trust. Kyo is less than happy about this but he can't do anything while the dog is growling at anyone who comes within ten feet of Shigure and itself. Shigure uses this to his advantage and gleefully annoys everyone in earshot.

-Momiji has a similar experience when the class pet (a rabbit) escapes and gets lost in the school. he nobly volunteers to search for it with his "rabbit-whispering powers," but unfortunately finds the rabbit dead after accidentally eating rat poison. Momiji feels so bad that he goes outside and catches a wild hare to replace it. no, Momiji doesn't see a problem with this. yes, the teacher, principal, and local animal control obviously object. it doesn't even fit in the cage.

-pets are a pretty loaded topic in all ex-zodiac households. the kids all go through a phase of begging for a pet, but obviously none of their parents want to regularly look at a physical representation of their old trauma. even people like Hatsuharu or Hatori aren't safe bc if someone like Yuki or Shigure pops in unexpectedly, you don't want them to find your pet mouse or dog staring back at them. i think most of the parents just have a no-pet policy, but i'm sure at least one household ended up going "fuck it" and getting a chinchilla.

-one time Rin got roped into chaperoning the twins' school field trip to a farm, and experienced every horse girl's dream when a ferocious barely tamed horse in the stables decided she was its best friend. cue the horse girl movie cliche montage except Rin fucking hated the attention and refused to pander to any of it. she ended up kicking the horse out of frustration, resulting in a stern lecture from the farmhands and a second (slightly awed) lecture from the teacher. Rin is no longer asked to chaperone field trips.

-Kyo was quickly banned from cat cafes as a teenager for obvious reasons, and to this day he can't convince his old hometown to lift the ban. the other Sohmas use this to their advantage regularly (especially Yuki, who always gets bitten by the cats but thinks it's hilarious to go with Tohru and wave at a fuming Kyo through the window).

[ileftherbackhome]

i think that single wikipedia read on george w bush has done more to deradicalize me against republicans than i could have ever imagined before.

republicans are people too. we need to start engaging with the people for the sake of working on fixing the problem together. we need to start looking at it like it's both "political parties" against the problem that is america.

honestly, the system is corrupt because the people who claim to care the loudest can't be bothered to check up on their politicians more than once every four years. that's the problem.

we stay home and let the political parties beg for money amongst the crazies than laugh at them for pandering to the crazies all while disenfranchising ourselves and never making our voices heard where it matters. in session and at the council meetings in town.

yeah, does it suck that voting isn't easy here and the parties have to spend money to gain access to making laws to help the people? definitely for sure i feel the anger there.

but what are we doing to make it easier for the people we claim we want to "lead" us? politicans are not on social media. it is our responsibility to make the change we want to see in the world.

y'all fantasizing about revolution but don't see that the republicans have been staging one for fifty fucking years now and it all started with convincing the american people their votes are useless.

i have said it before and I'll say it again. the "radical" change you are looking for, the one that doesn't harm people, is to show up in LARGE numbers and TURN EVERY STATE BLUE UP AND DOWN THE FUCKING BALLOT THIS YEAR.

That would literally open so many doors for grassroots organizers to start scheduling meetings with the president and congress and their local representatives and talking about what they want to see changed in the laws.

AND THEY WOULD HAVE TO FUCKING LISTEN BECAUSE IF THEY DIDNT DO WHAT WE WANTED THEN WE COULD PROTEST VOTE BUT IF YOU CANT EVEN BE BOTHERED TO ORGANIZE TO TURN THE WHOLE COUNTRY BLUE HOW DO U EXPECT POLITICIANS TO LISTEN TO YOU.

It sucks but it's fucking reality!!!!!! you need to have power over people and corporations have an easier time getting that power because they have a shit ton of money to spend on propaganda. but if we show up as a populus and vote blue, the politicians we elected would have to listen to us.

the reason politicians vote in the interest of corporations is because they have proven to politicians they can get them their votes and positions in power. if we show up and every fucking state goes blue, they would have to listen to us!!!! JUST LIKE THEY LISTENED TO THE PEOPLE WHO ELECTED REAGAN!!! AND LOOK WHERE WE ARE NOW.

please stop listening to people trying to convince its radical to do nothing. you cannot change the system from the comforts of your own home.

[chaoskirin]

You can't convince people who won't vote.

I'm done of pandering, pussyfooting, or being nice. Those people are idiots. Morons. They will never get that the people who were punished were the queer, disabled, immigrant, POC, homeless, different, autistic, children, and elderly.

There is a break in logic in the brains of these people. They suffer from liberalism and black/white thinking. To them, there is no middle ground. They would rather harm millions of people than do what those million of people beg them to do and vote for an imperfect candidate.

You cannot ever get through to these fuckheads. They will never listen. They will never sit themselves down and think about what they did, because in their mind, they got their imaginary asspats from the universe for not voting, or voting their conscience. Thousands of people are about to die, but they'll never reflect on what they did. It will always come back to "maybe the democrats should have provided a better candidate, then!"

They live in a fucking fairy world where if they just clap their hands hard enough, the capitalist hellscape of the United States will listen and give them Bernie Sanders. And if not, they'll take up arms from behind their computers and start a revolution of words, which SURELY the people telling them to do damage control will abide while fighting for their lives against a literal dictator.

There is no words you can offer to make them pull their head out from their ascending colon (look it up to see just how far they have themselves shoved up their own ass). If they try just a little harder, they might even be able to give themselves an at-home appendectomy, much like pregnant people who don't want their babies will have to give themselves their own abortions.

I know you're trying to help them see the light, but there is no light behind these people's eyes. There is nothing they can get. Nothing they can spontaneously understand. Because if they haven't figured it out in the last ten fucking years, they're a lost cause.

You know what you have to turn your attention to? Making sure people are registered. Make sure suppression isn't destroying the ability to vote for the people who really want to. Post on your local facebook, on Next Door, on those old forums that look like they're straight out of early 2000's AOL, and let people know you will help them make sure they can vote. Thousands of people, possibly tens of thousands, could not vote because of suppression.

Don't waste your time on people who've had the opportunity to listen and rejected logic for their own happy feelgood time. Spend your time on people who actually matter.

going insane hearing talk about whether harris did enough to "earn" votes. no candidate has ever or can ever earn my vote because a vote is not a payment i send to a politician and it's stupid to think about it like it is. exact same thinking error that leads to people talking about not voting like it's a boycott. if anyone earned my vote it's the people i tried to use that vote to protect

[mrs-theirin]

understanding.

so uh this originally started as “hating rebecca hours”, then it was loving nate hours, and then suddenly at the last second it became.......mutually respecting adam hours??? so here we are. @magebastard this one’s for you <3

calliope langford x nate sewell / calliope & adam du mortain, 2585 words. mommy issues paired with getting to know your stuffy leader better (also on ao3 <3)

The apartment is quiet. 

Mind-numbingly quiet, actually.

“Stay home and enjoy yourself,” Tina had said, practically pushing Calliope out the door, a wide smile plastered on her face that said if you don’t go home right now I will end you. Even Verda came out from the lab to say goodbye, his gentle eyes hardened in a way that let her know there was no fighting him. 

She needs something to do. The apartment just isn’t the same without Farah’s laughter, Adam’s groans of distaste, the irritating clouds of Morgan’s smoke—which still lingers on everything she owns. Honestly, she’s going to take Morgan’s cigarettes and shove them somewhere unpleasant—and Nate’s warm, calming presence. She debates sending him a text, maybe asking him for coffee, but the idea leaves as quickly as it came. 

He’s probably busy. She’s sure he has more important things to do than—

Im bad at this texting thing. Coffee

Calliope laughs. Before she can respond, another text from Nate comes in.

That was supposed to be a question. I cant find the apostrophe or question mark. I would like to have coffee with you. 

Another text, separate from the last.

Now, if you can. I heard you were sent home from work and I know how much you like the pastries there.

Her heart races at the thought of Nate frantically typing away at his phone, confused but determined to send her a text. She must admit, it’s a hilarious image, and she laughs as she sends her response.

relax and look for the “123” on the left of the keyboard. you’ll find all your punctuation needs there. and yes, i’d love to go get coffee. meet me there?

Ah! Found it. Thank you. And no, I’m outside your apartment. 

Calliope straightens, deigning to push aside the curtain and peek out at the sidewalk. Sure enough, Nate stands awkwardly outside, staring down at his phone. His gaze flickers up as her hand makes the curtain dance, and he waves politely. She waves back. She mouths “be right there” and pulls away, cursing herself for looking outside in the first place. Did he just run here? Was he just outside her apartment when he sent the original text? Did he just assume she would say yes? 

She rushes to her bedroom, ripping the nicest—and hopefully subtle—thing she owns out of her closet and throws it on, stopping in front of the mirror to undo the messy bun she has her bright orange hair in and tussle it into something appropriate. She glances at the panicked look in her eyes, and tries to calm down. What is she freaking out for? It’s just Nate. 

I would fight through any form of technology if I knew you were on the other end.

Nate, who can make her face flush with just a few words. Nate, who towers over her, his warm brown eyes staring into her soul. Nate, who is patiently standing outside waiting to take her to coffee. She tries not to hold out too much hope that it’s a date.

“Hey!” she says when she finally makes it outside, unconsciously taking too large of a step and standing uncomfortably close to him, which she quickly rectifies by inching backwards. They both laugh nervously. “Did you—”

“I was in the neighborhood,” Nate rushes out, his face flushing. “It’s a beautiful day out.”

She accepts the obvious lie with a face full of heat. “Let’s go then.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She loves the way he laughs. 

At Haley’s, he relaxes; his shoulders slouching, his gaze softening. He is no longer scanning every person on the street, trying to gauge if they’re a threat. He is talking and he is joking and he is smiling and he is laughing. And every time he throws his head back to laugh at some stupid sarcastic joke she makes, she melts. 

He sighs dreamily, then faces her with soft, kind eyes. “I really missed you, Calliope.”

Her heart thumps in her chest. “I missed you too. You could’ve called, you know.”

His smile fades. “I wasn’t allowed to. The Agency thought it was better if we just...left you alone for a while.”

“So I could recover?”

Nate turns away, scratching the back of his neck. “Yeah. That’s it.”

Before she can ask him to elaborate, she hears a familiar clack of heels behind her. Her body tenses. “Calliope,” her mother’s voice says, clear and professional, though surprised. She wasn’t expecting her daughter to be here. 

Calliope doesn’t even turn. Her hand clenches around her coffee and she clears her throat. “Rebecca.”

Something in her dies when she sees Rebecca take the seat next to her. It is crushed to ash as she turns to Nate, who is smiling kindly at Rebecca, ordering another pastry for her, inviting her to stay longer than Calliope prefers. Her mother hums gently. “Coffee date?” she asks, though there is something else in her voice. Something resentful. Something...cautious.

“And what if it was?” Calliope mumbles into her coffee, as Nate replies, “Oh no, just catching up.”

“You should be careful about how much time you spend in the open, Agent Sewell,” Rebecca offers, and it’s obvious why she’s saying it. Calliope begins to shake, as she always does around her mother, and washes her resentment down with her coffee. The warm liquid contrasts the coldness of her bitterness. 

It wasn’t always this way with Rebecca; there was a time where they laughed and smiled and shot each other with water guns. But eventually laughter dies out, smiles fade away, and water guns change to Glock 22s. Love changes to resentment. Dads die. 

She understands why secrets were kept. She hates that Rebecca doesn’t understand why she would be upset by the secrets that were kept. The way Rebecca’s eye twitches when Nate leans into Calliope is sign enough on its own. Can’t even be happy with the circumstances she has, apparently. 

“Of course,” Nate says, professional as always. “Understood.”

“Let the man...or, vamp, live,” Calliope retorts. “We’re just having coffee.”

Rebecca presses her lips together tightly. “Calliope. Do I need to remind you why you’ve been wearing turtlenecks for months?”

She chokes on her coffee, slamming the cup down on the counter, the paper crunching in her hand. Typical of her mother to remind her of trauma, trauma that deeply affects her, as if it’s just a statement she can throw out at any given moment, like a quick anecdote or conversation starter. How can one look at their daughter having her neck torn out by a killer vampire and think, “This will be good for future scoldings”? And her scoldings, well, of course they aren’t scoldings, they’re concerns. Worries from a concerned mother. A mother who was so concerned about her daughter that she left for years with no contact, leaving the local librarians to raise Calliope. 

Calliope tenses as she feels a hand on her shoulder, but deflates when she realizes what side the hand is on. Nate squeezes her shoulder affectionately, and she cannot thank him enough for being a rock. If Rebecca is the storm—cold, predictable, unrelenting—then Nate is the hearth; warm, welcoming, reassuring. He smiles softly at her. 

“Of course you don’t,” she finally speaks, subconsciously scratching at the scars. “But considering I’ll be working with the Agency again soon, getting coffee won’t matter much, will it? Or are you trying to say that I can only put myself at risk if I’m not having fun?”

Rebecca’s eyebrow twitches as she sighs. “I’m only trying to look out for you—”

“No, you aren’t.” Her voice is stern, but quiet. Don’t want to draw too much attention. That’s the way it’s always been, right?. “You’re looking out for yourself and your reputation as a ‘good mother’, but it’s all crap anyway. If you wanted to preserve that, you wouldn’t be begging me every 5 seconds to tell you you’re doing a good job.” 

“Calliope,” Nate gently warns, and she slowly shrugs his hand off of her shoulder. Now is not the time for another one of those sad, soulful looks he gives her when she argues with Rebecca. She doesn’t have the effort. 

Rebecca’s lips are thinned again, in that disappointed scowl Calliope’s seen so much of since this whole Agency business started. “Sweetheart,” she starts, and Calliope is already cringing away, already preparing herself for whatever pandering crap Rebecca is about to spew. “I want you to be safe.”

“But not happy, clearly.”

“Calliope Langford.” Rebecca’s voice is harsh, but it only manages to enrage Calliope more. Her mother isn’t stern often, usually grabbing for the ‘soft and meek’ route, but on the occasion she does show annoyance, it’s never a pleasant feeling. Not because it upsets Calliope, but because she knows it’s a ruse. If she holds out, her mother will give in, because they both know she can’t stand being the bad guy (despite making herself the bad guy in every single conversation they have). “This is dangerous business. I don’t want to see you hurt. I do love you, whether you believe me or not.”

Calliope stands abruptly, slapping a $20 bill on the counter. “Why don’t you concern yourself less with whether I believe you, and more with whether you believe yourself. Come on, Nate.”

She starts to walk away, but hesitates when Nate doesn’t immediately follow, out of his seat but hunched over, like a kicked, obedient puppy. A twinge of betrayal tugs at Calliope’s chest, but she waves it off, instead holding up her hand, exasperated. She leaves without another word. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The phone rings.

Once. 

Twice. 

Three times. 

Calliope sighs in exasperation, about to hit the red ‘end call’ button, when the phone finally clicks, a stern, professional voice coming through as clear as day: “Special Agent Adam du Mortain. Is this something important?”

She rolls her eyes, unable to keep the smile off of her face. “It’s just me, Adam. You don’t have to answer the phone like that.”

“Is this something important,” he repeats, though this time it’s less of a question. 

She gives in. “I was wondering if you wanted to spar. You said you were...less than impressed with my combat skills, so why don’t you teach me?”

The line is silent for a moment, before Adam lets out a small huff. “Where?” 

She blinks. She hadn’t thought of that. “...Here?” she offers, uncertain.

He sighs heavily. “Open the door.” 

The call ends and she is rooted in place for a moment before she springs up from her couch, opening the door and peeking out. Adam is standing on her stairs, looming over her, and he raises a single eyebrow, making the action of entering her apartment. She steps aside and watches him analyze the living room. “Move the table,” he says.

“You’re the one with the super strength,” she jokes, closing the door behind her. “Can’t you do it?”

He glares at her. “Are you serious about training with me?”

She straightens under his gaze, nodding sharply. “Yes,” she responds, though it comes out like a nervous question.

“Then move the table. And slide the couch away too. We need plenty of room.”

She salutes him, tying her hair back into a high ponytail. “Can do!”

He groans. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Why didn’t you call one of the others?” Adam asks, crossing his arms and staring down at the panting, sweating Calliope, who is holding onto her knees for dear life.

“Oh, you know—” she says between heavy breaths. “You’re starting to grow on me.”

“Your form is poor.”

“Oh, I know!” she wheezes. “You actually told me that, a bunch of times, like two seconds ago.”

If she didn’t know any better, she can swear she sees a ghost of a smile threatening to appear on Adam’s lips, then it’s gone as quickly as it came. He regards her with complete and utter disappointment. “They would’ve been nicer.”

“Ah, but nice isn’t what I need. I need to learn how to fight.”

This time Adam does actually smile, though it’s still not quite a full smile, more like pride over seeing a lesson learned. He cocks his head to the side. “It could also be that you’re fighting with Nate.”

She hesitates for a moment before scoffing. “I’m not fighting with Nate. Fighting would require words, of which there were none.”

Her two seconds of hesitation were enough for Adam, because he nods his head sharply, and scowls. “Figure it out. I don’t want you two at odds next time we’re all together.”

“Why?” Calliope drags the table back to its original spot, collapsing on the couch with a heave. “I thought I was a distraction.”

He joins her on the couch, his posture as formal as ever, the distance an obvious sign of something. “You are a distraction. But you’re more of a distraction when Nate is running through his mind trying to make up a list of ways he can make it up to you.”

“Make what up to me?”

“You’d have to tell me that.”

The two stare at each other before Calliope sighs, smiling. “Thank you for coming over. You didn’t have to.”

“I don’t have to do anything I don’t wish to,” he simply says, and she rolls her eyes.

“Loosen up a little sometime, huh? I think it would do you good.”

“Then you and I will have to have differing opinions.”

A knock sounds at the door, and Calliope starts to stand, but Adam takes the lead instead, gesturing for her to stay put. She doesn’t put up a fight, after all, her body is aching and all she really wants is a nap right now, maybe a 3 day slumber. When the door opens, she strains her ears to hear the soft mumbles of whoever is at the door. Adam’s voice is strong, and overshadows the meeker, much quieter voice of the person—no, woman, that’s a woman’s voice—standing at the door. A few more minutes pass until Calliope finally hears Adam say, “I think you should leave,” and shuts the door. When he returns, she gives him a curious smile. 

“Who was that?” she asks, and he shakes his head. 

“No one important. It’s late, I should leave. Goodnight, Detective Langford.”

She stops him before he can zip out. “Adam, honestly. You can call me Calliope. I promise you won’t implode.”

He hesitates, gears in his head clearly turning, then gives in, his shoulders visibly relaxing. “Goodnight, Calliope. You did well.”

“You’re lying to me!” she calls after him, and he says nothing as the door shuts behind him. She lets out a soft, incredulous laugh. Well, at least one good thing happened today. 

She heads to the light switch, peeking out of the window just for a second to try to catch a glimpse of the woman Adam had sent away. Her heart drops into her feet as she sees the car she knows too well. Rebecca sits in her car, taking a deep breath, and eventually starts it up and drives away, shaking her head. Calliope is frozen at the window. 

It was Rebecca at the door. Rebecca, who Adam...turned away? Told to leave?

She takes a moment to suck in a deep breath, letting out a loud sigh. Huh, she thinks, turning off the light and heading to her shower, eager to wash off the grime and sweat of training. Maybe he’s not so bad after all.

[betterbemeta]

Ugh I just saw an absolutely terrible post I don’t want to engage directly with (not on my dash, just, a friend found it and served it to me like “isn’t this terrible?” which I appreciate them for)

and it basically framed all ‘progressive’ trends in pop media, especially genre pop media as ‘hobby gentrification’ in some kind of faux-leftist spiel that conveniently left out like, any actual accountability the holders of capital have and instead placed the blame on “new fans” "shitting on the old guard” and “bourgeois moral wheedling” as if that’s the same as even their own definition of gentrification which they claim is “ renovating a physical location to “scale it up”, usually to the next income class tier. “

Im just. stunned by how unbelievably inept the comparison is, even self-contained in their own post. it’s wrapped in lots of Lefty Language to make it seem credible but

Progressive themes are not making it too expensive to do your hobbies. Consuming media isn’t a “hobby” and even if it was, there is no fundamental human right to shelter or resources being denied when dungeons and dragons says characters can be trans

The new “disparaging of the hobby’s past” is not the same as gentrification and I am not sure it is even happening. If the hobby’s past was so shameful, then modern media companies would not make so many references, begging and pandering in their rehashes of old media for people who are familiar with the property to buy it.

It is intellectually dishonest to say that “oh, hobbies have always been inclusive, they didn’t just become ‘good’ when the new kids showed up" when we have written records of minority writers being pushed out of retro gaming periodicals and awareness of focus testing in many “hobbies” (an offshoot of a game or toy company) to narrow their demographic. Like yes, true, my mom played D&D decades ago but 1) eating what’s put in front of you is not true inclusion, and 2) “some nice friends who included you in games” is not the same thing as a company’s commercialized materials updating for a modern awareness, or altering elements considered degrading for actual decades.

The things this person is whining about (gaming, comic books) are not “hobbies” anymore and didn’t “get big to appeal to higher income demographic”-- they became cash cow money franchises that rake in millions to billions of dollars from every demographic at once. This person is gleefully pouring money into their hobbies and ignoring that a capitalist noticed the money like “wow, I bet I could make more” and upgraded their burger stand into a McDonalds to harvest more money from more types of people and this person, who can still afford a burger at the new price (maybe even more burger!) is merely angry that they also serve McRib now, or that the secret sauce formula changed or something.

“You can see it with things like Marvel Comics, where they pushed social justice, hired terrible editors/writers who fit an agenda, and then repeatedly shit on their old readers while attempting to pander to a new demographic.” If this person doesn’t believe blacksploitation or fem-sploitation that resulted in cringy comics issues and movies didn’t exist in previous decades then they aren’t old guard. And Marvel Comics sure isn’t hurting for money these days. Being UTTERLY NEEDED by a corporation for it to survive isn’t like... something to be proud of. That is a situation the corporation wants to correct ASAP. If you think you’re the cornerstone of a major commercial enterprise (as opposed to a local business) as the consumer, you’re wrong and have no business claiming to analyze anything in terms of “gentrification.” Marvel was never a corner bodega and it has never needed any specific ‘community’ to survive.

implying that “moral” concerns are bourgeoisie and that the working class doesn’t care about them morals or inclusion and just wants their wolverine comic books is like... not only wrong, (”inclusion of the people who are more likely to be in the working class is bourgeoisie!”) and dangerous (”the working class is not interested in morality, only the rich care”), it’s almost comically egotistical. Like oh wow!! You’re doing so much work, having so much class consciousness, for buying comic books or “doing hobbies!” The work of buying these commercial items is a needed skill in society and trans or gay or black people involved disrupts that labor, right, ok! Consuming this media, which is sometimes intended for children and to show children a better world than our own world, is an act of labor that Marvel or Wizards of the Coast could not live without! Wow!

you’ll never get back the groady days where nerds were an “underclass” on a social hierarchy and you don’t want those days anyway, if they ever truly existed. Why do gamers wanna be oppressed so bad. their interests are validated, elevated into media empires the likes of which the world has never seen before and because that involves marketing that isn’t Aggressively Masculine or Shamefully Niche they can’t just shut up. They long for the days where their time wasters felt like a greasy spoon diner coffee with the busboy’s hair in it and can’t shake the paranoia that somewhere, just out of sight, there is a vaguely pleasant nonfat vanilla soy latte hovering over them and it wants to ruin star wars

[bloodybells1]

Motley Boo: The Dirt 2019 and a Tertiary Failure to Reframe the “Baddest Band”’s History within Patriarchal Discourse

It’s difficult to overstate the impact Mötley Crüe made on the history of heavy metal with their 1981 debut album, Too Fast For Love. Raw, phlegmatic, and, yes, fast—it clocks in at less than 40 minutes—the album dropped into the world of heavy metal like a megaton anvil (or a turbocharged racer, depending on how you looked at it). The repercussions were conclusive and far-reaching. Shortly after the release, the band would support established acts like Kiss on the road, and later followed up the record with an even bigger smash hit, Shout at the Devil, permanently engraving them into the annals of heavy metal. 

What distinguished this freshmen effort in the larger context of the metal scene, however, was the band’s—well, really, Nikki Sixx’s—intelligent cross-referencing of glam rock optics within the giant soundscape of the Marshall amp set. Almost a decade before Guns’n’Roses would introduce a similarly decadent soupcon of glam rock attitude into heavy metal’s DNA (more in the form of LA dispossession, but you know what I mean), there stood Crüe, bow-tying the cranked distortion of heavy metal with an androgynous, lipstick-smeared pucker.

Yet, the record was more than just a public relations gambit to redesign heavy metal in the image of T. Rex. After all, it seemed the band had actually made a great album. It was good enough to make it into the mixtapes of LA punks and New York skinheads, at least, as well as those of breadbasket-America headbangers—quite a feat for a band that cared little for the punk scene’s headier nihilism. Punks, for their part, looked past the cockrocking and focused instead on the record’s straightforward production and live sound. As it turned out, it was a good sign that a band like Crüe, for all their apparent fluffiness and ostensibly commercial leanings, had gained the favor of this more reticent community, having passed the “canary in the coal mine” test of punk rock’s preoccupation with authenticity.

And yet, I bet the first thing that comes to mind when prompted by the name of Mötley Crüe, at least to that of the layman, isn’t the infectious speed of “Live Wire”’s thunderclap-opening riff, but rather the band’s notoriously depraved extracurricular reputation. In fact, the quartet was already infamous for debauched hedonism prior to their even getting signed, the lore going back to their salad days as local lotharios at the Viper Room in downtown Los Angeles. Right out of the gate, they were as famous for fornication and drug abuse as for their music. 

Far from discouraging the storyline of excess, Crüe seemed right at home with their association with drugs and sex. The emphasis on carnality became a career-long feature of their mystique, both as a marketing strategy and as a core element of the philosophy implied in their music. Ultimately, they would enshrine this element in the form of a tell-all, committing all the sordid details of their exploits to paper in their aptly-named 2001 anthology of licensed sin, The Dirt. 

Couched as an entry of the confessional genre, the volume was jointly written in equal parts by each band member, offering long, anecdotal chapters, written in an extemporaneous, oral style. The accounts dove deep into the cesspool of their origins and the progress of their career. Obviously, the band didn’t write an exhaustive account of their entire story up to 2001, when the book was published, on their own; journalist Neil Strauss adroitly arranges their tracts with a wink and a nod. Not satisfied with a simple tell-all, though, he weaves the band members’ submitted drafts and “journal entries” into a grand narrative fabric that belies not only Strauss’s objective’s gaze, but a teleological vision of the price of fame, a tale steeped in storied entries of similar abasement, perhaps dating all the way back to Joris-Karl Huysmans’ A rebours.

Despite The Dirt’s clear insistence on the prevalence of moral transactionalism, it has nonetheless become known as a foundational text for the “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” trope of decadence. Readers seem to cherish the opening chapters of early hedonic excess without making much of the larger morality play laid out through the book’s end. The earlier chapters are so naked (excuse the pun) in their reportage of the band’s debauched activities, they’ve been taken as advertisements for that behavior. This rendering misappropriates the book’s real value—as a text on moral cosmology—by turning it into further glorification of rock’n’roll’s early hedonistic credo. Those early chapters are really a set up for what the book truly is, and should be known for most, that is, a discrediting of that credo.

The Dirt makes a clear case that the band has paid for their excesses—Vince Neil loses his daughter, Nikki Sixx almost dies, Mick Mars fights his way up to become the true sage in the band, Tommy Lee keeps getting divorced. These facts are laid out convincingly through a simple prose style: diaristic reportage of the self that, through careful pacing, mines deeper and deeper levels of personal pain and reckoning. Strauss is methodical in doling out these sojourns into the moral deep, making sure not to preempt their trials with hints of the future (never mind that we know how the story ends). This, along with the distinct voice of each band member, has the added effect of keeping the reader on the edge of their seat.

The supranarrative that emerges by the final page, one that supplants the traditional one that the unsuspecting reader no doubt imports into the book from decades of formulaic pandering to baser perspectives, states the fundamental primacy of Fate, that even the world’s most riotous band could not escape cosmic will. Mötley Crüe, as authors of the commodity known as “Mötley Crüe,” and through the media amplification of commodity fetishism, have become godlike and must be thrust down, made human again. Fate will make a human out of the man no matter how demiurgic he becomes. 

It’s no surprise that, with heady matter like this associated with a known commodity like Crüe, an early film deal sprang out of the publishing of the book. The Dirt came out in 2001, 20 years after Mötley Crüe came on the scene, and it has taken almost as much time for its dramatization, in the form of a Netflix biopic, to emerge. That’s a long time for a movie based on a book to come out, and there has understandably been a lot of anticipation.

Through the years, I’ve come to loathe biopics, which with few exceptions turn out to be the mere regurgitations of original texts, authored under viably artistic circumstances and trademarked, but then repeated by a committee of capitalist shills for a waiting audience eager to consume the brand anew. This explains why almost every biopic is a formulaic compendium, lacking any vision or direction, since its objective in the first place is to provide brand pornography for consumers of established texts.

It’s quite sad that the cinematic dramatization of The Dirt is no exception to this rule. It so exemplifies the craven absence of real art in the modern biopic as to appear almost comical at times. Indeed, when I looked at the image on my Netflix home page of the movie, I initially thought that perhaps someone had given Mötley Crüe’s inimitable story the Christopher Guest treatment.

Alas, no.

The movie is a sorry parade of every single biopic cliché that was ever established in the history of biopics. I won’t go into just how pathetically—shamelessly, even—this movie panders to the basest titillations of brand pornography. That sad fact has been firmly established by the critical consensus. (It carries a 43 percent Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes, a rating I, in fact, find charitable.) My point in writing about this infuriating piece of exploitative pablum is to direct the reader to the incredible missed opportunity of this movie.

As I’ve already written, the book’s greatest accomplishment is not the lascivious proxy to bad behavior its protracted tales of sexual promiscuity and substance abuse offer the more upstanding, less adventurous reader. It’s the successful reframing of the “sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll” narrative as a cautionary tale. Granted, we’ve seen this story inscribed into the annals of pop stardom before the publishing of The Dirt (hello Buddy Holly movie, Walk the Line, et al). Yet, its innovation lies not in the mere fact of the reframing, but in its offering the pen to the miscreant author: The Dirt is perhaps the first bad boy memoir: a behind-the-scenes tell-all yes, though of the Gore Vidal sort, and repurposed for the headbanger set with a moral edge.

By 2001, it had long been understood that this snot-nosed gang of aging rockers no longer had a decent recording in them (that’s no criticism if you believe, as I do, that the artform of rock music entails an inherent expiration date).  Instead, they produced a memoir that, shot straight from their shaky typewriters and notebooks, reinvents the band as willing atoners. In so doing they reemerge as personal subjects of a grand, cautionary tale, a heavy metal story for the era of Oprah, if you will. Mötley Crüe, then, performed a more authentic act in the writing of this book than any album they would have dared record.

Yet, along the current of its blood-soaked river of retribution, The Dirt, misses one crucial point of reckoning, one that positively begs for further exploration. 

Thanks to the #MeToo revolution, we are now given a critical apparatus to judge the excesses of the past committed in the name of patriarchy. Prior to this revolution, texts containing sexist, heteronormative givens were accepted reflexively by the zeitgeist. These were mythologies that historically debased and objectified women as the enslaved recipients of male lust, simple organs of the hedonic will of masculinity. We might have laughed at the music video for “Looks that Kill,” which features, among other debasing tropes, a gaggle of women in generic Neanderthal livery, but today we laugh harder—and more painfully. We no longer turn our eyes away from the now obvious rooting of this imagery in patriarchal attitudes.

The Dirt admittedly has almost nothing to offer by way of a #MeToo moment. (Early kudos, though, to Mick Mars who dedicates many of his paragraphs to the ludicrousness of male promiscuity.) But this isn’t necessarily a shortcoming of the book, anymore than that we may fault any number of classic stories and records that import similarly unexamined masculine, heteronormative givens into the 21st Century. As late as 2001, our eyes were yet glazed over with the unquestioned spectacle of male desire. Furthermore, the book is rife with vulnerable emoting and painful rumination. It thereby confers it an atmosphere of thoughtfulness. To a certain extent this vitiates against accusations of insensitivity.

But this potential forgiveness isn’t possible in cinema, where the taut storyline and shorter format require a more conclusive, unshaded verdict. Never mind that in 2019 it’s positively inexcusable. The #MeToo movement has today firmly established a visible discourse that supersedes antique notions of male desire, yet the movie seems to have taken no note of this seismic occurrence. To name but one of the movie’s baffling examples of cultural myopia, there are at least two scenes portraying women materializing out of the darkness underneath dining room tables, complete with satiated visages fresh from a round of clandestine fellatio. This is only one of the movie’s dated pickings from pre-#MeToo boilerplate, but it is perhaps the most glaring.

The film seems to conflate factual verisimilitude and hindsight objectivity; to which the simple response is that portraying something “as it was” doesn’t inoculate you from the sins of the past. One need only watch a couple seasons of another Netflix offering that traffics in garish ‘80s pop-cultural paraphernalia, GLOW, to witness a successful handling of these two elements. Many of the antique notions that were part and parcel in the ‘80s are now clearly offensive from today’s standards of race and sex discourse. These are reframed as racist and sexist mythologizing by the show’s deep dives into the family life of one of the African American wrestlers.

There’s nary a hint of this sort of wokeness from the film version of The Dirt. You really have to scratch your head as to how the committee let this fly, not to mention how desperate anyone would need to be in order to ignore such profligate tone-deafness under their collective noses.

The Dirt in 2019 truly encapsulates the most tragic outcome of a band like Mötley Crüe. The film’s failure as a work of art is not surprising when you consider that most biopics fail in that regard (Bohemian Rhapsody, anyone?). But the movie’s failure becomes truly irretrievable, of a completely different order of magnitude, when you consider that Mötley Crüe missed another opportunity to reframe themselves along the contours of contemporary discourse. They were successful in 2001, when, during the era of Oprah, they took their foundational text of rock’n’roll hedonism and reframed it as a personalized descent into Orphic confrontation. This gave us cause for hope in 2019, during the era of #MeToo, when the missing piece of that story, the accounting with the greater societal harm caused by unexamined patriarchy, was given an incredible opportunity to be placed back into the spine of the band’s legacy. Unfortunately, as Netflix and Mötley Crüe have made clear, the hope was misplaced.

[thelibertyloft]

What Was Missed in the Debate Mayhem

Ladies and gentlemen, like many of you, I'm still recovering from the real craziness of Tuesday night. Like many of you, I have had time to digest and debunk all of the political pandering of Communist-CNN and Madcow-MSNBC. I'm left with some personal findings of my own, and I want to share those with you all listening. 

There is no doubt that Trump's fire of freedom burns deep for our country - and thus, he has, for too long, taken the crap and criticism of the socialist-left and their comrades of the liberal media. Trump had some right jabs at ole' geriatric joker; however, he missed some true talking points and chances to let the babblin' Biden backslide into the oblivion. 

Donald Trump proved that he has the mindset and the political makeup and support of law enforcement agencies and staff across this nation. Unlike Joe Biden and the liberal-establishment that want to defund our nation's police, Trump believes in strong community and agency law enforcement. 

Most of you may have heard this, but many may not have picked up on it; Joe Biden stated that ride-a-long shrinks are the way to ensure that bullets can be talked away from and out of people in armed police conflict. That's right, folks; it would appear that ole' DC Swamp Monster himself belives that talk, not tactics, can disarm dangerous criminals. 

On Tuesday, Trump's highlight came when he asked muddy-minded Biden to name just one police agency or group supported him; he refused to answer. And why is that? Because braindead Biden has no support from any law enforcement agency, local, state, or federal. For his 47 years in office, Biden fails to understand that our nation's communities' security and safety have eluded him and the socialist-left who have contributed to the utter devastation of our neighborhoods at the hands of radical, domestic terrorist groups like the BLM and Antifa, which he stated was an idea, and not a movement. Also, not many may have caught this, but Biden told Trump that "Antifa would take him down."

During the debate, Trump was questioned by the equally chaotic moderator, Chris Wallace, on why he recently expanded the ban on racial sensitivity training throughout the federal government branches. Biden and the Democrats consider the training to be an essential step towards racial equality; Trump said the movement asked people to do things that were "absolutely insane."

Trump defended his stance on the debate stage by saying, "We have to go back to the core values of this country," Trump added. "They were teaching people to hate our country, that it's a horrible place, it's a racist place, and they were teaching people to hate our country. And I'm not going to allow that to happen."

Ladies and gentlemen, our president and the Republican Party, are 100% correct; critical race theory is crap and begs the notion that most white people in this country are racist and do nothing more than to prop up black people as cornerstones of their personal and professional success - leaving African Americans begging for scapes.

I'm here to tell you, if as a nation we are to believe this, then Joe Biden is the most significant racial bigot ever to be named as a presidential nominee. And why, because for 47 years, Joe Biden has dined and defended racists and attacked the black race, labeling them as a danger to American society by passing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

By his omission, Joe Biden predicated and participated in the law's strong arm, imprisoning African Americans at a much higher rate than whites. Joe Biden hasn't learned much in 47 years. His running mate, Kamala Harris, was just as tough on crime as Attorney General in California, leading to massive incarcerations and minorities' convictions. And now, both Democratic candidates have the audacity to stand before the American people and pervert their personal beliefs and professional actions that led to judicial racial discrimination. 

At the ripe age of 77, Biden has shed his cloak of colorism, and decided that he and his fellow liberals will this time, bring about real change for minorities in this country. Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that Democrats have defecated on the chance to provide useful and helpful policies to advance minorities in this country. 

Joe Biden lied to the American people saying that he is the Democratic Party and that he is not in favor of Bernie Sanders and AOC's Green New Deal, but later stated that the plan would pay for itself. Folks, if you are not in favor of something, and you plan to progress your platform, then you tell the American people that the far-left's deal to dismantle the interior of our democracy at the cost of 300 billion dollars will not work. 

I, like President Trump, are fed-up with communist fireworks on display by today's Democrats. Our nation is at a crossroads, fortunate or not, Trump or Biden will lead this country for the next four years. On Tuesday, Donald Trump proved yet again to be a fighter of freedom; no, he will not sleep or bend over for the socialist Joe Bidens of America. 

I don't know about you, but my liberty and right to choose life over the lifetime lies of liberals are not for sale. And that ladies and gentlemen, why my vote and my voice, like so many of you, will help keep Donald Trump as our nation's president. 

Music courtesy of Greg Shields Music. http://www.reverbnation.com/GregShields

Check out the latest episode of The Closet Conservative Podcast!

[kagansune]

Okay friends. I spent a semester and 40 pages of projects and honestly like a 3rd of my bachelor's on something that's being touched on here. CSR.

Also known as Corporate Social Responsibility. In the 20th century there was the rise of the idea that "the Business of Business is Business."

But then in the 90s CSR became a recognized term. CSR represents the duty of a corporation to all of its stakeholders (anyone who would be affected by what the company does, so workers, shareholders, consumers, locals of where their materials are harvested etc) and the environment. So the idea of this concept begs the question, what is the duty of a corporation exactly? Now you can examine tons of companies with different frameworks and talk about where they lie on the CSR spectrum and in fact I have. I did a detailed analysis of Patagonia (which doesn't do as well as you'd think. Transparency issues) and a detailed analysis of Marks and Spencer (one of the leaders of csr globally).

The general consensus moving forward is that the duty of corporations to their community is to leave the world better than they found it. However there are some issues with this.

For instance. A lot of companies just don't buy into this at all. Also most companies that do, initially buy into this because it makes them look better and makes them more attractive to consumers. They're pandering. You can see this with companies that do "an eco friendly series" for a clothing line. As upposed to make actual changes. This is what the person above is talking about.

However there are companies out there that really are trying and are changing the way business is done in the world. Fair trade chocolate is bigger than ever. There's a lumber supplier group in SE Asia that makes it impossible for people to exploit that area for its supply chain.

Unions. Organizations. Government regulations. All of these help. Especially for the less motivated companies. And it is nice to have a little more social incentive for companies to have better practices.

And please please. If you take anything away from this. Companies that are hiding something are afraid of public reporting. The companies that are actually making changes that matter? Their annual reports can be found online. In fact they should be easy to find. And we should push politically for public reporting of activities to be enforably mandatory. Because the biggest issue with CSR. Is accountability. If we can't prove if they're telling the truth or not. The majority of corporations will continue to get away with their bullshit

And listen. I'm not a capitalist. But I am a realist. And realistically this is the issue we're facing now. And while it might change and I hope it does. We can't just be arm chair philosophers. We have to take action. A glorious revolution would be fun and all but I like not dying. So i am going to focus on changing what companies can do. And what they should do. And hopefully it'll help.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

I’m about 90% sure the economy is never gonna “improve” 

this is capitalism in it’s final form

this is it honey 

[aftaabmagazine]

Filmmaker Siddiq Barmak talks from the heart

By Fariba Nawa

From the April 2004 Issue of Afghan Magazine | Lemar - Aftaab 

[caption: Siddiq Barmak, Berkeley, California 2004, photo by Yama Rahimi]

Fariba Nawa interviews Siddiq Barmak the day after he won the Golden Globe Award for the best foreign film.

It's the day after the Golden Globe Awards, the day after Siddiq Barmak stood in front of the world and Hollywood's most famous stars and accepted the award for best foreign film of the year. The Golden Globe for Osama was the icing on the cake after it became the first Afghan film ever presented at the Cannes Film Festival and was selected for the Director's Fortnight and received a special mention for directorial debuts. He also won the top spot at London and Montreal film festivals.

Afghanistan's now renowned filmmaker, Barmak walks out of the room he has been sequestered at in the San Francisco Ritz-Carlton Hotel, sun-baked skin glowing, hand extended.

"Am I glad to see a Dari-speaker! I've been tongue-tied all day trying to speak English to these American reporters," he says as he shakes my hand firmly.

Inside the press room where he has been sitting for the last five hours answering repetitive questions in what I consider proficient English, Barmak relaxes. He's comfortable and coherent, looking me in the eye with confidence.

United Artists, the distributor of Osama, has given me 30 minutes for the interview. Each reporter gets that much time. The good news is that he speaks a lot faster in Dari than English. The 41-year-old looks dapper in his white t-shirt and black suit. He offers me the untouched fruit tart in front of him.

The character Osama (Marina Golbahari) is a 12-year-old girl who pretends to be a boy so she can work and support her mother and grandmother. All the men in her family have died in the decades of war. Her street friend Espandi gives her the name Osama so that the boys in the neighborhood believe she is a boy. The film's plot centers on her attempts to hide her true gender. Yet the final tragedy in the film occurs when she is discovered to be a girl and is punished by the Taliban's draconian laws.

Some Afghans readily dismiss his award and say he won because the film panders to US policy against the Taliban. But Barmak clarifies.

"It is a new perspective on an Afghan experience. It's about Afghan women and humanity," he says.

Barmak is making the success of his film an opportunity to demand accountability on the promises the international community made to Afghanistan three years ago. He articulated his political message in his acceptance speech at the Golden Globe.

"I would like to dedicate this prize to the people who lost their trust in too much promises, to the people who lost the meaning of 'luck' and to the people who gave me a wonderful film, Osama."

The film is political but Barmak's message focuses on human suffering. It is a haunting account of the plight of women under the Taliban. I visited Afghanistan under the Taliban in the year 2000 and watching the film in New York City this year brought back memories of the psychological fear and entrapment that people felt under the regime.

Women and girls were not allowed to go to school or work under the Taliban. Barmak's movie shows a society besieged by gender apartheid and its impact on families. Women's oppression under the Taliban has been the subject of hundreds of books and films but many of those projects fail to relay a clear understanding of the issue. With riveting detail and color, Osama reconstructs the misery of five years in Kabul in less than two hours through the life of a young girl.

We never know her name in the movie. Barmak intentionally left her name out to show the crisis of identity. Osama loses herself in the disguise of a boy and her feminine attributes. Amateur Afghan actors were chosen from the streets and the professional Iranian cinematographer light up the screen. It's hard to believe that the main character Golbahari, now 14, was a beggar near Park Cinema in Kabul. She begged to Barmak for money, and he said he looked into her eyes and knew she was the right person for the role.

The film became Barmak's brainchild after he received a letter from a friend in Kabul recounting a true tale about a girl who disguised herself as a boy to survive during the Taliban years. The idea was realized when Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaaf and other investors from Japan and Ireland decided to believe in Barmak.

"I forgot to thank Mr. Makhmalbaaf last night, and I'm very sorry about that. I couldn't have done this without him. He gave me $100,000 for the project and said if this film makes money, pay me back and keep the profits. If it fails, we'll kiss each other on the cheek and start another film."

Barmak, who studied film in Moscow during the 1980s, wrote the screenplays for two short films adapted from Persian short stories. The Taliban destroyed them, but I was lucky enough to see a pirated copy. Both shorts were made during President Najibullah's secular government, and they detail the complications of life for women in the country.

The Stranger stars Salaam Sangi who is driven to murder after his feudal landlord forces his wife to sing in front of a foreign male guest. Murad, the character, is killed by the landlord's men as his wife waits for him to return home.

Barmak uses sparse but powerful dialogue between a mother and young son to tell a heart-wrenching story in The Shadow, which was shot in black and white. A mother grapples with giving up her child because her new husband wants the boy gone.

"I cannot stand the sight of him knowing he's not mine and imagining you in bed with another man! Get rid of him!" the man screams as the boy cries in the background.

The issue of women's suppression in Afghanistan did not begin with the Taliban, and neither did Barmak's interest in the subject. The real-life stories of honor, shame, and chastity provide gripping tales for his films. But the films seem to also advocate for equality, for reflection on the country's unjust traditions against women. Off the screen, Barmak helped Golbahari stop begging, and she is starring in other films now.

Barmak has lived in Afghanistan nearly all his life. Besides film school in Moscow, he fled to Pakistan during the Taliban regime. He returned after the US-led bombing campaign ended in Kabul.

The husband and father of three children says he has no intention of leaving Afghanistan. He has regained his position as the head of the Afghan government's Afghan Film Organization (AFO), which archives and funds films and the director of the Afghan Children Education Movement (ACEM), an association that promotes literacy, culture and the arts. He is eager to work with new Afghan filmmakers and repatriating exiles who have skills to offer.

"You have to come back because we need you to help reconstruct the country. If the locals are critical, you need to be patient and keep working," he says with absolute conviction.

And before I can get to my next question, United Artists knocks on the door. Time is up, and Barmak is ready for his next interview-- prim and proper with a big smile and an infinite amount of hope in his heart.

[caption: Siddiq Barmak, Berkeley, California 2004, photo by Yama Rahimi]

[caption: Siddiq Barmak, Berkeley, California 2004, photo by Yama Rahimi]

About Fariba Nawa

Fariba Nawa, an award-winning Afghan-American journalist, covers a range of issues and specializes in women’s rights and conflict zones. She is based in Istanbul, Turkey and has traveled extensively to the Middle East, Central and South Asia. Visit Her Website

[caveartfair]

How Quitting Instagram Made Me Appreciate Art Again

Taking pictures of Lena Henke’s exhibition, ”Germanic Artifacts,” at Bortolami in New York.

My wife was happily squeezing herself into a cage, and there I stood, just watching, not even tempted to take a photograph and post it online (#brucenauman #momaps1 #doublesteelcagepiece #tightspot). We were at the Bruce Nauman retrospective at MoMA PS1, and I was on a temporary Instagram detox at the time, one that involved a vast amount of self-trickery. Rather than ditching the app entirely, I reasoned, why not just set some parameters? I’m an adult, after all. I’d limit myself, make each Instagram post a curated delectation. Restraining the habit to posting a single image a week, I ventured, would curb my worst impulses. (It’s the same way I’d initially tried, and failed, to quit smoking or drinking: Only five cigarettes a day! Just seven-and-a-half drinks a week!) In the meantime, I wouldn’t keep Instagram on my phone—I’d delete it and re-download it every five or six days, in order to be more mindful. The pointless hassle would change me, open up new ways of being.

This was already a big leap, since I’m the sort of person for whom Instagram-posting had become a tic, the photographic equivalent of logorrhea. By the time I quit, I had posted an astounding 14,479 images to Instagram over the years. On any given day there were so many things I felt desperately needed to be shared with the world: A glamour shot of my cat, Chloe Zola Volcano; a detail from the new Dana Schutz exhibition; a picture of a dirty mattress on the curb, pompously captioned as if it were itself an unsung piece of installation art. I had 6,241 followers, which wasn’t nothing. My brand was irreverence, see? I’d even started, begrudgingly, to dabble in Instagram Stories, mainly because I’d read somewhere that this type of “engagement” was the swiftest way to add new followers.

But overall, I used this social-media platform in a decidedly anti-social way. Rather than scrolling through my endless feed, with its images from the lives of people I probably didn’t know and likely didn’t care about, I would obsessively check the app to see how my own posts were resonating with the community. Why did this shot of a creepy Isa Genzken mannequin fall flat? What was so popular about the accidentally obscene sign hanging outside my local laundromat?

View this post on Instagram

Stuck in a Bruce Nauman installation (Double Steel Cage Piece, 1974). Send help (not sure who (curators?!?)). #nauman #bruce #brucenauman #doublesteelcagepiece #ps1

A post shared by Dylan Reibling (@dylan.reibling) on Jan 18, 2019 at 12:57pm PST

I had long suspected that Instagram was killing the way I experienced art, the way I moved through museums and galleries. It’s easy to scoff at smartphone-wielding tourists at MoMA or the Met, dutifully snapping off-kilter, fuzzy images of masterpieces. Why bother? My own Instagram practice seemed more mature, somehow—a savvy detail shot showed off a refined sensibility. Sure, you could Google the same Grant Wood painting and see it online in glorious, professionally photographed high-resolution, but I was narrowing in on a particular moment in the Grant Wood, because it’s something that my idiosyncratic eye happened to notice, and I hope you like it. Seriously, like it.

We hear a lot about the perils of “Instagram art,” which I generally understand to mean flashy, spectacular stuff that’s meant to go viral on social media. But the problem isn’t just that a certain sort of eye-catching artwork panders to these inclinations. It’s what happens when all art is Instagram art, when even a solo journey through a museum becomes an awkward threesome: you, the art, and your phone, with the whole world supposedly watching.

This creates a lot of cognitive dissonance. I’ve walked into exhibitions recently that left me entirely cold and unmoved, yet I’ve still dutifully snapped my own installation shot; that bland, modular arrangement of abstract, colored panels on the wall might be boring in person, but with the right angle and lighting, it’s thrilling on Instagram. Meanwhile, a painting or performance that’s guttingly beautiful IRL often doesn’t translate into the flat world of the app. Instead of enjoying the experience as it unfolds, I would find myself suddenly irate about the inability to capture and share that ineffable feeling.

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We’re all about doing it for the ‘gram! Check out the Insta-perfect exhibit happening now at Gladstone Gallery and click the link in our bio for more feed-worthy spots. #whatshouldwedo #gladstonegallery #claudiacomte 📸: @__happymediumm

A post shared by What Should We Do?! (@whatshouldwedo) on Feb 5, 2019 at 7:22am PST

My own decision to finally delete Instagram is the culmination of a long year of sloughing off social media. That started in 2018 with Facebook, where I had 5,000 super-close friends, many of whom I didn’t know at all (I miss them each now, like a tiny phantom limb). Later in the year, after one pointless troll-argument too many, I also bid farewell to my approximately 2,000 Twitter followers.

That left Instagram, which seemed more benign—aside from the fact that it’s also owned by Facebook, and played a pivotal role in the Russians’ interference in the 2016 election. But people aren’t sharing their flatulent political opinions on Instagram, really. You don’t have to wade through your ex-roommate’s screed about veganism, or your uncle sharing a debunked story about Hillary Clinton from 2013. What you get on Instagram is people’s enviable vacations, their pets, the silly or serious stuff they see everyday: glorious weirdos on the subway, art openings on the Lower East Side.

The app itself also seemed—at least at first—like a good way to remember things. It wasn’t just an excuse to overshare; it was a personal scrapbook, a collection of visual memos, an archive of what I had seen and enjoyed. Deleting Instagram might be a bit like a self-inflicted lobotomy. Would I ever be able to recall the things that had moved me? Would a visit to Dia Beacon ever feel right again if I couldn’t pose for goofy selfies within Dan Flavin’s light installations or next to Richard Serra’s Cor-Ten steel behomeths?

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“Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light”

A post shared by Dee (@deeannanana) on Jan 27, 2019 at 2:25pm PST

It’s part of the addictive nature of social media that leaving it behind can be so hyperbolic. (The apps realize this, of course; it’s why quitting Facebook involves jumping through so many hoops, being reminded that all of your precious memories will soon be dust, that you might well die alone and unliked.) Not being tethered to Instagram simply means that your eye recovers, becomes normal again; you’re no longer a scout on the hunt for what might play well in a square format in someone’s newsfeed.

This doesn’t mean the process is painless. During my initial several-week detox period, I visited Lena Henke’s show at Bortolami, which is fairly understated, with one very big exception: an enormous sculpture of a purple pig. If that pig could talk, he’d be oinkily begging to be ’grammed. I still couldn’t resist a picture—one that I texted to my wife, rather than 6,241 acquaintances and strangers—but touring the show without the framing device of Instagram meant that I was simply more engaged. Rather than worrying about which shot to take, and how many of my followers would like it, I only had to care about whether or not I liked what I was seeing. That might seem like a pathetic revelation (and it is), but it’s a freeing one.

Recent visits to galleries in Chelsea and the L.E.S.—my Instagram by then officially defunct, deleted, dead—were literally eye-opening. At Derek Eller, I took in EJ Hauser’s mesmerizing abstractions, which seemed to shimmer and pulse the longer I stared at them. I saw Claudia Comte’s exhibition of woozy, Op art–inspired wall murals at Gladstone Gallery—an experience palpably crying out for selfies. At Lisson Gallery, I admired Van Hanos’s Figure Eight (2018)—a portrait of a nude man and woman on a bed, their image blurrily out-of-focus. The trick, borrowed from Gerhard Richter, seems made for Instagram (where one’s followers would wonder if there was something wrong with the painting or wrong with their phone). But simply spending some time with the work in person, looking without documenting, felt new—an urge to store the image in my brain, rather than immediately share it on Instagram as a marker of taste and refinement, a reminder to the world that I was at Lisson Gallery, admiring a painting by Van Hanos.

Figure Looking #2, 2017. Susan Brown Alpha Gallery

Figure Looking #4, 2017. Susan Brown Alpha Gallery

There’s nothing more tiresome than the former addict who won’t stop talking about how great he feels now. Finally deleting my account was a leap, of sorts, but a rewarding one. (If you’re considering the same, but are worried about losing everything you’ve posted—there’s an easy fix for that.) I’m certainly aware that there are people who use Instagram and other social-media apps in a discerning, healthy way; who enjoy seeing what their friends and family are up to; who cherish the chance to follow artists and see works-in-progress as they develop in the studio. Perhaps you live in a small town, miles from a decent museum, and find in Instagram an easy portal to see what’s happening in the gallery scenes of New York, Los Angeles, or Berlin. Maybe you just want to post endless pictures of your cats, since they are objectively the cutest cats who have ever existed. (Guilty.)

But ultimately, at least for me, Instagram began to feel like a burden, one that was ruining the way I thought about and experienced the art I was seeing in person. This isn’t breaking news—there’s a cottage industry dedicated to thinkpieces about how Instagram and other social media apps are rotting our brains, mutating our kids, and turning us into an atomized society of giggling zombies. But what it finally took to delete my page was an honest accounting: What was I getting out of Instagram, and what was I giving up in return?

When my wife was inside Nauman’s Double Steel Cage Piece (1974) at MoMA PS1, I felt a strange tension. The work allows for one person at a time to explore its interior, to circumnavigate a rectangular corridor that, even for the petite, is claustrophobic and confining. It took awhile for her to make this awkward journey. I followed her progress through the perforated steel facade, grinning and supportive. What I didn’t do was take a picture—even though the moment seemed to call for it, the sculpture practically begging for a moody, industrial-chic portrait. Afterwards, we went home and dissected what we had seen. We had enjoyed ourselves—been stimulated, frustrated, bothered, moved, amused—and that fact remained, even without the likes.

from Artsy News

[nodamncradle]

1. How has being transgender/nonbinary interacted with or impacted other facets of your identity (e.g. race, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, etc.)?

So, this is a little bit of a complicated question. I guess first we should establish some groundwork and go from there. I’m white . I was raised practicing Judaism (we converted), and it was a pretty staunch faith. I identified as gay before I came out as trans. I’ve always been pretty poor.  

Now looking how beings trans has impacted that can be done. It hasn’t change my experience as a white person. In terms of religion, I don’t really believe in G*d anymore, I guess I never really did. It always felt silly to pray to someone who hates queers and wasn’t for me. Since I began to reconcile my self with my trans identity I think I came to terms that G*d really wasn’t real, at least not for me. It sucks, but I feel sorta liberated. I feel sorta melancholy, life would probably have a few more answers and meaning if G*d was real, but so it goes, I guess.  I’ve started practicing a form of Buddhism more recently, I don’t know if Nirvana is real or if the Buddha was really enlightened but the practices really help bring some patience and restfulness in my head that seems to always be too full to function. In terms of my sexuality, I don’t identify as gay anymore. I don’t identify as straight either.  Being trans really grounded me in the truth of genitals not being binary, and sexuality being so much more than what’s in your partner’s pants. It feels so inappropriate to call myself straight because I’m a boy who likes girls (a lot), because I also like NB people and queer boys and just…gender and therefore sexuality isn’t as simple as 14 year old lesbian me thought. I identify as queer. It feels a lot more comfortable sweater to wear than lesbian. That always felt wrong to me. I don’t think it has had much of an impact on my socio-economic status much (yet). I’m college, I live on 125 to 300 dollars a month, and that’s just because my job sucks. I think it might in the future though, I am so scared I will never get a good job because I am trans. I think that’s why part of me wants to get passing now and go stealth before grad school, but who know. I’m scared about a lot of things, including this.

2. What have some of your negative experiences related to being transgender/nonbinary been?

My parents don’t accept me, I thought they did but they really, really don’t. They keep basically saying if I treat my depression than my gender dysphoria will go away, but I don’t know about that. I do know I am trans, I have always been trans and I am trying to having to explain that. I cancelled my HRT appointment because they basically said I would disowned if I carried this through. I am scared and sad a lot. I miss my family. I guess another thing would be the misgendering and dead naming me, but that has been a lot less bad that I suspected it would. Sometimes people text me calling me the female version of my name or calling me it and it’s sad and scary but so it goes. I also hate binding my chest, my ribs and spine and neck ache constantly, but I won’t be getting top surgery any time soon (but I also can’t function without it, I feel like my brain is short wiring when I don’t bind).

3. What have some of your positive experiences related to being transgender/nonbinary been?

My friends have been good, my job has been pretty good (they have to be though, Title IX exists). I don’t know. I can’t think of many. I’m trying to and I think when I get further along in my transition I will find some. Right now, I don’t know. I know it exists out there but I haven’t found them yet.

4. If you could tell every cisgender person in the world one thing about trans people/the trans experience, what would it be? (You can have more than one answer.)

No one chooses this, life would be a whole lot easier if I just lived as a woman, I could do so much more. Being trans limits my opportunities so much it scares me, but I can’t do anything about that. It’s not fun to be mocked, not be able to, to have to be on hormones, to have clinical depression because of dysphoria (and also shitty mental health genes), but all those things outweigh the anxiety and anger and uncomfortable-ness that comes with me living as a woman. I’m not a woman, and the thought of living as one makes me very very…well, unsettled, I guess is the word.

Support from cis friends is important, and this isn’t me brown-nosing the cis. If you have a trans friend who is going to use the bathroom, go with them (if they’re comfortable). It’s fucking scary and we need support. Just listen and don’t try to speak on things you don’t understand. Using the right names and terms of endearments makes such a difference. Don’t pander to us about pronouns and things, sometimes being called handsome makes a trans guy real happy and sometimes it makes them real fucking uncomfortable.

5. If you could have a phone conversation with your younger self (whatever age(s) you’d like), what would you say to them?

It’s gonna be okay, we figured it out. Please stop hurting yourself, please stop hating yourself. I know it’s not easy because your sad and miserable and uncomfortable with yourself all the way down to your bones, I know you ache but you have to just try to come to terms with who you are. You’re still going to be you after you transition, that’s what dad says, so try and be okay with laughing too loud, impulse haircuts that are too short and crying when dogs die in the movies. That shit doesn’t go away. I promise it will get better and it’s not perfect and I’m sad too but it’s gonna get better. I wish me from 5 years from now could call me before I called you to see where he’s at, but that can’t happen so you’re stuck with me. You are almost 20, and I know you never thought you could make it to 20, but you did and I am proud of you. I think the most important thing to say to you is I’m sorry and I don’t hate you. I don’t hate you, I’m proud of you. You’re smart and witty and compassionate and I am sorry I was so mean to you. You’re just an angry and sad kid and I am sorry for being so hard on you. I’m gonna work harder to be proud of you and I hope you try harder to take a deep breath and appreciate being. That’s all I’m asking, once a day count the breaths going in and out of you and appreciate them. Not everyone has that, and I know that doesn’t fix the sad or bend the broken but just try it, it helps. Your anger is the manifestation of your sad and just try and dismiss that, it’s the most destructive part of your nature (mom and Thich Nhat Hanh agree).

6. What has your experience with your family been like?

This is a hard and complicated one that I don’t know if I can answer right now. That’s still developing, I just came out to them. They’re processing. Mom is angry, mom doesn’t understand, mom is scared. Mom says she understood who I was before I was even born but I don’t that’s true. If she did she would know that this hurting and pain has been around for as long as I could remember, and I guess what’s worse would be if she knew I was hurting this much and she ignored it. It’s a lose lose. I don’t know.

Dad says it doesn’t matter, me being trans, but he wants me to try harder to be okay with who I am before I transition medically because who I am isn’t going to change, just how I present and so forth. He’s right. I don’t think mom is right.

Mom makes me sad. Mom is trying the best way she knows how. I know that, but it hurts the same way the best she could hurt when I was little. I want her to stop yelling and making fun of me and saying trans people don’t exist and I’m a girl, I want her to just stop. I understand she may never understand but I want her to just try to acclimate and let me exist. I am an adult, if I regret this, why not just let me and move on. That sounds so pissbaby-like but it’s true. She says she’s telling me that cold hard truths that no one else would, but I think she’s just making it where I’m gonna have to choose between family and my transition, and family isn’t enough to keep me from offing myself. That looks terrible typed out. I’m so miserable. I wish she would just accept me. I don’t know if she ever will. She doesn’t believe me. It scares me and makes me sad. It is what it is.

I miss my parents, I miss my brothers and I miss my sisters. I miss being a part of the family instead of the weirdo who comes home every now and then for dinner and ends up depression napping in the middle of the day. I love my family more than anything in the entire fucking world but they can’t take this from me. I never thought I would be the queer kid without a family or home, but I am afraid within the year it will get there. I do not think I will be home for birthdays or Christmas and that makes me very sad. You are afraid of what you don’t understand. I miss my family.

7.What else about being transgender/nonbinary would you like to write about?

Reach out and support each other. This is mainly for FTM and MTF trans people, support NB people. Begging for acceptance from cis people by throwing NB people under the bus doesn’t fix shit, they’re still gonna stomp you in with their boots and not let you piss where you want, not cover your medicines, ect. Just stop, they/them pronouns are valid. NB people are valid and have about as much explaining and justifying to do as you do for being MTF or FTM. Stop using binary behavior and language as standards to justify being the most trans, you’re invalidating feminine trans men and masculine trans women and everything inbetween and I just wanna know for what? A pat on the head from your local cis, fuck that noise. Community is more important that that.

On the same note, protect trans femme people (emphasis on POC). The violence against our community is concentrated against them. Don’t be complacent. Love each other, support each other, care for each other. Help your local trans youth community, if you can. Protect trans youth.  

[ciathyzareposts]

Missed Classic: The Archers – Won or Lost? (With Final Rating)

By Ilmari

Last time I managed to complete two of the four parts of The Archer. Now, it’s time to try the two remaining ones.

Part three: Eddie Grundy

Trevor Harrison, the voice of Eddie Grundy

After a droll old conservative and a love-sick teenager it’s time to let the comic relief in. Eddie Grundy was born in 1951 to Joe and Susan Grundy. The Grundy family didn’t really play any role in the life of Ambridge until 1970s, when Joe Grundy was introduced as a tenant farmer at Grange Farm and a widower with two sons, Alf and Eddie. Alf was always an on/off-character, who spent a lot of time elsewhere – usually in jail – while Eddie soon joined his father to become staples of Ambridge life. From the very beginning Grundys got the role of perpetual underdogs, who never had the opportunity or good luck to rise above their working class position.

Come the eighties, Eddie Grundy had already settled into the role of a lovable rogue. He spends a lot of his time at Grange Farm, although he also hopes to make it big as a country singer. In 1980s, Eddie has recently married Clarrie, the daughter of farm labourer Jethro Larkin, and this marriage will last all the way to the present day. And oh yes, he has ferrets as pets.

New arrival

Really, do I have to spell it? You have to choose between Chicken Kiev, a ferret and a baby, which one is going to interest the audience?

The problem is that the Grundy family is poor and Eddie doesn’t have the money for an extension that a third child would require. So, Eddie has to make one himself. He starts digging something, puts his boot on it and falls into septic tank. I think I’ve set the standards for the rest of the season.

In the end this plot line goes nowhere – Clarrie wasn’t really pregnant after all.

The love life of Joe Grundy

Joe Grundy refuses to do work and is just a nuisance. I make Eddie suggest Joe could move in with Martha Woodford, the village shopkeeper and a widower. Joe asks Martha to a movie, where the romantic atmosphere affects him and he proposes to Martha. Martha is excited, but Joe backs up when he hears that Martha would want costly wedding with champagne and caviar.

Holiday

Clarrie wants to go on a holiday. Having no clue where to take this plot line, I make Eddie suggest that Clarrie should look at paper for ideas. At first Clarrie wants to visit Disneyland, but then she settles for Torremolinos, since Andie and Fergy went somewhere nearby. Although it would be a nice little surprise that they would find on the spot that their hotel has not yet been built, that gets a reprimand from BBC, because Spanish tourist council complained.

The sad tale of Jumbo the sow

Joe Grundy has purchased an old sow, Jumbo, from the market. The problem is to get the pig back to the farm. I make Eddie put Jumbo at the back of his van, together with his wife and children. Then the pig makes a mess and Clarrie won’t have it. Eddie tries to sooth the sow with some music and she does like “June is busting all over”, but gets all restless with Eddie’s hit record “Poor Pig”.

Jumbo puts her weight onto the back of the van and flies out. Where does it land? As you can see from the picture, on the bonnet of Jack Woolley’s Bentley, driven by Higgs. Jack tells Eddie to move the pig, but she won’t budge. They have to drive to Grey Gables, and when Eddie goes to ask for Jumbo, he hears that Jean Paul, “Wally’s froggy cook, has cut Jumbo into little cutlets”.

Audience loves the story, censorship brigade not so much – they are after my head because of Jumbo’s fate.

Eddie’s cars

Eddie’s van is on its last legs and its doors keep falling off. I decide Eddie should get it renovated. Later I learn that Hollerton Motors did a lousy job, since the doors open just when Eddie has a load of poultry in it. Eddie phones infuriated to Hollerton Motors and demands a repay. The company suggests a new car in return, and Eddie chooses a Triumph Stag.

Later, Eddies notices that brakes of Triumph are very sluggish. He decides to get the brakes fixed, but then someone nicks the car. “Oh well, it wasn’t much use to getting the pigs on the market.” BBC thinks I am getting too unrealistic – how can the Grundys afford so many car repairs?

Fred the Ferret

Clarrie doesn’t like that Eddie is keeping a pet ferret Fred in their bedroom. Eddie puts ferret in the kitchen, where his son William pokes his finger into the ferret cage. Result is Fred biting William.

I could let Eddie bang either Fred’s or William’s head, but this seems too drastic a method. Instead, Eddie lures Freddie away with Clarrie’s chicken, and Clarries gets mad, because it was their dinner. Fred is banished outside.

After a few days, Fred’s cage door is open. Eddie finds him in the shed, nibbling his way through some sacks of feed. Now the ferret goes out into the dog house and has strict rations and no treats for a month.

After all the turmoil, Fred gets sick and doesn’t want to eat at all. Eddie calls in the local vet, Martin Lambert, which always means a call from Veterinary Association afterwards. Old Martin doesn’t fail us. He insults Eddie for calling him in to see a ferret, Eddie insults him back and the next thing you know is that Eddie’s nose is bleeding. Eddie goes to see the local doctor, who thinks that the only condition Eddie has is an unhealthy obsession with ferrets.

“The whole world is going barmy. I sit and wonder why the world is not kinder to ferrets.”

The Jailhouse Rock

Eddie’s bigger brother, Alf, is getting out of prison. Since he has no money nor job, Alf wants to be with his kin. Eddie dislikes the idea and goes to meet him with Clarrie. Eddie tries to persuade Alf not to come, but Alf starts to cry, which makes Clarrie go soft and invite Alf in.

Eddie has to now decide a proper way to celebrate his brother’s arrival. I at first suggest that Eddie just gets some cans in, but he and Joe drink them before Alf arrives. Instead, Eddie arranges a party at Cat and Fiddle, a local pub. Clarrie and Eddie go to the pub, and Clarrie complains about people being sick. Then Alf arrives with his lady friend, Delectable Dolores, and the party really starts. Clarrie can’t stand it and goes home.

When Eddie, Alf and Dolores get back to the farm, the party continues. Alf gets the lager out and Dolores dances in tune with Joe Grundy’s gramophone. Clarrie doesn’t like it and threatens to move to her father with the kids. Eddie begs her to come back, which she does, but only on the condition of getting a new dress. Eddie sends Alf and Dolores to bed and breakfast – at his father-in-law.

Country road

Eddie’s band is finally hitting it big, and they got a real gig! The only problem is that Eddie needs fancy cowboy boots. I make Eddie go around the town asking for work, and Phil Archer hires him to help with harvesting. Unfortunately, Eddie backs the combine into the shed.

Next, Brian Aldridge (Phil Archer’s brother-in-law) hires Eddie to paint some holiday cottages. While Eddie is whitewashing the fence, his friend Bugsy arrives with biker girls. Eddie invites them in to have some quality time. While they are busy with drinking and smoking and Eddie has his hands filled with a biker girl called Big Bertha, gamekeeper Tom Ferret bursts in and Bertha hurls a can at him.

Eddie ends up nicked because of all the damage done to cottages. I get in trouble too. BBC is furious, because my script pandered into lower instincts. Besides, people were worried what happened to old Tom. I get sacked!

I start all over again from the spot where Eddie needed some money. This time, I make him raid Joe Grundy’s sock drawer. Eddie finds £ 40, but also a love letter. Eddie decides to leave the money and blackmail Joe with the letter – unless Joe will improve his wages, Eddie will pin the letter up at the local pub. Joe does give him a raise, but only for two quids. Eddie cannot afford the new boots and has to wear his old wellies for the gig.

Part 4: Nelson Gabriel

While I managed to complete third part with only one reload, the fourth and final part was a different matter. I tried different tactics five or six times, but without success. I suspect the ending won’t be worth the effort of continuing, so winning the game is left as an exercise for the reader.

Jack May, Voice of Nelson Gabriel

Unlike with the previous characters, it was difficult to find information about Nelson Gabriel. Main reason for this is that the actor Jack May – and with him, the character he portrayed – died in the nineties, while the majority of Archer pages on the web focus on the current set of characters. Still, from what I’ve managed to learn, Nelson had been a major figure of the show almost from the very beginning.

Nelson Gabriel was born to Walter and Annie Gabriel in 1933. Gabriel family had traditionally been blacksmiths of Ambridge, but Walter had chosen another career and worked as a tenant farmer. Walter’s wife had died young, and Walter spent the rest of his life, until his death in 1988, dedicated to his son, always willing to turn his blind eye to Nelson’s failings.

And failings Nelson was rumored to have. Notoriously, he had been suspected of the 1967 Borchester mail van robbery, especially as he had faked his death just around the incident. Jury never found enough evidence to convict him, but rumours of illicitly gained riches persisted.

Nelson tries to keep a veneer of respectability in his role as a man of the world, owning both a sophisticated wine bar and an antique shop. Still, local police force has doubts about Nelson: could he be selling stolen goods?

Spoiled brat

Elizabeth Archer has a considerable debt for Nelson’s wine bar. Nelson can threaten to phone her dad and he can even go to Sicily to learn some creative ways for collecting debts (although Italian embassy will then complain to BBC about this misrepresentation of harmless Sicilian farmers). Eventually they come to an agreement that Elizabeth will do some cleaning for Nelson. I have little sympathy for Elizabeth, the whining teenager, but I must feel pity when I see how Nelson treats her. Nelson makes her polish all the brass in his house – and he has lot of brass items. “What it is to see an Archer toil!”

Nelson’s regular cleaner, Elsa, goes after Elizabeth, pointing out all the smears she hasn’t noticed. Elizabeth can’t take it anymore, so she pours a bucket of water on Elsa. Nelson gives Elsa an extra £ 10 as a consolation money and adds it to Elizabeth’s debt.

Later, Elizabeth is hired as Ms. Snowy the ice cream lady and makes enough money to clear her debt and to buy a bottle of Monet for Nelson. Nelson thinks he might have chosen the wrong career, if ice cream sellers are paid so well.

Depressed dad

Nelson’s father, Walter, is depressed and thinks his days are numbered (well, he will die in a few years). One possible answer is to buy a small macaw to Walter, but it will eventually grow up and Nelson has to get rid of it by selling it to a gypsy. Back to square one.

Finally, after other false leads, Nelson organises a tea party for his dad, inviting all the Oversixties of the village. Nelson catches Joe Grundy nipping some chocolate fingers into his pockets. Whatever Nelson does, it all turns against him in the end, but let’s say he suggests to Joe that milking time is coming soon. Joe doesn’t get the hint and finally someone else notices the missing chocolate fingers. Nelson accuses Joe, but then Tom Ferret makes a crying confession that he has been eating chocolate fingers for the whole evening. Meanwhile, Joe has managed to sneak away and the common opinion turns against Nelson, for blaming an innocent man. Nelson tries to point out how suspicious it was that Joe Grundy left so suddenly. “It is the milking time”, all say in chorus.

Renewing the wine bar

Nelson does not have enough money for sending his satin sheets to French laundry. He can try to cut back the expenses by sacking Shane, his cook. Unfortunately, Shane is the only gay person in village, and BBC needs to fill its minority quota.

Eventually, Nelson decides to go into partnership with Pat and Tony, another line of the Archer family (seriously, Ambridge citizens should really consider extending their gene pool beyond Archers). They are going to open a whole-food restaurant “Wild Oats”. Problem is that local organic food provider (yet another Archer) cannot provide Nelson with the products he requires.

After trying to get organic food elsewhere and making for a few weeks multi-hour driving trips to another town, Nelson decides to stop. Instead, he listens to Shane’s advice and starts a gay discotheque Adonis, where Joan Collins lookalike competitions are held (male strippers are strictly forbidden by BBC). The discotheque is at first successful, but then it becomes hip in the gay community to look straight, and Adonis has to be shut down for too little audience.

Nelson also tries to redecorate his wine bar in a more Oriental style. He doesn’t have money to buy real Oriental, so he settles for fake Sari. He also wants some Oriental style statuettes, and he can try to dupe local art students to do them for him. Unfortunately, their teacher gets angry and threatens to release the local education committee on Nelson – and BBC gets complaints about Nelson cheating students.

Oversixties trip

Peggy Archer has too much things to do on Grey Gables hotel, so she cannot chaperone the Oversixties annual field trip. The Oversixties are terrified when they hear that a recent arrival to Ambridge, Mrs. Antrobus, known also as “The Dog Woman”, because of her kennels for Afghan hounds, has volunteered to lead the trip. Oversixties want Nelson to help them.

One possibility is to let Nelson ask Jennifer Aldridge, Peggy’s daughter, to take the lead. Nelson samples some of Jennifer’s yoghurt, when meeting her, and the next night he wakes with stomach pains. Nelson tries to extort Jennifer with this information, since she has been trying to sell her yoghurt into a health shop. Unfortunately, Jennifer knows some dirt of Nelson. “History has never seen a Gabriel retreat from battle so hastily!”

Nelson has then no other choice but to lead the tour himself. He has to choose the destination – either Weston-super-Mare where the Oversixties have traditionally traveled, or the more sophisticated Longleat. If Nelson chooses Longleat, Mrs. Anthrobus gets excited and starts calling to Marquess of Bath, who resides in Longleat. Marquess isn’t happy with Mrs. Anthrobus’s antics, and the Oversixties are banned from entering Longleat.

Weston-super-Mare it is then. Nelson still has to hire some entertainer for the long bus trip. The only real alternative is Mick ’n Dick, Borchester’s answer to Chas ‘n Dave – they do not have “any musical talent, but one rousing chorus of Knees Up, Mother Brown is much like any other”. After some amusing incidents, Mick ‘n Dick start to sing Eskimo Nell. The Oversixties men are delighted and join in, while the women and Nelson are too flabbergasted to say a thing. BBC isn’t and says a lot, since Morality Brigade are horrified (then again, some members of audience request lyrics for the song).

Antique shops

Nelson’s antique business is not doing well and he has to step up his business. One thing he can do is to read a DYI guide and start an antique restoration business. This evidently backfires sooner or later, and the local police officers pay a visit of a suspected fraud. Nelson might also start to knock on people’s door, offering cash for what might seem like junk to them, but what really are priceless antiques. Unfortunately, BBC vetoes this plan since older listeners are already afraid of con-merchants.

Eventually Nelson starts a house clearance service. He hires Stewart, one of the Horrobins – a family of local ruffians – to do the heavy work. Due to an extremely bad luck, during the first gig Nelson’s competition, Chippendale Charlie, sneaks in, locks Nelson and Stewart inside a closet and steals all the furniture. Stewart breaks the door and Nelson has to pay the damage so that he has no money to pay for Stewart. Next night, Horrobin clan pays a visit and demands the paycheck of Stewart. Nelson placates them with some whisky.

Final Rating Puzzles and Solvability

The Archers shares a central failing with Secret of Adrian Mole, namely, that the player often has no reasonable way to know what the choices made imply. Didn’t you know that a character going to Channel Islands meant writing that character out of the series? Too bad, you are dead already. And when the solution can be solved beforehand, it is usually too easy.

The case looks a bit different, when we do not focus on individual choices, but on a series of them. Adrian Mole tracked only a single number throughout the game (your score), and that number had nothing to do with your ability to move forward in the game. The Archers, on the other hand, tracks several attributes (at least realism, the opinion of BBC and the number of viewers). Furthermore, these attributes are essential for moving forward, since after each part their status is evaluated. Thus, as a whole The Archers feels more of a challenge than Adrian Mole.

Score: 2.

Interface and Inventory

I complained that Adrian Mole had too simple an interface, since the player could do nothing beyond choosing a number between 1 and 3. The Archers seemingly uses the very same interface, but the feel is quite different. Partial reason could be the complexity behind the surface that I mentioned with the previous score. Partly it is all about the context – while making decisions from three well-defined choices is something we rarely do in everyday life, I can imagine a showrunner having to choose from few possibilities to continue a plot (i.e. scripts).

Score: 2.

Story and Setting

The town of Ambridge and its occupants, as described by the radio series, form a rich background for the game. What is more, this background has an actual effect on the events of the game, which now feel like an organic growth of the history of the radio series instead of mere tacked-on stories. In addition, there’s the interesting metaelement of the player being the showrunner striving to find balance between spectacle loving audience and conservative BBC authorities. The biggest failing storywise is that all the little stories form no grand thematic whole, but are mere daily stories in the life of Ambridge.

Score: 5.

Sounds and Graphics

Every plot line has its unique distinguishing picture. Some of them just show the place where the main action happens, others reveal more plot details. Just like with Adrian Mole, the graphics are a bit more memorable than they have usually been in Level 9 games.

Score: 4

Environment and Atmosphere

The Archers is essentially a soap opera producing simulator. The idea may seem daft, but it is surprisingly fun to tinker and try to find different plot lines and reactions from the audience. I can just imagine that a similar concept with some modern genre show would be great fun:

Tyrion Lannister stands upon the Wall and decides to relieve himself. What happens next?

1) Tyrion makes a quip about people on top of the world being able to throw their wastes on the lower classes. He then soliloquises about the unequal division of power and muses about the possibility of people governing someday themselves.

2) Suddenly a hand appears from the other side of the Wall. It’s a White Walker! Tyrion grabs a sword, cuts the hand and kicks the body down. He says to the corpse: “I am sorry we couldn’t arrange a warmer welcome.”

3) One drink too many tonight has deteriorated Tyrion’s sense of balance. He leans a bit too far and falls to an icy death. Nameless watchman says: “I thought he would make a bigger splash.”

Results:

1) Entertainment Weekly writes a detailed and approving review of the show: “Rarely is a sword and sorcery show so deep and thoughtful. We may be watching a new Wire.” You gain +10 % general viewers.

2) A Song of Ice and Fire Wiki section “How the show differs from the book” has grown. You lose -20 % G. R. R. Martin fans.

Reddit goes hot: “Best action scene EVER”. You gain +30 % preteen viewers.

New Yorker columnist writes about the empowerment of minority groups in modern fantasy. You gain +30 % viewers with university degree.

3) A Song of Ice and Fire Wiki sections “How the show differs from the book” and “Beloved characters killed off too soon” have grown. You lose -40 % G. R. R. Martin fans.

Teacher from Minnesota sends an angry tweet about school children imitating the death of Tyrion: “Kids dropping from roofs like apples!” Parents all over the country restrict their children’s screen time. You lose -50% viewers under twelve years.

Little People of America is offended by the exploitation of persons of short stature in modern media. You lose -40% progressive viewers.

4chan goes viral: “This ain’t free country if we can’t make fun of dwarves!” You gain + 60 % alt-right viewers. Don’t expect to visit your mother anytime soon.

Fox Corporation considers purchasing the rights for the next season of GoT. Kelsey Grammar rumored to get the role of Sir Davos.

What doesn’t work very well is the need to carefully min/max your audience reactions. Especially the fourth part started to feel stale, because I was forced to replay the same events over and over again, when trying to find a working combination of events. Either more variation in the possible storylines or less stringent criteria for a successful run would have been appreciated.

Score: 4.

Dialogue and Acting

I enjoyed my time reading this satire or parody of a soap opera. Some sites suggest that the writers of the show wrote parts of the text, and it is quite believable that some professionals were involved. The writers showed a good sense of humour and wit, especially in their descriptions of what the BBC executives and the audience liked about the show. Furthermore, all the four characters have a different and believable voice.

Score: 5.

(2 + 2 + 5 + 4 + 4 + 5)/.6 = 37. Most of you had significantly lower score guesses, but Will Moczarski nailed it almost perfectly and chose a one point too high a score. Congratulations!

Well, I wouldn’t have believed it when I started this game, but yes, this is one of the best Level 9 game so far. Of course, this is mostly due to the story and the writing being at least decent. Viewed solely as a game, The Archers is not much to look at, but as a piece of interactive fiction it is at least entertaining, if not that deep of an experience. In fact, the rating of The Archers might give us some indication how visual novels would fare with the PISSED ratings.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-the-archers-won-or-lost-with-final-rating/

[wknc881]

Show Review of Imurj's "Local Artist Spotlight"

On Friday, August 24th, the Raleigh music venue, Imurj hosted a “Local Artist Spotlight” show which featured three up-and-coming artists who were personally selected by Imurj. The lineup was as follows:

1. Stranded Bandits (opener)

2. Darren and the Buttered Toast

3. Mosquito Washington and the Bloodsuckers (headliner)

I listed the artists in their performance order but I will be describing their sets based on which I enjoyed the most (my favorite act being the last one).

Although Mosquito Washington was the headliner, I was least impressed by them. This band, comprised of 5 classic metal old-heads had little impact on the crowd. For the first few songs audience members– many of whom were very clearly not traditional metal heads– excitedly began head-banging and participated in a center-stage push-pit. Eventually, however, the crowd dissipated as riff-after-repetitive-riff drawled on. Now, don’t get me wrong, the members of Mosquito Washington are vastly talented men who clearly have a solid taste in music, but it is safe to say that their time is long over. Each song could have easily been an Alice Cooper or Black Sabbath cover, which may have been preferable to their lesser-known originals. It was nostalgic to hear such classic song structures, but maybe they weren’t suitable for this event. The vast majority of the crowd were in their early 20s and if they weren’t attending as part of the entourage of other performers, they were mere frequent customers of the bar and probably not diehard hair-metal fans. Overall, I feel as though Mosquito Washington could have had a better draw at a tribute show or by marketing themselves as a cover band. Kudos to the members for carrying on the spirit of the 70s and 80s, and such a pity that it was lost on the ears of the crowd.

Up next was Stranded Bandits, a 4-piece rock group that is relatively new to the Raleigh scene, but for those invested in its culture it won’t be long until their name becomes familiar. The band isn’t visually cohesive, unlike the other two artists on this lineup, but the sound each member produces mix to form an incredibly exciting set of songs.

They opened with a tune called, ‘Debauchery,’ which was steeped in classic rock elements and used riffs that the Foo Fighters themselves could have written. The crowd, at this point mostly made up of family and friends of Darren and the Buttered Toast, received the music warmly, with one audience member shouting out, “these guys rock!” Up next was a song called, ‘On the Run–’ I was very lucky that they announced the title of every song they played– and it featured main vocals and a solo by their drummer, Douglas (DJ) Schilens. The solo directly mimicked the performance style of Led Zeppelin drummer, John Bonham, particularly his Moby Dick solo in which Bonham transitioned between using sticks and his hands to play drums. Schilens used this same technique, although his solo wasn’t 15+ minutes long. In fact, Stranded Bandits seems to have a knack for showcasing their individual skills. Matt Barton, the lead guitarist of the group, was featured on an instrumental track entitled, ‘Beach Bum Blues.’ Furthermore, the group continually pays homage to their classic rock heroes, with Barton next honoring Jimi Hendrix by attempting to play guitar with his teeth. Although this was a courageous feat of showmanship, it may have fallen flat for the juvenile band– or maybe only the rock god himself, Hendrix, can successfully pull that trick off. Either way, Barton’s suave stylings outside of that moment proved to be well-suited to their music and he never made another mistake.

At the end of ‘On the Run,’ and truthfully between every song that was performed, Stranded Bandits’ bare-footed bassist, Arjun Sheth, kept up a strong, constant bassline and ensured that never did a moment pass when the audience wasn’t engaged by music. They swiftly transitioned into a Hendrix cover of the song, ‘Purple Haze.’ At this moment it was their frontman– Isaac McDaniel’s– time to shine. The frontman, though youthful, carries an air of unadulterated self-confidence when performing– I saw a clear connection to Steven Tyler. McDaniel never stopped moving, both on and off-stage, and even initiated dance circles during the following set. During their Hendrix song he threw himself to the ground, vivaciously slamming his fists against the ground, wholly consumed by the music.

This group is definitely one to keep an eye and ear on. The vibrancy of these young men won over the crowd and began the show with an explosion of sound. A few dissonant sections arose where it seemed as though the band members were drifting apart from one another, but unless you were listening critically, it would have been impossible to tell. Even so, I was informed that this was their very first real gig and that up until this point they had only done open mic events. These guys play with more finesse and flair than some veterans to the scene and I can safely say that I was beyond thoroughly impressed by Stranded Bandits.

After their set I was able to approach a friend of the band’s– Anya Johnson– who was kind enough to share her photos of their performance with me. Below are a couple of the pictures she took for Stranded Bandits.

Although the rockers in Stranded Bandits fulfilled their purpose of beginning the show with energy, it was their following act that really blew the crowd away. Darren and the Buttered Toast, as advertised on their website, are a group that draw on influences from “…the soul of R&B, Jazz, Rock, Gospel, and other musical traditions…with a focus on a positive vibe to lift the spirit and move the feet.” Without a doubt they achieved their goal. This group, having been active since 2013, had an extremely well-done set. Despite the fact that much of their music was improvised it flowed so well that it was as if they had practiced every note beforehand. Of course the skeleton of the songs were pre-written and practiced, but the meat of their performance comes from the vitality of their members. I have good things to say about all of them.

Darren Curtis (lead vocalist/guitar)

The charismatic frontman of Darren and the Buttered Toast kept his eyes ever-scanning the crowd, flashing a row of glittering teeth to anyone who matched his gaze. Curtis started off with the energy high and never let it fall. He spent the whole dancing in-front of his microphone and behind his guitar, tantalizing jazz lines seducing the audience’s eardrums. Curtis’ lyrics, especially during ‘Mr. Bass Man’ told a story set to music, and were easy to follow for the duration of the set. A true showman in every sense of the word.

Isaac Capers (backing vocals/drums)

Although Capers wasn’t showcased in the same way that Stranded Bandits had done with Schilens, there was no doubt that Capers is deeply talented. Instinctively I want to call him robotic, because to my knowledge he never missed a single beat all night, however, he was too fluid to be considered robotic. No, Capers is a definitively human drummer, and his heart guided the music he created. In pairing with Anthony Dyal, the two kept the audience dancing so frivolously that we were quite literally begging for more. Darren and the Buttered Toast performed two encores.

Delante’ Randolph (backing vocals/saxophone)

Let me start by saying that I was wholeheartedly floored by the talent that drips from this man’s fingertips. Saxophonists are notoriously creative musicians, and Randolph was no different. In coalition with Curtis– the two musicians bounced off one another effortlessly–, he created a sonic landscape fit for anyone to dance around in. Switching between a classic sax– I’d like to assume it’s an alto– and an electric sax allowed him to variate his sound in numerous ways. The electric, which looked like the biggest Juul I’ve ever seen, was hooked up to a pedal board which even furthered his ability to manipulate the music. This was something I had never seen before and it was phenomenal. Every note, every solo, every run was immaculately conceived and blessed our ears similarly. Furthermore, he was incredibly nice to talk to after the set and provided me with all the band’s contact info for future listening. Definitely an incredibly friendly man.

Anthony Dyal (bassist)

This man is the true backbone of Darren and the Buttered Toast. The funk and finesse he brought to the stage got the crowd off their feet, onto the dancefloor, and into each other's’ arms. A steady rocker, which was exemplified during his mini solo, Dyal is a master of his entire instrument. Incredible bass lines, incredible tone, the absolute cherry on the top of this buttered toast-erpiece.

Overall, Imurj did an excellent job of picking a line-up with a wide variety of genre-influences to pander to the interests of every show-goer. Every performance had its appeal and provided an excellent evening of rock n roll. I’m very excited to see where each of these groups go and how they musically progress.

If they’re ever playing in the area again, you can bet I’ll be there for another showcase of talent– I hope to see you all there.

Thanks for reading, and remember;

Punk’s not dead, its on 88.1 WKNC.

-DJ Beowvlf