#questions and quacksalvers

[flickeringflame216]

8, 22, and 25 for the reading ask? 👀

8. answered here!

22. answered here!

25. What's on the top of your list for 2025?

Currently reading The Boys in the Boat by Daniel Brown, so that's top of the list chronologically. I'm really looking forward to re-reading Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace soon! And for a first time read-- if you know the Inkworld books by Cornelia Funke, apparently there's a fourth one published in 2023 called The Color of Revenge?!?! So I'm excited to read that!

[asparkofhopeiswhatimafter]

56. Washing dishes or doing laundry?

57. Snakes or sharks?

58. Orange juice or apple juice?

59. Sunrise or sunset?

60. Slacker or over-achiever?

61. Pen or pencil?

62. Peanut butter or jelly?

63. Grammys or Oscars?

64. Detailed or abstract?

65. Multiple choice questions or essay questions?

66. Adventurous or cautious?

67. Saver or spender?

68. Glasses or contacts?

69. Laptop or desktop?

70. Classic or modern?

56. Ooh both my beloatheds <3 uhhhhh laundry I guess (it's less slimy)

57. Sneks! (But I love both)

58. Orange!

59. Sunrise

60. Recovering over achiever who feels like a slacker??

61. Pen

62. Peanut butter

63. I love my Grammy but idk anyone named Oscar

64. Detailed

65. Essay

66. Adventurous in theory

67. Saver

68. Glasses are so fun but not practical for me so contacts

69. Desktop for the nostalgia (I miss the clacky keyboard)

70. Uhhhh classic I guess but it depends on the thing

[hugotontheonbiquiffinarians]

hi omg i just read the clown protestors arthurxyou and i’m mind blown by your writing. i’ve never read anything with such detail. it didn’t even have smut but i enjoyed it so much- please, write more!!!!

Tonight...

Tonight was the night you had decided to venture beyond the confines of your comfort zone. To be sure, it was an average Saturday night, rife with studious affinity and booked arrangements with your vivid inner workings.

Tonight, however, was a night of errant impulse. One that enticed you to attend the Murray Franklin show, unescorted. Completely, utterly alone. Normally, the contrived atmosphere of televised events would make you recoil violently. But, tonight compelled differently. Your repulsion to the nature of insincere smiles and orchestrated laughs was retired instead to an unusual appetite for reality.

Tonight’s fabricated reality was especially seasoned. Mortality was indiscriminate to tonight’s audience. The puppeteer’s strings were fraying. The time, sedated. The cue cards, delayed in presentation. The audience’s response to riveting, murderous climax, expected, but no less unnerving to the imperious conductor. No less improvised and deserving of penance.

Then, there was him...

The celestial body of comedy cosmos. Orbiting aimless through an unforgiving galaxy, if only for a number of tense, uninviting minutes. The clown of the evening. Dressed to the cat o’ nines. At least, to you, he appeared as one to « live on the edge ». Front row, his visage was an unseasonably vibrant palette. Yet, you couldn’t be fooled. Beneath the suit and makeup, he was nothing short of Death’s Head Upon a Mop-Stick. An emaciated, miserable fellow seeking to exact a rather noble agenda. Albeit poorly executed.

In spite of his near skeletal composition, it was precisely this that attracted you to him. Ineffable, poetic beauty making a xylophone of his rib cage. Skeletal beyond physicality. An imaginative X-ray scan of eyes, hollow and sunken, yet defiantly verdant with a preserved seed of life.

Sparse about the chest and famished for attention, the compulsion to make daring strides to the soles of his sensitive feet was close to irresistible. Yet, you concede to refrain. At the moment, the man was reading from a notebook. A joke, it seemed. A classic knock-knock variation. While you, alone, were listening intently, quite eager to indulge the dulcet lull of his voice, to endure, in unwanted company, the audience’s dissent, was vexing and oppositional.

Yes, his delivery was morbid and untimely, but did it truly warrant such a wounding brand of ignominy ? Did the fair jester deserve to be pilloried by insolent townsfolk, demanding of entertainment, yet nevertheless poised at the pinch with peanuts of discontent ? His harmless touch of humour, reversed to inflict irreparable damage ?

Ah, but this wreaking of havoc would appear to double The Fool, himself, as A Hanged Man. In spite of this, the cards are yet shuffled in his favour. Tonight, The Hanged Man was dealt to another. The man positioned to the left of celestial coordinates, insouciant to the adjacent star’s warning pulse of blinding luminosity. One which would ultimately unleash the fatal gasp of supernova…

Only to be reborn to a less conspicuous state of matter. Bright enough to be observed from a distance measured by all planets, yet no less forbidding in its modest size. Commanding appreciation and respect, thereby.

Before the cycle of this reformation could reach completion, a hist had to be ushered. A solemn yet forceful call for silence, attracting attention. With such gale of conviction, the man was, at present, asserting statements of truth to the unofficial court.

”I killed those guys because they were awful.”

The audience is uncomfortable with this incisive appeal.

“Everybody is awful, these days.”

All, except you. Threatening to clamor in resistance. Still staring intensely at the man, more engrossed than repelled by his refreshing presence.

“It’s enough to make anyone crazy.”

A small, insignificant nerve of morality twinged at your conscience. Deliberating… at all odds, misconstruing, his claim. Wondering if you, alone, were ‘crazy’ for the polarity of your thoughts in the midst of this confused course of judgment.

Above all, you craved the impending strike of chaos. Beyond the deafening brevity of silence, the intrusive, whispering assent of disorder was quickly approaching. And you hadn’t a mite of disagreement to contribute to those misleading murmurs of the jury. In fact, their repugnance was instead vocalised by the arbiter and defendant, currently at wit’s end in contentious argument.

Helplessly, your fight or flight response was evident by an increased rate of breathing. Rising blood pressure, spectral ringing in the ears, concentrated pulsations of your heart throbbing against scattered areas of flesh.

When the trumpet sounds, your ears fall deaf. Glazed vision registers the stark splatter of crimson staining a distinct name with the permanent mark of quietus.

It’s all just a dream, you think weakly. The noisome screams to which you wish all tongues were made dumb. Silence is what you hunger for. The mouldy TV dinner awaiting at your squalid dorm was forgotten. Silence was vital. If only for reasons of rejecting all activity that didn’t declare the (now criminal) clown as sole focus.

And, it seemed, you had captured his attention as well. Still in a daze of adrenaline, he does his little dance, effectively ignoring the damsel in distress embraced by her saviour in sooted armour. The quacksalver named Sally. The sleazy husband of another, portraying the begrimed white knight. Both petrified in their respective roles, yet nothing more than minor characters in this bizarre lover’s tale.

He makes muted steps in your direction. A trajectory that is strangely fearsome in its perplexing gait. He walks as if he balances between the border of reality and fevered paracosm.

To think, it is not the camera he aims towards…

The pleats of his slacks point keenly to you with each gradual erase of distance. In contrast, his unfocused gaze is at once conflicted yet resolute. Still, the distant cries of terror bleed profusely into the juvenile squall of night. Still, your form, secured to the seat, adhered by delayed presence of emotion. Stoic as the stone cushion.

Just as well, tonight’s moon is noticeably full. Its lunar radiance captivates the expanding vacancy of studio. Amid the disruption of regularly scheduled programming, the light fixtures had begun to flicker. Sparks projecting in variegated asterisms. The tapestried windows began to transpose themselves to hyperrealism, admitting the grace of its silver radiance in full force. The intensity of its glow outlines his wingless form as a fledgling seraph. When his lips part, the voice bespeaks with the striking cords of angels.

“You’re not like the rest of them, are you?”

The question was a paralysing tickle of rhetoric. Inexplicit in answer. His tone was doused by curiosity. Incurably childlike. Sickly saccharine words dispensed from sugared teeth as a soothing balm.

Despite these futile attempts to remedy, you were still unsure if any of tonight’s events were not fabricated illusions of a sleep deprived student. Yet, you examine this clown with careful consideration, eyes wide shut, scrutinising his alluring visage, a painted mess of hidden message. The goofy curl of his lip, crooked and exposing of snaggletooth. The crinkle of his emerald eyes, dancing with the moon, illuminating the dim expanse. Glimmering with a dangerous combination of mischief, hope and promise. That, as well, of the silly hand gesture lacing each slender finger through yours, surprisingly chilled to the bone with sudden contact.

Failure to restrain his impending laughter is stimulated by your undue flinching, accompanied by the provocation of a slight gasp as visceral reaction. Failure to respond in time, to oblige his gentle clutch and flee the scene, was magnified by the abrupt entry of two hefty figures looming in the twirling shadows. Failure to react when these figures move swiftly to apprehend and wrest the hand from yours rather viciously.

In that moment, it was serpents against swine. A blur of stiffened and flailing limbs alike in mismatched choreography. Unlike the clown, you don’t resist when the medics wrench you away, divorcing you further from your self-prescribed medicine. And, still..., your attempt to inject a potent dose of belief was persistent.

It couldn’t be real... None of it was real.

But, his smile...

His laugh...

If nothing else was certain, the lingering stretch of that wounded, boyish smile, replete with delusions of dreams and splendor... was terrifying evidence of this obvious truth.

In pristine, white corners, two orderlies stand idly, mildly perturbed by your manic echoes of laughter. Heedless and indifferent to quell the chorus of its reverb as the trembling intensity of its sound gives a semblance of struggle against the straitjacket’s harness.

You think them fools for misjudging your benign mirth as an attempt to escape. Why would you wish to escape that which would finally aim to spread joy to needless misery?

Three consecutive seconds from the clock remind you of your place. When the click of the door’s handle reaches your ears, pure laughter subsides to shaky relief.

When your eyes open again, the vision is a clear frame of vivid spectacle. Two men in the throes of primitive aggression were dragging a half-starved man, limp and comatose, to a destination unknown.

The rhythm of your lungs return to a steady pace. The blood beneath lukewarm skin streams a settled flow through calm rivers.

The studio is emptied. Effectively purged of its pathogens. Still and all, the reality of the ordeal has yet to process its candid rendering. Fatigued and disenchanted, your steps to departure are light and heady.

——————————————————————

As a matter of blinded course, Arthur reveled in his sprinkled delirium. Quite literally basking in its fiery glow as the street lights and infernos merged to one. Perhaps the first in three decades of listless existence, Arthur could finally say, with sincerity, that he was truly, undoubtedly, happy.

Yet, he couldn’t help the risible itch of something missing. A shard of mosaic to complete the tessellating puzzle of this midsummer night’s dream.

Mere moments before the kaleidoscope of crash fractures his drunken taste of giddy liberty, he thinks that no such freedom can exist without the force of another to share the view.

———————————————————————

Then again...

——————-—————————————————

Was there not you ?

[pattyedouard-blog]

What Is Quackery?

There are many issues I'm enamored of that I'd like to explore even more. However, before I do, I know that I have to know about the subject. In the black-and-white times, the world of a slower, easier life, this ensured likely to go to "the stacks" of the neighborhood community college library, and a topical library a little an excessive distance from home. It engaged utilising the web to gain access to the net library systems, and it suggested checking the neighborhood Community Library Catalogue for literature, magazines, and articles or editorials in papers about the subject of interest. In other words, a super reliance on libraries, in true to life and both virtual. At this time, I start my pursuit with WikiPedia. I know that the info shown is usually moderated, and is commonly accurate, although on scorching difficulties, some content may be skewed at times. It is not the literal Word, provided from Paradise. Then again, I've largely been satisfied with the quality of job they do, and most content are carefully sourced with personal references used to write the article and they are a wonderful starting place for additional weeks of discovery. Down below, I wrote a cool article that is going to be largely taken from WikiPedia content pieces. Despite the fact that I've rewritten it, I have to even now return recognition where credit is certainly anticipated. I would still be just a copy cat if I failed to, because a basic rewriting of a piece is not a fresh work, according to the regulations. Fortunately, the Creative Commons license allows me to work with these interesting articles for my own usages. Having said that, please experience this small intro to this issue. Quackery is the campaign of deceitful or unaware medical procedures. A impersonator is a "fraudulent or not aware pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to obtain skill, expertise, qualification or credentials the person does not possess; a charlatan or fish oil salesman". The term quack is a cut form of the archaic term quacksalver, by Dutch: kwakzalver a "hawker of salve". In the Middle Age ranges the term warble meant "shouting". The quacksalvers sold the wares that can be purchased shouting in a loud tone. Common regions of general quackery include dubious diagnoses employing questionable analysis tests, as well as untested or perhaps refuted therapies, especially for critical diseases such as cancer. Quackery is often identified as "health fraud" with the significant characteristic in aggressive campaign. Since it is certainly difficult to separate those who knowingly promote unproven medical treatment plans and those who also are wrong with regards to their proficiency, America surfaces contain overpowered in defamation conditions that accusing another person of quackery or perhaps labelling a medical specialist a warble is in no way similar to accusing that person of committing skilled fraud. To be both quackery and theft, the cluck must know they can be misrepresenting favorable effect on self-confidence and dangers of your medical providers available (instead of, for example , marketing and advertising a great unsuccessful merchandise many people simply consider is undoubtedly effective). Beyond the ethical challenges in appealing benefits that may not likely reasonably be anticipated to happen, quackery also includes the risk that people might choose to forget about therapies which can be more likely to help them, in favor of company solutions provided by the "quack". Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch specifies quackery "as the promo in unsubstantiated strategies that lack a verified digno rationale" and even more roughly just as: Pietro Longhi's The Charlatan (1757) "anything associating overpromotion when it comes to health. " This kind of definition may consist of doubtful views and doubtful goods and services, regardless of truthfulness of their total marketers. In line with this kind of idea, the phrase "fraud" would be shy simply for circumstances in which purposive deceptiveness is engaged. Paul Offit has offered four ways in which alternative medicine "becomes quackery" Simply by "... promoting against standard therapies which can be helpful. " By inch... promoting probably harmful strategies without adequate warning. " By "... raining patients' bank accounts... inches And, finally, by "... promoting marvelous thinking... inch Unproven, generally ineffective, and sometimes dangerous medications and treatments have been peddled throughout human history. Theatrical performances were quite often given to boost the credit of purported medications. Narcissistic remarks were manufactured so that could be very humble fabrics indeed: for instance , in the mid-19th century revalenta arabica is advertised due to having unexpected restorative healing benefits because an empirical healthy eating plan with invalids; in spite of it is remarkable name and several shimmering reports it was in actual fact just typical lentil flour, sold to the gullible at many times the real price. In addition wherever very little fraud was planned, quack applications often trapped no effective ingredients in any way. Some cure contained chemicals such as opium, alcohol and honey, which will would have given symptomatic healing but experienced no curative properties. Some would have habit forming qualities to entice the purchaser to return. The few successful remedies distributed by quacks included emetics, laxatives and diuretics. Several ingredients does have therapeutic effects: mercury, silver and arsenic substances may possess helped some infections and infestations; willow bark secured salicylic plaque created by sugar, chemically very closely related to acetylsalicylsäure; and the quinine contained in Jesuit's bark was in fact an effective treatment for sumpffieber and other fevers. However , knowledge of appropriate uses and doses was limited. The science-based practice of medicine community has belittled the infiltration of different treatments into popular school treatments, education, and guides, accusing universities of "diverting analysis time, money, along with assets with extra fruitful lines in shop to be able to go after a theory that has simply no grund in biology. inches Recommended. W. Donnell gave the length "quackademic medicine" to describe this particular attention directed at alternative medicine simply by twoyear college. Mentioning the Flexner Report, he stated that therapeutic education "needs a very good Flexnerian housekeeping. inches For example , David Gorski criticized Brian M. Berman, organizer in the School of Maryland Centre when considering Integrative Drugs, with respect to posting that "There indicators that both equally substantial acupuncture and sham acupuncture treatment more efficient than hardly any treatment and that acupuncture might be a beneficial nutritional supplement to other forms of ordinary remedy due to mid back pain. very well He likewise castigated writers and peer critics at the New The united kingdomt Journals of Medicine pertaining to letting it to come to be composed, as it effectively advised intentionally mistaken subjects in order to achieve a known placebo effect. Heaps of thanks to WikiPedia with respect to the incredible information that is made available to Internet users by notably committed staff of unpaid editors and team members. This information was gleaned from WikiPedia.org. You should definitely take out your purse and consider A DONATION BY CLICKING HERE.

[flickeringflame216]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers :3 (no pressure! :D)

snow

talking with my sister

hot tea

library books

freshly washed hair

[flickeringflame216]

#5, 8, 12, 17, and 19 for the 2024 reads in review ask game?

5. Crowd Pleaser: Book you would recommend to almost anyone

For a good classic: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee For a short story collection: A Stroke of the Pen by Terry Pratchett For a cozy children's adventure: The Bookwanderers by Anna James For a murder mystery: Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

8. Blorbo Of The Year: Perhaps not your favorite of the year, but contains The Character

Meg from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle! It was so nice to revisit the first book; I've been slowly working my way through the sequels, but this one is so beloved.

12. Favorite series of the year

The Penderwicks series by Jeanne Birdsall. This was another much-needed reread, and I really enjoyed the audiobook versions read by Susan Denaker.

17. New author (either to you, or with a recent debut) you're hoping to read more of?

Hmm, nothing immediately comes to mind for this one. Several of the new (to me) authors I read this year either have no other works I want to read, or I felt pretty meh about their books. I liked the Terry Pratchett short story collection, though! So maybe I will venture into one of his novels at some point.

19. Favorite old(er) book you read this year

Emma by Jane Austen. (I almost decided to be a smart aleck and say something like Habbakuk or Nehemiah.)

[flickeringflame216]

BEAUTIFUL PERSON AWARD! Once you are given this award you're supposed to paste it in the asks of 8 people who deserve it. If you break the chain nothing happens, but it's sweet to know someone thinks you're beautiful inside and out <33

thanks meri! love seeing you on my dash <3

[flickeringflame216]

Let’s spread a little sunshine ☀️drop this sunflower🌻into the inboxes of the blogs that make you happy! (No pressure, I am only doing this myself because I have the energy at the moment 💛)

thank you song <3

[asparkofhopeiswhatimafter]

quilt and maple for the autumn asks!

quilt - how do you take your tea (or coffee)? just plain if it's herbal, on the rare occasion I drink black tea though I go for honey, cinnamon, vanilla, and milk. maple - is there a hobby / skill that you’ve always wanted to try but never did? I haven't tried bookbinding yet! it's on the (rather extensive) list, though. And I want to try some kind of dance one day but that's still firmly in air castle territory.

Ask game!

[flickeringflame216]

9, 19, 22 for the 2024 Reads asks

9. Compels Me Though: Okay, maybe not all of it made sense, but you had a great time anyway

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. This was so beloved and I'm glad to finally have finished (I'd been annotating it for a friend for about two years). The magic didn't "make sense" per se, but that never felt important to the story, since it took a backseat to the setting and plot. This story was so whimsical while remaining grounded in believable characters and emotional experiences; maybe one of my favorite reads of the year.

19. answered here!

22. Best book you found in the wild

Just picturing finding a random paperback on one of my hikes in the woods now... Devotions by Mary Oliver. Not found in the woods but in the library, which isn't exactly the wild, but it was a book I didn't specifically intend to read. I've read some Mary Oliver poetry, of course, it's kind of inescapable on this site. But this was the first time really sitting down to read a collection, as I normally would with a poet I enjoy. Such a delight!

[flickeringflame216]

love your new theme and pfp!

thank you! <3

[flickeringflame216]

Hey, I am @seeking-love-poet , I am a poetry sideblog that posts original poetry and plans to reblog/post some of my favorite pieces that others' have written. I was wondering if you would be okay with me reblogging some of your poetry? It would be listed under the tag "a string of words from another tongue" which is my tag for non-original poetry. If you are not okay with this please let me know, I don't want to overstep. I know a lot of poetry is very personal in nature and not necessarily something you want someone to reblog to a gimmick sideblog

that's fine! If I post something too personal to have passed around, I'll usually turn reblogs off. Thank you for asking though, that's very considerate.

[flickeringflame216]

Amber, Dream, and Maze for the Autumn asks?

Amber - what's something you do every day?

Something I've been trying to do every single day is read the Bible! Right now I'm in the Gospel of John.

Dream - describe your perfect au.

I must confess I'm not thoroughly clear on the meaning of this one. Is this like.. the ideal alternate universe for me personally? I have too many answers to that question, not all of them super lighthearted, but I think the universe in which I went to public high school--rather than being homeschooled--interests me, just out of curiosity.

Maze - apple picking or pumpkin patch?

Why not both? I recently went to the farm near my house with a bunch of friends to pick apples and pumpkins, and it was great.

[flickeringflame216]

*tacklehugs*

[flickeringflame216]

Seafoam!

that sounds ideal let's go frolic and explore magical castles <3

[flickeringflame216]

💗

NO YOUUUUU <3