#shut up kesia

[nonpoeticjustice]

that ashley madison doco is wild. they're trying so hard to make us feel bad for cheaters im cackling

[awakingtheshade]

i can't believe they turned uglies into a shitty netflix production.

[ywdh]

Brown guilty eyes and little white lies I played dumb but I always knew that you'd talk to her, maybe did even worse. I kept quiet so I could keep you. And ain't it funny? How you ran to her the second that we called it quits? And ain't it funny? How you said you were friends? Now it sure as hell don't look like it

Now you bring her around just to shut me down, show her off like she's a new trophy and I know if you were true there's no damn way that you could fall in love with somebody that quickly. Ain't it funny? All the twisted games, all the questions you used to avoid? Ain't it funny? Remember I brought her up and you told me I was paranoid

God, I wish that you had thought this through before I went and fell in love with you. When she's sleeping in the bed we made, don't you dare forget about the way you betrayed me cause I know that you'll never feel sorry for the way I hurt. You'd talk to her when we were together. You gave me your words but that didn't matter. It took you two weeks to go off and date her, guess you didn't cheat but you're still a traitor.

Rasanya ingin bertanya banyak hal namun aku tau akupun tidak akan merasa puas hanya dengan jawabannya. Belum lagi kenyataan didepan mata dimana dia dengan santainya melakukan hal yang ingin dilakukan tanpa merasa bersalah pada hati yang menunggunya. Lalu dia akan menjelaskan panjang lebar setelah malam-malam penuh frustasi yang ku lewati sendiri. Mungkin dia tidak akan merasa bersalah, si narsis itu memang selalu percaya dirinya karena dia punya alasan sendiri. Iya, sendiri. Menjelaskan perasaanku pun rasanya hanya kesia-siaan. Akankah dia peduli? Yang ku tau, dia membiarkanku begitu saja. Ain't it funny?

[newstfionline]

As Power Grid Sputters in Puerto Rico, Business Does Too

By Lizette Alvarez, NY Times, Nov. 15, 2017

GUAYNABO, P.R.--Miriam Gonzalez stepped outside her shuttered restaurant in this municipality near San Juan and offered an exaggerated grin. “This is my happy face,” Ms. Gonzalez, 52, said, heavy with mockery. “It’s a very happy face. We all have it on.”

Every morning, Ms. Gonzalez puts on this happy face like a coat of makeup to ward off the depression that has festered since Hurricane Maria shut down her restaurant, trampled its well-tended garden and crushed her usually upbeat spirit.

Like much of the island, she has gone without electricity since the storm hit on Sept. 20, making do with glowing lanterns, a gas barbecue grill, daily trips to the grocery store and wide open windows to stay cool. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s grid is working at less than 50 percent, leaving much of the island in the dark. For Ms. Gonzalez and other residents, the catastrophe of Hurricane Maria has been followed by an economic disaster with no end in sight.

Manuel A. Laboy Rivera, the secretary of Puerto Rico’s Department of Economic Development and Commerce estimated the economic losses at a minimum of $20 billion, although some economists and analysts put it as high as $40 billion, much of it from the drop in productivity. Puerto Rico’s economy is already $70 billion in debt and will be hard hit by the steep drop in tax revenue.

“The lack of power is the root of everything,” Mr. Laboy Rivera said. “This is a very challenging time right now for Puerto Rico.”

Countless small businesses, like Ms. Gonzalez’s, remain closed because they do not have power or a working generator (there is an epidemic of broken generators). On an island driven by tourism, many hotels are not open for guests. Manufacturers have operated in fits and starts.

At the unemployment office in Bayamón, about a 20-minute drive from Ms. Gonzalez’s restaurant, hundreds line up every weekday morning to try to collect emergency unemployment benefits. More than 22,000 applied in October, compared with 6,800 in the same month last year, according to the Puerto Rico Department of Labor.

Others are simply leaving the island: As of Tuesday, 156,000 people have arrived in Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Orlando on planes from Puerto Rico since the storm. Many of them are professionals and middle-class workers who have fled the island because their jobs disappeared and they can no longer live without power. They are likely to stay on the mainland, a crushing blow to the island’s fragile tax base and its ability to generate jobs. Government officials estimate that as many as 300,000 on an island with 3.4 million people could eventually leave.

Kesia Rivera, 29, who managed an insurance company, is thinking about joining her five brothers and sisters on the mainland. “I have a lot of expenses,” she said as she waited to fill out an application.

“There’s food. The kids’ stuff. My car was damaged by bad gas and I can’t fix it because it’s expensive. I don’t have a job, and I don’t have money,” she said. “It’s hard to find jobs right now; businesses don’t have money to pay employees.”

Chuck Watson, director of research and development at Enki Research, a disaster research and modeling company, said the lack of electricity had severely compounded Puerto Rico’s economic challenges. He called the government’s goal to restore power by mid-December “beyond wishful thinking.”

Without power, the economic losses will quickly multiply, Mr. Watson said.

“Once you uproot from Puerto Rico and come to the U.S. mainland, are you really going to want to go back, given the other issues like the Puerto Rican government and the unemployment, a number that will be catastrophic?” he said. “In New Orleans, there is a lot that left after Katrina and never came back.”

Tourism is among the hardest hit, Mr. Laboy Rivera said. About 30 percent remain closed, a number that has improved in the past two weeks. The loss in convention money is considerable, Mr. Laboy Rivera said. Most hotels that are open continue to house hurricane relief workers.

Manufacturing, which makes up 48 percent of the island’s economy and accounts for a third of the tax revenue, was bedeviled by the lack of power, structural damage, debris-strewn roads and, most recently, generator breakdowns. Many businesses, including pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical-device companies, have struggled to reach their pre-hurricane production and shipping goals, although the situation is rapidly improving.

Restaurants are either booming or flailing. Cooking at home without power is not easy, so restaurants with generators have plenty of business. But many suffered structural damage, did not have generators that were powerful enough or could not fix them when they broke.

The Association of Restaurants in Puerto Rico said about 1,800 of its 5,000 member restaurants, including some belonging to major chains, have not yet reopened. Generator breakdowns often prompt restaurants to close abruptly and repair parts can take weeks to arrive. A large new generator can cost upward of $40,000. It remains unclear how many of the smaller restaurants will be able to reopen, said Ramon Leal, the group’s president.

“Some days we open 50 restaurants and close 50 restaurants,” Mr. Leal said. The bigger problem, he said, is “we are losing tons of people from the restaurant industry. They are moving to Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, New York.”

Just as worrisome as the exodus, said Mr. Laboy Rivera, is the blow to the island’s small and medium businesses, which provide 80 percent of the jobs. These include accounting companies, advertisers, hair salons, law offices, media, medical labs and retail stores. As many as 50,000 of these businesses had not reopened as of the beginning of the month, he estimated.

On Calle Esmeralda, a once-busy commercial strip, Ms. Gonzalez’s charming farm-to-table restaurant, Believe, had flourished before Maria, earning up to $4,000 a day. Now she makes a fraction of that cooking hamburgers and shish kebabs on a portable grill out front, where locals sip beer on plastic chairs.

Ms. Gonzalez had a small generator for a couple of days but it broke down. She has waited weeks for repair parts and worries that the package, like so many others, might get stolen. Even if it arrives, finding someone to fix the generator is almost impossible. So is buying a new one.

The low point, she said, was laying off her 15 employees.

“That killed me,” she said. “I would lie here,” she added, stretching out on a bench, “with quartz on my forehead, chest and stomach, asking for electricity. I went to church, and I’m not a church person. I sat there and said, ‘Please bring the power back.’ “ Ms. Gonzalez said she cried so much she “dried up.”

Many nearby stores are closed, she said. At Peekaboo, a printing and school supply shop across the street, the owners said they had no plans to reopen. They have no generator and are afraid of being robbed. Next door, at Brain Games, the owner is on the mainland, unsure of whether to reopen. A spa and a restaurant across the street are dark.

Not all suffer equally. Hurricanes reward some industries, like construction, which had been moribund here for a decade. But the real boom is in joblessness.

Leisha Otero drove from Morovis, a mountain town turned inside out by Hurricane Maria, to the unemployment line in Bayamón. Having lost her small house and her $10-an-hour job as a practical nurse at a medical lab in Vega Alta, she came for news on her application for lost wages. But there was no word, only instructions to wait for a letter of approval from the federal government.

“I’m a nurse, a stylist, a nail technician,” she said, as her two children scrolled through photos on her cellphone.

Ms. Otero’s epileptic 11-year-old son contracted a bacterial disease from rodents shortly after the storm. His fever spiked at 103, he couldn’t stop vomiting and his lips were gray. She rushed him to the hospital. He is fine now, but she worries that his epilepsy medicine will run out and that his doctors will leave for the mainland. Plus, without a job, she has no health insurance.

Her husband already left, to Boston, where he found work in a factory. Her brother, a nurse, and his wife left for North Carolina. Ms. Otero said she has no choice. After stopping at the unemployment office, she would head for the airport with her children to reserve flights to Boston.

“It hurts my heart, seeing this all destroyed, and I love it so much,” Ms. Otero said. “Who knows when the businesses will reopen? They were already struggling before the storm.”

[constantwhirr]

Album Review: Pinegrove — Cardinal

Pinegrove in Brighton (2016) — Sir Phillip Randall, facebook.com/Pinegroveband 

Run For Cover Records (runforcoverrecords.com) mungkin adalah salah satu label yang patut diperhatikan karena memiliki rosters potensial seperti: Basement (UK) yang kembali dari hiatusnya pada tahun 2012 dan kemudian merilis album Promise Everything yang mendapatkan banyak sanjungan dari kanal musik kenamaan dunia; mewithoutYou (Philadelphia,US), band senior yang sudah terbentuk selama 15 tahun; atau Modern Baseball (Philadelphia, US) yang di setiap konsernya selalu dihadiri ribuan anak muda enerjik yang rela kehabisan suara karena sing-a-long sepanjang konser.

Satu alasan lagi untuk memperhatikan Run For Cover Records adalah mereka memiliki hidden gem yang kapanpun siap naik ke permukaan. Hidden gem tersebut adalah Pinegrove (New Jersey, US). Band ini beranggotakan Evan Hall (gitar, vokal), Zack Levine (drum) dan beberapa musisi yang saling berkombinasi serta bergantian mengisi lini instrumen yang diperlukan band ini ,baik dalam sesi rekaman maupun pertunjukan langsung. Pinegrove membawakan musik indie-rock dengan beberapa twist dari alt. country era 90-an. Band ini juga sudah mengeluarkan beberapa rilisan EP, single, album kompilasi dari keseluruhan karya mereka, album live, hingga 2 album penuh yang berjudul Meridian (2012) dan Cardinal (2016).

Cardinal (2016)

Cardinal (2016) — pinegroveband.com 

Ketajaman Evan Hall dalam penulisan lirik serta pemilihan kata yang unik menjadi salah satu senjata album ini, selain karakter vokal Evan Hall sendiri yang membius dan indah. Album berisi 8 lagu ini merepresentasikan kecemasan, keragu-raguan dan serta pencarian jawaban atas persoalan yang dialami oleh Evan Hall, sebagai penulis utama lagu-lagu tersebut.

Dibuka dengan lagu “Old Friends” yang catchy dan anthemic, Pinegrove memasukkan unsur indie-rock dengan sentuhan country secara lugas melalui sisi ritmis dari gitar dan drum, serta petikan banjo di background sebagai ambient, bersama isian gitar dengan reverb panjang yang mendayu. “Old Friends” bercerita tentang bagaimana kematian seorang teman yang bernama Leah mempengaruhi Evan Hall dalam melihat berbagai perspektif mengenai hal-hal yang ia miliki. Hal tersebut tercermin dalam petikan lirik “My steps keep splitting my grief, through this solipsistic moods. I should call my parents when I think of them, Should tell my friends when I love them.”

“Cadmium” menjadi lagu kedua sekaligus lagu yang paling unik secara musikal diantara semua lagu yang ada di album Cardinal. Pinegrove berusaha terlihat “nakal” dengan pemilihan beat dan riff gitar yang janggal namun terasa tepat untuk band indie-rock/country. Lagu ini bercerita tentang seseorang yang menginginkan dirinya supaya menjadi lebih baik dalam sebuah hubungan, namun hal tersebut menjadi sebuah kesia-siaan dan berharap si pasangan bersedia menerimanya dengan kondisi saat ini.

Pinegrove kemudian menggebrak melalui lagu “Then Again” yang mengajak kita untuk bergoyang dan bersenang-senang di bawah sinar matahari bersama dengan teman-teman kita semasa sekolah. Lagu ini seolah-olah mengajak kita untuk selalu menikmati momen-momen yang terjadi dan selalu menatap ke depan untuk melihat hal-hal yang ditawarkan oleh hidup.

“Aphasia”, yang menjadi lagu keempat, mencoba membuai para pendengar melalui lirik perpisahan sebagai tema utama. Diawali dengan “So satisfied I said a lot of things tonight. So long Aphasia and the ways it kept me hiding” yang dinyanyikan secara lirih dengan aransemen sederhana dari gitar, Pinegrove kemudian menutupnya dengan statement lugas yang dinyanyikan secara bersamaan, “One day I won’t need your love, One day I won’t define myself by the one I’m thinking of. And if one day i don’t need it, one day you won’t need it”.

Evan Hall, Pinegrove live at Kilby Court — Jflynnphoto, twitter.com/pinegroveband 

Seperti tidak ingin kehilangan momentum, “Visiting” yang memiliki tempo cepat dipilih untuk menjadi lagu kelima. Kefrustasian akan pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang tidak terjawab, yang menjadi tema utama lagu ini, disampaikan dengan baik oleh Evan Hall yang menyanyikannya seperti orang yang sedang berteriak. Sedikit melelahkan untuk didengar karena kepadatan instrumen dan komponen yang ada di dalam lagu, tetapi masih dalam garis yang wajar sehingga tidak lepas dari konteks yang dibangun oleh album ini. 

Pemilihan “Waveform” yang memiliki tempo sedang sebagai lagu selanjutnya kemudian dirasa tepat. “Waveform” lebih memiliki unsur country daripada indie-rock, dibandingkan dengan lagu-lagu yang lain. Dalam lagu ini pun terdapat penggalan lirik yang unik: “On a cutting board the lights were shutting down. An avocado cut through your thumb coursing out, already undone”

“Size of the Moon” kemudian muncul untuk menunjukkan betapa menggebu-gebunya Pinegrove. Pinegrove mengawalinya dengan pelan dan kemudian melanjutkannya dengan beat groovy pada pertengahan lagu, yang seolah-olah ingin membawa pendengar perlahan menuju klimaks. Dan hal tersebut terbukti berhasil.

Album ini kemudian ditutup dengan lagu “New Friends”. Jika pada awal album, “Old Friends” ingin menunjukkan bagaimana Evan Hall melihat perspektif lain melalui kematian temannya, “New Friends” bercerita tentang kebingungan Evan Hall mencari teman baru, karena kegagalannya me-maintain hubungan pertemanan dengan teman-teman lamanya. Hal tersebut terlihat dalam dua petikan lirik berikut: “So, I resolve to make new friends. I liked my old ones but I fucked up, so I’ll start again”, “And when I looked back up, everybody else was gone so I resolve to make new friends.”

Kesimpulan

Album ini adalah album yang layak untuk mendapatkan exposure yang lebih besar daripada yang didapatkan oleh Pinegrove saat ini. Pinegrove membuktikan bahwa sebuah karya musik dapat terdengar segar dan nostalgic pada saat yang bersamaan. Secara musikal, tidak ada kejutan yang mencengangkan dari pattern musik indie-rock dan alt. country, terkecuali lagu “Cadmium”. Tetapi justru disitulah Pinegrove kembali membuktikan bahwa dengan kesederhanaan, mereka mampu membuat album yang indah dan sedikit unexpected.

Bagi penggemar musik, album Cardinal sudah selayaknya masuk dalam list album terbaik. Dan bagi penggemar yang mencintai musik dengan lirik yang ditulis dengan baik dan tidak murahan, album Cardinal sudah seharusnya masuk ke dalam TOP list album terbaik. 

*Originally published on: https://medium.com/brief-cuts , 30th September 2016

(direct link: here)

[awakingtheshade]

ebegging posts rlly are the most embarrassing thing on tumblr

[awakingtheshade]

how can people even believe scott peterson is innocent ?

[nonpoeticjustice]

the state of american marriage is VERY concerning.

[nonpoeticjustice]

this is the most uncomfortable shit ive ever seen.

[nonpoeticjustice]

it's fascinating to me how teal swan gathered such a following whilst having that voice

[nonpoeticjustice]

don't know if im heartbroken or just very very sad but thats life i guess

[nonpoeticjustice]

does anyone have a masterpost of things to do when you feel empty or something?

[nonpoeticjustice]

how am i supposed to care about don lewis’ disappearance when the guy went to costa rica to have sex with 15 year olds ?

[nonpoeticjustice]

anyways i knew yall started worshipping megan fox way too soon and everything she's been doing lately is proof i was right lmao

[nonpoeticjustice]

If any of you like reading and book reviews, I know have a bookstagram called @dunebleue :)

[nonpoeticjustice]

they really couldn't bother finding a french-american actress for marienne?? or at least one who could do a believable accent?