#so i have no license no money and i had like $50 in cash in there

[annieisyourfavourite]

gonna kms for real, i can't have one fucking day where things don't go horribly wrong huh

[scotianostra]

On June 27th 1967 the first cash dispenser was opened by Barclay’s Bank in Enfield by actor Reg Varney.

The idea of an automatic money dispensing machine had been mooted and tried without success in the early 60's but it wasn't until Scotsmen John Shepherd-Barron and James Goodfellow successfully designed the "cash machine" and Personal Identification Number (PIN) technology which is still used over 50 years later.

Goodfellow lodged his patent in May 1966, more than a year before the first cash machine was ceremonially opened in a blaze of publicity. A machine was developed by John Shepherd-Barron, who was born in India, to Scottish parents, and lived much of his later life in Portmahomack in Ross-shire.

Shepherd-Barron's ATM beat Goodfellow's machines, which were installed at branches of Westminster Bank (later to become NatWest), by just a month.

So Shepherd-Barron became known as the "man who invented the cash machine" and not Goodfellow, the man who patented the system we use today.

Shepherd-Barron says he was inspired by chocolate vending machines, he stated "It struck me there must be a way I could get my own money, anywhere in the world or the UK. I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash.

The two devices were very different.

Shepherd-Barron's did not use plastic cards, instead it used cheques that were impregnated with carbon 14, a mildly radioactive substance.

The machine detected it, then matched the cheque against a Pin number.

Shepherd-Barron worked for banknote manufacturer De La Rue, which never patented its machine.

Before he died in 2010, he told a documentary that he didn't patent the idea because he did not want fraudsters knowing how the system worked.

He also said that the chief executive of Barclays had been quick to say yes to the idea when they had discussed it after a couple of Martinis.

Shepherd-Barron then had to go back to his team and get them to develop his idea.

In recent years, his claim to have been the real inventor of the cash machine has been recognised more widely.

Mr Goodfellow now does not like to talk about the years in which Mr Shepherd-Barron got all the credit but in a 2009 BBC documentary he said it "really does raise my blood pressure".

The engineer, from Paisley, told BBC Scotland: "My patent was licensed by all the manufacturers. They thought that was the way to go.

"The race to get it on to the street was not as important.

"Getting it right was the answer, not getting it first."

Mr Goodfellow was working as development engineer for Glasgow firm Kelvin Hughes in the mid-1960s when he got involved in a project to design a machine that could dispense money to customers when banks were closed.

He said in an interview that the driving force for the move was unions putting pressure on banks to close on Saturday mornings.

He said most people worked during the week and could not get to the bank, which closed at 3pm on weekdays.

Many people went to the bank on Saturday mornings but the unions were pressing for staff to work a five-day week.

The banks wanted a way to give working people access to their money when they were closed. Goodfellow said "The problem with cash machines was access.

"How would a genuine customer, and only a genuine customer, get money out of it?"

They considered biometrics - fingerprints, voice prints or retinal scans.

"But in the 60s the technology to do this was not there, it was impossible,"

So the next approach was an "exotic token", a piece of paper or plastic with "uncommon characteristics" that a machine would recognise.

His "eureka moment" came when he hit upon the idea of the Personal Identification Number (PIN).

This was the vital security measure that would make the system work, the number would be known to the customer and the bank and could be related to the card but not read by anyone else.

Goodfellow's invention was patented in May 1966, more than a year before his rival unveiled the first ATM in London.

But he still had a battle to make his concept reality.

"We had to meet some of the banks demands which were pretty severe," he said.

"They had a million customers and they wanted 2,000 machines across the UK.

"They wanted any one of the one million customers to be able to access any one of the 2,000 machines.

"You've got to remember there was no IT network in those days. The banks had no IT equipment. The bank's branches had nothing.

"We spent a lot of time developing the code. We had to submit something like 1,000 of these cards to a consultant, who would try to decipher it."

The cards he used were one quarter of a "Hollerith" punch-card, which just happens to be the same size as today's credit card. It contains just 30 bytes of data.

His patent for the card and Pin ATM was licensed for millions but Mr Goodfellow, as a humble technician, did not own the rights and did not get rich from his invention.

He said he signed patents for 15 countries around the world and got a dollar for each - worth about £10.

Mr Goodfellow left the firm in 1967 when it moved its operations to England and he went to work for IBM.

There have been arguments for years over who should officially go down in history as "the inventor of the ATM".

In 2005, Mr Shepherd-Barron received an OBE in the New Year honours list for services to banking as the "inventor of the automatic cash dispenser".

However, since then Mr Goodfellow, the man who patented the invention, has regained his place.

In 2006 Mr Goodfellow received an OBE for services to banking as "patentor of the personal identification number".

He has also been placed in the Scottish engineering hall of fame alongside John Logie Baird, the inventor of the television.

According to the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA), as of 2015, there were close to 3.5 million ATMs installed worldwide. However, the use of ATMs is gradually declining with the increase in cashless payment systems.

[plrplanet]

Increase your online earnings today! How Much Do You Know About Websites? It’s Time to Discover How Websites Can Earn You Instant Profits If I could show you how to create your own website business would you be interested? Just like most Web Masters and Internet Marketers, we are all trying to make more revenue from the web. The competition is tough we know this! Just when you seem to have that brainwave, that new idea which you think is going to make you a ton of money, but then discover someone else thought of it first and you feel deflated. Back to the drawing board it is. Never fear! There is a solution… Don’t Hang Around! Make Money with Instant Website Ideas Did you know that “the number of consumers researching or shopping online” is projected to spike past 200 million by 2015. According to various surveys, approximately 87% of Internet users in the US shop online. This number is expected to rise past 90% by 2015. Globally, more than 50% of Internet users make purchases online. This means that, by merely having an ecommerce website, you can address a market that is spread across the globe without any additional marketing costs or hassles. These days, we need to take it one step further and use some cast iron techniques to earn that all important online income. Did you know getting started online is really not as difficult as it may seem. The internet is here to stay, and it’s time that you started cashing in on the benefits of an online presence. It’s cheap, it’s easy and there are no so many ways to cash in in the online revolution of website profits. It’s not all work work work either. Some of the techniques I discuss in the eBook can be implemented today for zero investment from you! Here Are Just Some of the Things You Will Learn With“Instant Website Ideas for Fast Earnings”  Google Adsense Sites and How They Work Discovering Clickbank Products The Power of Affiliate Sites Fast tips on Article Marketing Social Media Marketing Unleashed The Power of Autoblogging Using Multi-Level Marketing And much, much more… The Truth is You Need Instant Website Ideas toBecome a Success! More and more people across the world are turning to the internet for a solution to their financial problems in the face of the job cuts resulting from the recent economic crisis. Many people, who have previously enjoyed successful corporate careers and who have never had to worry about money before, are now finding themselves in a situation where their pension funds have been dwindled precipitously and the college education plans they had for their children have gone up in smoke. The situation is out of control and lots of people are now beginning to question whether relying on someone else for a pay-check was ever really such a good idea in the first place. Turnkey Internet Businesses are becoming more and more popular as a second, as well as a primary, income source simply because they require hardly any up front investment and also have great earning potential. There are lots of possibilities out there that could suit your unique interests or skills. In this Ebook, we will look to examine some of these options so that you can make an informed decision about which strategy will be best for you. How Can You Get Started With Instant Website IdeasFor Fast Earnings Today? It is important to remember that this eBook, is not something that has been thrown together as a second rate money making scam eBook. The techniques disclosed in this eBook have been carefully researched and practiced to bring you the best and quickest methods of generating an income from turnkey websites. MRR License Master Resell Rights Terms and Conditions [YES]Can be sold[YES]Can be used for personal use[YES]Can be packaged with other products[YES]Can modify/change the sales letter[YES]Can be added into paid membership websites[YES]Can put your name on the sales letter[YES]Can be offered as a bonus[YES]Can be used to build a list[YES]Can print/publish offline[YES]Can convey and sell Personal Use Rights[YES]Can convey and sell Resale Rights[YES]Can convey and sell Master Resale Rights[YES]Can be given away for free [NO]Can modify/change the main product[NO]Can convey and sell Private Label Rights

[ask-paradox-and-friends]

Okay so I've been seeing several videos about the arts of and representation of diffrent fighting styles I decided to throw my hat into the ring about fighters. So I'll set up some fighting game fighter concepts and yall can give me name though asks! Also yes there's a tournament so far all I have is a massively illegal anything goes tournament with a massive cash prize finally becomes public after 50 years and so people from over the world set out to get the money.

A large bulky and fat somewhat muscular woman wearing tucked in Jeans thick boots suspenders and a tucked in shirt that says in a mixture of Japanese and American simply says 'if lost please return to SISTER' her story and reason for fighting is simple her sister is a Gajin with a love for Japanese culture and history to the point she's living in Japan as a history teacher and English language tutor in Tosa but she wanted to be a respected wrestler in Japan but due to regulations and traditions combined with her high metabolism she was unable to gain the weight or size needed to succeed in any sport so her simple and rather thick skinned loving younger sister set out to learn Sumo through recordings of national fights and wrestling from her retired uncle in Texas she took her sister's stage name and wandered around participating in all street fights she can to make her sister proud.

A Local drunk one day durning a massive dui gets arrested and loses his license after a year in jail and getting evicted he sold all his possessions to try and drown his sorrows over the fact that while getting into prison riots he was beaten so many times he was suffering severe self confidence issues he one day gets super plastered he gets ran over by a limo and gets dragged to a church and cared for by a nun and her group of children she watches over. After 6 years of recovering growing stronger by showing the children the things he learned in jail to let the children defend themselves he soon hears about the tournament while getting drunk again and getting into a massive bar brawl he in a brilliant move he steals a limo and a passport to get to the tournament. His goal? 'Win the tournament and give all the money to the people who took him in.'

An unknown person wearing a thick metal mask that only showed what seemed to be a flash of yellowed teeth. This individual is wearing white pants stained with mud a white shirt covered in patches of brown and black a large tattered purple cloak and worn gloves that showed scared callous knuckles showing improperly healed fingers. Noone who they are. Noone knows why they're here. All anyone hears from this being is odd rasps and growing snarls.

A high-school boy still wearing his uniform looming too pale and skinny to look threatening with clearly dyed hair that was a deep cyan in color with broken glasses held together by tape bandaid cracked lenses and the arms being replaced with ropes that were mixed with thick and strong steel woven rope. Missing at least 3 teeth this troubled teen who despite his nerdy look is full of aggression and a drive with fire in his eyes. He wants the victory he believes he deserves for a quote 'reason' he seems to have geekish hobbies.

A very tall very skinny elongated geezer wearing a very loose fitting pair of trousers and flowing shirt only held on his body through a series of belts the old man has no lips and always has a smile on his face. Prone to random bouts of laughter he has used face paint to make his face for a reason he says makes sense. His hair is matted and unkempt with his teeth being long and sharp as he also has claw like long fingernails. He is oddly flexible despite his age. He is prone to shrieking if in great pain.

A model who was well loved for their androgynous appearance and the ability to look like any kind of man or woman with the right make up and clothes. After being the poster child of body dysmorphyia after being falsely accused of things they would never do they had gone down a downwards spiral after finding the ones who falsely acused them and got them to confess the world and media that once defended the accuser soon tried to find the accused only to find the years of bullying and ridicule drove them to extreme body modification and large spiraling tattoos. The tattoos looking like a massive Canavas of artwork only boosted by the piercings and their body modifications now taking an oddly unknown and unnatural angle or grace and beauty in their own way. They are in the tournament as one last final PR move to show the world who they created.

[merulast]

It's all about the routing baby!

(Weird Al - It's all about the pentiums -- Great song ^^)

When I first started to plan this "road trip" I had various options and decided to go the straight way be following the E40 (european lane 40) to almost the borders and China. Of course by then I had no Idea that this would never be possible later on. Why? Lets have a short dive:

Source: Wikipedia E40

We don't need to talk about the fact that this road is crossing the Ukraine. The whole situation is simply terrible.

Had you ever wonder why tools like google maps route planer and others don't offer routes crossing the Chinese border? It's simple - You are not allowed to cross it by car. Not even the international driver license is valid in china. Except for some special areas. And except for you to hire some 'people' that make it 'possible'. The Overland travelers do this aaalot this days but be warned: That's NOT official! You will be stuck to the 'guides' and this is NOT legal. It is simply not. For you driving there will be illegal. The police just let you pass for 'reasons'.

You might get an full chinese driving license and import and re-register your vehincle on the borders. Anyway.

So Obviously this whole route is out of scope by now. Let's come to the public transport routes. If you want to plan routes, have a look at www.rome2rio.com - More on them later.

(yes, this picture again)

With the Ukraine as something you don't want to cross there is no alternative but to avoid it. But besides of war there is also an second thing that you would like to avoid. Visas. They may come in very difficult to get. Thats why, for example, I decided to also avoid Belarus.

The red Line

Germany -> Poland -> Lietuva -> Latvija -> Estonia -> Russia -> Kazakhstan

With avoiding of Belarus there is no big hassle on the first parts of this route. All EU Members share the same Visa rules, mostly the same money and the same ATM zone. So if you have a western credit or debit cards you wont even notice any issues at all. The only negative point is, that it's expensive to travel and stay there. At least compared to the other route.

With the Russian border this will change. Now you need a Visa. You can most likely get an E-Visa that is valid for 2 weeks and cost 50€ if you fill out the form by yourself. But because of certain 'things' you might get in trouble obtaining money. As least in most parts of the EU its not possible to obtain the Russian currency. Booking is not listing Russian Hotels anymore. And you never know if any credit card will still work in the urban areas. Henche. I would not even expect anyone to take electronic cash on the countryside anyway. With other words. This is, political stuff aside, a pretty red Flag.

Im not sure about Kazakhstan at the Moment. I also was not able to obtain Tenge anywhere in central europe at the moment. But I think that there will be no issue with visa and mastercards....

The blue Line

The original plan was to drive up to the Black Sea just by Flixbus. For me no Visa or money-changing issues ha been visible. You can relay on the Credit Card system and most of the time even on the european debit card systems.

I for myself decided to travel by

Germany -> Bavaria -> Austria -> Hungaria -> Romania -> Bulgaria -> Georgia

I wanted to also have a stop on Serbia .. But Flixbus had changed its traveling times to be as much overnight as possible. And this brings us to another thing: Never Travel more than 8 hours a day! We will spend an entire Month on transports. DO NOT exhaust yourself too much! Thats why I will take an sleeper train from Budapest to Bukarest.

Another negative point comes into count if we speak about the black Sea. I would love to cross it by ferry! More space to walk, to sleep and to watch dolphins. How could you not love to travel by Ship? But be aware: Black Sea Ferry Companys are .. special.

I would not need any Visas for the entire blue route. Thats a big plus, of course.

Anyway!

This post already had been MUCH longer then planed. Time to End it. The blue route it is. Next time we talk about preparing stuff that need to be done in before-hand.

Bye!

[onslaughtsixdotcom]

Space Travel in SEE YOU, SPACE COWBOY...

They say you can't help but put your kinks into your work.

One of my absolute favourite things to do in my tabletop games is to force the players to do something they don't want to do.

Man. That makes me sound like an asshole! Let me figure out how to say that differently.

The world around us is full of shit we don't want to do. We have to go to work to sell our time to someone else in order to pay our bills, and to afford food that our body requires to keep running.* We have to interact with people we don't want to interact with, because they control a thing we want. We have to renew licenses, pay taxes, maintain a vehicle, clean the house even if we haven't been to that part of the house in a week because it still somehow gets dirty. We have to do things we don't want to do.

*I personally resent the fact that I have to put food into my body at seemingly random intervals throughout the day, multiple times. The amount of time I waste every day buying food, preparing food, eating food and expelling food is astonishing and I resent almost every second I do it. You know that white oatmeal gruel they eat in the Matrix? "Everything the body needs?" Yeah gimme that. Just shoot it out of a canister into my mouth and solve 90% of my problems.

Red tape is the only thing the players can't stab their way out of.

I love making the players deal with mundane bureaucracy. When my D&D group first entered my huge metropolitan city Dawnharbour, they had to give up all their gold at the gates of the city in exchange for a bank check, that they had to cash at the bank in exchange for Dawnharbour's paper money. (The bank took 10%, of course.) When they wanted to build a tavern, I outlined a detailed list of all the taxes and licenses they would need and all the guildspeople they would need to speak to and get approval from. And then I had a guy show up at their house to collect their taxes for the year--not their home taxes, their adventuring taxes.

The players hated this. They hated every second of it. The bullshit that they had to do in order to achieve their goals. I loved it.

It's not something I put in every game session, but it's something I think should be there. Occasionally the players should just have to deal with something that's a pain in the ass. I don't know why I feel this way, but I do. Maybe this is the way I make the world feel realistic.

I've occasionally gotten comments about the space travel rules in our game SEE YOU, SPACE COWBOY…--that they either don't make much sense or it isn't clear why they exist. They are a little bit crunchy--nothing close to the original Traveller space travel rules, but they require you to roll a check, figure out how many days a journey might take, buy fuel, and then roll some dice to figure out how much you spend on food for the journey. (It should be noted that there are zero mechanical consequences for not eating or being hungry in CUSC, merely that you must announce at every opportunity that you are hungry. Unless you're smoking.**) You can wrap your head around it. It isn't difficult. But, it is annoying.

**Smokes in CUSC cost $$1, by the way. Everything else in the game costs $$50 or a multiple thereof. This means that if you smoke, you will always have a surplus of $$49. In an early playtest, someone asked "Why not just make smokes $$50?" and when I asked if having $$49 left over annoyed them, they said yes. I responded with, "Congrats, that's the point!"

That's really the point. Getting from point A to point B can be annoying, and you should plan ahead for it. And, everyone does it even if it's a pain in the ass, so you have to do it too.

You could excise these rules from the game and just let them gallavant from planet to planet, and if that's what your group enjoys then I'm not going to stop you. But I think you lose something about the world. The players should always have the sense that the world is out to fuck them over at every turn, and by making space travel difficult, you make it something they have to deal with.

Also, it opens lots of opportunities for generative storytelling. They can end up off course, adding multiple days to their journey, which can cause them to run out of fuel. Now they have to stop off somewhere they weren't planning on stopping at, interrupting everything they wanted to do, and now they have to go somewhere else. This is GREAT for a Bandleader because now they get to riff on a whole new area they weren't planning on using. If the players are too broke to get back on the space road, then they need to go hunt a bounty that's around here. That's great stuff! And it's super in genre for the show.

I don't know how to end this article. I just felt like writing about why the rules are the way they are, and why they're in the game. Stay gold.

[the-firebird69]

Watch "Zeus ⚡️" on YouTube

He's had a lot of people imitate him but this guy has done it like 50 times and put it in front of our son like 10 times it's ridiculous the guy is a huge huge homo too and we're going to take him down for it I'm sick of it nobody has license to do and this to any of us not to mention him and we're going to do what we want to he's a piece of crap too looks like a piece of crap and doesn't even look anything like the statues. I'll tell you what though I love those statues are humans and he's going to be one even if it's part of his skeleton which is left. And he's a massive egotist for doing practically nothing he's working for Tommy f and you can't lift his head the cars cost so much so nobody can buy them and people need to get to work and you're in the way and you haven't done anything to them you didn't even get any intel for Christ's sake and Tommy have uses you as a dirty rag all the time whenever he wants. Use my name in vane and I'm going to sue you.

Zues

Us up top

Thor Freya

I'm going to bring a lawsuit against you Trump and it's for trying to imitate him and it's a real lawsuit then I'm going to put it in court and it's going to be coded and you're going to go to hell he wants to publicized because you're such a f** and by the way we're knocking off each car that you go near and people think it's your company and they're going to kill you for it

Bitol and Goddess Wife

Ppl will it's okay to buy and you'll see all sorts of s*** about taking it over and it won't be true and if any of your guys get the cars we take them from them and others will too

Zues Hera

Such hostility what's this all about.

Trump

Oh you hit a jackpot. You found hidden gold. You found the Mason's gold and information. You found a whole bunch of stashed cash. You found an old nickel on the floor in your stolen apartment now on All the above. You want something all right and a lot of people can tell you what you won

Zues Hera and yeah you're a prima ballerina sitting there changing words and you're going to win something because you're doing that and you get this pink little too too on with the frills and stuff and boy you look cute you little b**** and yeah this is Hera

What is all this mean I don't get it you're jealous and stuff

Okay you're making knock-offs and you're going to take over all my companies take my money and push me out so Mac planned you to it says so what I don't have anything I guess that's the idea yeah that's the idea you can run around and if it takes some sort of Greek hero if you want I'm trying to imitate me but it's kind of stupid he says and sure I don't have anything to say they're embarrassing me and using my videos to take over my companies I can't believe this that's what they're doing

Trump

Yeh

Hera

Yup

Zues

Olympus

[tumblepenguin]

Why Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is the best music biopic film

So I watched it last night and I highly recommend it! But while watching the movie I kept thinking "This script is too good. Like this is too clever for it's own good." This thought couldn't escape me. I had to break down why this movie is, quite frankly, the perfect parody and love letter to the music biopic film. Quite possibly the best music biopic film.

In this essay, I will be using the songs that are explicitly referenced in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story as a way to showcase how they reflect or subvert the music biopic film tropes. How these songs are meant show the "real life backstory" of Weird Al Yankovic (and also, the universe this movie takes place in) is quite frankly buckwild. And we start at The Beginning and our first song.

My Bologna—The movie begins with the framing device—a voice over. Then, Weird Al is going to the hospital and being pronounced dead by Lin Manuel Miranda (the Hamilton writer/multi Grammy winner who was receiving the Hollywood Walk of Fame Star the same day as Weird Al and WHO JUST HAPPENED TO BE WITH WEIRD AL AT THE TIME OF THE ANNOUCEMENT OF THEIR WINS. ANYWAY WE WILL GET BACK TO THIS PLOT POINT LATER).

More voiceover. We see the hero's journey start by showing how Weird Al was a musically gifted child, but his family discouraged him. His Mom is the traditional 50's wife while Dad is a Overworked Blue Collar Man who works at factory (BUT THE ENTIRE MOVIE, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HE MAKES, SIMILAR TO HOW IN A BIOPIC MOVIE, THE "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ME DAD" DAD HAS "A TOUGH JOB THAT PUT BREAD ON THE TABLE, BUT MY DAMN SON DOESN'T APPRECIATE IT" FACTORY JOB). It is here we also establish the future Mentor+Agent character, but I'm getting ahead of myself. After receiving "The One True Calling"—(ie, the traveling salesman with the accordion, others gaining the appreciation for his talent at a high school polka party, the reveal to the "You Don't Understand Me" Dad how his son played the accordion in secret (complete with doing so "in the closet" because "My mom supports my artistic achievements, but still has to be a good housewife and follow her husband's rules, but to hell with the rules" idea), only for the "You Don't Understand Me" Dad to crush his spirits (ie throw him out of the house for his talent and we get the important line of "I will become Perhaps Not Technically the Best at But Arguably the Most Famous Accordion Player")—does our hero start the journey. He has a couple of tough gigs/ getting rejected while he's away from home. The future band mates are the new friends he makes away from home (guys that, as the movie points out, have shown NO MUSICAL TALENT OR INTEREST EARLIER IN THE FILM UNTIL THE BIG "GETS DISCOVERED BY A MENTOR+AGENT" MOMENT. GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF). After encouraging our hero to keep going, the future bandmates find themselves at the BIG MOMENT. The moment when our hero is tested for first time with the 1st song. The one that all audiences will know. A softball in terms of the types of references yet to come. In this case, Weird Al gets the inspiration for My Bologna after making his future bandmates a boloney sandwich.

I Love Rocky Road—The "Gets Discovered By a Mentor+Agent" moment of the music biopic. So after the real life recording of My Bologna in the bathroom (with some "dramatic license"), our hero sends his song to Captain Buffoon, a radio DJ (great name btw). The song is played on the radio and to our hero, things are looking up for him! Wrong! The record execs with TERRIBLE WIGS™ aren't buying it! They don't understand how this will get them cash money.

(Sidebar: one of the record executives is Weird Al himself in a Terrible Wig ™. And the other executive (Will Forte) is just laying into our hero. Just laying it on with saying "You're so dumb! You'll never amount to anything. Your breath kinda sticks too!" kinda jokes. And The Real Weird Al is like "hey man, that seems a little harsh." But Will Forte keeps going, making the childish insults worse. And The Real Weird Al has to say "that's kinda harsh, you don't need to go into him like that" about Fictional Weird Al. Anyway, great sequence folks.)

But our hero is not discouraged. Cause his tape to Captain Buffoon did get him a gig at a TOUGH BIKER BAR™/the "Tough crowd to win over" moment (with one bar patron being Patton Oswald, who was originally Dr Demento in the Funny or Die sketch that kicked this whole idea off. The bar owner is Dot-Marie Jones, which made me personally happy). And so he goes up alone, starts singing. But it doesn't seem to be working! The bikers/crowd aren't buying it either! See, they know what it means to be real! But low! Our hero, being discouraged, suddenly shows that "he can do it guys"! Not only that, but his friends are joining him too! The band is forming! The crowd is loving it! What once was slurs and heckling being thrown at our hero is now rapturous applause! Our hero's trial is over. BUT, a dark entity was watching from the bar. In a funny looking getup in the shadows.

Another One Rides the Bus—The Dark Bargain begins. Our dark bargain mentor figure is Rainn Wilson, playing Dr Demento (there are 2. COUNT EM 2 JOKES ABOUT DEMENTORS IN THIS SCENE ALONE. WITH LONG PAUSES FOR AUDIENCES TO REALIZE HE REFERENCING HARRY POTTER WHILE HARRY POTTER (Daniel Radcliffe) IS ON SCREEN). The success of the song means our hero gets his first taste of FAME and HIS STAGE NAME. He goes to a party with the ultimate blunt rotation including:

• Devo

• Elton John

• PeeWee Herman

• Tiny Tim

• Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

• Alice Cooper with a fake snake

• The comedian Gallagher played by Paul F Tompkins

• Kate Pierson from the B-52s

• Grace Jones

• Divine

• Salvador Dali

• Frank Zappa

• Conan O'Brien as Andy Warhol

(Sidebar: There is also a man with a guitar talking to "Elton" and another shot of a man with white blonde hair and suit that I didn't recognize. If someone could help me identify who these are supposed to be, that would be great!)

And our hero gets tested again by Jack Black as Wolfman Jack and John Deacon (bass player of Queen, which is funny because MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW THAT INFO, SO WE'RE MAKING JOKES ABOUT HOW RECOGNIZABLE SOMEONE IS. THE IDEA COMES UP AGAIN LATER IN THE MOVIE). This group of people are like the bikers—they need to see if he's the Real Thing AGAIN. Which gives us another "in universe" biopic song. And the guests are impressed! And soon, our boy is getting interviewed by Oprah (with Quinta Brunson as Oprah, which is incredible). The interview starts showing that he is getting money, the house he always wanted, The Dream ™. He even shows his chain of platinum records that he wears at all times (IT SAVES HIM LATER, TRUST ME). All he needs now is THE GIRL. Enter Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna. She sees the interview with Oprah and "Sees What She Likes

(Sidebar: in the Oprah broadcast we find out Pablo Escobar—yes, the international drug cartel leader—is one of the biggest Weird Al fans. THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER).

Cut to a hotel room. Our hero makes THE PHONE CALL BACK HOME™ to check in with the family. His mom picks up (IT'S ALWAYS THE MOM IN MOVIES. ALWAYS), and she says that she misses her little boy and Dad isn't home cause he's working the factory. The trope gets subverted because she says how disappointed she is with our hero, instead of the typical "Moms always support their kids and their kids' dreams" in most movies. This brings the hero DOWN. He finds his mentor (for some reason being in a bathtub connected to the bedroom where the The Phone Call From Home™ happens). And he gets drugged on LSD! So now we have a Dream Sequence. Which is amazing! At the end, he emerges Reborn! He has also created THE GREATEST THING EVER. His "Sgt. Pepper's" (including DRUG INFLUENCE ™) if you will.

Eat It—This time, "The record executives can do nothing but be in awe of the genius they just listened to". But our hero is tired of being a ONE TRICK PONY. He wants to make his own music. This song isn't a parody. And in the universe of the movie, Michael Jackson is the greatest Parody writer of all time. Because "Beat It" in this universe is a cover song (maybe so are all popular songs ever—hard to say). Now the little man and his accordion are the ones who dominate the charts. They shape music history forever. Not everyone he actually covers in real life.

(Sidebar: This is the most batshit thought I had while watching this movie. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE.)

This song is The Biggest Song in the World. And our hero is getting even more FAME. But with that comes Another Dark Bargain. At this point in a music biopic, our hero will have/or has encountered his supposed downfall. In music biopics, it's usually the mentor+agent, corrupted by money/fame. Sometimes it's the girlfriend who's a HUGE SLUT/does a lot of drugs/encourages the use of drugs/just being a BAD INFLUENCE. In this case, the girlfriend is Madonna (someone that Conservatives think is all the things depicted in the movie already. Yes, probably even being the queen of a drug cartel after killing Pablo Escobar and then takes out Weird Al via assassination at the Not Grammy Grammys BUT I AM JUMPING AHEAD OF MYSELF IN THIS STORY). So she stops on by The Mansion™ and she and Weird Al are Opposites Attract ™. They start making out (but can't show sex scenes in a PG-13 film). And the making out is so fucking funny. But now, "The Girl is in his life, and he's starting to get distracted from his job!" plot line has entered the chat. And Dr Demento is not having it. Instead of focusing on some exciting opportunities (including playing for Pablo "Previously Stated as One of Weird Al's Biggest Fans" Escobar for his 40th birthday party. Also there's a joke about Led Zeppelin versus Howie Mandel and having Weird Al replace Roger Moore as James Bond. And he throws a fit about only doing original work. Which is hilarious since we live in a "Who's the next James Bond after Daniel Craig" era), our hero just wants to be with his BAD INFLUENCE.

While at dinner with Madonna, there is a phone call.

(Sidebar: Weird Al states "This has been the happiest six hours of my life". How I'm choosing to believe that from the time Madonna and Weird Al made out, do the Next Morning Scene™ to the time of this dinner—including the previously established "Getting Distracted" scene—all took place in six hours. Insane.)

It's from one of the record executives (played by The Real Weird Al). It's about Michael Jackson "parodying" Eat It. And our hero IS NOT HAVING IT ™. The first blow that will lead to DOWNFALL. The Phone is getting smashed. Our hero will now be linked to Michael Jackson forever because of this parody! He returns to the table and cannot eat (it. GET IT? Also the waiter is Josh Groban). Now Madonna is giving him alcohol. The Slow Decent to the Bottom has begun! Meanwhile, the band is pissed! We haven't seen them in several minutes, but the BAND IS FIGHTING is about to commence. They say Weird Al has lost touch. He threats to replace everyone with machines (even the GUY WE DON'T REMEMBER IS IN THE BAND, LIKE JASON DEACON, BASS PLAYER FOR QUEEN. See, it all comes back around). "You've changed man," is said. Dr Demento arrives to try and SALVAGE THE SITUATION ™. But "Anything you want to say, you can say in front of my BAD INFLUENCE." And the mentor figure thinks The Girl=Bad Influence. "She's only using you for her own gains" line is used. But our hero is blinded by the love/BAD INFLUENCE to see the truth. This is also where the hinting mention of Like a Surgeon happens (BUT WE'RE NOT THERE YET. THE PAYOFF HASN'T HAPPENED YET). "You're not my real dad!" (even though this entire time, Weird Al wasn't looking for a Father Figure™). The mentor+agent figure is now dismissed. Madonna runs after him, telling him not to Drive While Drunk. But hands over the car keys away cause she a BAD INFLUENCE. While Driving To Clear His Head ™, our hero flips through the radio. It's playing the top radio hits (HIS SONGS) and he turns off the radio is disgust. Suddenly we have a car crash.

Like a Surgeon—We are now back in the hospital. All of the previously stated information is the first HOUR AND FOUR MINUTES OF THIS MOVIE. TO SET UP THE REASON LIKE A SURGEON EXISTS AS A SONG. THIS IS THE GIVEN BACKSTORY FOR THIS SONG.

But now, it's The Second Biggest Thing of All Time. And we get choreography that's the Vogue choreography. And Madonna is doing it backstage. So she's inspired by Weird Al, not ballroom dance culture, to dance like that in Vogue. Fucking wild. Also the backup dancers are wearing cone bras (a thing Madonna made famous with Like a Virgin). We now get The Doors movie parody with the ROCK BOTTOM MOMENT. Which includes flashing the accordion to the audience (instead of a dick). And now, our boy is CANCELLED and has to LAY LOW, which mean going to a diner with his very famous girlfriend. Madonna says what their Hollywood couple/ship name should be. But they couldn't lay low, because Madonna got kidnaped by Pablo Escobar. That's right, you forgot about Pablo Escobar, didn't you? But I mentioned him previously. And now, he's now the main plotline. All for Weird Al not noticing him senpai.

And now our movie turns into an action movie. With an amazing diner fight+punchline at the end of the scene. Also a "Predator style jungle knockout to sneak onto the enemy's basecamp" scene. And Madonna is being held hostage during Pablo's 40th birthday party, including a mariachi band playing. But Weird Al shows up and a firefight ensues. He gains the upper hand (cause everyone is a terrible shot+Tarantino style blood squibs go off. It's awesome).

THEN PABLO ESCOBAR SHOOTS WEIRD AL DEAD.

BUT PSYCH! CAUSE CHAIN OF PLATINUM RECORDS SAVED HIS ASS. AN HOUR AND SEVENTEEN MINUTES INTO THE MOVIE WE BRING THE CHECKHOV'S RECORD BACK. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

And Weird Al kills Pablo Escobar by throwing a record into his head. And Madonna, being the #girlboss that she is, decides she wants to becoming the head of an international drug cartel, and wants Weird Al to help her. But he decides to go against her. Her BAD INFLUENCE no longer has a hold on his life. AND THE VOICE OVER RETURNS. Cause now "the hero has to return home before his big comeback after the Fall from Grace" needs to happen, because of course that's what you do in a music biopic. So he returns home and starts working at the factory pushing levers and buttons that we, the audience and he, Weird Al, doesn't have a clue what they do (other than maim fellow factory workers, BUT WHATEVER). The "You Don't Understand Me" Dad finds him in the Depths Of Despair. And our hero has his emotional outburst. But our Dad has turned a new leaf. In fact, he like parody songs! He even sings the oldest one we know ("Jingle Bells, Batman Smells"). Also the mom is wearing the EAT IT fat suit.

(Sidebar: I feel mixed on this fat suit, but I won't get into it right now.)

And with this shared parody ancestry, the Dad thinks it's finally time to tell Weird Al why he was against him playing the accordion in the first place.

Amish Paradise—Dad's Tragic Backstory/Footloose Reason Why Society Doesn't Allow Their Kids to Do INSERT BLANK ACTIVITY HERE. Everything that you have read up until this point, an HOUR AND TWENTY FIVE MINUTES OF THE MOVIE, has been leading to this backstory for this song's inclusion in the movie. You're welcome. This Tragic Backstory is also animated, so thanks! Also because this is a rap/motivationally sounding song (I guess???), we see that our hero has Returned to Fight Another Day! This time with a new sound!

(Sidebar: does anyone else wonder if Coolio knew about this cameo before he died? Just asking cause Madonna apparently wasn't consulted about the role Evan Rachel Wood plays in this film according to interviews I watched after the fact).

This song is at the Not Grammy Grammys (he gets the "Perhaps Not Technically the Best at But Arguably the Most Famous Accordion Player" award over Prince. We'll need to move on from there). After being present the award by Diana Ross and Hulk Hogan, our guy wins and goes onstage to accept. Meanwhile, an assassin is seating in the front row. But wait, I thought Pablo Escobar is dead? Who is in charge of this assassin? Why, it's our girl Madonna. BUT I'M GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF.

The acceptance speech become a "Suck It Losers!" kinda speech. And here is where the A Star is Born reference with Weird Al pissing himself onstage happens. And Weird Al is assassinated. By a Madonna who is no longer in the audience, dressed in what I think is her American Life outfit.

(Sidebar: IS CYNDI LAUPUR NEXT TO DR DEMENTO IN THE AUDIENCE? CAUSE THAT'S NOT EVAN RACHEL WOOD AND WE NEEDED A FAKEOUT OF MADONNA SUPPOSEDLY SITTING IN THE AUDIENCE IN ORDER FOR HER DO THE ASSASSINATION. ANYWAY!)

And we get "What happened after the artist died/peaked" before credits rolls. Then credits with fake photos are mixed with real photos from childhood (I think those are real. If not, great touch). AND WE GET A MID CREDITS SCENE. Madonna brings flowers to Weird Al's grave (that says ATE IT 1985), but as she's leaving a zombie hand of Weird Al grabs her to drag her to hell like the end of Carrie/other horror movies. So Weird Al has been dead this entire time, and we have only been listening to a Zombie Weird Al since 1985!

Now You Know—the "Yep, this 100% happened guys. Totally!" song. Also has some great mentions about how long/repetitive the song is, who worked on the film, explicitly showing the parody songs instead of the originals used in the end credits, mentioning the "studio musician backing vocals" (who sound amazing by the way), and how the song can technically be nominated for an Oscar.

And this is why this movie is the great parody of all time.

[sugar-petals]

can you give us more thoughts about domestic yoongles? the taemin's one (wich I love) just made me miss the cat boy so much ;o;

i have a phd in househusband yoongi so let me fire out some ideas for ya.

myg at home headcanon

🐱 word count. 1.9k | fluff, slice of life, slight nsfw mentions, x reader, bullet points

The doorbell sound is a recording of Yoongi imitating a doorbell. He’s such a meme. Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

Seemingly, he teaches himself a new recipe every week. To perfection. Yoongi is very particular about sticking to the recipe and wielding his kitchen tools in the right way. He collects knives, olive oil, and still hates cutting onions.

He separates sleep time, work time, and couple time as the holy trinity. For each, he switches his mood.

Blushes easily no matter for how long you’ve been together.

Establishes his own radio show where he DJs at one point.

Yoongi keeps an extreme track on the garbage schedule. He knows exactly what is due when. Separating the trash is a must. That includes sorting out fake friends trying to get between your relationship. Your social circle as a couple is extremely deliberate.

Yoongi deems himself a terrible host for guests. Unless Hoseok is there to drag him out, it's true he rather stays in the kitchen or at the barbecue preparing the menu courses rather than making small talk. He leaves the hospitality bits to you, however you want to go about it.

What he lacks in conversing with guests, he makes up in bed, God is absolutely fair.

He sings and hums pretty often and has his own vernacular of extraterrestrial uwu noises. It's an alphabet that you have to yet decipher but it's incredibly cute.

Self-made paintings everywhere around his house. 

Yoongi hasn't gone clubbing since grammar school. The most he does is going to a restaurant at lunch with very close friends. And always in a work context. His private life is so secluded from everything else and paparazzi just don't spot him anywhere, Dispatch thinks he must live abroad.

Very well, he does consider his big ole house a separate country. It's a living organism with a studio, gym, trophy room, small-size basketball court, and vastly equipped kitchen. A home theater as well, he likes American movies (like Inception) and Korean action genres, and you can stream whatever you fancy in there whenever you like. 

Yes, he has underwear with cute little bears on.

There's even a little pond in the backyard. Yoongi, Pisces he is, likes fishes after all. Sometimes he sits at the edge of the 'Little Ole Min Lake (LOML)' and stares into the water for literal hours with his chin parked on his palm.

His fridge is so high-tech and futuristic, even Yoongi is rendered clueless by its AI sometimes. The washing machine, too.

Yoongi watches RuPaul’s drag race. What did you expect? He finds it so humorous.

Owns lord knows how many comic collections.

Favorite holiday destination: New York.

Christmas is basically 50% you unveiling new music equipment to him in the garage and Yoongi almost fainting at the sexiness of it. The other 50% is spent holding hands and orgasm after orgasm until the new year since you loose track of time.

Goes on long rants why he’d marry you again every weekend.

Making you presents is his specialty. Always accompanied with a hand-written note. He writes a lot of things by hand for you in general. Texting, basically never. Always on paper.

No sex without a blanket and socks on. Yoongi gets cold very very easily and just doesn’t like showing skin. You buy him a heated blanket for his birthday, he even uses it in his studio chair.

Chronically addicted to making out.

Matching black outfits and glasses.

Laughs at even your worst jokes or phrases you didn’t expect you even uttered.

Yoongi owns the phoniest, most secretive-looking black car ever and nobody knows about it. Even he forgets he owns it, in fact he genuinely acts like it just doesn’t exist. Hilarious. And that guy has a level 1 Korean driver's license. Which allows him to drive trailers and busses and fucking trucks, and construction machines, let that sink in.

It's really a genius curse. Yoongi being put to the test will always deliver but he won't choose to execute his full skillset if he doesn't have to. Well, pragmatic. He's not as phony as he thinks he is, which is even more hilarious.

He uses that behemoth of a car so scarcely because he'd rather have things delivered to his doorstep and he's stingy with gas. Also, he doesn't like traffic and driving because of the traumatic shoulder accident and his tendency to space out. Translation: You drive that thing... that monster... it really is an impressive, fast, and scary machine. 

If someone devious ever even remotely manages to invade his privacy and get past the doubly-installed security system, he has enough money to deal with it no matter what.

If it concerns your privacy, he's a red belt. And owns Jin's number if a taekwondo master is required. Jimin's if it needs someone with kendo skills.

If Yoongi needs someone to go on a complete rampage, Jungkook lives just down the block. He can sprint to Yoongi's bunker I mean mansion within 45 seconds. 30 if it's very urgent. 20 if the reward is an instant ramen splurge with Yoongi's black card.

He has a sexy, glamorous sword collection hanging on the living room wall anyways, so. Who the hell is dumb enough to mess with him and his expensive lawyer in the first place.

But just in case, who knows... Yoongi settles matters shruggingly, anonymously, and with cash and he's too exhausted for violence, but don't underestimate his deter-min-ation and network for emergencies. Also, he is Agust D after all.

He will bonk a naughty burglar or kidnapper across the head with a wooden cooking spoon or take him down by throwing a basketball if the situation requires it. Damn, his reflexes are so fast, a feral cat in motion. So, lean back and sip on your drink of choice. Things are cared for.

If Yoongi is the one being kidnapped or a highly skilled stalker invades the property at night when he's fast asleep (nothing can wake this man during certain hours, strong REM right here): Don't forget that honeyboy is a Dodgers fan. There are signed baseball bats everywhere in this damn house.

In that sense, your parents visiting you here for the first time thought you were an undercover thug couple. Not to worry mom and dad, you both just like sports very much okay.

Yoongi walks around in all black clothes and the rooms are all seemingly dark. Even if you live together, you don't know his skin care routine. It's clear to you he's some sort of vampire.

Since Yoongi always forgets to remove his makeup, you made it a habit to wipe it down when he's about to pass out. He won't lie, he enjoys that kind of affection.

Holly is your resident child. You're essentially a family.

He insists to tackle this by himself, Yoongi sees his therapist monthly. Not shifting responsibility is something he's stubborn about and he pours his emotions into writing. You will do conversation about deeper stuff, but he says it's mostly up to him and his own mind. He dislikes burdening you or opening up too much and it's something to respect rather than force him about. If he wants to share a thought, he will. It doesn’t mean he can’t trust you or sucks at communicating (we know that he’s direct). Yoongi simply can’t put that much pain in such few words nor should you alleviate it for him.

Calls from the manager faze Yoongi as much as Jimin is bothered by gravity. If he’s busy kissing your body slow mo, who the hell dares to disturb his worship. 

This man had so many let-downs and interpersonal catastrophes in his life, he's super discerning with people. Because he rolls that way, during their first meeting Yoongi uses his psychology certificate on your friends. You see him squint at them, he listens very closely. After they pass the vibe check aka meow radar, he befriends them, too.

Yoongi doodles Grammy trophies everywhere to manifest them.

Yoongi shaves his legs.

All the sex toys he’s ever bought are black. Gotta vibe in style.

He spends ridiculous amounts of time in the studio but he's yours for the remainder of the night, breakfast, and he makes a lavish lunch and dinner.

Um, consider his head parked between your legs. The Hongkong line was not a joke.

Doesn’t mind you squishing his cheeks whenever and for how long you like. 

Every other weekend he gets flowers, vouchers, and gifts — not because of fans, they don’t know where his house is, but because he donates so much.

Namjoon often drops by and cleanses the area with his crystals.

Yoongi is a photography major so you can ask him to take professional, ceiling-high black and white shots of you.

Feeding each other food lovingly. Man, this guy got lips.

He set up a library just for you, in the exact historical aesthetic you like the most. Send him the link to any book you want, it's basically in the online shopping cart already. As I said, he wants to make you presents like every week.

Sometimes he sits on the other end studying English videos and vocab while you read. And yes, he's already 95% fluent but pretends being merely intermediate. He knows technical terms even native speakers have never heard of.

He collects pajamas and earrings.

Swears on the phone.

Namjoon being the horniest member is a cover-up story. Yoongi masturbates almost unreasonable amounts of times, by himself and in your arms when going to bed. Not gonna lie, it’s a sight to see his hands at work. He’s almost equally obsessed with fingering you once you ask him.

Yoongi was the one asking you to move in and almost had a nervous meltdown before meeting up with you to tell you just that. 

He’s the little spoon and of course a sleeping burrito to hold tight.

Finds you equally attractive in any state or styling. Yoongi practices what he preaches, he always reacts the same and says the same. 

Jams out to outrageous beats Namjoon sends him by dancing in the studio. You walk in on him every time. Was embarrassed at first, now you dance along.

Has bought you a life-sized Yoongi pillow and customized you a giant Shooky to hug when he’s not at home over night.

Owned a wine cellar until he quit drinking. Turned it into a piano room instead.

Only you know Yoongi has a serpent and dagger tattoo.

Scrubs the bathroom religiously.

The house smells like restaurant food and his extravagant perfumes half of the time.

Sometimes he has to remind himself he’s married to you and not his coffee machine. He shall be forgiven. You can’t complain that he doesn’t love you enough, nor is he ever not adorable when drinking his latte.

Never wears short sleeves. It can be scorching and he’ll wear a jacket. 

Tell him and the cap stays on during sex.

He grows his hair out and puts it in a low bun. The bangs remain.

Yoongi has installed the most fire-proof building in the entire city it seems. That he wanted to be a firefighter when he was young definitely shows. Figures the house has to be protected from heat: His blasting studio music and Yoongi himself are just way too sizzling.

Still melts into a puddle when you kiss his nose.

Couple sunrise watching. 

© submissive-bangtan 2017-2021. all rights reserved. do not repost or translate. all depictions fictional.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Haven Gray

CW: Abducted whumpee, description of missing person, captivity, BBU/WRU

Where Is Haven Gray?

r/FindTheMissing

•Posted by u/bananasare2appealing

3 days ago

In the summer of 20XX, 21-year-old Haven Gray texted family and friends to let them know a second job interview they’d just finished had gone well, and they expected to be offered the job.

They made plans to have dinner with a couple of friends to celebrate, but never showed up to the restaurant. They were reported missing by their parents later that night and have never been seen again.

Hey, everyone, this is my first attempt at a post like this, so I hope you’ll go easy on me! Haven Gray is a kind of a personal case to me, I went to the same high school a few years behind them and there was still a lot of talk about what could have happened and like, their picture is in a memorial frame in the hallway by the principal’s office. It’s just a really important case to me and I hope they figure out what happened to Haven one day.

Haven Gray was the oldest of three children born to Matthew and Maria Gray in the small town of Trenton, Indiana. Tall, with long wavy red hair and gray eyes, they stood out in a crowd in more ways than one.

Haven set records for their high school’s cross-country track team, played well on the school basketball team, and maintained a 3.5 GPA alongside plenty of extracurriculars and an active social life.

They then spent two years attending Trenton Community College, looking to finish out their degree at Indiana State University and go into the human resources field. They kept up a part-time job on the side, but during the summer before they would move to ISU, they decided to look for full-time work to help save up some money.

Haven’s mother Maria was interviewed after their disappearance by local news station INNW as saying that Haven was very excited about finishing up their degree and moving into their first real apartment. 

Haven had seen an ad on a job-hunting website for a receptionist for a temp agency that specialized in placing HR professionals in nearby companies. Seeing a way to get some relevant experience before they finished up their degree, they applied and were contacted for a job interview.

Here’s where things get just a little weird, before they get even weirder.

Haven texted a photo of the strip mall where the job interview was, and noted that the company was not located in a well-maintained place, which made Haven very nervous. The signage also seemed brand new, which conflicted with information on the company website suggesting they’d been in that location for years. 

They waited in their car and called the company phone. Only when someone came out to greet them did Haven go inside for the interview. 

The first interview went smoothly, and Haven excitedly called their friends and family to say a second interview was already scheduled with the owner of the small company. It turned out, they explained, that the creepy location was no longer the company’s main location, and their second interview would be at a different address in a much nicer part of town.

They did not give any explanation, if any was given to them, about the reason for brand new signage if the business was in the process of leaving that address. On the day of the second interview, one week later, Haven’s mother saw them leaving in a deep blue top with satin detailing at the neck and gray slacks. 

They exchanged goodbyes, and Haven reminded their mother they would be meeting friends tonight, either to celebrate a good interview or commiserate over a bad one.

“My comfort,” Maria Gray said in her interview with INNW, “is that I said goodbye and I love you. I have that, at least. So many don’t get that final chance. I just wish I had known it was the last time. I would have looked at them a little longer.”

From here, Haven is seen on camera at their ‘regular’ Starbucks a few moments later, ordering a large (venti) iced latte. An automatic speed-checker camera next to the highway captured their car with license plate clearly visible driving in the direction of the interstate a few minutes later.

Two hours after this sighting, they called a friend, Natalie Morales, to tell her that the interview had gone well and they believed they would be offered the job. Dinner that night, Haven said, would definitely be a celebration. 

They texted three other friends, Maria, and Matthew - as well as a younger sibling. These are the last direct communications anyone had with Haven Gray.

“They didn’t sound scared,” Natalie said in her own interview with True Crime Podcast Now You See Them, Now You Don’t. "Not at all. I’ve thought about it over and over again, trying to ask myself, was there fear there? Had something already happened? And I just don’t think so. I think whatever happened, happened after they hung up the phone. They were excited, said the pay rate was way more than they expected for a receptionist job. The only thing is that they said the guy who interviewed them kind of... gave them the, you know. Made the hair on their arms stand up. You know what I mean? And I thought of that first, when they never... but he has an alibi.”

The man in question is Ladd Prescott, the stated owner of the temp agency Haven applied to. Ladd gave multiple interviews, off-camera and to law enforcement, but he did not leave the office and is seen on in-office security cameras and he is not considered a person of interest in the case.

The final image of Haven’s whereabouts that day comes from the CCTV camera at an ATM for Haven’s bank one hour after the final text message sent to their father Matthew. They are seen pulling up in their car to the drive-thru ATM, where they withdrew $300. 

Notable about this footage is three things:

1. Haven appears to look directly at the camera twice, deliberately holding their gaze maybe

2. Their hair, carefully styled when they left for the interview according to Maria, is noticeably in disarray, and they do not appear to be wearing the same shirt they had on when they left (the footage is super grainy, so this is hard to tell exactly, but if you check here you can see that they appear to be wearing a white t-shirt). 

3. A shadow just behind them moves independently of Haven, gestures a few times, and it appears - and police believe - that someone else is in the car with Haven Gray directing their movements.

Haven never arrived at the restaurant. When their friends attempted to contact them, the phone went directly to voicemail. This was very out of the ordinary for Haven, so friends called Maria and Matthew, who became immediately worried and contacted the police.

Haven Gray officially was listed as a missing person the next day.

Four days later, their car - with IDs, debit and credit card, a book they were reading, and their resume and list of questions from the interview all inside - was located at a nearby riverfront, abandoned. The only thing missing was the $300 in cash Haven had taken out of the ATM, and Haven themself. 

A witness came forward later stating they had seen a man with ashy blond hair who appeared to be in his 40′s or 50′s smoking next to the car the day Haven was last seen. This man has never come forward or been located and his connection to Haven’s disappearance, if any, is unknown.

Law enforcement believes that Haven was abducted within half an hour of finishing their interview by someone who forced their way into the car, and likely directed to the ATM to take cash out and then met someone else or moved into a different car after parking Haven’s at the riverfront. 

Weirdly, the riverfront was checked the day after Haven was declared missing, which suggests someone came back and moved the car after the witness saw the smoking man, then moved it back into place after the initial search of the area was over with.

Cell towers picked up pings from Haven’s phone for four hours afterward, heading due east. The nearest big city would have been Cincinnati, so it’s possible the abductor headed that direction. If they did, though, they took a winding route and Haven’s phone was turned off or discarded before reaching the city. 

Look, I know this is a big conspiracy theory and there’s absolutely no proof, but I think Haven was abducted by WRU. 

Why?

Three weeks prior to their disappearance, Haven attended a bar’s “singles night”. They mentioned to friends later that they connected with a man who worked for WRU as a handler, but then decided they couldn’t handle the reality of what he did and cut off contact before they could have their first real date.

(The handler in question has been cleared during the investigation, but I still have my suspicions)

I know this seems like the flimsiest reason, but Haven’s friends all say that the man was very upset by Haven’s discomfort with his job, tried to keep contacting them for days. I think the job interview is a red herring and it’s this handler guy who is behind it somehow - maybe him, or his friends.

Also, there’s a WRU Training Facility in Cincinnati, Ohio, only a few hours away... and law enforcement never even tried to get a warrant to search there. Easy way to get rid of someone if you did something to them, right?

(I know, I know, WRU has standards and does checks and all that, but seriously. Think about it.)

A year later, improbably, a farmer working to mow the ditch next to his fields found Haven’s cell phone in a ziploc inside a second plastic bag. The phone had been wiped to factory settings and no new useful information was found.

So, where is Haven Gray? 

Were they murdered? Abducted? Will we find their body in a field one day? Were they just dumped in the river next to their abandoned car? Are they part of the WRU system now? No one seems to know, and reported sightings of them in Los Angeles, New York City, and even one mention from Sydney, Australia, seem hard to believe.

Haven’s mother Maria says they have no plans to declare Haven legally dead, and they intend to keep looking “as long as it takes”.

What Are Your Thoughts?

-

WRU NEW ACQUISITION INTAKE FORM FACILITY 005

SUBJECT: 549065

DATE OF ACQUISITION: 06.06.20XX

TIME OF ACQUISITION: 1:45 PM

LOCATION ASSIGNED: FACILITY 005, CINCINNATI, OHIO

PREVIOUS ALIAS: Haven Finley Gray

AGE: 21

DATE OF BIRTH: 07.19.20XX

HAIR: Red

EYES: Gray

HEIGHT: 6′0″

WEIGHT: 153 lbs 

SEXUALITY: Pansexual 

DESIGNATION: Romantic

KNOWN SKILLS: Subject in school for business-related major, excellent with typing, record-keeping, work with Excel spreadsheets, etc. Subject reports regular workouts primarily consisting of long-distance cardio. Subject refused to provide details on sex life but is known to have been active in the dating scene of local area. Subject is known to be gregarious and social.

HOBBIES: Subject mentioned reading as a hobby, with primary interest in fantasy and science fiction. Three books located in subject’s car at time of acquisition. 

KNOWN CONCERNS: Subject is showing some irregularities in heartrate, likely due to fear. No other known concerns. 

KNOWN IMMEDIATE FAMILY: Matthew and Maria Gray, both living, location Trenton, Indiana. Grandparents are deceased.

SIBLINGS: Two younger siblings: Mark, brother, two years younger, and Penny, sister, four years younger. 

METHOD OF ACQUISITION: Involuntary. 

ACQUISITION DETAILS: Access to subject provided by local business. Subject was apprehended without incident by Handler Benjamin Ralford. Subject was given an injection of sedative and transferred to WRU company vehicle at 3:15 pm. The rest of the acquisition proceeded without incident.

ASSIGNED HANDLERS: 

CONTRACT SIGNED: 06.09.20XX 5:55 PM

           PRIMARY: Benjamin Ralford, per request, acting as primary. Handler and Processor, Romantic Division.

           SECONDARY: Melissa Striker, Senior Handler and Processor, Romantic Division

SIGNATURE PROVIDED VOLUNTARILY, SUBJECT NOT SEDATED FOR SIGNING. SUBJECT SHOWED NO VISIBLE SIGNS OF INJURY AT TIME OF SIGNING. SUBJECT REPORTED FEELINGS OF FEAR AND CONFUSION COMMON TO NEW RECRUITS.  

CONTRACT SIGNATURE: Haven Gray, aka 549065

PRESENT AT TIME OF SIGNING: Handler Benjamin Ralford, Badge #3345, WRU Attorney Ryan Alderson. 

ESTIMATED COST FOR TRAINING: $125,000 USD

COMPENSATION TO BE PAID BY PROSPECTIVE:  $500,000 USD 

CURRENT LOCATION: Romantic Division Room #12, post-signing contract

TRAINING PLAN: ALL Positions 1-35, Flexibility, Sensitivity, Endurance, Dance, Socialization

COMMENTS:

I’m going to take every fucking thing out of that head and put back in only what I want to be there. I think they’ll fall in line once the Drip is really working on them. My professional recommendation is total illiteracy should be emphasized before moving on to other training. They’ll do better with focus and commitment on the skills we want to impart that way. I am also recommending absolutely no scarring unless there is no other option. - Benjamin Ralford, Primary Handler

Scribbled at the bottom of the paper and not put in to WRU’s digitized records system is a note in Ralford’s handwriting:

Should’ve gone on that fucking date, asshole

-

@astrobly @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @whump-tr0pes @raigash @orchidscript @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @eatyourdamnpears @boxboysandotherwhump @vickytokio @whumpfigure @outofangband @downriver914 @justabitofwhump @thehopelessopus @butwhatifyouwrite @yet-another-heathen @nonsensical-whump

[notebooknebula]

Flip Real Estate Virtually with Paul Lizell & Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority

https://www.jayconner.com/flip-real-estate-virtually-with-paul-lizell-jay-conner-the-private-money-authority/

Jay Conner and his special guest Paul Lizell talk about how to utilize systems and processes that simplify the buying process of real estate.

Paul is the founder of The Virtual Investor, JP Homes, Inc & www.housedealsamerica.com He has been flipping properties since 2001 and is the original virtual wholesaler having purchased all over the U.S. since 2009. He has bought and sold properties in 44 out of 50 states and will continue to look at expanding into new markets.

Paul is a graduate of Drexel University in 1998, holds a degree in Finance and a minor in Economics, he now teaches at www.ReoAuctionAcademy.com. He focused exclusively on online auctions, bank REO’s, buying off the MLS and wholesalers across the country since 2013.

Timestamps:

0:01 – Get Ready To Be Plugged Into The Money

1:42 – Jay’s New Book: “Where To Get The Money Now”- https://www.JayConner.com/Book

3:20 – Today’s guest: Paul Lizell

4:57 – How Paul Lizell gets started on the real estate business.

6:58 – What is wholesaling?

8:01 – What is the advantage of buying a house vs getting it under contract?

10:28 – When you buy a house in today’s market are you primarily selling them to other real estate investors at a profit or are you selling them to the people who are going to live in the property?

11:16 – What kinds of profit are you seeing in today’s market while doing your business virtually?

11:57 – Wholesaling vs. Wholesaling

13:01 – Do you think that Wholetailing is more popular now because of the lack of inventory?

13:58 – When you’re wholesaling a house to an end buyer, what’re your criteria for pricing that home versus a complete rehab?

14:52 – In today’s real estate market as long as it’s clean and smells good that property is okay.

15:34 – How do you find your buyer?

16:07 – How do you find deals given the low inventory in today’s real estate market?

17:35 – How do you get the leads?

19:29 – How to connect with Paul Lizell: https://www.REOauctionAcademy.com & https://www.FlipRealEstateVirtually.com

20:30 – How do you manage your people on the grounds to inspect the property?

24:21 – Do you give additional compensation to your bank-owned real estate agents?

25:23 – How do you find your REO agents?

26:56 – When you become the winner in the online auction how long do you have before you got a close? Do you make a house inspection before you take it down?

28:34 – Paul Lizell’s parting message: In my business model my time is my only marketing cost.

Private Money Academy Conference:

https://jaysliveevent.com/live/?oprid=&ref=42135

Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now? It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book

Free Webinar: http://bit.ly/jaymoneypodcast

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

What is Real Estate Investing? Live Private Money Academy Conference

https://youtu.be/QyeBbDOF4wo

YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEstateInvestingWithJayConner

iTunes:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/private-money-academy-real-estate-investing-jay-conner/id1377723034

Listen to our Podcast:

https://realestateinvestingdeals.mypodcastworld.com/11279/flip-real-estate-virtually-with-paul-lizell-jay-conner-the-private-money-authority

Flip Real Estate Virtually with Paul Lizell & Jay Conner

Jay Conner

00:02:57

My guest is a good friend. We’re in a mastermind together. Well, he is the founder of The Virtual Investor. That’s right. He is a virtual investor and virtual wholesaler. He’s been flipping properties all the way back since 2001. And he actually is the original virtual wholesaler. And he’s purchased all over the US since 2009 virtually. In addition to that, my guest has bought and sold properties in 44 out of 50 states and continues to look at expanding into new markets. Now, in addition to that, he contributes his success to utilizing systems and processes that simplify the online buying process. He’s focused exclusively on online auctions bank REOs, buying off of the MLS, and wholesalers across the country since 2013. I’m so excited to have my friend and fellow mastermind member, Paul Lizell. Paul, welcome to the podcast.

Paul Lizell

00:04:32

Thanks for having me, man. I really appreciate it.

Jay Conner

00:04:34

Absolutely. I’m excited to have you on here, Paul. And of course, we’re going to be seeing each other again here pretty soon at one of our upcoming mastermind meetings. And today we want to hear all about what it’s like to be a virtual wholesaler. What in the world does that mean? And what’s that process look like? But before you get started on all that, tell us, how’d you get into real estate?

Paul Lizell

00:04:58

Interesting story. So let’s go back to the 1990s when I was in college. I was working for my uncle who’s a general contractor and he bought a quadplex, a 4-unit building. We fixed it up, renovated it. He turned around and rented it out. He was making pretty good profits on this property, too, and still had a lot of equity in it. So that kind of stoked my interest in real estate. And that point on, after he bought a few more and we renovated them and I was going through college, I decided this is something I got to get into. It’s gotta be my long-term goal. So I did and basically in 2001, I started my first property. Unlike his, it was a fix and flip. I got into that so I could build up some cash. Eventually, I did build up, got some rentals as well, but stuck with the wholesaling, the fix and flip game owner-finance game, and I’d been doing that ever since.

Jay Conner

00:05:46

That’s awesome. So, were you doing fix and flips a while before you started doing wholesaling? Or were you doing wholesaling and fixing flips simultaneously, like right out the gate?

Paul Lizell

00:05:59

Well, I really started in the fix and flip game and then when I had too many flip deals going on, I did a couple of wholesale deals. And I started to realize it was kind of easy doing these wholesale deals. So after the crash of 2008, 2009, when all the marketing was just tanking, and you probably remember that well, I’m sure, I decided, all right, let’s go more to the wholesale game and turn them and burn them, and we did that. And we still did fix and flips, don’t get me wrong. We kept those good deals, did fix and flips on them, kept some good deals, rentals, some owner-financing, but we basically became virtual wholesalers at that point. We started expanding. We started in Pennsylvania where I was originally from. I just moved here to Florida this past month, but originally I’m from about 45 minutes north of Philadelphia. And so I started in that market, expanded out, went to Pittsburgh, New Jersey, Delaware, Ohio, Indiana, the Carolinas, which I love and where you’re from. And then I started going down to Florida, Texas, before you know it, I bought and sold in 44 to 50 states.

Jay Conner

00:06:57

First of all, let’s make sure everybody understands what we’re talking about when we say wholesale a deal. There’s more than one way to wholesale a deal. So, what’s your definition of wholesaling? And what’s that look like?

Paul Lizell

00:07:11

So for most people, they think wholesaling is getting a property under contract from a seller and assigning that contract and collecting assignment fee. So for us buying bank-owned properties, and we do a few of those, don’t get me wrong. We do a few of those deals, we get some of those referrals. But, primarily, what we do with auction properties or bank-owned or HUD properties, we have to buy them, take them down and then resell them. So, it’s a wholesale, it’s just we actually have to take down the property. So we do need the funds to be able to purchase it, whether we use transactional funding, private lending, as you’re great at, at raising money, we do as well. We love the raising money game and using private lending for that. But yeah, it’s kind of the same deal as it is with assignment of contract, it’s  just we actually take it down so we show ownership at one point.

Jay Conner

00:07:59

So, what’s the advantage of actually buying the house instead of getting it under contract and then collecting an assignment fee?

Paul Lizell

00:08:09

You know in certain states there’s been a crackdown, I think Tennessee and Illinois have had a crackdown on wholesalers where they’re making them become licensed realtors. So I think this kind of negates that because you’re actually purchasing the property, right? You’re showing you have the vested interest, not just the vested interest or equitable interest, you actually purchased it and took it down. So you have the right to do what you want to afterwards, and nothing can come back. So from a legal standpoint, we’re probably the safest and best. I am licensed in Pennsylvania. I probably will get licensed in Florida. And occasionally we’ll do some of those assignment deals, but for the most part, we just take them down, resell them. And in this market, as you know, wholetailing has been unbelievable, just getting the property in decent enough shape to be mortgageable reselling it, not sitting on it for 6, 7 months while the rehab is getting done, while the showings are going on. It’s much quicker, you’re in and out 30 days at the most, and you’re hopefully selling it in 30 to 45 days in this market right now.

So, it’s been much quicker and better.

Jay Conner

00:09:08

Right. So the reason you actually buy the house and take ownership of it is, that way, regardless of where you’re doing business, you don’t have to worry about there being issues with just collecting an assignment fee. Am I hearing you right on that?

Paul Lizell

00:09:27

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we would prefer to do it without having to have all the cash and buy it, but the banks don’t allow you. So if you buy a property from the bank, you can’t just assign it to another buyer, you must take it down in your name and you can do things with it. We’ve done things in trust. You know trusts are great. But the problem with that is, unless it’s an investor that’s a buyer investor, that trusts in you and understands what you’re doing, that they know what you’re doing, they usually don’t want to buy your trust, or if you put it in an LLC and sell them that LLC, they don’t usually want to buy it. And I totally understand that, they’re going to want to put it in their own name. We’ve run into that in the past with Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae had that anti-flipping where you couldn’t sell it for more than 20% of what you paid for. I think it was 90 days after the deed was recorded, not when you purchased, but when the deed was recorded. So with those properties, it either had to do something off the HUD, or we just had to wait those 90 days and then just sell it to them at that point, which has other risks. But, overall, if you’re making profits, I’m alright with that.

Jay Conner

00:10:26

There you go. So when you’re buying the houses in today’s market, are you primarily selling them to other real estate investors at a profit? Or are you selling them to people that are actually going to move in and own the home themselves and live in it?

Paul Lizell

00:10:44

In this market, we’ve done more to end-buyers. More people are going to live there than in the past. Typically, we sell to other investors for the most part, but in this market, the way it’s been and the kind of properties that we targeted, we’ve kind of pivoted and go on into less of the trainwreck properties, the ones that need everything and more to the ones that just need a little bit enhancing to get it back to become mortgageable and then resell them. So we’ve kind of pivoted a little bit just in this market to try to take advantage of what’s there. Go after the low-lying fruit rather than everything else.

Jay Conner

00:11:14

I got it. I know it’s going to depend on the market. I mean, you’re in all kinds of markets all over the nation, but what kind of profits are you seeing in today’s market doing the business the way you do it?

Paul Lizell

00:11:26

So our wholesale profits are generally around $12,000 per deal, and that’s your standard wholesale. If we’re wholetailing it, we’re around $32,000 and the full-scale fix and flip we’re into anywhere from probably close to your number, the $67,000, but we’ve had plenty of that have been $80,000, $100,000, even $120,000, especially in this market over the past year. So it’s been nice, but those are your full-scale rehabs. And those were the home runs, obviously, they’re not your average.

Jay Conner

00:11:55

Right. And we’ve already said it, but I want to make sure our audience understands it. Tell everybody what wholetailing is versus wholesaling.

Paul Lizell

00:12:05

Yeah, great point. So wholetailing is more or less where you’re getting a property and it just needs some paint, some carpet, it doesn’t need a full kitchen gut. Maybe you just repaint the cabinets. Maybe you put new cabinet poles on them, or maybe put countertops on them. With bathrooms, you’re okay with them but maybe you just put a new toilet in, or a new vanity or even easier sometimes, just a new faucet on a sink. And then you’re reworking your painting and carpeting. Usually, you don’t have to do roof siding, windows, things like that. So wholetailing has really just been super profitable. It’s more so than the fix and flip, believe it or not, for us. When you look at it from a time standpoint, we’re selling those so quickly, as quickly as our full-scale fix and flip, but we’re putting less effort in, and our holding costs are so much lower. It’s been worthwhile for us and less management of contractors because it can be one of the most difficult, taxing things in this business.

Jay Conner

00:13:00

Do you think that wholetailing, or in other words, “not doing a full rehab,” but you just make it okay and nicer? Do you think wholetailing is so much more popular now and working so well because there’s just no inventory?

Paul Lizell

00:13:16

That’s it. You hit the nail on the head with that, Jay. We go back to 2009 when I was doing fix and flips. If I didn’t do a full-scale, redo everything, you didn’t have that many buyers interested in the property unless it was the first-time home buyer. But as the market has gotten hotter and hotter and has lesser and lesser inventory, people are being less picky figuring they’ll do some of the work themselves. So it’s really just kind of taking what the market gives you. We follow it in our business. We follow the “Keep it simple, stupid” theory, and I think that’s the best thing to do in any business. Whatever the market is giving you, take that, right? If you don’t need to do the full-scale rehab, don’t, unless it’s going to warrant you getting an additional $50,000 or $60,000 where it becomes worthwhile, just take what the market gives you.

Jay Conner

00:13:56

Yeah. So how do you determine how to price? Like if you’re wholetailing a house to an end-buyer, what’s your criteria for pricing that home at the stage you got it in versus a complete rehab?

Paul Lizell

00:14:15

So basically what we do now with the wholetailing, we’re discounting it at 10-15% off what the normal end, full-scale rehab would be, which is still giving some equity to the buyer, should they want to do something there. And still it makes them fly off the shelves, I tell you, they don’t last very long when you’re just doing the basics and people see it’s clean and easy. I can change the carpet. I can change the paint color or whatever, I can do this or that. So people aren’t as picky as they used to be because there’s just no inventory. It’s hard to be picky. You take what’s there, basically, more or less.

Jay Conner

00:14:50

So in this market, as long as it’s clean and it smells good, if it’s dated, that’s okay, right?

Paul Lizell

00:15:03

Yes, dated, okay. You go do the ’80s, ’90s style. People can live with that as long as things aren’t broken, right? As long as you don’t have holes in the roof and things like that. Roofing is definitely a big issue, HVAC system for people. We just did one in Laurinburg, North Carolina, and unfortunately it did need a new HVAC system, so we did install that. We’re still gonna do pretty well. His property is still gonna net around $32,000, even though we had to do the roof and the HVAC system and the rest of it was a wholetail.

Jay Conner

00:15:32

Gotcha. So when you’re wholetailing to an end-user, are you finding the buyer by listing it with a real estate agent in the MLS?

Paul Lizell

00:15:42

We are. So, 90% of the time we do that. And occasionally like we did in one in Charleston, Tennessee, which is a very rural area, I had my disposition manager reach out to a bunch of agents in that area to just let them know we have a property and we offered them 2% commission. And the only thing we had to do was put it in a hot water heater in that one. That was literally it.

Jay Conner

00:16:05

That’s amazing. So first of all, to be virtually wholesaling, you have to find these deals and there ain’t no inventory to speak of. So everybody wants to know, well, if there isn’t any inventory, how in the world are you finding the deals?

Paul Lizell

00:16:27

Well, we got a little bit of an advantage over a lot of other people in the market. Most real estate investors out there stick with certain territories, maybe one or two markets out there. Occasionally somebody does three or four, but for us, the whole country is our oyster, really. That’s what we look at. We got inventory anywhere. We have preferred states where we’d like to do business, don’t get me wrong, but if there’s a great deal in another state where we don’t typically do business, we will go there. Just to give you an example, we’ve done 5 deals in New Mexico this year. We hadn’t done a deal in New Mexico in I think the previous 6 years before that, so we just kind of take what the market gives you. If there’s a deal there, we’ll take it. And we also hit those tertiary markets, and the second-tier markets that if you’re looking at a town or a city like Charlotte, go an hour outside, like a town like Kannapolis, Gastonia, and then go another hour outside that loop there. And then you’re in like a third-tier market. We target those markets because people do want to live there, especially now with what’s going on with the pandemic and everything. People are looking to be more and more rural. So it kind of fits right into what we’ve done all these years, which is a big advantage for us.

Jay Conner

00:17:33

Right! So how do you get the leads?

Paul Lizell

00:17:35

So for us, it’s our own time. So we pay no marketing fees, right? We don’t have any marketing costs whatsoever. I had turned off the direct mail marketing in 2013 and I just buy exclusively off of these auctions. For me, it’s really looking at what’s on the auction sites right now. We use VAs. We have several VAs that do this for each different auction site, whether it’s Auction.com, Xome, the Hudson & Marshall, Hubzu, Realty Bid, Auction Network, HUD Home Store, Fannie and Freddie. We have them go through and they do what I call “First-level fig.” They look at it and we give them the criteria of what we look out for – square footage, repair amount – and then they’ll send me a spreadsheet on Excel. Yes, yes, no, no, no. So, let’s say there’s 250 properties on this particular auction that’s coming up.

We might weed that down to about 20 to 25 that we’ll actually bid on. And then as the bidding process goes, if we’re getting out there and we just let those go off and again, we pick the low-lying fruit there. We’re not going to get into a bidding war. Today, for example, there’s a property in Florida that was in Sarasota, which is a red-hot market. It’s a nice market. My maximum allowable offer is 141 because there’s a buyer’s premium on this property. So the most I would spend was 150 because the ARV was 350 tops. This thing ends up getting bid up to 203 with a buyer’s premium. It was over 210 that that person is purchasing a property for, plus it needed everything. This thing needed at least 125 and work. So basically whoever bought this is probably an end-buyer, but they’re going to be upside down when all is said and done. So we fall off that, we have our maximum viable offers that will go up to, and you can’t get emotional with it, right? That’s a nice market. I would have liked to have been in there, but it didn’t fit our criteria. So I let it go.

Jay Conner

00:19:27

Paul, in case we’ve got some listeners that need to leave the show a little early, go ahead and let folks know how they can get in contact with you and continue the conversation.

Paul Lizell

00:19:38

Sure, absolutely. So we have a couple of different websites. www.REOAuctionAcademy.com is one of them. And also FlipRealEstateVirtually.com is another one. Both URLs work. You can contact us, and if you want to learn more about our coaching program, which we teach people how to do exactly what we do. As a matter of fact, we teach a lot of other investors who do direct mail, postcards, and PPC. They want to learn this aspect of the business. They actually hire somebody or have somebody who doesn’t have as much going on and let them handle this whole new arm of the business for them.

Jay Conner

00:20:13

Again, those 2 websites are REOAuctionAcademy.com, and the other one is FlipRealEstateVirtually.com. All right, so you got the leads coming in. You got your VAs researching all the houses that are coming up on all these different auction sites. How in the world do you have boots on the ground, eyes on the ground, in all these different markets, taking a look at these houses to even know what a close estimation of repairs would be that you need to do? Because, obviously, you don’t want to bid on a property until you know what kind of repairs you’re looking at.

Paul Lizell

00:21:02

Absolutely. And this is one of the most important things. So how you develop these kinds of relationships and these relationships end up blossoming and give you more deals throughout the years. I’ll give you an example of it. So in Tucson, Arizona, there was an REO agent who I bought a bunch of properties through over the years from 2010, all the way through now, we still currently do. Basically, he saw I was a serious player in Tucson, Arizona. We wholesaled a bunch of them. And then he was starting to bring me deals and bring me leads and bring me properties. So he was my boots on the ground. And how that started was I just reached out to him initially after I was bidding on some properties, and this is what you need to do if you’re entering any new market, you need to contact the realtor or the REO agent for that property.

If it’s a bank-owned property, get some details. You’re trying to get the BPO, which is the “Broker’s Price Opinion” of the property. And if you can get that, that’ll tell you basically what they think the “as is value” is, the 30-day sale price, the 90-day sale price,  the 120-day sale price. And they’ll show comps on there, and that’s like, that’s gold. That’s gold when you get that. So you utilize them for that. You also try to get additional pictures from them. And then you’re trying to get what kind of repairs are needed because they generally know, again, the utilities usually aren’t on, but they know what repairs were needed. They know if the roof’s leaking, they know if the air conditioner or heater looks really bad and it looks like it needs replacing, the hot water heater. They’ll tell you if the kitchen needs to be replaced. And the best referrals I get for contractors, hands down, is from these agents.

And the big reason is these contractors who work for these agents get referrals and they get a lot of referrals. So they do not want to screw over these agents when they’re giving them, basically, free marketing. So the guys that we’ve used from all the agent referrals have all been good, and I’m going to knock on wood when I say that, the ones that I run into that have been bad are ones that I picked on my own. I’ve also gotten great ones, but the best referrals from people who are there, who have boots on our ground and have local people, you know how to do those repairs. So we relied big time on the agents on these properties. If there is no agent, we use a company called BPO Photo Flow that’ll go out there and take some pictures of the property.

And if we have a lockbox, they can usually get inside, take more pictures. And we kind of tell them what to look for, like take pictures of the exterior, make sure there’s no cracks in the foundation, take a picture of the basement, the systems, make sure the HVACs are right, hot water heater, kitchens and bathrooms are important. You know, anything that they noticed cracks or issues with flooring, whatever, anything off-level. We want to know that kind of thing. If there’s moisture in the basement, just so we know what we’re in for an aid, generally do a pretty good job and they’re fairly inexpensive to utilize.

Jay Conner

00:23:49

And what’s the name of that service? One more time.

Paul Lizell

00:23:54

It’s BPO Photo Flow, like “Broker’s Price Opinion.” BPOPhotoFlow.com. And they do a really good job. They’re not in every market, so sometimes we actually have to reach out to other local agents and send them out there. And then we just pay them basically more or less to go out there and take some pictures for us and then tell them if we buy it, we’re going to list it through you. We do offer that. And if we do buy, we do end up listing it with them or having them help us sell the property if they know some investors.

Jay Conner

00:24:20

So these REO real estate agents, also known as bank-owned real estate agents, have the listing for these properties that are going up for auction. So obviously if you buy it, you don’t have to pay them anything for the purchase because the bank, the REO, is paying their commission. But do you compensate these agents in any additional way other than when you make a purchase, the bank pays them?

Paul Lizell

00:24:46

We do at times, like if we know they’re going to be doing above and beyond, and they’re not going to get the listing, we will definitely pay them. We’ll say, “What do you want for this? Or what free one for that service?” They usually are very, very fair with the prices and we’re glad to do it. We just Venmo them most of the time. I’ve never really run into any issues with that. Most of the time, they’re really happy to just hand the listing for you. I even have thought of them managing my rehabs for me because they know the contractors, they kind of manage, oversee, and take pictures. They’re happy to go do that. They see the progress and they want it listed so that they can get their permission when all is said and done.

Jay Conner

00:25:21

Awesome. And how do you find these REO agents? I suppose one way you could find them is, well, your VAs are looking at auctions coming up. They go research the property and right there, they see who’s got the real estate listing on it. Right?

Paul Lizell

00:25:37

Absolutely. And you get a lot of these agents who will have 5, 10, 15, 20 different properties. And they’ll cover a huge geographical region, which is crazy. I mean, they’re running around all the time. Nobody works harder than an REO agent, that I can tell you. Those guys and gals, they work their butts off and they are good. Their numbers are so spot on. For example, on a property we had in Ohio a few years back, I was talking to the agent, “What do you think the value of this property is, as is?” And she’s like, it had to be somewhere between 17 and 20. Sure enough, we picked it up for like $7,500. We sold that for $17,500. She was just right on the money with it. And that happens time and time and time again, the only time, if you’re in with a newer agent, that’s where you want to be careful.

If it is a newer real estate agent, they’re not going to be as experienced. You’re going to want to try to lean on a secondary agent. Hopefully somebody that’s in one of these towns that has their own brokerage that’s been there for 10, 20 years and really knows the market. Well, those have been our best sources. Far and away, the people that are in small mom & pop shops, they just know the market. They know everybody in town. They usually know who lived in that property, especially if it’s a smaller town, like you live in, Jay, they know people, right? And they’ve been our greatest source all over every market that we’ve ever been in.

Jay Conner

00:26:55

Let’s say that you make a bid and you win the bid at the auction and all these auctions are online, right?

Paul Lizell

00:27:04

Yes. They’re all online.

Jay Conner

00:27:05

So you win the bid. So now you’re the winning bidder. On average, how long do you have before you get close? In addition to that, do you sometimes, or always get a home inspection before you take it down?

Paul Lizell

00:27:22

So, Jay, I’ll answer the first question first. 30 to 45 days usually is what you got, time-wise. Sometimes a little bit longer. If the title is a little cloudy or there’s past issues or where something wasn’t done right at the Sheriff’s sale. That’s the answer to the first question. The second one, we never get a home inspection. We’ll just send a contractor out there. I don’t have too much faith in the home inspection field, business, people. Most of these guys learn out of a book and never swung a hammer a day in their life. So the people I rely on are the contractors. I try to find general contractors that really know everything, as many aspects of it. And yeah, if they miss some stuff, sure, they’re gonna miss some stuff here and there, but they’re going to see the big stuff. And they’ve been a great source for me and are far less expensive because you’re just gonna pay $400 or $500 for these home inspections when I can send a guy out there for a hundred bucks to give me a pretty good inspection, you know.

Jay Conner

00:28:14

And again, as you said, you find these general contractors by referral from the bank-owned real estate agents, right?

Paul Lizell

00:28:21

Yup. And about 95% of the time, they don’t charge you a penny to go out there. They’re hoping to get the work.

Jay Conner

00:28:26

That’s fantastic. Well, this is a fantastic business model you’ve got, Paul. Any parting comments?

Paul Lizell

00:28:35

I love it. It’s a great business model. The one thing I really like about it is that I can turn a business on or off anytime I want, unlike the direct mail marketing or the PPC where you gotta be on those calls right away. On a PPC lead or direct mail, it’s constantly going. If I want to go on vacation, I shut down for 2 weeks or a month. If I want to go overseas, I can do that and just stop operations and start right back up when I get back. So I do love that. That is my favorite aspect of the business. I also don’t have to deal with home sellers 99% of the time. So those are 2 facets. I really like how it’s really simple. It’s not turnkey, but your time is your marketing costs, right? Your time and energy, which is your most valuable asset. Your time is all your costs involved.

[scotianostra]

On June 27th 1967 the first cash dispenser was opened by Barclay’s Bank in Enfield by actor Reg Varney.  

The idea of an automatic money dispensing machine had been mooted and tried without success in the early 60's but it wasn't until Scotsmen John Shepherd-Barron and James Goodfellow successfully designed the "cash machine" and Personal Identification Number (PIN) technology which is still used over 50 years later.

Goodfellow lodged his patent in May 1966, more than a year before the first cash machine was ceremonially opened in a blaze of publicity. A machine was developed by John Shepherd-Barron, who was born in India, to Scottish parents, and lived much of his later life in Portmahomack in Ross-shire.

Shepherd-Barron's ATM beat Goodfellow's machines, which were installed at branches of Westminster Bank (later to become NatWest), by just a month.

So Shepherd-Barron became known as the "man who invented the cash machine" and not Goodfellow, the man who patented the system we use today.

Shepherd-Barron says he was inspired by chocolate vending machines, he stated "It struck me there must be a way I could get my own money, anywhere in the world or the UK. I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash.

The two devices were very different.

Shepherd-Barron's did not use plastic cards, instead it used cheques that were impregnated with carbon 14, a mildly radioactive substance.

The machine detected it, then matched the cheque against a Pin number.

Rue, which never patented its machine.

Before he died in 2010, he told a documentary that he didn't patent the idea because he did not want fraudsters knowing how the system worked.

He also said that the chief executive of Barclays had been quick to say yes to the idea when they had discussed it after a couple of Martinis.

Shepherd-Barron then had to go back to his team and get them to develop his idea.

In recent years, his claim to have been the real inventor of the cash machine has been recognised more widely.

Mr Goodfellow now does not like to talk about the years in which Mr Shepherd-Barron got all the credit but in a 2009 BBC documentary he said it "really does raise my blood pressure".

The engineer, from Paisley, told BBC Scotland: "My patent was licensed by all the manufacturers. They thought that was the way to go.

"The race to get it on to the street was not as important.

"Getting it right was the answer, not getting it first.

"Mr Goodfellow was working as development engineer for Glasgow firm Kelvin Hughes in the mid-1960s when he got involved in a project to design a machine that could dispense money to customers when banks were closed.

He said in an interview that the driving force for the move was unions putting pressure on banks to close on Saturday mornings.

He said most people worked during the week and could not get to the bank, which closed at 3pm on weekdays.

Many people went to the bank on Saturday mornings but the unions were pressing for staff to work a five-day week.

The banks wanted a way to give working people access to their money when they were closed. Goodfellow said "The problem with cash machines was access."

How would a genuine customer, and only a genuine customer, get money out of it?"

They considered biometrics - fingerprints, voice prints or retinal scans.

"But in the 60s the technology to do this was not there, it was impossible,

"So the next approach was an "exotic token", a piece of paper or plastic with "uncommon characteristics" that a machine would recognise.

His "eureka moment" came when he hit upon the idea of the Personal Identification Number (PIN).This was the vital security measure that would make the system work, the number would be known to the customer and the bank and could be related to the card but not read by anyone else.

Goodfellow's invention was patented in May 1966, more than a year before his rival unveiled the first ATM in London.

But he still had a battle to make his concept reality.

"We had to meet some of the banks demands which were pretty severe," he said."

They had a million customers and they wanted 2,000 machines across the UK."

They wanted any one of the one million customers to be able to access any one of the 2,000 machines."

You've got to remember there was no IT network in those days. The banks had no IT equipment. The bank's branches had nothing.

"We spent a lot of time developing the code. We had to submit something like 1,000 of these cards to a consultant, who would try to decipher it.

"The cards he used were one quarter of a "Hollerith" punch-card, which just happens to be the same size as today's credit card. It contains just 30 bytes of data.

His patent for the card and Pin ATM was licensed for millions but Mr Goodfellow, as a humble technician, did not own the rights and did not get rich from his invention.

He said he signed patents for 15 countries around the world and got a dollar for each - worth about £10.Mr Goodfellow left the firm in 1967 when it moved its operations to England and he went to work for IBM.

There have been arguments for years over who should officially go down in history as "the inventor of the ATM"

.In 2005, Mr Shepherd-Barron received an OBE in the New Year honours list for services to banking as the "inventor of the automatic cash dispenser

".However, since then Mr Goodfellow, the man who patented the invention, has regained his place.

In 2006 Mr Goodfellow received an OBE for services to banking as "patentor of the personal identification number".

He has also been placed in the Scottish engineering hall of fame alongside John Logie Baird, the inventor of the television.

According to the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA), as of 2015, there were close to 3.5 million ATMs installed worldwide. However, the use of ATMs is gradually declining with the increase in cashless payment systems.

[plrplanet]

Easy Online Profits Today! Did You Know The Internet is The Number One Place to Start a Fast and Profitable Low Cost Business… We Want to Show You How! If I could show you how to create easy online incomes would you be interested? Just like most Web Masters and Internet Marketers, we are all trying to make more revenue from the web. The competition is tough we know this! Just when you seem to have that brainwave, that new idea which you think is going to make you a ton of money, but then discover someone else thought of it first and you feel deflated. Back to the drawing board it is. Never fear! There is a solution… Don’t Hang Around Waiting For The Next BIG Idea! Did you know that “the number of consumers researching or shopping online” is projected to spike past 200 million by 2017. According to various surveys, approximately 87% of Internet users in the US shop online. This number is expected to rise past 90% by 2017. Globally, more than 50% of Internet users make purchases online. This means that, by merely having a website, you can address a market that is spread across the globe without any additional marketing costs or hassles. These days, we need to take it one step further and use some cast iron techniques to earn that all important online income. Did you know getting started online is really not as difficult as it may seem. The internet is here to stay, and it’s time that you started cashing in on the benefits of an online presence with Easy Online Income! Getting started is cheap, it’s easy and there are so many ways to cash in in the online revolution of online profits. It’s not all work work work either. Some of the techniques I discuss in the report can be implemented today for zero investment from you! Here Are Just Some of the Things You Will Learn With“Easy Online Incomes”  Google Adsense Sites and How They Work Amazon Associates Klout eBay Profits Amazon Income The Power of Blogging Etsy And much, much more… The Truth is You Need Easy Online Incomes in Your Business toBecome a Success! More and more people across the world are turning to the internet for a solution to their financial problems in the face of the job cuts resulting from the recent economic crisis. Many people, who have previously enjoyed successful corporate careers and who have never had to worry about money before, are now finding themselves in a situation where their pension funds have been dwindled precipitously and the college education plans they had for their children have gone up in smoke. The situation is out of control and lots of people are now beginning to question whether relying on someone else for a pay-check was ever really such a good idea in the first place. Turnkey Internet Businesses are becoming more and more popular as a second, as well as a primary, income source simply because they require hardly any up front investment and also have great earning potential. There are lots of possibilities out there that could suit your unique interests or skills. In this report, we will look to examine some of these options so that you can make an informed decision about which strategy will be best for you. How Can You Get Started With Easy Online Incomes Today? It is important to remember that this report, is not something that has been thrown together as a second rate money making scam report. The techniques disclosed in this report have been carefully researched and practiced to bring you the best and quickest methods of generating an income from online business. MRR License Master Resell Rights Terms and Conditions [YES]Can be sold[YES]Can be used for personal use[YES]Can be packaged with other products[YES]Can modify/change the sales letter[YES]Can be added into paid membership websites[YES]Can put your name on the sales letter[YES]Can be offered as a bonus[YES]Can be used to build a list[YES]Can print/publish offline[YES]Can convey and sell Personal Use Rights[YES]Can convey and sell Resale Rights[YES]Can convey and sell Master Resale Rights[YES]Can be given away for free [NO]Can modify/change the main product[NO]Can convey and sell Private Label Rights

[gwoongi]

wordless pt.1

jeon jeongguk / reader genre: hitman (john wick?) au, sugar daddy au, fluff, pining, angst rating: mature words: 4.1k warnings: mentions of blood and violence, unconventional relationship, angsty themes, smoking mention a/n: this is jeongguk as john wick because i’m trash and i cant finish one story at a time. these prompts r from here btw :) im gonna do all 50 but im too lazy rn so here’s the first 10 :D

Sometimes, saying “I love you” is inappropriate, and given your circumstances, you think it might send Jeongguk over the edge if he hears them again.

Parts: One, Two, Three, Four, Five

Now, it definitely was not a stretch to assume that everything in Jeongguk’s life was indeed unconventional. People didn’t need to understand that what Jeongguk did for work was something that, by the law, was considered unprofessional and inhumane, and so when asked, Jeongguk sufficed for “boss of a company”, and questions weren’t asked. If they were, Jeongguk came up with a slightly more conventional lie, to make up for the reality that was Jeongguk working on the clock, killing nobodies for a bit of cash.

Taehyung, his right-hand man, had expressed how unconventional Jeongguk seemed to be over a dinner in Venice, a little restaurant tucked away unconventionally in a street that did not belong to America. Jeongguk spoke four languages comfortably, and had parents retiring in the Canary Islands. Jeongguk donated money to women’s charities and mental health services, and helped bribe his cousins into Ivy Leagues when racism prevented them from entry. Jeongguk was a Joe-Exotic in the making and owned a rescue black panther named Elio, and had houses across the globe for use when working. And, Jeongguk was dipping his toes into playing house with a sugar baby who was only five years younger than him, of whom he had met in a stakeout which involved the hit being on your brother’s head. Unconventionally, you led him to his target, and afterwards, dined with him in a Thai restaurant.

Things in Jeongguk’s life were far from ordinary, but perhaps it was the denial of mundane comforts that kept Jeongguk going. If he went back to normality, to working a shitty customer service job like when he was seventeen, dumping trash into overflowing piles behind the off-license he worked at, things wouldn’t be the same. Jeongguk would feel alien, like he didn’t belong. At least here, amongst the pain and the bullets and the years worth of trauma packed in his wrinkles (which, yes, if he looks hard enough, he can see some cursing his twenty five year old skin), Jeongguk felt like he sort of belonged. In an unconventional way.

Having met Jeongguk during his line of work, there were difficulties in being Jeongguk’s sugar baby. For one, he always felt guilty for having murdered your brother, even though you heavily supported the hit. Your brother was a jerk, a bully with money, someone who had wronged your entire family, turned off your younger sister’s life support when there was a chance of her survival. Asshole, he deserved it. Secondly, Jeongguk was impractical and irrational and often acted selfishly, meaning he was often out of the country on work, only available in whispers for a few hours and then he was gone, compensating with a few sums of cash.

He tried his best. Jeongguk, despite technicalities including his work and his past and his occasional mean streak, genuinely cared about other people. When he could, he made the effort, otherwise not attempting to make promises to you that he could not keep. Jeongguk knows that he got really lucky when he found you. You didn’t ask questions. Nobody was better for him.

However, Jeongguk was selfish, and broken, and in refusal of fixing what was wrong with him. When it was of convenience, Jeongguk drew comparisons to the last girlfriend he tried to entertain. One who wronged him, and died when he tried to repair everything she had destroyed. Jeongguk carries that with him like the tattoos on his skin, a permanent memory, and something that often disturbs what could be and should be between the both of you.

Jeongguk is worthy of love, and capable of loving. On days where Jeongguk is free to lounge without the guilt of not working, you find it is so easy to love him. But, it can’t be that way. You couldn’t just tell him that. Telling him that you loved him would be inappropriately unconventional. Sometimes, saying “I love you” is inappropriate, and given your circumstances, you think it might send Jeongguk over the edge if he hears it again.

(1) Holding their hands when they are shaking.

Jeongguk is in his living room, his right leg bouncing like a spring as he cradles an infant glass of whiskey. His eyes are glazed, yet wide, staring at the Seoul city draped in darkness and neon, and without even looking inside, you know that his brain is spinning, thoughts chaotic and loud.

“Hey,” you call out to him, and his eyes stutter to the left to catch you in the doorway, “I heard you get up. What’s wrong?”

Jeongguk shakes his head gently. “Nothing, baby, go back to bed. I’ll be up in a minute.”

Jeongguk often makes comments without expectancies. You stand in the doorway that connects the living room to the long hall that stems into bedrooms and bathrooms, and watch him for a moment. His whole body vibrates like a speaker, his hands trembling as the glass drains and he reaches for a second, or a third, or maybe a tenth. You want to sigh, without being patronising, but you know that any sign of sympathy is mistaken for that whenever Jeongguk is around to make the judgement.

He looks back to the skyline and frowns, his attention panning from the window to his phone that buzzes blue, but he ignores. Stepping across the cool wooden floorboards, you approach him sleepily and take a seat next to him on the sofa. Neither of you move, but he recognises you’ve moved. He bristles slightly, like it was unexpected.

“You can take your time,” you suggest to him, and his hands ache in his lap as he sets the glass down on the coffee table with a careless thud. He scoffs, devoid of emotion, and dips his head so his chin is near his collarbones. In his lap, those hands shake. “Maybe don’t drink so much tonight.”

“I’m clearing my head,” he insists weakly. Those hands still shake.

Brows creased with a pinch, you swallow the unease and reach for his hands. Jeongguk doesn’t say anything as you do so, enveloping his hands in yours, and so suddenly the shaking ceases. Like trying to block the shakes from reaching his wrists, your hands keep his safe.

“I know,” you understand honestly, because you do know what he’s going through. “How about tea, or something? To calm down, calm down the mess that’s up in there.”

Your chin is on his shoulder, and he smiles softly. “Are you calling me messy?”

“Nah, I’m calling your brain messy,” you reply. “It’s a cruel fucking brain.”

“Hate my brain.”

“Today, we hate it.”

Jeongguk’s head turns slightly so that he can see you, and in his lap, his thumbs brush across your skin.

“Thank you,” Jeongguk says quietly, attempting a smile that doesn’t quite convince. It doesn’t necessarily have to, not tonight anyway. His phone continues to flash like a light show, Taehyung’s name in bold. “Fuck. I’ll take the call, and then I’ll come back to bed, okay?”

You nod, “Mm, okay. Want me to make a drink?”

“I don’t need it,” Jeongguk concludes. “Not today.”

(2) Tucking the sheets around them when they stir during the night.

Sometimes Jeongguk wakes up in the night due to nightmares, but tonight, it’s different.

Beside him, you stir uncomfortably and kick his leg for the fourth time. He huffs and looks over, trying to figure out if you’re awake and indignant, or lost in the dream. He settles on the latter when you strain out the name of your brother and his heart swoops with a dull ache.

“You’re just dreaming, baby, come on,” Jeongguk mutters quietly into your ear, holding you in place to calm the thrashing. “He’s not here anymore, I’m here. Y/N.”

It subsides after a few minutes, making it the longest you’ve gone on record. He looks into your sleepy, upset eyes as you break awake and brushes the hair out of your face. He tries to smile for you, and maybe you can’t see in the dark.

“I’ll get you some water,” Jeongguk suggests gently. “Hm? Sweet thing. It’s just a dream.” He says this into your hair in a hug, leaving a kiss on your temple as he breaks. “You’re fine.”

“I’m fine,” you breathe uneasily, and he separates to get a glass of water and returns to find you sleeping again. What relief Jeongguk might have is exhaled as he sets the glass on the bedside table, stroking your hair until he moves away with the sudden realisation that this is not a normal exchange.

Before Jeongguk decides to leave again, he makes sure the bed is made and that you are safe; he tucks the duvet in tightly and presses a kiss to your forehead before grabbing his coat by the front door and leaving your apartment, one tucked in the city so far that Jeongguk finds it a hassle to visit.

(3) Travelling long distances just to see them.

For three days now, you have been in Colmar, and Jeongguk is beginning to feel lonely. It had been his idea to send you away, when the heat on his long, long fued with a rival colleague threatened your safety. In return, you got a new apartment that Taehyung had found closer to Jeongguk’s own when your address got leaked, and Colmar could be considered a vacation if you pretended for long enough.

With tensions cool and the coast somewhat clear, Jeongguk picks the skin around his fingernails as a distraction before deciding that enough was enough. He missed you, and missed how you were always around for him when he needed you most. This is what drives him to jumping on a plane in his company’s name, and flying to France.

A small boat passes underneath the bridge you are standing on, and your hands dig into the barrier as you arch to smile at the tourists beneath. One catches a glimpse of your denim skirt and cherry print blouse in the sunshine and extends his hat with a wave, and you wave back. France is nothing like Seoul, and is indeed warm and fruitful and unique. The sun is hot, the sky is clear, and the streets are filled with an atmospheric buzz of friendliness, the smell of coffee and some food you don’t know yet entrapping your senses.

“Madame, je peux vous prendre en photo?”

Hearing the voice, you turn your body left and prepare to face the tourist, but instead you are welcomed with the sight of Jeongguk dressed in black, sunglasses sliding down his nose with a smile. He does hold a camera in his hands, although teasingly.

“Oui,” you quip, posing cutely and Jeongguk takes a photograph anyway, to humour the moment, to print when he gets back to Seoul. You join his laughter as he peers at the photograph and he walks without looking up towards you.

“When did you get here?” you ask him, a round of laughter from the little boat making you turn to stare at them with a giggle.

“Bout an hour ago,” Jeongguk replies, and he shuts off the camera and puts it in his coat pocket. It’s only a small camera, probably cost him a crumb to buy from a vintage store. He meets your eyes with a comfortable smile and rounds in, pressing your lower back against the bridge barrier and circling your arms around you. Carefully, then, he kisses you, tasting the suncream on your skin as his lips wander from yours to the skin around your face.

“Miss me?”

“Terribly,” Jeongguk responds. “I am so bored when you’re not around. You always have something to do, always have something to say.”

You hum in response. “I’m glad I’m of some entertainment for you.”

“Oh, for sure,” agrees Jeongguk. “I don’t think I’ve used my brain so often when I’m away from work as much as I do when I’m with you. Did you know that you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met?”

“Wow,” you exclaim with a smile. “Hire me.”

“Ha!” he remarks, kissing you again and taking your hand in his. He moves, back in the way you came. “Over my dead body.”

(4) Making their favorite meal when they are having a hard day.

“You.”

“Not now, Y/N, I’m working,” Jeongguk replies non committedly. He fists his hair.

“Not up for discussion right now,” you huff, and he has the nerve to glare at you which only makes you uncomfortably angry. “You haven’t eaten in fourty eight hours, and I’m not about to be held responsible for your death when you die of hunger, so get your ass in the kitchen before I dump this food over your stupid head.”

He challenges you. “You’re brave talking to somebody who could destroy your life like that.”

“Do it, I literally have nothing to lose,” you answer. “Please eat something. I made it with love and care.”

Jeongguk relents, sighing at his paperwork but nonetheless moving away from his home office and following you like a child towards the direction of the kitchen. He feels bad, you know he feels bad, and he circles his arms around your body as you walk, stumbling into the space of the kitchen and smelling the familiar aroma of pork rice stew. Alas, he sees the bowl steaming in his spot at the table and his eyes follow you as you hum and set start to washing the dishes.

“Y/N-”

“No words, just eating,” you instruct. “Bone apple tit.”

He grins, then, and takes a seat. “You know that’s not the phrase, right?”

“Tell that to Twitter,” you sigh.

(5) Giving them a kiss before going to work and they are still in bed.

Jeongguk prefers to see you when he doesn’t have work the next day, because leaving when you’re asleep is an asshole move in any dictionary. So, when one of his men phones him at four in the morning and relays the horror that someone’s died on his property, Jeongguk has to fight the demons that almost convince him to hand the job over to somebody who gives a fuck about the intruder stuck on his barbed fence.

He gets up, anyway.

Next to him, in the bed that belongs to you because this is your new apartment, Jeongguk stares down at you and feels a tug in his stomach. Guilt, it follows him everywhere like a ghost.

Before he leaves, he likes to give you a little kiss for the morning, so the tingling sensation reminds you that despite being an asshole and leaving without properly saying goodbye, he still gives several shits about you, and will be back when he can be.

(6) Tucking your head into their neck during a hug.

Jeongguk wants to hang Taehyung for making him remember the reasons why you had to move across the city to a new apartment.

It had, of course, been Jeongguk’s fault, and when the notification came from an exhausted worker in his line of work that the alarm system in your apartment had been triggered for an intruder, Jeongguk remembers all he saw was red.

The front door was forced open, a body indent in the wood and the front porch ransacked and littered with shards of glass and bullets. Inside was no prettier, with mess scattered everywhere and photos smashed on the floors. The carpets were stained with red that Jeongguk prayed was just wine, the glass coffee table in two pieces and a knife covered in red on the floor. Jeongguk and his men, along with the few police officers Jeongguk could actually trust in this god-forsaken hellhole, noticed that the blood belonged to one of the intruders who lay dead on the stairs.

Nobody knows how Jeongguk got through the apartment so fast, and why, without any hesitation, he murdered the remaining intruders without suggesting questioning and torture. That was his go-to when it rarely concerned you. He wanted those stupid enough to even try and go after you to really fucking regret it as he picked off fingernails and made them suffer for hours or days. This time he just killed, and moved onwards, calling your name like a mantra.

Jeongguk could have cried when you emerged, petrified, from inside one of the closets. Upon seeing you, Jeongguk collapsed his gun on the floor and stepped towards you protectively, pulling you in tightly for a hug. Sobbing into his neck, you hugged him tighter, feeling finally safe when his hand held the back of your head, like you were a precious thing that was of value.

You were of the highest value to Jeongguk.

“Fuck you,” Jeongguk barks suddenly, and Taehyung shrugs and exits the office. All he had asked was if he loved you.

(7) Lightly kissing on top of a freshly formed bruise.

There might be the assumption that Jeongguk comes home with more bruises than you do. Which is true, technically, and there’s no hesitation from your end in nursing them to a comfortable recovery.

On rare occasion, Jeongguk comes home and finds you exhibiting a new purple blob on your skin. Like today. 

Jeongguk hasn’t seen you in two days, and when he lets himself into your apartment with the key he has glued to him at all times, he follows the silence and light to the bathroom. You sit on the edge of your bathtub, gently rubbing cream on your knee in little circles.

“What happened here?” he asks quickly, and you continue rubbing with your tongue poking out between your lips.

“You’ll laugh, don’t ask,” you mutter.

“Hey, I won’t laugh,” Jeongguk says. He rests his weight against the doorframe, “You open the front door the wrong way again?”

Ha! You laugh humourlessly. “Worse!” You look up at him sadly, “I tripped in the parking lot carrying my groceries. It’s on camera and everything, I want to die.”

Jeongguk pokes the inside of his mouth to resist laughing. “Well, fuck. That’s your leg ruined.”

“I know,” you pout. “Good thing you’re my sugar daddy- wanna pay for cosmetic leg surgery?”

“I like your bruised up legs,” says Jeongguk.

“Me too, but not these ones.”

“Bruh, that’s enough cream on your skin,” Jeongguk exclaims, moving forward to snatch the cream from your hands. “More is not better. Come on, you’re okay.”

“It hurts.”

“Boohoo,” he sighs. You don’t move. “Ugh, whatever. Come’re.”

Jeongguk drops the cream tube onto the sink but it clatters into the bowl. He’ll move it later if he remembers to, and he pretends it’s hard to pick you up off the bathtub and carries you swiftly out of the bathroom and into the living room. Things have barely moved since he last came to visit; the swarms of paper still invade your coffee table and your laptop is on sleep mode by a half-empty coffee cup filled with hot chocolate, because he knows your standing on coffee. Everything is a lot messier now that you’ve decided you want to go back to school, but at least Jeongguk knows it keeps you busy when he’s away.

“Oh,” he says suddenly, as you’re sat down with one leg up around him still. He pokes at a spot on your leg and you squirm, “there’s another one.”

You peer to look, “Oh, yeah, that one’s you.”

“Oh.” He pauses, “Pretty, though.”

You huff like a little baby and he dares you with raised eyebrows. That keeps you silent and Jeongguk moves his body at an angle to the right, sweeping to kiss the bruise better, the bruise that he made a few nights ago with tender love and care.

“All better,” he assures.

“It feels better already.”

“Mm. Magic.”

(8) Buying them something unrequested because it made you think of them.

“So, I was at a school fayre today.”

“Really?” Jeongguk sits with his laptop on his legs, and your legs are tangled around his body like some sort of jungle maze. He rarely works on his bed, not unless the work is sudden and he can’t help it. You’ve just come in, dived on the bed and claimed his waist as something to squeeze your legs around.

“Yep. Like, one of those little craft things where students sell their shit and make money from it. You know, supporting local artists! It’s really cute, if I was good at something I’d have participated.”

Jeongguk thinks of things you’re good at, and there’s a lot. “Aw. There’s always next year.”

“Yeah,” you reason. “Anyway- point is, is that I got you something.”

Jeongguk stills for a second, glancing over his right shoulder to see you, “Me?”

“Yep. You.”

“What did you get?” he asks, and then he’s back to checking blueprints.

You untangle your legs and slide off the bed, retreating to your bag slung across the room by the bedroom door. From here, you take out a small little pin-badge and when you’re sat next to Jeongguk again, you fiddle with it until it catches his attention.

“What’s this?” asks Jeongguk.

“It’s a badge of honour,” you claim, and you slip it into his palms. He fingers the front when he examines it, reading the little words of “Number One Dad” and he stares up at you. “Like it?”

“It’s for me?” he asks again.

“Yeah. You can wear it and like, I don’t know, think of me,” you shrug.

Jeongguk thinks for a moment. Even though it’s stupid, and cliche and a little bit embarrassing, he still thinks it’s funny and thoughtful.

“Want me to wear it to work?” he asks you.

“Oh, absolutely,” you encourage. “I’ll get Taehyung an uncle badge if he gets pissy.”

“Hey, you’re mine and he’s not allowed a relationship to you, no matter what definition,” Jeongguk pouts. “He wants a sugar niece, well...he’ll have to look somewhere else.”

You gape. “Wow. Who thought you had it in you to be so possessive.”

“Please, with a pussy like that of course I’m possessive,” he teases. He’s joking.

“My power,” you sigh anyway, and jump off the bed claiming that you’re hungry. Jeongguk looks at the badge again and pops it in his breast pocket before he loses it and regrets it.

(9) Participating in their hobby even if it doesn’t personally interest you.

Jeongguk’s bored out of his brain.

He has no idea how you can be so fascinated by this stupid game where you’re essentially in debt, but he still sits and watches you tour him around this weird island that is inhabited by ducks and an ugly gorilla villager dressed in pink. And to think that he had a part to play in all of this, because his bank account definitely helped pay for this Nintendo Switch and game.

“Do you like my beach?” you ask him. It’s literally just sand and one coconut tree, and a few shells by the water. Oh, there’s a beach chair on there too, but it makes little difference. “I’m poor, I can’t afford furniture yet.”

“Can’t you just make it?”

“I can, but I’m sick of making axes to collect wood,” you explain with a grudge against the fact that tools now break in this Animal Crossing game. Jeongguk hums like he’s invested, and he tries to be, because he cares about you too much to unintentionally hurt your feelings by displaying his crippling disinterest.

“Oh. Makes sense.”

“Can I show you my hybrid flower garden?”

He sighs. “Yeah, you wanted to show me all of your island, right?”

You nod enthusiastically. “Once you’ve had a tour, I can make you a profile and you can play too. You can live next door to me!”

“Why can’t we share a house?” Jeongguk presses.

“Because I don’t think it works like that, babe,” you confess. “Anyway. Here’s my garden.”

(10) Sitting in comfortable silence while eating a meal.

He’s tired. You’re tired.

The radio plays quietly updating Seoul on the fires that spread across the city today, and Jeongguk smells like smoke and salt. He keeps his head down as he eats his meal, something he brought home with him to make up for the fact that he’s been absent for almost a week now. You have so many things to say and he has so many things he needs to say to make up for everything, but nothing is said tonight.

You know he’s having a hard time, because Jeongguk’s been smoking again. He smoked on the balcony earlier, and once again in the bedroom. There are now ashtrays around your own apartment, and you don’t even smoke. Jeongguk takes a drink of bourbon and swallows it dry.

You look up at him from across the table, not wanting to press the issue when you know it’ll end in an argument, and then sex to make up for it. You’re both too tired to fuck today, too tired to speak. Just being in each other's company is enough for tonight. The only words he says are goodnight and something you don’t catch as you’re drifting off to sleep. Jeongguk’s awake all night, the fires burn until early hours, and the smoke smell is still there in the morning even when he isn’t.

[noassallclass]

So my roommate spent all of today writing up a report for Critical Role as a company and I really don't know much about business stuff but I think it is fascinating. Read to the end for a wild ride.

"Okay here is my idea of how Critical Role is actually structured based on what public information exists:

At Geek and Sundry, “Critical Role” as an entity was essentially a partnership between all cast members. The only asset this partnership had was the intellectual property of CR and the only Revenue it took in was licensing that IP to Geek and Sundry. This is because Critical Role Partnership was adamant about maintaining ownership of the IP. This license then pays out between the partners. Percentage

ownership of Critical Role Partnership is divided based on money put in, and previous work done. I would be very surprised if Mercer did not own at least 25% but probably not more than 50%, and the others are probably more or less even. At this point, the cast members both draw a salary from geek and sundry as employees (or contractors), and collect drawings from the licensing of the IP and also royalties as actors. When Orion leaves, the others almost certainly force him to sell out his ownership portion and he probably gets royalties from Geek and Sundry (and later CRPLLC). At this point, this licensing agreement is the only transaction that the entity “Critical Role” actually conducts.

Geek and Sundry pays to produce, distribute, and market the show, and takes all profit. It also takes some aspects of creative control, but probably not that much, though this is listed as the reason to leave Geek and Sundry. At this point, Critical Role continues to license with Geek and Sundry’s parent company Legendary Digital Networks and incorporates their partnership into a Limited Liability Corporation “Critical Role Productions”.

The ownership split is probably kept mostly the same, unless someone decides to sell portions of their shares, but I don’t see why they would. The shareholders (or owners) at this point hire a bunch of employees. Some roles they hire themselves, like Willingham as CEO and Mercer as CCO, and some they hire outsiders like COO Ed Lopez, SVP of Marketing Rachel Romero, and VP of Business Development Ben Van Der Fluit. Those who take additional roles will take salaries for those roles, as well as a salary for acting and writing, and dividends from profits. It is likely that Lopez got a certain amount of shares because C-Suite Executives often do as bonuses because it’s non-taxed income until he sells it and it incentivizes maximizing profits because that would increase his dividends. The other employees probably did not receive shares, so as not to dilute the percentage ownership further.

Critical Role seemingly has no board of directors (it’s possible they have one which is not public), which only happens when there are so few shareholders that they can all convene and take votes (Usually less than 20 owners), implying they don’t use investors to raise cash, which is consistent with a desire to retain creative control. This also means that it is up to all of the shareholders to vote on decisions about the managers of the company instead of a board. That means the only way they could fire Willingham as Chief Executive Officer is if all of the shareholders convene and vote for his firing. Without a board of directors, which often has independent outsiders, this is typically seen as bad for the company’s interests, but is legal in this case because it’s a limited liability corporation and they do not trade on an exchange .

Over the next year or so, CRPLLC makes a new studio and Geek and Sundry gradually relinquishes the distribution rights to older episodes. At this point everyone who works towards the function of the production and distribution of shows is an employee of CRPLLC and not Legendary or Geek and Sundry. For the past couple of years, Critical Role has licensed various brand crossover products like Funko Pops and The Darkhorse Comics. Funko Pop pays CRPLLC for the character likenesses and keeps all profits. CRPLLC also produces its own merchandise like t shirts and that sexy calendar that they pay manufacturers to produce and CRPLLC makes the profit in that scenario. They also have advertising revenue, which is a straightforward revenue stream.

Throwing back to two paragraphs ago, if they don’t use investors to raise cash, how can they afford to embark on a new expensive project that wouldn’t pay out until the future? Well, they could take out a loan (ew interest), save more money in retained earnings forgoing development in other areas (what do you mean we can’t afford to redo our website?) OR

They could do an 11 million dollar kickstarter! This would allow them to retain ownership of both the company and the product, because kickstarter is essentially just buying really expensive merchandise! People will buy a 30 dollar mug if it also comes with the promise that if enough people do it, they’ll make a tv show. Kickstarter money is revenue, not financing and it’s actually against kickstarter’s rules to promise equity for backers. Instead, kickstarter backers assume the risk that investors take (albeit on a smaller individual scale) with none of the benefit besides knowing that they helped make something exist. Compare this to if I, Callie invested $11 million into CRPLLC.

If the Legend of Vox Machina completely bombs and bankrupts CRPLLC which was kickstarted: CRPLLC would have to sell off all of its assets, resolve its liabilities (pay people for work done before laying them off, pay off bank loans) and whatever is left over would be split between the owners. Do they owe you, the kickstarter backer, for not making the show? Legally no. You chose to give us that money and had to trust we would spend the money well to make a good show and we spent all our money making sure our tree leaf animation looked good and could only afford to make 2 episodes.

If the Legend of Vox Machina completely bombs and bankrupts CRPLLC and it was Calliestarted: It would still be the same, except now Callie, the person who put in a lot of money for this show, is also an owner, and at least gets a slice of that money after the debts are paid off.

If the Legend of Vox Machina is really successful and it’s kickstarted: Good job, you did it! You got a fun tv show and like a t shirt! Fun!

If the Legend of Vox Machina is really successful and it’s Calliestarted: Not only do I get my fun tv show and probably also every piece of merch that exists, I got mad paid as an owner, not just from the show itself, but as we sell more and more merchandise because I’m a part owner of the company. I then continue to make money from literally everything else the company does until I decide to sell my shares or the company goes bankrupt.

And even better news! Amazon Prime bought the streaming rights for two seasons, so now I, Callie, have even more money from that sweet sweet licensing money.

Speaking of which, it is likely that the Amazon Deal is structured as follows: Amazon pays CRPLLC to license LoVM, with the stipulation that kickstarter backers can access the first 10 episodes legally. CRPLLC pays, with Kickstarter and Amazon money, Titmouse Inc. to produce LoVM. CRPLLC makes the difference between what they paid Titmouse (variable cost, depending on ultimate cost of animating) and what Amazon paid them. Amazon makes the difference of what they paid CRPLLC and what they make at market with LoVM. Amazon is the only company that stands to profit directly from the actual product of LoVM doing well. If it does poorly, there’s the possibility it gets cancelled, meaning that CRPLLC (and maybe Titmouse if CRPLLC already commissioned the work from them) will still get paid by Amazon, but never released. It’s possible that other companies could buy the license from Amazon in this scenario. This is the risk of selling your show to another company.

CRPLLC also has one subsidiary and one associated foundation: Darrington Press LLC and The Critical Role Foundation

Darrington Press LLC is an imprint of CRPLLC created to design and produce card and board games with the Critical Role IP. DP has 3 listed employees, Ivan Van Norman as Head of Darrington Press, Darcy L. Ross as Marketing Manager, and Mercer as Creative Advisor. As a subsidiary, it is wholly owned by CRPLLC. DP pays manufacturers and contractors to design and manufacturers games and pays for its own advertising, as a separate entity from CRPLLC. DP will likely sell its products to games distributers and the Critical Role Store. If the Critical Role Store sells DP games it’s because CRPLLC bought them from DP. The relationship between DP and CPRLLC is that when DP makes a profit and pays dividends, the recipient is CPRLLC. If DP goes bankrupt and cannot pay its debts, CPRLLC is not required to pay them. CPRLLC also chooses DP’s Board of Directors, which is probably just the owners of CPRLLC. This is all very ordinary. DP has four announced games set to release in 2021, but as of yet has not released any products or made any revenue.

The Critical Role Foundation is a registered non-profit and legally distinct from CRPLLC with seemingly no employees, with Johnson as President, and 4 other Board Members: Mercer, Lopez, Romero and another person named Mark Koro, who is a figure very closely tied to critical role I will outline later. Lopez and Romero are also in a long-term relationship or perhaps marriage. It is usually considered a bad idea to have two partners on a board of directors, as a conflict of interest can arise easily. As a registered non-profit CRF’s projected breakdown of donations is 85% grants to other non-profits, 10% emergency fund allocation, and 5% admin costs (this would be where possible future employees’ salaries would come from). Board Members on non-profits traditionally don’t take salaries, but can use their role as a board member to calculate donated time as a charitable donation for tax purposes. This all seems pretty normal. It’s not stated if or how much CRPLLC itself donates to CRF, including its initial endowment, besides the donation of free advertising, as no donation matching or any other programs seem to be advertised. In terms of an initial endowment, it seems that the only money put in was immediately spent on filing fees and legal fees, meaning the initial endowment was less than $5000. As a result, CRF operates from donors and possibly is not funded at all by CRPLLC. Any money that is donated from CRPLLC’s profits to CRF would be a charitable donation and lower CRPLLC’s taxable income amount. CRF began collecting non-taxable donations in May 2019, and as of December 8, 2020 CRF has yet to publish their 2019 financial statements, so not much is publicly known of how much money is raised by CRF and if they achieved their desired breakdown.

Now to talk about Mark Koro. Koro is an executive of Governmental Affairs (some places list director and others list VP) at Qualcomm, a telecommunications technology company with an annual profit of $7.67 Billion, and is estimated to make $20 per smartphone sold. Every smartphone. Qualcomm has been sued by China, South Korea, Taiwan, the EU, and the USA for anti-competitive behaviour. Koro’s department of Governmental affairs is responsible for negotiating and bidding with governments for contracts and rights to airwave frequencies, and also lobby and develop proposals for telecommunications legislation and policy. Before this, Koro worked at the National Security Agency in their corporate relations department liaising with defence and intelligence contractors. Before this, he worked in the George H.W. Bush administration as The National Security Advance Representative. This entails preparing logistics and security for Presidential events and dispatching Secret Service Agents to respond to Presidential Threats and continued in this capacity under following administrations until 2008. Koro was also an advisor to The Deputy Director of the NSA (the second highest position in the Intelligence Agency), and was a consultant to The Lawrence Livermore National Library, which is

“self-described as a ‘premier research and development institution for science and technology applied to national security.’ Its principal responsibility is ensuring the safety, security and reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons through the application of advanced science, engineering, and technology.”

These positions are all listed on Koro’s biography on the The United Nations website for the International Telecommunications Union Radiocommunication Sector (accessed Dec. 8, 2020). Mark Koro has no public associations with Charitable Work.

There is little online about Koro’s association with Critical Role, besides an article stating that Koro, as a fan of the show, in 2016 matched $50,000 worth of donations to 826LA. Koro’s associations with a monopolistic technology company, the NSA, Nuclear Weaponry, and multiple presidential administrations would be cause for alarm for many of CR’s fans, but if it were a purely professional relationship, it could be excused as including him for his business accumen, but Mark Koro is mutuals on twitter with all of the cast members and Brian W Foster, Britney Walloch-Key. This might seem like normal professional courtesy, but there is a lot of interaction between Koro’s account and Critical Role Employees’ personal accounts that reflect at least a close personal relationship between people that he would not interact with regularly just as a board member of a legally distinct organization."

P.S. 100% of Critical Role's Chief Officers are men in relationships with female subordinates.

[dual1pa]

the fair

Eddie x fem!reader (has nothing to do with the plot of Buffy)

Warnings: fluff, heavy make outs, characters are both 18+

A/N: I don't think I've seen imagines about Eddie but this could easily lead to a part 2. thanks for reading :)

She always had a crush on him. Ever since he sat next to her in Chemistry class. It’s like her teacher, Mr. Miller, knew she was in love with him because he made them lab partners. Ever since then, they would eat lunch together, he would meet her at her locker every day to walk her to her bus. He always had his hands tucked into his pockets and looked down at his feet.

Before she got onto the bus, he stopped her, “Hey. There’s this fair tonight down at the firehouse, something about them collecting money for the year, would you, uh, wanna go with me?”

She smiles widely, “Eddie, I would love to. I love carnivals!”

Eddie’s face lit up, “Great. Should I pick you up at your house or do you wanna meet me there.”

“Eastend street. Third house on the left, it has purple shutters, can’t miss it.” she quickly kissed him on the cheek and ran onto the bus.”

He touched the place where she kissed and blushed, finding his car through the endless amount of cars of the senior class. He mentally beat himself up as to why he didn’t ask to just give her a ride home. He shook the negative thoughts out of his head and put the keys into the ignition of his car, figuring out what the hell he was going to wear.

When she found an empty seat, she internally screamed that he finally asked her out. She put in her headphones and turned on her favorite music, as well as responding to unread messages. As she stared out the window at the buildings and homes she passed by thousands of times on the way home from school. She thanked God it was the weekend and could finally take a break from the books to focus on what she was going to wear to impress the guy she really liked.

Once she found a cute dress and a pair of white sneakers, she paced back and forth in her living room, constantly looking out the window watching for Eddie’s car to pull up.

“I’m so glad you’re finally going out with that boy you’re always talking about.” her mother said, not taking her eyes off the book she was reading.

“You have no idea how happy I am. Also, could you guys like… not be awkward and weird and just stay here when the doorbell rings?” she scolded her mother and father until they gave her the answer she wanted, which was “fine, I won’t say a word.”

Just as their conversation was ending, they all heard the doorbell ring.

“Remember. Say nothing until you hear that door shut.”

“Just go have fun with him! But, curfew is midnight.” her father said.

“Alright, alright. See you guys later.” she ran to grab her small purse filled with her driver’s license, some extra cash, some lip gloss, and chapstick.

She double-checked her makeup and hair in the small mirror. She opened the door to see Eddie, wearing a blue jacket with a white shirt underneath and a pair of khakis. His hair was brushed to the side.

“Hi.” she smiled clutching onto her small bag that’s attached to her hip.

“Hey. These are for you.” he handed her a bouquet of flowers of her favorite colors.

She gasped, “These are beautiful.” She brought them up to her nose to smell the wonderful scent.

“I remember you told me these were your favorite flowers and I couldn’t show up empty handed.”

“It would have been fine if you did. All I need is you here, but thank you for the flowers.” she quickly put them on the table in the foyer and shut the door behind her, following Eddie to his car parked in the driveway. He opened the car door for her and waited patiently for her to put her seatbelt on before he carefully shut the door.

The way to the carnival was peacefully quiet. The air from outside coming in from his half opened window, his hair slightly blowing in the wind. She couldn’t help but smile at the scene she was witnessing. His one hand was on the wheel and the other was resting on his leg.

“Do you like to listen to music? I don’t have an AUX cord in my car anymore, it broke. However, I do have the radio. Any stations you listen to?”

“Any station that plays pop music.” you smile.

“No problem.” he flipped through the many stations until he found something that sounded similar to a pop song.

“Is this one okay?” he asked.

“It’s perfect,” you said.

As Eddie pulled into the grass area of the firehouse, it was already packed. Many families, people they recognized from school, and couples on dates. The field lit up with dozens of different colors and the environment was filled with laughs and screams. She considered herself a ride lover, she’ll go on any ride no matter how scary they look. She hoped he was the same.

“Man, it sure is packed and it’s not even 7 yet.” he looked at his watch after he parked the car.

“I know. But, it is a Friday night and the rides actually look good this year.”

“Yeah, last year they sucked, that’s why no one went.”

She laughed, “I think they got the message.”

The two of them walked close together as the craziness of the fair sucked them in. Eddie paid for 50 tickets, he thought that would get them on most of the rides.

“What do you wanna ride first?”

“Up to you.”

“How about that?” you point to a ride in the shape of a circle, watching as the people brave enough to ride go upside down, “Do you do rides like that? I don’t want you to do anything you don’t wanna do.”

“No, I love rides like that. I’ll go on anything here.”

“C’mon then!” she grabbed his hand and lead him to the line for the ride.

--

For the rest of the evening, they held hands as they walked to different attractions and waiting in lines. The only times their hands weren’t intertwined was to share a funnel cake. She had the time of her life with him and she prayed that he did too.

“What should be our last ride?” he asked her, squeezing her hand.

“I think it should be the Ferris wheel.”

“It’s like you read my mind.”

She started growing impatient because of how long the wait was but refused to show it on her face. All she wanted to do was lean up against Eddie’s chest and wrap her arms around his waist. She was thankful he didn’t pull away when she first grabbed his hand.

“Do you have anything planned for the weekend?” Eddie broke the silence between them.

She shook her head, “Nope, just homework probably. You?”

“Same here. If you wanted to, we could study for that chem test we have next week.”

“That sounds amazing actually because I have no idea what I’m doing.” she chuckled.

“I’ll be your knight in shining armor when it comes to chemistry.”

“I love that. My parents are actually leaving tomorrow to go into the city until Sunday night, just come right over.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“How many?” the fair employee asked.

“Two.” Eddie said.

“Step right in. Enjoy your ride.”

“Thanks.” she smiled.

She sits down first, followed by Eddie. She watches as the employee goes to start up the ride, the employee presses a button and they keep climbing till they’re at the top.

“Wow, you can see the whole town from here. I think I can see my house from here.” she laughed.

Eddie gained the courage to put his arm around her. She leaned in to his touch and held his hand that was around her arm. She looked up at him, he was already looking down at her. Without thought, she leaned up to quickly kiss him. She pulls back, without saying a word, he goes back in for another kiss, this one more passionate. His lips were so soft she never wanted to come up for air. The hand that was on his lap was now holding her cheek.

“I’ve wanted to do that all night.”

“I’ve wanted to do that since Mr. Miller paired us up as chem partners.”

“Damnit. That means I could have asked you out earlier?”

She licked his bottom lip to bring him back in for a kiss.

Before they knew it, their ride was coming to an end.

“I wanna do more of this,” he said firmly.

“Me too,” she said.

On the ride home, they talked about their favorite rides and moments of the night. Both of them chose the Ferris wheel.

Eddie pulled up to her house and turned off the engine, “What time should I come over tomorrow?”

“How about 3? Then after we can watch a movie and just hang out?”

Eddie nodded in agreement, “I’m looking forward to seeing you again. I also really liked kissing you.”

That’s all it took for her to hike up her dress and maneuver herself over the console to straddle his hips. He quickly took off his seatbelt so she was more comfortable on top of him. She leaned down to kiss her crush. His hands gripped her waist. She moaned into his mouth, desperately wanting more of him. His mouth moved from her lips to her neck, sucking on the sweet spot, for sure leaving a mark. She glanced at her watch, noticing it was about to hit midnight. She definitely didn’t want her father coming out of the house and seeing what was happening.

She groaned, “I have to go. It’s almost past my curfew.”

“No.” he moaned in a protest.

“If I’m grounded that means my parents will cancel their trip to the city, and you and I both don’t want that, trust me.”

He lets her go as she gets out the passenger side.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, alright? 3pm sharp. I’ll be waiting.”

“Believe me, I’ll be here at 2:59.”

She blows him one last kiss before running up to the front door, unlocking it with her key. She locked the door behind her and watched Eddie pull out of the driveway and onward to his home. She couldn’t wait for tomorrow.