#sr mel save me….. save me sr mel

[planet-theia]

are there any shopify rebellion stans on this website

[fallstaticexit]

When your Gen X, boomer cusp boy mom mother can't read the room to save her life.

AN: If anyone is interested in some more Lyric lore, you can check out my TikTok for part one and part two of her backstory. Trigger Warnings: pregnancy loss, depression.

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Myrah: Oh, my sweet boys! I missed you so much!

Sonny: So you went and got married, huh? Didn’t think to tell us, mama?

Olive: [whispers] Girl, not your mom getting her groove back.

Lyric: [groans] See, this is what I’m talking about...

Nina: [whispers] This was not on my Myrah visit bingo card.

Ernest: We eloped. Nothing too fancy, since it’s both our second marriage. I can send some photos your way, just got to get them developed.

Mel: Developed?

Myrah: My Ernie is an old soul. Very old school.

Sonny: Uh-huh. How old exactly?

Lyric: Isn’t there a dinner we’re supposed to be eating or something?!

Myrah: Oh, that’s right! Everyone sit, I’ll bring out the food.

Sonny: Yeah, maybe get this man a shirt while you at it..

[awkward silence]

Sonny: How’d you meet my moms, man. What’s all this about?

Mel: This isn’t some life insurance scam, is it?

Myrah: Boys!

Ernest: We met at a Divorce Support Group.

Lyric: [sucks teeth] Why are you still going to those? You were divorced over 30 years ago...

Myrah: There’s no expiration date on support! I can still go. We take a trip to Cancun every year.

Ernest: She was telling her story about being a young mom in a loveless marriage, and I really felt that. I was a young father, too.

Sonny: [grumbles] Tuh. Ya don’t say?

Ernest: I asked her to join me for coffee one day, and well, the rest is history.

Myrah: Ernest completes me. We don’t let things like our age keep us from being happy. Ernest satisfies me in ways you can’t imagine-

[Everyone groans]

Ernest: Meeting your mom really changed my life, kids.

Olive: I get it. It happens to the best of us. I fell in love with a beautiful, elegant, rich older woman, and my life has never been the same. I’ll probably never fall in love again.

Sonny: ?????

Myrah: Thank you, Olivia. Kids, I just want you to be happy for me. Don’t I deserve that?

Lyric: This is weird! You get married without telling anyone, and it’s to some guy who’s like half your age. Why would you think we wouldn’t be upset about this?

Myrah: Well, honey, you’re not a little girl anymore. I can do as I please and not have to tiptoe around what my children think. I’m allowed to live my life however I want.

Ernest: Your mother’s right. And I think if you gave me a chance, I could show you how I can be a great father figure and role model to you and your brothers.

Lyric: Am I in the twilight zone?? What the hell is happening right now??

Ernest: Ah! Little man’s burgers! Must of slipped my mind. I guess age is catching up to me.

Sonny: Mhmmm, which is how old again?

Myrah: I’ll get it. Sit tight, baby.

Lyric: [sneers] You! Did you know about this?

Sonny: What! No!

Mel: I mean, you did say you talk to mom everyday. She never mentioned this?

Olive: Can we get these dishes passed around or...

Sonny: I mean, she mentioned having a friend name Ernest once but I’m thinkin’ he’s some old guy she met!

Ernest: [chuckles] Yeah, I get that alot. I normally go by EJ. Ernest Sr. is my father’s name.

Sonny: Uh-huh... and who yo daddy? Probably went to school with him...

Myrah: Alright, got one burger for my big strong, handsome grandson!

Myrah: What? What’s the matter?

Lyric: Mom, there’s cheese and stuff on it! He doesn’t like that! He’ll only have it plain!

Myrah: Ok! Ok! No problem! I’ll just pluck it off! I-I didn’t know-

Lyric: You would have known if you’d bothered to get to know him at all! You don’t know anything about any of your grandchildren, Mateo especially! All you care about is that he’s a boy.

Lyric: You don’t listen to me when I tell you about things that overwhelm him. You don’t listen to me at all! I’m not going to let you make him feel invisible like you did me.

Myrah: Lyric, wait! Please don’t leave like this! Talk to me, Sunshine!

Olive: Um. Thanks for the to-go plates, Mrs. M. I bet it would have been really good when it was fresh.

[tires screeching]

[oh-cramity-its-amity]

Oh shit there’s a new one okay. I thought the most recent was liek a week ago. Imma watch that rq

Okay I watched it I’m going feral I’m just gonna yell my opinions in yr inbox rq don’t mind me

Did they actually kill all of the fucking council memebers. They wouldn’t right. There’s no way <in denial. But no literally I will sob if they’re all dead. It looks like Mel is dead from mommy abassarda (🤤) seeking revenge and stuff. Would they kill golden boy and viktor tho? Unlikely. I’m also assuming Caitlyn’s mom is dead for that trauma

“you finally got the name right” I’m going to vomit

I know this is not an original opinion at all but I really hate the outfit 😭. Why does she look like that. What happened to my vi with her good outfits. Maybe it’s supposed to be symbolic that it doesn’t fit her but like

Istg if jinx dies I’m cutting off every riot persons heads

I’m a little mad they’re cutting it off at 2 seasons but it makes sense ig :/ I’m just like my lesbians. Why

YES! omg. i absolutely dont mind at all 😭. i was losing my mind!!! literally just WHAT.

i dont know if they did or not to be honest?? i remember seeing people discuss about them killing the members, and they debated about them killing champions. i dont think jayce is dead?? hes a champion. and if arcane is canon to LoL lore then like he wouldnt be?? not too sure about everyone else but i dont think the champions are dead or will die. cassandra however- i think fandom kinda considered her dead for a good majority of time. i dont know league lore so dont take me seriously 😭. BUT- i dont believe jayce is dead. idfk if viktor is, mel potentially. hmm... IM SURE like someone survived... they wouldnt do that to caitlyn... come on... kill her mom and then her childhood friend...? thats... ykw kinda on brand for the emotional turmoil.. BUT COME ON.

again- dont think they killed any champions but everyone else... yeah... probably rip. :(.

wondering how this is going to affect caitlyn tbh too. how is she going to handle herself. is vi going to comfort her?? uh... WILL WE FINALLY FUCKING GET A KISS?? istg anyway.

I KNOW!! oh mannnnn NO THATS NOT THE WORST PART

the "my sister is gone" had me like wanting to literally go insane because OUCH!!! someone please save vi from this turmoil 😭. shes gonna be put through it and IM not ready.

the red jacket was HER :(. i think its kinda a metaphor too like u mentioned about her not belonging on the team and feeling uncomfortable but then again the LoL players *were* clowning on the discourse of people being upset over vi being a cop. I DO LIKE THE GOGGLES THO. those r sick. but the outfit? girl what did they do to my favorite lesbian. who is she.

dont think jinx is gonna die thoughhhhh.... i mean... why would she... die... they wouldnt... right? ...right??

..right???????

please i just NEED them all to be okay i cant do this!!! /lh but also /srs. i do need them to be okay. IK I SIGNED UP FOR THIS BUT OW.

honestly im a little shocked about it being just 2 seasons too but i think its good just because of how long it took between 1-2. i have maaaad respect for the people working on it. swear as long as we get a physical release of the season season too ill be down. first we had news about s1 getting a physical TO A FUCKING TRAILER... we are eating SO good this week.

short and sweet though. tbh im sure theyll be able to tell what they need to cause 45 min per an ep. doesn't seem that surprising. but still 2 seasons is crazy. AS LONG AS THERES NO CLIFFHANGERS ILL BE FINE.

i justttt need caitvi in s2. i need them to kiss. i am not asking for a lot. need them to kiss and for literally jinx, and several people to NOT die.

anyway whoops. thanks for sending me your thoughts aaaaa

[twsted-princess]

Duo Lines with Melanie and @thetwstwildcard ocs cause I'm a fucking cycle-path

Melanie and Lorelai - Octavinelle's Sirens SSR

Melanie: Lorelai-senpai! Let's sing!

Lorelai: Sure, we'll give them a great show!!

----------

Melanie and Yuuto - School Uniform R

Yuuto: Mel I'll be fine, focus on the fight.

Melanie: Ok, but I have my first-aid kit just in case!

----------

Melanie and Emery - Gym Uniform R

Melanie: You look so cool Em!!!

Emery: Wha-!? Oh thank you.

---------

Melanie and Veil - School Uniform R

Veil: Just stay behind me.

Melanie: R- Right. Wow........

-----------

Melanie and Nasira - Yasmin Silk SR

Melanie: This is amazing, and you look incredible!

Nasira: The festivities aren't over just yet.

-----------

Melanie and Kiara - Vargas Camp SSR

Melanie: Kiaraaaa!! Wait for meee!!

Kiara: Do you want to just give you a piggyback ride?

----------

Melanie and Isidoros - Ghost Wedding SR

Isidoros: Do we really have to save that bastard?

Melanie: Yes we have to!

----------

Melanie and Kyrie - Fairy Gala - SSR

Melanie: Oh you look so pretty Ky!!!

Kyrie: I love your dress, you have to show me how you made it!!

----------

Melanie and Jirou - School Uniform R

Jirou: Do you ever shut up?

Melanie: I'm just trying to help......

------------

Melanie and Yua - Dorm Uniform SSR

Yua: Mel, it's time. Arise from your dream....

Melanie: And walk into the light!!!

[ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes]

Field of Poppies Part 10

Summary: After being apart for six years, childhood friends Tommy and Amelia reunite under odd circumstances. Tommy is an outspoken young man and Amelia is pregnant and out on the streets. The bond of family can be unbreakable but it is tested often. Especially when Europe descends into war.

Part 10: Tommy gives Amelia a promise and Amelia talks to John about love.

//I cannot for the life of me remember if I gave Amelia a last name. And if I did, I can't find it. So if anyone remembers me writing a last name, you get fifty bonus stars. 

            Things were fine for a bit. Amelia put all her effort into looking after Max. Tommy worked pretty much all day and then some nights he’d be at meetings with Greta and Freddie. At night, he gave Amelia a rest from Max, making sure the baby was taken care of. He was growing accustomed to sleepless nights, even when Max started sleeping through the whole night. He would often stay up for hours, writing, planning. He would stay up at his desk near Max’s cot, squinting to see in the dim light. Usually, both Amelia and their son would sleep through it. Sometimes she would complain and tell Tommy to come to bed. He said he would but instead, went downstairs so she could go back to sleep peacefully.

            There never seemed to be enough hours in the day. Tommy’s mind was always whirring with things. With everything going so well, he began to feel invincible. And inevitably, pushed his luck too far.

                       One morning, when Max was six months and spring was just beginning to bloom, John came bursting in through the door.

            “Tom’s been arrested!” He shouted, breathless from his sprint back home.

            “What?” Amelia startled and turned to Polly who was looking after Max.

            “Jesus.” The woman sighed and handed Max back to Amelia.

            “What happened?” Amelia questioned John.

            “We were at the bullring and some coppers came up and arrested him!” John was wide-eyed. Police weren’t something the Shelbys were unfamiliar with. Often times, Arthur Sr. would be tossed in jail for the night due to petty theft or disorderly conduct due to drinking. Arthur and Tommy learned to not trust the police officers from their father and would sometimes tease local officers they knew well. But neither of them had ever been jailed. Usually, they were given a warning or marched home to be scolded by their mother. But now that they were older, and the things they were getting into, it was only a matter of time before law enforcement took notice.

            “On what charges?” Polly asked, the more level-headed of the three in the room. She’d been cleaning up after Shelby messes for years and knew the drill.

            “I dunno.”

            “Pol, what do we do?” Amelia held Max close.

            “I’ll handle it.” She promised and went to get her coat. “Stay here with the boys. Don’t answer the door for anyone.”

            Gripped with fear, Amelia nodded. She trusted Polly. Trusted her to know what to do in dark times.

            John prided himself in being as tough as his brothers even though he was younger. But Tommy’s arrest had greatly shaken him up. He always thought his older brothers were invincible. That’s how they acted. No one could touch them. But seeing the police wrestle Tommy to the ground and put handcuffs on him was too much.

            Amelia could see the fear in the teenager’s eyes. “Are you hungry, John?” She did her best to try and have some normalcy. There was no need to panic yet. Polly could handle everything.

            John shook his head.

            “Okay. Could you hold Max for me for a mo’?” She wondered. “I just have to grab something upstairs.”

            He nodded and walked over to take the baby from her arms. He sat down at the kitchen table, quietly cradling Max.

            “Thank you.” Amelia gently touched his shoulder before heading upstairs. There wasn’t anything she needed to grab. She just needed a moment to collect her thoughts. She locked herself in the bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face. This couldn’t be the direction their life was going. She would not tolerate Tommy flitting in and out of jail. He promised her he would be there for her and especially for Max. She didn’t want there to come a time when Max was old enough to know what was going on. When he asked why daddy wasn’t coming home.

            No, Amelia would much rather be on her own than live through that.

 ~~~~~~~~~

            As Polly expected, it wasn’t too difficult to get Tommy out of jail. He’d only been taken in because Danny had gotten in a scuffle with the police. They’d gotten Danny and locked him up for a day but Tommy, who was present, had given them the slip.

            Polly waited as they released Tommy who looked disgruntled. But that was nothing compared to the icy glare from his aunt.

            “Pol…”

            “Don’t.” She jabbed a finger at him. “You are marching home right now and apologizing to your poor brother. He was in a state seeing you get arrested. And Amelia too. You made a promise to her, Thomas, you cannot run around like some common street criminal. Be better.” She urged before striding off back to Watery Lane.

            Tommy sighed and followed behind her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

            Amelia was upstairs when Tommy and Polly returned. John and Ada were looking after Max who was contently sleeping in his bassinette in the kitchen.

            “Tom!” John looked beyond relieved when he saw his brother walk through the door.

            “Hello, hello.” Tommy let his sister hug him tightly.

            “John said you got arrested!” Ada said. “I thought we’d never see you again.”

            “S’alright. I’m sorry for causing a fuss.” He said. “John, you shouldn’t have seen that, that was my fault.”

            John nodded. “I knew you’d be alright.” He said, trying to maintain his image as a Shelby boy. He didn’t want his brother to know that he was just as scared as Ada was.

            “Where’s Mel?” Tommy asked when Ada finally let go of him.

            “Upstairs,” John answered.

            Polly nodded. “I’ll watch the baby.”

            Tommy headed up to the bedroom, knocking a couple of times before Amelia let him in. She embraced him.

            “Tom, for fuck’s sake. I was so worried.” She gasped.

            “It’s okay.” He promised and hugged her back.

            “What happened? Why were you arrested?”

            “Something to do with Danny, it was just a little mishap.” He assured her. “Nothing big. They didn’t charge me with anything.”

            “Christ, Tommy, you can’t play these games.” She warned but still wouldn’t let go of him. “You know how the police are, you can’t keep attracting their interest or they’ll never leave you alone.”

            “It’s alright, Mel. It’s over.” He felt her push him away, much to his surprise.

            “That’s all it ever is with you, isn’t it? It’s fine. It’s done. It’ll be alright. That’s all you ever say to me anymore!” She moved away from him and wrapped her arms around herself. “You keep promising me all these nice things, that you’ll always be there for me and always be there for Max. Then what happens? You’re arrested! And I can’t imagine this will be the last time.”

            “Mel…”

            “I hear things, Tommy, I hear what people are saying about you. What they’re calling you and Arthur and Danny an-and everyone else. You think this is right?”

            Tommy ran a hand over his face, exhausted by the day. He sat down with a heavy groan. “Mel-”

            “The police don’t care, they’ll keep locking you up and then you’ve broken your promise to me and Max because you won’t have been there for us.” She paced the small room. “Is that what you want? You have so much potential, Tommy. You’re so much more than this. I don’t want you to rot away. I don’t want this city to make you some low-life like your father!”

            “Oi!” Tommy shouted as she had hit a nerve. He stood up and grabbed her arm to stop her from pacing. “I am not my fucking father. I will never be him. You say I have potential, yeah? Think I can just go out and make money like those fuckers in London, aye? They’ve got blue blood, they were born with money, Mel. I can’t make money the way they do. You’d have me go work in the factories? Fourteen-hour shifts every day? I could work all day and all night for the rest of me life and never make enough money to keep food on the table.”

            Amelia had tears in her eyes. “You don’t understand, I don’t care about money. I will be happy with whatever I have at the end of the day as long as I have you and Max. I don’t want you to end up in prison or killed because you want money. I will suffer and starve if it means keeping you safe.”

            He let go of her arm, shaking his head. “I won’t. I won’t starve and I won’t fucking suffer. Not anymore.”

            Amelia wiped her eyes. “So, I’m meant to wait for the call one day that you’ve been found killed?”

            “That won’t happen…”

            “You don’t know that!” She shouted. “You can’t control life, Tommy. If you go looking for trouble, you’ll bloody well find it eventually!”

            He went to his desk and pulled out a few pieces of paper. “See that.” He pointed forcefully.

            Amelia shook her head, not even willing to look. She felt like she’d been made a fool of by trusting him.

            “Five years.” He thumped his hand on the desk. “Five years and we’ll be legitimate. We’ll have a license; we’ll be operated legally. The money will come and there will be no need for worry about coppers.”

            “Those are just words.”

            “It’s my promise, Mel.” He cupped her cheeks so she would look at him. “Five years isn’t too long. I’ll be careful and nothing will happen. I may get nicked a few times but I’ll always be home for you the same day. Five years and we’ll be able to get a house and send Max to a proper school.” He wiped some of her tears away. “And if by five years I haven’t kept my promise, I’ll give you all the savings I have so you can have your own life with Max.”

            She sniffled and knotted her fingers in his hair. “You think it would be so easy to walk away from you?”

            Tommy sighed and wrapped his arms around her, letting her bury herself in his chest. He knew it would be impossible to walk away from her and Max, so he could assume she felt the same way. “Five years won’t be long.” He promised. “After that, we’ll have everything we could ever want.”

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~

            “Hey, Mel?”

            “Mhm?”

            Both John and Amelia were sharing a very rare quiet dinner together. Arthur and Tommy were working late in the shop while Polly cared after Finn and Ada who had both come down with a nasty cold.

            Now fifteen, John was starting to grow into himself. No longer was he the little boy who was trying so desperately to be like his big brothers. He was growing and his voice had deepened a bit as well. It was odd because Amelia had hazy memories of seeing John as an infant. To see him grow so fast was alarming. It made her think of Max, hoping that time wouldn’t pass by so quickly with him.

            “How d’you know when you love someone?” He asked. Of course, it was a question the teenager would never ask his brothers. And, his baby sister would only tease him too. Polly wouldn’t be much help either. So, it seemed that the only confidante he had was Amelia, who he always looked at as an older sister.

            “Well, I suppose it isn’t easy to really know right away.” Amelia wasn’t that surprised about the conversation. She could recall being young and only thinking about romance and going steady with someone. Of course, that someone was usually Tommy. Although there was a small stint of time when he fell out of favor with her for a forgotten reason, and she chose to fantasize about George Connelly. Yet, it was Tommy’s initials she carved next to hers on the stone bridge by the canal.     

            She was so lovesick for him. But in all reality, she wasn’t sure she really knew what love was at that point. “It should be someone you know very well. Someone you get along with.”

            John gave her a look. “Of course.”

            She smiled. “Well, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just a gut feeling.”

            He seemed a bit dismayed by the vague response. “I think I’m in love.” He confided.

            “Oh yeah?”

            “Yeah. Bloody stupid, Martha Boswell.” He muttered, disgruntled that he had developed feelings for the girl who had tormented him practically his entire life.

            “Do you think she feels the same way?” Amelia wondered. She couldn’t help but think how all-knowing Polly was. She must’ve known right from the start that the two were made for each other, just like she said she knew about her and Tommy.

            John got a little sheepish. “Yeah, we kissed at the fair. We’ve been writing back ‘n forth.” He admitted.

            “Then why are you so concerned about labeling things? Why can’t you just write back and forth and see where it takes you?”

            He grimaced. “’Cause her mum wants her to get married to this boy. But she says she doesn’t want to marry him. I said I could ask her mum if we could get married instead.”

            “Oh, John, you two are awfully young.” Amelia hesitated at the idea. Even if they were meant to be together, they should have the right to let the relationship grow organically, not have it forced on them.

            “I know.” He muttered. “But I don’t want to have her marry some other prick.” He seemed saddened at the idea of letting her go.

            “Maybe…maybe you can talk to Polly about talking to Martha’s mum.” She offered. “Arrange something more…reasonable.”

            He perked up a bit at the idea. “Would you talk to Pol with me?”

            Amelia nodded. “Of course. Let’s talk to her when Finn and Ada get a bit better.”

            John smiled. “Thanks, Mel.”

            The doors between the flat and the shop opened and Tommy came in looking tired. He tousled John’s hair and gave Amelia a kiss on the cheek. “Finn ‘n Ada getting better?” He asked.

            Amelia could sense some frustration or stress in his voice. “They’re still coughing a lot.” She answered. “Why don’t you eat something? I can make you a plate.” She offered.

            His eyes were wandering aimlessly around the room, not fully paying attention to her. “No, not right now, thanks.”

            Nervous something was wrong; Amelia tried a different route. “Do you want to take a walk with me?”

            He nodded. “Yeah, sure.” He agreed and helped her stand up. “John, could you look after Max for a bit?”

            After Amelia had helped him out, he nodded. “Okay.”

   ~~~~~~~~~~~        

            After they bundled up, Tommy and Amelia headed out into the cold winter night. He held her hand as they walked silently for a bit. Amelia wordlessly led him down to the canal, down beneath the bridge.

            “What’s wrong?” She asked.

            “Nothing.”

            “Tom, tell me.” She urged.

            He finally looked at her. “I’m just a little stressed.” He admitted.

            She guided him over to the stones, searching a bit before she found the telltale marker. “Look.” She pointed to the carving she’d made over five years ago.

            TS+AM

            “You made that?” Of course, he could recognize their initials instantly.

            “When we were twelve, thirteen, maybe.” She explained. “I just…I wanted you to know that you mean more to me than I think you realize. I need you to know how much I care for you.”

            Tommy nodded. “I know.” He said softly before leaning down to kiss her. Her lips were cold from the wintery air but soon warmed.

            Amelia could only imagine how thrilled her younger self would be had she known this was her future. Kissing Tommy Shelby by the canal just as it started to snow.

            They parted but he kept her close, savoring in her warmth among the chill. “Will you marry me?” He asked quietly.

            “What?” She found his eyes.

            He dropped a hand from her cheek so he could reach into his coat pocket, pulling out a diamond ring. It was modest, but for Small Heath, it might’ve been the Hope Diamond.

            Amelia’s breath caught in her throat. “Tom…how did…where did you get this?”

            “I’ve been saving, since right before Max was born. I’ve wanted this well…ever since you came back.” He let out a shy laugh. “I saw you there and realized how much I still loved you after all those years. I just know that I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”

            “Oh, Tommy.” She gasped and kissed him deeply.

            “So, will you?” He asked between breaths.  

            “Yes, yes, of course.” She agreed vehemently before pulling him back to her and kissing him again.

Permanent tag: @papa-geralt-of-cirilla​ @giftofdreams​ @biba3434​ @kimmietea​ @karmezii​ @enrapturedbythemoon​ @vampgirl1997​ @tarafaithe​ @evelynshelby​

Tag list: @shelbyblinded​

Masterpost

PB Masterlist

[marialaura-diazpena]

My Programming Journey: Understanding Music Genres with Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence is used everyday, by regular people and businesses, creating such a positive impact in all kinds of industries and fields that it makes me think that AI is only here to stay and grow, and help society grow with it. AI has evolved considerably in the last decade, currently being able to do things that seem taken out of a Sci-Fi movie, like driving cars, recognizing faces and words (written and spoken), and music genres.

While Music is definitely not the most profitable application of Machine Learning, it has benefited tremendously from Deep Learning and other ML applications. The potential AI possess in the music industry includes automating services and discovering insights and patterns to classify and/or recommend music.

We can be witnesses to this potential when we go to our preferred music streaming service (such as Spotify or Apple Music) and, based on the songs we listen to or the ones we’ve previously saved, we are given playlists of similar songs that we might also like.

Machine Learning’s ability of recognition isn’t just limited to faces or words, but it can also recognize instruments used in music. Music source separation is also a thing, where a song is taken and its original signals are separated from a mixture audio signal. We can also call this Feature Extraction and it is popularly used nowadays to aid throughout the cycle of music from composition and recording to production. All of this is doable thanks to a subfield of Music Machine Learning: Music Information Retrieval (MIR). MIR is needed for almost all applications related to Music Machine Learning. We’ll dive a bit deeper on this subfield.

Music Information Retrieval

Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is an interdisciplinary field of Computer Science, Musicology, Statistics, Signal Processing, among others; the information within music is not as simple as it looks like. MIR is used to categorize, manipulate and even create music. This is done by audio analysis, which includes pitch detection, instrument identification and extraction of harmonic, rhythmic and/or melodic information. Plain information can be easily comprehended (such as tempo (beats per minute), melody, timbre, etc.) and easily calculated through different genres. However, many music concepts considered by humans can’t be perfectly modeled to this day, given there are many factors outside music that play a role in its perception.

Getting Started

I wanted to try something more of a challenge for this post, so I am attempting to Visualize and Classify audio data using the famous GTZAN Dataset to perform an in depth analysis of sound and understand what features we can visualize/extract from this kind of data. This dataset consists of: · A collection of 10 genres with 100 audio (WAV) files each, each having a length of 30 seconds. This collection is stored in a folder called “genres_original”. · A visual representation for each audio file stored in a folder called “images_original”. The audio files were converted to Mel Spectrograms (later explained) to make them able to be classified through neural networks, which take in image representation. · 2 CVS files that contain features of the audio files. One file has a mean and variance computed over multiple features for each song (full length of 30 seconds). The second CVS file contains the same songs but split before into 3 seconds, multiplying the data times 10. For this project, I am yet again coding in Visual Studio Code. On my last project I used the Command Line from Anaconda (which is basically the same one from Windows with the python environment set up), however, for this project I need to visualize audio data and these representations can’t be done in CLI, so I will be running my code from Jupyter Lab, from Anaconda Navigator. Jupyter Lab is a web-based interactive development environment for Jupyter notebooks (documents that combine live runnable code with narrative text, equations, images and other interactive visualizations). If you haven’t installed Anaconda Navigator already, you can find the installation steps on my previous blog post. I would quickly like to mention that Tumblr has a limit of 10 images per post, and this is a lengthy project so I’ll paste the code here instead of uploading code screenshots, and only post the images of the outputs. The libraries we will be using are:

> pandas: a data analysis and manipulation library.

> numpy: to work with arrays.

> seaborn: to visualize statistical data based on matplolib.

> matplotlib.pyplot: a collection of functions to create static, animated and interactive visualizations.

> Sklearn: provides various tools for model fitting, data preprocessing, model selection and evaluation, among others.

· naive_bayes

· linear_model

· neighbors

· tree

· ensemble

· svm

· neural_network

· metrics

· preprocessing

· decomposition

· model_selection

· feature_selection

> librosa: for music and audio analysis to create MIR systems.

· display

> IPython: interactive Python

· display import Audio

> os: module to provide functions for interacting with the operating system.

> xgboost: gradient boosting library

· XGBClassifier, XGBRFClassifier

· plot_tree, plot_importance

> tensorflow:

· Keras

· Sequential and layers

Exploring Audio Data

Sounds are pressure waves, which can be represented by numbers over a time period. We first need to understand our audio data to see how it looks. Let’s begin with importing the libraries and loading the data:

import pandas as pd

import numpy as np

import seaborn as sns

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

import sklearn

import librosa

import librosa.display

import IPython.display as ipd

from IPython.display import Audio

import os

from sklearn.naive_bayes import GaussianNB

from sklearn.linear_model import SGDClassifier, LogisticRegression

from sklearn.neighbors import KNeighborsClassifier

from sklearn.tree import DecisionTreeClassifier

from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier

from sklearn.svm import SVC

from sklearn.neural_network import MLPClassifier

from xgboost import XGBClassifier, XGBRFClassifier

from xgboost import plot_tree, plot_importance

from sklearn.metrics import confusion_matrix, accuracy_score, roc_auc_score, roc_curve

from sklearn import preprocessing

from sklearn.decomposition import PCA

from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split

from sklearn.feature_selection import RFE

from tensorflow.keras import Sequential

from tensorflow.keras.layers import *

import warnings

warnings.filterwarnings('ignore')

# Loading the data

general_path = 'C:/Users/807930/Documents/Spring 2021/Emerging Trends in Technology/MusicGenre/input/gtzan-database-music-genre-classification/Data'

Now let’s load one of the files (I chose Hit Me Baby One More Time by Britney Spears):

print(list(os.listdir(f'{general_path}/genres_original/')))

#Importing 1 file to explore how our Audio Data looks.

y, sr = librosa.load(f'{general_path}/genres_original/pop/pop.00019.wav')

#Playing the audio

ipd.display(ipd.Audio(y, rate=sr, autoplay=True))

print('Sound (Sequence of vibrations):', y, '\n')

print('Sound shape:', np.shape(y), '\n')

print('Sample Rate (KHz):', sr, '\n')

# Verify length of the audio

print('Check Length of Audio:', 661794/22050)

We took the song and using the load function from the librosa library, we got an array of the audio time series (sound) and the sample rate of sound. The length of the audio is 30 seconds. Now we can trim our audio to remove the silence between songs and use the librosa.display.waveplot function to plot the audio file into a waveform. > Waveform: The waveform of an audio signal is the shape of its graph as a function of time.

# Trim silence before and after the actual audio

audio_file, _ = librosa.effects.trim(y)

print('Audio File:', audio_file, '\n')

print('Audio File Shape:', np.shape(audio_file))

#Sound Waves 2D Representation

plt.figure(figsize = (16, 6))

librosa.display.waveplot(y = audio_file, sr = sr, color = "b");

plt.title("Sound Waves in Pop 19", fontsize = 25);

After having represented the audio visually, we will plot a Fourier Transform (D) from the frequencies and amplitudes of the audio data. > Fourier Transform: A mathematical function that maps the frequency and phase content of local sections of a signal as it changes over time. This means that it takes a time-based pattern (in this case, a waveform) and retrieves the complex valued function of frequency, as a sine wave. The signal is converted into individual spectral components and provides frequency information about the signal.

#Default Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT)

n_fft = 2048 # window size

hop_length = 512 # number audio of frames between STFT columns

# Short-time Fourier transform (STFT)

D = np.abs(librosa.stft(audio_file, n_fft = n_fft, hop_length = hop_length))

print('Shape of time-frequency of the Audio File:', np.shape(D))

plt.figure(figsize = (16, 6))

plt.plot(D);

plt.title("Fourier Transform in Pop 19", fontsize = 25);

The Fourier Transform only gives us information about the frequency values and now we need a visual representation of the frequencies of the audio signal so we can calculate more audio features for our system. To do this we will plot the previous Fourier Transform (D) into a Spectrogram (DB). > Spectrogram: A visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies of a signal as it varies with time.

DB = librosa.amplitude_to_db(D, ref = np.max)

# Creating the Spectrogram

plt.figure(figsize = (16, 6))

librosa.display.specshow(DB, sr = sr, hop_length = hop_length, x_axis = 'time', y_axis = 'log'

cmap = 'cool')

plt.colorbar();

plt.title("Pop 19 Spectrogram", fontsize = 25);

The output:

Audio Features

Now that we know what the audio data looks like to python, we can proceed to extract the Audio Features. The features we will need to extract, based on the provided CSV, are: · Harmonics · Percussion · Zero Crossing Rate · Tempo · Spectral Centroid · Spectral Rollof · Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients · Chroma Frequencies Let’s start with the Harmonics and Percussive components:

# Decompose the Harmonics and Percussive components and show Representation

y_harm, y_perc = librosa.effects.hpss(audio_file)

plt.figure(figsize = (16, 6))

plt.plot(y_harm, color = 'g');

plt.plot(y_perc, color = 'm');

plt.title("Harmonics and Percussive components", fontsize = 25);

Using the librosa.effects.hpss function, we are able to separate the harmonics and percussive elements from the audio source and plot it into a visual representation.

Now we can retrieve the Zero Crossing Rate, using the librosa.zero_crossings function.

> Zero Crossing Rate: The rate of sign-changes (the number of times the signal changes value) of the audio signal during the frame.

#Total number of zero crossings

zero_crossings = librosa.zero_crossings(audio_file, pad=False)

print(sum(zero_crossings))

The Tempo (Beats per Minute) can be retrieved using the librosa.beat.beat_track function.

# Retrieving the Tempo in Pop 19

tempo, _ = librosa.beat.beat_track(y, sr = sr)

print('Tempo:', tempo , '\n')

The next feature extracted is the Spectral Centroids. > Spectral Centroid: a measure used in digital signal processing to characterize a spectrum. It determines the frequency area around which most of the signal energy concentrates.

# Calculate the Spectral Centroids

spectral_centroids = librosa.feature.spectral_centroid(audio_file, sr=sr)[0]

print('Centroids:', spectral_centroids, '\n')

print('Shape of Spectral Centroids:', spectral_centroids.shape, '\n')

# Computing the time variable for visualization

frames = range(len(spectral_centroids))

# Converts frame counts to time (seconds)

t = librosa.frames_to_time(frames)

print('Frames:', frames, '\n')

print('Time:', t)

Now that we have the shape of the spectral centroids as an array and the time variable (from frame counts), we need to create a function that normalizes the data. Normalization is a technique used to adjust the volume of audio files to a standard level which allows the file to be processed clearly. Once it’s normalized we proceed to retrieve the Spectral Rolloff.

> Spectral Rolloff: the frequency under which the cutoff of the total energy of the spectrum is contained, used to distinguish between sounds. The measure of the shape of the signal.

# Function that normalizes the Sound Data

def normalize(x, axis=0):

return sklearn.preprocessing.minmax_scale(x, axis=axis)

# Spectral RollOff Vector

spectral_rolloff = librosa.feature.spectral_rolloff(audio_file, sr=sr)[0]

plt.figure(figsize = (16, 6))

librosa.display.waveplot(audio_file, sr=sr, alpha=0.4, color = '#A300F9');

plt.plot(t, normalize(spectral_rolloff), color='#FFB100');

Using the audio file, we can continue to get the Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients, which are a set of 20 features. In Music Information Retrieval, it’s often used to describe timbre. We will employ the librosa.feature.mfcc function.

mfccs = librosa.feature.mfcc(audio_file, sr=sr)

print('Mel-Frequency Ceptral Coefficient shape:', mfccs.shape)

#Displaying the Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients:

plt.figure(figsize = (16, 6))

librosa.display.specshow(mfccs, sr=sr, x_axis='time', cmap = 'cool');

The MFCC shape is (20, 1,293), which means that the librosa.feature.mfcc function computed 20 coefficients over 1,293 frames.

mfccs = sklearn.preprocessing.scale(mfccs, axis=1)

print('Mean:', mfccs.mean(), '\n')

print('Var:', mfccs.var())

plt.figure(figsize = (16, 6))

librosa.display.specshow(mfccs, sr=sr, x_axis='time', cmap = 'cool');

Now we retrieve the Chroma Frequencies, using librosa.feature.chroma_stft. > Chroma Frequencies (or Features): are a powerful tool for analyzing music by categorizing pitches. These features capture harmonic and melodic characteristics of music.

# Increase or decrease hop_length to change how granular you want your data to be

hop_length = 5000

# Chromogram

chromagram = librosa.feature.chroma_stft(audio_file, sr=sr, hop_length=hop_length)

print('Chromogram shape:', chromagram.shape)

plt.figure(figsize=(16, 6))

librosa.display.specshow(chromagram, x_axis='time', y_axis='chroma', hop_length=hop_length, cmap='coolwarm');

The output:

Exploratory Data Analysis

Now that we have a visual understanding of what an audio file looks like, and we’ve explored a good set of features, we can perform EDA, or Exploratory Data Analysis. This is all about getting to know the data and data profiling, summarizing the dataset through descriptive statistics. We can do this by getting a description of the data, using the describe() function or head() function. The describe() function will give us a description of all the dataset rows, and the head() function will give us the written data. We will perform EDA on the csv file, which contains all of the features previously analyzed above, and use the head() function:

# Loading the CSV file

data = pd.read_csv(f'{general_path}/features_30_sec.csv')

data.head()

Now we can create the correlation matrix of the data found in the csv file, using the feature means (average). We do this to summarize our data and pass it into a Correlation Heatmap.

# Computing the Correlation Matrix

spike_cols = [col for col in data.columns if 'mean' in col]

corr = data[spike_cols].corr()

The corr() function finds a pairwise correlation of all columns, excluding non-numeric and null values.

Now we can plot the heatmap:

# Generate a mask for the upper triangle

mask = np.triu(np.ones_like(corr, dtype=np.bool))

# Set up the matplotlib figure

f, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(16, 11));

# Generate a custom diverging colormap

cmap = sns.diverging_palette(0, 25, as_cmap=True, s = 90, l = 45, n = 5)

# Draw the heatmap with the mask and correct aspect ratio

sns.heatmap(corr, mask=mask, cmap=cmap, vmax=.3, center=0,

square=True, linewidths=.5, cbar_kws={"shrink": .5}

plt.title('Correlation Heatmap (for the MEAN variables)', fontsize = 25)

plt.xticks(fontsize = 10)

plt.yticks(fontsize = 10);

Now we will take the data and, extracting the label(genre) and the tempo, we will draw a Box Plot. Box Plots visually show the distribution of numerical data through displaying percentiles and averages.

# Setting the axis for the box plot

x = data[["label", "tempo"]]

f, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(16, 9));

sns.boxplot(x = "label", y = "tempo", data = x, palette = 'husl');

plt.title('Tempo(BPM) Boxplot for Genres', fontsize = 25)

plt.xticks(fontsize = 14)

plt.yticks(fontsize = 10);

plt.xlabel("Genre", fontsize = 15)

plt.ylabel("BPM", fontsize = 15)

Now we will draw a Scatter Diagram. To do this, we need to visualize possible groups of genres:

# To visualize possible groups of genres

data = data.iloc[0:, 1:]

y = data['label']

X = data.loc[:, data.columns != 'label']

We use data.iloc to get rows and columns at integer locations, and data.loc to get rows and columns with particular labels, excluding the label column. The next step is to normalize our data:

# Normalization

cols = X.columns

min_max_scaler = preprocessing.MinMaxScaler()

np_scaled = min_max_scaler.fit_transform(X)

X = pd.DataFrame(np_scaled, columns = cols)

Using the preprocessing library, we rescale each feature to a given range. Then we add a fit to data and transform (fit_transform).

We can proceed with a Principal Component Analysis:

# Principal Component Analysis

pca = PCA(n_components=2)

principalComponents = pca.fit_transform(X)

principalDf = pd.DataFrame(data = principalComponents, columns = ['principal component 1', 'principal component 2'])

# concatenate with target label

finalDf = pd.concat([principalDf, y], axis = 1)

PCA is used to reduce dimensionality in data. The fit learns some quantities from the data. Before the fit transform, the data shape was [1000, 58], meaning there’s 1000 rows with 58 columns (in the CSV file there’s 60 columns but two of these are string values, so it leaves with 58 numeric columns).

Once we use the PCA function, and set the components number to 2 we reduce the dimension of our project from 58 to 2. We have found the optimal stretch and rotation in our 58-dimension space to see the layout in two dimensions.

After reducing the dimensional space, we lose some variance(information).

pca.explained_variance_ratio_

By using this attribute we get the explained variance ratio, which we sum to get the percentage. In this case the variance explained is 46.53% .

plt.figure(figsize = (16, 9))

sns.scatterplot(x = "principal component 1", y = "principal component 2", data = finalDf, hue = "label", alpha = 0.7,

s = 100);

plt.title('PCA on Genres', fontsize = 25)

plt.xticks(fontsize = 14)

plt.yticks(fontsize = 10);

plt.xlabel("Principal Component 1", fontsize = 15)

plt.ylabel("Principal Component 2", fontsize = 15)

plt.savefig("PCA Scattert.jpg")

The output:

Genre Classification

Now we know what our data looks like, the features it has and have analyzed the principal component on all genres. All we have left to do is to build a classifier model that will predict any new audio data input its genre. We will use the CSV with 10 times the data for this.

# Load the data

data = pd.read_csv(f'{general_path}/features_3_sec.csv')

data = data.iloc[0:, 1:]

data.head()

Once again visualizing and normalizing the data.

y = data['label'] # genre variable.

X = data.loc[:, data.columns != 'label'] #select all columns but not the labels

# Normalization

cols = X.columns

min_max_scaler = preprocessing.MinMaxScaler()

np_scaled = min_max_scaler.fit_transform(X)

# new data frame with the new scaled data.

X = pd.DataFrame(np_scaled, columns = cols)

Now we have to split the data for training. Like I did in my previous post, the proportions are (70:30). 70% of the data will be used for training and 30% of the data will be used for testing.

# Split the data for training

X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.3, random_state=42)

I tested 7 algorithms but I decided to go with K Nearest-Neighbors because I had previously used it.

knn = KNeighborsClassifier(n_neighbors=19)

knn.fit(X_train, y_train)

preds = knn.predict(X_test)

print('Accuracy', ':', round(accuracy_score(y_test, preds), 5), '\n')

# Confusion Matrix

confusion_matr = confusion_matrix(y_test, preds) #normalize = 'true'

plt.figure(figsize = (16, 9))

sns.heatmap(confusion_matr, cmap="Blues", annot=True,

xticklabels = ["blues", "classical", "country", "disco", "hiphop", "jazz", "metal", "pop", "reggae", "rock"],

yticklabels=["blues", "classical", "country", "disco", "hiphop", "jazz", "metal", "pop", "reggae", "rock"]);

The output:

References

· https://medium.com/@james_52456/machine-learning-and-the-future-of-music-an-era-of-ml-artists-9be5ef27b83e

· https://www.kaggle.com/andradaolteanu/work-w-audio-data-visualise-classify-recommend/

· https://www.kaggle.com/dapy15/music-genre-classification/notebook

· https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-start-implementing-machine-learning-to-music-4bd2edccce1f

· https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_information_retrieval

· https://pandas.pydata.org

· https://scikit-learn.org/

· https://seaborn.pydata.org

· https://matplotlib.org

· https://librosa.org/doc/main/index.html

· https://github.com/dmlc/xgboost

· https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html

· https://www.tensorflow.org/

· https://www.hindawi.com/journals/sp/2021/1651560/

[iimaginedragons]

song rec sunday

“same old war” -- our last night

if you’ve taken a look at my blog the past couple of days, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that i’d recommend an our last night track for this next srs. choosing which song to tell you guys about was so difficult, but in the end i settled for the first song that really made me fall in love with this band. the strings, guitar, and vocals build up the intro into its powerful guitar breakdown before getting straight into heavy lyrics and crisp vocals from trevor wentworth and matt wentworth, brothers and the lead singers of the band. the one guitar bit i particularly like is the slide just before the line “i feel so far from the sky”, as well as the rest of the prechorus. the hard, guitar-driven chorus beautifully communicates the difficult dilemma between fighting your mind’s disease or closing your eyes and giving in. i love that this song can convey the powerful message of standing up and fighting your mind every day even if it’s easier to give into it without making this message sound “basic”. for people who get caught deep in their own heads sometimes and who use music as an anchor, song lyrics with this message or similar ones around trying to save yourself, never giving up, etc. start to lose their power and meaning and be written off as cheesy or typical “get well” music - however, this doesn’t happen with our last night’s lyrics. their wording is simple but clever, clear but also often metaphoric, light enough to listen to just for fun but heavy enough to have an impact when needed, which i think is brilliant. this track is no exception, and same for the rest of the “oak island” album, which i think is my favourite they’ve ever put out there (closely followed by their newest album “selective hearing”). bottom line, even though this song does not contain the amount of screaming many of their other tracks do, it still holds the distinct post-hardcore sound (especially through the guitars and vocals) that make me love this genre more than any other. i’d highly recommend this song to all lovers of post-hardcore, hard rock, metalcore, and emo music, as well as to anyone who has an inner mental battle that they feel like giving up on; i think we all go through this, and - i’ll say it yet again - music can be amazing to help us cope with life’s difficulties.

---mel

[shockcity]

DD #7A - Fairness

Rating: T

Summary: Blindspot meets Daredevil and tweets about it a lot.

THIS IS PART I

Category: gen 

Warnings: none 

Part I

(Or) The Origins of the Most Amazing Crime Fighting Duo in the History of Forever

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc shoutout to my new followers! 3k & counting 👍🏼

Mel Cruz @cruzerkisses       @bspnyc I just want to tell u that I                      think what ur doing is wonderful.            Heroes like u r what the world needs.

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc to the guys that tried to hold up Lee’s bodega.  

[pic] dishonor on you!   ______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc GUESS WHO JUST SAVED MY BUTT FROM A GUY IN A FROG COSTUME?! #daredevil #NotKidding

Brad Miller @radbrad24       @bspnyc dude, why a frog? Also:                     AWESOME #daredevil  

Mel Cruz @cruzerkiss       @bspnyc R U SERIOUS

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc       @cruzerkiss IKR?!? @radbrad24        honestly, I try not to judge. Guy has          srs problems tho.

Fari D @farib29       @bspnyc pics or it didn’t happen  

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc       @farib29 LMAO if you wanna try         taking a selfie with that guy.         Personally, I like living

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc @excellentrev he came out of nowhere and KO’d the guy in like 0.5 seconds

Trevor Evans @excellentrev       @bspnyc sweet. What was he like?        His MMA creativity is off the charts

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc       @excellentrev he was rly intense?        scary but nice? Idk I was        busy fangirling man

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc @dianeplus2 nah, I’ll probably never see him again he’s like a legendary pokemon

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc HOLY CRAP it happened AGAIN. Either I’m really bad at this or DD is stalking me. #daredevil #seriouslysocool

Trevor Evans @excellentrev       @bspnyc where was this cuz       @DDsightings had him in C-town        last night.

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc       @excellentrev yeah, it’s not his usual       haunt. Idk why he’s my way. I’d ask       but…he kinda scares me.  

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc Ok got up the nerve to ask DD what he’s doing in C-town. Says there’s a ninja problem. Alrighty then. #daredevil #ninjas #apparently

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc OK so there actually r ninjas here and they SUCK so much. SO MUCH #WTH.

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc DD says I need help or I’m gonna die, so he’s gonna teach me the secret secrets of his badassery.

Trevor Evans @excellentrev       @bspnyc no freaking way dude

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc       @excellentrev I kid u not. I think…I          think I just teamed up with daredevil.       I think that’s what just happened rn.

Mel Cruz @cruzerkiss       @bspnyc is he as hot as the internet        claims?

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc        @cruzerkiss hotter

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc It’s official. I have a sensei. His name is daredevil. You may have heard of him. #daredevil #officialsidekick

_____________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc become daredevil’s sidekick and follower count goes from 3k to 50k in like four days. I see how it is #thanks

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc 1st lesson in daredevilling is going well. My ego is as bruised as my bod, which is a lot #ouch

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc Idk HOW he knows, but DD can totally see through my invisibility suit. I think he might be Dumbledore.

- Brad Miller @radbrad24       @bspnyc man dumbledore is built

- Fari D @farib29       @bspnyc is he gay too?

- Actual Blindspot @bspnyc        @farib29 the male species should be             so lucky

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc Backflip off a bridge he says. It’s easy, he says. Ninja this felon into submission, he says. It’s not hard, he says. #training #ugh

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc I need a day off but Daredevil is the MAN WITHOUT FAIRNESS

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc

URGENT!!!! EVERYONE SAY “DAREDEVIL TEMPLE” OUT LOUD!!! Pls pls life or death here!!!!!!! #daredevil #nyc #help

- Sarah Trang @sarahluv6       @bspnyc OMG what’s happening

- Trevor Evans @excellentrev       @bspnyc wow hope ur ok bro

- Mel Cruz @cruzerkiss       @bspnyc done! praying 4 u

- Brad Miller @radbrad24       @bspnyc lol guess u don’t have the       guys phone number  

- Ray Vincent @invincentable       @bspnyc got ur back man

- Jermaine Yanez @jermaine88       @bspnyc r u the ones makin all that          noise on canal st? cuz I’ve got work in          the morning

______________________________________

Actual Blindspot @bspnyc All good thank u so much guys!!! U honestly saved my life. All of you are superheroes today. Oh, and DD says thx too

_____________

Go to Part II

[itsworn]

1995 SN95 Cobra and Project Car Life: Never.Give.Up.

Life has a way of sapping the once-unrelenting passion gearheads have for our project cars. One day we wake up and realize that weeks have become years and the small setback we intended to fix the following weekend silently sidelined the build for several seasons.

Thankfully, despite all odds, the tale of this 1995 Cobra doesn’t end how you might think. Mel Josafat not only managed to keep his beloved Cobra through the ups and downs of life, but he eventually built the car of his dreams thanks to levels of dedication seldom seen. Each month he stashed $50-$100 into his dream car fund, and 15 years later he built the Cobra before you. How’s that for dedication?

Most people’s project-car story goes a little like this. When we are young and don’t have two nickels to rub together, we sink every last penny into our cars, even if it means eating cheaply until the next meager paycheck. But with age comes more money and more responsibility. There it is, the wretched R-word. Responsibility has a knack of diverting time and money into anything but a project car, no matter how special it might be.

Most would not know that a corner-killing suspension and chassis combo lurks under this clean Cobra thanks to a Max Grip Box from Maximum Motorsports.

The disconnect happens sometime between the days when we spent countless hours daydreaming beneath that poster of our dream car as a kid and the time when we assumed all those adult responsibilities. We eventually abandon our dream builds after realizing the two nickels we finally can rub together are already spent on responsibilities long before they land in the checking account.

But as we mentioned, this is not a story of shattered project car dreams or failure. Instead, this is a tale of steadfast dedication and sweet, sweet victory. To those wavering with their projects, let this be motivation to remain strong!

The slammed stance, negative front camber only looks better when you notice the Saleen front bumper and T1 rear wing atop the GT rear hood—simple, clean, and mean.

Josafat says, “When the SN95 Cobras first hit showrooms while I was in college I immediately fell in love with the sleek bodylines and the proven pushrod motor. I knew I’d do whatever it took to get one after graduation.”

True to his word, in 1996, after landing his first real job outside college, he went looking for his own Cobra. “After realizing that the then-new ’97 Cobras were out of my price range, I went looking for a used ’94/’95 Cobra with low mileage.”

Simple bolt-ons are all it takes to have fun on a road course. Thanks to a BBK CAI and shorty headers, a Bassani X-pipe, and Flowmaster mufflers, this Cobra has plenty of poke on the straights.

It took several weeks, but eventually he found a pristine, low-mileage, one-owner 1995 Cobra. It was love at first sight. “It was pristine, white, and owned by an older lady who only put 6,000 miles on it.”

Thankfully, he had a small pile of money saved up. He immediately add H&R springs and Flowmaster two-chamber mufflers to make it his own. He says, “It’s all I could afford at the time, but the mufflers and springs gave it my own style—I was just happy to finally own a Cobra.”

He daydreamed of building his Cobra into a drag car, then a show car, and eventually into a road-racer after seeing the Saleen SR in 1997. “I still vividly remember seeing the SR for the first time. My jaw dropped. It was so clean and so aggressive with the chameleon paint, the five-spoke wheels, and that wing and front bumper. It was perfect.”

With the image of the Saleen SR indelibly burned into his mind, Josafat decided that his dream build was, in fact, a road-race ready SN95 Cobra with five-spoke wheels, a Saleen front bumper and wing, and full Maximum Motorsports suspension. The only problem was, he was broke. But that didn’t matter in his case because in the absence of money he had diehard commitment.

“I have never had deep pockets, but thankfully I was able to add a few mods in the first year before I could not afford to do anything for over a decade,” he explains.

Few rollers look better on an SN95 than these 18×9.5 front and 18×11 rear Simmons FRs wrapped in Sumitomo rubber and hiding a Brembo front big brake kit with two-piece rotors.

He diligently saved money every month, and in the first year he managed to have a custom set of 18-inch Simmons five-spoke, three-piece wheels imported into the U.S. via Group-A Autotrend. If you ask us, there’s no better wheel for his combo. Perfection!

“I never lost sight of my dream,” says Josafat, “but the responsibilities [There’s that R-word again! —Ed.] of life and the expense of the parts I wanted meant I would not add many parts for over 15 years.”

While he would not mod his beloved Cobra for a long time, in the ensuing 15 years his Cobra served him well as a daily driver for over 140,000 miles and through several moves, all without garages, and it continued to mature with him through a marriage and the birth of his sons.

“For years I daily drove the car and it sat outside, but I always took care of it, keeping it clean and covered every night,” Josafat says. “There were some months it was really hard to put that money in the bank, when times were rough and I sold a lot of things to stay afloat. The thought of selling the car entered my mind, but only for a minute. Thankfully, my wife was always supportive of the car.”

And so month after month, Josafat added small amounts of money to a savings account that slowly grew as the years and miles wore on. “I had my eye on a Maximum Motorsports Max Grip Box for years, and after I got married in 2010 my wife told me that I’d better finish the car before the kids came. Thankfully, she helped me fulfill my goals for the car.”

With the support of his wife and his monthly contribution of no more than $100, he depleted his savings account and threw the books at it with a complete makeover thanks to a Maximum Motorsports Max Grip Box installed by Matt Medeiros of Performance Technic. As you know, a Max Grip Box will turn any Mustang into a complete corner killer thanks to an entire suspension overhaul with a tubular K-member and A-arms, coilovers, caster-camber plates, a torque arm, a Panhard bar, lower control arms, an upgraded steering shaft, chassis bracing, and much more.

Josafat  says, “The Max Grip Box was a complete game changer. It literally took the car from fun to absolutely insane in the canyons and on track.”

The newfound grip and handling prowess drove him to attend several track days, where the car was much better than he was. “I spun out several times at Thunder Hill during my first track day. The car was great, but I needed some work.”

It had taken him nearly two decades to get the car to this point, but with the greenlight before his children were born, he spent the next six months hitting it with serious upgrades.

“Since I was bitten by the track bug, I decided to add some safety, braking, and chassis and engine upgrades to finish it off,” Josafat tells us. The safety upgrades came in the form of a Maximum Motorsports roll bar, a Cobra driver’s seat with RCI harnesses, and a Sparco steering wheel with an NRG quick-release hub.

When he wanted more speed on the straights, he added a BBK Performance CAI and shorty headers, along with a Bassani X-pipe. Energy Suspension engine mounts keep the motor secured, while a Fluidyne radiator keeps it cool. Ford Performance 3.73 gears also help performance, and a Torsen differential with a T/A girdle and Moser 31-spline axles help put the power down.

Speaking of traction, a performance alignment from Roger Kraus Racing with more negative camber and max caster, along with Maximum Motorsports full-length subframe connectors, added to the Cobra’s handling prowess. Of course, we cannot forget the Brembo big brake kit with two-piece front rotors.

While the OG Simmons wheels make us drool, they would not be anything without the rest of the package, completed thanks to a Saleen front bumper and T1 wing mounted atop a GT trunk lid, which was actually sourced from a local Pick n’ Pull.

We often talk about a cohesiveness that makes certain cars stand out, and truthfully, it’s hard to define it because there is no one path to greatness. For Josafat, his road to Mustang greatness wasn’t lined with deep pockets and a mile-long mod list. Instead, while his car’s cohesiveness is striking, what’s most compelling is the blood, sweat, and tears this car oozes—it doesn’t take long to see this car has heart. Every mile it has rolled, ever nick or blemish it has amassed, is another story to tell and another memory to recall.

“I love this car,” says Josafat, as if there could be any doubt. “It’s been around forever, and it’s part of so many stories. It’s like a tattoo, I remember every story and moment with it—the sacrifice and determination it took to keep it all these years taught me a lot about sticking to something.”

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[scnapersonal-blog]

I’ve been in a private-messaging circle-jerk with the Kiwis for the last several days which has grown to about 25 pages

In that time, I learn the most shocking thing: somebody had acquired SRS who should frankly be intellectually incapable of receiving it by differentially diagnostic exclusive criteria.

Cuntster was the one who had made the announcement with his usual gaslighting shtick.

His inability to convince me of the absence of these emotional needs aside, I’ve written a parting exposition to that group today regarding how they even conspoired to sabotage my college entrance, but ultimately, with a context critical not of psychiatry, but psychiatry’s politically contextual use (NobleGreyHorse then ignorantly rambled on about Scientology as if they’re going to save any Aspergians in the upcoming Transsexual Imperium):

: All I really care about is that he chose someone of blood which will spare me of the worst-case scenario fate for when I really need to leave Scotland in the upcoming transsexual imperialist-induced Asperger genocide in the future. Low-mid caste status under leadership of my brother down the line is a fine staying scenario for me. It's the best choice I could've made whilst I discuss with Lennihan this Friday rehab. No, I'm serious; I want to go to rehab (so basically the anti-Winehouse; well, she was a real Jew, lol) and I want it to work, I want my reliance on opiates to stop and I want to be able to stay off them long-term either with the assistance of opiate-substitutes with a view to coming off them all altogether in a tapered fashion as should've been the case all along. I need to contact my SW to see if he has obtained the original copy of my SQA certificate yet from the college which I left having forgotten to pick it up after they'd photocopied it (they didn't make their cues clear in the interview process; that, as far as I'm concerned, was purposeful until recovery of this materialises). If he has, I can look to January options after having recovered in rehab, or, if that takes longer, next year options; same course, same level. I want, as an ideal, a hum-drum, office-going life, uncaring of how that pays -- if it's barely the living wage, well, emphasis on living. A single person regardless of sex can live comfortably off about £14,000 a year. Whatever you have to say about work-shops to be condescending or whatever, surely you should be able to foresee that in my abilities post-recovery. We'll never meet eye-to-eye on this gender stuff. Let's make that clear. I'm presenting as female as we speak, however "poorly". This isn't about sexual gratification or blahblahblah with this recent spurning by someone I misinterpreted had romantic interest for me, I've kind of meekly rescinded into quasi-asexualism-by-choice/celibacy, not because I don't have romantic desires, but in acknowledgement of my compete relationship exceptionalism. I'm self-aware of that much. I wasn't out to get cock. Being female was an emotional need, regardless if you believe it or not. Being remotely close to where my sister already was in her early-20s; moderately well-paying admin work subsidiary to a human resource's department but still in supervisorial role of call-centre staff -- I can communicate quickly, bark commands, co-ordinate myself under-pressure, and think fast on my feet when stabilized but nevertheless pressured, if that makes sense, having managed cults on Skype being my closest informal experience but nevertheless imparting very useful skills in that area, would be nice. The tertiary talisman I seek in particular is a 2-year Business degree. Maybe that'll become a 4-year far down the line, part-time. It's not my intellectual incapaciousness that ever let me down contrary to Cuntster's ramblings. He was on the money with the emotional instability things and why that could be a red flag with respect to admissions. The main problem was that autism-centric support was condescending and frankly disrespective of my new identitarian needs. Autism being a poison to my identity is most certainly a viable maxim; it's an excuse bordering on ludicrous not only for my mother to keep pressuring me to stay on benefits for her own sake, but for Cuntster to patronize me with this garbage about 'tard-wrangling work-shops? I don't even think Mel's IQ estimate would have me performing that work, to be honest. That is the stuff of Down syndromic people and severe schizophrenics who, content with their executively dysfunctional state, understandably want to occupy their time, but completely inappropriate in my functional predicament, which is objectively a bit higher; mid-road between that and a neurotypical on a social level given the right conditions and accomodations. I just need to stop making stupid, random relationships, like with prison gangsters, or with random junkies at bus-stops, and exercise better judgement. How I move on from there is indeterminate and difficult, but I know I won't be applying to the same college twice; Cuntster has made it implicitly clear they're ex-NHS and are employed there now, and explicitly so with the conversations I overheard. Besides, with Beth Brownlee's condescending attitude towards neurological hypermales, a discrimination case should be launched against them regardless of my attendance or not, and will be pursued courtesy of my legal contact. That truly is toxic to your college's environment. Your Business department would benefit from an increased number of autists in attendance for a number of reasons I could cite but deep down, you know them all; you know the studies of female inefficiencies and failures in their integration into the work place; you know how the neurological female at its near-extremes is toxic enough, let alone to when it gets so close to mental illness that you're the inevitable result, @Cuntster. Indeed, since gender dysphoria is one anyway, perhaps an employment tribunal should be launched against you, for, if I remember correctly, you had tried, in your pursuit of a PhD., to get medically licensed, but were too unstable and so pre-emptively disbarred. Wise move on the end of the General Medical Council. Your abuse of sodium valproate has done nothing to change that, as demonstrated in your sadistic trolling callousness here, and your bribing of medical professionals in Britain to support the transsexualism diagnosis and SRS of a testable mental exceptional individual overseas for recommendation purposes (Dr. Haselgrove was one of the psychiatrists involved in Robert Wayne Stiles' SRS recommendations, apparently motivated entirely by spite). The internationalism of psychiatry, a Trotskyist influenced strand of thought owing to the work of the Frankfurt school leftists in the first instance, where catecholamine alchemy is used to lineraize and psychopathize the thought processess of otherwise creatively independent beings (see: North Korea in its natural state, where the only antidepressant is codeine and the only cure for schizophrenia is methamphetamine), shows itself in the permission of a verifiable exceptional individual to become transsexual entirely out of spite, whilst denying their intellectual superior of the same conditional predicament (and that's not a claim of graniodisty: verifiably, where Natalie is on the IQ bell curve, nearly everybody around her is smarter than her and as such he should've never been allowed to make the decision, let alone undertake it; I'm pretty mediocre, and that's probably the best thing going for me in support of proving my stability for transsexualism-ascension reasons) for similarly emotionally fickle reasons unbefitting of the supposedly objective spirit of a "science" psychiatry feigns to be, but fails to embody. Being nice, being superficially appeasing to the sensitivities of psychiatrists, being of a personality type that's likeable, are not objective criterion of psychiatric disorders, but human vulnerabilities in the stupidity of its nature Haselgrove, despite his/her (I'm still unsure tbh; I'm stuck between "masculine cisgender female" and "cryptic-intersex MAAB for a long time", but either is condescending enough) supposed superior intelligence, fell folly to in the final analysis of its endorsement of Natalie Sharp's transition to spite the Cde. and General Sopiya Jangeun, showing psychiatry not to be science so much as pseudoscience in its politically charged nature of use. Indeed, when we see Lennihan verifiably speak of his confidence in persuading either the college in question, or, as he put it, "a college", to grant me entrance to a course, either now or down the line, we see psychiatry's use in a more political than objectively academic, analytical, or scientific purpose; all the more so for the impetuous actions of Haselgrove, who had sought to use its agent Cuntster, whether that is himself, or an intermediary, to try and deconstruct my ego to nothing in what is nothing short of psychopathically backwards sadism which makes the North Korean 49s look enlightened by comparison. Conclusively, this has been a certain adventure in the exploration of the psychiatric lobby's use of individuals to wield political influence in the destruction of "undesirables" in very specifically targeted ways that could be evidenced by strong circumstantial evidence in all cases; the sudden "disappearance" of my record being one of them when my SW either fails to recover it, or MySQA comes back online to show, incorrectly, that I left school with nothing. That will have been a mixture of Fareal and Cuntster's work; it would reveal that their purpose was not to stabilize, help, reason, or whatever with myself, but purely in a long-haul sabotage to destroy, life-ruin, and everything suspected of every self-serving hypocrisy I could accuse psychiatry of engaging in, and evidentiary of psychiatry as a tool of hypocritical self-servitude, for that matter. That's whether Cuntster has tried to appeal to Haselgrove intermediarily, or, has acted in split-differentiated/disassociative fashion, or, used other means in the chain of command to otherwise sabotage my life. "Chukjibop" may well be a metaphor, but it encapsulates perfectly the stupendous efforts of the NHS to destroy the offspring of a paedophile simply because of the primary school logic of "ah dinnae like him that much naww"; a primitive, Scotland-bastardized version of Songbun. I was made to be representative of my father's misdemeanours on numerous occasions and denied attribution of my remorse in an emulation of the emotional torture sustained by the National Socialist Prisoner of War Hoess during his incarceration in the British political prison system. However, "chukjibop" may also literally encapsulate the spirit of the speed and the ardour with which an Aspergian must do things in the future in order to prevent all and any forms of neurotypical sabotage and be weary of their trust of them, using the destruction of my person at every level of my existence, even staging a junkie to meet at a bus stop to appeal to my addictions on an emotional level (I wouldn't be surprised if that was Cuntster's staging), as an example of why neurotypicals must be regarded untrustworthy by Aspergians and approached on wearily, diplomatically precautious and "ten-foot-pole" terms; they are not friendlies, but are inimical to you when their psychopathic masks slip from not appeasing their emotionally faux-sensitive pseudo-vulnerabilities of untempered rage, vengeance, aggression, negroidality, and other primitive emotions only attributable to neurotypical psychopaths, for which it is all they are capable. It is only Monday, and I ultimately have until Friday to go; I'll be semi-active in this PM, but would prefer if KiwiFarms contact went strictly off limits, as articles, particularly in admonishment of how Natalie has unethically been given surgical procedures beyond his intellectual ability to comprehend, and how the diplomatic discussions between myself, LagoonaBlue, and ash_and_stone were misrepresented by Cuntster, need to be composed, edited, and accordingly published by ASMG members of staff; the active ones are 1 editor, as the rest cannot presently be reached by myself due to managerial duress and overload. Even autistic self-run concerns need their own accomodations, y'know. I'm not that delusional of my "powers" or abilities. Consider my analysis of the way Cuntster has manipulatively tried to throw the burdensome onus on me for sabotages he himself had planned and expected me ton combat in chasing for random, at-best-insinuated happenstances like a headless chicken, whether that be the implicit threats on the Farms in collusion with others, or the explicit boasts between himself, Atesh and Brownlee, whether that was in misrepresentation of my politics to portray me incorrectly as too "extreme" for the college environment, or colluding with Brownless to retroactively manipulate past records to include more extreme incidents in-class than had ever occurred in previous iterations of the course. Brady is innocent, of course, far too overworked to have a clue of the conspiracy going on. This shall be copied directly to her, solely for her contemplative benefit, and also to see if she can figure out who Cuntster is and fire him (c'mon, a 6'7'', moderately tanned, post-operative transsexual with idiosyncratic racial features can't be that hard to spot), accordingly.

-- myself, PM sent yesterday, some time late last night

In closing, too, because they had, as we say in the transsexual community, “ascended” somebody with diagnosed mental insufficiency/intellectual disability:

Robert Wayne Stiles is an ethics case. Failing to score above the intellectual disability threshold on an IQ test at any stage in life -- something I can proudly say I've never done even on my worst mark-downs -- is exclusion criteria for surgery, where-ever you are and whatever money you bribe. It demands investigation.

To which end I pledged writing to various editorial councils about it. SRS is irreversible, but the minimal punishment for him should be group home incarceration, and the minimal punishment for those who had written his recommendations with his worst interests at heart should be disbarring from respective medical councils.

[conversationswithmel]

When Cuba Gooding Sr. passed away on April 20, 2017, the first person I thought of was Mel. I remember him with stories of working at RCA records when Papi Cuba’s group, The Main Ingredient, was recording. I asked Mel about it one afternoon while we were on I-83-N in Baltimore, driving home from the Baltimore Farmer’s Market.

Me: remind me of when you saw main ingredient at rca records.

Mel: It had to be ‘72. I worked at RCA records in the mail room with the potential of going to the RCA Institute. {Editor’s note: See the next post for more general info on the job at RCA.}

That’s were I worked when we got married. Cuba Gooding was there. There were other groups there, but I remember his; the main one. I remember Tony Silvester - he was the light skinned guy with the beard. And there was Luther, I think his name was Luther, who was the dark skinned one…one of them died early, I think it was Luther, I am not sure. . . . He was a replacement. The first song that came out did not have him [Cuba] on it. . . . I saw a looooot of action. I was allowed to go into the recording studio and see them. I saw situations where their wives or girlfriends would show up and they would get caught. There would be a lot of violence going on in the hallway. One time, of them - his wife came out of the elevator and another girl was sitting on his lap. Everybody ran! I was gone too! I don’t know which one it was, I don’t think it was Cuba. He acted a little silly to me. He used to be in the elevator [Mel mimicks goofy sounding vocal warm up sounds], you know. And he wore tight pants with little skinny hats. He couldn’t dress to save his life. . . . Me: So did you ever hear them recording?

Mel: Yeah. The one I heard was Happiness is Just Around the Bend (click the title for the song). I actually like Cuba Gooding’s voice. I like his singing. He is a great singer. A knucklehead, but a great singer.

[ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes]

Field of Poppies Part 2

Summary: After being apart for six years, childhood friends Tommy and Amelia reunite under odd circumstances. Tommy is an outspoken young man and Amelia is pregnant and out on the streets. The bond of family can be unbreakable but it is tested often. Especially when Europe descends into war.

Part 2: Amelia notices changes in Tommy but also notices changes in herself. 

             It took some time before Amelia was at least a little bit settled, a couple of weeks to be exact. Polly had warned all of the Shelby children to leave the young woman be and to let her figure out her place. That meant no asking about what happened in London, no asking about the baby, and no asking about the father of said baby. Instead, they talked to her about the things they’d been up to. A very short list, honestly. After all, they were all in Small Heath the entire time. The only thing that really changed was the death of their mother and their ages.

            Although, Amelia did notice change in Tommy. He was a bit quieter than he was as a young teenager. Not as loud or rambunctious. However, he was still passionate. Still had an enthusiasm for horses and guns. But there was something budding that she noticed as soon as he started talking about it.

           ~~~~~~~~~~~

            “Now there’s a grocer looking for a shop-girl. I’ve just spoken to his wife and I think they’d be good employers. They know you’re pregnant so they would make you do anything too taxing. Best you’re not lifting anything too heavy.” Polly said after sitting down with Amelia late one afternoon. “But if that doesn’t work out, there’s always work in one of the factories.”

            Tommy who was listening in took instant offense to Polly’s suggestion. “She’s not working in a fucking factory, Pol.” He snapped protectively.

            “She has a baby on the way, she’s going to need the money.” His aunt insisted. “Here you have to take whatever you can get, you know that.”

            “You know what happens in those shitholes. People lose limbs to the machines and the bosses don’t give a fuck. They don’t even pay ‘em a decent wage.” He spoke with such anger in his voice. It was obviously something he cared a lot about. And since none of the Shelbys worked in factories, she could only assume it was based on friends he knew. What she did know was Tommy always had a big heart and especially hated injustice. She could recall several instances of him raising his voice over things he didn’t think were right or fair. On one such occasion, they couldn’t have been more than ten, he stood up for Curly because a couple of kids were making fun of the way he talked. When they refused to apologize, Tommy jumped the biggest kid of the pack and broke his nose. After that, the rest of the group hurried off.

            “I’m not disagreeing with you, Thomas, I’m just saying.”

            “She doesn’t need to work; we’ll take care of her.” He leaned against the counter.

            “That’s very sweet of you Tommy, but I’m sure you all have enough on your plate. I really don’t mind working.” In fact, Amelia felt like she didn’t have a choice. She could rely on the Shelbys for housing for a bit. But she wasn’t going to take money from them. If Arthur Sr was absent then that meant Polly was probably trying to make ends meet for the entire household. With money from the odd jobs that Tommy and Arthur did, that would mean there was only enough for them. Amelia felt it wasn’t her place to put more of a burden on the family.

            “Well, soon we’re going to have a betting shop. We’ll make plenty of money and you won’t have to work.” He brushed aside her concern.

            Polly threw a hand up. “This again…”

            “Betting shop?” Amelia raised an eyebrow. It was the first she’d heard of the venture.

            “Yep.” Tommy nodded proudly. “Arthur and I have already been taking bets for races. We’ve saved enough to buy the place next door for practically nothing. The last owner got kicked out. We’ll set it up as a betting shop.”

            “An illegal betting shop,” Polly interjected. “No one with any good sense would give you two a fucking betting license.”

            He just shrugged. “Don’t need a license if we don’t get caught.” He reminded her as if it were sage advice.

            His aunt scoffed and rolled her eyes. “That arrogance will get you locked up or killed one day.” She pointed a finger at him.

            Amelia had to agree with her. “Do you think it’s such a good idea?” She added.

            “Maybe not a good idea, but it’ll make money. We’ve already made more money this week than we would’ve made in a month. With a shop front, we’ll make triple that.” He was so self-assured that Amelia couldn’t help but believe that he would make it happen one day. She never knew Tommy to be a quitter. That’s why she worried.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

            Luckily, the grocer hired Amelia to work the till at the shop. She fell into a nice routine fairly quickly. The hours weren’t too long, but they kept her occupied which was godsent. If she was busy working, she didn’t have to sit with her thoughts. The only time she worried about her future was at night if she couldn’t sleep.

            As she became more settled with her routine, she felt like she could open up a bit more. For the most part, she didn’t say much when she was around the Shelbys. She engaged in conversation, but only to discuss what they were already talking about. She had no stories to tell. And it remained that way until Tommy began showing up to eat lunch with her a couple of days a week.

            She’d take her lunch break with him by the back door of the shop, eating what Polly had packed for them that morning. They made use of the empty crates to sit on and use as makeshift tables. The alleyway was grungy and cramped but it was exactly what they’d grown up with. There was a time when Amelia knew the back alleys of Small Heath so well, she could probably run them blindfolded. They’d run through the pathways like obstacle courses, ducking beneath clotheslines, and leaping over boxes and trash. It was hard to really take in the dilapidated area when they were running so fast through it.

            But at lunch, they sat, not really minding the smell like someone who was used to clean air might have. Amelia would give scraps to the cats that wandered around the neighborhood as Tommy talked. But it was hard to keep a conversation when only one person was really saying anything while the other simply agreed or nodded.

             “So, are you going to tell me what happened?” Tommy asked one day.

            “What do you mean?” Amelia didn’t meet his eyes because she had a feeling what he meant.

            “What happened in London.” He clarified. It had been weeks and Tommy was a bit worried about what she was keeping from them. Before she moved, there was nothing Amelia wouldn’t tell him. She was absolute shit at keeping secrets. If he had been trying to keep something from Polly or his mother, he would never tell Amelia. Sometimes she hardly even knew she was blabbing the secret until it was out of her mouth.

            Now she was closed off and hardly even acted like the same person. It made him a bit disappointed. He’d been so excited to see her but it didn’t feel like how things used to be. Granted, they were older, but he assumed they would still have the same bond they had before.

            Amelia chewed on her lower lip and kept her eyes on the sandwich in her hands. “I don’t know if you really want to know all the details, Tom. I don’t think it really matters anymore.”

            “Matters to me.” He insisted. “I mean, if you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. I just…” He shrugged. “You’re just not like yourself these days and I wanted to know why. I wanted to know if you were okay.”

            It had been a while since Amelia felt like anyone truly cared for her. And she couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed with the idea that Tommy cared enough to really listen to her. But she still felt so embarrassed by the circumstances that had landed her back in Birmingham. So much so that it brought tears to her eyes. “I just feel so lost.” She admitted after wiping her tears with the back of her sleeve. “I’ve felt lost ever since we left for London. I couldn’t find my place there, no matter how hard I tried. I thought maybe coming back here I’d feel better but I don’t. I feel like there’s no place for me anymore.”  

            Tommy set his lunch aside and stood up. “C’mon, you know you always have a place here.” He tried to comfort her as best he could.

            “It’s not the same. I have no fucking idea what I’m going to do. I mean what am I going to do with a baby? I’ve got no family, nothing. What happens when he or she grows up and they find out the truth? God, what they’ll think of me.” She stifled a sob.

            “C’mere, s’alright.” He murmured and sat down beside her so he could wrap an arm around her shoulders. “You’ve got a family here, yeah? We’re gonna look after you. I was serious about the betting shop.”

            “Tommy…”

            “Things are changing, Mel.” He said in a quiet but encouraged voice. “People aren’t happy with the way this place is being run. We’re not gonna let the rich walk all over us anymore.”

            She searched his blue eyes, at a complete loss. “What are you talking about?”

            “There’s a girl I met named Greta. She invited me to a meeting about unions. This could be the start of people deciding things for themselves instead of being bossed around by people. People who’ve never worked a day in their fucking lives.” He spoke with such animation that one could do nothing but believe him.

            “Tom…” Amelia sighed and let her chin fall to her chest, disappointed that she had to be the voice of reason. Disappointed that she had to dash his ambition. “I believe that you want to change the world. And I believe that if anyone had the ability to do it, it’s you. But you can’t just expect the world to turn upside down in a matter of days or even years.”

            He let his arm slip away from her shoulders. He wasn’t angry, she wasn’t the first person to doubt. But it was disheartening to know that she wouldn’t be on board with the idea. He thought she might take to it, but it was an ideology that not everyone would accept.

            “I’m sorry.” Amelia bit her lip. “That was shit of me to say.”

            “No, s’alright.” He rubbed the back of his neck and retreated back to his spot across from her. He balled up the wax paper his sandwich had been wrapped in. With a distracted aim, he tossed the ball at a nearby trash bin. It bounced off the side and rolled to the ground. But Tommy didn’t get up to retrieve it.

            “I just can’t focus on the rest of the world right now.” She frowned and rubbed her eyes. “It’s all too much to begin with but to think of…revolutions and-”

            “You think I’m mad then?” Tommy cracked a smile, drawing her eyes back to him.

            A light smile played on her lips but she shook her head. “No. I think you’re very well-intentioned. You always have been, always stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves. I just think you have high hopes for the world.”

            He shrugged. “Maybe. But if no one else does, then we aren’t gonna solve anything.”  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

            Before work, Amelia would walk Finn and Ada to school. This way, Polly didn’t have to lug Finn along in the pram, instead, she could tend to him at home. She would hold Ada’s hand as they made their way down the grimy streets of Small Heath. Neighbors would greet them and sometimes other kids would tag along.

            John had a fondness for splashing in every puddle he could find and gawking at every car that might pass them by. He was taken by automobiles and always told Amelia that when he was older, he was going to have the biggest, fanciest, most expensive car ever made. She would just smile and nod. Who was she to tell him that people in Small Heath never scraped their way to the top? They were the forgotten ones of society. No one cared whether they had enough money to eat let alone enough money to ever own a car.

            “Daddy’s coming home for my birthday.” Ada chirped to Amelia one day on their way to school.

            “No, he’s not.” John retorted from a few steps ahead of them.

            “John,” Amelia said in a warning tone. The subject of Arthur sr. was very touchy, especially for the youngest of the Shelbys. Ada and certainly Finn didn’t understand why he wasn’t around. It was difficult enough losing a mother but losing a father so shortly after would be even more challenging. Amelia could have issues with her parents but she felt they weren’t comparable to what the Shelbys faced. Especially at such a young age.

            “Yes, he is, it’s my birthday and he has to come home.” Ada asserted.    

            “He didn’t come home for my birthday.” He turned to glare at his sister. “So why would he come for yours?”

            It didn’t take much to make Ada cry. Although the young girl was strong-willed and tried to be tough like her brothers, she had a sensitive heart.

            “John, apologize to your sister right now.” Amelia ordered.

            “For what?” He shot back in a bewildered voice. “M’just telling the truth, she’s acting like a baby!”

            Ada burst into tears and shoved past them both, running the last block to the schoolyard.

            “What an awful thing to say, I hope you say you're sorry.”

            John just kicked at a stray pebble on the street. “It’s the truth. Mum said we hafta tell the truth, so I did. Dad don’t care ‘bout any of us.” He shrugged and glanced the other way when a group of boys called his name. “She’ll forget by dinner, Mellie.” He promised and went to catch up with his friends.

            Amelia stood in the street watching the kids all heading to class. An awful feeling settled in her stomach when she realized what she was up against in the coming years. A child asking who their father was. Where he was. Why he wasn’t there. Would she take the brunt of the anger? Would her child blame her for their father being absent? It was just another thing to add to the pile of scenarios she had to worry about. One more thing added to the list.

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