#that and binging Judging Amy several times over

[innytoes]

Anything else from the foster au that you're willing to share? I'm a sucker for foster care fics and I can't wait until this gets posted!

I can't wait to post it though right now I'd settle for 'stop adding more chapters, me'.

I too am a sucker for Foster Care AUs and also Best Dad Ray Molina, so here's some Ray being a good (foster) dad, a snippet where Ray wonders if Reggie is maybe more of an auditory learner after he flunked a test he studied hard for:

“How about for your next test, I read the chapters out loud for you?” Ray suggested. “And we’ll see if that makes any difference.” “I don’t want to waste your time,” Reggie said. That sounded like a lot of work, and Ray had his own kids to worry about, and his job, and fending off Aunt Victoria’s comments about how they were eating spaghetti again by making macaroni instead. “It’s not time wasted if I’m hanging out with you,” Ray said, giving him a smile. “Let’s give it a try, and see if it helps, alright? If not, we’ll try something else.” The tears that prickled at the edges of Reggie’s eyes weren’t in frustration this time. “Okay,” he agreed.

[tabloidtoc]

Globe, April 20

Cover: Kenny Rogers’ body is still on ice -- why his widow won’t bury him 

Page 2: Up Front & Personal -- Sloppy Tyra Banks, Gary Busey grocery shopping in Beverly Hills, Brian Austin Green grabs meals to go 

Page 3: Lisa Marie Presley is living large, puffy-faced Goldie Hawn hikes to her California home, Chris Pratt spring cleaning 

Page 4: Bindi Irwin has another surprise in store after pulling off her secret Australia Zoo wedding to Chandler Powell -- she’s pregnant 

Page 5: A bank has asked the LA Sheriff’s Office to force Tori Spelling to pay a $89,000 credit card debt and her money-bags mom Candy Spelling has once again refused to help, Patrick Stewart secretly married his third wife singer-songwriter Sunny Ozell in a Mexican restaurant in California with Ian McKellen officiating 

Page 6: Catherine Zeta-Jones admits she’s a bitch and being polite to fans pushes her over the edge 

Page 7: Spoiler Alert for Grey’s Anatomy -- Ellen Pompeo who has starred as Dr. Meredith Grey for 15 seasons will be killed off next season in a blockbuster story line

Page 8: Now that he’s moving to California rogue royal Prince Harry plans to turn his years as a stoner into a king’s ransom by launching a huge marijuana business empire -- Harry and wife Meghan Markle are slapping down $9 million for a 286- acre pot farm near Clear Lake in north central California to fuel their flashy new Hollywood lifestyle 

Page 10: Jon Voight tells his daughter Angelina Jolie to back off of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston

Page 11: Law & Order vet Elisabeth Rohm has called off her year-long engagement to California judge Jonathan Colby on good terms but the two have different priorities at this time, the handwritten lyrics to Hey Jude by Paul McCartney are set to sell for nearly $200,000 at a massive online Beatles auction 

Page 12: Celebrity Buzz -- Conan O’Brien rides a bike through Brentwood, Ellen DeGeneres has been recently blasted as one of the meanest people alive, Amy Poehler is co-founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade in Hollywood and NYC and the comedy clubs and improv schools laid off most staff without notice or severance or health coverage and only after embarrassing press and online comments trashed the millionaire she finally will provide funds for a one-month extension to healthcare for the full-time benefit eligible staff, Little Big Town singer Kimberly Schlapman says she’s 100% sure her 12-year-old daughter Daisy was a heaven-sent miracle thanks to her deceased first husband Steven Roads, Woody Allen outcreeps himself by spilling in his memoir the details of bedding both sisters of his former muse and live-in girlfriend Diane Keaton, Ramona Singer of RHONYC did away with the housecleaners due to coronavirus and posted a picture of herself mopping in a sexy nightie 

Page 13: Frumpy Kate Hudson, Sean Penn’s silver roots start to show, Maud Adams walks her dog, Kristen Stewart relies on the company of ghosts 

Page 14: Seth Rogen has a new pastime: watching flick flops like Cats while flying high, Demi Lovato’s got something to sing about -- a brand new ripped boyfriend named Max Ehrich who loves showing off his astonishing pecs, Fashion Verdict -- Emily Blunt 5/10, Noomi Rapace 3/10, Christina Aguilera 2/10, Cardi B 4/10 

Page 16: Rihanna vows to have up to four children in ten years with or without a man, Superman never carried an ounce of flab but his alter ego Dean Cain has piled on an unhealthy 50 pounds and is gobbling supersize portions of pizza and fast food to find comfort because of his nose-diving career 

Page 17: Inked-up train wreck Aaron Carter declared himself single in a nude photo after his girlfriend Melanie Martin whose name was just tattooed on his face was collared for felony domestic violence 

Page 19: 10 Things You Don’t Know About Scarlett Johansson, Luann de Lesseps confesses she’s still tippling even after her shameful drunken bust, stuck in lockdown Courteney Cox is binge-watching her sitcom Friends and was shocked to realize she can’t remember most of the series that made her rich and famous 

Page 20: True Crime 

Page 23: Former boxing champ Mike Tyson is dropping shocking confessions including having sex with fans, drug binges, psychedelic trips and being pen pals with England’s most vicious gangster 

Page 24: Cover Story -- a furious family feud is exploding over late country great Kenny Rogers whose body is being kept on ice because his widow Wanda Rogers wants to hold a massive send-off that’s now banned by the coronavirus lockdown 

Page 26: Health Report 

Page 29: Eminem gushes that being able to raise kids is one of his greatest accomplishments, former steroids user and New York Mets catcher Paul Lo Duca is raging over how fellow cheater Alex Rodriguez has revived his image as an A-list celeb and is slamming the retired New York Yankees slugger as one of the fakest people out there, Alicia Keys felt manipulated and objectified by a sleazy photographer who made her open her shirt and yank down the top of her jeans when she was only 19 

Page 30: Former teen sex slave Virginia Roberts Giuffre who claims she was pimped out to Britain’s Prince Andrew by pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is now charging the kinky billionaire and his mistress Ghislaine Maxwell pressured her to carry his child through surrogacy 

Page 31: Steve Carell shockingly quit his hit show The Office at the peak of its popularity because he wasn’t feeling the love from showrunners 

Page 32: Single mom-of-three Kourtney Kardashian is so lonely and desperate for love she’s stopped being set up by Hollywood pals and is casting her fishing net for a man online, a London collector of James Bond guns was robbed of five pistols used in 007 flicks worth a staggering $125,000, a sweaty towel that late NBA star Kobe Bryant tossed over his shoulders as he bid goodbye to basketball has shockingly sold for more than $33,000 

Page 38: Real Life 

Page 40: Daniel Craig is worth about $180 million thanks to playing James Bond but he’s got bad news for his kids -- he’s cutting them off without a cent because he finds inheritance distasteful -- he has a 28-year-old daughter from his first marriage to Fiona Loudon and a two-year-old daughter with current wife Rachel Weisz, busted in the college admissions cheating scandal Lori Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giannulli are accusing the prosecution of strong-arming its key witness to lie that they knew their payments were bribes and not donations to the university 

Page 44: Straight Talk -- newly leaked video is yet more proof that desperate loser Kanye West is a filthy parasite who’s been trying to save his fizzling career by leeching onto superstar songbird Taylor Swift 

Page 45: George Clooney is in hot water now that Nespresso the coffee giant he shills for on TV has admitted buying beans from farms that pay kids pennies for laboring in the fields, dumpy Drew Barrymore is hitting rock bottom again with her weight and is tired of blubbering in her closet over clothes that don’t fit and has vowed to give the extra weight the heave-ho before her new daytime talk show gets going 

Page 47: Hollywood Flashback -- Psycho, Bizarre But True 

[falseroar]

Dark Laughter Part 9: Storm Warning

((Hi! Here are links to Part 8: Studio Time and Part 1: What Dark Saw if you want/need them! Quick warnings for gunshots and a brief mention of blood.))

“Hey there Chica Beeka, who missed me?” Mark said as the dogs ran around him and Amy back at his house. They acted as if their people had been gone for days not hours, and when Mark patted his chest and called, “Up! Up!” it took several tries before Chica listened and he could catch her front paws and gently swing her back and forth.

“I’m never sure who’s more excited when we come home, you or Chica,” Amy teased as she pet Henry.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mark said, grunting a little as he picked Chica up and spun her around a few times before putting her back down. He kept up the baby talk for the dogs a little longer, but they were soon distracted by the new toys Mark and Amy had brought home with them.

“Thank you,” he said, again. “I think getting out of the house was good for me.”

“Sunlight will do that to you,” Amy said, smiling as she went to put her bag down on the couch. “Good thing we went out when we did, it looks like it’s going to start pouring any minute now.”

“Yeah,” Mark said. He pulled back the window curtain to look up at the darkening sky. “It’s just supposed to rain, right?”

“I can check,” Amy said, already pulling out her phone.

Chica walked up to Mark with her new rope toy in mouth, and he managed to distract himself for a second trying to pull it away from her before Amy said, “Oh.”

She showed him the new storm warning on the weather app and he immediately said, “I should call Y/N.”

Amy nodded, and Mark could feel her listening as he called up your cellphone, only to swear when it just rang and rang before going to voicemail. Without bothering to leave a message, he hung up and had to dig through his contacts to find a number he rarely used.

“What’s it to you?” Abe answered his phone.

“What kind of—” Mark stopped himself. “Abe, it’s Mark. Can I talk to Y/N?”

“Y/N? Oh, right, I forgot to tell you,” the Detective said. “I dropped Y/N off at the other guys’ house. Doc said they were running a little fever, but it wasn’t anything serious.”

“What?” Mark said.

“What?” Amy mouthed from the other side of the room.

“Something wrong?” Abe asked.

“Y/N’s with Dr. Iplier, they’re not feeling well,” Mark said to Amy. “I should go over there, if the storm gets bad…”

He trailed off and Amy nodded. She had seen you jump even at the sound of thunder on the TV, and knew what it meant to you and the others who had been at the house that weekend.

“I can stay here with the dogs and keep them calm,” she said and Mark hesitated. As much as he didn’t want to leave them, he didn’t want to drag her or the dogs out into bad weather.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised.

“Wait, you’re going over there?” Abe asked, and Mark could hear the rattle of blinds on the other end of the line. He could imagine the Detective peering out at the sky overhead as he heard a sharp inhale before Abe said, “My place is on the way. If something’s wrong, then I’m coming with you.”

“What? Nothing’s wrong,” Mark said and heard the disbelief on the other end. “I’m going to check up on them, that’s all. Besides, you can’t just invite yourself along. I am not stopping to pick you up.”

“Then I’ll drive over there myself,” Abe answered. “This is my partner we’re talking about—”

“That has nothing to do with anything!” Mark heard the rattle of the Detective’s keys and sighed. “You know what, fine. But you better be ready to jump in when I drive by, because I’m just going to slow down and open a door. Last thing I want to do is be caught out in LA traffic in the rain.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time I jumped into a moving car,” Abe said. “Or out of one.”

Mark didn’t bother with responding to that and just hung up on the Detective before giving Amy a real goodbye. Out in the van, he popped his phone into the holder on the dash and had it call Dr. Iplier as he backed out of the driveway and took off.

Almost immediately, he heard, “You’ve reached the office of Dr. Iplier. If this is about how you’re dying, please—”

Mark ended the call and told the phone to call Dr. Iplier’s cell, but that also went to voicemail. He was halfway to Abe’s house before his phone rang with a Google G in place of the caller’s image.

“Hey Google, are you with the doctor?” Mark asked.

“That is correct. We have only just now found a signal in our current location,” Google answered.

“Your—Aren’t you at the house?”

“Incorrect. This unit accompanied the doctor and the so-called King of the Squirrels into the woods, where the cell signal is entirely inadequate. Even here at this cabin, we only have a minimum connection to the other units.”

“Cabin?” Mark felt a bad taste rise in the back of his throat and swallowed it back. “What are you doing there?”

“The Host is incapacitated. Dr. Iplier has only just been able to bring him around, and he is babbling—”

“What?” Mark had to swerve back into his lane and forced himself to focus on the road and not on his phone. “What was he doing at the cabin?!”

“Unclear. The King of the Squirrels says that one of his… ‘subjects’ saw him enter this place, and when he arrived, he found him bound and incoherent. My words, not his.”

Straining, Mark could hear the doctor’s voice, clear and professional, and below that a raspy, rambling murmur. He pulled the van into a parking spot on the street in front of the low, run-down building the Detective called home and just stared at the phone, trying to let this sink in.

“Someone attacked him?” Mark asked.

He guessed that it was the King who answered, judging by the tone of his voice as he said, “He just kept saying he wasn’t infected, that he was in control. Over and over again.”

Silence fell on the other end of the line, and by straining Mark could hear the Host’s voice, faint and strained past recognition.

“Mask…is back.” A rasping wheeze. “It looked like…Y/N.”

Mark stared at Abe’s house as silence fell on both ends of the call before Dr. Iplier started barking orders and Google spoke about protocols, directives. Their words fell on deaf ears as Mark just kept hearing the Host’s words over and over again.

Suddenly, he swore, and then swore three more times in quick succession before jumping out of the van without bothering to end the call or even shut the door behind him.

Because it just sank in that the door to Abe’s house was standing wide open despite the rain already starting to come down, despite the fact that the Detective would never forget to lock the door behind him. It creaked in the wind as Mark ran toward it, and made a deafening crack as he pushed it out of his way and went in.

Only to come to an abrupt stop in the front hall, frozen at the sight of Abe standing with his back against the wall, both hands on his gun but unable to point it directly at the person standing opposite him.

It looked like you, except its eyes were two black holes that revealed nothing underneath and its mouth was turned in a horrible slash of a smile as it stared at the Detective. As if waiting to see what he would do.

“Abe, get away from it! It’s not Y/N!”

“You think I don’t know that?!” Abe yelled, a vein showing in his forehead as his eyes kept flickering toward the bloodstain on its chest and then back up to those empty eyes. He tightened his grip on the gun, but it only seemed to tremble more as he tried to raise it. “What is this thing? Why does it look like Y/N?!”

“Shh, it’s okay, detective, we’re not here for you,” it said, the Mask wearing your face. Its voice was like yours, but just slightly distorted, as if just a pitch higher or lower than it should be while putting the emphasis in all the wrong places. “Hahaha, that would just be silly. Our business is with the man with all the masks. Of course, you could always shoot me, if you wanted to. This wouldn’t be the first partner to die at yours hands, would it?”

“You’re not my partner,” Abe said, but his eyes flickered toward Mark.

“No, this is the thing that attacked everyone last year,” Mark said, keeping his eyes on it. “It ran around looking like me, taking over most of my egos and trying to kill the rest of us until we got rid of it. That thing is just a mask, Y/N is—"

He stopped short and the smile on its face got just that much bigger.

It had possessed the others before, making them all look like it with those empty eyes and rictus smiles.

What if this really was you?

Abe looked from him to the Mask and back again, eyes too bright as he demanded, “Well? Is this them or not?”

“I…” Mark trailed off.

“How do we snap them out of it?” Abe said, voice growing louder with every question. “What did you do last year?”

“I didn’t do anything; we could barely do anything to it! Y/N did something, dragged it back into that place they were trapped in inside the mirror—”

The mirror, which was now completely shattered.

“So long in that mirror, in that nothing, so long being nothing without even a face to call my own. Heh, you have no idea, do you? Oh, not when you have so many faces to choose from.” It laughed, its mouth not quite matching the sound, and pulled a wallet out of its pocket. Abe shouldn’t have been able to tense any more than he already was, but that vein in his forehead grew bigger at the sight of his gift to Y/N in the hands of this thing. As it spoke, the Mask opened the wallet and began tossing cards out of it and onto the ground. Mark recognized them as the cards the egos had given you back at the beach on your “birthday”, each of them a promise to spend time with you. Cards of Bing, Dr. Iplier, Bim Trimmer, one ego after the other clattered to the floor as the Mask tossed them aside as if they meant nothing. “One, two…There’s just so many to choose from, and that’s just the start when so many of your lovely fans want to be just like you.”

The last card fell to the ground and the Mask tossed the wallet aside with a laugh that made both of the men shudder.

“Not going to happen,” Mark said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “What’s it going to take to get rid of you again?”

“Silly. Haven’t you been listening? Only thing we want is to just make everyone happy. Once we’re through, there’ll be so many lovely smiles, so many people who look just like me, like us. That’s why we have to take care of all those people who ruined our fun last time!” The Mask laughed and then tilted its head at an angle your neck shouldn’t have been able to go. “Maybe we can take care of all that pesky unfinished business by the time you join us. Even if we have to make them smile.”

The Mask wearing your face moved for the first time, stepping on the fallen cards as it suddenly broke into a sprint toward Abe, empty eyes trained on his as its smile opened.

Mark called out and winced, hands going to his ringing ears as one shot then two rang out.

“Abe! Abe, put the gun down,” Mark said, and repeated it before prying the weapon out of the Detective’s unresisting hands.

The moment the gun left Abe’s hands he pressed them to his head and slid to the ground, eyes clenched shut as he began to hyperventilate. “No, no, no…”

“No, Abe, look, there’s nothing there,” Mark said. He shook the Detective’s shoulder. “It’s gone, you didn’t—It’s gone.”

Abe opened one watering eye and stared at the empty hall in front of him. There wasn’t even a sign of where his bullets went in the opposite wall, but his ears still rang with the sound of the shot and his hands wouldn’t stop shaking no matter how many times Mark tried to tell him it was okay.

“I could have…” The Detective inhaled, his breath breaking on the words.

“Abe, I can’t stay here,” Mark said. “I have to get to the house, if that wasn’t Y/N…I have to make sure they’re okay, warn the others—”

He stopped and swore, remembering the call. It had already attacked the Host, if it went after the others looking like you—

And then he swore again.

“Dark saw it, he saw it last night, so it can’t be Y/N.” And he would keep telling himself that to keep from thinking about the alternative. He patted himself down and realized his phone was still out in the van.

Abe grabbed his arm as he started to stand and said, “I’m…I’m going with you. Just, just give me a second.”

Mark offered a hand to help the Detective up to his feet, but without a word Abe stood and picked up the wallet the Mask dropped, along with all of the scattered cards. He lagged behind as Mark ran out to the van in the downpour that had really started to come down while he was inside and picked up the phone. In his haste before, he hadn’t ended the call and voices were still talking on the other end.

“Google,” he said.

“You left me,” Google said, accusing.

“Yes, but it was important—”

“I was still speaking, and we registered gunshots on your end—”

“We saw it, we saw that…demon or whatever it is,” Mark interrupted. “It’s gone now, but we think it’s going back to the house. You need to send a warning to the others, now.”

He looked up as Abe got into the passenger seat and the Detective nodded and said, “It said it had unfinished business with the people who stopped it before.”

“I have already initiated the lockdown,” Google answered. “My other units have gathered the egos and are keeping them in their current locations until it is determined to be safe to leave or take other action.”

“What about Y/N? Are you still in the cabin?” Mark asked as he pulled the van out into the street, its windshield wipers struggling to keep up with the rain rushing down in torrents. At this rate, the roads were liable to start flooding.

“We can’t go anywhere,” Dr. Iplier answered. “The Host is in no condition to be moved, and Google can’t make it back to the house in this storm without risking a short circuit. But we left one of the other Googles with Y/N, they’re not alone.”

“Interfacing with other units,” Google said, and there was a beeping sound on the other end of the line. “The storm is interfering with my reception. Please hold.”

In the van, it was silent except for the rain pounding against the roof and the steady rhythm of the wiper blades across the windshield as they waited for what seemed like forever before the android spoke again.

“Red unit is in the studio with Bim Trimmer, Yandereplier, and Eric Derekson. Yellow unit is in the kitchen with Chef Iplier, Silver Shepherd, Ed Edgar—”

“You don’t have to list them all!” Mark shouted at the phone.

There was a pause and then Google said, “Green unit is in the infirmary but not responding. Y/N, Wilford Warfstache, and Darkiplier are currently the only ones unaccounted for.”

“What do you mean, he’s not responding?” Mark said, feeling his foot pressing harder against the accelerator even though he was already going too fast. Beside him, Abe tightened his grip on the handle above the passenger door but said nothing.

“The unit is receiving messages, but has yet to respond. Location indicators place it in the infirmary, and last directives it acknowledged included taking care of Y/N.”

“The Host,” Mark said, desperately. “He’s there, ask him.”

Dr. Iplier answered again, after a long pause. “Mark, the Host is in bad shape. I don’t know what they did to him, but judging by his bandages and his overexertion this morning I suspect he’s in need of a blood transfusion that we can’t give him here. He can barely speak, and even if he could narrate, he’s confused and delirious.”

“What about one of the others, back at the house?” Abe asked. “Can’t you send one of them to check?”

“Lockdown was initiated for a reason,” Google said. “Based on previous data, this so-called ‘Maskiplier’ prioritized infecting those who were alone and vulnerable. Splitting up the others would only put them at risk.”

Alone and vulnerable.

“Dark,” Mark muttered, his voice lost in the sound of the rain. Of course it would show itself to the one person no one would listen to or trust.

He remembered last night, the doubt and whispers and the sense that he hadn’t been alone in the hall and sped up again, his grip so tight on the wheel that his knuckles were turning white.

It could have done something last night, attacked him or Dark like it did the Host. But it chose to mess with their minds instead, and as lightning flashed across the sky Mark realized that it was still playing with them. Why else would it show up at Abe’s house, just when Mark was supposed to arrive? It wanted to taunt Abe into shooting “you”, and it wanted Mark to know exactly what it was doing.

As the others continued to talk and argue about what to do, as thunder shook the van and the rain continued to pour down, Mark stared at the road ahead and kept driving, even though he knew they would never make it to the house in time.

((End of Part 9. Thank you for reading! Google also forgot to account for the many, many squirrels, who are weathering out the storm in the living room and maybe a couple of the bedrooms. The King of the Squirrels was pretty sure no one would mind.

Here’s the link to Part 10: You Look Like Me.

Tagging: @silver-owl413​ @skyewardlight​ @withjust-a-bite​ @blackaquokat​ @catgirlwarrior​ @neverisadork​ @luna1350​ @oh-so-creepy​ @purpstraw​ @weirdfoxalley​ @95fangirl​ @lilalovesinternet-l​ @thepoolofthedead​ @a-bit-dapper​ @randomartdudette​ @geekymushroom​ @cactipresident​ @hotcocoachia​ @purple-anxiety-blog​ @shyinspiredartist​ @avispate​ ))

[spaceiplier]

Friend in Need

The communicator on the Barrel rang a few times before Amy picked up. “Robin?”

Jack’s friend looked anxious, and took a deep breath before saying anything. “Hey, Amy,” he said, smiling nervously. “You don’t happen to know where Jack is, do you?”

Amy shrugged. “Let me check,” she said, leaning over the main console and searching for the signature of Jack’s ship.

It wasn’t showing up at all. A fainter signal indicated where he had been last, but Jack visited Nihill often, and the signal showed him leaving the planet before completely vanishing.

“He’s not showing up on our radar,” Amy said finally.

Jack had called them only a few days ago, and he sounded fine then. Still, the signal indicated that he had left Nihill almost a week ago. She and Robin shared a worried look.

“I want to say it’s ANTI,” she began, “but he called us just a few days ago, and he’s been missing for a week now. Do you think he’s sick or something?”

Robin shook his head. “He’d let me know if he was sick, and I haven’t heard from him since he left Nihill,” he replied. “Do you think you could try and find him?”

Amy nodded. “I’ll give him a call.”

Jack’s cheerful voice responded after a few rings, “What’s up?”

Amy frowned. She had set up the call for video, but Jack wasn’t showing his face.

“Something wrong with Sam?” she asked, waving hello.

“Yeah, he got damaged on my last mission,” Jack said.

Liar, Amy thought

“That’s too bad,” she said. “Do you have all the parts to fix him?”

Jack was silent for a short moment. “Yeah, I’m working on him now.” He went quiet for another moment. “So, why’d you call? Need something?”

Amy shook her head. “Your ship isn’t showing up on our radar, and Robin said you weren’t picking up his calls.” Amy couldn’t see Jack’s face, but she could practically hear his anxiety through the call.

“Sorry about that,” he said finally. “I must have gotten caught up working on Sam. Let him know I’ll call him soon, alright?”

“Alright,” Amy said, “but what about-”

Jack ended the call before she could finish asking about his ship. Well, at least half an answer was better than none.

She sent Robin a message before examining the map again, trying to find where Jack’s ship could have gone. She wished the others were there; they had all gone to the surface of the planet they were orbiting, and the atmosphere prevented any calls going through. She had been left to take care of the Barrel and the dogs. Not even Bing could help. He’d gotten damaged doing a skateboard trick, and had to be shut down until they could get a new power core for him.

Suddenly, something caught her eye. Not too far from Nihill, two planets circled each other, causing a distortion in between. If someone had placed their ship in between the two planets, they would essentially disappear from off the radar, even if they had left their signal on.

She sent another message to Robin, letting him know where she thought Jack had gone, and made her way to Bing’s room. If she got the temporary power core working, Bing could take care of Chica and Henry while she took a pod to Jack’s ship. The makeshift core would keep Bing up and running for a few days on low energy, so he wouldn’t get himself hurt again.

Crossing her fingers, she plugged the core into Bing’s chest, fiddling with the wires a bit and plugging in a few extra ones. The light flickered briefly, then glowed a bright orange as Bing’s eyes lit up again. He looked dazed, but grateful.

“I need you to take care of Henry and Chica for a little bit, okay?” Amy asked, staring into the robot’s flickering eyes.

Bing shook his hand with his thumb and pinky out and gave her a shaky smile. “Got it, dude.”

“Hey, guys, it’s Amy. I’m going to check on Jack. Something’s wrong with him, and he’s avoiding us and Robin. I’ll see you when I get back, if I’m not back before you are. Take care.”

Amy jettisoned the pod, setting the autopilot for the twin planets, Sharot and Balrot.

A day and a half later, Jack’s ship came into view, carefully nested between the planets.

Amy connected her pod, flinching as alarms alerted anyone on board to her presence. Not that she wanted to frighten Jack, but she had been traveling in relative silence for about a day, and the loud blaring of alarms made her jump. The door into the main section of the ship opened automatically as Amy approached it, but no robot or Velm greeted her. In fact, the only thing that greeted Amy was the dull red lights of a low power ship and complete silence.

She shivered and pulled out a small flashlight. The ship was cold, too, which struck her as entirely wrong. Jack was cold-blooded, and if the temperature got too low, he became drowsy and unresponsive.

“Jack?” Amy called, her voice echoing off the walls. “Chase? JJ? Anyone?”

But nobody came.

The halls were completely empty. Amy made her way to where Jack had shown the Barrel’s crew the robot’s room. The door was locked, but a small window allowed her to peer inside. Each charging station she could see had a robot docked on it, but why was the door locked? Amy placed her cyborg arm on the keypad that kept the door shut. A dull blue light scanned her palm and beeped, but the door didn’t unlock.

“Stupid piece of junk,” she muttered to herself, trying it again. This time, the door slid open quietly. Even though she had no reason to be quiet, Amy moved silently over to Chase’s docking station. If anyone knew what was wrong with Jack and could help Amy, it was Chase.

The companion robot blinked awake, and looked at Amy with pure terror in his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” he asked quietly, looking like he was about to short-circuit. “You’re not safe!”

Amy shook her head. “I’ll be fine,” she insisted, matching Chase’s quiet tone. “Where’s Jack?”

Chase looked straight at— no, past— Amy.

She turned around and saw Jack, completely in shadow except for the glow of the red lights directly behind him. Chase short-circuited and collapsed.

“H͏e҉l͡lo̡,͝ ̨Amy̴.̷” It was Jack’s voice, but something was wrong. It sounded like Jack was talking with his teeth clenched, and then had his voice run through a voice filter. He took a step forward, the lights in front of him finally illuminating his shape.

Jack looked awful. His face was gaunt, his skin sallow, and his tail dragged behind him.

Amy made eye contact with him, and flinched backwards. His normally bright green cyborg eye was a deep, glowing red.

“̶I̵ do͏n̸’̀t̴ th̨i̶nk̡ we’̧ve h̸àd͘ ̷t͝h͠e̵ plea͏s̨urę of̛ ̧m̸eeti̕n͞g,̛”͡ Jack said, grinning in a way that made chills run down Amy’s spine. “̕M̡y͠ ͜nam͠e ̷i̕s̨ A҉N͡T̢I͜,͜ a͞n̕d ̶I’̷m̕ in͡ contr̶ol̢ ͠nòw͝.͘”͡

Amy glanced at the line of defenseless robots behind her. ANTI was who had attacked Mark several months ago. Amy had never had any personal encounters with ANTI, but judging by what he had done to Mark, she’d counted herself lucky. Now she was standing down the hall from him, with a group of shut-down robots to protect.

She needed to get Jack back.

Making what was probably the wrong choice, but a choice nonetheless, Amy bolted out of the robots’ room, slamming the keypad so the door shut behind her, and sprinted down the hallway to her left.

Didn’t Jack say he had a safe room for situations like this? Why wasn’t he in there? And why did he look half dead? She could hear Jack— no, ANTI— running behind her, but not at full speed, and not nearly fast enough to catch up to her.

Now she understood why the ship was so cold. If Jack’s body was slowed down by the cold, so was ANTI. But if ANTI only showed up when Jack was injured, how had Jack gotten the temperature down if ANTI was in control? Had Jack known ANTI was coming? Jack had never really explained how ANTI worked outside of being a malfunctioning safety AI.

Amy took a sudden turn down a hallway on her left and ducked inside an open door.

Amy almost crashed right into Jameson Jackson. The startled robot stepped out of the way just in time.

“JJ, wh-” Amy stopped halfway through her question.

JJ was clutching where his lower jaw should have been, but where only mangled wires and a few bits of metal hung now. It appeared as though his lower jaw had been torn off quickly and carelessly.

“What happened to you?” she asked softly, already knowing the answer as she gently pulled the robot’s hands away from his face. “Why weren’t you in the charging station? Are you okay? Do you need my help?”

JJ shook his head and pointed at the door behind him with one hand, gesturing with the other. Amy tried futilely to follow the robot’s quick movements, but wagered a guess anyway.

“Is that Jack’s safe room?” she asked, getting a rapid nod in response. “You were taking him here when ANTI took over, is that it?”

JJ nodded again.

“And he attacked you.”

JJ nodded slower this time and kicked something at his feet. Amy bent down and picked up what JJ had kicked. The chunk of green metal had been mangled beyond recognition, but Amy could assume.

“Your jaw,” she whispered, turning the mutilated metal in her hands. JJ carefully took the metal from Amy and held it close to his chest. “Do you think you could help me get Jack back here?” Amy asked gently, putting her hand on JJ’s shoulder. JJ hesitated, then nodded quickly, determination shining in his eyes.

“Jack!” Amy called down the again empty corridor. “I know you’re in there somewhere! You have to take back control!���

ANTI turned the corner at the end of the hall, fury burning in his robotic eye. “̵҉̛J̡͝a̡̧̡çk̕̕ ̴i͢͏s̡ ͜G̶̵O̴͢͠Ǹ̸͏E̵͘͜,̛”̶̷ ANTI roared, charging at Amy.

She had underestimated ANTI’s power, despite the freezing temperature. She barely dodged a slash from ANTI’s claws, and stumbled when the cold steel of a knife connected with her biological arm.

Amy gave a short scream as it bit into her. It hurt so bad, but she couldn’t stop moving now. She couldn’t stop to look at the wound. She had to get ANTI to chase her to the safe room. JJ was waiting by the safe room door to lock it as soon as Amy got ANTI inside… somehow.

She heard ANTI wheeze and cough behind her. The sprint had taken a lot of energy from him, especially given the state that Jack’s body was in. Amy took advantage of this, sprinting down to where the hallway split towards the safe room.

“Some protector you are,” she taunted. “Jack’s in terrible condition! Have you seen yourself?”

ANTI was apparently very easily enraged, and he only stumbled briefly as he charged at Amy again. She was ready this time, and dodged completely, letting the knife slice harmlessly at the air by her shoulder. She could see the door that led to the safe room and made a mad dash for it, ducking inside just as ANTI started running towards her again. She could hear him getting slower, and as he approached the door, she could hear his labored breathing.

As soon as he stepped into the doorway, Amy grabbed him by his shirt collar and tossed him into the open door of the safe room. He howled with fury as JJ slammed the door shut and locked it. He and Amy stepped outside into the hallway and JJ locked that door as well. Amy flinched as she heard ANTI slam against the door a few times before giving up. JJ looked terrified, but proud.

“We did it,” Amy wheezed, and then passed out from loss of blood.

Mark paced the docking station, anxiously running his hands through his hair. Amy’s message hadn’t soothed his nerves at all when he came back and she was gone. Bing was powered down again, since his temporary power core ran out of energy just after Mark, Tyler, Ethan, and Kathryn had returned to the Barrel.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Tyler said from the doorway, leaning against its frame. “Amy’s tough. She can take care of herself.”

Mark stopped to glare at his friend. “That’s not what I’m worried about,” he replied, resuming his pacing. “What if Jack’s hurt, and ANTI lashes out at her? He’s a lot stronger than any of us, and if he’s loose, and Amy goes there, and she doesn’t know that he’s there, and-”

Tyler stopped Mark, grabbing him by the shoulders. “She’ll be fine,” he said sternly. “You haven’t slept for two days, and as your friend, I’m ordering you to go lie down right now.”

Mark grumbled and looked over at where the other spare pod should have been parked. “Fine.”

Tyler nodded and flashed Mark a smile, gently leading him towards the door. Just as they were about to leave the room, the docking alarms started going off, and Mark spun back around. The spare pod docked, and Mark ran towards it, bouncing impatiently as he waited for the door to open. The pod door slid open with a woosh, but the sight that greeted Mark was not the one he expected.

Jameson Jackson stood in the doorway, his jaw missing, and holding Amy in his arms.

Amy looked peaceful inside the healing pod. The bandages wrapped around her arm were messy and bloodstained. JJ had done his best to clean the wound on their way to the Barrel, but he wasn’t a doctor and knew there wouldn’t have been time to wake up Henrik and the ship before Amy’s condition would be too far gone. The animated robot had typed up everything that had happened, from the time ANTI took over to boarding the pod and treating Amy’s arm.

ANTI’s knife had dug further into her arm than she must have noticed, and she had run on adrenaline until they got ANTI locked up. The amount of blood she had lost… Amy was lucky to be alive.

JJ was with Ethan now, trying to figure out if there was some way to fix the lump of metal that was once JJ’s lower jaw. Mark was sitting in a chair in the infirmary, trying not to fall asleep in case Amy woke up while he was napping.

JJ left the next day, gesturing a thanks to Ethan for trying to help him with his jaw, and giving both Amy and Mark hugs for apologies. He’d have Jack call them as soon as he came back. The pod would autopilot its way back to the Barrel.

The crew of the Barrel waved JJ goodbye, and the pod he had arrived in took off once more.

It was almost a week before Jack called, not looking much better than when Amy had seen him last. He explained in between coughing and checkups from both Henrik and JJ that ANTI would take over periodically even if Jack wasn’t hurt. Usually Jack would end up starving himself the few days before and lowering the temperature to a debilitating degree.

However, ANTI came early this time, and so he’d only managed to go without food for a few days and lower the temperature before ANTI took over. He’d gotten Amy’s call the day he went under, but didn’t want her to worry, so he made up the story about Sam getting damaged.

He didn’t plan on fixing JJ’s jaw, since the original would be impossible to replace, and “honestly, he’s better this way.”

Mark didn’t show up for the call. He knew it wasn’t really Jack’s fault, but part of him wanted to blame someone for the damage.

Amy had tried to convince Mark to talk it out with Jack, but Mark had refused.

Sometimes, it just helped to stew for a bit. Jack hung up after a heavy silence when he’d asked where Mark was. He didn’t call for another two weeks, but this time, it wasn’t ANTI’s fault.

[h-pescod]

Why You Should Stop Screwing Around With Low-Energy People

* I should probably say that I'm going to curse occasionally, in this post or otherwise. I'm going to try my hardest to keep my language "professional," but at the end of the day I'm still going to get fired up about things - it happens, but I'll work on keeping it to a minimum.

*****

With all of the fads going on in society, whether it has to do with beauty or health or fashion, there is always someone telling you how to think, how to act, how to feel. And a lot of them are basic, helpful tips, like drinking water and keeping track of appointments by starting a daytimer (something often forced upon us in primary education when we need it the least, and pushed to the point where we hate it until we reach pseudo-adulthood, when we realize how useful they actually are).

Perhaps I won't sound all that different, judging by the title of this post, telling you to drop people from your life. You think to yourself, "why should I listen to you? I don't even know you." And you shouldn't - because you don't. But I will share a personal story, so you can judge for yourself how it works.

I am one of the most organized people I know, and I do everything from highlight to colour-code to run three different calendars to make sure I can keep track of everything. This type of thing is really helpful for when I have off days, when my brain decides all we're going to do is lay in bed, or binge watch the Lord of the Rings, instead of actually being productive and pounding out a term paper or another chapter of my book. I also value my sleep, so I try my absolute hardest to get to bed at a decent hour (as in, before midnight if I can), even if it means that I have to sacrifice finishing up the last couple of things on my to-do list because my eyes are almost literally being held open by toothpicks. What I will say as well is that last semester (full university course load, absolute hell, do not recommend if you can help it) I was also really struggling mentally due to a variety of external issues. All you really need to know is that I was tired all the time, but that I was still managing to get my assignments in on time and do decently well on them.

And I had this friend. She was nice enough, and a good person, and I enjoyed spending time with her. For sake of anonymity, we'll call her Amy. Amy and I had a class together, and while we didn't necessarily see each other all the time that was okay, because we were both busy. At the beginning of the semester, after having an argument, we were still seeing each other for an okay amount of time, going for coffee over break and then texting in the evenings. And that was all well and good.

Now, I struggled a lot over the summer, and even going into the beginning of the semester, but I was working on keeping a positive attitude even though I had a lot on my plate. But even if you're self contained, it's nice to have some sort of support system. The problem was she was a super crappy texter unless she really wanted to talk to you. And that was fine, because Amy also had a lot going on in her life, so I tried not to worry about it too much as far as day-to-day stuff. It really started to grate on my when I really needed her and she wouldn't even reply until several hours later, sometimes in the evening the next day, or two days, and her only excuse was "I was busy," even though I knew she was active on all her social media, and she had hung out with several other people during that time.

I won't go into too much more detail, but let's just say that this put Amy and I on the rocks, big time. Am I saying that I did everything right in the relationship? No, by no means was I perfect. There were plenty of other things I could have done to maybe impress upon her that despite being her so-called "best friend," Amy wasn't even treating me like she liked me very much. But as you can probably imagine, this whole ordeal was unnecessarily draining on me, and it wasn't something I needed on top of everything else going on in my life. I wasn't getting the support I needed from her, despite giving more than enough to her and constantly checking in to make sure she was taking care of herself (she had a bad habit of trying to lose weight by.... not eating... like at all... I'm talking full-blown Tony Stark diet, sans alcohol).

I don't want to bad-mouth her. Amy was a good friend, for the most part.

But she was also super low-energy. Like I'm talking 90% of what she did was complain about shit, even if it wasn't directly related to her; school, her cousin, how tired she was all the time, how busy she was even though almost all of her schedule was self-imposed and when she wasn't fucking around at yoga and taking pictures in coffee shops working she was doing absolutely fuck all until 22.30 when she actually started to study. Sorry, still a little bit salty about that. My point is that she was really negative, and our conversations started to revolve around a couple of select topics rather than a wide variety, if they occurred at all.

We managed to keep our friendship alive, in a Frankenstein's Monster "returned from the dead" sort of way, until December, when I had suffered through numerous depressive episodes that she couldn't care less about because she "didn't have time" even though she could do all sorts of other things, and cared about other people (when I say "didn't have time," I'm saying that she wouldn't even text me back when I wouldn't talk to her for days since I was spiraling and she knew it, no that she didn't necessarily care about me). So I dropped her, and we argued about it. Amy said she hadn't done anything wrong even though we had had no less than three conversations about her shitty attempt at superficial friendship in the span of four months, and things would change or about four days until she went right back to it.

And now - now, oh my gods. It took me a bit to be able to hear her name or think about her without hurting inside, because I cared about her and that wasn't reciprocated, but now I'm so over it that I see her in the hallway sometimes and if I didn't hear her name I wouldn't even have known she was there. I don't feel as tired, emotionally, as I did when I was struggling to keep a friendship together all by my damn self. I'm a happier person. I'm more focused on bettering myself rather than trying to please another person, and I've more or less adopted "equal effort or leave" as my motto. I've stopped fucking with people who are so internalized with their own problems that they couldn't give less of a shit about your feelings or what that's doing to a relationship.

I'm not saying that you should immediately drop someone who isn't giving their fair share in a relationship. "It be like that sometimes" is a good thing to keep in mind, because people go through things that they may not feel comfortable sharing and they may not be able to give 100% to you. Sometimes you have to pick up the slack. But you also have to remember that if you're consistently giving more to them than they're giving to you - like Amy was, taking my support but giving very little attention or support in return in the ways I told her numerous times that I needed it - then you may have to consider letting them quietly out of your life. If they aren't picking up the slack when you need them to and only support you when it's convenient for them, re-evaluate. Have the tough conversations about why what they're doing is hurting you. It isn't worth your mental health to try and keep beating a dead horse, especially if you've expressed your concerns and their behaviour hasn't changed.

Friendships, relationships, and human interaction are all wonderful things. You need them. They're important to social balance and making sure you don't get stuck in your own head all the time and you have people to take care of you. But at the end of the day, your mental health needs to come first. If you aren't happy with something, change it. If something is hurting you, figure out why and deal with it. People who aren't on the same wave-length as you, who are negative and only bring down your mood when you have a conversation with them, are not people who you want to be around long-term. At risk of sounding like all of those infomercials where they guarantee you things, I can guarantee, from personal experience, that if you evaluate every relationship that's causing you pain and let that person go if you have to, you will feel better. You'll be happier. It will be one less thing for you to worry about at the end of the day.

Because you do not depend on the attention other people give you - your health, your idea of yourself, is not dependent on the amount of time people spend on you, and if someone is wrapped up in themselves and cannot see you for your worth, then maybe they aren't as important in your life as you thought they were going to be.

Stagnation is a sign of low energy, and in order to take care of yourself you need to be aware of it. If something stagnates, ask yourself why. If it's a change you can make, then do it. If it's a change they can make, or need to make, talk to them about it. They may not realize they're doing it. But if it becomes a consistent problem, at the end of the day your life only deserves positive energy, and you may need to let them go. You are not responsible for taking care of people.

[thempoetry]

“Double Portrait” by Brittany Perham

Lately, I’ve been lounging with James Longenbach’s How Poems Get Made, and it’s colored the way I’ve been reading the poets available to me. In particular, Longenbach’s chapter on voice describes how “[w]hen we say that a poem presents us with a strong sense of voice, what we’re often in fact saying is that the poem sounds like Donne” (39). And he goes on to describe Donne’s almost supernatural ability to create the impression of a human speaker through skillful variances in diction and the sound of words.

{In a particularly gripping section, he uses the lines of later poets to demonstrate Donne’s influence; listen in the following lines for the voice that seems to animate them:

Robert Browning: But do not let us quarrel any more.

Marianne Moore: Why so desolate?

D. H. Lawrence: You tell me I am wrong.

Bidart: What should I have done?

Ashbery: Time, you old miscreant!

Ellen Bryant Voight: I made a large mistake I left my house

…if these examples sound alive to you, notice the shapes to which they lead the mouth; notice the natural variance therein… } (38-39)

All of which is to say, I was thinking about voice when I picked up Perham’s book.

First of all, it’s worth noting — as the cover rightfully boasts — that this volume was chosen by Claudia Rankine (!) as the winner of the 2016 Barnard Women Poets Prize (the last winner was Sandra Lim, chosen by Louise Glück for The Wilderness). And an honor well-deserved: Perham’s poems are disarmingly frank without losing their playful edge; as an example, the first poem in the collection involves the idea (and actuality) of vomiting blood.

How does a collection that begins with the idea of catching your father’s bloody vomit in a “bin,” how does such a collection still manage to project such a sense of dignity, of self-collectedness?

If I may, I think the answer is twofold:

1. AURA OF LIVED EXPERIENCE: Perham’s poems ooze an aura of lived experience — of someone who has been through what she reports and has thought about it for a fortnight or two. In particular, it was a gift to experience her insights about what is major and what was minor, so to speak, as in her fantastic song about daily life with a partner:

I read your new book it’s great now I’m sulky I get a new job insurance! it’s great now you’re sulky but also you’re happy I’m happy I’m happy you’re happy It’s payday (26)

Taking up the gauntlet of many illustrious women poets before her, Perham magnifies the domestic for the drama it always is: a stage where shellfish, champagne, and paper towels mark the boundary between two individuals laboring over the project of togetherness.

This kind of book resists the canon for the precise way in which it resists the canonic judgement of what is major, and what is minor. Perham’s insistence on foregrounding the everyday is also her insistence that our lives are worth writing about: “There’s no use putting on perfume / for a Skype conversation” (31). Her ability to point out the obvious, the familiar is actually extraordinary, and constitutes a genuine poetic gift.

2. FORMAL INVENTIVENESS: The other reason Perham’s work is enjoyable is that Double Portrait reads like a romp, a display of inventiveness that extends beyond content (the playpen of many a contemporary poet) towards form. (In this way, her work recalls to mind the form-wrangling work of Danez Smith.)

Take, for example, the litany in the “Third Series” that begins:

9,885,998 of us watched the clip of a hatchling duckling One of us went to podcasts One of us heard the voices of old men and knew poetry was there One of us was male, male (55)

Or this poem, which weaves quartets in Dante-esque shifts;

I’d be be waiting for you to come home. Amy says, A fondling session comes with the inevitable risk — Spring will come and I’ll be alone in this little box of a room.

Amy says, A fondling session comes with the inevitable risk of being laughed at—is it habit, is it altogether voluntary? Alone in this little box of a room, a “fondling session” seems like everything! (75)

Weaving the ends of lines with acumen that reads as naiveté, an endless process of discovery, Perham lives up to Rankine’s incisive observation: “This is the world before exhaustion and cynicism overtakes the lyric.” In a world of exhaustion and cynicism, turning to others — mirroring them, attempting to “address the Thou” (77) despite everything — may be one energetic salvation.

Finally, I had to ask myself while binge-reading this book, why is Double Portrait not at all like Dorothea Lasky’s poems about kitten videos and so on? I think it has to do with my first point — the insight about the the genuine major and minor, the forthrightness of what feeling is genuinely bound up in. Perhaps it is fair to say that Perham’s work displays a wider, deeper palette of emotion, including the (rare!) shades of filial piety (9), forgiveness (3), uncertainty in the midst of fidelity (18), kiddish obsession (20) and the feeling of willingly becoming a stranger to a past lover (74). These are real emotions — and we judge their reality by the way in which they resonate with our own lived experiences. Said in another way: these are poems that resist the textureless digital world, that bristle and break the surfaces that flatten experience into ironic reportage.

Overall: 8/10 for intelligent jolliness

Read If You: -Are wondering who’s doing what in the world of poetic form these days -Miss your mum -Have been in several relationships and aren’t married yet; where are you even? are you on the “train of living” that everyone else seems to be on or are you, like, an accidental drifter? should you change your name? is it ok to feel what you feel? (Perham: yes.)

Further Reading

How Poems Get Made, James Longenbach

BONUS: Prompty Memes for Poetic Fiends

Inspired by Brittany Perham, try writing:

1. A contemporary ghazal 2. A poem in which quatrains, tercets or any other stanza form “weaves” in the Danteseque way above (ABAB, BCBC, CDCD etc.) 3. A piece that explores a duality that isn’t the duality between lovers, family members, or citizen/state.

… ok, to the siren call of dinner.

With soy-soaked tempeh, Michu

(I dog-eared poems I loved.)

P.S. I forgot to tie up the loose end about Longenbach’s voice. Perham’s poems also display a lovely sense of voice, though her tools to accomplish this involve content as much as diction and assonance. Peace!!!

[dinafbrownil]

Must-Reads Of The Week From Brianna Labuskes

The Friday Breeze

Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes, who reads everything on health care to compile our daily Morning Briefing, offers the best and most provocative stories for the weekend.

Happy Friday! Today is the day I’m going to challenge you to stretch those creative muscles and enter our Halloween Health Care Haiku Competition. Yes, it is going to be exactly as awesome as it sounds! The entries are already pouring in, check out the rules here. To kick things off, KHN’s very own talented and brilliant haiku master-in-residence Stephanie Stapleton wrote this one: “Goblins wear white coats, and not much is spookier, than the health system.”

Now on to what you might have missed this week.

Democrats packed themselves onto a crowded stage this week for what already feels like the umpteenth debate but was only the fourth or the sixth (depending if you count the two-nighters separately).

Going by the amount of heat she took, it seems safe to say Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is considered by her rivals to be one of the race’s front-runners. With that spotlight, though, comes a target on her back.

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) – who are both vying to become the alternative for former Vice President Joe Biden’s moderate voters – were particularly sharp in their demands for Warren to reckon with the costs of “Medicare for All.” The question of how she would pay for such a plan has been one she’s been managing to dodge, but her rivals tried to hold her feet to the fire on Tuesday. “At least Bernie’s being honest,” Klobuchar said at one point in reference to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) admission that the proposal will raise taxes.

FWIW: Despite being pressed to answer the direct question: “Will you raise taxes on the middle class to pay for it? Yes or no?” Warren still didn’t let herself be pinned down. Something that, the day after the debate, Biden jumped on as well.

The New York Times: Warren Draws Fire From All Sides, Reflecting A Shift In Fortunes In Race

The New York Times: Joe Biden Ramps Up Attacks On Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Credibility’

Health care is possibly the broadest (or at least one of the broader) topics that the candidates could talk about, and yet all it seems they’ve been discussing at the debates is health care coverage. Friends, you are not alone if you’re frustrated by not seeing a more diverse range of questions. Even Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) was fed-up enough to redirect the conversation toward abortion rights and reproductive health. Considering it’s such a viscerally hot-topic at the moment, the omission seems glaring.

Los Angeles Times: Kamala Harris Slams Republicans On Abortion, Says They’re Killing Poor Women Of Color

But it’s not just reproductive health that the moderators could ask about. Axios came up with at least four great questions that I think a lot of people in the field would like to have answered. Like: Many of the things that make people sick are not the fault of bad health care — they’re social factors like poverty, low-quality housing, etc. Should it be part of the health care system’s job to address them? (Hint, hint moderators.)

Axios: Four Health Care Questions For Tonight’s Democratic Debate

Don’t get me wrong, there were a few other health-related moments beyond “Medicare for All” bickering… including one of the more heated exchanges of the night. Beto O’Rourke said Democrats need to be courageous in their policies and not be scared of polls, to which Buttigieg responded: “I don’t need lessons from you on courage.”

The Wall Street Journal: Democratic Debate: The Moments That Mattered

Meanwhile, amid all this focus on “Medicare for All,” a new study counsels that there are many paths toward universal coverage—it doesn’t have to be “Medicare for All” or bust.

The Associated Press: Study: ‘Medicare For All’ Not Only Way To Universal Coverage

The Friday Breeze

Want a roundup of the must-read stories this week chosen by KHN Newsletter Editor Brianna Labuskes? Sign up for The Friday Breeze today.

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A big decision on the constitutionality of the health law is expected to drop sometime in the coming weeks. Although in theory, the Trump administration wants a certain outcome, if the court decides the ACA is unconstitutional, it could be a big ole headache for the White House heading into 2020. A ruling like that could not only foster confusion right around open enrollment, but also allow the Democrats to re-frame the health narrative in a way that could appeal to independent and moderate voters more than the current back and forth about “Medicare for All.”

The New York Times: How Pending Decision On Obamacare Could Upend 2020 Campaign

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) passed away this week at 68 from complications of longstanding health problems. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced that she’ll be renaming her signature drug pricing policy after Cummings as he was a long-time champion of reigning in such costs.

Some might remember that it was Cummings who took Martin Shkreli, of “pharma bro” fame” to task at a hearing.

“It’s not funny, Mr. Shkreli,” Cummings said as Shkreli smirked. “People are dying, and they’re getting sicker and sicker.”

The Baltimore Sun: U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, Key Figure In Trump Impeachment Inquiry And Longtime Baltimore Advocate, Dies At 68

Stat: Pelosi: Democrats Will Name Marquee Drug Pricing Bill For Late Rep. Cummings

In a high-stakes, eleventh hour gambit Judge Dan A. Polster is summoning the drug CEOs involved in the massive, nationwide opioid trial to try to agree to a massive $50 billion settlement. Although the talks center around the big players involved — like AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson — plaintiffs’ lawyers say they hope such a deal would have a domino effect on the remaining defendants.

Although the reports seem hopeful, those familiar with the talks say that the cities and counties are hesitant because they’re worried they’re not going to see their fair share of the money.

(This is as of press time! It’s happening today, so there could be developments depending when your read this—ah, the excitement of live news!)

The New York Times: Judge Summons Drug C.E.O.S For Talks On Sweeping Opioid Settlement

In a sea of heartbreaking stories on the opioid epidemic, this one stands out. The Washington Post took a look at West Virginia’s crisis and how court victories against drug companies aren’t really the panacea they’re sometimes made out to be.

The Washington Post: Inside West Virginia’s Opioid Battle: ‘They Looked At Us Like An Easy Target’

These two court stories feel like they happened ages ago, but really it was just last Friday post-Breeze. If you caught them happening in real time, there’s nothing to update, but I wanted to make sure I included them for anyone who wasn’t glued to their computer on a Friday evening.

The New York Times: Judges Strike Several Blows To Trump Immigration Policies

The Associated Press: US Appeals Court Skeptical Of Trump’s Medicaid Work Rules

This binge-worthy story needs no other introduction than the one ProPublica already wrote for it, so I’m going to quote them: “Welcome to Coffeyville, Kansas, where the judge has no law degree, debt collectors get a cut of the bail, and Americans are watching their lives — and liberty — disappear in the pursuit of medical debt collection.”

ProPublica: When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

And, on a related note, if you’ve missed my colleague Jay Hancock’s coverage of UVA’s lawsuits against their patients, make sure to check out all the developments here.

Meanwhile, in the miscellaneous story file this week:

— Melody Petersen of LAT won the holy cannoli award this week with her investigation into the practice of harvesting body parts—and the coroners that go along with it. My face when reading the entirety of the article was an exact replica of the “shocked and distressed” emoji.

Los Angeles Times: In The Rush To Harvest Body Parts, Death Investigations Have Been Upended

— Deaths, poor quality of care, and other problems have absolutely plagued the Indian Health Service for years, and Native Americans are sick of it. They want to take over running their own health care system, but the task would be daunting.

The New York Times: Fed Up With Deaths, Native Americans Want To Run Their Own Health Care

— You can’t swing a cat these days without hitting some new CBD product. It seems inevitable that that kind of lucrative, thriving marketplace would draw pharma’s attention. Here’s a look at what companies are developing new drugs to tap into those profits. (PSA: but don’t actually swing any cats, please.)

Stat: These Four Companies Are Betting Big On CBD-Based Prescription Drugs

— If you want a fentanyl drug ring story that reads like a thriller, check this article out.

The New York Times: The China Connection: How One D.E.A. Agent Cracked A Global Fentanyl Ring

That’s it from me! Have a great weekend and don’t forget to get your flu shot!

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/must-reads-of-the-week-from-brianna-labuskes-26/

[thesoundofsimple]

It took me a while to compile these. Maybe I was busy, maybe I didn’t want the closure.  I’m not always so great with closure. I think it was more that i tried and failed to post this several times and it was starting to become too much work. Anyway, I’ve finished the series. This story has consumed me for the last two years. Hey, I’m not a fast reader ok - don’t you judge me. But it’s a nice thing to have something in your life like that for so long, what’s the rush. I’ve compiled a bunch of my fav moments from the book below along with some commentary on some of them. Where to begin... I read this series because of two people. Either in high school or early college my friend Matt insisted that I start reading the Gunslinger series. He was obsessed with it. I was not a king fan at the time and chalked his interest Up to the other weirdo fantasy books he would read about kings and queens and warriors and big bears and those fantasy books you would see in the bookstores with the girls with the big boobs and they are riding a wolf or something from other dimensions and such (you know the ones right?) Sometimes he’d plead with me anyway about how I was missing out. I ignored this but regardless, the seed was planted. As I was reading this, i realized how lucky i was to be able to just keep reading this series unencumbered by the wait for publication. I was never having to wait YEARS for the next book to come out, or wondering if it ever would come out. I kinda got the Netflix treatment on this, i could binge read. I had the sad realization that as obsessed as Matt was with the series, he only got through three. He died a few months before Wizard and Glass which i realize is a small tragedy in comparison to the whole "he died" part but its a tragedy nonetheless. I wish Matt could have been able to finish the series. That would have made him happy. He was a nice person and one of my best friends, I realize writing this, I miss him. The other person implicated here as getting me interested was my friend Amy. She'd been a big King fan since she was a kid. A little kid. A weird little kid according to her, reading fukin Pet Cemetery at age 11 and such. My own 11 year old would have to be committed to a mental institution if she read that book. Amy liked reading in general and I hadn't really been reading any books in a long time and I was embarrassed about that when it came to her so i tried to start reading a bit not to seem like a total degenerate. that kid had a way of making me do things that were good, things i should be doing - nice quality really. She had a way of picking out things for me that, well, I really liked. She was my taste-maker for a few years with stuff like this and I came to believe if she said i would like it, well it was a done deal because she was always right about what i'd like. That said, she was also a little self conscious sometimes about her interests. She'd go on a whole rant about something sorta esoteric and then suddenly become self aware and look embarrassed, say something like "yeah, your girl's a real weirdo, sorry" but I loved listening and learning about lots of stuff (great stuff) i just had been oblivious to. Roland and his friends were among Amy's favorite stories. So a few years later when we, well, didn't talk anymore, and I missed her... quite a lot, I started picking up some of the books she told me about. While Matt put the idea in my head to read these books, I know that the real reason i finally did was to have a tiny part of her around, a one way connection but a connection regardless (now who's the weirdo) And it was nice to be honest. I would have liked to have talked to her about these books, or just say Thankya for putting the idea in my head. 

It’s amazing to me how much the world changed for King from the first book to the last. Or since Matt left. Or since Amy left. Or shall I say, the world has moved on, if it do ya. That the first book was started before I was born and before the last, Harry Potter appeared in the world of Roland. This was an almost uncomprehendingly amazing story. I cant believe it came from one brain. its staggering to me really, truly staggering. Thank you Mr. King. August 1, 2018. 

—————————— My comments in bold You needn’t die happy when your day comes, but you must die satisfied"

“That smell of cooking meat wafting through the air was not pork.”

“sköldpadda tumbled to the red rug, bounced beneath one of the tables, and there (like a certain paper boat some of you may remember) passes out of this tale forever” Loved this reference to IT

“A man can’t pull himself up by his own bootstraps no matter how hard he tries” agreed. reflective of my continuing shift to the left of the political spectrum

“Roland nodded, which wasn’t good enough for Eddie. “Let me hear you say it.”“Hoggie.”“Hoagie.”“HOOG-gie.” Philly! “always tuned to the oldies on WCBS” my mom always had this on growing up. cousin brucie. 

“Anyone who doesn’t think the imagination can kill is a fool” it can. it can make your day or ruin your life

“He leaned forward through the fragrant pipe-smoke. “Son,” he said, “tell your tale. And don’tcha skip a goddam word.”” you knew he was going to believe, i loved this. 

“And she kept the secret. I was the only one she ever told.” Eddie, perhaps remembering that post-coital confidence in the dark of night, was smiling painful” keeping each other secrets... i know that painful smile while remembering

“John offered them a smile that augured well for his future as a dirty trickster: bemused on the surface, sly beneath. well, i just liked this

“Do any of us, except in our dreams, truly expect to be reunited with our hearts’ deepest loves, even when they leave us only for minutes, and on the most mundane of errands? No, not at all. Each time they go from our sight we in our secret hearts count them as dead. Having been given so much, we reason, how could we expect not to be brought as low as Lucifer for the staggering presumption of our love?” and sometimes, they leave, and indeed, are gone.  “and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love’s ever been the more destructive weapon, sure.” aye

“To a wide-eyed lad, the tacky tricks of the world’s most ham-fisted prestidigitator look like miracles. ”

“Steek-Tete in Thunder-clap, thinking just briefly of Mr. C. S. Lewis, and the wonderful wardrobe that took you to Narnia. They did not come out in Narnia.”

“What do you know about what it’s like to spend your whole life on the outside, to be the butt of the joke every time, to always be Carrie at the fuckin prom?”

“It was a simple and perfect bit of wordless communication, the sort people who love each other take for granted.”

“My grandfather had a proverb,” Pimli said. “‘You don’t worry about dropping the eggs until you’re almost home.’” “Was it Emily Dickinson who called hope the thing with feathers? I can’t remember” had a friend, she liked this one. 

“Because the only thing talent wants is to be used.””

“Yet he is content enough. The food is good, and although his sexual appetites have subsided quite a bit over the years, he’s not a bit averse to the odd bonk, just reminding himself”“very time that sim sex is really nothing but accessorized masturbation” I cant help but think this is my future. at least it will be accessorized!

If there’s any movie the Breakers never get enough of, it’s Star Wars.” was this a dig a starwars?  “Roland smiled. “A man who can’t bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.”  “Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim”

“Even if the torture stops, I’ll die. And you’ll die too, for when love leaves the world, all hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives.”

“Nerves, he thought, were for people who still hadn’t entirely made up their minds.”

“the rest of the tale will be short and brutal compared to all that’s gone before. Because when katet breaks the end always comes quickly.Say sorry” = king does this thing where he makes a statement like this and you start worrying and reading faster and faster “All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one”

“He used to tell me that never’s the word God listens for when he needs a laugh.”” “Hush,” he whispered, and she did. The hand caught in her hair pulled. She brought her face to his willingly and kissed his living lips one last time. “I . . . will . . . wait for you,” he said, forcing each word out with immense effort.”

“I probably know more about D-cups than D-lines, and I think that’s true of everyone here”  i take the D line home, D cups are more fun. 

“on order from Viking Motors (“The Boys with the Toys”) in Oxford himself.” i think i stopped into this store last fall

“It was also a stick shift, and she had never driven one of those.”

“Roland and Jake were now bracing their hands against the dusty metal dashboard, where a faded sticker proclaimed AMERICA! LOVE IT OR LEAVE! in red white and blue” was once in a bar in south boston and they have this big sign up that says this. i agreed at the time 15 years ago, now i realize it’s against everything i believe in

“You’re in one hell of a hurry, mister—like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. What very important date are you almost too late for?”  I believe this is what is known as The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon

“Despite his sorrow, there were no tears yet; his eyes felt like hot stones in his head. Perhaps the tears would come later, when the truth of what had happened here had a chance to sink in a little”

“He knelt a moment longer with his hands clasped between his knees, thinking he had not understood the true power of sorrow, nor the pain of regret, until this moment.I cannot bear to let him go.”

“It’s what we call poetic license, Roland.”He nodded, showing unexpected (to her, at least) understanding. “Pretty lies,” he said” =pretty lies, i liked that

“If she had trimmed her bush, maybe she would have taken them off. If she’d known, getting up that morning“

“You wouldn’t dump me without at least . . .” She shrugged one shoulder. The gesture made her look very young. “Without at least saying goodbye?”

“The George Washington,” Marian Carver said. “Or just the GWB, if you’re a native.” i used to listen to the traffic reports as a kid and know all these abbreviations, GWB, BQE, LIE, etc

That man had some hard bark on him

“He opened it and slipped inside with no look back. That, he had found, was ever the easiest way.”

“There were photographs of Eddie and Jake in the folders that were simply too painful to look at. Memories were better.”  “nothing so glamorous, just a retreaded adman from upstate New York”

“Then she screamed. There were no words in it, nor could there have been. Our greatest moments of triumph are always inarticulate.”

“Because the body had a way of forgetting the worst things, she supposed, and without the body’s cooperation, all the brain had were memories like faded snapshots.”

“Good boys go to heaven, and all my friends be in t’other place, toastin marshmallows” 

“It felt strange to laugh, but it was a good feeling, like finding something of value long after you were sure it was lost forever.” this resonated with me

“Oy had decided to live. It was a small thing, but it was a good thing.” It was a good choice. it always is. no matter what. 

“not Sheemie, he’s gone into the clearing at the end of the path, say sorry” thought sheemie deserved a better more dramatic end. “After today she’d see him no more. And that was for the best. Still, she would have given anything in her life to have him make love to her again. You could stay at the apartment for a couple of days and rest up,” she said. “I’d stay with you.” And fuck thy brains out, do it please ya, she thought” sex with an ex? yes please. 

““Bet your bottom dollar,” Roland answered”“and was sorry immediately. He’d learned the phrase from Eddie, and saying it hurt.” has this happened to me, using a phases of a departed only to find is satisfying but satisfying at the same time? i think so...

“In the dark, such visions had a horrible persuasiveness, but luckily she was too tired for them to keep her awake long.”

““It hasn’t been a bad life,” Joe was saying. “Not the life I expected, not by any manner or means, but I got a theory—the folks who end up living the lives they expected are more often than not the ones who end up takin sleepin pills or sticking the barrel of a gun in their mouths and pullin the trigger.”

“Laughter, Susannah would reflect later, is like a hurricane: once it reaches a certain point, it becomes self-feeding, self-supporting. You laugh not because the jokes are funny but because your own condition is funny.”

“But what Roland and Susannah and Patrick heard in a major key, Mordred heard in a minor” i liked this. i have  this really really smart friend but he cant understand the difference between major and minor even when i played him some stuff in piano, hes like “i dont get it”

“Beneath a picture of Roland in profile, he had printed: BEATLES, not Beetles.” WOW i never NEVER realized this! im in IDIOT

“She wondered why everything had to be so damn hard, so damn”“riddle-de-dum) mysterious, and knew that was a question to  which she would never find a satisfactory answer . . . except it was the human condition, wasn’t it? The answers that mattered never came easily.” 

“where she’d learned the art of murder and fallen in love and been left bereaved?”

1. “More important than that, it was unworthy of how much he had come to love and respect her. It broke what remained of his heart to think of bidding her goodbye, but if it was what she wanted, what she needed, then he must do it. 

2. “No,” said he, and she saw he truly was not. She believed she had never seen such sadness and such loneliness on a human face. “Never” 3. “For a moment she thought he would make it easy on her, just agree and let her go. Then his anger—no, his despair—broke in a painful burst. “But you can’t be sure! ” 4. “She took him by the arm and pulled him down and put her lips on his. When she inhaled, she took in the breath of a thousand years and ten thousand miles. And yes, she tasted death.” 5. “He put his face in his hands. It occurred to him that if he had never loved them, he would never have felt so alone as this. Yet of all his many regrets, the re-opening of his heart was not among them, even now. She had brought grace to his life. It wasn’t a word that had occurred to him until she was gone.” this whole section where suzanne leaves roland was kinda hard for me to read, a little to close to home. even tho they were just friends, it was very familiar. 

“A hard rain made for queer bedfellows at the inn; had Roland never heard that saying?”

“Or what if he does know her, somewhere far back in his mind, yet still denies her as completely as Peter denied Jesus, because remembering is just too hurtful?”

“She tosses Roland’s revolver into this litter barrel. Doing it hurts her heart, but she never hesitates.” id never be able to do this. 

“His touch is electric, and she sees that he feels it, too. It occurs to her that he is going to kiss her again for the first time, and sleep with her again for the first time, and fall in love with her again for the first time. He may know those things because voices have told him, but she knows them for a far better reason: because those things have”“already happened. Ka is a wheel, Roland said, and now she knows it’s true. This was a sweet part of the book. Reminded me of a lyric “i get the joy of rediscovering you...”

“And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness.”

“One taste of the old times sets all to rights”

“All right. I go. Long days and pleasant nights. May we meet in the clearing at the end of the path when all worlds end.” Thank you. 

[ultralifehackerguru-blog]

New Post has been published on http://www.lifehacker.guru/21-celebrities-you-probably-forgot-guest-starred-on-the-office/

21 celebrities you probably forgot guest-starred on 'The Office'

“The Office” is quite possibly one of the most iconic television shows of all time. There’s no shortage of memes, parodies, and quotable moments, but the sheer star-power in the series is a category all its own.

Principal cast aside, some big Hollywood celebs made some hilarious, heartfelt, and flat-out weird guest appearances over the show’s eight-year run. But with a whopping 188 episodes and nine seasons, it’s entirely possible that even the most dedicated Dunder Mifflin fanatics may have forgotten who played who (and we wouldn’t judge you for it).

Keep scrolling for a refresher on all the celebrities that guest starred in “The Office.”

Ricky Gervais played his iconic character on the show during season seven.

He’s the UK version’s co-creator.

Netflix

Some may be surprised to learn that the “The Office” we all binge on Netflix actually isn’t the first version of the show. The series originated in the UK with show co-creator Ricky Gervais starring as David Brent, a.k.a the British version of Michael Scott. Gervais reprised his role twice in season seven of the US version: once in a cold open where he befriend Michael outside an elevator, and a second as an applicant to Dunder Mifflin.

Warren Buffett made a sly guest appearance during season seven.

He was briefly interviewed for a job.

Netflix

No one would blame you if you didn’t catch this one. Remember the man who tried to penny-pinch Dunder Mifflin during his job interview in season seven? Yeah, it was Warren Buffett, no big deal.

Idris Elba played a tough higher-up during season five.

He was the killjoy higher up.

Netflix

Michael Scott definitely had a penchant for befriending the DM corporate higher ups, but Idris Elba’s Charles Miner proved to be a bit of a killjoy throughout season five with his stickler management style.

Will Ferrell popped up a few times in season seven.

He had tough shoes to fill.

The Office / NBC

Ferrell and Steve Carell have been friends for years and previously starred in “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy” together, so it’s no surprise he popped up in a few episodes as Deangelo Vickers, the Southwest-obsessed replacement for Michael Scott. He lasted just four episodes before making a not-so-graceful exit after injuring himself in a freak basketball accident.

Amy Adams played Jim’s ex in season one.

She was on for three episodes.

Netflix

Before Jim and Pam were, well, Jim and Pam, there was Jim and Katy. That’s right — before Adams became the Hollywood starlet we know today from hits like “Sunshine Cleaning,” “Doubt,” and “Julie and Julia,” she played Jim’s overly-perky, ex-cheerleader girlfriend for three episodes before he dumped her on a booze cruise.

James Spader had a recurring role in seasons seven and eight.

He made a few appearances.

The Office / NBC

Ah, who could forget the mysterious and weirdly enchanting Robert California? James Spader starred as the CEO of Sabre before leaving to star in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “The Blacklist.”

Kathy Bates also appeared in seasons seven and eight.

She often communicated via video call on the show.

Netflix

Before Robert California talked his way into the Dunder Mifflin offices, Kathy Bates played the overly-confident and deeply-Southern Jo Bennett, Sabre’s original founder and CEO.

Evan Peters played Micheal’s nephew in season seven.

He played a pretty annoying character.

Netflix

Before Evan Peters was freaking out all of America in “American Horror Story,” he had a brief cameo in the season seven episode “Nepotism,” in which he starred as Michael Scott’s nephew Luke Cooper. In the end, baby Evan left the episode in tears after Michael literally spanked him for basically being a terrible employee. Awkward.

Will Arnett also played someone who came in for an interview in season seven.

He was toward the beginning of the episode.

Netflix

Arnett’s guest appearance was brief but memorable in season seven’s “Search Committee” episode, where he played a secretive manager candidate that insisted on withholding a precious three-step plan from Jim, Toby, and Gabe.

Jim Carrey also guest-starred during season seven.

He was certainly memorable.

IMDb

Another of several guest appearances in the Search Committee episode was Jim Carrey’s quirky character, simply known as Finger Lakes Guy. That name alone should jog your memory.

Christian Slater appeared in a strange orientation video in season six.

He was in an orientation video the employees watched.

Netflix

Technically this could be considered a not-so-subtle cameo, but we can’t just ignoreChristian Slater in Sabre’s mildly creepy orientation video.

Rashida Jones appeared in season three as a love interest.

Before Pam there was Karen.

Netflix

Before she took on the role of the poetic and beautiful land mermaid Ann Perkins on “Parks and Recreation,” Jones was Karen Filippelli, Jim Halpert’s last girlfriend before he finally confessed his love for Pam.

Timothy Olyphant was mean to Pam in season seven.

He rubbed a some fans the wrong way.

Netflix

“The Santa Clarita Diet” star appeared as rival salesman/possible male model (in Michael Scott’s words) Danny Cordray for a few episodes in season seven. But while he was nice to look at, he left the show in poor taste when it was revealed he thought Pam was too dorky to date. #Rude.

Kevin McHale had a memorable role, even as a pizza delivery man in season four.

He played a hostage.

Netflix

Before he landed his most well-known role as the nerdy yet ridiculously-talented Artie Abrams on “Glee,” McHale was a pizza delivery man with an attitude that landed him as Michael and Dwight’s Hostage during the company launch party.

Tim Meadows serenaded us in season two.

His dinner with Jan and Michael was iconic.

Netflix

You may know him as Mr. Duvall in “Mean Girls,” but we can’t forget Meadows’ business meeting with Michael and Jan at America’s (unofficial) Favorite Restaurant: Chili’s. Remember them singing their all-too-catchy jingle about baby back ribs?

Jack Black and Jessica Alba had a really random appearance in season five.

It was pretty unexpected.

Netflix

Technically this could be considered the most random cameo in the world rather than a true guest appearance. Black and Alba made a small appearance in as an on-screen couple in a fictional film that Andy bootlegged in season five’s Stress Relief episode. The two actors didn’t interact with any of the show’s characters, but it still deserves some credit.

Melissa Rauch played a fellow new mom in season six.

She played a new mother.

Netflix

Around the same time she started her role as Bernadette Rostenkowski on “The Big Bang Theory,” Rauch guest starred as new mom Cathy in Delivery: Part 2, where Pam accidentally breastfed Cathy’s baby in an exhausted stupor instead of little Cece — a common mistake, obviously.

Ray Romano also played an interviewee in season seven.

He even took out a sandwich during his job interview.

Netflix

The comedian and star of “Everybody Loves Raymond” joined the handful of celebs that made an appearance in the Search Committee episode. Romano played Merv Bronte, the easily-influenced and self-deprecating interviewee.

Josh Groban played Andy’s brother and appeared in seasons eight and nine.

He was Andy Bernard’s brother.

Netflix

In what is probably one of the more random guest stars on the show, Groban played Andy Bernard’s more talented, adorably unaware younger brother Walter Bernard Jr. You might remember him from the Garden Party episode when he upstaged Andy and mistook both Phyllis and Meredith for Pam.

Joan Cusack had a rare and sweet cameo in season nine.

She was in the final episode.

Netflix

Cusack had a small but significant role in the Finale episode as Erin Hannon’s biological mother. While she didn’t have more than a couple lines, her sweet role was the perfect touch on what was arguably one of the most emotional episodes in the series.

(C)

[supershawolelf]

Top Usa Lawyers

 "No envelope mix-up here!  Meet the lawyers behind the 'Moonlight' Oscar winner, Melania's litigation, Bill O'Reilly's downturn, the year's most significant media megamergers and pretty much anything that matters in Hollywood. Extortion.  Messy divorces.   Nine-figure deals with Chinese media conglomerates.  It's been a busy year for Hollywood's power lawyers, who once again gather in THR's pages for the magazine's yearly Power Lawyers difficulty.  The men and women on this listing handle a range of instances, from simple talent contracts to complex corporate mergers which take weeks to iron out, but all of them have things in common.  All of them love working in the entertainment market.  They all play a vital part in keeping Hollywood's wheels turning.  They're all at the very top of the area.  And judging from THR's poll -- they drink a lot of coffee (an average of 5.5 cups a day, even if calculations include the guy who promised to down 97 cups).  Beneath, the Electricity Lawyers of 2017 talk about their biggest cases, disclose their private political beliefs (just 14 percent think Donald Trump will get impeached) and reply the age-old question, "Which superhero would you most want to represent? ""

Marty Katz

Sheppard Mullin Alma mater University of Michigan Law School Why he matters When you're a Hollywood litigator, all sorts of weird stuff can pop up.  Like a princess 's collapse on a Carnival cruise boat.  Katz is working with this while also planning to proceed to trial for investors seeking to regain what they spent for the troubled movie adaptation of Martin Amis' London Fields.  But his bread and butter is still profit-participation cases.  He's representing MGM in a dispute over a pair of Clint Eastwood classics and recently completed arbitrating a case between a music video that became a viral sensation online. Comfort food "Pizza and fries. "

Daniel Petrocelli

O'Melveny & Myers  Alma mater Southwestern Law School  He issues His most headline-grabbing situation in 2017 was safeguarding Donald Trump in the Trump University fraud case.  That settled around the time his client won the presidential elections.  Petrocelli also settled a lawsuit for customer SiriusXM (in a dispute over public broadcasting of pre-1972 sound records ), worked with Fox on its own suit against Netflix for poaching executives defended Kesha within her legal warfare with Dr. Luke.  Last TV show binged Narcos

Ari Lanin

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Alma mater USC Gould School of Law  He matters He was his company 's lead partner in the formation of WndrCo, the electronic and tech investment firm that's Jeffrey Katzenberg's $750 million post-DreamWorks passion project.  He also guided Otter Media, the joint venture between AT&T and Chernin Group, in the formation of Gunpowder & Sky with Van Toffler and Floris Bauer.  The independent studio is racking up acquisitions, including New York-based indie distribution firm FilmBuff and several festival names like Sundance standout Novitiate.  Who should play me at the movie of my life The Stone

Tom Hansen

Hanson, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush, Kaller & Gellman Alma mater USC Gould School of Law Why he matters Hansen's clients Stephen Colbert and Mel Gibson equally had roaring comebacks this year, while Robert Downey Jr. signed a deal to star in Dr. Doolittle to get Universal.  David Lynch created a long-awaited return with Showtime's Twin Peaks reboot.  Client Bill Simmons' HBO series Any Given Wednesday was canceled, but he's already bouncing back by making an Andre the Giant documentary there.

Matthew Johnson

Ziffren Brittenham Alma mater Southwestern Law School  Why he issues In April, Johnson filed a suit on behalf of Sylvester Stallone alleging that Warner Bros. was "dishonest" in profit participations.  The complaint continues a busy period for the lawyer, who lately scored a settlement for three people who maintained that ABC's Quantico derived from their job.  Most dangerous thing I've accomplished in a decade "Getting close to the gorillas in Rwanda. "

[nomadmanager]

What Happened To Jen Horn? : The Year And A Half That Has Passed - A 2016 Review (and 2017 so far)

For a long time, I stopped writing.  I stopped writing for me. 

Apart from my annual review/preview + letter to self, there was not much other writing I’ve done for personal release (as people did back in the Livejournal days, for those of you old enough to know it) in the past 4-5 years. And I’m months overdue on this year’s letter to self and my 2016-2017 review/preview. 

What’s held me back all this time (apart from the excuse we like to tell ourselves that we’re busy, etc.) is that I was avoiding writing things down, largely because I was afraid to admit to myself of how little I had accomplished of the goals I had set for myself in 2016, and furthermore, how little I knew of what I wanted to happen in 2017. I was hiding from the world because I didn’t want to have to admit failure or be forced to aspire to do more merely because of social pressure (even when that was imagined).

About a week ago, I started a half-assed effort of writing again. I wrote word vomit that I kept to myself, because I feared judgment from those who might read my words. I would be exposing my private, personal thoughts that I felt have nothing to do with the work I do, and I felt it would do little to help others in the world. I was still hiding.

But then, I’ve always felt and written differently when I imagined at least one another person reading my words, so I thought it was still essential that I post this publicly. And who knows, maybe you can relate to it a little bit and find a nugget or two to be useful in your own life. 

And to give myself added courage, I reminded myself: 

“Jen, this is for your personal blog. Who cares what other people think? You’re afraid they’ll judge you because you were fearless enough to put your honest pain, joy, fears and dreams (or lack thereof) out there for their possible consumption? Then they have a problem, not you. This is your space. Use it for your catharsis if you wish. There are plenty of other places in cyberspace where they can choose to spend their time. If they don’t like your self-indulgent whining or whatever, and yet they continue on reading, then they’re the idiots, aren’t they?” 

And so, here we are. You may go, or you may stay. 

If you choose to stay, prepare for a looooot of possibly incoherent word vomit about what’s been up with Jen Horn (though I tried to organize the following 4,000 words a bit) and a looooot of my personal story and feelings. If you go, ciao. 

THE YEAR (AND A HALF) THAT HAS PASSED ^ That being considered, this post is still pretty short. 

So much has happened since the beginning of 2016, and simultaneously, it also seems I was stuck in certain aspects of my life. If you’ve wondered what’s been happening with Jen Horn lately, here it is. 

For a good part of the past year and a half, I spent it wavering, doubting what I ought to do next with Muni, and my life in general. It was obvious to me that I remained lost in figuring out the right business model to keep running it sustainably without sacrificing values of sustainability and social good. It was also clear to me that I was losing the steam I once had in the earlier stages of Muni – back when it was an informal movement, up to its earlier stages as a formal institution. 

ACT 1: GERMAN WINTER & MANILA SPRING (CLEANING) 

The DO (and Don’t) School + Dealing with Cancer 

I had joined The DO School’s Entrepreneurship for Good program in January 2016 in Berlin with the hopes to get clarity and growth for Muni. Instead, the unintended effect of it making me reassess things, is that it made me cast greater doubt in Muni and in my desire and motivation to continue with the status quo vs. going off to start something anew. 

While I was in Berlin, in February, about a week after my birthday, I found out my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I tried to be there for my mom, even as I was 10,000 km away. More importantly, I tried talking to my dad, so that he could support her vs. stress her out, because I do know how they can get, especially when they don’t see eye to eye and want to impose their own ways on the other. 

Upon my return to Manila from Berlin in March, I dove right into family + work -- with my mother’s dilemma on how to deal with her cancer + MUNI Market 2016 already pre-scheduled to happen in Nuvali in May. 

If you were in my wormy brain in late 2015, then you’ll know I had already been rethinking Muni back then. So by this time in 2016, I was becoming increasingly fatigued by the thought of the work, wanted a more full time team but couldn’t afford it (nor commit to affording it), and I missed creating and traveling and doing things for me. And frankly, my mom’s situation made me rethink my own life and what I valued while I was trying to help her realize what brought her meaning in her life.

Healing of the body (which we did explore with several doctors) has a lot to do with healing the mind and heart, through meditation and such (not as popular with most doctors, if not done alongside other conventional means), and I was exploring some of that with her from April to June with various meditation apps, books, checking out some local meditation classes or retreats. She wasn’t into all of that, save for the occasional Headspace session, but I tried to lighten her psychological-emotional burden or stress when I could, even in other ways like just talking (or listening) to her.

On Firing Up Motivation vs. Being A Vegetable

Shortly after the Muni Market concluded on May 21, we also organized a Muni Meetup on Motivation on June 9, to revitalize demotivated dreamers and doers who we believed should still have the courage to go on. 

The truth is, it was as much for myself as it was for the Muni community. And even when we got raving feedback about how it encouraged and inspired attendees to act boldly and soldier on, it did not seem enough to lift my own spirits. I felt like I lacked the motivation to go on and I didn’t know how to gain it back. I had called for a planning meeting with my core team after that meetup. However, instead of discussing next steps, I wound up breaking down in unexpected tears. I asked what would happen to Muni without me? Would they soldier on? And is it even really valuable or was I just being self-important?

For two weeks in June 2016, I was pretty much a vegetable. I went on ridiculous Netflix binges, until I finally resolved to get my shit together. I de-cluttered my physical and mental spaces; sold more of my unwanted / unneeded belongings; booked myself in a Vipassana meditation retreat in August (because ironically, while exploring meditation more for my mom, I found that I was revisiting it more for me too), all to help me really reassess what I valued.

ACT 2: SPANISH SUMMER 

Eat, Pray, Love (in 17 days, with parents – lol)

The 10th to the 27th of July 2016 would also find me in a surprise trip to Europe, a 17-day whirlwind trip through some parts of Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, Seville), France (Lourdes) and Portugal (Lisbon, Fatima) with my parents. They had been initially scheduled to go with other friends in March, but had to postpone the trip when they found out about my mom’s diagnosis. 

 Worried about traveling alone with my dad, my mom wanted a younger and more travel-savvy person to accompany them (since they were no longer traveling with their other friends), and I suddenly found myself in the continent again. It was not a trip I was supposed to be on. And while the thought of going around Europe (this time on holiday) was appealing, I was also worried about extended travel with my parents given our history of stressful family trips. 

Somehow, we survived each other. It was a relatively stress-free family trip considering the duration of the trip, unfamiliarity with the countries, and constant moving around. It was actually really good. 

The Day I Had For Me 

In the days leading up to the end of the trip though, I felt myself getting antsier, not because of parental squabbles, but more of just me wanting some of my own time away from them during this trip. 

And so, on day 15, I managed to find a long stretch of alone time, and meet someone (let’s call him L) who would largely shape the year to come. I’ll spare you the cheesy details, suffice it to say, it was a connection that I had never had before. And we were determined to see each other again somehow. Maybe the next summer, who knew? 

More Days I Made For Me 

On the 27th of July, I left Spain, and by August 3, I would finally push through with a 10-day Vipassana Meditation Retreat, after 4 years of putting it off. 

I had hoped I would get me more balance, clarity on Muni and what I want to do with my life. What I emerged clear about was that I wanted to go back to Europe before the year was over. If the connection I made with L was still present (or stronger). It was. And so I made plans to. 

Not long after I had gotten out of Vipassana (a few days after), he also paid me a surprise visit in the Philippines for a week. It was possibly one of the happiest times of my life. 

“I think anybody who falls in love is a freak. It’s a crazy thing to do. It’s kind of like a form of socially accepted insanity.” – Amy, Her (2013) 

And so, I told my closest friends and my Muni team about our story, and my intention to go see him for a couple of months. They were supportive of the insane pursuit of love, and agreed to hold the fort from November 1 to January 11, as we only had one scheduled meetup for December. 

I kept the reasons for my trip from majority of the population secret because I still find it mildly cringe-worthy that I, Jen Horn, strong, independent woman who doesn’t need a man per se and has her own thing going for her, would travel that far, and essentially put her life on hold for a couple of months for a boy, well, a man, but you know, a boy. 

But it was the only thing that made sense in life at the time. 

From August to October 2016, I would then run a few more events for Muni (our scheduled workshop series) and do some marketing/event consultancy, while also selling more stuff on Carousell to augment my income and declutter at the same time, and spending as much time with family as I could. 

ACT 3: ITALIAN FALL 

A Life Without Muni 

For a long time (read: about a decade, give or take – so yeah, a long-ish time), I’ve gone back and forth between with the desire to live for something greater than myself, and the desire to live according to my whims and desires, or whatever I thought they could be, even if it was: “to get by through life with as little effort as possible”. 

To create something greater than one’s self requires commitment, something I wasn’t sure I still wanted to give by the time I had my mini-meltdown in June, as I felt like maybe I wanted to do different things already. They (motivational speakers, life coaches, and peddlers of The Secret) say we can attain what we want for as long as we have clarity, or a solid purpose. I wasn’t sure if I wanted the same things I thought I wanted before. 

In 2012, when I had my pre-Muni quarter life crisis, I thought I had found it when I came up with Muni. I wanted to be a brainwasher for the good of the planet. I wanted to share what accessible solutions were out there so regular folks could shop, eat, travel and live more sustainably by creating content, a community, and a gathering similar to what the Muni Market has become today. 

I wanted to connect like-minded individuals, and start conversations that paved the way for paradigm shifts and an empowered way of thinking of our impact, in spite of the bleak state of the planet. I wanted people to rethink their preconceptions, speech, habits and behaviors, and in turn, influence others to take up more conscious choices as well. 

That was good enough for me.

It would seem that I had more or less accomplished what I sought to do with Muni (though it didn’t help that I didn’t set quantifiable goals from the beginning), but generally, I felt at peace with moving on. Doing more consultancy work instead of forcing the issue on getting cash sponsorships for Muni events. There’s a lot of other things I could do with my skill set and my network in the Philippines that could provide more decent pay with less risk (because I wouldn’t be independently mounting an event and just praying it break even). 

The Blue Pill

From the time I left Berlin in March to my mini-meltdown in June, I hadn’t figured it out. I gave myself time to think about it more. Besides, I had other things that were keeping me happy in the meantime.

I was off to Europe to spend time with someone who made me feel the happiest I had felt so far. I was high and hopeful.

Normally, I’m guarded when it comes to matters of the heart. I don’t immediately let people in. Neither do I immediately go all out. So, the fact that I let my guard down so easily when we met, quieted my normally over-analytic mind, and traveled 12,000km with the sole purpose of spending time (2 months!) with someone I had spent not more than 8 days with at that point, was crazy.

I had no clue what I would do in Europe apart from be with him and learn more about his daily life, his work, his family, and try to expand my network in Spain (and Europe in general) and look for potential work opportunities. (Admittedly, the efforts I did for the latter were half-assed, and I know I could have tried harder.)

We had a glorious time. In November, we spent a couple of days in Paris (then I spent some days with the Philippine delegation for COP22 in Marrakech), and several days in Naples, Rome and Venice, until finally going back to Madrid where we played house for a little over a month. It was one of the best times of my life, up until the final days before my pending departure, when we dread having to be apart.

From the get-go, a long distance relationship was not something either of us wanted. And prior to me going to Europe in November, neither of us had really thought through what I might be doing on that side of the world. Between L and I, he had the more stable gig, which required him to be in the continent. So the question was always, what would I do in Europe if I moved there?

The Red Pill

I still had a lot of what I felt was unfinished business with Muni, and with my country in general. We still had the upcoming Muni Market in 2017, and I wasn’t quite ready to let it go yet.

Other things I was considering earlier in 2016 included the possibility of further studies on Environmental Psychology in the UK (if I managed to get a scholarship), and other creative pursuits like content creation, painting and such, which I could technically do from wherever.

But assuming I got the scholarship, I would have wanted to apply those lessons in the Philippines too. And I still have a hard time aligning with the idea that I could make money with creative personal work vs. doing mindful marketing consultancy or other things related to the work I did with Muni. And for consultancy projects, it would be easier to get them in a country where I’ve already built a considerable network and reputation (and in a country whose language I actually speak).

So as my stay in Europe was coming to a close, and I had no answers yet, I was sad and worried. But I remained hopeful that what L and I had was strong and that we would figure it out. 

ACT 4: TROPICAL DEPRESSION

The Beauty of the Philippines

When I got back to Manila in January 2017, I actively did the pre-work I needed to do for Muni Market 2017 set in April. Good news also came when my mother’s PET scan came out clear.

In February, my love for traveling within the Philippines was re-established when I spent some time with the parents and accompanied them on short trips to Quirino province, and Bagac, Bataan, and also in Subic for a forum on Responsible Travel, which also showcased some great things happening in the country, travel-wise.

It just made me re-realize that, damn, there really is so much to see here, and there’s so much work I could do here too. On top of all that, that month, I found out that I didn’t get the scholarship I had hoped for, and work opportunities I had applied for also fizzled out – less reasons to be in the Europe.

With a renewed appreciation for the beauty of my own country (in spite of the political mess and the bad rep we may have with foreigners as a result), and without clearer opportunities in Europe, doubt had begun to creep into what I previously thought was a stronger fortress that L and I built.

No matter where I went traveling or for however long, I would always regard the Philippines as home. And it seems that even if I did find something to do in Europe and managed to do some work in the Philippines (remotely for a large part), no compromise could be made for me to spend even a couple of months in the year back home.

The Unknown

We also did (or didn’t do) certain things that made our relationship stand on less solid ground, like not having a definitive date to see each other again, or making plans but having work constantly get in the way, or simply not being as present (even virtually) for each other. It didn’t help that we would have these conversations over Skype calls (or worse, through What’s App messages) vs. in person where we could kiss and make up to make each other feel less shitty. Repeatedly watching La La Land did not help either.

There was also the issue of kids, which had been brought up before but not thoroughly discussed. While L would say he didn’t know where in the world he would be or what exactly he would be doing in a couple of years (he claimed he was not a planner like that), one thing he knew for sure was that he wanted to have kids eventually, whenever that would be.

I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of having my own children, so much so that I’d already told my mother years back not to expect any grandchildren from me. Though admittedly, he made me start considering it, thinking maybe I just hadn’t met the right person at the right time in my life yet. This is not to say that I now actually wanted children, or that he was necessarily the right person, or this was the right time, but he actually made me start to really rethink something I thought I had been so sure about for myself.

Lights Out

There were just too many things I would have to reconsider about how I wanted to live my life if we were to make things work. And so, with all these things combined, the fire that burned twice as bright, burned twice as fast. And before February was over, we had decided to break it off.

We busied ourselves with work, coped with the pain of the loss in our own ways. I thought I was okay; I remained fairly productive in the first couple of weeks of breaking up.

Then I struggled with a major logistical / organizational issue for the upcoming Muni Market (a month before it was scheduled to happen), and this really, really stressed me out for at least a good week. And after discussions with the concerned parties left the issue unresolved, I experienced something akin to a panic attack.

At some point during that ordeal, I posted “This too shall pass” as a status on Facebook, which prompted L to ask me if I was okay. I wasn’t.

And while I was glad he was concerned, it also opened an emotional floodgate. I couldn’t imagine life without him. We chatted a bit, but tried to keep some distance. I binged on This Is Us. I sent him a heartfelt email, and we agreed to go on a call when the craziness of the Muni Market was over. 

Limbo

Muni Market 2017, with its well-attended and well-received meetups with topics ranging from fashion, communication, food, travel and waste were a success. And the question again was: “When is the next one?”

When is the next one indeed? This was the second year that I ran it thinking, will this be my last one? Is it time to move on? But each time we run it, and we get feedback from the community that it was such a great experience for them, and that we need more of these, it makes me feel like what we do matters.

I constantly wonder if the work we do could essentially be done by some other groups, since from the time Muni was born, more like-minded groups have come up. But I am constantly told there is value here. It’s just about deciding how I might continue to serve the community while harnessing more of the value for myself as well vs. just getting caught up in the work.

Simultaneously, I felt like I made a mistake and broke up with L too soon, without having more discussions or exploring more options or waiting it out a little longer. And so I reached out, asking if we might continue trying. I gave him time to think. We went back and forth again about when we next be able to see each other. It was not an easy time.

From the time we got together, I had to condition my mind about living life one way, and then the other, and back again, and back again, and again, and again. Not knowing where to stand, and an extended feeling of not being on any solid ground is nerve-wracking and insanity-inducing.

Meanwhile, tired of feeling pathetic and taken for granted and generally not liking the person I was becoming, with a prompt to carry on with life without him (while he took more time to think), I did. 

I sought opportunities locally, and finally settled on a short-term consultancy project for a sustainable tourism project in El Nido, Palawan from May to June 2017. It kept me busy, like, really busy, that I had almost no time to think about my feelings.

By the time my project contract ended though, I thought it was also more than enough time for me to get a more definitive answer from L if I should stay or I should go. In April, I was ready to drop things to try again with him. But the longer it took for him to decide, the less confident I was that it would be a good decision. Perhaps it was just a refusal to let go of something that represented the happiest I had been so far, and an escape from the world as I know it.

And while the week before another fateful conversation in early July, we were making plans to see each other in August, our conversation was about us having our moment, and losing it. We lost it when we didn’t make firm plans to see each other in May. Or when we couldn’t make plans to see each other in March or April. Or perhaps we lost it earlier, when I left Madrid in January.

Whatever the case may be, it seemed that we were right to break up earlier in February. And we simply regressed when we should have been moving on.

With that sealed, clean and clear, I was on a fierce mission to move on. I made month-long travel plans (to leave within a week in a few days after that conversation), got back on Tinder with a vengeance, and sought comfort in the sea. I’ll save the details of that for ACT 5.

Suffice it to say that travel and the sea helps, and as much as I think I prefer nature vs. people, talking to certain people who you meet along the way helps more – whether it be about your heartbreak, or what you would like to do with your life moving forward, or simply learning from them, about them, and their life experiences. Tinder, not so much. Or if it does help, in my case, it only serves to make me realize what I don’t want (even when I thought it was what I wanted).

After a month of visiting friends and traveling through Negros and Cebu, I’m now back in Manila. I’m on the road to recovery from heartbreak, and hopefully sorting my shit out and getting my act together, as I’ve seen myself experience a Renaissance after going through these types of things. The only way out is through. And hopefully, I emerge from it better and brighter than before.

If you’ve read all the way to the end, thank you for sharing your time. I’ve only started to let you in on the story, and my personal, selfish dilemmas. Perhaps more reflections and insight will follow in succeeding posts. 

You may not agree with the choices I made or didn’t make, or how I’ve dealt with things, and you can keep your judgment to yourself. But if you empathize with anything I’ve said, or feel less alone, or possibly more hopeful that things will get better, then I send you love and high fives. 

To brighter days ahead, Jen 

[balarsen22]

Therapy 5/29 (and afterwards)

Fucking sucked. I seriously considered cancelling. I sat in silence for a good 15 minutes before I could read what I wrote (with Jessica occasionally saying something encouraging to get me to talk). 

“Over the years I have exaggerated my symptoms of my eating disorder at times, but this has been one of the things I actually think is real. But i’ve told a lot of lies because of it. I had noticed in 3rd grade that I was bigger- Garrett martell called me bessie the cow. I kept eating, but I started to pinch my fat in the mirror. I would pinch my stomach and my arms and my thighs and imagine cutting it off. I refused to wear dresses the majority of the time, I made my mom find me boy’s shorts so they were longer and covered my legs. when I was in 6th grade I unsuccessfully put myself on diets- I was too afraid people would notice. I quit show choir in 7th grade because the outfits we had to wear were too tight and I didn’t want to go on stage in them, and I didn’t have the confidence anymore to sing on stage. I didn’t think I was good enough. I didn’t read as much. I gave up soda as a “new years resolution” in when I was in 8th grade so I had an excuse not to drink it (because as kids at the barn there was the soda machine and the snack machine and our parents weren’t there, and we all drank a ton of it and ate a lot of junk food), and then after a year I said I didn’t really like it anymore so I still didn’t have to drink it. During that summer, I would stay at the barn all day and try to eat as little as possible, but I would usually end up coming home and eating a ton for dinner. the only thing I wanted to do was ride. When school started, I was really tired all the time and would come home from the barn and go straight to sleep, and then get up and do homework and go back to bed. On weekends I would sleep until 10 or 11 on weekends I didn’t have to work, and go to bed around 8 or 9. My mom even took me to the doctor for it because she was afraid I had juvenile diabetes or something. The doctor told me that I just needed to eat healthy and that I should exercise more. During second semester of second year I started to go to the choir room during lunch, and just eat an orange. I would eat as little as possible while I was at school, but then I would come home from the barn and eat a ton for dinner, and then go upstairs and take a shower and purge with the water on so no one could hear, but I hadn’t figured out that I needed to drink a lot of water with my food so there were a lot of times I just couldn’t get anything to come up. We had a scale in the bathroom christian and I shared, and I started weighing myself every morning and night. But over the summer I began to eat more normally again. For the most part I started eating normally sophomore year, but only if I had spent all day at the barn or worked or exercised that day. 

After jay died, I was really down and  stopped exercising, and gained weight. I started taking diet pills that spring. I hid them in my room, but got caught throwing out the box one day. we had a family meeting, I had said I flushed them. I kept taking them. I got to where I was cold all the time. I would wear like 3 coats while I was at the barn, and I always bundled up at home. I figured it was side effects from the diet pills, but I didn’t want to admit that. So I told Kim the doctor said I had some vitamin deficiency and thats why I was cold. I made up a big story about it for her, but I didn’t say anything to my parents about it. Around then is when I started to not be able to sleep. I was really ashamed of what I was doing and knew I needed to stop, but I kept taking them. but eventually I ran out of pills and I didn’t have the money to buy anymore because it was show season. I started eating more normally again, but would now binge and exercise more instead. and then in march of senior year, I started eating less and less, and then stopped eating all together at what was supposed to be my last horse show. and after that I just told kim my stomach hurt when she asked why I wasn’t eating a lot. I started tracking and obsessing over calories and food. I had gym in the morning at school that was a weight lifting class, and then I would go to the barn after school, and then I would stop at the Y on my way home and do 30-60 minutes of cardio. I would go home and eat pretty normally in front of my parents, but I would purge dinner a lot. I lost a lot of weight. I had to use the hole punch to punch 2 more holes in my belt because it was too big. All my pants were too big. my shirts were baggy. I had lost between over 20 pounds in under 2 months. Kaylin Ramaker at school confronted me in the band room one day and asked if I was anorexic, because she never saw me eat anymore and I had lost a lot of weight. I hadn’t thought people at school noticed. I told her that I was having stomach issues and that we’re figuring out what’s going on, but that’s when I realized that maybe I had an eating disorder. I resolved to stop, and I started eating a little more.

The day before I graduated high school I got whacked in the face by fonzi really good. I said I broke my nose, but I didn’t. I used makeup to give myself black eyes. I wore a catchers mask around the horses so I wouldn’t get whacked in the face. I worked at the paper mill. I started cutting myself on purpose at work on the die cuts, I guess more for attention that I was getting beat up at the paper mill and validation of how much I hated it. But I also liked the feeling right after, that immediate sense of calm that took over. And then it got to where I couldn’t stop. I started cutting on my hips if I thought that there were too many cuts on my arms for it to be explained by work. I started eating more, but I got more on a try to restrict and then binge cycle. I didn’t like to purge, so I tried not to and just worked out more instead, but I still would  purge a couple of times a week. I thought about killing myself that summer a lot, but I was working with Sadie all the time, and I never wanted to do that to anyone.

When I left for school, I over exaggerated my history with horses. I made it sound like I was better than what I was. I said I had shown at world, when I really didn’t. I also was almost ashamed that my parents were paying for college because I didn’t want to be that spoiled rich college kid, so I said I had saved money selling horses. In reality, I had probably made about $3000 in commission for selling horses. I had been working at the barn since I was 14 and babysitting since I was 13, and had worked some odd jobs and worked at the paper mill, but the majority of that went into paying for horses (although my parents still paid for most of it). I never fully owned my own horse, I always leased. I was amazed that I had friends, and on the outside things were going good. I had started eating normally, mainly because I ate all of my meals every day with the same group of people. I started to get more depressed and I started to think about killing myself, a lot. but I wouldn’t do it because of losing ken. but he was on my mind a lot because of it, and I said I had found ken. In reality we were at a horse show in jefferson. I can still remember kim’s voice when she was on the phone with caitlin and she paused to tell us- “ken evans killed himself last night.” I couldn’t understand how he could do that when Jay didn’t have a choice. but anyways, I told my friends that I found him. When we climbed mount beirdstat I twisted my knee pretty bad at the top, and it kept giving out on me and hurt like hell. I was on crutches for 3 weeks and my knee had ballooned up, it was a severe strain of my acl, but I wasn't able to work out and it was hard getting around on crutches, so I started getting worse. I would tell my cousin’s story of getting caught at a bar as underage, and the cop knowing her brother (who is also a cop), and she was brought home in the cop car but they didn’t give her a ticket, making it seem like I had partied a lot before. I wanted to seem like I was one of the cool kids. We got caught for drinking in the dorms shortly after thanksgiving break, and then I got into an argument with amy over some comment and it just slipped out. and then i found out that she was a mandatory reporter, and I freaked out over it. so I told a few friends, I went to the counseling center for the first time right before finals. at that point, I wanted to die. When I got home, I told kim at the end of Christmas break the day I left to go back. and then I met with student conduct services for drinking in the dorms, and amy had reported what I said to them. They said due to what was going on, they wanted me to go to some therapy sessions for it. So then more friends found out, and I started making it bigger. I didn’t have to pretend I was happy when I was around everyone anymore. I finally had a reason I could point to that explained why I was so down all the time, and it explained the things I had always been weird about- I didn’t want to be around guys, I really struggled with the smell of beer especially, and I was always so jumpy. And it was an explanation for why I couldn’t sleep. But then I started to magnify my reactions I didn’t want my parent’s support, I wanted kim. I would only talk to her about it. I made up going to see the gyno and saying I had untreated chlamydia, and that I was probably infertile. I made up going to clinics and that I was infertile. I acted how I thought someone with PTSD would act. I went on the judging team trip, and in the car I had too much time to think about what was going on, and I started to think that the only way I could get out of this was to kill myself. I went to the hospital the night i got back from the trip, but they sent me home because I didn’t have a plan. I was skipping class, and I was binging all the time. I didn’t want to leave the dorms. Sometimes I would purge, sometimes I wouldn’t. I gained a lot of weight, all the weight I had lost the previous spring and more. I was cutting a lot more.

My barn jeans were tight, and I immediately put myself on a diet, but I would still binge. I started to purge more. That summer I got in my first car accident. I still don’t know why I didn’t realize the car was stopped until it was too late. It just didn’t register in my brain (the same thing happened the following summer). I told my friends that I was in an accident, but that it was someone else’s fault. I struggled to find a therapist. I kept up the trauma lie. once I even was hiding under the desk. A cop came and found me when I was at work one day, and I said I didn't want to talk. Kim convinced me to talk to her a different day, so I reported it. There was one time that I came back to the barn one day and said how I had just saved a guy’s life in the grocery store by performing CPR, just because I guess. I don’t even know why. I went off of coach really hard, and really messed up my back. I was in so much pain. I said I fractured it, I didn’t. I struggled to sleep at home, so I slept in kim’s basement, a lot. Kim kept trying to get tyler and I together. We talked a lot at work, and we even went to dinner once. But it was more just as friends.

I went back to school even though kim didn’t want me to. I had told kim I was back in therapy, but I wasn't at that point. I had also admitted to her about cutting. Apparently that was her limit. She told me I either had to come home or she couldn’t do it anymore. I stopped telling her things. It broke me. I saw her at congress when I was there with judging team. I placed 4th overall, but I wasn’t technically one of the 4 on the team because I really struggled with reasons in practice. I told everyone that there was a registration mistake and that I was supposed to have been. It was awkward with Kim when I saw her. I started restricting my food again more after that, and I went back to the counseling center and got placed with Yesim. I started trying to see how much I could push the limits with not eating. I lived alone, so I just didn't keep much food in the house. I walked to and from school each day- I lived a little over 3 miles from campus. At the world show for judging I cut back on eating even more, and then after world I just stopped grocery shopping pretty much. I bought an iPad, and told everyone that I won it in a raffle. I would buy binge food and started binging and purging, or I would chew and spit. I had a scale in the bathroom and a scale in the kitchen. I had reminders on my phone telling me "don't eat, you're fat" every hour. I got a tattoo for my birthday, and told my parents that I was friends with the tattoo artist and it was free. I had T for O-chem2 and my ochem lab, and I tried reaching out to her, but looking back on it I probably just came across as crazy instead. My parents came to visit, and that's when I started saying stuff about my mom. I wasn’t sleeping hardly at all anymore, and I was really suicidal. I called the CSU counseling hotline, probably too much because eventually I was told that if I called anymore they would only tell me to go to the hospital and that was it. I stopped calling hotlines all together, and just would cut more. I was cutting a lot that point. I started cutting words into me- fat, worthless, ugly. I started to get drunk by myself about once a week and then take a handful of meds and go to bed. I started seeing Chris Bachman for nutrition counseling at CSU and started to eat a little more, but I was still purging. I spent the night in the hospital over spring break for suicidal thoughts. I can still hear the pity in the nurses voice when she saw the cuts- "why would you do that to yourself?" I got switched from Yesim to Susan shortly after that. I hated seeing Susan, but at that point I was required by case management to be in counseling and iTeam. I involved dr d in the lie, and I fucked up. I got drunk by myself one Friday night and that's when made up that story sophomore year, said I went to the hospital for it. Apparently he had a friend that worked at the hospital that went to check on me and I wasn't there, so I got caught. I had told my friends too. I was trying to figure out how to get myself out of it, and I honestly don't remember much of what happened the rest of the day. It's really fuzzy. I just remember being in the ambulance and then being in the psych ward room and saying it was all a hallucination and blamed it on the meds, and then they let me go home. Right after that I got locked up for a few days by Feldpausch. And then I did the whole take back the night speech, and then posted it. I did a little better after that, because I got a lot of messages from people. 

I worked my summer job at Dr Belsito's, and tried some therapists outside of CSU because I didn't want to see Susan anymore. I started in surgery at the VTH. Things I got into another car accident, I still don’t know why it didn’t register in my brain the guy was stopped. Sometimes that still happens, that it takes a little longer for me to register it. I don't really know why. I told my friends that the guy’s taillights were out. I stopped seeing Chris- she fell asleep during one of our sessions. I was seeing Darcy stamps, and I was pretty suicidal still. I was crazy. But when she asked about stuff from when I was younger, and I talked about how I would hang out with Christian and Carrie, she told me that it wasn't normal. That most people don't actually grow up like that. I was mind blown. It really stuck with me. She eventually sent me back to CSU at the end of the summer. I started seeing Nara. 

I was living with Kelly and Marianne now so that helped with having to eat more, but I was still depressed and suicidal. My filly for colt training came down on my knee, I said I had a hairline fracture of my patella. It wasn't, just badly bruised. I got really close with Lynette from work. but at the end of the semester I got even more depressed. I went home for Christmas break, and I didn't go to the barn at all. That spring I got close with Magee. I was struggling badly, and she had actually approached me after lab one day. I said I was having issues with a restraining order against him and that I was being harassed.”

I hadn't finished writing it because I would get so upset every time, so she had me just finish talking about the story- the stuff she knew. The cutting and trying to stop, the lies about the bleach. The expanded story. She asked what I was thinking when I was doing prolonged exposure therapy with her. I was mainly disgusted with myself, afraid I would get caught. Ashamed. we moved on, I admitted that panic attack I had at la luna that got me sent to TK, at first it wasn’t real. But then I realized that I actually wasn’t able to move, and flipped my shit and did panic. Then at TK I had to keep it up too. And then i found out about factitious. and a small part of me was relieved that I was caught. But I wasn't quite ready to give it all up yet, and forged the test results. And that was it. 

She thanked me for sharing, and asked if there was anything I had missed. I couldn't think of anything big, just little lies I had said along the way. She said that I put down all the events, but she wanted to know the feelings that went along with it- what I felt before it, what I was feeling after it. We were out of time, so she told me to write about it. She likes when I write, then she can get more in my head. She said she was booked tomorrow, but that she had an opening wednesday afternoon if I wanted it. I just shrugged. I was to the point that I just wanted to self destruct. I didn't want to be there anymore. I didn't want to talk anymore. She said that I can just let her know if I decided I wanted it. 

I left and sat in the truck for a little while, because I knew I wouldn't be safe to drive. She texted me while I sat there and said that her 8am tomorrow canceled, so that would be open if I wanted it. I said that would probably be good. she replied “Great. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. I know you hate when I say this, but I am so proud of your honesty and courage today.” I just replied “thanks.” (with the period in there to try to convey my tone). I wanted to say that makes one of us, because I am not proud. I am not happy with having to talk about this today. I am just filled with self hate. She says that talking about it is the first step to forgiving myself for it all, but all this has made me do is hate myself even more. 

I wanted to stop and buy supplies to cut with on the way home, but I fought the urge. I went on the trail skate with ruby and winnie, which was a bit of an adventure, but I still wanted to cut, badly. I gave in on my way home and bought a pencil sharpener, and then took it apart and used it. I probably should've reached out to someone or tried more skills, but I didn't want to fight the urge at that point. I didn't give a fuck about my recovery at that point or the contract or anything. I want to self destruct. The rest of the day, I literally did nothing. like I was just curled up in bed petting jake for awhile staring at the ceiling, and then I sat on the couch and stared at banana gram tiles but didn't have it in me to make any words. I just stared at the wall. eventually I pulled out my laptop to try and do some work, but I couldn't focus on it. I just kinda stared at the screen for a few hours. I just was really out of it all day. I want to hurt myself, but I can't kill myself yet. I need to suffer more for all of the shit I’ve done. I wasn't sure if I had it in me to be around a big group of people tonight, but could hear Jessica calling me a coward in my head for not doing what I needed to do to help myself, so I went. It was good to get out of the house and it kinda got me out of my head, but not fully. I dropped Megan off afterwards, I didn't really want to talk about details, but I did talk a little about how I was feeling. I also told her that I fucked up again and cut today. Before she got out of the truck she gave me a hug and told me she still loves me, and that tomorrow is a new day. 

I know in the name of honesty I need to tell Jessica tomorrow morning that I cut today, but she’s going to either be mad at me and call me a coward for not going and getting help when I needed it or she’s going to think its just part of the attention seeking behavior, which wasn't what I was doing. Or she’s going to overreact and bring up residential again. I don't want to tell her. or maybe I’ll tell her just as I’m leaving. a doorway confession... that would piss her off too, but I wouldn't have to be there for it.