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i520u · 1 year ago

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⌕ dates with riize 𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔

hello briize hello riize lovers i’m one of you please keep the requests coming

PAIRING riize x gn!reader (not proofread!)

TAGS sfw, fluff, headcanons

OSAKI SHOTARO ༄

literally all sunshines and rainbows throughout the rest of the relationship

if you get into an argument with him that has GOT to be your fault idk what to tell you

i feel like he’s the type of boyfriend to teach you how to drive

and when you hit the curb he’s like “that’s okay! we can try again when i fix the car!”

but at the same time he’s gripping that roof handle in the car for dear life but he’s just too sweet to tell you that your driving’s horrible

he never lets you drive again btw

HE’D FILM SOOO MANY DANCE TIKTOKS WITH YOU!!!

also i feel like instead of a gf effect, it’s the opposite with him because he gives you the bf effect

your entire fashion style is gonna change for sure like have you seen this man? that is a man of AESTHETICS

would be so enthusiastic with teaching you all the tiktok dance steps

and none of these tiktoks are cringe they’re actually those cool ones

the type to hug you at the end of the tiktok video or kiss the temple of your head idk…

i imagine his ideal dates might be cafe hopping/cafe hunting all across tokyo or just shopping around shibuya

takes you to one of those claw machines while you’re shopping and he’ll try winning you a random plushie of an anime that neither of you watch

so now you have a random plush of like… some dude from haikyuu

would pay for your drinks btw (coffee, milk tea, matcha)

SONG EUNSEOK ༄

OK LISTEN.

cake decorating

he just looks like he’d enjoy doing that like did you see how proud he was wearing that hello kitty hairclip

please this man is gonna hear you suggest it and he’s like “LET’S GO!!”

craziest part is that he’s gonna eat you up at decorating it too

you’ll see him make a cute flower on his cake using the cream and you’re like “how did you do that :( how dare you be better than me :(”

and he’s gonna giggle nervously and his face is gonna turn a light shade of red while he helped you out

“i’m not better than you, we’re equally good.” and then he compares your cakes together and the only reason why yours looks ok is because he helped you for the most part

if you genuinely feel a little gloomy that yours looked bad he would purposely mess up on the rest of his cake

because eunseok will never be caught dead leaving his beloved partner unhappy, no matter how small the issue might be

i feel like he would notice those little shift of emotions that you have that even you barely notice

and he’d do his best to cheer you up because you’re just his everything </3

after the cakes are done he takes 282629 pictures of you and your cake and then he’d probably say things like “keep posing, you’re so pretty”

i think most of his dates would involve domestic things like that

if you don’t live together he’d crash to your house, help you deep clean the entire house and he considers that a date too

a little bit more low maintenance when it comes to relationships if that makes sense

also i think he’s not very clingy but he LOVESSS a clingy partner even if he doesn’t verbally say or show it

he’s always have a light blush on his face whenever you just cling on him

so please cling onto him as much as possible

JUNG SUNGCHAN ༄

just a feeling… but

gym dates 😭

and he’s so cheesy about it okay like at first you’re reluctant because the thought of going to a gym scares you

but then the first time you go there and he’s like so touchy with you in a good way

purposely standing so close to you while he helps you out with the equipments

maybe at one point he’s even like “yeah just do it like that.” while helping you out with the weights and then giving you a kiss on the cheek

which catches you off guard you almost dropped the weights but he was holding it with you so you’re good

when you blush he would let out a flustered giggle and won’t comment on it

and then you make it even worse by saying something like “i’m just flushed from the workout” and he’s like “sure babe”

would always be close to you just in case you’re caught underneath the weight and you can’t lift it up anymore

at the end of the date you’re like “i can’t move my legs” and then he just carries you

takes you out to eat something sweet afterwards

he’s going to be all smiley the whole time too

at the end he’s like “didn’t i tell you it would be fun? do you wanna go to the gym with me again next week?”

if you say no he’s not gonna sulk and punch the wall or something he’s just gonna be like “aww that’s alright too.” and then kiss your head

then he would say something like “you were incredible on your first try though, i’m proud of you.”

clenches fist i want him so bad…

PARK WONBIN ༄

i swear wonbin’s a little weird

like have you seen his tiktoks… something’s strange about that man

i think he stated before that he loves shopping so you KNOW what that means

always send you vids he sees on the internet about some new shop opening up in hongdae or something and he’s like “let’s go bae”

sends you the weirdest tiktoks and is like “you”

and then you’re like “wonbin what”

and he won’t elaborate

sends you his fit checks

if you don’t approve he will actually sulk i’m not kidding

sometimes when he’s bored he’d write a song for you

like not a singing song but a musical one from his guitar if that makes sense

he loves matching with you. matching earrings, matching clothes, matching beanies.

ohh i feel like he’d also do those cute couple videos on tiktok like you know he would slow dance with you in the snow and post it for everyone to see this man LOVES soft launching you

his soft launches are also by no means him trying to hide you or keep you a secret, it’s more like… he just likes to have a mysterious vibe to his online person 😍

also i think he loves leaving kisses on your neck whenever you snuggle up to watch a movie or something

like you’re talking to him while you’re on his lap and he’s just like “mhm, and then what?” and then he gives you kisses down your jaw and neck

he’s all over you PLEASE no matter in public or private and it’s even worse (or better 😜) in private too

HONG SEUNGHAN ༄

definitely a gamer bf

dates with him involves him going out to see the sun for the first time that week ❤️

i’m just kidding but your dates probably involves a lot of going out because you feel like this man NEEDS to get some sunlight

also one of the guys that enjoys PDA

he wins the idgaf war he would kiss you at any point of time if he suddenly feels like it

you can just be talking like straight up gossiping about something that happened between your aunt and a scammer and he would just…

he would just grabbed the sides of your face and plant the deepest kiss ever

and then you’re all flustered and he would burst into laughter

he’s the biggest flirt ever he has this one stare that would leave you WEAK in the knees

definitely has a habit of staring at your lips when you talk which makes you SOOO nervous

plays with your hands or hair while you talk

just a thought but he’d definitely run his thumb over your lower lip after he kissed it WOAH

calls you with the most generic pet names but god it makes you run LAPS

also when you come over his house he’d make you pull for him on that FIFA game idk how the game works but i hope you get what i’m trying to say

LEE SOHEE ༄

AH i feel like him as a bf is so fun

he looks like so much fun from the instagram/tiktok posts tbh

the most normal boyfriend ever help idk how to explain it

sends you pictures of him at work with captions like “fighting my hardest battle (i’m at the work i willingly applied for)

various dates

he doesn’t always suggest ideas for dates but he goes ALL out for you when you suggest them

you want to watch the sunset? best believe he’ll take you to the prettiest beach he could find for you to enjoy

you want to have a movie date? he’s gonna set up the projector at his house HIMSELF

i don’t think he’s very keen on kissing in public but he has no problem holding you close to him

holds your hand, holds you by your waist, EVERYTHING

takes 0.5x pictures of you from your forehead

he has a picture of the two of you completing a heart drawn on your cheeks as his lockscreen

always yapping about you like

“my lover made me this lunch”

“my lover gave me this for my birthday”

“my lover tied my tie for me today”

his favourite type of dates are karaoke dates sorry like this man is beyonce’s son he’s GOING to use that godsent vocals of his

also i feel like anniversary celebrations are so grand with him his love for you is so genuine he wants to give you the world and more

i want him so bad… he’s my goat

ANTON LEE ༄

dates are SOPHISTICATED

he’s bred in BOSTON you know he goes crazy with that shit

make you dress up fancy in silk and satin and stuff everyone once in a while to take you to a fine dining i’m so serious

takes you on concert dates too

like… mitski or laufey or niki zenfaya concert dates

he would lift you up on his shoulders during these concerts so you would see clearly

also likes backhugging you

he’s so soft spoken so you don’t have the heart to ever start any arguments with him

when he was a swimmer he’d give you those vip pass or something (idk how dating an athlete works oops)

after his competition finish and he’s still wet from the water and its just covered by his towel and swim attire, he would go up to you with a flushed face and would ask you if he looked cool or not

i think he’s the type to enjoy talking to you most of the time during dates or just like an everyday occurrence

like he loves staring into your eyes as you speak he loves you so much but he’s too shy to tell you that so often

he’s not the type to just blurt out “i love you” but you can just tell that his feelings for you are true from the way he stares at you

would let you decorate his hair with your hairclips and would wear them out for the rest of the day

he’s soooo smitten by you it’s crazy

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stevishabitat · 8 months ago

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Your New Place

Part Three

Thrifting

Heading to the thrift store, charity shop, or rummage sale is probably one of the first things you think of when you get a new place. Here's what to focus on when you get started...

Lamp

Improving your lighting might be the #1 best thing you can do for your room. Even if you have an overhead light, you will want a smaller lamp by your bed to help you wind down at night, or in case you need to get up in the dark. Sure you can use your phone for navigating in the dark, but a bedside lamp is kinder to your eyes and more cozy. Don't worry if the lamp or lampshade isn't exactly your style. Get something that works and is a good size for your space. You can diy some changes to the aesthetics later.

Wastebasket

You need somewhere to put rubbish, and you don't have to use a boring plastic bin from Walmart. The thrift store is often a great place to find something to use as a wastebasket. I've found some really fun options at thrift stores including planters, large popcorn tins, buckets, baskets, crocks, etc.

Sheets/curtains

Basically, you need fabric. It doesn't matter what it's original purpose was, you just need fabric in a color or pattern that you like. If you get a big flat sheet, you can use it for curtains, maybe make a pillow case, and cover a cushion for the floor or a chair. You can hang it from the ceiling as a room divider. You can use it to cover cardboard boxes to make attractive little storage containers. You can decoupage it onto furniture or jars. Rag rugs aren't terribly difficult to make and you can use any fabric cut into long strips. The possibilities are endless.

Milk crates

Milk crates are one of the most versatile things for a new place, if you can get your hands on some. You can use them as bookshelves, shoe shelves, a nightstand, a little table or desk, put a cushion on top and it becomes a seat or footstool. There are some really fancy things you can do with milk crates, but even without doing anything to them, they're darn useful.

Other things to look for :

Shoe shelves

Rolling storage carts

Over the door hooks and shelves

If you don't have a closet, try to get your hands on one of these:

A couple notes on thrifting soft items such as pillows, cushions, stuffed animals, rugs, upholstered furniture, etc.

If bedbugs, lice, or fleas are a big problem in your area, thrift stores might not even stock soft items at all.

If that's less of a concern in your area, proceed with caution. Check for unwanted stains or smells (mold, smoke, pet smells, etc) before you buy. Don't assume you can get rid of a bad smell or stain.

If the item can safely be washed and dried in the big machines at the laundromat, do that.

**********************************

Part One

Part Two

#Your New Place

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1magine-engine · 4 years ago

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Obey Me: MC is Hiding Something

When MC first awakens in the council room no one thinks much of them. They’re sitting there shivering like a dog left out in the rain and refuses to meet anyone’s eyes.

Lucifer starts to wonder what in devil’s name made you a good candidate for this exchange program. You barely had enough courage to answer when Lord Diavolo welcomed you so graciously, much less look dignified in any way.

Something odd he does observe though is, despite your silence and obvious terror, you seemed to accept the concepts of a Devildom and of RAD and him and his brother very easily or maybe you were just nodding along insipidly.

Mammon’s opinion of you is even lower. He already hated the idea of having to watch and make sure some stupid human didn’t get themselves killed on their first week. Damn it! That wasn’t his job! They can’t even carry a conversation, always just staring and watching everybody.

The human doesnt seem to have any kind of motivations or idea as to what they wanna do. Lucifer will never know if he leaves you alone at school for a while considering you’ve found your friends group with the other exchange students. And at home he sees no problem with letting you go off for just an hour or two. All you really do is walk around and examine the rooms and grounds. Maybe you’re an architecture freak or something.

Leviathan barely pays you any mind when you arrive, not like he ever has the chance to, being that he never leaves his room outside of going to class. But during breakfast he does notice how interested you seemed in the game console he’s playing on. And for a moment he wonders if you’re a gamer or an otaku too

but no, ugh you’re just some normie. You watch Asmo obsess over his compact mirror and Satan over whatever book he’s holding just the same. And you’re conversation is shit like Mammon said. Listless and lacking enthusiasm. But he doesnt stop you when you watch over his shoulder when he plays.

Satan doesn’t have a problem with you. That said, he doesn’t particularly like you. But he can respect how much time you seem to spend in the library, and how many books you borrow about the devildom and kinds of demons. It made sense, you wanted to know the kind of creatures you were surrounded by.

he does wonder though, why one day you seem to be borrowing a lot of Solomon’s books and Solomon’s time as well. But then again, that makes sense too, you were both human after all. Maybe you would stop flinching and get even a little more comortable with someone your race around. When one of his tomes disappear, he interrogates Mammon because of course, it’s Mammon.

Asmo likes your style. It’s not particularly glamorous or eye-catching but it matches your aesthetic. He especially admired your choices in acessories. The amulet you’re always wearing is so pretty and he swears sometimes it almost glows. And your rings were peak Devildom fashion, sharp, edgy iron designs. But he especially adored the silver spike earring you wore.

He was both delighted and smug that he was the first one to get a little closer to you. But of course, how could you resist! You even complimented the perfume he was wearing and asked where he got it. And he directed you to his favorite oils and essences shop that supplied products and ingredients from every realm. And while applying some to your wrist he catches a glimpse of a tattoo peeking out from under your sleeve but you pull your hand away, bashful. Oh, he’ll get you to show him someday. Heehee.

Beel is curious how a human can eat so much. He’s been told human athletes apparently eat a lot to maintain muscle mass and strength and the like but looking at you, you didn’t seem the type to do anything strenuous. Except he does notice that when a demon bumps you in the hall, you’re not hurt or thrown off despite the size difference. And when you’re purposely knocked into by someone else, your reaction is fast, pivoting out of the way and behind the demon and you almost look like...

Nah. You weren’t going to attack him, you began to cower and apologize again and again until Mammon had to drag you way before it got any more embarrassing. The next time you pique his interest is at the gym in the house. You always make sure to go at a time when there isn’t anyone else and he happened to go after you. But it couldn’t have been you that just used that machine. Were you really capable of lifting that much?

Luke and Simeon are sympathetic, Simeon understands the discomfort and the adjustment and answers any questions you have about the brothers and how not to piss them off or placate them if ever you did make them angry. He answers your questions about RAD and the program but does wonder. Wherever did you get an angel relic like the one hanging from your ear?

Luke says you shouldn’t be afraid of those no good demons, if anything happens you can run to Purgatory Hall and they’ll help. He promises. He likes your company and starts up baking with you, teaching dishes and pastries. He tells you a lot about Michael and lets slip things about Lucifer and the brothers back when they were still angels. You don’t push him on the subjects but you do seem pretty interested.

it all came together, very easily. First the lights, Leviathan’s screams echo in the halls as he laments not having saved soon enough. Asmodeus’ whining about losing such good selfie lighting came next and both come out into the hall, yelling for their older brother. “Lucifer!”

If not for that, Lucifer probably wouldn’t have noticed, having been locked up in his firelit office since dinner was over. Heaving a sigh he gets up. All of the yelling told him the lights were out so how could he have expected the brilliant flash of white that burned his eyes when he opened his door. He stumbles, leaning on the door frame for support as footfalls race down the hall.

He growls, feeling his wings and horns materialize but something isn’t right. His vision doesn’t return and his skin starts to burn. In the air he catches the faintest scent of something he hasn’t smelled in a long time. Holy oil.

When the little light in the fridge fades, Beel thinks he may have fucked up. But then it turns out the whole house is out so it must just be some prank. He keeps eating, uncaring whether or not he identifies what it is he’s shoveling into his mouth. Then he smells it.

once upon a time he’d caught Luke with some kind of cookies from the celestial realm. And they were some of the best cookies he’d ever had in his existence. He could never forget that smell, so when it wafts through the air coming from the main hall, he follows. Drool begins to gather beneath his tongue.

He misses the sharp, metallic scent drifting beneath it.

Satan’s vexation spikes when his reading light goes out and his peace and quiet is distrubed by his idiot brothers. Mammon probably tried to turn the power off in Levi’s room to get him out so he can sneak in and steal his stuff again. But then Asmo starts yelling, and one cry from Lucifer rattles his bones.

It’s enough to get him on his feet. But what draws a gasp from him is the flash of lightning that gives him his sight for a moment. White lightning, an impossibility in the devildom’s ever red tinged sky. He goes to the window, knocking a stack of tomes over and unlatches it. But it doesn’t budge. Using the light on his D.D.D. he tries again but it just won’t open.

Outside Satan’s door heavy footsteps, thump along in a slow rhythm. Satan races to the door and Beel is there trudging along the carpet like a zombie, his nose perched in the air.

“Beel?! What the-? What are you doing?”

“Hey what’s the big idea!? Where are you guys!? Who’s doing that weird singing?!”

Mammon calls out into the mansions, just as confused as everyone else. Satan’s brows furrow; he didn’t cause this, then. He’s about to answer but Mammon yelps, and a resounding thwack has Satan grab Beel, and race towards the sound, almost stumbling over each other’s feet in the dark. They’re only guide is the ocassional flash of white and the sound of chanting growing louder as they grow near.

It is still pitch black but years of experience and spatial awareness tells him they’re in the foyer. Satan ventures out, almost tripping over something on the ground; it’s Mammon. He lays at the top of the steps, passed out. Satan is about to shake him awake when Leviathan and Asmo come out of a hall holding up Lucifer between them. Another flash. Lucifer’s demon form flickers in and out, smoke rising from his blistering skin. Satan freezes and Beel picks up Mammon in his arms.

“Satan! What the hell is going on!?” Levi calls out into the dark over the spell.

The chanting stops. So does the lightning and they’re plunged into complete darkness. They hear the sound of plastic and a baggie hits Beelzebub square in the chest, landing on Mammon’s stomach. “Cookies?”

He smells that first but then they recognise the other scent prominent in the air as blood.

Human blood.

“Wait, where’s MC?!” Asmo’s voice comes from the black. “Are they trapped somewhere?”

Someone laughs.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that.”

Lightning flashes again, bathing the foyer in glaring white. It’s only for a moment but their eyes are quick enough. It becomes clear where the stench of blood was coming from. “After all, I’m not trapped in here with you...”

Your eyes seem to glow, vacant of whatever fear or trepidation you’ve deceived them with for weeks. In your hand is the earring Asmo admired so much, the silver tip dripping red. At your side, your palm is sliced open, already clotting as you’ve used all you needed for the seal activating the devil’s trap around the entire house. Your sleeves are pushed up to the elbows the sigils and signs inked into your skin tasting air again after so long. As you place your hand on the seal they come alight. Your lips curl over your teeth.

“You’re trapped in here....with me.”

Solomon knows a demon slayer when he sees one. And he tells you right off the bat whatever you’re planning it isn’t a good idea. You’re outnumbered and overpowered by them.

but then he sees otherworldly magic light up the skies and decides maybe it’s a good time to visit the House of Lamentations.

Part 2

#obey me #shall we date #obey me lucifer #obey me diavolo #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me asmodeus #obey me satan #obey me beelzebub #obey me simeon #obey me luke #obey me solomon #obey me headcannons #obey me fic #merakiulous-k

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tabbycasto · 3 years ago

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Nail Tech Talk : Top Tips For Setting Up In An Unconventional Space

Setting up can be a little daunting when you first start out, but it doesn’t take long to start building your collection & creating a space that you're happy with. When I started to set up my treatment room, I began by creating a mood board to figure out the aesthetics & practicality of the room. I love to use Pinterest to get my visual ideas out and have mood boards for things like Storage Ideas, Pedicure Set Up and design inspo.

Once you’ve figured out the style you're after you can start to figure out how to make it come to life. Everything takes time and you’ll find sometimes it’s not until you’ve actively worked in a space that you can truly see what you need to change & adjust to make the space really work best for you. It's a work in progress that grows with you as you develop new skills. Don't feel that everything has to be done at once.

My Treatment Room aesthetic is kitsch, plant adorned & bright. I try to keep things fun, but tidy and cozy for clients. I’m not a "normal salon space", but that’s one of the reasons my clients like to come to me. I don’t try to make the room do something it can’t do, I just work with what I can.

Storage

Storage is really important, especially as it can actually save you time if you keep yourself well organized. I really love easy access storage so that I can grab things quickly and not waste time looking around for products.

Nail Polish/ Gel Polish Storage

I originally started out with both the long and short Ikea Alex drawers. These are great if you are just starting out and don't have too much product as they provide a lot of storage space, but if you are like me and tend to have a lot of product (I do makeup as well as nails), I’d recommend going for better quality drawers with more side supports than Ikea. My Alex drawers lasted about 3 years before I had to replace them with a similar Tallboy Style Drawer which I found on sale at La Redoute. My advice would be to spend a little extra on furniture if you can so that you don't have to replace it in future.

Ikea Picture Shelves are also a great way to display polish/gel colours on your walls, but they will need dusting regularly which is why I prefer to use the tallboy style drawers. I tend to use the Picture Shelves to create a "gallery wall" where I display framed art and photos, but these would be great for displaying certifications and awards as well.

Glitter/Diamonte/Dried Flower Storage

I invested some time decanting all my glitters, diamantés and dried nail art flowers into clear acrylic lidded jars which sit in clear boxes (labelled on the bottom) so I can showcase colours more easily to clients rather than rummaging through boxes. Clear Acrylic storage is great as you can see when things are running low and need topping up. I tend to separate these into colour sections keeping like colours together. Ebay, Amazon, Hobby Craft & Muji are great for finding these kind of clear acrylic storage solutions.

Wire Storage

I keep wires under control with a wire tidy box also from Ikea to reduce tripping hazards and keep the room looking tidy. As I do a lot of filming in the room, I do have quite a few different wires for various things, anything that doesn't fit into the Ikea Wire Tidy, when not in use, gets stored in Ikea Rattan/Wicker Storage Boxes and slotted away in my Ikea Kallax. I label the different plugs with a Dymo Label Machine so I don't get things confused.

How To Display Your Nail Art Professionally

I love nail art and have a lot of nail tips left over from content creating and old Pop Up Nail Bar menus. I was looking for a way to showcase these to clients and discovered a really cool Nail Art Display Box on Ebay which looks very professional. You can change the display every season or theme each clear pull out frame to your liking. With so many ideas and options available this is a great way to break it down visually for customers. Here is a break down on how to start yours (links to where to find it are in the description box) :

https://youtu.be/F5Yzousncqg

Pedicure Set Up

I recently started offering pedicures again and needed to create a cozy pedicure space that could easily be put away when not in use. As I don’t have laminate flooring, I had a custom size floor matte made to protect my rug and carpet area from splashes and mess by https://www.floormats.co.uk . When not in use, this slots away under a sofa and easily pulls out when I need it again. It's also easy to wipe down and keep disinfected.

Instead of using a storage trolly to display Pedicure Products (as my room is carpeted which wouldn’t be practical), I keep my bottles and sprays on trays on top of a wooden stool. I have 2 different trays which I alternate with the two systems I use, Footlogix & Famous Names Releaf. * Nail techs use my discount code TABBY10 for 10% off these brands and more on the Louella Belle site.

I purchased my concrete pink/white tray to display my Footlogix products from Etsy Seller JustSoDesignbyRachel (https://etsy.me/37c1csl ) who had to adapt when first lockdown hit & set up a shop selling hand made beautiful concrete items. Where I can, I love to shop with and support smaller businesses & fellow nail artists.

To display my Famous Names Releaf I went for a more rustic looking tray from Dunelm which suits the natural ethos of the system : https://www.dunelm.com/product/wooden-tray-craftland-1000167605?defaultSkuId=30696657

For a leg rest/foot rest, I use a foldable stool from Amazon with customised vinyl material that can be disinfected. I found out about the stool from a fellow nail tech on the Footlogix Facebook Group ! The vinyl I reupholstered the stool with came from Etsy Shop HomeTexStudio (https://etsy.me/2JJlRsb). The height is just right for my set up, not for everyone I’m sure , but for the space I work with it’s perfect. Here’s a video of the DIY stool transformation :

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CHGFgx6D6EY/?utm_medium=copy_link

I use Belava Pedi Bowls with recyclable disposable liners for my pedicures as I love glitter & they really go with my room's aesthetic! I think customers also feel much better knowing each time they visit they get a fresh pedi liner. The Belava Glitter bowls do come with a disinfectable insert, but I prefer to use the disposables as I feel it reassures customers that my hygiene standards go above and beyond, especially in these times.

I use an IKEA rattan stool to sit on when doing pedicures and my clients sit on a large sofa chair which allows them to really relax and decompress. After each client, I disinfected the soft furnishing with Sursol Fabric Disinfecting Spray as removing all soft furnishings was not an option for me.

Retail Items

As my set up has less surface space than a traditional salon space, I show off the products I retail on my shorter Ikea Alex Drawers & Ikea Kallax shelves. I try to keep displays and clutter to a minimum as every surface gets wiped down and disinfected before/after each client. In keeping with the aesthetics of my room, I display my products in small wooden boxes and clear acrylic shelves.

The Work Table

My work table is the area of my room that gets the most use. I use it as a work space for not just my nail clients, but also to film and create nail tutorials and content. Unlike many techs, my work table is a little wider than usual which is not for everyone, but works well for me. I have the Ikea Nordan Gateleg Table which has 6 storage drawers down the middle and two sides which can fold down. I use the Clear Ikea Skvallra Desk Protector to keep it free of any accidents and spills. To add a little personality to the space I alternate Paperchase Wrapping Paper which I find very fun and colourful under the Desk Protector, these make great backdrops for nail art photos as well. To get the best out of my nail art photos I use the Ikea Tertial Lamp with a Day Light bulb which I find works well as a work lamp and for photography purposes.

I keep my tools tidy with a custom made Jesmonite tray which I had commissioned by a fellow nail tech ( @bylaurajayne_jesmonitedesigns). It matches my room aesthetic and keeps things nice and tidy when I'm working. I tend to sterilize my tools in my Enbio Auto Clave and then place them on my tray ready for use! If you haven't seen her trays do check them out ! They are the perfect size for nail techs as she makes both rectangle long trays and smaller square trays so there is plenty of room for everything. I think displaying nail tools on the work table like this also gives the tools a bit of respect and helps you to look after them, after all they are probably your most used items and I think it's nice to look after them well so it's just fitting to display them proudly and with a bit of care and thought!

I recently purchased a new hand rest from @gb.wrist.rests. This has been a real game changer as it definitely improves the posture for both myself and my clients when working. Previous to this I had been using an Ikea Wooden laptop holder, which worked well for a couple of years, but over time the disinfectant began to wear down the varnish and I felt it was time to invest in something better. It was also great to support another fellow nail tech who started the GB Wrist Rests business up with her partner during lockdown.

Dust Control

To control dust, I have the Zephyros Dust Collection from Tafs. I find this works really well for keeping the space tidy and protecting mine and my clients lungs. I tend to work more with soak off systems and don't currently e-file so this works well for me. I would recommend getting a more powerful Air Purifier for busier salons working more regularly with enhancements.

Sterilisation

In the corner of my room I store my Enbio S Auto Clave which is used to sterilize tools after they have been washed, then disinfected. I store this on an Ikea Alex Cupboard which doubles up as a storage space for all my cleaning products and spare nail files etc. The Auto Claves are not cheap, but one of the best investments in my Treatment Room. I think customers feel more reassured and I certainly feel better using one. Nail techs can use my code TABBY to get money off their purchases at https://www.enbio.com/uk/

My greatest advice for anyone new to the industry or just starting to set up would be take it a bit at a time. We all have to work within budgets and as you gain clients and get busier you will be able to afford to work your way up towards a space that suits you. I spent many years working as a mobile freelancer before building up a client base that comes to me. It's also worth noting that your own health and client health is so important. Consider the comfort of both of you when creating your space - make sure you are looking after skin and lungs. Protect your hands with gloves when you work to avoid over exposure and make sure you protecting your lungs from dust particles, but most of all have fun creating a space that suits you!

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ktrivia · 5 years ago

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All Men Dream

Bucky x Reader

Summary:

Reader is enhanced with the powers to enter dreams. She originally entered Captain America's dreams just to see if she could, but kept returning to them because she loved spending time in the 1940s ease of life in his idyllic versions of the time. But what happens when the good Captain figures out something is amiss?

Author’s Notes:

When I originally wrote this chapter I had just had dental surgery and I guess the meds I was on (which probably helped with writing this) made me think I posted it. No joke, I just spent a half hour searching through tumblr and almost messaged @searchingforbucky to find my own damn fic. Turns out I just never posted it to begin with (insert shrugging emoji here)

I’m currently in the process of writing the next chapter and I greatly appreciate everyone’s patience during my long absence from this story!

If you would like to be tagged in this story (I’m so excited that people actually want to read this) please send me a message!

Also let me know what you think of this chapter! I always love getting comments, questions, and theories!

Chapter 5

Bucky’s POV

I tried opening my eyes, but it felt like someone had poured cement over them. They were heavy and it took every little bit of focus to get them cracked open. As light filtered in and shapes began to form, I began to hear snippets of the voices around me.

“Clint! Clint! Wake-“

“Med bay!”

“Blood coming from-“

Turning my head slowly, I tried to see what the commotion was about. Why was I so tired? I saw Clint laying on a medical bed next to me with Natasha essentially on top of him as she shook his face violently. Had we gone on a mission and he’s been injured? Lifting my heavy head, I looked down at my body, inspecting it for wounds, but there was nothing out of the ordinary.

As I looked past my feet, I saw her. Y/N was slumped over in her chair. Electrodes were still attached to her forehead and chest, but she seemed almost lifeless. Adrenaline shot through me as my eyes opened completely and the memories of her in my dreams appeared again.

Scrambling off the bed was as ungraceful as it could be with the sedatives still burning from my system, but I stood up and started making my way to her as fast as I possibly could. I was stopped by a large body blocking me.

“Buck! What did she do to you?” Steve questioned firmly while taking in my sedated state.

“She didn’t. It’s those damn drugs Banner gave me to knock me out,” I explained without taking my eyes off of Y/N. Now that I was closer, I could see blood running out of her ears and nose.

“Steve, we have to help her,” I said as I pushed around him. Steve grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

“Clint’s not awake Bucky. We don’t know if she did something to him and it backfired and that’s why she’s bleeding.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” I yelled. “He’s just sedated. She needs help. She purposely did this to herself so Clint and I would get out of there safely.” I wrenched my arm free and ran to her, dropping to my knees in front of the chair. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Banner running to grab the hospital bed I had been lying on.

I placed my hands on each side of her face, tilting her head up to face me. With each thumb I gently pulled open her eyelids to check for pupillary response. When light hit them, her pupils both contracted which meant her brain had hopefully not suffered too much damage from what had happened, if any. Steve spoke as I manually checked her pulse, not trusting the low reading on the electrodes were showing.

“What happened in there?”

“She looked uncomfortable the minute she brought Clint into there,” I explained clinically while still checking her vitals. “She was still sarcastic and seemed outwardly upbeat, but she started getting really pale and I could see her wincing like something was hurting her. By the end, she looked like she was going to keel over and that’s exactly what happened. But instead of waking up and helping herself, she made sure Clint got out. I don’t know how she did it, but she made sure He and I were safe before breaking the connection. She saved our asses, Steve.”

By the time I finished explaining, Bruce had arrived with the rolling hospital bed. Carefully, and without removing any of the attached electrodes, I picked her up and placed her on the bed. Tony unlocked the breaks on the machines reading her vital signs and brain activity so he could roll them alongside her as they rapidly moved towards the rooms exit.

Steve, Wanda and I followed the two men and they began asking questions and trying to get explanations.

“Wanda, was there anything malicious happening in her head?” Steve asked.

“No,” Wanda replied with a shake of her head. “She showed them a field and an ice cream shop from one of your dreams. She was just trying to explain everything as best she could but there was a lot of pain there. It felt like she was being ripped in two. Her consciousness was almost splitting in half while trying to keep hold of Bucky and Clint’s minds.”

Wanda’s answer explained why Y/N had seemed like something was hurting her. An edge of guilt started to fill me as I realized I had made her do this task she’d never tried before.

“Bucky and Clint’s vitals were perfect until the very end of it except for that one little spike Bucky had in the middle,” Bruce explained when they reached the elevator that would take them to the med bay.

“You see a stripper from the 40s while you were there, Manchurian Candidate?” Tony asked, sarcastic even while they were rushing someone to emergency care.

“She brought us to an ice cream shop Steve and I went to all the time. It must have spiked my heart rate,” I answered absent mindedly as I watched the floor numbers tick down.

When the door opened, doctors were waiting and ready for us. They grabbed the gurney and rushed Y/N into an exam room. I tried to follow, but Steve’s arm blocked me.

“We need to finish debriefing and the doctors need space to work,” he commanded, but I could see there was a bit of guilt in his eyes too. I watched through the glass and the doctors begin doing diagnostic exams as Y/N just laid there, unmoving.

Wanda and Steve were still going over what Wanda had found in her mind while Tony scrolled through a tablet someone had brought him.

“I went deeper into her mind while I was in there and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She lives a very normal life and unless she has some higher power to hide memories, there is nothing nefarious about her.” Steve nodded at Wanda’s explanation and was about to respond before Tony interjected.

“I had Friday run a background check on her and she’s literally so normal she could be an extra in a movie. Both parents still alive, one brother, a cat at home in her Brooklyn apartment. She works, well worked, for a marketing agency. Her boss fired her for not coming in yesterday so he seems like a genuine asshole. Her work is actually pretty good. Seems like she does the design work and marketing plans on her own. Oh, and she creates slogans and jingles too-“

Tony!” Steve interjected as Tony began rambling about Y/N’s job. “Are there any red flags at all?”

“No. Not a single one. Her file is completely clean. Not so clean that it’s suspicious, but clean enough where her worst offense is a parking ticket.”

The room fell quiet as everyone considered the information they learned within the last ten minutes. Not only did Y/N not work for one of our enemies like Hydra, but she lived a normal life with a normal family and probably normal friends. We had swooped in and interrupted that to the point of her being fired and who knows what else. Steve spoke first.

“Sam went and searched her apartment. There was nothing suspicious there, but he did grab the cat and bring it back here. Even if there was something going on with Y/N, there was no reason for the cat to starve.”

We all nodded, remaining quiet again. Each of us alone with our own thoughts.

“So, what we’ve all just established here is that we abducted, somewhat tortured, and potentially seriously harmed an innocent woman.” Tony said.

“Yes,” Steve whispered with a small nod.

“Then what do we do now?” Tony questioned.

Tag list (Please message me if you would like to be added to it):

@paradisiacalsparks @cals-cigarette @searchingforbucky @mavelfanatic @some-person-somewhere @marvel-th @unfortunately-im-awake @jessicakimba @fandom-addict-aesthetics @simplysaying @spnsquirrel @bxrnsfeyson @magnolialikes @buckyinantarctica @fluffymadamina @willowtree42095 @horsesandwolvesaremyanimals @pieofawkwardness @mirajanestrauss987 @nerdypisces160 @in-avengers-we-trust @lilo-1398

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shireness-says · 5 years ago

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Wherever You’re Going (I’m Going Your Way) [2/6]

Summary: 1952. A lost boy without a home, Killian Jones rides America’s back roads on his motorcycle, searching for a purpose that’s just out of reach. This pit stop was only supposed to be a few days, a couple of weeks at most, but a pretty blonde waitress just might be his salvation. Is he brave enough to let her? Rated T for language. ~5.5K. Also on AO3. Ch. 1

~~~~~

The bench outside of Nolan's Garage is a nice one, all things considered. Killian would know, after a summer spent sleeping on a series of them. It's got an armrest at one end that he can prop his bedroll against for a pillow and is good, sturdy wood instead of the stylized metal contraptions some towns insist on adopting for aesthetic or some such.

After months on the road, Killian is now more used to sleeping out of doors, only seeking an inn or other shelter on rainy nights to protect from the elements. He's used to the way the birds start their song at dawn, the way the sun's rays gradually wash across his face to bathe him in a brightness and warmth that eventually coaxes him back to the waking world. What he's not used to is the dark shadow that is suddenly cast across his form, looming and severe, tangible even in his dozing state. With great effort, Killian peels his eyes open to find a man standing over him — tall, blonde, wide-shouldered. Visibly unhappy.

"You must be the stranger," he states simply. Even in those five words, Killian can hear the judgement, the distrust, the disapproval. It's nothing he's not used to; one doesn't exactly endear oneself to the locals by showing up unexpectedly in their idyllic little towns and sleeping on park benches.

"Aye," he agrees, pushing himself into a sitting position and extending a hand in introduction. "Killian Jones."

"I don't care." The other man's arms stay crossed, his expression severe. "What do you want?"

Killian sighs. "I don't suppose you're Nolan?"

"I might be. Like I said — what do you want?"

Whoever claimed that honey worked better than vinegar was clearly a liar; either that, or Nolan is rather smarter than your average fly. Possibly both. "I'm afraid I’ve run into some trouble with my bike," Killian says simply, nodding towards the machine in question. "I hoped maybe I could avail myself of your services." It's needlessly formal, but it feels like the kind of thing he might have said in his past life to charm all matter of different people into doing his bidding.

"Can you pay?"

Killian hesitates. This is where things get a little more complicated. "Aye," he finally says — not a lie, per say, though not exactly the truth — "Though I'd prefer to pay with labor than with money."

The statement earns him an appraising look. "You can do auto repair?"

"At a rudimentary level, yes," he admits. Still, he hesitates before adding the next part; the next part is what could open him up to a whole series of questions he's not much in the mood to answer. "I picked up a few things during the war, though I'm more used to dealing with plane engines than cars."

For all of Killian's fears, Nolan doesn't immediately press, or offer pointless platitudes. In fact, Killian would almost say that something about his posture releases, lets go of some of the tension he'd been carrying. "Why can't you fix it yourself then?"

"Hard to fix much of anything without the right parts - in this case, a tire. I just need someone to order it for me, and a place I can replace it. I figured — if you're amenable — I could help out around here until the tire comes in or I've worked off the cost."

Nolan looks at him a moment longer, before finally nodding — slowly, thoughtfully, decisively — and jerking his head towards the garage. "Come on in, then, and we'll take a look."

Killian quickly gathers his things and moves to wheel his bike in as Nolan goes to roll up his front garage door. "You said you served? In what, the RAF?" he asks as Killian begins to push the bike inside.

"Yes, sir." Maybe he's a little bit short, but he's learned that’s the best way to discourage further questioning.

Not that he needs to worry about that; the blond man just nods again. "I was in the Army. In Italy. And it's David."

It's all the explanation either of them needs; some things, they both understand, don't bear further discussion.

"We don't get much by way of excitement around here. A few flat tires, oil changes, that kind of thing," Nolan — David explains. "Most of our business is just pumping gas. You think you can handle all that?"

“Aye. It won’t be a problem.”

“Let’s take a look then.”

David’s garage is neater than Killian expected. In his experience, auto shops are dirty, grungy places. Though there is still a bit of that — engine grease has a way of working its way into corners and sticking around for far longer than anyone would prefer — all his tools are neatly organized, clearly left in long-since-designated places. If he had to guess, he’d say it must be a bit of that military order leftover in David.

“You said something about a tire?” the other man asks, already crouching down to squeeze at the rubber.

“Aye. I drove over a nail at some point, and it’s become embedded in the front tire. It’s only a slow leak right now, but it needs addressing.”

David runs a sure hand along the curve to find the piece of metal in question before leaning in for a closer look. “Yeah, it’s in there pretty good,” he agrees. “We can take it out and slap a patch on there, if you like, but that’s more of a temporary measure. I’d recommend just replacing the whole thing. The tread is getting worn anyways. How far have you been riding?”

“Went all the way to the gulf and back up.”

“Yeah, you’re due then. It’s up to you, but I’d like to order tires for the front and back.”

“Aye, that sounds fine,” Killian agrees. “Best to replace them at the same time, anyways. How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Hard to say,” David shrugs. “The work itself isn’t the issue — you know that will go quickly — but it’s the shipping that’s more of a problem. I’ll call today, get that ball rolling, but we’re a ways out. It can take a while for things to get all the way out here. If I had to guess… a week? Maybe two?”

It’s not ideal; that’s a long time for Killian to stay in one place, and it makes him feel anxious. He feels better when he’s moving. But what other choice does he have?

(A week, maybe two, and he’s gone. Anyone can withstand that; even he can endure it.)

“That’s fine,” he repeats. Uselessly. There’s nothing else to say, though — David can’t rush how long it takes things to get here, and Killian knows exactly how far in the middle of nowhere this town is.

“Before I agree to trade parts for labor, though, I’ve got to see what you can do. I can’t just put you to work on a promise,” David warns. “Otherwise, you’re going to have to come up with the money.”

“Of course.”

David leads them across the shop to where a sedan is lifted up to display its underside. “Routine oil change,” David explains, nodding vaguely in the direction of the car’s guts. “Think you can handle it?”

Killian doesn’t bother to confirm or deny — a waste of speech, really, when he could get down to the doing — just shrugs his jacket off to drape over a nearby tool bench. “Any gloves I could borrow?”

David passes them in equal silence, and Killian sets to work. There’s something soothing about the ritual of all this — unscrew the drain cap and let the used oil drain into a receptacle, remove the old oil filter, and replace it with a new one. The hardest bit is figuring out how to lower the car back to normal level and where David keeps the fresh oil.

“I can change a tire, too, if you need more proof,” Killian offers as he strips off the borrowed gloves again.

“That’s fine. I think I can find something for you to do around here. Let me show you the cash register, you’ll need that for gas.”

And just like that, they’ve come to an arrangement.

David doesn’t expect much by way of conversation — a good thing, since Killian doesn’t have much to give. He’s out of practice, frankly, no longer skilled in all the ridiculous little intricacies of small talk, and nowhere near ready to talk about anything deeper — especially with a man he’s only just met. The afternoon mostly passes in an easy kind of silence, with David working in the garage on a car engine he’d described as “a special pain in the ass” and Killian handling the pumps outside. The customers look at him suspiciously when he runs out to help instead of David, but that’s nothing new. He’s earned an awful lot of suspicious looks in his travels, and he knows it’s because he’s an unfamiliar face.

(Granted, the leather jacket probably doesn’t help. He knows it makes him look like he’s up to no good, but it’s warm and holds up well in the weather, and he has no intention to change that just because a few uptight townspeople look at him with narrowed eyes.)

The afternoon passes quickly in that matter, and before Killian knows it, he comes back inside the garage after serving a small rush of people to find David putting his tools back in their proper place.

“Closing time,” David comments in explanation, nodding towards the clock. Sure enough, the hands read 5:30; he should have known in a little town like this, everything would close before six. Before he can even start making plans for the evening — where he’s going to get food, where he’s going to sleep, all the little details that he’s accounted for dozens of times since he started this ride — David jerks his head towards the door in an abrupt invitation. “Come on, Mary Margaret will have dinner on the table soon.”

“I’m sorry?” It doesn’t really process. Only hours ago, David was standing over him in a threatening manner, demanding to know what he was camping on a town bench for, and now he’s… apparently inviting Killian to his home. Surely he can’t mean that.

“My wife,” David clarifies, as if that was the confusing thing. “She’s making a pot roast, maybe some pie since we’ll have company. I called her earlier to let her know you’d be joining us for dinner.” His face turns sharp again for a moment. “You are coming to dinner, right?”

“I… well, yes, I suppose I am. If you and your wife want me there, that is,” Killian manages to say, tripping over the words in his surprise.

“Good,” David nods. “You’ve got to eat, after all, and the missus would kill me if I didn’t invite you. She’s got strong opinions about a home-cooked meal. For good reason, too, it’s a damn fine pot roast. Are you coming?” The last is definitely necessary prodding, as Killian is still stuck several steps from the door trying to figure out what just happened.

Still, he follows David out, making sure to snag his bag by the door on his way. Even if he’s a bit thrown off by this turn of events, that doesn’t change the fact that he’ll be lost without his belongings for the night. “Thank you,” he murmurs as David locks up behind them. “I appreciate the invite.”

“Don’t mention it,” the other man shrugs, tucking the shop keys back into his pocket. “Like I said, my wife would kill me if I made you go scavenging on your own.”

The Nolan residence is on a quiet street maybe a ten minute walk from the garage. If Killian had thought Main Street was impressive, this is something else. Trees arch gracefully over the pavement, creating their own little world in the shade. The houses have front porches and flower beds lining the front walk. Half of them have a flag fluttering outside the front door. It looks like a cliche of American domesticity, and he hasn’t even made it off the street.

David and his wife’s house proves to be a cheery pale blue with white trim and has flowered window boxes. Before they go inside, he crouches to take off his work boots and nods for Killian to do the same. “Can’t have us tracking grease in the door,” he explains. “No need to stain the rug if we don’t have to.”

The house inside is just the same — picture perfect yet impossibly real. He can spot lace doilies on end tables and a carved hatstand in the entry hall, and the smell of something delicious wafts through the rooms. It’s obvious, too, that this isn’t just a house — it’s a home, evident in a carefully bookmarked novel on the coffee table some sewing discarded in the corner.

The woman who comes bustling down the hall to greet them fits his impression of the space perfectly — a cliche of the loving, welcoming wife with her big smile and apron and perfectly pinned hair. David’s a lucky man to be living this life, and Killian feels a dull pang of longing for that kind of certainty, even if he doesn’t feel ready to plant roots in that way yet.

“Welcome home!” the woman all but coos, dropping a quick kiss on David’s cheek before turning her dimpled grin on Killian, extending a delicate hand to shake. “You must be Killian — David told me you were helping at the shop and I just insisted he bring you home for dinner. Granny’s is all well and good, but it’s nothing compared to a good home-cooked meal, is it?”

Despite Killian’s misgivings about the trappings of this whole idyllic life (even just watching it from afar intensifies the constant itch beneath his skin, to move, to flee, to fly), he likes Mrs. Nolan immediately. “No, it isn’t,” he concedes, cracking a small smile. He even manages to take the hand she offers, pressing a kiss to the back of it that makes the pretty brunette blush and David glower. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Nolan.”

“Oh, you must call me Mary Margaret!” she protests as David’s glare intensifies. Faced with that kind of reaction, Killian doesn’t plan to follow the lady’s command. “I just put dinner on the table, you’re just in time. Pot roast with potatoes and green beans, and a good chocolate cake for dessert. Does all of that sound good to you?”

“It sounds delicious, ma’am.”

“Good answer,” David mumbles not quite under his breath, earning himself an affectionate whack to the chest from his wife. It sends an odd pang of longing through Killian — they’re obviously well suited for each other, and Killian finds himself wanting a partner he can share that same kind of companionship with. It’s silly, though; that kind of commitment would require a kind of stability he just can’t give. It’s still lovely to watch though, as David leads them to the dining room with one callused hand just barely grazing along Mary Margaret’s back. Quickly, they both wash their hands at the kitchen sink before taking a seat at the table.

“So David said you’ll be in town for the next week or so?” the lady of the house asks as they start to dig in.

“That’s the plan, at least. Just until the replacement tires get in,” he replies before taking a bite of potatoes. It’s been a while since Killian has had a home-cooked meal, and Mrs. Nolan’s cooking proves to be more than up to snuff.

“Well let me tell you, there’s no better place to break down than in Storybrooke — and I’m not just saying that because I’m married to the mechanic!” she gushes with a tinkling laugh. As far as Killian can tell, she seems to do that a lot — a striking contrast to David’s more reserved demeanor. “Storybrooke is just such a nice little town — I can’t imagine living anywhere else. But I understand that you’ve been driving all over the country?”

“Let the man eat, Mary Margaret,” David chides affectionately. “He can’t get a bite in between all these questions.”

Mrs. Nolan blushes a bright pink in response, somehow managing to look delicate even in her embarrassment. “Oh! Of course, where are my manners. You don’t need to answer that, Killian. I can’t insist you come to dinner and then not let you eat!”

Killian swallows a bite of roast hurriedly in order to respond. “It’s quite alright, Mrs. Nolan,” he smiles. “Yes, I’ve been driving up and down the coast since March. I’m planning to head westward after this.”

“That must be so exciting,” she smiles. “I’m more of a homebody, myself — I can’t imagine driving all over the place for so long.”

“It’s not for everyone,” Killian agrees noncommittally.

A few minutes of relative silence pass as the three of them truly dig in, interrupted only by assurances that dinner is delicious and you know how I love your potatoes. For those minutes, Killian is almost lulled into thinking that he’s in the clear, that no more questions are coming to dredge up things he doesn’t like to think about.

“So what about when you’re not on the road, Killian?” Mary Margaret asks in a tone of voice that’s almost suspiciously innocent. He’s sure she doesn’t mean anything nefarious; she’s just making conversation. Still, he has a bad feeling about where this is going. “Where do you call home?”

And there it is — a question to really set his nerves on edge. A question that he doesn’t really have a proper answer to. “Nowhere, at the moment. I’ve been travelling ever since I came to the country.”

“And what about your family? Are they still back in England?”

If Killian was wary of the first question, his heart drops into his stomach at the second. “No,” he barely bites out. “There’s no one back in England.”

Maybe they hear the barely restrained pain in his voice; maybe they just grow tired of his poor excuses for conversation. Killian wouldn’t blame them; he knows that he’s less than good company, and isn’t remotely carrying his weight in their interactions. All he knows is the depth of his gratitude when conversation shifts towards more generic topics, ones David can answer, like about their day at the shop.

Dinner is fine, and a fine excuse to make him interact with even a little bit of the world.

It’s an even greater relief when he can bid them both a good evening and leave for the night.

———

Despite Mrs. Nolan's best attempts to fatten him up, Killian still wanders down to Granny's that night after dinner. Perhaps it's for the tea; perhaps it's for a change of scenery; perhaps it's for the chance to see the lovely blonde waitress again.

(It's absolutely the last option, no doubt, but Killian likes to pretend he still has a little bit of his dignity sometimes. He's not a young boy mooning over a pretty girl anymore, even if he certainly is acting that way at the moment.)

The sounds and rituals of the diner are more familiar now that it's his second visit — the right of the bell above the door, the way everyone hushes for just a moment as he walks in before hurriedly continuing on in an array of conversations, Granny's nod he's sure means seat yourself. The same booth as he occupied last night is still open, and Killian slides across the vinyl once again. Sure enough, only a minute or two later, the same blonde angel as before appears to take his order.

"Hello again," she smiles. Little lines around her eyes crinkle with the gesture; they suit her, Killian decides, making her look even more like a creature who's meant to spread and receive joy. "What can I get you tonight?"

"Just another pot of tea, please," he replies, trying to match her smile. It doesn't feel quite so natural on Killian's face — proof that he's long since out of practice in performing what's such a natural gesture on everyone else.

(Another thing he lost to the sea, along with Liam, along with his youth, along with his plans.)

"No sandwich tonight?" she continues, apparently oblivious to Killian's internal struggle. She doesn't even bat an eye at whatever twisted facsimile of a smile graces his face; maybe it looks better than he thought.

"Not tonight, love. I already had a bit of dinner. Thank you though, miss..." he trails off in question, arching a single eyebrow to accentuate the query.

It would be well within her right to refuse to tell him; after all, he's an odd and awkward stranger she's met all of twice. To his surprise though, she just smiles again, and offers him her name like a gift. "Emma. Emma Swan."

It suits her, he decides immediately; it's graceful and elegant and maybe just a little otherworldly, like a princess out of a fairy tale he hasn't heard before. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Swan," he returns. The smile feels a little easier now, though he's not ready to admit why.

The smile on her — on Emma's face turns a little wry. "And you are....?"

It absolutely figures that he'd get so lost in the joy of knowing this angel's name that he would forget his own. "Killian — Jones," he hastens to reply, tripping over his own name in the process.

"It's nice to meet you, Killian Jones," she replies, clearly trying to cover a laugh. "I'll have that tea right out for you."

Though Emma returns with the small teapot and a cup on a saucer a few minutes later, more people have trickled into the diner for a late dinner and he's unable to engage her in conversation any further. That's alright; he'd borrowed Frankenstein from the Nolans' bookshelf for a reread, and there's no time like the present. He didn't come to Granny's just to talk to Emma, after all.

(That's what he tells himself, anyways; the truth is that something more compelling than the pie lured him back, whether or not he ever acts on it.)

Dr. Frankenstein is just as egotistical and irritating as Killian remembers, but he gets lost in that gothic world all the same, reveling in the twists and turns he half-remembers from grammar school. Before he knows it, it's 10pm again, and whether it's the tea or the story or something else entirely, Killian isn't remotely tired. It's a relief in many ways; after all, he can't dream if he doesn't sleep. Insomnia has never been a problem he's faced, for better or worse, but there are nights after a particularly intense streak of nightmares that Killian wished that the urge to close his eyes and slip into slumber wasn't quite as strong.

Regardless, he's just starting to contemplate wandering back toward the garage and the bench he’s pretending is a bed when Emma slides into the seat across from Killian.

"You're a wanderer," she says. It's not a question, just a statement of fact. He can't say he's ever been called that before, but Killian supposes it's accurate. He can't think of a better descriptor, at least.

"Aye, I suppose you could say that," he concedes. "Better than some things I've been called," he mutters much further under his breath.

"I've never gone further than Portland," Emma admits. Killian can already tell by the far-off look in her eyes that it's not for lack of desire; just for lack of opportunity. "I wanted to join the Red Cross during the war, but..."

"Be glad you didn't," Killian interrupts before she can finish the thought. He knows how that story ends anyways: too much to do on the homefront and too few men to do it. "No one should see what went on over there unless they had to."

"I know," Emma replies. "I don't regret it. I was needed more here. But I worry that might have been my chance to see the world."

"You'll get another chance, Swan." He doesn't know where the instinct to call her by her last name comes from; all he knows is that it feels right.

"I hope so," she replies wistfully, before shaking herself back out of it. "But for now, tell me: what's it like?"

For a short, terrible moment, Killian worries that she meant what it was like to fight, and the flames flash in front of his eyes again. Something of it must show in his face, however, as she hurries to clarify her request. "I meant in your travels. On your bike." She sighs and runs a frustrated hand over her hair. "I've made a mess of this, haven't I?"

“It’s alright, love,” he smiles, moving to clasp her hand in reassurance before thinking better of it. “You haven’t made a mess of anything.”

“You’re just saying that,” she mumbles. “Being polite.”

“It’s the truth. You’ve got nothing to apologize for. I, on the other hand… I’ve rather forgotten the question.” It’s almost flirtatious — not that he means it to be. It’s hard to imagine himself light-hearted enough to flirt nowadays, even when faced with a beautiful blonde with a smile that could light up even the darkest of nights.

There’s no point to it anyways; he’ll only be in Storybrooke for a few days, a week at the longest.

(No matter what he says, he’s already in danger of becoming attached to this girl, his angel.)

“What’s it like out there?” Emma repeats. Curiosity and excitement twinkle in her eyes and she leans against the table with crossed arms, like she’ll hang onto every word. He thinks she truly will, too; he only hopes that the words he has to say won’t disappoint her. She doesn’t deserve that.

“It’s… big,” he says, knowing full well that the description is horribly inadequate, even if it’s true. “Vast. I grew up thinking that Britain was so large, or Europe, but neither come anywhere close to your country. All the things you can see… it’s a marvel.”

“So where have you been?” Emma asks. “Or is it easier to ask where haven’t you been?”

Killian blushes a bit at that, though he can’t quite figure out why; maybe the implication that he’s worldly, or some kind of expert. “I’ve been up and down the East Coast,” he tells her. “Started in March and rode all the way down to Florida while the heat could still feel good. And now, obviously, have worked my way back up.”

“You must have gone to the beach down there, right?” She doesn’t even wait for an answer before plowing forward. “Is it different from the ocean here? I can’t imagine anyone making that trip and not going to see the ocean.”

Maybe for other people, that’s true; it seems like the kind of cliche vacation road trip residents of a picture-perfect town might take. Killian still remembers, though, how his life almost ended in this same ocean, thousands of miles away — still remembers being tossed by the waves and scrambling to keep himself above water and the way that the cold of the Atlantic cut into his flesh. He still remembers the panic and the desperate realization that if he didn’t fight like hell, he’d be swallowed by the turbulent waters and never resurface.

Most people love the ocean; Killian no longer counts himself among them.

“It is different,” he finally says. “The shore isn’t so pebbled as it is here. There’s just sand, everywhere, even where you’d expect there to be proper soil instead. It makes the water look different, too — it moves the same, but the colors are different. It’s the dark sand and rocks that turn the water so dark, here. On the Gulf, everything is blue instead.”

“It sounds beautiful,” she sighs. “I’m going to go someday, somehow. I swear it.”

“I’m sure you will.” It’s not placating, or at least he doesn’t intend it to be; something about Emma makes him believe, even so soon into their acquaintance, that she can and will do anything she sets her mind to. If she wants to see the world, she’ll find a way.

“You really think so?” she asks, a mix of hope and uncertainty creeping into her voice.

“Of course. I think you can do anything you want to — especially a lady as bold as yourself.”

“Thanks.” She smiles at the reassurance; he likes this look on her a lot better. He likes it even more when the smile turns into a self-deprecating laugh. “That’s enough about me, though. Tell me more about where you’ve been.”

“There’s not much to tell,” he admits. “It’s been a lot of back roads and landscapes and little tiny towns, and not a lot of sightseeing.”

“What’s been your favorite part, then?”

“The speed,” he admits readily. There’s no thought even required. She most likely wanted to hear about a particularly memorable town or something like that, but the truth is, he’s been more interested in the ride itself than anywhere he might be going, as cliche as that is. “Out there, with an open stretch of road… it feels like flying. It’s exhilarating. There’s almost nothing like it.” Of course, it’s a shameless attempt to recreate the feeling of soaring across the skies in the Jolly, but Emma doesn’t need to know that. Discussions of how he’s desperately trying to reclaim the feeling of the last time it felt like he had a purpose aren’t exactly suitable conversation when you’ve barely learned a girl’s name.

“Maybe you’ll have to show me before you leave,” she suggests with a coy little smile. Truth be told, Killian isn’t sure how to respond to that; it’s hard to believe a woman like her would be interested in spending any time with him, and it’s far too presumptuous to believe she’s flirting with him. She must just be expressing an odd kind of kindness, just expressing interest in the things he likes for politeness’ sake. That’s a thing people do, he thinks; he’s far too out of practice with having to interact with strangers.

(After all, this is just temporary. He’s only here until his bike is fixed — a few days, a week at the longest.)

(That doesn’t stop a little part of him from wishing that she really did mean it.)

“Where else do you want to see? Besides the Florida coast,” he blurts out, looking for a way to sidestep… whatever just happened. It’s hard to know how to respond to what she just said, even if he is eager to otherwise continue their conversation. She’s good company, he finds, and doesn’t act with that cloying kind of politeness he’s used to from so many other people and never knows how to respond to. She’s… genuine. Genuinely kind, and genuinely curious.

“Oh, everywhere,” she sighs. “The Grand Canyon, the Four Corners — I want to stand in four states at once, and don’t even try to tell me how ridiculous that is — the Alamo, Niagara Falls… all of it.” She blushes fetchingly at the end of her list. “I know it’s a lot, but we had a very comprehensive geography book in the library when I was in school. It really captured my imagination, I suppose you’d say.”

“I don’t think it’s — well, it is a lot, really,” he chuckles, “but that’s not a bad thing. I wouldn’t say it’s excessive. I’m the one driving across the country without anything resembling a plan.” This time, his chuckle is self-deprecating, almost bitter.

“Ah, but it’s not without purpose, is it?” she says with a wry smile and a knowing tone. “Not having a plan isn’t the same thing as not having a reason.”

It’s terrifying, in a certain way, the way she can read him so easily. Those are things he’s not prepared to discuss with her, not tonight and possibly not ever.

“It’s not,” he says shortly, “but that’s not a matter for discussion tonight.”

“No, I guess it isn’t.” If he were a more optimistic man, he might almost say she looks sad that their conversation is ending. “I’ll let you get back to your book, then. Would you like a fresh pot of tea?”

Don’t go, he thinks. “That would be wonderful, thank you,” his mouth says — some stupid brain-heart miscommunication.

“I’ll get that right out to you.” Carefully she slides out of the booth, smoothing her skirt as she goes. Killian is helpless but to follow her with his eyes all the way back to the kitchen. The loveliest woman he’s met in a long, long time, possibly ever, and he’s mucked it all up.

Ah, well, it’s not like it matters anyways. His stay was always meant to be temporary, after all, when he’s only here for as long as it takes for his new tire to get here. There’s no sense in forming attachments.

(It may already be too late for that, but he’s willing to ignore it until he can’t any longer.)

~~~~~

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Thanks for reading - let me know what you think!

#captain swan #cs ff #csrt #my writing #Wherever You’re Going (I’m Going Your Way)#50s AU

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ralafferty · 4 years ago

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84. Seven Story Dream

One of Lafferty’s better-known mystery stories, thanks to its inclusion in Does Anyone Else Have Something Further to Add?—actually, the only one of his mysteries to feature in any of his major-press collections. It’s a mordant tale of striking confidence; one can see why a platform as big as Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine went for it. And yet, without the efforts of Virginia Kidd, it probably would’ve been just another unpublished manuscript in the Lafferty archives.

Lafferty submitted the story to A.L. Fierst soon after writing it, in November 1961; the agent apparently didn’t reject it, as he did many of Ray’s SF stories, but he did not succeed in selling it—and likely did not try to. Unlike several other of the mystery stories which Fierst failed to sell, such as “Enfants Terribles” or “Almost Perfect,” Lafferty did not continue to shop this one on his own; instead, it would sit in his file boxes for almost a decade, when Virginia Kidd asked him which of his older stories might be worth a look.

It might not be quite the coup of “Enfants Terribles,” which Kidd succeeded in selling to the undisputed top-tier mystery mag, Ellery Queen’s, despite Lafferty trying that same market and many others years before, but landing an abandoned story in the market’s #2 magazine is no mean feat. Hitchcock Mystery had started back in the ’50s, piggybacking on the success of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV anthology series. The magazine kept their namesake’s famous silhouette and predilection for suspenseful tales, but otherwise operated completely independently—although on occasion the show would adapt stories from the print outlet; it’s sort of a shame that Presents was no longer running when Lafferty’s story did, as it would have made a fine episode.

Kidd’s other intervention with the story was a little more understated. It wasn’t her practice (with Lafferty, anyway, or with any of her other clients I’ve researched) to make changes directly to manuscripts; instead she would make the case that the material needed changes, and leave the author to provide them, or not. But in this one case, Kidd—who, though best known for her efforts representing SF/F writers, had a fondness for mysteries and a very keen eye for plotting and characterization—did the touch-up work herself, and only then mailed Lafferty for his approval. Sadly, the letter in which she initially proposed the change seems to have been lost (as opposed to the one where she acknowledged his acceptance), but we can recover the shifts by comparing his manuscript draft with the version as published:

Manuscript: The machine played now in the compelling voice of Gilford Gadberry, as it had often played to George Handle in his sleep till he had learned it: “I killed Minnie Jo Merry. I killed Minnie Jo Merry. Strangled her and threw her out the window. I killed—”

Published story: The machine played now in the compelling voice of Gilford Gadberry, as it had night after night played to George Handle, in his sleep, till he had learned to answer on cue; and the cue, of course, was the question: “Who killed Minnie Jo Merry?” “Pretty uninspired,” Gadberry had to admit, “but I had to assume uninspired questioners, to whom the cliché would come naturally.”

(As a side note here, what is Lafferty playing at by calling a character George Handle? I can’t find any connection to the composer, but it tantalizes nonetheless.)

There’s actually quite a few red herrings in the story, not so much at the basic level of whodunit—the identity of the real killer is never in any serious doubt—as it is about why he did it, and how he set up someone else to take the fall. As ever with Lafferty, these elements reflect on the meta level of the story’s composition.

Much of the story seems to revolve around sleep-learning, or hypnopedia. To educate himself, Handle listens to recordings, some of which he paid Gadberry to make, while he sleeps; Gadberry takes the opportunity to have Handle hypnotize himself into admitting he was the killer. In pondering where Lafferty would’ve encountered this practice, we could turn to his self-education in science fiction, where it’s been a favorite trope since Hugo Gernsback himself put it into Ralph 124C41+, and Aldous Huxley put it at the heart of his Brave New World. But there’s a more immediate reason it might’ve been on Lafferty’s mind on or just before November 25, 1961, the day he finished the story: on November 16, an episode of popular sitcom My Three Sons revolved around sleep-learning—in this case, learning Spanish, which lifelong language-learner Lafferty might’ve taken particular interest in. Furthermore, the plot of the show involves the recordings being changed out surreptitiously, though for the purpose of a moral to be learned, rather than a murder to be covered up.

In the show they use a home record player; I went down a rabbit-hole trying to figure out exactly what sort of audio equipment Lafferty would’ve had in mind here; thanks to his engineering training and his job selling electronics parts, he was fascinated by consumer electronics and media technology generally, but he’s maddeningly imprecise in his descriptions here, with mention made of “the tapes, the wires, the records” crowding Handle’s apartment. In 1973, when the story was published, it clearly would’ve been standard-issue cassette tapes, which had been available for a decade. But in 1961, when he was writing this, cassette systems were much larger, and the bulk as well as the cost scared many consumers away from getting what seemed then like a novelty.

Ultimately it doesn’t much matter (he said, setting aside huge amounts of media theory dealing with modernism, hypnotism, sound reproduction, and death)—what matters is that the murder itself is getting displaced by a question of technology. As we discover, the reason for that murder is primarily aesthetic: the murdered woman was more aesthetically pleasing dead than alive. But this is the basis for essentially every murder mystery, nearly all of which require at least one corpse to fulfill their own aesthetic—something which Northrop Frye identified in assigning the genre not to the realm of moralism or any romantic restoration of society, but to the realm of sadism and ironic comedy. The exact identity of the character who made the corpse is ultimately irrelevant; it might be the person repeating “I killed Minnie Jo Merry. I killed Minnie Jo Merry…” or they might be ventriloquizing those words at the impetus of another, but in the end it’s the author who’s responsible: theirs is the aesthetic judgment that necessitated the killing. In making a mostly aesthetic decision to carry out a murder, Gadberry reflects also on the morality of the author as artist, even to the point of staging the opening scene for maximum sensory effect (in the process “savagely striking down” a lone white flower—again, subtlety not really the point of this piece). He cites as his motives “jealousy, frustration, curiosity,” but the first two are clearly deprecated to the third, which he shares with any author who creates a character for the sole purpose of killing them off.

This is a grim promontory on which to find oneself, philosophically speaking, and I wonder if it isn’t that which led Lafferty to shelve the tale for so long. There’s a further inquiry to be had over the degree to which this tale deviates from the spirit of oft-cited inspiration G.K. Chesterton, whose Father Brown treats murder less as a crime against morality than as one against rationality: there is evil in the world, and no amount of detection will make that wholly right again, but so long as such crimes can be made comprehensible within the wider moral universe then the logical coherence of that universe remains unshaken. By contrast, Lafferty’s Gadberry acts according to his own morality, in which the aesthetic is prime above all—a true Decadent.

Curiously, it’s Kidd’s edit that steers things back toward a more Chestertonian morality, by bringing in the notion of the cliché. In the original version of the ending, Gadberry’s deception is solely for the purpose of maximizing the aesthetic purity of his world, in which murdering a woman and framing another man is perfectly justifiable in the quest for artistic experience. The idea, however, that he is phrasing his hypnotic direction in such a way that it would be triggered by “uninspired questioners” shows that he is aware of the competing moral framework; moreover, that he is perfectly willing to betray his own artistic vision when doing so more effectively panders to the anaesthetic or the artless, thus undercutting any claim his competing moral universe might have to internal coherency. By pulling the story back from the madness of decadence, Kidd made it into a serviceable detective tale—one that critiques the genre and its clichés, without consigning the whole thing to oblivion on the basis of a single core flaw.

Completed November 1961. Published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, ed. Ernest M. Hutter, July 1973. Collected in Does Anyone Else Have Something Further to Add?, New York: Scribners, 1974.

Next entry: three centuries of history in a single afternoon, in “Among the Hairy Earthmen”

#shortstory #mystery #daehsfta

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blathwillburn-blog · 7 years ago

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years ago

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From the Strategist: Everything You Need to Picnic, According to Picnic Professionals

Photo Media/ClassicStock/Getty Images

The best picnic baskets, coolers, blankets, and more, from the Strategist

While spending time outdoors — masked and at a distance — is a lower-risk way to socialize in person with others, replacing an air-conditioned restaurant brunch with a picnic takes a little more planning than rolling out of bed and hopping on the subway. “A picnic can teeter into being really unpleasant if you have too much stuff or don’t bring enough,” says Ali Rosen, the host of Potluck With Ali and author of the potluck cookbook Bring it!. And though she says it’s important to strike a balance between bringing too much and too little, most folks likely have on hand what they need to picnic.

Whether you’re picnicking at a city park, state beach, or your own backyard, we spoke to four picnicking professionals — including some who have been planning picnics for years — about the best picnic blankets, foldable chairs, and food, plus the bags (or wagons) for carrying it all. However, before you go ahead and gear up, all our experts recommended checking out your picnic destination’s rules and regulations — regarding where and what you sit on and how you prepare food — to make sure you’re staying above board. (Drinking alcohol is also a ticketable offense at parks citywide — but more on that below.)

Picnic baskets and coolers

Yeti Hopper M30 Portable Soft Cooler

While a wicker basket is aesthetically pleasing, it is often hard to store and carry and is not well insulated. All of the experts who we spoke to advised carrying something with a more comfortable strap, and most say an insulated tote is ideal, especially since it folds down. In order to keep things cold all day, Julie Lindenman, owner of an eponymous event-planning company, which pivoted to picnic planning during the pandemic, packs this easy-to-carry Yeti soft cooler with ice and says it still fits up to “a couple bottles of wine, lunch for two people, two water bottles, and a few other drinks.” Our colleagues at Grub Street call Yeti coolers “indestructible,” and we’ve named them as among the best gifts for beer lovers, who are always in the mood for a cold one.

L.L. Bean Insulated Tote

REI Co-op Pack-Away 12 Soft Cooler

One major (and recurring) complaint about Yeti coolers is the price, so if you want something a little more budget-friendly but with the same function, Lindenman recommends one of these insulated totes from L.L. Bean or REI, adding, “even your local corner store probably sells them at this point.”

Scout Cool Runnings Soft Cooler

“We do most of our picnics in reusable totes, just because you can flatten it and get on with your life,” echoes Wendy Weston, founder of Perfect Picnic, which has been organizing European-style artisanal picnics since 2011. Weston likes the insulated totes from Scout but says that putting frozen water bottles (or a frozen washcloth) at the bottom of any easy-to-carry tote is just as good as filling with ice cubes.

West Elm Modern Picnic Backpack 20 Piece Set

If you want to keep your hands free, Lindenman recommends West Elm’s less-insulated picnic backpack, which comes with a 20-piece set of plates and cutlery for four, plus salt and pepper shakers.

Bee & Willow Picnic Basket with 4 Place Settings

If you are going to go the route of a traditional-style wicker basket, three out of our four experts recommend buying one that comes with cutlery inside it. At Personal Attention, a New York City-based, French-inspired event service, which also plans picnics, project manager Laéthycia Simms vouches for the Bee & Willow wicker basket because “there’s an insulated section, so you just put ice inside and can keep everything cool.”

Foldable Shopping Cart Trolley Bag

With more stores than usual closed, Rosen notes that folks might need to bring more of their own gear to picnics this summer — because it’s a bit harder to stop by a bodega or supermarket for an extra thing or two. Packing a granny cart full of things, in lieu of an overflowing cooler, will help make transporting all of your stuff easier, especially if your picnic spot isn’t too far away. This trolley, which senior editor Katy Schneider likes the looks of, comes in a picnic-appropriate gingham pattern.

Mac Sports Collapsible Folding Outdoor Utility Wagon

“The biggest pain about a picnic is hauling all this stuff around the park,” says Weston. The solution is a wagon. She likes this one because it folds “completely flat, and they can carry a lot of weight.” Not only does this wagon fit all of her gear, it also fits her daughter.

Picnic blankets and chairs

Angemay Waterproof Outdoor & Picnic Blanket

When it comes to picnic blankets, all of our experts say the bigger, the better, though they all prefer different kinds of materials. Rosen loves her portable, waterproof picnic blanket so much that she says it’s the present she most often buys friends. Plus, “the blanket has taken on new meaning during coronavirus times, because it naturally allows you to give people space.”

DII Turkish Towel, 39x78”

“A lot of blankets that are branded picnic blankets are flannel or fleece, which I’m kind of confused by because it’s so hot in the summer,” says Lindenman, who prefers Turkish towels that are “lightweight and easy to machine-wash, so you’ll definitely feel like it’s clean after.”

Chicago Canvas & Supply All Purpose Canvas Cotton Drop Cloth

Weston also prefers lightweight blankets to thick, waterproof options and recommends putting painter’s tarp underneath to keep your area dry. “Canvas acts as a barrier, which doesn’t harm the grass like plastic, and it can be used to create a larger surface area for social distancing,” she explains.

Cliq Compact Outdoor Chair

Most of the experts we spoke to say that chairs are a must-have picnic accessory for those who have back issues or are uncomfortable sitting on the ground. Though any easy-to-carry, foldable chair is sufficient, two experts specifically named Qliq chairs which “basically fold up to the size of a Nalgene water bottle,” according to Lindenman.

WolfWise Large Pop Up Beach Tent

If you’re going to be out in the sun all day, Rosen recommends bringing this pop-up tent from Wolfwise, which has sandbags to stay grounded on the beach and stakes to set into the ground at a park. “You have to set up most bigger tents, but this unfolds in one move. It opens fully on the front and back and has screens that go up and down on the sides so you can sit under it to stay out of the sun or put your kids in there for a nap,” she says, adding that watching a video is the easiest way to learn how to fold it back up.

Picnic spread

Thin Bins Collapsible Containers

“My biggest advice with food is, store things separately and get rid of the idea that you want to build your meal beforehand” explains Rosen, who adds that lightweight containers are ideal — like this collapsible, silicone set from Amazon — but Ziploc bags will work in a pinch. And all of our experts advised bringing what Weston calls “fresh food made to travel” that will last during travel and heat, such as whole cured meats and cheeses, fresh baguettes, jarred vegetables and condiments, and salads (with dressing on the side). You can assemble them once you’ve arrived at and set up your picnic spot.

Stasher 100 Percent Silicone Reusable Sandwich Bag

Another highly recommended collapsible, silicone storage item is the Strategist-favorite Stasher bag. “I’ve used them for everything from sliced fruit to actual ice from the freezer, and they seal it all off really well,” says Lindenman.

Freshware Cutting Boards

Rosen and Weston both recommend bringing a lightweight board for preparing and serving whole foods, like this wooden set of three, which weighs a total of one pound.

West Elm Modern Melamine Dinnerware

You’ll also need something to eat your picnic on. If you’re willing to tote along real plates, Weston suggests the melamine wares from West Elm, which are both cute and very hard to break.

Ökabode Disposable Bamboo Utensils, 200 Pieces

For disposable plates and cutlery, Rosen likes bamboo, because “it’s recyclable and it also just looks really nice.”

Caspari Brushstroke Paper Napkins, Pack of 20

“If you’re trying to do something special, do one of those little things, like order patterned napkins, just to make it feel like something is happening,” encourages Rosen. Strategist senior editor Anthony Rotunno recommends a vibrant, “museum-quality” set from Caspari.

Vapur Eclipse Collapsible Water Bottle, 1 Liter

In addition to food, water is essential for making your picnic enjoyable — and according to the experts we spoke to, a frozen water bottle can not only help keep you hydrated as it melts, it doubles as an ice pack on your way there. Lindenman specifically recommends the bottles from Vapur, because they’re “flexible and rollable, so at the end of the day, it’s not like a massive empty water bottle rolling around in your bag.”

Corkcicle 60oz Water Bottle & Thermos

In New York City, public consumption of alcohol is usually a $25 ticketable offense, but to-go liquor licenses during the coronavirus have loosened the open-container laws, so our experts say that (with a little finesse) picnic drinking is likely easier than ever. Weston advises against bringing more conspicuously packaged bottles of wine and instead recommends filling a Corkcicle canteen with one (or two) bottles of wine, or a premixed cocktail, adding, “they actually work — you can put that bottle in the sun and it stays cold.” Plus, the canteen hides obvious alcohol labels.

BrüMate Hopsulator Trio 3-in-1 Stainless Steel Insulated Can Cooler, 12 oz and 16 oz

Koozies also help obscure alcohol labels on cans, says Lindenman. Strategist writer Dominique Pariso recommends the triple-insulated koozies from BrüMate, which keep everything from slim, 12-ounce White Claws to 24-ounce tall boys as ice-cold as when you “first cracked it open straight from the cooler.”

EatOkra

“One thing that a picnic can be now, that it isn’t necessarily at other times, is, it’s a great way to support restaurants, especially Black-owned restaurants,” says Rosen, who recommends using the app EatOkra to find Black-owned restaurants and food trucks near you (the app is free, but food is not). All of our other experts agree that this summer more than ever, picnics can be a way to support local businesses and take a break from cooking, especially since restaurants across the city are beginning to offer prepackaged picnic spreads — many of which are detailed in this list, compiled by our colleagues at Eater.

Clean Cubes 13 Gallon Disposable Sanitary Trash Cans

Once you’re done eating, you’ll want some way to clean up your site. While personal-hygiene basics, like hand sanitizer and wipes, are must-haves for keeping yourself clean, all of the experts also recommend bringing trash bags to maintain your picnic area. “The last thing you want is to carry around a Whole Foods bag that’s overflowing with garbage while you look for a trash can,” says Weston, who notes that the Clean Cube trash bins have a cute paper, gingham exterior, and an interior trash bag so “you don’t have to deal with things falling out of it.”

Other nice-to-haves

Codenames

“People tend to forget, but it’s nice to have options of what to do at a picnic, especially if you’re in a group, and a board game helps keep people engaged,” says Simms, who is one of a couple of experts to recommend bringing games along to your picnic. Though there are many board games for couples and families, if you’re looking for a socially distant group game, consider one where a single person can control all the pieces, like expert-approved word-deduction game Codenames.

Bar5F Empty Clear Spray Bottle 16 oz.

In addition to sunscreen and a hat, Simms brings a spray bottle to picnics, especially in parks with limited shade, like the Brooklyn Bridge Park. “When the sun is out, it’s nice to have a little spritz, and when you’re not using the bottle, you can put it in the basket with the ice to stay cold,” she says, adding that spray bottles are very popular in French picnicking.

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The best picnic baskets, coolers, blankets, and more, from the Strategist

Picnic baskets and coolers

Yeti Hopper M30 Portable Soft Cooler

L.L. Bean Insulated Tote

REI Co-op Pack-Away 12 Soft Cooler

Scout Cool Runnings Soft Cooler

West Elm Modern Picnic Backpack 20 Piece Set

If you want to keep your hands free, Lindenman recommends West Elm’s less-insulated picnic backpack, which comes with a 20-piece set of plates and cutlery for four, plus salt and pepper shakers.

Bee & Willow Picnic Basket with 4 Place Settings

Foldable Shopping Cart Trolley Bag

Mac Sports Collapsible Folding Outdoor Utility Wagon

Picnic blankets and chairs

Angemay Waterproof Outdoor & Picnic Blanket

DII Turkish Towel, 39x78”

Chicago Canvas & Supply All Purpose Canvas Cotton Drop Cloth

Cliq Compact Outdoor Chair

WolfWise Large Pop Up Beach Tent

Picnic spread

Thin Bins Collapsible Containers

Stasher 100 Percent Silicone Reusable Sandwich Bag

Freshware Cutting Boards

Rosen and Weston both recommend bringing a lightweight board for preparing and serving whole foods, like this wooden set of three, which weighs a total of one pound.

West Elm Modern Melamine Dinnerware

You’ll also need something to eat your picnic on. If you’re willing to tote along real plates, Weston suggests the melamine wares from West Elm, which are both cute and very hard to break.

Ökabode Disposable Bamboo Utensils, 200 Pieces

For disposable plates and cutlery, Rosen likes bamboo, because “it’s recyclable and it also just looks really nice.”

Caspari Brushstroke Paper Napkins, Pack of 20

Vapur Eclipse Collapsible Water Bottle, 1 Liter

Corkcicle 60oz Water Bottle & Thermos

BrüMate Hopsulator Trio 3-in-1 Stainless Steel Insulated Can Cooler, 12 oz and 16 oz

EatOkra

Clean Cubes 13 Gallon Disposable Sanitary Trash Cans

Other nice-to-haves

Codenames

Bar5F Empty Clear Spray Bottle 16 oz.

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geeksfromfuture-blog · 5 years ago

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Can Technology Save Animators?

To a certain extent, I guess the question can technology save animators is a very reasonable one. It's not like we can't do other things, right? We still have our jobs and they are still being performed by people who have some degree of skill in their area of expertise. The best way to think about it is that some people may never need to become animators in the first place. In this type of situation it's fine and there is nothing to be ashamed of. If a person can't do something, it's just the way it is. Some of the people who don't like working with computer graphics software can easily get used to it and learn to appreciate the beauty of creating things on paper rather than pixels on the screen. Are you getting what I'm saying? This article isn't necessarily meant to be very opinionated but I thought it might be helpful to offer a few thoughts and opinions. That's how I feel. I have had the pleasure of working on a website where we had to produce video for commercial applications. At one point in time I didn't know that the many years of my experience in the art would be put to use for the sake of making a few dollars. You see, the company in question was a high quality and well established company and they needed videos for commercial purposes. We needed to have high definition color video. We needed to work on the website's IT department. These are some pretty high tech people. They needed those videos to be ready to upload within 24 hours. I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting into but I was basically told to get a few things done on the spot. Then the job was handed tome to go out and figure out all the different animation techniques we were going to use. On the company's website, the engineers talked a lot about how they were making the videos look real. I wasn't comfortable with the idea that they were still using computer generated images. It seemed to me that this was a bit dishonest since most people have no clue what a computer image really looks like. The general belief that computer generated images have some kind of aesthetic value is a completely false one. A great deal of thought and attention has been given to producing images that are realistic, yet attractive to the eye. People have a tremendous amount of emotion attached to the way things look. If the visuals on the site are a few degrees off from reality, they just don't seem as real. That was when I learned that you could do something called low-res animations. I had previously never heard the term. I knew something wasn't right and that is when I decided to look for more information on low-res animations. I ended up learning a lot about them but more importantly I learned that low-res animations can be used in the production of videos. It just made sense that we needed to produce them so that they could be properly appreciated. Movies are made on film, because the computer is so fast that computers just don't have the ability to do all the things that film has been doing for centuries. That's why movies are made on film. Is it really a bad thing that people are willing to accept a little compromise in order to enjoy some of the fine arts? We are what we are and if we get used to the change, we can easily move on.

Will Technology Save Animators?

Will Technology Save Animators? This is a question that has been around for years, probably longer than most of us have been alive. In fact, it dates back to the beginning of the film and the beginnings of animation. Throughout the entire history of animation, this question has plagued the industry. In the past, workers in the field were usually employed in small shops that operated on an hourly basis. In many cases, the lowest paid workers were the ones who made the most money; often times more than enough to support their families. These days, technology has become such a critical part of our lives that many jobs have been outsourced to other countries and jobs that required the labor of less educated individuals are now performed by a machine. While most of the people in these jobs tend to be loyal to the company that they work for, there are still some who see no reason to stay and fight for a fair wage. Most of these people are making up for a lack of compensation by increasing their workloads and creating work that demands more money than ever before. For those who are not in these jobs yet, it is only a matter of time before they will find themselves being replaced by a machine. While technological advances have improved almost every aspect of life, the same cannot be said for pay. More jobs seem to be offered at wages that are not nearly as good as they once were. While we may consider ourselves lucky if we have a job that has more benefits than we do, the truth is that most of us are not making that much money. The fact is that, while companies continue to make more profits by cutting costs than they do by hiring more people, employees still must struggle to survive. Will Technology Save Animators? The answer is still yes. The majority of the technological advances that are required to keep up with the need for better technology are being developed at home in the form of software and computer programs. While many of these tools have already proven their worth, they are not yet as widespread as many believe. People wonder if it will be possible to create a new type of video game technology that will allow for virtual reality or at least simulate the feeling of it. Will technology save animators? We may never know because there is no way to know until it is made. Though many feel that the only way to maintain the current status quo is through technological advances, it should be noted that there will always be a need for skilled workers in the industry. There are jobs for people to look for, but the vast majority of the available jobs will likely not require that much training. The only person that can tell us what will happen to the industry and the future of technology will be the engineers who create the technological advances that will take over the future. Whether or not you think this is the right time to invest in computers and video games, you have to admit that there are serious opportunities for the people who want to get ahead.

Read the full article

#ai #artificalintelligence #CanTechnologySave #deeplearning #geeks #geeksarticles #geeksfromfuture #HowTechnologySave #innovation #iot #machinelearning #robots #Technology #TechnologyForAnimators #WhenTechnologySave #WhichTechnologySave #WillTechnologySave

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violetsystems · 5 years ago

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#personal

I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say I was hurt a lot by this last week. It’s kind of like banging your knee on the same chair every morning. You ask yourself two questions. Why is it still there in your path of movement and are you going to suffer aesthetically by keeping things the way they are? We’re not talking about my horrible interior decorating skills here though we’re talking about how broken my life is. In my defense I came back to the same warm space I always come back to. I didn’t bruise a kneecap but my heart is pretty sore. There’s little things you learn about facing travelling alone. You face your deepest internal fears about yourself often. People often forget how long you’ve been facing them. I find being a kind, genuine, and thoughtful person goes a long way when you are on your own. I also keep to myself for the most part. Stuff seems to float around me like some casting interview happening next to me at a counter over coffee. Walking past skate videos on Flushing on my way to get coffee. Finally see people wearing daybreaks in the wild. Mostly in the wildest and conspicuous of places. Followed by a pack of runners in the outskirts of Brooklyn under a viaduct. There’s things I live that I often forget I’m a part of. Mostly because people pretend I don’t exist. It’s easy when nobody really includes you in anything beyond the periphery. I’m not cool enough to exist at this point. Not without somebody to vouch for my right to breath. For the most part I have to go out of my way to stay comfortable exploring alone. I sometimes get that people feel comfortable around me. Like it’s some hidden scene or secret revolution. But most of the time people forget I’m just trying to get a sandwich. I wander a lot. I walked half of New York with my bags on Saturday. I probably should have taken the offer to leave them at the hotel. I got to 14th after lunch and coffee at the World Trade Center a little without direction or purpose. Some girl flagged me down. She pointed at the ground. “You dropped something.” I looked down puzzled. I did actually drop the entire contents of my wallet in the middle of Xi’an Cuisine a day before. I was humiliated. I got over it. I had wandered into two of the same chain by accident. The first time I was hungry so I got noodles. Second time just mildly amused about the karma of it all. I stopped at the station to pause to scan the ground. I asked where. “I was going to say you dropped your smile.” I was confused then even more humiliated. And then it turned out to be a canvasser. And I quickly tried to escape the gravity of bullshit, anger and manipulation I felt. I’m used to being manipulated by now. If you know how badly I’ve been fucked over at this point it’s a Seinfeldesque tragic comedy to some people. Water cooler humor at my expense. People keep taking the joke of my life farther it seems and leaving me out of the punchline. The girl asked where I was going. I didn’t know. I wander like a Viking because I feel trapped in a cage. And yet I have a quiet little place that I’ve carved out of pain and suffering with a sunlit kitchen and stray cats on the porch. I didn’t say much in reply. I just shook my head and shouted softly back. “I’m going home.” And at three pm on a Saturday I took the F train back to Queens and took the bus back to the airport where I sat and played Hearthstone for hours. My flight leaving on time at ten pm and arriving slightly earlier than usual. What a vacation right? It definitely had it’s moments. Mostly in my own head awash with my own special blend of hopelessness, apathy, and genuine sense of duty. My smile on the ground because I’ve been walked all over. Maybe I left it at home.

There are times when talking to people has its rewards. I got lost in Bed-Stuy getting off the Marcy stop. I was staying in a pretty heavily Hasidic Jewish area at the border of Dumbo in Brooklyn. A man in a Star Wars hat pointed me to a short cut. I just needed my bearings and it wasn’t an overbearing interaction. I got back in one piece. Walking the streets by yourself can be a little scary. But when you’ve been faced with so much trauma at a certain point you get over the sensitivity. I’ve been writing here for years silently about all the episodes of PTSD I should be recovering from that nobody has answered for. At a certain point people try to drag you into whatever drama or narrative they feel you should be part of. But they never ask if you are ok with it. They never even ask your name. I feel like a ghost half the time. It probably doesn’t help I have Daul Kim quotes all over my blog. For the record the only social media I really use is here and Instagram. I don’t use tinder to meet people or dating apps to go on dates. Subsequently I’ve been on very few dates. But the ones I’ve been on have been actual dates. Coffee and conversations about the moment. None of that I feel particularly uncomfortable about being myself in front of someone I like. In some ways going to New York alone is proof of that. It’s also proof that no one accepts the person that I am. I had friends in town. Nobody texted me. Nobody reached out. I frequent the places I feel comfortable in. I shop at Dover. Get coffee all over. But I do it myself. Nobody helps me. Nobody holds my hand. I sit in public and play Hearthstone on my laptop while people talk loudly around me. Like i’m the anchor of some hidden tourist scene when in reality I’m like some private security guard. I don’t get paid. I don’t get any recognition. The things I do get paid for have demonstrated some very harsh realities to me. I don’t feel appreciated and I didn’t have a restful vacation I haven’t had a restful life for years. This is going on the third year I’ve traveled to New York. Incidentally the third year of quitting drinking. A habit I have no desire to go back to. Part of my charm has been facing my anxieties head on in public. Slowly melting down in silence then coalescing into a new person. It’s called growth. It sucks when nobody can see it. It sucks harder when you realize you’ve outgrown a lot of things and people. It also sucks to not know exactly what you are growing into. If you have been around the earth as long as I have you can worry you are growing into death. I’m still just as invisible and insignificant as I was years ago. I just admit it to myself now. I start from that point and ask a very important question. Where am I really significant? Where do I matter and where am I valued for who I am? If you really want me to answer that question after all this it is very simple. I belong at home alone. Shutting the fuck up and focusing on my own growth. I’ve been there for the world for so long and the world has abandoned me for the most part. Leaving me to stare down at my shoes on the ground and smile softly. Because my feet and my will are the only thing that have ever kept me moving through all this bullshit.

I’m sad. Profoundly so these days. Some people might call that deep. I’d wager if you knew how deep my love for things go you’d know how hurt I am by all of it. Most of it is not anyone’s fault I guess. It’s the way the world works. I’ve never felt good enough for people who claim to be cool. I always thought that’s not something for me to judge about myself. I don’t really break my neck to be part of anything these days. When I do it’s almost always attacked or thrown into some drama. My narrative gets hijacked often. People keep whispering behind my back that I could be something. Never to my face. They suggest that I should keep chasing after my dreams. But truthfully nobody has really checked in with me in the last three years to know what those are. These days my dreams collide in reality often like the gears of some bureaucratic machine. I’m caught up in those gears past a point of turning back. Like a meat grinder. My life is so broken at this point I can only focus on that things that work. I work out in my kitchen in private. I play games on my laptop and listen to seventies psych and funk. I’d love to share that with someone someday. I’d love to share a different playlist too. But simply having an environment that you can be safe in and share with someone is a whole other thing. And nobody has ever asked me what I feel I have succeeded in. They just think of me as some washed up failure. And yet I can travel anywhere for the most part and handle myself just fine. People even seem to feel safe enough around me to leverage that. Sometimes that is ok. We call that sharing power. But there are times when people want too much. Expect too much from something they know actually very little about. And that is me. You’d think from me pouring my heart on the internet all these years people would understand how utterly destroyed I feel. And they don’t. They’re too busy with their own narrative to care unless you bend over backwards to fit into it. I’ve always bent over backwards in yoga like positions to fit into a narrative I support. A movement of feminism. A movement of class. A movement that has rolled over me like a bus more times than I care to moan about but I trust all the same. After all I’ve done I’m still not living for me. I have nowhere else to go at this point. I”m stuck in my kitchen which isn’t a very terrible place. That’s America for you I guess. I have a roof over my head but not much else in my life that feels very real. There’s not much I can do about that except remain patient and focus on my own growth. In that I’m not so sad at all really. I’m literally the best I’ve ever been at this point. Healthiest and most fit too. Not good enough to star in a prescription drug commercial or reality tv show pilot. Good enough to keep the streets safe for most people. Maybe good enough to smile to the right person one day. For now I don’t really have much reason so I’m going to focus on saving the energy for somebody that matters. In that you know nothing ever really changes with me. However far away that feels. Or however too serious I take all this when I know it will be ok. Sometimes it takes time for people to realize your worth. People doubt I can be me to this very day. But you can only be the best you if you challenge yourself to realize that first. And I know I’m what I’m worth. People don’t stick around. And for me it’s worth sticking it through to prove that I do. All winter. And then some probably. And then some. And even then I’m still going to love you just the same. But I know when to hang my head low and protect my heart. Maybe that’s why I don’t smile. Because nobody deserves the opening other than you. I’m fine with that. I’ll live with it. Until then. <3 Tim

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write-this-way-please · 8 years ago

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Take One

Take One: Scene One [College Au! Taking an editing course with Christian]

As class came to an end your professor handed back your peer reviewed midterms. You honestly always thought peer reviewed was a fancy way of saying Your professor was too lazy to actually grade it themselves, but there were no complaints on your end. There was no way a classmate would fail you, they probably had the same anxiety.

Everyone was always lenient at peer reviews. Right?

“Alright Kids, remember to go over the discussion board, read the next chapter and start drafting ideas for the final” Professor Seo leaned on her desk, taking off her glasses. “Any questions?”

“Yeah, can I do a makeup midterm?” One of the kids in the back piped up.

She chuckled. “No make ups, but if anyone enters the film festival, that presentation will be used to replace their lowest grade, including a midterm. Next question?”

“Professor Seo, what is this?” you gasped turning over your paper.

“Is there a problem?” she raised a brow.

“A problem? Yeah, you can say that” you pointed at the C on your review paper. You knew for a fact your film was better than a C, especially compared to some of your classmates. You’d always gone that extra mile. There was no reason in hell this should have been a C.

“I was going to go over that after class with you, I did think the review of your short film was a little on the harsher end but, I couldn’t argue with his reasoning's. He had very valid points”

You scoffed “Lack of personality that did nothing to compliment the overal ambiance of the film?” you quoted the notes on the paper.

“The wording wasn’t ideal but after another review, I had to agree with him. Your film was elegant and safe but-”

“Anyone could’ve directed it” Christian turned around to face you from the row in front of you. “A few generic cut scenes to some rivers, and trees blowing in the wind, accompanied by a monologue that would be best suited for some B rated young adult novel that doesn’t even make it to theaters”

“Excuse you?!” you rolled your eyes and scoffed. “Says the guy that literally can’t produce something without over saturated lights, and some basic trap filter that looks like a child doodled all over your film.”

“At least I have a style”

“And what’s that? Dark silhouettes, fog machines and excessive filters?”

“And your style is what? Slowmo street shots, coffee shops, and disconnected monologues? I felt like I was watchin the rejected footage of the next Amazon teen series.”

“I’m sorry and what’s the purpose of you using a steadicam if you’re literally going to throw these shaky ass, Blair Witch Project filters on all of your footage? It looks like your cameraman had a seizure”

“I’m sorry just how many times did you need to have the same tree shots looped in the video?”

“About as many times as you needed to have a black and white video and a random eye color edit, that looked like a cheesey effect from an early 2000’s music video.”

“Who do you even think you are?!”

“Your new editing partner” Professor Seo interjected with a smile. “You two are going to work together and edit your midterms into a collaborative project for the film festival.”

“Excuse me?!” you couldn’t help but give your professor a dumbfounded look.

“I’d rather we not” Christian groaned, raking his hand through his hair.

She raised her hands in the air “Hey you guys signed the syllabus, even though I did leave a note in there that said subject to change in regards to film festival participation”

“Fine” you huffed “Looks like I’ll need the film festival grade to replace this C” you said just loud enough to make sure Christian heard you.

“If you don’t like the C, don’t do C-grade material.”

“I wanna push him in front of a truck.” you crossed your arms over your chest, mumbling to yourself.

Your friend Dahye laughed to herself rubbing your back. “Down girl… Seriously, is this some sort of foreplay with you two?”

“I’m seriously gonna run him over.” you grumbled. “A couple times”

After class you found yourself in one of the empty work rooms, sitting on the desk, facing Christian. “I’d rather be home sleeping, but thanks to someone I’ve got to make a video for a festival I’m not prepared for.”

“Oh relax Princess. It’s not like we’re aiming for first place.” he took a puff of his vape.

“You’re not aiming for first place. I’m trying to get an A” you sighed looking at your notebook, trying to find at least one salvageable idea. You coughed shooing away the smoke. “And can you not do that indoors? Why do you always have to be such a fuck boy?”

“You love it” he chuckled placing both his arms on either side of your thighs, brushing up against your dress.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” you removed his hand from your thigh.

“You still mad at me Babe?” he pouted, kissing the side of your mouth.

“Don’t kiss me Barom. You gave me a C you asshole.” you playfully shoved his chest away.

“Woah Barom?” he scoffed “What are you my mother?” he laughed. You only ever used his birth name when you were pissed. He placed his hand over his chest, feigning hurt. “Oh come on, I’m the asshole? You compared my film to an early 2000 music video without a steadicam” he laughed. “Also over edited and saturated? I felt like you were just sitting on that one, waiting to use it”

“You compared mine to a rejected young adult movie!”

“Damn right I did. You’re really gonna argue that that was one of your better videos? I’ve seen you do better producing in your sleep.”

“Ouch Christian. I worked really hard on that film.”

“But it’s not to your usual standard. If I let you get away with half-assing something, I’ll never see the beautiful things you make when you actually try.”

You sighed, refusing to admit that he was right. Honestly, your thoughts on your work were lukewarm. You didn’t think it was C worthy, you just knew it wasn’t an A. You had a concept and kind of lost it halfway through. You couldn’t help but toss together an ending with some exposition.“I just...have writer's blocks...”

“Bullshit. You don’t have writer's block.” he set down his vape and tilted your chin to look down at him “You’re just afraid to put out something that other people don’t like. But here’s the thing Babe, it’s not about other people. All that matters is you like it.”

“That’s stupid.”

“That’s art.” he smirked pecking your lips. “Trust me, and just got with your gut. I’m giving you creative control on this one.” he smiled “I concede and you’re the director.”

“You hate giving up the director’s seat.” you sighed playing with the hair on his nape.

“But I love you more…” his voice was gentle as he tucked your hair behind your ear. “I’m here for you... I’ve seen your better work and you have an incredible instinct.” Seeing you relax and lean into his touch he smiled. “Besides you need this project wayyyyyy more than me” he chuckled “I got an A on my midterm.”

“I fucking hate you” you hit his chest, pouting. “I got a C because of you”

“It really is because I know you could do better” You’d met Christian over the summer during a visual editing course. There were only a handful of people willing to spend their summer taking a four-hour course two times a week and Christian was the one who caught your attention. His style drew you in, despite his striking difference in overall appreciated aesthetic.

One study date led to another. Soon enough both of you realized that studying was the furthest thing from your mind and fell into a rhythm of sorts. Dating naturally followed. Despite being together you were both very serious about your projects, opting to separate business and pleasure.

You’d given him feedback before on his work but never any sort of constructive criticism so being forced to work together under these conditions were pretty stressful. “It’s gonna be fine” Christian chuckled, smoothing down the furrow between your brows. “You need to relax to get the creative juices pumpin.”

“I’m not gonna drink before working.” you released a deep sigh.

“Luckily for you, I had another idea….” he smirked, laying you back on the desk, pulling you into a kiss. His lips molding over yours as he grinned against your mouth. “Mmmm...”

“Christian...What if someone comes in?” Your hand slid down his strong shoulders to his chest, as you took a moment to catch your breath. Your lips still, grazing his as you looked at him with hooded eyes.

“Then let’s give ‘em a show” he smirked, burying his face in your neck as his hands wandered lower, cupping your bottom.

To be continued?

Send help I’m having Christian feels I usually try not to update the same person so close to a previous scenario but I really liked this one x_x If you like and want more from this series, let me know

Also, I’m in no way actually insulting Christian’s actual videos lol I love them, it was just for dialogue sake XD

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floralharjuku · 8 years ago

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Ad Hominem

The sight of so much pure white for the first time in three-fourths of a century is enough to give him pause, an involuntary impulse flipping the trigger deep with in his memory unit. Memories flood him unbidden, memories of unholy crucifixion at the hands of a humanoid machine, of the Tower that rose from the earth, a burning flare of mental anguish that ate away at him every step he took closer to the death he so craved, memories of a castle in the sky, its white walls hiding secrets that damned them all, memories of a sword, gleaming, brilliant white, jammed to the hilt in his chest as he couldn’t even let out a scream of pain, just a strained gurgle.

It’s near unnoticeable, but…

He tremors. His bare hands shake over the neatly folded clothing, his pulse rate climbing with each beat of his artificial heart, which was less romantic of a notion as a “heart” and more of a glorified pump system.

Calm down…He shakes his head and grasps his right wrist with his left hand, holding it steady. It’s okay.

Taking a long swallow, he manages to finally touch the garments, ghosting his fingers over the Resistance handy work.

They truly had done so much for him, first by allowing himself and 2B to remain with them even after revealing that YoRHa and what little they had to fight for was all a fabrication to keep them placated, and then by doing this…

They owed the Resistance their lives. Truly, without them, they would have long perished alone in the grand scheme of things.

His fingers massaged the embroidery of the garment as he carefully dressed. They had managed to capture it down to the slightest detail, even down to the slight curvature in the stitching. He expected no less from an android, but he mostly reserved this kind of skill for practical purposes, such as repairing a tent or patching the frayed fabric of someone’s work pants. According to the records, humans wore these kinds of garments only once and wearing them now, he could see why.

He hadn’t worn his YoRHa uniform for quite some time, the very thought sending him into a panic he couldn’t calm despite the soothing words from 2B or his Pod. Sometimes, he would simply bore his eyes into the crumbling concrete walls of their room, lost in memories of anguish and anger.

But this uniform was different. Instead of the stoic black of the YoRHa, he was clad head to toe in the soft, creamy white of marriage. He flexed his fingers, testing the new leather of the gloves. They fit well, almost as well as he remembers his own, which are buried in the deepest part of a box he keeps underneath his bed.

He’s not shaking anymore, he notices as he ties the blindfold over his eyes. He’s forgotten how it used to feel, having abandoned that practice with her years ago, but the symbolism of this moment doesn’t belong to them; it belongs to cultures long since dead and forgotten, relics of the past they deemed worth reviving. At the very least, they wanted something that was uniquely theirs and theirs alone.

•••

She studies the flowers and knows that the voice of a chipper and chatty Operator will soon follow as it is dragged, kicking and screaming, from her memories.

It’s painful, to think about 6O and YoRHa even so long into the past they were. Despite her programming, she still has moments where she believed that 6O was calling her for another one-sided chat, only to remember her death in graphic detail.

The stems of the flowers have been bound together with repurposed cables, the blossoms carefully arranged in the bouquet of hydrangeas, lilies and other flowers scavenged from the hillsides. The voluminous flowers weren’t her idea or to her taste, but 9S had liked them. As a compromise between them saw the inclusion of scattered Lunar Tears, a gift from the rolling shop himself.

He also supplied the veil that currently rests atop her head, a light fabric she didn’t know the name of flowing past her shoulders and down her back. She wasn’t sure why she needed to cover her face — the meaning of this tradition was lost on her — but Emil seemed to have a well of old world knowledge he could dig into despite the fractures in his memories.

She stood, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Old yet new collided to create a dress that made a strange amalgamation of sadness, fury and joy rise in her. Following the pattern of YoRHa standard dresses, this fit well against her body, feeling as natural to wear as a second skin. However, unlike the YoRHa issued clothing, these were white with soft gold embroidery; clearly, these were not made for war, but as the universal sign for surrender, for peace.

In her fingers, she clutched her visor, this too white and gold. It was non-functional, more for aesthetics and private symbolism than anything. This was the last piece holding them back and once this was done, they would leave YoRHa behind and begin again.

The thought of the future, a future with Nines, spurred her to action. She gently brushed the veil to the side and tied the blindfold over her eyes.

•••

He was blind to their presence, but he knew exactly who they were just based off of the sounds they made. The Resistance took up much of the space with their mismatched voices rising above each other as they spoke, filling the empty space with their chatter. He picks out the excited tone of 4S, his fellow Scanner. He’s recording the entire process to study later on, focusing on each new experience for about a second before whipping around to record something else. But one voice in particular stood out, her voice clearly hesitant and unsure if she should even be here due to her history with the pair.

A2…so she had decided to accept the invitation after all… He was both happy and a bit nervous that she had decided to come. They’ve tried to mend the best they could, but even now, a part of him still hates her, still wants to hunt her down.

9S shifts from foot to foot out of nervous habit, anxiety building in him for an unknown reason and his Pod notices right away.

“Pulse rate palpitations detected in unit 9S,” it never really did lose that unsettling monotone, never quite finding the emotional range that the androids possessed. “Perhaps you should breathe.”

His laugh comes out shaky and quiet, tinkling like shards of broken glass in a dryer. He doesn’t know why the sudden outburst happens, but it does in high-stress moments like this and he can’t stop it. He’s glad that they’re too busy talking to hear or notice his brief moment of madness because he doesn’t want to explain the unexplainable processes in his addled brain.

“I’ll remember that,” he says quietly to his Pod, wishing that he could actually seeher instead of a dark silhouette against the white of the blindfold. But he doesn’t want to look yet, lest he catch a glimpse of 2B before the proper time.

They’ve been separated for more than makes him comfortable and it’s eating at him. In the normal span of a day, he’s never more than shouting distance away from her, most times closely clutching her hand in his.

Maybe he’s clingy. Maybe they both are.

The voices fall silent one by one, a sort of reverent and hushed awe hanging in the air where noise once was. He turns his head before remembering that he can’t see what they do, but now he can hear her footsteps against the concrete.

The urge to look is strong. He wants to see her, to feel what they feel and he wonders if she has the same thoughts about seeing him.

She’s unsure in her steps but follows the path led by her Pod. Sometimes, she sways to the right but a simple correction given by her support and she is centered again.

He’s waiting for her just thirty steps ahead, standing off to the left, probably in the same anxious throes as herself. They’re blind, the moment when they meet will be the first time they see each other and cast away the blindfolds forever. It’s a form of symbolic closure, something only they will understand and therefore the perfect inclusion to this ceremony.

Perhaps it’s only a symbol and they never will escape these memoirs of their past. Perhaps closure is something they don’t deserve. Perhaps they don’t deserve love or happiness or each other.

But…she’s reached him now and stands across from him, her hands tightening around the flowers. Carefully, she reaches up with one hand and mimics the gesture of his silhouette, removing the fabric from around her eyes.

They deserve this, and in that moment when their eyes finally meet, they deserve each other.

•••

It’s a celebratory occasion, and A2 has never been much for celebration. It unnerves her, sets her teeth on edge.

She’s not even sure she should be here, basking in their happiness, their joy, because she knows she’s always holding them back. She’s that dark spot on their white clothing, a stain too stubborn to be scrubbed away. She’s the personification of their nightmares, the ones she knows they have, the ones where she is the murderer of his only reason for living. 2B and herself have already come to terms with the fact that 9S will never fully accept her existence, so when she received the invitation she was wondering if it was a mistake or a shill.

Still, she had dragged herself here, reconsidering it halfway through her journey.

The white-clad pair seemed frozen in place as they finally got to look at each other, eyes roaming over their partner. The lovestruck idiots…if they ever thought they were being discreet, they seriously had some problems.

Her Pod takes the flowers from her, floating with the bouquet obscuring much of the light grey rectangle.

A2 is lost in the whole process, this ceremony having been dragged out of obscurity and altered slightly to more fit an android couple. Certain things changed.

They didn’t need to eat so why would they create a…“cake” was it? Most of these old partnering ceremonies included worship to some sort of God, a thing they didn’t believe in. Anemone tried her best to fill in the blanks but they all knew that something was missing from this moment. It felt incomplete and thus something they, the androids, couldn’t fully adopt.

Perhaps in a few years, as this practice became more common among the lovebirds, they would discover what was missing.

The strange thing was, 9S and 2B didn’t seem to care. Perhaps that what was missing. A2 couldn’t understand the point of this process, but for some reason it mattered so much to them. And, she guessed, maybe that was the point. It didn’t matter if she or anyone in the Resistance understood. At the end, it was about them and what stupid shit they wanted.

Huh, maybe that was the point.

9S trembled as he took 2B’s hands, slowly interlocking their fingers together. They promised each other eternity, something as androids they could easily give to each other (but she chose to not point that out), promised each other faith and honesty. It was the sentimental bullcrap that she had to put up with when she was quasi-traveling with them, but she never commented on it outside of sitting on the outskirts of camp whenever they were being, ehem, overly affectionate. She supposed they deserved it; however, and it never really bothered her outside of leaving a strong feeling of pain in her chest.

The more she watched them, the more that idea was cemented: the idea that they deserved some peace and to be these lovestruck fools who didn’t have to murder each other for the sake of a false mission with no goal other than morale. For the greater good, their torment mattering nothing to their creators. They all deserved a moment to be obnoxious with their happiness.

Applause startled her out of her thoughts and, hurriedly, she brought her hands together, hoping no one noticed her late start.

•••

Anemone was perhaps the only person she felt comfortable around, considering their history together and the cool-headed demeanor of the Resistance leader. “I don’t really get this whole celebration.“ A2 muttered to the darker-skinned android as they leaned against the wall.

“They don’t either,” Anemone chuckled softly as her eyes trailed over to the white pair as they swayed awkwardly to soft music Emil played over his speaker. When A2 had approached him, he seemed excited about the whole thing (of course his face didn’t show it but his voice dripped with energy) and zoomed off to…somewhere before she could prod further.

A2 raised an eyebrow, following her gaze. “So what’s the point?” 9S seemed to be muttering something into 2B’s ear, which left her face unreadable as she nodded stiffly. “I know we don’t have to live by structure anymore but…”

Anemone ran her nails down the back of her opposite arm. She was lost in her processes, mulling over her words carefully before parting her lips and saying softly, “it may well be the last time these two experience anything.” When A2 visibly recoiled, Anemone continued, “I forgot you’ve been disconnected from the Resistance server for a while. But…they offered to be the test subjects for the Gestalt process.”

A2 bit the inside of her cheek at the mere mention of the selfsame project that single-handedly ended the human race. “…you guys are really trying that, huh?” She shook her head. “I can’t say I can see it working.”

Anemone’s voice was laced with passion. “There’s been success in smaller, less complex subjects. We’ve exhausted those trials and it’s only natural that we advance to the next step.” She applauded with the group as the song came to an end, 9S and 2B unfurling from their tight embrace. “They’ve decided they would help us take that step, but they wanted to take it together.”

“And you’re just gonna let them?”

“I can tell you; I tried to convince them otherwise. Nothing I could say could sway them.”

The two were joined on the floor by others who wanted to join in the “dancing” or whatever they wanted to call it. “So…what’s going to happen to them?”

Anemone sighed, running a hand through her bangs. “In all honesty, I have no idea. We’re tampering with a Black Box. We’ve had success with deactivated models, but…” She trailed off. Clearly, she was just as hesitant as A2 but more set in her conviction. “We have to try.”

“Last time I checked, there’s no more ‘have to.’” A2 crossed her arms and shifted on her feet.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“It’s a stupid choice.”

Anemone smiled. “But we have the freedom to make those stupid choices, don’t we?”

•••

He lay to her right, running his thumb over her hand as he studied the sensation one last time. Muscle fibers and circuitry rested underneath the surface of soft artificial skin, her carbonate skeleton dense and reinforced yet flexible. Yet it felt absolutely natural to him.

Would…would that change in a human body? Would it no longer feel the same? Would he never be comforted by her touch, but rather disgusted by the sensation so alien? Doubt swirled in his mind, leaving him with a pit deep in his heart.

Fear. It was crawling it’s way up again, threatening to derail everything they had worked for and promised each other. Their eternity was in this moment and…he was so unsure if life would be awaiting him at the end…

Her voice was low in volume, soft in pitch and gentle in tone, but she was demanding he look at her.

“Nines.” He slowly lifts his head to meet her eyes. She takes his other hand, trailing her fingers along.

Her voice is…minuscule when she says, "I’m scared too.”

In that moment, he knows he’s been selfish. He’s been so trapped in his own fear, his own reservations, his own thoughts that he hasn’t even considered hers.

It’s always been like that: she doesn’t voice her suffering so he simply doesn’t think it exists. Even when they were caught in the dance of life, death and duty, he never once thought of her and her needs because she was 2B and she didn’t need anything.

But she’s just as broken and naked as he is, pieces of herself cut off and tossed into the void. She can never be whole, never be without the fear of waking up with him not by her side, never be safe without a weapon nearby, never be herself again because there never was a “self” to tear out. They had to create those on their own, formulating love and purpose where there should be none after the losses they incurred.

And yet, here she was, holding his hands and preparing for the unknown with him.

He grasped her hands a little tighter, so afraid of letting go. “I…I love you.”

She smiled softly, and, with great reluctance, pulled their hands apart. “I love you too, Nines.”

“Are you ready?” Jackass asked, her eyes on the Black Boxes, dense cubes of compressed matter and energy and the closest thing to an android heart.

The two nodded and felt the wave of a forced shutdown overtake them. Before he fell asleep, 9S could hear Jackass mutter to herself a reaffirmation: “it’s for science. It’s what they want.”

So it seemed they weren’t the only ones with hesi—

[Unit 9S Black Box signal offline.]

[Unit 2B Black Box signal offline.]

[Death confirmed]

#crystarmum is writing again #2B #9S #nier spoilers #nier automata #2B9S #fanfiction #a2 #anemone #wedding #marriage

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talkinganddrumsolos · 8 years ago

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I Went To New Orleans And All You Got Is This Lousy T-Shirt

Among the glib and oversimplified beliefs I find utility in repeating to others is this recommendation: all Americans ought to visit New Orleans. I mean something more specific, of course, something like: all Americans ought to visit New Orleans but only partly for bon-temps decadence and also to see the most eccentric but perfectly logical extension of what your country's economic system and institutional racism and general human ingenuity hath wrought. To see a place where the the problems of Everytown, USA are humidified into a crucible but also where young black men regularly earn social and financial capital from playing the tuba. To see a place that is doomed in the short-to-medium term to repeat its own mistakes and doomed in the long term to Poseidon, yet "still I rise" until the sea level counters again.

This also requires having a particular point of view — some desire to witness regional cultural experience, and some empathic consciousness toward the underprivileged whose communities often are the originators of said cultural experiences. These things manifest in basic questions that should occur to any witness, as in "why is there an elaborate parade today for no particular reason?“ or “who had the idea to immerse seafood in butter?“ or “how does this elegant baroque richesse coexist with such stark inequality and tropical decay?” Apparently even this half-woke perspective is harder to come by in America c. 2017 than it it ought to be, but when presented with such marvels it isn’t really a big ask. It doesn't really matter exactly what type of privilege or cultural experience you're curious about; in New Orleans, chase any thread far enough and the intersections of oppressions and creative pursuits both should get you to some form of the experience I have in mind.

OK wait. That all scans way too grim and medicinal, especially since my personal experiences in New Orleans have been, on the whole, really fucking fun. As a wee lad my immigrant parents convened a family vacation to Louisiana basically as an excuse to escape winter and imbibe seasoned crawdads; I was old enough to remember specific things being entertaining and delicious but not old enough to find any of it particularly enlightening. About six years ago I sent myself to the Jazz and Heritage Festival for work with a colleague who happened to be a New Orleans native, and Josh basically gave me the weeklong crash course in Crescent City Conspicuous Consumption 101. The pump had been primed by jazz music mythologies and some vague inference that the city in the news and other mass-cultural phenomena all the time was indeed exceptional living history, but that was the start of the love affair really.

Throughout this last trip I just completed, well-meaning people kept asking me why I was visiting, which struck me as superfluous. I just assumed they would just assume I was there for the same reason that any other out-of-place-looking dude was suddenly in the area code: tourism. Well, that and the convergence of a few boring personal motivations: trying to make the most of forcible unemployment; trying to be warm during an East Coast winter, trying to ride a bicycle somewhere warm during an East Coast winter, trying to use some frequent flyer miles (I paid $11.20 for the flight), trying to see what attracted some good friends from college to land there and stay there, trying to take a vacation from my own simmering existential crises. But also I went to try to better understand why the music and food I’d developed a taste for existed and perpetuated itself not just by reading about it, but by consuming more of it. Basically, tourism.

If I had to pick a centerpiece event of the week I was there, it was probably the 21-hour period in which I attended the first parade of the Mardi Gras/Carnival season — the profoundly politically-incorrect Krewe du Vieux, followed by the more broadly satirical krewedelusion — and the following day’s second line parade of the CTC Steppers (nothing to do with Mardi Gras), which crossed an industrial canal into the Lower Ninth Ward led by 6-7 floats blaring bounce and modern R&B ahead of the brass band. The mere regular existence of these traditions, where ordinary people build ornate floats to slowly walk around the city in costumes for no discernible purpose other than merriment, is an manmade wonder of the world in itself. They also form a handy contrast: the white-encoded Krewe du Vieux vs. a social aid and pleasure club thoroughly suffused in blackness, skewering others vs. prideful celebration of self, depictions of Donald Trump suffering sex acts vs. a fair amount of twerking, the most economically successful areas of the city vs. a poor area still very much recovering from post-Katrina flood damage, anarchy as aesthetic vs. actual barely reined-in anarchy. In some figurative respects, and a literal one, it was night and day.

(krewedelusion, a younger, more diverse and more female set of sub-krewes, took on some sharper and generally more clever targets. Among the many were anti-AirBnB protests, Guy Fawkes masks, an all-women sub-krewe, the Krewe du Jieux [say it out loud], and a group named after James Brown: the Krewe of King James Super Bad Sex Machine Strollers. Their “security” staff was members of New Orleans Ladies Arm Wrestling. It, like much of New Orleans, doesn’t quite fit as neatly into the duality I’m setting up.)

I didn’t quite eat as much shellfish or see as much live music as I had intended, though it was still quite a bit. I did do my fair share of “chill,” as did apparently most of the city. On aimless strolls or bike rides through neighborhoods, an awful lot of folks seemed to be porch-sitting or biding their time in coffee shops or otherwise not really up to much in the middle of the day. Obviously there are plenty of people invisibly doing the building and harvesting and oil drilling and construction and shrimp-boating and cooking, and plenty of tourists to skew the visible numbers, but it seems like an awful lot of folks are marginally employed, or self-employed, or underemployed, or employed in weird service-industry hours, or just not employed. Coming from DC, a place where work-life balance is both bad and boujee, a place where people have more time than money was welcomed if a bit confusing.

Maybe this, and many of my experiences this time around, were filtered through the truly fine folks I stayed with. My friend lives with her girlfriend and another gay couple and most of that household is students and freelancers. One dude also plays in a moderately well-known rock band. Counting their central social circles, the whole thing was a bit like the Dykes To Watch Out For anthology like the one on their bathroom shelf. Basically my whole experience of this Mardi Gras parade in the presence of queer folks and at a gay bar, which, it turns out, was a pretty awesome vantage point for the freak flags of Carnival time anyhow. New Orleans has always struck me as a sort of place where people can build their scenes with relative ease, and as a general statement I’m glad all my peoples down there have found their peoples.

You see things from one subaltern position and you begin to see them all, and not coincidentally my gracious hosts are involved with several social justice communities. One night we went to a panel discussion called “Black Liberation in the Time of Trump” (it was hosted by a white anti-racism group called European Dissent) which seemed apropos. Chalk it up to my artistic interests maybe, but I’ve always observed the predominant power dynamic around New Orleans to be why black communities define so much of its cultural life yet hold so little of its wealth, and are many times legally restricted unduly in the development of that culture.

(Sometimes this discussion too easily excludes underprivileged populations that don’t fit on it. A friend of a friend, an black EMT, is often asked to list the “race” of patients, and reports that there are only two categories on the form — white and black — which is curious given the large Vietnamese and growing Hispanic communities in the city. Again, shades of grey here.)

I guess some well-meaning white folk see New Orleans as defined by its European cultural history, as in French Quarter architecture or Cajun or Italian food or erstwhile Catholicism, and there’s certainly a lot of that to go around. Here and elsewhere though, the United States of America’s popular cultural history has generally been defined by black people repurposing things for themselves, which is how you get to the neighborhoods where people actually live, and black Creole cooking, and Mardi Gras Indians, and Congo Square and jazz and R&B and traditional brass bands and modern brass bands and bounce and Cash Money Records, and a black majority population after white flight and Robert Moses freeway projects, and gentrification and/or tourism co-opting these things to sell back to moneyed mostly-white people. You can’t really enjoy yourself down there without noticing this.

One wonders whether many of the other relative post-Katrina newcomer folks participate in this cultural life of the city in any meaningful way — if it’s just another dangerous city with economic opportunity and terrible infrastructure (my God the roads), or whether the city’s exceptionalism is worthy of their deeper understanding and time investment as well. The city’s longer-term residents, I suspect, alternately welcome and revile these newcomers, depending in part on these newcomers’ engagement with local concerns. Turfing and perceived ownership in the cultural arena is a tricky topic; having “covered” transplanted white jazzmen based there and elsewhere, there are few clear rules. Yet sometimes even the best intentions for allyship or even active complicity needn’t qualify you for a hood pass, and it’s best to shut up and listen.

As is my unfortunate wont, I’ve made this whole reflection overlong and not particularly coherent. Maybe an incident from my last night in town would illuminate my general point insofar as I was trying to make one. I found myself at a wine and cheese and tapas joint with a huge outdoor patio and a monochromatically pale audience, whatevs, to see a cellist named Helen Gillet. She does a looping and improv thing across idiom, singing French chanson and American rock songs and original compositions and generally getting rad, somewhere between Andrew Bird and Tune-Yards and Yo-Yo Ma. Her last tune, fittingly, severed the hair on her bow. It was all a reminder that the New Orleans music tradition isn’t necessarily about tresillo patterns and trombones, but more generally about good and creative music.

Anyway, throughout the performance, we were frequently interrupted by two blacked-out military helicopters conducting drills above an adjacent abandoned Naval building. They would hover alarmingly low, as if to pick up a nonexistent passenger from a rooftop, then elevate away, occasionally leaving an enormous and unidentified explosion in their wakes. To put it lightly, it was very disruptive. But Helen kept at it despite the deafening roar of rotors, occasionally joking that they were listening. What else was she to do, right?

That creativity and revelry and uniquely resourceful art is valued in such quantity in New Orleans that it can support many musicians with a significant supplementary or working-to-middle-class income is, I think, no small wonder. But those military helicopters were a stark symbolic reminder that cellos are not actually ordnance; that these cultural pursuits are circumscribed by colonial and police-statist and capitalist and white supremacist systems that are more powerful, more insidious, more invisibly baked into the fabric of everyday life than we can at once describe. (This, too, was on the day we woke up and learned that Beyonce’s Southern-, Louisiana- and black-centric critically-lauded album had “lost” a Grammy award to a contrite Adele, which as many commentators pointed out, is a prime example of what systemic racism looks like in the music biz itself.) This oppression both gives rise to and then limns many of the things I love about New Orleans, and yet those things still happen, at least so far.

To a privileged observer it’s all beautiful and all damned and rarely quite so simple as one or the other. To a local, it must be hard to get on with your day unless you somewhat accept that it just is.

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networkingdefinition · 5 years ago

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Espresso Quotes

Official Website: Espresso Quotes

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• A good espresso to me is a little bit salty; you just become used to a good taste. Anytime I go into a new place and they don’t clean their machine properly or the water temperature isn’t right, it tastes awful. – Andrew Bird • American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100 degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroad stations for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an American percolator, such as you find in private houses or in humble luncheonettes, served with eggs and bacon, is delicious, fragrant, goes down like pure spring water, and afterwards causes severe palpitations, because one cup contains more caffeine than four espressos. – Umberto Eco

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Espresso', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_espresso').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_espresso img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Been trying the soapy water and instant coffee method. Works somewhat, but boy it tastes terrible. I don’t know how you guys can stand it. I’m going back to milk and espresso for my cappas. – David Lynch • Can we just call them storm spirits?” Leo asked. “Venti makes them sound like evil espresso drinks. – Rick Riordan • Coffee arrived and the espresso was excellent, like an aromatic electric fence. – Ben Aaronovitch • Coffee which makes the politician wise, and see through all things with his half-shut eyes. – Alexander Pope • Coffee?” Santangelo calls down to us. We both look up. He,Ben, and Raffy are hanging over the side. “Is it espresso?” Anson Choi asks behind us. “Freshly percolated,” Ben answers. “You should see the gadgets they have up here.” Anson Choi aims a begging look at Griggs. “You want to sell out over a coffee?” Griggs asks him with disgust. “They’ve got muffins as well,” I tell them. “Double chocolate chip. His mum made them.” Griggs gets up and holds out a hand to me. “Truce. – Melina Marchetta • Compared with other Americans, journalists are more likely to live in upscale neighborhoods, have maids, own Mercedes and trade stocks, and less likely to go to church, do volunteer work or put down roots in a community. Journalists are over-represented in ZIP code areas where residents are twice as likely as other Americans to rent foreign movies, drink Chablis, own an espresso maker and read magazines such as Architectural Digest and Food & Wine. – John Leo • Espresso consumption is an aesthetic experience,like tasting a vintage wine or admiring a painting. – Andrea Illy • Espresso is a miracle of chemistry in a cup. – Andrea Illy • Espresso is to Italy, what champagne is to France. – Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

• Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. – Anne Morrow Lindbergh • Having acquired an espresso machine as good as a solid e-61 and a very good grinder, your incremental dollars will be best spent on either buying truly badass coffee, or setting up a roasting setup yourself that with lots of effort will allow you to produce high end roasted coffee. – Ken Fox • I bought an espresso maker and coffee maker and make them myself every day. – Utada Hikaru • I do, but I don’t like doing that. I would do it out of hate or anger. I would do it because some- one was pushing my buttons, but really I don’t want to break my back in some European city while everyone else is drinking espresso. I only do it because someone refused to pay for the shipping, or something like that. I don’t want to let a whole city of people down. – Josh Smith • I get energy from meditation practice and from eating healthy fresh food, only one cup of espresso in the morning, and not drinking too much. – Richard Simmons • I got hooked on espresso when I visited Italy at 18, but these days I prefer a ‘flat white.’ It’s like a small latte with less milk – they’re popular in Australia. – Hugh Jackman • I know there are other writers who sit down religiously every morning, they take their espresso, they put a clean sheet of paper there and they sit looking at that paper until they’ve finished or covered at least a number of those pages. No, I’m not like that. I have to be ready. It has to gestate it for quite a while and then it’s ready to burst forth. – Wole Soyinka • I like the Valentino store in Rome.Because in Rome when I’d be riding my bike, that store is right next to the Spanish Steps, and it gets so crowded there, so I could sometimes duck into the Valentino store and go up to the top floor and have a little espresso and just relax and take it easy. – Owen Wilson • I love coffee. I love a midday espresso on set, just for the energy. – Carrie Brownstein • I probably have about four or five cups of coffee a day. I make myself an espresso macchiato when I wake, which is a shot of espresso and just a dollop of steamed milk. Then, if I’m going to do some work at home, I would make myself a French press. It’s the best way to make conventional coffee. – Howard Schultz • I used to have two double espressos a day. I gave that up, had headaches for five days but now I’m feeling great. – Hugo Weaving • I usually get up not before 9. I have a huge library – I’m a big fan of Scandinavian crime fiction – so I’ll usually take a book and go off to one of my favorite bistros for a cappuccino or espresso or maybe I’ll have some lovely smoked salmon for breakfast. – Anthony Geary • If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee. – Abraham Lincoln • If you’re a Kanye West fan, you’re not a fan of me, you’re a fan of yourself. You will believe in yourself. I’m just the espresso. – Kanye West • It was her first book, an indigo cover with a silver moonflower, an art nouveau flower, I traced my finger along the silver line like smoke, whiplash curves. … I touched the pages her hands touched, I pressed them to my lips, the soft thick old paper, yellow now, fragile as skin. I stuck my nose between the bindings and smelled all the readings she had given, the smell of unfiltered cigarettes and the espresso machine, beaches and incense and whispered words in the night. I could hear her voice rising from the pages. The cover curled outward like sails. – Janet Fitch • Leo: “So…giants who can throw mountains. Friendly wolves that will eat us if we show weakness. Evil espresso drinks. Gotcha. Maybe this isn’t the best time to bring up my psycho babysitter.” Piper: “Is that another joke? – Rick Riordan • Now-what’s our game plan?” Coach Hedge belched. He’d already had three espressos and a plate of doughnuts, along with two napkins and another flower from the vase on the table. He would’ve eaten the silverware, except Piper had slapped his hand. “Climb the mountain,” Hedge said. “Kill everything except Piper’s dad. Leave.” “Thank you General Eisenhower,” Jason grumbles. – Rick Riordan • Once I had a potentially heart attack-inducing eight double espressos in one day. I think my assistant secretly swaps my coffees for decaf as she doesn’t want me to die of caffeine overdose. – Steven Soderbergh • Sleep is critical to me… at least eight or nine hours a night. I start to slow down my body and my mind at least 30 minutes before I get into bed. I don’t watch any disturbing or invigorating TV at night. I also get energy from meditation practice and from eating healthy fresh food, only one cup of espresso in the morning, and not drinking too much. – Jane Fonda • Starving to be skinny isn’t my thing. When I don’t eat, it affects my mood! On-set, I fuel up with small meals and I’m always grabbing high-protein snacks, like almonds. Chai lattes with espresso also keep me going. – Nina Dobrev • The magic of espresso is that it’s only made with 50 beans. – Andrea Illy • The quintessential expression of coffee is espresso. – Ernesto Illy • The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself. – Mark Helprin • Their offense is shakier than Katherine Hepburn after an all-night espresso bender at Starbucks. – Dennis Miller • There are certain aspects of acting that I don’t like. I’m not a person who loves being on set. I mean, I know people that have their espresso machines in their trailers and they like being in there and they put pictures on walls. But I don’t like it. I don’t like sitting around. – Joaquin Phoenix • To espresso or to latte, that is the question…whether ’tis tastier on the palate to choose white mocha over plain…or to take a cup to go. Or a mug to stay, or extra cream, or have nothing, and by opposing the endless choice, end one’s heartache. – Jasper Fforde • To me, every kitchen appliance is useful and nothing’s overrated. When I look at my little espresso machine, I don’t see coffee. I see a steaming valve as an opportunity to make amazing creme brulee. – Grant Achatz • Until now, I’ve been a kind of binge-writer – I’ll carve out five or six hours on a weekend day and make a large container of espresso and just bang out a lot of words. – Lev Grossman • Waitress!” Hedge called. “Six double espressos, and whatever these guys want. Put it on the girl’s tab. – Rick Riordan • We are too often double espresso followers of a decaf Sovereign. – John Ortberg • What I don’t like is breakfast in the morning. I have a double-espresso cappuccino, but no food. – Wolfgang Puck • What’s it like to be a baby? It’s like being in love in Paris for the first time after you’ve had three double espressos. – Alison Gopnik • When I first discovered in the early 1980s the Italian espresso bars in my trip to Italy, the vision was to re-create that for America – a third place that had not existed before. Starbucks re-created that in America in our own image; a place to go other than home or work. We also created an industry that did not exist: specialty coffee. – Howard Schultz • When somebody is a little bit wrong – say, when a waited puts nonfat milk in your espresso macchiato, instead of lowfat milk – it is often quite easy to explain to them how and why they are wrong. But if somebody is surprisingly wrong – say, when a waiter bites your nose instead of taking your order – you can often be so surprised that you are unable to say anything at all. Paralyzed by how wrong the waiter is, your moth would hang slightly open and your eyes would blink over and over, but you would be unable to say a word. – Daniel Handler

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