#which I am choosing to reject and substitute with my own version

[kaythefloppa]

Binga Redesign [Sloth Bear] + Rewrite/HC:

My first artwork that ever is posted on Tumblr. It's garbage and disproportionate, but it's something!! [to be clear, this isn't the only Lion King/Guard-based artwork that I've made, this is the first of many that I'll be uploading here].

I've been high off of my Lion Guard hyper fixation for the past few weeks, mainly in how demotivation and disappointing S3 was and how I should write my post-canon fic/have the events after the finale play out in my verse [which I will illustrate with some art-pieces - I'll do this here, Deviantart and on the Lion King subreddit, my user is KrattBoy2006].

However, one thing really ground my gears to a halt and made me immediately clap my hands and say "Fuck this" was fucking Binga. I refuse to accept this abominable incontinent MLP-OC-reject-pukeskin-gender-bendered little Chippette. She's 10x more annoying than Bunga is [even with Season 3's character assassination of the poor dude], her existence, personality, design, and by extension, her relationship with Bunga relies on really outdated, sexist, and overall boring hetero-romance tropes. You could cut her from the story and nothing of substance would be changed [don't believe me? Fiona Riley recorded more lines for the one episode Shabaha appears in, than for the 3 episodes Binga appears in. Take that however you will]

Out of everything in TLG S3 that I've had to tolerate or write around when it comes to my headcanons, AUs, and fics, Binga is the one thing that I flat-out choose to ignore altogether. If not because of how much cringe I endure, it's because.... she's boring lmao.

And rather than just taking the easy way out and pretending she doesn't exist [not like that's not a good option either] or by having Bunga dump this chick [again, am not entirely opposed to], I eventually just said “screw canon” and came up with my own version of her, more fleshed out than in the show itself [I’m definitely not a fan of her name since that’s another cisbend of Bunga, but until I find a good substitute, I'll go with Sloth!Binga].

Rant Aside: On with my Rewrite version of Binga. Here, she’s a sloth bear: Why that? Because A) I want to take more advantage of the Asia setting, B) because sloth bears are termite predators like honey badgers so it does fit, C) because sloth bears, much like honey badgers are incredibly fierce when they need to be, D) I’m a sucker for height difference in relationships, and E) I think them being an interspecies couple makes it very interesting, funny, and wholesome, and be a neat mirror to Timon & Pumbaa's relationship. [And before y'all say anything about how they can't have babies, note that the ability to reproduce in a relationship should not solely determine if two characters should and shouldn't get together]:

I originally wanted to have her be a honey guide [since they do also live in India]. But then I read that the whole "Honey badger/honey guide symbiotic relationship" thing was an outdated myth so I went with the next available bug-eating, Indian-native animal.

In my AU, Binga is the polar opposite of Bunga. She lived in fear and isolation as a result of immense trauma from the loss of her parents [in the same tragedy that took Sãhasí and Ãnanda and left young Rani with a scar, I'll get to that point in my verse soon]. The Night Pride adopts her out of pity and she grows up as a sister to Rani and Baliyo until she leaves on her own: Meeting Bunga inspires her to be braver, but at the same time, she is able to help Bunga become mature and level-headed, and which inspires him to eventually reconcile with Kion and apologize to him for his emotional negligence.

Bunga and Sloth!Binga have an on-off relationship. Both of them are new to the concept of actually being with someone, especially with one of them having such a coveted and busy title as the Night Pride's Bravest. They go through some ups and downs and travel around lands with each other before eventually deciding that they would rather spend the rest of their lives with each other.

I have 2 existing possible outcomes for their future:

Scenario 1:

Bunga and Binga follow Kion to the Pridelands after him and Rani's relationship falls apart, and during their time there, Bunga and Binga stay at Timon & Pumbaa's old home. When Kion returns to rebuild his alliance with the Night Pride, Bunga, and Binga opt to stay in the Pridelands, and they help advise the next Bravest of the Lion Guard .

Scenario 2:

Same as Scenario 1, except when Kion returns to the Tree of Life, Bunga and Binga return alongside him and become the surrogate aunt and uncle to Kion and Rani's kids.

In either outcome, they do end up adopting children, orphaned from both the Pridelands and the Tree of Life, much to the excitement of Grandpa Timon & Pumbaa.

For Binga's design, I tried to incorporate the sloth bear look and blend it with Binga's design. The freckles were my own design choice. Overall it doesn't look as awful as it could've been.

[binsofchaos]

Toni Morrison | Nobel Lecture December 7, 1993

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

“Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise.” Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures.

“Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise.”

In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.

One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, “Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead.”

She does not answer, and the question is repeated. “Is the bird I am holding living or dead?”

Still she doesn’t answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.

The old woman’s silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.

Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. “I don’t know”, she says. “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”

Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility.

For parading their power and her helplessness, the young visitors are reprimanded, told they are responsible not only for the act of mockery but also for the small bundle of life sacrificed to achieve its aims. The blind woman shifts attention away from assertions of power to the instrument through which that power is exercised.

Speculation on what (other than its own frail body) that bird-in-the-hand might signify has always been attractive to me, but especially so now thinking, as I have been, about the work I do that has brought me to this company. So I choose to read the bird as language and the woman as a practiced writer. She is worried about how the language she dreams in, given to her at birth, is handled, put into service, even withheld from her for certain nefarious purposes. Being a writer she thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one has control, but mostly as agency – as an act with consequences. So the question the children put to her: “Is it living or dead?” is not unreal because she thinks of language as susceptible to death, erasure; certainly imperiled and salvageable only by an effort of the will. She believes that if the bird in the hands of her visitors is dead the custodians are responsible for the corpse. For her a dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences. Official language smitheryed to sanction ignorance and preserve privilege is a suit of armor polished to shocking glitter, a husk from which the knight departed long ago. Yet there it is: dumb, predatory, sentimental. Exciting reverence in schoolchildren, providing shelter for despots, summoning false memories of stability, harmony among the public.

She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love. But she knows tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience.

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

The old woman is keenly aware that no intellectual mercenary, nor insatiable dictator, no paid-for politician or demagogue; no counterfeit journalist would be persuaded by her thoughts. There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like paté-producing geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.

Underneath the eloquence, the glamor, the scholarly associations, however stirring or seductive, the heart of such language is languishing, or perhaps not beating at all – if the bird is already dead.

She has thought about what could have been the intellectual history of any discipline if it had not insisted upon, or been forced into, the waste of time and life that rationalizations for and representations of dominance required – lethal discourses of exclusion blocking access to cognition for both the excluder and the excluded.

The conventional wisdom of the Tower of Babel story is that the collapse was a misfortune. That it was the distraction, or the weight of many languages that precipitated the tower’s failed architecture. That one monolithic language would have expedited the building and heaven would have been reached. Whose heaven, she wonders? And what kind? Perhaps the achievement of Paradise was premature, a little hasty if no one could take the time to understand other languages, other views, other narratives period. Had they, the heaven they imagined might have been found at their feet. Complicated, demanding, yes, but a view of heaven as life; not heaven as post-life.

She would not want to leave her young visitors with the impression that language should be forced to stay alive merely to be. The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. Although its poise is sometimes in displacing experience it is not a substitute for it. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie. When a President of the United States thought about the graveyard his country had become, and said, “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. But it will never forget what they did here,” his simple words are exhilarating in their life-sustaining properties because they refused to encapsulate the reality of 600, 000 dead men in a cataclysmic race war. Refusing to monumentalize, disdaining the “final word”, the precise “summing up”, acknowledging their “poor power to add or detract”, his words signal deference to the uncapturability of the life it mourns. It is the deference that moves her, that recognition that language can never live up to life once and for all. Nor should it. Language can never “pin down” slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable.

Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue?

Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

“Once upon a time, …” visitors ask an old woman a question. Who are they, these children? What did they make of that encounter? What did they hear in those final words: “The bird is in your hands”? A sentence that gestures towards possibility or one that drops a latch? Perhaps what the children heard was “It’s not my problem. I am old, female, black, blind. What wisdom I have now is in knowing I cannot help you. The future of language is yours.”

They stand there. Suppose nothing was in their hands? Suppose the visit was only a ruse, a trick to get to be spoken to, taken seriously as they have not been before? A chance to interrupt, to violate the adult world, its miasma of discourse about them, for them, but never to them? Urgent questions are at stake, including the one they have asked: “Is the bird we hold living or dead?” Perhaps the question meant: “Could someone tell us what is life? What is death?” No trick at all; no silliness. A straightforward question worthy of the attention of a wise one. An old one. And if the old and wise who have lived life and faced death cannot describe either, who can?

But she does not; she keeps her secret; her good opinion of herself; her gnomic pronouncements; her art without commitment. She keeps her distance, enforces it and retreats into the singularity of isolation, in sophisticated, privileged space.

Nothing, no word follows her declaration of transfer. That silence is deep, deeper than the meaning available in the words she has spoken. It shivers, this silence, and the children, annoyed, fill it with language invented on the spot.

“Is there no speech,” they ask her, “no words you can give us that helps us break through your dossier of failures? Through the education you have just given us that is no education at all because we are paying close attention to what you have done as well as to what you have said? To the barrier you have erected between generosity and wisdom?

“We have no bird in our hands, living or dead. We have only you and our important question. Is the nothing in our hands something you could not bear to contemplate, to even guess? Don’t you remember being young when language was magic without meaning? When what you could say, could not mean? When the invisible was what imagination strove to see? When questions and demands for answers burned so brightly you trembled with fury at not knowing?

“Do we have to begin consciousness with a battle heroines and heroes like you have already fought and lost leaving us with nothing in our hands except what you have imagined is there? Your answer is artful, but its artfulness embarrasses us and ought to embarrass you. Your answer is indecent in its self-congratulation. A made-for-television script that makes no sense if there is nothing in our hands.

“Why didn’t you reach out, touch us with your soft fingers, delay the sound bite, the lesson, until you knew who we were? Did you so despise our trick, our modus operandi you could not see that we were baffled about how to get your attention? We are young. Unripe. We have heard all our short lives that we have to be responsible. What could that possibly mean in the catastrophe this world has become; where, as a poet said, “nothing needs to be exposed since it is already barefaced.” Our inheritance is an affront. You want us to have your old, blank eyes and see only cruelty and mediocrity. Do you think we are stupid enough to perjure ourselves again and again with the fiction of nationhood? How dare you talk to us of duty when we stand waist deep in the toxin of your past?

“You trivialize us and trivialize the bird that is not in our hands. Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon’s hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly – once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

“Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.

“Tell us about ships turned away from shorelines at Easter, placenta in a field. Tell us about a wagonload of slaves, how they sang so softly their breath was indistinguishable from the falling snow. How they knew from the hunch of the nearest shoulder that the next stop would be their last. How, with hands prayered in their sex, they thought of heat, then sun. Lifting their faces as though it was there for the taking. Turning as though there for the taking. They stop at an inn. The driver and his mate go in with the lamp leaving them humming in the dark. The horse’s void steams into the snow beneath its hooves and its hiss and melt are the envy of the freezing slaves.

“The inn door opens: a girl and a boy step away from its light. They climb into the wagon bed. The boy will have a gun in three years, but now he carries a lamp and a jug of warm cider. They pass it from mouth to mouth. The girl offers bread, pieces of meat and something more: a glance into the eyes of the one she serves. One helping for each man, two for each woman. And a look. They look back. The next stop will be their last. But not this one. This one is warmed.”

It’s quiet again when the children finish speaking, until the woman breaks into the silence.

“Finally”, she says, “I trust you now. I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How lovely it is, this thing we have done – together.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/books/best-toni-morrison-books.html

[ailinaline]

The Untamed: unsorted

Well... I am nothing, if not eccentric, after all. Why not publish a huge post all of a sudden? :)

The Untamed (СQL) is an abyss, and I am still falling, grasping at some scattered thoughts... that tend to arrange themselves in equally chaotic blocks of thoughts, which, in turn, multiply questions successfully.

Spoilers ahead, I guess...

I.

The timeline of СQL is more than a little blurry, and when I try to calculate, how old Wei Ying was, when he died, I come up with the sorrowful conclusion he couldn’t be more that 21, probably younger. Which, in turn, means that the post-time-skip Sizhui is, actually, of the same age or even older than Wei Ying and Lan Wangji were, when they did a lot of things I honestly can’t imagine the new generation pulling off, even physically/magically, let alone psychologically (although I wouldn’t go as far as to call young LWJ and WWX mature - they clearly were not, and that was a huge part of the tragedy foundation, in my opinion). The young disciples are referred to as ‘children’, and they truly are. Compared to 16-17 year old LWJ and WWX, they are very, very young, inexperienced and not especially capable – while still being quite skilled and smart. And it’s both fabulous and painful to watch. Fabulous because it’s a very vivid and authentic demonstration of how exceptionally gifted LWJ and WWX are (and were); and painful because, unfortunately, not all of their greatness comes just from inborn talents.

II.

I am easily charmed by languages, but СQL, being the third Chinese dorama I have ever watched, is still the first one to so profusely tempt me to learn Chinese – in order to translate the songs and to understand the subtleties of the dialogues.

III.

I can’t get rid of the impression that the concept of rules/order breaking and punishment/atonement is fundamental for СQL (and its world). As far as I am aware, the Chinese culture does tend to be quite severe in this regard, but right now I am considering the symbolic layer of the process rather than the harm/good/efficiency of any particular method.  And I wonder, whether I am imagining things or Wangji’s history of ‘transgressions’ and punishments within his sect is really openly symbolic and not merely coincidental.

My interpretation certainly lacks some special cultural insight because I can’t help being of European origin, so I read all the codes as a European would, first, and only then make an attempt to switch lenses and decipher the message, taking into account my scarce knowledge of the Chinese (and Asian) culture.

And yet...

The first time (drinking) Wangji is not only completely innocent, but also a ‘victim’ of Wei Ying’s careless (and questionable) mischief. They share the punishment (and we encounter the number 300, by the way), but Wangji is obviously (and rather fiercely) on his own here, and evidently by choice, despite Wei Ying’s sincere efforts first to exclude and then to include him. Wangji, just as obviously, truly believes he deserves the punishment – not for drinking as such, I think, but for lowering his guard and being not attentive enough: internally, he substitutes one transgression with another, and the equation works for him (actually, it might be unfair, but quite fortunate for their future relationship that Wangji blames himself or, at least, blames himself more than Wei Ying). To put it in a nutshell, for Wangji, the system and order are intact and non-contradictory: he is understandably upset, even angry, but hardly shaken, and simply intends to do better than that in the future, so to say. It’s hard to speculate, if this is Wangji’s most unpleasant experience so far or not, but in any case, the psychological pressure is minimal and reproach is rather mild (and I am really surprised, Lan Xichen didn’t find all that story highly suspicious… or was it his indirect method of showing WWX that he hadn’t been told on?..)

The copying of the rules happens after a considerable amount of… experience, if not time. And the transgression is not specified, but hinted at very heavily. I also wonder, if Lan Qiren realized an additional message he conveyed through his choice as well as through his general treatment of his nephew during that meeting: a strict reminder that, a war hero or not, LWJ is still too young to have an opinion. Wangji accepts the book of rules reverently, accepts the punishment… the word, that springs to mind is ‘habitually’: he doesn’t disregard it, per se, he doesn’t devalue the fact his uncle is not happy with him, he still wants to do better, but… there are things of greater importance to him now, and LWJ is so focused on them that he makes the request about the restricted books at the least suitable moment, really. (And I believe this dismissal does cut him rather deep.) The system still works, but the seed of the conflict is already planted.

The third episode seems pivotal in itself: we actually don’t know, what the punishment for letting WWX and the Wens go was, except for having to kneel, while being lectured, but this time this is a result of a conscious choice to do something that definitely wouldn’t be approved. And I can’t remember a single second of the screen-time, when Wangji would look repentant: conflicted, upset, slapped (when Lan Qiren mentions his mother), stressed (his uncle uses some pretty cruel techniques that border on manipulation, to my mind), but not sorry at all – not for letting the fugitives go, at least.  And comparing the shades of Wangji’s silence here and on the previous occasion, this one seems somehow more determined. And closed-off. And there is no intention to do better, in regard to this transgression: the alternative he is being pushed to is unacceptable.

Kneeling again, for the whole day, in the cold, lifting a… what is it, as a matter of fact? It does look like a slightly smaller version of ‘the discipline whip’ we’ll see later, and if it is really so, then it’s beyond prophetic symbolic – it looks more like a promise on Lan Qiren’s part. :/ Anyway, my impression is that, for the first time in the series, LWJ is actively absent from the scene of his own punishment: he doesn’t reflect on it (I think he expected something like that), he also doesn’t mentally substitute one transgression with another to restore the balance (his inability to help Wei Ying is not something to atone for by kneeling). He simply endures. And thinks. And feels. Just not what he is expected and obliged to be thinking and feeling at the moment. And through all of this, Wangji is utterly, hopelessly and stoically alone and unaccepted. His concerns have been dismissed and care rejected by Wei Ying. His actions and decisions have been castigated by a significant authority figure (whom he loves and respects). If I am not mistaken, in the special edition Wangji’s loss-and-loneliness are somewhat artificially heightened through the pseudo-contrast because his moments are mixed with the moments of Wei Ying’s drinking with his new family, who values and appreciates him. (In reality their situations are just the same: they are both in anguish and feel helpless to change things they wish to change.) And, a cherry on top: we don’t know, what has been said initially, and by whom, however, we see that Wangji is released not by his uncle, but by some adept (or disciple). It might be a normal procedure, but it completes the picture of being unequivocally separated from any supportive figure and hints at a lack of closure, in a way, as there was no forgivenes-and-reconnection after the punishment.  

I am struggling to verbalize, why exactly, but to me, this scene is, in a sense, more bitter than the next one, despite the circumstances.

During the next punishment Wangji is as actively present as he was absent during the previous one. And if then he was frozen in sadness, now he is all fire (fueled by grief, and guilt, and fury, and despair, yes, but fire, nonetheless). And the system and order get burned down: what Wangji re-builds during his seclusion is his very own set of rules. They do coincide with the Gusu Lan set, but not fully. And this is a point of no return because, filtered through Wangji’s own system of values, now they are more than just the elders’ lessons learned and tested – they are the only valid reference point for recognizing transgressions and ‘living with no regrets’.

(On another level, I am more than a little puzzled by several details here:

1) linguistics: do they really call this thing a discipline ‘whip’ in Chinese?

2) cultural message: as literally nothing could get in the way of filming a beating with an actual whip, the type of instrument has to make some sense, doesn’t it? (For now, I can’t think of any reason to choose this tool, though. Except the number 300 as 300 lashes are hardly survivable, even with a golden core.)

3) application: I can understand, why Wangji has his shirt on (although this is a more dangerous and torturous option: such a thin layer is no protection at all, but it will be hell to clean the wounds afterwards), but why is his hair down his back like that?..

4) consequences: the scarring looks rather odd, considering. (And again: it was definitely not a problem to paint whatever they had to, so – why?)

The only (and vague) explanation I can come up with is that the type and form of the tool is not important at all: it’s the intent and sentence that count, so the wounds and pain would be the same, even if the instrument looked like a rod or a cane. (Still doesn’t explain the hair, though.) And as for the scars, perhaps, not all of them have to stay forever, especially if the cultivator is very strong.

Well, no: unsatisfactory...)

IV.

I wonder... My first impression after watching the scene, where Lan Wangji cuts off Jin Guangyao’s  arm, was that he was actually saving him from Baxia, separating Guangyao from the mark on his hand. And the only reason, why the spirit of the sword attacks Jin Ling next, are the drops of the bad/damned blood on the boy’s shoulder. But after the special edition I am not so sure.

V.

Lacunae and plotholes (or what I subjectively perceive as such) are extremely challenging and thought-provoking in this series. Right now, I wonder about the Wens: Wen Qing clearly stated she had asked one of the clansmen to look after WWX, so not all of them were going to surrender. Could it be that they were attacked at the Burial Mounds, when seeing the siblings off, and taken away by force?

...Enough. For now.

[artyloreviews]

Disco Elysium (2019) - A Review and Analysis

A postmodern role-playing game for a much different audience. A combination of skillful artistry and unfulfilled potential. An attempt at tackling difficult topics and pandering to different tastes. A full package, with deceptive contents...

I enjoyed playing through Disco Elysium, but for completely different reasons than those that initially sold the game to me. Going in, I believed that it would be the type of RPG that I had been looking for quite some time – one that is not burdened by most of its interaction with the world happening on a grid, scanning through a list of spells and abilities, franticly pausing every frame, trying to min-max numbers as to not get destroyed by a pack of menacing farm animals of a slightly higher level. Examples of that in the genre would be classics such as Baldur’s Gate or newer re-iterations like Divinity: Original Sin and Shadowrun: Hong Kong. What I would habitually find myself doing is picking up the game, sinking my teeth into it, eventually hitting a numerical roadblock in some quest, and almost immediately retiring to a life of “not playing that game ever again”, as I am faced with the option of either save scumming and beating my head against the numeric wall, until by some fluke of the numbers I get the “good” number and am allowed to proceed; or could just stop doing whatever thing I am currently invested in and go somewhere else on the map, where the numbers are not as disagreeable, so I can get my personal numbers high enough to where the numbers I was having difficulty with before seem less impressive and I can pick up that quest again, but this time only halfway through, struggling to remember contextual cues that were relevant perhaps a few hours ago, but are now a forgotten footnote in some journal entry.

In both cases, the immersion gives way to the idea of gameplay, as the perhaps flawed ideal of an RPG is that which is based on table-top role playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, the aforementioned Shadowrun, or anything else that follows the same formula. From my personal experience in TTRPGs, the same issue persists, namely in having meaningful choice and character development take second fiddle to massive 3-5-man 1-2-hour combat encounters in between the more immersive moments of dialogue between players, non-player characters or story development. I’ve always felt that combat is so abstracted from everything else in TTRPGs in the way that it suddenly shifts into an entirely different game, which unlike the elements of role-play is less free-form and bound to a rigid set of rules. You’re no longer interested in how things look, feel or act, but rather how large a number is on a sheet of paper; and this contention of mine seems to always be translated into the video game counterpart of this genre, carrying the same problem from one medium to the other. Games even seem to compound upon the issue, by putting you in charge of multiple characters, where your custom created character is somehow not only equal to them, but at the same time the savior of the universe and all that is holy.

I cannot help but believe that the party ought to be AI controlled pawns, considering that they are supposedly different people with their own goals and aspirations; thus leaving the player to micro-manage their singular character – their avatar in the game world, rather than developing a form of psychogenic schizophrenia by having to deal with each and every one of the party’s members (now, admittedly the remakes of both Baldur’s Gate games have such a feature, but the combat AI is so poor, that you still have to go and remind them that they actually have a whole list of spells that they could be, in fact, using to… for instance, heal you, as you sit there bleeding profusely, crippled and powerless on the ground).

The only games which I have seen managing combat and RPG elements successfully are listed as a fundamentally different genre, known as “immersive sim” or “0451 games”. To name a few, that would be games like those of the Deus Ex, Dishonored and even the Fallout series. Most of those are first-person, for the most part shooters, with some emphasis on a singular character’s development through dialogue and stat point distribution. My main point can roughly be exemplified by comparing the naming convention and the reality for both genres: one is a “role-playing game”, the other is an “immersive simulation”; the first being used deceptively, as you could be playing a multitude of roles at any given time and also suspending that role-play to participate in some rather lengthy tactical combat for what could be 50% of the game’s runtime. On the other hand, you have “immersive sim”, which according to Warren Spector (game designer of Deus Ex and Thief fame) is a game in which “you are there, [and] nothing stands between you and [the] belief that you're in an alternate world”. I simply cannot emphasize enough how even the most engaging narrative and the most skillful writing can be tarnished by this type of abstract combat, which feels so fundamentally foreign and somehow still intrinsic to the idea of role-playing games and immersion.

Disco Elysium seemed to be the odd one out – a RPG that has no combat, except that, initiated by your choices in dialogue (more akin to playing an animation than actual combat). It was also advertised to me as having quite an in-depth ideological system, that was affected by your choices in-game and would automatically adapt dialogue according to your flavor of politics, philosophy or culture through a series of thoughts, which you would internalize, if used often enough. Frankly, it seemed like wish fulfilment for a jaded immersion-loving straight-edge centrist such as myself.

Upon launching the game, I was quickly introduced to the persona that I would be inhabiting – a deranged, drunken amnesiac, who in some cases would pass as a cop, but only if one’s notion of law-abiding is that of a drug-fueled abusive lover; also known as - the farthest thing from me. I already knew that my journey through the game would be that of a redemption arc, where this horrible piece of shit human, was going to become the most squeaky-clean, drug- and alcohol-free centrist known to all of Revachol. A true test of the game’s systems in action – from deranged and corrupt, to the straight and narrow. To my eventual surprise - I could do all of it, and very successfully at that. By the end of my nearly 24-hour playthrough, I had achieved my ideal vision for the character, with only a bit of resistance, which I will briefly mention further down the line. For now, I had succeeded in using all the tools available to me in order to internalize the thoughts for centrism, rejecting any form of drugs, and by the end almost managing to squeeze in the time to internalize being sober, cut short due to the spontaneous conclusion of the game.

The thoughts system was not entirely what I had initially imagined. Namely, what I had envisioned was a system, which converts whatever responses one made throughout the game, into non-internalized thoughts, which would begin to alter the dialogue options available, and only after choosing to emphasize said options, would it eventually internalize and give you a lot more radical options based on said thought. What it would turn out to do instead is make the acquisition of thoughts work in a similar manner, but make the process of internalization a menu, in which you “equip” thoughts into available slots. It seems like a minor inconvenience, but it makes the thoughts feel like yet another item that you just set and forget, rather than the thoughts of a person being actively developed over time, based on what kind of discourse they engage in. I suppose the idea of having it take anywhere from thirty minutes to six hours to internalize is there to be the substitute for the drawn out process of internalization. It is in a way saying “I feel like turning into a centrist in the next thirty minutes.”, while going around doing investigative work around a crime scene. The more active process I envisioned, would indeed take a lot longer, but it would be massively more immersive, as more and more options become available to you over time, rather than after some arbitrary timer has gone down.

Another big detractor is having to use skill points to unlock new slots for thoughts, which would otherwise be put into your more practical skills. Theoretically, one would think a human has an almost infinite capacity for new ideas; and one is surely not going to want to internalize them all. A good example would be the “Volumetric Shit Compressor” thought you gain early into the game, which mainly fulfils its purpose in one skill check for less physically able characters as a part of a single quest and is never made use of again, beyond its flat stat bonuses. No other thought in my playthrough had a temporary pragmatic function like that, which feels like a missed opportunity. Its temporary nature is where the skill-point cost seems absurd, when they could be better used to improve one’s skills. In what way would the character becoming more skillful help them stop “getting their shit together”? Wouldn’t one discard the though immediately after it’s no longer useful? The way the system works currently, meant that I spent most of my points on slots and playing around with thoughts, rather than improving my character until the very last parts of the game, which in effect made the game more difficult than intended. The decision to make thoughts equipable and not persistent passive perks that can upgrade into more radical or complete versions of themselves is perhaps one of my main disappointments with the game. The effect on scope would be minimal, as the game already has the dialogue options for those thoughts written and would only need to change their acquisition and internalization to be less menu-driven and more player-driven.

I tangentially mentioned not having skill-points to freely use until the latter parts of the game: That in turn made skill checks a lot more difficult and perilous, by making white skill checks (ones you can fail and retry upon increasing the skill they require) harder to re-unlock once failed and making red checks (ones that you cannot retry once failed) almost impossible, if not clothed in every stat-boosting piece of apparel in one’s inventory or seasoned with every potentially hazardous bottle of booze or glowing fairy dust left lying on the ground. White checks also do not unlock after one has used a consumable item or changed a piece of clothing to boost said stat, which encourages save scumming, as there is no way to change clothing in the middle of dialogue or knowing what the skill check will be, leading to one of the many pitfalls which I described earlier.

An even greater fault is that some quests just drop dead in their tracks, if the stat check is not completed. Moreover, since one cannot be proficient in all four skill categories, I would regularly hit a brick wall, upon being faced with a Psyche or Physique skill check, as my character mainly specialized in Intellect and Motorics. The thing about hitting a brick wall in Disco Elysium is not so much that you fail and have to face the consequences, but rather cannot continue at all and the narrative stops dead in its tracks until you can succeed the check. Sometimes quests are tied to each other, so not being able to progress in one of them means that you can’t progress in any of them. Suddenly an entire quest chain can just be gone at the click of a button. It got to a point where I would prefer to hear that all my efforts were in vain, fucking everything up irreversibly, rather than having a white check get locked and sit there in my journal, waiting for me to miraculously gain five points in some sub-skill of Physique. One way to fix this would be to have more obfuscated red checks with uncertain odds that lead to failure states. At least that would be more immersive than the current offering, as one could live with the consequences, rather than be left guessing what it could have been if one had slightly higher skills. This, however, could be difficult, as there is a dice roll to every skill. Not being skilled merely means you have less of a chance of succeeding or, alternatively, a higher chance to fail and lock the skill check.

The one thing that the game does great when it comes to skills is the addition of secret tasks. If one were to follow particular lines of inquiry, they often lead to some skill check down the line becoming easier, due to the things learned beforehand about that topic. This system rewards being thorough and attentive and is, perhaps, the best feature of the game. However, observations made through the “shivers” system (where orbs of information will show up contextually above the protagonist’s head, revealing information about the environment or elaborating on something relevant) do not appear to factor into these skill checks. This often leads to you reading something important when it pops up in the overworld, but upon engaging someone in conversation one must often select benign lines of dialogue, acting like one hadn’t made those observations to begin with. The dissonance is even more infuriating whenever Kim (your companion throughout the game) tells you that you are obviously wrong, because he also made those observations but (unlike you) could talk about them. It would have been a lot more diegetic if there were dialogue options available for you to repeat the observation to Kim instead, perhaps as you talk to him in the overworld (a feature that is woefully underutilized, and shows the same five or so options throughout the entire game, except whenever Kim wants to talk to you about something he deems relevant – an ability, which you would think the player should have had as well).

Speaking of the overworld, Disco Elysium does quite a lot with the small real-estate it has on its map. For what feels like a small neighborhood, it packs tens of hours of content, a varied cast of characters and lots of places to explore. Walking around is encouraged by the game, almost to a fault. At many points during the game Kim will remark upon your seemingly absurd ability to run around without getting tired. There even comes a point where you are injured, and are told not to run to avoid further harming yourself. After about twenty hours I realized that this was in order to signal to the player that if they run all over the place, trying to finish everything as quick as possible, they would be left with a lot of extra time at the end of the day, which would have been perhaps better spent looking into side-quests or other optional activities. However, the walk speed is woefully slow and with the amount of backtracking one needs to do, means that you will be seeing the same places plenty of times, which only tempts you even more to not waste your precious time RP-walking. The game has benches, which you can use to pass the time, but they are only available whenever Kim is not with you, which is only durring the night, meaning you can’t make any meaningful progress by resting on one, effectively making them worthless. That and the presence of time-gated tasks, means you will most likely be trying to find ways to waste your time, prompting Kim to berate you even more for straying away from the main focus of the narrative, as he often does. If you’re a fast reader, the game luckily fast-forwards time based on how many options you’ve selected, rather than real-time. This is most apparent whenever you’re save scumming and going though entire trees of dialogue you’ve already read.

And you will be reading a lot, as this is what you signed up for when you relinquished the combat systems of your typical RPGs. A welcome change, I might add, as the dialogue is beautifully written and engaging for tens of hours. (The end credits even thank Chris Avellone for what is probably him lending a bit of his Midas touch when it comes to game writing.) However, there are of course flaws in the way Disco Elysium decides to portray some of its characters, as it is sometimes more interested in making political statements in a very one-note way that might shock some people, rather than what one would think are nuanced and fleshed out personas. A large part of the cast is wearing a thick layer of existentialism, which they seem to flaunt upon every given opportunity. The same goes for characters who clearly exhibit some variety of political radicalism; you’ve got your racist nationalist, your bourgeois-eating communist, your fence-sitting centrist (dubbed moralist) and a whole swath of colorful opinionated people whom you either interact with or endure. Everyone else is mostly pleasant to be around, if not a bit saddening, due to the overall melancholic way of life people of Disco Elysium are forced to lead, influenced by factors that they alone cannot control; an overall sense of futility present at every turn. Most of them have quirks that help them cope with their predicament, which you can explore in full detail through in-depth dialogue trees, leading to some intriguing interactions and ultimately some interesting consequences down the line. Every line of dialogue seems to have a lot of those, which is surprising for a game that so haphazardly makes you select dumb questions for answers you already know. An example of that is the one occasion in which I used a particular brand of alcohol to boost my “Pain Threshold” in order to open a certain mission-critical freezer. Which towards the end had Kim labeling me as someone who “drinks on the job”, even after becoming sober and internalizing the thought that removes all positive effects from alcohol, as well as the action leading to us retrieving an item, which we would later use to further the plot. Instead as a one-off sacrifice of one’s principles, it was seen as a major transgression that would only lead people into thinking of me as even more of a raging alcoholic, rather than someone who is trying to recover and “get their shit together”, as it were.

A major part of the game’s rhetoric is lost to those who do not have a dictionary that has been well tempered through copious forms of political jargon, coming from a various selection of manifestos, academic political analyses and some of the more famous philosophical works for the last century. I would go as far to say that some of the sentiments the game presents are absolutely impenetrable when it comes to wording. I’ll give you an example:

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*. Incrementally, you begin to notice a change in the weather. When it snows, the flakes are softer when they stick to your worry-worn forehead. When it rains, the rain is warmer. Democracy is coming to the Administrative Region. The ideals of Dolorian humanism are reinstating themselves. How can they not? These are the ideals of the Coalition and the Moralist International. Those guys are signal blue. And they're not only good -- they're also powerful. What will it be like, once their nuanced plans have been realized?

If you immediately recognized that it was about centrism, then congratulations – you are a lot smarter than me and probably everyone else around you. For you Disco Elysium is the perfect college-level textual experience for your Tuesday-night 1960’s poetry club. For the rest of humanity, it’s a bunch of gibberish. Flowery prose and poetics are riddled everywhere and you're never really sure what you're doing, what thoughts you're thinking or what's happening to you.

I mentioned briefly that the game tries to depict centrism as a form of moralism (a term which it prefers over the former). Even so, it presents centrism as less of an effort to hold multiple perspectives and act with a full and informed range of understanding, but rather as the stereotypical “fence-sitting” argument, where no decision can be made now, and progress can only be obtained through a slow, incremental process. While on the surface, it would seem so – as a self-proclaimed and passionate centrist, I cannot help but disagree with the outsider view that the game seems to be promoting, favoring critique of the right and an emphasis towards the left side of the political compass (making small but insignificant jabs towards both throughout). Contextually, the game’s developers Studio ZA/UM, have displayed a clear favor of the political left in their public appearances, which may explain this somewhat skewed perspective. While it’d be lovely to go on about the politics of ideology, it’s better not judge the contents of the game based on the developers’ ideological affiliation, but rather on its own merits.

Considering the amount of reading one needs to do, I would hesitantly say that Disco Elysium is part RPG, part choose-your-own-adventure visual novel. I say RPG, because of the aforementioned brick walls, inhibiting progress in a way that no immersive sim ever would, as there would be multiple ways to get the same information, which is sadly not a thing Disco Elysium does well. The sheer volume of the text is also a cause for some, I would suppose, aesthetic concerns about the game. Graphically, the game is stunning with its unique painterly style, but it often values it over function, namely in having the UI serve little to no purpose, as Kim and your portraits take up the entire bottom left of the screen. At the same time the dialogue panel is put on the far right side of the screen, even though two thirds of it are spent zoomed in on some 3D models doing their idle animations, instead of having the text front and center, as the thing you will be most likely looking at for 90% of your time with the game. Other technical issues include shadows being displaced from where they should be, especially on stairs, as well as being incredibly jagged for a game that doesn’t really have high hardware requirements and very little real-time lighting, but all of this is frankly unintrusive, compared to the cramps in your neck from looking to your right all the time.

Every once in a while, you get to enjoy not having to read, as a select few scenes are entirely voice-acted by a talented cast. I am unsure, however, of the production team behind the recordings, as they seem to sound as if recorded in home studios with different microphones and sound processors. Other than that, the quality and range of the performances is wonderful, especially since it is coming from some lesser known actors in the industry.

When it comes to sound, the game does a fantastic job of establishing a lot of varied soundscapes for an admittedly small plot of land. The music is ambient, droning and subtle in all the ways that make you not think about it, until you are sitting there listening to the soundtrack on your own time, remembering all the scenes that every piece of music has lifted from monotony. All of the tracks have this aging, somber tone to them, much like the world they are written for, making the music an unavoidable essential part of the experience, as you walk the fields of Revachol with the wind blowing and the small creek near you emitting a slight babble. The only downside is that the mixing of all these layers is often horribly unproportioned. Everything will be quiet, until some random intercom plays two straight minutes of loud white noise into your ear. Those parts are few and far between, but still leave a surprisingly large impression for an otherwise spotless execution of foley and ambience.

Overall, Disco Elysium is a full package. While not necessarily the game that I hoped it would be, it was still an enjoyable experience with an incredible main quest, memorable characters and side quests, elevated by wonderful sound design and fantastic ambient music, with writing that will be unparalleled for years to come. While it is not without its flaws, and some of them are quite major - it does what it set out to do with flying colors and is sure to appeal to a lot of people, who have been looking for an experience such as this. For me, however, it also represents a lot of squandered potential. It is by no means an ideal game – far from it; but I would still recommend you play through it for yourself, just to see where it takes you. It has a way of challenging you intellectually, that not a lot of games can pull off, especially nowadays. It is an admirable endeavor in tackling difficult topics, whilst also spinning an intriguing narrative that keeps you invested until the very end.

Score: 7/10

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SimCity BuildIt Guide

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There is not simply a storyline that you're following in buildit, however this recreation is truly greater task-oriented than the laptop model ever changed into. I'll get extra into element approximately the SimCity BuildIt financial system, however for example, the best manner to enlarge the land of your town is to purchase land tracts (rectangles of land) to permit extra time to construct. Nicely, the only manner to buy those tracts is to shop for or locate bulldozer parts. If you can not locate or have enough money the elements, you can not develop the land place of your city. You could handiest view a maximum of 20 items at a time and you cannot select what you spot. The listings seem to be completely random. Any item may be offered in gthq, including the specialized items such as vu's tower, beach, mountain and bulldozer items. Because of the limits on the gthq, it's very rare that you'll actually be able to find what you're looking for, especially if it's one of the more rare items in the game. Rather than the current market, i would suggest an auction system where you can bid on items and have more control on pricing. (there are additional items for expansion to the beach and mountainside.) To increase your territory or your city's storage capacity, you need to get a certain number of each of a set of three parts. For example, to expand into a certain 6-by-8 lot, you might need five dozer wheels, five dozer blades, and five dozer exhaust pipes. For a different lot, you might need seven of each item. To acquire these parts, you can buy them in the global trade hq (be advised that they sell quickly), or on rare occasions receive them as gifts when you travel to another city to buy something else, and click on a gift icon. If red exclamation marks appear on the icons on the right of the screen, find out immediately what is happening! These icons will tell you what can be improved to make your citizens happy. You can also visually assess the level of happiness of each individual district by selecting the government icon in the city services menu. What is city services? Your citizens have needs! As a mayor, you must consider eight key points that make up the well-being of your citizens. These goods are consumed at such a rate that they do not reach the warehouse. The increase in the city warehouse. Go to the city warehouse and click on the green button "increase warehouse" to see what special items for storage space are required to increase its capacity. Collect the necessary goods, click on the screen to confirm, and the size of your city warehouse will increase instantly. If you do not want to view icons with the opinions of your fellow citizens, you can purchase missing special items for simcash. In some cases, you can even permanently lose your city. How to download a city to a new device? Complete the training mode until the city councilor tells you that you will play next yourself. Click on the "settings" icon and log in to the appropriate account. Do not see the authorization buttons? So, you have not completed the training mode in the game. Why didn't my saved city load? Have you saved the original city? If you did not save it using the in-game settings, you will not be able to access it from any device. These videos only work while you're online. Also, sometimes if i didn't notice the movie icon quickly enough, the video would expire and nothing would happen when i clicked on the icon. Several times, i would listen to my advisor and watch the ad, but the advisor would not reappear to let me pick my reward. When that happens, i find it's best not to click on the movie icon for a while, because if it happens once, it's likely to keep happening. Athough maxis could have designed SimCity BuildIt's commerce function for single-player use, making transactions with real players and visiting their cities adds greatly to the richness of the game. The downside is that i really miss the ability to trade when i'm offline. One online feature that lets you directly interact with other players is the mayors' club, which unlocks at level 18. You can join a mayors' club, which is a group of up to 25 players who can chat or make deals with each other. As mayor, you lay down the roads, place houses, stores, and factories, collect taxes, and arrange deals with other cities. You must also provide services for your citizens, the sims, when the options become available—power, water, sewage treatment, sanitation, and education. If you neglect expanding services and the overall city upkeep, your sims move out, you lose tax revenue, and the city stagnates. First, though, they can and will talk back to you (with their words appearing in an opinion bubble above a house or other property), tell you what's working and what isn't, although their responses are admittedly canned. Some updates and upgrades may change the way we record usage data and metrics, or change data stored on your device. Any changes will always be consistent with ea's privacy and cookie policy. You can withdraw your consent at any time by removing or disabling this app, visiting help.ea.com for assistance, or by contacting us at attn: privacy / mobile consent withdrawal, electronic arts inc., 209 redwood shores pkwy, redwood city, ca, usa. Ships of battle - age of pirates - warship battle 2.6.28 apk + mod (unlimited money,free shopping) + data for android gangstar vegas: world of crime 4.4.0m apk + mod (money/vip gold/diamonds/anti ban) + data for android note - make sure that you disable your internet connection while playing this game. However, i think a better idea is to know exactly what you're looking for and to play to the requirements, not to stock. If you have a bunch of residences that are looking for a certain material, go crazy on stockpiling those as at least you know you'll be able to quickly in and spend those on actual upgrades once they are ready to go. Once you unlock the trade hq, i recommend using it to sell your excess rare parts (i.e. It'd been 10 years since its last outing - simcity 4, which retained the classic blocky approach to city building. However, the reboot overhauled the game entirely, as it surely had to -  it received a brand new game engine, a fully 3d experience and an online home, where players could trade with others in close proximity. The problem is - this was the only choice: there wasn't an offline mode. Cue server issues, downtime and many more problems, and what was left was a disastrous relaunch for a much beloved franchise. Daniel is a father of two boys, husband to jenb and works in digital marketing for the 2nd largest hospital system in florida. He's founder of dadtography.com, a travel & video blogger and avid digital photographer. Daniel is a father of two boys, husband to jenb and works in digital marketing for the 2nd largest hospital system in florida. He's founder of dadtography.com, a travel & video blogger and avid digital photographer. Be a dadtographer... Copyright © 2020 dadtography, llc · read our privacy & user generated content policy · built on genesis the content of this website does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. When traffic congestion begins to roll over, the adviser will notify you of this, and a red exclamation mark will appear next to the road icon. Modernization of roads. Click on the upgrade icon with helmet and traffic light. You will see a view of the city with a highlighted road network. Green / black roads = good. Red roads = bad! The yellow light in this view indicates average traffic congestion. In the event of a sharp increase in population in this area, residents will complain! My biggest complaint has to do with the game's decision to limit some of the cooler buildings to premium currency buys (and at amounts that you'll never earn in-game). Meanwhile, buildit's strongest facet is its graphics. Simply put, i absolutely love the visuals in SimCity BuildIt. Players have full rotational control of their town and all the structures are highly detailed and simply look great. Your city is also teeming with life — zoom in and you'll see cars on the street, stoplights, and even traffic jams when that becomes a problem for your city. But as often as not, the deals are for your storage and expansion parts. Money generated from these deals come at the expense of your city's growth, so think long and hard about giving these parts up. You're the mayor, and have the final word. Tapping the global trade hq, which i always think of as the world trade center, shows items that other sims have put up for sale. Touching the building brings up a list of offers, which you can refresh every 30 seconds. You can make the road upgrade smaller by running another road into it, this will help you save significant amount of coins. As a rule of thumb, you should request for new upgrading plan, whenever the upgrade request asking for 2~3+ items that you do not have. Always go forward with the upgrading plans that require materials only from the factory. At mid point in game with upgraded factories, you will find yourself loaded with the basic materials. 2. Slow down on building the stores, refresh the upgrades, and only upgrade if you do have the materials that can be made from your existing buildings. Your futuristic city adviser will tell you what products your neighbor wants to buy. Click yes !, to accept the offer or no, thanks !, to refuse the sale. There are ten different omega products. Based on the results of using the omega research center, you receive a random omega product. How to unlock a futuristic city? Click on the neomall site between the wu tower and the mountains. If you meet the requirements for access to futuristic cities, an adviser will appear on the screen, which will guide you into the future. If you change your mind and want to remove the lot from the shelf of the warehouse, click on the red button (but think carefully - it will cost you simcash, and the goods will be lost!). If you have run out of empty boxes at the warehouse, but you want to put up for sale other goods right now, you can purchase additional boxes for simcash. Click on the box with the yellow sticker in the lower right corner of the warehouse. Now you will send your main facebook account (that you have connected SimCity BuildIt to) a friend request that you accept. Now you're able to start SimCity BuildIt with that facebook account and you will see your main city in the friends list. If you want to build your feeder city right there are some things that you will need to mind, otherwise it might get less effective. This takes a little time, i'd say some hours but you can simply do it on breaks and don't need to do it all straight. Whenever you overbuilt, you run a chance of losing a building completely, and it can happen to your biggest building, so do not risk it! If you have to choose between placing your services, pick the area where you have the most dense population. This means if you only have enough money for a fire station or police station, you better make sure those cover your tallest buildings. Your tallest buildings will have the most impact on your city in terms of happiness and money. Because it works at the first time after you install it, but if you want to play it free forever then you must turn off any internet ln your phone forever even after you close the game because the game is still running at the background and it will sync with ea server at the background while you turning on the internet and the server will detect that it's illegal and will notify you that data is corrupt, that means your app is blacklisted already so if you don't mind with internet forever, this mod is for you, but if you still want to use internet after playing, don't download it or you will regret it losing all your record because it is already blacklisted note - make sure that you disable your internet connection while playing this game. But as often as not, the deals are for your storage and expansion parts. Money generated from these deals come at the expense of your city's growth, so think long and hard about giving these parts up. You're the mayor, and have the final word. Tapping the global trade hq, which i always think of as the world trade center, shows items that other sims have put up for sale. Touching the building brings up a list of offers, which you can refresh every 30 seconds. What are these deals that constantly offer my city? This is just a convenient way to earn Simoleons and free up some storage space. Click on the icon for the image of speech in which the simoleon is drawn as soon as it appears in your city. To close the deal, click "yes!" And the Simoleons will appear on your account. To opt out, click "no, thanks." No one will be offended, and soon new offers will appear. If at the moment you do not have a product, but you would like the transaction to take place (perhaps these products will appear soon), click on the screen outside the transaction window and then it will be saved on your card.

[gracieladowling-blog]

Merge Information Vinyl Me, Please Interview — Vinyl Me, Please

If you would like to merge a bunch of audio tracks into one file, AVS Audio Editor is always ready to help, even if your input information are of various codecs. I made this so you possibly can obtain it and use it to merge manualy. Extract mergeMP3.7z somewhere the place no admin rights are wanted, mergemp3.com eg. Desktop and replica your MP3 information that you simply wish to merge in MP3s folder and than double-clik file. It'll merge these MP3 information into one and put it within the folder Merge_MP3. Easy as that. EArt Audio Editor is another free audio editor. The MP3 Merger is ready to be a part of multiple audio files in various codecs. It exhibits an information waveform for each audio file uploaded and you should use this visual aid to edit the recordsdata with none inconvenience. Yow will discover numerous edit effects and filters you can use at your discretion. For every subject, do you wish to add, substitute, or reject the information? Arrows offer you decisions for each subject. Should you choose Substitute," the data on the precise will change the information in that category on the left. Should you choose Reject," the knowledge on the proper will be deleted when the data are merged. If there isn't any information in the corresponding subject on the left, you'll be able to select Add" to add the data. These fields embody information about dates and places as well as relationships.

Direct MP3 Joiner is an easy and quick audio tool to combine MP3s , in addition to merge or join MP3 recordsdata. With Direct MP3 Joiner, you may be a part of multiple music MP3 files into a bigger MP3 file in a cut up second. You'll be able to merge, combine and be a part of MP3 audio recordsdata with blazing velocity, with out recompressing and with out high quality loss. Our MP3 Joiner works with audio recordsdata directly and the joined MP3 track will probably be prepared almost instantly. With our MP3 Merger, you'll be able to be part of your separate audiobook chapters into one huge audiobook or combine multiple music tracks into one non-stop audio CD.3. With the intention to save the merged MP3, select the audio output formats as MP3 in the "Profile" menu and click on "Convert" button. After seconds, you may playback the merged MP3 file on your pc. When the process completes, it should provide a link to download the combo. Moreover combing audio information , the crossfade feature of makes the merged songs circulation one into one other seamlessly. Then, you may reorder some audio blocks to patch a track cowl. Furthermore, as a traditional audio editor, WaveShop can lower, trim, merge MP3s, add audio transitions, normalize, amplify, reverse, fade audio, and so on.Cute Video Audio Merger is a simple utility, and it doesn't offer any video modifying options so you'll be able to't trim your video or edit it in any manner. The dearth of preview possibility for video can also be a giant flaw that some users won't like. Regardless of these flaws, the applying is rather simple to make use of and even the most basic users will be capable of handle it. We now have to mention that this software comes bundled with some pointless software program, but you possibly can select to not set up it during the setup process.A small number of buyer data can simply be merged instantly from the ChartMogul UI. Because the name suggests, MixPad is a free multi-observe mixing app for Mac and COMPUTER primarily designed to merge multiple audio tracks into a new file. But along with that, it can be used as a MP3 splitter to cut MP3 files into several pieces in a couple of clicks. Further more, you should utilize it to report and edit any audio as nicely. It's a full audio cutter and manager to trim, join, document, and edit audios in one place.The story of Merge Records is the story of American independence. What continues to set Merge aside from different labels trying to get music to fans' ears is that it hasn't built its status on a single band or sound, says Alex Ross, who writes about classical music for New Yorker magazine. Free Merge MP3 (version 7.eight.three) has a file measurement of 6.seventy four MB and is on the market for download from our website. Simply click the inexperienced Obtain button above to start out. Until now this system was downloaded 2223 times. We already checked that the download hyperlink to be safe, nonetheless to your own safety we recommend that you just scan the downloaded software together with your antivirus.The filename1.mp3" half defines the availability directory of your recordsdata. As well as, I've certainly not lost any elements of my information after doing a merger, and I have been merging with this app for numerous years. The interface is very simple, and merging data is tremendous quick. It appeared like Merge MP3 may work, and the fact that it does not re-encode was a plus for low bit rate streams. Moreover, this system was used just a few instances in the past. Then - VOILA - today (12-12-12), I made a decision to try once more and see if perhaps that toolbar had been removed, and it had, so I downloaded the app, and WOW - I am so completely satisfied to have this little fella again again!!! Needless to say, more than likely, is that I now have tons of merged recordsdata to make amends for, but it will be a pleasure to take action with this quick little app.so the method is: use the tool to merge all of your m4a recordsdata right into a smaller mp3 file. re-import the brand new merged file into itunes as an m4a file rename it as an m4b file. The parallel processing concept may also be used when creating complex insert effects — the place sound-making devices in the rack are patched on to results units. Once more, use the splitter circuit and merge the results all within one Spider Audio device. It doesn't offer the most complex options but that also means no want for many tuition and audio tech information - for the common user who wants to quickly merge MP3 recordsdata it appears ultimate.Someone mentioned on June 26 this did not work for them - the merged file could not be found anywhere. I don't know if this was their drawback, however I, too, found myself in that very same place a couple of instances - until I found why that happened, which turned out to be "my" fault. Once I open my apps, I have to click "Run As Administrator", and the few times I forgot to do this and easily opened the app and tried merging the information, NOTHING happened - no merger befell. As quickly as I noticed this, after all, I re-did the merger by FIRST clicking "Run As Administrator" and all was okay once more. So just a thought as to probably why you won't discover the merger anywhere you probably have your "Person Account Management Settings" turned on and need to "Run As Administrator" EARLIER THAN trying to merge recordsdata. Hope this "tip" might be of some assistance.

[womanwiththepoppytattoo]

“Codependency” is bullshit

7.26.20

I pulled the blog down for a while. I also deactivated my Facebook account. If I could have found a large rock to hide under, I would have. Why? Because I shared this blog, this very personal blog where I expose all of my pain as well as my most important thoughts, with a few people I thought might understand, might appreciate it, might care. Most of them didn't care enough to read it. The ones that did, (metaphorically speaking) backed away from me slowly. 

Grieving the loss of a child is extremely isolating; no one really wants to understand. Add in the complicating factors in my case, and what you get is an experience so far off the charts that literally no other human on Earth can understand what I'm going through. Or, so it seems to me at least.

And I know my writing is not perfect. My thinking is not perfect. Maybe I'm insufferably self-important or self-righteous. Maybe I'm actually delusional. When you speak your truth the way I am doing here, you make yourself vulnerable to all kinds of judgments. Nonetheless, speaking our truth is the most important work we can do.

In recoiling from the rejection of the people I was trying to connect with, I also lost my connection to Rey, my connection to the universal consciousness. When we put up walls to protect ourselves, they keep out everyone and everything. This is not the first time I have felt my connection to Rey dissipate. It happens sometimes when the bad memories overwhelm me. But I have come to understand that it is not that he is not there, it is that I am not receptive. The "interventions" occurred because I was receptive to them. There is no transmitter, there is only a receiver.

Rey's spirit is always with me; I am the one who must tune in to him. So last night as I lay in bed, I repeated over and over again, "I love you Rey." And in offering love, I opened myself up to receive love, and I did receive it.

So, today I am back, writing here again. Because what I need to say is too important to keep to myself. I was given what I was given for a reason.

I am going to dive in and talk about something I feel very passionate about. In fact, one of the reasons I feel so isolated is that I can't find a therapist I can work with because they are all so brainwashed by this particular ideology that when you reject it, they have nothing else to offer. I am referring to the ideology of "codependency."

There is not much that upsets me more than someone suggesting that, because I was the victim of a narcissist, I must be "codependent." A codependent is, according to the mythology, a pathetic creature who lacks self-esteem, self-love, and emotional independence, and who is bossy and controlling. This is a dogma that has taken hold of both the mental health profession and the subculture of survivor support groups. I have always instinctually rejected this ideology, but the only book I have found that validated my thinking on this was Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller.  With some determined Googling, you might also find the occasional blog post, like this one. Overall, though, there are too few voices standing up against this toxic ideology. 

I understand where it comes from. In the mental health profession, you can only fix the person in front of you. You can't fix society and you can't fix the abuser who doesn't want to be fixed. But what if the way we are "fixing" the victims is actually perpetuating myriad social problems, both the obvious and the not-so-obvious?

The version of the ideology of codependency that has spread through popular culture suggests that those of us who allegedly suffer from this malady have an unhealthy dependence on someone in our lives: we are addicted to an unbalanced relationship. But what is an addiction? It is not simply a dependence. We are dependent on oxygen, food, and water, and we do not call these addictions. Addiction could reasonably be defined as an unnatural dependence on something that substitutes for a real need. And connection to others is a real need. In fact, it is the one that we are usually using addictions to cover up.

We are all, to some degree, some of us more than others, starved for connection. We are surrounded by other humans, but the disfunction of our culture keeps us from being able to connect to each other except under certain special circumstances. This is especially true for introverts. So, when, after years of starving, we finally find this connection with someone, of course we grab onto it and we fight for it with everything we have.

One of those special circumstances is understanding: meeting another person who uniquely "gets you." Rey and I understood each other. In spite of the differences in age and background, we had a lot of important things in common. Of course, narcissists understand everyone: a very high degree of social intelligence is part of their pathology. Empaths - which is what I am - understand everyone too, in our own way. It is the same intelligence, the same need for connection, the same signals interpreted by different receiving equipment. But even beyond this, there was a predestined feel to our relationship that evoked nostalgia for me right from the start - he just felt like a piece of my soul. And I can only guess, based on his behavior, that something similar happened for him. I ignored a lot of "red flags", but, at the same time, I perceived him more truly than anyone else. I am the only person close to him who was not surprised by his death and who has not been surprised by anything anyone has told me about him since. I may be the only person who really understood him; and that is, of course, the reason why he was so uniquely cruel to me. The narcissist cannot stand to see his true self reflected back to him in the eyes of another, even if that person accepts and loves him. But avoidant people, including narcissists, need connection too, even if they are incapable of accepting it. They are driven by this need and by their own vehement rejection of it. Were it not so, they would just be simple con artists. I can't deny Rey screwed me over financially to an embarrassing degree, but he actually could have exploited me much more effectively and intelligently, and not ended up on the street, sleeping in other people's cars, if he had not been tripped up by his own emotions.

My point is, connection is a universal human need. We are not designed to be islands and meet all of our own emotional needs; nor are we meant to engage in only transactional relationships. Even if you reject the spiritual element, this is obvious from an evolutionary point of view. Humans evolved in small, tribal groups. We did not have millions of people to choose from: we were stuck with the few people we had for life. We did not have the luxury of cutting broken people out of our lives. We had to fix our relationships, and we had to fix each other; this was a necessity for survival. This is what we evolved to do and it is what we are supposed to do. Our modern culture tells us this is unhealthy; that we should have boundaries and only worry about ourselves. That we cannot fix anyone else. And, for this brief moment in history, this last part is true; because the narcissists and other broken people today have an infinite number of new, unsuspecting victims to choose from, so they have no motivation to change their behavior. But this does not mean that empathy and unconditional love are pathological; it does not mean that putting up walls to protect ourselves from each other is natural or healthy. It is not. The empath is not broken; society is broken. And we are all paying enormously high prices for this brokenness, whether we acknowledge it or not.

The codependency paradigm is a symptom of what I call our society's toxic individualism. The implications of toxic individualism are visible in literally all of our social problems. This is why I cannot be silent about it.

For now, I will leave you with a quote from an important book I just finished reading, One Mind by Larry Dossey, M.D. If the metaphysical aspects of my writing appeal to you at all, I recommend this book.

My message is that there is a way of recalibrating our collective response to all of these problems - a move that then permits a cascade of solutions to fall into place. This approach requires rebooting our ethical and moral stance toward the earth and toward one another. It is about changing channels, redialing our basic concepts of who we are and how we are related to one another and to the terrestrial crucible that sustains us. I believe that the concept of the unitary, collective One Mind, a level of intelligence of which the individual minds of all sentient creature are a part, is a vision that is powerful enough to make a difference in how we approach all the challenges we face - not as a mere intellectual concept, but as something we feel in the deepest way possible. As Hesse said in the prologue to Demian, "I have been and still am a seeker, but I no longer seek in stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me."

[superjournalslibrary-blog]

Bible Descriptions of Backsliding

 Exchanging Fountains for BROKEN CISTERNS

…they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

Jeremiah 2:13

When I was a medical student, I was sent on a working visit to Danfa, a Ghanaian village, for two weeks. Once, during a field trip, we came across another remote village that had no running water. Since the village had no running water, they had dug a large hole in the ground where water gathered; often, this water was dirty and brownish.

They Drank the Dirty Brown Water!

The people in the village bathed, defecated and urinated in it. At the same time they drank from it and used it to cook. This water obviously gave them various diseases and sicknesses.

In the Bible, backsliding people are likened to people who have access to clear running water, but exchange it for dirty smelly water - just like what I saw in that village.

I am sure you would wonder why someone would leave sweet, fresh, infection-free water, for sickness-infested and dirty water. There are believers who have had access to a life of holiness and godliness. However, they have rejected that to live a sinful and demon-controlled life.

God has given you an alternative to the dirty brown water. God is telling you that when you backslide you are going back to something terrible which will eventually kill you. He is telling you not to do something as absurd as drinking that muddy water again.

Becoming a Degenerate Wild Vine

...art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine...?

Jeremiah 2:21

The next Bible description of backsliding is that of a good plant which has degenerated into a thorny and strange vine.

Here, God shows us how a farmer's plantation from which he was expecting a good yield turned into a field of thorns and useless weeds. You, the believer, are that beautiful plant of the Lord. Why on earth would you want to allow yourself to degenerate into a thorny and worthless shrub? This is how God sees you when you backslide.

God's problem with Israel was that He had invested so much love, care, tenderness and time into their lives. Yet they had turned into disobedient, hardhearted and wicked people. Will you allow yourself to become a worthless creature before God? The answer should be a definite "No!"

Becoming a Wild Camel

...thou art a swift dromedary traversing her ways.

Jeremiah 2:23

A backsliding Christian is also described as a swift dromedary traversing her ways. A dromedary is another name for a camel. It is a wild and swift creature, which strays anywhere.

The heart of a backsliding person is as unrestrained as a wild camel. It is not under the control of anything. It is loose and wild. I remember some years ago I went to visit a backsliding Christian in London.

My Friend Had Gone Wild

The best way I could describe this person was loose and wild. I was trying to bring him back to the Lord. It took me a long time to locate his house. I eventually got to his flat after midnight. He was surprised to see me, and welcomed me into his home. As we got to talking, he realized why I had come. Being a one-time mature Christian who had backslidden, he knew all the Scriptures I intended to quote.

So at a point he interrupted me and said, "Listen, I know what you are going to say, and I know all the Bible verses you are armed with tonight. But I want you to know that I don't really care."

So he took out his cigarette and started smoking right in front of me. He said, "I want you to see me smoking. Because I am not under any restrictions."

Then he took out an album and showed me some pictures he had taken with his girlfriend. Some of these pictures were quite suggestive and lewd.

He said, "I want you to see me as I really am. This is how I am now. This is what I do. And there is nothing anyone can do about it!"

Once again he was making the point that he could do anything he wanted to, and that no one could control him. You see, backsliders are like wild camels which have no restrictions and boundaries anymore. Your Christian life is supposed to be governed by God's Word.

When a person backslides he begins to do what he wants to do, and not what God wants him to do. He's like a wild animal with no checks and controls. God's Word gives us guidelines that are for our own good but a backslider chooses to live outside God's law. What a pity!

Becoming a Wild Ass

A wild ass used to the wilderness, that snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure; in her occasion who can turn her away...

Jeremiah 2:24

I prefer the Berkeley translation of this verse, which says:

Like a wild donkey accustomed to the wilderness, in the heat of her passion snuffing up the wind: in the time of her mating who can turn her lust away?

Jeremiah 2:24 (New Berkeley Version)

Many backsliders are like wild animals heated up with passion looking for a mate. The Amplified Bible puts it this way: No males seeking her need weary themselves; in her month they will find her seeking them.

She Told Me, "I Have No Time For You!"

I remember one time going on a visit to search out a backsliding sister. I went with a good friend of mine, with whom I was doing some pastoral work. When we got to this backsliding sister's house, I told her that we had come to find out how she was doing in the Lord. Her house was in a part of the city I didn't know very well and it had taken us about three hours to find the house.

When we got there she looked at me with a straight face and said, "I cannot talk to you now because I am cooking."

Then I said, "We have come a long way to see you, and won't you even offer us a seat?"

She insisted that she had no time for us. So after mumbling a hurried exhortation to stay with the Lord, we scurried off. This young girl, who had no time for us, found time for an unbeliever boy who was 'chasing' her. She had no time for the Christian brothers who wanted to help her in her spiritual life. But the unbeliever boyfriend had no problem gaining access to her.

The Moffatt translation of the Bible elaborates further: "No male need trouble to search for her; all can find her at mating time."

When you become a backsliding Christian, the Bible says you become prey to unbelievers. Unbelievers can easily lead you away to sin.

Show me a backsliding Christian, and I'll show you an easy prey for the devil and his cohorts.

Satan capitalizes on the fleshly passions of backsliders, and has little problem finishing them off.

A Lady Who Forgets Her Ornaments

Can a maid FORGET her ORNAMENTS... yet my people have forgotten me…

Jeremiah 2:32

According to Jeremiah, the backslidden person is like a woman who forgets to put on her ornaments.

Many women are attached to their earrings, necklaces and make-up. Some women will never appear in public without adorning themselves with these accessories. (Unfortunately, many ladies substitute outer beauty for inner beauty. They have no time to pray, or read their Bibles but they spend a lot of time putting on all sorts of ornaments everyday!)

I must say I have rarely seen a lady who is not attached to her trinkets. God compares the backslidden person to a young lady who has forgotten to beautify herself with her numerous dresses, shoes, necklaces, earrings, mascara and the rest. How unusual!

Jeremiah realized that these things were part and parcel of every normal woman, and that women were very attached to these trappings.

He likened this bond between a woman and her ornamental accessories to the relationship that exists between a believer and God.

God describes the act of backsliding as a woman forgetting her ornaments.

In other words, backsliding and going away from God is a very unusual thing.

It may not look unusual in the natural, but in the sight of God and the angels it is a very strange phenomenon indeed.

Some people remind me of this very thing. Once upon a time they used to sing, praise, worship and even lead other Christians.

Today, They Are Just Nominal Christians

Today, they are just nominal Christians. One thing I am sure of is that some Christians do not even know that they are backslidden.

If a vibrant charismatic Christian leader becomes just a nominal principled individual in society, he must understand that he has backslidden. Although people may consider him a good person, in the sight of God he is fallen from the high state that he used to be in - leading people to the Lord, exhorting them, sharing the Word, laying hands on people and so on.

One person comes to mind every time I think of this scripture. She was a vibrant, witnessing and fruitful Christian.

"Oh Pastor, We Still Go to Church"

Now and again, when I see her I ask, "How is your Christian life?"

She smiles and says, "Oh Pastor, we still go to church."

All I can say for her is that she is a good and moral person who does no harm to anything or anyone. But there used to be more to her Christianity than that! Can a person who was so attached to the active, fruit-bearing Christian experience be separated from this state so easily? I wonder how the heavenly cloud of witnesses feel when they see this happen. Jeremiah could only describe it in one way - a woman separated from her ornaments.

A Bride Who Forgets Her WEDDING GOWN

Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a BRIDE her ATTIRE...

Jeremiah 2:32

Many brides are in love with their wedding gowns. Before the wedding day, they hang them in their wardrobes to ensure that they don't get stained. Often, the gown is prepared in advance for the great day (and some gowns cost more than a year's salary!).

The bride's gown is worn for only a few hours, but the bride spares no expense when she is buying it. Many women are thrilled to be the bride - the star of the day, the most beautiful woman of the day, the princess of the moment. She walks down the aisle in splendor!

No Woman Forgets Her Wedding Gown!

God is saying that when you go away from Christ, you are like a bride who forgot to wear her wedding gown on her wedding day. I think if this were ever to happen it would enter the "Guinness Book of Records"! If anyone reading this has ever heard of a bride going for her wedding forgetting to put on her wedding gown, please write to me immediately!

This is why God is so horrified when Christians forget their God and backslide. It is simply implausible, inconceivable, and beyond belief. The Bible maintains that a bride cannot be divorced from her wedding dress. No! And that is why God was horrified when you first showed signs of backsliding.

A Lover Playing the Harlot

...thou hast PLAYED THE HARLOT with many lovers…

Jeremiah 3:1

God compares the backslider to a woman who is married to the man of her dreams, but then decides to go after other men. She jumps over the wall at night, leaves her dear, beloved, charming prince in bed and goes to hunt for “fresh blood”.

I know that many people find the profession of prostitution horrifying and repulsive. They cannot imagine how people can abuse their bodies for a living.

I remember a lovely woman who had a respectable husband. After some years of marriage, this lady began to have affairs with other men. She would climb over the wall and run away at night, when her noble husband was asleep. Can you imagine that?

But let me ask you something else. If your wife not only left you, but went out into the streets to become a prostitute, would that not even be worse? How would it feel like to pass by the “red light” district and discover your wife busily trading her wares?

You would be shattered!

This is exactly how God feels when He sees the children He so loves standing out there in the world and selling themselves to the works of Satan. How sad!

Eating Your Own Vomit

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

Proverbs 26:11

When it comes to food I am very particular about what I eat. My mother always gave me piping hot food, so I am not used to eating food that is not very hot. I have decided not to eat anything I don't want to eat.

I remember once during a visit to the Far East, I sat at table with some dignitaries.

I must admit it was a very difficult experience for me having to swallow a few morsels of what looked like eels, snakes, clams and so on.

God knows how difficult it is for us to eat things we do not like. For most of us there are things we just wouldn't eat, even if we were starving. For example, your own vomit.

I recall one particular day when I saw a dog in my house vomiting some disgusting, pudding-like substance.

The Dog Ate the Strange Pudding

It was so smelly I just avoided that area of the house. About an hour later, I passed by and I was very shocked to find the dog eagerly lapping up the pudding of vomit. How utterly disgusting! I wondered why the dog was eating it. Was there no other food?

Some of you must have seen this phenomenon before. Well, that is exactly what you look like when you go back to your old ways, old boyfriends, old girlfriends and old habits you once vomited out. God is utterly surprised at you.

This reminds us of the prodigal son who ended up eating pig feed.

The prodigal son is another description of the backslidden believer. He demanded his share of his father's property and walked out of his father's house. He journeyed to a far country and wasted all his substance on riotous living. In the end he had to feed with pigs.

And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat...

Luke 15:16

And that is what it means to backslide. If you have the opportunity to eat at table with your Christian family, why must you end up eating with pigs?

Dear Christian friend, I have tried in these last few pages to describe the horrors of backsliding as graphically as I possibly can. What else can I say? If this message is not clear to you, you may either be deaf, blind or simply dishonest. God is telling us clearly that once we have come to know Him, we will do well to stay with Him. There is no turning back and no falling away.

But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition...

Hebrews 10:39

…No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God.

Luke 9:62

by Dag Heward-Mills

[sohlkim]

"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise." Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures. "Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise." In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement. One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, "Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead." She does not answer, and the question is repeated. "Is the bird I am holding living or dead?" Still she doesn't answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive. The old woman's silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter. Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. "I don't know", she says. "I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands." Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility. For parading their power and her helplessness, the young visitors are reprimanded, told they are responsible not only for the act of mockery but also for the small bundle of life sacrificed to achieve its aims. The blind woman shifts attention away from assertions of power to the instrument through which that power is exercised. Speculation on what (other than its own frail body) that bird-in-the-hand might signify has always been attractive to me, but especially so now thinking, as I have been, about the work I do that has brought me to this company. So I choose to read the bird as language and the woman as a practiced writer. She is worried about how the language she dreams in, given to her at birth, is handled, put into service, even withheld from her for certain nefarious purposes. Being a writer she thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one has control, but mostly as agency - as an act with consequences. So the question the children put to her: "Is it living or dead?" is not unreal because she thinks of language as susceptible to death, erasure; certainly imperiled and salvageable only by an effort of the will. She believes that if the bird in the hands of her visitors is dead the custodians are responsible for the corpse. For her a dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences. Official language smitheryed to sanction ignorance and preserve privilege is a suit of armor polished to shocking glitter, a husk from which the knight departed long ago. Yet there it is: dumb, predatory, sentimental. Exciting reverence in schoolchildren, providing shelter for despots, summoning false memories of stability, harmony among the public. She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love. But she knows tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience. The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas. The old woman is keenly aware that no intellectual mercenary, nor insatiable dictator, no paid-for politician or demagogue; no counterfeit journalist would be persuaded by her thoughts. There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like paté-producing geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness. Underneath the eloquence, the glamor, the scholarly associations, however stirring or seductive, the heart of such language is languishing, or perhaps not beating at all - if the bird is already dead. She has thought about what could have been the intellectual history of any discipline if it had not insisted upon, or been forced into, the waste of time and life that rationalizations for and representations of dominance required - lethal discourses of exclusion blocking access to cognition for both the excluder and the excluded. The conventional wisdom of the Tower of Babel story is that the collapse was a misfortune. That it was the distraction, or the weight of many languages that precipitated the tower's failed architecture. That one monolithic language would have expedited the building and heaven would have been reached. Whose heaven, she wonders? And what kind? Perhaps the achievement of Paradise was premature, a little hasty if no one could take the time to understand other languages, other views, other narratives period. Had they, the heaven they imagined might have been found at their feet. Complicated, demanding, yes, but a view of heaven as life; not heaven as post-life. She would not want to leave her young visitors with the impression that language should be forced to stay alive merely to be. The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. Although its poise is sometimes in displacing experience it is not a substitute for it. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie. When a President of the United States thought about the graveyard his country had become, and said, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. But it will never forget what they did here," his simple words are exhilarating in their life-sustaining properties because they refused to encapsulate the reality of 600, 000 dead men in a cataclysmic race war. Refusing to monumentalize, disdaining the "final word", the precise "summing up", acknowledging their "poor power to add or detract", his words signal deference to the uncapturability of the life it mourns. It is the deference that moves her, that recognition that language can never live up to life once and for all. Nor should it. Language can never "pin down" slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable. Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue? Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference - the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives. "Once upon a time, ..." visitors ask an old woman a question. Who are they, these children? What did they make of that encounter? What did they hear in those final words: "The bird is in your hands"? A sentence that gestures towards possibility or one that drops a latch? Perhaps what the children heard was "It's not my problem. I am old, female, black, blind. What wisdom I have now is in knowing I cannot help you. The future of language is yours." They stand there. Suppose nothing was in their hands? Suppose the visit was only a ruse, a trick to get to be spoken to, taken seriously as they have not been before? A chance to interrupt, to violate the adult world, its miasma of discourse about them, for them, but never to them? Urgent questions are at stake, including the one they have asked: "Is the bird we hold living or dead?" Perhaps the question meant: "Could someone tell us what is life? What is death?" No trick at all; no silliness. A straightforward question worthy of the attention of a wise one. An old one. And if the old and wise who have lived life and faced death cannot describe either, who can? But she does not; she keeps her secret; her good opinion of herself; her gnomic pronouncements; her art without commitment. She keeps her distance, enforces it and retreats into the singularity of isolation, in sophisticated, privileged space. Nothing, no word follows her declaration of transfer. That silence is deep, deeper than the meaning available in the words she has spoken. It shivers, this silence, and the children, annoyed, fill it with language invented on the spot. "Is there no speech," they ask her, "no words you can give us that helps us break through your dossier of failures? Through the education you have just given us that is no education at all because we are paying close attention to what you have done as well as to what you have said? To the barrier you have erected between generosity and wisdom? "We have no bird in our hands, living or dead. We have only you and our important question. Is the nothing in our hands something you could not bear to contemplate, to even guess? Don't you remember being young when language was magic without meaning? When what you could say, could not mean? When the invisible was what imagination strove to see? When questions and demands for answers burned so brightly you trembled with fury at not knowing? "Do we have to begin consciousness with a battle heroines and heroes like you have already fought and lost leaving us with nothing in our hands except what you have imagined is there? Your answer is artful, but its artfulness embarrasses us and ought to embarrass you. Your answer is indecent in its self-congratulation. A made-for-television script that makes no sense if there is nothing in our hands. "Why didn't you reach out, touch us with your soft fingers, delay the sound bite, the lesson, until you knew who we were? Did you so despise our trick, our modus operandi you could not see that we were baffled about how to get your attention? We are young. Unripe. We have heard all our short lives that we have to be responsible. What could that possibly mean in the catastrophe this world has become; where, as a poet said, "nothing needs to be exposed since it is already barefaced." Our inheritance is an affront. You want us to have your old, blank eyes and see only cruelty and mediocrity. Do you think we are stupid enough to perjure ourselves again and again with the fiction of nationhood? How dare you talk to us of duty when we stand waist deep in the toxin of your past? "You trivialize us and trivialize the bird that is not in our hands. Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon's hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly - once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation. "Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company. "Tell us about ships turned away from shorelines at Easter, placenta in a field. Tell us about a wagonload of slaves, how they sang so softly their breath was indistinguishable from the falling snow. How they knew from the hunch of the nearest shoulder that the next stop would be their last. How, with hands prayered in their sex, they thought of heat, then sun. Lifting their faces as though it was there for the taking. Turning as though there for the taking. They stop at an inn. The driver and his mate go in with the lamp leaving them humming in the dark. The horse's void steams into the snow beneath its hooves and its hiss and melt are the envy of the freezing slaves. "The inn door opens: a girl and a boy step away from its light. They climb into the wagon bed. The boy will have a gun in three years, but now he carries a lamp and a jug of warm cider. They pass it from mouth to mouth. The girl offers bread, pieces of meat and something more: a glance into the eyes of the one she serves. One helping for each man, two for each woman. And a look. They look back. The next stop will be their last. But not this one. This one is warmed." It's quiet again when the children finish speaking, until the woman breaks into the silence. "Finally", she says, "I trust you now. I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How lovely it is, this thing we have done - together."

[spoopy-action-at-distance]

Some more Whale Weekly:

Chapter 4: Only One Bed has resulted in Ishmael developing a burgeoning crush, to balance out the other crush he developed the previous night on some random guy at the bar. He gets sleep-hugged and starts fantasizing about matrimony and his stepmother and that one time he had sleep paralysis. Queequeg attempts to throw him off by acting weird. It is not very successful.

Chapter 5: Ishmael takes his kinky hindside back downstairs and appreciates the skin tones of the other patrons like one would do a cheese tray - complete with opinions about fragrance to go with them. Queequeg is ignoring him in favour of dragging dishes across the table with his harpoon. How wude.

Chapter 6: Ishmael savours the multicultural town he's in. Or more like he savours the men. So many men! So many different kinds! All of them seamen! It's like a candy store for someone who only likes liquorice! The place is misunderstood and underappreciated, its houses having been dragged from the sea like whale carcasses. Whale oil, so much whale oil. Whale oil for women being exchanged for whales waiting for their sailor boyfriends. Where were we?

Chapter 7: Ishmael barges into another church and trips over Queequeg. This, together with some memorial plaques, sends him spiralling straight into another philosophical tailspin, this time starting at death at sea and ending with renouncing his oysterdom.

Chapter 8: Enter Father Mapple, a priest. He is a former whaler with unusual ship mannerisms, which obviously means that Ishmael is into him too. Everything Father Mapple does is loaded with deep marine significance. Everything in the church is loaded with deep marine significance. No one has spoken a word yet and Ishmael is already having a deep spiritual experience.

Chapter 9: The sermon is about how defying orders makes you a miserable wretch who can only make up for it by being eaten - you guessed it - by a godly whale. Father Mapple, an inveterate tourist attraction, has been giving this one for ten years and adding a new detail or piece of ship lingo on every round.

Chapter 10: Ishmael finds Queequeg again, minding his own business. This does not deter Ishmael, who now becomes convinced that he has found a perfect Sigma Male TM. He broadcasts his vibes so hard that Queequeg decides he might as well make the most of it and become his sugar daddy.