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I’m about to turn 18, and my single-ish mom is 29 weeks pregnant. How do I help her as much as possible?
2024.05.29 06:36 a_winters_day I’m about to turn 18, and my single-ish mom is 29 weeks pregnant. How do I help her as much as possible?
I’m not quite sure how to start this, but the main goal of this post is to hopefully gain some advice on how to be as much as a help to my mother (39F) as possible, through her third trimester and past postpartum.
For some context, this baby will be my mother’s fourth child, however, he’s her first child with her current boyfriend (35?M). The rest of us have the same father who she was married to for around 18 years, until a few years ago. She has been with her current partner for two years. (Their anniversary was recently)
My father was quite abusive and my mom was left to do most things regarding us children alone, as a very young woman.
I do not want this pregnancy to be anything like that. However, I’m not sure that her current partner is completely ready for this father role. Which is fair, considering this is his first child and this was an accidental pregnancy.
He has yet to move in with us, which I am sure my mother is concerned about, because he has had since December to do so and it is now late May. He is a slow person in general and takes his time, but my mother has expressed to him many times that she would like for him to be moved in as soon as possible. He lives with his mom and brother as a caregiver figure of sorts for his mother (To give him so grace… but it’s barely that). However, we live extremely close and it would be very easy for him to get to her.
This next piece of context is extremely important!! I have a brother (13) who is special needs. He has a chromosome disorder so rare he’s the only person on earth with it. It’s quite hard to explain, but he needs 24/7 supervision. And he’s not easy to manage. Thankfully, he has a caregiver that helps some days of the week. But on the days he doesn’t, he is a lot for my mother to handle. I help the best I can, but I often feel like I can’t do enough to be a good help after her baby is born.
I am constantly researching things about pregnancy, birth, postpartum, babies, and more. I think instagram thinks i’m expecting at this point. But I’m not, and I’ve never been. I don’t know how to help in ways that are worthwhile. What can I do to truly make my mom as happy as possible? And to make this her best pregnancy experience yet?
I clean and make her breakfast (sometimes on breakfast… i tried to make her a snack yesterday and ended up just wasting food, and it’s things like that that make me wonder if I’m making things worse by trying to help. Maybe i’d just be getting in the way) but for some reason i feel like nothing is enough.
I know there’s only so much I can do. But sometimes i wish I could take the baby and raise him as my own away from her, so she could finally spend part of her just for herself, not taking care of others.
Also, I don’t have my drivers license, and don’t plan on getting it because the drivers where I live are very bad. We got in a car accident last month, and I’ve felt shaken up in the car ever since. I bring that up because it means i can’t go get stuff for her postpartum, unless I use my electric bike. I would like to be able to help in that way, though.
I just graduated high school, so I’ve been getting lots of money. I’ve been trying to either save it or spend it on the baby and my mom. I also have an internship for June that will make me over 1 or 2,000 dollars I can’t remember. I wanted to give it all to her. Maybe pay part of the hospital bill? I know those are really bad.
She’s also been stressed about money, I think. For some reason, her managers won’t give her shifts. Her partner works at the same place, but since he lives with his mom, he isn’t working and is focusing on pharmacy school stuff. Maybe i’m projecting my own feelings, (Because from time to time i resent them for getting pregnant) but i can imagine she’s upset he isn’t thinking ahead to all the things this baby will need.. all the expenses… etc.
Anyway, that was a lot of rambling, sorry. If anyone has advice for me on how to helpful without getting in the way, please let me know. I need it very much, and it’s eternally appreciated. Even if you just list off things people would’ve helped you with when you were pregnant and postpartum.
She doesn’t like me helping because i’m a (her) kid, but it feels like my duty as the eldest. I might update this if i remember more things but for now :) thank you
submitted by a_winters_day to Advice [link] [comments]
For some context, this baby will be my mother’s fourth child, however, he’s her first child with her current boyfriend (35?M). The rest of us have the same father who she was married to for around 18 years, until a few years ago. She has been with her current partner for two years. (Their anniversary was recently)
My father was quite abusive and my mom was left to do most things regarding us children alone, as a very young woman.
I do not want this pregnancy to be anything like that. However, I’m not sure that her current partner is completely ready for this father role. Which is fair, considering this is his first child and this was an accidental pregnancy.
He has yet to move in with us, which I am sure my mother is concerned about, because he has had since December to do so and it is now late May. He is a slow person in general and takes his time, but my mother has expressed to him many times that she would like for him to be moved in as soon as possible. He lives with his mom and brother as a caregiver figure of sorts for his mother (To give him so grace… but it’s barely that). However, we live extremely close and it would be very easy for him to get to her.
This next piece of context is extremely important!! I have a brother (13) who is special needs. He has a chromosome disorder so rare he’s the only person on earth with it. It’s quite hard to explain, but he needs 24/7 supervision. And he’s not easy to manage. Thankfully, he has a caregiver that helps some days of the week. But on the days he doesn’t, he is a lot for my mother to handle. I help the best I can, but I often feel like I can’t do enough to be a good help after her baby is born.
I am constantly researching things about pregnancy, birth, postpartum, babies, and more. I think instagram thinks i’m expecting at this point. But I’m not, and I’ve never been. I don’t know how to help in ways that are worthwhile. What can I do to truly make my mom as happy as possible? And to make this her best pregnancy experience yet?
I clean and make her breakfast (sometimes on breakfast… i tried to make her a snack yesterday and ended up just wasting food, and it’s things like that that make me wonder if I’m making things worse by trying to help. Maybe i’d just be getting in the way) but for some reason i feel like nothing is enough.
I know there’s only so much I can do. But sometimes i wish I could take the baby and raise him as my own away from her, so she could finally spend part of her just for herself, not taking care of others.
Also, I don’t have my drivers license, and don’t plan on getting it because the drivers where I live are very bad. We got in a car accident last month, and I’ve felt shaken up in the car ever since. I bring that up because it means i can’t go get stuff for her postpartum, unless I use my electric bike. I would like to be able to help in that way, though.
I just graduated high school, so I’ve been getting lots of money. I’ve been trying to either save it or spend it on the baby and my mom. I also have an internship for June that will make me over 1 or 2,000 dollars I can’t remember. I wanted to give it all to her. Maybe pay part of the hospital bill? I know those are really bad.
She’s also been stressed about money, I think. For some reason, her managers won’t give her shifts. Her partner works at the same place, but since he lives with his mom, he isn’t working and is focusing on pharmacy school stuff. Maybe i’m projecting my own feelings, (Because from time to time i resent them for getting pregnant) but i can imagine she’s upset he isn’t thinking ahead to all the things this baby will need.. all the expenses… etc.
Anyway, that was a lot of rambling, sorry. If anyone has advice for me on how to helpful without getting in the way, please let me know. I need it very much, and it’s eternally appreciated. Even if you just list off things people would’ve helped you with when you were pregnant and postpartum.
She doesn’t like me helping because i’m a (her) kid, but it feels like my duty as the eldest. I might update this if i remember more things but for now :) thank you
2024.05.29 06:30 a_winters_day I’m about to turn 18, and my single-ish mom is 29 weeks pregnant. How do I help her as much as possible?
advice pregnancy
I’m not quite sure how to start this, but the main goal of this post is to hopefully gain some advice on how to be as much as a help to my mother (39F) as possible, through her third trimester and past postpartum.
For some context, this baby will be my mother’s fourth child, however, he’s her first child with her current boyfriend (35?M). The rest of us have the same father who she was married to for around 18 years, until a few years ago. She has been with her current partner for two years. (Their anniversary was recently)
My father was quite abusive and my mom was left to do most things regarding us children alone, as a very young woman.
I do not want this pregnancy to be anything like that. However, I’m not sure that her current partner is completely ready for this father role. Which is fair, considering this is his first child and this was an accidental pregnancy.
He has yet to move in with us, which I am sure my mother is concerned about, because he has had since December to do so and it is now late May. He is a slow person in general and takes his time, but my mother has expressed to him many times that she would like for him to be moved in as soon as possible. He lives with his mom and brother as a caregiver figure of sorts for his mother (To give him so grace… but it’s barely that). However, we live extremely close and it would be very easy for him to get to her.
This next piece of context is extremely important!! I have a brother (13) who is special needs. He has a chromosome disorder so rare he’s the only person on earth with it. It’s quite hard to explain, but he needs 24/7 supervision. And he’s not easy to manage. Thankfully, he has a caregiver that helps some days of the week. But on the days he doesn’t, he is a lot for my mother to handle. I help the best I can, but I often feel like I can’t do enough to be a good help after her baby is born.
I am constantly researching things about pregnancy, birth, postpartum, babies, and more. I think instagram thinks i’m expecting at this point. But I’m not, and I’ve never been. I don’t know how to help in ways that are worthwhile. What can I do to truly make my mom as happy as possible? And to make this her best pregnancy experience yet?
I clean and make her breakfast (sometimes on breakfast… i tried to make her a snack yesterday and ended up just wasting food, and it’s things like that that make me wonder if I’m making things worse by trying to help. Maybe i’d just be getting in the way) but for some reason i feel like nothing is enough.
I know there’s only so much I can do. But sometimes i wish I could take the baby and raise him as my own away from her, so she could finally spend part of her just for herself, not taking care of others.
Also, I don’t have my drivers license, and don’t plan on getting it because the drivers where I live are very bad. We got in a car accident last month, and I’ve felt shaken up in the car ever since. I bring that up because it means i can’t go get stuff for her postpartum, unless I use my electric bike. I would like to be able to help in that way, though.
I just graduated high school, so I’ve been getting lots of money. I’ve been trying to either save it or spend it on the baby and my mom. I also have an internship for June that will make me over 1 or 2,000 dollars I can’t remember. I wanted to give it all to her. Maybe pay part of the hospital bill? I know those are really bad.
She’s also been stressed about money, I think. For some reason, her managers won’t give her shifts. Her partner works at the same place, but since he lives with his mom, he isn’t working and is focusing on pharmacy school stuff. Maybe i’m projecting my own feelings, (Because from time to time i resent them for getting pregnant) but i can imagine she’s upset he isn’t thinking ahead to all the things this baby will need.. all the expenses… etc.
Anyway, that was a lot of rambling, sorry. If anyone has advice for me on how to helpful without getting in the way, please let me know. I need it very much, and it’s eternally appreciated. Even if you just list off things people would’ve helped you with when you were pregnant and postpartum.
She doesn’t like me helping because i’m a (her) kid, but it feels like my duty as the eldest. I might update this if i remember more things but for now :) thank you
submitted by a_winters_day to u/a_winters_day [link] [comments]
I’m not quite sure how to start this, but the main goal of this post is to hopefully gain some advice on how to be as much as a help to my mother (39F) as possible, through her third trimester and past postpartum.
For some context, this baby will be my mother’s fourth child, however, he’s her first child with her current boyfriend (35?M). The rest of us have the same father who she was married to for around 18 years, until a few years ago. She has been with her current partner for two years. (Their anniversary was recently)
My father was quite abusive and my mom was left to do most things regarding us children alone, as a very young woman.
I do not want this pregnancy to be anything like that. However, I’m not sure that her current partner is completely ready for this father role. Which is fair, considering this is his first child and this was an accidental pregnancy.
He has yet to move in with us, which I am sure my mother is concerned about, because he has had since December to do so and it is now late May. He is a slow person in general and takes his time, but my mother has expressed to him many times that she would like for him to be moved in as soon as possible. He lives with his mom and brother as a caregiver figure of sorts for his mother (To give him so grace… but it’s barely that). However, we live extremely close and it would be very easy for him to get to her.
This next piece of context is extremely important!! I have a brother (13) who is special needs. He has a chromosome disorder so rare he’s the only person on earth with it. It’s quite hard to explain, but he needs 24/7 supervision. And he’s not easy to manage. Thankfully, he has a caregiver that helps some days of the week. But on the days he doesn’t, he is a lot for my mother to handle. I help the best I can, but I often feel like I can’t do enough to be a good help after her baby is born.
I am constantly researching things about pregnancy, birth, postpartum, babies, and more. I think instagram thinks i’m expecting at this point. But I’m not, and I’ve never been. I don’t know how to help in ways that are worthwhile. What can I do to truly make my mom as happy as possible? And to make this her best pregnancy experience yet?
I clean and make her breakfast (sometimes on breakfast… i tried to make her a snack yesterday and ended up just wasting food, and it’s things like that that make me wonder if I’m making things worse by trying to help. Maybe i’d just be getting in the way) but for some reason i feel like nothing is enough.
I know there’s only so much I can do. But sometimes i wish I could take the baby and raise him as my own away from her, so she could finally spend part of her just for herself, not taking care of others.
Also, I don’t have my drivers license, and don’t plan on getting it because the drivers where I live are very bad. We got in a car accident last month, and I’ve felt shaken up in the car ever since. I bring that up because it means i can’t go get stuff for her postpartum, unless I use my electric bike. I would like to be able to help in that way, though.
I just graduated high school, so I’ve been getting lots of money. I’ve been trying to either save it or spend it on the baby and my mom. I also have an internship for June that will make me over 1 or 2,000 dollars I can’t remember. I wanted to give it all to her. Maybe pay part of the hospital bill? I know those are really bad.
She’s also been stressed about money, I think. For some reason, her managers won’t give her shifts. Her partner works at the same place, but since he lives with his mom, he isn’t working and is focusing on pharmacy school stuff. Maybe i’m projecting my own feelings, (Because from time to time i resent them for getting pregnant) but i can imagine she’s upset he isn’t thinking ahead to all the things this baby will need.. all the expenses… etc.
Anyway, that was a lot of rambling, sorry. If anyone has advice for me on how to helpful without getting in the way, please let me know. I need it very much, and it’s eternally appreciated. Even if you just list off things people would’ve helped you with when you were pregnant and postpartum.
She doesn’t like me helping because i’m a (her) kid, but it feels like my duty as the eldest. I might update this if i remember more things but for now :) thank you
2024.05.29 06:19 Potential_House_9517 maximize your comfort
 | submitted by Potential_House_9517 to makeyourchoice [link] [comments] |
2024.05.29 06:18 3by7by37 [RANT] The Absolute Disastrous State of Telcos in SG.
![[RANT] The Absolute Disastrous State of Telcos in SG.](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/QbnVsTpNjy0Nr6iA1DjLDJz7egZQvJzRpAc6JeKs-bw.jpg "[RANT] The Absolute Disastrous State of Telcos in SG.") | Let me preface this by saying that I hugely appreciate how well-connected Singapore is as a whole. We have one of the fastest Internet speeds (according to Ookla) and also one of the highest smartphone adoption rates in the world, so it’s easy to take a lot of this infrastructure for granted. submitted by 3by7by37 to singapore [link] [comments] YET, the event that begets this post is my not-so-pleasant experience with 2 telcos (out of the big 3). Firstly, SingTel. SingTel has been one of my most trouble-free lines since a very long time ago… when it comes to connectivity. Their customer portal, on the other hand, has a long way to go. I often find that bills will suddenly be higher by a few dollars with no itemisation whatsoever to explain it. I also find OnePass to be highly redundant and clunky - the website would not even load on FireFox and I had to open the portal on a new tab in Safari just to stop it from self-destruct via endless refreshing. Next, M1. The main reason for this post. How am I supposed to use M1’s services if it will not even let me pay my bill? The issues with its lacklustre customer portal became apparent most when M1 introduced the “Bespoke” plans with its own application (My M1+). For starters, why is there even a need to segregate your own services as such? I could understand it if it was part of a transition to a newer model of services, but the current implementation of it is simply dumb and counter-intuitive. The first screenshot is myself trying to log into the My M1+ app, which tells me I’m not one of the cool kids and to head to the My M1 app instead. Dumb, but fine. The next screenshot is myself following instructions and landing myself in this limbo. I guess M1 wants to play Ask Your MotheFather? I am literally trying to give them money and M1 won’t take it 😭 P.S: my billing account won’t even show up on the desktop portal… so |
2024.05.29 05:56 Fillasophical Need hope
For about 2 years I have done nothing. I have been unemployed and have had an income through government supports which i no longer have and have lost my house my cats and my girlfriend. In December I stopped taking my medications because I was sure they were causing my issues. It seems like all my issues sky rocketed once I took risperidone for a few months. I feel like I have no personality, no thoughts, no feelings, except rage and distress. My life feels like a constant state of being in agony in my mind. I read and read and read and all I come to find is that apathy is permanent and you can't get rid of it. If this is the case why should I keep on living. What life is this? I can't do anything because I don't know what to do or rather I think why do anything. If my existence as a human is lacking the part what makes it a human experience then why do I exist. My whole life ive been babied. Mother paying my bills when I cant and making appointments for me and what not.
Ive spent so much time on NPD or ASPD or schizoid or AvPD that I'm convinced I have some sort of cluster b personality disorder and all I can think of is why would I even try to live my life when I am nothing more than a walking pathology and don't really have a personality just a brain that works off IF statements like a line of code.
People get to experience life without having to second guess themselves all the time but that's the only thing I can do, to the point where i simply don't do anything because I'm not really doing anything I'm just acting.
I cold turkeryed lamotragine, sertraline and this other medications for sleep, I can't even remember what I was on and now I feel like I have brain damage. I can't think I can't enjoy anything I cant feel love for anyone, but I also wonder if I ever did. And it's debilitating, I constantly wonder If I ever was someone with a "soul" or if I have always been just a robot with a reactionary function to the world. If this person says this then say this back. Everything seems so fake and unreal and I honestly think I have a block in-between my brain and reality.
When I got evicted I moved into my friends parents place where he stays and now I'm stuck and can't stand it anymore. Was he even my friend though or just someone who also partied alot. I don't want to be around people I don't want to have to explain to these Christians that I can't just go to church and be cured and that my depression is a choice. For the past 2 years I've been stuck in some purgatory state and it doesn't make any sense how any living being could even feel this way. It's literally hell on earth.
I cant move out because I don't have an income and I can't get an income because in all honesty If I had a job I would quit after a week. 1 year ago I almost had a job and I did an interview and the first day of work on the way there I turned around went home and blocked all the phone numbers associated with it.
I cant get supports because by the time I'm half way through the process I realize nothing matters reality isn't real my thoughts are fake I'm a psychopath anyway so why would I bother. I applied in December and didn't follow up and just did it again. 2 weeks ago.
When I graduated in 2019 I was drinking every weekend and in 2021 started trying drugs with my best friend, we did mushrooms and acid a couple times and a few times molly on the weekends. I've been drinking since grade 9, not every weekend but any chance I could, every party, every family event and holiday. Around 2020 I became a pothead and I would smoke insane amounts of weed, some days I smoked 3.5 grams a day some days I smoked 7 grams a day but more or less from 2020 to 2023 I would smoke non stop with no breaks unless around peopoe who disaproved, waking up in the night to smoke ,sometimes twice. I also took shrooms every like 3 months for a year or so and would be able to say that I've done them 3 times a year atleast from 2020 to 2023. All while being on these meds that I have been convince are neurotoxic and designed to give you brain damage. Oh and I've tried cocaine 3 times in the last year aswell. Never did much of it tho.
So I've lost all hope in living a life that is human. I feel void of myself I don't know who I am, I constantly feel like I'm pretending and acting to be human and can't connect with anyone and they would never know I feel this way.
The past 2 years I have don't nothing but sit at home with my blinds closed and hope no one is going to knock on my door as I sit for I hours a day staring at my phone googling and resding reddit and coming to the conclusion that I have some sort of psychosis or skitzophrenia or paranoia. My friends will call and I'll watch it ring until it stops and won't reply to my family. Because whats the point in trying to be human when I am no longer a human thanks to the cognitive issues I have to face.
And there's no hope online. You have anhedonia? It's the same everywhere I look, people replying to other people's posts or articles with "same here been 20 years now." So what's the point. How am I to know if it's depression or ASPD or NPD or Permanent Apathy from being chronically staring at my phone since I was 14 and watching gore and porn since I was that age. There's no knowing, there's no certainty in my own cognition or personality, not that i have one anymore. It's like do I have this cluster b? Who knows because if I did I wouldn't let a therapist know because I'm scared I do so I don't touch on it. Everything is a loop and a pardox of mental illnesses. I should have never read anything and I could have just been like "yup I'm depressed" now I have to worry if I should even try.
I moved to this place I'm in in december and just threw all my belongings in a room and I walked over everything until a couple weeks ago I threw out thousands of dollars worth of stuff because it's in the way and I dont have my own place anymore so things don't have a designated place. Threw out my computer, my tv, my model cars and all the model building supplies I had, airbrushes compressors hundreds of paints and brushes and clamps and just so much shit because those are people things let alone the human aspect of putting them somewhere.
Now I have cloths and a phone so running away will be easier. But where to go? Food costs money, I'm just tired of not feeling like a human and realizing everything I owned was just part of the act anyway. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. It's all that goes through my head all day long even if I did I wouldn't know it because I'm too far gone and it would be second guessed. I've now hyperfocused on the fact that laying down and staring at my phone for 2 years straight has, if not amplified, solidified my brain damage beyond repair. Because I feel nothing all day I just stare at my phone. But I can't do that anymore because now I'm expected to be a human in this household that I no longer want to be in. I'm completely isolated and I prefer that but I don't but I do but I don't but I do. It's like I want to be able to have friends and connect with someone but that's impossible because I'm just some empty emotionless husk with pure apathy and so I don't know what to do anymore.
I could get back on meds but isn't that the cause of this. The chemical lobotomy at its finest, causing you to need more of itself.
I dont see any hope anywhere because I want to be someone who has emotions but I have none and I want to be someone who has a human experience but I am not one. What do I do? Suicide? No there's ways to cope. I don't want to cope. What the fuck? You think coping with hell on earth is better than dieing? Why would I cope when all I have then is to look around at the world going "oh look that person feels this, thats something I can't do" because that's all that goes in inside.
I just say what I think someone is expecting to hear and then I think we'll isn't that what everyone is doing? Their all saying the same shit anyway but then I think we'll no they say what they say because they feel a certain way. Something I can't do, feel. Because im a sociopath. Being out if this household could help I'm sure but that's not even fathomable. Even with supports at max I can't afford a ppace of my own. I'd have to rent a room with a stranger, but it's funny because even those who aren't strangers are strangers now.
I shower once a week because why would I shower that's a human thing. I am not human anymore. I am void of humanity.
23 and dead. Who would have thought.
No one understands any of this so I just say I'm depressed and they think i shoukd try therapy and meds. Whats that going to do? Give my sociopathic brain the ability to not be a sociopath? If only they knew what distress and pain I feel every second of every day.
Ontop of all that even I was able to come back to myself it's just constant ocd of where should I place this and when or what or where should I do and what's the most optimized way to do this or that and why is that there instead of here and how do I know if here or there is better.
So now I guess I'll go back on ssris, and go back to thinking I'm poisoning myself and then repeat this cycle until death.
I'm just gonna run away and start stealing to eat because nothing matters anyway
submitted by Fillasophical to anhedonia [link] [comments]
Ive spent so much time on NPD or ASPD or schizoid or AvPD that I'm convinced I have some sort of cluster b personality disorder and all I can think of is why would I even try to live my life when I am nothing more than a walking pathology and don't really have a personality just a brain that works off IF statements like a line of code.
People get to experience life without having to second guess themselves all the time but that's the only thing I can do, to the point where i simply don't do anything because I'm not really doing anything I'm just acting.
I cold turkeryed lamotragine, sertraline and this other medications for sleep, I can't even remember what I was on and now I feel like I have brain damage. I can't think I can't enjoy anything I cant feel love for anyone, but I also wonder if I ever did. And it's debilitating, I constantly wonder If I ever was someone with a "soul" or if I have always been just a robot with a reactionary function to the world. If this person says this then say this back. Everything seems so fake and unreal and I honestly think I have a block in-between my brain and reality.
When I got evicted I moved into my friends parents place where he stays and now I'm stuck and can't stand it anymore. Was he even my friend though or just someone who also partied alot. I don't want to be around people I don't want to have to explain to these Christians that I can't just go to church and be cured and that my depression is a choice. For the past 2 years I've been stuck in some purgatory state and it doesn't make any sense how any living being could even feel this way. It's literally hell on earth.
I cant move out because I don't have an income and I can't get an income because in all honesty If I had a job I would quit after a week. 1 year ago I almost had a job and I did an interview and the first day of work on the way there I turned around went home and blocked all the phone numbers associated with it.
I cant get supports because by the time I'm half way through the process I realize nothing matters reality isn't real my thoughts are fake I'm a psychopath anyway so why would I bother. I applied in December and didn't follow up and just did it again. 2 weeks ago.
When I graduated in 2019 I was drinking every weekend and in 2021 started trying drugs with my best friend, we did mushrooms and acid a couple times and a few times molly on the weekends. I've been drinking since grade 9, not every weekend but any chance I could, every party, every family event and holiday. Around 2020 I became a pothead and I would smoke insane amounts of weed, some days I smoked 3.5 grams a day some days I smoked 7 grams a day but more or less from 2020 to 2023 I would smoke non stop with no breaks unless around peopoe who disaproved, waking up in the night to smoke ,sometimes twice. I also took shrooms every like 3 months for a year or so and would be able to say that I've done them 3 times a year atleast from 2020 to 2023. All while being on these meds that I have been convince are neurotoxic and designed to give you brain damage. Oh and I've tried cocaine 3 times in the last year aswell. Never did much of it tho.
So I've lost all hope in living a life that is human. I feel void of myself I don't know who I am, I constantly feel like I'm pretending and acting to be human and can't connect with anyone and they would never know I feel this way.
The past 2 years I have don't nothing but sit at home with my blinds closed and hope no one is going to knock on my door as I sit for I hours a day staring at my phone googling and resding reddit and coming to the conclusion that I have some sort of psychosis or skitzophrenia or paranoia. My friends will call and I'll watch it ring until it stops and won't reply to my family. Because whats the point in trying to be human when I am no longer a human thanks to the cognitive issues I have to face.
And there's no hope online. You have anhedonia? It's the same everywhere I look, people replying to other people's posts or articles with "same here been 20 years now." So what's the point. How am I to know if it's depression or ASPD or NPD or Permanent Apathy from being chronically staring at my phone since I was 14 and watching gore and porn since I was that age. There's no knowing, there's no certainty in my own cognition or personality, not that i have one anymore. It's like do I have this cluster b? Who knows because if I did I wouldn't let a therapist know because I'm scared I do so I don't touch on it. Everything is a loop and a pardox of mental illnesses. I should have never read anything and I could have just been like "yup I'm depressed" now I have to worry if I should even try.
I moved to this place I'm in in december and just threw all my belongings in a room and I walked over everything until a couple weeks ago I threw out thousands of dollars worth of stuff because it's in the way and I dont have my own place anymore so things don't have a designated place. Threw out my computer, my tv, my model cars and all the model building supplies I had, airbrushes compressors hundreds of paints and brushes and clamps and just so much shit because those are people things let alone the human aspect of putting them somewhere.
Now I have cloths and a phone so running away will be easier. But where to go? Food costs money, I'm just tired of not feeling like a human and realizing everything I owned was just part of the act anyway. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. It's all that goes through my head all day long even if I did I wouldn't know it because I'm too far gone and it would be second guessed. I've now hyperfocused on the fact that laying down and staring at my phone for 2 years straight has, if not amplified, solidified my brain damage beyond repair. Because I feel nothing all day I just stare at my phone. But I can't do that anymore because now I'm expected to be a human in this household that I no longer want to be in. I'm completely isolated and I prefer that but I don't but I do but I don't but I do. It's like I want to be able to have friends and connect with someone but that's impossible because I'm just some empty emotionless husk with pure apathy and so I don't know what to do anymore.
I could get back on meds but isn't that the cause of this. The chemical lobotomy at its finest, causing you to need more of itself.
I dont see any hope anywhere because I want to be someone who has emotions but I have none and I want to be someone who has a human experience but I am not one. What do I do? Suicide? No there's ways to cope. I don't want to cope. What the fuck? You think coping with hell on earth is better than dieing? Why would I cope when all I have then is to look around at the world going "oh look that person feels this, thats something I can't do" because that's all that goes in inside.
I just say what I think someone is expecting to hear and then I think we'll isn't that what everyone is doing? Their all saying the same shit anyway but then I think we'll no they say what they say because they feel a certain way. Something I can't do, feel. Because im a sociopath. Being out if this household could help I'm sure but that's not even fathomable. Even with supports at max I can't afford a ppace of my own. I'd have to rent a room with a stranger, but it's funny because even those who aren't strangers are strangers now.
I shower once a week because why would I shower that's a human thing. I am not human anymore. I am void of humanity.
23 and dead. Who would have thought.
No one understands any of this so I just say I'm depressed and they think i shoukd try therapy and meds. Whats that going to do? Give my sociopathic brain the ability to not be a sociopath? If only they knew what distress and pain I feel every second of every day.
Ontop of all that even I was able to come back to myself it's just constant ocd of where should I place this and when or what or where should I do and what's the most optimized way to do this or that and why is that there instead of here and how do I know if here or there is better.
So now I guess I'll go back on ssris, and go back to thinking I'm poisoning myself and then repeat this cycle until death.
I'm just gonna run away and start stealing to eat because nothing matters anyway
2024.05.29 05:56 Fillasophical Need hope
For about 2 years I have done nothing. I have been unemployed and have had an income through government supports which i no longer have and have lost my house my cats and my girlfriend. In December I stopped taking my medications because I was sure they were causing my issues. It seems like all my issues sky rocketed once I took risperidone for a few months. I feel like I have no personality, no thoughts, no feelings, except rage and distress. My life feels like a constant state of being in agony in my mind. I read and read and read and all I come to find is that apathy is permanent and you can't get rid of it. If this is the case why should I keep on living. What life is this? I can't do anything because I don't know what to do or rather I think why do anything. If my existence as a human is lacking the part what makes it a human experience then why do I exist. My whole life ive been babied. Mother paying my bills when I cant and making appointments for me and what not.
Ive spent so much time on NPD or ASPD or schizoid or AvPD that I'm convinced I have some sort of cluster b personality disorder and all I can think of is why would I even try to live my life when I am nothing more than a walking pathology and don't really have a personality just a brain that works off IF statements like a line of code.
People get to experience life without having to second guess themselves all the time but that's the only thing I can do, to the point where i simply don't do anything because I'm not really doing anything I'm just acting.
I cold turkeryed lamotragine, sertraline and this other medications for sleep, I can't even remember what I was on and now I feel like I have brain damage. I can't think I can't enjoy anything I cant feel love for anyone, but I also wonder if I ever did. And it's debilitating, I constantly wonder If I ever was someone with a "soul" or if I have always been just a robot with a reactionary function to the world. If this person says this then say this back. Everything seems so fake and unreal and I honestly think I have a block in-between my brain and reality.
When I got evicted I moved into my friends parents place where he stays and now I'm stuck and can't stand it anymore. Was he even my friend though or just someone who also partied alot. I don't want to be around people I don't want to have to explain to these Christians that I can't just go to church and be cured and that my depression is a choice. For the past 2 years I've been stuck in some purgatory state and it doesn't make any sense how any living being could even feel this way. It's literally hell on earth.
I cant move out because I don't have an income and I can't get an income because in all honesty If I had a job I would quit after a week. 1 year ago I almost had a job and I did an interview and the first day of work on the way there I turned around went home and blocked all the phone numbers associated with it.
I cant get supports because by the time I'm half way through the process I realize nothing matters reality isn't real my thoughts are fake I'm a psychopath anyway so why would I bother. I applied in December and didn't follow up and just did it again. 2 weeks ago.
When I graduated in 2019 I was drinking every weekend and in 2021 started trying drugs with my best friend, we did mushrooms and acid a couple times and a few times molly on the weekends. I've been drinking since grade 9, not every weekend but any chance I could, every party, every family event and holiday. Around 2020 I became a pothead and I would smoke insane amounts of weed, some days I smoked 3.5 grams a day some days I smoked 7 grams a day but more or less from 2020 to 2023 I would smoke non stop with no breaks unless around peopoe who disaproved, waking up in the night to smoke ,sometimes twice. I also took shrooms every like 3 months for a year or so and would be able to say that I've done them 3 times a year atleast from 2020 to 2023. All while being on these meds that I have been convince are neurotoxic and designed to give you brain damage. Oh and I've tried cocaine 3 times in the last year aswell. Never did much of it tho.
So I've lost all hope in living a life that is human. I feel void of myself I don't know who I am, I constantly feel like I'm pretending and acting to be human and can't connect with anyone and they would never know I feel this way.
The past 2 years I have don't nothing but sit at home with my blinds closed and hope no one is going to knock on my door as I sit for I hours a day staring at my phone googling and resding reddit and coming to the conclusion that I have some sort of psychosis or skitzophrenia or paranoia. My friends will call and I'll watch it ring until it stops and won't reply to my family. Because whats the point in trying to be human when I am no longer a human thanks to the cognitive issues I have to face.
And there's no hope online. You have anhedonia? It's the same everywhere I look, people replying to other people's posts or articles with "same here been 20 years now." So what's the point. How am I to know if it's depression or ASPD or NPD or Permanent Apathy from being chronically staring at my phone since I was 14 and watching gore and porn since I was that age. There's no knowing, there's no certainty in my own cognition or personality, not that i have one anymore. It's like do I have this cluster b? Who knows because if I did I wouldn't let a therapist know because I'm scared I do so I don't touch on it. Everything is a loop and a pardox of mental illnesses. I should have never read anything and I could have just been like "yup I'm depressed" now I have to worry if I should even try.
I moved to this place I'm in in december and just threw all my belongings in a room and I walked over everything until a couple weeks ago I threw out thousands of dollars worth of stuff because it's in the way and I dont have my own place anymore so things don't have a designated place. Threw out my computer, my tv, my model cars and all the model building supplies I had, airbrushes compressors hundreds of paints and brushes and clamps and just so much shit because those are people things let alone the human aspect of putting them somewhere.
Now I have cloths and a phone so running away will be easier. But where to go? Food costs money, I'm just tired of not feeling like a human and realizing everything I owned was just part of the act anyway. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. It's all that goes through my head all day long even if I did I wouldn't know it because I'm too far gone and it would be second guessed. I've now hyperfocused on the fact that laying down and staring at my phone for 2 years straight has, if not amplified, solidified my brain damage beyond repair. Because I feel nothing all day I just stare at my phone. But I can't do that anymore because now I'm expected to be a human in this household that I no longer want to be in. I'm completely isolated and I prefer that but I don't but I do but I don't but I do. It's like I want to be able to have friends and connect with someone but that's impossible because I'm just some empty emotionless husk with pure apathy and so I don't know what to do anymore.
I could get back on meds but isn't that the cause of this. The chemical lobotomy at its finest, causing you to need more of itself.
I dont see any hope anywhere because I want to be someone who has emotions but I have none and I want to be someone who has a human experience but I am not one. What do I do? Suicide? No there's ways to cope. I don't want to cope. What the fuck? You think coping with hell on earth is better than dieing? Why would I cope when all I have then is to look around at the world going "oh look that person feels this, thats something I can't do" because that's all that goes in inside.
I just say what I think someone is expecting to hear and then I think we'll isn't that what everyone is doing? Their all saying the same shit anyway but then I think we'll no they say what they say because they feel a certain way. Something I can't do, feel. Because im a sociopath. Being out if this household could help I'm sure but that's not even fathomable. Even with supports at max I can't afford a ppace of my own. I'd have to rent a room with a stranger, but it's funny because even those who aren't strangers are strangers now.
I shower once a week because why would I shower that's a human thing. I am not human anymore. I am void of humanity.
23 and dead. Who would have thought.
No one understands any of this so I just say I'm depressed and they think i shoukd try therapy and meds. Whats that going to do? Give my sociopathic brain the ability to not be a sociopath? If only they knew what distress and pain I feel every second of every day.
Ontop of all that even I was able to come back to myself it's just constant ocd of where should I place this and when or what or where should I do and what's the most optimized way to do this or that and why is that there instead of here and how do I know if here or there is better.
So now I guess I'll go back on ssris, and go back to thinking I'm poisoning myself and then repeat this cycle until death.
I'm just gonna run away and start stealing to eat because nothing matters anyway
submitted by Fillasophical to anhedonia [link] [comments]
Ive spent so much time on NPD or ASPD or schizoid or AvPD that I'm convinced I have some sort of cluster b personality disorder and all I can think of is why would I even try to live my life when I am nothing more than a walking pathology and don't really have a personality just a brain that works off IF statements like a line of code.
People get to experience life without having to second guess themselves all the time but that's the only thing I can do, to the point where i simply don't do anything because I'm not really doing anything I'm just acting.
I cold turkeryed lamotragine, sertraline and this other medications for sleep, I can't even remember what I was on and now I feel like I have brain damage. I can't think I can't enjoy anything I cant feel love for anyone, but I also wonder if I ever did. And it's debilitating, I constantly wonder If I ever was someone with a "soul" or if I have always been just a robot with a reactionary function to the world. If this person says this then say this back. Everything seems so fake and unreal and I honestly think I have a block in-between my brain and reality.
When I got evicted I moved into my friends parents place where he stays and now I'm stuck and can't stand it anymore. Was he even my friend though or just someone who also partied alot. I don't want to be around people I don't want to have to explain to these Christians that I can't just go to church and be cured and that my depression is a choice. For the past 2 years I've been stuck in some purgatory state and it doesn't make any sense how any living being could even feel this way. It's literally hell on earth.
I cant move out because I don't have an income and I can't get an income because in all honesty If I had a job I would quit after a week. 1 year ago I almost had a job and I did an interview and the first day of work on the way there I turned around went home and blocked all the phone numbers associated with it.
I cant get supports because by the time I'm half way through the process I realize nothing matters reality isn't real my thoughts are fake I'm a psychopath anyway so why would I bother. I applied in December and didn't follow up and just did it again. 2 weeks ago.
When I graduated in 2019 I was drinking every weekend and in 2021 started trying drugs with my best friend, we did mushrooms and acid a couple times and a few times molly on the weekends. I've been drinking since grade 9, not every weekend but any chance I could, every party, every family event and holiday. Around 2020 I became a pothead and I would smoke insane amounts of weed, some days I smoked 3.5 grams a day some days I smoked 7 grams a day but more or less from 2020 to 2023 I would smoke non stop with no breaks unless around peopoe who disaproved, waking up in the night to smoke ,sometimes twice. I also took shrooms every like 3 months for a year or so and would be able to say that I've done them 3 times a year atleast from 2020 to 2023. All while being on these meds that I have been convince are neurotoxic and designed to give you brain damage. Oh and I've tried cocaine 3 times in the last year aswell. Never did much of it tho.
So I've lost all hope in living a life that is human. I feel void of myself I don't know who I am, I constantly feel like I'm pretending and acting to be human and can't connect with anyone and they would never know I feel this way.
The past 2 years I have don't nothing but sit at home with my blinds closed and hope no one is going to knock on my door as I sit for I hours a day staring at my phone googling and resding reddit and coming to the conclusion that I have some sort of psychosis or skitzophrenia or paranoia. My friends will call and I'll watch it ring until it stops and won't reply to my family. Because whats the point in trying to be human when I am no longer a human thanks to the cognitive issues I have to face.
And there's no hope online. You have anhedonia? It's the same everywhere I look, people replying to other people's posts or articles with "same here been 20 years now." So what's the point. How am I to know if it's depression or ASPD or NPD or Permanent Apathy from being chronically staring at my phone since I was 14 and watching gore and porn since I was that age. There's no knowing, there's no certainty in my own cognition or personality, not that i have one anymore. It's like do I have this cluster b? Who knows because if I did I wouldn't let a therapist know because I'm scared I do so I don't touch on it. Everything is a loop and a pardox of mental illnesses. I should have never read anything and I could have just been like "yup I'm depressed" now I have to worry if I should even try.
I moved to this place I'm in in december and just threw all my belongings in a room and I walked over everything until a couple weeks ago I threw out thousands of dollars worth of stuff because it's in the way and I dont have my own place anymore so things don't have a designated place. Threw out my computer, my tv, my model cars and all the model building supplies I had, airbrushes compressors hundreds of paints and brushes and clamps and just so much shit because those are people things let alone the human aspect of putting them somewhere.
Now I have cloths and a phone so running away will be easier. But where to go? Food costs money, I'm just tired of not feeling like a human and realizing everything I owned was just part of the act anyway. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. It's all that goes through my head all day long even if I did I wouldn't know it because I'm too far gone and it would be second guessed. I've now hyperfocused on the fact that laying down and staring at my phone for 2 years straight has, if not amplified, solidified my brain damage beyond repair. Because I feel nothing all day I just stare at my phone. But I can't do that anymore because now I'm expected to be a human in this household that I no longer want to be in. I'm completely isolated and I prefer that but I don't but I do but I don't but I do. It's like I want to be able to have friends and connect with someone but that's impossible because I'm just some empty emotionless husk with pure apathy and so I don't know what to do anymore.
I could get back on meds but isn't that the cause of this. The chemical lobotomy at its finest, causing you to need more of itself.
I dont see any hope anywhere because I want to be someone who has emotions but I have none and I want to be someone who has a human experience but I am not one. What do I do? Suicide? No there's ways to cope. I don't want to cope. What the fuck? You think coping with hell on earth is better than dieing? Why would I cope when all I have then is to look around at the world going "oh look that person feels this, thats something I can't do" because that's all that goes in inside.
I just say what I think someone is expecting to hear and then I think we'll isn't that what everyone is doing? Their all saying the same shit anyway but then I think we'll no they say what they say because they feel a certain way. Something I can't do, feel. Because im a sociopath. Being out if this household could help I'm sure but that's not even fathomable. Even with supports at max I can't afford a ppace of my own. I'd have to rent a room with a stranger, but it's funny because even those who aren't strangers are strangers now.
I shower once a week because why would I shower that's a human thing. I am not human anymore. I am void of humanity.
23 and dead. Who would have thought.
No one understands any of this so I just say I'm depressed and they think i shoukd try therapy and meds. Whats that going to do? Give my sociopathic brain the ability to not be a sociopath? If only they knew what distress and pain I feel every second of every day.
Ontop of all that even I was able to come back to myself it's just constant ocd of where should I place this and when or what or where should I do and what's the most optimized way to do this or that and why is that there instead of here and how do I know if here or there is better.
So now I guess I'll go back on ssris, and go back to thinking I'm poisoning myself and then repeat this cycle until death.
I'm just gonna run away and start stealing to eat because nothing matters anyway
2024.05.29 05:46 r0tten_cl4wz are my inlaws going too far?? im at my wits end.
(long story) this is a throwout because im anxious and dont know what else to do / have no one to talk to this about. im 19 and i live with my bf (20) in his parents house. he rents his room and pays a fair share of the bills (his choice / his parents dont expect him to pay anything). i moved in after my mom and i got into a fight and she basically kicked me out (she has done this before). i cannot live at my fathers after multiple assaults and threats on my life, my grandparents are enablers to my moms extremely hazardous/drunken abusive behavior, and no other family live in state. i moved into their house after he talked to his parents and they both agreed (his dad had an extremely abusive household like mine so he sympathized). its been alright so far (ive been here for 4 months) with minimal issues until it started a few months ago. in march i recently miscarried and it made everything really… awkward? his mom started to make comments to her husband to which he relayed to my bf about us sleeping in the same bed together and even went as far as to push us to get engaged and married multiple times / for him to sleep on the couch out of the room he pays for. she states she feels awkward and uncomfortable around ME because of us sleeping in the same room + im a stranger to her (shes one of those older generation that believes are owed a convo about ever detail of their lives + she is extremely gossipy about other people in a rude way) (she did apologize only to my bfs face about the MC and went out and bought some snacks as a silent apology for us + wished me a happy mothers day with some hesitation.) i dont really know how to handle it anymore. i dont have anywhere to go, i cant sleep in my car because im pregnant again but havent told anyone except my bf. we both came to the conclusion that we are moving out ASAP. we were close to renting a home but got backtracked because of the surprise MC in march. afterwards i started to spiral and my mental health hasnt been so good, a couple months afterwards a mentoparental figure passed away from a LOT of cance going into hospice, no one told me about the funeral either, had to figure out myself.. anyways, shes mainly just brought my bf to talk to her and her husband under the guise of how hes performing at work and then starts ranting about ME to him for literal hours. he does put his foot down but is kind of a mediator to not cause any drama that would ultimately get us kicked out. her husband does not intervene with her lectures/ ‘talks’. he sits there and actually doesnt say a word. this isnt the first time for a push for marriage has happened (her reasoning us that shes religious and believes that a man and woman shouldn’t even live together without being married, but has told us to our faces, with me present, that she doesnt want us to go anywhere because she likes us there/ theres no pressure to leave and every time my bf shows her an apartment he found she tries to talk him out of it) they also say that my bf barely spends time with his parents anymore and hints its because of me locking him away from them. i do not want to be here, i never did, i strongly advocated of not staying there because i knew it would cause issues since theyre pentecostal.. i do not agree with their religious views at all and have no issue with people being religious but do not force it on me, especially when im at my wits end and trying not to stress me and my baby out more + literally am homeless. i dont want to sleep in a walmart parking lot while pregnant.. but i feel like this is my last resort because of the blatant two faced bullying im receiving. i cook for them once and a while (with my own money + spend my own money buying them groceries because apparently 200 dollars my bf gives them isnt enough to feed anyone), i drive people around to work (sometimes as early as 4 in the morning and immediately get up at 4 in the evening to pick people up and no i dont get paid for the gas i do it for kindness/to help), i get zero sleep (mostly 4 hours and under right now) because her husband sleeps in the living room mostly and has absolutely maddening alarms (tornado siren) that go off between 2 am and 8 am (if he doesnt wake up to stop them) + no one lets me sleep in the ‘afternoon’ they call it (its 9-12 am) and have irritated my dog to bark at nothing at even 7 in the morning on weekends. ive been nice, ive been lenient but i cannot be nice to them (which they complain im so weird because i dont talk to them and am not buddy buddy with them for some sTrAnGe reason /sarc). please help me, i genuinely have no idea what to do and am on the verge of just walking into a river /sarc.
submitted by r0tten_cl4wz to Vent [link] [comments]
2024.05.29 05:31 PublicEnemyNumber_01 Used my secondary insurance as my primary in 2022, BCBS did an audit and now I’m being charged thousands of dollars by doctors offices.
In 2022 I had a BCBS plan through my work as well as a BCBS plan though my parents(which ended at the end of 2022). At all of my doctors visits I used by parents plan(secondary) to bill all my medical charges. This year BCBS did an audit and now I’m being charged over 10,000 dollars in medical bills and I don’t have the money to cover that. I wasn’t aware that I did this and I didn’t even know such an ordeal would be an issue. I don’t have any of my plan information from them but I’m going to contact HR tomorrow and try to get that from them. Will BCBS reprocess these bills through the correct primary account even though that plan is now canceled or am I totally fucked??? I’m literally in a panic right now as these bills could crush me if I’m charged in full. Any advice will be of help.
Edit: To add another question: so far I’ve been sent back two bills from doctors that equal close to 10,000 and there is a big list of visits that include one trip to the emergency room. If these stack up to equaling multiple tens of thousands of dollars is there so way I can plea out of this situation or will I have no choice but to pay everything if full if BCBS refuses to cover under the policy I should have used. I also currently have united healthcare. If BCBS won’t cover would it be possible to use the coverage I currently have to against these bills?
submitted by PublicEnemyNumber_01 to HealthInsurance [link] [comments]
Edit: To add another question: so far I’ve been sent back two bills from doctors that equal close to 10,000 and there is a big list of visits that include one trip to the emergency room. If these stack up to equaling multiple tens of thousands of dollars is there so way I can plea out of this situation or will I have no choice but to pay everything if full if BCBS refuses to cover under the policy I should have used. I also currently have united healthcare. If BCBS won’t cover would it be possible to use the coverage I currently have to against these bills?
2024.05.29 05:27 thinkingstranger May 24, 2024
The defense and the prosecution today made their closing statements in the New York criminal case against Trump for falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels. The payment was intended to stop her account of her sexual encounter with Trump from becoming public in the days before the 2016 election, when the Trump campaign was already reeling from the Access Hollywood tape showing Trump boasting of sexual assault.
The Biden-Harris campaign showed up at the trial today with veteran actor Robert DeNiro and former police officers Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, who protected the U.S. Capitol and members of Congress from rioters on January 6, 2021. In words seemingly calculated to get under Trump’s skin, DeNiro said, “We New Yorkers used to tolerate him when he was just another grubby real estate hustler masquerading as a big shot,” and called him a coward.
When Robert Costa of CBS News asked campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler why they had shown up at the trial, Tyler answered: “Because you all are here. You’ve been incessantly covering this day in and day out, and we want to remind the American people ahead of the…first debate on June 27 of the unique, persistent, and growing threat that Donald Trump poses to the American people and to our democracy. So since you all are here, we’re here communicating that message.”
Yesterday, in remarks at Arlington National Cemetery in observance of Memorial Day, President Joe Biden honored “the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of women and men who’ve given their lives for this nation. Each one…a link in the chain of honor stretching back to our founding days. Each one bound by common commitment—not to a place, not to a person, not to a President, but to an idea unlike any idea in human history: the idea of the United States of America.”
“[F]reedom has never been guaranteed,” Biden said. “Every generation has to earn it; fight for it; defend it in battle between autocracy and democracy, between the greed of a few and the rights of many…. And just as our fallen heroes have kept the ultimate faith with our country and our democracy, we must keep faith with them,” he said.
His speech at Arlington echoed the message he delivered to this year’s graduating class at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he urged the graduates to hold fast to their oaths. “On your very first day at West Point, you raised your right hands and took an oath—not to a political party, not to a president, but to the Constitution of the United States of America—against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” he said to applause. Soldiers “have given their lives for that Constitution. They have fought to defend the freedoms that it protects: the right to vote, the right to worship, the right to raise your voice in protest. They have saved and sacrificed to ensure, as President Lincoln said, a ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.’”
“[N]othing is guaranteed about our democracy in America. Every generation has an obligation to defend it, to protect it, to preserve it, to choose it,” he said. “Now, it’s your turn.” Biden spent more than an hour saluting and shaking the hand of each graduate.
In contrast, Trump ushered in Memorial Day with a post on his social media company, saying: “Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for “DEFAMATION.” He then continued to attack E. Jean Carroll, the writer who successfully sued him for defamation, before turning to attack Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over the civil case of Trump and the Trump Organization falsifying documents, and Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the current criminal case in New York.
The message behind this extraordinary post was twofold: Trump can think of nothing but himself…and he appears to be terrified.
On Saturday, May 25, Trump had an experience quite different from his usual reception at rallies of hand-picked supporters. He was resoundingly booed at the national convention of the Libertarian Party in Washington, D.C., where Secret Service agents confiscated squeaky rubber chickens before his speech. Attendees jeered Trump’s order, “You have to combine with us,” even when he reminded them of his libertarian credentials—tax cuts and defunding of federal equality programs—and promised to pardon the January 6 rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Trump also promised to pardon Ross Ulbricht, who founded and from January 2011 to October 2013 ran an online criminal marketplace called Silk Road, where more than $200 million in illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services, such as computer hacking, were bought and sold. Most of the sales were of drugs, with the Silk Road home page listing nearly 13,000 options, including heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and LSD. The wares were linked to at least six deaths from overdose around the world. In May 2015, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison and was ordered to forfeit more than $180 million.
Libertarians want Ulbricht released because they support drug legalization on the grounds that people should be able to make their own choices and they see Ulbricht’s sentence as government overreach. Trump has repeatedly called for the death penalty for drug dealers, making his promise to pardon Ulbricht an illustration of just how badly he thinks he needs the support of Libertarian voters. But they refused to endorse him.
Trump appeared angry, and on Sunday, as Greg Sargent reported in The New Republic, he reposted a video of a man raging at MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. In it, the man says that when Trump is reelected: “He’ll get rid of all you f*cking liberals. You liberals are gone when he f*cking wins. You f*cking blowjob liberals are done. Uncle Donnie’s gonna take this election—landslide. Landslide, you f*cking half a blowjob. Landslide. Get the f*ck out of here, you scumbag.”
Trump’s elevation of this video, Sargent notes, is a dangerous escalation of his already violent rhetoric, and yet it has gotten very little media attention.
Last November, Matt Gertz of Media Matters reported that ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News provided 18 times more coverage of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s comment at a fundraising event that “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables” who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic,” than they provided of Trump’s November 2023 promise to “root out the communist, Marxist, fascist and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
CNN, the Fox News Channel, and MSNBC mentioned the “deplorables” comment nearly 9 times more than Trump’s “vermin” language. The ratio for the five highest-circulating U.S. newspapers was 29:1.
Clinton’s statement was consistent with polling, and she added that the rest of Trump’s supporters were “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change.” She said: “Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
Sargent noted that news stories require context and that Trump’s elevation of the violent video should be placed alongside his many threats to prosecute his enemies. While there is often concern over disrespect toward right-wing voters, Sargent writes, there has been very little attention to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s posting of “a video that declares a large ideological subgroup of Americans ‘done’ and ‘gone’ if he is elected.”
Scott MacFarlane of CBS News reported yesterday that Republicans have ignored a law passed in March 2022 requiring the placement of a small plaque honoring police officers who protected the U.S. Capitol and the lawmakers and staffers there on January 6, 2021. It was supposed to be in place by March 2023 but has not gone up. A spokesperson for House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says his office is working on it. Kayla Tausche of CNN reported today that three of the police officers at the Capitol that day—Sergeant Aquilino Gonell and Officer Harry Dunn, both retired, and Officer Daniel Hodges, who is still with the Washington, D.C., metropolitan police—will be traveling to swing states for the Biden campaign to tell voters that Trump threatens Americans’ fundamental rights.
Finally, today, Melinda French Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced $1 billion in new spending over the next two years “for people and organizations working on behalf of women and families around the world, including on reproductive rights in the United States.” Only 2% of charitable giving in the U.S. goes to these organizations, she wrote the New York Times, and “[f]or too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women's rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense. I want to help even the match.”
—
Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/26/libertarians-reject-trump-rfk-chase-oliver-presidential-nominee-00160040
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/27/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-156th-national-memorial-day-observance-arlington-va/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/25/remarks-by-president-biden-in-commencement-address-to-the-united-states-military-academy-at-west-point-west-point-ny/
https://newrepublic.com/article/181973/trump-media-attacks-media-dangerous-turn
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-fails-to-install-plaque-honoring-jan-6-police-officers/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/28/politics/biden-campaign-january-6-officers/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722qy5dzlgo
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/25/trump-commute-ross-ulbricht-sentence-libertarian-convention-00160025
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ross-ulbricht-aka-dread-pirate-roberts-sentenced-life-federal-prison-creating
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-is-spotlighting-ross-ulbricht-silk-road-appeal-to-libertarians-2024
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4305566-trump-doubles-down-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers/
https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/major-news-outlets-gave-much-less-coverage-trumps-vermin-attack-then-they-did-clintons
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4687060-donald-trump-squeaky-chicken-libertarian-controversy/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/opinion/melinda-french-gates-reproductive-rights.html
The Dworkin ReportDe Niro and Jan 6 Heroes Unload on Trump Outside NY TrialRobert De Niro just showed up outside the New York City courthouse, where Trump is facing 34 felony counts. Rightwing lunatics are already trying to start conspiracy theories lying and saying that thi…Read more8 hours ago · 765 likes · 132 comments · Scott Dworkin
X:
BidenHQ/status/1795469679542100005
costareports/status/1795484830349852855
adamkinzingestatus/1795111150494826743
BidenHQ/status/1795468053993357493
submitted by thinkingstranger to HeatherCoxRichardson [link] [comments]
The Biden-Harris campaign showed up at the trial today with veteran actor Robert DeNiro and former police officers Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, who protected the U.S. Capitol and members of Congress from rioters on January 6, 2021. In words seemingly calculated to get under Trump’s skin, DeNiro said, “We New Yorkers used to tolerate him when he was just another grubby real estate hustler masquerading as a big shot,” and called him a coward.
When Robert Costa of CBS News asked campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler why they had shown up at the trial, Tyler answered: “Because you all are here. You’ve been incessantly covering this day in and day out, and we want to remind the American people ahead of the…first debate on June 27 of the unique, persistent, and growing threat that Donald Trump poses to the American people and to our democracy. So since you all are here, we’re here communicating that message.”
Yesterday, in remarks at Arlington National Cemetery in observance of Memorial Day, President Joe Biden honored “the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of women and men who’ve given their lives for this nation. Each one…a link in the chain of honor stretching back to our founding days. Each one bound by common commitment—not to a place, not to a person, not to a President, but to an idea unlike any idea in human history: the idea of the United States of America.”
“[F]reedom has never been guaranteed,” Biden said. “Every generation has to earn it; fight for it; defend it in battle between autocracy and democracy, between the greed of a few and the rights of many…. And just as our fallen heroes have kept the ultimate faith with our country and our democracy, we must keep faith with them,” he said.
His speech at Arlington echoed the message he delivered to this year’s graduating class at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he urged the graduates to hold fast to their oaths. “On your very first day at West Point, you raised your right hands and took an oath—not to a political party, not to a president, but to the Constitution of the United States of America—against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” he said to applause. Soldiers “have given their lives for that Constitution. They have fought to defend the freedoms that it protects: the right to vote, the right to worship, the right to raise your voice in protest. They have saved and sacrificed to ensure, as President Lincoln said, a ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.’”
“[N]othing is guaranteed about our democracy in America. Every generation has an obligation to defend it, to protect it, to preserve it, to choose it,” he said. “Now, it’s your turn.” Biden spent more than an hour saluting and shaking the hand of each graduate.
In contrast, Trump ushered in Memorial Day with a post on his social media company, saying: “Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for “DEFAMATION.” He then continued to attack E. Jean Carroll, the writer who successfully sued him for defamation, before turning to attack Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over the civil case of Trump and the Trump Organization falsifying documents, and Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the current criminal case in New York.
The message behind this extraordinary post was twofold: Trump can think of nothing but himself…and he appears to be terrified.
On Saturday, May 25, Trump had an experience quite different from his usual reception at rallies of hand-picked supporters. He was resoundingly booed at the national convention of the Libertarian Party in Washington, D.C., where Secret Service agents confiscated squeaky rubber chickens before his speech. Attendees jeered Trump’s order, “You have to combine with us,” even when he reminded them of his libertarian credentials—tax cuts and defunding of federal equality programs—and promised to pardon the January 6 rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Trump also promised to pardon Ross Ulbricht, who founded and from January 2011 to October 2013 ran an online criminal marketplace called Silk Road, where more than $200 million in illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services, such as computer hacking, were bought and sold. Most of the sales were of drugs, with the Silk Road home page listing nearly 13,000 options, including heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and LSD. The wares were linked to at least six deaths from overdose around the world. In May 2015, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison and was ordered to forfeit more than $180 million.
Libertarians want Ulbricht released because they support drug legalization on the grounds that people should be able to make their own choices and they see Ulbricht’s sentence as government overreach. Trump has repeatedly called for the death penalty for drug dealers, making his promise to pardon Ulbricht an illustration of just how badly he thinks he needs the support of Libertarian voters. But they refused to endorse him.
Trump appeared angry, and on Sunday, as Greg Sargent reported in The New Republic, he reposted a video of a man raging at MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. In it, the man says that when Trump is reelected: “He’ll get rid of all you f*cking liberals. You liberals are gone when he f*cking wins. You f*cking blowjob liberals are done. Uncle Donnie’s gonna take this election—landslide. Landslide, you f*cking half a blowjob. Landslide. Get the f*ck out of here, you scumbag.”
Trump’s elevation of this video, Sargent notes, is a dangerous escalation of his already violent rhetoric, and yet it has gotten very little media attention.
Last November, Matt Gertz of Media Matters reported that ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News provided 18 times more coverage of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s comment at a fundraising event that “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables” who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic,” than they provided of Trump’s November 2023 promise to “root out the communist, Marxist, fascist and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
CNN, the Fox News Channel, and MSNBC mentioned the “deplorables” comment nearly 9 times more than Trump’s “vermin” language. The ratio for the five highest-circulating U.S. newspapers was 29:1.
Clinton’s statement was consistent with polling, and she added that the rest of Trump’s supporters were “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change.” She said: “Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”
Sargent noted that news stories require context and that Trump’s elevation of the violent video should be placed alongside his many threats to prosecute his enemies. While there is often concern over disrespect toward right-wing voters, Sargent writes, there has been very little attention to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s posting of “a video that declares a large ideological subgroup of Americans ‘done’ and ‘gone’ if he is elected.”
Scott MacFarlane of CBS News reported yesterday that Republicans have ignored a law passed in March 2022 requiring the placement of a small plaque honoring police officers who protected the U.S. Capitol and the lawmakers and staffers there on January 6, 2021. It was supposed to be in place by March 2023 but has not gone up. A spokesperson for House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says his office is working on it. Kayla Tausche of CNN reported today that three of the police officers at the Capitol that day—Sergeant Aquilino Gonell and Officer Harry Dunn, both retired, and Officer Daniel Hodges, who is still with the Washington, D.C., metropolitan police—will be traveling to swing states for the Biden campaign to tell voters that Trump threatens Americans’ fundamental rights.
Finally, today, Melinda French Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced $1 billion in new spending over the next two years “for people and organizations working on behalf of women and families around the world, including on reproductive rights in the United States.” Only 2% of charitable giving in the U.S. goes to these organizations, she wrote the New York Times, and “[f]or too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women's rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense. I want to help even the match.”
—
Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/26/libertarians-reject-trump-rfk-chase-oliver-presidential-nominee-00160040
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/27/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-156th-national-memorial-day-observance-arlington-va/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/25/remarks-by-president-biden-in-commencement-address-to-the-united-states-military-academy-at-west-point-west-point-ny/
https://newrepublic.com/article/181973/trump-media-attacks-media-dangerous-turn
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-fails-to-install-plaque-honoring-jan-6-police-officers/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/28/politics/biden-campaign-january-6-officers/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722qy5dzlgo
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/25/trump-commute-ross-ulbricht-sentence-libertarian-convention-00160025
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ross-ulbricht-aka-dread-pirate-roberts-sentenced-life-federal-prison-creating
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-is-spotlighting-ross-ulbricht-silk-road-appeal-to-libertarians-2024
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4305566-trump-doubles-down-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers/
https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/major-news-outlets-gave-much-less-coverage-trumps-vermin-attack-then-they-did-clintons
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4687060-donald-trump-squeaky-chicken-libertarian-controversy/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/opinion/melinda-french-gates-reproductive-rights.html
The Dworkin ReportDe Niro and Jan 6 Heroes Unload on Trump Outside NY TrialRobert De Niro just showed up outside the New York City courthouse, where Trump is facing 34 felony counts. Rightwing lunatics are already trying to start conspiracy theories lying and saying that thi…Read more8 hours ago · 765 likes · 132 comments · Scott Dworkin
X:
BidenHQ/status/1795469679542100005
costareports/status/1795484830349852855
adamkinzingestatus/1795111150494826743
BidenHQ/status/1795468053993357493
2024.05.29 04:57 Able_Health744 One time Riddler gave a kid $100 because they asked him a riddle he couldn't solve [Batman #263, 1975]
![One time Riddler gave a kid $100 because they asked him a riddle he couldn't solve [Batman #263, 1975]](https://preview.redd.it/evrutm126a3d1.jpeg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=91136c1961c4e380f30c3cac9b1559fdfd42550b "One time Riddler gave a kid $100 because they asked him a riddle he couldn't solve [Batman #263, 1975]") | submitted by Able_Health744 to batman [link] [comments] |
2024.05.29 04:38 just4sanu Is Elementor Birthday Sale Live? (2024 Full Details Inside)
Elementor 8th Birthday Sale 2024 (May 28th – June 6th)
The Birthday sale of Elementor is live, just click the button below to claim your discount — they’re offering up to 30% off on their pro plugin and up to 75% off on WordPress hosting.Get Elementor Birthday Offer
The Elementor Birthday Sale is going on now, and you can get a hefty discount of up to 75% on their page builder WordPress plugin or WordPress hosting.
Just stay with us to find out all about the latest deals and offers as Elementor turns E-I-G-H-T.
Usually, Elementor doesn’t give out coupon codes all the time, but on special occasions like this, they offer special discounts. So make sure you don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity.
Elementor was started in June 2016 and since then they’ve been offering birthday sales, where you get the chance to save big on their paid plans. This year, they are offering discounts again. If you want to know what birthday offers they have, you came to the right place.
Let’s find out all the details without any further delay.
What is Elementor Birthday Sale?
Elementor Birthday Sale is an annual celebration of the popular WordPress page builder, Elementor. During this sale, users can get discounted pricing on Elementor WordPress hosting + Elementor Pro, which is the paid version of the plugin and includes additional features and functionalities.It usually takes place around the anniversary of the company’s founding and offers users a chance to save money while using Elementor to build their websites. This year’s birthday sale is LIVE right now, and we have picked out the best deals for you below.
#1. Get up to 75% off Hosting and Builder
Take a look at the special discounts on Elementor Hosting during Elementor’s birthday sale in 2024.https://preview.redd.it/eibhhknzz93d1.jpg?width=1277&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=497491a95dfe597b139991744d49d101fb702784
#2. Get up to 30% off Elementor Pro Plugin plans
Here are the anniversary discounts available for the Elementor Page Builder plugin (pro version).https://preview.redd.it/cklr0vp60a3d1.jpg?width=1288&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cea8eb6d77d3922b5a535f4b5fc46f97bdfa684d
How to Grab the Birthday Deal of Elementor Pro?
To get the special discount for Elementor’s birthday sale in 2024, all you need is to follow these instructions I’m going to tell you. Let’s start.Step #1: Go to Elementor Website (Click here to jump)
First of all, you need to visit the official Birthday Sale landing page of Elementor, and from there choose what you want to purchase — Elementor hosting or Elementor Pro Plugin.Step #2: Select your plan
On their Birthday landing page, you’ll see that Elementor is offering up to 30% off its pro plugin and up to 75% off its hosting plans. Here, you just pick your favourite plan that you’d like to go with and hit the Buy Now button.Step #3: Create an Elementor account for free
You’ll now see your cart showing the plan you chose, and total pricing. The Elementor Birthday sale discount code will automatically be applied to your purchase. From here, you can now proceed to enter your valid email address and password for your Elementor account.Step #4: Enter your billing info
Now, you have to complete your billing information. It includes your first name, last name, address, city, country, pin code, state, and company name. After filling in all these details, click the continue button.Step #4: Finish your order
Elementor offers two ways to pay for your purchase. You can choose to pay with your credit card or use your PayPal account. Once you have entered all the necessary information, just click on the “Pay Now” button to complete the payment process.Step #5: That’s all. Elementor Birthday 2024 Sale is yours…
If you’ve been following our instructions closely, you’ve already gotten the number one Website builder tool. There’s no more step after that.Remember, this Birthday sale of Elementor is only available for a limited time (expiring on 7th June 2024), so don’t wait too long to take advantage of it.
Elementor Birthday Sale Price for Plugin and Hosting
Elementor has two products:- WordPress Hosting
- Page Builder WordPress Plugin
Elementor Hosting Plans
Elementor is not just a page builder, but it also provides web hosting for WordPress websites. It’s like getting a package deal because when you buy web hosting from them, you also get the Elementor Pro page builder plugin.So, if you’re still trying to decide on a web host or if you’re unhappy with your current one, Elementor’s cloud hosting could be a great choice for you.
Here’s how they have reduced the prices of their hosting plans during their special Birthday sale or anniversary celebrations.
https://preview.redd.it/g3l98gic0a3d1.jpg?width=1277&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=822563014987cbb2ba7df06c40cabbc19f4deab3
Click here to snag up to 75% discount on any Elementor WordPress hosting and get page builder and theme for FREE — all in one package.
Elementor Page Builder Plugin Plans
Elementor offers both a free and paid version of its website builder plugin. The cost of the paid version, Elementor Pro, starts at $59/year for a single-site license and goes up to $399/year for a 1000-site license.Here’s a discounted plan for the Elementor Pro plugin during the Birthday sale.
https://preview.redd.it/blcbgpqf0a3d1.jpg?width=1288&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5f7d347f8262219478b20bb39a5cc958a176a2fc
They also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee (for both hosting and plugin) so you can try it risk-free.
Click on this exclusive Birthday sale link to choose your favourite Elementor Pro Plan.
Get Your Elementor Birthday Deal 2024
No doubt Elementor is the #1 website builder tool available on the market that helps you make any type of website in less than one hour. They have a visual drag-and-drop editor that lets you easily change things on your website while you’re working on it.And the best part is, when you make changes, you can see them live right away on your website. It also has ready-made designs and templates that you can use to make your website look professional without much effort. Overall, I would say Elementor is super simple to use and doesn’t require any coding skills.
From May 28th – June 7th, there’s a special sale on Elementor because it’s their birthday. So if you want to try it out, now is a great time. Just click the button below to sign up and get started.
Claim Elementor Birthday Discount Sale
Well, that’s all from this blog post. Now, I want to hear what you think about Elementor and its BIGGEST Birthday offer.
Did you like them (if you ask me, then yes, I especially like their plugin as well as the huge discounts they provide during their birthdays)? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section. Byeeeee…
Frequently Asked Questions – Elementor Anniversary Sale
Is Elementor Birthday Deal live?
Yes, Elementor’s birthday deal 2024 is live! This year they are celebrating their 8th birthday and offering a whopping up to 75% discount on all of their plans. The sale is only for a limited time so make sure to grab this opportunity before it ends.When is the Elementor Birthday Sale happening?
The Elementor Birthday Sale typically takes place in late May or early June, around the time of Elementor’s official launch date. At the time of writing this article, the Elementor Birthday Sale is live (from 28th May – 7th June), you can check them out from here.2024.05.29 04:18 knifewife2point0 How do y'all handle work?
Hi all,
I'm in round two of sciatica pain. This time it is so much worse than the first. I've been to urgent care and the ER and a back and spine specialist. Right now, the specialist wants me to wait to see if the gabapentin works, but that still leaves me in almost 10 out of 10 pain most days. I'm pretty much bedbound, can't even stand long enough to microwave a meal. (I have to lie down and take a break while it cooks.) So many of my activities of daily life are changed. I can't even go to the bathroom normally (bending, not a worry of caudus equinas syndrome). So, even though I'm very fortunate to be able to do my work from home, I have my laptop in bed with me, which is not conducive to typing. Fortunately, my manager has no idea what I do and hasn't assigned me anything new in months, so it's not a huge issue yet. However, I have had to take days off either to go to the doctor or simply because I have to take a stronger pain med which puts me to sleep. Never mind driving, which is nearly impossible, and knocks out my side hustle, which was tutoring.
So my question is, how do you all work and pay the bills while dealing with this pain? I'll be late on my rent for the second month in a row here shortly, and I have $30 whole dollars for groceries for the next 6 weeks. I just don't know what to do.
submitted by knifewife2point0 to Sciatica [link] [comments]
I'm in round two of sciatica pain. This time it is so much worse than the first. I've been to urgent care and the ER and a back and spine specialist. Right now, the specialist wants me to wait to see if the gabapentin works, but that still leaves me in almost 10 out of 10 pain most days. I'm pretty much bedbound, can't even stand long enough to microwave a meal. (I have to lie down and take a break while it cooks.) So many of my activities of daily life are changed. I can't even go to the bathroom normally (bending, not a worry of caudus equinas syndrome). So, even though I'm very fortunate to be able to do my work from home, I have my laptop in bed with me, which is not conducive to typing. Fortunately, my manager has no idea what I do and hasn't assigned me anything new in months, so it's not a huge issue yet. However, I have had to take days off either to go to the doctor or simply because I have to take a stronger pain med which puts me to sleep. Never mind driving, which is nearly impossible, and knocks out my side hustle, which was tutoring.
So my question is, how do you all work and pay the bills while dealing with this pain? I'll be late on my rent for the second month in a row here shortly, and I have $30 whole dollars for groceries for the next 6 weeks. I just don't know what to do.
2024.05.29 03:42 SVUVigilante Karim “Kiko” Kamel (Sheikh) — #MeToo
In 2010, when I was 19-years-old, I was in an acting class with “Kiko”; he was four years older than me. One day, I had booked a role in a film about a gay athlete in a closeted relationship, but as a cis man, felt I could use guidance to lend authenticity to my performance. Knowing that Kiko was gay (and friend from class), I asked him during break if he help run my scenes and give me feedback. Kiko welcomed my request and invited me to his apartment. Soon my life would never be the same.
While we were running a more intimate scene at his place, Kiko reached his hand up my leg. I stopped the scene and told him I was getting uncomfortable. He asked me, “How can you expect to be believable on set if you’re getting uncomfortable now?” Understanding how important this role was for my career and being emotionally raw (as the scene required vulnerability), I let him leave his hand there. As we went on, he placed his hand on my penis and began to molest me, despite my protests and re-assertions that I was straight (and at the time in a relationship with a longterm girlfriend). But he continued to manipulate me psychologically, justifying his behavior, exploiting my impressionable state of mind. At a certain point—I’m not sure exactly when—I dissociated from my body, floating up to the ceiling, seeing everything play out as if watching from above. It was Kiko molesting a stranger, not me. He began to perform fellatio on me. I was utterly paralyzed.
When it was over, I felt numb. Everything was clouded over with shame. I don’t even remember leaving his place, only suddenly being in the driver’s seat of my car, unable to even start the engine. Later on that day when I called to confront him, Kiko blew off the whole thing and expressed no remorse. In fact, my impression was that this was a routine of his and I was likely not the first, nor the last (more on that later).
Within a year of this event, I developed a sex addiction and substance abuse problem that I largely attribute to him, which led to my arrest and subsequent involuntarily hospitalization after a failed suicide attempt. Thousands of dollars in therapy bills later, being medicated for years, and working daily on my mental health, I’ve been able to stabilize my life. Depression is still a battle every day, as is managing my addiction, but it’s my cross to bear and I do so proudly. So you may be wondering, why am I choosing to come out now?
I recently decided to reach out to Kiko in an attempt to get closure and received no response. Upon looking him up on instagram, I saw in his profile that he mentioned being an “Ayahuasca Child,” and a horrifying image flashed in my mind: Kiko introducing a young man to ayahuasca under the pretense of a being a “shaman,” and during the psychedelic trip, molesting him like he did me. From my own (unrelated) experience with ayahuasca, I know the psychological damage that would cause would be irreversible.
As I said before, I worry there is a pattern here. To support that, some people who know Kiko have written things online anonymously that also paint him in a similarly negative light. If he is a repeat offender, as most are, I cannot sit by as he continues to sexually abuse innocent people. He must be stopped or lives are literally in jeopardy. I was lucky to survive thanks to resilience and a strong support system; others may not be so fortunate. That’s why I ask anyone who has any information or a similar experience to contact me. I hope this will be not only cathartic for us all, but more importantly, save future victims from a lifetime of trauma or worse.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to my story. I hope to hear from you.
**Though it goes without saying, this is a safe space; anonymity and discretion are my top priority for other victims. I will not judge and hope we can heal together.
submitted by SVUVigilante to WestHollywood [link] [comments]
While we were running a more intimate scene at his place, Kiko reached his hand up my leg. I stopped the scene and told him I was getting uncomfortable. He asked me, “How can you expect to be believable on set if you’re getting uncomfortable now?” Understanding how important this role was for my career and being emotionally raw (as the scene required vulnerability), I let him leave his hand there. As we went on, he placed his hand on my penis and began to molest me, despite my protests and re-assertions that I was straight (and at the time in a relationship with a longterm girlfriend). But he continued to manipulate me psychologically, justifying his behavior, exploiting my impressionable state of mind. At a certain point—I’m not sure exactly when—I dissociated from my body, floating up to the ceiling, seeing everything play out as if watching from above. It was Kiko molesting a stranger, not me. He began to perform fellatio on me. I was utterly paralyzed.
When it was over, I felt numb. Everything was clouded over with shame. I don’t even remember leaving his place, only suddenly being in the driver’s seat of my car, unable to even start the engine. Later on that day when I called to confront him, Kiko blew off the whole thing and expressed no remorse. In fact, my impression was that this was a routine of his and I was likely not the first, nor the last (more on that later).
Within a year of this event, I developed a sex addiction and substance abuse problem that I largely attribute to him, which led to my arrest and subsequent involuntarily hospitalization after a failed suicide attempt. Thousands of dollars in therapy bills later, being medicated for years, and working daily on my mental health, I’ve been able to stabilize my life. Depression is still a battle every day, as is managing my addiction, but it’s my cross to bear and I do so proudly. So you may be wondering, why am I choosing to come out now?
I recently decided to reach out to Kiko in an attempt to get closure and received no response. Upon looking him up on instagram, I saw in his profile that he mentioned being an “Ayahuasca Child,” and a horrifying image flashed in my mind: Kiko introducing a young man to ayahuasca under the pretense of a being a “shaman,” and during the psychedelic trip, molesting him like he did me. From my own (unrelated) experience with ayahuasca, I know the psychological damage that would cause would be irreversible.
As I said before, I worry there is a pattern here. To support that, some people who know Kiko have written things online anonymously that also paint him in a similarly negative light. If he is a repeat offender, as most are, I cannot sit by as he continues to sexually abuse innocent people. He must be stopped or lives are literally in jeopardy. I was lucky to survive thanks to resilience and a strong support system; others may not be so fortunate. That’s why I ask anyone who has any information or a similar experience to contact me. I hope this will be not only cathartic for us all, but more importantly, save future victims from a lifetime of trauma or worse.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to my story. I hope to hear from you.
**Though it goes without saying, this is a safe space; anonymity and discretion are my top priority for other victims. I will not judge and hope we can heal together.
2024.05.29 03:34 Any-Willingness8436 What should I do now?
I need advice 9-1-1 I (f45) and my partner (m43) met 19 yrs ago through a mutual friend. It was love at first sight and we started talking and we both fell head over hills and decided to move in together since we couldn’t be apart for more than a week. We finally made the move and moved in together. He had a descent job and I was on the hunt for any kind of job. Since I had 2 daughters 9 and 5 at the time. He had 3 children m7 f5 and m of literally months. At the beginning it was bumpy but any new relationship is. It took about 10 yrs for our family to finally cope in between his family his ex and me with my daughters. A month into me moving with him 3 hrs away from my family he was laid off his job I had been looking for a job since day one so finally one day I found a job as a waitress working graveyard at a restaurant at a not safe area. I struggled since the biological father of my daughters cut ties after I moved he came to visit once or twice and then he vanished. We struggled financially for a long time. I was new on the online job search thing but I suggested he posted on Craigslist his painting since he’s a magnificent painter. It was a hit it. It went too good I left my job to help with the driving since it was mostly out of town. I got too bored that I asked to help him so it wouldn’t take too long. Our days were 10 hr days we did the murals for about 8 or 9 yrs. We argued constantly over simple things. So I told him I love him but I couldn’t do it any more. I started working from home doing clothing alterations it didn’t pay a lot but it helped. He then open a business selling and repairing video games and consoles it did good for a few yrs and he started an apprenticeship at a tattoo shop. He is very creating smart and extremely talented. I then started helping a friends mom doing alterations at her bridal shop that was next to an embroidery place that actually shared a room and the stomps of the machines hypnotized. As soon as there was a chance I got the opportunity to work there as well. I’ve been jumping from job to job to help with the expenses of the house and the shop my partner still owned. At his apprenticeship he had a slip and was fooling around with this other female it ended. He finally decided to close ip his shop bc it just wasn’t working. When he finished his apprenticeship he went on and decided to open his own shop. He got his keys December 2019. Most expenses fell on me since he had no income at the time. He was working very hard to get the place standing it was a mess he demolished painted installed plumbing electric the whole 9 yards. He opened his doors June 2020. We couldn’t be any happier. He is also a musician so he would get gigs all the time. I have to mention I was doing the house work the kids rides the cooking and when he needed me I was there all while I had 2 jobs I would take the kids to and from school and drop off my step kids too (I hate the word step kids) they’re my children too. Any how September 2020 he got this new gig job and by October same yr he didn’t want me to go see him play when he was blocks from home. He started acting weird like dressing differently and caring about his looks I had my suspicions but he would always tell me it was just in my head. I could see his call logs and I found out who he was talking to it was the lead singer of this new band. I confronted him and he said I was crazy. Ok. I kept seeing weird behaviors and talked to him about it since we are not legally married I offered to open a relationship since it would be months at a time w/o intimacy he said no cause nothing was happening. There were times he would take my car on a Sunday nights and act mad so he won’t come home. He ever told me once he couldn’t remember where he parked my car so he left it 2 hrs out of town which caused me to call off work many times. I was loosing my mind I knew something was wrong and I did everything to fix the situation. I decided to place a tracker in my car so he won’t have to strand it again. Next weened he took my car again and left it by the airport all night. I confronted him with pics of my car where he had left it and he admitted he carpooled with this other female that is married should I add. FF to may 17 2022 I got a hold of all his ig user names and passwords, he was talking to at least 6 females but I didn’t confronted him this time that day I had a terrible migraine and was feeling aweful I needed to rest my head and be calm so I went home he rejected me as if I was a piece of trash I sat up and told him it felt like he didn’t want to be with me so I asked him to leave he got up and he left. Right away he started dating this scumbag not the singer but this other person. He had a dinner date may 18th with a 26 yo and on and on. All in a span of 2 months after he left my home. We started talking again and we were fine I told him everything I felt and how much he had hurt me he told me I didn’t deserved that and no I don’t. When he moved out and finished fooling around he got this god and I loved her she was the sweetest dog. After my second job I would go to his place and puppy sat for him he would help me financially when I needed and things were working out it was like we were dating. September 2023 we got into a huge argument and things were bad I went zero contact for a month and it was bad. Until. He had one of his panic attacks and called me to take him to the er so did I saw the dog again and things were calm for over a month. By December same yr he gave me a check I couldn’t cash, on the 23rd I went to his place to return the check and give him his Xmas gift it was a large print of his dog on a makeup trip we did in march it wasn’t much but it was with so much love. He didn’t let me in to see the dog he said I was not welcomed he opened his door about an inch and the dog came out running to me. He called the cops on me I explained the situation and they talked ti us individually. I left and had Xmas eve with my children. I forgot to mention that my youngest f22 and his daughter f21 are currently living with me. Xmas day I was home alone and he calls me I pick up and it was him he was stressed he said that his dog was acting weird since Saturday she couldn’t bark she tried but was just wizzing we rushed her to a hospital 2 hrs away we came back without her she didn’t make it on our way back he told me that the day he called the cops on me she ran to his room sat in a corner and just looked down. He spend the rest of the week in my place I didn’t know what to do but be by him and help him. He decided to get another dog he just turned a yr I love that dog too. I’ve spent the night at his house every other night to help with the puppy while he works. I still had 2 jobs and his place is about 20 mins from mine. About 3 months ago he asked me to lend him some cash so he can get a car to play with so I did. 2 weeks ago my sister invited me to celebrate my nieces graduation and I asked him if our youngest had a date for his and he said no so I told my sister I was attending. Last Wednesday my kid told me he had a ceremony ticket for him and another one for me I arranged as crazy as it sounds to ask for Thursday off to drop off my daughter to my sisters which is 3 hrs away saw my mother for 20 or 25 mins and started my drive back because on Thursdays we take his dog to the street fair so by 1 pm I was back in town I took a quick nap and started getting ready for the fair. He calls me at 7 pm to ask if everything was ready I said yes I’m just getting his cooler ready we take ahi’s bowl a portion of kibble ice packs snacks and a spray bottle. I couldn’t find the spray bottle. I went to my car to check if it was there and I saw him pulling up in his truck I asked if he could come over and kept looking I check again and he walks right inside so I closed up and went in with him I told him I can’t find the spray bottle and he lost it he was cussing out the spray bottle and I was in shock I mean dollar tree has them we can replace it but he was mad at the bottle. He had been doing this same thing for 3 weeks he looses it and he goes into his bedroom extremely upset last time he was like that I let him know I can’t do these kinds of arguments they’re ridiculous. I told him I needed to go home with my dogs and I left. We have a mutual friend that has a dog like ours and that night he posted a pic of both dogs and the lost spray bottle was hanging from the side pocket of the wagon. I texted him Sunday so I could go see the dog and he said ok I spent an hr with I walked him and ate snacks then I left I called him yesterday and he said he had 2 walk ins so I visited the dog for 2 hrs walked him played with him and ate snacks. We both as an agreement we talked about me quitting my second job and puppy sit and he’d pay me what my second job did and so he can get hands on on his shop it’d be a win win it’s been very slow like scary slow and he needs to build his portfolio so we all happy. I talked to him about a bill I owe is 1200 and he said we’ll figure it out well it’s due today since things aren’t smooth I texted him and asked him to please call me he said about what I said about the dog and other things he asked is something wrong with the dog I said not really but we need to talk and he said there’s nothing to talk about I send him a pic of the bill and it’s due date which is today and he said not my problem ask for a loan or something. He owes me 2k I was trying to figure out how we can still help each other and he told me I was harassing him and that I can’t come see the dog and he will get a restraining order. I know his financial situation isn’t good but neither is mine he blocked me again. I know he’s a narcissist and very self centered. His actions don’t have an affect on me but the dog does I’m afraid something would happen to the dog like it did to the other one. I can’t say I don’t care about the money but I barely make ends meet for myself nor can I say I hate him I want him to be ok and succeed like I should too. I know it’s toxic that is why I left. I sent that payment today on time but now I will be behind on all my bills including my rent and car payment. I don’t want to go to his house I don’t know what I did wrong. All I’ve done is is be by his side when no one is he has literally no true friends and he’s not close to his children on his son graduation I was there there was his grandma his stepdad his biological mom me sitting next to her my stepdaughter her boyfriend and then him who got there 30 min late and on the phone for most of the ceremony.
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2024.05.29 03:14 redlight886 February 1998 PLAYBOY Interview with Conan O'Brien [additional content]
PLAYBOY Interview With Conan O'Brien Interview by Kevin Cook For Playboy Magazine February 1998
A candid conversation with the preppie prince of "Late Night" about his rocky start, his show's secret one-day cancellation and how David Letterman saved the day.
He was polite. He was funny. He gave us a communicable disease.
At 34 Conan O'Brien is hotter than the fever he was running when we met in his private domain above the "Late Night" sound stage. A gangly freckle-faced ex-high school geek he is "one of TV's hottest properties" according to "People" magazine. The host of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" has become his generation's king of comedy.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Congested too, but O'Brien has far more to worry about than his head cold. A perfectionist who broods over one bad minute in an otherwise perfect hour of TV, he worries he might be anhedonic, "I have trouble with success," he says, "I was raised to believe that if something good happens something bad is coming." Sure things look good now "Rolling Stone" calls "Late Night" "the hottest comedy show on TV." Ratings are better than ever, particularly among 18- to 34-year-olds, the viewers advertisers crave.
But O'Brien only works harder. Despite his illness he taped two shows in 26 hours on three hours' sleep. He smoothly interviewed Elton John then burst into coughing fits during commercials. Later in his crammed corner office overlooking Manhattan traffic Conan the Cool gulped Dayquil gel caps. He coughed spewing microbes.
"Sorry, sorry," he said. Of course O'Brien can't complain. He came seriously close to falling to being banished behind the scenes as just another failed talk show host.
At his first "Late Night" press conference he corrected a reporter who called him a relative unknown, "Sir I am a complete unknown," he said. That line got a laugh, but soon O'Brien looked doomed. His September 13, 1993 debut began with O'Brien in his dressing room preparing to hang himself only to be interrupted by the start of his show. Before long his career was hanging by a thread. Ratings were terrible. Critics hated the show. Tom Shales of "The Washington Post" called it as "lifeless and messy as roadkill." Shales said O'Brien should quit.
Network officials held urgent meetings discussing the Conan O'Brien debacle. Should they fire him? How should they explain their mistake?
In the end of course he turned it around. The network hung with him long enough for the ratings to improve and the host of the cooler-than-ever "Late Night" now defines comedy's cutting edge just as Letterman did ten years ago.
Even Shales loves "Late Night" these days. He calls O'Brien's turnaround "one of the most amazing transformations in television history."
O'Brien was born on April 18, 1963 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, a doctor, is a professor at Harvard Medical School. His mother, a lawyer, is a partner at an elite Boston Law firm. Conan, the third of six children became a lector at church and a misfit at school. Tall and goofy, bedeviled with acne, he tried to impress girls with jokes. That plan usually bombed, but O'Brien eventually found his niche at Harvard where he won the presidency of the "Harvard Lampoon" in 1983 and again in 1984 - the first two-time "Lampoon" president since humorist Robert Benchley held the honor 85 years ago.
After graduating magna cum laude with a double major in literature and American history he turned pro. Writing for HBO's "Not Necessarily The News." O'Brien was earning $100,000 a year before his 24th birthday. But writing was never enough.
He honed his performance skills with the Groundlings, a Los Angeles improv group. There he worked with his onetime girlfriend Lisa Kudrow, now starring on "Friends." But Conan was not such a standout. In 1988 he landed a job at "Saturday Night Live" - but as a writer, not as on-air talent. In almost four years on the show O'Brien made only fleeting appearances, usually as a crowd member or security guard. His writing was more memorable. He wrote (or co-wrote) Tom hanks' "Mr Short-Term Memory" skits as well as the "pump you up" infosatire of Hanz and Franz and the nude beach sketch in which Matthew Broderick and "SNL" members played nudists admiring one another's penises. With dozens of mentions of the word that hit was the most penis-heavy moment in TV history. It helped O'Brien win an Emmy for comedy writing.
In 1991 he quit "SNL" and moved on to "The Simpsons" where he worked for two years. His urge to perform came out in wall-bouncing antics in writers' meetings. "Conan makes you fall out of your chair" said "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening. O'Brien's yen to act out was so strong that he spurned Fox's reported seven-figure offer to continue as a writer. He was driving for the spotlight.
By then David Letterman had announced he was turning shin - leaving NBC taking his ton-rated act to CBS. Suddenly NBC was up a creek without a host. The network turned to Lorne Michaels, O'Brien's "Saturday Night Live" boss. Michaels enlisted Conan's help in the host search planning to use him in a behind-the-scenes job. But when Garry Shandling, Dana Carvey and almost every other star turned down the chore of following Letterman, Michaels finally listened to Conan's crazy suggestion, "Let me do it!" Michaels persuaded the network to entrust it's 12:30 slot which Letterman had turned into a gold mine to an untested wiseass from Harvard.
O'Brien was working on one of his last "Simpsons" episodes when he got the news. He turned "paler than usual," Groening recalled. The Conan moseyed back to where the other writers were working, "I'll come back with the Homer Simspon joke later. I have to go replace Letterman," he said.
NBC executives now get credit for their foresight during those dark days of 1993 and 1994. They snared the axe and now reap the multimillion-dollar spoils of that decision. In fact, the story is not so simple. We sent Contributing Editor Kevin Cook to unravel the tale of O'Brien's survival, which he tells here for the first time. Cook reports:
"His office is chock-full of significa. There's a three-foot plastic pickle the Letterman staff left behind in 1993 - perhaps to suggest what a predicament he was in. There's a copy of Jack Paar's 'I Kid You Not' and a coffee-table book called 'Saturday Night Live: The First 20 Years.' His bulletin board features letters from fans such as John Watters and Bob Dole and an 8" x 10" glossy of Andy Richter with the inscription: "To Conan - Your bitter jealousy warms my black heart. Love and Kisses Andy."
"Of course it's all for show. From the photos of kitch icons Adam West and Robert Stack to the framed Stan Laurel autograph, from the deathbed painting of Abraham Lincoln, to the ironic star taped to Conan's door - they're all clever signals that tell a visitor how to view the star. Lincoln was his collegiate preoccupation: stardom is his occupation. Somewhere between the two I hoped to find the real O'Brien.
"As a Playboy reader he wanted to give me a better-than-average interview. I wanted something more - a definitive look at the guy who may end up being the Johnny Carson of his generation."
"Here's hoping we succeeded. If not I carried his germs 3000 miles and infected dozens of Californians for no good reason.
O'Brien: Yes, this is how to do a Playboy Interview -- completely tanked on cold medicine. I'll pick it up and read, "Yes, I'm gay."
Playboy: We could talk another time. O'Brien: (coughing) No, it's OK. I memorized Dennis Rodman's answers. Can I use them?
Playboy: You sound really sick. Do you ever take a day off? O'Brien: No. The age of talk show hosts taking days off is over. Johnny Carson could go to Africa when he was the only game in town -- "See you in two weeks!" But nobody does that now. I will give you a million dollars on the first day Jay takes off for illness.
Playboy: Do you ever slow down and enjoy your success? O'Brien: If anything, the pace is picking up. Restaurateurs insist on giving me a table even if I'm only passing by, so I'm eating nine meals a night. Women stop me on the street and hand me their phone numbers.
Playboy: So you have groupies? O'Brien: Oh yes. And other fans. Drifters. Prisoners. Insomniacs. Cab Drivers, who must watch a lot of late night TV, seem to love me lately. They keep saying, "You will not pay, you will not pay, you make me happy!"
Playboy: How happy did your new contract make you? O'Brien: Terrified. The network said, "We're all set for five years." I said, "Shut up, shut up! I can't think that far ahead." Tonight, for instance, I do my jokes, then interview Elton John and Tim Meadows. We finished taping about 6:30. By 6:45 my memory was erased and my only thought was, Tomorrow: John Tesh. And I started to obsess about John Tesh. Sad, don't you think?
Playboy: Not too sad. You got off to a rocky start but now you're so hot that People magazine recently said, "that was then, this is wow." O'Brien: I try not to pay much attention. Since I ignored the critics who said I should shoot myself in the head with a German Luger, it would be cheating to tear out nice reviews now and rub them all over my body, giggling. Though I have thought about it.
Playboy: Tell us about your trademark gag. You interview a photo of Bill Clinton or some other celeb, and a pair of superimposed lips provide outrageous answers. O'Brien: We call it the Clutch Cargo bit, after that terrible old cartoon series. They saved money on animation by superimposing real lips on the cartoons. I wanted to do topical jokes in a cartoony way -- not just Conan doing quips at a desk. TV is visual; I want things to look funny. But we're not Saturday Night Live; we couldn't spend $100,000 on it. Hence, the cheap, cheesy lips, You'd be surprised how many people we fool.
Playboy: Viewers believe that's really the president yelling, "Yee-haw! Who's got a joint?" O'Brien: It's strange. You may know intellectually that Clinton doesn't talk like Foghorn Leghorn. Ninety-eight percent of your brain knows the president wouldn't say, "Whoa Conan get a load of that girl!" But there are a few brain cells that aren't sure. When Bob Dole was running for president we had him doing a past-life regression: "My cave, get away." And then back further, "Must form flippers to crawl on to rocky soil," he says. There may be people out there who believe that Bob Dole was the first amphibian.
Playboy: Do you ever go too far? O'Brien: The fun is in going too far. It's a nice device because you get Bill Clinton to do the nastiest Bill Clinton jokes. We'll have Clinton making fart noises while I say "Sir! Please!"
Playboy: Are you enjoying your job now, with your new success? O'Brien: Well, there are surprises. I hate surprises. Like most comics, I'm a control freak. But I am learning that the show works best when things are out of control. Tonight I ask Elton John if he likes being neighbors with Joan Collins. He says he isn't neighbors with Joan Collins. He lives next door to Tina Turner. So I panic -- huge mistake! But Elton saves the day. "Joan Collins, Tina Turner, it doesn't matter. Either way I could borrow a wig," he says. Huge laugh, all because I fucked up. Later he surprised me by blurting out that he's hung like a horse. The camera cuts to me shaking my head: That crazy Elton. What can I do? Of course, I'm delighted that he went too far.
Playboy: That "What can I do?" look resembles a classic take of Jack Benny's. O'Brien: There's an old saying in literature: "Good poets borrow; great poets steal." I think T.S. Eliot stole it from Ezra Pound. Comics steal, too. Constantly. When I watched Johnny Carson, I noticed that he got a few takes from Benny and Bob Hope. When a comedy writer told me how much Woody Allen had borrowed from Hope, I thought, What? They're nothing alike. Then I went back and watched Son of Paleface, and there's Hope, the nervous city guy backing up on his heels, wringing his hands and saying, "Sorry, I'll just be moving along." Now look at early Woody Allen. You see big authority figures and Woody nervously saying, "Look, I'll just be on my way." Of course Woody made it his own, but he must have watched and loved Bob Hope.
Playboy: Who are your role models? O'Brien: Carson. Woody Allen. SCTV. Peter Sellers. When Peter Sellers died I felt such a loss, thinking, There won't be anymore of that. There's some Steve Martin in my false bravado with female guests: "Why, hel-lo there!" And I won't deny having some Letterman in my bones.
Playboy: You were surprise as Letterman's successor. At first you seemed like the wrong choice. O'Brien: I didn't get ratings. That doesn't mean I didn't get laughs. Yes, I had a giant pompadour and I looked like a rockabilly freak. I was too excited, pushed too hard, and people said, "That guy isn't a polished performer." Fine! But it isn't my goal to be Joe Handsomehead cool, smooth talk show host. Late Night with Conan O'Brien is supposed to be a work in progress, and now that we've had some success there's a danger of our getting too polished and morphing into something smoothly professional. Which would suck.
Do you know why I wanted this show? Because Late Night with David Letterman played with the rules and it looked like fun. Here was a place where people did risky comedy every night for millions of people. We had to keep this thing alive. There should be a place on a big network where people are still messing around.
Playboy: How bad were your early days on the show? O'Brien: Bad. Dave left here under a cloud: his fans and the media were angry with NBC. Then NBC picks a guy with crazy hair and a weird name. And the world says, "Harvard? Those guys are assholes." I sincerely hope that the winter of December 1993, our first winter, was the worst time I will ever have. I'd go out to do the warm up and the back two rows of seats would be empty. That's hard to look at. I would tell a joke and then hear someone whisper, "Who's he? Where's Dave?"
Playboy: You had trouble getting guests. O'Brien: Bob Denver canceled on us. We shot a test show with Al Lewis of The Munsters. We did the clutch cargo thing with a photo of Herman Munster. Unfortunately, Fred Gwynne, who played Herman, had recently died, and Al Lewis kept pointing at the screen, saying, "You're dead! I was at your funeral!"
Playboy: For months you got worried notes from network executives. What did they say? O'Brien: They were worried. The fact that Lorne Michaels was involved bought me some time. But Lorne had turned to me at the start and said, "OK, Conan. What do you want to do?" Now television critics were after me and the network was starting to realize what a risk I was. Suggestions came fast and furious. I kept the note that said, "Why don't you just die?"
Playboy: Did they suggest ways to be funnier? O'Brien: They were more specific and tactical. The network gets very specific data. Say there was a drop in ratings between 12:44 and 12:48 when I was talking to Jon Bon Jovi. I'll be told, "Don't ever talk to him again" Or they'll want me to tease viewers into staying with us: "You should tease that -- say, 'We'll have nudity coming up next!'"
Playboy: You did come close to being cancelled. O'Brien: We were cancelled.
Playboy: Really? You have never admitted that. O'Brien: This is the first time I've talked about it. When I had been on for about a year, there was a meeting at the network. They decided to cancel my show. They said, "It's cancelled." Next day they realized they had nothing to put in the 12:30 slot, so we got a reprieve.
Playboy: Were you worried sick? O'Brien: I went into denial. I tried hard not to think, Yes, I'm bad on the air and my show has none of the things a TV show needs to survive. We had no ratings. No critics in our corner. Advertisers didn't like us. Affiliates wanted to drop us. Sometimes I'd meet a programming director from a local station where we had no rating at all. The guy would show me a printout with no number for Late Night's rating, just a hash mark or pound sign. I didn't dare think about that when I went out to do the show.
Playboy: Are you defending denial? O'Brien: How else does anyone get through a terrible experience? The odds were against me. Rationally, I didn't have much chance. Denial was my only friend. When I look back on the first year, it's like a scene from an old war movie: Ordinary guy gets thrown into combat, somehow beats impossible odds, staggers to safety. His buddy say, "You could have been killed!" The guy stops and thinks. "Could have been killed?" he says. His eyes cross and he faints.
Playboy: How did you dodge the bullet? O'Brien: There were people at NBC who stood up for me. I will always be indebted to Don Ohlmeyer, who stuck to his guns. Don said, "We chose this guy. We should stick with him unless we get a better plan." He was brutally honest. He came to me and said, "Give me about a 15 percent bump in the ratings and you'll stay on the air. If not, we're going to move on."
Playboy: Ohlmeyer started his career in the sports division. O'Brien: Exactly, his take was, "You're on our team." Of course, it wasn't exactly rational of Don to hope I'd be 15 percent funnier. It was like telling a farmer, "It better rain this week or we'll take your farm away."
Playboy: What did you say to Ohlmeyer? O'Brien: There wasn't time. I had to go out and do a monologue. But I will always be indebted to Don because he told me the truth. Wait a minute -- you have tricked me into talking lovingly about an NBC executive. Let me say that there were others who were beneath contempt -- executives who wouldn't know a good show if it swam up their asses and lit a campfire.
Playboy: Finally the ratings went your way. Hard work rewarded? O'Brien: Well, I also paid off the Nielsen people. That was $140,000 well spent.
Playboy: Ohlmeyer plus bribery saved you? O'Brien: There was something else. Just when everyone was kicking the crap out of the show, Letterman defended me.
Playboy: Letterman had signed off on NBC saying, "I don't really know Conan O'Brien, but I heard he killed someone." O'Brien: Then I pick up the paper and he's saying he thinks I am going to make it. "They do some interesting, innovative stuff over there," he says. "I think Conan will prevail." And then he came on as a guest. Remember, this was when we were at our nadir. There was no Machiavellian reason for David Letterman, who at the time was the biggest thing in show business, to be on my show.
Playboy: Why did he do it? O'Brien: I'm still not sure. Maybe out of a sense of honor. Fair play. And it woke me up. It made me think. Hey, we have a real fucking television show here.
Of six or seven pivotal points in my short history here, that was the first and maybe the biggest. I wouldn't be sitting here -- I probably wouldn't even exist today -- if he hadn't done our show.
Playboy: The Late Night wars were hardly noted for friendly gestures. O'Brien: How little you understand. Jay, Dave and I pal around all the time. We often ride a bicycle built for three up to the country. "Nice job with Fran Drescher!" "Thanks, pal. You weren't so bad with John Tesh." We sleep in triple-decker bunk beds and snore in unison like the Three Stooges.
Playboy: You talk more about Letterman than your NBC teammate Leno. O'Brien: I hate the "Leno or Letterman, who's better?" question. I can tell you that Jay has been great to me. He calls me occasionally.
Playboy: To say what? O'Brien: (Doing Leno's voice) "Hey, liked that bit you did last night." Or he'll say he saw we got a good rating. I call him at work, too. It can be a strange conversation because we're so different. Jay, for instance, really loves cars. He's got antique cars with kerosene lanterns, cars that run on peat moss. He'll be telling me about some classic car he has, made entirely of brass and leather, and I'll say, "Yeah, man, I got the Taurus with the vinyl." One thing we have in common is bad guests. There are certain actors, celebrities with nothing to say, who move through the talk show world wreaking havoc. They lay waste to Dave's town and Jay's town, then head my way.
Playboy: You must be getting some good guests. Your ratings have shown a marked improvement. O'Brien: Remember, when you're on at 12:30 the Nielsens are based on 80 people. My ratings drop if one person has a head cold and goes to bed early.
Playboy: Actually, you're seen by about 3 million people a night. Your ratings would be even higher if college dorms weren't excluded from the Nielsens. How many points does that cost you? O'Brien: I told you I'm an idiot. Now I have to do math too?
Playboy: Do you still get suggestions from NBC executives? O'Brien: Not as many. The number of notes you get is inversely proportional to your ratings.
Playboy: What keeps you motivated? O'Brien: Superstition. We have a stagehand, Bobby Bowman, who holds up the curtain when I run out for the monologue. He is the last person I see before the show starts, and I have to make him laugh before I go out. It started with mild jabs: "Bobby, you're drunk again." Bobby laughs, "Heehee."" Then it was, "Still having trouble with the wife, Bobby?" But after hundreds of shows, you find yourself running out of lines. It's gotten to where I do crass things at the last second. I'll put his hand on my ass and yell, "You fucking pervert!" Or drop to my knees and say, "Come on, Bobby, I'll give you a blow job!"
"Ha-ha. Conan, you're crazy," he says. But even that stuff wears off. Soon, I'll be making the writers work late to give me new jokes for Bobby.
Playboy: Did you plan to be a talk show host or did you fall into the job? O'Brien: I was an Irish Catholic kid from St. Ignatius parish in Brookline, outside of Boston. And that meant: Don't call attention to yourself. Don't ask for too much when the pie comes around. Don't get a girl pregnant and fuck up your life.
Playboy: Were you an alter boy? O'Brien: I wanted to be an alter boy, but the priest at St. Ignatius said, "No, no. You're good on your feet, kid," and made me a lector. A scripture reader at Mass. He was the one who spotted my talent.
Playboy: What did you think of sex in those days? O'Brien: I was sexually repressed. At 16 I still thought human reproduction was by mitosis.
Playboy: How did you get over your sexual repression? O'Brien: Who says I got over it? My leg has been jiggling this whole time.
Playboy: What were you like in high school? O'Brien: Like a crane galumphing down the hall. A crane with weird hair, bad skin and Clearasil. Big enough for basketball but lousy at it. My older brothers were better. I would compensate by running around the court doing comedy, saying, "Look out, this player has a drug addiction. He's incredibly egotistical."
I was an asshole at home, too. My little brother Justin loved playing cops and robbers, but I kept tying him up with bureaucratic bullshit. When he'd catch me, I'd say, "I get to call my lawyer." Then it was, "OK, Justin, we're at trial and you've been charged with illegal arrest. Fill out these forms in triplicate." Justin was eight; he hated all the lawsuits and countersuits. He just cried.
Playboy: Were you a class clown? O'Brien: Never. I was never someone who walked into a room full of strangers and started telling jokes. You had to get to know me before I could make you laugh. The same thing happened with Late Night. I needed to get the right rhythm with Andy and Max and the audience.
Playboy: So how did you finally learn about sex? O'Brien: My parents gave me a book, but it was useless. At the crucial moment, all it showed was a man and a woman with the bed covers pulled up to their chins. I tried to find out more from friends, but it didn't help. One childhood friend told me it was like parking a car in a garage. I kept worrying about poisonous fumes. What if the fumes build up? Should you shut off the engine?
Playboy: For all your talk about being repressed, you can be rowdy on the air. O'Brien: The show is my escape valve. When I tear off my shirt and gyrate my pelvis like Robert Plant, feigning orgasm into the microphone, that shows how repressed I am -- a guy who wants to push his sex at the lens but can only do it as a joke.
Playboy: Aren't you tempted to live it up? O'Brien: I always imagined that if I were a TV star I would live the way I pictured Johnny Carson living. Carousing, stepping out of a limo wearing a velvet ascot with a model on my arm. Now that I have the TV show, I drive up to Connecticut on the weekends and tool around in my car. I could probably join a free-sex cult, smoke crack between orgies and drive sports cars into swimming pools, and my Catholic guilt would still be there, throbbing like a toothache. Be careful. If something good happens, something bad is on the way.
Playboy: Yet you don't mind licking the supermodels. O'Brien: At one point a few of them lived in my building, women who are so beautiful they almost look weird, like aliens. To me, a woman who has a certain approachable amount of beauty becomes almost funny. It's the same with male supermodels. They look like big puppets. So while I admire their beauty I probably won't be "romantically linked" with a model. I'd catch my reflection in a ballroom mirror and break up laughing.
Playboy: The horny Roy Orbison growl you use on gorgeous guests sounds real enough -- O'Brien: Oh, I've been doing that shit since high school. It just never worked before.
Playboy: Your father is a doctor, your mother an attorney. What do they think of their son the comedian? O'Brien: My dad was the one who told me denial was a virtue. "Denial is how people get through horrible things," he said. He also cut out a newspaper article in which I said I was making money off something for which I should probably be treated. So true, he thought. But when I got an Emmy for helping write Saturday Night Live, my parents put it on the mantel next to the crucifix. Here's Jesus looking over, saying, "Wow, I saved mankind from sin, but I wish I had an Emmy."
Playboy: Ever been in therapy? O'Brien: Yes. I don't trust it. I have told therapists that I don't particularly want to feel good. "Repression and fear, that's my fuel." But the therapists said that I had nothing to worry about. "Don't worry Conan you will always be plenty fucked up."
Playboy: When a female guest comes out, how do you know whether to shake her hand or kiss her? Is that rehearsed O'Brien: No, and it's awkward. If you go to shake her hand and her head starts coming right at you, you have to change strategy fast. I have thought about using the show to make women kiss me, but that would probably creep out the people at home. I decided not to kiss Elton John.
Playboy: Do you get all fired up if Cindy Crawford or Rebecca Romijn does the show? O'Brien: I like making women laugh. Always have, ever since I discovered you can get girls' attention by acting like an ass. That's one of the joys of the show -- I'm working my eyebrows and going grrr and she's laughing, the audience is laughing. It's all a big put-on and I'm thinking. This is great. Here is a beautiful woman who has no choice but to put up with this shit.
But it's not always put on. Sometimes they flirt back. Sometimes there's a bit of chemistry. That happened with Jennifer Connelly of The Rocketeer.
Playboy: One guest, Jill Hennessy, took off her pants for you. Then you removed yours. Even Penn and Teller took off their pants. O'Brien: Something comes over me. It happened with Rebecca Romijn -- I was practically climbing her. Those are the times when Andy and the audience seem to disappear and it's just me and this lovely woman sitting there flirting. I keep expecting a waiter to say, "More wine, Monsieur?"
Playboy: Would you lick the wine bottle? O'Brien: It's true, there's a lot of licking on the show. I have licked guests. I have licked Andy. Comedy professionals will read this and say, "Great work, Conan. Impressive." But I have learned that if you lick a guest, people laugh. If I pick this shoe off the floor, examine it, Hmmm, and then lick it, people laugh. I learned this lesson on The Simpsons, where I was the writer who was forever trying to entertain the other writers. I still try desperately to make our writers laugh, which is probably a sign of sickness since they work for me now. Licking is one of those things that look funny.
Playboy: Johnny Carson never licked Ed McMahon. O'Brien: We are much more physical and more stupid than the old Tonight Show. Even in our offices before the show there's always some writer acting out a scene crashing his head through my door. A behind-the-scenes look at our show might frighten people.
Playboy: One night you showed a doctored photo of Craig T. Nelson having sex with Jerry Van Dyke. Did they complain about it? O'Brien: I haven't heard from them. Of course I'm blessed not to be a part of the celebrity pond. I have a television show in New York, an NBC outpost. I don't run with or even run into many Hollywood people.
Playboy: You also announced that Tori Spelling has a penis. O'Brien: I did not. Polly the Peacock said that.
Playboy: Another character you use to say the outrageous stuff. O'Brien: Polly is not popular with the network.
Playboy: You mock Fabio, too. O'Brien: If he sues me, it'll be the best thing that ever happened. A publicity bonanza: Courtroom sketches of Fabio with his man-boobs quivering, shaking his fist, and me shouting at him across the courtroom. I'm not afraid of Fabio. He knows where to find me. I'm saying it right here for the record: Fabio, let's get it on.
Playboy: Ever have a run-in with an angry celeb? O'Brien: I did a Kelsey Grammar joke a few years ago, something about his interesting lifestyle, then heard through the network that he was upset. He had appeared on my show and expected some support. At this point my intellect says, "Kelsey Grammar is a public figure. I was in the right." Then I saw him in an airport. Kelsey didn't see me at first: I could have kept walking. But there he was, eating a cruller in the airport lounge. I thought I should go over. I said hello and then said, "Kelsey, I'm sorry if I upset you." And he was glad. He looked relieved. He said, "Oh, that's OK." We both felt better.
....See my other post with the last third of the interview
submitted by redlight886 to conan [link] [comments]
A candid conversation with the preppie prince of "Late Night" about his rocky start, his show's secret one-day cancellation and how David Letterman saved the day.
He was polite. He was funny. He gave us a communicable disease.
At 34 Conan O'Brien is hotter than the fever he was running when we met in his private domain above the "Late Night" sound stage. A gangly freckle-faced ex-high school geek he is "one of TV's hottest properties" according to "People" magazine. The host of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" has become his generation's king of comedy.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Congested too, but O'Brien has far more to worry about than his head cold. A perfectionist who broods over one bad minute in an otherwise perfect hour of TV, he worries he might be anhedonic, "I have trouble with success," he says, "I was raised to believe that if something good happens something bad is coming." Sure things look good now "Rolling Stone" calls "Late Night" "the hottest comedy show on TV." Ratings are better than ever, particularly among 18- to 34-year-olds, the viewers advertisers crave.
But O'Brien only works harder. Despite his illness he taped two shows in 26 hours on three hours' sleep. He smoothly interviewed Elton John then burst into coughing fits during commercials. Later in his crammed corner office overlooking Manhattan traffic Conan the Cool gulped Dayquil gel caps. He coughed spewing microbes.
"Sorry, sorry," he said. Of course O'Brien can't complain. He came seriously close to falling to being banished behind the scenes as just another failed talk show host.
At his first "Late Night" press conference he corrected a reporter who called him a relative unknown, "Sir I am a complete unknown," he said. That line got a laugh, but soon O'Brien looked doomed. His September 13, 1993 debut began with O'Brien in his dressing room preparing to hang himself only to be interrupted by the start of his show. Before long his career was hanging by a thread. Ratings were terrible. Critics hated the show. Tom Shales of "The Washington Post" called it as "lifeless and messy as roadkill." Shales said O'Brien should quit.
Network officials held urgent meetings discussing the Conan O'Brien debacle. Should they fire him? How should they explain their mistake?
In the end of course he turned it around. The network hung with him long enough for the ratings to improve and the host of the cooler-than-ever "Late Night" now defines comedy's cutting edge just as Letterman did ten years ago.
Even Shales loves "Late Night" these days. He calls O'Brien's turnaround "one of the most amazing transformations in television history."
O'Brien was born on April 18, 1963 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, a doctor, is a professor at Harvard Medical School. His mother, a lawyer, is a partner at an elite Boston Law firm. Conan, the third of six children became a lector at church and a misfit at school. Tall and goofy, bedeviled with acne, he tried to impress girls with jokes. That plan usually bombed, but O'Brien eventually found his niche at Harvard where he won the presidency of the "Harvard Lampoon" in 1983 and again in 1984 - the first two-time "Lampoon" president since humorist Robert Benchley held the honor 85 years ago.
After graduating magna cum laude with a double major in literature and American history he turned pro. Writing for HBO's "Not Necessarily The News." O'Brien was earning $100,000 a year before his 24th birthday. But writing was never enough.
He honed his performance skills with the Groundlings, a Los Angeles improv group. There he worked with his onetime girlfriend Lisa Kudrow, now starring on "Friends." But Conan was not such a standout. In 1988 he landed a job at "Saturday Night Live" - but as a writer, not as on-air talent. In almost four years on the show O'Brien made only fleeting appearances, usually as a crowd member or security guard. His writing was more memorable. He wrote (or co-wrote) Tom hanks' "Mr Short-Term Memory" skits as well as the "pump you up" infosatire of Hanz and Franz and the nude beach sketch in which Matthew Broderick and "SNL" members played nudists admiring one another's penises. With dozens of mentions of the word that hit was the most penis-heavy moment in TV history. It helped O'Brien win an Emmy for comedy writing.
In 1991 he quit "SNL" and moved on to "The Simpsons" where he worked for two years. His urge to perform came out in wall-bouncing antics in writers' meetings. "Conan makes you fall out of your chair" said "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening. O'Brien's yen to act out was so strong that he spurned Fox's reported seven-figure offer to continue as a writer. He was driving for the spotlight.
By then David Letterman had announced he was turning shin - leaving NBC taking his ton-rated act to CBS. Suddenly NBC was up a creek without a host. The network turned to Lorne Michaels, O'Brien's "Saturday Night Live" boss. Michaels enlisted Conan's help in the host search planning to use him in a behind-the-scenes job. But when Garry Shandling, Dana Carvey and almost every other star turned down the chore of following Letterman, Michaels finally listened to Conan's crazy suggestion, "Let me do it!" Michaels persuaded the network to entrust it's 12:30 slot which Letterman had turned into a gold mine to an untested wiseass from Harvard.
O'Brien was working on one of his last "Simpsons" episodes when he got the news. He turned "paler than usual," Groening recalled. The Conan moseyed back to where the other writers were working, "I'll come back with the Homer Simspon joke later. I have to go replace Letterman," he said.
NBC executives now get credit for their foresight during those dark days of 1993 and 1994. They snared the axe and now reap the multimillion-dollar spoils of that decision. In fact, the story is not so simple. We sent Contributing Editor Kevin Cook to unravel the tale of O'Brien's survival, which he tells here for the first time. Cook reports:
"His office is chock-full of significa. There's a three-foot plastic pickle the Letterman staff left behind in 1993 - perhaps to suggest what a predicament he was in. There's a copy of Jack Paar's 'I Kid You Not' and a coffee-table book called 'Saturday Night Live: The First 20 Years.' His bulletin board features letters from fans such as John Watters and Bob Dole and an 8" x 10" glossy of Andy Richter with the inscription: "To Conan - Your bitter jealousy warms my black heart. Love and Kisses Andy."
"Of course it's all for show. From the photos of kitch icons Adam West and Robert Stack to the framed Stan Laurel autograph, from the deathbed painting of Abraham Lincoln, to the ironic star taped to Conan's door - they're all clever signals that tell a visitor how to view the star. Lincoln was his collegiate preoccupation: stardom is his occupation. Somewhere between the two I hoped to find the real O'Brien.
"As a Playboy reader he wanted to give me a better-than-average interview. I wanted something more - a definitive look at the guy who may end up being the Johnny Carson of his generation."
"Here's hoping we succeeded. If not I carried his germs 3000 miles and infected dozens of Californians for no good reason.
O'Brien: Yes, this is how to do a Playboy Interview -- completely tanked on cold medicine. I'll pick it up and read, "Yes, I'm gay."
Playboy: We could talk another time. O'Brien: (coughing) No, it's OK. I memorized Dennis Rodman's answers. Can I use them?
Playboy: You sound really sick. Do you ever take a day off? O'Brien: No. The age of talk show hosts taking days off is over. Johnny Carson could go to Africa when he was the only game in town -- "See you in two weeks!" But nobody does that now. I will give you a million dollars on the first day Jay takes off for illness.
Playboy: Do you ever slow down and enjoy your success? O'Brien: If anything, the pace is picking up. Restaurateurs insist on giving me a table even if I'm only passing by, so I'm eating nine meals a night. Women stop me on the street and hand me their phone numbers.
Playboy: So you have groupies? O'Brien: Oh yes. And other fans. Drifters. Prisoners. Insomniacs. Cab Drivers, who must watch a lot of late night TV, seem to love me lately. They keep saying, "You will not pay, you will not pay, you make me happy!"
Playboy: How happy did your new contract make you? O'Brien: Terrified. The network said, "We're all set for five years." I said, "Shut up, shut up! I can't think that far ahead." Tonight, for instance, I do my jokes, then interview Elton John and Tim Meadows. We finished taping about 6:30. By 6:45 my memory was erased and my only thought was, Tomorrow: John Tesh. And I started to obsess about John Tesh. Sad, don't you think?
Playboy: Not too sad. You got off to a rocky start but now you're so hot that People magazine recently said, "that was then, this is wow." O'Brien: I try not to pay much attention. Since I ignored the critics who said I should shoot myself in the head with a German Luger, it would be cheating to tear out nice reviews now and rub them all over my body, giggling. Though I have thought about it.
Playboy: Tell us about your trademark gag. You interview a photo of Bill Clinton or some other celeb, and a pair of superimposed lips provide outrageous answers. O'Brien: We call it the Clutch Cargo bit, after that terrible old cartoon series. They saved money on animation by superimposing real lips on the cartoons. I wanted to do topical jokes in a cartoony way -- not just Conan doing quips at a desk. TV is visual; I want things to look funny. But we're not Saturday Night Live; we couldn't spend $100,000 on it. Hence, the cheap, cheesy lips, You'd be surprised how many people we fool.
Playboy: Viewers believe that's really the president yelling, "Yee-haw! Who's got a joint?" O'Brien: It's strange. You may know intellectually that Clinton doesn't talk like Foghorn Leghorn. Ninety-eight percent of your brain knows the president wouldn't say, "Whoa Conan get a load of that girl!" But there are a few brain cells that aren't sure. When Bob Dole was running for president we had him doing a past-life regression: "My cave, get away." And then back further, "Must form flippers to crawl on to rocky soil," he says. There may be people out there who believe that Bob Dole was the first amphibian.
Playboy: Do you ever go too far? O'Brien: The fun is in going too far. It's a nice device because you get Bill Clinton to do the nastiest Bill Clinton jokes. We'll have Clinton making fart noises while I say "Sir! Please!"
Playboy: Are you enjoying your job now, with your new success? O'Brien: Well, there are surprises. I hate surprises. Like most comics, I'm a control freak. But I am learning that the show works best when things are out of control. Tonight I ask Elton John if he likes being neighbors with Joan Collins. He says he isn't neighbors with Joan Collins. He lives next door to Tina Turner. So I panic -- huge mistake! But Elton saves the day. "Joan Collins, Tina Turner, it doesn't matter. Either way I could borrow a wig," he says. Huge laugh, all because I fucked up. Later he surprised me by blurting out that he's hung like a horse. The camera cuts to me shaking my head: That crazy Elton. What can I do? Of course, I'm delighted that he went too far.
Playboy: That "What can I do?" look resembles a classic take of Jack Benny's. O'Brien: There's an old saying in literature: "Good poets borrow; great poets steal." I think T.S. Eliot stole it from Ezra Pound. Comics steal, too. Constantly. When I watched Johnny Carson, I noticed that he got a few takes from Benny and Bob Hope. When a comedy writer told me how much Woody Allen had borrowed from Hope, I thought, What? They're nothing alike. Then I went back and watched Son of Paleface, and there's Hope, the nervous city guy backing up on his heels, wringing his hands and saying, "Sorry, I'll just be moving along." Now look at early Woody Allen. You see big authority figures and Woody nervously saying, "Look, I'll just be on my way." Of course Woody made it his own, but he must have watched and loved Bob Hope.
Playboy: Who are your role models? O'Brien: Carson. Woody Allen. SCTV. Peter Sellers. When Peter Sellers died I felt such a loss, thinking, There won't be anymore of that. There's some Steve Martin in my false bravado with female guests: "Why, hel-lo there!" And I won't deny having some Letterman in my bones.
Playboy: You were surprise as Letterman's successor. At first you seemed like the wrong choice. O'Brien: I didn't get ratings. That doesn't mean I didn't get laughs. Yes, I had a giant pompadour and I looked like a rockabilly freak. I was too excited, pushed too hard, and people said, "That guy isn't a polished performer." Fine! But it isn't my goal to be Joe Handsomehead cool, smooth talk show host. Late Night with Conan O'Brien is supposed to be a work in progress, and now that we've had some success there's a danger of our getting too polished and morphing into something smoothly professional. Which would suck.
Do you know why I wanted this show? Because Late Night with David Letterman played with the rules and it looked like fun. Here was a place where people did risky comedy every night for millions of people. We had to keep this thing alive. There should be a place on a big network where people are still messing around.
Playboy: How bad were your early days on the show? O'Brien: Bad. Dave left here under a cloud: his fans and the media were angry with NBC. Then NBC picks a guy with crazy hair and a weird name. And the world says, "Harvard? Those guys are assholes." I sincerely hope that the winter of December 1993, our first winter, was the worst time I will ever have. I'd go out to do the warm up and the back two rows of seats would be empty. That's hard to look at. I would tell a joke and then hear someone whisper, "Who's he? Where's Dave?"
Playboy: You had trouble getting guests. O'Brien: Bob Denver canceled on us. We shot a test show with Al Lewis of The Munsters. We did the clutch cargo thing with a photo of Herman Munster. Unfortunately, Fred Gwynne, who played Herman, had recently died, and Al Lewis kept pointing at the screen, saying, "You're dead! I was at your funeral!"
Playboy: For months you got worried notes from network executives. What did they say? O'Brien: They were worried. The fact that Lorne Michaels was involved bought me some time. But Lorne had turned to me at the start and said, "OK, Conan. What do you want to do?" Now television critics were after me and the network was starting to realize what a risk I was. Suggestions came fast and furious. I kept the note that said, "Why don't you just die?"
Playboy: Did they suggest ways to be funnier? O'Brien: They were more specific and tactical. The network gets very specific data. Say there was a drop in ratings between 12:44 and 12:48 when I was talking to Jon Bon Jovi. I'll be told, "Don't ever talk to him again" Or they'll want me to tease viewers into staying with us: "You should tease that -- say, 'We'll have nudity coming up next!'"
Playboy: You did come close to being cancelled. O'Brien: We were cancelled.
Playboy: Really? You have never admitted that. O'Brien: This is the first time I've talked about it. When I had been on for about a year, there was a meeting at the network. They decided to cancel my show. They said, "It's cancelled." Next day they realized they had nothing to put in the 12:30 slot, so we got a reprieve.
Playboy: Were you worried sick? O'Brien: I went into denial. I tried hard not to think, Yes, I'm bad on the air and my show has none of the things a TV show needs to survive. We had no ratings. No critics in our corner. Advertisers didn't like us. Affiliates wanted to drop us. Sometimes I'd meet a programming director from a local station where we had no rating at all. The guy would show me a printout with no number for Late Night's rating, just a hash mark or pound sign. I didn't dare think about that when I went out to do the show.
Playboy: Are you defending denial? O'Brien: How else does anyone get through a terrible experience? The odds were against me. Rationally, I didn't have much chance. Denial was my only friend. When I look back on the first year, it's like a scene from an old war movie: Ordinary guy gets thrown into combat, somehow beats impossible odds, staggers to safety. His buddy say, "You could have been killed!" The guy stops and thinks. "Could have been killed?" he says. His eyes cross and he faints.
Playboy: How did you dodge the bullet? O'Brien: There were people at NBC who stood up for me. I will always be indebted to Don Ohlmeyer, who stuck to his guns. Don said, "We chose this guy. We should stick with him unless we get a better plan." He was brutally honest. He came to me and said, "Give me about a 15 percent bump in the ratings and you'll stay on the air. If not, we're going to move on."
Playboy: Ohlmeyer started his career in the sports division. O'Brien: Exactly, his take was, "You're on our team." Of course, it wasn't exactly rational of Don to hope I'd be 15 percent funnier. It was like telling a farmer, "It better rain this week or we'll take your farm away."
Playboy: What did you say to Ohlmeyer? O'Brien: There wasn't time. I had to go out and do a monologue. But I will always be indebted to Don because he told me the truth. Wait a minute -- you have tricked me into talking lovingly about an NBC executive. Let me say that there were others who were beneath contempt -- executives who wouldn't know a good show if it swam up their asses and lit a campfire.
Playboy: Finally the ratings went your way. Hard work rewarded? O'Brien: Well, I also paid off the Nielsen people. That was $140,000 well spent.
Playboy: Ohlmeyer plus bribery saved you? O'Brien: There was something else. Just when everyone was kicking the crap out of the show, Letterman defended me.
Playboy: Letterman had signed off on NBC saying, "I don't really know Conan O'Brien, but I heard he killed someone." O'Brien: Then I pick up the paper and he's saying he thinks I am going to make it. "They do some interesting, innovative stuff over there," he says. "I think Conan will prevail." And then he came on as a guest. Remember, this was when we were at our nadir. There was no Machiavellian reason for David Letterman, who at the time was the biggest thing in show business, to be on my show.
Playboy: Why did he do it? O'Brien: I'm still not sure. Maybe out of a sense of honor. Fair play. And it woke me up. It made me think. Hey, we have a real fucking television show here.
Of six or seven pivotal points in my short history here, that was the first and maybe the biggest. I wouldn't be sitting here -- I probably wouldn't even exist today -- if he hadn't done our show.
Playboy: The Late Night wars were hardly noted for friendly gestures. O'Brien: How little you understand. Jay, Dave and I pal around all the time. We often ride a bicycle built for three up to the country. "Nice job with Fran Drescher!" "Thanks, pal. You weren't so bad with John Tesh." We sleep in triple-decker bunk beds and snore in unison like the Three Stooges.
Playboy: You talk more about Letterman than your NBC teammate Leno. O'Brien: I hate the "Leno or Letterman, who's better?" question. I can tell you that Jay has been great to me. He calls me occasionally.
Playboy: To say what? O'Brien: (Doing Leno's voice) "Hey, liked that bit you did last night." Or he'll say he saw we got a good rating. I call him at work, too. It can be a strange conversation because we're so different. Jay, for instance, really loves cars. He's got antique cars with kerosene lanterns, cars that run on peat moss. He'll be telling me about some classic car he has, made entirely of brass and leather, and I'll say, "Yeah, man, I got the Taurus with the vinyl." One thing we have in common is bad guests. There are certain actors, celebrities with nothing to say, who move through the talk show world wreaking havoc. They lay waste to Dave's town and Jay's town, then head my way.
Playboy: You must be getting some good guests. Your ratings have shown a marked improvement. O'Brien: Remember, when you're on at 12:30 the Nielsens are based on 80 people. My ratings drop if one person has a head cold and goes to bed early.
Playboy: Actually, you're seen by about 3 million people a night. Your ratings would be even higher if college dorms weren't excluded from the Nielsens. How many points does that cost you? O'Brien: I told you I'm an idiot. Now I have to do math too?
Playboy: Do you still get suggestions from NBC executives? O'Brien: Not as many. The number of notes you get is inversely proportional to your ratings.
Playboy: What keeps you motivated? O'Brien: Superstition. We have a stagehand, Bobby Bowman, who holds up the curtain when I run out for the monologue. He is the last person I see before the show starts, and I have to make him laugh before I go out. It started with mild jabs: "Bobby, you're drunk again." Bobby laughs, "Heehee."" Then it was, "Still having trouble with the wife, Bobby?" But after hundreds of shows, you find yourself running out of lines. It's gotten to where I do crass things at the last second. I'll put his hand on my ass and yell, "You fucking pervert!" Or drop to my knees and say, "Come on, Bobby, I'll give you a blow job!"
"Ha-ha. Conan, you're crazy," he says. But even that stuff wears off. Soon, I'll be making the writers work late to give me new jokes for Bobby.
Playboy: Did you plan to be a talk show host or did you fall into the job? O'Brien: I was an Irish Catholic kid from St. Ignatius parish in Brookline, outside of Boston. And that meant: Don't call attention to yourself. Don't ask for too much when the pie comes around. Don't get a girl pregnant and fuck up your life.
Playboy: Were you an alter boy? O'Brien: I wanted to be an alter boy, but the priest at St. Ignatius said, "No, no. You're good on your feet, kid," and made me a lector. A scripture reader at Mass. He was the one who spotted my talent.
Playboy: What did you think of sex in those days? O'Brien: I was sexually repressed. At 16 I still thought human reproduction was by mitosis.
Playboy: How did you get over your sexual repression? O'Brien: Who says I got over it? My leg has been jiggling this whole time.
Playboy: What were you like in high school? O'Brien: Like a crane galumphing down the hall. A crane with weird hair, bad skin and Clearasil. Big enough for basketball but lousy at it. My older brothers were better. I would compensate by running around the court doing comedy, saying, "Look out, this player has a drug addiction. He's incredibly egotistical."
I was an asshole at home, too. My little brother Justin loved playing cops and robbers, but I kept tying him up with bureaucratic bullshit. When he'd catch me, I'd say, "I get to call my lawyer." Then it was, "OK, Justin, we're at trial and you've been charged with illegal arrest. Fill out these forms in triplicate." Justin was eight; he hated all the lawsuits and countersuits. He just cried.
Playboy: Were you a class clown? O'Brien: Never. I was never someone who walked into a room full of strangers and started telling jokes. You had to get to know me before I could make you laugh. The same thing happened with Late Night. I needed to get the right rhythm with Andy and Max and the audience.
Playboy: So how did you finally learn about sex? O'Brien: My parents gave me a book, but it was useless. At the crucial moment, all it showed was a man and a woman with the bed covers pulled up to their chins. I tried to find out more from friends, but it didn't help. One childhood friend told me it was like parking a car in a garage. I kept worrying about poisonous fumes. What if the fumes build up? Should you shut off the engine?
Playboy: For all your talk about being repressed, you can be rowdy on the air. O'Brien: The show is my escape valve. When I tear off my shirt and gyrate my pelvis like Robert Plant, feigning orgasm into the microphone, that shows how repressed I am -- a guy who wants to push his sex at the lens but can only do it as a joke.
Playboy: Aren't you tempted to live it up? O'Brien: I always imagined that if I were a TV star I would live the way I pictured Johnny Carson living. Carousing, stepping out of a limo wearing a velvet ascot with a model on my arm. Now that I have the TV show, I drive up to Connecticut on the weekends and tool around in my car. I could probably join a free-sex cult, smoke crack between orgies and drive sports cars into swimming pools, and my Catholic guilt would still be there, throbbing like a toothache. Be careful. If something good happens, something bad is on the way.
Playboy: Yet you don't mind licking the supermodels. O'Brien: At one point a few of them lived in my building, women who are so beautiful they almost look weird, like aliens. To me, a woman who has a certain approachable amount of beauty becomes almost funny. It's the same with male supermodels. They look like big puppets. So while I admire their beauty I probably won't be "romantically linked" with a model. I'd catch my reflection in a ballroom mirror and break up laughing.
Playboy: The horny Roy Orbison growl you use on gorgeous guests sounds real enough -- O'Brien: Oh, I've been doing that shit since high school. It just never worked before.
Playboy: Your father is a doctor, your mother an attorney. What do they think of their son the comedian? O'Brien: My dad was the one who told me denial was a virtue. "Denial is how people get through horrible things," he said. He also cut out a newspaper article in which I said I was making money off something for which I should probably be treated. So true, he thought. But when I got an Emmy for helping write Saturday Night Live, my parents put it on the mantel next to the crucifix. Here's Jesus looking over, saying, "Wow, I saved mankind from sin, but I wish I had an Emmy."
Playboy: Ever been in therapy? O'Brien: Yes. I don't trust it. I have told therapists that I don't particularly want to feel good. "Repression and fear, that's my fuel." But the therapists said that I had nothing to worry about. "Don't worry Conan you will always be plenty fucked up."
Playboy: When a female guest comes out, how do you know whether to shake her hand or kiss her? Is that rehearsed O'Brien: No, and it's awkward. If you go to shake her hand and her head starts coming right at you, you have to change strategy fast. I have thought about using the show to make women kiss me, but that would probably creep out the people at home. I decided not to kiss Elton John.
Playboy: Do you get all fired up if Cindy Crawford or Rebecca Romijn does the show? O'Brien: I like making women laugh. Always have, ever since I discovered you can get girls' attention by acting like an ass. That's one of the joys of the show -- I'm working my eyebrows and going grrr and she's laughing, the audience is laughing. It's all a big put-on and I'm thinking. This is great. Here is a beautiful woman who has no choice but to put up with this shit.
But it's not always put on. Sometimes they flirt back. Sometimes there's a bit of chemistry. That happened with Jennifer Connelly of The Rocketeer.
Playboy: One guest, Jill Hennessy, took off her pants for you. Then you removed yours. Even Penn and Teller took off their pants. O'Brien: Something comes over me. It happened with Rebecca Romijn -- I was practically climbing her. Those are the times when Andy and the audience seem to disappear and it's just me and this lovely woman sitting there flirting. I keep expecting a waiter to say, "More wine, Monsieur?"
Playboy: Would you lick the wine bottle? O'Brien: It's true, there's a lot of licking on the show. I have licked guests. I have licked Andy. Comedy professionals will read this and say, "Great work, Conan. Impressive." But I have learned that if you lick a guest, people laugh. If I pick this shoe off the floor, examine it, Hmmm, and then lick it, people laugh. I learned this lesson on The Simpsons, where I was the writer who was forever trying to entertain the other writers. I still try desperately to make our writers laugh, which is probably a sign of sickness since they work for me now. Licking is one of those things that look funny.
Playboy: Johnny Carson never licked Ed McMahon. O'Brien: We are much more physical and more stupid than the old Tonight Show. Even in our offices before the show there's always some writer acting out a scene crashing his head through my door. A behind-the-scenes look at our show might frighten people.
Playboy: One night you showed a doctored photo of Craig T. Nelson having sex with Jerry Van Dyke. Did they complain about it? O'Brien: I haven't heard from them. Of course I'm blessed not to be a part of the celebrity pond. I have a television show in New York, an NBC outpost. I don't run with or even run into many Hollywood people.
Playboy: You also announced that Tori Spelling has a penis. O'Brien: I did not. Polly the Peacock said that.
Playboy: Another character you use to say the outrageous stuff. O'Brien: Polly is not popular with the network.
Playboy: You mock Fabio, too. O'Brien: If he sues me, it'll be the best thing that ever happened. A publicity bonanza: Courtroom sketches of Fabio with his man-boobs quivering, shaking his fist, and me shouting at him across the courtroom. I'm not afraid of Fabio. He knows where to find me. I'm saying it right here for the record: Fabio, let's get it on.
Playboy: Ever have a run-in with an angry celeb? O'Brien: I did a Kelsey Grammar joke a few years ago, something about his interesting lifestyle, then heard through the network that he was upset. He had appeared on my show and expected some support. At this point my intellect says, "Kelsey Grammar is a public figure. I was in the right." Then I saw him in an airport. Kelsey didn't see me at first: I could have kept walking. But there he was, eating a cruller in the airport lounge. I thought I should go over. I said hello and then said, "Kelsey, I'm sorry if I upset you." And he was glad. He looked relieved. He said, "Oh, that's OK." We both felt better.
....See my other post with the last third of the interview
2024.05.29 03:00 Stunning-Pilot3722 Doordash drivers
I just want to make a point. To those of you that never tip, give bad ratings for the dumbest reasons, or tip poorly, stop and put yourself in our position. Ask yourself, would you shop for and deliver someone's groceries or food for $2-$3. Alot of people are unaware that doordash pays us an average base pay of $2-$3 per order. Which means we rely 100% on the customer tips. Without tips we would not be able to do this job. The gas, wear on our vehicles and safety concerns are not worth $3. Doordash is not responsible if we get into a wreck. And for those of you that say, get another job if you don't like it. For some of us it's not that simple. I know multiple drivers that do this as a 2nd or 3rd job. I myself have a full time job but was injured at work and ended up having not one, but 2 surgeries due to this injury. While out of work I've had to take a HUGE pay cut. Over $400 a week loss while I'm out. My husband and I have kids, bills and responsibilities so I'm doing what needs to be done until I return to work. Doordash is a job I can work for that I don't have to worry about my current restrictions being an issue and it's a job I can start and stop any time I want. I don't have to worry about putting in a notice when I return to work or waiting for background checks and drug screens to clear before I can start working. I just click dash now and start working which makes it the perfect temporary side job to have. While yes some use this because they don't want to get a real job, others use this as an extra income to get by. So when you're clicking the bare minimum tip or changing it to $0, don't be surprised or upset when either your order doesn't get picked up by a driver, you get a driver that decides to destroy your order, or your food arrives cold because it's taken awhile for doordash to find a driver that would accept your shitty paying order. If you can't afford to tip, you definitely shouldn't be ordering from expensive restaurants or buying tons of junk food and non necessities from the dollar store. If you're that broke you definitely shouldn't be using a delivery service seeing ass they do an uncharged on every item and charge extra fees for delivery. If your excuse is you don't have a vehicle and you're a crappy tipper, then maybe you should be saving the money you spend on chocolate shakes, big macs, and all the other junk to purchase a vehicle. There is no excuse for being cheap when it comes to tipping the person you're asking to pick up and deliver the items you're unable to pick up or refuse to get yourself. It's the same as if you go to a restaurant. You tip your waitress and yet he or she gets paid an hourly wage and if they get injured on the job they're covered by their employer. They don't use gas or put a ton of mileage on their vehicles to bring you your food. They don't have to worry about going to a strangers home and being harmed or their vehicle breaking down. If anything you should tip your driver better than you would a waiter or waitress. Next time you place your taco bell, mcdonald's, dollar general order etc. Please stop and ask yourself, what would you consider a fair amount of pay to pick up your own order and deliver it. If you yourself wouldn't do it for the amount you expect us to then obviously you need to either adjust the tip or get it yourself. For those of you that don't tip due to previous bad experiences with drivers, you can always go back and add a tip after your food is delivered. And one last thing, I've heard many customers say they leave a note for the driver that says they will tip after delivery or will tip cash. We don't see these notes until after we have accepted the order. When an order pops up on our app for $2, we have no way of knowing if you're going to tip after the fact so we are going to decline it most of the time. When we get the order it only shows us which restaurant we are going to, the total we will make for the order and the total miles to complete the order then we are given the option to accept or decline.
submitted by Stunning-Pilot3722 to u/Stunning-Pilot3722 [link] [comments]
2024.05.29 03:00 swaggylongbottom WARNING: Ignition Casino Has HORRIBLE Player Service & Curacao Egaming Liscense Means Nothing
 | Greetings all. submitted by swaggylongbottom to onlinegambling [link] [comments] After months of much back and forth and remaining silent on all public forums, I feel it important to share my story with the community so others can make informed decisions on where they choose to gamble online. Back in March, I was playing a Bingo style game on Ignition. The game has you place an initial wager on up to 4 cards, then draws the initial batch of 30 balls. Each card has a grid of 3x5, and pays out varying amounts for different patterns completed. All wins are cumulative and build off each other, and each card has a section at the too displaying the current amount won on that card. The play can, after the initial 30 balls, choose to wager on additional balls, one at a time, to try to make winning patterns, up to a full grid. There is a bonus round triggered by making a special pattern during the game. During this round, the player selects a target and either reveals a prize amount, or wins nothing and the game continues. The round is over when the player opts not to wager on an additional ball, or when the maximum 15 additional balls have been wagered on, during which time all winnings are added to the players balance. Now, during one such game I triggered the bonus during the initial 30 ball period and revealed $2,500 as my prize. When I returned to the game screen, this was also reflected in my wins for that card and the game. I continued wagering for quite a few more balls, and eventually hit another big payoff on the same card on another pattern for over 4k. The problem is, as soon as I hit this pattern, the bonus I had won was deactivated and removed. The card only totaled the pattern that I had hit and not the $2,500. I had screenshotted the bonus round showing the prize total, the main game right after showing the total wins which reflected the $2,500 and the active bonus line for multiple balls wagered, then again after the 4k line was hit showing the bonus being removed. Each step was documented, as I had previously had an issue in exactly this manner; after taking it all the way to Ignitions Dispute Resolution Office they paid that first instance. Now, let's talk about that first instance (when i got paid), because it's actually pretty relevant to the second. The VERY first time it happened (before I ever got paid for it) was actually quite a while before; I wasn't really sure what had happened and something was wrong. I reached out to customer service and they said that "after reviewing the gameplay, all rounds were paid out correctly. I thought maybe I didn't fully understand the game, so I double checked all the rules etc. to make sure I wasn't in the wrong. When I didn't see anything, I decided to screen shot all my larger wins and bonuses in this game. A few weeks later I hit for 3k on a bonus, and it was knocked out by the same glitch described above. I spent hours on the phone with customer service, sending in the screenshots to prove something was wrong. At one point, the agent tried to tell me that I was paid the 3k... 10 hours later. Funny thing was, I had screenshotted that win and told her this. You know what she did? She laughed at me and said with an attitude "Oh yeah? You won 3k again huh?". Even more funny is that the transaction log she was digging in trying to pull up ANYTHING to refute my claim clearly showed my wagers in that game leading up to that win. An escalation to their DRO and a week of time passing and FINALLY they paid me. However, this was not the case with the $2,500. Instead of admitting that there was an issue with the game and rectifying my payout, they simply stated that "all rounds were paid correctly" and that "since they paid me 3k in goodwill in spite of having already being paid in the previous situation, they would not be paying me again". This was absolute nonsense and infuriating to day the least. So I reached out to their "Regulatory Authority", the E-gaming Commission of Curacao. Surely, armed with time-stamped screen shots showing the events as they unfolded, this body would be able to set things straight, right? Well, no, not at all actually. For starters, all Ignition offered up was the transaction logs showing wagers, wins and losses from the session. They couldn't produce the actually footage from the gameplay, but their ball numbers directly corresponded to my screenshot. Which would demonstrate that I did not doctor the evidence, and that I did, at the very least, trigger the bonus, something that Ignition never even attempted to dispute, but rather only stated the other lines that were hit and paid and again, that all rounds were paid correctly. The gaming commision continued to extend 7 additional days here and 10 here and 7 more here to Ignition every time they failed to respond. Even worse, the emails were all generic form emails with nothing personalized regarding the situation and a total lack of effort to address the evidence I presented. After 2 months of this case hanging around with no new information from Ignition, I was fed up, and told the Commission this much. Their response was to side with "the operator" and close my case, saying that Ignition had provided sufficient evidence but that some couldn't be shared because it was "confidential". Hmmmm..... oh and once again, an impersonal email from a template. As of today, Ignition has also disabled my account in retaliation. So here's the short of it: Ignition Casino does have trustworthy games and does pay out when its games pay properly. It's RTP, I found, was fair and the variety of games was solid as a slots player. They add new content frequently and I truly enjoyed my time playing. However.... they have HORRIBLE customer service when something goes wrong and will not own their errors even when you shove their faces in it. The curacao egaming commision badge means absolutely nothing. It is meant to make players feel safer, and perhaps it ensures that the RTP of a game is correct and that a Casino can't up and run with players money suddenly, but, when it comes to an issue like this do NOT expect any meaningful help. You don't pay their bills... the casino operators do. Always remember that. I hope my story has been somewhat helpful as a cautionary tale. And that it stands as a way for these two organizations to improve their operations going forward so that other players aren't treated like this in the future. And Ignition.... you owe me $2,500. I'll take a check. |
2024.05.29 02:53 Past-Statistician358 $1000 fee-free bill payments to ANYONE with your credit card (easily hit credit card min spend requirements)
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submitted by Past-Statistician358 to referralcodes [link] [comments]
Using the Plastiq referral link, you can get 1,000 fee-free dollars to use on the platform. This means that you can make payments worth up to $1,000 without incurring any Plastiq fees, which can be a significant savings. The Plastiq referral link is a great way to take advantage of this offer and start using the platform to manage your payments more efficiently.
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2024.05.29 02:24 redj_acc Undergrad Research Positions cost several thousand dollars???
Recently, I found out that doing Summer Research for course credit in lieu of having a paid position actually costs you >3000 dollars for Summer work. To meet graduation requirements it's important for me to get this research done over the summer, but I'm struggling to pay that amount. Financial aid has not applied to this summer work, so I was wondering if anyone had advice on how to navigate this?
It seems exceptionally greedy for the university to make me forgo payment AND instead have to pay them what I would earn instead. The reasoning of the university is that they bill by the credit, & I'm earning credit
If anyone has advice for this situation would really appreciate the help. I may be missing something or signing up for it incorrectly.
submitted by redj_acc to washu [link] [comments]
It seems exceptionally greedy for the university to make me forgo payment AND instead have to pay them what I would earn instead. The reasoning of the university is that they bill by the credit, & I'm earning credit
If anyone has advice for this situation would really appreciate the help. I may be missing something or signing up for it incorrectly.
2024.05.29 02:23 SoulPossum People who are in or were in long term relationships, what sorts of boundaries did/do you establish in regards to how you interact with members of the opposite sex that aren't your S/O?
A few weeks ago I posted about a friend of mine who I briefly dated before meeting my wife. Short version is that when we were hanging out regularly back in the day she was pretty explicit about not wanting to be with me at all. Now, years later, she may or may not be trying to find a way to restart that relationship even though I'm married now. The prevalent theory amongst my friends/wife is that where she saw me as boring in the past she now sees me as stable and a potential savior (for lack of a better term) who can help her get out of her current situation.
Recently this friend reached out and asked me to give her some money. I declined even though I technically have the amount she asked me for. I didn't get into specifics about why I couldn't do it but something about it just felt off to me. I don't think my wife would really care (I try to keep her in the loop about when I hear from this friend because I don't want her to think anything inappropriate is going on), but I would feel like I'm slighting my wife by giving money to another woman without the expectation of her paying it back. And it's especially awkward for this friend in particular. Back in the day she was doing better than me financially, which was one of the reasons she didn't want to date me. While we dated and while we hung out as friends she never spent any money on me. I didn't expect her to. I paid for the dates I invited her on and I paid my share when we went out as friends. But she was attractive and had a lot of rich guys who were willing to buy her things and pay her bills back then. I do feel bad that she's in a tight spot now but on some level it does kinda feel like she's just looking for me to be the next guy to sponsor her financially since she no longer gets that sort of attention/support from the guys she used to deal with when we were younger. So not only does it feel inappropriate due to the fact that I'm in a relationship, but it also feels like an instance of lopsided support since this was never something that was done for me back when our situations were reversed.
How do you navigate things like this in a relationship? What lines do you draw about how you handle your money with friends knowing that you are in a relationship with someone who is relying on you for financial responsibility? To be fair I should mention I don't really give my male friends money like that either. I'm always down to give advice or help out with figuring out a solution or a course of action to a problem. But I also feel like I need to have some sort of a boundary between my friends and my wife, this probably being the biggest one. I only have a finite amount of money I can make and I only have a finite amount of time in which I'll be able to make it. Most of it is probably going to have to go supporting my family/home because my wife doesn't make enough by herself. So it's rare that I'm willing or able to give out funds even though I'm not desperately hurting for every single dollar I have currently.
submitted by SoulPossum to Plantmade [link] [comments]
Recently this friend reached out and asked me to give her some money. I declined even though I technically have the amount she asked me for. I didn't get into specifics about why I couldn't do it but something about it just felt off to me. I don't think my wife would really care (I try to keep her in the loop about when I hear from this friend because I don't want her to think anything inappropriate is going on), but I would feel like I'm slighting my wife by giving money to another woman without the expectation of her paying it back. And it's especially awkward for this friend in particular. Back in the day she was doing better than me financially, which was one of the reasons she didn't want to date me. While we dated and while we hung out as friends she never spent any money on me. I didn't expect her to. I paid for the dates I invited her on and I paid my share when we went out as friends. But she was attractive and had a lot of rich guys who were willing to buy her things and pay her bills back then. I do feel bad that she's in a tight spot now but on some level it does kinda feel like she's just looking for me to be the next guy to sponsor her financially since she no longer gets that sort of attention/support from the guys she used to deal with when we were younger. So not only does it feel inappropriate due to the fact that I'm in a relationship, but it also feels like an instance of lopsided support since this was never something that was done for me back when our situations were reversed.
How do you navigate things like this in a relationship? What lines do you draw about how you handle your money with friends knowing that you are in a relationship with someone who is relying on you for financial responsibility? To be fair I should mention I don't really give my male friends money like that either. I'm always down to give advice or help out with figuring out a solution or a course of action to a problem. But I also feel like I need to have some sort of a boundary between my friends and my wife, this probably being the biggest one. I only have a finite amount of money I can make and I only have a finite amount of time in which I'll be able to make it. Most of it is probably going to have to go supporting my family/home because my wife doesn't make enough by herself. So it's rare that I'm willing or able to give out funds even though I'm not desperately hurting for every single dollar I have currently.
2024.05.29 01:23 Calebd2 Any consequences for not using a car rental "reservation" that wasn't prepaid?
Last time I went on vacation the car rental company didn't have a vehicle available. It caused a huge headache.
As a result, for my next upcoming vacation, I booked separate "reservations" for a vehicle with both Dollar and Thrifty. I figured if one did not have a vehicle available, I'd go to the next one.
They did not require me to prepay. Any details about cancellation fees on their websites only talk about prepaid reservations.
If I don't use one of these reservations will either company try to bill me somehow for not using the reservation?
submitted by Calebd2 to TravelHacks [link] [comments]
As a result, for my next upcoming vacation, I booked separate "reservations" for a vehicle with both Dollar and Thrifty. I figured if one did not have a vehicle available, I'd go to the next one.
They did not require me to prepay. Any details about cancellation fees on their websites only talk about prepaid reservations.
If I don't use one of these reservations will either company try to bill me somehow for not using the reservation?
2024.05.29 01:22 Fun-Illustrator3154 Supreme Court justice- Highschool
Hello, my name is Isabella. I’m a rising junior in high school who intends to major in political science in college.
A lot of my experience in law comes from my social advocacy group, where we proposed and successfully passed a bill that invests hundreds of thousands of dollars in programs in favor of disconnected youth. Through that experience, I was able to gain connections to a Supreme Court justice.
I was wondering if I should potentially email them, asking for an opportunity to work with them over the summer.
I know the Supreme Court has a schedule and they are not open throughout the year, so I was wondering if this sounds stupid. Also, there is the blaring fact that I am still in high school, and might not have any skills that would be of value to them.
Do you have any advice on what I should potentially ask? Or if I should ask at all?
The area that I live in does not have many law related summer programs and I can’t afford the paid ones, so I figured I should reach out to those I know.
But it’s very important to me that I do not come off as ignorant or rude. If you think this request would be inappropriate and I shouldn’t ask at all, please let me know.
I would love love love your advice.
Let me know what you think!!
submitted by Fun-Illustrator3154 to LawSchool [link] [comments]
A lot of my experience in law comes from my social advocacy group, where we proposed and successfully passed a bill that invests hundreds of thousands of dollars in programs in favor of disconnected youth. Through that experience, I was able to gain connections to a Supreme Court justice.
I was wondering if I should potentially email them, asking for an opportunity to work with them over the summer.
I know the Supreme Court has a schedule and they are not open throughout the year, so I was wondering if this sounds stupid. Also, there is the blaring fact that I am still in high school, and might not have any skills that would be of value to them.
Do you have any advice on what I should potentially ask? Or if I should ask at all?
The area that I live in does not have many law related summer programs and I can’t afford the paid ones, so I figured I should reach out to those I know.
But it’s very important to me that I do not come off as ignorant or rude. If you think this request would be inappropriate and I shouldn’t ask at all, please let me know.
I would love love love your advice.
Let me know what you think!!