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The William Gude Diatribe a/g ZE part 2

2024.05.29 03:18 DissedFunction The William Gude Diatribe a/g ZE part 2

The William Gude Diatribe a/g ZE part 2
This is a written transcription from a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fRbLZN1pQA It features William Gude and Jessica Palmadessa, two of the most popular Los angeles YouTube Scientology protest/content creators.
general timestamps are provided.
6:12
William: Do you even have a job?

How you pay your bills?

He was hoping Youtube would do it.I don’t think it’s going to happen now.

I’m going to make sure your little f*cking,...

you know I would have like helped him grow his channel.

Jessica: You WERE helping him!

William: I was! I was like, oh, he’s going to get up with a million, talking it up, man listen—

we end that.

Create a whole new, create a whole new f*cking Youtube Zach,
It’s done.
6:12:16
William: ..and all because WeinLA (Ever) paid no interest in you.
She did not want you . She wanted Eric. She liked Eric. Eric has talent. He plays guitar. He’s a real journalist. He’s written in Daily dot, he’s written in Rolling Stone—a real journalist. Real.
He’s (referring to Zachary) like “I’m doing journalism and Scientology—no one reads it” NO ONE reads it. No one. I would never read that. And I’m like don’t read the whole thing, I’m telling you no one’s read the first paragraph, no one. That’s you Zach.Whatever drugs you were on this morning boy when you sober up your going to come off of it..
Jessica: he was on something this morning…
William: .…Zach’s been on drugs. Why do you think he’s been acting like that? That first night when he went out to the Fig and sh*t, he was on drugs. You’re a ..you’re a f*cking junkie. Junkie Zach. Zach the junkie! Get off the drugs! Riding around, like who rides around like “Oh I’m a ..look look how f*cking cool I am”
(garbled feed)
6:13:33
William: …always hear a lighter sparking cuz he’s always f*cking smoking crap or meth or whatever, I don’t think that’s weed. I think that sh*t is ____like geeking out.
Jessica: I told you, I told you, I told the whole chat I said it was a bad idea to go against Will.
William: I’ll never stop. (Agreeing with Jessica).
Jessica: I said it from the beginning. I said it not because of Will or not because of me, because the chat was going to destroy you (referring to Zach) and that’s what happened.
6:14:02
William: Oh Zach. Zach Zach Zach…
So when Zach comes live again (talking and giving directions to Jessica’s chat room) go on in there and troll his sh*t.Make him shut down his chat. Let him know that he’s a f*cking weirdo for being out on Fig. What investigative journalism is being done? What is he doing? He’s filming from a distance…jerking off.
That’s what he’s doing. No one, he doesn’t want anybody else in the car with him, no one’s ever in a car…people have offered to come with him, no he’s got to film with his left hand and jerk off with his right hand.Zach (said with Will pointing to the camera). Zachary! He’s not in the chat but he’s watching.
Jessica: for some reason it really upset him that I was waiting for you. I was like I thought you liked WeinLa, whatever. (Suggesting that maybe Zach has a crush on Jessica?)
6:15:02
William: (mocking Zach) “But nobody did anything when I was doxed.” (Referring to when Zachary was swatted at Gelsons) No, first off you’re sitting right next to the f*cking person’s car spy stalking her (referring to Koster?) That’s STALKING!
(Jessica nodding strongly).
No one does that! I told EVERYBODY stay the F*ck away from her car.But no, I’m going to for some reason you got to sit there four cars away and “oh I broke a story”..NO ONE cares! It means nothing. You got to sit there next time you know what his next investigative reporting, he’s going to do it from …he’s going to be hiding in the trunk of her car! —he’s going to be in the trunk of her car.—and yeah I’ surprised that when the cops came and check your car —they didn’t find a rape kit.
I just figured they’d find bungee cords, zip ties, knives, ropes all that sh*t. Your Fig gear. That’s what you pack up when you take it out to Fig. We gonna to have to check and see if Zach —we need to see if there’s any missing people. ‘Cuz Zach might have bodies in his f*cking house.
Jessica: Got to make sure WeinLA is okay!! (Laughing).
William: Is WeinLA okay? Let’s check. I need to know! (slight pause).
go to your pool with your f*cking mammories hanging to your knees.
Zach’s got tits that hang to his knees!!! He can tie them tits in a knot!
OH my God, who’s going to milk them!
Who’s milking Zach like a f*cking cow (said making a milking motion) With those tits and he’s hanging around the pool —everybody laughs at you Zach. You look like sh*t.I’m not in the best shape you know what I’m not going to do? I’m not going to go on live in a pool like that and he’s thinking he’s “oh I’m some sexy …”
you’re a WEIRDO!
Everybody laughs at you.
You know what happens when you go in there? (Talking about livestreams from the pool).
I get screenshots like look at this guy.
They laugh at you.Your neighbors laugh at you! They’re probably wondering what the f*ck is he doing in that pool? Setting up a camera while he’s in a pool. Who does that?You know who does it? Zachary Ellison—the biggest weirdo in LA. My god.
6:17:02
William:You had to run your mouth, huh?Was it worth it? (Mocking)
Let’s see what you do oh then we’re going to hear about “oh man I got to get out of here it’s unsafe, it’s unsafe, Streets is out here,” that’s right. I’m going to protest you.
And I’m going to come to Fig and I’m gong to find you on Fig —I’m going to tell everybody you got this f*cking weirdo over here watching you, watch out for that guy he may be a serial killer.
Jessica: (driving and reading the chat) He’s in the chat?
William: F*ck him! F*ck you Zach! Run your mouth against me? I’m gong to f*cking ruin you. and you know it. Bitch ass.
You know what I’m going to do, I’m going to go onto Twitter later I’ going to go on Instagram on it I’m going to post videos about you with your tits hanging to your f*cking knees.
6:18:04
William:Your saggy ass titties.You think anybody, you think WeinLA (Ever) is going to look at that video and be like “oh well that looks nice” NO ONE! No one. Maybe a bull will…maybe a bull…right cuz they like you know they like them (starts making a milking a cow gesture again)
Then I’m gonna f*cking when you come out there to La Poubelle I’m gonna milk you you right in front. I’m gonna get a little container together and we’re gonna get some Zach milk. We’re gonna milk your titties.
Jessica: That’s hot.
William: gonna have colostrum and all that sh*t. When you come to La Poubelle I’m going to get you a special bra. Special bra but for those little funnels you got. My God, run your mouth.
6:19:01
William: Zach, you can’t be me. I know you want to.“No I’m not trying to be Streets.” He literally got to have the same —he went and bought the exact same RayBans, same color, everything. And a black hoodie. Like why were you wearing hoodies? You were wearing that f*cking —you had that coat that I see little kids wear—in a winter in Wisconsin and it was like of all colors let’s make it like puke yellow.
Jessica:there’s going to be a press conference tonight.
William: Oh, press conference Zach. I’m going to crash your press conference. I’m going to come find you, you go live, Zach goes lives, I’m going to show up. You better do live for me at some-I’ll show up there too.
Jessica: I don’t think he’s going to show his face again to be honest. Zach all you had to do was not try and you know…(voice trailing off)
William: (interrupting) get off the drugs Zach. He should at least blame it on drugs. If you weren’t on drugs then..
Jessica: (interrupting) that’s what everyone, my mom (Jessica’s mom is reportedly a paid moderator in her chats) was like “Zach, just say you were hacked, that’s all you got to do is say that you were hacked but he was standing by it, he kept coming back “I’m the only one that broke the story about Francois”
6:20:13
William: No one cares about that like literally no one cares. No one. You know what matters Zach? That we shut down f*cking Scientology in LA. You had nothing to do with that. You had nothing to do with that. They don’t recruit anymore. You had nothing to do with that Zach. Nothing. You just came with your thing putting the camera in everybody’s face with your weird f*cking smile.
Jessica: (reading chat and responding) Is WeinLA okay? I don’t know, you have to check Zach’s trunk (laughing) but I think she should be fine.
William: You going to pop sh*t while I’m jail. you should never have said a damn thing.
6:21:00
William: I’m not even pissed off at the cops anymore, I’m focused on Zach you bitch.
Jessica: you can’t be pissed so it’s just funny the downfall of himself.
William: Yeah, he started feeling himself, no one’s paid Zach any attention. Ever. Like literally. Like I said, and all a sudden he starts getting a little attention on, he’s got 2-3000 followers and subscribers on YouTube..
Jessica: I don’t think he does anymore. Think that dropped a bit.
William: F*ck him. That’s what he gets. Of all the people, of all the people you want to run your mouth against …boy...
6:22:00
William: He that I what did I do to get arrested, what did I do stand there filming from a distance and I deserve it?
Jessica: first off he thought you were going to be held for 48 hours he was starving—
William: —Zach you don’t know sh*t! What the hell do you know, listen I’m gonna tell everybody in the chat, right…Zach does not know what he’s talking about ever. Ever. We just laugh at him. I hope you guys are on with the joke.I think most of you are. Right? But no one takes him seriously. The guy know sh*t but he doesn’t know anything.
Jessica: ah so he wasn’t held for 48 hours, I don’t know if you noticed..
William: You want to know why? Zach? Because they said, oh you’re a journalist we verified you’re a journalist.. Zach, if you got arrested, no one would have..are they going to be like you’re a substack —they’re going to go looking for your ..it’s. a substack. It’s a f*cking blog. It’s just a longform Twitter post. That’s all it is.
Jessica: he said there’s only been like 3 journalists that’ve ever covered Scientology. I’m like first off, I consider Solomon a journalist…
6:23:01
William: yeah, everybody’s covered Scientology way better than you have Zach, what the f*ck do you know? Oh god.
Jessica: you don’t get like a certificate that says journalist.
William: the guy sits at La Poubelle, at a distance
Jessica: smoking up a blunt
William: or something. I mean maybe the blunt got something in it.
Jessica: It’s got to. It’s been ever since he demanded WeInLA to go home from that ice cream shop. That’s something—
William: —She didn’t want to go home. She wanted to hang out with Eric cuz he’s a cool guy to hang around. And he’s actually you know a good-looking guy unlike you. (Talking to Zach)Unlike you Zach, unlike you, you’re not a good looking guy.Zach, you’re f*cking UGLY!
6:24:00
William: You were pissed off you were f*cking had your little panties in a bunch because she (Ever) was getting attention, she was giving him attention and you weren’t getting it. So I’m going back and I’m going to cock block you guys, got to get out of here. Eric comes to these protests, Eric comes to these protests every day these protests are going on when sh*t is going off he’s not a p*ssy like you Zach. His little piece of sh*t Civic jerking off. That’s what he does. Smoking
(garbled)
William: How you doing Zach? It’s never going to end. You know damn well. Somebody gets in a fight with me it never ends.
6:25:00
Jessica: and last thing, it’s not dangerous at La Poubelle. That’s not why I—
William: (interrupting) —La Poubelle is not dangerous. It’s freaks like you. That’s why people stop going to La Poubelle.
Freaks like you Zach. That’s why it had nothing to do with danger, no one’s scared of La Poubelle, literally no one is scared, no one wants to be around a freak show like you Zach.
I can’t believe you don’t you haven’t figured that out. Haven’t you noticed when you come walking up at La Poubelle people walk away from you? When I see you filming you come walking over you start talking about “oh it’s unsafe out here” everybody walks away from you like “what the f*ck are you talking about?” They clown you. Everybody laughs about, laughs about you. You started feeling yourself and taking yourself too seriously you going we had to sit there and bring you back to reality—you ain’t sh*t.
Jessica: and it’s not groundbreaking that you filmed the guy in the parking lot it was or her talking to the cheeseburger guy or whatever, it was not groundbreaking. It was just creepy. Please stop filming females in a car because if I was her I would get a restraining order.
6:26:01
William: Yeah I mean she’s probably going to get, I can see her working —
Jessica: I will be her (Koster, owner of La Poubelle) witness! I will be her witness!
William: I can see her trying to get a restraining order cuz this guy is stalking her car at 1:00 in the morning. Who am I do defend Francois but I’ve told EVERYBODY, I’ve told everybody I’m like man this is weird, get the f*ck away from her car. It makes everybody look bad. Zach, you make everybody look bad doing that weird sh*t. It’s embarrassing. So nobody wants to be around you cuz when your restraining order coming and it’s going to be a legit one —nobody wants to be tied up with them. NO ONE.
Can’t believe you run your mouth like that.Who the f*ck do you think you are?
Jessica: He’s been winding up for this though.
William: oh yeah. Zach’s going to go to Twitter like, I’ll film the police you know we’re going to cancel him, nobody listens to you Zach. You’re muted by everybody. Even people that follow you out of a courtesy they then mute you, no one —that’s why no one replies to your tweets. No one. The only people that reply to your Tweet are people who follow you on some of the Scientology stuff —other than that, no one.
If I catch you replying to them, I’m going to block your ass. Unless it’s..juicy
.I’m going to start a new channel, auditing Zach. The Zach audit. What are you going to do Zach? Zach, if everybody out here scares you, boy, everything’s dangerous.
Jessica starts mumbling something
William: Zach’s a bitch. Zach’s a bitch. Zach gets nothing done. No one and I mean no one in LA will doubt who’s like top not even not just activist but journalist you ask journalist —they’re not saying you Zach. I promise you.Nobody know who you are. No other journalists knows who you are. No one.
F*CK YOU ZACH.
Jessica: (smiling at Streets) you’re funny as shit. (Looking to camera) You guys enjoy the show?
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2024.05.28 15:31 deeptechsharing Traxsource Weekend Weapons May 10th, 2024

Title: Traxsource Weekend Weapons May 10th, 2024 *exclusive\* Genre: House, Afro House, Deep House, Funky House, Jackin House, Nu Disco / Disco, Soulful House, Tech House, Indie Dance, Melodic House & Techno, Minimal / Deep Tech, UK Garage / Bassline, Progressive House Release Date: 2024-05-10
DOWNLOAD in 320kbps: https://sharing-db.club/djs-chart/483373_traxsource-weekend-weapons-may-10th-2024/
Tracklist: 1. James Curd, Mr. Flip – Cookin’ (Saison Remix) (5:42) 2. Freenzy Music, Marian (BR) – Pakit Ban (Original Mix) (6:00) 3. 2fox, Laville – Elevation (Extended Mix) (Extended Mix) (6:36) 4. Dr Feel, WUULA – L’Amour (Original Mix) (6:43) 5. N.W.N., Soso – Soul Food (5:27) 6. Deepstar, Donna Allen – Sugar (feat. Donna Allen) (Richard Earnshaw Extended Remix) (6:33) 7. Ben Banjo Field – Be Yourself! (Original Mix) (5:34) 8. Demarkus Lewis – You Mean The World To Me (6:11) 9. The WildViolets – Sunrise (Dr. Packer Remix) (3:29) 10. Fouk – Cobalt (5:40) 11. Masters at Work, Louie Vega, Kenny Dope – Craze Bass Dub (5:10) 12. Souldynamic – Careca (7:09) 13. Local Singles – Fever (Original Mix) (4:56) 14. Inda Jani, Leandro Di – Listen Baby (Extended Mix) (5:55) 15. Darmon, Augusto Yepes & Sounds Of Rituals – Seva (6:55) 16. Akeem Raphael – Music Is Our Addiction (Extended Mix) (5:25) 17. Sebb Junior – The Love I Need (Extended Mix) (5:26) 18. Trinidadian Deep – Moments Of Sounds (6:12) 19. Ch’i, Alison Crockett – Loneliness (feat. Alison Crockett) (DJ Meme Extended Remix) (6:20) 20. Borka & The Gang – Make It (4:42) 21. Hot Since 82, Ron Carroll – Preach (feat. Ron Carroll) (Extended Mix) (8:23) 22. DJ Dove, DJ Disciple – To The Deep (Baustaff Remix) (2:47) 23. Mijangos, Café De Sol – Bahia (2024 Version) (6:15) 24. David Fesser – Slang (6:48) 25. Mujo Deep – Mdambi (Main Mix) (7:19) 26. Tal Fussman – Freedom Defines House (4:41) 27. Andy Faisca – Meant To Be (6:32) 28. Jackman Jones – It’s A Vibin’ Ting (6:07) 29. Franck Roger – Imagine (6:14) 30. Monifah – Testify (DJ Beloved & Matt Knight Remix) (5:45) 31. DJ Sneak – Chicago House music (6:18) 32. Marc Cotterell – Come On Down (Edit) (3:33) 33. Manda Moor – KarateCat (Original Mix) (6:30) 34. Kiko Navarro, GYE – Nanadi (Extended) (8:03) 35. Toronto Hustle, Sean Roman, Javonntte – Fall In Love (5:18) 36. Jorge Montiel, Juan Laya – When the Sun Goes Down (4:39) 37. Modesti – We Are Together (Original Mix) (5:08) 38. SeeMeNot, Kitty Amor – Together, Pt. II (Extended Mix) (6:37) 39. Risk Assessment – The Way I Feel (Risk Assessment Vocal) (6:32) 40. Carlos Barbero, Illinois – Mad Retreat (David Mayer Extended Remix) (6:49) 41. Mr. Nunez – Toma (Extended Mix) (5:55) 42. John Acquaviva, Olivier Giacomotto, Dan Diamond – Let It Go (Dub Mix) (7:30) 43. Pipi Le Oui – Baby Slow Down (Ken@Work Remix) (4:19) 44. Daniel Steinberg – Move (Extended Mix) (5:36) 45. Flavio Martini – Yeah (Original Mix) (6:10) 46. T.Williams , Tendai – Hold On (feat. Tendai) (3:37) 47. Joyce Muniz, Sara Bluma – Beats & Lines (Extended Mix) (5:00) 48. Peter Brown – Sunshine (5:39) 49. FiNE, Enoo Napa, Lizwi – Nomathemba (Enoo Napa Remix) (7:18) 50. GW Harrison – Break Of Dawn (2:41) 51. Magic Number – All I Ever Wanted (Atjazz Remix) (5:08) 52. Rory Northall – You Baby (6:16) 53. Gama – Bad Girls (Original Mix) (7:10) 54. Afro Wav, Mandisa – Out Of Love (Afro Wav Rework) (7:04) 55. Ziggy Funk – Elapsed (5:47) 56. Hotmood – I’m On Fire (4:40) 57. Raredub – L.L.L (4:09) 58. Fred Aster, L Speaks – French Cat (Vocal Mix) (5:30) 59. Stan Kolev & Matan Caspi, Stan Kolev, Matan Caspi – Adinkra (7:56) 60. Paris Cesvette, Muzikman Edition, Lifford – Your Smile (Michele Chiavarini Remix) (7:33) 61. Easttown – Chaos (5:58) 62. Serge Funk – Please Don’t Leave Me (Extended Mix) (6:52) 63. Thiago Cohen – What’s Up (Original Mix) (5:48) 64. Arie Mando – On The Phone (6:04) 65. Dexter Troy – Retro Romance (Original Mix) (6:43) 66. Morttimer Snerd III – What U Waitin 4? (Miggedy’s Full Dizko Slap) (7:12) 67. MAYER (TN) – Savaya Nights (8:06) 68. GZZ – Let’s Get Together (6:20) 69. John Daly – I Get So High (Original Mix) (7:31) 70. Pass The 40 – More Disco (5:01) 71. D3 – September (Vick’s Time Traveler Extended Mix) (10:59) 72. Over12, Rocksolid – Infinite Sorrows (6:03) 73. Venessa Jackson, Frankie Ferrara – Raindrops (Qubiko Extended Remix) (6:47) 74. Le Hutin – Thoughts (Original Acoustic Mix) (3:34) 75. Analog Sol – Solidays (6:49) 76. Sammy Deuce – Burning Desire (6:15) 77. Roy Davis Jr. – Save Your Life (Long Version 2024 Remaster) (7:06) 78. David Fesser – Wicked (5:48) 79. Foo Funkers, Da Funk Junkies – Dress In Good Vibes (Edit) (3:08) 80. Liva K – The Drill (Original Mix) (6:59) 81. Mikki Afflick Showcasing David Walker – Light At The End Of The Tunnel (An AfflickteD Soul Vocal Mix) (7:00) 82. Ucros – Eyes Starry (7:10) 83. The WildViolets – Sunrise (4:13) 84. STUCKINWAVEFORMS, Janahee – never wanted (Boki V.I.P) (3:38) 85. DJ Simi – Total Musy Shake (6:24) 86. Dwson, Keziah Tehillah – Lost In Me (Original Mix) (6:27) 87. Demarkus Lewis – Livin’ For Life (Main Mix) (5:37) 88. Krystal Klear – Rampage (5:46) 89. GIDEÖN, Rush Davis – The Fall Of Rome (Relentless CNT Dub) (6:27) 90. SACRED H3ART – Whats Good (4:45) 91. Maurice Joshua, Meagan McNeal – Lovin’ U (Maurice Joshua House Mix) (6:48) 92. Angel Heredia, Ramon Bedoya – Dame Sombra (5:58) 93. 84Bit, Ma Khe, A.P.(84Bit) – Mind (7:17) 94. Dj Hermes, FLY – Pasilda (Afro Extended Mix) (6:19) 95. Beny Junior – There’s Nothing (4:52) 96. Just Desserts (AUS), Malii (AUS) – U Don’t Care (3:39) 97. Exte C, Céline Languedoc – Lagé Mwen (Main mix) (5:36) 98. Aldo Cadiz, Ki Creighton – For The Floor (Extended Mix) (7:00) 99. Shvrlee – Hold You Baby (5:41) 100. Supertaste – All This Time (3:34) 101. Murphy’s Law (UK) – Every Day, All Day (Extended) (5:56) 102. Dexter Troy – So Right (6:33) 103. Ben La Desh – Heel Goed (6:59) 104. Frankey & Sandrino, Charlotte Riby – Memories (Original Mix) (6:36) 105. MF Productions – Got to get this disco (Extended Mix) (6:01) 106. Christian Smith – We Are The Robots (4:21) 107. Souldynamic – Goleada (7:15) 108. Nick Reach Up, Dave Spoon, Final Cut – Dance the Night Away (Holmes John Remix) (3:17) 109. DJ Mes – Detroit Ratchet City (6:49) 110. Masters at Work, Louie Vega, Kenny Dope – Gene’s First Bass Dub (4:54) 111. The WildViolets – Searching For A Spark (3:48) 112. Eli Fola – Lagos Mentality (7:00) 113. Shvrlee – Funkyo (4:46) 114. Addict Disc – Give Up (6:35) 115. De La Frank – Tribe (4:03) 116. TCTS – Desire (Original Mix) (6:22) 117. Risk Assessment – The Way I feel (Risk Assessment Dub) (6:32) 118. Housego – Good Thing (7:04) 119. Soulcool – Tribulations (7:28) 120. Dave Kurtis – Celebrate This Night (5:09) 121. Theuss – Losing My Mind (Aaaron Remix) (7:20) 122. DJ Christian B – i Need U (6:07) 123. Zsak – House Affair (Daniel Dash Extended Remix) (5:08) 124. DJ Dove, Troy Weekes – I Feel Good (Todd G Remix) (4:08) 125. DJ Sneak – I need you (7:50) 126. Hector Rios Vnzl, Basic Jhonson – Mujeres Dinero (5:20) 127. Da Vynalist, Lebzin – Letswai (Salt) (Original Mix) (6:00) 128. Robbie Doherty – I Want You (Extended Mix) (5:23) 129. C. Da Afro – Run For Joy (5:46) 130. Vampire Sex – Aguacate (Jesse Perez Remix) (feat. London X) (Original Mix) (5:31) 131. Cisco Barcelo, Giulyiano – Spanish Guitar (5:52) 132. Loui PL – On My Mind (Original Mix) (3:56) 133. Tal Fussman – Pace (6:30) 134. Wisso, Jacob Eighty8, Nes Mburu – Umeenda (7:00) 135. James Curd, Mr. Flip – Cookin’ (5:01) 136. Eldar Stuff – Madan (Extended Mix) (4:49) 137. Alton Miller – Gratitude Part II (Main) (6:26) 138. Luca Bacchetti – Storyteller (8:23) 139. Inda Jani, Leandro Di – Keep Going (Lolu Menayed Remix) (6:05) 140. Blaqq & Why’d – Make Me High (6:24) 141. Ethiopian Chyld, Poetic Leestar – Pinnacle (4:04) 142. Beije – Ecdysis (Original Mix) (8:03) 143. Lauti Mina – String Of Life (8:07) 144. Pass The 40 – Back And Forth (5:05) 145. Dexter Troy – Do It (Original Mix) (7:10) 146. Ross Couch – Love Is Enough (6:49) 147. Roy Davis Jr. – 2B Or Not 2B (Roy’s Remix 2024 Remaster) (7:03) 148. DJ Dove, Francesca Maria – Shackle Me Free (Milk Bar Remix) (2:34) 149. Chris Deepak, Konstantina Korma – Papua New Guinea (8:22) 150. AtLows – Jack Breaks (Original Mix) (5:26) 151. Hector – Talk Back (4:53) 152. Peter Mac, Daniele Busciala – My Story (Afro Latin Mix) (7:10) 153. Grace Bones – To The Rhythm (Original Mix) (4:49) 154. Yooks, Hannah Khemoh – Sleep Talk (6:19) 155. Spacefunk Dub – Flying (Extended Mix) (6:05) 156. Quadis, Victoria – Turn Off (Original Mix) (6:34) 157. Kaiz (BE) – Baby Please Stop (5:56) 158. Fahu, Noah Slee – Get2gether (4:39) 159. DiMO (BG), Mr.K (BG) – Carmelo (5:53) 160. Rosario Galati, Yves Murasca – Be Sure to Let Go (Sebb Junior Extended Remix) (5:56) 161. Ken@Work – Disco Esapna (4:28) 162. Adriatique, Eynka – Beyond Us (Extended Hatshepsut Version, Alex Wann remix) (6:03) 163. Genk – The Rhythm Is All You Need (4:16) 164. Martin Eyerer – Anthem, Pt. II (No Intro) (7:23) 165. AnAmStyle – Never (5:45) 166. Byron the Aquarius – Kitty Kat (Extended) (4:32) 167. James Curd, Mr. Flip – Cookin’ (Hotmood Remix) (4:50) 168. Aldo Cadiz, Ki Creighton – Bum Bum (Extended Mix) (6:53) 169. Cisco Barcelo, Giulyiano – Trip To Africa (6:40) 170. DJ Jeroenski, Alex Vasi – Hot Sensation (Extended Mix) (3:50) 171. Addict Disc – Check Out (6:13) 172. Mike Newman – Shevra (Jesus Pablo & Pixel8 Trax Remix) (5:08) 173. Ché Pierce – The Incident (Raw Mix) (6:12) 174. Mauri Fly – The Colours Of The Bongo (Original Mix) (6:16) 175. Shay dT – Rompiendo Barreras (4:29) 176. MistaJam – Do It Like This (Extended Mix) (5:16) 177. Ken@Work – Piano 90 (4:07) 178. Patty Johnson – I’m in love (Europe Version, 2024 Remastered) (6:31) 179. Robert Owens, Audio Soul Project, Alex Zelenka – Make Me Move (Audio Soul Project Vocal Mix) (5:30) 180. CamelPhat, Sohn, Mind Against – Turning Stones (Mind Against Remix) (4:11) 181. Pavel Svetlove – We Play The Biggest Baddest Tune (5:36) 182. Vampire Sex, London X – Aguacate (3:52) 183. Telephones – Aquatrak (FM AM Mix) (7:55) 184. Martina Budde – My Treasures (Original Mix) (5:01) 185. Earth n Days – Stronger (Extended Mix) (5:32) 186. Mr. Nunez – The Warning (Extended Mix) (6:05) 187. Carlo Lio – Kensho (Extended) (5:38) 188. Le Babar, Lee Wilson – Search Again (Extended Mix) (4:42) 189. Afro Wav – Drum & Soul (8:19) 190. temu – Everybody Wants to Rule the World (4:48) 191. Micropacer – Foreign Affairs (5:41) 192. Shvrlee – Phocean City (4:59) 193. Andy Compton, The Rurals, Kayenne Live – Time Keeps Passing (6:04) 194. Mobin Master, Rubber People – Ritmo Selva (Original Mix) (5:09) 195. Techin, ROKKE – Diamonds (Original Mix) (5:59) 196. Both 91 – Same Old Samples (4:37) 197. Flatty Tatcher – Make Me Feel (5:41) 198. Tsouko G – Watch Me (Original Mix) (6:51) 199. Lavan, Corsica One – Tremendous (6:40) 200. Dj Athan’ – Costes Del Sol (George North Remix) (6:10)
submitted by deeptechsharing to deeptech_house [link] [comments]

2024.05.21 04:53 False-Bandicoot-3131 Songs that shit in your mouth (it’s a positive thing).

I know I have scattered tastes, let me know what you think.
submitted by False-Bandicoot-3131 to musicsuggestions [link] [comments]

2024.05.18 17:05 Elove228 Help I have an addiction 😭😂😂

So I bought the 2760 not realizing it has no sd card . I have the schok classic on its way, but like kaios more than I thought I would. Dilemma is should I get a 2780?. I can sell the tracphone device no issue . I like the dura devices,but side loading apps is not going to be as important as I thought and I'm sending the schok back. I have a mini 12 which could serve as a touch iPod and a classic I recently installed lockbox on my iPod classic so music is no longer an issue
And yes I am a CERIFIED tech junky . Worked for deathstar aka ATT for 4 yrs. My collection includes a pixel 4xl 2 iPads , a MacBook pro 2012. In my defense I'm slowly, but surely cleaning everything out all my electronic clutter.
submitted by Elove228 to dumbphones [link] [comments]

2024.05.17 16:20 unnecessary_teamwork AITA for defending my disabled friend?

(group alt acct to respect privacy + tldr at the end)
I'm pissed af (in European and American) & may edit to clarify. Sorry for length, formatting, & English.
Preface / my friend "B"(mid-30s) is like the parent of our friends (aged 20-54, but mostly in the 30s). (I'm the pit bull, that'll come back later) There's ~9 in the group.
B has a mysterious illness & has been having mental and physical problems for the past few months. I noticed our neighborhood gatherings at B's house have been getting smaller, but when I asked B brushed it off.
Last night: card game @B's, like 6-7 ppl there (a lot of new people)... B's roomy and his new gf were supposed to stay in. I left about 10pm, with my fwb.
Woke up early ~5am to a text from B sent ~3:30am. B had woken up outside, by the card table, to no one there. with no memory of anything after about 8:30pm.
I went over ~6am to find B in a state. Loopy, banged up, and refusing an ambulance. B's vitals were fine, so I just cancelled my plans to keep an eye out.(my fwb was casually bitchy about it)
THIS IS WHERE I LOST IT: group chat was down, weird.. ok. Checking socials..... they were "privately" accusing B of being a drama queen or some sort of junkie / cunt & verging on threatening to mess with B while having episodes. {{B is only on new scripts. Side effects: can't even have fruit, milk, or too much sunlight, let alone drugs!}}
((((((***EDIT TO CLARIFY: B FELL ON THE TABLE AND WAS ACTING OUT.... BUT NON VIOLENT, according to the people that responded))))))
I made a private post, tagging ALL of our group, even the ones that haven't been around. I didn't mention B's state in any way, but made it VERY CLEAR that I want nothing to do with anyone that's not supporting B.
I can't screencap it without doxxing... It was intense, but I didn't threaten anything. Been blocked by B's sibling & roommate #2, my cousin, and one of the neighbours. After a few salty msgs, oc. Most just saying "I can't be around that" like B ain't been (parental af) there for years?????
I feel like shit about losing long & great friendships over this. But idk how these mfs be treating B like that. And idk if I actually scared them with the phrase "we have a problem"?? Now I feel like I made a rift between the people that can and can't handle B having episodes. I understand some people panic in emergencies, but no one even called emergency.
Thank you for reading my ramblings & feel free to ask me to clarify anything // if not:
TLDR '''' AITA for being a massive cunt to my friend's group, because they have dropped / refuse to help our sick friend? (Friend is like our party mom)
submitted by unnecessary_teamwork to AmItheAsshole [link] [comments]

2024.05.14 18:58 VeeQueue [US] Open to offers! ABH, Armani, FAB, Julep, Jo Malone, MAC, Penhaligon's, Tom Ford, Urban Decay and tons more!

Hi there, welcome to my post! Feel free to make an offer for anything listed :D
The Boring Stuff: - Items come from a non-smoking home, and are all new / never used unless noted. Used items have photos showing usage. - Prices exclude shipping & insurance, to be calculated to your zip code ($5+).

ISO List

(trades only, not looking to purchase at this time. Will also look at lists!)

Palettes, Kits, and Sets

Anastasia Beverly Hills eyeshadow singles, listed L-R, top then bottom. $25 for the 4 shadows, or priced individually below: - ABH eyeshadow single in Wine, full size, swatched - $8 - ABH eyeshadow single in Surface of the Sun, full size, swatched - $8 - ABH eyeshadow single in Chocolate Crumble, full size, new - $8 - ABH eyeshadow single in Metal, full size, swatched - $8
Benefit Greeting From Cabana Glama DesTANation Makeup Kit, used as shown - $15
Karl Lagerfeld x ModelCo Minaudière with Mini Lip Kit, full size, NIB P - $100 Includes: - Minaudière hard clutch / makeup bag, with attachable (heavy) chain to use as a shoulder bag and dust bag - Full-size Lip Liner in Rosewood (0.05 oz.) - 2 Mini Lip Glosses in Ramatuelle and St Tropez Sunset (0.04 oz. each) - 2 Mini Lipsticks in Kate and Stella (0.05 oz. each)
Flesh Starshine eyeshadow palette, full size, new. Open. Back of palette. - $20
Kat von D Shade + Light eyeshadow palette in Plum, full size, used 2x as shown. Back of palette. - $10
Make Up For Ever MUFE 9 artist shadow palette Volume 4 (shades 100, 842, 240, 620, 806, 536, 126, 546, 530), full size, used 2x as shown. Back of palette. - $25
Smith & Cult Book of Eyes quad palette in Noonsuite (bronzey), full size, NIB - $25
Tarte Be Your Own Tarteist Eye & Cheek Palette, used as shown - $20
Urban Decay Naked Cherry palette, full size, NIB - $40

Eyes

Brows:
Anastasia Beverly Hills ABH Clear Brow Gel, travel size (2.5ml), NIB - $7
ModelCo More Brows in Light / Medium, Full Size - $10
Ulta Brow Tint in Medium, full size, new - $6
Eyeliner:
BareMinerals Lasting Line Long-wearing Eye Liner in Absolute Black, Full Size, New - $10
Beauty For Real I-Line 24-7 Eyeliner in Black Magic, full size, new - $10
Estée Lauder Automatic Eye Pencil Duo Refill in Charcoal, full size, NIB - $10
Lancome Drama Liqui-Pencil in Noir Intense, Travel Size, .018oz - $5
Laura Geller I-Care Waterproof Eyeliner in Charcoal, Full Size - $10
NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in Milk (white), full size, new - $3
Sephora Waterproof Contour Eye Pencil in 33 Love Affair (plum), new, travel size (.017oz) - $3
Stila Smudge Stick Waterproof Eyeliner in Stingray (jet black), full size, NIB - $15
Tarte Sex Kitten Eyeliner in Black, travel size (half size, .0035oz), new - $8
Ulta Dual-Ended Liner, in Halo & Black/Brown, Full Size - $3
Victoria's Secret Very Sexy Sparkling Eyeliner in Blacklight, Full Size, cracked cap used 2x - $5
Eyeshadow:
Kat Von D KVD Metal Crush Eyeshadow in Thunderstruck (warm white gold), full size (.1oz), swatched - $12
Laura Geller Baked Marble Eyeshadow in Amethyst, full size, new - $12
Maybelline Expert Wear Eyeshadow in Amethyst Smokes, used 3x - $2
NYC HD Color Trio Eye Shadow in Late Night Latte, Full Size, used 5x - $2
NYX Prismatic Eyeshadow Single in Punk Heart (plum with purple shimmer), full size, used as shown - $3
Trestique Color and Smudge Shadow Crayon in Marimoto Pink Pearl, full size, NIB - $15
Ulta Eye Shadow singles Duo in Petite (light beige matte) and Beauty Junkie (mauve glitter), both full size (.06oz), both new - $8 for the pair
Ulta Eye Shadow Palette in Lace, Charm, Nostalgia, Vintage, Delicate, and Seaside, .21oz, new - $6
Lashes:
Eyelure London Limited Edition Party Lashes in Snow Princess, full size, NIB - $3
Wet n Wild Fantasy Makers Blue Glow in the Dark Lashes, full size, NIB - $2
Mascara:
BellaPierre Volume Lash Waterproof Mascara, full size, new & sealed - $10
Butter London Double Decker Lashes Mascara in Black, travel size (.18oz), NIB - $6
Clinique Chubby Lash Mascara in 01 Jumbo Jet (black), travel size (4ml), NIB - $5
Clinique High Impact Mascara in black, half size (.15oz), new - $10
Clinique Lash Power Flutter-to-Full Mascara in 01 Black Onyx, travel size, new - $8
Estée Lauder Sumptuous Knockout Mascara in 01 Black, travel size (.09oz), new - $10
Julep Length Matters Mascara in Jet Black, travel size (.2oz), NIB - $8
Laura Geller StyleLASH Intense Lengthening Mascara, FS (.33oz), NWOB - $14
Maybelline Great Lash Mascara in Black, travel size (.15oz), new - $2
Pur Big Look Mascara with Argan oil, full size (.12oz), new - $6
Ulta Amped Lashes Mascara in Jet Black, full size, new - $6
Ulta Beauty Maximum Lashes Defining and Lengthening Mascara, full size, new - $6

Lips

Lip Gloss, Balms, & Stains:
ChapStick Lip Butter in Green Tea Mint, full size, NIB - $2
First Aid Beauty FAB Ultra Repair Lip Therapy, full size (.5oz), new - $8
Jane Iredale SPF 15 Lip Drink Lip Balm in Flirt (sheer pink), full size, NIB - $10
MAC Vamplify Lip Gloss in Suggestive, FS, new - $12
Mally Beans High Shine Lip Gloss in Pilar Bean, DS (.07oz), new - $6
NYC City Proof Extended Wear Lip Gloss in Mauving All Night #458, Full Size - $3
Philosophy High-Gloss Lip Shine in Fresh Cream, full size (.4oz), new and sealed - $6
Pur Chrome Glaze High-Shine Lip Gloss In DIY (pinky nude), full size (0.07 oz), NIB - $10
Ulta Double Duty Lip Stain and Balm in Drama (Dark Red), full size, new - $4
Ulta Double Duty Lip Stain and Balm in Romance (Pink), full size, new - $4
Urban Decay Revolution Lip Gloss in Savage (bright pink), travel size (.05oz), new - $5
Whole Foods organic lip balm in Peppermint, full size, new and sealed - $1
Whole Foods organic lip balm in Pomegranate Orange, full size, new and sealed - $1
Whole Foods organic lip balm in Tangerine, full size, new and sealed - $1
Victoria's Secret Beauty Rush Lip Balm in Minty Kiss, Full Size - $3
Lip Liners & Primers:
Kat Von D Everlasting Lip Liner in Homegirl, full size (.25g), used 2x as shown - $10
Milani Color Statement Lip Liner in 02 True Red, full size, new - $2
Tarte Tarteist Lip Crayon in Thirsty (bright red), .01oz, NIB - $10
Lipstick - Liquid:
Julep It's Whipped Matte Lip Mousse in At Midnight (Fireball Red Matte), full size (.14oz), new - $10 for 1, $16 for 2
Julep It's Whipped Matte Lip Mousse in Love Potion (Bronzed Black Metallic Matte), full size (.14oz), new P - $10 for 1, $16 for 2
Julep It's Whipped Matte Lip Mousse in Pillow Talk (Victorian Pink Matte), full size (.14oz), new - $10 for 1, $16 for 2
Julep It's Whipped Matte Lip Mousse in Say Hello (Rich Marsala Matte), full size (.14oz), new - $10 for 1, $16 for 2
Julep It's Whipped Matte Lip Mousse in XOXO (Femme Fuchsia Matte), full size (.14oz), new - $10 for 1, $16 for 2
Laura Geller Lip Silk Liquid Lipstick in French Kiss (soft pink), full size, new - $10
Maybelline Color Sensational Vivid Matte Liquid Lip Color in Nude Flush , Full Size, swatched 1x - $3
NYX Suede Cream Liquid Lipstick in Orange County (bright orange), travel size (.05oz), new - $4, or 2/$6
NYX Suede Cream Liquid Lipstick in Pink Lust (bright pink), travel size (.05oz), new - $4, or 2/$6
NYX Cosmetics Soft Matte Lip Cream in Transylvania (deep wine), full size (0.27 oz), new - $4, or 2/$6
OCC Lip Tar in Disintegration (pale plum metallic), full size, NIB - $12
OCC Lip Tar in Hoochie (magenta / purple), full size, NIB - $12
Tarte Lip Sculptor, Lipstick & Lipgloss, in VIP (cool nude), travel size (1.5g lipstick 1ml lipgloss), new - $10
Tarte Tarteist Lip Paint in Bae (red), full size, new - $13
Lipstick - Bullet & Pencil:
Almay Demi-Sheer Creme Lipcolor in 80 Demi Mauve, full size, used 3x as shown - $8
Bite Beauty Luminous Creme Lipstick Topper, no shade listed but a shimmery bronze, full size, new - $18
Bite Beauty High Pigment Pencil in Rhubarb, full size (.09oz), used 1x - $10
Bite Beauty Matte Cream Lipstick in Barberry (cool dark plum), full size, used as shown - $16
DCA Lipstick in No. 108, full size, used 2x as shown - $4
Estée Lauder All-Day Lipstick in Ancient Brick, full size, swatched as shown - $12
Estée Lauder Pure Color Envy Sculpting Lipstick in Irresistible, full size (.12oz), new P - $15
Illamasqua Glamour Lipstick in Tease (pale Nude), full size, used 3x - $12
Kat Von D Studded Kiss Lipstick in Homegirl (satin matte berry), travel size (.04oz), used as shown - $6
Kat Von D Studded Kiss Lipstick in Poe (cool metallic blue), full size, NIB - $12
Kat Von D Studded Kiss Lipstick in Roxy (purple), mini size (1g), used 1x as shown - $6
Korres Matte Twist Lipstick in Tempting Coral, full size (.05oz), new - $10
Lancome Rouge Absolu Lipstick in Rose Espace, full size, used 3x as shown - $12
Laura Geller Color Brilliance Lustrous Lipstick in Cute, full size, new - $12
Laura Geller Italian Marble lipstick in Strawberry Toffee, full size, new - $12
MAC Retro Matte Lipstick in Flat Out Fabulous (bright pink/purple), full size, new - $12
Makeup Academy Lipstick in Persian Rose (bright pink), full size, used 1x - $3
Makeup Revolution Scandalous Lipstick in Depraved (violet), full size, used 1x - $3
NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in 413 BLKR (fuchsia), full size (.08oz), new - $16
NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Let's Go Crazy (cool fuchsia), 3/4 size (1.8g, FS is 2.4g), new - $10
Nudestix Magnetic Matte Lip Color in Greystone (greige), .088oz (FS is .1oz), new - $12
NYC Lipstick in Fragile Pink, Full Size - used as shown - $2
NYC Ultra Moist Lip Wear in Blossom #316, Full Size, Used 2x - $2
NYC Ultra Moist Lip Wear in Ruby #305, Full Size, Used 2x - $2
Sephora Collection Rouge Cream in #49 Belly-Dancing (red), mini (.03oz, FS is .14) - $2
Smashbox Be Legendary Cream Lipstick in Inspiration (cool fuchsia), .08oz (FS is .1oz), new - $10, or 2/$15
Smashbox Be Legendary Cream Lipstick in Legendary (cool red), .08oz (FS is .1oz), new - $10, or 2/$15
Smashbox Be Legendary Cream Lipstick in Tabloid (cool violet), .08oz (FS is .1oz), new - $10, or 2/$15
Ulta Lipstick in Cherry Picked 202 (medium true red), Full Size, Used 1x - $4
Urban Decay x Gwen Stefani lipstick in Spiderweb (satin red cream), full size, NIB - $12
Urban Decay Matte Revolution Lipstick in Temper (red-orange), full size, NIB - $12
Urban Decay Vice Lipstick in Phone Call (bright pink with cream finish), full size, NIB - $10
Wander Beauty Wanderout Dual Lipstick in Wanderberry (rich burgundy), half size (.07oz), new - $10
Winky Lux Matte Lip Velour in Royal (purple), .14oz, NIB - $10

Face

Blush:
Lancome Blush Subtil in in Rose Fresque, full size (.18oz), used as shown - $12
Ulta Cheek Palette in Fresh Glow Highlighter and Nude Pink Blush, .155oz, new - $5
Bronzer & Contour:
BareMinerals BareSkin Serum Bronzer in Sheer Sun, Travel Size (.1oz) - $3
St. Tropez One Night Only Finishing Gloss, travel size (.16oz), new - $2
Foundations, Concealers, CC Cream, & Powders:
Bee Naturals Tinted Moisturizer in Shade 2 (Medium/Dark), Full Size (1oz) - 1/$15 or 2/$20
Benefit Porefessional Pore Minimizing Makeup in Shade 1, travel size (.16oz), new - $10
Dermablend Loose Setting Powder, travel size (.11oz), new - $10
Jane Iredale Smooth Affair, travel size (.24oz), new - $8
Julep Cushion Complexion concealer 5-in-1 Skin Perfector with Turmeric in 200 Nude, full size, NIB - $18
Laura Geller Balance-N-Brighten Baked Foundation in Medium, full size, new - $15
Laura Mercier Translucent Loose Setting Powder, travel size (.12oz), new - $6
Pixi by Petra Beauty Bronzer in Summertime, Travel Size, .16oz - $4
Highlighters:
Laura Geller Baked Gelato Lace Illuminator in Ballerina, full size, new - $15
Laura Geller Baked Golden Rose Highlighter, full size, new - $12
P/Y/T Upgrade Highlighter in Backstage Pass (warm shimmer nude), .07oz, NIP - $8
Primers & Setting Sprays:
Becca First Light Priming Filter, travel size (.2oz), NIB - $7
Japonesque Velvet Touch Primer, travel size (.3oz), new - $8
Laura Geller Spackle Even Tone Primer, travel size (.5oz), new - $6
Pur Correcting Primer, travel size (.3oz), new - $10
Too Faced Hangover 3-in-1 Face Primer & Setting Spray, travel size (.06oz), NIB - $4
Too Faced Hangover Replenishing Face Primer, travel size (.16oz), NIB - $4
Urban Decay All Nighter Long Lasting Makeup Spray, travel size (.5oz), new - $6

Skincare & Body

BareMinerals Skinlongevity Vital Power Infusion, full size (1.7oz), new - $35
Bliss Leave it to Cleavage, Travel Size, .5oz - $4
Bliss Triple Oxygen Instant Energizing Foaming Mask, new, travel size (.16oz) - $3
Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Gel, new, Travel Size (.5oz) - $4
Clinique 7 Day Scrub Cream, travel size (1oz), new - $5
Daily Concepts Exfoliating Body Scrubber - $5
Elizabeth Arden Prevage Daily Anti-Aging Serum, Travel Size, .17oz - $8
Erborian Bamboo Creme Frappe Skin Reviving Gel, new, travel size (.17oz) - $4
Estée Lauder Advanced Night Micro Cleansing Foam, travel size (1oz), new - $6
Estée Lauder Revitalizing Supreme+ Global Anti-Aging Cell Power Creme, .5oz, new - $15
First Aid Beauty FAB Facial Radiance Intensive Peel, travel size (.34oz), new - $6
First Aid Beauty FAB Ultra Repair Cream, travel size (1oz), new - $6
First Aid Beauty FAB Ultra Repair Cream Intense Hydration in Honeysuckle, travel size (1oz), new - $6
First Botany Cosmeceuticals 50X Strength Hyaluronic Acid Serum, .5oz, new - $8
MAC Cleanse Off Oil, travel size (.2oz), new - $4
Milk Makeup Sunshine Oil, Sample, .1oz - $2
Murad Age Reform Nutrient-Charged Water Gel, travel size (.25oz), NIB - $10
Omorovicza Budapest Magic Moisture Mist, full size (1.7oz), NIB - $65
Omorovicza Balancing Moisturizer, full size (30ml), new - $50
Perricone MD Blue Plasma Cleansing Treatment (gentle cleanser), travel size (2oz), new - $18
Perricone MD Cold Plasma Plus + Eye Cream, travel size (.25oz), new - $30
Proactiv Skin Purifying Mask, travel size (1oz), NIB - $10
Shiseido Ultimune Power Infusing Concentrate, travel size (.33oz), new - $15
Strivectin TL Advanced Light Tightening Neck Cream, travel size (.25oz), NIB - $10
Toulon Mineral Infusion Serum-92, 1oz - $6
Whish Self-Tanner, Travel Size (.75oz) - $2

Hair / Tools / Nail Polish / Etc

Alterna Haircare Caviar Anti-Aging Miracle Volume Mist, travel size (1.4oz), new - $6
Bumble & Bumble BB Pret-a-Powder, travel size (.5oz), used 1x - $8
Essie Nail Lacquer in Say it Aint Soho (metallic copper), full size, new - $5
Fatboy Spray Putty, full size (4.8oz), new - $15
Julep Color Treat Polish in It Girl Lillian (pink creme), full size, new - $8
Living Proof TBD Multi-Tasking Styler, travel size (1oz), new - $7
OPI Nail Lacquer in Can i Bairro This Shade (dusty teal), full size, new - $5
OPI Nail Lacquer in The Taupe of the Iceberg, full size, new - $5
Phyto Paris Phytoelixir Cleansing Care Hair Cream, travel size (1oz), new - $8
Phyto Paris Intense Hydrating Brilliance Mask (Dry Hair Phytojoba), 1.7oz, NIB - $8
Matrix Total Results Miracle Creator Multi-Tasking Treatment, travel size (1oz), new - $3
Urban Decay Heavy Metal loose glitter in Reverb (blue), full size (.10oz), NIB - $10

Fragrance

Full Size
Aromachology Exotic & Spicy EDP, full size (1.7oz), used 1x - $40
Jo Malone English Oak & Redcurrant Cologne, full size (3.4 oz), sprayed 1x - $100
Penhaligon's Heartless Helen, full size (75ml) in box, used 3x - $160
Ralph Lauren Polo Sport for Women, used as shown - $12
Travel Size
Armani Air di Gioia EDP, travel size spray (.5oz - bigger than a rollerball), NIB - $20
Armani Sky di Gioia EDP, travel size spray bottle (.5oz - bigger than a rollerball), NIB - $20
Bvlgari Au The Rouge EDC, travel size (.17oz), used 2x - $10
Candie's Candie's EDT, travel size (.5oz), about 60% remaining - $5
Lush All Good Things solid perfume, travel size (12g), used 1x as shown - $15
Origins Ginger Essence Sensuous Skin Scent, travel size (.5 oz), used as shown (about 80% remaining) - $12
Philosophy Pure Grace EDT spray, travel size (.5oz), NIB - $15
Samples 3/$5
Atelier Cologne Vanilla Insensée Cologne Absolue, sample size + postcard, new - $3
Burberry Mr. Burberry EDT, sample size (2ml), new - $2
Calvin Klein Eternity for Men EDT, sample size (1.2ml), new - $2
Clean for Men Classic EDT, sample size (1ml), new - $2
Versace Eros EDT, sample size (1ml), new - $2
Viktor & Rolf Spicebomb EDT, sample size (1.2ml), new - $2.
submitted by VeeQueue to makeupexchange [link] [comments]

2024.05.09 02:32 ghostoftheuniverse My canelés are taking twice as long to bake as other recipes out there and still aren’t fully baked! Please help!

My canelés are taking twice as long to bake as other recipes out there and still aren’t fully baked! Please help!
All of the six recipes that I tried had the baking times of the long stage about half as short as I needed, and mine still came out raw inside. I suspect that this is due to the fact that I have a conventional oven (i.e., no fan), and the other recipes use a convection oven. What am I doing wrong? Recipe below.
Canelés de Bordeaux
This recipe is adapted from u/tower_junkie’s recipe.
Ingredients
500 g (2 cups) milk
35 g (2.5 tbsp) butter
1 egg + 3 yolks
240 g (~2 cups) powdered/confectioners sugar
125 g (1 cup) all-purpose flour
1 vanilla bean, scraped
15 mL (1 tbsp) natural vanilla extract
30 mL (2 tbsps) rum
Preparation
Warm the milk and butter in a pot to 80 ºC (176 ºF).
Whisk the eggs, pour them into the sugar, and then whisk again lightly until incorporated.
Whisk the milk and melted butter briefly, and then pour half of it into the flour. Mix until only small lumps remain (these will be strained out later)—don’t overbeat.
Pour the egg-sugar mix into the batter, and whisk lightly.
Slowly add the remaining milk to the batter while whisking. Whisk to combine into a thin crêpe-like batter.
Scrape the vanilla bean and add both the scrapings and bean pod to the batter. Add 15 mL of natural vanilla extract and 30 mL of dark rum. Whisk lightly to combine. Cover and refrigerate for 24-48 hours.
Seasoning the molds
I used Maurizio Leo’s approach described here with a 50:50 mix of white beeswax and butter. It is absolutely critical that your seasoning is as thin as possible, otherwise the crown may take forever to fully darken.
Baking
Preheat the oven to 220 ºC (428 ºF) with a pizza stone on the middle rack. Allow the pizza stone to equilibrate to the target temperature for about 20 min.
Remove the batter from the refrigerator, and let it come to room temperature.
Once the batter is at ambient temperature, whisk it lightly to combine the skin with the rest, then strain the batter to remove all remaining lumps. Try not to whip too much air into it.
Fill the canelé molds to about 1 cm from the top.[1]
Place the molds on a baking sheet and then place the sheet on top of the pizza stone such that all molds are directly above the stone.
After 15 min, bring the temperature down to 180 ºC (356 ºF) without opening the oven.
After 2 h at 180 ºC and reaching an internal temperature of 112 ºC (234 ºF), I called it quits. I removed them from the oven and using oven mitts/gloves immediately turn them out of their molds.
1 Early on in the bake, the canelés will inflate to above the molds, but then slowly deflate back down to about the original height.
submitted by ghostoftheuniverse to AskBaking [link] [comments]

2024.05.03 18:41 ChristianWallis I'm a PI and my client asked me to stalk her. It only got weirder from there

Let’s get the obvious out of the way.
Being a PI sucks. It’s not what you think. It’s pretty much harassing women. Men hire PIs to go harass their wives and girlfriends and once in a blue moon you get asked to find a missing dog, or to harass a man instead. But that’s it, really. Sometimes I’m looking for hard evidence of infidelity, but a lot of the time my clients just want to rattle the soon-to-be-ex. To make them paranoid and jittery and less reliable in a courtroom, or less likely to pay attention to small print agreements that stiff them out of the holiday home. So that’s my job. I’m a pawn and it is almost always on behalf of the kind of men who think women reading a book in public are secretly looking for male attention.
I don’t have an office. I did for a short while. But things are tough, as I’m sure many of you know, and PI work isn’t exactly lucrative. I don’t know why I’m still doing this job, except to say I’m my own boss, and it’s not easy out there. I went into this with vastly different expectations. If anyone wants to hire someone who was convicted of insurance fraud while training to be a police officer, let me know. Otherwise I’m on my own, following people in cars and sleeping in dingy motels. So when someone reached out looking for a guy to stalk them, I just figured it was a fetish thing. I got a nephew who went to art school and makes big bucks painting cartoon characters doing fucked up stuff. He ain’t painting the Sistine Chapel, but he pays the bills and looks after his family. I figure if that work is good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.
So I met the woman and was surprised at how normal she looked. It was in a public place, a park with a nice bench. And even though it was starting to rain a little we didn’t let it bother either of us. We sat there, two tape recorders running, and hashed it out. She said she liked me. If she hadn’t she wouldn’t have gotten out of her car. That was flattering coming from her. Good looking woman. Professional. I didn’t know at the time but I’d quickly figure out she was a forensic accountant.
Anyway, we got talking. She never gave me her motivation, but I would later come to understand her as an amateur narcissist. She was new at loving herself. She was smart, accomplished, and actually rather beautiful provided you didn’t spend a great deal of time agonising over things like symmetry or eyebrows, and instead paid attention to how a smile reaches the eyes, or how laughter sounds when it catches someone by surprise. But she grew up dirt poor and spent her teen years unable to visit the dentist, or access a gym, or even just eat home cooked food that wasn’t microwaved. Plump frame, blotchy skin, hair she kept short with a pair of scissors because her and her mother relied on the shampoo and soap they stole from the motel where they shared cleaning shifts. When she fumbled awkward questions at some of the better looking boys in her class, she rarely met with success. That’s not to say she was an outcast, either. She had a social life. It’s just poor kids have to grow up early. Prom’s a luxury. Eating isn’t. If you know, you know. Otherwise you might be surprised by just how fucking tough it can be for some kids in this country. Anyway, she got out of that hole, fought tooth and nail, got an education, a good job, and by the time she finished her victory lap and took stock of her life she was thirty-five years old and a thousand miles from the trailer she was raised in.
And she looked good. The woman in the mirror was a stranger that she wanted to get to know. I think hiring me was an act of self-love. I think if she could have, she would have sat in a car and watched herself get a cup of coffee, spying closely at the professional looking woman doing a little half-run half-skip to get out of the rain. The way she stood in line rocking back and forth on her heels to the music in her airpods thinking no one’d notice. She wanted to admire herself, but unable to time travel or clone herself, she instead resorted to hiring me as a kind of proxy.
I had my own boundaries, of course. They covered anything that was gonna get me in trouble. The gist of the contract, after a nice week spent meeting after work and talking, was that I was to follow her as often as I could and just… observe her. Photos. Videos. Secret recordings. Occasionally a little bit more. Nothing physical. For example, one time I inventoried her handbag after she left it in a taxi by accident. I’m not a photographer, but something about all those knick knacks laid out on a motel bed snapped with a black and white polaroid, it looked good. Like something you’d see in a fancy gallery. Avant garde my nephew would say. She loved it. Paid me a bonus for it and everything.
Anyway, this carried on like this for about six months. They were… interesting times. Tailing her across train stations, racing across open parking lots to install a tracker on her car, standing on a bridge and dropping an air tag in her bag as she walked past. It was a little bit like being a spy. She even paid for me to buy high end equipment. Crazy stuff. One camera, I could sit on my balcony and read the texts on her phone from a block away. Occasionally there were days where I couldn’t or wouldn’t keep up the required intensity. Stalking requires a lot of cardio. When that happened, when I didn’t feel like following her into a crowded place, or sprinting half-way around town following her car, I’d do research. I’d investigate who this woman had once been. I created fake Facebook profiles and tracked down old school friends, spoke to former teachers, lovers, all of that. The whole job was a matter of mapping her out, like she was a country, you know? And a country isn’t just hills and rivers and borders. Countries have history.
She was happy with my initiative. The text she sent me when I showed her the research folder was a glowing commendation. First one I’d had in a long time. It was nice, someone telling me good job. She had a real way of making me feel like a kid getting a gold star. I didn’t realise at the time, but I was putty in her hands. Head over heels, bless my stupid heart. Of course I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I’d had just enough time to grow over confident. I made the mistake of thinking that I wasn’t gonna find anything in her past that’d give me trouble sleeping.
Boy did I get that one fucking wrong.
Her mother. That’s where things took an odd turn. Now I knew from news reports the mother died in their trailer while her daughter was off staying at some boyfriend’s place for a few days. Natural causes, it read. I wanted to know a little more about what natural causes they were. Figured if there was a congenital thing, it seemed like maybe I ought to know. You’d think the way the trailer park owner reacted to me asking about it, I’d tried asking the Russian government for proof of a democratic election. Thin reedy little woman who gave me hell the moment I mentioned a name. What do you wanna know that for? Who’s asking? Who’s paying you? Why you wanna dig this shit up?
Oh she ripped me to pieces. I put it down to the natural sprinkling of crazies in the standard population and took a different tact. Started calling up the older folks in the park. Residents. Every single one of them put the phone down on me the second I mentioned her name.
Well, all of them except one.
Some people wanna talk and this old bastard was one of them. He had a lot to say about everything from the president to social media and I let him ramble on before starting to press my point. Told him at the start I was a historian looking into the local area, that made it so it wasn’t too suspicious when I began asking about this and that. Slowly making my way to the death of a fifty-three year old woman a couple trailers down from him some years ago.
Again, soon as I mentioned her name, there was a change in the air, even over the phone. For a second I thought this old guy was gonna hang up just like the others. Could hear him smacking his dry lips as he mulled it over.
“Francine didn’t deserve what happened to her,” he said after a while. “She wasn’t a good woman. Didn’t treat her daughter too good neither. But didn’t deserve what happened. Maybe if they’d found her earlier, some of those fellas in white coats could’ve got more evidence, put that little wretch of hers away. But from what I understand, weren’t much left of her at all.”
Then he hung up, leaving me with a whole lot of questions.
This frustrated me. I had, until now, had a fair bit of luck at this new profession of mine. They say be careful what you get good at. Sad truth was, I was getting good at stalking and this was my first real roadblock. I remembered the way I felt when she told me good job and it bothered me I couldn’t really say much about this critical part of her life. That and, well, maybe I still got a chip on my shoulder about being a failed policeman. If you give me a problem, I can sometimes drive myself crazy looking for a fix.
So I hopped in my car and drove to the trailer park, damn near on the other side of the country. Don’t know I was hoping to find. No way the trailer was still there, and it wasn’t. But what I found odd was the lot hadn’t been replaced. There was a hole in the ground, about the right size, and nothing else. Just an empty spot where the trailer had once stood. And the trailers on either side weren’t occupied either. I could tell by politely and legally looking through the windows. Most of them were cleared out, but a few weren’t. They still had plates and other knick knacks left hanging around, like the owners had left without bothering to pack.
“You shouldn’t hang around there, mister.”
The girl who appeared stood a good twenty feet away, shouting over the wind so as to be heard.
“Smell can make you awful sick.”
I wrinkled my nose, aware of the odour she was talking about. Had been since I approached the empty lot. A faint musty smell that made me think of an exotic pet shop.
“What do you mean?”
“Smell makes you sick,” she said like it was self-explanatory. “Woman who died there left behind an awful stench. Made the neighbours sick. And the neighbour’s neighbours, and so on for a couple trailers in a row. No one likes to live there now. Still can’t. Had a couple move in a year or two back and they got sick too. Daddy says it’s a bad one. Not even rats go near that hole.”
The smell wasn’t pretty, but this trailer park looked like the kinda place where hubcaps went missing regularly. Figured they would’ve been used to bad smells. What made this one so special?
I looked over at the girl.
“Where is your dad?”
Few minutes later and I was stood outside a trailer waiting pensively. The little girl had disappeared inside to fetch her father and since then I’d been sat listening to the quietest trailer park in the whole world. Crickets and silence. Traffic on a distant highway. Place was dying, that much was clear.
When the father finally did make an appearance, he said nothing for the first few minutes. Lit a cigarette, offered me one. I refused on account of having quit some time back.
After a while he spoke up.
“I’d invite you in but if you been hanging around that old lot, not sure I want you inside my home. No offence.”
“None taken,” I replied.
“Sally says you’re a historian.”
The man wasn’t terribly old. Mid-thirties, at a guess, but he looked me up and down like I was a teenager caught throwing eggs at his house.
“What’re you really?”
“PI,” I replied.
“Ha now that makes sense. Some relative looking for answers? Heard the Hendersons had a sister with money.”
“That’s exactly it,” I lied. “She didn’t buy the official story.”
“Nor should she,” he replied. “Henderson was fit as a fiddle day he moved in. Weren’t no justice in what happened to those who got sick. And poor Francine… They say she died of natural causes. Man even back then I knew it was shit and I was just a lil kid. The smell alone. Think it’s bad now but at the time, before they came in with a crane to lift the trailer up whole and move it to the dump. Shit it was something awful. There was talk of moving the whole park. Course no one gave enough of a shit about us to go ahead and actually do it.”
“What did she die of?”
“Don’t know. Only thing I am sure of is that that girl of Francine’s lied. Said her mother was live and well when she left before the weekend and they was all on good terms, but that was bullshit. We heard ‘em fighting for weeks before, for one. And of course the body, state that was in, ain’t no way it’d been rotting for just a few days.”
He offered me another cigarette. I refused. He lit it up instead. Second one in what felt like just a few minutes. Made me itchy just to see. I wanted to say something, anything to get a little bit more. But I’d told a big lie pretending to be there on someone else’s behalf, and didn’t want to catch myself out, so I just sat and listened to the quiet buzz of his little patio light.
After the second cigarette was done he reached into his back pocket and took out an old photo.
“I hope you find justice for Henderson and the rest of them,” he said. “Only real bit of proof I ever had something fishy went on.”
He handed me the picture. Wasn’t easy to see what I was looking at. Pile of old leaves, maybe. Mulch. I squinted at it for a few good seconds but couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“What…?”
“Took that the day they arrived to get rid of the trailer. Had to stand on my friend’s shoulders just to reach.”
“What is it?” I asked, my skin starting to crawl as I picked out details. Whatever I was looking at, it was slumped on a sofa with floral wallpaper in the background. It was about the size of a man, but riddled with holes and cavities the size of golf balls. In my whole life, I’d never seen something that looked like that.
“Why that’s Francine,” he said. “Or at least what was left of her.”
He let me keep the photo. At a guess, that was the only interesting thing that’d ever happened to that man and he’d been waiting to share it with someone. All I had to do was give him an excuse. He seemed to take some pleasure in passing it on. Certainly found my reaction to it amusing. I must’ve gone pale as I grappled with thoughts of what had happened to make a body go bad like that. Back in the hotel, under a good light, I checked that picture again and again. Something about it made me deeply uncomfortable. Knowing a woman was under all that… all those holes and crevices must’ve been made in her flesh. And what’d happened to her skin that’d turned it such a funny texture? Looked furry, like the kinda thing that grows on top of a long-forgotten cup of coffee.
A part of me considered asking my client about this, but I knew that wasn’t the way to go. First, she probably wouldn’t tell me good job if I had to ask. She hired me to do a certain thing and that didn’t involve politely requesting information right from the source. Second, well… I’d read the police reports, what was publicly available, anyway. And she’d made it clear she’d left on the friday and came home on the Monday and…
Well what if that guy was right? Did she really leave her mother alive and well? I mean, people kill. Not just psychos. People like you and me. We do it every day and sometimes we even pull it off. Only half of US murders get solved. That’s a fact. If anyone could be in the right half of that equation, it’d be her. She was smart as hell, my client. Even at seventeen she would’ve been a clever one. Clever enough that she might easily have been able to cover her tracks. Gone over to some boyfriend, twisted his arm into giving her an alibi. Sure, I could see that.
I just needed to figure out what the fuck was going on with that crime scene in the trailer. Thankfully I got some friends still on the force, one of which I even have a bit of leverage on. At first he couldn’t find much on the actual mother, but then I asked him to see if he could take the photo I had, show it around, and see if anyone had seen something like it before. That proved a lot more fruitful. Few days later he came back with a strange one, but straight away I saw the connection.
I’ll spare the details. Old man was found in a tub, all sorts of fucked up, in some old apartment building. It had since been condemned on account of the body which is fairly weird since bodies don’t usually cause that much fuss, but less weird when you realise that said body was in such a bad state it made three people sick and caused long-lasting structural damage. Whatever happened to this guy, it ate through the tub he’d been lying in and seeped into the floors and walls below. Turned plasterboard to shit and apparently even caused some trouble for the sturdier elements like steel and concrete. I don’t know how that works exactly, but that’s what the file said and going by the photos, I didn’t feel like anyone was lying.
As for the pictures? What can I say? Made my fucking skin crawl. No blurry little polaroid snapped by a kid. These were professional crime scene pictures that showed something in a bathtub that didn’t register as human until my eyes went looking for details. He looked like a hairy paper-wasp’s nest, only there were fingers and nipples and other little things that made it clear it had been built using a person as the framework. No face though. Just a head like a pile of used paper plates. Looking at those photos made me learn a new word just to describe how I felt. Trypophobia.
Wasn’t just the one guy either. Building was linked to the disappearance of the ground floor tenant. Some computer geek. I didn’t worry about him too much. But what did catch my eye was there was only one woman living in the whole place. Second floor apartment. The registered name was… somewhat familiar. Close enough to a certain someone’s that it raised the hairs on my neck. Police at the scene managed to get a photo of her and sure enough, there she was. My client going by a different name. Clearly something fishy was going on or else why the pseudonym? I figured it possible she’d maybe offed her own mother. Parents and spouses make the most common victims. But what connection was there to that second corpse, and what about the missing guy?
It was like a horror movie was following her around and she was just blissfully unaware. Condemned buildings and festering trailers made for a far cry from the professional accountant who enjoyed oat milk lattes and used sweetener instead of sugar to spare her teeth. But there was no denying she was the connection. There was photographic proof she’d lived in that building. If I wanted to get ahead of this, to really understand what was going on, I had to figure out what had happened to those bodies. I’d pretty much exhausted my favours with the police and truth was they didn’t know any more than I did. But it turned out the building was still standing. Condemned, but they hadn’t demolished it, partly because no one wanted to take responsibility, but I reckon it might have had something to do with the biohazard warnings slapped on every single window and door.
Good thing I’d brought a gas mask. I waited for sunset, geared up, and entered through the unlocked door. First thing that hit me as the door swung open was the smell. Similar to the trailer park but full pelt and hot as hell. Made me think of lizards and poorly kept terrariums. Strong enough to make my eyes water even through the mask. One thing was clear as I took a look around the hallway - the building was diseased. Not just rundown or decrepit like the usual urban decay. This was something else. Looked like the inside of a clogged pipe. You know how limescale fills it up? It was a bit like that. This oily rust coloured fluid had seeped down the walls and left them glistening and soft. Ropey stalactites of the stuff hung down from the ceiling like old party banners, and I edged around them afraid of what might happen if one touched me.
Best guess was that stuff was digesting the place. Anything soft or organic was going or gone. Old umbrella frames were left standing in one corner, the fabric burnt or dissolved away. The carpet was reduced to just a few patches no bigger than my hand. And a bunch of old cardboard boxes piled up under the stairs had turned squat and half-liquid, almost flowing down and around each other. The worst came when I took a look in the back room. More of a broom closet, I guess. Wouldn't have gone in but something caught my eye. A well-worn shoe that wasn’t covered in that oily shit. Sign of recent activity. That and the way the door was ajar just raised my suspicions, so I took a look.
Even now the timeline eludes me, but someone, a vagrant most likely given the way they were dressed, died a nasty death in there. Chemical burns come to mind. They were balled up in one corner, eyeless, looking up at me as I pushed the door open to take a closer look. Pink flesh threaded with red blood vessels, yellow bones poking through here and there. From the looks of things they’d been trying to work the door open. You could see a history of their escape attempts left by bleeding hands. Rust coloured finger streaks ran all along the door’s edges, special attention paid to the hinges. And he’d broken the only window and tried hauling himself up there only to realise it was barred from the other side. The jagged glass that still clung to the frame was covered in old blood. His palms must have looked like grated cheese. Eventually he’d given up and lain down in that shit and the thought of it made my chest feel heavy and tight. I’d only been in the building a few minutes and that shit was already eating through my shoes. I could hear the thick rubber soles sizzle and pop with each step. But that guy had been forced to sit down in an inch deep puddle of the stuff, likely because exhaustion had left him no choice but to tough it out. So how long had he tried staying up right?
Hours? Days? Weeks?
Him getting stuck in there had to be deliberate. I was sure of it. A feeling in my gut. Someone had locked the door behind him and left him to die slowly. God only knows why, but did that mean they were still hanging around and waiting for a chance to get to me? Looking around, I sure didn’t feel safe or alone. The shadows seemed too deep and the steady drip drip drip of that rancid oil oozing out of every surface was too monotonous. Someone or something lived in that filth and chances were they’d been responsible for that poor vagrant’s agonising death.
That meant getting out of that shithole was a priority, so I made for the stairs and started the climb. If there were any answers in that place, it’d be in the apartment where that old man died. The crime scene tape was still hanging off the door frame when I found it, and the TV and sofa, or what remained of them, stood in the same place as in the photos. Back in the day the old man had been a hoarder and I was surprised crime scene hadn’t cleared all his shit out. It was all still there, only what had once been a chest high maze of papers and magazines was now just a kind of hardened pulp, almost like magma dried mid-flow. Whole fucking place was covered in the stuff like a coral reef, growing up the walls and even patches of the ceiling. Looked a hell of a lot like a wasp’s nest, and it looked to be the source of that oily looking fluid. You could see it sweating out of every crease and fold in that strange hive. It was almost hypnotic to look at. Glistening amber beads oozing out of papery sheets that flowed like rock striata. There was a gentle, barely perceptible rhythm. Hypnotic.
I don’t know why but I reached out and ran the tip of my finger as gently as I could along the surface. It felt like the underside of a mushroom. All those papery gills. Gossamer thin. Soft and inviting. I wore no gloves and the brief moment of contact had deposited a single bead of that strange syrup on my fingertip. It caused a tingling sensation that was not entirely unpleasant. Even the blood that trickled down my knuckle felt warm and wet, like testing a hot bath with your hand. I liked it. I liked it and I wanted more.
I went to reach out and push my arm into the nest when a hand burst out of the nest and gripped my wrist. I was so surprised I didn’t even make a noise, but instead wordlessly fell back as the hand pushed me away from the nest. A very nearly skinless forearm followed and soon after a face emerged from the papery nest like a grime covered nightmare. Black eyes and a lipless mouth. It was a man that could have passed for a corpse, like a half-digested piece of meat. Terrified, I struggled to my feet and realised that this person had broken damn near every bone in my wrist with that single grip.
“Your meat smells raw,” he growled before heaving himself out of the nest in a disgusting parody of childbirth.
My sanity flickered and the next thing I knew I was on the ground floor with bleeding eyes and both hands frantically pulling at the door handle. My mind returned in pieces. I blinked red tears away but didn’t stop trying to open the door. I felt it, that urgent need to leave, like a suffocating man feels the need to breathe. But I’d fucked up bad. I’d sniffed out the closet and saw the trap laid there, but hadn’t seen the larger one set for me. There was only one way in and out of that building and I hadn’t jammed the door open! Now it was shut and nothing I did could get it open. With more time maybe I could’ve pried the jamb or even kicked it down, but my heart was racing and my vision blurring. I wanted out of that place. A hot primal need to get the hell out. The air was too hot. My mask too stifling. Sweat condensed on the inner plastic and made it damn near impossible to see. And the pain in my wrist was a throbbing explosion that made sensible thought impossible. I’d realised early on into my little foray that I was underprepared, but the scale of what that meant eluded me until I was there wrestling with thoughts of exposure and contagion and disease, fumbling at a greasy doorknob with a broken hand while suppressing thoughts of what might be crawling up my leg or back or neck. Panic threatened to consume me. The world and all the normality it represented was right fucking there. I could hear it. The distant hum of traffic. The amber glow of streetlights that lit up the biohazard posters. Not thirty minutes ago I’d been there. Safe and far away from this waking nightmare.
I was being reduced to a prey animal. Even in the moment I could sense it happening to me. Being made into something lesser, but it was like my actions were no longer my own. When I finally gave up on the front door, I turned around and saw the shadows way back at the hallway begin to shift as something descended the stairwell. There was no other way out. No door. No window. Just me, a long corridor, and a nightmare coming right at me.
Something inside me gave up. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m still not sure if it was that building and that strange fluid that seemed to warp my own thoughts, or maybe there’s just too much one person can go through. But I could practically hear the thin membrane of my sanity tear as I fell backwards into the door and slid down onto my ass, breathlessly awaiting my terrible fate. I almost contemplated turning off my light but by then it was too late. I could see him coming towards me. He was legless. Nothing from the waist down except blackened viscera trailing up the stairs behind him. He pulled himself towards hand over hand with hungry eyes. Before I knew it he was on top of me, one hand gripping my mouth with a salty palm, the other stroking my hair.
And then in an instant his demeanour changed. He pulled back with a terrified cry and scrambled away like I’d just stuck him with a blade.
“No no no no no,” he muttered. “No no you should have said you should have said I didn’t know I thought you were another one I didn’t know I thought you were here for me I didn’t know you were hers.”
He cowered away, pedalling on both hands backwards while keeping his eyes fixed on me.
“Tell her I did not know you were hers I could not smell until I was close very close if I hurt you I am sorry tell her I am sorry I did not mean to hurt you it is just I do not get to eat often and am always hungry.”
With a rapid gesture he threw the key for the door at me. It skittered across the floor and fell just short of my feet.
“Tell her I did not know.”
“W-w-w-what are you?” I stammered.
He looked at me curiously, stopping his retreat only briefly to gauge my expression.
“She likes to be seen but I looked without asking and I got what I deserve.”
“Who are you talking about?” I asked.
He very nearly laughed, but with such deformities it was mostly a drooling guffaw.
“You know!” he gasped. “Don’t be stupid. You’re in love with her. Just like me. But different. You got permission. I didn’t. But she was good. She left me an old nest to live in. And I have permission to eat anything I kill or trap myself. Hard now that people know to stay away but sometimes I get lucky.”
His eyes flicked to the closet with sickening hunger.
“What has this got to do with her?” I asked.
“What colour are her eyes?” he replied, almost manic with excitement. “Answer. Answer. Tell me. Tell me. What colour are her eyes?”
“G–”
I stopped. The word felt wrong in my mouth.
“Bl–
“Bro–”
“No no,” he chittered. “None of those.”
Seemingly excited but afraid, he raced forward momentarily and gripped my lapels with twisted glee.
“Compound,” he hissed with such forbidden pleasure. “Her eyes are compound. She’s jealous of us, you know?
“Jealous we get to love her.”
And then he disappeared into the darkness and something inside me gave way entirely and I passed out.
I don’t know much of what came after, exactly. I was found a few hours later in my car, idling at a traffic light. I’d made some effort at getting away on my own but didn’t get very far. No surprise here but I got sick as a dog going in that place. A deep chest infection. The kind that scares everyone at least once in their life. Only fair given how fucking stupid I was. But forgive me, I hadn’t anticipated nightmares beyond human comprehension. I challenge anybody to think that fucking far ahead. You think junkies. You think flies. Squatters. But that guy… that man slipping out of the nest and barrelling towards me on two hands. My mind going sizzle pop along with the soles on my boots. In real life, shit like that always sneaks up on you.
So I paid the price. Six months. Jesus. Six long months. I got every fever you can think of. Sepsis. Kidney failure. Liver failure. Month after month drowning in my own fluids, coughing up shit that made the nurses gag and leave. I asked the doctor what the long term effects will be and he winced before reading a list of things that didn’t leave much hope for a happy retirement. And if it was hard on my body, it was even worse on my mind. Those fever dreams… doctors say what I remember in that building, that was all just part of the sickness. Say I spent a good three days in a coma and strange dreams are the norm. Which I might accept if it weren’t the fucking skin graft still healing on my right hand. No one can explain that.
My client visited. Just the once. There are universally sad moments in life and one of them is realising someone you have a lot of affection for doesn’t have it back. They have some. Just not the same amount. It was always one way though, wasn’t it? I saw her every single day but if I was doing my job right, she only saw me once a month for our meetings. Our arrangement ended not long after, so I hope anyway. She left like it was nothing but me… ah Jesus it felt like someone excavated my heart right out. Even after what she told me why she was there, even after what I did, I could barely stand up straight I was so heartbroken. There were times after that I wished the sickness would just take me. Maybe that defeatism is why it got so bad. Who knows?
She came to me looking for a recommendation, of all things. She wasn’t cold. Far from it. But there was a sense of disappointment as she sat beside me and eyed me up.
“I liked the initiative,” she said after a while. “But the results leave me unimpressed.”
“What the fuck happened in that place?” I asked, and even though I could barely hear my own voice, she seemed like she heard every word. For a moment, the way she contemplated it, I thought I was gonna get a straight answer.
“You know my mother said men don’t see ugly women. They know they exist but they just poof them right outta their mind. Like a magic trick. She said we worked better being a little plain. Good enough to take home for a night. Any more and we’d start to leave problems everywhere we go. That guy was a problem. She was trying to warn me about the dangers of attention but silly me, I went and got addicted. I hoped with you there might be a degree of… separation. Infatuation on a contractual basis.”
She took a deep breath like she’d had a long hard day.
“I don’t know. Maybe Mom was right. It’s ridiculous, I suppose. The fly shouldn’t admire the spider. It either sees it and fears it, or doesn’t know what’s coming until it’s too late. I think Mom was telling me to go for the latter. It’s no fun being invisible though. You spent all that time looking at me. Following me. What did you see?”
I looked at her until my eyes watered and something throbbed in my skull.
“I don’t know,” I tried to lie.
“Be honest.”
She looked right at me and something in the air changed. I don’t know what. Hot. Jesus it was hot. Like looking at the sun. I remember the heart rate monitor going nuts and then… then I remember gossamer wings and serrated chitin. A tick on the inside of your cheek. A leech on your tongue. A horsehair worm that won’t leave the skin. And then an instant later my eyes refocused and there was just a normal woman in front of me.
“Someone I could have loved,” I answered, unable to stop the words spilling like vomit. “Someone who I thought deserved love.”
“See,” she said. “Who wouldn’t like your version better?”
I was crying again. Heart racing. World like butter, going soft at the edges. Whatever she did, it was like undergoing brain surgery in real time.
“I’d like a recommendation,” she said after another minute or two of silence. “I’d like to see myself. I look in the mirror and I don’t see what you do. I’d like an artist to paint me. A version of me, at least. It won’t be easy on them. All this time you’ve probably looked directly at me for no more than five, ten minutes in total. Just didn’t realise it. Always the back of my head or my hair obscuring just so. That won’t do. I want a portrait. I want to know what you see.”
“What will you do to them?”
“I won’t do anything. Not intentionally. But if you ask someone to paint the sun, expect them to go blind. Whoever paints me will be painting the sun in their living room. Going blind is the least of their problems. Now, fess up. You know someone. You mentioned them once in passing. A cousin, maybe. An artist in need of cash. I’m sure of it.”
“Why would I tell you anything?”
“Because you love me,” she said. “And because despite everything you will get better and you will come back to me. Year or two, I think. You are adamant I have no hold on you, and you will think that for a long time. And this period of freedom, you’ll enjoy it only by my good grace and mercy. You did a good job. Better than any before. I’ve read your notes and reports over and over and seen details of myself I didn’t even know were there. It’s a thing of beauty, what you did. And one day soon you’ll come back to me with some excuse for why you want the contract to continue.”
I tried to spit the word never but managed, at best, a weak shake of the head. Something that put a most peculiar smile on her face.
“It doesn’t work like that. It’d be like trying to brute force your way through Alzheimer’s. You’ll be back. Even now you’re mine. All mine. I’m just being gentle. And you’re going to give me the name and number of this artist because even though you know I could no more love you than a spider loves the fly, you are desperate to please me. Because when I broke the man in that apartment building. When I tore him in two and told him that he would live for as long as I desired, writhing without air for years and years, drowning in sickly fluids and trapped helplessly in a hive he is determined to maintain even though I wouldn't be caught dead going back there. He was grateful. And, with time, you’ll be grateful too.”
She put the pen in my hand. She smiled, mouthed the word good boy, and God help me…
I gave her my nephew’s number.
submitted by ChristianWallis to nosleep [link] [comments]

2024.05.02 18:20 ChristianWallis I responded to a craigslist ad looking for a personal stalker

Let’s get the obvious out of the way.
Being a PI sucks. It’s not what you think. It’s pretty much harassing women. Men hire PIs to go harass their wives and girlfriends and once in a blue moon you get asked to find a missing dog, or to harass a man instead. But that’s it, really. Sometimes I’m looking for hard evidence of infidelity, but a lot of the time my clients just want to rattle the soon-to-be-ex. To make them paranoid and jittery and less reliable in a courtroom, or less likely to pay attention to small print agreements that stiff them out of the holiday home. So that’s my job. I’m a pawn and it is almost always on behalf of the kind of men who think women reading a book in public are secretly looking for male attention.
I don’t have an office. I did for a short while. But things are tough, as I’m sure many of you know, and PI work isn’t exactly lucrative. I don’t know why I’m still doing this job, except to say I’m my own boss, and it’s not easy out there. I went into this with vastly different expectations. If anyone wants to hire someone who was convicted of insurance fraud while training to be a police officer, let me know. Otherwise I’m on my own, following people in cars and sleeping in dingy motels. So when this new job came along, a craigslist ad looking for a guy to stalk them, I just figured it was a fetish thing. I got a nephew who went to art school and makes big bucks painting cartoon characters doing fucked up stuff. He ain’t painting the Sistine Chapel, but he pays the bills and looks after his family. I figure if that work is good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.
So I met the woman who posted the ad and was surprised at how normal she looked. It was in a public place, a park with a nice bench. And even though it was starting to rain a little we didn’t let it bother either of us. We sat there, two tape recorders running, and hashed it out. She said she liked me. If she hadn’t she wouldn’t have gotten out of her car. That was flattering coming from her. Good looking woman. Professional. I didn’t know at the time but I’d quickly figure out she was a forensic accountant.
Anyway, we got talking. She never gave me her motivation, but I would later come to understand her as an amateur narcissist. She was new at loving herself. She was smart, accomplished, and actually rather beautiful provided you didn’t spend a great deal of time agonising over things like symmetry or eyebrows, and instead paid attention to how a smile reaches the eyes, or how laughter sounds when it catches someone by surprise. But she grew up dirt poor and spent her teen years unable to visit the dentist, or access a gym, or even just eat home cooked food that wasn’t microwaved. Plump frame, blotchy skin, hair she kept short with a pair of scissors because her and her mother relied on the shampoo and soap they stole from the motel where they shared cleaning shifts. When she fumbled awkward questions at some of the better looking boys in her class, she rarely met with success. That’s not to say she was an outcast, either. She had a social life. It’s just poor kids have to grow up early. Prom’s a luxury. Eating isn’t. If you know, you know. Otherwise you might be surprised by just how fucking tough it can be for some kids in this country. Anyway, she got out of that hole, fought tooth and nail, got an education, a good job, and by the time she finished her victory lap and took stock of her life she was thirty-five years old and a thousand miles from the trailer she was raised in.
And she looked good. The woman in the mirror was a stranger that she wanted to get to know. I think hiring me was an act of self-love. I think if she could have, she would have sat in a car and watched herself get a cup of coffee, spying closely at the professional looking woman doing a little half-run half-skip to get out of the rain. The way she stood in line rocking back and forth on her heels to the music in her airpods thinking no one’d notice. She wanted to admire herself, but unable to time travel or clone herself, she instead resorted to hiring me as a kind of proxy.
I had my own boundaries, of course. They covered anything that was gonna get me in trouble. The gist of the contract, after a nice week spent meeting after work and talking, was that I was to follow her as often as I could and just… observe her. Photos. Videos. Secret recordings. Occasionally a little bit more. Nothing physical. For example, one time I inventoried her handbag after she left it in a taxi by accident. I’m not a photographer, but something about all those knick knacks laid out on a motel bed snapped with a black and white polaroid, it looked good. Like something you’d see in a fancy gallery. Avant garde my nephew would say. She loved it. Paid me a bonus for it and everything.
Anyway, this carried on like this for about six months. They were… interesting times. Tailing her across train stations, racing across open parking lots to install a tracker on her car, standing on a bridge and dropping an air tag in her bag as she walked past. It was a little bit like being a spy. She even paid for me to buy high end equipment. Crazy stuff. One camera, I could sit on my balcony and read the texts on her phone from a block away. Occasionally there were days where I couldn’t or wouldn’t keep up the required intensity. Stalking requires a lot of cardio. When that happened, when I didn’t feel like following her into a crowded place, or sprinting half-way around town following her car, I’d do research. I’d investigate who this woman had once been. I created fake Facebook profiles and tracked down old school friends, spoke to former teachers, lovers, all of that. The whole job was a matter of mapping her out, like she was a country, you know? And a country isn’t just hills and rivers and borders. Countries have history.
She was happy with my initiative. The text she sent me when I showed her the research folder was a glowing commendation. First one I’d had in a long time. It was nice, someone telling me good job. She had a real way of making me feel like a kid getting a gold star. I didn’t realise at the time, but I was putty in her hands. Head over heels, bless my stupid heart. Of course I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I’d had just enough time to grow over confident. I made the mistake of thinking that I wasn’t gonna find anything in her past that’d give me trouble sleeping.
Boy did I get that one fucking wrong.
Her mother. That’s where things took an odd turn. Now I knew from news reports the mother died in their trailer while her daughter was off staying at some boyfriend’s place for a few days. Natural causes, it read. I wanted to know a little more about what natural causes they were. Figured if there was a congenital thing, it seemed like maybe I ought to know. You’d think the way the trailer park owner reacted to me asking about it, I’d tried asking the Russian government for proof of a democratic election. Thin reedy little woman who gave me hell the moment I mentioned a name. What do you wanna know that for? Who’s asking? Who’s paying you? Why you wanna dig this shit up?
Oh she ripped me to pieces. I put it down to the natural sprinkling of crazies in the standard population and took a different tact. Started calling up the older folks in the park. Residents. Every single one of them put the phone down on me the second I mentioned her name.
Well, all of them except one.
Some people wanna talk and this old bastard was one of them. He had a lot to say about everything from the president to social media and I let him ramble on before starting to press my point. Told him at the start I was a historian looking into the local area, that made it so it wasn’t too suspicious when I began asking about this and that. Slowly making my way to the death of a fifty-three year old woman a couple trailers down from him some years ago.
Again, soon as I mentioned her name, there was a change in the air, even over the phone. For a second I thought this old guy was gonna hang up just like the others. Could hear him smacking his dry lips as he mulled it over.
“Francine didn’t deserve what happened to her,” he said after a while. “She wasn’t a good woman. Didn’t treat her daughter too good neither. But didn’t deserve what happened. Maybe if they’d found her earlier, some of those fellas in white coats could’ve got more evidence, put that little wretch of hers away. But from what I understand, weren’t much left of her at all.”
Then he hung up, leaving me with a whole lot of questions.
This frustrated me. I had, until now, had a fair bit of luck at this new profession of mine. They say be careful what you get good at. Sad truth was, I was getting good at stalking and this was my first real roadblock. I remembered the way I felt when she told me good job and it bothered me I couldn’t really say much about this critical part of her life. That and, well, maybe I still got a chip on my shoulder about being a failed policeman. If you give me a problem, I can sometimes drive myself crazy looking for a fix.
So I hopped in my car and drove to the trailer park, damn near on the other side of the country. Don’t know I was hoping to find. No way the trailer was still there, and it wasn’t. But what I found odd was the lot hadn’t been replaced. There was a hole in the ground, about the right size, and nothing else. Just an empty spot where the trailer had once stood. And the trailers on either side weren’t occupied either. I could tell by politely and legally looking through the windows. Most of them were cleared out, but a few weren’t. They still had plates and other knick knacks left hanging around, like the owners had left without bothering to pack.
“You shouldn’t hang around there, mister.”
The girl who appeared stood a good twenty feet away, shouting over the wind so as to be heard.
“Smell can make you awful sick.”
I wrinkled my nose, aware of the odour she was talking about. Had been since I approached the empty lot. A faint musty smell that made me think of an exotic pet shop.
“What do you mean?”
“Smell makes you sick,” she said like it was self-explanatory. “Woman who died there left behind an awful stench. Made the neighbours sick. And the neighbour’s neighbours, and so on for a couple trailers in a row. No one likes to live there now. Still can’t. Had a couple move in a year or two back and they got sick too. Daddy says it’s a bad one. Not even rats go near that hole.”
The smell wasn’t pretty, but this trailer park looked like the kinda place where hubcaps went missing regularly. Figured they would’ve been used to bad smells. What made this one so special?
I looked over at the girl.
“Where is your dad?”
Few minutes later and I was stood outside a trailer waiting pensively. The little girl had disappeared inside to fetch her father and since then I’d been sat listening to the quietest trailer park in the whole world. Crickets and silence. Traffic on a distant highway. Place was dying, that much was clear.
When the father finally did make an appearance, he said nothing for the first few minutes. Lit a cigarette, offered me one. I refused on account of having quit some time back.
After a while he spoke up.
“I’d invite you in but if you been hanging around that old lot, not sure I want you inside my home. No offence.”
“None taken,” I replied.
“Sally says you’re a historian.”
The man wasn’t terribly old. Mid-thirties, at a guess, but he looked me up and down like I was a teenager caught throwing eggs at his house.
“What’re you really?”
“PI,” I replied.
“Ha now that makes sense. Some relative looking for answers? Heard the Hendersons had a sister with money.”
“That’s exactly it,” I lied. “She didn’t buy the official story.”
“Nor should she,” he replied. “Henderson was fit as a fiddle day he moved in. Weren’t no justice in what happened to those who got sick. And poor Francine… They say she died of natural causes. Man even back then I knew it was shit and I was just a lil kid. The smell alone. Think it’s bad now but at the time, before they came in with a crane to lift the trailer up whole and move it to the dump. Shit it was something awful. There was talk of moving the whole park. Course no one gave enough of a shit about us to go ahead and actually do it.”
“What did she die of?”
“Don’t know. Only thing I am sure of is that that girl of Francine’s lied. Said her mother was live and well when she left before the weekend and they was all on good terms, but that was bullshit. We heard ‘em fighting for weeks before, for one. And of course the body, state that was in, ain’t no way it’d been rotting for just a few days.”
He offered me another cigarette. I refused. He lit it up instead. Second one in what felt like just a few minutes. Made me itchy just to see. I wanted to say something, anything to get a little bit more. But I’d told a big lie pretending to be there on someone else’s behalf, and didn’t want to catch myself out, so I just sat and listened to the quiet buzz of his little patio light.
After the second cigarette was done he reached into his back pocket and took out an old photo.
“I hope you find justice for Henderson and the rest of them,” he said. “Only real bit of proof I ever had something fishy went on.”
He handed me the picture. Wasn’t easy to see what I was looking at. Pile of old leaves, maybe. Mulch. I squinted at it for a few good seconds but couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“What…?”
“Took that the day they arrived to get rid of the trailer. Had to stand on my friend’s shoulders just to reach.”
“What is it?” I asked, my skin starting to crawl as I picked out details. Whatever I was looking at, it was slumped on a sofa with floral wallpaper in the background. It was about the size of a man, but riddled with holes and cavities the size of golf balls. In my whole life, I’d never seen something that looked like that.
“Why that’s Francine,” he said. “Or at least what was left of her.”
He let me keep the photo. At a guess, that was the only interesting thing that’d ever happened to that man and he’d been waiting to share it with someone. All I had to do was give him an excuse. He seemed to take some pleasure in passing it on. Certainly found my reaction to it amusing. I must’ve gone pale as I grappled with thoughts of what had happened to make a body go bad like that. Back in the hotel, under a good light, I checked that picture again and again. Something about it made me deeply uncomfortable. Knowing a woman was under all that… all those holes and crevices must’ve been made in her flesh. And what’d happened to her skin that’d turned it such a funny texture? Looked furry, like the kinda thing that grows on top of a long-forgotten cup of coffee.
A part of me considered asking my client about this, but I knew that wasn’t the way to go. First, she probably wouldn’t tell me good job if I had to ask. She hired me to do a certain thing and that didn’t involve politely requesting information right from the source. Second, well… I’d read the police reports, what was publicly available, anyway. And she’d made it clear she’d left on the friday and came home on the Monday and…
Well what if that guy was right? Did she really leave her mother alive and well? I mean, people kill. Not just psychos. People like you and me. We do it every day and sometimes we even pull it off. Only half of US murders get solved. That’s a fact. If anyone could be in the right half of that equation, it’d be her. She was smart as hell, my client. Even at seventeen she would’ve been a clever one. Clever enough that she might easily have been able to cover her tracks. Gone over to some boyfriend, twisted his arm into giving her an alibi. Sure, I could see that.
I just needed to figure out what the fuck was going on with that crime scene in the trailer. Thankfully I got some friends still on the force, one of which I even have a bit of leverage on. At first he couldn’t find much on the actual mother, but then I asked him to see if he could take the photo I had, show it around, and see if anyone had seen something like it before. That proved a lot more fruitful. Few days later he came back with a strange one, but straight away I saw the connection.
I’ll spare the details. Old man was found in a tub, all sorts of fucked up, in some old apartment building. It had since been condemned on account of the body which is fairly weird since bodies don’t usually cause that much fuss, but less weird when you realise that said body was in such a bad state it made three people sick and caused long-lasting structural damage. Whatever happened to this guy, it ate through the tub he’d been lying in and seeped into the floors and walls below. Turned plasterboard to shit and apparently even caused some trouble for the sturdier elements like steel and concrete. I don’t know how that works exactly, but that’s what the file said and going by the photos, I didn’t feel like anyone was lying.
As for the pictures? What can I say? Made my fucking skin crawl. No blurry little polaroid snapped by a kid. These were professional crime scene pictures that showed something in a bathtub that didn’t register as human until my eyes went looking for details. He looked like a hairy paper-wasp’s nest, only there were fingers and nipples and other little things that made it clear it had been built using a person as the framework. No face though. Just a head like a pile of used paper plates. Looking at those photos made me learn a new word just to describe how I felt. Trypophobia.
Wasn’t just the one guy either. Building was linked to the disappearance of the ground floor tenant. Some computer geek. I didn’t worry about him too much. But what did catch my eye was there was only one woman living in the whole place. Second floor apartment. The registered name was… somewhat familiar. Close enough to a certain someone’s that it raised the hairs on my neck. Police at the scene managed to get a photo of her and sure enough, there she was. My client going by a different name. Clearly something fishy was going on or else why the pseudonym? I figured it possible she’d maybe offed her own mother. Parents and spouses make the most common victims. But what connection was there to that second corpse, and what about the missing guy?
It was like a horror movie was following her around and she was just blissfully unaware. Condemned buildings and festering trailers made for a far cry from the professional accountant who enjoyed oat milk lattes and used sweetener instead of sugar to spare her teeth. But there was no denying she was the connection. There was photographic proof she’d lived in that building. If I wanted to get ahead of this, to really understand what was going on, I had to figure out what had happened to those bodies. I’d pretty much exhausted my favours with the police and truth was they didn’t know any more than I did. But it turned out the building was still standing. Condemned, but they hadn’t demolished it, partly because no one wanted to take responsibility, but I reckon it might have had something to do with the biohazard warnings slapped on every single window and door.
Good thing I’d brought a gas mask. I waited for sunset, geared up, and entered through the unlocked door. First thing that hit me as the door swung open was the smell. Similar to the trailer park but full pelt and hot as hell. Made me think of lizards and poorly kept terrariums. Strong enough to make my eyes water even through the mask. One thing was clear as I took a look around the hallway - the building was diseased. Not just rundown or decrepit like the usual urban decay. This was something else. Looked like the inside of a clogged pipe. You know how limescale fills it up? It was a bit like that. This oily rust coloured fluid had seeped down the walls and left them glistening and soft. Ropey stalactites of the stuff hung down from the ceiling like old party banners, and I edged around them afraid of what might happen if one touched me.
Best guess was that stuff was digesting the place. Anything soft or organic was going or gone. Old umbrella frames were left standing in one corner, the fabric burnt or dissolved away. The carpet was reduced to just a few patches no bigger than my hand. And a bunch of old cardboard boxes piled up under the stairs had turned squat and half-liquid, almost flowing down and around each other. The worst came when I took a look in the back room. More of a broom closet, I guess. Wouldn't have gone in but something caught my eye. A well-worn shoe that wasn’t covered in that oily shit. Sign of recent activity. That and the way the door was ajar just raised my suspicions, so I took a look.
Even now the timeline eludes me, but someone, a vagrant most likely given the way they were dressed, died a nasty death in there. Chemical burns come to mind. They were balled up in one corner, eyeless, looking up at me as I pushed the door open to take a closer look. Pink flesh threaded with red blood vessels, yellow bones poking through here and there. From the looks of things they’d been trying to work the door open. You could see a history of their escape attempts left by bleeding hands. Rust coloured finger streaks ran all along the door’s edges, special attention paid to the hinges. And he’d broken the only window and tried hauling himself up there only to realise it was barred from the other side. The jagged glass that still clung to the frame was covered in old blood. His palms must have looked like grated cheese. Eventually he’d given up and lain down in that shit and the thought of it made my chest feel heavy and tight. I’d only been in the building a few minutes and that shit was already eating through my shoes. I could hear the thick rubber soles sizzle and pop with each step. But that guy had been forced to sit down in an inch deep puddle of the stuff, likely because exhaustion had left him no choice but to tough it out. So how long had he tried staying up right?
Hours? Days? Weeks?
Him getting stuck in there had to be deliberate. I was sure of it. A feeling in my gut. Someone had locked the door behind him and left him to die slowly. God only knows why, but did that mean they were still hanging around and waiting for a chance to get to me? Looking around, I sure didn’t feel safe or alone. The shadows seemed too deep and the steady drip drip drip of that rancid oil oozing out of every surface was too monotonous. Someone or something lived in that filth and chances were they’d been responsible for that poor vagrant’s agonising death.
That meant getting out of that shithole was a priority, so I made for the stairs and started the climb. If there were any answers in that place, it’d be in the apartment where that old man died. The crime scene tape was still hanging off the door frame when I found it, and the TV and sofa, or what remained of them, stood in the same place as in the photos. Back in the day the old man had been a hoarder and I was surprised crime scene hadn’t cleared all his shit out. It was all still there, only what had once been a chest high maze of papers and magazines was now just a kind of hardened pulp, almost like magma dried mid-flow. Whole fucking place was covered in the stuff like a coral reef, growing up the walls and even patches of the ceiling. Looked a hell of a lot like a wasp’s nest, and it looked to be the source of that oily looking fluid. You could see it sweating out of every crease and fold in that strange hive. It was almost hypnotic to look at. Glistening amber beads oozing out of papery sheets that flowed like rock striata. There was a gentle, barely perceptible rhythm. Hypnotic.
I don’t know why but I reached out and ran the tip of my finger as gently as I could along the surface. It felt like the underside of a mushroom. All those papery gills. Gossamer thin. Soft and inviting. I wore no gloves and the brief moment of contact had deposited a single bead of that strange syrup on my fingertip. It caused a tingling sensation that was not entirely unpleasant. Even the blood that trickled down my knuckle felt warm and wet, like testing a hot bath with your hand. I liked it. I liked it and I wanted more.
I went to reach out and push my arm into the nest when a hand burst out of the nest and gripped my wrist. I was so surprised I didn’t even make a noise, but instead wordlessly fell back as the hand pushed me away from the nest. A very nearly skinless forearm followed and soon after a face emerged from the papery nest like a grime covered nightmare. Black eyes and a lipless mouth. It was a man that could have passed for a corpse, like a half-digested piece of meat. Terrified, I struggled to my feet and realised that this person had broken damn near every bone in my wrist with that single grip.
“Your meat smells raw,” he growled before heaving himself out of the nest in a disgusting parody of childbirth.
My sanity flickered and the next thing I knew I was on the ground floor with bleeding eyes and both hands frantically pulling at the door handle. My mind returned in pieces. I blinked red tears away but didn’t stop trying to open the door. I felt it, that urgent need to leave, like a suffocating man feels the need to breathe. But I’d fucked up bad. I’d sniffed out the closet and saw the trap laid there, but hadn’t seen the larger one set for me. There was only one way in and out of that building and I hadn’t jammed the door open! Now it was shut and nothing I did could get it open. With more time maybe I could’ve pried the jamb or even kicked it down, but my heart was racing and my vision blurring. I wanted out of that place. A hot primal need to get the hell out. The air was too hot. My mask too stifling. Sweat condensed on the inner plastic and made it damn near impossible to see. And the pain in my wrist was a throbbing explosion that made sensible thought impossible. I’d realised early on into my little foray that I was underprepared, but the scale of what that meant eluded me until I was there wrestling with thoughts of exposure and contagion and disease, fumbling at a greasy doorknob with a broken hand while suppressing thoughts of what might be crawling up my leg or back or neck. Panic threatened to consume me. The world and all the normality it represented was right fucking there. I could hear it. The distant hum of traffic. The amber glow of streetlights that lit up the biohazard posters. Not thirty minutes ago I’d been there. Safe and far away from this waking nightmare.
I was being reduced to a prey animal. Even in the moment I could sense it happening to me. Being made into something lesser, but it was like my actions were no longer my own. When I finally gave up on the front door, I turned around and saw the shadows way back at the hallway begin to shift as something descended the stairwell. There was no other way out. No door. No window. Just me, a long corridor, and a nightmare coming right at me.
Something inside me gave up. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m still not sure if it was that building and that strange fluid that seemed to warp my own thoughts, or maybe there’s just too much one person can go through. But I could practically hear the thin membrane of my sanity tear as I fell backwards into the door and slid down onto my ass, breathlessly awaiting my terrible fate. I almost contemplated turning off my light but by then it was too late. I could see him coming towards me. He was legless. Nothing from the waist down except blackened viscera trailing up the stairs behind him. He pulled himself towards hand over hand with hungry eyes. Before I knew it he was on top of me, one hand gripping my mouth with a salty palm, the other stroking my hair.
And then in an instant his demeanour changed. He pulled back with a terrified cry and scrambled away like I’d just stuck him with a blade.
“No no no no no,” he muttered. “No no you should have said you should have said I didn’t know I thought you were another one I didn’t know I thought you were here for me I didn’t know you were hers.”
He cowered away, pedalling on both hands backwards while keeping his eyes fixed on me.
“Tell her I did not know you were hers I could not smell until I was close very close if I hurt you I am sorry tell her I am sorry I did not mean to hurt you it is just I do not get to eat often and am always hungry.”
With a rapid gesture he threw the key for the door at me. It skittered across the floor and fell just short of my feet.
“Tell her I did not know.”
“W-w-w-what are you?” I stammered.
He looked at me curiously, stopping his retreat only briefly to gauge my expression.
“She likes to be seen but I looked without asking and I got what I deserve.”
“Who are you talking about?” I asked.
He very nearly laughed, but with such deformities it was mostly a drooling guffaw.
“You know!” he gasped. “Don’t be stupid. You’re in love with her. Just like me. But different. You got permission. I didn’t. But she was good. She left me an old nest to live in. And I have permission to eat anything I kill or trap myself. Hard now that people know to stay away but sometimes I get lucky.”
His eyes flicked to the closet with sickening hunger.
“What has this got to do with her?” I asked.
“What colour are her eyes?” he replied, almost manic with excitement. “Answer. Answer. Tell me. Tell me. What colour are her eyes?”
“G–”
I stopped. The word felt wrong in my mouth.
“Bl–
“Bro–”
“No no,” he chittered. “None of those.”
Seemingly excited but afraid, he raced forward momentarily and gripped my lapels with twisted glee.
“Compound,” he hissed with such forbidden pleasure. “Her eyes are compound. She’s jealous of us, you know?
“Jealous we get to love her.”
And then he disappeared into the darkness and something inside me gave way entirely and I passed out.
I don’t know much of what came after, exactly. I was found a few hours later in my car, idling at a traffic light. I’d made some effort at getting away on my own but didn’t get very far. No surprise here but I got sick as a dog going in that place. A deep chest infection. The kind that scares everyone at least once in their life. Only fair given how fucking stupid I was. But forgive me, I hadn’t anticipated nightmares beyond human comprehension. I challenge anybody to think that fucking far ahead. You think junkies. You think flies. Squatters. But that guy… that man slipping out of the nest and barrelling towards me on two hands. My mind going sizzle pop along with the soles on my boots. In real life, shit like that always sneaks up on you.
So I paid the price. Six months. Jesus. Six long months. I got every fever you can think of. Sepsis. Kidney failure. Liver failure. Month after month drowning in my own fluids, coughing up shit that made the nurses gag and leave. I asked the doctor what the long term effects will be and he winced before reading a list of things that didn’t leave much hope for a happy retirement. And if it was hard on my body, it was even worse on my mind. Those fever dreams… doctors say what I remember in that building, that was all just part of the sickness. Say I spent a good three days in a coma and strange dreams are the norm. Which I might accept if it weren’t the fucking skin graft still healing on my right hand. No one can explain that.
My client visited. Just the once. There are universally sad moments in life and one of them is realising someone you have a lot of affection for doesn’t have it back. They have some. Just not the same amount. It was always one way though, wasn’t it? I saw her every single day but if I was doing my job right, she only saw me once a month for our meetings. Our arrangement ended not long after, so I hope anyway. She left like it was nothing but me… ah Jesus it felt like someone excavated my heart right out. Even after what she told me why she was there, even after what I did, I could barely stand up straight I was so heartbroken. There were times after that I wished the sickness would just take me. Maybe that defeatism is why it got so bad. Who knows?
She came to me looking for a recommendation, of all things. She wasn’t cold. Far from it. But there was a sense of disappointment as she sat beside me and eyed me up.
“I liked the initiative,” she said after a while. “But the results leave me unimpressed.”
“What the fuck happened in that place?” I asked, and even though I could barely hear my own voice, she seemed like she heard every word. For a moment, the way she contemplated it, I thought I was gonna get a straight answer.
“You know my mother said men don’t see ugly women. They know they exist but they just poof them right outta their mind. Like a magic trick. She said we worked better being a little plain. Good enough to take home for a night. Any more and we’d start to leave problems everywhere we go. That guy was a problem. She was trying to warn me about the dangers of attention but silly me, I went and got addicted. I hoped with you there might be a degree of… separation. Infatuation on a contractual basis.”
She took a deep breath like she’d had a long hard day.
“I don’t know. Maybe Mom was right. It’s ridiculous, I suppose. The fly shouldn’t admire the spider. It either sees it and fears it, or doesn’t know what’s coming until it’s too late. I think Mom was telling me to go for the latter. It’s no fun being invisible though. You spent all that time looking at me. Following me. What did you see?”
I looked at her until my eyes watered and something throbbed in my skull.
“I don’t know,” I tried to lie.
“Be honest.”
She looked right at me and something in the air changed. I don’t know what. Hot. Jesus it was hot. Like looking at the sun. I remember the heart rate monitor going nuts and then… then I remember gossamer wings and serrated chitin. A tick on the inside of your cheek. A leech on your tongue. A horsehair worm that won’t leave the skin. And then an instant later my eyes refocused and there was just a normal woman in front of me.
“Someone I could have loved,” I answered, unable to stop the words spilling like vomit. “Someone who I thought deserved love.”
“See,” she said. “Who wouldn’t like your version better?”
I was crying again. Heart racing. World like butter, going soft at the edges. Whatever she did, it was like undergoing brain surgery in real time.
“I’d like a recommendation,” she said after another minute or two of silence. “I’d like to see myself. I look in the mirror and I don’t see what you do. I’d like an artist to paint me. A version of me, at least. It won’t be easy on them. All this time you’ve probably looked directly at me for no more than five, ten minutes in total. Just didn’t realise it. Always the back of my head or my hair obscuring just so. That won’t do. I want a portrait. I want to know what you see.”
“What will you do to them?”
“I won’t do anything. Not intentionally. But if you ask someone to paint the sun, expect them to go blind. Whoever paints me will be painting the sun in their living room. Going blind is the least of their problems. Now, fess up. You know someone. You mentioned them once in passing. A cousin, maybe. An artist in need of cash. I’m sure of it.”
“Why would I tell you anything?”
“Because you love me,” she said. “And because despite everything you will get better and you will come back to me. Year or two, I think. You are adamant I have no hold on you, and you will think that for a long time. And this period of freedom, you’ll enjoy it only by my good grace and mercy. You did a good job. Better than any before. I’ve read your notes and reports over and over and seen details of myself I didn’t even know were there. It’s a thing of beauty, what you did. And one day soon you’ll come back to me with some excuse for why you want the contract to continue.”
I tried to spit the word never but managed, at best, a weak shake of the head. Something that put a most peculiar smile on her face.
“It doesn’t work like that. It’d be like trying to brute force your way through Alzheimer’s. You’ll be back. Even now you’re mine. All mine. I’m just being gentle. And you’re going to give me the name and number of this artist because even though you know I could no more love you than a spider loves the fly, you are desperate to please me. Because when I broke the man in that apartment building. When I tore him in two and told him that he would live for as long as I desired, writhing without air for years and years, drowning in sickly fluids and trapped helplessly in a hive he is determined to maintain even though I wouldn't be caught dead going back there. He was grateful. And, with time, you’ll be grateful too.”
She put the pen in my hand. She smiled, mouthed the word good boy, and God help me…
I gave her my nephew’s number.
submitted by ChristianWallis to u/ChristianWallis [link] [comments]

2024.04.30 13:07 NoiseyBox Gave up sugar as much as possible. A few questions

So as of 3 weeks ago, I've given up all sweets and cut out all sugar where possible. Down to 1 glass of milk a day and a half cup yoghurt with raspberries for breakfast. I keep under the US RDA for sugar, which is 50 grams of sugar, and even casual counting I can keep it under 40.
This is very hard for me as all my life I've been super thin (120 lbs, 6 feet tall) but once I hit 50, the weight started to pile on, but my diet didn't change. So, not liking how I was feeling, I went cold turkey. Within the first week, I lost 1 pants size, down to 36x32 and was feeling pretty good. I knew the cravings would kick in sooner or later, but I had no idea just how bad they would be.
In short, the craving are bad. I feel like a junky. I suppose not a huge surprise given my garbage diet prior to this (4 chocolate bars a day, minimum, an entire bag of reeses peanut butter cups for lunch, a whole box of two-bite brownies for after-dinner dessert, an entire danish pastry for breakfast...garbage like that) but I'm having trouble concentrating at work (IT) and even my dreams are being invaded by eating chocolate.
I have taken to eating a single reeses-mini before bed, just so I can sleep, but what can I do to help cut down on the withdrawal-like symptoms?
submitted by NoiseyBox to diet [link] [comments]

2024.04.25 20:32 darkgodcanine Album rule

Album rule submitted by darkgodcanine to 196 [link] [comments]

2024.04.25 07:43 Realistic-Bat-8944 Well well well

4m of acting got you no where 😂😂😂😂😂 ppl wising up 😂😂😂😂 didn't get much drug money 😂😂😂😂😂 there's the chunky junkie ju we all known for yrs 😂😂😂😂 hmm no mention of date other day probably got money then blocked him lucky escape lad but still wonder how much it cost ya 😂😂😂 fellow junkie been helping ya sort ya house no junkie ju he going though ya tat to see what he can sell 😂😂😂😂 you Will have them arrested by weekend for burglary grape etc man then beg to ya girlsssss 😂😂😂😂😂 same old stories repeated i mean walking streets with fellow junkie begging online for drug money walking around with a dog while yours locked in a room hope he shit and pee everywhere 😂😂😂😂 goung in chemist twice cause you off ya chops 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 the list goes and finally letting slip online you just use and milk ya followers 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂like we known for yrs he he haha ho ho just need some karma to come for you
submitted by Realistic-Bat-8944 to GeordieJulieAskew [link] [comments]

2024.04.23 05:26 soberingthought 'Tude Talk Tuesday for April 23, 2024

Hello, fellow Sobernauts!
Welcome to 'Tude Talk Tuesday, where you're invited to share what changes you've noticed in your attitudes and perspectives since you've gotten sober.
I once heard someone say "I'm a comfort-seeker and a feel-good junkie" and that resonated with me.
A primary motivation for my drinking was to feel "better". For me, better meant to numb out my feelings and perhaps experience a ever-more fleeting moment of euphoria as the drink hit. Looking back on my drinking and using career, I spent so much time trying to control the ride to maximize my pleasure from my intoxicants. It's why I'd push them so hard and, ultimately, why I'd push them to the point that I lost control because that's really what I wanted, was to stop trying to control it.
In sobriety, I'm still a feel-good junkie. If there is something I get enjoyment or comfort from, I'm liable to abuse it, to squeeze it dry for every drop I can get from it. I find myself in enjoyable situations and something in the back of my head starts trying to manipulate the experience, to milk it for all its worth. And that causes me to lose the moment. It's taking me a long time to retrain my brain to just enjoy things as they are and not for what they could be.
So, how about you? How's your wiring in sobriety?
submitted by soberingthought to stopdrinking [link] [comments]

2024.04.16 05:52 eloquentlywrite-it Alliteration - repetition of consonant sounds in close proximity. EG: Sally sells seashells by the seashore."

Alliteration
Let us begin with something we know Shakespeare stole, simply so that we can see what a wonderful thief he was. When Shakespeare decided to write The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra he of course needed a history book from which to work. The standard work on the subject was Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, but Plutarch wrote in Greek, and, as Shakespeare's friend Ben Jonson later pointed out, "thou hadst small Latin and less Greek."
Despite years at Stratford Grammar School learning pretty much nothing but the classics, Shakespeare could never be bothered with foreign languages. He always used translations.
So he got hold of the standard English translation of Plu- tarch, which had been written by a chap called Thomas North and published in 1579. We know that this is the version
Shakespeare used because you can sometimes see him using the same word that North used, and sometimes pairs of words. But when Shakespeare got to the big speech of the whole play, when he really needed some poetry, when he wanted true greatness, when he wanted to describe the moment that Antony saw Cleopatra on the barge and fell in love with her he just found the relevant paragraph in North and copied it out almost word for word. Almost word for word. Here's North:
she disdained to set forward otherwise but to take her barge in the river Cydnus, the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the sound of the music of flutes, howboys, cithernes, viols, and such other instru- ments as they played up in the barge.
And here's Shakespeare:
The barge she sat in like a burnished throne, Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails and so perfumed that The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes.
The thing about this is that it's definitely half stolen. There is no possible way that Shakespeare didn't have North open on his desk when he was writing. But also, Shakespeare made little changes. That means that we can actually watch Shakespeare working. We can peep back 400 years and see the greatest genius who ever lived scribbling away. We can see how he did it, and it's really pretty bloody simple. All he did was add some alliteration.
Nobody knows why we love to hear words that begin with the same letter, but we do and Shakespeare knew it. So he picked the word barge and worked from there. Barge begins with a B, so Shakespeare sat back and said to himself: "The barge she sat in was like a..." And then (though I can't prove this) he said: "Ba... ba... ba... burnished throne." He jotted that down and then he decided to do another. "The barge she sat in like a burnished throne... ba...ba... burned? It burned on the water." And the poop was gold? Not any more: the poop was beaten gold. That's four Bs in two lines. Enough to be getting on with. Shakespeare could have got carried away and written something like:
The barge she basked in, like a burnished boat Burned by the banks, the back was beaten brass.
But that would just be silly. Of course, Shakespeare did write like that sometimes. There's a bit in A Midsummer Night's Dream that goes:
Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade, He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast; But there he was taking the mickey out of poets who use alliteration but don't know where to stop. No, Shakespeare wasn't going to put any more Bs in, he was working on the P North's original had "the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple." That's two Ps already, so Shakespeare decided that the sails would be pa... pa... perfumed. Maybe he stopped to wonder how you would perfume a whole sail, or how you might be able to smell them from the river bank (the Cydnus is quite wide). Or maybe he didn't. Accuracy is much less important than alliteration.
From there on in, Shakespeare was coasting. North had "After the sound" so Shakespeare had "to the tune." North had a whole orchestra of instruments "flutes, howboys, cithernes, viols"-Shakespeare cut that down to just flutes, because he liked the F. So flutes made the "Water Which they beat to Follow Faster, As Amorous of their strokes."
So Shakespeare stole; but he did wonderful things with his plunder. He's like somebody who nicks your old socks and then darns them. Shakespeare simply knew that people are suckers for alliteration and that it's pretty damned easy to make something alliterate (or that it's surprisingly simple to add alliteration).
You can spend all day trying to think of some universal truth to set down on paper, and some poets try that. Shake- speare knew that it's much easier to string together some words beginning with the same letter. It doesn't matter what it's about. It can be the exact depth in the sea to which a chap's corpse has sunk; hardly a matter of universal interest, but if you say, "Full fathom five thy father lies," you will be considered the greatest poet who ever lived. Express precisely the same thought any other way-e.g. "your father's corpse is 9.144 metres below sea level" and you're just a coastguard with some bad news.
Any phrase, so long as it alliterates, is memorable and will be believed even if it's a bunch of nonsense. Curiosity, for example, did not kill the cat. There are no widely reported cases of felines dying from being too inquisitive. In fact, the original proverb was not "curiosity killed the cat" (which is recorded only from 1921), it was "care killed the cat." And even that one was changed. When the proverb was first recorded (in Shakespeare, actually, although he seems to be just referring to a well known bit of folk wisdom), care meant sorrow or unhappiness. But by the twentieth century it was care in the sense of too much kindness-something along the lines of a pet that is overfed and pampered. In a hundred years' time it may be something else that does the pussy- killing, although you can be certain that whatever it is- kindness, consternation or corruption-will begin with a C or K.
Similarly, there was once an old proverb, "An ynche in a misse is as good as an ell," an ell being an old unit of mea- surement of 1.1 miles. So the ell was changed to a mile, and then the inch was dropped because it doesn't begin with an M, and we were left with "A miss is as good as a mile," which, if you think about it, doesn't really make sense any
more. But who needs sense when you have alliteration? Nobody has ever thrown a baby out with the bathwater, nor is there anything particularly right about rain. Even when something does make a bit of sense, it's usually deve ous why the comparison was picked. It takes two to tang but it takes two to waltz as well. There are whole hogs, b why not pigs? Bright as a button. Cool as a cucumber. Dead as a doornail. In fact, Dickens made this point rather bette than I at the opening of A Christmas Carol.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door- nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Except that Dickens knew full well why it is doornails that are dead. Dickens was a writer, and as a writer, he knew that alliteration is the simplest way to turn a memorable phrase. This was, after all, the guy who had written Nicholas Nick- leby, The Pickwick Papers (full title: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club) and, indeed, A Christmas Carol. He knew which side his bread was buttered, as had those who came before him, like Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice), and those who came after him (Where's Wally?) So popular is alliteration that in the 1960s it actually made a grab for political power. In the 1960s a vast radical youth movement began campaigning to do things for the sole reason that they began with the same letter. Ban the bomb. Burn your bra. Power to the people. For a moment there it seemed as though alliteration would change the world. But then the spirit of idealism faded and those who had manned the barricades went off and got jobs in market- ing. They stopped telling people to ban the bomb and started telling them to put a tiger in your tank, chuck out the chintz and use Access-Your Flexible Friend, or perhaps PayPal. And all because the lady loves Milk Tray.
It's enough to get your goat.¹
Alliteration can be brief and obvious-a short, sharp, shock. Or it can be long and subtle. John Keats once wrote fourteen lines of Fs and Ss, and it was beautiful:
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair; Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more By reason of his fallen divinity Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.
Whereas, at almost the same time, Thomas De Quincer famous junkie and prose stylist, got himself all muddled up over this sentence:
At present, after exchanging a few parting words, and a few final or farewell farewells with my faithful female agent.
So muddled was he that he decided to add a footnote apolo- gising for his paroemion (that's the technical name for exces- sive alliteration). The footnote went:
Some people are irritated, or even fancy themselves insulted, by overt acts of alliteration, as many people are by puns. On their account, let me say, that, although there are here eight separate f's in less than half a sentence, this is to be held as pure accident. In fact, at one time there were nine f's in the original cast of the sentence, until I, in pity of the affronted people, substi- tuted female agent for female friend.
"Agent" seems a strange substitution for "friend." But he probably had to do it as he couldn't change "farewell fart wells." It's much too clever to use a word as an adjective and then a noun. In fact, the trick has a name. It's called polyptoton.
​
Own Explanation:
why are not vowels used in alliteration
Consonant sounds tend to create sharper, more distinct sounds compared to vowels, which are produced with less constriction of airflow.
​
explain alliteration in one lineChatGPTChatGPT
Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in close proximity within a phrase or sentence.
​
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939), in the scene where the Scarecrow sings his song "If I Only Had a Brain":
"I'd unravel every riddle For any individ'le In trouble or in pain."
The repeated "r" sound in "ravel," "riddle," "individ'le," and "trouble" demonstrates alliteration, creating a rhythmic and memorable quality to the lyrics.
​
"The Shining" (1980), directed by Stanley Kubrick. In one of the iconic scenes, Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, types the same sentence repeatedly on his typewriter:
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
This sentence showcases alliteration with the repeated "w" sound in "work" and "play," as well as the repeated "d" sound in "dull" and "boy." The use of alliteration in this context adds to the eerie and unsettling atmosphere of the film.
​
"Jurassic Park" (1993), directed by Steven Spielberg. In the scene where Dr. Ian Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldblum, is discussing chaos theory, he says:
"Life, uh, finds a way."
The repeated "f" sound in "finds" and "way" creates alliteration in this memorable line.
​
​
"Goldfinger" (1964), there's a famous line delivered by the character Auric Goldfinger, played by Gert Fröbe:
"Do you expect me to talk?"
To which James Bond, portrayed by Sean Connery, responds:
"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
The repeated "e" sound in "expect" and "me" creates alliteration in this intense exchange.
​
"The Dark Knight" (2008), the character Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart, delivers a line with alliteration:
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
The repeated "h" sound in "hero" and "yourself" creates alliteration in this memorable quote.
​
submitted by eloquentlywrite-it to u/eloquentlywrite-it [link] [comments]

2024.04.15 17:43 philip-lurkin Good micro-adjustments for bringing down a 5.7?

Hi everyone,
Seems like this board gets a lot of panicky 5.7 posts (sorry to add to the noise!), but I'm curious in your collective expertise what you'd recommend as a good micro-adjustment to bring a 5.7 down just a bit further.
I am a relatively fit and healthy 39 year old male with bad genes (unhealthy/overweight/alcoholic parents, pancreatic cancer in grandparent). Last year I pulled a 5.8 and wiped a lot of sugar from my diet -- no junky cereals, no more occasional candy, switched to 0g sugar yogurts (they taste good enough for me!), I snack on nuts now, added unsweetened almond milk into the mix -- and got on a consistent 2x a week cardio workout schedule (peloton). A1C dropped to 5.7 after a year of that.
I want to add another layer of healthy habits into the mix that will help. Would you recommend I look to more dietary adjustments, or try to up my exercise? I've seen posts about strength training, which I could add into the mix. I weight 175 and could use to lose maybe 5-10 lbs (but they're proving to be quite difficult to shake.)
I've got a 3 year old, which comes with the frequent stress-overload and the occasional nugget dinner. I don't have the bandwidth to do a huge life-adjustment but feel like I'm on the right track and can manage a little bit more course-correction.
Would very much appreciate your recommendations! Thank you for your time :)
EDIT: Huge thanks to everyone for your replies!
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2024.04.12 20:18 OneMegOfMany WHEEE! Zojirushi Estate Sale Haul!

WHEEE! Zojirushi Estate Sale Haul!
I am flying high today! Scored all this stuff, plus’s a Jiffy stand up steamer! The sale had several of my dream kitchen electronics, including a Zojirushi rice cooker, Nespresso milk frother, Raclette grill, and a new Instant Pot Ultra! Everything appears to be either new or in pristine condition. Also got a copy of Food Lab for $5!
There’s also some art supplies including a several Blackwing pencil products (a nearly full box of new pencils, a set of colored pencils, & the remnants of a gift set including accessories). Plus some waterproof headphones (always wanted some for swimming laps!) and a bag of Apple cords, ear buds, an Apple mouse, and an old iPod shuffle (this was a bit of a gamble, but worth it I think).
Don’t mind me, I’ll be over here doing the happy dance! 🤗
submitted by OneMegOfMany to ThriftStoreHauls [link] [comments]

2024.04.11 18:30 KumaMishka Trans Lesbian IRL : The Dating Sim Game

Tagline : You are a trans lesbian in a very transphobic and heteronormative world. You broke up with your cis girlfriend for a year now. Loneliness drive you to seek for someone. Somebody to love. Who would that be
Love Interest Characters:
LUNA (She/Her) One of the well known discord mod. (by well known I mean 50 people) FPS games junkie that sometimes will share the stat with 47/2 K/D rate while moaning "I am worse at these games after HRT. I should stick to VN now!". She is the very simple route to playthrough TBH. She's already into you and seem like asking you out a lot after lovebombing you in chat you are so afraid that she will turn out to be a scammer. Actually, She has a polycule. If you choose this route you will become one of her polycule but you might not feel "into" all other folks in her polycule and this might initiate some discomfort in which you will have to manage with some skill check. UNLESS your created character's race IS NOT WHITE. Then you will have a lot harder time getting into her polycule in which you might feel very alienated, isolated, singled out, not getting featured in any TwitteThreads Circle post (/uj whatever the f*ck that is) /rj you might as well wave her goodbye at the bittersweet non-white trans ending.
Charisa (She/They) Nerdy girl and activist from Gayland who will always be tsundere about being queer activist "Ugh, I hate calling myself activist. It sound self-righteous af." You will meet her at some Egoist milk club which will close down after 4 months because Land Lord happened. After that you will have to find her at some book stores or protest sites around the town. She might swing by with some cis girl(s) around her sometime. Someone might look "Very close" to her but you have to choose the choice where you believe her when she said "They are just my friends!" because turn out it really is... Charisa will look like a character with commitment problem but you all know being trans women and being lesbian at the same time in this f*king world is lonesome af so choose the choice that you would "Intellectualize" about this issue that will impress her and win her! better with Wong Kar Wai music in the background. Don't worry if she said "Nice Spooks, nerd." back sometimes she said it in tsundere/ironic manner... sometimes...
Laura (She/Her) (actually she never tell you but being cis so I assume as such. Don't cancel me if I misgender cis.) To cut it short, She is a chaser. Who will chase your girldick to the end of time. If you plan to do the Bottom Surgery Route, skip her. But if you really feel compelled by how much she love girldick she's the better choice,.. I think... why would you do this!!? she might not even see you as a woman lol. Actually skip her and all. Unless you are really horny... I haven't play this route enough to know if there were a redemption arc for her (to actually be trans lover and not chaser) or not so... yeah... triggering for me to just do walkthrough about her. Only think I like about her is that her very being make TERFs "genital preference" group mouth fumingly angry.
Lin Chi Ling / Julia Lin (She/HeZe/They) Look at her pronouns. She might sound like a "theyfab" to you but she is actually just very into her Gender Studies and claim "I do these to show that gender does not matter to me." But next thing she will say would be something very cisnormative and binarism that will give you headache for someone who try to claim to make "gender does not matter". She's just ignorant in good faith you need to educate her more and take time slowly with her. She will ask you to go with her to the women bathroom just to show that she's a good ally and this... when no one is around she will ask some intrusive things about trans bodies and other issues. Be calm with her and take to circlejerk forum to vent it out instead of venting directly to her or you will end up in Contrapoint video. Yes, do educate her carefully and she will be more and more into you for some weird reason.
(more romance characters coming in the next dlc....)
Other NPC
Kate Blanc (She/They) : Cis woman who is a nonbinary-chaser with vagina fetishism. Don't even try to befriend her or she will mistaken you as "being into her" and try to bully you away. Also they will love using AGAB language it's annoying for me I wish they have "skip only Kate Blanc dialogue" option.
Evangeline (She/Her) : Love chatting with you on HER. Not matter how much you tell her that you are trans she will insist to see you and then being so mad when she actually see you irl and ghost you after that. There is a rumour that her unused character art is a red-hared girl with twintail.
Darun (He/Him) : A trans man who will mistaken you as a trans straight but don't spook out, He is actually respectful and back away and just be a good friend with you when you are direct about being a lesbian.
Boris (He/Him) : The opposite of Darun I will just leave you at that. Just swipe left if He try to add you on HER. Yes, On HER app. Or else headache will ensue. He won't even listen that you are a lesbian and claim that because he is a lesbian too. If your "femininity" stat is low enough, like Evangeline, he might not even show up at all.
Boonmee (He/They) : "Cis man" in the first half of the game and then you will crack their egg as a nonbinary person at the last half. Will add you on Videogame website chat but never flirt with you and instead claim that you are his "Aneki" (big sis) yes, he's a weeb. Just play as cool big sis with them. They mean no harm and will actually help you in some scenes.
Matthew (He/Him) : Think Laura but worse. Male chaser who will try to make you his unicorn, exoticize you, fetishize you and don't care even if you say you are a lesbian. Avoid at all cost.
Misha (She/They) : Another trans woman character who will chat "Hello, how are you." and then silent when you text back but the next 4-5 days she will text the same seentence without any progress about the dialogue, to the point that it get eerie. She might as well be a bot. The underdeveloped character from dev. oversight+crunch working time. But the dev. actually come out about this and said that "Her character really reflect what happened in some dating app. Some people actually behave like this." idk if I should believe this.
submitted by KumaMishka to transgendercirclejerk [link] [comments]

2024.04.10 23:08 TableOdd4689 I really hate it when people say shit like this

I really hate it when people say shit like this
Niggas can’t enjoy music without it being a competition to see who knows more but who the fuck cares if you don’t know about some 15+ sometimes year old unreleased music
submitted by TableOdd4689 to tylerthecreator [link] [comments]

2024.04.09 23:16 BennyHonny Got my endgaming vinyl's, so happy right now 🥰🦾

Got my endgaming vinyl's, so happy right now 🥰🦾
love records. I’ve been listening to, buying and collecting records for well over 50 years. For decades, they were far and away the highest quality audio source available. For much of their existence, tape was their main competitor: reel to reel, cassette and the ghastly 8-track. With good equipment, records were the first format to offer true high-fidelity sound. Match a good turntable with a really good cartridge, add numerous 15 inch woofers, hundreds of watts of pure, clean power and…ahh….sonic nirvana.
CDs came along in the ‘80s and pretty much did away with album cover art (and, almost, albums themselves). They were more expensive, but offered more music; 60 minutes or so compared to 38 or 40 minutes on vinyl. Then, the iPod hit the scene eliminating the physical product altogether. Now streaming’s the thing, making the concept of “owning” music obsolete.
But now, records are back; something to hold onto; something to look at; something to watch spin around on the turntable; something to take care of (not unlike a pet). And of course, one cannot overlook the erotic aspects of vinyl. There’s the hole in the middle, the spindle on the turntable, the circular motion, the ritualistic cleansing procedure and of course, the main event: the needle in the groove.
So records are fun. They can sound great, but not always. Are records delicate or durable? It depends almost entirely on the quality of their care. Properly handled and stored, records can remain in top shape and sound crisp and clear for decades; generations even. However, when mishandled, records can quickly degenerate into a scratchy, screechy mess far more likely to annoy than entertain. Back in records’ heyday in the ‘60s and ‘70s, record abuse by the masses was as widespread and disheartening as disco music. Greasy fingers directly on the playing surface, stacking of records on “automatic” record players, leaving them lying around outside their jackets, and one of the worst sins of all: playing records with a penny taped to the tone arm; these are some of my least favorite things.
The reason I said records’ durability depends “almost” entirely on the quality of their care, is because record production, again back in their heyday, was notoriously uneven. Some labels used virgin vinyl as a matter of course and all those records sounded great. A couple notable cases in point were German-manufactured records on the ECM label and most releases on Columbia. Other labels weren’t so picky. Stories abounded of record labels that took their unsold records, melted them down, paper labels and all, and used the residue to print more records. The result was vinyl with a paper content sometimes as high as 7%. How does paper imbedded in vinyl sound? Pour the milk on those Rice Krispies and you’ll see. Some records sounded like this right out of the shrink wrap.
I’ve been amused by seeing some “record players” available for sale lately where vinyl and CDs are sold. These are tiny, all-in-one units that come in their own little suitcase. The platter to place the record on is about 7 inches in diameter so a 12 inch LP hangs off the edge. (A 45 fits nicely, however. Yippee!) The single speaker is built in (no stereo here). These are actually little more than toys. In fact, I still have one of those. My parents gave it to me sometime in the early ‘60s, when I was about 5 or 6 years old. It had two controls: a knob for “On/Off/Volume” and another for “Tone.” So, somebody is still making these things. Do you suppose people are playing $25, 180 gram audiophile pressings on these things? Undoubtedly. Sigh
One of these little toy record players showed up in the movie, “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.” The Keira Knightly character carried around a batch of records proclaiming that they sound so much better than CDs. One of the records she carried was The Beat of the Brass (A&M, 1967) by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. It’s easily identifiable by the field of bright yellow flowers Herb and the boys are standing in on the cover. I mention this, because that’s an album that’s been residing in the Vinyl Vault for about the last 45 years. So thats why i bought these sons o bitches.
submitted by BennyHonny to vinyl [link] [comments]

2024.04.05 20:03 Wafel_Ranger incezzt thugs ft biggie eninem & snoop dogg

incezzt thugs ft biggie eninem & snoop dogg
lyrics:
Walking donw the street seeing a hooker with hella toes
Before you know we go toe to toe
And she blows and she blows when she shows
OFF her titties intermitties fiddies
So the chick moans and woes like a junkie on a shrooms overdose
But no sweat my dick can handle that little fucking rat you make forenever never be sad
So to stop the stds from coming I was my dick clean, look at my body, hella lean
Have you seen the meanest greenest honest motherfucker like me?
Dodging all the stds
Refrain
Stds make me wanna kill myself,
Keep it in the family don’t spill your health
Yeah that hooker was my sister mister
Made her pregnant beautiful baby boy
Ahoy ahoy
Yeah use her diarrhea as lube when you keep it in the family you don’t have to pay too much for hookers youll be able to buy a seven eight
Yo pass it onto snoop
Wass good everybody im snoop d o double gg
I make my sissy bitty suck on my wee wee
Do you wanna be real dog hold up check that mother or brother or father
Yeah if it’s with yo brother it aint gay, yeah bitch im hella straight
Practice sucking so I can suck my sisters
After she lactates I wont wait getting that creamy milk and her ovulus
Wow wow wow jippie jo jippie jay keeping it in your family is okay yay
2024 baby, everybody in the house now
Yo, yo, yo ,yo
Stds make me wanna kill myself,
Keep it in the family don’t spill your health
Yeah that hooker was my sister mister
Made her pregnant beautiful baby boy
Ahoy ahoy
Yeah use her diarrhea as lube when you keep it in the family you don’t have to pay too much for hookers youll be able to buy a seven eight
So ths was my rap listen to this while you fap to a pic of your sister little dna fister
Everybody everybody everybody
Yo this is biggie, I didn’t die because of gang violence but of type 2 diabetes
I had a crush on my cat since he was a little fetus
Who you gonna tell who you gonna call
Little kitty, your little asshole is so, WITTY, WITTY, WITTY
Pass to slim shady
Yo I am the slim shady, and I call hailey my lady
Now if that isn’t isn’t shady I am not a slim shady but just a slim
Bom biddy bim I am a faggot for my mother but my brother is way hotter
I am not a material guy but when It comes to hailey I be not shy
Now, little bubu don’t cry, I broke up with kim cause she don’t same dna as slim
Mom, you never voluntarily had sex with me I hope you fucking burn in hell for this shit
submitted by Wafel_Ranger to ratemysong [link] [comments]

2024.04.05 02:09 american_psychonaut carnivorous diet - milky is a good source of electros ?

i’ve been doing carni for almost a month and i have recently became slightly addicted to milk . well i just came across someone saying milk is good source of electrolytes . your body knows what it needs. could this be the reason for my sudden addiction or am i just craving sugar she carbs like a little junkie ??
submitted by american_psychonaut to carnivorediet [link] [comments]

2024.03.26 03:01 Quizziqualquetzal Vindicta saved my life

This is a repost that I’ve been wanting to submit to this forum however only recently had the karma to do so. Also I forgot!
Pt. 2 coming soon!
Vindicta Saved My Life
Thank you a million times over to this community. I wouldn’t be here today had it not been for this place and the mods who keep it going.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so rather than cutting it away and becoming shorter; revise and rework that weak link.
I wanted to share my personal softboost journey and the impact it has had on my life so far. I plan to perfect my softboost to upgrade to hardmaxx. I like to keep things simple, steady, and consistent.
Vindicta is not one-size-fits-all; however, I hope someone finds some inspiration in what I realize works for me.
Before I even start, though, I’d like to underline one matter: Nothing vindicta related can be done successfully unless you work just as hard on your inner peace as your outer appearance. Before this last year, I would try to prioritize mental health over beauty or vice versa, and only when I found a proportionate balance between caring about the two did I start flourishing.
I’ll post in-depth pictures for each section in their respective subreddits later. These are just the bones!
For context:
I am black, white, asian, and in my early twenties. After a long battle with depression, I wanted a completely new life. However, I needed to break down and simplify my goals.
I wanted to feel prettier, be healthier, make more money, and, eventually, move out of the country.
(this is a highly rudimentary and simplified version of the what, when, why, how, and where. I care more about actually getting to the concrete changes I made)
In no particular order:
SKIN
I have deep acne that doesn’t always flare up; however, it is brutal and angry when it does. My skin is a combination but melanated, so my scarring from picking is dark. I also get easily congested skin. Now I have clear skin. However, I am still facing a few dark spots. * I realized over time that the reason why my scars weren’t fading while using mainstream products is that melanated skin scars are different than what mainstream products are designed to fix. It seemed like a duh moment; however, it wasn’t something I was aware of. Here are the products that fixed that for me:
I mainly use the oil to foam cleanser and the benzoyl peroxide bar to cleanse- the Burt’s Bees one I use to shave my eyebrows and lady ‘stache; it works better than facial oil or shaving cream because it’s gentler and doesn’t break you out. I use a dermaplaining razor by Gilette Venus. If facial shaving has ever failed you, try this razor and cleanser combo!
I bought both creams from Costco and use them depending on my needs: CeraVe dries matte, and Cetaphil stays glowy.
Both dark spot fading serums are BOMB FOR MELANTED SKIN! They smell a bit odd, but I am not one to care about the scent of my products if they are effective. I use them mostly at night, but they are safe to use during the day. I interchange my use of them.
I use PC AHA liquid as a mask on tissue paper once weekly. It would be best to have an exfoliant when using retinoids like adapalene due to cell turnover rate. Adapalene is giving me that glowy, airbrushed skin HOWEVER you will purge like a mfer, and for a damn minute! The wait is worth it, though.
Cerave Lactic Acid Bodywash and the AmLactin Lotion work amazingly to lighten elbows and knees as well as KP and scars. I use a scrub mitt.
Sunscreen is personal- I like the Neutrogena one because it goes on like nothing and sits well under makeup.
I Have a nice steamer from Amazon that helps with congested pores.
HAIR
I have a mix of 3 a-b-c, thick, and low porosity curls. Androgenic alopecia runs on one side of my family; however, I have yet to have been diagnosed. In the last few years, I neglected my hair by perming, bleaching, dyeing, and everything in between. Eventually, I had a receding hairline. Now, my hairline is filling in, and I am recuperating my length. I hope to be at waist length by Summer. This is huge because of the incredible mental toll the state of my hair took on me. It felt unmanageable and was breaking off in my fingertips. I have a much better relationship with my hair now, and it's almost a spiritual connection lol… wash day is my moment of prayer!
My routine is as follows:
My tools are:
Wash day is once weekly. The ABC line lessens my breakage. I oil my hair the night before and prior to showering I spray my scalp with olive oil and ACV, and put aloe on the ends. 10 minutes before I shower, I put in the Redken ABC treatment. I shampoo twice, first with the ABC shampoo and then the Allsoft. Then I condition and leave it in for a WHILE! I mix the coil custard with the ABC leave-in, use the Olaplex oil, and put some Amla oil on my scalp. I put those curls in a braid and a bonnet, and we’re ready. I oil throughout the week.
MINOXIDIL SAVED MY HAIR! I use it twice a day. I credit all my regrowth to that.
HEALTH
I put away money to get mental health help and a diagnosis. While I currently cannot afford consistent therapy, I am on medication that works wonders for me. Nonetheless, there were still aspects of my health that medication didn’t help. I visited a nutritionist, got bloodwork done, and researched. I have a set of vitamins and supplements that work well for my initial and hormonal health, my hair, skin & nails, my energy, my sleep, and my overall mood. This is simply what worked for me; it might not work for others!
Supplements::
Here is a short list of what and why:
Fenugreek: Hair growth and hormonal health
Chlorophyll: Breath and Skin
Seamoss: Overall
Hum Detox: I enjoy their proprietary blend and the supplement mix that are for the gut
Hair, Skin & Nails: per the title, the Costco one has a nice blend of vitamin C, biotin and zinc
Vitamin A: Skin and Hair
Vitamin B Complex: Overall health; I take an extra dose during the days of my period- this was life-changing, lol.
Vitamin D3 and K2: Mood and Skin
Vitamin E: Hair and Skin
ACV capsules: gut health
Myo D Inositol: PCOS and intimate health
Probiotics and Prebiotics: Digestive and Intimate Health
Collagen powder: Ehhhh, I'm not really sure yet; I'm a bit iffy about this one. Joints, hair, and nails, I guess?
L-Glutamine and Creatine: Workout support
Red Ginseng: My blasian parent has made me take this with green tea since I was a little girl. I stopped when I was depressed. I know it’s a superfood, however between you and me; the only empirical data I have is that I felt like a butt when I didn’t take it, and I feel better now that I am again.
Exercise::
I work out 4-6 times a week. It sucks at first, but it builds the kind of strength, stamina, and endurance you need to do a routine like mine. Here is an easy exercise breakdown for anyone:
Legs
Torso
Arms
Do an hour-long workout of each at least once a week. That’s already three days! Do three exercises per area. Now, me personally? I’m a gym junkie, looking to get my PT license soon. I’m all in and have a very detailed routine, but as long as I’m moving my body frequently, I’m staying on track.
Food::
So, I’m neurodivergent and have odd food tendencies; therefore, I can eat the same thing consistently and not get bored of it. I do, however, need extreme structure with what I eat because if I am too inconvenienced or uncomfortable, I don’t feel hungry. A plan and familiar foods are safe and reliable, and to upgrade my life, I need the rest and energy to do that. Word of advice? Regardless of your weight goals, when it comes to eating as a whole- make it as easy as possible. Eating something gets you closer to your goals than eating nothing ever will. Anyway, here’s how I narrowed it down with some simple examples:
Meal prep once a week. Have CARBS VEGETABLES PROTEIN SNACK FRUIT CEREAL.
I made many carbs (cous cous, brown rice, lentils), a salad or vegetable dish, and a simply seasoned protein. Throughout the week, I could spice up and season the meat as I pleased, but I didn't have to whip out all these pots and pans in the middle of the week—for example, Brown rice, some pan-cooked chicken with salt and pepper, and baked zucchini. During the week, I could make zucchini risotto, throw some old bay and Cholula on the chicken, and put the zucchini on some lettuce to make a salad! or…… I could do none of that and eat all plain with some season salt on it.
Why am I putting an emphasis on the food? Because I swear, nothing hurt more than neglecting my body by not feeding myself decent food. It got bland at times and boring too- dollar tree food isn’t the most versatile, but if I wanted to to use Redken on my hair then I had to save money elsewhere.
Cereal is an easy breakfast and where I get most of my grains.
I had fruit and seaweed snacks on rotation, or at least whatverer cheap and healthy snack costco would have on sale.
I avoided the following:
I also have a daily calorie goal, but use it as a general goal and rarely counted calories. I exercize frequently and have cheat days that I actually enjoyed more because they became a speical lil treat.
Eating better has literally FIXED MY SLEEP. Of course you look good, get healthy, your hair grows sososososososo much better (in fact if your hair doesnt grow maybe your diet is bad), but all in all, the best thing I’ve gotten is better sleep and nothing keeps me from a full 8 hours now. I can forget my meds, my vitamins, not exercize and have horrible anxiety but if I don’t eat, my night is ruined.
LIFESTYLE
Getting a routine down and parenting myself into following it no matter whart. I came to the realization that if I don’t respect myself, then my life is over. Therfore if i tell myself to do the right thing and actually listen to my moral compass, then I have to do it…. whether I like it or not. I wanted to start meditating, journaling and working on my spirutality. Therefore, every single dmn day I started getting up early to write a line or two in a jounral (even if it was to complain), I would meditate for fifteen minutes and at one point throughout my day, I would take my dog on a slightly longer walk than usual. I hated it for weeks and felt stupid, like I was trying to imitate some health coach or tiktok guru. Yeah, no- it works. The dumb meditation and stupid little walks work wonders for my mental healt. It’s my ME time, and being alone with my thoughts has forced me to be comfortable with my self on a very weirdly intimate level. Also, journalling is cool beacuse even if I don’t do it for me, I might have a kid one day that’ll wan to read it. So yeah:
When it comes to what I actually spend my time doing: work and learn.
Work::
I am working multiple jobs and will stop when I reach 6. I have 2 full time jobs, a part time job and a weekend job. Think receptionist, retail, food service…. I am also close to getting a few remote opportunities with flexible schedules. If you have a skill, there will be someone willing to pay for it. I don’t like it. Any of it. I would rather be home painting, sketching and making art. But I need to think in the long run. I am saving up to go back to school and would like to build up my resume. I will never be in my early 20s again with this much work flexibility on my hands, so I’m going to jump on the opportunity. Besides, I plan on starting during the fall semester, so I might as well just put my head down and work my butt off now.
Learn::
I am studying a language and a standardized college test prep. I have no test dates yet. However, I fully intend to get accolades for these two eventually. Regardless its good for me to learn. Once again, I’’m not stuck doing this forever. I’ll get to go back to school soon so keeping up with taking. notes and stuff should be beneficial for me… I guess?
I also try and watch a documentary once every two weeks. I don’t know, I guess I just see most people finding learning and stuff boring. I don’t want to be like most people, and I think being smart is kinda sexy. I split the documentary up during the hours I don’t. work. its a nice break and reprograms the mind to find learning to be relaxing.
aaaaaaaaaand here’s the routine I cram all of this into, or rather my magic formula.
ROUTINE
5am-7am
Meditate, Journal, Skincare, Study, Breakfast.
7am-6pm
Multiple shifts with a workout somehwere inbewteen.
6pm-8pm
Read, Netflix, Dinner, Sleep.
EXTRAS:
I have a great playlist I’m always listening to as well as a solid and simple makeup routine that makes me feel pretty. I also keep a very strict laundry and chore schedule. NONE of this works unless my space is clean and my bedsheets smell good.
and yeah, thats kinda it. This is how Vindicta saved my life, and I’m not done yet. I have a list of goals to add and maybe I’ll do another post about. it, but for now here is what worked for me!
submitted by Quizziqualquetzal to vindictapoc [link] [comments]

http://rodzice.org/