The pain was the worst thing`Dominick Mason had ever known…and he knew what it felt like to die. It felt like his brain was in a blender, being chopped to liquid for a Jeffery Dahmer smoothie and though it seemed melodramatic, he imagined he could feel himself losing brain cells by the minute. The sun, Merrick told him, would not burn him, but it would decay him faster, so sleep or rest during the day. With the sick, throbbing agony in the center of his brain, however, that was impossible. He spent most of the day curled up on his side, hugging his knees, and moaning. He had flashbacks to dying in his apartment, and that made things even worse. The room became too small, too close, the air too stale. His heart, filled with the blood of last night’s meal, pounded in his chest, and he went from slightly chilly to hot and feverish as blood was forced through his circulatory system. It mixed with the embalming fluid and left him feeling full and constipated. He didn’t want to get up, but he also didn’t want to go on lying there. He was the definition of miserable.
Before long, the pain became too great and he got up to pace, pressing his hands to the sides of his head and gritting his teeth. Merrick, who slept very little if at all, sat in his chair and watched, trying his best to talk him through it. “It’ll be over soon,” Merrick said. “The pain receptors in your brain are the first to go. When they burn out, you won’t feel anything.”
“When?” Dom asked, his voice raising with the tide of pain.
“A couple days?”
“A couple days???”
“The pain will lessen gradually,” Merrick said, “this is the worst of it.”
Dom believed that this was, indeed, the worst of it, but he doubted it would lessen gradually. For the rest of the day, the pain got worse and worse until every light blinded him, every sound turned his stomach, and the smell of anything made his gorge rise. The cloying smell of the embalming fluid, the light but unmistakable odor of dead flesh, and the scent of stale blood sitting in decomposing stomachs made him want to vomit, but he was afraid to. He didn’t think he could handle the sight of blood rushing from his mouth and splattering the floor. He still possessed enough of his facilities, he believed, to go insane.
Pain has a way of darkening one’s mood, and by the time the sun began to set, Dom was in the most sour mood possible. Even Merrick’s calm, fatherly voice was beginning to get on his nerves. When he took the oath to him the day before (or was it the day before that?), he turned his faith and trust over to Merrick entirely. He was finally accepted, included, finally had the love and fellowship that, in the pit of his soul, he had always wanted. Merrick understood him, Merrick was kind to him.
But deep down, Dom realized that he didn’t fully trust him. He said that his brain didn’t rot because he was “lucky.” That sounded like some bullshit to Dom. Why wasn’t Joe a blithering idiot too? Was he lucky as well? Did lightning strike in the same place twice? In life, people had done nothing but hurt and lie to Dom. Why would death be any different? He thought back to the strange liquid that always seemed to leak from Merrick’s nose, and Joe’s. He thought it was embalming fluid, but it never leaked from his own nose, or from anyone else’s. He tried to tell himself that it was far too soon to judge, but once he began to doubt something, his mind raced away. He felt a twinge of guilt, as Merrick had done absolutely nothing to deserve his doubt, but goddamn it, his head was on fire and he wanted it to stop. Anything to make it stop.
Just after sundown, the music began as Club Vlad opened for the night. It throbbed in the center of Dom’s head and made him want to claw his eyes out. When it became too much for him, he slipped away and stumbled into the sultry summer night. He came out in the alley running behind the club, clutching his head and breathing through bared teeth. He staggered, bumped into a metal trash can, and roared at the top of his lungs, as if he could purge himself of the pain by screaming.. His voice echoed and came back to him, making the pain worse.
Merrick was lying. He knew it. People always lied to him. His brain was rotting and PEOPLE WERE LYING! Flashing with anger, he slammed his fist into the brick wall of a Chinese restaurant. He barely felt anything so he did it again and again until his hand was lumpy and shaking. He sat heavily on the ground and pressed his hands to his head. It felt like maggots were burrowing into his brain, and he was suddenly terrified that they really were. He needed to stop this awful pain, but how?
An idea came to him.
The funeral home.
Maybe there was something there.
He was on his feet and lumbering there before the thought had even finished reverberating through his mind. It was a long shot, but he was desperate. On the way there, he stuck to the shadows, staying out of the light cast by the streetlamps and avoiding people. When he passed them, he kept his head down. When he reached the funeral home, he went to the back door where he and Jessie had gone the other day. He tried it, and it opened.
Inside, he bounced off the walls like a pinball, knocking over an end table and tearing at the flesh of his head, pulling it away in long, gray strips. He panted like a wild animal, his body a raging tempest of emotions. It was reaching a crescendo, he thought, his brain was about to go supernova. The world dimmed, things got really echoy. The young man he’d picked the embalming fluid up from was there, looking scared.
Flashing, Dom grabbed him by his shirt and slammed him against the wall, knocking a painting of a flowery field to the carpet. Everything seemed to go in slow mo. “How does Merrick keep his brain from rotting?” Dom heard himself demanding from far away. “How does he keep the pain away?”
The man trembled. “I-I-”
Dom slammed him again. “Tell me or I’ll make you like me.”
“No!” the man wailed. He shook his head from side to side, his eyes wet with fear.
“How?”
“He-He uses a solution,” the man stammered. “Some kind of special thing. It preserves his brain. That’s all I know.”
An idea occurred to Dom.
Holding the man by the back of his neck, Dom dragged him into the embalming room and pushed him against the table. His head felt like it was swelling. Hot, screaming, getting ready to explode. He looked around, found the embalming machine, and grabbed the hose. There was a sharp tip on it so that you could jam it into a body. He held it in his hand, hesitating for just a moment before pressing it to his temple. The man watched in horror as Dom slowly shoved the tip into his head. It tore his flesh, broke through his skull, and sank into his brain. He felt no pain, only pressure, but cried out anyway. His eyes rolled up into his head and a shudder went through his body.
“Turn it on!” he yelled.
“That’s not what he -”
“TURN IT ON!”
Starting, the man turned the machine on. Cold embalming fluid squirted directly into Dom’s brain. Almost at once, the pain began to ebb away, replaced only by a fuzzy sense of numbness. His knees buckled and he sank to the floor, looking for all the world like an addict taking a hit of his favorite substance after a long and trying day. Fluid leaked from his nose, ears, and eyes and dripped down the back of his throat.
The man waited for a long time, then turned the machine off.
The pain was gone.
At least for now.
“Tell me again,” Dom said.
The man did. Merrick used a special preserving agent to keep his brain intact. Joe, the man suspected, got it as well. So Merrick had lied to him.
Dom felt betrayed.
And angry.
Leaving the man (Dom realized that he didn’t even know his name), he walked back to Club Vlad, his hands fisted in his pockets. All his life, he had been hurt, lied to, and ignored. All his life, people had done wrong to him. And all those years, he just took it.
He resolved not to be so accepting in death.
At last, he was going to stop being a sniveling little bitch and stand up for himself.
When he reached Club Vlad, he slammed through the back door and took the stairs two at a time. At the top, he called out Merrick’s name. The old man was sitting in his chair, being attended to by Jessie and Matt. He looked startled when Dom came in. “You lied to me,” Dom said, stalking over to his benefactor.
“What are you talking about?” Merrick asked, doing his best to sound innocent.
“You lied to me!” Dom screamed. He bent over and got so close to Merrick’s face that he could have kissed him. “You told me there was no way to save my brain, but that’s not true. You’re pumping your head full of shit and letting the rest of us rot.”
A dark shadow flickered across Merrick’s face. “Watch your tone when you talk to me,” he said. His voice was low, menacing.
“Fuck you,” Dom said. “I should k -”
Suddenly, Dom was being grabbed from behind and yanked back, an arm around his neck. He cried out in alarm as Joe swung him around and slammed him face first into the wall. He heard his nose crunch, felt his teeth shatter. Next, Joe wrestled him to the glitter-sprinkled floor and wedged his knee between his shoulder blades.
Merrick watched with a sneer of disgust, his hands gripping the arms of his chair. He wheeled himself over, Jessie holding his IV stand steady and following behind. “Listen, you son of a bitch,” Merrick said, “you’re lucky to be a part of this family.”
Cold fear filled the pit of Dom’s stomach, yet he wouldn’t back down, couldn’t back down. He had lived his entire life like a mouse in a burrow, he wasn’t about to live his entire death the same way.
“Fuck your family,” he said defiantly. “And fuck you.”
Merrick’s face darkened and he sat back in his chair. He looked at Jessie and nodded. She went away and came back a moment later holding something in her hand. Dom’s eyes widened when he saw what it was.
A wooden stake, one end honed to a razor point.
Why they had one of those lying around, Dom didn’t know; it’d be like Superman keeping a piece of kryptonite on the mantle over the fireplace. Merrick directed Max and Matt to hold Dom’s arms down/ Joe pivoted, kneeling on his head now so that Dom’s back was exposed. Dom’s heart slammed with terror and tremors raced through his body.
“Is this what you want, Dominick?” Merrick asked. “To die? To truly die?”
Dom swallowed hard. No, it wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to live, to love, to have a family one day. He wanted a happy, normal life, the life TV and social media had been promising him since he was a little boy.
But all of that went out the window the night he died in his little apartment. There was no life anymore, just a grotesque parody of life. What was there for him other than death? Clinging desperately onto life for decades like Merrick? Stuffing himself full of embalming fluid and moth balls? Grinding for one more minute just so he could sit hooked up to a machine?
Dom spoke.
“What?” Merrick asked, not having heard.
Dom licked his lips. “Just fucking do it.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Expectation hung in the air. Finally, breaking the tension, Merrick nodded to Jessie. Kneeling down, she brought the stake up, and Dom closed his eyes.
This was it.
He braced himself for death.
Jessie brought the stake down just as a shot rang out, deafening in the small space. Her head whipped back, embalming fluid, skull fragments, and gray, sickly pieces of brain showering from the back of her head. She flopped back and landed on the floor with a sickening thud.
A woman cop, her black uniform in stark contrast to the burning white light, stood in the doorway to the hall, her gun drawn. Everyone did, indeed, freeze, more out of surprise than respect for authority. They all looked at her, their dead mouths agape, resembling children who’d been caught doing something wrong.
“Everyone on the ground!” she barked.
No one knew what to do. They hadn’t expected to be raided by the police so had not prepared. She jerked her gun and everyone instinctively flinched. “On the ground!” she repeated. To Max: “You too, bone boy.”
The first one to react was Joe. He sprang at her like a big, undead frog. She brought the gun around and fired, but he was already crashing into her. The shot went wild and struck the IV bag next to Merrick; he ducked and let out a sound of fear. The others rushed her, and Dom got quickly to his feet. Jessie lay on the floor, her mouth open in a silent scream and her bony fingers frantically examining the ragged hole in the center of her forehead. For a moment, he was frozen; everything was happening too fast. Then, when Merrick saw him and cried, “Stop him!, he came alive. Jessie tried to grab at his leg, but he kicked her hand away and stomped on it like it was a giant spider. On the other side of the room, Matt, Joe, and Max had forced the cop to the ground. Perhaps excited by all the action, perhaps just hungry, they began to tear her apart. She howled in pain, and the last thing Dom saw before he fled was her open, blood-filled mouth. Her eyes were filled with pain…with terror.
After that, Dom ran.
***
When the interloper was dead, Merrick directed Joe and Matt to dispose of the body. “Get rid of it,” he said wearily and rubbed his temples, “make sure it isn’t found.”
They rolled her into a carpet from the office, and the way her feet stuck out may have been comical under other circumstances.
Goddamn it, this was bad. Merrick’s entire philosophy rested on avoiding detection. He had done well in that regard. Whereas other vampires had attacked their villages and gotten themselves dug from the ground and staked, he had made it four decades. He never shat where he ate, and there is no bigger turd than killing a cop. They might dawdle on all the boys who’d gone missing - taken because their blood was stronger and more robust than the blood of girls - but they would not take a cop dying lightly at all.
Merrick owned various businesses around the country. He and the others would simply move on. Tomorrow night, they would disappear into the night. They had done it before and they would likely do it again. Once things were settled at their new base of operations, he would have Joe killed for all the trouble he’d caused.
And Dom?
Let him go.
The little rat wouldn’t last a month on his own.
“Jessie?”
Jessie sat against the wall, gazing into space.
“Jessi…start packing. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
She didn’t move, didn’t seem to hear. The shot had all but lobotomized her.
Damn it.
Joe backed the van up to the back door of Club Vlad, and then helped Matt carry the carpet-rolled body down the stairs. They loaded it in and closed the back doors. Together, they drove around looking for a place to dump it. Merrick wanted it to go unfound, but Joe doubted there was anywhere isolated enough in the city. On a whim, he drove to Washington Park, a vast expanse of green trees and shadows. There was a large pond there. It seemed the best option. They were leaving tomorrow anyway, so did it really matter?
Joe backed the van to a railing overlooking the dark water and put it in park. He and Matt got out, fetched the body, and carried it to the railing. They lifted and heaved it over. It splashed. Thus, they rid themselves of Vanessa Rodregiez.
***
Bruce sat anxiously up in his easy chair and waited for his cell to ring.
Parked in front of the TV by warm lamplight, a beer wedged between his legs, he’d been watching the 11’o’clock news when the phone rang. He picked it up and it was Vanessa. “Hey,” she said, “I think I found our body?”
“Which one?” Bruce asked and took a drink. “We have a lot of those these days.”
“Dominick Mason.”
Bruce sat forward in his chair. “Dead Dom? Where?”
“He just came out of a funeral home, ironically enough.”
“That sounds about right,” Bruce said. “Where are you now?”
“I’m following him east on Central.”
“Are you sure it’s him?” Bruce asked.
“I think so, but I’m not sure. I’ll call you back when I’m done.”
Bruce sat the phone aside and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
At some point, he fell asleep sitting up, his head lulled to one side and his mouth open. He snorted himself awake, rubbed his eyes, and sat up. He checked his phone and was perturbed to see that it was past 2am.
Vanessa hadn’t called.
He dialed her number and let the phone ring until it went to voicemail. Sighing, he ended the call, then waited a few minutes and called again.
Still no answer.
It was possible she had forgotten. Maybe the guy turned out to not be Dead Dom after all. She followed some random guy around, realized it, and that was that. Hell, she was probably too embarrassed to call and tell him about it.
Something told him that wasn’t right, however.
There was something else going on here.
Something…darker.
Just before 3am, his phone rang. He snatched it off the end table next to the chair and answered it. It was Burt, the night sargent. “Rodriguez is missing,” he said simply.
Bruce’s heart sank. “Missing?”
“Yeah, she hasn’t checked in for hours and she isn’t answering calls.”
“I’m on my way,”
Bruce tore through the house, pulling on his uniform, socks, and shoes in less time than it took a Daytona 500 pit crew to service a car. In ten minutes he was speeding down 787, the Albany skyline rising in the distance. As he hurried to the station, he thought back to his last conversation with Vanessa. She’d found Dom the Dead Man, the “corpse” who’d scared Ed Harris out of a 20 year career. Despite all their talk about vampires and the living dead, Bruce didn’t believe it, not really. Even so, he was sure that Dominick Mason had done something to Vanessa.
He checked in at the station before doing anything else. They had triangulated Vanessa’s last known location via cell towers. Cops were already out searching the streets for her. Bruce went out as well, intending to start from her last known position and work his way east on Central. The closest funeral home was Tebbutt and Frederick on Central. There was also Lasak & Gigliotti on North Allen Street. Bruce didn’t know which one Vanessa had seen Dom come out of, so he checked both.
Both were deserted at this hour.
Undeterred, Bruce drove up and down Central Ave. At one point, he noticed a shape in an alleyway that looked human. He hit the brakes, jumped out, and pointed his gun at it. “Freeze!”
An old wino stepped out of the darkness. “Alright, you got me,” he said, hands up. “I started COVID. It was an accident, I swear.”
Bruce sighed and put his gun away.
For two more hours, Bruce searched the streets of Albany for Vanessa. At 4am, he spotted a squad car abandoned in the rear parking lot of an abandoned gas station on lower Lark Street. He called it in and the desk sergeant confirmed that it was the one Vanessa had signed out that night.
Still there was no sign of Vanessa herself.
Just after dawn, as the city came alive and CDTA buses began lumbering up and down the streets, Bruce got a call on his cell. “A jogger found a body in Washington Park.”
Bruce was in his personal car. He had no bubble light, no siren. Even so, he sped through the streets like he did, blowing through red lights and stop signs with little care to himself or anyone else. When he got to Washington Park, he found an army cops by the pond, the scene cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. He slammed on the brakes, threw open the door, and jumped out without even turning off the engine.
The body was rolled up in a carpet and lying on the bank. Two beat cops unrolled it at Bruce’s direction. “We should wait for -” one of them started, but Bruce cut him off.
“Do it.”
They compiled, and at the carpet’s center, like a rotten cream filling, was the body of Vanessa Rodregiuez. Her head was tilted to one side, her eyes wide and staring. Her throat had been mangled and ripped away, her head nearly severed. Even in the black and red mess, Bruce could make out the teeth marks and puncture wounds. They may have looked like something else to anyone else who saw them, but he knew, in that moment, what they were dealing with.
A sharp pang of horror sliced through him, and his knees went weak.
“Jesus Christ,” one of the beat cops drew.
Bruce fell to, rather than knelt on, one knee. He bent over the body, a mixture of horror and grief welling his throat. He wanted to reach out, to comfort her in death, but he stayed his hand. Instead, he visually examined the body. She had bruises on her face, defensive wounds on her hands, and her gun was gone. Whoever had attacked her, she put up a fight.
Something glinted on her pants.
“What’s that?” one of the cops asked.
“I dunno,” the other replied, “but it’s all over the carpet.”
Indeed, there were glinty little specks all over it, winking like mocking eyes. Nice work, eh? We really fucked her up, didn’t we? Wink wink.
“It looks like…”
The other cop cut him off. “Glitter.”
Bruce flashed back to his visit to Club Vlad the other day.
There had been glitter everywhere.
Bruce stood up.
He had work to do.
***
Instead of going back to the station to start his shift, Bruce went to Lowes. There, he bought a mallet, a gas can, and a dozen sticks of wood. An employee in a blue vest used a machine to sharpen them to a wicked point and he took his purchases to the car. Next, he drove over to the Mobil station and filled the gas can. He was so hellbent on revenge that he sprang for premium, the good stuff. No expense shall be spared.
His final stop was at a Catholic church. He filled a canteen with holy water from the marble font by the door, then swiped a crucifix from the wall. He stopped by the station, went inside, and grabbed a black duffle bag with POLICE written across the front in yellow. He opened the gun cabinet in his office, took out a shotgun, and loaded it with shells. He grabbed a handful from the box and stuffed them into his pocket.
He was just finishing up when Bertha came in. “There you are,” she spat, “I’ve waited long enough for you to do something. I demand -”
Bruce shoved the duffle bag into her arms. “Make yourself useful.”
“What?” she demanded.
“We’re going to get your granddaughter,” Bruice lied. Kind of.
Bertha’s demeanor changed. “Good. It’s about time. I was starting to think you were a complete incompetent.”
Bruce didn’t answer. Outside, he plucked the bag out of Bertha’s hands and tossed it into the backseat. He slipped behind the wheel and Bertha sat in the passenger seat. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Club Vlad,” Bruce said and started the engine.
“I want all of them arrested.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bruce said.
She barked orders the entire way there. Bruce was so deep in his thoughts that he barely heard her. The image of Vanessa’s ruined throat and terror-twisted face haunted him, and he felt a lump forming in his throat. Hot tears filled his eyes but he blinked them back and forced himself to calm down.
I’ll cry when I’m done killing, he thought.
A few minutes later, he pulled to the curb in front of Club Vlad. It was a hot and sunny day and the place seemed even more ominous because of it. The windows were black, the front cast in perpetual shadows by the old marquee from when it used to be a theater. The place was surely closed, but Bruce could hear music still playing from inside, some techno dance bullshit. “Alright,” he said, “let’s go.”
Getting out, he slung the dufflebag over his shoulder and carried the shotgun, the canteen full of holy water clasped to his belt. Bertha carried the gas can, looking confused. “Why do we need this?” she asked.
“We’re burning the place down.”
Bertha blinked in surprise…then an evil grin carved across her face. “That’ll show the bastards.”
Unlike last time, the door was locked. Bruce used the butt of the shotgun to break the glass, then reached inside and unlocked the door, being careful not to cut himself. This was the point of no return. What he had in mind would probably get him kicked off the force or even thrown in jail - and we all know how tough jail can be for a former barnaclehead. The memory of Vanessa’s contorted face pushed him on, however.
He’d suffer any consequences he needed to just so long as he got the sons of bitches who did this to her.
Inside, the club was cool and cave-like. Strobe lights flashed, on and off, black and white, dazzling Bruce’s eyes. The bartender was at his station, cleaning up from the night before. When he saw Bruce and Bertha come in, he started. Bruce pointed the shotgun at him. “Don’t fucking move,” he commanded.
The bartender hesitated, then reached for something under the bar.
The shotgun kicked in Bruce’s hands, and the bartender flew back, turning as he crashed into the barback. Bottles, glasses, and mugs crashed to the floor along with the bartender. Bruce racked the gun, and the shell flew out. He moved low and fast now, expecting to be swarmed by vampires, living thugs who worked for vampires, or vampire thugs who worked for themselves.
Though the shot had been like thunder, no one came.
Bruce had no idea where to go, but he imagined that vampires were naturally gravitate to the lowest part of the building. Was there a basement? Shit, he should have looked up the building plans at city hall. Damn, this is what happens when you go off half-cocked. He searched around a bit, opening doors and sweeping the rooms beyond with the shotgun. He found no basement, only stairs leading up. “Stay close,” he said to Bertha.
In the lead, Bruce crept up the stairs, the flashlight on the shotgun providing a cone of clean, white light. At the top of the stairs, he went right, and came to an office and a store room. Backtracking, and bumping into a bungling Bertha, he went into the next room. It was large and open with a vaulted ceiling, almost like a ballroom. Here the same strobe lights throbbed on and off, making him dizzy. Was this to dazzle prospective vampire hunters?
Either way, this was the place. Bodies lay strewn across the floor, some curled up on their sides and others in the classic vampire pose: Flat on their backs with their hands laced over their chests. In the center, like the sun to the planets, Merrick Garvis lay slumped back in his wheelchair, his neck exposed for any potential assassin to come and cut. Not that it would kill him. At least Bruce didn’t think it would.
“They’re all dead,” Bertha whispered. She looked around and gasped. “There’s Jessie.”
Jessie lay on her back, her hands folded on her chest. She had a ragged bullet hole in the center of her forehead. “Oh, God,” Bertha wavered, “someone shot her.”
He hoped it was Vanessa. And he hoped it fucking hurt.
Looking around, Bruce couldn’t find Dominick Mason. Was he the one who killed Vanessa? Was it a group effort? He wanted the little son of a bitch bad, but it looked like he’d have to go on without him. They didn’t have much time.
Unshouldering the duffle bag, he knelt down and rummaged around. “Start splashing that gas on the bodies,” he said.
“But -”
“Just do it,” he snapped.
There must have been a harder edge in his voice than normal, because Bertha jumped and did as she was told. She upended the can and began to splash gasoline onto the sleeping forms, the smell of it acrid and strong.
Taking out a stake and the mallet, Bruce went over to Merrick and knelt down. He gripped the stake in one hand and placed it firmly against Merrick’s chest. He brought the mallet up and hesitated, the gravity of what he was doing finally reaching him. What if he was wrong? What if -
Merrick’s head whipped up and their eyes locked.
Too late.
Bruce brought the mallet down as hard as he could. The stake drove deep into Merrick’s heart, and the vampire let out a howling screech that rang through the chamber like the cry of a banshee. His bony fingers clawed at the stake and his head whipped from side to side, his back arching and his robe coming open. In the quick strobe pattern, Bruce was shocked to see that his body was little more than a wood frame, chicken wire, and cotton balls. His blacked heart was hidden behind a screen of mesh that the stake had easily torn through. It throbbed, seemingly in time with the strobe lights, and Merrick let out another wail.
Bertha screamed, and Bruce jumped to his feet.
The vampires, drawn by their master’s cries of distress, were rising to their feet. Two, four, six of them, pale and ethereal like ghosts in a gothic mansion. They came toward Merrick, and Bruice fell back a step. The old man had gone still and lay slumped to one side, his eyes open and his mouth slack, embalming fluid leaking from the corner of his lips. Jessie bent over him and touched his face. Though she moved like a zombie, with no human emotion, Bruce was crazily sure that it was a touch of tenderness and love. Merrick didn’t stir.
He was dead.
Jessie looked at him. Yellow liquid leaked from her eyes like tears. Instead of attacking him, she turned on her grandmother and slammed her against the wall. Bertha screamed and dropped the can. It landed on its side, its contents sloshing out onto the floor. A man that resembled the pictures Bruce had seen of Joe Rossi only deader rushed him, slamming into him and knocking the shotgun aside. It hit the floor and skidded away. Joe grabbed Bruce around the throat and squeezed. Still the lights flashed, off and on, off and on. The walls thrummed with the mechanized beat of dance music, pierced only by Bertha’s screams as Jessie ripped out her throat.
Joe leaned in, his fangs wicked and glowing in the light. Bruce clawed at the monster’s face, tearing away strips of dead flesh. Joe turned his head to the side, and Bruce kneed him in the groin. Even dead, getting kicked in the balls hurt like hell, apparently. Joe’s grip loosened and Bruce was able to shove him off. Bruce unclasped the canteen and frantically screwed the cap off as Joe recovered. Joe sprang at him again, and Bruce splashed him in the face.
A sound like sizzling meat filled the air, and Joe screamed at the top of his lungs. He pressed his hands to his face and danced around the room, his skin liquifying and oozing between his fingers. The others were coming now, led by a terrible skeletal thing. Bruce scooped the shotgun off the floor, brought it around, and fired. The blast hit the thing dead center, tearing it literally in half. The top half flew back, an all too human look of surprise on its face, and the bottom half fell over with a wet thud. Another vampire came at, and Bruce slammed it across the face with the butt of the gun. He heard its jaw crack, saw teeth flying.
Bertha lay dead on the floor, Jessie bent over her. The smell of Bertha’s blood attracted the others, who seemed to forget about Bruce, Merrick, and everything else. Joe was on his knees, wailing in pain, and the skeletal thing was pulling itself toward Bertha. A feeding frenzy broke out as vampires fought to get a piece of her the way piglets might fight over their mother’s teat. Bruce watched in a mixture of horror and fascination, but recovered himself. He grabbed the gas can from the floor and dumped the rest of its contents on Merrick’s body, the feeding vampires’ backs, and the floor, using the last of it to make a little trail to the door. He tossed the can aside, bent down, and stuck a match.
A huge, fiery whump filled the room, and fire streaked along the trail. The vampires all went up in a huge ball of flames, and fire shot up Merrick’s body, catching his robe, his hair, and the wooden frame that had kept him semi upright for God knows how long. Letting out inhuman screams, the vampires broke from Bertha’s corpse. One stumbled around, bounced off the wall, and fell; another toddled toward Bruce before falling to its knees. The half skeleton kept drinking from Bertha’s neck even as it burned.
The heat was enormous, baking. Bruce backed away, and the last thing he saw before smoke obscured his vision was Merrick Garvis.
He was literally melting.
***
Dominick Mason tried to go home, but he no longer had a home. All of his worldly possessions sat on the sidewalk in front of his building, discarded coldly as easily. His key didn’t work in his door and there was a FOR RENT sign on it. Why would it be any other way? He was dead. Sooner or later, everyone forgets you when you’re dead, and all the things you held so dear wind up in the trash. It was a hard pill to swallow, but most people aren’t around to see it after they die.
He was.
From his building, he walked east toward Washington Park. In the distance, thick, black smoke billowed into the air, and sirens rose. He barely noticed and wouldn’t have cared even if he did. No more rubbernecking for him. That was for the living.
The pain that had plagued him so the previous day came back, only less this time. Maybe he was imagining it, but it was getting harder to think. Not that he cared, really. What was there to think about anyway? How he had no one to mourn or miss him? How he died and not one single person, except for maybe his mother, cared, or even noticed? How he had done nothing with his life? Even to the women he’d slept with, what was he? Just another dating app hookup. They probably didn’t even remember his name.
Merrick had been right about one thing. Death was easy. It was life that was hard…life that hurt.
With that in mind, Dominick made his way to Washington Park. It was a vast and deep place with many small caves and thickets. Kids played on the playground, their cries of laughter scenting the still air. It had grown cloudy and began to rain. Still, smoke poured into the sky in the direction of Club Vlad. Dom didn’t wish ill on Merrick and the others, didn’t hope it was them burning. He didn’t care anymore. Not about them, not about anyone. For better or worse (and he would argue it was worse), his life was over. His time came days ago, he just missed the boat.
Picking out an isolated little area, Dom sat against a tree with his legs splayed out in front of him. He titled his head back and closed his eyes. Yes, thinking was hard now. His mind felt sluggish, cold. He was thirsty…so, so thirsty, but he ignored it.
Slowly, the bugs found him. Flies buzzed around him and laid their eggs in his skin. Beetles scuttled over him, followed by worms.
Next, it was the birds. They ate out his eyes and nibbled at his blue, bloated skin.
The animals came last.
Their appetites were bigger.
And they left little remaining of poor, outcast Dominick Mason.
***
That night, Bruce sat alone in his little trailer, a bottle of whiskey wedged between his legs and unshed tears in his eyes. He stared at his reflection in the darkened TV set and took long swallows from the bottle. He planned to drink until he forgot or passed out, whichever came first. He tried to not think about Vanessa, but in his addled state, he couldn’t control himself, and began to cry. When that storm passed, like the others before it, he chugged from the bottle.
As distant church bells clanged the hour - midnight - a feeble knock came at the door. Bruce took another drink and it came again. Getting up, he stumbled, nearly fell, and gripped the bottle tightly. He didn’t want to lose one precious drop.
Again, the knock.
“I’m coming,” Bruce slurred. He staggered to the door and fought with the lock. He was dizzy and seeing double.
When he got it, he opened the door.
The bottle dropped from his hand and clanked onto the floor.
Vanessa, clad in a puke green hospital gown, stood on the step, her hands pressed to her chest and a look of anguish on her milk white face. Her head tilted to one side, the wounds on her neck cleaned but open, gaping. Her dark eyes shone with tears. “I’m dead,” she said.
Breaking down in tears, she collapsed against him and they sank to the floor. She was cold and smelled. Bruce wrapped his arms around her and held her to his chest anyway. “Shhh, it’s alright,” he said drunkenly. “Hey, it’s alright.
“I’m dead,” she repeated, and her voice broke. “I don’t want to die.”
Bruce held her close, trying to warm her icy skin. He didn’t know what to say, so he cried with her.
“You’re safe now,” he said, “it’s going to be okay.”
“I want blood,” she said and sobbed harder, “I want to hurt people.”
“Shhh,” Bruce said again. “It’s okay.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a utility knife. He flicked the blade across his wrist and searing pain shot up his arm. “Here,” he said and offered her his blood, “drink this.”
He did this without care and without thought. She needed him, and one barnaclehead always backs up another.
Vanessa hesitated, looking from his face to the oozing blood, unsure.
“Go ahead,” he told her.
Vanessa brought his wrist to her mouth.
And began to drink.

Does this lake have a shark or something? Yes it does in Jurassic Shark! When an oil company's secret research facility in a remote Ottowa lake delves too greedily and too deep, they release a megalodon, and then folks get et. Those folks include some art thieves and some college kids. There's your plot. Technically it's more involved, theres a whole plot about one of the college kids, Jill, trying to expose the oil company, and another involving the art thieves trying to get their dropped painting out of the lake, but we all know we're not here for plot. And we're not here for girls in bikinis either, or at least, not primarily. I know I'm here primarily for that FOLKS GET ET part, and like 15 people are indeed ingested, so success on that front. But that's obviously not all we have to talk about.
No, when a Z tier critter flick comes around, we need to talk about 2 things: its cheese level, and its kills. The cheese level is super high. Director Brett Kelly is at best technically a filmmaker, with a long list of various exploitation movies on a filmography that we're fairly sure to see more of on Rifftrax I"d wager. He gives us everything we'd expect: rough dialogue, "fan service" (which I would argue serves fairly little purpose in the internet era, but whatever) awkward plot, continuity issues: it's all here. My personal favorites are some terrible sound design in a stairway segment that you'd notice even if the guy's didn't call it out, and a "isn't this ironic" bit centered around the identity of the stolen art. So part one, the cheese, is secured.
The other half, the kills, are where I think we falter. We've seen plenty of killer critter movies on Rifftrax, and this one may have the weakest kill effects of the lot. Obviously budget is a factor in this thing, and though there are a couple severed limb props that aren't too bad, most of the killing that takes place is poorly implemented CGI. In essence, the shark is merged into the actor as if biting them, or just wiped across the screen to create that effect. It works, yes, but honestly, I want more preposterous gore in my critter flicks. So I'd argue that the movie fares poorly in that respect. It's not terrible...no, it is terrible, obviously...its just not the terrible I want.
But let's move on to the riffing, because at the very least, the guys are not terrible. Indeed, they tend to be having a fine old time. You get a lot of the stuff you'd expect, like riffs about the director's clear preference for long shots of bikini girls, giving voice to the shark, Canadian riffs, and all of that. You even get a dose of dumb blonde jokes, which is somewhat expected if not too desirable. But there is good stuff here, too. I referenced the stairwell scene before, a weird hybrid of a Sorkin walk and talk attempt and that Mr. Bean on holiday gag where he gets stuck between old folks on the stairs that sounds just horrible. Then there's plenty of riffs about a surprisingly buff thug (including a great Uncle Fester impersonation from Bill) who is inviting us to a perpetual gun show. There is also a great call out of a character who is surprisingly and inexplicably wearing a shirt for the Hogsback Brewing Company, which operated in the films homeland of Ottowa from 2010 to 2018. Most interestingly though, there's a nice couple of callbacks here. There's a Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald riff (just dropping in my belief that this song is one of the most long lived joke subjects in riffing) for starters, then references to a few lovely favorites, the Mike whispers from Mutant and the kinda I guess infamous Parade of Aquatic Champions short. The guys have a lot of fun here.
In the final shark counting, this riff probably ends up somewhere between SOLID and GOOD, depending on how much gore you'd want from it. If you'd prefer more, it might take that step down, but the riffing is right on regardless.
Get Jurassic Shark if you like: bikinis, digital sharks, or meandering through the woods.
Skip Jurassic Shark if you don't like: low gore shark movies, the work of John Singleton Copley, or how there's really just no hint of anything Jurassic Park like in here.

Context: I have recently started being proactive in my credit card rewards/points/cashback programs. Prior to the past 5 months I have always been fairly lazy about it. However since the new year I decided to take all of the expenses my wife and I have to see if I would actively keep it up. So far I have already maxed out my Amex's BCE 3% on U.S. Online Retail Purchases and now at 1%. I am closing in on maxing out groceries and gas. I have also been keeping up with the additional offers: total rewards earned so far in 2024: $510. However after doing this it looks like I could be doubling up and better maximizing my rewards. I just got the CSP this week and I am looking to for advice about pairing credit cards/applying for new cards that would work best for me while optimizing my return. Based off what I can see it looks like CFF or CFU are the best cards to pair with CSP? But I am also wondering what I should do about the Amex. Should I upgrade to BCP or Gold and pair that with the Wells Fargo AC as a catch all? Recommendations/advice would be great! (Also I think that Amex platinum would have been good if I was not straddled with toddlers and travelled more like I did pre-kid. Anyone with kids that travels less now I would love to hear your opinion on the Amex platinum).

• Current credit cards you are the primary account holder of: (list cards, limits, opening date): (example: Chase Freedom $X,XXX limit, 12/2019 - be sure to mention if any are business cards)
  • CSP, $15.3K limit, 05/2024
  • AMEX BCE, $19.3K, 4/2016
    • Prior to that I had the Costco Amex which I opened in 2014
    • Moved to BCE when Amex and Costco split.
  • Usaa Platinum Visa, $12K ,8/2013
    • This was the first card I could get. Not in love with it, but if I could upgrade it instead of having a hard pull on my credit I wouldn’t mind keeping it as a back-up for emergencies.
• * FICO Scores with source (see note on FICO score sources below): Experian 739
• * Oldest credit card account age with you as primary name on the account: 12 years
• * Number of personal credit cards approved for in the past 6 months: 1 (CSP)
• * Number of personal credit cards approved for in the past 12 months: N/A
• * Number of personal credit cards approved for in the past 24 months: N/A
• * Annual income $: ~$150K, Household $300-350K

CATEGORIES

• * OK with category-specific cards?: (Answer YES if you're OK using one card for 3% back on groceries and another for 4% on dining) YES
• * OK with rotating category cards?: (Answer YES if you're OK using a card that has different bonus categories each quarter, e.g. 5% on gas from Jan - March, then 5% on groceries April - June) Maybe never had a card like this.
• * Estimate average monthly spend in the categories below. Only include what you can pay by credit card.
  • * Dining $: ~$500
  • * Groceries $: ~$1,500
    • Hungryroot: ~$800
    • Costco: ~$680 total,
  • * Gas $: (If at Costco or Walmart, please specify)
    • ~$400
  • * Travel $: ~$100
  • * Do you plan on using this card abroad for a significant length of time (study abroad, digital nomad, expat, extended travel)?: No with the exception of one trip to Mexico for a wedding later this year. We do not travel abroad regularly anymore due to kids and probably will not for another 6-8 years. We do travel probably 10 times a year domestically average trip length 3-4 days. However we only fly probably 3-4 times a year.
  • * Any other categories (examples: phone/internet, insurance) or stores (example: Amazon) with significant, regular credit card spend (the more you specify, the better):
    • Amazon: ~$650 (I think my wife orders groceries from here sometimes? I am not sure).
    • Internet: $80
    • Phone: ~$100
    • Insurance: ~$280
  • * Any other significant, regular credit card spend you didn't include above?:
    • Netflix: $22.99
    • Apple Music: $16.99
    • Sunday Ticket (in the fall that I split with my cousin… Thank you Youtube for allowing two screens). ~$44
    • NFL+ (in the fall): $7
  • * Can you pay rent by credit card? If yes, list rent amount and if there's a fee for paying by credit card: No

MEMBERSHIPS & SUBSCRIPTIONS (delete lines that don't apply)

• * Current member of Amazon Prime?: Yes
• * Current member of Costco or Sam's Club? Costco
• * Currently paying $13.99/month or more for Disney Bundle (Disney+ / Hulu / EPSN+) or other Hulu services?: Yes
• * Current member of Chase, US Bank or any other big bank?: Yes
• * Are you open to Business Cards?: (these are an option if you have any kind of side gig, such as selling on eBay or Etsy): Not at the moment.

PURPOSE

• I need advice on which cards are best to pair with each other based on what I currently have and/or what I should do going forward?
• Any cards recommendations are welcome.
  • Based off this sub I was looking at the following:
    • Pairing CSP with CFF or CFU?
    • Upgrading BCE to BCP or Gold and then pairing with Wells Fargo AC?

My husband(38yr old male) and I (39yr female) have been together for 22 years. We have 3 teenage sons. Our relationship has not been great. We've been through multiple separations due to issues arising from alcohol abuse on his part(he is now mostly sober). Before covid we were living apart and had an open marriage. He was paying child support and doing what he could to help me financially. It was so wonderful for me. I felt so peaceful and happy and was healing from all that he put me through. I was working a part time job that paid pretty poorly but it worked with my kid's schedule so I stayed at that job for 7 years. Then when covid hit he ended up moving back into our house. I wasn't happy about this at all but also didn't want to keep him from his kids plus I really had no choice since we both own the house and we were not legally separated. I would often feel overwhelmed by caring for the children and keeping up with the house that we bought together. We've owned it for 10 years at this point. I have expressed my need for him to contribute to keeping the house up for literal years. It's now 2024 and while he doesn't drink anymore and we do get along well I still have no romantic feelings for him, he's my family and I love him but that's it. He's constantly wanting to have sex with me even though I have told him l that I have zero interest. I tell him that I am so overwhelmed with the state of our house and his lack of help that I have no desire to have sex. I feel like if my needs aren't met why should I meet his need for sex? He works from home and has his own business. Last year he allowed me to quit my crappy job and now I feel like he holds that over my head. Like because he makes all the money that it's the only thing he has to do. The business that he built pretty much runs itself and he has plenty of time during to take care of other things. There is mold in our bathroom, trim falling apart on the windows outside, actual windows falling apart, everything is a mess and I cannot keep up. My 3 sons also don't clean up after themselves so I feel like I'm constantly surrounded by mess. Dirty dishes, dirty laundry, pee on the toilet seat ect. I have no access to money, only to a shared credit card that I'm afraid to put big purchases on like a new window or whatever. We do not have a joint bank account although he will send me money to my bank account to pay some bills(car insurance, streaming services, pet food ect). Most of the time it's just enough to cover whatever bills I have although sometimes I do get extra. He holds all the power in our relationship and I'm just so tired. I feel like I've been a good, supportive wife and good mother but of course I am not perfect. I had horrible parents growing up. He doesn't seem to understand that he can't just buy what I'm asking for from him. We have conversations about what I need from him and he admits that he needs to do more but then doesn't act on it. Like he's just telling me what I want to hear so I'll have sex with him. It takes effort to have a connection with me and he puts in no effort. I don't want to make him sound like a monster, he's not. He doesn't yell at me and we have great conversations. I can go out and see my friends or whatever. He'll cook dinner if I tell him I don't want to do it that night. We very rarely fight and he's never physically abused me ever.
We don't have an open marriage anymore and I want so badly to be in love with him but I don't know what to do at this point. In January he allowed me to buy a puppy(we have 2 other dogs) and is paying for all of her care/training classes. I have started entering her in shows(she won one of them!!) which he obviously pays for. He tried to say that because he bought me a puppy and I'm happy that I should have sex with him...Being happy about my puppy doesn't mean I'm suddenly in love with him again. Just this morning he said that my childhood trauma has caused everyone in the house trauma and that hit me SO fucking hard because I have tried with every fiber of my being to not let my trauma effect my family. I asked him what he meant by that but he didn't elaborate. Then said he was joking when I asked if he was being serious. It felt like he was trying to blame me for the way things are. Throughout our relationship I have tried so hard to be a good person, I am a good person dangit and yes I do have trauma from my childhood but I don't see how that is what caused him to drink and drive, drink so much he'd miss work, or drink so much he slept at work, lie to me about being drunk, drink so much it ruined our relationship. I have in the past had too many animals. For example I had chicks in our basement that made a HUGE mess and it took me a long time to clean it up...but I did. Before that I had a hobby fish breeding business and had a bunch of fish tanks in our basement. When the cost of the electricity was too much for us to handle I sold everything and took the fish room down. He tried to tell me back then that I was an animal hoarder even though all of my animals have always been well taken care of and always had appropriate vet care. That really hurt me as I love animals and would never do anything to hurt them.
I have tried to divorce him in the past but at the end of the day I don't want to break my family up. I want to be with my children and him but I can't do this by myself and I feel so fucking alone. There's so many details I'm leaving out here because I don't want this to get longer than it is but lately I've been thinking that maybe I am the asshole here...I dunno :(

I like it when movies retell the same story
To be clear I do not mean remakes like Disney’s lion king or cash grabs sequels movie studios tend to do. I mean actually retelling a story.
Movies like Babylon, Rebel Moon, poor things. These movies are great because they retell told stories. Good stories should be retold and reimagined. It’s what we’ve been doing for ages. Ulysses one of the greatest works of literature in the English language, for example, in a way it is the Odyssey retold, a story whose story structure has become a trope onto itself. The lion king was a retelling of hamlet, 10 things I hate about you is taming of the shrew. It doesn’t have to be just literature 300 is a retelling of the legend of the 300 Spartans and despite the fact we know this battle happened as a historical fact, the story tells the legend, it’s the legendary actions of the great warriors of old.
Humans like retelling stories. How many King Arthur and Robin Hood movies and shows are there? How many King Arthur and Robin Hood books have been written since the year 900?
We like retelling, making stories suit our personalities, our era, our new generations. That’s why fanfics are a thing. Personally I’m not a fan of fanfic, but I understand and appreciate that it’s the love of a story that drives these creative minds to write terrible “romantic” fan fiction (fucking 50 shades of gray) and entire sub genres like steam punk are basically just jules vernes fanfiction. Lord of the rings being Norse mythology fan fiction and high fantasy being Lord of the rings “inspired”.
Star Wars was a retelling of westerns and samurai movies (also the fall of the roman republic). Rebel Moon and the Mandalorian are retellings of Star Wars. Metropolis is very much inspired by Frankenstein and Poor things is very much inspired by metropolis. Babylon retells the story of singing in the rain but retells it from behind the curtain of Hollywood and adapts it to our Modern sensibility.
Some stories are just so good they deserve a retelling. Some were good that one time in the 80s and 90s and shouldn’t be retold in the 2020s.
Star Wars needed to be retold by Lucas in the prequels and clone wars and then by the guys running the tv shows now. But most people don’t like how Disney is handling their IPs. That’s why I’m glad rebel moon exists, it’s telling the story of Star Wars from outside the clutches of Disney.
And I’m not saying this as an edge lord Snyder fan who considers the man as an absolute genius and libtards can shut the fuck up.
Zack Snyder is not one of the great directors. He’s a good one but not a master. He does not have the finesse of Kubric or Hitchcock, he doesn’t have the dynamic dialogue and art direction of early Tarantino or the self awareness of later Tarantino. Or any other director you personally consider to be a master of the craft.
But I respect the hell out of the guy to telling the stories he likes the way he understands them, his determination on having creative control on any project. His charisma when treating cast and crew. His intent on adapting works faithfully and the way he interprets them (with the exception of murder Batman).
His take on superman is an interesting one. A more apathetic superman. Compared to homelander and other evil supermans, it’s one that describes the time Cavil was Superman. An apathetic time, not as divided, but on the way to division through apathy.
His take on Watchmen. More grounded and realistic than Moor’s version, but is still faithful. He understood that watchmen as written by moor is unfilmable and needs to be properly adapted.
And 300s faithfulness speaks for itself.
But he’s no genius adapter. The superman he wanted to bring back was the one who died in the 80s. He tried to right the mistake of death of superman. He messed it up in the beginning. Corrected it in Batman v Superman and landed it in the Snyder Cut. But he had to course correct very hard.
Now. Rebel moon. The retelling of Star Wars.
Blending the tone of the prequels and the story of the original trilogy with that Snyder touch.
To that I say keep going Zack. The direction your movies have taken so far has certainly been rocky at times but you got a second chance in the Snyder cut and this new shift is doing well so far. Keep telling the stories that you like the way you see them.

Hello,
I have had a debt collector reach out to me informing me that they are trying to collect on a medical bill from 2022. I have verified that the actual company is legitimate, and that I did indeed receive service from the medical provider. I am even fairly certain that I paid the provider for services, but again, near 2 years is a long time ago and remembering that far back is near impossible. The Debt Collector says that the medical facility told them that the medical facility billed my insurance, but under my insurance claims portal, I don't see a claim for that medical facility, so I can neither verify, nor deny that this was the case. I currently have my bank pulling statements from around that time as they're no longer available on the online portal of the bank, so that I can run through them and verify that a payment did or did not come out for the medical facility. The problem I have with this all is that I was never directly sent a bill from the medical facility and if I had paid them, it would have been some sort of Co-Pay at the time. 2 years have gone by, and I have seen no bill from them, even after calling and them saying that if I had a bill, it would be sent in the mail. Since no bill was sent to me, I assumed that I had paid in full already, so I should not worry about it once 6 months to a year went by.
My question is, what are my legal rights if they had not sent a bill for nearly 2 years, and then all of a sudden a debt collector is calling about this alleged bill that I owe? Should I seek counsel, or what? I feel like personally this would be a violation to my rights as a consumer, but I cannot be sure as I am not a legal expert. The state I live in is Colorado.

https://timesofmalta.com/article/de-la-salle-stella-maris-schools-go-coed.1092305?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3G-ky52ti97m9dYYJJv7cUnnSVE0uZIl7hUjNyDna1bm-7ZiOuhHuCjYQ_aem_AajBTs5EWR2_cy5BqBXINQxQyPSCbonX9zmwE-fzcPkGHE0z3JKjYPuWIOO1z6VOQtg_yoQXUEmg1RONpqbxPgan#Echobox=1715874359
As the leader of the Malta Catholic Democratic Party, I would issue the following statement regarding the potential transition of De La Salle and Stella Maris schools to co-education:
Official Statement
The Malta Catholic Democratic Party welcomes the initiative taken by De La Salle and Stella Maris schools to consider transitioning to co-educational institutions. This progressive step reflects the evolving educational landscape in Malta and aligns with our commitment to equality and inclusivity.
Education is a fundamental right, and we believe that co-education fosters a healthy environment where students of all genders can learn together, preparing them for the realities of our diverse society. The Lasallian mission’s dedication to providing a human and Christian education to children and youth, irrespective of gender, is commendable and resonates with our values.
We support the consultation process undertaken by the schools, ensuring that the voices of staff, parents, and students are heard. This collaborative approach is crucial for the successful implementation of such a significant change.
As we move forward, the Malta Catholic Democratic Party pledges its support to the schools, the students, and their families during this transition. We are confident that this change, rooted in the Lasallian tradition of excellence and service, will enrich the educational experience for current and future generations.
This statement would be shared with the public and media to communicate the party’s position on the matter¹.

https://timesofmalta.com/article/public-service-central-digital-register-individuals.1092563?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR23nn20QvxOZfEGW_2eyssp9e9gUJAqHcmEktBHPp4DGudhOdqixXBX_Gg_aem_Aah_mWAzq_r-UgD_BaFnTs-5_Jsh8v47HuuSPejkOj-DCDEPh_lA5eZ_NPOXmWpZYOJjbQyjNu7Eil3fhHEeyiho#Echobox=1715874762
As the leader of the Malta Catholic Democratic Party, I would issue the following statement:
Statement on the Establishment of a Central Digital Register
The Malta Catholic Democratic Party welcomes the initiative by the Malta Public Service to establish a central digital register of all individuals. This project, which was launched at the Public Service Expo24, represents a significant step towards modernizing our public administration and making government services more accessible and efficient for all Maltese residents¹.
We recognize the importance of digitalization in today’s society and the potential it has to simplify interactions between citizens and the government. By consolidating personal data within a central database, we can ensure that individuals will only need to visit one department to update their information, thereby implementing the 'Once Only Principle’¹.
However, we also emphasize the need for stringent security measures and regulatory compliance to protect the privacy and personal data of our citizens. The Malta Catholic Democratic Party insists on the highest standards of data protection and ethical handling of personal information.
We pledge our support to this project and commit to monitoring its implementation closely. We will advocate for transparency, security, and the safeguarding of citizens’ rights throughout this process.
The Malta Catholic Democratic Party remains dedicated to promoting initiatives that benefit the public while upholding our core values of dignity, respect, and social justice.
This statement would be shared with the public and media to communicate the party’s stance on the new central digital register initiative.

BLUF: Autistic people, currently, especially those who present as having “woman autism” are being used as props. This is good for no one.
People with autism seem almost to be, in Langston Hughes’ phrase “in vogue” (and as he noted, their wages – and acceptance – aren’t growing any). One example is that for those with “woman autism”, there has been an adoption by other women as something like magic pixie dream girls (that is, they’re used, if only rhetorically, for others’ aggrandizement). This is exemplified by the meme “girls with autism vs. boys with autism” [an example], which is patently mocking toward the latter (though by the comments on such productions, “the latter” can’t quickly pinpoint the mockery, which increases the “hilarity”. And if you believe in upping autistic solidarity, downing bullying, you’ll downvote such memes thoroughly. That few people do that, is indicative of the commonest human attitude toward autistic people).
But this is only one instance: in fact, events such as “autism awareness month” are instituted by non-autistic people and have, on this writer’s assessment, nihl positive impact for actually autistic people. (Have personally observed people use the word “autistic” as a derogatory, later proudly construct “AAM” banners). So what (aside from “Autism Speaks” Naked Lust For Profit) are autistic people used for?
Implicit in the idea of the “Manic Pixie Aspergirl”, specifically, seems to be the notion that women lack social grace and emotional intelligence, if, and only if, they’re “diseased”. Ergo, “healthy” women must have loads of “EQ”, which authorizes women’s gaining preeminent political power, which aim is implicit in most social justice discourse (e.g., Justice Ginsberg’s implicit claim that nine women justices would somehow be better able to rule on prostates, than nine men would be able to rule on ovaries.) Efforts for social justice are not “wrong”; they do currently incline toward power struggles that tend to injustice, as we’ll show.
Victims deserve an end to their victimization. Yet, to achieve power in pursuit of this aim, implies surmounting (or establishing) a power hierarchy – but hierarchy implies the caste systems of power which enable and indeed, require, victimization, e.g., of the out-group or underclass of the hierarchy (so that Ms. Wilkerson’s analysis is incomplete: hierarchy is a general condition of humans’ acting in concert [discounting the “free association” notion of anarchism, as seldom-observed, though anarchism as a field is a lamentably neglected]. Ergo, victimization of someone is intrinsically associated with a “society”).
If autistic people are only an abstract group in need of “awareness”, and at that, used for the benefit of others (or for non-autistics to flatter themselves with their unmerited attention bestowed unto the “sick”), then better to eschew society and its incessant victimizing hierarchies altogether.
Indeed, the general characteristic of autism is a difficulty in operating with non-autistics; we suppose any society, hierarchical or no, if majority non-autistic, tends to exclude them. So long as the non-autistic people exist and are in a majority, operation for autistic people is a basic impossibility.
Anyone who claims to be an “ally” of autistic people therefore must be a hypocrite, or disingenuous; most are parents for whom their autistic children are less a loved-one, than a problem . They’re happy to use autistic people as cudgels against Lena Dunham or Sia, or whomever, in their “who’s ‘in’, who’s ‘out’” one-upmanship social games. They don’t, e.g., accept stimming is just something some people do sometimes. No reason to think they ever will.
Besides, alliance implies reciprocity. Social reciprocity, in which autistic people will not be allowed to participate, and there’s no evidence “allies” have ever or will ever be recompensed in any way for any pains they take, nor are they historically useful for liberation anyway. And hypocrisy is the beginning of willful injustice as contradiction is of logical error.
(For how is it the inventors of heroin and rape should describe anyone else as “disordered”? And these people actually think there’s such a thing as “eye contact”, that that isn’t just staring at someone’s eye-holes, which it is, actually. As if any given facial configuration can’t indicate at least two emotions, as it does, so that they “read body language” as only what their wishful thinking makes it – which is what they actually do, and why harassment happens. In short, if they’re so damn “ordered”, and so superior in communicating: how could war exist? It couldn’t – ergo, they aren’t ordered. And so if truly a “bellum omnium contra omnes”, then how to cooperate to negotiate a social contract? So Thomas Hobbes was wrong).
People don’t actually like one another – which you’ll learn if ever you try to make the world a better place, after you fail because nobody would let you. How could they: nobody without autism notices enough to know anyone or anything else (which is the actual difference: the humans don’t notice jack sh*t. They just assume by wishful thinking: “I want you, so your face means you want me”; “I hate you, so your face is provoking me”. Autistic people notice the details and have to think it all through, and that can take years; lively conversations can’t take years, and people without pleasing conversation are disregarded).
The solution is to follow Charles Bukowsky’s epitaph-advice. And don’t ever try to have sex with anybody, and don’t want to. Everyone follows that advice: no more harassment. Who could ask for anything more? Besides, if it were so damn good why aren’t they always doing it? But they aren’t. So it isn’t. And it isn’t.
Whereas “Tohru Honda”-esque compassion that might make life bearable is nowhere observed, nor practiced.
Nor anyway is life “meaningful”: Psalm 30, verse ten/Psalms), flatly states the author did not believe in a “heaven” in spite of their supposed proximity to miracles. Hence the other Abrahamic faiths falter as genetic errors, descended from Judaism, considering the appeal of them all was an ultimate heavenly reward for the ills of life. Other faiths are inadequate, example, Buddhism’s compassion is in opposition to its non-attachment.
From all we now know and seemingly could know, life is as rolling a four on a pair of dice. It just happened. It doesn’t matter. (Obvious after attending at another’s deathbed, and being in a car that “died”. Only recently are both possible, and only recently is the former rare, so few know. In each case, they make odd noises, and then they just – stop. No “soul”, unless cars have souls. Soul a misconception).
It’s important only if there were someone to say: “If I roll a four, we all get laid.” In the beginning there was no such storyteller. Stories – lies – are the only thing that present an appearance of good in life. This is a “tragedy” only for humans telling a tragedy-tale. For the universe, it’s just something that happened. And later will unhappen. And never mattered, as accidents just happen, don’t “mean”.
It's difficult to avoid telling stories to yourself, but it’s the only way to acceptance which is all that you’ll ever have, since you can accept losing everything, too. The most beautiful lie is still only a lie, and it’ll leave you when you need it, because it was never there.
Probably better to leave.

The ophthalmic packaging market is poised for impressive growth, with estimates suggesting a CAGR of around 12% by 2027. This surge is driven by several factors. Firstly, a growing number of people are diagnosed with eye conditions like dry eye and conjunctivitis, requiring specialized packaging for ophthalmic products. Secondly, stricter regulations on recycling packaging materials are pushing innovation for sustainable and recyclable options in this industry. Furthermore, brands are increasingly using unique and functional packaging to stand out and improve product shelf life. Finally, the rise of emerging economies, a growing global population, and heightened awareness of eye health create exciting new opportunities for ophthalmic packaging companies in the years to come.
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Market Trends:
Response to Rising Eye Disorders: The increasing prevalence of eye diseases like dry eye and glaucoma is driving demand for innovative packaging solutions. This includes developing single-dose and multi-dose containers that ensure sterility, ease of use, and proper medication adherence for patients.
Sustainability and Regulatory Compliance: Stringent environmental regulations and a growing focus on eco-friendly practices are pushing for the development of recyclable and biodegradable ophthalmic packaging materials. This trend also includes optimizing package size to minimize waste.
Focus on Patient Convenience and Safety: Ophthalmic packaging is evolving to prioritize patient convenience and safety. Examples include tamper-evident seals, child-resistant closures, and braille labels for visually impaired users. Additionally, single-dose packaging is gaining traction due to its ease of use and reduced risk of contamination.
Brand Differentiation and Innovation: In a competitive market, pharmaceutical companies are using packaging as a tool for brand differentiation. This includes using unique shapes, colors, and graphics to enhance brand recognition and product appeal. Additionally, advancements in material science are leading to the development of ophthalmic packaging with improved barrier properties and functionality.
Emerging Markets and E-commerce: The rise of emerging economies with growing populations and increasing disposable income is creating new opportunities for ophthalmic packaging companies. Furthermore, the growth of e-commerce for prescription medications is necessitating packaging that can withstand the rigors of shipping and ensure product integrity.
Market Opportunities:
The ophthalmic packaging market is brimming with opportunities. The growing burden of eye diseases fuels demand for innovative solutions. Companies can capitalize on this by developing single-dose and multi-dose formats that prioritize sterility and ease of use. Sustainability is another key driver, with opportunities in developing eco-friendly and recyclable materials. Meeting patient needs is crucial, with child-resistant closures, braille labels, and user-friendly single-dose packaging offering a competitive edge. Furthermore, in a crowded market, unique and functional packaging can enhance brand recognition. Finally, the rise of e-commerce and emerging economies presents exciting prospects for companies that can deliver ophthalmic packaging solutions that ensure product safety during transport and cater to new markets with growing populations. By focusing on innovation, sustainability, and patient-centric design, ophthalmic packaging companies can solidify their position in this thriving market.
According to the recent report published by RC Market Analytics, the Global Ophthalmic Packaging Market is expected to provide sustainable growth opportunities during the forecast period from 2024 to 2030. This latest industry research study analyzes the ophthalmic packaging market by various product segments, applications, regions and countries while assessing regional performances of numerous leading market participants. The report offers a holistic view of the ophthalmic packaging industry encompassing numerous stakeholders including raw material suppliers, providers, distributors, consumers and government agencies, among others. Furthermore, the report includes detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the global market considering market history, product development, regional dynamics, competitive landscape, and key success factors (KSFs) in the industry.
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Geographically, the ophthalmic packaging market report comprises dedicated sections centering on the regional market revenue and trends. The ophthalmic packaging market has been segmented on the basis of geographic regions into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. Ophthalmic packaging market estimates have also been provided for the historical years 2020 to 2023 along with forecast for the period from 2024 - 2030.The report includes a deep-dive analysis of key countries including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, China, Japan, India, Australia, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa, among others. Thereby, the report identifies unique growth opportunities across the world based on trends occurring in various developed and developing economies.
The Ophthalmic Packaging Market Segmentation:
By Dose:

• Single Dose
• Multi-Dose

By Type:

• OTC
• Prescription

By Material:

• Plastic
• Glass
• Others

By Region:

• North America
• Europe
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East & Africa

Leading players in the global ophthalmic packaging market include Amcor, Gerresheimer, West Pharmaceutical Services, Schott AG, and Becton Dickinson. These companies are driving growth through various strategies such as geographic expansion, investment in innovative packaging solutions, and forging strategic collaborations. This multi-faceted approach allows them to tap into new markets, develop advanced packaging options, and leverage synergies to gain a competitive edge.
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Key Questions Answered by Ophthalmic Packaging Market Report:

• Product popularity and adoption based on various country-level dynamics
• Regional presence and product development for leading market participants
• Market forecasts and trend analysis based on ongoing investments and economic growth in key countries
• Competitive landscape based on revenue, product offerings, years of presence, number of employees and market concentration, among others
• Various industry models such as SWOT analysis, Pestle Analysis, Porter’s Five Force model, Value Chain Analysis pertaining to Ophthalmic Packaging market
• Analysis of the key factors driving and restraining the growth of the global, regional and country-level markets from 2020-2030

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First of all I have to say I'm not a big music expert. More like the "listens-to-everything" type. Honestly, of course there are styles of music that I don't particularly appreciate (Rap, Jazz, Metal), but otherwise everything from Monteverdi operas to current electronic pop is included. I therefore ask you to treat my assumptions with caution and to forgive some statements that may not be particularly profound.
I often go to YT to listen to music (I often just watch the videos in passing because I don't necessarily need moving images to accompany music that I like). I've noticed lately that even without the YT algorithm (I'm deleting my cookies), I keep clicking on songs that came out in 1984. I don't do this consciously, but simply because it really seems that exactly 40 years ago only super-hit songs were coming out. Then I did some research and actually: Even if you don't just focus at Number 1 hits (I'm from Europe, but it seems the differences to the kind of songs that became hugely popular in the United States where not that big then), it feels like that during the 52 weeks of 1984 more than 100 songs that became enormously famous came out in '84 - that's two world hits every single week!
Most of them still stand the test of time and remain well-known even to people who weren't born in 1984 yet (like myself). For example, when I think of your karaoke sessions at my colleges student club, I would assume that roughly 10% of pop songs people choose to sing there (and the night is long...) where written and published in 1984! No other year seems so significant for pop music history, not even the also extremely popular Y2K for the Noughties, because the era of 00's-Hits spans over more than just one year (I would say 1997 to 2002). Of course some 80's pop classics also came out one or two years earlier or later, but I would take any bet that these wouldn't even represent the majority of the 80's-songs if you added them together against the tunes that came out in '84 ALONE!
Furthermore, I realized that I'm not the only one to notice that phenomenon: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/100-best-singles-of-1984-pops-greatest-year-163322/dead-or-alive-you-spin-me-round-like-a-record-174440/ or https://nerdist.com/article/why-1984-is-greatest-pop-music-year-prince-van-halen-madonna-bruce-springsteen/
But why was that? Why did 1984 become a crucial year for pop music? In the articles, I didn't find any reasonable explanation for this other than the rise of MTV (even though MTV didn't even exist in Europe at the time, and yet the songs became hits here too). I would also find it interesting how contemporary witnesses, i.e. people who experienced the 80s musically, perceived this: Were you aware back then that 1984 was a special year with one hit after another...?
Compared to 1984, 2024 seems a rather absolutely irrelevant year in pop music history: Everything is dominated by Taylor Swift - yeah, I know, Michael Jackson ruled 80's pop, but at least he wasn't alone... Maybe 1967 is probably the only comparable year to 1984 in terms of popular music - but for rock, not pop, when the big groups of the time such as the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, The Who, Kinks etc. released very important beat and rock albums and songs that are still widely known "oldies" today (a fact that I learned trough articles BEFORE recognizing it by myself, to be honest).

I’ve had this theory in my mind for a while, and I’d love to expand on it with Scout’s Honor answering my questions. I think I might have an idea as to how the Infected psychology works. Be warned, this is going to be a very long post.
First, I want to look at Ink. He retained almost his entire personality, even after being Infected. I’m going to use him as an example through this entire theory.
We know Burt used the line “The smarter you are in life, the smarter you are in death” and it was brought up again much later on in Season 4, signifying some serious importance. Kelly also once said, referring to Ink: “What happens when they turn you, but you’re already a monster?” I don’t think this was just a throwaway guess. I think this has serious significance to the story and helps build my theory a bit.
Let’s use Datu and his perspective after he was turned. He said he felt like he was “watching his life through the backseat of his mind.” Like he was lacking control. But Ink retained control, and both of them are smart cookies. Why? Or why doesn’t Randy show nearly as much control as Ink, and why did his eyes AND Datu’s go cloudy?
You could say the eyes thing is related to how much control you retain, but with Scout’s Honor and Joe, and also Buffalo Bill, I don’t believe this is the case. Rather, there are THREE components at play that separate Ink / Datu and Randy / Joe and Buffalo Bill.
Using Burt’s first line, we can say intelligence is a factor in how much of yourself you maintain. But intelligence alone isn’t enough, because Randy didn’t have control like Ink did. Another factor is how much of a leader or a “follower” you are (wink wink). I think this plays into the clouding of the eyes. Every Infected we’ve seen without cloudy eyes is some kind of leader, Ink leading mass hordes, “Coal” leading the Scorpions, Buffalo Bill holding alpha status, and Joe leading the… other Scorpions. (I see what you did there, Kc) Now, whether or not the green eyes is a coincidence between all the leaders or green eyes form in Infected leaders, or green eyes has a relation to leadership, I’m not sure, but I do think how much of a leader you are also goes into play as to how much of yourself you retain.
Finally, using Kelly’s quote, how much of a monster you are. This is the third and most important component and it hasn’t been explored much, but I think there is something about how Infected turn that protects them from retaining their future self, should they hate what they’ve become. Basically, if someone who hated Infected turned, they would have the least control, because otherwise they would try and take themselves down. It’s like how humans have self-preservation, Infected also have a more complex self-preservation instinct.
The higher each of these components are, the more of yourself there is after you’re turned. Ink was a rare and lucky combo of all three, and so when he turned, he remained himself. Randy was high in intelligence but wasn’t a monster or a leader, so he had cloudy eyes and only had a small part of himself left inside. Datu was similar because he wasn’t a leader either and his eyes went cloudy, but he had a comparable intelligence. He also mentioned seeing from the backseat of his mind, as in being without control because he wasn’t a monster either.
Joe wasn’t a monster, but he was a leader. He most likely had a good intelligence because he was able to trap the kids in Scout’s Honor and predict their movements (if I listened to that right). So he didn’t retain his personality, because the “monster” part is what an Infected needs to be like themselves. In simplest terms, if you’re an unintelligent monster who follows rather than leads, you most likely won’t retain very much of yourself, but if you’re an intelligent leader who can’t stand hurting others, you would most likely see the same effect. You need all three to be like Ink.
This means Buffalo Bill was probably also a good person before death, as he shows leadership instincts and intelligence, but isn’t coherent like Ink.
Finally, there are two other parts of how the Infected work that are separate but I’d like to still mention them. One is physical characteristics, and the other is your deepest drive. I believe both of these are “amplified” once you turn. For physical characteristics, I think the changes an Infected goes under that makes them tougher, also makes them better in whatever they’re good at (an athletic person would become a runner, which could explain why jumpers were so rare because most people aren’t extremely good at jumping versus running. Also, the Infected are better on ground and chasing and so probably are strengthened in that field more).
The deepest drive thing comes from some of the conclusions made from Scout’s Honor and Descendants, with Fredo and the wedding couple and more. I think that whatever your deepest motivator or drive when you turn becomes your main drive as an Infected. I imagine the more you retain from life and the more control you have, the less of this exists, but it still does exist in everyone depending on how motivated of people they were. Many people who turned probably had no drive (like, living life day to day, with no goal), and that could explain why so many Infected are mindless.
I’d love to hear some thoughts on this and see if anyone agrees or disagrees. There’s a few leaps but I’ve tried to keep it as close to the story as I can.

Hello everybody. I leave here an excerpt (chapter 8) from a book recommended by my psychologist that has helped me a lot. This is the book Don't Believe Everything You Feel, by Robert Leahy. (I highly recommend it for those of us who have ROCD) Below I provide the excerpt:
CHAPTER 8 - I can't tolerate mixed feelings.
Do you struggle with mixed feelings? Do you think you should only feel one way about someone or a situation? Do you find it hard to make decisions because you can see both the pros and cons? Ambivalence, or mixed feelings, is part of real life, and if you can't tolerate ambivalence, you miss out on the richness of life that can also seem contradictory. One reason you might have trouble accepting ambivalence is that you believe in the "pure mind." In other words, you believe there's an ideal state where you know for sure what's right, what's true. You ruminate, seek reassurance, consider all possible variations of things while waiting for an epiphany, a sudden realization where everything falls into place. That's a myth. Reality is complex, contradictory, and always fluid, and your mind is part of that reality. The pure mind is part of emotional perfectionism you learned about in Chapter 4. Emotional perfectionism is the belief that we should only have certain types of emotional experiences – like feeling happy, satisfied, gratified, not frustrated, etc. The pure mind is the idea that the mind should be clear, not ambivalent, not confused. But the reality is that our mind is often chaotic. In this chapter, we examine ambivalence, especially how to think about it. You'll see that life involves losses and gains and that certain things come as a package deal. We'll learn that the problem isn't ambivalence, but rather thinking that ambivalence is the problem. Let's look at some examples. Brenda has been seeing Mike for several months and has started ruminating about how she feels about him. "I don't know what I feel. I mean, sometimes I enjoy being with him, but other times he annoys me. Not often, but sometimes. We have great chemistry and enjoy being together a lot, and he's an amazing guy. But I don't know, sometimes I get annoyed talking to him. He talks a lot about work, and, to be honest, I'm not that interested in his work. I just don't know how I feel. Do I like him or not?" As a result of her ambivalence, Brenda sometimes focuses on the few times she feels annoyed when talking to Mike. "What's wrong with me? What's wrong with our relationship?" And then she worries about the possibility that he's not "the right person" for her – she thinks maybe she should break up with him. Even though she feels more comfortable with him than with anyone she'd been involved with before, she's full of doubts. "How can I commit if I have mixed feelings? Shouldn't I be sure?" What makes this harder for Brenda is that she realizes Mike has many great qualities. She knows he's a wonderful partner in many ways and that he's completely devoted to her. Brenda's ambivalence about Mike bothers her. Nicole finds herself in a similar dilemma, but her ambivalence is about her job. She works for a small tech company, the hours are long, the work is unpredictable, and the team leader is sometimes irrational. But she loves what she does, thinks she's learning a lot, and there's great potential for growth. "I don't know, they tell us to follow our dreams, and I think this was my dream, but sometimes it's boring, sometimes frustrating, and I just don't know how I feel about this situation." Nicole thinks she shouldn't feel ambivalent about her job. She thinks this should be her dream. She keeps thinking she should be in a dream job, that she should never feel bored at work, and that either there's something wrong with her, or this isn't the right job. Nicole can't tolerate mixed feelings about work. Is the problem Mike, the job, or the difficulty in tolerating ambivalence? We can have mixed feelings about our relationship, our job, our appearance, where we live, and even what we eat. Some of us get stuck in ambivalence and think we have to be clear, certain, and free of any doubt to make decisions. We're plagued by regrets and can't see situations in perspective. You might think the problem is having mixed feelings, that it's bad to have doubts about anything important in life. But if mixed feelings are part of the richness and complexity of life, what's the problem? Perhaps the problem is that you think mixed feelings are a problem – and then you trigger rumination, seeking reassurance, procrastination, and other strategies that don't help solve the problem. That's part of the myth of the pure mind, which is another part of your emotional perfectionism. Let's see if you can't accept ambivalence and if your solutions make the problems even worse. Back to Brenda and Mike momentarily, I asked Brenda why having mixed feelings about Mike was difficult for her. Brenda looked at me with a surprised expression and said, "Shouldn't I know how I really feel?" "Yes," I replied, "and I think you do know how you really feel. You have mixed feelings. What you have is ambivalence." Brenda laughed. But she still thought she shouldn't have mixed feelings. She asked, "Shouldn't I know how I feel?" I countered that she knows her own feelings – and they are mixed. So we talked about how she has long-time friends about whom she has mixed feelings that she accepts and the possibility that this is also valid in relation to Mike. "Maybe having mixed feelings is part of getting to know people," I suggested. "But don't you think if you love someone, you shouldn't have mixed feelings?" "That seems too idealized. But unreal. Maybe loving someone is accepting mixed feelings. Maybe loving someone is seeing the bigger picture." How do you think about your ambivalence? Do you have a set of rules about how you should feel? Check the statements that apply to you: I should never have feelings of ambivalence. If I'm ambivalent, then I need to keep thinking about the issue to get rid of mixed feelings. Other people can help me get rid of ambivalence. I need to change everything I feel ambivalent about. If I'm ambivalent, then I can't make decisions. Only neurotic, anxious, and depressed people feel ambivalent. Almost everyone is completely sure about how they feel. If you think you shouldn't have mixed feelings, you'll have difficulty tolerating them, living with them, and accepting them. You'll likely ruminate and worry about them, seek reassurance, and struggle to make decisions and live with the outcomes. You'll be more prone to regret, look to the past, and idealize some alternative you didn't choose. Your intolerance of mixed feelings may make you doubt the value of your experiences in everyday life and forget to appreciate what you really have. But what if you had a different view of ambivalence? What if you had more thoughts and feelings about ambivalence? Ambivalence is normal because all parts of life have ups and downs. I can accept ambivalence instead of ruminating about it. Everything involves losses and gains. Everyone has mixed feelings if they're honest with themselves. I can make decisions if I have mixed feelings because decisions always involve a mix of feelings when you compare one alternative to another.
End of the excerpt I selected.
This chapter also addresses ways to deal with ambivalent feelings and tools, but as it is an authored work, I don't have the right to reproduce the entire chapter here. However, I believe I have helped a bit. Big hug.

So I've posted a lot of times on this subreddit, and a part of that is because I haven't fully fleshed out the details of my world; I had a basic idea of what I wanted my world to look like, the types of magic I wanted to be there, and the world in which I wanted that magic to occur. I'm someone who likes grinding down on my magic system until it makes sense, so I haven't really been able to focus on writing my actual story, although in fairness I've tied up a few plot threads. Now, I think I have a genuine final product and can actually start writing my story. So here it goes.
FUNDAMENTALS
The three fundamental forces in my universe are Dream, Spark, and Sacrifice. Dream is the product of the underworld, Sacrifice resides in the domain of the living, and Spark is the energy that binds and separates the two worlds. I'm very fascinated by the idea of making a sacrifice, or the spilling of blood in many cases, being necessary for dreams to come true.
Dream, in this context, is imagination, memory, past, future, desire, fear, all that does not yet exist but existed or has the potential to exist. The fuel of Dream is memory, because a dream that is not remembered, even subconsciously, is one that ceases to exist, and Dream tends to absorb memory.
Sacrifice, in this context, has a more neutral meaning than we're used to; it only means a change in the mortal realm, mental or physical, that initiates the coming to life of a dream. Think of a mother, who sacrifices or is made to sacrifice her body for 9 months to give birth to the dream of a child, the possibility made real by the change in the mother's physical circumstance. Or an empire; someone dreamed of it, but they needed to spill blood to bring it into fruition. The blood and death, not the action, is the sacrifice, and that sacrifice brings life to a dream.
Spark, broadly, is energy. From a metaphysical perspective, it is the energy that carries out a sacrifice and, using that sacrifice, brings Dream into existence. Two people needed to perform the action of intercourse for the mother who gives birth to a child to have made a sacrifice; the act of intercourse induces the sacrifice, which is the state of pregnancy. To go back to the empire example, you need to perform the act of stabbing or shooting a bunch of people, or if you're not into all out war, the act of slitting the throat of the king, for instance. The act induces the sacrifice, which is death, which enables the dream to come true. But more broadly, spark is literally energy, the force that makes the planet move, the sword to swing, the fire to burn.
The child of Dream and Spark is Will. Will is consciousness, the ability to make something happen, to manipulate energy to accomplish a purpose, to make the dream come true.
The combination of all three, Dream, Spark, and Sacrifice, is what creates life, a physical manifestation of the Will; this is what makes life special above all other things. When in your physical body, the Will is bound by that body because the body created by Dream, Spark, and Sacrifice creates a barrier that the Will cannot cross, which is why almost no one can manipulate energy on their own. Once you die, you either cross into the Underworld, the land of dreams, or a Sacrifice in the form of emotional connection interacts with the Will to block it from returning to the Underworld, binding you to the Mortal Realm, making you a ghost, a will that exists in the Mortal Realm but without a physical body usually cannot perceive the world except for other Wills, trapping spirits stuck in the Mortal Realm in their own memories unless they can use the body of another as a host.
The exception to the binding of the Will to the body is through Dream; when you dream, your Spark transfers your will to the Underworld, where all dreams live. Spark has a natural magnetism towards the Underworld, and the Will has a natural attraction to Spark, meaning when you're asleep, Spark is no longer bound by consciousness and is able to take the Will to its natural home before waking. As I said before, dreams are fueled by memory, so when you dream, the Underworld is slowly taking memories from you until you wake up, meaning that most people forget most of what they dream about.
The Mortal and Immortal Realms are separated by a substance in the air known as Valin Steel, which has the effect of cancelling out any binding effect of a sacrifice, detaching Spark energy from the physical form it is bound to, causing it to by default return to the Immortal realm. When Spirits are summoned from the Immortal Realm to the Mortal Realm, that creates a disturbance which causes Valin Steel particles to form into visible chunks of a metallic substance stronger than normal steel. Valin Steel is particularly dangerous because of its combustibility, with only a small amount of exposure to fire being sufficient to cause explosions that can level neighborhoods if not cities with just a few pounds of material.
One other reaction is that of the Will interacting with the physical world. The Will generates Spark, and when it is not bound to a physical body but is still bound to the Mortal Realm, that Spark, when a spirit uses it to manipulate the Mortal world, sinks into and irradiates any material under it, which creates a substance called Emanation, which contains certain levels of Spark, which means it can be combined with other ingredients to induce specific magical effects when the solution makes contact with something; Emanation is thus the basis for all magical potions.
MAGIC
As I said, the Will of a living being cannot cross past or alter that body, but when a living thing dies, while most go to the Underworld, some are trapped here, without a body to bind the Will. Unbound, a spirit's Will allows them manipulate the Spark, and this forms the source of all magic in this world; the key to using magic, therefore, is developing some type of relationship or having a pre-existing relationship with a spirit. Without any sacrifice, spirits can use telekinesis, lightning generation and manipulation, and thermokinesis. Because Spark forms the basis of cognition, spirits can enter your brain and steal your thoughts and memories, share thoughts and memories by imparting them to the being they're passing through, essentially able to impart "suggestions" that, in their strongest form, can act as a form of hypnosis.
Spirits can also briefly possess creatures, but bodies are generally not equipped to handle two sparks in a single host. A spirit possessing a body would cause every part of that body to want to move, and having two sparks in one body can end up killing the host because without constant movement the extra spark ends up just absorbing oxygen from the air for stimulation. This is why when possession occurs it is usually only for brief periods, like a minute or so. The exception is if people learn certain war dances which allow them to use their whole bodies, they can be possessed, therefore possessing the power of spirits, for a much longer time; they have to keep dancing to maintain the stability, and this form of magic use has given birth to multiple martial arts styles based on encircling and constantly barraging your opponent; some of the arts are called Sand-Dancing, Water-Dancing, and Mud-Dancing, all based on using bouts of telekinesis to quickly harness easy to manipulate materials to overwhelm opponents (the inspiration for these martial arts styles would be Capoeira; Capoeira is extremely effective and allows for constant movement).
So the biggest fuel for my magic system is the issue of perception. Most people can't remember visiting the Underworld, most people can't see beyond their bodies, most people cannot see ghosts in the Mortal Realm, and most ghosts cannot see the Mortal Realm because they don't have a physical body with which they can perceive. This creates a situation where, while anyone can use magic because most people can develop some type of connection with spirits, it is difficult in practice for most to do so.
But some people are born with, or in rare cases develop, a unique bond with dream, giving them some or all of these abilities. Really creatives, people with certain mental disorders, or people born from uniquely difficult circumstances that required sacrifice, usually on the part of the mother, that is greater emotionally or physically than what would otherwise be expected, are more connected to Dream, and are therefore more able to perceive it beyond just their physical senses. This represents around 10% of the population; a strong sign of one of these abilities is lucid dreaming, because it means you are able to navigate the Underworld while not having your memories stolen, meaning you can essentially access the dream world whenever you sleep, or if you're trained whenever you want. Seeing spirits in the mortal realm is rare; around 2% of people have the ability, and it's really useful because spirits have the ability to manipulate energy but can't perceive the world around them, meaning that you can make a deal with a spirit for them to lend you their services in exchange for lending your body to them. Another rare ability is astral projection, which comes hand in hand with the ability to perceive the Mortal Realm as a spirit because both involve the ability to perceive the world beyond your physical body. So these ghosts, unlike others, are under normal circumstances essentially autonomous because they can perceive the world around them, meaning they can interact with the world without the constraints of a physical body. These are usually the deadliest types of spirits.
In order to change the nature of something, you need a sacrifice and a spirit must provide the spark necessary to activate that sacrifice. There are three different types of sacrifices:

1. White Sacrifices, which are made by causing mental anguish or connection. This sacrifice is necessary for two purposes; to create and bind someone to a magical oath which makes it so such an oath cannot be broken as long as the person bound to the oath remains bound, or to create a magical bond between two or more beings, allowing those bonded with each other to communicate telepathically, to perceive events through each other’s eyes, to share memories, and when one dies, to share a living body.
2. Red Sacrifices, which are made simply by spilling blood. This sacrifice is necessary to transform the physical form of one thing into another form. For instance, to transform an inanimate object into another inanimate object, one must coat that object with their own blood, and have a spirit activate that blood sacrifice by using their spark. Typically, Red Sacrifices involve shedding one’s own blood to change their physical form; when Red Sacrifices are activated, their form changes. When transforming into a form larger than themselves, the spell will cause a person to absorb the soft matter (water, sand, dust, mud, etc.) around them to gain mass, and when transforming into a form smaller than themselves, they shed mass in the form of “Formsand”, which they can then use to transform into their original form. This sacrifice can be permanently imbued as an ability to change into a specific form and back using tattoos made from emanation; the process of tattooing spills the blood necessary for a blood sacrifice, and the specific ingredients, the placement of the ink, and the Will of the tattooer and the tattooed determine the specific form they turn into. Descendants of those who shape shift inherit some of the characteristics of the altered forms of their parents.
   1. Some animals have also evolved ways of using Red Sacrifices to give themselves enhancements, such as the ability to breathe fire.
3. Black sacrifices, which are made by taking a life. This sacrifice is necessary to bind spirits of the dead to a physical form. The target spirit can perform or activate the sacrifice, but if the target spirit is one that the magic user wishes to control, another spirit has to make and activate the sacrifice. This can be used for a variety of purposes, including permanently binding spirits to a physical object and forcing it to do the bidding of the user, and permanently binding a spirit to a dead corpse, giving them new life in a new body.

Spellcasting is the act of giving spirits you are bound to instructions to perform an action. Basically, spirits recognize certain words as commandments to perform an action based on what they've learned; the more people that recognize a specific word as a specific command, the more potent that spell becomes. Spellcasting in the context of telepathic acts is often performed with songs or poetry, with certain phrases being used as a form of hypnotism as the melodic effect coincides with the spirits placing ideas in your head; this also happens to act as a sort of work-around to the requirement of possession for mind control because the spirit doesn't need to channel their energy through the whole body, just the mind, and they don't need to completely enter the person's body to influence them; this allows some magic users to cross the line from hypnotism into genuine mind control.

So, I'm not entirely sure what my goal is with this post. One thing I know for certain is that it will be very long, and probably sort of jumbled and frantic, more stream of consciousness than anything. I guess I just sort of wanted to share some of the important realizations I've had in recent months, and see if: 1. Other people think that they're fair or "correct" realizations, and I'm not becoming, like, delusional or something. 2. Maybe my sharing these perspectives will help or inspire someone else who has struggled in ways similar to me.
So, here's the basic background of things. I've always been a really reserved and quiet person, ever since I was a little kid. Add in being skinny and nerdy for most of my life, and maxing out at a height of 5'9", and I'm not exactly a hot product for the average girl my age (19, turning 20 in a few weeks). In fact, I'd never had a relationship until this past year in college, but I'll get more into that in a minute. Hell, I hadn't had so much as a first kiss until this past year, either.
And, at the beginning of this past school year, being my second year of college (as a commuter student, so socializing is pretty difficult), I began to really get down on myself for having never been in a relationship, never kissed a girl, being a virgin, etc. It started to really take a toll on my mental health, because I believed that there was something intrinsically wrong and unlovable about me. Whereas a lot of young men who struggle socially romantically seem to be directing their sadness, frustration, and anger outward toward the world, especially toward women, I instead found myself directing those feeling toward myself. I was convinced that, on a basic level, there was some vital component to who I am as a person that disqualifies me from being worthy of love or affection. After all, that's what 19 years of evidence suggest, right?
Looking back, I think a large component in this was how I had been struggling, and still struggle to a degree, with my identity as a young man. I'm naturally a pretty progressive person, and I make an effort to be open to the perspectives of other groups and listen to their stories. Unfortunately, as we all know, a lot of people have been harmed by the men in their lives. And I know, I know: if I'm not doing anything wrong myself, then I shouldn't take any of these stories personally.But I guess, given the poor mental state that I was already in, I took it as validation that there was in fact something intrinsically wrong about me, and that thing was being a man. I started to avoid people on the street, especially if they were a woman or presented as feminine. At work, I avoid going anywhere near female customers, out of fear of making them uncomfortable. I'd keep my head down walking from class to class on campus, worried that I might make someone uneasy with my gaze. It wasn't that I thought I was a threat; in fact, I knew that I was not. But I also knew that the people around me didn't know that. In their eyes, maybe they have to assume that I'm a creep or that I'm a dangerous type of man. And it hurt to realize that, and I realize now, like I said, that I took it as validation that there was something intrinsically wrong with me.
Due to that, as well as other factors, such as stress and exhaustion from overworking (I'm a full-time student and work about 30 hours a week, which is a lot for me, might not be for others, I admit), I experienced some of the worst periods of depression I've ever had, since being diagnosed with it and anxiety in 2021. I tried going to therapy. I went to a few sessions, then gradually started missing more and more due to a lack of time, until my therapist cancelled all of our scheduled future sessions. It was on me. I wasn't committed.
I lost my passion for my hobbies and interests, like creative writing, which had previously been an important emotional outlet for me. A lot of nights would be spent lying in bed, listening to a playlist filled with sad music and hugging a pillow, wishing it was someone who loved me in the way that I thought, or hoped, love would work.
At the behest of my friends, to whom I only presented my issues as being a little down about never having been in a relationship, I started messing around with dating apps. At first, I felt good about making some sort of effort to put myself out there. Like I said, I've always been insanely reserved, so doing something like making a dating profile felt like an accomplishment. Of course, nothing much came of it. Over the five or so months that I was on the app, I maxed out at about six likes on my profile, and only matched with two people.
But one of those two people was a girl who went to the same college as me, and we seemed to have a lot of interests in common. And I mean a lot. To the point that it was almost comical. Of course, I realize now that having some hobbies in common isn't enough to form a good relationship with someone, but I realize now that I was just desperate for someone who I could convince myself halfway-tolerated me. She and I started to go out, and after a while, we decided to make things "official." My first kiss. My first relationship. My first girlfriend.
It lasted for only a few months. After a while, something felt off. I wasn't as excited to see her as I had been before. It was hard for us to make time for each other, between my working and her being involved in extracurricular stuff around campus. Car rides and dates began to be filled with longer and more frequent stretches of awkward silence, as I tried to think of something to say or talk about, only to come up empty-handed. As we got to know each other better, I realized that we didn't have as much in common as I first thought. She was a little more conservative, not necessarily in a political sense, but more in terms of "status", if that makes sense. I learned that financial success was very important to her parents, and I could tell that it was important to her, too. She avoided telling her parents that I was an English major, instead opting to tell them that I was getting a degree in computer science, as that was my minor at the time. It seemed to me that the status of a relationship was more important to her than the quality of the relationship (pot calling the kettle black, yes, I realize). For example, there was a dance on campus that she wanted to go to, pretty much just to take pictures of the two of us together so she could show them to friends and family. But as for the dance itself, it was more of the same that had been happening before: awkward silence, short conversations, lots of looking around at anything other than each other.
After a while, I decided that, for both of our sakes, I needed to break things off. I didn't want to waste her time when I knew that my heart wasn't in it anymore. So, at the beginning of April, I drove over to her dorm, and we talked it over in my car for a while. At the end, we hugged one last time, and I haven't seen her since.
I think a key component in the decision I made is the fact that I reconnected with some old friends from high school, who are still local, even though they are going to another university. Over Christmas break, I hung out with them for the first time since the pandemic as, during that time, I ended up having a falling out with them over some dumb high school drama and political differences. To my surprise, they had changed a lot, and had managed to pull themselves out of the incel trajectory that I had seen them beginning to fall down during high school. They were kinder, more accepting people. My surprise was matched only by my pride in them. I had feared and assumed the worst of them, and I couldn't have been happier to be proven wrong. Since then, I've been invited back into their group chats, and I see them in-person with some regularity, when our schedules allow it.
I think having that connection made me feel more comfortable with the idea of being single again, and since the break up, I've been able to rely on them for support, laughs, and just feeling like I have somewhere I belong. Before, I found myself desperate for any kind of connection and fell into a cycle of denying myself that connection because I was convinced that, since it didn't just present itself, I wasn't worthy of it.
And maybe it has something to do with that, but on the drive home from my now-ex's dorm (though I still wonder if I should/could really call her an ex. Sure, we agreed to make things "official", but we still only dated for a few months), I felt my perspective on, well, at the risk of sounding over-dramatic or overly romantic, everything, being to change.
And I guess that's what the title of this post is about. The things I've begun to realize in the time leading up to and following that break-up.
Above all else, I've realized the importance of connection. If I didn't have a stable friend group again, I don't know where I'd be. Probably still in a stale relationship, clinging on and trying to convince myself that I'm not feeling the way that I'm feeling. I have people to talk with again, to confide in when I feel stressed or depressed. I go out and do things again, which I didn't realize I hadn't really done very much since the pandemic.
But I know that for a lot of people who are/were in the position I had been in, finding friends is difficult. If it weren't for my unique circumstances of being reunited with an old, estranged group of friends, I would absolutely be in the same position. I still really struggle with social anxiety, and talking to new people is a huge struggle for me. So, I've also had some realizations that don't have as much to do with the friendship side of things, and I hope that these can be of some use to people who also struggle with social anxiety.
I know that the idea of "working on yourself" is cliche and overused, so I won't frame it exactly like that. In my opinion, saying it like that makes it sound too daunting and tedious, and having been in those dark, dark places myself, I know that it was the last thing I wanted to hear. So, instead, I like to think of it this way. It's more like living in spite of your circumstances. Over the course of this past year, I essentially shut my life down, because I was so convinced that there was no point, because I felt that I knew that I would never be loved or accepted. Now, I feel an urge to go on living for myself, almost in direct spite of the fear that I may be forever alone. It's a fear that I still deal with, and who knows, maybe things will end up that way.
And, I suppose, that leads into my main realization, which is sort of an extension/restatement of the last one, now that I think about it. I now feel the desire to accumulate enough in my life, to reach a point where I am satisfied enough, that I can rest knowing that I will be okay, with or without a relationship. Before, my self-worth was almost entirely attached to my relationship status, and my lack of romantic experience. Now, I realize that a relationship can only come when I don't need it, or at least don't feel that I need it. Being a huge nerd and a writer, I think a lot about quotes from books, shows, movies, and games that have stuck with and there's one from God of War: Ragnarok that comes to mind here (by the way, I actually highly recommend playing or watching a playthrough of God of War 2018 and Ragnarok if you've struggled with masculinity in the same way I have, the music and cutscenes from those games have actually helped to pull me out of some mental spirals about my self-worth and identity as a man). It comes from a scene in which Kratos confronts his younger self, and is trying to decide if he is willing/ready to be a god again:
"Should I lose everything and everyone, will there still be enough left inside so that I do not become you? I do not know. But I have hope."
It's a quote that resonates with me now more than ever (even though it's from a DLC that just came out around Christmas, lol). I know now that I want to get to a place where there is enough left inside me that I know I'll never fall into that dark mental state again.
Something else that I've noticed has happened is the return of my passions for my hobbies and interests, especially for writing. I don't want to sound too arrogant, but I think I've begun to realize an important goal for my writing. If I'm lucky enough, I want to be able to write and release stories that explore masculinity and isolation, and, if I can, I want to create stories that can help guide other young men and boys who have struggled in the way I have and continue to do. I want to create characters who serve as positive male role models, who are emotionally strong, intelligent, and kind. I want to write stories of personal redemption, and show that no one is truly ever too far gone to be able to recover. If my writing could help even just one person who is struggling, then I would consider my career to be a success.
At the risk of being too cheesy, I'd like to end this very long-winded post with another quote, this one from a YouTube channel I recently discovered, and one I would highly recommend to just about anyone: Cinema Therapy. It's from their video about "A Silent Voice", which also happens to be one of my favorite movies, and one of my main inspirations when it comes to the kinds of stories I want to tell.
"Depression doesn't go away, doesn't lift for most people. But there's a capacity to feel again. There's a capacity to feel joy. The cure for so many things is connection. And we may think 'no one want to connect with me.' But we just need to find the right people."
I think the only thing I would add to that is that, in my opinion, the connection can also be with yourself.

I'm reposting because we've cleared up some spots on the server and have since upgraded network equipment so have more capacity for new users. I've also more than doubled the selection of content. Our last go around I only recruited a few users and was very selective, so feel free to re-apply if I didn't select you before. If you don't get into the Plex, you can still get into the Discord where you will have an opportunity to join the Plex in the future.
I'm a digital archivist with a ~500TB collection that I'm looking to share with people. This is the first time I'm expanding access outside my small-circle of friends. I'm looking for people who are also interested in joining and building a real community of AV nerds.
The collection is primarily movies and tv shows. There is a lot of stuff that was personally ripped and you won't find elsewhere, and some "lost media" that took some effort to find.
A lot of attention was paid to "completeness" and correct organization, with over 2500 fully complete TV series and 10000 movies. Completeness includes downloading full franchises of content, so I tend to have all the special episodes/reboots/sequels/spinoffs/movie of any particular franchise. If I'm missing an episode of something, that's because it probably just isn't available ANYWHERE. Quality is almost always the best available resolution/format for whatever content is on the server.
You will also get access to my Overseerr page, where you can request anything I don't already have. Available Sources: All top tier private trackers, many specialized private trackers. Can do a custom request rip if its available on any online streaming service, even if its a foreign streamer like FujiTV On Demand.
I also regularly stream major live events and PPV events for free through our own streaming site.
If you don't make the cut for the Plex, you will still be able to join our Discord where you will be able to participate in the community, join our watch parties, and have an opportunity to join our Plex in the future.
If you are looking for a new home and can add value to building this community, PM me with a short blurb about what sort of content you like and how you can contribute.
Here are the types of contributors I'm looking for:
1) Curators
You will be responsible for helping me surface content that we already have and finding content to add. This means suggesting movies to watch on movie nights or creating thematic collections. For example: you are a horror movie buff that can curate Halloween collections, or deep cut collection of the best cult horror movies.
2) Discord Community Managers
You will be responsible for helping me recruit for the community, run events, and moderate. This means stuff like finding new users to bring on the Discord, engaging our users there, and setting up events like movie nights or poker nights.
3) Lost or Obscure Media Hunters
You will be responsible for helping me find and rip lost or obscure media. I already have access to most private trackers, but maybe you have invites to some obscure private tracker for specific content I can't find. Maybe you go out of your way to find out of print DVDs that nobody else has uploaded anywhere. You know who you are.
4) Plex Share Managers
You will be responsible for helping me maintain good practices and policies with regards to inviting people to the Plex share. I've only opened this up to a limited number of people so far so that I can ensure the best experience for our users, and so I don't get arbitrarily banned by Plex. I'd like to keep it that way. You've set up a Plex Share community before or have a lot of experience with them.
5) Sysadmins
I'm just looking for other homelab geeks to recommend new services, bounce ideas and help troubleshoot stuff. Eventually looking for other admins to help me maintain infrastructure and do admin work when I'm not available to do so.
6) Mirror providers
Maybe you live in another region and have the resources to setup a mirror.

Library Highlights:

• Prestige Cinema and TV
• Sitcoms (New and old, the good stuff and the popular stuff)
• Science Fiction (Every major and minor SciFi franchise, from Babylon 5
• Horror (Basically everything, you will be hard pressed to find something I don't have)
• Cult and B Movies
• Gen X/Millennial Nostalgia Content
• Superhero Franchises (Marvel / DC / all the less known stuff like Flash Gordon as well)
• Drag Race and Drag Content (all regional franchises, even the first season of untucked aka Under the Hood)
• Copaganda (Every Law and OrdeDick Wolf show, NCIS, CSI, 911, FBI, The Rookie, etc.)
• Foreign Content (Critically acclaimed, culturally relevant, etc.)
• Anime (All the large franchises and highly rated stuff. Examples include: Dragonball, Sailor Moon, Gundam, One Piece, Lupin, Fate, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Bleach, Pokemon, Attack on Titam, Baki, Death Note, Cowboy Bebop, Solo Leveling, etc.)
• Modern Animation (Newer stuff from Netflix/Disney+/Max/Fox/etc.)
• Contemporary Animation (The stuff Gen X/Millennials watched growing up. Classic Nick, Cartoon Network, Fox Kids, Disney Content. The well known stuff like Dexters Lab to the obscure and forgotten like Eek the Cat.)
• Golden Age Animation (Complete collections of Looney Tunes, Terry Toons, Hanna-Barbera, Disney, Paramount, etc. A lot of work went to tracking down complete collections of a lot of these cartoons. )

"Shoghi Effendi described clearly how a process of “progressive deterioration in human affairs” is occurring in parallel with another process, a process of integration, through which the “Ark of human salvation”, society’s “ultimate haven”, is being built up. We rejoice to see, in every country and region, true practitioners of peace occupied with building this haven. We see it in every account of a heart being enkindled with the love of God, a family opening up its home to new friends, collaborators drawing on Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings to address a social problem, a community strengthening a culture of mutual support, a neighbourhood or village learning to initiate and sustain the actions necessary for its own spiritual and material progress, a locality being blessed with the emergence of a new Spiritual Assembly.
The methods and instruments of the Plan allow every soul to contribute a share of what humanity needs in this day. Far from offering a temporary salve for the ills of the moment, the prosecution of the Plan is the means by which long-term, constructive processes, unfolding over generations, are being set in motion in every society. All of this points to an urgent, inescapable conclusion: There must be a sustained, rapid rise in the number of those committing their time, their energy, their concentration to the success of this work." -Message of the Universal House of Justice, Ridvan 2024

The theme of the forces of disintegration and integration occurring at the same time is reinforced. My sense is we get no where arguing about events in the world and tied up in the petty politics, finding fault, taking sides, and involving ourselves in these disputes. We seem to have much more success and more to offer by offering a vision and a message of hope, love, unity, and tolerance.
Note the use of the phrase "long-term, constructive processes, unfolding over generations". My sense (actually stated as a "pattern of life" by the Universal House of Justice) is that our objective and vision is in creating ultimately is a pattern of life where people in every neighborhood meet regularly, socialize, study scriptures, deepen, pray, and teach (especially children and youth) and reinforce each other. This vision of every week persons participating on some activity in each neighborhood, whether Baha'i or not, is becoming a reality in some neighborhoods in many places in the world. I wish we could see and know more about these examples of great success. In creating this pattern, we are restoring that sense of community and the bonds of affection and support (not just among Baha'is) of each other that seems to have been lost in this modern, materialistic age. We are about restoring the spiritual foundations. We help people put away the negativity and see the hope and reduce the polarization and selfishness in society.
We have a devotional this evening in our home (thanks to the work of my wife and a couple of friends who have made connections in the community over the years) where we had to consciously not invite some people and limit the number of Baha'is because we will have too many to fit in our home. The people coming include devout Christians, a Buddhist, Hindu, non-denominational persons, and agnostics. Yet, what we find is a "screaming" need among some for a sense of community, sharing, caring, and socialization among a subset of our community. This is despite the fact that we live in a very conservative and well-off community and town. Yet, find so many receptive souls. My wife and some friends have given "firesides" or met for lunch or done small study circles multiple days each week resulting from this simple effort.

Greetings DDC experts! I have a gig for Data Scraping for LinkedIn - $5USD/100 Leads and if its a good between us I will have you do more. Thank you.
Project Overview: Create a Google Sheets file with the following column headers:

• Company Name: Full name of the company.
• Company Size: Number of employees or classification (e.g., 1-5, 6-10, 11-20, 21-50, 51-100, 101-200, 201+).
• Primary Contact: Name and title of the main contact person.
• Contact Information: Email and/or phone number of the primary contact.
• LinkedIn URL: Link to the company's LinkedIn profile.
• Company Website: Not Required but add if they have one.
• Physical Address of Company: If they have a physical address please add it. If they have multiple locations please indicate and list all.
• County: Please indicate which county where business operates. Boulder, Weld, Larimer, etc.
• Proximity to Boulder: Distance in miles from Boulder, CO. If in Boulder just say Boulder
• Business Type: Solo-business owners, group therapy practices, non-profits, or franchise.
• Service Focus: Specify the company focus: senior care or senior wellness , therapy, hospice, assisted living etc.
• Last Active Date: Date when the company was last active on LinkedIn.

Verification:

• Active Status: Ensure that the company is still in business in Colorado via https://www.sos.state.co.us/biz/BusinessEntityCriteriaExt.do
• Active on LinkedIn Must have posted/commented within the last 180 days.
• Contact Accuracy: Verify the primary contact information for accuracy.
• Proximity Check: Calculate and verify the distance from Boulder, CO.

Submission:

• File Sharing: Share the Google Sheets file via a shareable link or direct access permission.

Payment: Paypal $5USD/100 Leads, To Be Considered: Examples of Other Jobs, + reviews of your work, If you have other skills please list them with, karma<100 will not be considered.
Thank you.

The summer spirit was born from an affair between The Lady Of The Waves and Nagareru No Kami. The baby was born with water energy and floated to the top of the sea. Nagareru No Kami put the baby on a surfboard and used his breath to blow him towards the beach, and the sunlight gave the baby a nice tan and blonde hair. He washed up on the beach of California and became an adult the next day as well as tattoos that appeared on him with no explanation. He had golden eyes that revealed him to not be a normal human.
With no possessions except a swimsuit that he found and the surfboard given to him by the gods, The Summer Spirit was considered homeless by most of society and treated as such. He never needed to eat and his emotions had connections to the weather, but people were drawn to him and thought he looked familiar for reasons they could not articulate. Eventually, Summer was discovered by other deities and asked to return to the spirit world. He missed the beach, and created one in the underworld for himself and those who he invited over.
The Summer Spirit is the spirit of summer itself. He grants proficiency in surfing, swimming, lifeguarding, CPR, Camping, or any other abilities related to summer activities. He grants intimacy with lifeguards, surfers, college and frat guys, or any person who carries the energies of the summer within them. These are usually free-spirited and fun loving people who do not spend a lot of time worrying about things they cannot control and enjoy the present moment whenever they can. He can be called upon like any other deity and the best offering to him is to workout, maintain a summer body, or just spend time outside on hot days.

Hi everyone
I am a 21 year old student who was in a 3 year relationship with my gf 20 that ended abruptly two days ago.
Our relationship began in highschool and got off to a rocky start when everyone around me started gossiping about her cheating on her ex. I grew up in a household with a single mom who had been cheated on every single relationship. So I was deathly afraid of this happening to me. After months we came up with this agreement that we’d update eachother on snapchat whenever we were apart. And because we missed eachother we would also call at night when we slept.
After all those years this turned into what I think was my crutch to keep my fears away. The snapchats turned away from occasional talking to full day surveillance. The calling turned into a necessity, all day if we were apart, during showers etc. Whenever I saw something that set alight my paranoia I got extremely combative. For example if she hadnt sent a snap in an hour from the other, i would become afraid and fully believe that there was something going on. This then turned into me saying things like “if you treat me like this I wont be able to continue our relationship”. I now look at this and see that it is a threat of me leaving unless she did what i said. I saw it as me enforcing my boundaries and it seemed normal.
She also expected calls from me and would also get upset if I didnt update well, so I thought that this was just how we did things, every relationship had something weird or unhealthy they had to work on in my eyes. When I went to work she recorded herself so i could surveil what she did, and I was somehow so blind to how fucked up that is. And i sought therapy in those two years but had extreme difficulties in finding a psychologist. So these issues remained.
A couple of days ago, while she had a hard week with college, she broke down about everything to a friends mom. Who then informed her parents. While we were discussing the distribution of chores around our appartement, we were living together for 2 years now, her parents stormed in and scolded me for being a controlling manipulator. The dad got very verbal and the mother said something akin to “i dont know how i havent seen that my daughter was so unhappy here”. It blew me away, i never thought she was unhappy as we were having fun just the evening beforehand.
Now they keep her away from me and are blocking my number, telling her that my controlling behaviour outweighed any of the good i did. Like helping her out of cutting herself and abusing alcohol. They check her phone to see if she doesnt message me.
After they left I looked up if I was an abuser, and i can certainly see that i did things on the lists being unaware of what I was doing. I called helplines and spoke to as many people i could to help me and figured that i needed instant care. I will now have a team of psychiatrists and psychologists visit 3 times a week and will be admitted to a facility sometime in the future.
I do not want to be an abuser, and she wants to stay in contact but work on ourselves separately, i agree and i want to be better for myself. But i dont know how i feel with them keeping her locked down like this. its healthy for them to keep her away. But no contact entirely when I really want to change, i cannot fight to redeem myself it seems to me.
Am I a lost cause? Did I lose the best person in my life? I will be admitted to the most intensive therapy we have in our country and I wish to update her on progress and ask how she is doing. To this she is receptive as she has already texted me without her parents knowing, stating the same. But I am afraid that she will want to contact but won't be allowed to.
TL:DR: I made my girlfriend snapchat update me throughout the day as many times as she could and whenever she could. We called whenever we could, this meant also during showers or whatever private moment. I thought that us agreeing to this meant that was a ‘relationship rule’ that we both enforced. I thought that her also showing a same need for me to be available for a call when I showered or that I also update when I left that it was okay. Somehow I only see how fucked up this was now and feel extremely guilty and clueless as to how the darkest parts of me got me to lose her. Her parents found out and now she has been taken away.