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whatsnewalycat · 2 years

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Psychomanteum / Chapter 1

Pairing: Dieter Bravo x F!Reader

Chapter 1: Honey, This Mirror Isn't Big Enough for the Two of Us

Rating: Explicit (18+ only)

Series Summary: You've recently taken on the customer-facing responsibilities of the small-scale cannabis bakery you and your late husband ran out of your apartment, which introduces you to occasional customer, Dieter Bravo. A friendship is sparked when you realize you have something in common: you've both died. What Dieter doesn't tell you about his near-death experience, though, is that it foretold his life with you.

Word Count: 6.2k+

Content / Warnings: alternating POV, death, sitting shiva, stitches / scars, cannabis, edibles, drug use, alcohol use, haunted mirrors, spooky stuff, verbal argument, face slap, cheating, sexual grieving, a dick named Glenn, meet cute

Notes: Chapter title from "Honey, This Mirror Isn't Big Enough for the Two of Us" by My Chemical Romance. Hey friends! I have a couple things right off the bat: (1) the reader has a name (Louella/Lou/Lua) and has scars and tattoos, but no other physical descriptors; (2) I'll be trying to release new chapters on Saturdays.

[ Tag List ] [ AO3 ] [ Title Song ]

When people ask what it’s like to die, you’re supposed to tell them it’s terrible, even though it isn't. Like leaving a shitty yelp review for a restaurant when you actually really loved the food, but you have a vendetta against the owner and their staff.

Death Louella F. Rating: 0/10 Scary as fuck. Not in a cool, vintage way like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but in more of a can-you-believe-people-cream-their-pants-over-this-shit way like Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight. Ugh. They sent me away at the door and wouldn’t even tell me why. RUDE!!!! I would rather die than go back.

It’s only polite, after all. If everyone knew that it fucking rules to be dead, nobody would stay here in these decaying bodies, on this doomed fucking rock floating through space. So, when your good friends (like good good friends) ask, you give them the inside scoop.

Death Louella F. Rating: 10/10 The single most magical thing to happen to me during my existence in the mortal realm. Truly ethereal. I only had the 1 hour trial, and I wanted upgrade to the forever package, but my dad forced me to return to my meatbag (BOOO!). Can’t wait to do it again. Absolutely TO DIE FOR!!!

That’s why, now, when your just ok friend Kourtney comes over on the last day of sitting shiva in your apartment, and she asks you what was it like to die? in the same cadence she asks how's your mom?, you don’t tell her the truth.

You don’t tell her than every waking moment you’re alive now is torture because you don't understand why you weren’t allowed access to the club. Why could Ethan go, but not you? What could you possibly have left to do that doesn’t include him?

Instead, you give her a wane smile and joke, “Oh, ya know, I had better shit to do, so here I am.”

Her big sky blue eyes soften and her shoulders slump when you tell her this. Then she threads her blonde eyebrows together and gives a sympathetic frown, “Oh, honey.”

No matter how many times you try this line, everyone responds with pity. You need some new material. Kourtney wanders off into the kitchen before you can respond.

When you look around the living room from your vantage point on a sitting stool, you briefly notice that all of the other visitors are gravitating towards the kitchen, too. Then the opaque black stain that looks like a black hole in the middle of your otherwise pristinely white carpet catches your eye. You tilt your head as you study it, wondering how it can be so impossibly dark.

“Are you ready, Lou?” your father-in-law, Adam, asks you from across the room.

You lift your gaze and look around at the other sitters, realizing they're all staring at you expectantly.

“Yeah, yep,” you finally respond, then get to your feet. They follow suit.

After gathering their belongings, Ethan's immediate family crowds around your apartment's entryway to bid their farewells. His mom and dad tell you that they’ll call you in a few days to check in on you. You believe it. Unlike everyone else that promised you’d “talk soon,” Adam and Sarah mean it.

"If you need anything, and I mean anything at all, please don't hesitate to call us," Sarah tells you, then scoops you into a great big hug. When she pulls away, she holds you by the shoulders and stares at you with tears pooling in those brown eyes that break your fucking heart. You look away when you say goodbye.

Your stepson, Ben, literally scoffs when you tell him to call you if he wants to talk about it. Which is just like a 16-year old to do. When his mom is distracted, fussing over your stepdaughter, you try to level with Ben.

"Listen. I know. I know people just say that. My dad died when I was 16, too. It fucking sucks. And I get it. So if you wanna talk to someone who knows which shade of 'this fucking sucks' you're going through, I'm your guy."

This time when he responds, the snotty tone is gone. It's replaced by a morose veil over his eyes and he just nods, "Ok."

The 12-year old, Talia, saves your phone number and tells you she’ll send you snapchats.

Even though you iterate these comforting half-promises to communicate in the future, when you tell Ethan's kids you’d “talk soon,” you don’t mean it. They don’t, either. But that’s alright. You never thought the too-little-too-late maternal bonding would stick, anyway.

Once the last mourning visitor leaves, and door clicks shut, you deadbolt it, and you’re... alone. It's surreal. Moping around the silent apartment, you reorganize things to your liking, collect sitting stools, and tug the fabric off the mirrors. You're stunned momentarily after each reflection you unveil.

The person you see is a stranger. Your skin is very Bride of Frankenstein, stitched together with pieces of tattooed corpses. Just over a week ago, your body was twisted and mangled, but doctors slapped you back together in time to bury your husband. Briefly, you consider covering all of the mirrors again until you're farther along in the healing process, but decide against it. What the fuck does it matter, anyway.

For at least five minutes, you're anchored in front of the spare bedroom door, its key pinched tightly between your thumb and index finger. You locked it last week to keep nosy visitors from poking around during shiva. God only knows what kind of shit they would stumble upon, considering how out-of-control Ethan was towards the end. Not to mention the deep freezer filled with bulk amounts of flower and cannabutter.

There are two huge mirrors in the room that you want to uncover. But this room is- well, was- his space. On most days, he spent hours in there, isolating, listening to music, hanging out with friends, or whatever else. Not like you'd know, since it was just another club you weren't invited to join. A deep sense of foreboding infiltrated your psyche when you covered the damned things, and it somehow feels worse now.

A fuzzy, uncomfortable buzzing starts under your skin as you stare at the old brass door knob. You’re just about to say fuck it and try again later when something clatters from inside the room. Your hands work on their own accord. They slide the skeleton key into its slot, then turn the knob and push the door open. It swings back on its hinges with a groan and butts up against the doorstop with a thud.

The room is neat and clean, like it was a week ago, but you immediately notice two things that make your hair stand on end:

The picture frame

The mirrors

When moving into this apartment, Ethan insisted the 4x6” ceramic picture frame be transported on your lap from the dumpy apartment in Bushwick. His little brother, Benji, gave it to him for his birthday the summer before he fell through the ice. The photo depicts a 12-year old Ethan with his arm around his little brother’s shoulders, both smiling from ear-to-ear as they hold up the fish they caught off the dock of their childhood home in Eagle Bay, NY.

One bare nail stands erect on the navy blue wall. That’s where it was hanging when you locked the door last week. But now, the picture frame is propped up by the easel back in the middle of the shiny hardwood floor.

It doesn’t make sense.

On the westernmost and easternmost walls, the matching set of Regency era mirrors, which hang across from one another, are uncovered. Their intricate bevels are illuminated by the fading sun, casting shadows into the mahogany frames. The bedsheets you covered them with last week are crumpled on the floor beneath them.

“Why are you covering the mirrors?” you asked your great-grandma, watching her from the doorframe of your parents’ room with curiosity. Her paper-thin skin drooped over the hills and valleys of her hands, shifting over bones and blood vessels as she secured a white cotton bedsheet to the full-length mirror with clothespins.

“So his spirit doesn’t get trapped inside,” she explained simply.

You shake the memory from your head.

They’re just mirrors.

Ignoring every cell in your body that screams at you to get the fuck out, you take a few cautious steps forward, then pick the picture frame up off the ground. The pad of your thumb rubs against the smooth finish of the white ceramic. An ache radiates across your chest as you stare at the young boys with their matching smiles, backdropped by tall pines and open waters. Suspended in time, happy and carefree in their favorite place.

Now they’re both fucking dead.

The urge to cry tingles at the back of your throat. You look up at the bare nail sticking out of the wall across the room and march towards it. A shiver of warning runs down your spine as you walk past the antique mirrors. You mount the frame on the wall in its place.

But then you’re frozen.

Spiders are crawling around inside your spinal column, spinning webs, exploring every inch. And, it’s fucking insane, just childhood memories fucking with your head, but you swear you feel eyes on your back. A shudder racks your body. You look straight down at your feet, holding all of your concentration steady on them as you turn around towards the door.

The buzzing in your bones intensifies. Instinct engrained in the folds of your brain for a millennia, since homo sapiens were hunters and gatherers, urges you to look up look up look up because someone is watching you. Hunting you.

Fighting your seized muscles, you make yourself take one step forward.

Adrenaline floods your bloodstream and spurs you into action without thought. Your feet carry you past the mirrors, out of the room. The spiders mobilize, scurrying inside your spine, making you nauseous. As your trembling hands fumble with the doorknob, your eyes betray you.

They flick to the westernmost mirror.

And just barely… you think you see someone staring back at you.

“What is this?” Anika’s Bulgarian accent is the first thing Dieter hears as she shakes him out of sleep. His response is to roll away from the nuisance and pull the white duvet over his head. She jumps off of the bed and yanks the blanket away from him in a series of furious tugs as she hisses, “No. No sleep. Get up.”

When she succeeds in retrieving the whole blanket, she throws it on the floor by her feet, exposing Dieter's naked body to the megawatt afternoon sun. The intrusion sets him off, and he groans, pinching his nose in response to the headache throbbing in his eyes and nose, “Fuckin’ a, Annie, what?”

Sitting up, eyes still closed, he grumbles, “What could be so fucking important-“ he cracks open an eye, throwing his palm down against the mattress in frustration, then sees the headline displayed the iPhone she's holding in front of his face.

LEAKED: DIETER BRAVO PARTYING WITH INSTAGRAM MODEL

He squints as he reads it again, then snatches the phone away, scrolling through the short article on the tabloid magazine DIRT’s website.

The Cliff Beasts 6 star, Dieter Bravo, was spotted with Instagram model, Lilly Stokes, getting hot-and-heavy at several LA nightclubs late last night. Reportedly, the duo were heavily intoxicated, seen taking shots and snorting lines of illicit substances. In the photos obtained by DIRT, the disheveled Bravo, sporting a half-buttoned floral shirt and jeans, can be seen groping Stokes, dressed in a hot pink slip dress and stilettos, as she straddles the actor in a roped-off section of Aspect’s VIP lounge. This scandal is surfacing amid rumors of Bravo’s marriage with Anika Bravo being strained to the breaking point. Dieter and Anika met in 2020 during the filming of Cliff Beasts 6, a film made infamous by the hit documentary Beasts of the Bubble. The couple tied the knot in 2021, immediately following their escape from Clifton Hotel. In one of their only public appearances together, the newlywed couple raised eyebrows when they brought fitness guru Kate Ridley with as their date to the Beasts of the Bubble premiere. Since then, the Academy Award winning actor has been under fire for alleged infidelity and drug abuse, as well as displaying bizarre behavior, such as his appearance on The View in September, when he told host Meghan McCain that he “hopes hell is real so (her) dad burns there forever.”

As promised, the article includes a slideshow of photos depicting him and Lilly making out in a booth at Aspect the previous night. Dieter tosses the phone to the side, and all he can do is shrug, staring up at her with cold eyes, “Whaddya wanna know?”

They sit here like this for a beat, frozen in their stubbornness. As if he doesn’t know the question on her mind.

She blinks, swallows hard, and crosses her arms in front of her body. Then finally breaks and asks, “Is it true?”

As if she doesn’t know the answer.

He grinds his jaw back and forth, considering the consequences of what he’ll say next. She stares at him.

Fuck it.

“Yeah,” he admits to his wife, averting his gaze as he runs his fingers through his hair, “Yeah I fucked her.”

Anika rears back, then slaps him across the face, gritting her teeth together as she growls, “FUCK YOU!”

His cheek stings as her palm jerks his head to the side. He deserves that.

Sure, he could have lied, but there’s no use in denying it. There he was, caught on camera with Lilly's tongue down his throat and his hands up her dress. From there, they stumbled into the bathroom of the club. He gave the bathroom attendant $200 to guard the door. Then, he snorted coke off her perfect tits, bent her over the granite top sink, and fucked her speechless.

The bathroom attendant won’t be speechless, though. Dieter is sure that for another $200 from any number of tabloids, the gangly, pasty skinned kid would unzip his rubber band lips and tell all.

"Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do, Annie!? You won't fucking touch me!" the cords of his neck stick out as he leans forward barks this into her face.

"Don't deserve to be touched," she spits, narrowing her eyes as she inches so close he can feel her breathe, "Leave me alone all the time. Do you know how lonely I am, Dieter? What kind of man leaves me alone all the time?"

"Fucking AGAIN with this. Really? Every fucking time I come home, it's all I hear," Dieter stands up out of bed and stomps over to the closet, Anika hot on his trail. He starts mocking her, using an exaggerated Bulgarian accent, "Oh I'm so sad, you leave me alone in this big house with all this money, oh nooo!," then he turns on his heel to scoff in her face, "Get over it, for fuck's sake. It's tired."

Her shoulders sag. He knows he went to far. He’s being mean. Cruel, even. But he can't stop. His father’s anger, flooding from his hindbrain through his mouth.

"It's how I feel, Dieter," she squeaks, big brown eyes filling with tears. He starts digging through drawers of the built-in dresser for boxer briefs, then stuffs his legs into a pair. She sobs, "I didn't know it would be like this. So lonely."

"Yeah?! Welcome to my FUCKIN' LIFE!" he screams into her face, then rips a shirt off the hanger and pulls it over his head before storming off.

You sink down into your purple velvet couch and turn on the TV. Fresh-out-the-shower damp hair sticks to your cheek when you rest your head on a black and white checkered pillow. In an attempt to take your mind off what you thought you saw in the spare bedroom earlier, you flip through various streaming services for a distraction. However, your attention is drawn to the shiva candle dwindling down on the fireplace mantle.

Each time it flickers, dread seizes your heart. You hold your breath and watch it, unblinking, until it steadies.

It happens again.

And again.

Your eyes flit to the opaque black ink stain in the middle of your carpet, only for a moment. But it's long enough. When you look back to the candle, the flame is gone. Black smoke curls and dances in celebration around a glowing orange wick.

He’s gone.

This fact creeps into your consciousness slowly, but surely. The same way the cold settles into your bones when the temperature is below freezing. It starts off fine, maybe a little brisk, but manageable. Then your nose, fingers, and toes start to feel frosty. Before you know it, you can't stop shivering, and can't even remember what warmth felt like.

Hugging your knees to your chest, you squeeze every ounce of oxygen from your lungs. Your brain prompts you to inhale. The breath comes as a shattered gasp, and your chest heaves, but the well of pain is too far underground. The tears don't come. You’re unable to tap into it and release the pressure that's been building for nine days. You're about to fucking explode.

Your gaze shifts to the window. It’s dark outside. You try to decide who to reach out to for support. Each person you consider would come over and sit with you as they awkwardly make conversation. They would probably try to talk to you about Ethan, or tell you about how their friend’s cousin had a husband croak on them and they did abc, then xyz, and voilà! They’re cured!

And you just can’t with that shit right now. You don’t want to be pitied. You want to have a normal conversation. One where you aren’t expected to cry and talk about it. You want to be how you were before.

How you were before, but without him.

“Whiskey neat,” Dieter tells the bartender without looking his way.

When he glances up into the mirror behind the bar, he sees the version of himself that Anika hates the most. Mop of curly brown hair stuffed under a baseball cap, sunglasses covering half his face, wearing sweatpants and whatever t-shirt he happened to pull off the hanger before heading out the door.

“Airport Dee,” her lip would curl up and touch the columella of her nose, “I don’t like him.”

“Airport Dee means Working Dee, which is better than Broke Dee, right?” he would try to reason, meeting her eyes over his sunglasses, tugging her closer for a kiss goodbye.

She would arch a brow and back away from him, her sneer firmly in place, “I like Home Dee the most.”

The last few times he left, he didn’t even say goodbye. He thinks that maybe Airport Dee isn’t the version of him she hates the most anymore.

His phone buzzes. He pulls it out of his pants pocket to see the text from his wife.

> ANNIEBABY: > If u get on the flight, we’re done

An amused laugh trickles from his throat. The bartender, a handsome, tall, blonde man with terrific posture, slides a coaster in front of Dieter, then places the lowball glass on top of it. Just in time. Dieter picks it up and swallows it in one go, then tells the bartender, who’s foolishly walking away, “Another.”

The bartender turns on his heel and raises a well-kept eyebrow at Dieter, who responds by reaching into his wallet and slamming a $100 bill onto the bar, advising, “This is your tip if you keep ‘em coming and don’t fucking look at me like that again.”

“You got it, boss,” the man responds as he grabs a bottle of bourbon and flips it upside down over Dieter’s cup.

The phone starts buzzing again, but this time it’s his publicist. He picks up with a cheeky, “Darlene, it’s been ages, what in the world could you possibly be calling me about?”

“Just wanted to call and let you know you’re making my life a living fucking hell today,” she volleys the same faux-sweetness back to him.

“Welcome to the club,” he mumbles.

“How’s your wife?”

“Terrible, she’s leaving me,” Dieter drops this bomb, then tells her, “Hey, I’m boarding a flight for the, uhh- the screen test thing, I’ll call you later.”

“Dieter, don’t you fu-“

He hangs up and puts his phone in airplane mode. Morphine was such a good idea.

Instead of the all-consuming anxiety that typically accompanies one’s name trending on Twitter, all Dieter feels is an overwhelming sense of fuck it. That’s what morphine is good for, after all. Not for all the time, though. Just emergencies.

He imagines a bottle of MS Contin but instead of the prescription label it just reads EMERGENCY OBLIVION.

“Having a rough day?” the bartender asks, looking from the discarded phone to Dieter’s smiling face as he leans against the bar.

Dieter giggles and shakes his head, “Fuck off, you don’t care.”

“I- I care,” the bartender frowns, then pushes off and stands up straight.

“You don’t. Not really. You’re just nosy,” Dieter grins with a shrug.

He downs the whiskey, slams the cup against the bartop, then points to it. The bartender refills the cup and fucks off. Dieter sighs with satisfaction and floats into the abyss.

About mid-way through your third vodka cranberry, you start to feel more comfortable in your skin.

A short-statured man hangs his winter coat on the back of the barstool next to you and sits down. A green knit cap hides any indication of hair on top of his head, although a trimmed beard hints that it'll be dark brown if he has any. When he looks your direction through thick rimmed glasses frames, you meet his honey brown eyes and you smile.

Granted, it’s not a smile you really mean, but he’s cute and he sat right next to you at a bar that has plenty of other open seats, so, you’ll play the part.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” he inquires, gaze trailing up and down your form.

You shake your head, “Not at all.”

“Thanks,” he gives you a wide smile, then flags down the bartender and orders a drink.

You sit back and look up to the flatscreen TV playing the Knicks game, pretending to care, watching the teams dribble a basketball from one side of the court to the other. Back and forth, back and forth. It seems so fucking pointless.

“You a Knicks fan?” he asks, following your line of sight to the TV.

“Hmm?” you blink, then realize you are furrowing your brow up at the game as if you’re interested, “Oh, no. I don’t give a shit.”

This makes him laugh. He shows you those pearly whites again, then extends his hand to you, “I’m Dante.”

“Louella,” your hand meets his. It’s warm and sandpapery. His thumb rubs against the back of your hand as you shake.

You ponder what this stranger’s hands would feel like on other parts of your body. What it would feel like to forget, just for a while, that Ethan’s hands were the last ones to touch you. What it would feel like to forget that he’ll never touch you again.

“That’s a really pretty name,” he comments, not letting go of your hand, not ceasing the movement of his thumb on your skin. A tingle trickles down the middle of you and produces goosebumps across your flesh.

It’s the only enjoyable sensation that has managed to rise above the soul-crushing emptiness of the past week and a half. Your skin aches and yearns for more.

You try to stretch your smile wide and make your eyes sparkle as if you’ve never heard that before, “Thank you, Dante.”

“Can I buy you a drink?” he lets go, then leans forward against the bar.

Your eyes flick from his thick lips to his honey brown eyes and you nod.

“Dieter fucking Bravo!” Glenn hollers at his longtime friend as Dieter approaches the well-dressed table.

Friend might not be the right word. Enabler is probably closer to the truth. His nasally voice booms across the dining room, earning a few disgruntled stares from the highbrow patrons expecting a quiet lunch on the Upper East Side.

Dieter offers a nod in the general direction of the outburst, then pulls out the chair perpendicular to Glenn and plops down, picking up the menu as he scoots in his seat.

A peeved, but incredibly handsome, waiter comes to the table and pours ice water in a glass for the new arrival, “Welcome, sir. Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Whiskey neat,” Dieter answers, then dismisses the waiter's presence as he glances around the room through tortoiseshell Ray-Bans and tells Glenn, “You finally got your wish. Anika is filing for divorce.”

“About fucking time,” Glenn guffaws and claps his hands together, “Was it the thing with the uh, what’s that broad’s name, Bailey?”

“Lilly,” Dieter corrects.

“Lilly,” Glenn repeats, “Irregardless, congratulations, my friend. Welcome to the divorcee club!”

Dieter’s face scrunches up in disdain at the enthusiasm as he mutters sarcastically, “It’s an honor.”

“We should celebrate,” Glenn winks.

He knows Glenn well enough to know that "celebrate" means "go on an alcohol and drug binge so outrageous, you'll be trying to chase that high for a year." And, fuck, that sounds like a slice of heaven. The last time he "celebrated" with Glenn was pre-COVID. They were awake for 2-days straight, going to nightclubs, stripclubs, country clubs, whatever. It was a blast.

He thinks it was, at least.

“I don’t have to go back to the studio ‘til Wednesday, so I’m game,” Dieter gives a small grin, then rubs his hands together.

The waiter returns with Dieter’s drink and takes their order, then talk of celebrating recommences. Glenn leans over, trying to be as discreet as his voice can manage, “What kind of stuff ya looking for?”

Dieter ponders this, leaning back in his chair as he rolls head on his shoulders and sips his drink. The first thing that comes to mind are these "special" baked goods he gets sometimes when he’s in New York. The guy hand delivers them, and they were better than any pastries he’s eaten otherwise, “straight” or not.

“Doesn’t matter. I just want to get out of my fuckin' head. I’m gonna see if I can get some of those edibles we got last time. The pastries, what’re they called?” Dieter snaps his fingers together trying to jog his memory.

“Cookies?”

Dieter scoffs and shakes his head, “You think I don’t know what a fucking cookie is? No, it was like a donut.”

“Like a…” Glenn screws his face up and shrugs, then takes a sip of his old fashioned, “Like a long john?”

Idiot. Dieter pulls out his phone, clearing notifications from the Lock Screen from his lawyer, Darlene, and Anika, then sends a text message to Ethan.

< ME: < In NYC. Want what I got last time, can u do that?

“I texted the guy,” Dieter advises, then briefly looks at the last message he received from Anika.

> ANNIEBABY: > My father was right about u

He ignores the sharp stab in his chest at this remark, remembering how hard it was to convince her dad that he wasn’t a piece of shit. Just as he’s about to hide his phone again, it buzzes.

> ETHAN NYC: > Idk what you got last time. $150/ dozen pastries. $100/ 2 dozen cookies. $50/ 4 brownies. Have to pick up here now FYI, in downtown Brooklyn.

< ME: < Ok. Surprise me. 12 pastries, 24 cookies, 12 brownies.

> ETHAN NYC: > You got it. Should be ready by tomorrow afternoon. I’ll text you the address when they’re ready.

“Alright, edibles won’t be ready 'til tomorrow, but it’ll be worth the wait,” Dieter announces to Glenn, who’s also fucking around on his phone.

Glenn nods, then looks up around the room and back to Dieter, leaning in as he asks, “So you wanna go do a few lines in the bathroom, or what?”

Once the second-to-last order has been picked up, you pour yourself a glass of wine. It's noon, which you consider a socially acceptable time to start drinking.

You turn the stereo on and start prepping for the next day while you sip wine and sing along to the music on your baking playlist. Aside from getting fucked by Dante in the bar bathroom the other night, baking is the only thing that has taken your mind off of the fact that Ethan is dead.

It's the stupid little things you wouldn't have expected that sting the most.

His prescription refill reminders dinging on your phone. Leftover takeout from the day before the accident starting to emit an unacceptable odor. A package arriving yesterday from something he ordered online. You stare at the nondescript cardboard box now, as it sits next to the stack of outgoing pastry boxes, and wonder what's inside.

All of these things and the deep ache they cultivate... but you still haven't cried. Everything feels so far away, like it's not real. Is this normal? Are you broken?

You swallow the remaining wine in your glass and refill it.

There’s a buzz on the intercom. You pad over to the screaming box, holding your wine glass by the stem as you press the DOOR button.

A knock sounds on the door a minute later, so you turn the stereo down from a roar to a murmur. You open the door to reveal a broad, relatively tall, tan-skinned man. Pillowy lips fold in a frown and he narrows his dark eyes at you. His age shows in the creases of his face and the sparse grays in his patchy facial hair.

“Hi,” you greet the unrefined, but notably handsome, stranger, “Come on in.”

He does so cautiously, furrowing his brow with confusion as he peers around the apartment like a frightened animal, and you explain for the 8th time today while extending your hand to him, “I’m Louella. I’m Ethan’s wife.”

“Dieter,” he meets your hand and shakes it, avoiding eye contact. When he turns his head to the side to examine your kitchen, you catch a glimpse of his profile and feel the urge to run a finger down the center of his aquiline nose.

“Ohhh!” you exclaim as your face heats up, “DEE-ter! Not DIET-er. It’s your name! That makes sense.”

He runs a hand through his mess of curly brown hair, “Yeah.”

When he does this, his knit sweater pulls up over the waistband of his jeans and exposes his bellybutton. Your eyes fall on the soft section of his broad body and you suddenly can’t tell if your mouth is dry, or if you’re drooling, but you swallow hard, and- is it fucking hot in here?

“Sorry,” you shake your head and feel the heat of embarrassment creep up your neck as you make your way over to the kitchen counter, “I just, um, I haven’t really met any of our clients in person. I thought maybe you were someone on a diet? I don’t know. Ethan had all kinds of weird fucking code names for people.”

“I didn’t know Ethan was married,” Dieter comments as he pinches one nostril closed and sniffs, then rolls the sleeves on his sweater up to his elbows. His jaw is clenched like he’s grinding his teeth. He’s practically fucking vibrating.

This dude is coked the fuck up.

“Technically, he’s not anymore, because he’s dead,” you nod, then clear your throat and try to move on to the next subject as you fidget with your apron, “But yeah, I’ve always done the baking, so it’ll be just as good. I just can’t drive. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

His head jerks back and he unleashes a booming, bright laugh that brings an actual smile to your face, “Did you… did you just yadda yadda the fact that he’s dead?”

“Mhmm, yeah,” you laugh nervously. Your entire head is lit ablaze up now as your attention is drawn to his gorgeous smile, “This is like the tenth time I’ve done this today, I’m a little desensitized to it.”

His cheeriness disintegrates as he realizes he's laughing about your recently deceased spouse.

“I’m-“ Dieter’s mouth gapes open and he tries to generate a response. You meet his glossy eyes, and notice now that his pupils are blown out so wide over the dark brown irises, they appear black. They remind you of Ethan. The black ink stain on your carpet.

And they’re filled to the brim with that annoying fucking look. Pity.

“Don’t- don’t say you’re sorry,” you sigh, real smile waning into one that’s painfully forced, then gesture to the stack of boxes on the counter, “Just pay me and you can be on your way.”

Dieter climbs into the backseat and sets the pastry boxes between himself and Glenn. He can’t shake the puzzled look from his face. Glenn lifts the cover off one of the boxes and grabs a brownie as the driver starts off down the street.

“What?” Glenn asks with a mouth still full of brownie. His dilated eyes search Dieter’s face, narrowing with suspicion.

Dieter frowns as he scratches the scruff on his chin, then snaps his head back and forth, cracking his neck, “That was weird.”

“Why? Did he hit on you or something?” Glenn’s words form around the food in his mouth. Dieter’s lip curls in disdain at the homophobic implication. He swears Glenn forgets that Dieter is not straight sometimes.

“No,” he scoffs and turns to dig a pastry out of the box in spite of the cocaine buzzing through his veins, suppressing his appetite.

When he bites into it, he finds it’s exactly the one he was trying to think of yesterday. Apple Danish. His shoulders wiggle and he groans in delight as the flaky crust gives way to apple filling inside. He swallows and clears his throat, “No, it wasn’t even him, it was his wife. The guy died.”

“She hot?” Glenn asks, not looking up from his examination of the remaining brownie.

Dieter nods as he chews, raising his eyebrows to indicate fuck yeah.

“How’d he die?” Glenn questions. His eyes are flicking all around the backseat of the town car, knee bouncing at lightspeed to spend some of his amplified, god-like energy. Dieter can tell he does not give one single fuck, he just wants to move his mouth.

“Didn’t ask,” Dieter takes another bite and throws his head back, groaning “Fuck, that’s good.”

Glenn shoves the rest of the brownie into his cavernous mouth and nods in agreement, “Good call.”

“But, she just casually mentioned that he died,” Dieter shakes his head and swallows the pastry.

“Weird,” Glenn comments in a disinterested tone as he grabs for a bottle of champagne waiting in an ice bucket by his feet.

Dieter licks his fingers and shakes his head again, “That’s not the weird part.”

“Then what the fuck is the weird part?” Glenn snips, growing impatient, all red-hot edges, fueled by cocaine and alcohol.

It wasn’t the off-putting way you spoke about your husband’s death. Or your apartment filled with a haze of loneliness so palpable it felt like someone was squeezing Dieter's heart.

Glenn wipes the brownie crumbs off his hands onto the seat of the car, then passes two champagne flutes to Dieter, who pops the last bite of Apple Danish into his mouth and takes the glasses. The unmistakable champagne POP! makes both the men flinch. Glenn fills both of the glasses that are shaking in Dieter’s unsteady grip. A substantial amount overflows onto the floor of the vehicle.

Dieter takes a swig of the bubbly, then explains, “When I OD’d, before they revived me, I saw her. It was like a memory, man. But it wasn’t, because it didn’t happen yet.”

He thought maybe the wires got crossed with someone else and he got the wrong memory. Fuck, he doesn’t know how it works. In the moments of clarity during his near-death experience, he knew, somehow, that he was seeing the future. His future. Each time he looked back on the experience, though, he grew more unsure.

But you opened that door into your apartment, and it was like déjà vu. High ceilings, purple crushed velvet couch in the living room that reminded him of Prince, pastry boxes stacked on the white granite countertop in the kitchen that looked made for a chef. It smelled like vanilla and pastry crust.

Louella. One of your bare arms looked torn to shreds, tattoos once cohesive now crudely pasted back together, ribbed with newly formed scar tissue. Your smile, the real one, occupied your whole face.

"Weird," Glenn responds. He's scrolling through Twitter on his phone, not even listening.

There was more, though.

Waking up in your bed, morning light spilling onto the two of you like a spotlight, his fingers tracing the map of scars up your leg.

Holding your hand while walking down the icy, snow-dusted sidewalk outside your apartment building.

Kissing you in front of an ordained minister, cheers erupting from the crowd of spectators.

Louella. Who the fuck are you?

[ Next Chapter ]

#dieter bravo x f!reader #dieter bravo x fem!reader #dieter bravo x reader #dieter bravo x you #dieter bravo #pedrostories #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal fandom #pedro pascal character fanfic #pedro pascal character #pedro pascal characters #psychomanteum

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beardedmrbean · 2 years

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US basketball player Brittney Griner has pleaded guilty to drug charges in a Russian court but has denied deliberately breaking the law.

The Olympic gold medallist was detained in February at an airport near Moscow when cannabis oil vape cartridges were allegedly found in her luggage.

"I was in a rush packing and the cartridges accidentally ended up in my bag," she told the court in Khimki.

Her trial began last week on charges that could mean 10 years in jail.

Griner's wife earlier called on President Joe Biden to do "whatever is necessary" to secure her release. Mr Biden told Cherelle Griner he was working to have her freed as soon as possible.

The 31-year-old basketball star, who is accused of possessing and smuggling drugs, had already sent the president a letter saying she was "terrified [she] might be here forever".

Russian government officials have warned the US not to "make noise in public about the case". "The hype and working on the public, with all the love for this genre among modern politicians, currently only disturbs" the court process, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

"I'd like to plead guilty, your honour. But there was no intent. I didn't want to break the law," Brittney Griner told the court in English. In handcuffs and wearing a red T-shirt and trousers, she said she would like to give her testimony later and needed time to prepare. The trial was then adjourned for a week.

Griner is one of the most successful players in the women's professional league in the US, with WNBA team Phoenix Mercury. She has won WNBA and Euroleague titles as well as two Olympic golds. She had travelled to Russia to play club basketball during the off-season and has featured in EuroLeague team UMMC Ekaterinburg since 2014.

Cannabis oil is illegal in Russia, but her high-profile arrest at Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow came a week before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Relations between the US and Russia are in a parlous state and it took several months before the Biden administration made her case a priority. A US National Security Council spokeswoman said on Thursday she was wrongfully detained by Russia under "intolerable circumstances".

Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted that US embassy officials had attended Thursday's hearing and had handed Griner a letter from President Biden: "We will not relent until Brittney, Paul Whelan, and all other wrongfully detained Americans are reunited with their loved ones."

Whelan is serving a 16-year jail term on spying charges rejected by his family as nonsense.

Russia has denied that the player's detention is connected to the icy diplomatic relations with the US, but John Garamendi, a member of the US Congress, warned last month that the war could exacerbate the issue. "We don't want Ms Griner to become a pawn in the political battle that's being waged throughout the world right now."

There has been speculation that even if Brittney Griner is given a jail term Russia may be prepared to exchange her or Paul Whelan for a high-profile Russian prisoner in a US jail, such as arms dealer Viktor Bout. Dubbed "Merchant of Death", Bout was jailed for 25 years after he was caught in a US sting operation in Thailand.

Cherelle Griner earlier told a rally organised by her wife's Phoenix Mercury team: "I'm frustrated that 140 days have passed since my wife has been able to speak to me, to our family and to our friends. I'm frustrated that my wife is not going to get justice."

#nunyas news #now to see if clemency is granted

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santiagoni001 · 1 month

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female-buckets · 2 years

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When Jonathan Franks first heard that the American basketball star Brittney Griner had been detained in Russia, his initial sense was one of disbelief.

But it wasn't any kind of incredulity that she'd been arrested accused of possession of some cannabis oil at an airport near Moscow, more that any western media would relay the details of her alleged crime as if it was fact.

"This is being reported as if people are taking these allegations seriously," he told CNN. "I think that it's a huge mistake to report these allegations as if they're true or even are likely to be true."

Franks was immediately suspicious, because he has worked on behalf of numerous American citizens who have unexpectedly found themselves in similar situations with hostile governments. He's currently the campaign spokesman for Trevor Reed, who has been detained in Russia since August 2019.

Based on the limited information that has been provided by the Russian Federal Customs Service and state media, Franks is very concerned about the predicament that Griner now finds herself to be in.

"This has a lot of hallmarks of a very wrongful and arbitrary detention," he explained. "I found the video from the Russian customs service odd. They're parading her before cameras. The mugshot was completely unnecessary and asinine."

The Russian Customs Service claims that Griner was 'smuggling significant amounts of narcotic substances' and says that a criminal case is underway. A potential jail sentence of 10 years has been mentioned.

"They're making her out to sound like a drug kingpin. I think that it is unlikely that Ms. Griner will get a fair trial," concludes Franks, "because nobody gets a fair trial in Russia. It's a rigged game."

In 2014, the American Iranian journalist Jason Rezaian was detained in Tehran. He couldn't have known it at the time, but he was in for a long stay at Iran's notorious Evin Prison: 544 days.

The Washington Post reporter was eventually released in January 2016, and in Griner's case he sees many parallels to his own. "It's the most audacious hostage taking by a state imaginable," Rezaian told CNN.

"I know from my own case that the supposed charges against me were not based in anything like reality, and they were used to perpetuate a narrative about why I was being held."

Like Franks, Rezaian cautions against repeating the allegations against Griner verbatim.

"I think that every time reporters repeat that narrative, we're doing some of the dirty work of the hostage takers for them. My attitude is Brittney Griner is innocent of any crimes until the world sees otherwise," adds Rezaian.

It's still not exactly clear when Griner was apprehended in Russia, but it was some time in February, as she was returning from the States to compete for UMMC Ekaterinburg in the Russian basketball league.

It's Griner's seventh season in Russia, where she plays during the off-season in North America. News of her predicament didn't arrive in the US until March 5, when Russia revealed that they were holding her.

Only then did Griner's wife, Cherelle, begin writing about it on Instagram. "There are no words to express this pain," she said. "I'm hurting, we're hurting."

If she can indeed be classified as a 'hostage,' Griner will join an unenviable club of around more than 50 American citizens who are currently held hostage or wrongfully detained overseas.

Campaigners have been working to free Americans Reed and Paul Whelan, who are both in Russia.

Whilst acknowledging that Griner's family have been placed under an enormous amount of emotional stress, Rezaian believes they should have spoken up sooner.

"They made the same mistake that I see others making time and again, allowing the possible hostage taker to take control of the narrative," says Rezaian.

"Unfortunately, we see people telling themselves: 'This is all just a big mistake that's going to blow over in a few days.' Suppressing her detention isn't doing her any favors, these things don't magically resolve themselves."

The timing of Griner's detention could hardly be worse, she was arrested in the lead-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and it was publicized only after the US had begun sanctioning the Russian government.

"You can't extricate these things from each other," Rezaian explained. "To try and maintain diplomatic niceties around these situations may be in the interest of US national security, but it's certainly not in the interest of Brittney Griner."

Rezaian urges Griner's family to speak up and encourages her American employers to make some noise.

Griner is a two-time Olympic champion, a seven-time all-star with the Phoenix Mercury and a legend of the women's professional league, the WNBA. Whilst her team and the league have issued brief statements, Rezaian says they could and should be doing so much more.

"The WNBA, a part of the NBA, one of the biggest and most powerful sports leagues in the whole world, has a real responsibility to this individual," he says. "There should be a robust response."

In the vacuum of information about Griner's situation, some have sought to fill the airwaves with commentary about her involvement with Russian basketball and the wisdom of her decision to travel there at a time when geo-political tensions in the region resembled a powder keg.

It's a sentiment that smacks of victim-blaming. "It's irrelevant," says Rezaian. "It's not a credible argument."

Franks is equally dismissive. "Would have, could have, should have. It's Monday morning quarterbacking, and it's not helpful," he says. "They have welcomed her to that country to work. To me, that's pretty brazen."

Both men say that Griner had every right to continue working as a professional athlete in Russia, and the fact that a country in which she was well known and celebrated has now locked her up only makes the allegations against her more suspicious.

Rezaian recalls the countless trips he made in and out of Iran over a period of five years. "I never had any problems until I did," he says. "Is that my fault? No, absolutely not."

It's hard for anybody to predict what the coming weeks and months will bring in Griner's case, but Rezaian draws on his own experience to suggest that Griner might have to prepare for a long stay in Russia.

"It may turn out to be a marathon, not a sprint. You hope that it's a sprint but conserve your energy in a way that that will benefit you throughout this ordeal," he says.

In a podcast called '544 Days,' that he released in October 2021, Rezaian details the anxiety, uncertainty, and monotony of his detention in Iran. He says he made the audio series partly to lay out a roadmap to the families of other citizens that may one day find themselves in a similar situation.

"I tried to find things to laugh at every day because there's certainly a lot of absurdity in these situations," he adds.

"That doesn't take away from the horror and the terror of it, but the absurdity that a great American athlete is being held on unsubstantiated charges at the dawn of a cataclysmic war on the other side of the world? It is horrifying, but it's also farcical in its own way."

Franks knows from his time of advocating for Reed that Griner could be detained for a while.

He urges everybody that cares about her to keep her case in the public arena.

"Sports fans can play a huge role because they're not a constituency that I think the [American] government is hearing from," says Franks.

"You want to see Brittney Griner come home? Or Trevor Reed or Paul Whelan or any of the other 50 hostages? I would suggest calling the White House every day and telling them you want President Biden to prioritize the repatriation of wrongfully detained American citizens."

Franks reiterates that Griner's family should do the same. "There's a difficult choice to make about whether to speak or not to but shine a light," he says. "If it were my loved one, my answer would be shine a light. Every time.

"People that do wrongful detention are oddly sensitive to bad headlines."

#honestly these are good points...#i'm still not convinced a quiet response is better #is a quiet response better for the WNBA? probably #is a quiet response better for BG? maybe not #wospo #brittney griner #phoenix mercury #wnba

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illumisbundles · 3 years

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i am requesting anything sero mainly bc i trust you with my baby daddy

this was honestly supposed to be cute and fluffy but something happened along the way and it ended up being a one-shot, lmao. but here’s your spicy-sero-flavored juice. 😗✨

content warning(s): jealous!dom!sero × sub!fem!reader; cannabis usage; exhibitionism (i think?); light degradation; some spanking; fingering; edging; cockwarming

minors dni!

— IT REALLY WASN’T WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE. you and mina were at the bar mingling, but she left to go quickly use the bathroom, leaving you and a purple-haired bartender alone. he saw this as an opportunity to strike up a conversation, which you happily engaged in. but you didn’t think anything of it, not that you were able to, really. you were a bit tipsy, and he was good company. he had a dry humor about him that you liked, and you found yourself laughing at his jokes. not to mention his pretty, amethyst eyes that you found yourself gazing at. they were just so purple, and you hadn’t seen anything like it before. you also hadn’t realized that he was flirting with you but it was okay, because (un)luckily, your boyfriend, sero, noticed for you.

so now the two of you were in the women’s bathroom with the door locked, you being bent over the sink with your skirt hiked up, ass sticking out just the way he liked it.

“look at this, you walked out of the house with nothing under this? why, so you could flash the bartender this pretty pink pussy of yours? is that it?” sero growled, smacking your ass with every other word spoken, causing you to shake your head, whimpering behind a bitten lip. but that wasn’t enough of an answer for him. “use your words little girl, stop shaking your head. you seemed to have had no problem earlier.”

“n-no!” you answer with a slight cry, for the man behind you spanked you again. “It wasn’t like that, i swear! we were just talking!”

unfortunately for you, the plea, much like you muffled cries and moans, fell on deaf ears as sero continued to spank your ass. eventually though, he began to get bored with only spanking, and decided to take it up a notch by stuffing his long fingers into your mouth for you to suck on. once he felt that they were wet enough, he pulled them from your mouth and sat them on your already dripping treasure.

“you didn’t need me to prep you, huh? you’re already dripping wet,” he marveled more so to himself, circling your clit with two of his fingers before slipping them inside of you.

“hanta…” you whined as he pumped his fingers as fast as he could inside of you, making your legs shake underneath you.

“open your eyes and look in the mirror,” sero demanded you, and you obeyed, watching as the two of you made eye contact.

sero’s eyes were anything but warm as the whites of it had a slight pinkness to it, indicating that he was a bit under the influence, and his irises were swirling around with lust. he was focused on you, watching the lewd faces you were making while you rutted against his hand to increase the friction.

“yeah, right there,” you moaned as you felt yourself reaching your peak. he looked so fine from behind you, toned arms flexing as he sped up his pace, his ponytail flopping with every thrust he made and dangling crosses that hung from his ear clinking together.

“yeah?” your boyfriend repeated after you, shifting his fingers so that the tips of it would hit that sensitive spot inside of you. “you wanna cum for me, sweetness? let me hear you say it.”

“oh, i’m gonna— shit, yeah, i’m gonna cum for you. hanta, fuck, right there!”

your walls began to clench tightly around his fingers, signaling that you were nearing your climax. his fingers were curling up inside of you and it felt so good, it was almost as if you could taste the bliss that was about to take over your body. but as soon as you going to get there, he snatched his fingers away from your body. he was very lucky your quirk didn’t involve sight because if it did, he’d be dead on the ground. sero only looked back at you, sucking your flavor from off his middle and ring fingers.

“sero what the fuck was that?!” you asked him, almost angry. he raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

“oh you thought i was going to let you cum? only good girls get to do that. now stand up, and let’s go.”

when leaving the bathroom, you could feel sero’s palm sgainst the small of your back, gently guiding you. it was as warm as when he sat his hand on the side of his waist. it felt impersonal, almost, and you knew then that you’d messed up.

“oh there they are!” kirishima exclaimed as the two of you headed back to you all’s section. mina was back from wherever she ran off to, and denki and bakugou were nursing their drinks. “where were you guys, we were looking all over for ya?”

“yeah, sorry. y/n needed to use the bathroom,” sero explained, dragging you back to you guys’ spot in the corner. you were going to sit down next to him but it seemed that sero had other plans when he grabbed you to sit down onto his lap.

he wrapped his arms around you and placed a soft kiss against your neck before whispering into your ear, instructing you to pull out his dick and sit on it.

“sero, here? but—”

“shut the fuck up and just do it,” he growled in your ear, grabbing your hips to lift you up while you (as discreetly as you could) followed his directions. sero then eased you onto his length, whose tip was nearly kissing your cervix. you had to bite back a moan. “and don’t move.”

it was different now that the two of you were back out amongst the people, since the bathroom hat allotted you a bit of privacy. the two of you appeared to be cuddled up, and though very unlikely due to how dark the club is, just knowing that there was a chance of someone catching onto the hell that was breaking loose beneath the table had your adrenaline going, and you had no idea if you liked it or not.

hanta had sparked up another blunt, and was busy occupying himself with that and boy did it drive you wild, watching puffs of smoke in all types of shapes and sizes escape from his airways, only for it to be sucked right back in. you so badly wanted him to grab you by the chin so you could shotgun it, but you knew better than to ask him now. not while he was upset with you.

but while one hand was holding the blunt, the other was busy gripping your thigh, fingertips steadily making their way toward your throbbing heat. they finally reached the meeting of your thighs, and you nearly fell apart. you began to rock your hips against his fingers to create some friction to bring about even the tiniest bit of pleasure, but sero put a stop to that.

“stop moving,” he demanded, slapping the side of your thigh, making you cease your movements. you only swallowed, deciding to obey and just follow directions, not wanting to dig yourself in a bigger hole, and revel in the sensation of sero’s immobilized fingers. “i want you to sit there and think about what you’re missing.”

how couldn’t you? he was being the biggest tease, nevermind the fact that his dick was inside of you, unmoving. but he seemed to be fine, engaging in conversations whenever he felt like it, even including you just to be petty while “rearranging” his position, knowing that it’ll choke you up. all of this over a fucking conversation? you thought. good grief. but you knew better than to voice that, so you stayed quiet for a while, listening in on your friends’ conversations while trying to ignore the sexual frustration that was building up.

“hanta, i wanna go home,” you whined once the boys began talking amongst themselves, no longer able to withstand the feeling of your boyfriend just sitting idly inside of you.

sero looked over at you with lazy eyes, pulling the rolled leaf away from his lips and blowing the smoke in your face before saying, “and i want a girlfriend who doesn’t go around flirting with every man she sees.”

“i wasn’t flirting with him—!”

“who the fuck’re you getting loud with, huh?” he hissed, instantly shutting you up by grabbing you by the throat and gently squeezing the sides of it. “you want to get embarrassed? you want me to let everybody know how much of a slut you are?”

how were you surrounded by future heroes and none of them were noticing what was going on between the two of you? absolutely useless, they’d be.

“no hanta, i—”

“who?” sero asked, squeezing the sides of your neck a bit tighter.

“daddy,” you quickly corrected yourself. “no daddy, i don’t. i’ll be good,

“that’s what i thought, now pipe the fuck down. you’re ruining my high.”

needless to say, you were in for it when the two of you leaving the club.

— unedited.

#𝐑𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄! — ☎️#𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐘! — 🌶#hanta sero #sero x reader #stoner!sero #sero x you #sero x y/n #mha

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maniacelite132 · 3 years

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comicsteve-blog · 4 years

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23ish Things I’ve Learned about the World from Coronavirus.

This is not meant to belittle any of the chaos but to offer some slightly humorous perspective. Here are my quick observations on our new world:

1) ‘Driveway drinks’ are all the rage. - I’m a ‘social social’ distancer (SSD) and proactively socialize from 10-12 feet away. Most of us have reluctantly embraced social distancing. However, if you’re a social person, the creative emphasis is on the “social” part, not the “distance”. New taglines are emerging such as “Hey let’s eat not together”, “Facetime drinks anyone?”, or “Love to see you from 7 feet away!” Personal space will never be…. the …… same.

· (as an aside, there’s definitely a subset of the population who's thrilled to have a valid reason to be as anti-social as possible... you people know who you are).

2) Join me for a scotch by phone! Zoom video happy hours (ZVHH) will be a new thing. And they’re much cheaper to host - I open the Zoom room, you bring your own alcohol. Pants not required.

3) Household dynamics have changed - Stay at home moms & dads now have stressed out working from home husbands & wives, plus children learning at home. You’re forced to share your space, which can cause major distress. Soon each person will be assigned a room. Who gets the kitchen as their safe space? Who gets the bathroom? Trades will be made, fights will occur. I’ll trade you an avocado for use of the toilet.

4) Pre-Corona sanitizing – was there any? With everyone’s justified obsession with constant handwashing and sanitizing, it begs the question: Were we all dirty and unsanitary beforehand?? Was the subway ever sanitary? When was the last time my crappy gym was cleaned? Howie Mandel aside, I’m just not clear on where we stood on cleanliness in the past?

5) Demographic trends are emerging – Here are the top predicted trends that will emerge in the coming months/years: Corona-babies. Corona-divorces. Highest percentage of babies born to the recently divorced. Babies named Corona to honor their conception. Babies born very, very clean.

6) Spouse anxiety inequity (SAI) – This occurs when your spouse is exponentially more worried than you are. You’re ok with washing hands and taking basic precautions. But you’re not as keen to go apesh*t with your paranoia. One spouse is freaking out, the other is fine. Kids are confused, households divided. There are hand washing timers and toilet paper square limits. Of course, intimacy is out of the question until everything has been sufficiently washed for 20 seconds or more.

7) Newfound family time (NFT) - People have discovered things they never knew existed: 1) walks are a thing 2) family togetherness 3) nature. We didn’t need Trump to make America great again, it was the coronavirus. If there’s one thing we can be grateful for: newfound family love 😊. (note: too much of this will promptly lead to divorce).

8) Emails, so many emails! – Every company I’ve ever shopped or transacted at in the past 15 years has sent me emails. I get hundreds a day from businesses I forgot all about. It’s good to be back in touch Pilates studio I went to once 11 years ago! And I’m glad to hear you’re disinfecting your counters.

9) Physical greetings have eternally changed - Hand shaking is gone forever. Fist bumping is thankfully gone. Elbow shakes are a new thing. Head nods are nice. Finger guns are making a strong comeback. What else will emerge?

10) Rules about remote schooling – While teaching virtually, schools are encouraging kids to use Facetime and social media to be safe. Education by Tik-tok?? Despite the near term logic, everything we’ve been yelling at them about the past 10 years is out the window! Between social distancing and strictly electronic communication, I worry if kids will ever learn to talk to people in person? Is eye contact still a thing?

On the other hand, it’s a strange kind of torture for kids to be out of school yet unable to see their friends or play ball in the park.

11) Conversation about anything but Coronavirus is no longer a thing - I for one am burned out. I’m not trying to downplay the chaos; I’m just anxious and frustrated at having the same conversation repeatedly. Can we maybe discuss something else - even for a minute? Still, regardless of whatever topic you begin to explore during dinner, it inevitably gets turned back to COVID-19 in the end (even sex).

12) Watching the news is the most dangerous activity you can do - Nothing brings panic and anxiety more than CNN. By the way, has anything else happened in the news in the past week? Isn’t this an election year? I don’t know that I’ve heard any other stories. I feel badly for people who get sick or injured from non-COVID19 things… no one seems to care. (unless of course you’re Tom Hanks and have contracted COVID-19).

13) Reevaluating what you buy in the grocery store - You used to have a plan. Now you gladly take whatever’s left on the shelf. We don’t eat this. We do now!

· Only loser pasta is left. Gluten free, pasta made from chickpeas (what??).

· While the chicken is gone, there’s tons of fake meat available. Impossible!

· As a related aside, is there a reason everyone’s buying 18 cartons of toilet paper? Does coronavirus cause diarrhea? (does fake meat?)

· What’s the protocol for produce? It’s out and has clearly been touched. Hmmm. To be safe, I recommend turning all fruit into sangria “to kill the germs”

· Finally, I almost got into a knife fight at Shoprite last night because some fool tried to grab a bag of that delicious yellow Vigo rice out of my shopping cart. Some things are worth fighting for (as an aside, you can have my gluten free bread and oat milk).

14) The accidental cough (TAC) - God forbid someone coughs or sneezes publicly; they’re immediately met with dread. How dare you! Stay away! A sneeze on the bus is perhaps the most appalling thing anyone could do right now. The dry cough? Even worse. Please keep your non-corona bodily reactions to yourself.

15) Homemade hand sanitizer is a thing – I heard some are wasting perfectly good Tito’s vodka to try and make their own hand sanitizer. Tito’s had to put out a statement that it doesn’t work because the alcohol content is too low. In unrelated news, the moonshine business is really taking off nicely.

16) Watching sports – Seems like the sports networks, having run out of things to discuss, are now playing classics. I enjoyed the Mets-Expos 17 inning game from 1988 but seriously there’s got to be better programming options. We’re all home watching TV after all. BTW, if COVID-19 can’t boost network TV ratings, I’m not sure what could. (also please stop broadcasting video game football, that’s not a real sport).

17) Avoid large gatherings - Done. Small gatherings are all the rage. 50+ no good. 49 or under… no problem. (note this # changes daily, soon 7 will be the new cap).

18) Bars were closed on St. Patrick’s Day ☹ - This is an oxymoron. So what are we to do? Host a Zoom happy hour of course. Up to 49 people can attend (not sure I know that many people). I do feel bad for bar owners – their Superbowl has been cancelled.

19) No fighting – Somewhat related to St. Patty’s, fighting is now a thing of the past. You can aggressively curse someone out for coughing in public. Unless that person is unconcerned, there will be no physical retaliation. Go ahead, try it.

20) Travel deals anyone? Sure I imagine all travel may be shut down soon…. But in the meantime, you can quickly (and irresponsibly) book a trip to Florida for $50, the Caribbean for $75, or the space station on the moon for $179. Depending on your risk tolerance and recklessness, this is a great opportunity to see the world.

21) Ignore the stock market – Like everybody else, I watch in disgust as my investments plunge. But I don’t need this money tomorrow, so I’m doing my best to ignore it. Plus there are some obvious areas to potentially invest in: Zoom. Reckitt Benckiser (owns Lysol). Gojo Industries (owns Purell). P&G (TP). Netflix. And of course alcohol and cannabis companies are always a safe bet.

22) Classes at the Polo Club are shut down – this is perhaps the worse tragedy of all. The Polo Club in Boca Raton has canceled its classes. For fk’s sake! If my 75-year-old mother can’t start her day with Zumba, all hell is sure to break lose. As a related aside, mah-jongg tiles are basically carriers in and of themselves. You’ve never seen a Florida community spread a virus until a mah-jongg tournament gets underway.

23) Observe young children and animals - I realize that sounds awfully inappropriate. But I love the fact that my dog and kids playing outside are so innocent and naïve during these times. They don’t seem to have a worry in the world and keep enjoying life with a smile (or tail wag). Think like a child or a puppy, maybe you’ll feel better for a moment or two.

Kidding aside, we’re all doing our best to control this pandemic and get over the hump…. I leverage humor to treat my pain, and I think we all could use a little levity right now. Eventually, we’ll overcome and be back to a new normal (minus handshakes and in-person happy hours).

If you need me, I’ll be performing in an empty comedy club down the street. Stay tuned for my next post – foolproof tips on working from home! Stay safe my friends, Steve

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Stephen Strauss survived the corporate world for 20+ years and is now a content and marketing consultant. He’s performed stand-up comedy hundreds of times at comedy clubs and corporate functions including sales meetings and customer events. Research confirms his jokes made his fellow co-workers 47% happier.

Please connect at [email protected], via LinkedIn, or just open your window and scream his name (that's probably safest).

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observantdrifter · 4 years

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Activity Within a San Jose Party Hub on a Costa Rican Friday Night.

One must enter a spontaneous and impulsive mindset if interested in understanding the habits of a Costa Rican partygoer. Fully submitting to the experience is crucial, especially regarding new experiences. In this case, I was lounging in my home, sedated by inactivity in previous hours. This was disrupted by a call from a close friend of mine. She was in the neighborhood, and invited me to spend a night on the town with her. Naturally I told her to say no more, I’d be with her shortly.

First was beer, always beer. It’s important to lubricate the minds thought processing capability by diluting the consciousness. To be an impartial observer, alcohol is a great help. One liter in, the idea of making the trek about one kilometer west to “La Cali” came about. Neither one of us had any opinion on the matter, although a subliminal curiosity was present. Without much thought at all, we began walking in that direction.

La Cali is a street lined with loud bars and clubs of assorted themes. There’s something for a wide range of socialites. Reggae, Rock, Hip Hop, ect. Any mainstream entertainment seeker would find themselves right at home. For a person like me, a place like this is intolerable without first dissolving any concept of sobriety.

Such a place, on such a night, attracts large flocks of traditional members of the mass mentality. Immediately after penetrating the anesthetized crowd countless red faces and glazed over eyes inspect you from head to toe, silently evaluating the random individual who has just entered their vicinity. Clouds of low-grade marijuana smoke came from unknown sources. They mingled with clouds of tobacco smoke coming from less clandestine regions. These predominant smells were joined by those of vomit, beer, sweat, and a hint of sewage. The few of those who did not have some sort of psychoactive substance in their system were feeding off the turbulent energy of the environment. This scene was scored by the unsettling loudness consequent to all of the locales’ sound systems operating at maximum capacity.

The one kilometer walk to this strange place had made us dangerously sober and the smell of ditch weed triggered a craving. Our funds were severely limited, so the low-grade cannabis would have to do. We spent the next 20 minutes or so infiltrating the congregation from multiple angles. Periodically asking suspected stoners for some weed please. We asked multiple watchymans (Costa Rican term given to men who watch parked cars) and each time we were told “Wait right here while I go visit the doctor.” Often they would come back empty handed.

The lack of luck in comparison to the abundance of odor was mildly frustrating. If we were crack users we would be in a much different situation. Every time we would stand on a certain corner to assess potential marijuana users, we would witness countless crackheads coming and going contently. Each time saying hello to what seemed like old friends, handing them a bundle of coins and leaving with a couple loose pebbles of crack in their palms. I figured this out by asking a particularly shabby looking individual who had just exchanged a suspicious hand shake with a redheaded woman on a street corner. I asked, “Just out of pure curiosity, whatcha got there?” He proudly opened his hand and presented to me a small crack rock. “Crack! Hey, you want some? What do you need? I’ll get it for ya!” I kindly declined the offer.

This interaction raised suspicion in the dealer, who was now looking over at us frequently. She was surrounded by men within the next few minutes, all notably interested in our presence. We decided the area, although highly populated, was potentially dangerous and relocated.

After we left we met a lively individual by the name of Ivo. He was selling lollipops for a living. This did not trouble him however, he was an extremely joyous man. We asked him for some weed please and he said he would go visit the doctor at once. To make sure we wouldn’t leave this business opportunity he left us his jar of lollipops as a certain binding contract. After a few minutes, he returned with a small twisted piece of plastic that contained what resembled a brownish-green pebble that weighed no more than a quarter of a gram. It also contained a balled up rolling paper. He charged us 2,500 colones for said brownish-green pebble. We refused and negotiated the price down to 1,025 colones.

Now completely sober, we fled to the near by Parque Francia. We sat at a picnic table and I produced the twisted plastic containing the brownish-green pebble and rolling paper. I inspected the surface of the pebble closely, looking for any sort of unwelcome powders or particles. I deemed it OK to smoke and broke the pebble into minuscule crumbs. I rolled the pebble crumbs into a joint, and requested a light from a nearby couple. After introducing flame to flower, I smoked it viciously. My friend took much more modest drags.

I hadn’t smoked in weeks, and the alcohol had expanded my blood vessels. There was no doubt in my mind that it was coming. The experience. The high achieved by ditch weed is very rough around the edges, negative side effects are often expected. While the effects where gradually overcoming me, I decided it would be best to do something pleasant as soon as possible to keep my mind off of these overwhelming side effects. I had remembered a large Datura plant in the vicinity of the park, and the signature sweet, aromatic smell that they release in the night to attract nocturnal pollinators. In this case the plant attracted a severely uncomfortable drug user.

When we got to the tree, it had no flowers. I realized the dry season was upon us. As I looked up to the branches in disbelief, somewhere down the road a man began screaming. Threatening to kill something or someone. He was in a vehicle and his piercing screams amplified by the second as he seemingly accelerated towards us. We ran. The responsible man and his vehicle passed through a nearby intersection at fantastic velocity, and as the distance between him and us increased his voice faded.

The panic did not fade. We continued running back to the park. By the time we got there I was completely overwhelmed. My heartbeat was pounding through my eardrums and I felt as if I was about to collapse. Beads of sweat ran down my forehead and beliefs of unreal dangers and threats bombarded my mind. My friend was not affected as severely as I was. We sat on a curb for several minutes while my debilitating mental state came and went in a series of waves, each diminishing in intensity.

The effects subsided completely after about 30 minutes, and we walked home where it was warm and safe and abundant in delicious food. There was no more talk of the night that had just occurred. All we knew was that it was a great success in every strange and uncomfortable and sadistic way.

#san jose #costa rica #party #drugs #crack cocaine #mids #the fear #paranoia #confusion #strange #experience #writing #unreal dangers #journalism #observation #impartiality #tropics #psychoactive #substances

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weedmonster6-blog · 4 years

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Discover Marijuana Dispensaries Near You - Recreational - Medical Dispensaries

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harrisonstories · 6 years

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RTE Radio 2 Ireland - BP Fallon interview with George Harrison (18 Oct. 1987)

Photo by: Brian Roylance, Genesis Publications

This is an interview I’ve edited and uploaded to youtube because it’s quite long, and it was in two parts, so I’ve combined them together. You’ll notice at about 14:52 there’s a slight jump in the conversation which is where the second part begins.

I really love this interview. It’s one of - if not my favourite interview he ever did. I strongly suggest you give it a listen. Similarly to the Swedish Fan Club Tape, George is extremely calm and open, and Irish DJ BP Fallon asks refreshing questions. BP Fallon has himself had an interesting life, and at one point worked at Apple for Derek Taylor (You can also see him miming the bass in the Instant Karma Top of the Pops video). I’m guessing this related to why George felt relaxed. I hope you enjoy it.

Below I’ve included the written version of this interview by BP Fallon for The Sunday Tribune. It has some information not available in the audio (not sure if it simply wasn’t recorded, or if there’s another version which includes the full conversation):

"Sometimes it feels like another world, another life, some previous incarnation," George Harrison says. "I view it a bit through a haze but, y'know, people don't ever stop talking about it so it's hard to got too much distance between myself and The Beatles."

George Harrison doesn't mind that, not anymore. "I used to," he admits. "I used to not like it at all. I wanted to be free of it. Now I've learned to live with it. And also, don't forget, there was a period when The Beatles split up and there were all kind of court cases and bad vibes and stuff and that left a bad taste in the mouth for a while but after the years it's all cleared up, everybody's friends again."

He's sitting in a little office in the house owned by his company Handmade Films, just off Cadogan Square in Knightsbridge in London, a few streets behind Harrods. Fourty-four-years old this man is, he has a bit of a beard and his shortish hair is swept back and there are new lines on his face. He drinks coffee and smokes ciggies and when you sit talking to the geezer you can't help but feel warmth for him.

As one of John, Paul, George And Ringo, The Fab Four, as a member of the most popular, the most inventive, the most influential rock group of all time, he has gone through one of the strangest trips ever. They were Gods once, The Beatles. And sitting here now, George Harrison comes across as a normal bloke.

He was born in Liverpool, the fourth child of Harold and Louse Harrison. George's father was a bus driver - before that, he had been a ship's steward on the White Star Line for ten years and from one of his travels in America had returned with an old wind-up gramophone and records by bluesman and yodeller Jimmie Rodgers and country singer Hank Williams. Young George was smitten. He listened to skiffle, people like Lonnie Donegan and songs about the Rock Island Line. And then he heard Elvis Presley singing Hearbreak Hotel. "It came out of somebody's radio," George Harrison says, gazing out the window at the autumn light fading behind the trees, "and it lodged itself in the back of my head. It's been there ever since."

At the age of 13, for £3, he bought his first guitar. Two years later, Paul McCartney introduced George to his friend John Lennon (George - "this snotty-nosed kid" as Lennon recalled). George joined John and Paul in their skiffle group The Quarreymen. In 1962, when George was 19, John, Paul, George and their new drummer Ringo Starr made their first record together. It was a fresh-sounding bluesey pop record called Love Me Do and they now called themselves The Beatles.

They changed the world, these four Scouse moptops making new noises and singing about wanting to hold your hand and about walruses and about revolution and all you need is love.

And for eight years The Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

For a while, The Beatles - at very least by example - endorsed smoking dope and taking LSD. John, Paul and George were each busted at least once for breaking the cannabis laws. "A lot of the stuff that happened..." - and then George brings himself up to the present tense - that happens, it's just like when Prohibition was on. If they make a big deal about stuff it becomes bigger than it actually is. In moderation... you have to have moderation in everything. The worst drug of all is alcohol... it actually kills more people then heroin." He says he was fortunate as a kid to see a film about the trumpet player Chet Baker, about Baker's heroin addiction, "and that and maybe something else made me aware that this thing was just too much.

"Of course, the other things, the psychedelic drugs, are much different because they don't put your body in a stupour, they sort of..." and now he's laughing... "they sort of catapult you out into the universe. It's a totally different perspective." Then his voice is serious again. "These things obviously can be very dangerous too. I'd hate to have some right now because I don't think I could handle it. It just gives you too many things to think about all at once."

Love and peace went out the bathroom window when The Beatles split in 1970, with Paul McCartney publicly announcing he had left. George says he realised The Beatles weren't shaking a couple of years before that. "Everyone was just getting all uptight with each other. The new wives were coming in and, y'know, living under the piano and there was no privacy anymore for us as far as the group was concerned in what was normally the only privacy we ever had, the four of us when we got into a studio. And we'd just grown away from each other. One time or another every one of us left that group before we finally stopped."

George left during the making of what would be Let It Be. Ringo left another time "and went on holiday, and John was always wanting to leave and Paul too. You know, it was too much pressure and we'd been through those years. It was just too much.”

He emphasises that the remaining three Beatles are good pals, now. "Paul and I went through a shaky period but we're okay, now. All the old aggravations have passed a long time ago. There's no reason not to be friends."

By 1971 George Harrison was the most successful solo Beatle, with his triple album All Things Must Pass and the enormous hit My Sweet Lord. Four years later his single Ding Dong Ding Dong - a record even worse than McCartney's Mary Had A Little Lamb - was the first release by a solo Beatle to fail to enter the charts. Several years later a court ordered him to pay £260,000 damages for plagiarising the Chiffons' song he's So Fine with My Sweet Lord. That Harrison had modeled My Sweet Lord on another song, the gospel Oh Happy Day by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, was bad enough. That he had to pay the money to his former manager Allen Klein - "a looney who didn't take care of business" George describes him now- because Klein had scooped up the publishing of He's So Fine... that rubbed salt into the wound.

His career and also his marriage to his first wife Patti Boyd were in pieces. Patti had gone to live with George's close pal Eric Clapton, who had written Layla about his best friend's wife. George started drinking heavily, contracting a serious liver complaint that his friends feared might be the end of him.

George's chum Eric Idle had found it impossible to raise the necessary finance to make the Monty Python film Life Of Brian, so George chipped in with half the required money, £2,250,000. It turned out to be one of the best investments George had ever made, reaping a profit of more than £30,000,000. Since then, Harrison and his film company Handmade Films have scored with another Monty Python film The Meaning Of Life - banned in Ireland - and delivered films like Time Bandits and Mona Lisa as well as Shanghai Express, a disaster for its stars Sean Penn and Madonna and its producer Harrison. But what the heck. George isn't short of a few shekels.

In 1978, George married Olivia Trinidad Arias, a 27-year-old who had been born in Mexico and had been working as a secretary in A&M Records in Los Angeles. George's health had been desperate. He was fading away. Olivia contacted the Chinese acupuncturist Dr. Zion Yu and within weeks of treatment George had regained his energy and his spirit.

They have a nine-year-old son named Dhani - the Indian for wealthy - and the other day he asked his father to make him up a cassette of Chuck Berry songs. After George appeared at the Prince's Trust concert in London five months ago with Ringo, Eric Clapton and Elton John, Dhani came backstage. George had sung his own Beatle compositions While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Here Comes The Sun. "I asked him 'What did you think?' and he said 'Uh, you were alright Dad, but why didn't you do Chuck Berry songs like Roll Over Beethoven and Johnny Be Good and Rock'n'Roll Music?'"

He has a new LP out any day now, his first in five years. It's called Cloud Nine. "Have you heard the album?" he asks solicitously. "No? I'll see if someone's got a copy." George Harrison wanders off, and returns with a young woman who says "It's a bootleg I taped from the CD." George flips the cassette into the music system and spins it through, looking for a specific track. "I think you might like this one," he says in his dry Liverpudlian drawl, settling himself into another chair as he watches for reactions.

Ringo's drums with cellos straight from Lennon's I Am The Walrus lead into George singing with fondness for former Beatle times. It's a track that could fit on a Beatle record and it's called When We Was Fab. "Fab... but it's all over now baby blue" George sings, and at the end there's sitar sounds like George cosmicing out on Sgt. Pepper. It's... well, fab.

When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, George Harrison didn't suddenly lock himself away from the world in his Gothic mansion. Near the riverside town of Henley-On-Thames, this bizarre 70-roomed palace called Friar Park was remodeled a century ago by the eccentric Sir Frankie Crisp and is set in 33 acres of parkland with three lakes with secret stepping stones so one can appear to walk on water, underground caves linked by a river and a reproduction of the Alps that includes a perfect 100 foot high replica of the Matterhorn. George was already in hiding.

"I was already trying to hold onto some sort of privacy. I think everyone needs to have a bit of space, y'know. I mean, if you were just being mobbed and on the TV and that all your life you just turn into a loony, and long before John got shot I was already just digging in the garden, planting trees and just trying not to go on television, just having a bit of peace.

"But what it did, it affected me probably like anyone who loved John and who grew up with him and his music. And it was a very sad thing and, um, it didn't make me feel..." Harrison's voice trails off, and for a moment his eyes look away and he's lost in private thoughts. He looks back. " It made me wonder about ever gettin' into situations where there's fans, although at the time you can't blame fans for that. There's one loony in every crowd, I suppose. But I go on living normally. I don't panic unnecessarily."

There was talk that for Live Aid Paul, George, Ringo and Julian Lennon might let it Beatle together, but George dismisses any idea of reunions. "I don't think we'll play together. The Beatles certainly can't play again and I think it's best left as it is, y'know."

Long before Live Aid, George Harrison's Concerts For Bangladesh raised £45,000,000 for the starving. He didn't appear at Live Aid but says if he'd known more about it "maybe I would have done it but they did alright without me." George talks at length about the planet, his concerns about destruction. Last year he participated in an anti-nuclear rally in Trafalgar Square, and he's a member of the ecological organisation Greenpeace. "I love those people because they go out and actually do it. I mean, if it wasn't me that's the kind of thing I'd like to be, out there on a ship getting harpooned by Russians and Japanese."

At the turn of the Seventies, George became a benefactor to the Hare Krishna movement. He not only made records with them and talked about them publicly but also forked out a quarter of a million pounds to buy them a 15-room Elizabethan mansion with 17 acres of land.

Since then, George's friend His Divine Grace Guru Bhaktivechanta Swami, the leader and founder of the International Society For Krishna Consciousness, who was 77 when they met, has died. George feels that some of the remaining Krishnas have at times abused his patronage, and he cites letters from people who wrote saying that they were hassled at airports by devotees using Harrison's name.

Nevertheless, he still subscribes to "the Swami's ancient Vedic way of having God consciousness. The technique of chanting, just like the monks and Christians, they do it too really but it's just using beads and chanting these ancient mantras... they do have great affect. I wouldn't knock them at all. I am always a bit dubious about organisations and since the swami died it does seem to be chaotic, with all kinds of guys thinking they're the gurus. To me, it's not important to be a guru, it's more important just to be, to learn humility." And George still chants. "I've still got my bag of beads and they're really groovy now, all polished up."

Is he a happy chap? "Yeah, I'm okay. Sometimes I get depressed. It's a constant battle, isn't it? You have to consciously make an effort to be happy and considering everything, I've come along quite nicely. There's always room for improvement but, um, I have a laugh and I feel quite good about things." He believes in reincarnation. "The only reason we're actually in these bodies is to learn and develop love of God and liberate our souls from this round and round, the Memphis Blues." He reckons he'll come back again. "Well," he says laughing, "by the look of things I'll probably have to... but I'd like to give it a pass one of these incarnations!"

And, George Harrison, what would you like to be remembered for?

He pauses. "I don't know... I don't know." And then he smiles and looks you directly in the eyes and you see the face of a man still searching, still looking to extend his gentle vision for all time. He'd like to be remembered, he finally says, "just as somebody who's not bad, not that bad”...

"That'll do, yeah."

Fair play to you, George.

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apptg554 · 3 years

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weliketheiroldstuff · 3 years

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Fucked Up are bringing their 10 year anniversary tour for 'David Comes To Life' to The Shelter in January

If someone asked me what my favorite record of the last ten years was, this might be it. A toss-up between a couple of completely different records across multiple genres might come up. Yet, the way the first act of Fucked Up’s David Comes To Life hooks you in and makes it damn near impossible to let go of the record until it is completed, that shit pretty much seals it. Fucked Up had at this point solidified their place as making true artwork out of Hardcore music.

I’m rather elevated, to say the least on some excellent hybrid cannabis concentrates but I’m just going to go ahead and say it.

David Comes To Life is the Led Zeppelin IV of Hardcore Punk.

Look, I’m not super into comparisons like that but it’s almost like two ends of the ingestible epic rock music spectrum with LZ being the Mainstream side and FU being the Underground side. DCTL is a fucking masterpiece. I’ve said this for so long, close to a decade, this record has saved my life plenty of times. My failed attempt at bowing out count is much lower because this album exists. It’s not the context or the album as a whole or 1 song. It’s the fact that it’s like a hardcore punk opera. It’s more art than concert almost, but totally not, as the songs off this record that I’ve witnessed live so far, are strong enough to cave your fucking puny emo chests in. It definitely made my almost middle-aged man boobs jiggle seeing them 5 years ago at Black Christmas 2016. Shit, here’s a photo…

I love the way this group of humans attacks their creativity in such a way that the lasting effects of their music will more than likely live on for generations. There are little kids listening to specifically Code Orange and Code Orange only who will one day have this entire catalog on vinyl. I don’t expect everyone to understand my connection to this band nor do I guarantee is it for everyone. This is for everyone even if it isn’t fucking entry-level hardcore. It borders on avant-garde hardcore if you ask me and I’ll always view it as more than a piece of music, more than a record, and this is more than a band. It’s just the sound of truth and honesty and intelligence and chaos and raw fucking emotion while making the dorky hardcore kids feel fucking seen. Fucked Up is a gift, treasure them. Cherish them. I can say that it is for the weirdo hardcore and punk kids. For those that ever felt like they weren’t hardcore or punk or emo enough that this band is probably going to make you feel like it’s made me feel for a long time now, less alone in this fucking mess we’re all in.

On the heels of their most recent epic release The Year of the Horse the band announces a 10 year anniversary tour and it will be here in Detroit, January 28th, 2022 @ the iconic Shelter in the basement of Saint Andrew’s Hall. I got my tickets while hiding in the bathroom at work. Up the punx.

See ya turkeys there? Cue me losing my shit with my camera to “A Little Death”. In fact, here’s a Pitchfork video of them playing “A Little Death” live if you need a taste of the fun that is Fucked Up live. Also, this video only has like 3600 views, I have zero hope for my future. But I will see this band in half a year, so I got that going for me.

Fucked Up tour dates:

1/19/22 – Ottawa, ON – Club Saw 1/20/22 – Montreal, QC – Bar Le Ritz 1/21/22 – Boston, MA – The Sinclair 1/22/22 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Made 1/23/22 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts 1/24/22 – Washington, DC – Union Stage 1/25/22 – Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Smalls 1/26/22 – Columbus, OH – Ace of Cups 1/28/22 – Detroit, MI – Shelter 1/29/22 – Toronto, ON – Great Hall

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lobsters-on-their-heads · 6 years

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Continuing Travels of Cophine, Chap. 9

This is not a Christmas fic. Christmas will happen, though. Most of this chapter has been sitting on my computer for several weeks now, but the semester was ending, and I’m trying to sell my novel, and the bipolar goblins in my head don’t always play nicely, so it sort of sat there for a while. Then it needed clean up and restructuring, which the time off actually helps with quite a lot.

If you want to start from the beginning, the entire work can be found here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12116799/chapters/27477684

Her throat woke her up on Wednesday morning, tickling and flaring until she coughed and floundered out of the blankets for her water bottle. After a few gulps, her throat calmed down, and she fell back onto the pillow.

Gray light snuck into the room, looking like it was filtered through an iceberg, illuminating the lamps and the old stereo along the wall. Even without her glasses, Cosima knew exactly where everything was, which lampshades were stained or torn, the marbling on the walls, the dimensions of the weird little doors that opened into more wall. She coughed again, and looked to see how much blood there was this time.

No blood. Not on her hands, and not on her pillow or her lips. And then she remembered. She was well now. Her cough was just a cough.

“Are you okay?”

Delphine's face was tucked into the blankets and the pillow so that only her hair and her closed eyes were visible. Half of her hair had come loose from its binding to snake around her head. Cosima smiled, remembering the joy of once again finding Delphine's hairs on her bedding the morning after her arrival from Geneva.

“Yeah, I'm okay. Did you sleep alright?”

“Mmm. Hnn?”

Cosima tucked a few strands behind Delphine's ear and followed the line of her jaw to her chin. “It's okay. Just keep resting.”

An hour later, when Delphine finally stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom, Cosima was finishing her first cup of chai and setting up some more vials for inoculations. The lab had been clean and well-stocked upon their arrival three days ago, meaning that the guys really had been keeping up with it, or they had done some last-minute magic to make it look like they had. The primary absence was Cosima pot crop, acquired with Felix's help when they moved in, and now distributed among various members and acquaintances of clone club. The Hendrix's even had one of the plants tucked into their garden.

After checking that all of their carefully acquired gear was in proper condition, she checked her email. There was one from her mother telling her the weather report in Toronto, as though Cosima didn't already know it was freezing. After that was another email from her advisor, asking to push back the date of their meeting in Minnesota by a week.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

She already had the plane tickets for her and Delphine, and a non-refundable hotel reservation for five days, which now her advisor said he could not do. Cosima swore again and pulled on her own face. She would have to deal with that later. For now, she forwarded the entire email chain to Alison with a note that said “Problems.”

She was getting her second cup of chai ready when the upstairs door knocked. “Hello.....?”

“Come on down!” she cried, grinning as Scott bounded down the wooden steps into the lab. When he got to the bottom, she tackled him with a hug that forced him back a few steps.

“Gosh it's good to see you!” he laughed. “This place is weird without any clones hanging around.”

“You mean Krystal wasn't dropping by every other day?” Cosima pulled back and gave him a good look. “By the way, what the hell is that on your face?”

Scott's exuberance faltered, and he touched his face, where patchy brown hair erupted in some asymmetrical places. “What? You don't like it?”

“Uh... Well, you know, I, uh.... It's different! It's just different, that's all.”

He squared his shoulders and stuck his jaw out. “Cora likes it.”

Cosima blinked and stood back. This was a new development. “Cora???”

The grin crept back onto Scott's face and he blushed. “Yeah, she's this girl who works at the university with me. She's super smart. You'd like her.”

“Cora...” Cosima sat on a laboratory stool and spun around once, her eyebrows raised. “Is she cute? Don't answer, actually. She's obviously cute, or you wouldn't have that look on your face. The question is, when do I get to meet her? You know I have to do a little, uh, quality assurance check before you're allowed to go out with her.”

He giggled and nodded. “Okay. I dunno when she can come by, though. She has kind of a long commute into town, and it's hard to find times when we can even hang out outside of work...”

Cosima rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay, whatever. I see how this is gonna be.”

He spluttered, and Delphine crept out of the bathroom, arms crossed over her chest. “Oh, hey, Delphine!” he said, waving to her.

“Hello, Scott.” Delphine kept her arms tucked over her breasts as she gathered her clothes for the day. Meanwhile, Scott just grinned at both of them.

“It's just like old times, isn't it! Only, you're not dying, and Delphine's not breathing down my neck all the time to get you to come to work on time.”

Cosima groaned. “Or to give you another fucking fluid sample. I really don't miss that.”

If Delphine had any thoughts about Scott's comment, she didn't say so, instead shuffling back into the bathroom to change clothes. Only then did Cosima notice that Delphine was wearing the puppy dog socks she'd bought for her in Mexico City, and she grinned. While Delphine got ready, she chatted more with Scott, catching up about his work at the University of Toronto, his cat, and his opinion on the newest Star Wars movie.

“No spoilers, though!” she said, holding up a finger. “I haven't seen it yet, and I'm taking Delphine to see it on Monday for her birthday. If you spoil it for me, Scott...”

“I know, I know, you'll cut off my manhood and feed it to some goats.”

“Correct.”

* * * *

Driving to her parents' hotel, Cosima tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and chewed on a finger nail. She hated driving, but had left the Rabbit Hole later than Delphine wanted to, and now Delphine was doing her makeup in the passenger's seat. They'd spent the night talking over yesterday's meeting with Cosima's parents, about how much more to tell them and how to tell it, and about the extended family that Delphine would eventually get to meet. Cosima thought about her mother's parting words the night before.

“And we look forward to learning a lot more about Delphine!” She'd leaned heavily on the last syllable of her name, in the same way that she'd exclaimed earlier, “oh, you're from Paris! How wonderful!”

The light turned green, but the delivery van ahead wanted to make a left turn, so they all had to wait. Cosima tapped her fingers some more.

“Are you worried?” Delphine asked.

“About what?”

“Anything. You're fidgeting.”

“Oh. Yeah.” The delivery van turned left, and she accelerated onwards, through downtown streets with wreaths on the light poles and Christmas displays in the windows. Delphine wasn't wrong, and they might not get to talk privately for the rest of the day. “Can I ask you something?”

Delphine smiled. “Of course, mon amour. Anything.”

“Do you parents know? About me, I mean?”

There was a pause from the passenger's seat, and then, “no. But they don't know very much about me at all, anymore. I told them when I moved to Canada, but not much more than that.”

“Hm.”

They turned right and drove several blocks to a more residential section, and Cosima chewed on her lip. She'd always known that Delphine wasn't close to her parents, and she was in no position to criticize her for not telling her parents anything, considering the clone bomb she'd only just yesterday dropped on her own parents. With everything they'd been through together, though, it was only now occurring to her that Delphine was not even out to her parents.

“Do want them to come to the wedding?” she asked. “Your parents, I mean.”

Delphine paused again and propped her face on her fingertips. “Maybe. It's not that important to me, you know. I haven't even thought about it.”

“You have some time, I guess. You don't have to know right now.”

* * * *

They got to the hotel's restaurant just before ten. A quick glance around told them they'd probably have it mostly to themselves, which was a relief. Talking about clone business in any public place could be tricky. They seated themselves in a booth near the window, looking out at the stone courtyard and smoker's area, far enough from the door to avoid a draft. Watching a man in a business suit suck on his cigarette and pace in the frozen air, Cosima took Delphine's hand in hers.

“I'm glad you quit.”

“What, smoking?”

“Yeah. You're not ducking outside all the time to light up, and it means I get to keep you around a little longer.”

Delphine snorted. “Says the woman who's been bemoaning the absence of her marijuana plants.”

“Hey, cannabis is way safer than tobacco; I've been telling you that for years now. It's the only thing that kept me eating when I was sick and living in the Rabbit Hole without you.”

They ordered coffee from Todd, a bored, pimple-faced young man in an ill-fitting silk vest, and looked over the menu. After months of travelling and eating their way through Latin America, it was both comforting and disappointing to find the same predictable items on this menu that Cosima could find at any hotel restaurant anywhere in North America. Delphine might've been thinking the same, because she said, “No rice and beans.”

“You miss `em?”

“Almost.”

“We can get some at the store for you. They can't be that hard to cook. Not compared to hollandaise sauce.”

At 10:15, after they'd turned away the waiter twice, saying they weren't ready, Delphine checked her phone and sighed. “Your parents gave you their sense of punctuality, I think. Do they know the restaurant stops serving breakfast at 10:30?”

“Yeah, they know. And it's all my mom. My dad's probably been ready to go for an hour, and he's just sitting on the couch waiting for her to do her hair or put her makeup on or whatever. Hey, how much you wanna bet these 'mixed fruit cups' are just pale honeydew melon and cantaloupe?”

Sally and Gene came in five minutes later, wearing sweaters and jeans. Even after spending several hours with them the day before, it was still a small shock for Cosima to see them again after so long away. They had aged more than she expected, but maybe that was the lack of contact making them seem that way. Maybe they'd always had so many wrinkles, and maybe her father had always shuffled that way when he walked, and had always had that wattle of skin below his chin. They were in their late sixties, after all, and her father would turn seventy in just a few months.

“Hey, kiddo,” Gene said, clapping Cosima on the shoulder as she stood to greet them.

“So sorry we're late,” Sally said with a smile. “Have you been waiting long?”

“No,” they both answered. “Not long.”

The Niehauses slid into the booth across from Cosima and Delphine and ordered coffees for themselves when Todd reappeared. They exchanged morning pleasantries – yes, everyone had slept well; yes, they liked their room, and thank you for reserving it. They offered to pay Cosima back for the room, and she refused. Then they all ordered, and once Todd had gone again, Sally sat back in her seat with her hands folded over her stomach, and gave Cosima a measured look.

“You gave us a lot to think about yesterday, Sweetie.”

Cosima took a deep breath. “I know. It's a lot to take in, but you do get used to it. I did; we all did.”

“Two hundred.... how many did you say there are?”

“274,” Cosima said. “That's, I mean, those are the ones that are still living. There were more originally.”

“How many more?” Gene asked.

“We're not exactly sure. It was just this past summer that we learned the 274 number, after the organization behind the cloning was destroyed; before that we had no idea.”

Sally's breath shook, and she turned to stare out the window. Gene, on the other hand, nodded and tapped his fingers on the table. “That must've been hard for you to come to terms with. Having 274 genetic identicals, I mean, that's...”

“It was, a little. But, it's also fascinating. I mean, you saw last night, we're all completely different people, even though our DNA is identical. Well, I mean, almost entirely identical.”

Sally turned back at the last sentence. “What do you mean, almost entirely? I thought the point was that you were entirely identical, not almost?”

“In every way that anyone else would notice, we are completely identical, but each of us has a tag number encoded in our DNA that's used for identification purposes. Or, that was used for identification purposes. Nobody's identifying us like that anymore.”

“A tag number?”

At her mother's shock, Cosima remembered learning about her own tag number from Delphine, who now rubbed her finger against the side of Cosima's jeans in a silent show to support. “Yeah. The, um, Dyad, the group that ran the study, they put it there so they could tell us apart.”

“But... why not use your names, or your social security numbers, or....”

“Because we can change our names, and not all of us live in the US or Canada. It's like, you'd tag mice or rats for an experiment. It removes the personality and lets researchers focus on the science.”

“You're not a mouse, Cosima,” Gene said.

“No, but as far as they were concerned, I might as well have been.”

Beside her, Delphine stepped in. “The experiments are all finished. No one is tracking the clones now, or running tests of any kind. All of that ended when Neolution collapsed earlier this year.”

“Neolution.” Sally and Gene looked at each other. “That does sound familiar,” Sally said.

“Yeah, they were doing all kinds of unethical stuff. Human cloning was just one part of it. You might've seen them on the news back in the spring.”

Todd returned with their plates, and there was the usual fuss of remembering who'd ordered what and exclaiming over how tasty it all looked. Cosima got the falafel salad – the most exotic item on the menu – and the fruit cup, which met her expectations except for two little blueberries tucked in with all the pale melon chunks. They ate quietly for a while, listening to the faint chatter from the restaurant staff across the room and the pop song playing in the lobby. The wall television, thankfully, was on mute, so the American politician's passionate words stayed silent.

Gene had finished all of his breakfast sides and gotten a refill on coffee when he leaned over his plate towards Delphine. “This whole cloning business must've hard for you to come to terms with, too, huh, Delphine?”

Delphine had just put a large forkful of omelet in her mouth, and froze, eyes wide. She and Cosima had discussed what to tell them about how they'd met, settling on “we met in Minnesota doing research.” They had not, however, prepared an answer for how Delphine had learned about clones. Whatever they said, though, Cosima did not want her parents to know about Delphine's role as monitor. Not yet. She wanted them to love Delphine first, and then learn about their complicated history.

“She took it pretty well in stride, I'd say.”

Delphine nodded while she chewed her food and swallowed. “Yes. It's fascinating, actually. I mean, obviously much of the research was unethical, but the science behind it is... fascinating.”

Cosima nodded in agreement, but saw an internal struggle in her parents' faces.

“Do you have a background in science, Delphine?” Sally asked.

Delphine's eyebrows twitched as she smiled. In all of the hullabaloo the day before, somehow they had neglected to say anything about that. “Yes, I have a doctorate in immunology.”

“Oh!” Both Drs. Niehaus sat up a little straighter at that, and Cosima knew they were ninety percent of the way to loving Delphine already. She knew they would. After all, Cosima loved her, and she spoke French, her mother's college minor. Having a doctorate in a biological field was the extra cream cheese icing on the cake. The conversation slid away from Dyad and Neolution and into Delphine's research and medical background, which impressed Sally and Gene just as much as Cosima had expected.

They were finishing up brunch and arguing over the check when Cosima's phone buzzed. It distracted her enough to let Sally grab the check and slap Cosima's hand away when she went for it again.

“Did you just slap me?” Cosima asked.

“Yes.” Sally tucked her credit card into the flap and gave to it Todd. “You might not be genetically related to me like I thought you were, but I am still your mother, Cosima, so you should listen to me and let me pay the bill.”

While Delphine laughed about that and Gene picked at his teeth, Cosima checked the new message on her phone. It was from Sarah.

Slight emergency situation today. I need your help.

Sure thing, Cosima replied. What do you need?

My final exam is at 3, and Charlotte has a parent teacher conference at 2:45.

For a moment Cosima wondered how she could help with that, when it hit her. “Oh no.”

Which one exactly are you asking me to do for you?

The conference.

“Is everything okay?” Delphine asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, Sarah just needs some help with Charlotte.”

Delphine checked her phone, which read 11:37. “It's Wednesday. Shouldn't she be in school right now?”

“Yeah, I think she is.” Delphine and both of her parents watched her, waiting for more of an explanation, but Cosima hesitated. Delphine knew about clone swaps; in fact, she'd organized an impressive triple-clone swap in her early days as Dyad director. Her parents, on the other hand... “There's a teacher conference for Charlotte this afternoon, and Sarah's not sure if she can make it.”

Delphine's eyebrows shot up, immediately comprehending the nature of Sarah's request, but Sally and Gene barely reacted. “Oh, that happens all the time,” Sally said. “Teachers understand parents are busy. She can probably reschedule.”

Cosima texted to see if she could. Meanwhile, Gene gnawed on the remains of his pork chop and looked confused. “Charlotte's another, uh.... another one like you, right?”

“She's a clone, yeah. They tried to restart the whole experiment several years back, but Charlotte was the only successful one.” She tried to keep her tone light, despite the horror of the situation.

“So, does she have, uh....” Gene waved his hands around in the air. “I mean, you have parents. You have us. And, and, the other lady yesterday, the one with the purple hair, she talked about her mother, so I assume she has parents, too.”

Cosima figured out his point and smiled, remembering how awkward he'd been after she came out of the closet, calling her a “homosexual” until she gave him permission to use the words “lesbian” and “queer.”

“It's a little more complicated with Charlotte,” she told him. “She had a adoptive mother, legally, but she didn't spend much time with her, and she's presumed dead now.”

Not until she saw her parents' faces did Cosima realize how those last words came across. Until now, the only other people she'd ever talked to about Marion Bowles were other members of Clone Club, who had long since ceased being shocked by the words “presumed dead.”

“Sarah's her legal guardian now,” Delphine explained. “She's been living with her for a few months now.”

“Ah.” Gene fidgeted with his lower lip, the way he did when was working out a problem in his head.

“The poor little thing,” Sally said. “What do you mean, presumed dead though? Is her mother missing?”

Delphine stepped in again. “Her mother had a position of some authority in Neolution's hierarchy, and before they went down for good, they, euh, restructured many of those top-level positions. Considering the illegal and sensitive nature of their work, they didn't want to just release former leadership into the world to share their secrets, so they, um... they often had them eliminated. To protect the research and the organization. Since no one has heard from Miss Bowles in almost two years, and all attempts to find her have failed, we think it's safe to assume that she's been killed.”

Todd came back to the table with the receipt for Sally to sign, but Sally and Gene were gaping too much to notice him.

“Are you serious?” Gene asked.

“Unfortunately,” Cosima said, “yes. We are. Like I said yesterday, there are reasons why I didn't want you to know any of this before now. It just wasn't safe.”

“But were you safe?” Sally asked. “You and.... and the others like you?”

Cosima wanted to ask what time period, exactly, she was referring to, but decided that her mother mostly just needed reassurance right now. Details could come later. “Yes,” she said. “I was safe.”

#continuing travels of cophine #cophine #cophine fanfiction #orphan black fanfiction #post canon

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wedoyouressays195 · 4 years

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Impact of Illegal Drug Use Among Teens

For more than one hundred years, the United States has been managing the utilization and maltreatment of illicit medications. The central government has burned through billions of dollars since 1906 attempting to stop the creation, circulation, ownership and utilization of medications. The war on drugs has been long and exorbitant with negligible advancement made. In spite of the fact that the utilization of unlawful medications among adolescents has decreased, their maltreatment of physician recommended drugs has risen generously. Medication use is an intense issue among young and school age people and is available on each grounds over this country.Even however the war on drugs is continuous, the governmentâ€™s endeavors to decrease tranquilize dealing has had little impact on the utilization or maltreatment of illicit medications among adolescents. Medication misuse proceeds to plaque our country, causing obliteration along its way, there is by all accounts no way out from this disturbing pattern. The most significant test for medicate strategy is to invert these risky patterns. Unlawful medications are effectively available; they are in our homes, schools, organizations and even in the correctional facilities and penitentiaries. They influence the vast majority in this country in some structure or another, in the case of manhandling them themselves or knowing somebody who does or has mishandled them.The utilization of medications right on time among youngsters is particularly hazardous, and regularly lead to useless, undesirable conduct. Inclusion in criminal equity framework, adolescent misconduct, untimely sexual action (which opens them to explicitly transmitted maladies and increment the danger of undesirable pregnancies), are totally connected with the utilization of illicit medications. The stunning expense for pointless social insurance, car collisions, wrongdoings coming about because of medication use and additional law implementation has caused considerably more harm to a previously fizzling economy.If the administration is to push ahead in its endeavor to battle the war on drugs, it needs to make viable medication arrangements and grow better projects to stop the beginning of starting medication use. Educating todayâ€™s youth about the risks of illicit medications will demonstrate definitely more gainful than basically utilizing alarm strategies with harsher punishments. A key segment in the battle to spare the youngsters from drugs is viable medication training. The Narconon medicate educational program will show them why they should state â€œNOâ€, by helping them comprehend the enduring harm of drugs.In handling the high school tranquilize issue, first, we need to figure out what a portion of the hazard factors are that may have driven them down that way from the earliest starting point. How a kid connects in different settings like at school, with instructors, their companions, kin, guardians and in their neighborhood can assume a urgent job in their enthusiastic, social and psychological turn of events. On the off chance that they start to carry on in the class, bomb classes, have poor social adapting abilities, start to connect with an inappropriate group and change in generally speaking discernment about things they know aren't right similar to lying, drugs, violations, etc.These are for the most part warnings and ought to be examined and tended to right away. You need to take a stab at chatting with them or taking them to see an expert to discover what's up, if conceivable, change their condition, place them around positive companions, get them engaged with sports, church, social clubs. Take the necessary steps to keep things from spiraling crazy, use every one of your assets. Attempt to tell the youngster you are there and that you care about what they are experiencing, this could have a significant effect, in whether you reach them.If guardians read, instruct themselves of the risks in utilizing medications, at that point and at exactly that point will they have the option to show their kids how to engaging in tranquilize use. To arrange enough exploration for a balanced paper destinations like; the Office on National Drug Control Policy, National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Internet, ProQuest, and the Ashford Online Library were utilized. These locales alongside others sources contained a plenitude of data, enough information to make an instructive paper.This research called attention to the social and wellbeing cost of illegal medication use, and further distinguished that sedate related disease, demise and wrongdoing, cost the country more than one hundred billion dollars per year. The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) reports, of the 263,871 crisis office visits by youths age 12-17, about one tenth (8. 8 percent) included self destruction endeavors, just about three of each four (72. 3 percent) were females. Of the 95. 4 percent sedate related suicides pharmaceuticals were included and more than three-fourths (77. 0 percent) finished with follow-up care (SAMHSA, 2008).The most noteworthy expense of all medication misuse is paid in the lost of human lives, either legitimately through overdose, or medication misuse related maladies, for example, tuberculosis, (AIDS) and hepatitis. (NIDA and NIAA, 1992). It was imperative to lead this exploration to make perusers mindful of exactly how awful society is bombing the young people of this country. The United States government can't do it without anyone else. This is a national issue and it will take a country to settle it, everybody needs to help or this battle will be always lost.After a right around ten-year decrease, maryjane is on the ascent again among youngsters. Secondary school seniors announced that they smoked pot more than cigarettes as per the National Institute on Drug Abuse ongoing â€œMonitoring the Futureâ€ overview. While 21. 4% confessed to utilizing maryjane over the most recent 30 days, just 19. 2% smoked cigarettes during a similar time span. This was the first run through since 1981 that pot was utilized more than cigarettes in that age gathering. In spite of the fact that the general wellbeing efforts to decrease cigarette smoking among teenagers think about this as a triumph, its decay can fundamentally be added to the ascent of cannabis use.Many kids appear to feel that smoking pot is just â€œnot that large of a dealâ€, all things considered, it is just pot; even eighth graders don't accept the hazard is that extraordinary. This sort of demeanor clarifies why there is a 1% expansion of every day use for eighth graders and a 3% expansion for tenth graders and means that weed use will probably keep on moving as these children draw nearer to graduation. Around one out of four seniors and one of every four tenth-graders said they smoked maryjane in the last year.Obama administrationâ€™s tranquilize despot, Gil Kerlikowske, accuses state clinical weed estimates like Californiaâ€™s Proposition 19 for causing pot to appear to be less perilous to youthful Americans. â€œCalling maryjane â€˜smoked medicineâ€™ is totally mistaken, youngsters have taken an inappropriate messageâ€ (Healy, 2010, p. A-10). As indicated by the executive of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Nora Volkow, in light of the fact that teenagerâ€™s cerebrums are as yet building up the expanded day by day utilization of cannabis is especially upsetting, since it has been known to cause learning and memory damage.The truth that they use pot all the more oftentimes puts them at a more serious danger of getting reliant on it and different medications. The utilization of the club medicate Ecstasy has expanded among eighth-and tenth graders yet not all medications indicated an expansion. The maltreatment of the solution torment prescription Vicodin was down to 8% contrasted with 9. 7% in 2009 and the illegal utilization of narcotic painkiller OxyContin rose among tenth-graders however stayed consistent with twelfth-graders. The utilization of medications recommended for a lack of ability to concentrate consistently scatter, (ADHD) for non-clinical reasons in the most recent year among secondary school seniors is 6. % and is about the equivalent for amphetamines use (Healy, 2010). One of the most recent developing adolescent patterns, which focuses on the inspecting of an assortment of physician endorsed medications and afterward drinking liquor is causing a lot of concern. Children feel that physician recommended drugs are more secure than road drugs, since they are endorsed by a specialist and are typically bought in a medication store.This is basically false; they really are all the more remarkable which makes them much increasingly perilous particularly while adding liquor to the blend. Nora Volkow, says, â€œKids are not pharmacologists, they may state, Fentanyl OxyContin-whatâ€™s the distinction? So they take a lot of things and may consolidate them with liquor, that is a dangerous miscalculationâ€ (Jetters, A, 2010-2011, p. 146). To accomplish sentiments of happiness, the measure of narcotic painkillers required is so near the sums that can kill you. In the event that you include liquor or sedatives like Klonopin, Valium, Xanax, which likewise discourages the minds respiratory focus. Only one gin and tonic joined with a 40 mg methadone pill can be lethal. They are playing a risky round of Russian roulette, one that they obviously don't understand.When you consider medications and how they got into the United States, the majority of us consider them originating from another nation, as perhaps Mexico or some place in South America. In any case, more now than any time in recent memory we need look no farther than our own medication cupboards. The times of taking an anti-inflamatory medicine or Tylenol for a cerebral pain, spinal pain or toothache are a distant memory. We would now be able to glance in our medication cupboards and look over an assortment of incredible extra painkillers recently endorsed to us for different a throbbing painfulness. For in the course of recent years, multiple times the quantity of narcotic medicines was written.Doctors recommended them at a pace of in excess of 180 million every year. By giving patients enough medicine to facilitate their torment, specialists trust it helps in the mending procedure and permits the patient to concentrate on recovering and not on the torment. This kind of basis may have made specialists over cure, consequently recommending painkillers for even the smallest torment. Painkillers like Vicodin, OxyContin, and Percocet are even recommended to youngsters that have scarcely arrived at puberty. This may clarify why they are the most mishandled pills among 12 and 13-year-olds (Jetters, A, 2010-2011, p. 148).Dentist and oral specialists are endorsing narcotic for straightforward systems like molar extractions. Moreover, the children are being sent home with much a greater number of pills than they need. Indeed, kids feel

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