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internallydeceased · 5 years

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Begin Again - (Chapter V)

And So We Meet Again Oxford, England

Previously…

At that moment her pager went off, announcing that she was needed elsewhere. She looked at it and frowned, returning her attention back to Jamie

“Well, that’s my cue. If I don’t see you before you’re discharged, just know that it was a pleasure to meet you, and I wish you the best of luck.”

Before Jamie even had the chance to respond, she was gone.

*** September 22nd, 1977

One year ago today, his life changed drastically. In the year since then, so much had happened and he wasn’t even there for four of those months—not really.

It’s surprising how fast the human body deteriorates when it isn’t able to move or eat or drink. The only sustenance he could get was through a GI tube, and you could hardly call that food.

By the time he woke up, he didn’t recognize himself, and his family had a hard time coming to terms with his appearance even though they’d sat by his bedside for months.

He’d been discharged as an inpatient five months ago, but was back at the hospital more times than he could count for his physical therapy sessions.

52 weeks, 365 days, 525600 minutes since he had broken practically every part of him, and yet it seemed like no time at all. Yet at the same time, it felt like forever.

You know how time seems to go slower when you’re anticipating something? You’re constantly looking at the clock and it seems like it’s been five minutes since you last looked at it but when you check it again it’s really only been one?

For five months Jamie’s life was a lot like that. Working to get back to the man he was, but in the back of his mind there was a little voice saying ‘what for?’

It took only three months for his body to deteriorate to what looked like a skeleton, but it would take a lot more than three months to get it all back.

In five months, he no longer looked like a dead man walking- at least, but he was still thin.

Everything had healed rather nicely— though there were plenty of scars that would stay with him for the rest of his life, reminding him of that day and every day since. All but his hand.

His hand was the reason why he needed the physical therapy. It had been badly damaged in the accident and while the surgeons were able to put the bones back in place—a rod here and there —and sew the skin back together, he couldn’t use it himself for three months, so doctors had to flex it for him—that set them back a bit.

He’d made a lot of progress since he woke up, but his hand still pained him, but it was his heart that hurt the most.

Five months ago Claire said goodbye to him, in case she didn’t see him before he got discharged. He’d been discharged less than an hour after she’d gone, and he hadn’t seen her since.

He didn’t think anything of it at the time, he would be back at the hospital enough times in the coming year that surely he’d see her again.

Except he hadn’t, and he never got the chance to say goodbye. Besides, he didn’t want to say goodbye, he wanted to say hello.

***

He’d decided to take another year off before returning to school, not wanting to do too much all at once.

He’d only just gotten the go ahead to go back to work, and he was happy about that. At least he could stay out of his head for a little while.

Jamie worked as a stable hand at a local barn that offered equine therapy and beginner lessons to kids who wanted to learn how to ride.

There had been a fair share of horses and other animals at Lallybroch, but the horses were always his favorite. Jamie loved to ride, even to just be around them.

When he moved to Oxford he thought that he’d have to get a part-time job as an office clerk or something of the sort, but it was a stroke of luck that he’d found this place.

After he’d gotten settled into his small apartment—at least somewhat—he drove around the city and even further into the rural outskirts.

He had no destination and the smallest sense of direction, he just wanted to drive through the countryside and breathe in the fresh country air.

It wasn’t Scotland, but it did remind him of home.

He’d taken a turn at some point, and as he drove further down the road he saw it.

A rather nice looking barn with lush green pastures, and lots of horses grazing against the setting sun beyond the horizon. It all looked like some expensive painting that belonged in a museum.

It put a smile on his face, and so he decided to check it out.

Everything looked very high class and relatively new, Jamie figured it to be some prestigious stable full of snobby rich girls who thought they were better than everyone else because they could ride and do dressage.

But as he made his way through the grounds, he was pleasantly surprised to see that wasn’t it at all.

He came upon a small outdoor arena, just off of the main barn. He noticed the grey gelding first, head low and content, listening to the silent cues of the rider.

The rider looked to be a child around the age of twelve, and the smile on the boy’s face reminded Jamie of the feeling of utter joy he felt when he first sat a horse.

He only noticed the older woman after she had spoken to the child, encouraging him and making sure he was comfortable.

After a few minutes they concluded their lesson, and the boy’s father came from the other side of the arena to help the boy down off the horse.

Only then had Jamie noticed that the boy couldn’t walk, as his father carried the boy outside the arena to a wheelchair he hadn’t noticed before.

He’d heard of equine therapy, but had never actually seen it.

That place represented a new start for him; after so much loss and hardship back home, this was a turn for the better, and something Jamie sorely needed.

He needed it even more now.

***

Jenny decided to stay with her brother in his small apartment so he wouldn’t have to be alone. She figured it would only be for a few months at most, to help him get reacquainted with daily life, but Jamie was quiet and restless, and it became clear that she wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

But today; today could be the first step that would finally give Jamie a path back to the brother she knew.

***

Jenny drove him out to the barn a little before noon, glancing at her brother hoping to see a piece of the man she knew, the smallest hint of a smile, anything that she would recognize. But he just leaned against the passenger door with his head resting on the window, staring as the world outside passed them by.

She pulled into the gravel driveway of the stable a few minutes later and shifted the car into park. Jenny took a deep breath and turned to Jamie. “Well, we’re here. Please call me if you need anything. Anything at all—I mean it, Jamie.”

Jamie was already stepping outside the vehicle when she grabbed his hand, forcing him to look at her.

“Hey... have a good day.” She gave him a small smile, and was grateful to see the slight nod and small smile he gave in return.

***

Jamie shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, retreating into it like a turtle in its shell.

He stopped just in front of the white wooden sign, breathing in the crisp autumn air and tracing the familiar cursive letters with his hand: Equine Healing.

“James Fraser!” the older woman: a middle-aged mother of three and grandmother of nine named Ellen.

She had the same name as his mother, and this Ellen reminded him so much of her.

She pulled him into a hug, being careful not to squeeze him too hard. “I’m so glad to see you! You had us all so worried! How are you doing?”

“Hi Ellen,” He pulled away and shifted his eyes quickly to the ground before looking her in the eye. He thought about lying, telling her that everything was fine so that he didn’t have to talk about it; any of it. Then he realized that this was a safe place, and he needed to talk to someone.

“To tell ye the truth, I’ve been better.”

Ellen frowned and rubbed his shoulder. “I know. Come on.” She gestured toward the main barn and they walked there together.

While he was still in the hospital Jamie was happier than he’d been in a long time, even with all the pain, IVs, and machines that seemed to become part of his body.

When he’d left, that happiness quickly faded and he slipped into a place in his mind where he could be alone.

It was only recently that he figured out why, though he should’ve known a lot sooner.

Whose voice had he heard when he was dying? The one that, for some reason, made him want to live. The voice of a stranger that made him want to work towards getting better, when his family couldn’t?

Who had been at his bedside every day since he’d woke up, that listened to him without pitying him? The one that he tried to put out of his mind ever since, because he didn’t want to admit it even to himself.

Claire.

He’d fallen in love.

***

He followed Ellen all the way to the end of the aisle, stopping outside the stall of a young grullo mare named Ember.

Ember arrived shortly after Jamie had been hired, rescued from a life of abuse and neglect. She was thin when she came off the trailer, though not emaciated. She was afraid of everyone, desperately trying to flee. It took them almost an hour just to move her a few yards from the trailer to the small paddock.

Once she was alone in her paddock, she paced the fence-line, snorting and rearing and throwing her head. Even though she had a tank full of water and a few flakes of hay that had been few and far between in her previous ‘home’, if you could call it that.

She’d arrived in the morning and hadn’t calmed down until that evening, and the only reason was because she had exhausted herself trying to get out.

She stayed relatively calm after that, but she wouldn’t let anyone near her, even if they were there to refill her water or give her grain.

It took weeks for her to get acclimated, and even then it was only just.

She allowed people to feed her and clean the paddock, but if they tried to touch her she would kick out at whoever tried.

The first person she started to trust was Jamie.

He would sit outside her pen, talking to her in Gaelic. Each day he managed to get a little bit closer to her, it seemed that she liked the Gaelic, almost like she could understand what he was saying.

And he’d sit there for hours on end in between chores. Finally, she let him touch her. She tensed at first, but Jamie whispered to her again in Gaelic and the muscles in her neck relaxed.

“See, you’re alright. No one will hurt ye anymore, I promise.”

The mare whickered and flared her nostrils in response.

Ember came to realize that not all people were bad, and that some of the smaller ones had treats in their small hands.

But Jamie would always be her favorite.

“Hey, girl. I’ve missed you.” He whispered in the ancient tongue of his homeland, scratching just under her forelock (her favorite).

Ellen smiled, and left the two to get reacquainted.

Jamie had helped Ember, and now she would help him. Not out of any obligation or debt, but because of the simple and powerful bond that exists between man and animal.

***

Jenny came to pick him up several hours later, and she was overjoyed to see the smile on his face and that he was talking to someone.

He got into the car and closed his eyes and exhaled deeply.

“Good day?” Jenny chuckled, turning on the ignition and putting the vehicle in drive.

“Aye. A good day.” He said confidently, the smile still on his face.

***

October 3rd, 1977

Going back to work was just what Jamie needed to get him out of his cramped apartment, and out of his head.

Jenny was getting on a plane back to Scotland today, leaving Jamie alone- really alone for the first time since before the accident.

She hoped she wasn’t making a mistake by leaving.

“I’ll be fine Janet. Ye can call me whenever, if it makes ye feel better.”

Jenny turned toward him and gently shoved him. “That means ye have to answer, dimwit.”

Jamie chuckled and pulled his sister into his arms, hugging her goodbye. “Goodbye Jenny, I’ll be alright. Say hello to everyone for me, yeah?”

Jenny pulled away, tears welling in her eyes. She nodded, and forced a smile. “Are you sure you’ll be alright? Because I can stay for a few more days if ye need me to.”

“I’ll be fine, Jenny. Now go. Get back to yer husband and Wee Jamie, and give ‘em a hug from me.”

Jenny nodded and hugged him again, she hesitated for a moment, but finally turned and headed toward the terminal.

Jamie closed his eyes and tilted his head back, breathing deeply, relieved in some small way.

Then there it was again, that voice. Just when he thought he was getting back to the man he was before.

“I told you, Frank. I can’t, it’s over. I have my life and you have yours, now please, just leave it be.”

Claire.

#can i get a yeet #begin again #begin again au #70s au #jamie x claire #outlander #outlander fanfiction #outlander fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic #interallydeceased #BA #BA au #outlander au #j/c fanfic #mine

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teaboot · 5 years

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hi i hope its okay to ask about your career? i'm on a crossroads in my life and one of the paths im interested in is fashion but im just so... torn? and i don't think many ppl take it seriously, like, as sth you do in life unles you profit really well... my family certainly doesn't see it as an option an im just very curious about your experience w/ studying and working in the industry

Honestly? I never in my life expected going to college for fashion. He'll, I spent half my childhood topless and barefoot in jean overalls, covered in dirt with a snake in each hand. My best friend from grades 4 through 7 was a sheep. I brought that sheep to a school dance. Seriously, fancy clothing was never for an instant a topic in my mind.

I always figured it was sort of shallow, you know? Fashion was for dumb rich people who paid too much for shoes you couldn't even hike in.

What I DID love, however, was Costume Design. All the cool outfits and armour and prosthetic bits in The Dark Crystal, and Star Wars, and Lord Of The Rings. And the practical effects! Ohhh I could go on. I loved it. I wanted to help create that magic.

And to be a Costume Designer, I had to go to school for Fashion Design.

And I will tell you right now: if someone is in a fashion design course? Good for you. It's hard work. But if you've GRADUATED your fashion design course?

Ho-lee-fuck. You have my immediate respect.

Getting a fashion design degree is a four year commitment, usually. Because I'm an idiot, I decided to finish it in two. And I did! But out of... I believe a starting class of 15-20? Only four of us graduated.

To highlight the worst of it? My family is poor. Pretty much all my classmates were either ludicrously wealthy or at least well-off. I had duct tape holding my sneakers together, and I worked on group projects with people wearing Louis Vuitton who had maids back home. They were nice enough, but the cultural disconnect was more jarring than I'd expected.

And the actual class work is hard. The people coming in with fantasies of becoming the next Kim K with little to no real physical labour or skill involved dropped out pretty quickly.

See, knowing how to draw was part of it, but the whole spectrum of classes involved Fashion History, Color Theory (Which is an ENTIRE course on just colors!), Life drawing, Digital illustration (for both factory instructions AND fashion images), Fashion illustration, Concept design and development, GERBER training (The only digitizing program for making patterns, apparently, which is garbage and makes me cry), Patternmaking, Trends (And how to predict/utilize them), Advertising, Basic web design, textile sciences (where we learned how to make fabric, design fabric, and analyze various materials and weaving/knitting techniques), and then the ACTUAL design and construction classes, where we finally got to learn how to use industrial machines and do a million sample pieces to cover sewing and ironing techniques before moving onto designing and sewing our own ideas.

If it sounds overwhelming, good. It IS overwhelming. I can't speak for others, but my mental and physical health both tanked. I worked 20 hour days and spent weeks at a time on campus without going home, mostly because I couldn't afford the train. If you have the opportunity to use the full four years, DO NOT RUSH LIKE I DID. It will CONSUME YOU. There were so many days where I woke up in a bathtub or under a table and thought, 'I made a mistake. I can't do this. I'm an idiot, I should quit, my life is hell.'

Really, I think the only reason I didn't because the only thing I am more than dumb is stubborn, and I have amazing friends and family who I could call and talk openly to, and I'd already flushed enough money down the campus toilet that quitting now with nothing to show for it would have been a move of eternal regret.

...BUT- and I must insist, BUT- I LEARNED SO MUCH. I had hardass teachers who made me cry, I learned about a system of corporate corruption and greed that starts with a seed and ends in farmers shooting themselves in the field and mothers losing children in villages across the world and the $3 dress you buy off the rack and the laws that make it possible. I learned that there are ways to Fuck that system, and I learned how to change that system. I learned where the problems are. I learned where the lies and misconceptions are. I learned about disability and ableism, fat shaming, diet culture, ageism, social hierarchy, revolution, historical trends that keep coming back and ideas so appealing that they didn't stop until people end up dead.

It's fascinating. It changes your worldview and the way you think. People need to know that fashion isn't just clothing- its everything from the way you hold your body to the food you eat, the color of your skin and hair, your wedding ring, your dog, your living room wall. It encompasses EVERYTHING, and I love that.

That being said, I graduated tired and hungry and went off to work a desk job just to breathe a little for about a year. Then I made fashion flats for factory production for a while, because the pay is good and I know how.

And I have so many opportunities open to me, now. I could work in a high-end boutique. I could be a patternmaker for wedding gowns, prom dresses, suits, costumes, bathing suits. I can and HAVE worked backstage in fashion shows. I can be a tailor, a costume designer, a stylist, a personal shopper, a curator- there are so many directions I can go from here, and for a while I even did small clothing adjustments for people to help ends meet.

It's a collection of skills I will always have that I can always use, no matter my social standing. I could lose my house, my family, my job, my mobility, but so long as I can communicate or hold a pencil I will have a valuable skill.

I'm in the process of applying for the IATSE film union, to be a costume designer. It's been four years since I started. I'm nervous, and excited, and anxious, but worst case scenario I can't get a foot in the door? I can make clothes for my children. I can tailor my own suits. I can do repairs for friends and neighbors. I can go to a store, look around, and say, "That's a bad deal. That's a bad investment. I can get good value out of this instead", and that's good, too.

At the end of the day, though, you know the most important thing I've learned?

My job is not my life. My job is what SUPPORTS my life. Having a job I love would be nice, but it's still only secondary.

Sorry, I ramble. Hope I could help!

#Suicide tw #fashion design

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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WE ARE LIVING IN A FAILED STATE

The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.

By George Packer | SPECIAL PREVIEW: JUNE 2020 Issue | The Atlantic Magazine | Posted April 21, 2020 |

When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.

Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. Civilians took out their sewing machines to try to keep ill-equipped hospital workers healthy and their patients alive. Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos.

Donald Trump saw the crisis almost entirely in personal and political terms. Fearing for his reelection, he declared the coronavirus pandemic a war, and himself a wartime president. But the leader he brings to mind is Marshal Philippe Pétain, the French general who, in 1940, signed an armistice with Germany after its rout of French defenses, then formed the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. Like Pétain, Trump collaborated with the invader and abandoned his country to a prolonged disaster. And, like France in 1940, America in 2020 has stunned itself with a collapse that’s larger and deeper than one miserable leader. Some future autopsy of the pandemic might be called Strange Defeat, after the historian and Resistance fighter Marc Bloch’s contemporaneous study of the fall of France. Despite countless examples around the U.S. of individual courage and sacrifice, the failure is national. And it should force a question that most Americans have never had to ask: Do we trust our leaders and one another enough to summon a collective response to a mortal threat? Are we still capable of self-government?

This is the third major crisis of the short 21st century. The first, on September 11, 2001, came when Americans were still living mentally in the previous century, and the memory of depression, world war, and cold war remained strong. On that day, people in the rural heartland did not see New York as an alien stew of immigrants and liberals that deserved its fate, but as a great American city that had taken a hit for the whole country. Firefighters from Indiana drove 800 miles to help the rescue effort at Ground Zero. Our civic reflex was to mourn and mobilize together.

Partisan politics and terrible policies, especially the Iraq War, erased the sense of national unity and fed a bitterness toward the political class that never really faded. The second crisis, in 2008, intensified it. At the top, the financial crash could almost be considered a success. Congress passed a bipartisan bailout bill that saved the financial system. Outgoing Bush-administration officials cooperated with incoming Obama administration officials. The experts at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department used monetary and fiscal policy to prevent a second Great Depression. Leading bankers were shamed but not prosecuted; most of them kept their fortunes and some their jobs. Before long they were back in business. A Wall Street trader told me that the financial crisis had been a “speed bump.”

All of the lasting pain was felt in the middle and at the bottom, by Americans who had taken on debt and lost their jobs, homes, and retirement savings. Many of them never recovered, and young people who came of age in the Great Recession are doomed to be poorer than their parents. Inequality—the fundamental, relentless force in American life since the late 1970s—grew worse.

This second crisis drove a profound wedge between Americans: between the upper and lower classes, Republicans and Democrats, metropolitan and rural people, the native-born and immigrants, ordinary Americans and their leaders. Social bonds had been under growing strain for several decades, and now they began to tear. The reforms of the Obama years, important as they were—in health care, financial regulation, green energy—had only palliative effects. The long recovery over the past decade enriched corporations and investors, lulled professionals, and left the working class further behind. The lasting effect of the slump was to increase polarization and to discredit authority, especially government’s.

Both parties were slow to grasp how much credibility they’d lost. The coming politics was populist. Its harbinger wasn’t Barack Obama but Sarah Palin, the absurdly unready vice-presidential candidate who scorned expertise and reveled in celebrity. She was Donald Trump’s John the Baptist.

Trump came to power as the repudiation of the Republican establishment. But the conservative political class and the new leader soon reached an understanding. Whatever their differences on issues like trade and immigration, they shared a basic goal: to strip-mine public assets for the benefit of private interests. Republican politicians and donors who wanted government to do as little as possible for the common good could live happily with a regime that barely knew how to govern at all, and they made themselves Trump’s footmen.

Like a wanton boy throwing matches in a parched field, Trump began to immolate what was left of national civic life. He never even pretended to be president of the whole country, but pitted us against one another along lines of race, sex, religion, citizenship, education, region, and—every day of his presidency—political party. His main tool of governance was to lie. A third of the country locked itself in a hall of mirrors that it believed to be reality; a third drove itself mad with the effort to hold on to the idea of knowable truth; and a third gave up even trying.

Trump acquired a federal government crippled by years of right-wing ideological assault, politicization by both parties, and steady defunding. He set about finishing off the job and destroying the professional civil service. He drove out some of the most talented and experienced career officials, left essential positions unfilled, and installed loyalists as commissars over the cowed survivors, with one purpose: to serve his own interests. His major legislative accomplishment, one of the largest tax cuts in history, sent hundreds of billions of dollars to corporations and the rich. The beneficiaries flocked to patronize his resorts and line his reelection pockets. If lying was his means for using power, corruption was his end.

This was the American landscape that lay open to the virus: in prosperous cities, a class of globally connected desk workers dependent on a class of precarious and invisible service workers; in the countryside, decaying communities in revolt against the modern world; on social media, mutual hatred and endless vituperation among different camps; in the economy, even with full employment, a large and growing gap between triumphant capital and beleaguered labor; in Washington, an empty government led by a con man and his intellectually bankrupt party; around the country, a mood of cynical exhaustion, with no vision of a shared identity or future.

If the pandemic really is a kind of war, it’s the first to be fought on this soil in a century and a half. Invasion and occupation expose a society’s fault lines, exaggerating what goes unnoticed or accepted in peacetime, clarifying essential truths, raising the smell of buried rot.

The virus should have united Americans against a common threat. With different leadership, it might have. Instead, even as it spread from blue to red areas, attitudes broke down along familiar partisan lines. The virus also should have been a great leveler. You don’t have to be in the military or in debt to be a target—you just have to be human. But from the start, its effects have been skewed by the inequality that we’ve tolerated for so long. When tests for the virus were almost impossible to find, the wealthy and connected—the model and reality-TV host Heidi Klum, the entire roster of the Brooklyn Nets, the president’s conservative allies—were somehow able to get tested, despite many showing no symptoms. The smattering of individual results did nothing to protect public health. Meanwhile, ordinary people with fevers and chills had to wait in long and possibly infectious lines, only to be turned away because they weren’t actually suffocating. An internet joke proposed that the only way to find out whether you had the virus was to sneeze in a rich person’s face.

When Trump was asked about this blatant unfairness, he expressed disapproval but added, “Perhaps that’s been the story of life.” Most Americans hardly register this kind of special privilege in normal times. But in the first weeks of the pandemic it sparked outrage, as if, during a general mobilization, the rich had been allowed to buy their way out of military service and hoard gas masks. As the contagion has spread, its victims have been likely to be poor, black, and brown people. The gross inequality of our health-care system is evident in the sight of refrigerated trucks lined up outside public hospitals.

We now have two categories of work: essential and nonessential. Who have the essential workers turned out to be? Mostly people in low-paying jobs that require their physical presence and put their health directly at risk: warehouse workers, shelf-stockers, Instacart shoppers, delivery drivers, municipal employees, hospital staffers, home health aides, long-haul truckers. Doctors and nurses are the pandemic’s combat heroes, but the supermarket cashier with her bottle of sanitizer and the UPS driver with his latex gloves are the supply and logistics troops who keep the frontline forces intact. In a smartphone economy that hides whole classes of human beings, we’re learning where our food and goods come from, who keeps us alive. An order of organic baby arugula on AmazonFresh is cheap and arrives overnight in part because the people who grow it, sort it, pack it, and deliver it have to keep working while sick. For most service workers, sick leave turns out to be an impossible luxury. It’s worth asking if we would accept a higher price and slower delivery so that they could stay home.

The pandemic has also clarified the meaning of nonessential workers. One example is Kelly Loeffler, the Republican junior senator from Georgia, whose sole qualification for the empty seat that she was given in January is her immense wealth. Less than three weeks into the job, after a dire private briefing about the virus, she got even richer from the selling-off of stocks, then she accused Democrats of exaggerating the danger and gave her constituents false assurances that may well have gotten them killed. Loeffler’s impulses in public service are those of a dangerous parasite. A body politic that would place someone like this in high office is well advanced in decay.

The purest embodiment of political nihilism is not Trump himself but his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. In his short lifetime, Kushner has been fraudulently promoted as both a meritocrat and a populist. He was born into a moneyed real-estate family the month Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office, in 1981—a princeling of the second Gilded Age. Despite Jared’s mediocre academic record, he was admitted to Harvard after his father, Charles, pledged a $2.5 million donation to the university. Father helped son with $10 million in loans for a start in the family business, then Jared continued his elite education at the law and business schools of NYU, where his father had contributed $3 million. Jared repaid his father’s support with fierce loyalty when Charles was sentenced to two years in federal prison in 2005 for trying to resolve a family legal quarrel by entrapping his sister’s husband with a prostitute and videotaping the encounter.

[ Francis Fukuyama: The thing that determines a country’s resistance to the coronavirus]

Jared Kushner failed as a skyscraper owner and a newspaper publisher, but he always found someone to rescue him, and his self-confidence only grew. In American Oligarchs, Andrea Bernstein describes how he adopted the outlook of a risk-taking entrepreneur, a “disruptor” of the new economy. Under the influence of his mentor Rupert Murdoch, he found ways to fuse his financial, political, and journalistic pursuits. He made conflicts of interest his business model.

So when his father-in-law became president, Kushner quickly gained power in an administration that raised amateurism, nepotism, and corruption to governing principles. As long as he busied himself with Middle East peace, his feckless meddling didn’t matter to most Americans. But since he became an influential adviser to Trump on the coronavirus pandemic, the result has been mass death.

In his first week on the job, in mid-March, Kushner co-authored the worst Oval Office speech in memory, interrupted the vital work of other officials, may have compromised security protocols, flirted with conflicts of interest and violations of federal law, and made fatuous promises that quickly turned to dust. “The federal government is not designed to solve all our problems,” he said, explaining how he would tap his corporate connections to create drive-through testing sites. They never materialized. He was convinced by corporate leaders that Trump should not use presidential authority to compel industries to manufacture ventilators—then Kushner’s own attempt to negotiate a deal with General Motors fell through. With no loss of faith in himself, he blamed shortages of necessary equipment and gear on incompetent state governors.

To watch this pale, slim-suited dilettante breeze into the middle of a deadly crisis, dispensing business-school jargon to cloud the massive failure of his father-in-law’s administration, is to see the collapse of a whole approach to governing. It turns out that scientific experts and other civil servants are not traitorous members of a “deep state”—they’re essential workers, and marginalizing them in favor of ideologues and sycophants is a threat to the nation’s health. It turns out that “nimble” companies can’t prepare for a catastrophe or distribute lifesaving goods—only a competent federal government can do that. It turns out that everything has a cost, and years of attacking government, squeezing it dry and draining its morale, inflict a heavy cost that the public has to pay in lives. All the programs defunded, stockpiles depleted, and plans scrapped meant that we had become a second-rate nation. Then came the virus and this strange defeat.

The fight to overcome the pandemic must also be a fight to recover the health of our country, and build it anew, or the hardship and grief we’re now enduring will never be redeemed. Under our current leadership, nothing will change. If 9/11 and 2008 wore out trust in the old political establishment, 2020 should kill off the idea that anti-politics is our salvation. But putting an end to this regime, so necessary and deserved, is only the beginning.

We’re faced with a choice that the crisis makes inescapably clear. We can stay hunkered down in self-isolation, fearing and shunning one another, letting our common bond wear away to nothing. Or we can use this pause in our normal lives to pay attention to the hospital workers holding up cellphones so their patients can say goodbye to loved ones; the planeload of medical workers flying from Atlanta to help in New York; the aerospace workers in Massachusetts demanding that their factory be converted to ventilator production; the Floridians standing in long lines because they couldn’t get through by phone to the skeletal unemployment office; the residents of Milwaukee braving endless waits, hail, and contagion to vote in an election forced on them by partisan justices. We can learn from these dreadful days that stupidity and injustice are lethal; that, in a democracy, being a citizen is essential work; that the alternative to solidarity is death. After we’ve come out of hiding and taken off our masks, we should not forget what it was like to be alone.

This article appears in the June 2020 print edition with the headline “Underlying Conditions.”

_____

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected].

_____

GEORGE PACKER is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century and The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.

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Why Some People Get Sicker Than Others

COVID-19 is proving to be a disease of the immune system. This could, in theory, be controlled.

By James Hamblin | Published April 21, 2020 10:41 AM ET | The Atlantic Magazine | Posted April 21, 2020 |

The COVID-19 crash comes suddenly. In early March, the 37-year-old writer F. T. Kola began to feel mildly ill, with a fever and body aches. To be safe, she isolated herself at home in San Francisco. Life continued apace for a week, until one day she tried to load her dishwasher and felt strangely exhausted.

Her doctor recommended that she go to Stanford University’s drive-through coronavirus testing site. “I remember waiting in my car, and the doctors in their intense [protective equipment] coming towards me like a scene out of Contagion,” she told me when we spoke for The Atlantic’s podcast Social Distance. “I felt like I was a biohazard—and I was.” The doctors stuck a long swab into the back of her nose and sent her home to await results.

Lying in bed that night, she began to shake, overtaken by the most intense chills of her life. “My teeth were chattering so hard that I was really afraid they would break,” she said. Then she started to hallucinate. “I thought I was holding a very big spoon for some reason, and I kept thinking, Where am I going to put my spoon down?”

An ambulance raced her to the hospital, where she spent three days in the ICU, before being moved to a newly created coronavirus-only ward. Sometimes she barely felt sick at all, and other times she felt on the verge of death. But after two weeks in the hospital, she walked out. Now, as the death toll from the coronavirus has climbed to more than 150,000 people globally, Kola has flashes of guilt and disbelief: “Why did my lungs make it through this? Why did I go home? Why am I okay now?”

[ Read: The best hopes for a coronavirus drug]

COVID-19 is, in many ways, proving to be a disease of uncertainty. According to a new study from Italy, some 43 percent of people with the virus have no symptoms. Among those who do develop symptoms, it is common to feel sick in uncomfortable but familiar ways—congestion, fever, aches, and general malaise. Many people start to feel a little bit better. Then, for many, comes a dramatic tipping point. “Some people really fall off the cliff, and we don’t have good predictors of who it’s going to happen to,” Stephen Thomas, the chair of infectious diseases at Upstate University Hospital, told me. Those people will become short of breath, their heart racing and mind detached from reality. They experience organ failure and spend weeks in the ICU, if they survive at all.

Meanwhile, many others simply keep feeling better and eventually totally recover. Kola’s friend Karan Mahajan, an author based in Providence, Rhode Island, contracted the virus at almost the same time she did. In stark contrast to Kola, he said, “My case ended up feeling like a mild flu that lasted for two weeks. And then it faded after that.”

(Related Podcast: Listen to James Hamblin interview Kola and Mahajan on an episode of Social Distance, The Atlantic’s podcast about life in the pandemic)

“There’s a big difference in how people handle this virus,” says Robert Murphy, a professor of medicine and the director of the Center for Global Communicable Diseases at Northwestern University. “It’s very unusual. None of this variability really fits with any other diseases we’re used to dealing with.”

This degree of uncertainty has less to do with the virus itself than how our bodies respond to it. As Murphy puts it, when doctors see this sort of variation in disease severity, “that’s not the virus; that’s the host.” Since the beginning of the pandemic, people around the world have heard the message that older and chronically ill people are most likely to die from COVID-19. But that is far from a complete picture of who is at risk of life-threatening disease. Understanding exactly how and why some people get so sick while others feel almost nothing will be the key to treatment.

Hope has been put in drugs that attempt to slow the replication of the virus—those currently in clinical trials like remdesivir, ivermectin, and hydroxychloroquine. But with the flu and most other viral diseases, antiviral medications are often effective only early in the disease. Once the virus has spread widely within our body, our own immune system becomes the thing that more urgently threatens to kill us. That response cannot be fully controlled. But it can be modulated and improved.

One of the common, perplexing experiences of COVID-19 is the loss of smell—and, then, taste. “Eating pizza was like eating cardboard,” Mahajan told me. Any common cold that causes congestion can alter these sensations to some degree. But a near-total breakdown of taste and smell is happening with coronavirus infections even in the absence of other symptoms.

Jonathan Aviv, an ear, nose, and throat doctor based in New York, told me he has seen a surge in young people coming to him with a sudden inability to taste. He’s unsure what to tell them about what’s going on. “The non-scary scenario is that the inflammatory effect of the infection is temporarily altering the function of the olfactory nerve,” he said. “The scarier possibility is that the virus is attacking the nerve itself.” Viruses that attack nerves can cause long-term impairment, and could affect other parts of the nervous system. The coronavirus has already been reported to precipitate inflammation in the brain that leads to permanent damage.

Though SARS-CoV-2 (the new coronavirus) isn’t reported to invade the brain and spine directly, its predecessor SARS-CoV seems to have that capacity. If nerve cells are spared by the new virus, they would be among the few that are. When the coronavirus attaches to cells, it hooks on and breaks through, then starts to replicate. It does so especially well in the cells of the nasopharynx and down into the lungs, but is also known to act on the cells of the liver, bowels, and heart. The virus spreads around the body for days or weeks in a sort of stealth mode, taking over host cells while evading the immune response. It can take a week or two for the body to fully recognize the extent to which it has been overwhelmed. At this point, its reaction is often not calm and measured. The immune system goes into a hyperreactive state, pulling all available alarms to mobilize the body’s defense mechanisms. This is when people suddenly crash.

Bootsie Plunkett, a 61-year-old retiree in New Jersey with diabetes and lupus, described it to me as suffocating. We met in February, taping a TV show, and she was her typically ebullient self. A few weeks later, she developed a fever. It lasted for about two weeks, as did the body aches. She stayed at home with what she presumed was COVID-19. Then, as if out of nowhere, she was gasping for air. Her husband raced her to the hospital, and she began to slump over in the front seat. When they made it to the hospital, her blood-oxygen level was just 79 percent, well below the point when people typically require aggressive breathing support.

Such a quick decline—especially in the later stages of an infectious disease—seems to result from the immune response suddenly kicking into overdrive. The condition tends to be dire. Half of the patients with COVID-19 who end up in the intensive-care unit at New York–Presbyterian Hospital stay for 20 days, according to Pamela Sutton-Wallace, the regional chief operating officer. (In normal times, the national average is 3.3 days). Many of these patients arrive at the hospital in near-critical condition, with their blood tests showing soaring levels of inflammatory markers. One that seems to be especially predictive of a person’s fate is a protein known as D-dimer. Doctors in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus outbreak was first reported, have found that a fourfold increase in D-dimer is a strong predictor of mortality, suggesting in a recent paper that the test “could be an early and helpful marker” of who is entering the dangerous phases.

These and other markers are often signs of a highly fatal immune-system process known as a cytokine storm, explains Randy Cron, the director of rheumatology at Children’s of Alabama, in Birmingham. A cytokine is a short-lived signaling molecule that the body can release to activate inflammation in an attempt to contain and eradicate a virus. In a cytokine storm, the immune system floods the body with these molecules, essentially sounding a fire alarm that continues even after the firefighters and ambulances have arrived.

At this point, the priority for doctors shifts from hoping that a person’s immune system can fight off the virus to trying to tamp down the immune response so it doesn’t kill the person or cause permanent organ damage. As Cron puts it, “If you see a cytokine storm, you have to treat it.” But treating any infection by impeding the immune system is always treacherous. It is never ideal to let up on a virus that can directly kill our cells. The challenge is striking a balance where neither the cytokine storm nor the infection runs rampant.

Cron and other researchers believe such a balance is possible. Cytokine storms are not unique to COVID-19. The same basic process happens in response to other viruses, such as dengue and Ebola, as well as influenza and other coronaviruses. It is life-threatening and difficult to treat, but not beyond the potential for mitigation.

At Johns Hopkins University, the biomedical engineer Joshua Vogelstein and his colleagues have been trying to identify patterns among people who have survived cytokine storms and people who haven’t. One correlation the team noticed was that people taking the drug tamsulosin (sold as Flomax, to treat urinary retention) seemed to fare well. Vogelstein is unsure why. Cytokine storms do trigger the release of hormones such as dopamine and adrenaline, which tamsulosin can partially block. The team is launching a clinical trial to see if the approach is of any help.

One of the more promising approaches is blocking cytokines themselves—once they’ve already been released into the blood. A popular target is one type of cytokine known as interleukin-6 (IL-6), which is known to peak at the height of respiratory failure. Benjamin Lebwohl, director of research at Columbia University’s Celiac Disease Center, says that people with immune conditions like celiac and inflammatory bowel disease may be at higher risk of severe cases of COVID-19. But he’s hopeful that medications that inhibit IL-6 or other cytokines could pare back the unhelpful responses while leaving others intact. Other researchers have seen promising preliminary results, and clinical trials are ongoing.

[Read: The best hopes for a coronavirus drug]

If interleukin inhibitors end up playing a significant role in treating very sick people, though, we would run out. These medicines (which go by names such as tocilizumab and ruxolitinib, reading like a good draw in Scrabble) fall into a class known as “biologics.” They are traditionally used in rare cases and tend to be very expensive, sometimes costing people with immune conditions about $18,000 a year. Based on price and the short supply, Cron says, “my guess is we’re going to rely on corticosteroids at the end of the day. Because it’s what we have.”

That is a controversial opinion. Corticosteroids (colloquially known as “steroids,” though they are of the adrenal rather than reproductive sort), can act as an emergency brake on the immune system. Their broad, sweeping action means that steroids involve more side effects than targeting one specific cytokine. Typically, a person on steroids has a higher risk of contracting another dangerous infection, and early evidence on the utility of steroids in treating COVID-19, in studies from the outbreak in China, was mixed. But some doctors are now using them to good effect. Last week, the Infectious Diseases Society of America issued guidelines on steroids, recommending them in the context of a clinical trial when the disease reaches the level of acute respiratory distress. They may have helped Plunkett, the 61-year-old from New Jersey. After three days on corticosteroids, she left the ICU—without ever being intubated.

Deciding on the precise method of modulating the immune response—the exact drug, dose, and timing—is ideally informed by carefully monitoring patients before they are critically ill. People at risk of a storm could be monitored closely throughout their illness, and offered treatment immediately when signs begin to show. That could mean detecting the markers in a person’s blood before the process sends her into hallucinations—before her oxygen level fell at all.

In typical circumstances in the United States and other industrialized nations, patients would be urged to go to the hospital sooner rather than later. But right now, to avoid catastrophic strain on an already overburdened health-care system, people are told to avoid the hospital until they feel short of breath. For those who do become critically ill and arrive at the ER in respiratory failure, health-care workers are then behind the ball. Given those circumstances, the daily basics of maintaining overall health and the best possible immune response become especially important.

The official line from the White House Coronavirus Task Force has been that “high-risk” people are older and those with chronic medical conditions, such as obesity and diabetes. But that has proven to be a limited approximation of who will bear the burden of this disease most severely. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its first official report on who has been hospitalized for COVID-19. It found that Latinos and African Americans have died at significantly higher rates than white Americans. In Chicago, more than half of the people who have tested positive, and nearly 60 percent of those who have died, were African American. They make up less than one-third of the city’s population. Similar patterns are playing out across the country: Rates of death and severe disease are several times higher among racial minorities and people of low socioeconomic status.

[Read: What the racial data show]

These disparities are beginning to be acknowledged at high levels, but often as though they are just another one of the mysteries of the coronavirus. At a White House briefing last week, Vice President Mike Pence said his team was looking into “the unique impact that we’re seeing reported on African Americans from the coronavirus.” Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has noted that “we are not going to solve the issues of health disparities this month or next month. This is something we should commit ourselves for years to do.”

While America’s deepest health disparities absolutely would require generations to undo, the country still could address many gaps right now. Variation in immune responses between people is due to much more than age or chronic disease. The immune system is a function of the communities that brought us up and the environments with which we interact every day. Its foundation is laid by genetics and early-life exposure to the world around us—from the food we eat to the air we breathe. Its response varies on the basis of income, housing, jobs, and access to health care.

The people who get the most severely sick from COVID-19 will sometimes be unpredictable, but in many cases, they will not. They will be the same people who get sick from most every other cause. Cytokines like IL-6 can be elevated by a single night of bad sleep. Over the course of a lifetime, the effects of daily and hourly stressors accumulate. Ultimately, people who are unable to take time off of work when sick—or who don’t have a comfortable and quiet home, or who lack access to good food and clean air—are likely to bear the burden of severe disease.

Much is yet unknown about specific cytokines and their roles in disease. But the likelihood of disease in general is not so mysterious. Often, it’s a matter of what societies choose to tolerate. America has empty hotels while people sleep in parking lots. We are destroying food while people go hungry. We are allowing individuals to endure the physiological stresses of financial catastrophe while bailing out corporations. With the coronavirus, we do not have vulnerable populations so much as we have vulnerabilities as a population. Our immune system is not strong.

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We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected].

_____

JAMES HAMBLIN, M.D., is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is also a lecturer at Yale School of Public Health and author of the forthcoming book Clean.

*********

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alovevigilante · 3 years

Text

Job interview: by Kari Keillor

Interviewer: Hello, Mrs. Kailior is it?

Kari: No, it’s pronounced Keeler, like the elves but without the b.

Interviewer: yes, I see... ok. Well, I see here that you are interested in working for our fine establishment.

Kari: yes, please as I need the money.

Interviewer: ok then... why do you want to work here?

Kari: I need money.

Interviewer: (jots down notes) ok, yes... yes... hmmm, I see here that you only have your associates degree, is that correct?

Kari: yes. I’m also one class into my junior year of college at a four year college.

Interviewer: oh... I see. Well, I’m sorry, but in order to complete this interview we need our applicants to have a minimum of a four year bachelors degree to be able to do this very important job we need filled.

Kari: I’m not a bachelor.

Interviewer: yes, we see that here on this paper. That means you aren’t qualified to be what it is we’re looking for here.

Kari: you haven’t seen me. Your nose has been down in my resume the whole entire time.

Interviewer: um, yes, see we don’t quite know how you got in here to be seen, seeing that you aren’t up to our qualifying qualifications.

Kari: yes, well seeing that I’m unseen, and as long as I’m here, maybe we can discuss what I HAVE done in my life that can be an asset to your job requirements. Perhaps that will suffice and be of some value to your qualification team.

Interviewer: no.

Kari: ok. Well, it was nice not really meeting you.

Interviewer: yes. Thank you for fulfilling my requirements of having to see a certain amount of people to fill this very important position that we probably won’t fill for quite some time and leave empty, and make others in our company do the job in addition to the jobs we pay them to do, and won’t pay them any extra to do this extra work of this job we have left, unfulfilled. Also, we will all complain about it a lot, and the middle management, that’s me, will shrug and yell at the people below me, and we will tell our higher ups, but they won’t be available because they will be golfing, and eating croissants on a veranda in Paris, while everything below them goes to shit. And when their workers become disgruntled, they will blame me, and I will say that I am following their protocol of the very important and highly overrated way of how things have always been done in business.

Kari: yes. That sounds about right. Well, thank you for saving me all that time and grief.

Interviewer: no problem. Good luck to you, and it was great not giving you a chance.

Kari: yes, and thanks for not investing time or effort in me!

Interviewer: sure thing! Take care now!

Scene.

George Carlin: Kari?

Kari: yeah?

Carlin: feel that clamp on your ass?

Kari: yeah.

Carlin: that’s bitterness.

Kari: right. Well, what do you want from me? I’m going back to school.

Carlin: why?

Kari: to become what I already am now only accredited by society.

Carlin: do you want to do this?

Kari: not this way.

Carlin: then why don’t you just wait til you feel better about it.

Kari: George, I’m 46. By the time I get my masters I’ll be over 50 years old. Wait?! I don’t have time to wait anymore. I’m sick of not having a degree.

Carlin: why?

Kari: cause I can’t do shit without one! I have an associates degree. Do you know what that means when you’re looking for a job, George?

Carlin: yes, cause I’m you. But enlighten me anyway so we can feel worse than we already do now.

Kari: ok, well, it’s basically the equivalent of having a high school diploma. When you look for a job that’s above minimum wage the requirements are usually the minimum of a bachelors degree in whatever and a certain amount of years of “on the job” experience.

Carlin: so?

Kari: ok, well, DON’T have it, George!

Carlin: then don’t do it, Kar...

Kari: George, I’m tired of not doing, ok? It’s time for some success for Kari Keillor, ok? I’m tired of the glass ceiling of social norms.

Carlin: great. Then continue to write and yell and scream and that will create the momentum you need for success in your chosen field.

Kari: a graduate degree in Art therapy and counseling?

Carlin: no asshole! Writing comedy!

Kari: no.

Carlin: fine, ok? We’re all here waiting until you come to your senses.

Kari: George, unfortunately we need to collaborate for that to occur, and I got news, we don’t have that.

Carlin: you don’t have to collaborate to write, Kari.

Kari: George, maybe you have forgotten what it’s like here on planet earth in the 3D, since you are now NOT here in the physical, but in order to lead a decent life, it takes tangible money, accreditation, and collaboration with people. I have none of the above.

George: yeah, I see your point. Ok then, off to school we go.

Belushi, John: oh fuck, I gotta go back to school and do this shit with her?!

Richard Pryor: yes sasshole, because you are belligerent to people online with your shit!

Belushi, John: don’t blame all this on me, Hamis is all up in Murray’s grilled ass...

Richard: ok, look. Kari’s pissed, ok? So now, our ass is being enrolled as a psychology major. This is what you get for being a shit... and a dick!

Kari: guys, look, it’s what we have to do to be seen for what we are. If it costs another 100 grand to do it, then so be it.

Belushi, John: this suuuuuucks, ok?! I’m not into it, so I’m not goin!

Gilda Radner: (pulling John by the ear) oh, you’re goin! Kari will sew your asscheeks together and drag you by the extra thread if need be.

Kari: I decided not to go near his asscheeks fictitious or not.

Gilda: probably a good decision.(1) Ok, let’s put it like this, we’re back to class. And you need to apologize to bill Murray, Steve Martin, John Cleese, Eric idle for being idle-y, Frank oz, and Mandy patinkin!

Belushi, John: I didn’t do shit to those guys! They have a whole bunch of problems all on their own! They’ve all lost their will to laugh! So why are you blaming me?!

(Terri and graham snicker in the background)

Harold ramis (aka hamis): listen John, we all know you like to instigate, and now all of us are going to be forced to listen to lectures on the human psyche, and you are to blame! So just apologize to them, and get this shit over with! I’m not willing to go back and become a junior in college again! Well, actually come to think of it, it may be slightly interesting to see how the human brain relates to how we interact as a collective people. This could benefit our writing immensely! Ok, I’m in. But Kari, just mention meatballs to bill one more time... for old times sake...

Kari: Hamis, how many times can a person mention that ridiculous, old timey movie before people start asking themselves if you’re insane?!

Richard: 34.

Kari: I don’t think it’s that many, Richard...

Belushi, John: nooooooooo! God, no! Ok fine, I’ll apologize... anything’s better than talking theory with ole schezwan head over here...

Kari: oh great! Now I’m gonna be called racist again... and still...

Belushi, John: Ramis isn’t Asian... you’re ok...

Michael stuvic (meathead from “All in the family”): No! Ok?! That’s just WRONG! She is a racist, a bigot, a lunatic, and she needs to be stopped! Gloria and I will not raise our little Joey the way that she’s been raised! We need more people to revolt against her incompressible blather!

George: she was raised in a good parochial upbringing.

Meathead: “I just thank god I’m an atheist...” (2)

Kari: I AM NOT A RACIST OR AN ATHEIST! I believe in all people being equal, and in God!

Meathead: no one said you were an atheist... A racist? Yes, but not an atheist.

Kari: EVERYONE thinks I’m the worst!

Belushi, John: no they don’t! They just think you’re a devil worshiper!

George: Belushi, stop fucking with Kari, she basically has the balls but doesn’t literally like people may or may not think, to write what she thinks we want her to say. So, now she has to apologize for being a shit but not, cause we were kidding and what she said wasn’t that bad or even bad at all... and Mandy, Judas Priest isn’t satanic, nor are they an anti-Semitic heavy metal group. They sing a ridiculously high pitched, screaming bloody murder, very, very, very long song called, “painkiller” about a flying skeleton half robot man that is on fire riding a motorcycle, and killing evil in its path. That’s it.

Richard: yes. It’s the age old story of skeleton half man half robot or machine, that gets pissed, and decides he’s going to take revenge and vengeance, so he flies in the air with metal and smoke and thunder and lightning and steel, and all that heavy metal good shit, and he crushes people’s dicks.

Gilda: sounds innocent enough to me...

Carlin: you like metal now, Richie?

Richard: well, I’m her, so I have to.

Belushi, John: THAT’S what the song is about?!

Kari: look, I don’t freaking know, alright?! All I know is that I only wanted to hear him sing it because he sings ungodly high for a man that hasn’t been kicked in the nut sack.

Hamis: we all want to hear that...

Belushi, John: .... but nooooooooo! She’s a fucking crazy woman! She’s insane! She’s telling me to sing a satanic song and I’m not ok with that!

Judas Priest: how many times do we have to say we’re not satan worshipers before someone believes us?!

Richard: 34.

Karl: ok, that’s it. I’ll apologize for all of you, because I do it all the time anyway. Ready?! Here goes: I’m sorry to everyone! I’m sorry I’m such an asshole and that everyone must be so insulted by me and my mere existence that no one in my life talks to me anymore. Ok?! There! I’m sorry you think I’m crazy because I’m a bored housewife who needs a destiny, and who hates to clean never, and cook sometimes but usually either orders out or ma comes over and cooks dinner for everyone at 6am, and I’m not even qualified to work as a person who talks poops on sesame street ok?! Cause I’ve most likely been banned from there in my head and maybe out, I’m not quite sure yet, because of being me! And I’m sorry, if that embarrasses you, or if I embarrass you by mere genetics or association! And yes, separation, isn’t cool with me, but it’s fine If you aren’t cool with me, cause I’m me, and if it’s a choice between you and me, I have to choose me, cause I’m all I got, ok? I wake up with me in the morning, and go throughout my day with me, and yes, close your ears people who don’t want to hear this part cause it can be construed as dirty like some of you believe me to be, I also bathe and sleep, with myself too! I do that! So, the opinions of you plural, make a marginal difference to me if I let them, which I usually do, because I’m human, and I have feelings and I care, but the scales have tipped now, and me, wins, cause I care about how I feel too now, ok?! And if you have a low opinion of me, and treat me that way, you, are out! Cause I’m not down with people who haven’t invested that much time or effort to get to know me talking smack about me like they’re experts on the subject of me, cause they’re not! So please enroll in the school of Kari keillor directly for the information, that’s ME, or shut your pie holes! It’s as simple as that!

Richard: God I love her....

Carlin: Kari?

Kari: yeah?

Carlin: to the school we go, unless we hear otherwise.

Kari: what otherwise?!

Carlin: exactly.

Scene.

Kari: no scene! Wtf are you talking about?

Carlin: you are now witnessing reality. The reality is, no one collaborates with you, so it’s time you make the executive decision to support you, and we’re down with that.

Karl: you have, no choice.

Carlin: I know, but it’s nice you bounce it off is anyway.

Kari: ok, who wants to end this extremely lengthy scene and/ or monologue?

Belushi, John: I will. I wanna know something...

Kari: oh man....

Belushi, John: no, really, I’ve always wanted to know something and it’s really important.

Kari: ok, what is it?

Belushi, John: when there’s so many amazing pizza places around the Chicagoland area, why would ANYONE eat at a chain pizza place?!

Kari: scene.

Belushi, John: no, fine... I apologize to Frank oz, my old time pal, for calling him an asshole. He’s not one. He’s a really nice, and forgiving person.

Big bird: yeah! Wait a minute... who’s he?

Kari: sigh... scene...

1. “I think that is a good decision.” Is a quote from my husband’s cousin Gary, and I don’t know where the hell he got it from, but it’s most likely from a very obscure movie, as it’s an obscure reference.

2. A direct quote from the show, “All in the family” said by the fictional character Michael Stivic created by Norman Lear.

0 notes

bigyack-com · 4 years

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H&M’s Different Kind of Click Bait

The H&M group sells an estimated three billion articles of clothing per year. Its revenue makes it among the top three fashion retailers in the world.Clothing for its brands, including H&M, Arket and & Other Stories, is manufactured in 40 countries, the company said; in Bangladesh alone, it sources from 275 factories that employ half a million workers. As it sprawls ever further around the globe, hopping from trend to trend, how can H&M keep track of how the skirts, pants and sweaters it sells are made? How, for example, can it monitor whether, in faraway countries, workers are being paid less than they need to live, forced to work hours of overtime in precarious conditions?This spring, after almost three years of preparation and coordination by 40 team members from Hong Kong to Stockholm, and at a time when scrutiny of the global fashion industry and its shadowy supply chain is greater than ever, H&M introduced an effort to do exactly that — and to make it public for shoppers.Now, the company says, it can be held accountable for the origins of its products. If consumers care to look.

They Made Your Leggings

Browsing the H&M website this month, you may find yourself taken with a ladies’ amber sweater with “Hiver” written on the front, or else a pair of pink children’s leggings, with smiling bunny faces and ears that stick out from the knees for $4.99.Click on the “product sustainability” tab on the page, and you will learn they were made in Bangladesh by some of the 13,000 workers at the Jinnat Apparels & Fashion plant in Gazipur, a dense manufacturing neighborhood near Dhaka.This is part of the company’s new “consumer-facing transparency layer.” H&M shoppers can now find out not only the country where clothing was manufactured, but also details on materials and recycling, the name of the supplier or authorized subcontractor where a garment was made; the factory address; and the number of workers employed there. Customers shopping in physical stores can also have access to this information by using the H&M app to scan the product price tag.There are limits to how much information you’ll get, of course. The sustainability tab won’t tell you that Jinnat sprawls over seven floors, each the size of a football field, or that employees perch in front of whirring sewing machines making white cotton T-shirts, monitoring 337 high-tech embroidery appliances and snipping at stray threads. And you won’t find out that this single company makes 400,000 pieces (roughly 110 tons) of clothing per day, or around 10 to 12 million units per month, up to a quarter of which will be bound for H&M. Still, it is nevertheless the first effort of its kind by a retailer of this scale.H&M created the system by building a bridge between its supplier and production databases and then linking it to its retail interfaces. (The company declined to say what the project had cost.) Pascal Brun, the head of sustainability for the H&M brand, said the new public transparency layer showed that the company had nothing to hide regarding labor or environmental practices, or how H&M products were made.“It is not going to change the world,” he said. “But it is about building a foundation for real change, given we can’t build this industry from the ground up all over again.”

Seeing Through Transparency

“Transparency has become the key driver of change in the fashion industry, which used to be about as untransparent an industry as it could possibly be,” said David Savman, the head of production for the H&M group, from a factory floor in Dhaka. Tanned and golden haired, the Swede filed between rows of workers and inspected sequined T-shirts, asking line managers about different cotton hybrids and admiring fire doors.Change came crashing down on the industry with the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh in 2013, a factory collapse that led to the death of more than 1,000 workers, with scores more disfigured or disabled for life. In the wake of the catastrophe, several Western retailers found they had sold clothes sourced from the factory, or had little to no idea where the clothes they sold were sourced from. All have since come under increasing public pressure to investigate, police and invest in exactly where and how their products were made. There is also pressure for them to be as transparent about their findings as possible (though some have been far more forthcoming than others about taking action).The creation in Bangladesh in 2013 of two five-year fire and safety monitoring agreements between retailers and unions made significant improvements and reforms. The Accord on Fire and Building Safety, which is legally binding, was signed by more than 200 retailers including H&M and Inditex (neither of which had any ties to Rana Plaza, but plenty of other alleged supply chain abuses). The other agreement is the nonbinding Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which was signed by Walmart, Gap and Target. Both have spurred improved working conditions in many Bangladeshi factories, and calls for other countries to adopt similar standards.These agreements, now up for renewal, have sidelined some of the country’s most dangerous factories, and cut their ties to most Western retailers, though not all. A Wall Street Journal investigation in October found that Amazon continued to sell clothes from Bangladeshi factories that other retailers had blacklisted because of their inability to pass safety requirements. Pressure from consumers has also prompted brands like H&M to proactively support local suppliers who create safe and profitable businesses in places like Bangladesh.“We choose not to work with a lot of suppliers that other rivals work with so they can save on costs,” said Karl-Johan Persson this fall. (In 2018 six suppliers in Bangladesh were phased out by H&M because of their poor sustainability performance.) Mr. Persson, the billionaire chief executive of H&M, sat in the “hygge”-style library for the company’s army of young designers in Stockholm as he defended his family company’s business model and its contributions. He declined to specify how much H&M spent annually on transparency efforts, other than to say the investment had continually hurt short-term profit in order to ensure the long-term survival and growth of the company. His argument is that by working in low-cost areas, H&M is creating jobs and investing in the economy; by making its partnerships public, it is accepting its own liability.“But often,” Mr. Persson said, “the focus ends up on what we don’t do.”The new “transparency layer” project has been cautiously applauded by some human rights and fashion advocacy groups and union leaders. But many have also said that H&M’s efforts do not go far enough, questioning whether improvements like this are worthwhile if they merely prolong the existence of a system where profits and shareholder interests are continually placed ahead of employees, suppliers and the environment.Currently, customers do not have access to information on workers’ wages at individual factories, or local minimum fair living wage commitments and calculation methodology. Nor does the transparency layer offer a breakdown of the pricing structure that could specify how labor costs are calculated.“Transparency is primarily a means to an end, and mere information about where a garment is produced does not automatically guarantee meaningful changes in factory labor conditions,” said Aruna Kashyap, senior counsel for the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, which is part of a coalition that started the Transparency Pledge (of which H&M is a signatory).“H&M is among the leaders on supplier transparency, and other companies should follow this practice,” Ms. Kashyap said. “But that doesn’t mean that H&M and other companies that are transparent have fixed an industry model that is replete with problems.”

The Model and the Problems

Even after the Rana Plaza tragedy, the global business model for producing low-cost clothing remains the same. Most brands don’t own their own production facilities, but instead contract with independent factories to make their garments. Generally, in these factories, located in mostly developing economies, very low wages are paid to workers using manufacturing processes that are geared toward expediency rather than the environment.Subcontraction or homeworking remain common, and make it even harder to track where clothes come from.The industry is operating at an almighty scale. In total, across the fashion industry, 80 billion garments are produced each year, according to Greenpeace, with consumer demand and appetite for trend-fueled fashion only growing stronger, in part thanks to a digital culture powered by social media and the wallets of a young emerging global middle class. The worldwide apparel and footwear market’s expected growth, pegged at roughly 5 percent through 2030 by Euromonitor analysts, would risk “exerting an unprecedented strain on planetary resources” by raising annual production of fashion to more than 100 million tons, according to a Euromonitor report.The pressure to meet those demands, and the demand for ever-cheaper labor, are at odds with the move toward transparency and tightly managed supply chains. Many major brands in Europe and North America continue to have limited information about the factories and workers producing their wares. Inspections are usually delegated to third-party auditors, which have proven to be far from foolproof and at the mercy of the often uneven tides of developing nations.Revelations of egregious failures within the garment industry still emerge on a regular basis. A Guardian story in October reported that the active wear company Lululemon had been sourcing clothing from a factory where Bangladeshi female factory workers said they were assaulted. This month, in Delhi, India, a fire broke out in a factory that made school bags and killed 43 workers, including children, who were asleep on the floors inside.Last year, Transparentem, a nonprofit focused on investigating human and environmental abuses in the apparel industry, published a report about abusive conditions and forced labor at a set of Malaysian apparel factories that made wares for brands in North America and Europe such as Primark, Asics, Nike and Under Armour.

Servitude and Lack of a Living Wage

According to the Transparentem report, many workers, often migrants from Bangladesh and Nepal, said that they paid steep recruitment fees to acquire jobs. These could take years to pay back, resulting in “debt bondage,” a common form of modern slavery that occurs when a person is forced to work to pay off debts for little or no pay.Factories limited employees’ movements by withholding their passports; it wasn’t unusual for them to live jammed together in squalid conditions. Many also had to pay a government levy on foreign workers out of their own paychecks (a practice that was legal when Transparentem interviewed workers in 2016 and 2017).“The physical distance, cultural distance, and often time zone difference have all meant that there are inherent challenges in understanding the labor conditions in any manufacturer supply chain,” said Benjamin Skinner, the founder and president of Transparentem.Brands have largely trusted suppliers to follow certain rules with employees and the environment and then verified that those policies were being followed, Mr. Skinner said. But based on his organization’s work, he added, “the ‘verify’ part can be pretty weak.” Because auditors would alert factory owners to their visits, or only interview workers in the presence of their bosses, it created an environment where noncompliance was easy to hide.This gap between intent and reality also emerged in a May report from University of Sheffield researchers in Britain on apparel companies not delivering on promises to pay workers a living wage.Generally set by governments (sometimes with input from foreign and local businesses, unions and NGOs), living wages can differ significantly between countries, with benchmarks sometimes geared to maintaining a country’s competitiveness as a low-cost manufacturing destination rather than the needs of workers. The wages can also be significantly less — sometimes even falling below the poverty line — than the living wage as defined by outside groups, which broadly incorporates food, housing, medical care, clothing and transportation.Many companies, including Adidas and Puma, referred to components of a living wage in their supplier codes of conduct, the researchers said, but the wording around requirements was “very vague,” leaving fulfillment an option and the legal minimum wage the only requirement.On top of all this, the researchers noted that companies relied heavily on outside auditors to ensure codes of conduct were being followed, running into the same issues outlined by Mr. Skinner. Many of these firms are “beholden by financial conflict of interest since they are hired by companies who could decide not to continue to hire them if they identify too many problems,” they wrote. Often, they visited only top suppliers, leaving out the many subcontractors where abuses can be the worst.

Who Polices the Supply Chain?

After Transparentem revealed the Malaysian abuses to 23 companies with direct or indirect buying relationships with the factories, most said that they would take action.Buyers and suppliers were able to negotiate the return of passports and secure the reimbursement of recruitment fees for workers at several facilities. (By November 2018, the total amount of fees paid and scheduled to be paid exceeded $1.4 million.)Still, under the current system, the industry status quo means major garment manufacturers are mopping up mistakes, rather than not making them at all. This is the problem H&M is trying to solve.Mr. Savman of H&M said that because H&M did not own factories, all sustainability efforts and investments like a Dhaka training center ultimately focused on supporting and promoting processes and mechanisms between suppliers, unions and workers that made them self-sufficient when it came to problem solving.A self-reporting system called the Supplier Partnership Impact Program allowed H&M to see issues and regulate what sort of monitoring was needed and where. National Monitoring Committees — round table discussions between H&M employees, union representatives and factory owners — attempted to resolve pay disputes and abuse allegations at factory level.Alongside regular auditing by independent groups, Mr. Savman said, H&M still frequently sent its own employees to monitor factories, sometimes by prearrangement but often unannounced. His colleague Payal Jain, the sustainability manager for H&M’s global supply chain who started her career as a factory worker in India, said that H&M visited its factories several times per week, and 2,500 audits were made in the country per year.That may sound like a lot, but it is an average of 10 per factory — in 365 days. Or less than once per month. The company was also criticized by the Clean Clothes campaign last year, which said H&M had not met a 2013 commitment made to ensure suppliers would pay a living wage to 850,000 textile workers by 2018. (H&M said it had reached at least 600 factories and 930,000 garment workers with its fair living wage strategy, and did not share the Clean Clothes Campaign’s view of how to create change in the textile industry.)Additionally, some factory owners say that despite support from H&M’s sustainability teams, they experience pressure from the company or from production teams who still want more product at a cheaper price — or they threaten to pull their business and go to even less expensive hubs, like Ethiopia. Ms. Jain said cost of labor was not a negotiable part of a supplier contract. But if suppliers are paid less, or overtime is required to complete a contract, the likelihood is that shortfall will get passed down the chain.“Brands like H&M offer training, help union members establish themselves in my factory and guide us on investing in the business, which are all very good and important things,” said Lutful Matin, the manager of Natural Denims, another factory near Dhaka. It employs 6,900 workers to make garments for H&M, Zara, Mango and Esprit. “But then their buying teams still drive down order values and I feel such pressure,” Mr. Matin said.He had proudly shown off the conditions and quality of his products. But, he said, while “I know I’ve invested more in my factory than competitors, they still get orders. There are always new certificates and alliances that need to be passed. Globally the trading market is getting tougher. Sometimes I don’t know how easy it will be to survive.”

The Shopper’s Role

While the work it does is recognized by its recognition in projects like Fashion Revolution’s Transparency Index, H&M believes the best way to get consumers thinking about who made their clothes is to talk to them close to the point of sale.“Consumers have a lack of trust and say they don’t always know how to make the right choices,” said Anna Gedda, the head of sustainability for the H&M group. She added that it was “a constant struggle” to work out how much information a customer may want versus what might make them switch off or walk away from a sale.From Dhaka, Mr. Savman was more forthright. “We are still at the stage where if you put two T-shirts, one cotton and one recycled cotton, which is 30 percent more expensive, the majority of consumers will still take the first option,” he said. “We put a lot of information out there, like the product transparency layer. But how much do customers engage with it? Not a lot — yet.”Nearby, the managers and owners were keen to show off the scope and quality of their Jinnat complex, from their high-quality Italian knitting machines and subsidized food store and medical facilities to the anonymous complaint boxes on every floor and payment system so that workers can be compensated directly and efficiently. As tens of thousands of workers streamed back into the steamy streets for their lunch break, Abdul Wahed, the chairman, looked on.“We are extremely proud of the factory here, and the work we have done,” he said. “People can know when and where we make their clothes.” The onus is on them to click. Read the full article

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pyojihoonmoved · 6 years

Note

0-44 owo

wow, this is payback isn’t it. okay let’s do it.

0: Height

5′11″

1: Age

21, 22 in a month i cry.

2: Shoe size

like… 9? 9.5??

3: Do you smoke?

no thanks.

4: Do you drink?

very rarely tbh.

5: Do you take drugs?

no thank u again

6: Age you get mistaken for

I don’t know? I usually am guessed to be my age or maybe a little older?

7: Have tattoos?

8: Want any tattoos?

yes please.

9: Got any piercings?

yes, just 2 in each lobe.

10: Want any piercings?

cartilage and maybe more, but i’ve tried my cartilage twice and they failed each time so idk.

11: Best friend?

you can’t make me name just a single one.

12: Relationship status

technically single but unavailable as hecc.

13: Biggest turn ons

yeah you’d like to know that wouldn’t you, ya nastea .

14: Biggest turn offs

🤔🤔🤔

15: Favorite movie

I don’t really have one??

16: I’ll love you if…

you feed me .

17: Someone you miss

no one, atm. well there is someone that comes to mind, a friend I had from middle school to high school

18: Most traumatic experience

I honestly can’t really… think of anything like outright… traumatic ? ? ? so lucky me.

19: A fact about your personality

i’m a pretty resilient person, ig?? i mean if smth gets me down or whatever i’m able to move on from it fairly quickly. there are better things to do than to sit and stress over some shit that happened that you can’t change.

20: What I hate most about myself

a n x i e t y.

21: What I love most about myself

I’m funny? ? ? at least I think so..

22: What I want to be when I get older

uhhh… still working on it lmao !

23: My relationship with my sibling(s)

better than it used to be, since we’ve gotten older. then again, it was never really bad to begin with, but you know how siblings are with each other when they’re kids. like one time i threw my heavy ass binder at my brother when we got onto the school bus and it hit him in the back bc he was talking shit bout my best friend at the time LMFAO. i was like 10?? at the time?? maybe 11? and he was 12/13?? good times lmao.

24: My relationship with my parent(s)

it’s neither here nor there? so i guess its a good one? I don’t really feel comfortable talking to them about anything but we don’t fight anymore so it’s cool.

25: My idea of a perfect date

you know in all my 21 years of life this is something i’ve never sat down and actually thought about and visualized? i think just being with the person I like and spending time together and enjoying each other’s company is enough to make the date perfect.

26: My biggest pet peeves

when people smack their food/gum loudly!!! holy shit!! or when people wanna leave ur door open when they leave. being late as a result of other people like i can’t stand being late . people who ask you what y’all should get for a meal then say ew when you pitch ideas, even though they hadn’t contributed in any other way besides “hey what do y’all want” and “ew”. anw i’ll end that there i could go on all day LMAO.

27: A description of the girl/boy I like

WOW where to even. pushing aside like obvious things about how cute/hot she is bc like she’s all of those things (((im very gay))), she’s makes me laugh, makes me feel better when I’m feeling bad mostly over stupid shit, and idk, i feel comfortable with her, to where i can talk to her freely and discuss how i’m feeling without being made out to be the bad guy or anything like that. i could spend literally 24/8 talking to her without getting tired of it, which is saying something because there are very few people I can just not only consistently talk to but like look forward to talking to them on the daily. 12312/10 do not regret liking. she’s a very important person to me and even if things don’t go further than where they are now, I’d be okay with that as long as I still have her in my life. and i hope she knows how much i love her and one day believes she’s every bit of important as i think and make her out to be because she is, maybe even moreso.

28: A description of the person I dislike the most

honestly there isn’t anyone that I like… severely dislike?? people do shit that annoys me and what not but idk there’s no deep seated hatred, only annoyance. ig if I had to answer then the description would be someone that needs to grow the fuck up lmao anw.

29: A reason I’ve lied to a friend

I don’t think i’ve ever lied over something serious. like the only time I ever lie is when i make up excuses for why I can’t hang out or whatever, and thats only if they’re not a close friend. if they’re a close friend I usually just tell them straight up lmao hey nah im not feeling it.

30: What I hate the most about work/school

school since I’m in it right now, uhhh. everything lmfao. but specifically that’d be the fact that my class starts at 8am. and the textbooks are boring af.

31: What my last text message says

tbh idk bc i delete mine daily and sometimes several times daily so whatever I said last or someone said to me last it isn’t there.

32: What words upset me the most

“card declined” :(((

33: What words make me feel the best about myself

honestly any compliment makes me like c: but when people tell me i’m funny/have a good sense of humor i’m like extra cccccc:

34: What I find attractive in women

everything . i’m gay. i fucking love girls.

35: What I find attractive in men

are they pyo jihoon? if not then nothing lmao .

36: Where I would like to live

I mean?? I don’t know?? I’m good with anywhere as long as I’m allowed to have pets and it’s like, you know. a decent place.

37: One of my insecurities

tbh I’ve been feeling a little insecure about my weight again these days. and it’s not like I’m really overweight or anything, like not at all. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a normal BMI or whatever for my age but. i got a lot of shit when i was younger for being overweight, mostly from my brother and his friends and even the rest of my family and so on, so i’m a bit ehhh about it.

38: My childhood career choice

I don’t remember?? I think I wanted to either work with the police or be a lawyer or something, I don’t know.

39: My favorite ice cream flavor

cookie two step by my love blue bell. aka cookies and cream combined with chocolate chip cookie dough

40: Who I wish I could be

uhhhhhh. i don’t know?? I’m alright w/being myself, idk.

41: Where I want to be right now

at home, with blu.

42: The last thing I ate

chick-fil-a. which was several hours ago so i should probabaly make myself food.

43: Sexiest person that comes to my mind immediately

@pushzeen ;)))))

44: A random fact about anything.

UHHHH. UHMMMM. i.... used to want to learn how to sew?? my grandma even bought me a sewing machine when i was in like 5th grade so i could learn, and we started off by making barbie clothes but then family drama happened so i didn’t see her for years. and then a few years back everyone started talking again and so she gave me that sewing machine to take home with me but??? a bitch still can’t sew cause she has no idea what she’s doing on her own lmao. so it’s just chilling in my closet.

#answered #pushzeen #zayra

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chocobabyporcelain · 7 years

Note

How would the bros react to an S/O who wears jfashion? (I'm trying to think of things you like but all i can think of is jfash)

I am so here for this. But of course, you knew that.I did a different subfashion with each bro, but if you wanna see a specific bro with a specific fashion, just shoot me an ask and I’ll get to it.I’ve included a links to a pinterest baord on each fashion so if you’re not familiar, you can get a better visual.(Also, side note, I can totally see Iris dressing in Visual Kei)

Tags: @neko-otaku13 @itsmootothecow @itshaejinju @mp938368 @ffxv-milkshake @bespectacled-girl @insomniacapples @expectogladiolus

Noctis –Decora:

Noctis had known you since middle school, but he’d never seen yououtside of school before. Which meant he’d never seen you inanything other than your school uniform and the minimal makeup yourschool would allow.

Whenhe saw you at the arcade, dressedbrighter than a rainbow, he couldn’t help but stare. Nobody couldhelp but stare. Not all of them appreciative.

Youwere dressed in a bright yellow cut-sew with multicoloured polkadots, along with a red and blue chequered skirt over rainbow tights.There were glittery greenplatform sandals on your feet and a strawberry patterned jacketdraped loosely over your shoulders. You had a seemingly impossibleamount of hair clips decorating your bright red wig and plasticjewellery lining your wrists and fingers. Yourfuzzy, blue monster backpack was hanging limply from your arm as youand your friend, who was dressed similarly, battled on one of themachines.

“Yes!” you yelled out your victory, throwing your hands in theair as you jumped up and down, your backpack bouncing on your arm.

You friend groaned loudly and threw her head down in a pout. “You’reonly good at this because you have more experience.” she grumbled.

Noctis could hardly believe it was you. Could this really be (Y/N)?The girl in his class who kept to herself and barely said a word toanybody? The girl who got so embarrassed when she mispronounced“disestablishment” that she refused to speak for the rest of theday?

He took a deep breath and slowly made his way over to you. “(Y/N)?”

Youturned to face him, youreyes widening when you saw exactly who was addressing you. “PrinceNoctis!” You stepped back, subconsciously pulling your jacketfurther around yourself, as if trying to hide.

Your friend cast a look between the two of you and smiled. “I’mgonna go grab some sodas.” she said, slipping away before you couldcall her back.

An awkward silence stretched between you, both of you looking aroundin different directions.

“It’s—”

“You—”

You both spoke simultaneously, and then laughed nervously atyourselves.

“You first.” Noctis insisted.

Younodded.“I was just gonna say it��s a little strange seeing you outside ofschool.” You pulled yourbackpack to your front, running your fingers through its soft fuzz. Anervous habit you’d picked up somewhere along the line.

Noctissmiled at you, giving your coord a once over. Which made you a littleself-conscious, honestly. “You look amazing.” he gesturedvaguely at your clothes. “So bright andbeautiful.”

It was hard to tell who blushed harder at that comment, you orNoctis.

“Colourful!”he corrected. “Bright an-Bright and colourful.”

Youchuckled. “Thank you.” Youlet one arm fallfrom your bagto your side, fingers playing with the hem of your skirt. “It’scalledDecora fashion.”

“I’dlove to hear all about it,” Noctis was almost embarrassed at howquickly he’d spoken. “If, y’know, you’d like to tell me?”

Youswayed a little, rolling up onto the balls of your feet with a brightsmile. “Yeah, I’d really like that.” you replied, maybe alittle too eagerly.

“Cool.”

Iswear, Decora is a lot nicer looking than the coord I just described.

Prompto – Fairy Kei:

You were sat on a high wall just behind the overlook in Lestallumwhen Prompto first saw you. He caught sight of your pastel pink andbaby blue sneakers dangling just above his line of sight. “Oh,”he muttered softly as he looked up and saw you in your entirety.

Your fluffy tutu in pink, mint and lavender splayed out either sideof you, draping over the pastel candy-print tights that encased yourthighs. The pink sweater you were wearing (in Lestallum, which wasquestionable enough) was easily three times too big for you, one sidehanging off your shoulder, and had “Barbie” written across thefront in pretty cursive letters. You wore baby blue knee-highs overyour tights, with little pink teddy bears holding balloons on thesides, disappearing into your high-top sneakers. Your hair was dyedin split colours, pink one side, blue the other, and was tied up intwin-tails, with slightly uneven tie-off points which looked clumsy,but cute. You were swinging your legs daintily, fully engrossed inyour phone.

Prompto couldn’t help the smile that stretched across his face ashe looked up at you. A real life fairy princess, perched comfortablyatop her vantage point, looking out at the world. You were beautiful.A true vision in soft pastels.

He took a deep breath, gathering the courage to call out to you.“Exc– Excuse me!”

You peered over the top of your phone, unsure whether or not thevoice was calling you. You saw the blonde man down below waving toyou, and you gave your own shy, tentative wave in return.

“Hey, this might sound weird but, um,” he lifted his camera, asif to make you aware of its existence. “Would you be comfortablewith me taking your picture?”

You knitted your eyebrows, worrying your lower lip a little. “Oh,erm…” You considered it, briefly. He seemed genuine enough andhe did ask permission first. That’s gotta count forsomething, right? You took a breath and forced a smile. “Yeah,sure.” You placed your phone down beside you and held up a peacesign.

Prompto hesitated. “Are you sure?” he called up. You werebeautiful and he definitely wanted a picture of you, but hewasn’t prepared to make you uncomfortable.

“I’m sure.” you replied, giving a short chuckle.

Prompto smiled up at you once more and aligned his camera, spending alittle time adjusting in a way that was comfortable and got a goodangle. He framed it perfectly, the midday sun behind you in a waythat made you glow radiantly.

“How do I look?”

“Gimme a sec.” He quickly made his way up the small hill, and youswivelled around on the wall to greet him.

You jumped off your comfy perch and grabbed your soft backpack offthe ground, stuffing your phone back into the yellow fluff.

Prompto stopped short when he caught sight of it. The fluffy birdshaped bag was recognisable anywhere. “Is your backpack a chocobo?”he asked with an excited smile.

You giggled, pulling your soft bag closer, cuddling him like aplushie. “Yeah. He’s super cute. I love him.” you said, swayingthe bag as if nursing a child.

“I think you might be my favourite person.” Prompto muttered,unable to stop the heat rising to his cheeks.

Blushing just as bright, you gave another nervous giggle, buryingyour face in the soft fluff of your chocobo backpack. “Do you, um,”you lowered the bag from your mouth, realising it was probablymuffling your speech. “Do you think you could email me that pictureso I can use it for my blog?” you asked, gesturing to his camera.

“Oh, sure thing.” Prompto reached into his pocket and dug out hisphone, opening his notes app and handing it to you. “Here, writedown your email address.”

You took the phone from him, typed in what you needed to, and handedit back.

Your name, email address and phone number.

“(Y/N?),” he smiled. “That’s a pretty name.”

“Thanks.” You began to fidget with your bracelet, a band ofplastic, pastel beads spelling Cry Baby that was previouslyhidden beneath your sleeve. “So, do you have a name, orshould I credit you as Mr. Camera.” you asked.

Prompto snorted at the nickname. “It’s Prompto.” he replied,maybe hoping a little that you’d call him Mr. Camera anyway. Maybehe thought it sounded kinda cool.

“Prompto.” you repeated.

That’s when a car horn decided to blast, startling the both of you.

“(Y/N)!” you heard your friend’s voice call.

You looked up to the road, where you could see the car of anotherfriend, the one in question leaning far out of the window. “Get in,loser. We got a tea party to get to!”

You waved and turned back to Prompto. “That’s my ride.” Youhesitated, rocking slightly on your heels. “So… text me later?”you trailed off cautiously.

“Sure thing!” Prompto’s reply was immediate. “I’ll send thephoto tonight.”

You smiled and nodded. “Thank you so much.” With that, you rushedto your friend’s car, pausing to wave before you climbed in,ignoring your friends as they teased you.

Prompto waited until the car drove off before looking back at hiscamera, at the photograph of you, sitting atop the wall with thatsweet smile. “Ah, geez.” he muttered.

He had it bad.

Hereis my very own Fairy Kei board!In fact, most of the coord in this is based off my actual wardrobe.

Also,can I throw out the headcanon that Prompto is totally prepared totwin with his Fairy Kei S/O?

Ignis – Uchuu Kei:

For as long as Ignis has known you, he’s known about your penchantfor space. Many a time he’d found you, in the wee hours of themorning, curled up on the woven chair that sat on your balcony,staring up at the night sky.

He loved the sound of pure excitement in your voice as you pouredover your star chart, talking endlessly about the vastness and beautyof space, yet to be explored.

The crescent moon string lights you’d hung around the vanitymirror, the nebula print cushions you’d decorated the bed with, thenebula soaps in the bathroom, all of it may not have been to Ignis’staste, per say. But, a shared home should have equal representationof all parties coexisting, and that was your mark.

He’d noticed you were starting in integrate your passion for spacein your outfits. It started with your nails, your usual block colouracrylics traded in for nebula patterns. Then, there was a pair ofholographic creepers you had your heart set on from the moment yousaw them.

You’d started to wonder if you could make your whole wardrobe spacethemed. Or would that be silly? You supposed it was. After all, youweren’t a little girl anymore, and they probably didn’t even makespace themed clothing in your size.

Still, that didn’t stop you looking it up at home whileprocrastinating work. You scrolled through pages and pages ofchildren dressed as aliens and astronauts, becoming more and morediscouraged at each microhuman you saw draped in silver, green andUFO print.

Until, you stumbled upon something amazing.

You slammed your hands down on the table, staring wide-eyed at thescreen on your laptop.

“(Y/N)?” Ignis called, poking his head around the door of thesmall dinning room, where you were (supposed to be) working. “Whatwas that? Are you alright?”

You smiled at him over the top of your heavily decorated laptop.“It’s a thing!” you muttered, your voice pinching slightly asyour excitement become more apparent. You beckoned him over to showhim the images on your screen.

Ignis came to stand behind you, placing an arm across your shoulders.He watched with you as you scrolled down the page, showcasing imageafter image of people—adults—wearing nebula patterns,silver, constellations, aliens. Space fashion was a thing!

“It’s called Uchuu Kei,” you said, opening a few images in newtabs for a closer inspection. “I can’t believe it’s actually athing!”

The excitement in your voice brought a smile to Ignis’s face. “Ithink it’d suit you nicely.” He pointed to a particular image onthe screen. I girl dressed in a silver dress, navy, star sprinkledtights and holographic creepers. “You’re halfway there, you justneed the dress.” he commented with a chuckle.

You laughed along, mulling it over in your mind. Could you reallypull it off? You wanted to, but you weren’t convinced. What if youjust looked really silly? “You think so?” you asked, a littleshyly.

“Certainly.”

And with that, your mind was made up. You’d try out Uchuu Kei. Andif it didn’t suit you, it didn’t suit you, and it would be alearning experience and you’d move on.

It started with you collecting garments, tucking them away in yourcloset until you felt you had enough to build a semi-decent coord. Itwas mostly tops and sweaters, you noticed. All with aliens, crescentmoons, rocket ships and various other space motifs. You only had ahandful of suitable skirts and one pair of shorts, and two pairs oftights.

When you felt you had enough, you wanted to work on building a coord.You gathered all of the Uchuu clothes from your closet and laid themout neatly on the bed. You’d pick up a shirt, lay it over a skirtand then put it back, picking up a different shirt and trying again.

You were there for hours, and quickly growing frustrated.Why was coording so hard?

When you finally settled on what you hoped was a workable coord, yougot changed, applying a little makeup and checking yourself over inthe mirror. “Ignis,” you called, making your way out of thebedroom and landing before your boyfriend in a cute curtsy. “Do Ilook alright?”

Ignis regarded you with an appreciative hum. You were wearing a shortsleeved t-shirt, black with a little green alien riding in a UFO withthe words I BELIEVE written in bold, friendly letters.On top of that was a nebula print suspender skirt, the strapsdecorated with badges of UFOs and rocket ships. You were wearing oddsocks, one navy and sprinkled with glittery stars and one a plainwhite, both pulled up to just under your knees, and on your feet,your beloved holographic creepers.

With a gentle smile, Ignis got to his feet, placing a hand on thesmall of your back, pulling you closer. “You look exquisite,darling.” he whispered, softy brushing a stray lock of hair fromyour face. “My little space princess.”

Someexamples of Uchuu Kei.

Gladiolus – Oshare Kei:

Gladiolus has known you for a long time. He’s seen all of yourabrupt style changes, and they happened often.

When you two met, you were playing around with Gyaru. It was acomfortable style, but the fake tan was annoying, and the bleachedblonde and heavy makeup really did not suit you.

You very briefly tried a Classic Lolita style, but thatquickly evolved into a more Gothic Lolita style, which youfound far more suited to you. Far more stylish.

Moriwas one of Gladio’s personal favourite looks on you. Theloose, floaty dresses and thick woollen cardigans gave you adelicate, doll-like look, and the earthy tones made you appear like aforest sprite.

When you announced, out of the blue, that you wanted to try adifferent style, Gladio had to admit that he was sad to see yourforest girl look go.

He very quickly changed his mind when he saw your next style.

Thefirst thing he noticed was that you haddyed your hair again. Mostlyblack this time, with neon pink dip dye. The vest you had on was alsoblack, full of rips with more neon pink peeking through. Hecould see the slightest hint of black, Lycra shorts peering outbeneath your short, pink and black tartan skirt. Yourblack and pink striped socks were uneven, one just below your kneeand the other pushed down to mid-calf, both disappearing intobattered, black converse.

Youspun on the spot, your skirt flaring out and showing off how snuglythose shorts fit. “What do you think?” yourquestion ended in a nervous lilt to your voice as youendedyour twirl in a cute little curtsey.

Gladiolooked you up and down, a muted grinplaying on his lips. “I think,” he said, pulling himself up offof the sofa and approaching you. He held your wrist in his hand andtwirled you once more, leaving you giggling and almost falling intohim. “thatyou look amazing.”

He stepped back, admiring you all over again. “What’s it called,again?” he asked.

“OshareKei.” you answered. “It’s kinda like Visual Kei, but morecolourful.” You swayed alittle, glancing down at your outfit. “Well, more pink, on thisoccasion.” You chuckled nervously, suddenly becoming self-criticalof your chosen colour scheme. Was it too same-y?No, no, plenty of coords use a two-colour palette, you looked fine.Better than fine. You lookedamazing! Right?

Gladioraised an eyebrow at you. “Hey, I know that look.” He lifted youup by the waist and held you with one arm under your butt and theother supporting you back. Herested his forehead against yours and looked you in the eye. “Believeme, (Y/N). You look incredible.Better than… the girl fromthat… Visual band you like…”he trailed off, trying toremember the band, or the girl, or anything, really.

Youscrunched your nose a little. Well, that was vague,but you decided you’d take the compliment, anyway. You smiled,wrapping your arms around Gladio’s neck, swinging your legs gentlyat his sides. “Thanks, Gladio.” you muttered.

Ican see Gladio really being into the “soft punk” vibe Oshare Keigives.

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regrettablewritings · 7 years

Text

The Roommate Story, Part 1

@xemopeachx this is the story that jumps the shark because anything else I put after this is just jelly :/ This is also a very long story because there was just so much about this bitch that I have to chop it up into segments within parts. So . . . Here’s the first installment, I guess.

Fact: Everyone who’s gone to boarding school, lived on a college campus, or shared an apartment has a shitty roommate story. If you do not, you haven’t roommate’d right. My story (or, rather, my compilation of occurrences) isn’t necessarily crazy, but the end of it usually has people wide-eyed and using sentences that include the words “smack” and “bitch” and “arrested.” No guarantee you will but if you have crazier, please tell me: I love nightmare roommate stories.

So for a little bit of backstory, my first semester freshman year roommate’s name was Kathryn (whose name has been changed for the purposes of this story). We attend (well, she just graduated, so attended) a college located in a small, dreary northern Ohio town five hours outside of Canada. Really, this place has very few things going for it but I picked it because I didn’t want to pay out-of-state-fees and because as glorious as moving back to New Orleans for college might’ve been, I can’t handle heat very well at all (which is a shorter story for another time). But one of the other things this school has going for it are its learning communities: We’ve got language-based ones, ones for business-oriented majors, ones for education majors, an international student one . . .

The one I applied for was one oriented for creative minds. Sounds nifty, right? (Once again, stories for another time.) When I got the email of whom my roommate was to be, I saw it as a good thing because both Kathryn and I were attending the school as theater tech majors which her focusing on stage management and myself as a costumer. Plus, she shared a name with one of my best friends from high school so I was psyched.

Well, little chickee-poos.

I’m gonna need you to be patient with me because I don’t even know how or where to begin with what all happened. I mean, it started out pretty okay at first. Kathryn was a bit louder and more bombastic than I was but then again, I’m a shy introvert with social anxiety so that’s not an impressive feat whatsoever. She even introduced me to our neighbors May and Allison (names also changed) and thereby led to me meeting May’s friends Marissa and Francesca. And in our classes, I met Graham, Lynn, and Hunter. It seemed like we had a swell thing going on.

Then Kathryn met Stan.

Stan was also in the learning community we were a part of, but we met him through different means. I met him first because we both had a film class together, and she met him through a coloring contest one of the RAs was holding. I don’t know what exactly drew Kathryn to Stan, given that he literally looked and dressed like a facial-hairless Michael Moore, but soon they were attached and I guess going through some sort of courting thing. In hindsight, May and I theorize that it was mainly because Allison and I would talk about the boyfriends we’d both had at that time and Kathryn would often mutter about being single.

I mean, to be fair, Stan wasn’t bad at first. Then I learned that his room was the one causing the stench down the boy’s hallway. The reason this matters is because we lived on a co-ed floor and the laundry room was down the boy’s hall for some reason and you had to pass by his room to get there. The door was always open, releasing this nigh-on visible beam of stench and thereby allowing you to see the cause of it: His room was a mess with his mattress sitting literally in the middle of the floor (the rooms are muy tiny by the way) with his books and shit stacked in the bedframe and dirty clothes flung everywhere. I would later learn that Kathryn had spent nights on said coverless mattress and would subsequently scream inwardly about it. But anyway, aside from this, I was generally indifferent towards Stan. Who cares if he wore the same five shirts like a cartoon character? Not me hahahahahahahahahahaha—

So fast forward to one September Tuesday night: Kathryn and Stan are out doing whatever, I’m on the floor drawing because I finally have the room to myself. They come knocking and enter and ask if I would mind if they watch TV. I have no real qualms about it, so long as they keep it down. About ten minutes in, I happen to look up. They are slowly but surely merging into this heap of flesh upon the futon.

So let’s lay something down about me: In spite of what I write, PDA honestly petrifies me a little. A lottle. I need to be eased into that shit whether it’s myself or somebody else. I don’t know why, but if I get too flustered, my face is a wearable inferno and I feel grossed out and like a trapped animal and eventually literally collapse under how befuddled I am. I don’t know why, I don’t know since when, but it’s something I have tried but frankly have extreme trouble controlling.

My face starts burning. I feel increasingly awkward. I also notice how late it’s getting but unfortunately I am not confrontational in the slightest. Plus, I’ve been critiqued in the past for my “conservative ways” and worried about receiving more if I voiced my discomfort. Apparently the ground rules Kathryn and I had laid when we first moved in were relative . . .

By the time I finally managed to muster up the girly balls to say anything, though, they were making out. In an animalistic panic, I booked it and wound up spending the night in May and Allison’s room. When I voiced my discomfort to them, they looked at each other and came clean about what all had been going on while I lay oblivious. For this, dear reader, is but only the fucking prologue to my first semester of freshman year. Let us begin . . .

For starters, I suppose I should go with the fact that the stage-setter for how Kathryn’s mind apparently works is that not even a full 24 hours after we’d met, she was talking about me. Reminder that I am shy, introverted, and hella anxious to the point of confining myself to the room for hours at a time for the first week of school. I had done literally nothing. But apparently I had: I wanted to design costumes, but I didn’t know my way around a sewing machine. In high school, I didn’t have the transportation to take classes and my school picked the same people for the same tasks in theater tech over and over so I never stood a chance. But that’s why we go to college, right? To learn? Nope! You gotta know exactly what you’re doing the moment you step a toenail on campus!

At least, this is what Kathryn was suggesting when she told the others how ridiculous it was for me to pursue something I didn’t know how to do (to which Francesca later got pissed over because apparently some fashion designers don’t even know how to sew). But what really stuck with me was the fact that my biggest sin according to Kathryn was how quiet I was. And I quote: “She’s just so quiet! I don’t know what I’m going to do with her!” “ ‘To do with her.’ ” Like I was some sort of animal that couldn’t be housetrained. This stuck with me even to now and pisses me off to no end. Because from this, we can tell that Kathryn was an arrogant, ignorant piece of work who took her boldness as something good. It was not. I have the stories and tidbits to prove it:

May, Francesca, Marissa, and I are black. Kathryn and Allison are white. The reason I bring this up is because Kathryn was (and honestly probably still is) ignant as hell. Because let’s be honest: When enough people of a certain group gather (be it ethnic or occupational), certain jokes will fly. We honestly didn’t go to into it, but Kathryn still wanted in for God knows what reason. I don’t know what possessed Marissa, but she decided to give Kathryn leeway and allow her ONE DAY a week to say only a very limited kind of joke (which was more than what should’ve been allowed anyway).

I don’t remember Kathryn ever actually making said joke, but I honestly suspect it might’ve been a colorism thing (I’m light, the others weren’t). What I did here, however, was possibly worse.

So if you would remember from earlier, Kathryn and I were both theater tech majors. One musical Kathryn was especially fond of was Hairspray. Some of you familiar with the story may be getting ahead of me and praying that what I’m about to explain to the less knowledgeable didn’t actually happen. Others who know of the play but still don’t know, jump on in with the rest who just don’t know about the musical at all.

So in Hairspray, the story takes place during the Civil Rights movement of the 60s where a popular dance show serves as a platform of sorts for the main character and her black friends to get their message of desegregation across. This show, the Corny Collins Show, has two separated segments: the regular broadcast where all the teen dancers are white, and a monthly broadcast called “Negro Day” when black performers are allowed on the show.

In short, Kathryn decided that it would be a good idea to refer to the one-day-a-week thing as “Negro Day.” (She also told her parents about it, causing them to dislike May, Francesca, and Marissa despite the three never trying to set a bad impression for their daughter.)

Speaking of her parents, she sort of treated them way too much like they were her friends. Worse yet was how much she talked crap about them. She never gave me any indication or statement that would suggest them to be abusive or neglectful and considering that she spilled way too much into about herself, you think this wouldn’t be a problem. But it was always referring to her mother as a bitch here and boasting about splurging her father’s finances there. Just really uncomfortable stuff. She even once prodded into Allison’s financial situation when she saw her buying stuff on Amazon.

But back to the race thing (because we’re not done yet!), she made a lot of ignorant assumptions born out of suggestible things. And by that, I mean she had attended a predominately white school (though by the way she acted, you would think it was completely white), whereas May, Francesca, and Marissa attended a predominately black school. It wasn’t a bad school, either. Surrounded by cornfields, maybe, but I swear that’s nearly every suburban Ohio school because this state is nothing but corn. And yet, no matter how much they insisted otherwise, Kathryn assumed they had attended school in the ghetto. Furthermore, when she’d learned that May took AP classes in high school, she vocally assumed that their AP classes weren’t off the same caliber as hers. It was also a little disturbing how she, after learning that Marissa got financial help from her aunt, began asking if May and Francesca also required financial help.

But her assumptions weren’t just race-based: They were also connected with sexuality.

So I’m going to just be blunt about something that is honestly a certifiable fact from theater and queer people alike: Theater is chock full o’ gays. Not everyone is theater is queer, but it’s one of those things where the population is so great because it’s where you know you’re bound to find somebody like you. You try not to jump to conclusions with certain people, especially because some characteristics just aren’t the end all be all but with Hunter . . . We all had our suspicions. But it wasn’t any of our business, so there was no need to prod.

Kathryn, however, took it a few steps further. In her mind, Hunter+Gay=It’s Okay to Change In Front of Him. It’s one thing to do this when the other party consents or if there is a sense of familiarity. We had only known Hunter for maybe a month. She tried to get me to change in front of Hunter as well, insisting that it was totally fine even though he was sitting right there. In hindsight, it was a good thing I insisted I wasn’t comfortable doing that because we later learned he had a crush on Kathryn.

Later in the semester, we learned that of the people in the group, she could most easily manipulate May. I think it’s because as loud as May is, she isn’t confrontational and tries to please people. This became most apparent after Kathryn managed to wrong May twice by taking advantage of her good will. The first time was minor in that she begged May to walk with her to the nearby dining hall even though May insisted she had plans. In the end, May agreed to go under the assumption that they were having dinner. But when they get there. Hunter and Lynn are there and Hunter asks, “Are you coming?” May is confused. “We’re going to a reading of A Raisin in the Sun,” he explains. When May turns to Kathryn, Kathryn shrugs.

“I just wanted someone to walk with me in case something happened.” Mind you, it was broad daylight outside and the entire five minute walk from the dorm to the dining hall they went to is populated by students, the fine arts building, the library, Greek Row, and the fancy new dorm. What could’ve happened?!

The second instance was a bit more of a headache but still kinda rude. May and I decided that we were going to get our homework done, then head down to the learning community (it was in the dorm’s basement) to do crafts and shit. Just be productive. I finish my stuff earlier than expected and give her the heads up that I’ll be downstairs if she needs me. It is here that she miserably admits to getting roped into playing board games with Kathryn, Stan, and our RA. Despite insisting to Kathryn that she wanted to do artsy stuff, Kathryn insisted it wouldn’t take long and May didn’t want to disappoint the RA. Because Kathryn has this weird thing about board games, one game turned into three and eventually May was stuck in a hell loop of dice and cards and trivia questions for four hours. During these four hours, May asked Kathryn if they could break and order pizza because the dining halls were closing soon. Kathryn never really directly answered but I guess she kept May playing under the guise of getting food. When the games finally ended and Kathryn went to put her stuff away, May texted about the pizza. No answer. About an hour later, May passed by the computer lab to spy Kathryn with other people, eating pizza and laughing.

Kathryn was also terribly oblivious of her own anatomy. Now, I try to give leeway about this because frankly the American school system is shite about female sexuality but even the shit that she didn’t know was suspicious as hell. (I would later learn that she supposedly didn’t have to take health class but I could’ve sworn that this is an Ohio graduation requirement.) The other reason I’m so hesitant to believe this claim is the fact that she attended a decently upscale school in the northern part of the US. She didn’t even learn about her clit until the year before during a game of Cards Against Humanity! So for some reason, rather than wait until sophomore year when Human Sexualities was an available class (or, you know, google it), she felt it was absolutely necessary to ask May and myself questions about sex. May got the worst of it, having to answer questions about vaginas, the fact that you don’t pee out the actual vaginal canal, and about periods (“What was I supposed to do!? Tell her a pussy troll comes out and smacks her around down there and that’s how you bleed!?”). I, on the other hand, got asked about orgasms.

I never made any indication that I knew what I was talking about and I have never been sexually active or gave any reason for anyone to assume I was. What gave her license to believe I knew anything about the physiology and psychology behind climaxing was the fact that Lynn and I were analyzing a script from our script analysis class called In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play). Which, mind you, Kathryn was also reading. Seriously, bitch just came in as we were studying and goes, “Regrettable, how does an orgasm work? I mean, what happens when you have one?”

I swear she was just doing it to get a raise out of me stumbling to explain blood rushing and spasms. You couldn’t even suggest that she explore herself because when May suggested it, she flipped out and insisted she couldn’t because she was asexual and that would be ridiculous to do as such.

While I have my hangups about sexual activity, I could never quite understand this argument so if anyone who identifies as ace could clarify, I would very much appreciate it.

(And before you go with the idea of sexual repulsion, I must note that she did let Stan finger her a couple of times apparently and let people know about it.)

Speaking of Stan, he’s going to play a bigger role in Part 2 . . .

#personal life #roommate from hell #story time #long. ass. post #and it's only gonna get longer once you add in the rest of this story

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trebaolsmovingcastle · 7 years

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If there is a constant in my writing about the news and modern society it isn’t my contempt for the conservatives of the world, it’s my hatred of automation. Which is to say that I appreciate and understand the drive towards it, but as this article unintentionally lays out, automation is a shitty gift of the magi where you can buy well made shirts for cheap, but you lost all your jobs to t-shirt making robots.

The article spends most of its time focusing on Softwear, an Atlanta based clothing automation manufacturing company.

The company grew out of the drive to get all the things our military wears and uses made domestically...but the DOD basically discovered almost immediately that the reason we make everything overseas is that...

Making clothes in the US is prohibitively expensive, because workers expect to receive decent wages for their labor. So what did the military do? It invested in automation. The Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency granted Georgia Tech with $1.26 million to develop robotic sewing machines.

Mysteriously the article then explains that Softwear’s machines also don’t produce clothes domestically...but it doesn’t explain where they produce them. Anyway, the company founder, Palaniswamy Rajan is the Eli Whitney of modern manufacturing.

He's unapologetic about eliminating mechanical jobs like sewing, arguing that automation lets workers focus on more interesting, bigger-picture tasks — and often in better, higher-paying jobs.

(...)

“Most young people nowadays would rather work in services than in a factory,” he says, “so why try to recreate a world that is long gone and wasn't all that great to begin with?

It's an idealization of the past, as if the past were always so rosy," he said."Do we really want phone operators plugging in your phone connection, people having hard physical-labor jobs in factories," he said, that are physically straining and often unhealthy?

Whitney of course produced the cotton gin, designed to automate the process of cleaning and picking burs from cotton, a laborious and difficult job done by slaves in the south. The gin was so good at its job that it saved slavery as an institution and brought about the unintended consequence of reinvigorating a slowing slave trade and guaranteed Civil War 50 odd years later.

In this case Rajan makes the false claim that the factory worker has freedom of choice now. No longer obliged to work at the factory the laborer can kick back, pop open a beer, then dream up the next great American novel, or go and work at a tech start up where the real cash was.

In Rajan’s universe the difference between the old time factory worker on the line and J.D. Rockefeller was one of time, it was an accident of circumstance that that laborer was a laborer, remove the labor, and the laborer becomes free to be a tycoon.

Trump of course has pledged a return to manufacturing, but as is becoming evident, manufacturing now is automated, meaning very little labor is involved, and its been this way for 40 plus years. When I grouse about rust belt dumb fucks blaming Obama for not opening factories, it’s because this ‘factory’ problem is older than I am, meaning that there haven’t been factories, with good jobs, and strong unions, since well before I was born in the 80′s...so who all is opining around the burning meth lab for the good ol’ days of manufacturing when most of the people who’d be talking about it...never had it to begin with.

"The fact that the U.S. manufacturing sector has been succeeding by many measures in recent years makes Trump's promises seem like false dreams," Mark Muro, a senior fellow and the director of policy at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, wrote in MIT's Technology Review. "No one should be under the illusion that millions of manufacturing jobs are coming back to America."

Indeed, despite Trump's public rhetoric about pressuring the air-conditioner maker Carrier to keep jobs in Indiana instead of sending them to Mexico, the company's CEO later acknowledged the result would be, you guessed it, greater automation.

Meanwhile Trump insists that the real problem are the god damned sonofabitchin Mexicans, secretly toiling away at secret american factories that are forever cloaked because of their proximity to the latins notoriously advanced ‘labor tech.’ Except of course...

...one study from Ball State University finds "almost 88% of job losses in manufacturing in recent years can be attributable to productivity growth, and the long-term changes to manufacturing employment are mostly linked to the productivity of American factories." In other words, robots, not outsourcing or trade competition, are the culprit.

FUCKIN’ JOHNNY FIVE ALIVE AND TAKING OUR JOBS!

YOU AREN’T FOOLING ME DEMON! (I can’t...I love Johnny 5 too much to stay angry at him, take my jobs you lovable scamp.)

The author of one of these studies however feels pretty good about what’s happening...

optimistic about the prospects for automation to generate better, higher-paying jobs. He wrote in a separate paper that the rapid pace of recent technological growth had not, for the most part, wiped out a significant portion of jobs but instead changed the labor market in myriad ways, many positive: "Automation does indeed substitute for labor — as it is typically intended to do. However, automation also complements labor, raises output in ways that lead to higher demand for labor, and interacts with adjustments in labor supply."

That may be especially the case in the services economy, which accounts for some 80% of spending in the nearly $19 trillion US economy.

Except....whoopsidoodle...

Service industries, even complicated ones like food service are getting automated simultaneously.

Also, I should probably reiterate what should be painfully obvious here, factory jobs in America were traditionally middle class jobs, they were higher paying and offered superior benefits to service industry jobs. Service industries were what you got in high school before college. Now they’re becoming the only job...and they’re being automated too. So when you eliminate middle class labor, the laborers don’t ‘level up’ into service industry, they get sorted down economically...except that soon, in essence simultaneously to industrial automation killing jobs, service industry automation will kill service labor.

You, if you read this, noticed that service industries are our economy. 19 trillion bucks my friends...you going out to buy a shirt and some french fries, that’s our economy. Except what happens when you automate large portions of that industry and thus eliminate the jobs held by the people who operate the businesses you are generating profit for...and by extension...what happens to you, because the idea is that these ‘Service’ jobs can also be automated, and are being automated...so...if you can’t work in factories, and the tech industry is glutted on engineering graduates and outsourcing, as well as using contract work to avoid long term job security...and you can’t support all the people in the service industries as they dry up...what do you do?

According to Rajan you are suddenly free to do what you want.

In a capitalist system that demands you sell your labor for wages to buy goods and services, which you can no longer labor in. What happens when money stops going into the service industry that our economy is fundamentally based on now? Because, remember, the service industry isn’t just the fry cooks and store clerks, it’s those same laborers spending money in other service industry supporting businesses. With no work for service industry workers, there’s no money circulating at Target, McDonald’s, or any of the other service based jobs.

One critical hole, that I can not get, and god knows I’ve tried, any economist or tech futurist to talk about is ‘what happens when you kill all the low paying, low level jobs in a capitalist society with no safety nets?’

I’ve seen a few arguments that you’d have more jobs repairing the robots...except it’s not a directly comparable number, it’s not like every robot generates a thousand jobs, the robot may generate a percentage of a job, because a single repairman or service center can repair and do work on multiple robots.

Also, because I come from a working class family, I don’t pay special attention to the wealthy and jobs performed by ‘professional’ or white collar workers.

Guess what you fucks, those are getting automated too...

JPMorgan said on February 27 that it was launching software that could accomplish in seconds the same amount of work it would take lawyers 360,000 hours to do. This kind of surge in productivity is hard to fathom — and lawyers aren't even part of the manufacturing industry.

So...lawyers now can be marginally hedged down in favor of automation, we know also that in the tech industry and stock market similar automated number crunching and data analysis is becoming common. That would have been done by the larger portion of white collar workers in those offices in the past and is now becoming obviously the way to go, thus...fewer of those guys around the office. But don’t worry, they’re finally free from the crushing weight of office work and can finally cycle into the better labor of the service industry...oh wait, that’s a step down the economic ladder, and also those jobs are disappearing.

I should mention that futurists will cite the fact that the world didn’t end when the industrial revolution happened, we went from agrarian and craftsman based societies to industrial ones. The artisans and farmers of yesteryear were crushed and used to oil the machines of industry. It worked out, because your talented shoe maker went on to work at a shoe factory, your farmers all filed in and filled positions in dangerous factories...they had jobs literally generated for them, awful jobs, their labor was undervalued, but there were jobs present to keep at least a majority of them from dying in their now machine plowed fields and empty workshops.

The problem with this ‘NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION’ is that there aren’t factories. We aren’t creating a new industry or job market for the displaced ‘craftsman’ and ‘farmers’ instead we’re eliminating labor, unskilled and otherwise, and we’re not generating a new workplace and new economy to support these displaced workers, and the system we have is notorious for devaluing labor, especially desperate labor.

So what happens? What do you do when your economy is built on low wage, low skill workers...and you take their jobs, and the jobs of the strata above them, and the jobs of the strata above them...but...you also have a society fundamentally flawed, that can be in the midst of this crisis and blame it all on ‘immigrant’ labor?

Find someone, anyone that can provide an answer that is honest, and isn’t ‘we move past capitalism into a utopia where there is no work and everyone is free’ and I will gladly read what they have to say and try to add it to my understanding of this problem...because so far...I’ve only seen the out of touch try and explain that everything will work out great, while not answering the question of ‘what do you do when no one can afford basic necessities...and there isn’t enough work to go around, and your government is literally antagonistic towards your existence?’

#labor #automation #future

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ticknart · 7 years

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The True Story of how Stacy Rowe Destroyed the Fashion Club

Everything was great at the beginning of her senior year. Sure, the Fashion Club had sort of disbanded during the summer, but Quinn, Tiffany, Sandi, and Stacy still spent lots of time together. They talked clothes and makeup and boys, all the things they used to do in Fashion Club, but there was no reason to pretend that it was all they thought about anymore.

Tiffany did what she enjoyed most, spending her parents' money and dating as many guys as possible. The pickings were slim at the high school, though. She was a senior and it was unseemly to date lower classmen, even if they were really popular, and she'd already dated the desirable guys in the senior class. After the Fashion Club broke up, she started putting feelers out at Lawndale State, going to parties and making sure she was known in the right circles. College men were what she wanted, and there were plenty out there for her to get at.

When school started, Sandi seemed listless. Sure, to the average student and the teachers she was still throwing out advice to students about how to dress and trying to tell teachers what and how they should be teaching, but she wasn't her normal, overly confident self anymore. Eventually, though, she found the project she needed to keep her from turning into Tiffany: Kevin Thompson, the star quarterback. He was still in school with them, even though he had been a senior the year before. When Sandi learned what had happened to him and that he wasn't dating anyone, she made her move. First she convinced him that they were supposed to be together; Stacy had her suspicions how. Then Sandi started to remake Kevin. Now he only wore his uniform or any school colors on game days. She made sure he had the most stylish shirts and hats and that he wore the right brand of shoes. She cured him of sticking straws up his nose, when she was around, at least, and taught him the proper ways to snub both the not attractive and the fairly attractive who showed interest in him. Sandi was as happy as she could be which really meant she was too busy to sit and think about herself.

To Stacy, Quinn was the biggest surprise. Their junior year, Quinn had started paying more attention in classes. She started to volunteer to answer questions in class. Volunteered! Her grades went up and when they took the STATs that May, Quinn got the highest score out of the four Fashion Club member by nearly two hundred points and Quinn thought she could do better when she took the test again in the fall. So, three afternoons a week Quinn studied and since she didn't have secretary duties, which were pretty much anything Sandi told her to do, Stacy joined her best friend studying. Quinn still dated, but not as much as she used to. Like Tiffany, Quinn saw how thin the pickings had gotten at Lawndale High, but unlike Tiffany, Quinn didn't want to move in on college guys. She mostly stuck with Jamie, Jeffy, and Joey because she knew them and it was only to relax from her studying. It all seemed to be working for her, too. She was just as popular as ever. Her clothes were always the cutest. And her grades were really good. Stacy was a bit jealous, but also really happy for her best friend. Maybe it was because Quinn's weird sister had gone away to college, or maybe it was just Quinn was just becoming what she always could have been, Stacy wasn't sure, but whatever it was it that Quinn had filled Stacy infectious energy to do something. To be something. When she wasn't studying with Quinn, Stacy was learning to sew. She knew that after she finished school she wanted to work in the fashion industry. Unlike the other girls, Stacy didn't think she could be content just talking or writing and commenting about fabrics and colors and trends, she wanted to be the one creating the clothes everyone was talking about. Sundays, Stacy lugged her mother's old sewing machine to her grandmother's house to be taught. They started out simple, with scraps of material sewn together so Stacy could see how the different stitches were used. The hardest part was learning not to be afraid of the needle. In her mind she could see herself working with the fabric, feeding it into the machine and then being pulled along with it and having her hand stitched into the cloth. It made her go slow at first, but her grandma was patient and kept reminding her that the only way a sewing machine could hurt her was if she let her mind drift. "Stay focused on the point where cloth and needle meet," she said, "and you'll be fine." During the rest of the week, on the days that she wasn't studying with Quinn, she'd practice in her room and work on the projects she started with her grandma. The first thing she ever made on her own was a pillow case made out of an adorable baby blue material with printed ducks and bunnies. She was so proud when she put her pillow in it and swung it around the room and the case held together. She was so happy; she squealed and danced around her room. Her next project was a gift for her friends. She made boxer shorts. Yeah, they were kind of a joke, but there were plenty of girls who liked to wear boxers to bed, and she'd put some serious thought into the print on the material to make it special for each girl. Of course she'd practiced making a pair for herself, out of the left over pillow case material, and she found that the hardest part of this was cutting the pattern out and pinning it together, otherwise it was like making the pillow case. The biggest difference was that not all the seams were straight, but that made it more challenging, and that made it more fun. When she finished, she put each pair into a bag for the girl and straightened the colored tissue paper, trying to make it look nice. Each girl got a different color: Quinn's was pink, Tiffany's a nice pale green, and Sandi's a sky blue. Those seemed to be the girls' favorite colors and it was an easy way to remember who got which bag without having to look at a card. Stacy slid herself off her bed and onto the floor. She stretched her arms and back and legs and toes then gathered the bags in her arms. She hummed a tuneless tune as she walked over to her desk and carefully arranged the bags in front of her mother's sewing machine. She wondered how hard it would be to convince her parents to get her a brand new one for Christmas. Maybe one that could stitch embroidered designs automatically. That would be fun. "Stacy," her mother called from down stairs, "come to the dining room, your father and I need to talk to you about something." Her face fell. She couldn't imagine what they might want to talk to her about. She hadn't done anything wrong at school, at least nothing she could remember. She'd put the dishes in the dishwasher away when she got home from school. At least she was pretty sure she had. Stacy's parents sat her down at the dining room table, both looked very serious and Stacy was nervous. Was it about her college applications? They weren't due until the end of the month, she had plenty of time to get that stupid essay about the people she wanted to eat dinner with finished. Could it be about her grades? Sure, they weren't perfect, but since she'd been studying with Quinn her test scores had been improving. Most of them had changed from C's to B's. Low B's, but that was still an improvement. They hovered over her for what seemed like an hour before her mom said, "Stacy, honey, we have something we have to talk about." She paused and looked as Stacy's dad. He looked back and gave a little shrug. They both looked uncomfortable and her dad looked a little embarrassed. Was this going to be about sex? Did they think she had been having sex? Was there some rumor about her she didn't know about? She'd never had sex. She'd never let a guy get past second base, and even then it was still over the bra. There had been a little grinding, too. Oh God, would she have to explain that to them? Sure, it was better than having them think she'd had sex, but she didn't want them to know anything about her sex life. Couldn't they be like normal parents and just not think about it until she got married and then worry that she wasn't having enough to get them a grandkid? The silence had gone on too long, someone had to say something. "What's this about?" Stacy asked, hoping it was a safe enough question that they wouldn't pounce on her. "Stacy, sweetheart," her dad said, running his hand through his thinning hair, "my firm... You see... Well, a big mistake was made down at the office. You know what I do, right?" "Sure, Dad. You invest money for people into companies and buy and sell and trade stocks and bonds and stuff, right?" "Good girl. You're absolutely right. Now, do you understand how we get money from that?" Her mother rolled her eyes and said, "Christ, Daniel." He looked at her mother. "Fine, fine. I'll get on with it." He turned back to Stacy. "Okay, well, there was this company, this energy company, that was making lots of money. It kept buying smaller energy companies so it could make even more money, understand?" Stacy nodded, not sure what this had to do with her. "See, it was doing so good that my firm kept buying stock in it. The price kept going up, see? It looked like it would go up and up and never stop. We invested a lot of money there, see?" "Yeah, Dad," she said. "It was doing so good that even my colleagues were putting their own money into it. I did it." He took a deep breath. "The thing is, sweetheart, that the company was... Well, it was lying. Sure, it was merging with and acquiring all those other companies, but it was lying about its profits." He started talking faster. "Some fancy accountants decided that they wanted their options to go through the ceiling so they could sell and leave the company millionaires. And it's not like there was anything we could do about it. They write and issue their own reports and that's all we have to go on. I mean maybe it'd be better if there was some independent auditing board out there that went over the books of companies of certain sizes and then they'd write the reports." He wasn't really talking to anyone but himself anymore. "Oh, sure, it smacks of regulation and socialism, but it'd be a lot of help for guys like me. Guys just trying to make a living, to support his family. We'd actually know what was going on, money wise, and we could make better decisions. I mean that's the rule, right? the better the information, the more truthful the information a guy has the more likely he is to make good decisions and not watch the money he invested for himself and dozens of others just disappear," he snapped his fingers, "like that, with no warning. No warning at all." Stacy looked at her mother, her eyes saying, "What?" "What he's saying, Stacy," her mother said, "is that we're broke. Or nearly broke." "What?" Stacy asked, shocked. "We have no money. I'm sorry." "I don't understand," she said, looking back and forth between her parents. "What does this mean for me?" Her parents looked at each other. Her mother pulled out the chair next to Stacy and, reaching for Stacy's hand, said, "It means no more shopping trips. No more new clothes. Not from Cashman's, no more trips to Junior Five, not from anywhere." Stacy gasped, her lip quivered, and she nodded. It hurt, but she could survive on last season's clothes. There was no Fashion Club, so she didn't have to stay right on top of the trends anymore. She could mix and match the clothes she did have to keep her look interesting, unique, and as fashionable as anyone at school. If she got desperate for something new-ish to wear, she could always shop at one of those stores down on Dega Street where they sold vintage clothes, but didn't call themselves vintage. There were plenty of options for her. "It means your mother," her father put his hand on her mother's shoulder, "will be going back to work." "Mom?" asked Stacy, looking into her mother's eyes. "Really? What about your charities?" "They'll find someone else to do the work," she said, stroking Stacy's hand, and looking sad. The charity work her mother did was as soothing to her as shopping was to Stacy. "My family needs me to get back out there and start transcribing letters," Stacy's mother looked up at her husband and shrugged, "or something." Her father got down on his knees, put his hands on Stacy's and her mother's, and said, "And... we can't afford to send you to college." Stacy closed her eyes and closed her mouth as tightly as she could to keep her lip from quivering. It didn't work very well. "I... I'm so sorry, Stacy," he said in a low voice. "We just can't. We can't even afford to pay the fees for all those applications you brought home." Tears leaked out from the corners of Stacy's eyes and she felt sobs building in her chest. She wanted to wail. She didn't, though. The Stacy from a year ago would have. She would have burst into tears and run for her room, screaming. She wasn't like that anymore. She wasn't the kind of girl who would spend an entire Saturday crying over a guy being a jerk. She was stronger than that now. She had stood up to Sandi and stepped back from the comfort that was the Fashion club. Besides, wailing wouldn't solve anything. It wouldn't make her feel any better. It wouldn't give her parents the money they needed. It wouldn't turn back time so that her father could not make his mistake. It would do nothing. Nothing at all. "We're sorry, honey," said her mom. "We've seen how hard you've worked in school. We're so proud of you for doing it on your own, too." "We know how much you want to go to college," said her dad. "I'm sorry, Stacy. I'm sorry I failed you. I-- I love you." "We both love you, very much," said her mom. Stacy tried to take a deep breath but it something in her chest kept cutting it short. Once her lungs were full, she breathed out. Her next breath in came easier and the third, even easier still. She wiped her eyes with the back of her arm and didn't even pause to thank the makeup industry for waterproof mascaras and eye liner. Her eyes open, more tears dribbled down her cheeks. She wiped her face again and looked at her parents. Her mom looked like she was on the verge of tears. Her dad looked like he wanted to throw up and like he wanted to hit something and like he wanted to be able to take her in his arms and kiss her boo-boo and blow the pain away. He couldn't, though, and they both knew it. "How do you feel, sweetheart?" asked her dad. "What are you thinking?" "I think," she said, sniffling. "I think we're going to be okay." She tried to smile, but knew it looked more like a grimace. "I think I can get a part time job and go to junior college." Fresh tears slid down her cheeks. "I think we'll be okay." Her mom let go of her hand and dove into her. She couldn't remember ever being hugged like that by anyone before. "We'll be fine," her mom kept whispering in her ear. Her dad took Stacy's hand in one of his and patted it with the other. "There's my brave girl," he said. "The bravest girl on the whole planet." Stacy focused on her breathing. In and out. Slow in and slow out. Slow in and slow out. When her mom finally let her go the tears had stopped and her breathing was no longer ragged. Her parents stood up and looked at her. "I think I need to get cleaned up," said Stacy, rising from her chair and trying to smile. She put one hand on the table to steady herself and rubbed her eyes with the other. "I have homework to finish." "We'll get dinner started, right, Dan," said her mother. "Yeah," he said, not taking his eyes off Stacy. "Yeah. Dinner's a good idea." Stacy turned around and walked, very deliberately placing one unsteady foot in front of the other, out of the dining room. She walked over to the stairs and climbed them, using the railing to pull herself up one after the other. When she reached the top, she didn't head for the bathroom; she headed for her bedroom. It was bright enough that she didn't have to turn on the light. Not that she would have anyway. She saw the three gift bags she'd been preparing earlier on her desk in front of her mother's sewing machine. A gift for each of her friends. She didn't want to think about that, though. All she wanted was her bed. She stiffly crossed the room. She climbed on top of the covers and grabbed her pillow. Her pillow covered in the pillow case she had made. She held her pillow tightly to her body and wrapped herself around it and let the tears and sobs she had held in dining room out. She lay like that, sobbing silently, until her mother called up the stairs to say dinner was ready. Stacy uncurled herself, walked to the bathroom, washed her hands and face, touched up her makeup, and walked downstairs to dinner telling herself that everything was going to be fine. She was going to make sure of that. During dinner, Stacy kept up the chatter. She talked about her sewing and how much fun she'd been having spending time with her grandma, chatting and watching taped soap operas as they worked. She worried about the STATs, which were coming up in a few weeks. She told her parents about her gifts for her friends, but she didn't think either one of them understood why she would give girls boxers. By the time dinner was over and everything was cleaned up, Stacy was exhausted. She never knew that talking could wear a person out. In the morning, she couldn't remember washing her makeup off or getting changed for bed and she wasn't sure if she'd just slept with her mouth open or had forgotten to brush her teeth. Not that it mattered anymore, but her mouth tasted awful She pulled her self out of bed, cleaned up, and got dressed. Nothing fancy, just the same sort of thing she wore everyday, but it worked for her and, so far, no one had said anything bad about it. Her parents were gone by the time she got downstairs to get a small bowl of plain, fat-free yogurt into which she dropped a small handful of blue berries. She sat down at the kitchen table and let out a sigh. She didn't want to think about what her parent's had said the night before, but she couldn't help it. Things had gone from different, but nice, to horrible overnight, literally for her, if not for her parents. How long had they known this was coming? Probably a while. They had never fought, that she knew of, but they'd been talking quietly in the dining room since the end of summer. They must have known something was wrong then. But why wait so long to tell her? Was it to protect her? From what? Maybe they just didn't want to ruin her senior year. She didn't understand, but it was too late to worry about it. Too late to do anything except try and figure out what to do next. A job. That was probably the first step, but where? Could she work at a fancy place like Quinn did? She'd be able to dress up for that, but could she be the one to turn people away or make them wait for a table? She wasn't sure. With the way her luck was running, though, she figured she'd probably end up working at some fast food place. Stuck in some awful orange smock and a cap with some horrible cartoon animal printed on it. Dressed like everyone else working there. No room for originality. Tears welled up around her eyes. "No, no, no," she said to herself. "I will not cry." She put the spoon in her bowl and set the bowl on the table. She wasn't hungry. "I am a young woman of the modern age," she said, paraphrasing the affirmation from an article she read in Waif's special summer issue that focused on women who achieved all their career goals while still looking beautiful. "And as a young woman of the modern age I deserved to have all my goals achieved. To achieve my goals I must be strong and stylish, gutsy and generous, beautiful and bold." She took a deep breath, stood up, and said with a forceful voice, "And I am all of those things." She took her bowl to the sink, gave it a quick rinse, then put it into the dishwasher before she headed back to her room. In her room, she put on a warm sweater and scarf, and grabbed her purse, her books, and the gifts for her friends. At least she had that to look forward to. The walk to school was uneventful. The air was chilly, but the wind was calm and the sky was clear. There was no rain in the forecast, for today, at least. The closer she to Lawndale High the more students she saw. Some walked alone, like her, some in groups of three or four. She saw one couple walking to school, holding hands, their heads close together, probably whispering sweet things to each other. She sighed and wondered if there was anyone at school she could share a moment like that with. Maybe, she thought as she walked in the main door to her locker. From her locker she waved to Quinn, who had just come in. "Hey, Stacy," Quinn said, walking over. "What are those?" she asked pointing at the gift bags Stacy had just stored in her locker. "Those," said Stacy, unwrapping and folding her scarf to store for the days, "are a surprise." Quinn raised an eyebrow, her way of asking, "What kind of a surprise?" without actually speaking. "You'll find out at lunch," said Stacy, smiling at her best friend. Quinn frowned, her way of asking, "Will I like it?" "You'll love it," said Stacy. "Trust me." Quinn let her face go back to normal and actually said, "Okay." The first bell rang. "Eep!" she said, "Gotta get to my locker. See you in class, Stacy." As Quinn hurried off, Stacy called, "See you in class, Quinn." Classes that morning moved along pretty quickly. Mr. DeMartino gave a pop quiz in history about The New Deal, which Stacey thought she did pretty well on. Math was just the teacher drawing graphs on the board. In science some of the girls got Ms. Barch riled up and she spent most of the hour lecturing the class on the biological reasons men are unreliable. She didn't understand anything in Economics, Mrs. Bennett spent most of the period drawing diagrams using x's and o's and arrows, but none of it made sense, it only made everything she said more confusing. When the bell that ended Econ and started lunch rang, Stacy was already out the door. She hurried to her locker, opened it, and grabbed the three gift bags; she wanted to be in the cafeteria at their regular table before the other girls got there. She was so excited she shivered as she hurried through the halls and into the cafeteria. At their table, she sat and waited, trying not to smile, but the corners of her lips kept twitching upward. She watched the entrance for her friends. Sandi and Tiffany came in at the same time. "So I told him," Stacy heard Sandi say, "'Fine, if it's more important for you to go to practice than to take me shopping maybe we should just break up.' If you know what I mean." "I do," said Tiffany in her unique, drawn out way of speaking. "And he did, too," said Sandi, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "That's good," said Tiffany, reaching the table. "Hi, Sandi," said Stacy to the other two as they sat across from her. "Hi, Tiffany." "Mmm," Sandi said, pressing her lips together while eyeing at the gift bags. "Hello, Stacy." "What's in the bags?" asked Tiffany, reaching for the bag with the green paper. Stacy pulled it out of Tiffany's reach. "It's a surprise," she said. "You'll find out what's in here when Quinn gets her." "Very well," said Sandi, examining the bags, "we'll wait for her, but I hope she gets here soon because I have other, more important, things I could be doing." "I'm sure she won't be long," said Stacy, scanning the room and hoping she was right. "Oh, there she is," said Tiffany, pointing behind Stacy. "Sorry I'm late," said Quinn, sitting next to Stacy. "I, uh, got caught up with something and sorta couldn't leave it alone." "That's okay," said Stacy. "Now that you're--" "Nice of you to join us, Quinn," said Sandi, admiring her finger nails. "We were afraid you had forgotten your friends." Quinn looked at Sandi and frowned then turned to Stacy, "So, the bags?" "Yeah," said Tiffany, "what's the surprise?" "Here," said Stacy, passing a bag to each girl. "It's not a big deal. Just something that I made." She looked down at the table and blushed. "It's really kind of a joke, you know? Nothing big." Tiffany and Quinn each reached into the gift bags and pulled out the folded boxer shorts. Quinn shook hers out with a flick of her wrist. Tiffany set them down and carefully unfolded them and smoothed them out on the table. "Stacy, they're adorable," said Quinn. Quinn's pair of boxers was made out of a pink material with printed smiley faces scatter across it. When Stacy saw it in the store it reminded her of a shirt Quinn liked to wear. "Thank you." Quinn reached over and gave Stacy a one armed hug. "Yeah, thanks," said Tiffany. Tiffany's boxers were midnight blue printed with golden six pointed stars. The material had reminded Stacy of some of the decorations at Tiffany's house around Christmas. "They look so comfortable." "You're welcome," said Stacy, relieved. "I'm glad you li---" "What," asked Sandi, looking at the black shorts covered in roses, "are these?" "They're boxers," said Stacy, furrowing her brow. "Oh," said Sandi, "these are much too small for Kevin to wear." "They're not for him, Sandi," said Stacy, a lump growing in her throat. "They're for you." "Why would I need a pair of boxer shorts for?" she asked, looking up from the shorts and into Stacy's eyes. "You can sleep in them." "Stacy, I could never wear something so," she looked directly into Stacy's eyes and arched an eyebrow, "cheap to bed." Stacy froze. "I mean, maybe, maybe if the material wasn't of such poor quality." Tears welled up and Stacy closed her eyes hoping to hold them back. "Sandi," Quinn hissed, "stop it." "Or if the stitching didn't look like it was done by a retarded elephant who had never learned how to sew." Stacy sniffed, and the tears leaked out from under her eyelids. She wasn't going to bawl, though. Not over this. She opened her eyes and forced herself to meet Sandi's. "Maybe," Sandi said, smiling a cruel smile and idly fingering the waist band, "if one of those two things hadn't happened I could be as excited as Quinn or Tiffany, but my position as a leader of students and my own personal taste could never allow me to wear such a garment." With a deep, shuddering breath Stacy dried her eyes with a napkin, put her hands on the table, and pushed herself up. "Stacy?" said Tiffany in her slow way, reaching out to grab Stacy's hand. First, Stacy very slowly and carefully put her purse over her shoulder and picked up her books and binder and put them under her left arm. She leaned forward and reached out toward Sandi with her right hand. "Don't," squeaked Quinn. "She wouldn't dare," said Sandi, looking up and into Stacy's eyes. And she wouldn't, even though it would make her feel great for a few minutes. Her hand darted out and snatched the boxers out of Sandi's hand. Sandi flinched. That felt like a victory. "Quinn, Tiffany," she said, not taking her eyes off Sandi and keeping her voice a cool as she could, "you're welcome. If you ever want another pair, just let me know, we'll go shopping for material and I'll make it for you." As she walked away, she heard Sandi say, "Well, if a person can't take a little constructive criticism..." before her voice faded into the rest of the noise of the cafeteria. She didn't look back, but she wanted to. She wanted to know how Quinn and Tiffany had reacted to what she had done. Were they arguing with Sandi, telling her how wrong she was to say what she said? Not that it would help, Sandi just got more stubborn the more she was told she was wrong, but it would make Stacy feel better. Did they agree with Sandi? Were they sitting at the table making fun of her gift? God, she felt like such an idiot. The left turn she made out the cafeteria door was automatic. There was no thought to it. Which was a good thing, with silent tears sliding down her cheeks, she wasn't in the mood to concentrate on anything. Her feet just took her where she usually ended up after lunch, Mr. O'Neill's room. Mr. O'Neill's empty room. The other student's wouldn't be in for another twenty minutes, at least, so Stacy had her choice of desks to sit at. But where to sit today? Sandi, along with her and Quinn and Tiffany, usually sat in the corner farthest from the door and the teacher, but there was no way Stacy was going to sit there today. She thought about sitting as far away from Sandi as she could, but that would put her in the corner by the door, and if she sat there Stacy would have to deal with Sandi as she came into the room after lunch. There was no way to predict how Sandi would react to seeing her there. At best, Sandi would just pretend that Stacy didn't exist and move on to her usual seat. Although the idea of Sandi just passing by without saying a word was almost laughable. And then there'd be the pitying looks from Quinn, at least, and possibly Tiffany. Stacy didn't want to put up with that, not right now. She chose the seat in the front of the room across from the door. She may be sitting in the same row at Sandi, but it in Sandi's world the front was like a whole different planet. Sandi did her best to pretend the front of the class didn't exist, which probably explained her grades. Stacy dropped her books, binder, and purse on the desk then dropped herself into the seat and quietly cried. She knew that Sandi wasn't always a nice person, but Stacy thought, or at least hoped, that was just Sandi's prickly outside and on the inside she was sweet like a cream filled cookie. Not that Stacy knew what the cream in those cookies tasted like. Stacy had hoped that all the times Sandi had made fun of people it was just because she was trying to prove to the Fashion Club how much better she was than the rest of the people in school, not because she enjoyed it. It wasn't that way, though, Stacy realized as she sobbed. Sandi was just a rotten person through and through. "Oh," said a voice by the door. Stacy looked up to see a shocked look on Mr. O'Neill's boyish face. "Is something wrong, Stacy?" Stacy pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped her eyes. "No," she said, sniffling, "nothing's wrong." Mr. O'Neill walked toward her. "Are you sure?" he asked. "I can be very good at listening to the problems of you young adults." He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. She pushed him off and said, "Nothing's wrong, Mr. O'Neill. Please leave me alone." "But, Stacy," he said, crouching down so his head was nearly level with hers, "I may be able to help you." "Leave me alone," she said again, more forcefully and then quieter, "please." "Stacy, use me, please. I have years of experience with heartbreak. Use my wisdom." He reached for her hand. She pulled away before he could touch her. "I just need to be left alone," she said. "I don't need your help." "What does that mean?" He leaned away from her. "Why don't you go ask Ms. Barch," she said, glaring at him. "Oh my," he said, standing. "I really must have a talk with Janet about her lectures." He backed away from her then walked out the door. Stacy put her head on her desk and let herself cry until the first bell rang. After it rang, she got up, walked to the bathroom, and cleaned herself up. By the time she got back, just before the tardy bell rang, she looked as good as he had when she got to school that morning. As good as Sandi had looked. She glided into the room and sat down in the front row seat with out acknowledging the girl in the corner, who wasn't sitting with Quinn and Tiffany, they were on the other side of the room. It was a nice gesture that made her feel better, but she told herself it was unnecessary because this was between her and Sandi, Quinn and Tiffany could be friends with whoever they choose. It felt really good to see them so far away from Sandi, though. Mr. O'Neill took a long look at Stacy, probably surprised that this was the same girl who had been crying just ten minutes ago. She gave him her sweetest smile. Nothing to worry about here, she tried to convey in her smile. She was just a girl treading water in the cold ocean who had tied one end of a rope around her waist and threw the other end to her friend only to have her friend casually kick the rope back into the water. But she would be okay once things got sorted out. She would be just fine. Just fine.

After: The True Story of How Tiffany Blum-Deckler Destroyed the Fashion Club

#Daria #fanfic #old fanfic #The Fashion Club #Stacy Rowe #Quinn Morgendorffer #Sandi Griffin #Tiffany Blum-Deckler

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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COVID-19 Fashion School Grads ‘Pushing the Industry to Go Virtual’ – WWD

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“You are the chosen class,” said Oprah Winfrey. “Building your community is how you change the world,” said LeBron James. “Leave behind the old ways of thinking that divide us,” said former President Obama.

Some of the biggest names on the planet converged for a virtual graduation special over the weekend to celebrate the class of 2020. The message? The coronavirus has been hard on all graduating students — high school and college — who must face a historic level of uncertainty when they were just raring to go into the world.

The quarantined months have been particularly hard on students of such hands-on disciplines as fashion, textile and product design, whose final collections had to be completed on bedroom floors instead of classrooms, and often without supplies, drawing tables, pattern-making equipment or sometimes even sewing machines.

Graduation celebrations were scrapped, and long-awaited debuts into the fashion world, via the graduate runway show, along with them. And as unemployment soars and fashion retail and brand bankruptcies loom, students face a challenging future.

But there are glimmers of hope in leaving behind those old ways of thinking, as Obama called them. In the first part of our class of 2020 series, WWD saluted the next generation of fashion designers and trailblazers at the Rhode Island School of Design, ArtCollege of Design and Savannah College of Art and Design. In part two, we shared the experiences of students at Academy of Art University, Otis College of Art and Design and Kent State University.

In the final part of the series, WWD takes a look at what’s being done differently for graduation, as well as some words of wisdom from students, faculty and administrators, at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the New School’s Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.

FASHION INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, NEW YORK CITY

New graduation plan:

FIT is planning an in-person undergraduate commencement in October at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden and a separate graduate school commencement ceremony. FIT will recognize the class of 2020 with a virtual graduation week celebration that began May 18. Since FIT’s annual “Future of Fashion” runway show was canceled, senior thesis collections will be featured on a web site, which will include a dedicated page for each graduate, representing five areas of specialization. In addition to social media visibility, FIT will produce an exhibition and film in the fall, featuring designs selected by industry experts and faculty (assuming it is safe to do so).

Career counseling:

FIT’s Career Internship Services continues to support graduating students with career preparation and development. In response to COVID-19, FIT recently hosted its first virtual career fair, in addition to offering students ongoing workshops to enhance virtual presentation skills for job interviews. “We’ve also been working with employers to understand their current needs, and continue to share related insights with our graduates so they can pivot as necessary, and communicate solutions during job interviews,” said Troy Richards, dean of the School of Art and Design. “Getting a job is going to require entrepreneurial skills. It might take a bit longer to find a job, but our students are so well prepared to hit the ground running, they will make a place for themselves.…We’ve also offered training in CLO 3-D software so students could translate their designs into digital models, strengthening skills during this time when everyone is speeding up production and cutting costs. Students have benefited significantly from feedback from industry critics, as well, as part of our senior program.”

Student wisdom:

“During this time, we are all encountering circumstances and challenges that we never expected. As I was approaching graduation and the beginning of my career, I was anticipating both an exciting period of growth, as well as an unknown path. It now seems that this path will be even more unpredictable. However, I believe that this unstable time creates an environment for young designers like myself to reimagine the boundaries and possibilities of the fashion industry. There is so much opportunity for exploration and innovation. Despite uncertainty, I look forward to the future, and I believe that my peers and I have the chance to bring new perspectives and vision to the table.”

— Annalisa Ebbink, BFA, fashion design, sportswear

“Every coin has two sides. The uncertainty destroys all my plans for the year, but also creates opportunities. After graduation, although it might be hard to find a job right away, I believe that the fashion industry will actively and positively face the situation. I believe that opportunities for new designers like me will appear. Under the current circumstances, I have had time to slow down, more time to think, to read and to develop skills for both my professional and personal interests. I will continue to pay attention to what is happening and respond accordingly based on the situation. Embracing and accepting the uncertainty, creating more value, will be the first choice for me.”

— Anqi Jiang, BFA, fashion design, knitwear

“This is definitely not the future I thought I would be graduating into, but FIT has provided me with the skills to adapt in this ever-changing world and I am interested to see how the fashion industry changes as we all heal.”

— Elle Klein, BFA, fashion design, sportswear

“When the future seems uncertain, I like to remind myself to breathe and continue moving forward. Every generation has dealt with difficult moments, like this one, but with our creativity and the skills we have learned we will find answers and solutions.”

— Giulia Rao, BFA, fashion design, knitwear

“To be honest, I’m a little frightened to graduate in this unfortunate time. However, I believe that our new generation’s biggest strength is that we are able to achieve a creative solution and find our way to adjust toward a better circumstance. Because of what is happening now, many of us are understanding the importance of sustainability. Personally, I encourage people to buy less and style more, and I hope many people will realize that the world doesn’t need fast fashion and that they don’t need to buy every single item on trend to be stylish and chic. Therefore, I think the current situation will be a push that we needed for many years.”

— Babi Byambatsogt, BFA, fashion design, sportswear “I have the drive to do anything in this world. A virus shut down the world, yet I am still chasing my dreams. Let’s take this time to grow, evolve and love one another.”

— Kenneth Ivey, BFA, fashion design, sportswear

“People have made me feel positive during this global virus, even about facing the future. Everyone has been forced to face the risk of losing their jobs or maybe even people they’ve loved. This year became more difficult and challenging for all students who are preparing to graduate. The only thing that we can do now is keep ourselves and our families safe and remain positive. We are facing a new era that interconnects physical and digital lives. Moreover, everyone is pushing the fashion industry to go virtual. For example, we have seen several brands using AR, 3-D and CGI technology in advertising themselves for the past few seasons. I talked to several friends and they strongly expressed their thoughts about developing new technology. Since we didn’t choose to live in an uncertain world, we must make the choice to make our lives more stable. I deeply encourage people to stay strong, even if the coronavirus makes us all feel like we are suffering and are overwhelmed. We have been forced to leave our comfort zone but all of us are going to face a better world tomorrow.”

— Ka Ho Kam, BFA, fashion design, sportswear “As Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘The best way to predict the future is to create it.’”

— Irene Xiaoyu Zhang, BFA, fashion design, knitwear

Faculty Wisdom:

“Every graduating class at FIT is special, but this year’s class has demonstrated real grit and proven their ability to adapt and overcome even the most challenging obstacles put in their way. I am confident that they will continue to use their immense gifts, creativity and remarkable work ethic to reach their full potential, and I look forward to following their careers. Like so many previous FIT alumni, I am sure they will be successful, and define success on their own terms.”

— Troy Richards, dean, School of Art and Design

“To the 2020 graduates of the fashion design program — you overcame the challenges that this semester presented. Often with limited resources — you designed and created beautiful garments, a testament to your tenacity, ingenuity and future success. Congratulations.”

— Sandra Markus, chair and professor, fashion design

“This is the moment we have to rethink what being a designer is. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but it’s an exciting moment to make something new and different come out of it. You can be the designers of a new age.”

— Tom Scott, assistant professor, fashion design

“See the unusual in the usual, and what feels like a collapse is nothing more than space for new ideas.”

— Amy Sperber, assistant professor, fashion design

“Creativity comes out of restriction. You’ve proven that being innovative, influential and inspired has no boundaries.”

— Nicole Benefield, assistant professor, fashion design

PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN, NEW YORK CITY

New graduation plan:

The Parsons graduation ceremony went virtual on May 13 via Zoom for students and their loved ones across the globe. The hourlong program included remarks from Parsons leadership, program directors, faculty and students. “While circumstances are undoubtedly different this year, a few things remain constant. This includes our students’ unwavering dedication to and passion for their work as well as our commitment to celebrating and showcasing their achievements as widely as possible,” said interim dean Jason Kass. “As is always the case, our graduating students have done amazing work this year that explores new possibilities, terrains and futures for fashion. We are so excited to share this work with the public in the coming weeks and through a digital format that will be as uniquely Parsons as our typical on-site activations.”

Career counseling:

“Parsons understands that our graduates are anxious about their futures in ways that are extraordinary, and we will be working with all students to ensure that they feel prepared and supported as they enter an uncertain job market,” Kass added. “Our School of Fashion program directors continue to work closely with graduating students to help them identify productive ways forward. In some instances, this includes pairing students with industry mentors while in others, it means holding regular Zoom sessions for students to share their anxieties as well as ideas. Now is a time for forward-thinking action and creative problem solving, both of which are at the core of a Parsons education.”

Student wisdom:

“After four years of blood, sweat and tears — managing school while working to support myself, commuting from a different state, and oftentimes crashing at school or at my friend’s place to wake up and repeat the endless grind — I want to be celebrated in the best way possible with my rest of my mates. But because that’s not possible beyond Zoom calls at the moment, I’m just trying to make the best of it through digital platforms. As much as I’m going to miss school, running into people to talk about useless crap, pulling all-nighters with the dress form and celebrating our survival through each semester with the same people that pained through with me, I continue to remind myself that this isn’t the end to my learning, to meeting, connecting and creating.”

— Sayo Watanabe, School of Fashion 2020

“This pandemic situation is a tough time, but it also lets people rethink about lots of aspects of our life, for me it shifts my view on human connection and technology. The situation has also affected how I approach my thesis as well. This graduation doesn’t mean an end, I will definitely keep working on what I believe, and what I care about.”

— Danlin Zhang, School of Fashion 2020

“We were told on the first day to center our process around who we love, what we care about, the community that surrounds us, and above all, to demand excellence of ourselves. This way of thinking will be carried with me throughout the rest of my career and life. I look forward to nothing but excellence from the class of 2020.”

— Katya Ekimian, School of Fashion 2020

Faculty wisdom:

“Creative visualization is a powerful thing. See it, believe it, design it and your idea will manifest as a reality. Your expression must count for something true and the energy that you put into your creative process will be received by those who understand it. You will feel completely fulfilled and empowered by that process and nothing will stop you from achieving your goals.”

— Keanan Duffty, program director, MPS Fashion Management

“Everything needs to start from self. Knowing and understanding what is important to you — what is going to drive the commitment. Being blatantly truthful of your strengths, weaknesses and attributes will be the key to unlocking and owning your unique positioning, beliefs and place in this ever-developing industry.”

— Neil Gilks, program director BFA Fashion Design: Collection and Product

“Embrace the future, class of 2020. As designers, you have the opportunity to design new systems for an industry that is in need of fresh new approaches to collaborative processes. Build on what you have learned through your years at Parsons, identify what is missing, and problem solve by offering innovative solutions. Think globally and reflect on what fashion needs to do better, be it sustainable practices, ethical conduct, community justice or systemic changes. This is a time to rethink, with design, new ways to strengthen the local and global fashion industry alongside refining current media and communication skills.”

— Francesca Sammaritano, director, AAS Fashion Design

“This is going to be a difficult time to enter the job market as a graduating fashion student. There is no point in sugar-coating the truth. However, this crisis will end, and brands will need innovative thinkers that can think beyond old business models and engage consumers in new, more meaningful ways, no matter the format. This is a moment when companies are more likely to take risks, to use this as an opportunity to reset and build new foundations that can ensure a brand’s future success. This means they will be looking for new employees that are ready and willing to work hard and rethink what fashion can be, with more careful consideration of people and planet.”

— Joshua Williams, associate professor, MPS Fashion Management

FASHION INSTITUTE OF DESIGN AND MERCHANDISING, LOS ANGELES, ORANGE COUNTY, SAN DIEGO AND SAN FRANCISCO

New graduation plan:

“We went 100 percent remote and online learning for the spring and summer quarters, and it’s been great,” said Barbara Bundy, vice president, education at FIDM. “The thought process continually changes, because we’re living in this world of uncertainty, but right now it looks like we are doing San Francisco campus graduation in June and Los Angeles in September. What form it will take we don’t know. We usually do L.A. graduation at Staples Center, and with the reopening of large events and venues moved now to California’s reopening stage 4, who knows what will happen? We want to give our students a ceremony if possible. We also had to cancel our debut fashion show. But we were able to squeeze in a photo shoot with our advanced fashion design students before the stay-at-home order, and we are doing weekly Instagram takeovers with some students. We want to do a show, but where, when and how we don’t know.”

Career counseling:

“That’s the big thing, the uncertain job market,” Bundy said. “Students are putting their portfolios together, and the career center is working with them one-on-one to arrange initial interviews that are being done virtually. We are waiting for companies to open up as well….And in the meantime, we’re doing reaching out and saying, ‘Hi; we’re here if you have any needs.’ Our number-one recruiter over the years is Guess; they touch every major and have been dear partners. They sponsor our sustainability classes, and have been generous with scholarships. We’ve also been working with the Black Design Collective. And we’re looking at doing virtual job fairs. We are being creative.”

Student wisdom:

“I think it’s a great time for young designers to be creating. Fashion is going to be different after the pandemic; I don’t know exactly how but I’ll continue to adapt and evolve. I’m using this time to create a new collection and consider it an exciting time for fashion.”

— Scarlett Dyer, advanced fashion design major, FIDM 2020

“I like to keep busy, so while quarantined, I’m just doing as many things to fill my head as possible. Currently, I’m taking this time to make masks, looking into getting my master’s degree and waiting for the job market to open back up.”

— Delaney Poe, advanced fashion design major, FIDM 2020

“I’m grateful to be working remotely as a Global Product Innovation intern at a major skin-care company. While it is not an ideal time to start a career, I’m confident that beauty and related industries will recover. Change is intimidating but as a young person, at the start of a career, it’s also exciting. We have the opportunity to make history.”

— Natalie Noble, beauty marketing and product development major, FIDM 2020

“COVID-19 has definitely changed the way I see the world and future. The opportunity presented now, creating anew, has given me liberty to begin the execution of the beauty brand of my dreams.”

— Roxana Ontiveros, beauty marketing and product development major, FIDM 2020

Faculty wisdom:

“Hang on to your dreams, don’t lose them, and stay positive. The class of 2020 will always be remembered as the class that graduated during the pandemic. As one student said to me jokingly, ‘I have always wanted to be the smartest one in the room, and now that I’m studying at home, I am always the smartest one in the room.’ They might not have some of the same events, but will go down in history with pandemic graduates. I have respect for them, they are working hard on their resumes and portfolios. I know they will get amazing jobs, and they have the skills for tomorrow. They are tech and social media savvy, and ready for what will happen today and in the future.”

— Barbara Bundy, vice president, education, FIDM

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bbabushkajusofonii · 5 years

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HolaHolaHola Beautifuls! Here, Up North in The South, school has started and that has us going every which way!! To help calm the frazzles, another BTS giveaway because stress and school son primos hermanos. This year's #Back2School event is giving one lucky winner twelve-plus prizes to help make starting school a little easier. The winner will receive everything from homeschool classes for the year, to educational toys for their toddler, AND Back to Campus gear your college student needs! Celebrate learning with all of your children, big and small! Learn more about the prizes below AND good luck to all who enter! ~ Victoria ENTER TO WIN a Snap Circuits Classic Electronics Exploration Kit from ELENCO! Snap Circuits Classic can be used to make interesting circuits, encouraging educational play that teaches your future engineer about electricity. All of the parts have colored graphics that represent their real electronic names and symbols. This educational toy comes with a complete instruction manual and project guide that helps you to guide your child through exploring over 300 experiments --no soldering required. The color-coded parts combine to create working circuit boards just like the ones found inside televisions, radios, and other electronic devices. With easy-to-follow instructions, Snap Circuits gives your child a hands-on education in how electrical circuits run the devices they use everyday. Visit ELENCO to learn more about Snap Circuits and all of their innovative and educational toys that encourage children to "learn by doing!" ENTER TO WIN a Blue Bear Family shaped ice blocks from Monkey Business! This set comes with one mom and two cubs. They come pre-filled with non toxic fluid, ready to be placed in your freezer and await their turn to chill out in your child's school lunchbox or homeschool park-day cooler! Monkey Business has been creating useful objects with a smile since 1994. They are on a mission to shine a light on the little things that make up your day so you can see them from a new perspective. Visit Monkey Business to learn more about the business of making you smile AND checkout their great products for your home and family. ENTER TO WIN breathable and lightweight PeachSkinSheets® so your student will have a great night sleep all school-year long! Regardless if your child is a hot or cold sleeper, PeachSkinSheets® are thermal controlled to keep both hot sleepers cool, and cold sleepers cozy! The advanced poly microfibers contained in their Athletic Grade SMART fabric breathe just like workout clothes to wick away moisture too. Can't find the right size for your College student's new bed? That's because college dorm mattresses are longer than the standard twin/full mattress you might use at home. Take a look at their XL Twin Dorm and XL Full Dorm sheet sets available at PeachSkinSheets® Visit them online to learn more, order a swatch, or read about their 30 Day 100% Money Back Guarantee! ENTER TO WIN a SMITCO Snap Pop Beads - 725 Piece Kit! The SMITCO pop bead kit is a great addition to your homeschool or classroom. Use them for dexterity, creative play, sensory bin fillers, or math manipulatives. The brightly colored beads arrive in various shapes, sizes, and textures, inspiring an interest in building and engineering in a fun kid-friendly way! Kids love the broad spectrum of colors, and the feel of the smooth beads against their little fingers. Visit SmitCo online to find more ideas on kid-appealing back to school supplies and kits. ENTER TO WIN a Full School Year (Two Semesters) Online Science Class ($680 value) from College Prep Science! Live Online Classes are more than just a once a week teaching engagement. Students are assigned homework, take exams, and are provided with an end of course grade that can be retained for your student's homeschool portfolio and high school transcripts. Live Online Classes at College Prep Science are available for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Human Anatomy & Physiology, Exercise and Sports Physiology, Forensic Science & Human Anatomy, Embryology - The Magnificence of Human Development, Introduction to Biochemistry/Microbiology, AND MORE! Visit the Live Online Classes details page to register! REMINDER: Fall Classes Start September 9th! ENTER TO WIN a 2-Day Biology or Chemistry Lab Intensive ($280 value) from College Prep Science! Science Lab Intensives are offered in 15 cities during the Fall, 2019 and Spring, 2020. Each two day intensive is the equivalent of a full school year of labs! Intensives can be attended by future, current, or previous Biology or Chemistry students. There are no prerequisites to attend! Appropriate background information is presented prior to and during each lab that is performed. Visit the Science Lab Intensives details page to find course details, event locations, daily schedules, and how each child will be able to apply what they have learned with "real-life" knowledge. ENTER TO WIN a Sew What Box and sewing accessory surprise from TaylarMade Tailoring! Teach your child how to sew this school year! The Sew What Box monthly subscription box contains handpicked projects that are beautiful, useful, and can be completed in about an hour. The only thing your creative student needs to get started is their Sew What Box Subscription Box, a sewing machine, iron, a pair of scissors! The contents of each box includes pre-cut fabric, pins, and detailed instructions. Simply dust off your sewing machine, hop over to watch the online video tutorial, and get sewing! Visit TaylarMade to take a look at past boxes, inquire about alterations, or signup for a sewing lessons! ENTER TO WIN a TickleMe Plant Garden Kit! The TickleMe Plant has an amazing ability to close its leaves when Tickled! The branches even droop too! What a fun Science project to kick-off the new school year! Mark Your Calendars! Bring Your TickleMe Plant To School Day is Sept 26. 2019! In honor of Johnny "Chapman" Appleseed and his love of planting Apples, TickleMe Plant is encouraging students to bring TickleMe Plant Seeds and TickleMe Plants kits to school or homeschool co-op to grow and show others this amazing plant. Like Johnny Appleseed, they want to share their love of Nature. ENTER TO WIN a D.A.D.®2 from TigerLight! Are you sending your big kids Back to Campus this fall? Here's two alarming facts you need to know before you do: 1 out of 5 women are sexually assaulted before they finish College; AND male college-aged students (18-24) are 78% more likely than non-students of the same age to be a victim of rape or sexual assault! The D.A.D.® 2 with Crowd Alert is #1 most powerful, effective, safe, innovative, game-changing, futuristic, non-lethal personal protection on the planet! It is only 5 inches long, weighs 4.6 ounces, AND fits comfortably in the palm of your student's hand so they are never alone! Learn more at TigerLight! ENTER TO WIN Lugz new arrival men's sneakers! From its inception, Lugz footwear has been an innovator in the footwear market from its signature styles, to creating trendsetting footwear beyond boots and has added casual shoes and athletics to the mix for the Lugz men, Lugz women and Lugz kids lines. Checkout all of the New Arrivals and tell me which pair is your favorite! Mine are the Men’s Changeover II Oxford Sneaker for everyday, Men’s Dot.Com 2.0 Denim Oxford Boot for Friday nights, and Men’s Hardwood 6-Inch Boot for when your young man wants to look his best! Visit Lugz.com to learn more and choose your favorite! (...it's so hard to pick just one!!) ENTER TO WIN the Simplay3 High Back Toddler Wagon! This wagon is the perfect addition to any family with children under the age of seven. Pull the littles along while you walk your school-aged children to school, OR bring it to your next park-day to keep everything handy while you mingle and gush over the kids with your best mom-friends. The Simplay3 High Back Toddler Wagon (Made in the USA) is a secure and comfortable ride for young toddlers transitioning from a stroller. We love the high contoured backrest because it gives the kids extra support, and the seatbelts keep them secure. The additional storage under the seats and cupholders make this wagon the perfect ride for on-the-go-families. Take a look at the specs and learn more about the key features at Simplay3. ENTER TO WIN a Winning Moves USA Prize Pack! Winning Moves USA's mission is to provide happiness to consumers by offering Classic, Retro, Cool and Fun games for play with friends, family, AND classmates. Some of our favorites fun, yet educational, games from the Winning Moves lineup are Pass the Pigs BIG PIGS, and No Stress Chess. Schedule "game play" into your child's school day to keep learning fun! ENTER TO WIN the item of your choice from TVStoreOnline.com! TVStoreOnline.com is a Detroit-based movie, television, and comic book apparel and costume company seen on Good Morning America, Live with Kelly and Ryan, The Today Show, The Ellen Show! They have an amazing collection of high-quality shirts, hoodies, and apparel your kids will love for Back to School -- shirts you aren't likely to pickup at your local stores! Stop by to see if they have the shirt you've been looking for! ENTER TO WIN! ALL OF THE PRIZES LISTED ABOVE ONE WINNER TAKES ALL!!!!! The giveaway is open US Only, 18+ The giveaway ends 9/1 at 1159 pm est Be sure to come back daily for more chances to win. a Rafflecopter giveaway Mommy’s Playbook Giveaway Rules: This giveaway is Sponsored by all of the 2019 Back to School Giveaway brands listed within the giveaway article and hosted by Mommy’s Playbook. Victoria and/or Mommy’s Playbook, Participating bloggers, are not responsible for prize fulfillment. By entering this giveaway you are giving the giveaway host and/or event sponsor permission to retain your email address for future communication, you may choose to opt-out of such communications at any time. This giveaway is not sponsored or endorsed by any social media outlet including, but not limited to, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. Please contact Victoria (at) MommysPlaybook.com regarding any questions you have pertaining to this giveaway. Un poquito de todo and todo BUENISIMO!! Buena Suerte Beautifuls. BB2U

http://bohemianbabushka.bbabushka.com/2019/08/BTS-Celebration-Multiprize-Giveaway-Spanglish.html

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hottytoddynews · 7 years

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Julie Coleman recently has opened Design Gallery at 1603 University Avenue. The business can address all of your alterations needs plus a number of related activities. HottyToddy.com recently attended Julie’s Grand Opening.

HottyToddy.com: Congratulations Julie on your exciting new business. Tell our readers a little about your background in the world of sewing.

Julie Coleman: I played with sewing machines ever since I was a kid, growing up with my very crafty mother, and also my father who was an architect. I got my college degree in Health Sciences from Korea University, but I was always more interested in crafts and design.

So following my passion, I attended a school to become a certified technician in tailoring in Korea. After that, I worked as a fashion designer, and made wedding dress, but eventually found interest in home interior design and began my own business in 1984.

I still remember my first customer who asked me to design a sofa cover. The customer was so satisfied with my work that she compensated me enough to buy an entire sofa!

Julie Coleman

From that point on, I was confident that I could make it in this field. Ever since large retail stores began to arrive in Korea, I began to supply apparel and curtains to several companies all over the nations. When the financial crisis hit Korea in the late 90s, I began to focus on going on roadshows and on high-end curtain designs for home decorations and hotels, plus I set up many open houses when builder parcel out house and apartment.

I also worked with major television studios in Korea (MBC, SBS) in designing part of their sets on dramas and TV series.

When I came to America, I began a business in Northern Virginia and D.C. working with various single-family homes and offices designing curtains and other home decorations.

I also provided photo screen and blinds design for a local Japanese restaurant franchise, Sakura.

HottyToddy.com: In addition to performing alterations, what other services do you provide?

Julie Coleman: Alterations have always been a base of my operations because of the equipment I am able to utilize. Customers over the years have tended to ask for that kind of help with their personal clothing, which I enjoy doing. I can do service for any kind of clothes, hem, suit, dress, even wedding dresses.

I also make custom-made curtains and blinds, beds and pillow covers, and any other sewing related work and set up apartments and single home model houses.

HottyToddy.com: You also instruct sewing classes. What are some of the details?

Julie Coleman: When I got to the States, I realized that there are many people who know how to sew, but do not have the technical skills required for control curtains. So I had to do everything on my own, from the design to actually making the final product.

Sewing classes really began when I needed employees to help me in the business of making curtains. I have had many new immigrants from my native country who have asked for help in acquiring a skill to help them in making a living.

HottyToddy.com: What are the store hours?

Julie Coleman: The Design Gallery store hours are 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Mon thru Sat, except Tuesdays. The store is open from 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. on Tuesdays.

Since I also sell Korean Kimchi at our local farmers market, which open on Tuesdays from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., that’s why I close early on Tuesday at 2 p.m. But if we get more people to work at our store, we plan on having normal hours including on Tuesdays.

HottyToddy.com: Regarding your custom-made curtains, can customers come by for an estimate?

Julie Coleman: Of course. Designing curtains takes longer than you think because there are so many factors that you have to consider. Since curtains and blinds can completely change the mood of the house.

Customers are always welcome and I make appointments to see the windows and take measurements in individual homes or businesses. Before beginning the specific work, I detail the plan and materials in writing for every job. Potential clients can get a free estimate.

HottyToddy.com: Is it correct that you also had a similar business while living in Washington DC?

Julie Coleman: Yes. New homes had become a major part of my work in the DC suburbs, up until the recession of 2008 when not so many new homes were being built. Restaurants continued to use my services and the alteration business never ceased.

HottyToddy.com: How do you enjoy living and being in business in Oxford?

Julie Coleman: Upon my husband’s retirement, and Oxford being the home of his former law partner in Washington who had moved back here, and his son’s attendance at Ole Miss created a desire to move permanently to Oxford. The pace of life is wonderful. We love it!!!

We’ve been enjoying our time here in Oxford, where we’ve met so many nice people, and made new friends. We especially love the fact that Oxford can be a place where you can enjoy both quietness and energy at the same time.

HottyToddy.com: Regarding your services involving blinds and shades, could you give us a more in-depth narrative?

Julie Coleman: There’s a saying that your clothes are like your wings. What you wear can bring out your real character. Having the right fit goes a long way in achieving this. That’s what I love it.

With our homes, curtains, shades, and blinds can easily change the look and feel of the house. Also, once you design and buy them, you will be looking at them for many years. Having the right design can provide you with the feeling of satisfaction and joy for many days ahead. What can we expect more than that?

When I am working on my work, I do my best to see my work in the perspective of the clients and try to bring utmost satisfaction for them. It also means that I myself have to be satisfied with the work first because if I am not satisfied, then the client will never be satisfied. I also think I have been gifted with the eyes that can pick up how things fit well with others.

In my many years that I’ve been working, I never thought that I didn’t enjoy what I do. I also always look to work in ways in which that benefits the clients first, rather than trying to maximize my profit.

I also want to spread the words about shades and blinds that work with remote controls (sometimes known as authorization system) for the elderly and people who may struggle with putting up the shades. Often times, the cost of the system is very high, so I would also like to help people to find the right ones for them. Hopefully, physical difficulty of operating the shades and blinds won’t get in the way of people’s wishes to have new designs.

HottyToddy.com: How has your business progressed since opening?

Julie Coleman: The business has been open even before this store opening, but I was only directly working with select few clients. With the store opening, I finally have a permanent base to be able to reach out to more people. Since not many people know about the business yet, I am getting new people walking in every day. I try to provide the best service to each and every person who walk into the store.

HottyToddy.com: Typically what is the timeline from a customer dropping off an order till pickup for delivery?

Julie Coleman: For alternations, I try my best to not go over three business days. For urgent work, I also do overnight service. With curtain design, it generally takes about a month since it takes time to finalize the design and also to order needed fabric. It may take a bit longer if I am designing the whole interior of the house.

HottyToddy.com: Julie, are there any unique features about Design Gallery that you would like to highlight?

Julie Coleman: As I mentioned, I’ve always enjoyed working with the perspectives of my clients. I try my best to never take any shortcuts, and live up to my own high standards and expectations. From the initial consultation to the installation, I always strive to do my best and to provide highest quality work.

I do not run my business simply to make a profit. I feel like I have been given this talent from God for me to share this talent and love with others. Through my work, I hope that others will feel true joy and love, and receive healing in their hearts. I believe that this is my ultimate calling, and I thank God for giving me this gift and the opportunity!

Steve Vassallo is a HottyToddy.com contributor. Steve writes on Ole Miss athletics, Oxford business, politics and other subjects. He is an Ole Miss grad and former radio announcer for the basketball team. Currently, Steve is a highly successful leader in the real estate business who lives in Oxford with his wife Rosie. You can contact Steve at [email protected] or call him at 985-852-7745.

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