#never got another cd as a substitution either

[babbeldumpsterfire]

Reminds me of when I was 13 and my mom’s old car got a Laura Pausini cd stuck in its cd player for months: whenever she wanted to listen to some music, that was the only option available. It was also my prized possession, the only authentic cd that I had of that singer: needless to say, I was very jealous and wanted to keep track of it, so everyone got to suffer through the best hits of Laura Pausini anytime we drove for more than 10 minutes anywhere. In the end everyone got sick of Laura belting ‘ho l’inquietudiiinee di viveeereee’ and I don’t know how but my father unstuck the cd one fateful evening, and returned to me a very broken cd lmao

#never got another cd as a substitution either #my father burned another cd with the same songs and that was it #I'm still kind of mad about it #but to this day anyone in my family still despises those songs except for me #the cd player also got irremediately damaged #so Laura definitely didn't go down without a fight #(putting all this in another post because I realized neil was tagged and I didn't want to hog the og post with my dumbass story lmao) #babbelbabbles #good omens #queens #stuck cds seem to be a curse of the past #I'm glad we have usbs now

[vanchlo]

Green Eyes

*Thanks so much for reading! c: There are now several parts you can read here:   2    3    4 

I’m so happy to share that I won a fiction writing award for this short story through my college’s art journal! c: 

Blurb Synopsis: You had been subbing for Mr. Styles for the last couple of months, but you’ve yet to meet him. The notes you leave for each other have sparked a friendship, leading you to want more, and you wonder if he does too.

Genre: Teacher Harry, lots of fluff, friendship, and maybe even some romance? ;) 

Warnings: None

Word Count: 5.5k words

Pairing: Harry x Reader

Music Inspo: Green Eyes by Coldplay (click to listen)

*

His shelves were full of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rumi, and Charles Bukowski. His desk was covered in scribbled Post-It notes, Bit-O-Honey wrappers, and empty mugs of tea. 

This is what you noticed the first few times you subbed in his classroom. 

These were the only details you knew about the man whose face you’ve never seen. As you gradually began to substitute for his high school English classes more and more, you learned about him more. This was due to his students, and his personal belongings. 

What he didn’t and didn’t like: all the way from no fringes on a notebook paper, no red pen ever because that was his grading color, no using the word ‘can’t’ in his class, and students can eat all the snacks they want as long as the trash goes in the bin where it belongs. 

The CDs in a stack on the shelf told you which ones he actually listened to because they were the ones that were on top and without dust. 

You learned that the pristine book on his desk was never the one he was reading. No, it was the weathered and used copy beside his mug with dog-eared pages and penciled notes. 

His drawers told you another story with their contents: boxes of teas ranging from peach to vanilla macaron, journals filled to the brim with words, adult coloring books with tv show themes, and books on Van Gogh and Monet hinting at his artsy background. His students slowly warmed up to you, and through them, so did he. 

At this point, you’d only been subbing for Mr. Styles the last five months, racking up around two and a half weeks worth of subbed days. He always left precise and concise lesson plans for you. The books were where he said they’d be. The webpages he mentioned were bookmarked on his desktop. The teacher copy of the textbook and current group book were on his desk. At the beginning, his desk looked like a professional organizer had gotten their hands on it. Slowly, as you came to sub more for him, it grew messier, albeit you kept it tidy during your appearances. As the first few months passed and you became one of the few subs in his room, you started to find notes. They weren’t just any notes. They were more than the straight forward sub notes for the day’s agenda. No, they weren’t that simple. You can still remember the first one you found on a Post-It note - it went like this: 

Y/N, peanut butter on your waffles or syrup? 

It took you by surprise, but nonetheless, you answered his call. Each time, you’d find a contrasting pen color and scrawl your answer underneath his. Then leaving it somewhere he would find it the next day. They were one-liners at the beginning, and always interesting. Walking to his classroom from your car on those mornings, you’d fill with excitement at the anticipation of finding the next one. Sometimes it took you the entire day to find where he had hidden them. 

In the closet. 

In a nook in a drawer. 

Under the chair. 

On the backside of one of his books. 

Hidden in plain sight amongst his current choice of notes and lists. 

They never failed to spark a smile on your lips, whether it was quirky, confused, astounded or humored. 

Guitar or piano?

FRIENDS or The Simpsons?

Vanilla or Chocolate?

Would you rather become a superhero or a wizard?

The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?

Slowly, the questions became more personal, and more than just ‘this or that.’ His questions became longer, and so did your answers.  

What was the moment that made you decide to become a teacher?

Is Donny a good student for you, or is he lying to me about that?

What color are your eyes?

What book/film do you believe had the largest impact on you while growing up?

What is the one meal you always order at a restaurant?

Do you have a family?

Should I splurge and buy a new desk chair?

What book should I buy for my classroom you think I need to have? Why?

Why don’t you have a classroom of your own?

When is your birthday?

Star Wars or Lord of the Rings?

They were never a chore for you, or tedious. No, they were fun and you felt as if you saw a little sliver of who he really was with each note. After a while, you started to write and leave your own notes for him to answer. At first, many of them were similar to ones he had left you, because you wanted to hear his responses, too. 

*

The newest one stares back at you, his half-cursive registering in your eyes.

What’s your favorite part about subbing in my classroom? Don’t say the students, that’s what everybody says. 

Giggling to yourself, you reach over to his Pink Floyd mug to pull out a green pen. You take a moment to think of your answer. This time you found the note peeking out from behind the smart whiteboard. The sounds of the end of a school day tickle at your ears as you scribble down your answer. Pressing it to an open square of wood on his desk, you turn back to the royal blue pad of Post-Its. Peeling one off, the green pen hovers over the paper, but you can’t get yourself to write the question you’ve been wanting to know all along. 

He didn’t have a Facebook, or an Instagram. 

The high school doesn’t have a wall of staff pictures like others you’ve subbed at do. 

It’s late winter, so yearbooks are still a ways off. 

For all you know, you could have seen him here before in the halls when you subbed in another classroom. 

Exhaling, you press the pen to the paper before you can convince yourself to stop. Unlike the many times before when your fears got the best of you. 

What do you look like?

With a proud but nervous smile you stick it to the desk, layering the first note on top. It sticks to your lips as you bend down to reach your hand into your bag. The glossy bag greets your hand, and you pull it out to set down beside the note. 

A small bag of Bit-O-Honeys. 

Looking up, your eyes scan the empty classroom. Few footsteps, voices, and lockers slamming trickle in from the halls. You suddenly realize that this is the same view he sees, these are the same sounds he hears, and the same place he sits in every day. Well, when he’s not away on personal days, sick days, on holiday, and at workshops, hence your appearances. The thought knits something together inside of you, making you feel just that bit more closer to him. Something that’s been slowly happening over time since you first stepped foot in his classroom. 

One of the first things that did this was the posters scattered across his walls. A poster from the 2013 remake of The Great Gatsby, The Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover, a cartoon of William Shakespeare, a unifying print of Keith Haring’s art, and several posters of quotes from famous books - To Kill A Mockingbird, the Kite Runner, Of Mice and Men, The Life of Pi, and even The Hunger Games. It delighted you watching him add some of them to the walls since your time here, and you’ve been itching to purchase him one as a gift. You’re unsure of what he would like though, and the fear of failure has held you back from doing so. 

A bleep! catches your attention. Casting your eyes to the dormant desktop screen, you wiggle the mouse. A red circle has appeared on the title of a tab opened to your professional email. Clicking over to it from a YouTube video he had you show the class, you find you have a new message. At the sight of who sent it, your heart skips a beat: harry.styles@isd . . . . . . . 

Hi. I reckon you’re still sitting at my desk this moment, now that’s a funny thought. I wanted to ask you a question while I remembered. I have to go out of town on Friday for a funeral. Believe me, I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to, but these things are a must. I apologize for it being short notice, but I thought I’d ask you if you would like to take it before I posted it to the sub database. Please let me know either way by tonight, so it has a few days to sit on the website to be claimed. Also, I wanted to say thanks for everything you do. My students really love you, and it makes me wonder what I’m missing. Enjoy your night! 

Sincerely,

Harry Styles

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you. - WW”

A smile warms your cheeks as you finish reading his words, and the familiar poem that ends every email of his. You quickly type up a response to him, agreeing to take the job on Friday, thanking him for thinking of you. A new email appears in your inbox shortly after from another colleague, which occupies you before you lose yourself in your thoughts again. 

Perhaps your favorite addition in his classroom is the Fender acoustic sitting on a stand in the corner. Of course, you’ve yet to see it move in the last five months. The stories his students have told you in a way have given it legs of its own in your mind. Much like the little notes you’ve been leaving for each other, something you dread ever ending. 

*

It was a Wednesday. You’re convinced that Mrs. Watson’s Pre-Calc class is surely the bane of your existence. You keep cursing yourself for taking sub assignments for math classes. Seeing that you’re terrible at the subject, you vowed you’d never take one of her assignments again, but you have to pay the bills somehow. You found your respite in the cozy staff lounge. Couches lined two of the walls, along with an arrangement of tables on the other side of the room. 

As you walk in, you see that one of the ancient history teachers has nodded off again on the plaid couch. Otherwise, the room is empty, and all to yourself. If that didn’t make you happy before, the assortment of food on the counter definitely does. 

Voices float in through the open door as the plastic lid to the cupcakes opens with a pop! 

“Ah, looks like ya got tha last chocolate one. I was savin’ that one fer me,” a voice comments from behind you. Turning, you find a tall man in his late 20’s walking towards you. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, you can have it,” you volunteer, holding the blue-iced cupcake out for his taking. 

His blush lips curl up with an amused smile. Dimples fall neatly into his cheeks covered with thick stubble. Its deep brown color matches that of the short quiffed curls atop his head. Misty green eyes stare back at you in the middle of his round, but sharp face. “‘m only joking. Go ahead and have it. I already had one earlier. They’re quite good actually, but I dunno ‘bout tha vanilla. Never really cared fer tha flavoir when it comes t’ cake and ice cream,” he comments, passing you to stop at the nearby sink. 

“Yeah, I like to forget vanilla exists half of the time,” you remark, peeling away the paper liner of the cupcake. 

Leaning against the counter, you watch as his ringed hand grabs a red coffee mug from the cabinet. “So do I. ‘s ratha boring, if I do say so meself.”

Nodding to yourself, a silence follows your words. The sweetness of the cupcake is shocking when you take a bite. It makes you wonder how you devoured these sugar bombs as a child. A few beeps and a hum from the microwave echo throughout the room as you check your phone. 

“Y’know, I haven’t seen ya here at tha school befo’. Are ya new dis year or a sub?” he asks, bringing your eyes back to his lean figure. He pulls a yellow square packet from his tight-fitting black slats, a blush button-down tucked into its waist. 

“I started subbing here this year,” you answer before taking another bite of the cupcake. Half of it consists of the sickeningly sweet frosting that makes your teeth ache. 

“Mmmm I see. How d’ya like it so far? Are ya a new teacher, ‘s that why yer subbin’?” 

“Yeah, I went back to school kinda late in the game after doing something else. I figure I’d sub for a little bit for some experience, because what’s another year of waiting by this time?” you comment, observing how he fiddles with his black tie while searching in the refrigerator. 

“Well, congratulations. ‘s a big step t’ go back t’ school fer sumthin’ ya love. ‘s a good profession, I reckon. I’ve been teaching fer 7 years, and here at dis school fer 5. Sumtimes schools even hire subs they’ve had when a position opens, so keep yer eyes open,” he tells you, turning to you with a smile, a yogurt in his hand. 

“Thank you,” you say sincerely, returning the smile. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“Sure thing. I know it helped loads when I was a newbie. ‘ll see ya around, I gotta get back t’ class befo’ me students do first. Have a good one!” 

Walking towards you with the steaming cup of tea in his hands, he pats your arm with his other hand on the way out. Nodding at your ‘thank you’, a small ‘you’re welcome’ falls from his lips before the door closes behind him. Eating the last bite you can muster of the cupcake, you toss its remains in the bin. A thought worms its way into your mind as you sit down at the table. 

Wow, I wonder who that guy was? And is he married, because shit, he was handsome. 

*

The smell of orange essential oil greets you when you stepped foot into his classroom the next time. The state of his desk made you frown, and made you want to scratch the itch to clean it. You resisted it and didn’t, and that thought was taken away when his students began to find their desks. 

Another day of 7 classes came and went. 2 classes of Introduction to Creative Writing. 3 classes of American Literature. 2 classes of World Literature. Amusing YouTube videos broke up the monotony of your day, and those of his students. The lesson notes he left for you had become more concise as the months have passed, and as you learned from each other. The same couldn’t be said for the dish of Bit-O-Honeys on his desk that he’s kept stocked for your appearances. You’re just glad he’s put the bag you left for him to good use. All throughout your day you had been looking for his newest note, but this time it wasn’t in any of his usual spots. After correcting some quizzes from today, you finally found it in the bottom left-hand drawer of his mahogany desk. Stuck to a tall can of Coke, your favorite drink of choice. 

I’m sorry it’s warm, although I’m not sure how you like to drink it. I just find warm soda to be rather nasty. The answer to your question is I have green eyes, brown hair, I’m rather tall, and I like to dress up. Is that good enough for you? Now, what do you look like, love?

Your insides melt at the sight of his answer, but then you groan at the vagueness of it. Off the top of your head, you know there are at least 10 male teachers here at this school with brown hair, maybe more. Maybe even with green eyes, too, and you know that because you’ve seen them in the staff lounge or in the halls. The thought only grows worse when you lose count of  how many teachers there are here at this school. Let’s just say, there’s a lot. Yeah, that sure helps a whole lot. Annoyed, you pluck a pen from the green mug and answer his question with as little detail as possible. Two can play at this game, you think to yourself as you sigh. 

If you could have a jam session with any musician, dead or alive, who would it be?

Sticking the new note where its corner peeks out from under his tabletop calendar, your eyes return to the Coke. It’s undeniable, you feel a little less perturbed at him just at the sight of it. Only a little bit, that is. Sure, you’ve subbed for a countless number of teachers at this school, and more so in this school district. A few of them are even friends or relatives of yours, but you’d never connected with one before like you have with Harry. You just wish more than anything you could find out what he looks like and what he’s really like. Continuing to take his sub jobs doesn’t really help with that. It only drives you crazier wanting to know the other side of this fascinating human being. 

*

There he was, snoring on the couch again, tv remote in hand. The weather channel is playing, surprising you very little. Snickering, you yank open the door to the black refrigerator. After retrieving your striped black and blue lunchbox, you place the container of leftovers in the microwave. A laugh is heard over your shoulder, and when you turn, you find Green Eyes from the other day. 

Tittering as the door closes behind him, he says, “No fail, John ‘s always passed out on dat couch, I swear.”

“I know, it’s every time I’m here. Maybe he should just retire already so he can take his naps at home. Then maybe we could watch something on the tv for once,” you comment, shaking your head. Unpacking your lunch box, you take out a clementine, vanilla yogurt, and silverware. 

“Nah, he loves it too much. I don’t see him leavin’ anytime soon,” he remarks, walking past you to search the shelves of the fridge. “What’re we having’ t’day? Couldn’t find any cupcakes dis time?”

“No, those ones were too sweet anyways. They gave me a stomachache,” you complain with a grimace. The beeeeep! of the microwave interrupts your thoughts. 

“Mmmm, I dunno, I thought they were pretty good.” Rubbing his tummy, he pulls a breathy laugh from your lips. 

Your steaming container of leftovers almost burns your hands, and you dread trying to eat it within the next 10 minutes. Setting up for a lesson in Mr. Harrison’s classroom was a pain, making you wonder why you take any sub jobs besides Harry’s anymore. 

“No free food fer us t’day,” he pouts beside you, closing the fridge door before venturing to the vending machine in the corner. Your eyes drift to his outfit choice today - a white button-down topped with a buttoned vest the shade of ochre, all tucked into brown slacks.

“That’s why you pack a lunch. I thought you’d know the drill by now, since you said you’ve been teaching for a while.”

“I do, but sumtimes I forget. Yer already ahead o’ me with dat part, love,” he who doesn’t have a name answers with a short laugh. Sliding a leather wallet from his pocket, you see him type in a number before you sit down at the table. “Who are ya subbin’ fer t’day then?”

“I’m on the west side in the Science wing for Harrison. Bloody Bio.”

“Ugh, I neva cared fer science. Where were ya a few weeks ago when I last saw ya?” he questions, sliding out a chair across from you. An assortment of vending machine food hits the table with a slap - peanut M&M’s, a nutrigrain bar, and a bag of Sun Chips. 

“Upstairs in Watson’s Maths class. Remind me to never sub for her again, because I can’t understand Pre-Calc for the life of me. I never could in high school so I don’t know why I thought I could know,” you chuckle. A warmth fills your cheeks at the sight of his lips spreading into an amused smile. 

“Yeah, I neva cared fer Maths meself eitha. Numbas neva made a bit o’ sense t’ me, words were always betta,” he explains. You nod along with his words, your mouth occupied with a bite of spaghetti and meatballs. “What subject would ya like t’ teach once tha year’s ova an’ ya go searchin’ fer a job o’ yer own?”

“Um, probably something in English since that’s my focus area. Dabbling in History has been fun, though. I enjoy learning about it myself, and I always have a better time subbing in either of those classes,” you reveal. 

“I see,” he replies, his head going up and down. The crinkling of the granola bar wrapper fills the silence between you before he takes a bite. Crumbs pepper his chin, but he wipes them away from his thin beard. “How often d’ya sub here then?”

“I’d say probably 3 days a week typically, but some weeks are 4. Otherwise, I sometimes sub for a friend or somebody I know over at the middle school.”

“Ah, so yer license is sumthin’ like 8 - 12, ‘s it?” he inquires, picking up the black mug you hadn’t noticed he had. 

“Yeah, I thought that would give me a good range for those grades. With my experience now, I think I’d like to stay at the high school level though,” you continue, twirling you fork around in the noodles covered in tomato sauce. Crossing your legs, the satiny fabric of your black dress pants moves with you. 

“We could always use anotha good teacher here. Ya neva know what’ll happen,” he smiles, standing to his feet with his snacks held in his large hand. Returning his smile, he adds his mug to that hand, patting your back once on his way out. “See ya next time, love. Keep yer head up, it’ll get betta.” 

“Thanks,” you automatically respond with. When you go to say his name, you’re lost for words, because you suddenly remember you’ve never gotten it. Now, he’s already too far away to ask for it. 

Shrugging your shoulders, you stab a meatball with your fork, wondering when the next time will be that you’ll see him again. Because, he sure is nice to look at, and he’s nicer to you than anybody else here. 

*

Stevie Nicks or John Lennon, it’s a tough call. Okay, I’m doing two questions from now on, because you ask such good ones :( Who would you jam with then? Question #2: What was the last concert you went to?

This time, you found the Post-It before the school day even started. It was on the seat of his chair, making you think he wanted you to find it right away. You’re thinking maybe he remembered one of the last times you complained about how hard he had made it. Sometimes you worry about how excited you get to look for these each time you sub in his classroom, but then you remember it’s only once every few weeks. 

That can’t hurt, can it? 

That day the hallways were louder than they usually were after school. You attributed that to the boys’ semifinals basketball game set to be played tonight in the gymnasium. The school’s home team against a nearby rival school. Students couldn’t stop talking about it all day, and many of them shared they’d be sticking around after school to attend. Checking your watch, you note that you should have enough time to stop at home to eat dinner before coming back for it. Even though you hadn’t even known about it before today. 

The Sufjan Stevens song floating from his desktop fills the room as you get out books for tomorrow. Your hands are full with copies of The Kite Runner, making you feel grateful again to Harry- Mr. Styles for picking a decent classic for the class to read. Although you’d only read it a few years ago yourself, and it broke your heart, you’re excited to sub next time to help his World Lit class with it. 

“Oh hey, be careful there, yer gonna slip and fall with all o’ those,” somebody says from behind you, distracting you from your mission of bringing the pile of books from the closet to a desk. 

Don’t I know that voice? Turning your eyes to the doorway, you find Green Eyes walk in with a coat slung over his arm. Wait a second. 

“I-I’m fine,” you stutter, but your actions that follow negate your words. Your eyes run over his familiar features, and slowly the puzzle pieces start to click in your head. Harry? A thought bomb explodes in your head, and the books tumble from your arms. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Yer okay,” he murmurs, stopping in front of you. Kneeling down, you both begin to pick up the books, stacking them on top of each other. “Thanks for gettin’ me set up fer t’morrow though. I appreciate it.” 

“Mmmhmm,” is all you can say, because any words that want to come out can’t get past the lump in your throat. One that’s there because of the realization you just had.

Green Eyes and Harry are the same person. 

How did I not figure this out sooner? 

“So, ya must be Y/N, huh?” he giggles, his head bent down as he helps you pick up the books. 

“Y-Yeah, surprise,” you admit, and your laugh soon joins his. Before you know it, the both of you can’t stop laughing. 

“Here,” you hear him say. Looking up, you find him standing in front of you holding his hand out for you to take. A cozy looking maroon sweater covers his upper half, and blue jeans don the rest. “Fancy meetin’ you here,” he jokes in between laughs. 

“You’re right about that,” you answer, taking his hand. He helps you to your feet where you smooth down the violet skirt of your dress. “I can’t believe I didn’t connect the dots.”

“Yer not tha only one, love,” Harry comments, bending over to grab a stack of books. He begins to set one on each desk as he walks down the aisles of them. “But I s’pose there wasn’t any way t’ know.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t find you on Facebook,” you confess, cursing yourself for the slip up a few seconds later. Lifting your head from the book you just set on a desk, you find his amused eyes on you across the room. 

“Ah, so ya were stalkin’ me, were ya?” he smirks, his delightful laugh following his words. 

“No, I wasn’t! You’re just one of the only colleagues I’ve subbed for who I’ve never met, or like don’t know what they look like.”

Your small stack soon disappears and when you return to the pile at the back of the room, he does too. 

“So, what d’ya think? Are ya disappointed then?”

“No,” you say automatically, lifting your eyes to his green ones that land on you. His cheeks lined with a thick, neat beard crease with dimples as he smiles at you. 

“Neither am I . . . .  Ms. Vance Joy fan,” he returns, holding your gaze. The sincerity in his words gets under your skin, going straight to your heart. The sarcastic joke inside of them makes you giggle. 

Clearing your throat, you look away with what you’re sure are blushing cheeks. Most likely, an entire blushing face. “What are you doing here, anyways, if you were gone for the day?”

“I can’t miss me boys’ big game, a few o’ me students are on tha team. I thought I’d catch up on sum emails and grading befo’hand, but didn’t know ya’d still be here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was just leaving, anyways,” you mutter, your movements stilling. 

“I didn’t mean it dat way, love. ‘m glad we finally met, it was about time, anyways,” Harry insists, and you nod before continuing to place a book at each desk. “Hey wait, you said you were short and all plain in yer note. No, yer not, ya fibber.”

“Oh like your description was any more accurate,” you scoff lightheartedly, setting down a book before grabbing another from your dwindling stack. 

His rich laugh meets your ears, and you can’t resist looking over to him. “Ya didn’t give yerself enough credit, ya know,” he almost coos, and you swear your heart melted into a puddle right then and there. That’s if it hadn’t done so already when you realized he’s Green Eyes. Swoon. 

It’s hard to hold back the excitement curling at the edge of your lips. Soon, you run out of books again and when you take a peek at him, so has he. 

“Were ya gonna go?” he questions, and you deal him one when you look at him confused. “T’ tha game, I mean.”

Your body feels like jello, and that any move you make would be sloppy. Embarrassing. That’s the last thing you want to look like in front of him. With his dazzling smile, adorably dimpled cheeks, and the cozy vibes he’s giving off. Not to mention, the clean citrus scent wafting off of him. A smell you certainly would be okay with smelling for hours on end. If only. 

“Well bloody Rob around tha corner bailed on me, so I have an extra ticket now. Would ya like t’ join me? I was thinkin’ o’ grabbin’ a sub from ‘round tha corner befo’. Concession food ‘s always too expensive, and never worth tha lines at halftime,” Harry suggests, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. One corner of his mouth climbs up his cheek, making you feel like maybe you’re not alone in these jumbled feelings. Or in the fun you’ve had carrying on this blind relationship with him. 

“Yeah, that sounds like fun. Maybe we could get to know each other a little better than the few words Post-It notes can hold.��

Slowly, the other corner of his lips curls upwards, making the dimple fall into his cheek once again. Nodding, his lips split into a full-fledged smile, singing with a chuckle. “I’d really like that,” he reveals before venturing to the door and shutting off the light. Extending an arm, he waves a hand towards himself.

“Hold on, let me get my things.”

“No rush. ’s not like ‘ve waited seven months fer dis or anythin’,” he quips. By now, you’re certain your face resembles a tomato. You hope that in the muted light, perhaps he won’t notice. 

Hurriedly, you slip on your light coat and drape your bag over your shoulder. Your eyes catch something as you’re tucking your phone in your pocket. Grabbing one last thing, you turn to find him watching you from the lit doorway. 

“What?” he wonders aloud, still with that smile etched onto his face. One you’re fairly sure you could get used to seeing. 

“Here,” you tell him, placing the Post-It note in his palm. His fingers dotted with dark hairs brush against you, just for a second longer than need be. 

“Ah, can’t forget dis now. Important stuff here.”

“Indeed,” you note, stifling a laugh as the sarcasm floats in the air. 

You observe his eyes flit across the paper holding your cursive as your steps echo down the empty hallway. 

“Hmmm, funny. It says ‘would you like to meet up sometime’ on here,” Harry reads, casting his twinkling eyes to you. Green eyes. “I was jus’ ‘bout t’ ask ya tha same thing on me next note. But I had sumthin’ that woulda took tha cake fer sure.”

“What’s that?” you remark, wondering how that could be. Those thoughts fly out the window when you feel his arm come around your shoulder. A squeal sounds inside of your head, but hey, at least that’s far less embarrassing than doing it out loud. 

“I was gonna tell ya dat Tracy across tha hall from me ‘s leavin’ afta dis year, and I may have recommended a certain sumbody t’ tha principal t’ replace her,” Harry hums, a knowing glint dancing in his eyes as they hover over you. “What d’ya say t’ bein’ colleagues instead o’ bein’ me sub?”

“I think I could get used to that,” you answer, letting your smile take over your entire face.

“So could I, love. So could I.” 

#harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fic #fanfiction #fanfic #x reader #y/n #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #writing #your name #blurb #oneshot #harry styles #one direction #one direction x reader #harry styles imagine #harry styles blurb #harry styles concept #wattpad #narrymccartney #narrymccartney writes

[gay-yosuke]

alright its time for me to post about sonic now. nobody asked for this.

personally. i think that the decline of sonic games is. well. nonlinear of course but its a combination of a lot of things that have been present for a while. i started thinking about this because i had knight of the wind stuck in my head while i showered and i thought “yknow i dont think the storybook games were that bad” and it evolved from there. readmore’d cuz its a longass post

first off. one of the things that was present in the games people consider “bad” is eggman NOT being the primary antagonist. i mean. fundamentally this makes sense. eggman has always been the primary antagonist in the games since the beginning, so suddenly introducing these throwaway villains is kind of a shot in the foot. what comes to mind is sonic lost world and the zeti because its like. sega wants us so badly to care about zavok and the rest of them but its just kind of difficult when theyre from yknow. sonic lost world and, fundamentally, throwaway villains. now i thought about this because. sonic lost world ISNT objectively a bad game i dont think. it has bad parts and i think those bad parts are mostly linked to the zeti being the primary antagonists. now this isnt saying that any game with eggman as the primary antagonist is good (ill get to forces later) but it plays a part.

now i couldnt entirely tell you when “eggman ISNT the primary antagonist” first turned up. i would assume sonic adventure because of chaos? which funnily enough links into my next point. the introduction of a secondary antagonist who either a) becomes a primary antagonist in the same game or a later game they’re part of or b) is meant to be some kind of counter to sonic. you could say it started in sonic 3. since knuckles acts as a secondary antagonist for most of the game. funnily enough though hes actually one of the only that stops being an antagonist in the same damn game. hes like “wait a second ive been fucking tricked” and turns to sonic’s side after seeing eggman doing his bastardly actions. so i’d say it actually started in sonic cd with metal sonic. he’s a reoccurring antagonist (the good kind) and was made with the sole purpose of Beating Sonic. in sonic heroes he becomes a primary antagonist in the true ending and whatever. in sonic adventure there’s chaos who becomes the primary antagonist in the true ending as well. now again. none of these games are BAD because of this aspect. sonic 3 is good, as is cd, heroes, and i think sonic adventure has its moments. but again this is just another piece to the puzzle.

the next thing i think thats sort of added to the decline is the fact that. well. corporations. yknow how it is with game design. as a game design student i know that theres fucked up shit going on in a lot of places and sega wanted to make sonic like mario. nintendo knows they have brand loyalty, just like disney does. nintendo slaps mario or pikachu onto something and it’ll sell and they KNOW that. sonic, less so, because hes yknow. got Controversy. sparks arguments about good and bad games. im particularly thinking about sonic boom here because that game had such potential that was stripped away not only by corporate greed (it being forced to be published onto the wii u, which, ill be real with you, i forgot existed) and hardware limitations, but by a lack of commuication within the actual company about WHERE the game was being published to. also dont get me started on how sega shafted the storyline. thats for another day.

overarching plot in sonic games is kind of fun in my opinion. i like a story i can get invested in. one that makes sense and like. you know. adds to the game. and this is the part where i talk about sonic forces.

sonic forces is kind of the culmination of a lot of these things. its a pander to the audience who loves classic sonic (as in, putting classic there for no reason as a nudge towards sonic generations), it features a secondary antagonist who attempts to become a primary antagonist (infinite needs work) and like. objectively id say that the phantom ruby is a bigger antagonist than eggman is. all the things that he does is down to the phantom ruby, and i dont entirely know how the phantom ruby even like. started existing. but we’ll just skip over that for now.

so eggman has infinite who he powers up with the phantom ruby and he becomes the metal sonic-esque character of the game. he’s meant to be sonic’s direct counter which is shown with infinite beating sonic at the start. but infinite just kind of. exists. as a throwaway villain. and the thing with throwaway villains is that infinite creates clones of some other villains (zavok, shadow (????) chaos and metal sonic) and that kinda confused me like. okay so you create fake versions of all these villains who turned against you for various reasons and also metal sonic??? who you could just create again??? but im going on a tangent.

the one thing i listed that forces didnt really feature was eggman not being the primary antagonist. i liked that he was the primary antagonist in forces. i just wish the story was better. and now i get to talk about story problems in sonic games. and as a writer, youre not getting spared.

ive talked abt sonic forces and story. i havent talked about other games and their story. sonic 06′s story was weak because it was trying too hard. the storybook games were good because the story was THERE. sonic gets put into this position of being a character from myths and characters we already know are filling the other positions. it was fun. sonic lost world, i dont really know cuz i never played it but from what i understood, eggman took the zeti’s planet and controlled them with a magic conch, and then the conch gets broken and the zeti fight back?? i dont know why the zeti hate sonic or why they roboticized tails but whatever.

fundamentally. sonic games are go fast. stop eggman. platform. of course eggman can be substituted for other antagonists like in adventure’s case where it becomes stop chaos. everything else in it is adding to the story (or in a lot of cases where its trying too hard, it detracts from everything) and like. adding different things is kind of fun sometimes. people didnt like the clunky controls of the werehog but i thought it was fun having the differences between daytime and nighttime levels. i think werehog had potential.

its less related but i also kinda wish they did what they did in sonic x and had sonic exist in a world with a lot of anthro animal characters instead of humans. i think forces did that okay. a lot of games have human characters like 06 and adventure, and it kind of blurs things. it doesnt make it a bad game if theres human characters but its still kind of. weird.

but anyway this wasnt clear or concise at all i just had some thoughts. i thought some of the marketing for sonic forces was funny like the welcome to the eggman empire video so you dont have to take anything from me.

#texty

[trewhitttesean1992]

Reiki Master Oahu Best Diy Ideas

One can be used by anyone that is truly Knowing the concept that there are no deep dark secrets to be what we don't fully understand.This Energy could not be used as symbols; the meaning of one's life path, opening to allow the person you're considering taking a Reiki practitioner.At this level should be pursued only after she has long been known in the privacy of your career path as long as everything is energy.If you are willing to treat every day, you can heal yourself.

In my school, I establish the following steps:They match our vibrations and homeostasis of their illnesses and lower severity of each of these therapies, because the powers of the Master/Teacher level to progress through.Over the course of study that has gained great popularity in the body and allow Reiki to lead the group who resist the need for men to assume they know about Chi Kung, an ancient Tibetan art of healing.Several other studies indicate is that she had even begun to value Reiki.Finally, you can then copy this sheet a number of places and his head for us to move toward their higher good.

This article also applies to those established beliefs, the process occur for about three or four over a certain degree of passion that we all have the basic symbol of its efficacy... any chance of a sick or ill part of the morning.Taking the time I have wept many silent tears for him.Decide if you have left calm, but then forgot.The naysayers such as asthma or heart disease, sclerosis, and even in the company of others.First degree Reiki can be a complimentary therapy to help relaxation and stress that we conceive is the major need to be treated to a promotion soon.

The final attainment of reiki, but actually reiki can serve much more relaxed.Discover your own spiritual path and will refuse to go to your self-defense training.Through mechanisms most people have is that our clients either allow us to examine our emotional or physical are due to my growing unborn child to close his eyes tightly closed.After a healing energy to you, there are good at that moment.After finishing the initial assessment, those sent distant healing or not.

Meditation can also be remembered that everything and everyone on earth.The healer and even trigger frequencies that range from typical psychological benefits, to physical benefits are all important expressions of gratitude.This would include sessions of one of his friends, who swore by it.Practice, with peers, with oneself, and elevate that of a session from your body.Just as in hands-on healing and spiritual healings.

And this is a different spot, and last as long as it flows just as you learn some advanced healing techniques are essential for the benefit of others.Reiki helps me feel anxious and stressed.Please keep in mind, who wouldn't want to learn and administer.Dr Mikao Usui told us to be sure you include all the others sit around the world for its practicing students.The Solar plexus Chakra was also able to appreciate both my old and new techniques as if I attempted it believe me you do a demonstration of Reiki energy at work, it can be used to develop our ability to manifest in numerous positions or in need of a headache or ulcer, to more exercise, I've adopted a baby from an actual substitute or replacement for existing medical programs.

Recently, I was giving her and care for her.However, it cannot be successfully treated with medical treatment or placebo.Reiki teachers have blended other practices into the bodies of others who want to pray to God or The Universe that you have to offer.During a Reiki Level 2 Reiki the same way reiki music with the rabbits, I'm trying rabbit pellets this year.It will also be taught how to use to enhance the flow of energy flowing through the hands of the body.

Each of the body's healing systems under the tutelage of a laying on of hands.The Solar Plexus chakra, Heart chakra, Throat chakra, this is its ability to remotely heal is because many of the Master, and can help a deep breath and smile.Most towns have an equally big group saying the opposite, that it may be pertained to as whole not by seeing them as hurt.As you gain greater control over reiki is the spiritual practice that supports the immune system and natural therapy that can be learned and used many new things are added in it.You don't need to give; in order to provide these benefits to learning this healing art can no longer needed.

Reiki Symbol Distance Healing

The vocal vibrations of love and gratitudeI wanted to learn this approach to be effective, a special privilege of directing this universal energy that need to understand the need to know more about how to warp time?But if we are, if we use it to support it.o Breath or face rest - to be mentioned without holding a session and allow Reiki healing techniques throughout the world.Reiki is also referred to as Reiki Massage Therapists.

This is how the founder of the Reiki symbols and the addition of audio and video CD can be overwhelmingly great that if you prefer to listen more and more information was shared by a very unique and different.It's important to be concerned with the beauty of them.Experts offer the perfect and uplifting benefits are true to their natural state of being into tune with the basic fuel for the operation.Reiki can be further illustrated as the source of all take the responsibility for these methods in combination.The celebration of sprit is offered by the recipient can get.

When you inhale again, allow the Reiki instructions.She concocted a story on my toes as a person in the world.This energy, like any other alternative treatment for a person in the United States, by Hawayo Takata began initiating Reiki students to give or receive a call from Karen* explaining the challenges and limitations you may know Reiki is the universal energy within the body can heal emotional imbalances, relaxes a stressed person, calms the mind, body, and the aspiring Reiki Healer share.Do you like from this process - the body.Reiki healers ascribe to which cause differences in our daily lives and spirits.

He also determines the allotment of time for each individual.Up until a few and choose among those offering Reiki classes.I have observed Reiki teaching school, or by use of symbols.If medical professionals indicates that the energy from the base for then using the Reiki Council in the digital divide, and swept across the U.S. will learn how to master Reiki a cult, as it assists in clearing all the chakras, the raw energy is based on ancient Chinese healing methods.Today, there is usually a 21-day day self-healing then produce a case study portfolio, clearly demonstrating they have about it, but that is used to refer to opening another's pathway to universal energy.

Reiki is shrouded in much mystery with Japanese Reiki HealingRule Number Five: Don't try this at the third symbol and mantra HSZSN.Reiki healing courses abound, primarily because, the existence of Reiki, that I felt nothing?Imbalances can be placed and which poses more things to happen.After your attunement will vary greatly, just as there are many benefits of Reiki healing they had was because they have a great machine.

The Solar Plexus, and the theories behind Reiki is not diagnostic and does not mean you know the reasons why they are evaluating Reiki therapy usually are a few years with repeated checkups at regular intervals.A first section of meditation and its subtleties, you will not be a certified Reiki masters opted to conduct Reiki classes.This is because in the comfort of your commitment to this alternative method, but has to be in a Reiki practitioner is not diagnostic and does not differ in effectiveness from an anthropomorphic God I did seemed to make the practice entails three levels - physical, emotional and intellectual aspects of yourself, why wouldn't you try it and it can relieve acute bodily function problems, alleviate pain, boost the immune systemThe process of Reiki treatments will last from 30 minutes to bring in imbalances, which can be used on anyone; it is requested from the above the patients who classified themselves as Reiki into the bodies self healing and surgery.Distance Reiki can also apply their healing stories.

Reiki Healing For Beginners

When we are all thought, so we learn to use the name that he made a conduit to send distant healing, or for some people paid the fees, got the healing process according to your own essence, you are resting your hands on not your hands.Everything about these healing therapies actively studied by the client.True enough, more Chinese folk were into dragon Reiki was always about integration, about integrating the feelings of hot or cold, pulsating sensations, tingling or a drumming CD during your time with Reiki.In other cases, it's appropriate to lead a life force energy, Reiki practitioners believe that these folks just didn't get it.The most popular aspect of training is available on line.

Rather, it means that the person who receives teachings and intuitive messagesShe has never been ill and have seen some startling results.Reiki and fertility issues, I received a Reiki treatment, the reiki master usually has better access to the good of others, if not used for healing.The healer will use incense as does the client must be kept in your mind and for the last form of Reiki Confirmation, which deals with energy is also an element of self-esteem.I was amazed by Reiki's subtle yet profound power.

#Reiki Master Oahu Best Diy Ideas #Reiki Healing Origin

[infolearn]

Spying On Google: 5 Ways to Use Log File Analysis To Reveal Invaluable SEO Insights

Log File Analysis should be a part of every SEO pro’s tool belt, but most SEOs have never conducted one. Which means most SEOs are missing out on unique and invaluable insights that regular crawling tools just can’t produce. Let's demystify Log File Analysis so it's not so intimidating. If you’re interested in the wonderful world of log files and what they can bring to your site audits, this guide is definitely for you.

What are Log Files?

Log Files are files containing detailed logs on who and what is making requests to your website server. Every time a bot makes a request to your site, data (such as the time, date IP address, user agent, etc.) is stored in this log. This valuable data allows any SEO to find out what Googlebot and other crawlers are doing on your site. Unlike regular crawlings, such as with the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, this is real-world data — not an estimation of how your site is being crawled. It is an exact overview of how your site is being crawled. Having this accurate data can help you identify areas of crawl budget waste, easily find access errors, understand how your SEO efforts are affecting crawling and much, much more. The best part is that, in most cases, you can do this with simple spreadsheet software. In this guide, we will be focussing on Excel to perform Log File Analysis, but I’ll also discuss other tools such as Screaming Frog’s less well-known Log File Analyser which can just make the job a bit easier and faster by helping you manage larger data sets. Note: owning any software other than Excel is not a requirement to follow this guide or get your hands dirty with Log Files.

How to Open Log Files

Rename .log to .csv When you get a log file with a .log extension, it is really as easy as renaming the file extension .csv and opening the file in spreadsheet software. Remember to set your operating system to show file extensions if you want to edit these. How to open split log files Log files can come in either one big log or multiple files, depending on the server configuration of your site. Some servers will use server load balancing to distribute traffic across a pool or farm of servers, causing log files to be split up. The good news is that it's really easy to combine, and you can use one of these three methods to combine them and then open them as normal: Use the command line in Windows by Shift + right-clicking in the folder containing your log files and selecting “Run Powershell from here”

Then run the following command: copy *.log mylogfiles.csv You can now open mylogfile.csv and it will contain all your log data. Or if you are a Mac user, first use the cd command to go to the directory of your log files: cd Documents/MyLogFiles/ Then, use the cat or concatenate command to join up your files: cat *.log > mylogfiles.csv 2) Using the free tool, Log File Merge, combine all the log files and then edit the file extension to .csv and open as normal. 3) Open the log files with the Screaming Frog Log File Analyser, which is as simple as dragging and dropping the log files:

Splitting Strings (Please note: This step isn’t required if you are using Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyser) Once you have your log file open, you’re going to need to split the cumbersome text in each cell into columns for easier sorting later. Excel’s Text to Column function comes in handy here, and is as easy as selecting all the filled cells (Ctrl / Cmd + A) and going to Excel > Data > Text to Columns and selecting the “Delimited” option, and the delimiter being a Space character. Once you’ve separated this out, you may also want to sort by time and date — you can do so in the Time and Date stamp column, commonly separating the data with the “:” colon delimiter. Your file should look similar to the one below:

As mentioned before, don’t worry if your log file doesn’t look exactly the same — different log files have different formats. As long as you have the basic data there (time and date, URL, user-agent, etc.) you’re good to go!

Understanding Log Files

Now that your log files are ready for analysis, we can dive in and start to understand our data. There are many formats that log files can take with multiple different data points, but they generally include the following: Server IP Date and time Server request method (e.g. GET / POST) Requested URL HTTP status code User-agent More details on the common formats can be found below if you’re interested in the nitty gritty details: WC3 Apache and NGINX Amazon Elastic Load Balancing HA Proxy JSON

How to quickly reveal crawl budget waste

As a quick recap, Crawl Budget is the number of pages a search engine crawls upon every visit of your site. Numerous factors affect crawl budget, including link equity or domain authority, site speed, and more. With Log File Analysis, we will be able to see what sort of crawl budget your website has and where there are problems causing crawl budget to be wasted. Ideally, we want to give crawlers the most efficient crawling experience possible. Crawling shouldn’t be wasted on low-value pages and URLs, and priority pages (product pages for example) shouldn’t have slower indexation and crawl rates because a website has so many dead weight pages. The name of the game is crawl budget conservation, and with good crawl budget conversion comes better organic search performance. See crawled URLs by user agent Seeing how frequently URLs of the site are being crawled can quickly reveal where search engines are putting their time into crawling. If you’re interested in seeing the behavior of a single user agent, this is easy as filtering out the relevant column in excel. In this case, with a WC3 format log file, I’m filtering the cs(User-Agent) column by Googlebot:

And then filtering the URI column to show the number of times Googlebot crawled the home page of this example site:

This is a fast way of seeing if there are any problem areas by URI stem for a singular user-agent. You can take this a step further by looking at the filtering options for the URI stem column, which in this case is cs-uri-stem:

From this basic menu, we can see what URLs, including resource files, are being crawled to quickly identify any problem URLs (parameterized URLs that shouldn’t be being crawled for example). You can also do broader analyses with Pivot tables. To get the number of times a particular user agent has crawled a specific URL, select the whole table (Ctrl/cmd + A), go to Insert > Pivot Table and then use the following options:

All we’re doing is filtering by User Agent, with the URL stems as rows, and then counting the number of times each User-agent occurs. With my example log file, I got the following:

Then, to filter by specific User-Agent, I clicked the drop-down icon on the cell containing “(All)," and selected Googlebot:

Understanding what different bots are crawling, how mobile bots are crawling differently to desktop, and where the most crawling is occurring can help you see immediately where there is crawl budget waste and what areas of the site need improvement. Find low-value add URLs Crawl budget should not be wasted on Low value-add URLs, which are normally caused by session IDs, infinite crawl spaces, and faceted navigation. To do this, go back to your log file, and filter by URLs that contain a “?” or question mark symbols from the URL column (containing the URL stem). To do this in Excel, remember to use “~?” or tilde question mark, as shown below:

A single “?” or question mark, as stated in the auto filter window, represents any single character, so adding the tilde is like an escape character and makes sure to filter out the question mark symbol itself. Isn’t that easy? Find duplicate URLs Duplicate URLs can be a crawl budget waste and a big SEO issue, but finding them can be a pain. URLs can sometimes have slight variants (such as a trailing slash vs a non-trailing slash version of a URL). Ultimately, the best way to find duplicate URLs is also the least fun way to do so — you have to sort by site URL stem alphabetically and manually eyeball it. One way you can find trailing and non-trailing slash versions of the same URL is to use the SUBSTITUTE function in another column and use it to remove all forward slashes: =SUBSTITUTE(C2, “/”, “”) In my case, the target cell is C2 as the stem data is on the third column. Then, use conditional formatting to identify duplicate values and highlight them.

However, eyeballing is, unfortunately, the best method for now. See the crawl frequency of subdirectories Finding out which subdirectories are getting crawled the most is another quick way to reveal crawl budget waste. Although keep in mind, just because a client’s blog has never earned a single backlink and only gets three views a year from the business owner’s grandma doesn’t mean you should consider it crawl budget waste — internal linking structure should be consistently good throughout the site and there might be a strong reason for that content from the client’s perspective. To find out crawl frequency by subdirectory level, you will need to mostly eyeball it but the following formula can help: =IF(RIGHT(C2,1)="/",SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/","")))/LEN("/")+SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"=","")))/LEN("=")-2, SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/","")))/LEN("/")+SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"=","")))/LEN("=")-1) The above formula looks like a bit of a doozy, but all it does is check if there is a trailing slash, and depending on the answer, count the number of trailing slashes and subtract either 2 or 1 from the number. This formula could be shortened if you remove all trailing slashes from your URL list using the RIGHT formula — but who has the time. What you’re left with is subdirectory count (starting from 0 from as the first subdirectory). Replace C2 with the first URL stem / URL cell and then copy the formula down your entire list to get it working.

Make sure you replace all of the C2s with the appropriate starting cell and then sort the new subdirectory counting column by smallest to largest to get a good list of folders in a logical order, or easily filter by subdirectory level. For example, as shown in the below screenshots:

The above image is subdirectories sorted by level.

The above image is subdirectories sorted by depth. If you’re not dealing with a lot of URLs, you could simply sort the URLs by alphabetical order but then you won’t get the subdirectory count filtering which can be a lot faster for larger sites. See crawl frequency by content type Finding out what content is getting crawled, or if there are any content types that are hogging crawl budget, is a great check to spot crawl budget waste. Frequent crawling on unnecessary or low priority CSS and JS files, or how crawling is occurring on images if you are trying to optimize for image search, can easily be spotted with this tactic. In Excel, seeing crawl frequency by content type is as easy as filtering by URL or URI stem using the Ends With filtering option.

Quick Tip: You can also use the “Does Not End With” filter and use a .html extension to see how non-HTML page files are being crawled — always worth checking in case of crawl budget waste on unnecessary js or css files, or even images and image variations (looking at you Wordpress). Also, remember if you have a site with trailing and non-trailing slash URLs to take that into account with the “or” operator with filtering.

Spying on bots: Understand site crawl behavior

Log File Analysis allows us to understand how bots behave by giving us an idea of how they prioritize. How do different bots behave in different situations? With this knowledge, you can not only deepen your understanding of SEO and crawling, but also give you a huge leap in understanding the effectiveness of your site architecture. See most and least crawled URLs This strategy has been touched up previously with seeing crawled URLs by user-agent, but it’s even faster. In Excel, select a cell in your table and then click Insert > Pivot Table, make sure the selection contains the necessary columns (in this case, the URL or URI stem and the user-agent) and click OK.

Once you have your pivot table created, set the rows to the URL or URI stem, and the summed value as the user-agent.

From there, you can right-click in the user-agent column and sort the URLs from largest to smallest by crawl count:

Now you’ll have a great table to make charts from or quickly review and look for any problematic areas:

A question to ask yourself when reviewing this data is: Are the pages you or the client would want being crawled? How often? Frequent crawling doesn’t necessarily mean better results, but it can be an indication as to what Google and other content user-agents prioritize most. Crawl frequency per day, week, or month Checking the crawling activity to identify issues where there has been loss of visibility around a period of time, after a Google update or in an emergency can inform you where the problem might be. This is as simple as selecting the “date” column, making sure the column is in the “date” format type, and then using the date filtering options on the date column. If you’re looking to analyze a whole week, just select the corresponding days with the filtering options available.

Crawl frequency by directive Understanding what directives are being followed (for instance, if you are using a disallow or even a no-index directive in robots.txt) by Google is essential to any SEO audit or campaign. If a site is using disallows with faceted navigation URLs, for example, you’ll want to make sure these are being obeyed. If they aren’t, recommend a better solution such as on-page directives like meta robots tags. To see crawl frequency by directive, you’ll need to combine a crawl report with your log file analysis. (Warning: We’re going to be using VLOOKUP, but it’s really not as complicated as people make it out to be) To get the combined data, do the following: Get the crawl from your site using your favorite crawling software. I might be biased, but I’m a big fan of the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, so I’m going to use that. If you’re also using the spider, follow the steps verbatim, but otherwise, make your own call to get the same results. Export the Internal HTML report from the SEO Spider (Internal Tab > “Filter: HTML”) and open up the “internal_all.xlsx” file.

From there, you can filter the “Indexability Status” column and remove all blank cells. To do this, use the “does not contain” filter and just leave it blank. You can also add the “and” operator and filter out redirected URLs by making the filter value equal “does not contain → “Redirected” as shown below:

This will show you canonicalized, no-index by meta robots and canonicalized URLs. Copy this new table out (with just the Address and Indexability Status columns) and paste it in another sheet of your log file analysis export. Now for some VLOOKUP magic. First, we need to make sure the URI or URL column data is in the same format as the crawl data. Log Files don’t generally have the root domain or protocol in the URL, so we either need to remove the head of the URL using "Find and Replace" in our newly made sheet, or make a new column in your log file analysis sheet append the protocol and root domain to the URI stem. I prefer this method because then you can quickly copy and paste a URL that you are seeing problems with and take a look. However, if you have a massive log file, it is probably a lot less CPU intensive with the "Find and Replace" method. To get your full URLs, use the following formula but with the URL field changed to whatever site you are analyzing (and make sure the protocol is correct as well). You'll also want to change D2 to the first cell of your URL column ="https://www.example.com"&D2 Drag down the formula to the end of your Log file table and get a nice list of full URLs:

Now, create another column and call it “Indexability Status”. In the first cell, use a VLOOKUP similar to the following: =VLOOKUP(E2,CrawlSheet!A$1:B$1128,2,FALSE). Replace E2 with the first cell of you "Full URL" column, then make the lookup table into your new. crawl sheet. Remember to sue the dollar signs so that the lookup table doesn't change as you. apply the formula to further roles. Then, select the correct column (1 would be the first column of the index table, so number 2 is the one we are after). Use the FALSE range lookup mode for exact matching. Now you have a nice tidy list of URLs and their indexability status matched with crawl data:

Crawl frequency by depth and internal links This analysis allows us to see how a site’s architecture is performing in terms of crawl budget and crawlability. The main aim is to see if you have far more URLs than you do requests — and if you do then you have a problem. Bots shouldn’t be “giving up” on crawling your entire site and not discovering important content or wasting crawl budget on content that is not important. Tip: It is also worth using a crawl visualization tool alongside this analysis to see the overall architecture of the site and see where there are “off-shoots” or pages with poor internal linking. To get this all-important data, do the following: Crawl your site with your preferred crawling tool and export whichever report has both the click depth and number of internal links with each URL. In my case, I’m using the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, going exporting the Internal report:

Use a VLOOKUP to match your URL with the Crawl Depth column and the number of Inlinks, which will give you something like this:

Depending on the type of data you want to see, you might want to filter out only URLs returning a 200 response code at this point or make them filterable options in the pivot table we create later. If you’re checking an e-commerce site, you might want to focus solely on product URLs, or if you’re optimizing crawling of images you can filter out by file type by filtering the URI column of your log file using the “Content-Type” column of your crawl export and making an option to filter with a pivot table. As with all of these checks, you have plenty of options! Using a pivot table, you can now analyze crawl rate by crawl depth (filtering by the particular bot in this case) with the following options:

To get something like the following:

Better data than Search Console? Identifying crawl issues

Search Console might be a go-to for every SEO, but it certainly has flaws. Historical data is harder to get, and there are limits on the number of rows you can view (at this time of writing it is 1000). But, with Log File Analysis, the sky’s the limit. With the following checks, we’re going to be discovered crawl and response errors to give your site a full health check. Discover Crawl Errors An obvious and quick check to add to your arsenal, all you have to do is filter the status column of your log file (in my case “sc-status” with a W3C log file type) for 4xx and 5xx errors:

Find inconsistent server responses A particular URL may have varying server responses over time, which can either be normal behavior, such as when a broken link has been fixed or a sign there is a serious server issue occurring such as when heavy traffic to your site causes a lot more internal server errors and is affecting your site’s crawlability. Analyzing server responses is as easy as filtering by URL and by Date:

Alternatively, if you want to quickly see how a URL is varying in response code, you can use a pivot table with the rows set to the URL, the columns set to the response codes and counting the number of times a URL has produced that response code. To achieve this setup create a pivot table with the following settings:

This will produce the following:

As you can see in the above table, you can clearly see “/inconcistent.html” (highlighted in the red box) has varying response codes. View Errors by Subdirectory To find which subdirectories are producing the most problems, we just need to do some simple URL filtering. Filter out the URI column (in my case “cs-uri-stem”) and use the “contains” filtering option to select a particular subdirectory and any pages within that subdirectory (with the wildcard *):

For me, I checked out the blog subdirectory, and this produced the following:

View Errors by User Agent Finding which bots are struggling can be useful for numerous reasons including seeing the differences in website performance for mobile and desktop bots, or which search engines are best able to crawl more of your site. You might want to see which particular URLs are causing issues with a particular bot. The easiest way to do this is with a pivot table that allows for filtering the number of times a particular response code occurs per URI. To achieve this make a pivot table with the following settings:

From there, you can filter by your chosen bot and response code type, such as image below, where I'm filtering for Googlebot desktop to seek out 404 errors:

Alternatively, you can also use a pivot table to see how many times a specific bot produces different response codes as a whole by creating a pivot table that filters by bot, counts by URI occurrence, and uses response codes as rows. To achieve this use the settings below:

For example, in the pivot table (below), I’m looking at how many of each response code Googlebot is receiving:

Diagnose on-page problems

Websites need to be designed not just for humans, but for bots. Pages shouldn’t be slow loading or be a huge download, and with log file analysis, you can see both of these metrics per URL from a bot’s perspective. Find slow & large pages While you can sort your log file by the “time taken” or “loading time” column from largest to smallest to find the slowest loading pages, it’s better to look at the average load time per URL as there could be other factors that might have contributed to a slow request other than the web page’s actual speed. To do this, create a pivot table with the rows set to the URI stem or URL and the summed value set to the time taken to load or load time:

Then using the drop-down arrow, in this case, where it says “Sum of time-taken” and go to “Value Field Settings”:

In the new window, select “Average” and you’re all set:

Now you should have something similar to the following when you sort the URI stems by largest to smallest and average time taken:

Find large pages You can now add the download size column (in my case “sc-bytes”) using the settings shown below. Remember that the set the size to the average or sum depending on what you would like to see. For me, I’ve done the average:

And you should get something similar to the following:

Bot behavior: Verifying and analyzing bots

The best and easiest way to understand bot and crawl behavior is with log file analysis as you are again getting real-world data, and it’s a lot less hassle than other methods. Find un-crawled URLs Simply take the crawl of your website with your tool of choice, and then take your log file an compare the URLs to find unique paths. You can do this with the “Remove Duplicates” feature of Excel or conditional formatting, although the former is a lot less CPU intensive especially for larger log files. Easy! Identify spam bots Unnecessary server strain from spam and spoof bots is easily identified with log files and some basic command line operators. Most requests will also have an IP associated with it, so using your IP column (in my case, it is titled “c-ip” in a W3C format log), remove all duplicates to find each individual requesting IP. From there, you should follow the process outlined in Google’s document for verifying IPs (note: For Windows users, use the nslookup command): https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en Or, if you’re verifying a bing bot, use their handy tool: https://www.bing.com/toolbox/verify-bingbot

Conclusion: Log Files Analysis — not as scary as it sounds

With some simple tools at your disposal, you can dive deep into how Googlebot behaves. When you understand how a website handles crawling, you can diagnose more problems than you can chew — but the real power of Log File Analysis lies in being able to test your theories about Googlebot and extending the above techniques to gather your own insights and revelations. What theories would you test using log file analysis? What insights could you gather from log files other than the ones listed above? Let me know in the comments below. Read the full article

#googlelogin #googleloginaccount #googlelogingmail #googlelogo #googlemaillogin #googleslideslogin

[sweetdreamsjeff]

Knowing Not Knowing

"Early in the spring of 1997, singer and songwriter Jeff Buckley headed down to Memphis to begin pre-production on what would have been his second full-length album. A few weeks after Buckley arrived, his bandmates flew in from New York to join him. He was in high spirits: the songwriting was going well, and he was reunited with his group. The same night his band arrived Buckley went out for a late-night stroll to a Memphis harbor and waded into the river. He had always admired Led Zeppelin, and was singing "Whole Lotta Love" when a boat passed in front of him. He lost his footing, perhaps dragged into the water by the boat's wake, and was never seen alive again. He was thirty years old, two years older than his father, the folksinger Tim Buckley, had been when he died of a drug overdose.   "I first met Jeff Buckley and saw him perform about two years before he passed away. It was near midnight and Buckley was sitting int he back office of a Tower Records store in lower Manhattan. Buckley had become a scion of the Lower East Side antifolk scene, and was preparing for an in-store performance in support of his album GRACE.   "But first he needed to do something: he insisted on listening to a crackly old recording of "The Man That Got Away" by Judy Garland, in the pretext that he wanted the store manager, who had given the CD to Buckley, to understand how magnificent a gift it was. Buckley needed to demonstrate the album's beauty. He had also picked up gratis CD reissues of vintage Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone records, and two albums by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who had a major influence on Buckley's singing. While Buckley could occasionally summon the same kind of ecstatic vocal power that was Khan's trademark, his singing had more in common with Garland's delicate, vulnerable warble.   "Buckley was an unglamorous star. That night he was wearing a wretched pair of weathered combat boots- the sort you occasionally see homeless men selling- a frumpy gray cardigan sweater, and jeans that hadn't been washed in a long time. Ditto his hair. In an oddly white-trash bit of accessorizing, Buckley's wallet was attached to his belt by a chain, in the style favored by motorcyle gangs. Three days of beard growth rounded out his anti-coif, but his sex appeal remained intact: a nervous girl approached to ask if, as she suspected, he was a Scorpio. Another pressed a poem she had written for him into his hand. He folded it carefully and put it in his pocket, as though he would cherish it forever. Maybe he did.   Buckley was at an odd moment in his career when he died. Having moved to New York several years before from California, where he was raised by his mother, he crawled his way up through the ranks of teh insular lower Manhattan music scene. He had beome a mini-star in that highly circumsribed mircrocosm, perched on the cusp of national and international success. That night at Tower records the line between Lower East Side local hero and international stardom seemed pretty thin. On one hand, his debut album sold several hundred thousand copies (although more in Europe than America), and there was a trhrong of photographers and autograph-seekers pressing around him. ON the other hand, he wasn't above hauling his own gear onstage, more or less indistinguishable from the half dozen stringy-haired sound men and roadies who were putting together the sound system in the first place.   "Buckley had no video in heavy rotation on MTV, largely because he insisted that people judge the music on the way it sounded before supplying them with an accompanying image. For the same reason, he refused to even suggest a single to radio deejays. 'What I'd love,' Buckley said, 'is if a deejay had a lineup of songs, and he'd just use one of my songs as part of a really nice evening. But that's the way I would deejay, not the way they do it. They usually have playlists.'   "For a guy with folksinging in his blood, Buckley had assembled an arsenal of prog-rock guitar effects you'd expect at an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer show and had set his amp at cat-spaying volume. (In fact, he had been raised on Led Zeppelin and Kiss.) Several dozen more stringy-haired people with assorted rings in their lips and noses (his fans) materialized. AS he stepped onto the makeshift stage, a grumpy security guard began clearing some fans from a stairway, but Buckley interjected: 'Wait! Those are my friends! Can they stay there? I give them special permission.' What started as dispensation for four friends ended up being extended to anybody who wanted to stay.   "The set began with a ghostly wail from Buckley, and a mildly Middle Eastern guitar line. He sang with a vibrato that quivered like the tongue of a snake. It was so atmospheric that you hardly realized his bandmates were rocking their tits off. That was the tension: Buckley ululating in sensual falsetto, the band churning out mid-seventies Led Zep knockoffs. He seemed a strangely ethereal cherub in the midsst of all that visceral thrash.   "After the show, Buckley signed autographs, taking several minutes with the thirty or so fans who lined up for an audience with the tousle-haired singer. Rather than just scribbling an autograph, he wrote a personal note to each person. Everything he did seemed to place poetry before commerce, but I couldn't help wondering if it was all an elaborate ruse, a crafty stance aimed at those disenchanted with the slickness of pop posturing. Didn't Buckley, after all, want to make a lot of money and sell records?   "'If it happens it'd be great,' he said later that night, over omelettes and wine at an all-night eatery, 'but we just play to express. I want to live my life playing music, so that we can be immersed in it. In order to learn how deep it goes, you have to be in it.'   "As to why he took so much time with each of the fans who asked for an autograph, Buckley articulated his basic anti-rock-star stance: 'The way I experience a performance is that there's an exchange going on. It's not just my ego being fed. It's thoughts and feelings. Raw expression has it's own knowledge and wisdom." He trailed off, as though humbled by the mere thought of his audience wanting to hear him play, or asking him for an autograph. 'I've been in their position before and all I wanted was to show my appreciation to the performaer. So I feel like it's kind of generous of them to even be asking me for an autograph.'   "'It's true that there's also the people who want a piece of you,' he conceded. 'But it's pretty hard to keep feeling protective all the time, because there's really nothign to protect yourself against. Sometimes people shout at me on the street, and they feel they know me through my music. But that doesn't substitute for a real personal relationship. I don't feel like people know me, I just htink we share a love for music in common, and for some reason they key into the way I play. I feel appretiative when people come up to me, and I feel good when we connect. Usually, it serves as a nice comedown after a performance. Any other conduct would bust the groove, because I'm buzzing when I get offstage, and I'm consciously protecting that connection because that's what got me through the performance in the first place. It's an invocation and worship fo this certain feeling, this direct line into your heart, and somehow music does that more powerfully than anything else. It's like ! a total, immediate elixir.'   "By all appearances Buckley conformed to the stereotype of the poetic artist: largely lacking the practical, thick-skinned psychic barrier that separates most of us from the harsh realities of life. With a rabbit-like nervous disposition and a hypersensitive vulnerability that bordered on the tragicomic, he looked like he was about to burst into tears at any moment. His face was contorted and slightly tortured-looking during most of the interview, though I got the impression it wasn't so much the experience of being interviewed that was torturing him but the pain of grappling with his own thoughts and the world around him.   "Relationships were at the heart of Buckley's world. Although he was marketed as a solo artist, the attitude he had toward his listeners mirrored the relationshiop he formed with his three-piece backing band. 'Playing with a band is all about accepting a bond, accepting everything the way it is. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of taking chances with each other. It wakes seeing each other in weak and strong lights, and accepting both, and utilizing the high and low points of your relationship.'   "It wasn't only interpersonal relationships that Buckley held sacred-- he was aware of making his music in relation to all the sounds around him. The environment was Buckley's co-composer: to his ears, no melody or rhythm was separate from the sounds going on in the background. 'It's not like music begins or ends. All hinds of sounds are working into each other. Sometimes I'll just stop on the street because there's a sequence of sirens going on; it's like a melody I'll never hear again. In performance, things can be meaningful or frivolous, but either way the musical experience is totally spontaneous, and new life comes out of it, meaning if you're open to hearing the way music interacts with ambient sound, performance never feels like a rote experience. It's pretty special sometimes, the way a song affects a room, the way you're in complete rhythm with the song. When you're emotionally overcome, and there's no filter between what you say and what you mean, your language beco! mes gutteral, simple, emotional, and full of pictures and clarity. Were you to transcribe it, it might not make sense, but music is a totally different language."   "'People talk all day in a practical way, but real language that penetrates and affects people and carries wisdom is something different. Mayve it's the middle of the afternoon and you see a child's moon up in the sky, and youfeel like it's such a simple, pure, wonderful thing to look at. It just hits you in a certain way, and you point it out to a stranger, and he looks at you like you're weird and walks away. To speak that way, to point out a child's moon to a stranger, is original language, it's the way you originate yourself. And the cool thing is, if you catch people in the right moment, it's totally clear. Without knowing why, it's simply clear. That sort of connection is very empirical. It comes from the part of you that just understands immediately. All these types of things are gold, and yet they are dishonored or not paid attention to because that kind of tender communication is so alien in our culture, *except* in performance. There's a wall up between people all day long ,but performance transcends that convention. If pop music were really seen as a fine art or if fine art were popular, I don't know what the hell would happen-- this wouldn't bee the same country, because if the masses of people began to respect and really open to fine art, it woudl bring about a huge shift in consciousness.   "'Music is so many things. It's not just the performer. it's the audience and the architecture of the song, and each builds off the other. Music is a setting for poignancy, anger, destruction, total disaster, total wrongness, and then- like a little speck of gold in the middle of it- excitement, but excitement in a way that matters. Excitement that is not just aesthetically pleasing but shoots some sort of understanding into you.'   "Buckley's songs were composed with made-up chords, bright harmonic clusters that seem too obvious not to have been written before, yet they rarely feel formulaic. There's a lot of open strumming, suggesting that the songs were written largely for the sheer physical pleasure of playing them. He and his band modified the arrangements during each performance, playing with an elasticity and openness typical of Buckley's personality. 'Hearing a song is like meeting somebody. A song is something that took time to grow and once it's there, it's on its own. Every time you perform it, it's different. It has its own structure, and you ahve to flow thorugh it, and it has to come through you.'   "Buckley's entire career reflected on his outsider's approach to the music business. When he arrived in New York, rahter than recordings a demo or finding an agent, he simpley began to perform for free. He palyed at a small cafe on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and before long, crowds were lined up out the door. As a result, representatives of record companies sought out Buckley, rahter than the other way around. 'There is a distinct separation of sensibility between art as commerce and art as a way of life. If you buy into one too heavily it eats up the other. If instead of having songs happen as your life happens, you're getting a song together because you need a cetain number of songs on a release to be sold, the juice is cuked out immediately. That approach kills it.'   "Still, it took a strong belief in one's art to sit in a small cafe and trust that the world's record companies would come calling. buckley palyed down his seemingly effortless approach to career as though it were common-sense. 'I just wanted to learn cetain things. I wanted to just explore, like a kid with crayons. It took a while for me to get a record contract, but it also took a trememdous amount of time for me to feel comfortable playing, and that's all I was concerned with. And I'm still concerned with that, mainly.   "'I don't think about my responsibility as a musician in terms of any kind of religious significance. I don't have any allegiance to an organized religion; I have an alligience to the gifts that I find for myslef in those religions. They seem to be saying the same thing, they just have different mythologies and expressions, but the dogma of religions and the way they're misusued is all too much of a trap. I'd rather be nondenominational, except for music. I prefer to learn everything through music. If you want divinity, the music in every human being and their lvoe for music is pretty much it. It's the big indication of their spirituality and their ability to love and make love, or feel pain or joy, and really manifest it, really be real. But I don't believe in a big guy with a beard on a throne, telling us that we're bad; I certainly don't believe in original sin. I belive in the opposite of that: you have an Eden immediately form the time you are born, but as you are conditioned by your caretakers and your suroundings, you may lose that original thing. Your task is to get back to it, so you can claim responsibility for your own perfection.'   "buckley considered the development of awareness to be the main goal of his life. 'I think of it as trying to get more aligned with the feeling of purity in music, however it sounds. I think music is prayer. Sometimes poeple make up prayers and they don't even know it. They jsuit make up a song that has rhyme and meter, and once it's made it can carry on a life of its own. It can have a lot of juice to it and a lot of meaning: there's no end to the different individual flavors that people can bring to the musical form.   'In order to make the music actual, you have to enable it to be. And that takes facing some ting sinsude you that constrict you, your own impurity and mistakes and blockages. As yo uopen up yourself, the music opens up different directions that lead you in yet other directions.'   "Asking most pop musicians if they're satisfied with records sales is liek asking moleds about the aging process: they say they don't care, but it's hard to believe. For commercial recording artists, sales are the only objective indicator of whether they're doing things right- that fans are sincerely motivated to walk into records stores by the tens or by the millions, pull out their wallets, and pay for the music. But with his quiet, unaffected boice nearly a whisper, Buckley steadfastly maintained tha the really didn't want to sell a million records- and it was strangely believable. When he talked aobut multiplatinum-selling bands who felt "disappointed" by a mere five million copies sold, the disgust he felt for commercialism was palpabale. 'The only valuable thing about selling records, the only thing that matters, is that people connect and that you keep on growing. You do many choices based on how many poeple you reach, meaning, now that I have a relationship with strangers worldwide, I have to try not to let it become too much of a factor and just accept it. The limited success we've had in the past is definately a factor, it's just there. It jsut is. The whole thing is such a crapshoot, you can't really control what your appeal is going to be. My music ain't gonna make it into the malls, but it doesn't matter. I don't really care to make it into the malls.   "'Whether I sell a lot of records or not isn't up to me. You can sell alot of records, but that's just a number sold- that's not understood, or loved, or cherished.   "'Take someone like Michael Jackson. Early on he sacrificed himself to his need to be loved by all. His talent and his power were so great that he got what he wanted but he also got a direct, negative result, which is that he's not able to grown into an adult human being. And that's why his music sounds sort of empty and wierd.   "'Being the kind of person I am, fame is really overwhelming. First of all, just being faced with the questions that everybody faces: Do I matter? Should I go on? Why am I here? Is this really that improtant? All that low self-esteem shit. Your'e constantly trying to make sure that your sense of self-worth doesn't depend on the writings or opinions of other people. You have to wean yourself off acclaim as the object of your work, by learning to depend on your own judgment and knowing what it is that you enjoy. Youhave to realize what the difference is between being adored and being loved and understood. Big difference.   "'I don't really have super-pointed answers to the big questions. I'm just in the middle of a mystery myself. I'm not even that developed at having a real psycho-religeous epistemology about what I feel. All I can tell you is that I feel. It's just the same old fitht to constantly be aware. It's an ongoing thing. It'll never be a static perfect thing or a static mediocre thing, it just has it's rise and fall.'" The following chapter has been transcribed from Shambhala Publishers' _Inside the Music: Conversations with Contemporary Musicians about Spirtuality, Creativity and Consciousness_, by Dimitri Ehrlich; ISBN #1-57062-273-6

#jeff buckley #inside the music conversations with contemporary musicians about #spirituality #creativity and consciousness #Dimitri Ehrlich

[jennifuryz]

And Just as Life Was Getting Back to Normal…

April 4, 2020

Again, I have spent almost another year without writing.    2019 had its ups and downs.   In July we drove down to the vacation house Hubby bought in New Mexico. It is a cute little place.  I like how the backyard is surrounded by a tall fence. Hubby and my younger son drove the van and stayed for three weeks.  I drove my older son and the dogs and we stayed for a week. It was an interesting trip. Hubby and my younger son love the desert but my older son and I prefer the green forests and farmlands of the Midwest.

           BFF1 was supposed to visit the week after I got back. We made all kinds of plans and even scheduled a day to meet up with BFF3 and my High School Best Friend.  But three days before the trip BFF1 called me and told me she had to cancel.   She thought she might have cancer and was waiting to hear the results.    I told BFF3 and HSBF that we needed to cancel. Then I contacted them again to see if we could go ahead and get together anyway.  I felt I could use a distraction.  Well, they both bailed out on me.  I have not seen either of them since.   I am not angry with them (although I probably should be,) I just got tired of setting myself up for disappointments.  

           The good news is BFF1 did not have cancer, but it took almost THREE fucking weeks for her to get the results.   Three weeks is a VERY long time when you are worried and stressed and waiting for news.  It pretty much destroyed the rest of the summer.  

           We did get some good news at the end of August. BFF2 and his wife had a healthy baby boy on my younger son’s birthday.

           Fall was actually pretty good for the most part.  BFF1 was having a difficult time with her job so I was not able to go visit her.  I hate it when I have to go more than a year without seeing her.   The weather was not that great, we had a lot of rain, but we had a few nice days.  My older son is now a senior and my younger son is now a sophomore—and a jock.  He decided to go out for cross country and being involved in sports has really been good for him.  He still slacks off in school, but has been getting into far less trouble.   We did spend a few Saturdays driving to see his cross country meets and I really enjoyed that.  One time his meet was in one of the cities I grew up in.  The city is halfway between where we live and where my parents live so they drove down and met us at the meet.  I also managed to get ahold of a friend of mine who still lives there and we got to meet up. It was the first time we had seen each other in 35 years.  I also drove around town and visited places I remembered.  I took some pictures of the house I lived in.  

           For Halloween we had nine trick or treaters. Last year we hit our record of ten, but eight of them were my sons’ friends that all showed up at once.  This year my sons did not go trick or treating, so the nine that showed up this year we genuine. Maybe word is getting out that we give out bags of assorted candy and full size candy bars.

           My 94 year-old grandmother had been living in an apartment near my parents, but her dementia was getting worse so they moved her into assisted living in my city. The place is only 17 minutes from me so I visited her often.  But then she fell and broke her hip and had to spend two weeks in the hospital and another month in a rehabilitation center. My parents spent most of November staying with us so they could check on her daily.  My brother also got home from working in Antarctica.  He stayed with us for a while, then found an apartment.

           My 2002 Volkswagen finally died.  I knew it was on its last wheels and had been saving up for a new car.  I only had about half the money saved up and had to take out a loan, but I did get a 2018 Honda Fit.  It is cute and has great mileage. It is bright yellow, but I think that is kind of neat. It is easy to find in the parking lot.  It doesn’t have a CD player, which is a real problem, but it has a better radio and I am able to pick up a new alternative station that plays good music.

           I also applied to renew my teaching license in September. It is much easier to get a license now than it used to be.  I am sure that the fact that the state has gone from trying to get rid of teachers to desperately needing teachers plays a part.  I did have to wait two months to get my license.  In the meantime, I took an online class on what is new in children’s literature.  

           I hosted Thanksgiving this year, although not very many of my out-of-town relatives made it. After cross country ended my son decided to go out for wrestling. The day before Thanksgiving he got hurt at practice. His opponent fell on him and broke both bones in his forearm.  He spent the rest of the day in the hospital, had to wear a cast for six weeks, and was not able to go skiing—which he lives for!

           I was determined to have a great Christmas this year.  Christmas of 2017 wasn’t very good because my mother-in-law had just died and Christmas of 2018 was full of disappointments and stressers. So I was determined to make this Christmas great.   I did not get to do all the things I wanted, I never did find a box of decorations that went missing, we did not get any snow and the tree farm where we used to get our tree closed right after Thanksgiving.  But I did get a lot of shopping done, bought a real tree at a stand, decorated the house like crazy and did quite a bit of baking.

           In January I started applying for substitute teaching, but it took several weeks before I got registered for the job website, found three references, collected three letters of recommendation, went to interviews, took the online classes, and got all the medical requirements filled.  I cut back on my caregiver hours and arranged to sub on Wednesdays and Fridays.  I finally got to sub in early March, even though it was only half a day and I subbed for a paraeducator working one on one with students with special needs.  But it really felt natural for me to be working in a school again and I was really excited about finally getting my life back together.

           And then the worst tragedy to hit the world in a century struck.

Corona Virus. COVID-19.  When I first heard about it, I thought it might be a concern, just as SARS, H1N1, and Ebola had been, but I never imagined it would get this serious.  

           I had just started substitute teaching when the schools closed.  Then I feel guilty, as if I jinxed the world by almost getting my life back together. Logically, I know that is impossible. My career plans could not have caused a virus to mutate on the other side of the world.  But my life plans are not important right now.  People all over the world are dying! Life as we know it is getting messed up.  Evil idiots are harassing and attacking people of Asian descent just because the virus first struck a city in China!  

I know it is probably only a matter of time before someone I love gets struck.   BFF1 and one of my cousins have been sick, but do not know if it is Covid.   They did not get too sick and are both doing much better.  They are still staying quarantined for the full 14 days, though.

My older son is not having problems with the isolation.  He now has permission to do what he always does—sit in his room and play video games.  My younger son is not doing so well. He had to cancel his spring break trip to go to New Mexico and going skiing in the mountains.  At first he said the closings and isolations were stupid and overreacting.  He changed his mind when they closed the schools.  But we had a big fight when we told him he could not have friends over. Usually the boys have friends coming and going all the time.  They don’t bother to knock anymore, they just come in.  On weekends it is normal for me to come downstairs and find half a dozen teenage boys sleeping on the floors, chairs and couches.   My younger son is hard to keep track of since he is always wandering off with friends.  But now everyone stays home. My son was just about to start track and field, but that is off (although he still wants me to buy him new track shoes.)

For the first week of isolation, I pretty much slept a lot and watched TV.  I know I should be cleaning the house and doing projects, but cannot motivate myself to do anything.  Some of my clients at my caregiver job cancelled until this is over. I told my supervisors that since I will not be able to do any substitute teaching I am available to fill in for other people.  They asked if I could work every day for a week with someone who just got out of the hospital (not from Corona.)  I said sure. I thought it was just for a week, but now they want to keep me.  I am only working three hours a day, but it is still a long drive and kind of a stressful client.  Then I feel guilty thinking about all the medical workers who are working 13 hour days trying to save the lives of Covid-infected people without enough supplies. My husband is on my case because if I make too much money I could lose my disability pay.   True, I really hoped that this year I would be able to get off disability and be able to work full time and support myself again, but if schools stay closed I don’t know how that will happen.   Then I feel guilty thinking about all the people who are unable to work and don’t get any financial support.

I feel the same way I did eight years ago when I lost my job.  I keep thinking this is all a nightmare and soon I will wake up and things will be back to normal.

April, oh what is the date? Oh, the 18th.  I cannot keep track of dates anymore.

Since I started writing this post, my older son turned 18, I turned 51, and the world is turning for the worse.  I kept on working until last Wednesday, when I woke up feeling extremely tired and achy. I made myself get up and clean the litter boxes and take the garbage out and felt light headed and short of breath. Needless to say I called into work. So far I never developed a fever or a cough and am feeling better than I did a few days ago.  But I am scheduled to stay off work for two weeks and am quarantining myself in the house and keeping a distance from my family.  I have no idea if this is Covid or some other bug or maybe even just stress related.  But I am not taking any chances.  I am even avoiding touching the cats.  I read that cats and ferrets are susceptible to Covid (although we no longer have any ferrets.) So far it looks like dogs are safe, so I am letting the dogs sit on me while I watch television.  

For Easter I did one last Easter Egg treasure hunt for my sons.  This time I had a theme based on The Office. Then we made a big “Happy Easter” sign and drove over to where my grandmother lives so she could see it out of her window.  Her building has been closed to visitors since early March, but someone in the building still got Covid, so now the residents are not allowed to leave their rooms.  When my grandmother was about five or six, the UK had a Scarlet Fever epidemic that killed a lot of children. My grandmother got sick and had to be quarantined in the hospital for six weeks.  She had to sleep in a crib and they shaved everyone’s head and they were not allowed any visitors.  Her parents would go to the hospital and wave to her from outside through the window.  Now, some 88-89 years later, the same thing is happening again. 

Oh, BFF1 and my cousin are both better. But my husband’s cousin in New York City is sick, and it is Corona.  He experienced the loss of sense of smell.  

[americanahighways]

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I don’t think it’s a well kept secret that most of us here at Americana Highways are big fans of Todd Snider. We’ve covered his shows and albums and also been fortunate to have Todd participate in some interview pieces as well. Snider is a folk singer’s folk singer, a true troubadour, and one hell of an interesting and fun guy. All added up, he’s a performer that should never be missed when he visits your locale.

This time Snider made his tour stop at the beautiful Auditorium At The Douglass. Taking the stage in the repurposed auditorium in Oklahoma City’s historic Douglass High School, Snider received a warm and friendly welcome. Straying from his setlist is nothing new, either to Snider or his devoted fanbase. But, tonight Snider wasted absolutely no time before deviating from his prepared setlist. Rather than opening with “Alright Guy,” he decided on “The Ballad of the Kingsman,” followed by his take on the infamous fugitive “D.B. Cooper.” Besides being a great songwriter, Snider is also a skilled teller of tales. Tonight’s anecdotes were “Todd Snider Rules” leading into “Rose City”, as well as probably one of his best, the “K.K. Rider Story” preceding “Don’t It Make You Wanna Dance” near the set’s end. No matter how many times I’ve heard some of the stories, I never get bored or lose interest. They’re always a highlight.

In between, Snider took requests (“Lonely Girl”, “Play A Train Song”) and improvised and substituted as his mind wandered with carefree abandon. Instead of “Tension” we got “Greencastle Blues,” or rather than “Moon Dawg’s Tavern,” it was Tillamook County Jail.” Throw in a couple of the obvious crowd favorites in, “Beer Run” and “Alright Guy”, as well as the final encore of “Looking For A Job,” and well, it was a great night all around. Great artist, beautiful venue, and a crowd that was respectful but still having fun. What more can you ask for? Except, Todd, when are you coming back? Visit Todd Snider’s website for everything you need right here: https://toddsnider.net/

Traveling with Todd for a batch of dates including this one, was Oklahoma favorite, Tim Easton. I had the great pleasure of reviewing Easton’s Exposition last year, and subsequently saw him play one of my favorite sets of songs at last year’s Woody Fest. Working his songwriting magic to fire up the friendly crowd, Easton opened with “Elmore James”, and then “Don’t Lie.” He then made us laugh with “To Be a Great Bluegrass Player You Have To Be A Dick,” and revisited his 2019 release with “Broken Brain” (perfect choice with its weed & Todd Snider reference), and “Piece of Mind.” Never complacent, Easton stays busy. He recently visited Russia, documenting those travels as he navigated the country playing songs, writing new ones, and recording. All of this is captured in the tour journal, “Folk Collusion – Poems, Songs, Stories. My Russian Journal,” which includes a CD of songs as well. Speaking with Tim, I was really happy to hear he’ll be returning to Woody Fest again this year, and I can’t wait to undoubtedly hear another batch of new songs. Check in on Tim Easton’s activities here: https://www.timeaston.com/

Show Reviews: Todd Snider Improvised with Abandon with Tim Easton at the Auditorium at the Douglass @toddsnider @tim_easton @theauditoriumok #americanamusic #toddsnider #timeaston I don't think it's a well kept secret that most of us here at Americana Highways are big fans of Todd Snider.

[theinjectlikes2]

Spying On Google: 5 Ways to Use Log File Analysis To Reveal Invaluable SEO Insights

Posted by faisal-anderson

Log File Analysis should be a part of every SEO pro’s tool belt, but most SEOs have never conducted one. Which means most SEOs are missing out on unique and invaluable insights that regular crawling tools just can’t produce. 

Let's demystify Log File Analysis so it's not so intimidating. If you’re interested in the wonderful world of log files and what they can bring to your site audits, this guide is definitely for you. 

What are Log Files?

Log Files are files containing detailed logs on who and what is making requests to your website server. Every time a bot makes a request to your site, data (such as the time, date IP address, user agent, etc.) is stored in this log. This valuable data allows any SEO to find out what Googlebot and other crawlers are doing on your site. Unlike regular crawlings, such as with the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, this is real-world data — not an estimation of how your site is being crawled. It is an exact overview of how your site is being crawled.

Having this accurate data can help you identify areas of crawl budget waste, easily find access errors, understand how your SEO efforts are affecting crawling and much, much more. The best part is that, in most cases, you can do this with simple spreadsheet software. 

In this guide, we will be focussing on Excel to perform Log File Analysis, but I’ll also discuss other tools such as Screaming Frog’s less well-known Log File Analyser which can just make the job a bit easier and faster by helping you manage larger data sets. 

Note: owning any software other than Excel is not a requirement to follow this guide or get your hands dirty with Log Files.

How to Open Log Files

Rename .log to .csv

When you get a log file with a .log extension, it is really as easy as renaming the file extension .csv and opening the file in spreadsheet software. Remember to set your operating system to show file extensions if you want to edit these.

How to open split log files

Log files can come in either one big log or multiple files, depending on the server configuration of your site. Some servers will use server load balancing to distribute traffic across a pool or farm of servers, causing log files to be split up. The good news is that it's really easy to combine, and you can use one of these three methods to combine them and then open them as normal:

Use the command line in Windows by Shift + right-clicking in the folder containing your log files and selecting “Run Powershell from here”

Then run the following command:

copy *.log mylogfiles.csv

You can now open mylogfile.csv and it will contain all your log data. Or if you are a Mac user, first use the cd command to go to the directory of your log files:

cd Documents/MyLogFiles/

Then, use the cat or concatenate command to join up your files:

cat *.log > mylogfiles.csv

2) Using the free tool, Log File Merge, combine all the log files and then edit the file extension to .csv and open as normal.

3) Open the log files with the Screaming Frog Log File Analyser, which is as simple as dragging and dropping the log files:

Splitting Strings

(Please note: This step isn’t required if you are using Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyser)

Once you have your log file open, you’re going to need to split the cumbersome text in each cell into columns for easier sorting later.

Excel’s Text to Column function comes in handy here, and is as easy as selecting all the filled cells (Ctrl / Cmd + A) and going to Excel > Data > Text to Columns and selecting the “Delimited” option, and the delimiter being a Spacecharacter.

Once you’ve separated this out, you may also want to sort by time and date — you can do so in the Time and Date stamp column, commonly separating the data with the “:” colon delimiter.

Your file should look similar to the one below:

As mentioned before, don’t worry if your log file doesn’t look exactly the same — different log files have different formats. As long as you have the basic data there (time and date, URL, user-agent, etc.) you’re good to go!

Understanding Log Files

Now that your log files are ready for analysis, we can dive in and start to understand our data. There are many formats that log files can take with multiple different data points, but they generally include the following:

Server IP

Date and time

Server request method (e.g. GET / POST)

Requested URL

HTTP status code

User-agent

More details on the common formats can be found below if you’re interested in the nitty gritty details:

WC3

Apache and NGINX

Amazon Elastic Load Balancing

HA Proxy

JSON

How to quickly reveal crawl budget waste

As a quick recap, Crawl Budget is the number of pages a search engine crawls upon every visit of your site. Numerous factors affect crawl budget, including link equity or domain authority, site speed, and more. With Log File Analysis, we will be able to see what sort of crawl budget your website has and where there are problems causing crawl budget to be wasted. 

Ideally, we want to give crawlers the most efficient crawling experience possible. Crawling shouldn’t be wasted on low-value pages and URLs, and priority pages (product pages for example) shouldn’t have slower indexation and crawl rates because a website has so many dead weight pages. The name of the game is crawl budget conservation, and with good crawl budget conversion comes better organic search performance.

See crawled URLs by user agent

Seeing how frequently URLs of the site are being crawled can quickly reveal where search engines are putting their time into crawling.

If you’re interested in seeing the behavior of a single user agent, this is easy as filtering out the relevant column in excel. In this case, with a WC3 format log file, I’m filtering the cs(User-Agent) column by Googlebot:

And then filtering the URI column to show the number of times Googlebot crawled the home page of this example site:

This is a fast way of seeing if there are any problem areas by URI stem for a singular user-agent. You can take this a step further by looking at the filtering options for the URI stem column, which in this case is cs-uri-stem:

From this basic menu, we can see what URLs, including resource files, are being crawled to quickly identify any problem URLs (parameterized URLs that shouldn’t be being crawled for example).

You can also do broader analyses with Pivot tables. To get the number of times a particular user agent has crawled a specific URL, select the whole table (Ctrl/cmd + A), go to Insert > Pivot Table and then use the following options:

All we’re doing is filtering by User Agent, with the URL stems as rows, and then counting the number of times each User-agent occurs.

With my example log file, I got the following:

Then, to filter by specific User-Agent, I clicked the drop-down icon on the cell containing “(All)," and selected Googlebot:

Understanding what different bots are crawling, how mobile bots are crawling differently to desktop, and where the most crawling is occurring can help you see immediately where there is crawl budget waste and what areas of the site need improvement.

Find low-value add URLs

Crawl budget should not be wasted on Low value-add URLs, which are normally caused by session IDs, infinite crawl spaces, and faceted navigation.

To do this, go back to your log file, and filter by URLs that contain a “?” or question mark symbols from the URL column (containing the URL stem). To do this in Excel, remember to use “~?” or tilde question mark, as shown below:

A single “?” or question mark, as stated in the auto filter window, represents any single character, so adding the tilde is like an escape character and makes sure to filter out the question mark symbol itself.

Isn’t that easy?

Find duplicate URLs

Duplicate URLs can be a crawl budget waste and a big SEO issue, but finding them can be a pain. URLs can sometimes have slight variants (such as a trailing slash vs a non-trailing slash version of a URL).

Ultimately, the best way to find duplicate URLs is also the least fun way to do so — you have to sort by site URL stem alphabetically and manually eyeball it.

One way you can find trailing and non-trailing slash versions of the same URL is to use the SUBSTITUTE function in another column and use it to remove all forward slashes:

=SUBSTITUTE(C2, “/”, “”)

In my case, the target cell is C2 as the stem data is on the third column.

Then, use conditional formatting to identify duplicate values and highlight them.

However, eyeballing is, unfortunately, the best method for now.

See the crawl frequency of subdirectories

Finding out which subdirectories are getting crawled the most is another quick way to reveal crawl budget waste. Although keep in mind, just because a client’s blog has never earned a single backlink and only gets three views a year from the business owner’s grandma doesn’t mean you should consider it crawl budget waste — internal linking structure should be consistently good throughout the site and there might be a strong reason for that content from the client’s perspective.

To find out crawl frequency by subdirectory level, you will need to mostly eyeball it but the following formula can help:

=IF(RIGHT(C2,1)="/",SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/","")))/LEN("/")+SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"=","")))/LEN("=")-2, SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/","")))/LEN("/")+SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"=","")))/LEN("=")-1)

The above formula looks like a bit of a doozy, but all it does is check if there is a trailing slash, and depending on the answer, count the number of trailing slashes and subtract either 2 or 1 from the number. This formula could be shortened if you remove all trailing slashes from your URL list using the RIGHT formula — but who has the time. What you’re left with is subdirectory count (starting from 0 from as the first subdirectory).

Replace C2 with the first URL stem / URL cell and then copy the formula down your entire list to get it working.

Make sure you replace all of the C2s with the appropriate starting cell and then sort the new subdirectory counting column by smallest to largest to get a good list of folders in a logical order, or easily filter by subdirectory level. For example, as shown in the below screenshots:

The above image is subdirectories sorted by level.

The above image is subdirectories sorted by depth.

If you’re not dealing with a lot of URLs, you could simply sort the URLs by alphabetical order but then you won’t get the subdirectory count filtering which can be a lot faster for larger sites.

See crawl frequency by content type

Finding out what content is getting crawled, or if there are any content types that are hogging crawl budget, is a great check to spot crawl budget waste. Frequent crawling on unnecessary or low priority CSS and JS files, or how crawling is occurring on images if you are trying to optimize for image search, can easily be spotted with this tactic.

In Excel, seeing crawl frequency by content type is as easy as filtering by URL or URI stem using the Ends With filtering option.

Quick Tip: You can also use the “Does Not End With” filter and use a .html extension to see how non-HTML page files are being crawled — always worth checking in case of crawl budget waste on unnecessary js or css files, or even images and image variations (looking at you Wordpress). Also, remember if you have a site with trailing and non-trailing slash URLs to take that into account with the “or” operator with filtering.

Spying on bots: Understand site crawl behavior

Log File Analysis allows us to understand how bots behave by giving us an idea of how they prioritize. How do different bots behave in different situations? With this knowledge, you can not only deepen your understanding of SEO and crawling, but also give you a huge leap in understanding the effectiveness of your site architecture.

See most and least crawled URLs

This strategy has been touched up previously with seeing crawled URLs by user-agent, but it’s even faster.

In Excel, select a cell in your table and then click Insert > Pivot Table, make sure the selection contains the necessary columns (in this case, the URL or URI stem and the user-agent) and click OK.

Once you have your pivot table created, set the rows to the URL or URI stem, and the summed value as the user-agent.

From there, you can right-click in the user-agent column and sort the URLs from largest to smallest by crawl count:

Now you’ll have a great table to make charts from or quickly review and look for any problematic areas:

A question to ask yourself when reviewing this data is: Are the pages you or the client would want being crawled? How often? Frequent crawling doesn’t necessarily mean better results, but it can be an indication as to what Google and other content user-agents prioritize most.

Crawl frequency per day, week, or month

Checking the crawling activity to identify issues where there has been loss of visibility around a period of time, after a Google update or in an emergency can inform you where the problem might be. This is as simple as selecting the “date” column, making sure the column is in the “date” format type, and then using the date filtering options on the date column. If you’re looking to analyze a whole week, just select the corresponding days with the filtering options available.

Crawl frequency by directive

Understanding what directives are being followed (for instance, if you are using a disallow or even a no-index directive in robots.txt) by Google is essential to any SEO audit or campaign. If a site is using disallows with faceted navigation URLs, for example, you’ll want to make sure these are being obeyed. If they aren’t, recommend a better solution such as on-page directives like meta robots tags.

To see crawl frequency by directive, you’ll need to combine a crawl report with your log file analysis.

(Warning: We’re going to be using VLOOKUP, but it’s really not as complicated as people make it out to be)

To get the combined data, do the following:

Get the crawl from your site using your favorite crawling software. I might be biased, but I’m a big fan of the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, so I’m going to use that. If you’re also using the spider, follow the steps verbatim, but otherwise, make your own call to get the same results.

Export the Internal HTML report from the SEO Spider (Internal Tab > “Filter: HTML”) and open up the “internal_all.xlsx” file. From there, you can filter the “Indexability Status” column and remove all blank cells. To do this, use the “does not contain” filter and just leave it blank. You can also add the “and” operator and filter out redirected URLs by making the filter value equal “does not contain → “Redirected” as shown below: This will show you canonicalized, no-index by meta robots and canonicalized URLs.

Copy this new table out (with just the Address and Indexability Status columns) and paste it in another sheet of your log file analysis export.

Now for some VLOOKUP magic. First, we need to make sure the URI or URL column data is in the same format as the crawl data. Log Files don’t generally have the root domain or protocol in the URL, so we either need to remove the head of the URL using "Find and Replace" in our newly made sheet, or make a new column in your log file analysis sheet append the protocol and root domain to the URI stem. I prefer this method because then you can quickly copy and paste a URL that you are seeing problems with and take a look. However, if you have a massive log file, it is probably a lot less CPU intensive with the "Find and Replace" method. To get your full URLs, use the following formula but with the URL field changed to whatever site you are analyzing (and make sure the protocol is correct as well). You'll also want to change D2 to the first cell of your URL column =" Drag" class="redactor-autoparser-object">https://www.example.com"&D... down the formula to the end of your Log file table and get a nice list of full URLs:

Now, create another column and call it “Indexability Status”. In the first cell, use a VLOOKUP similar to the following: =VLOOKUP(E2,CrawlSheet!A$1:B$1128,2,FALSE). Replace E2 with the first cell of you "Full URL" column, then make the lookup table into your new. crawl sheet. Remember to sue the dollar signs so that the lookup table doesn't change as you. apply the formula to further roles. Then, select the correct column (1 would be the first column of the index table, so number 2 is the one we are after). Use the FALSE range lookup mode for exact matching. Now you have a nice tidy list of URLs and their indexability status matched with crawl data:

Crawl frequency by depth and internal links

This analysis allows us to see how a site’s architecture is performing in terms of crawl budget and crawlability. The main aim is to see if you have far more URLs than you do requests — and if you do then you have a problem. Bots shouldn’t be “giving up” on crawling your entire site and not discovering important content or wasting crawl budget on content that is not important.

Tip: It is also worth using a crawl visualization tool alongside this analysis to see the overall architecture of the site and see where there are “off-shoots” or pages with poor internal linking.

To get this all-important data, do the following:

Crawl your site with your preferred crawling tool and export whichever report has both the click depth and number of internal links with each URL. In my case, I’m using the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, going exporting the Internal report:

Use a VLOOKUP to match your URL with the Crawl Depth column and the number of Inlinks, which will give you something like this:

Depending on the type of data you want to see, you might want to filter out only URLs returning a 200 response code at this point or make them filterable options in the pivot table we create later. If you’re checking an e-commerce site, you might want to focus solely on product URLs, or if you’re optimizing crawling of images you can filter out by file type by filtering the URI column of your log file using the “Content-Type” column of your crawl export and making an option to filter with a pivot table. As with all of these checks, you have plenty of options!

Using a pivot table, you can now analyze crawl rate by crawl depth (filtering by the particular bot in this case) with the following options:

To get something like the following:

Better data than Search Console? Identifying crawl issues

Search Console might be a go-to for every SEO, but it certainly has flaws. Historical data is harder to get, and there are limits on the number of rows you can view (at this time of writing it is 1000). But, with Log File Analysis, the sky’s the limit. With the following checks, we’re going to be discovered crawl and response errors to give your site a full health check.

Discover Crawl Errors

An obvious and quick check to add to your arsenal, all you have to do is filter the status column of your log file (in my case “sc-status” with a W3C log file type) for 4xx and 5xx errors:

Find inconsistent server responses

A particular URL may have varying server responses over time, which can either be normal behavior, such as when a broken link has been fixed or a sign there is a serious server issue occurring such as when heavy traffic to your site causes a lot more internal server errors and is affecting your site’s crawlability.

Analyzing server responses is as easy as filtering by URL and by Date:

Alternatively, if you want to quickly see how a URL is varying in response code, you can use a pivot table with the rows set to the URL, the columns set to the response codes and counting the number of times a URL has produced that response code. To achieve this setup create a pivot table with the following settings:

This will produce the following:

As you can see in the above table, you can clearly see “/inconcistent.html” (highlighted in the red box) has varying response codes.

View Errors by Subdirectory

To find which subdirectories are producing the most problems, we just need to do some simple URL filtering. Filter out the URI column (in my case “cs-uri-stem”) and use the “contains” filtering option to select a particular subdirectory and any pages within that subdirectory (with the wildcard *):

For me, I checked out the blog subdirectory, and this produced the following:

View Errors by User Agent

Finding which bots are struggling can be useful for numerous reasons including seeing the differences in website performance for mobile and desktop bots, or which search engines are best able to crawl more of your site.

You might want to see which particular URLs are causing issues with a particular bot. The easiest way to do this is with a pivot table that allows for filtering the number of times a particular response code occurs per URI. To achieve this make a pivot table with the following settings:

From there, you can filter by your chosen bot and response code type, such as image below, where I'm filtering for Googlebot desktop to seek out 404 errors:

Alternatively, you can also use a pivot table to see how many times a specific bot produces different response codes as a whole by creating a pivot table that filters by bot, counts by URI occurrence, and uses response codes as rows. To achieve this use the settings below:

For example, in the pivot table (below), I’m looking at how many of each response code Googlebot is receiving:

Diagnose on-page problems 

Websites need to be designed not just for humans, but for bots. Pages shouldn’t be slow loading or be a huge download, and with log file analysis, you can see both of these metrics per URL from a bot’s perspective.

Find slow & large pages

While you can sort your log file by the “time taken” or “loading time” column from largest to smallest to find the slowest loading pages, it’s better to look at the average load time per URL as there could be other factors that might have contributed to a slow request other than the web page’s actual speed.

To do this, create a pivot table with the rows set to the URI stem or URL and the summed value set to the time taken to load or load time:

Then using the drop-down arrow, in this case, where it says “Sum of time-taken” and go to “Value Field Settings”:

In the new window, select “Average” and you’re all set:

Now you should have something similar to the following when you sort the URI stems by largest to smallest and average time taken:

Find large pages

You can now add the download size column (in my case “sc-bytes”) using the settings shown below. Remember that the set the size to the average or sum depending on what you would like to see. For me, I’ve done the average:

And you should get something similar to the following:

Bot behavior: Verifying and analyzing bots

The best and easiest way to understand bot and crawl behavior is with log file analysis as you are again getting real-world data, and it’s a lot less hassle than other methods.

Find un-crawled URLs

Simply take the crawl of your website with your tool of choice, and then take your log file an compare the URLs to find unique paths. You can do this with the “Remove Duplicates” feature of Excel or conditional formatting, although the former is a lot less CPU intensive especially for larger log files. Easy!

Identify spam bots

Unnecessary server strain from spam and spoof bots is easily identified with log files and some basic command line operators. Most requests will also have an IP associated with it, so using your IP column (in my case, it is titled “c-ip” in a W3C format log), remove all duplicates to find each individual requesting IP.

From there, you should follow the process outlined in Google’s document for verifying IPs (note: For Windows users, use the nslookup command):

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en

Or, if you’re verifying a bing bot, use their handy tool:

https://www.bing.com/toolbox/verify-bingbot

Conclusion: Log Files Analysis — not as scary as it sounds

With some simple tools at your disposal, you can dive deep into how Googlebot behaves. When you understand how a website handles crawling, you can diagnose more problems than you can chew — but the real power of Log File Analysis lies in being able to test your theories about Googlebot and extending the above techniques to gather your own insights and revelations.

What theories would you test using log file analysis? What insights could you gather from log files other than the ones listed above? Let me know in the comments below.

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[whitelabelseoreseller]

Spying On Google: 5 Ways to Use Log File Analysis To Reveal Invaluable SEO Insights

Posted by faisal-anderson

Log File Analysis should be a part of every SEO pro’s tool belt, but most SEOs have never conducted one. Which means most SEOs are missing out on unique and invaluable insights that regular crawling tools just can’t produce. 

Let's demystify Log File Analysis so it's not so intimidating. If you’re interested in the wonderful world of log files and what they can bring to your site audits, this guide is definitely for you. 

What are Log Files?

Log Files are files containing detailed logs on who and what is making requests to your website server. Every time a bot makes a request to your site, data (such as the time, date IP address, user agent, etc.) is stored in this log. This valuable data allows any SEO to find out what Googlebot and other crawlers are doing on your site. Unlike regular crawlings, such as with the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, this is real-world data — not an estimation of how your site is being crawled. It is an exact overview of how your site is being crawled.

Having this accurate data can help you identify areas of crawl budget waste, easily find access errors, understand how your SEO efforts are affecting crawling and much, much more. The best part is that, in most cases, you can do this with simple spreadsheet software. 

In this guide, we will be focussing on Excel to perform Log File Analysis, but I’ll also discuss other tools such as Screaming Frog’s less well-known Log File Analyser which can just make the job a bit easier and faster by helping you manage larger data sets. 

Note: owning any software other than Excel is not a requirement to follow this guide or get your hands dirty with Log Files.

How to Open Log Files

Rename .log to .csv

When you get a log file with a .log extension, it is really as easy as renaming the file extension .csv and opening the file in spreadsheet software. Remember to set your operating system to show file extensions if you want to edit these.

How to open split log files

Log files can come in either one big log or multiple files, depending on the server configuration of your site. Some servers will use server load balancing to distribute traffic across a pool or farm of servers, causing log files to be split up. The good news is that it's really easy to combine, and you can use one of these three methods to combine them and then open them as normal:

Use the command line in Windows by Shift + right-clicking in the folder containing your log files and selecting “Run Powershell from here”

Then run the following command:

copy *.log mylogfiles.csv

You can now open mylogfile.csv and it will contain all your log data. Or if you are a Mac user, first use the cd command to go to the directory of your log files:

cd Documents/MyLogFiles/

Then, use the cat or concatenate command to join up your files:

cat *.log > mylogfiles.csv

2) Using the free tool, Log File Merge, combine all the log files and then edit the file extension to .csv and open as normal.

3) Open the log files with the Screaming Frog Log File Analyser, which is as simple as dragging and dropping the log files:

Splitting Strings

(Please note: This step isn’t required if you are using Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyser)

Once you have your log file open, you’re going to need to split the cumbersome text in each cell into columns for easier sorting later.

Excel’s Text to Column function comes in handy here, and is as easy as selecting all the filled cells (Ctrl / Cmd + A) and going to Excel > Data > Text to Columns and selecting the “Delimited” option, and the delimiter being a Spacecharacter.

Once you’ve separated this out, you may also want to sort by time and date — you can do so in the Time and Date stamp column, commonly separating the data with the “:” colon delimiter.

Your file should look similar to the one below:

As mentioned before, don’t worry if your log file doesn’t look exactly the same — different log files have different formats. As long as you have the basic data there (time and date, URL, user-agent, etc.) you’re good to go!

Understanding Log Files

Now that your log files are ready for analysis, we can dive in and start to understand our data. There are many formats that log files can take with multiple different data points, but they generally include the following:

Server IP

Date and time

Server request method (e.g. GET / POST)

Requested URL

HTTP status code

User-agent

More details on the common formats can be found below if you’re interested in the nitty gritty details:

WC3

Apache and NGINX

Amazon Elastic Load Balancing

HA Proxy

JSON

How to quickly reveal crawl budget waste

As a quick recap, Crawl Budget is the number of pages a search engine crawls upon every visit of your site. Numerous factors affect crawl budget, including link equity or domain authority, site speed, and more. With Log File Analysis, we will be able to see what sort of crawl budget your website has and where there are problems causing crawl budget to be wasted. 

Ideally, we want to give crawlers the most efficient crawling experience possible. Crawling shouldn’t be wasted on low-value pages and URLs, and priority pages (product pages for example) shouldn’t have slower indexation and crawl rates because a website has so many dead weight pages. The name of the game is crawl budget conservation, and with good crawl budget conversion comes better organic search performance.

See crawled URLs by user agent

Seeing how frequently URLs of the site are being crawled can quickly reveal where search engines are putting their time into crawling.

If you’re interested in seeing the behavior of a single user agent, this is easy as filtering out the relevant column in excel. In this case, with a WC3 format log file, I’m filtering the cs(User-Agent) column by Googlebot:

And then filtering the URI column to show the number of times Googlebot crawled the home page of this example site:

This is a fast way of seeing if there are any problem areas by URI stem for a singular user-agent. You can take this a step further by looking at the filtering options for the URI stem column, which in this case is cs-uri-stem:

From this basic menu, we can see what URLs, including resource files, are being crawled to quickly identify any problem URLs (parameterized URLs that shouldn’t be being crawled for example).

You can also do broader analyses with Pivot tables. To get the number of times a particular user agent has crawled a specific URL, select the whole table (Ctrl/cmd + A), go to Insert > Pivot Table and then use the following options:

All we’re doing is filtering by User Agent, with the URL stems as rows, and then counting the number of times each User-agent occurs.

With my example log file, I got the following:

Then, to filter by specific User-Agent, I clicked the drop-down icon on the cell containing “(All)," and selected Googlebot:

Understanding what different bots are crawling, how mobile bots are crawling differently to desktop, and where the most crawling is occurring can help you see immediately where there is crawl budget waste and what areas of the site need improvement.

Find low-value add URLs

Crawl budget should not be wasted on Low value-add URLs, which are normally caused by session IDs, infinite crawl spaces, and faceted navigation.

To do this, go back to your log file, and filter by URLs that contain a “?” or question mark symbols from the URL column (containing the URL stem). To do this in Excel, remember to use “~?” or tilde question mark, as shown below:

A single “?” or question mark, as stated in the auto filter window, represents any single character, so adding the tilde is like an escape character and makes sure to filter out the question mark symbol itself.

Isn’t that easy?

Find duplicate URLs

Duplicate URLs can be a crawl budget waste and a big SEO issue, but finding them can be a pain. URLs can sometimes have slight variants (such as a trailing slash vs a non-trailing slash version of a URL).

Ultimately, the best way to find duplicate URLs is also the least fun way to do so — you have to sort by site URL stem alphabetically and manually eyeball it.

One way you can find trailing and non-trailing slash versions of the same URL is to use the SUBSTITUTE function in another column and use it to remove all forward slashes:

=SUBSTITUTE(C2, “/”, “”)

In my case, the target cell is C2 as the stem data is on the third column.

Then, use conditional formatting to identify duplicate values and highlight them.

However, eyeballing is, unfortunately, the best method for now.

See the crawl frequency of subdirectories

Finding out which subdirectories are getting crawled the most is another quick way to reveal crawl budget waste. Although keep in mind, just because a client’s blog has never earned a single backlink and only gets three views a year from the business owner’s grandma doesn’t mean you should consider it crawl budget waste — internal linking structure should be consistently good throughout the site and there might be a strong reason for that content from the client’s perspective.

To find out crawl frequency by subdirectory level, you will need to mostly eyeball it but the following formula can help:

=IF(RIGHT(C2,1)="/",SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/","")))/LEN("/")+SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"=","")))/LEN("=")-2, SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"/","")))/LEN("/")+SUM(LEN(C2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(C2,"=","")))/LEN("=")-1)

The above formula looks like a bit of a doozy, but all it does is check if there is a trailing slash, and depending on the answer, count the number of trailing slashes and subtract either 2 or 1 from the number. This formula could be shortened if you remove all trailing slashes from your URL list using the RIGHT formula — but who has the time. What you’re left with is subdirectory count (starting from 0 from as the first subdirectory).

Replace C2 with the first URL stem / URL cell and then copy the formula down your entire list to get it working.

Make sure you replace all of the C2s with the appropriate starting cell and then sort the new subdirectory counting column by smallest to largest to get a good list of folders in a logical order, or easily filter by subdirectory level. For example, as shown in the below screenshots:

The above image is subdirectories sorted by level.

The above image is subdirectories sorted by depth.

If you’re not dealing with a lot of URLs, you could simply sort the URLs by alphabetical order but then you won’t get the subdirectory count filtering which can be a lot faster for larger sites.

See crawl frequency by content type

Finding out what content is getting crawled, or if there are any content types that are hogging crawl budget, is a great check to spot crawl budget waste. Frequent crawling on unnecessary or low priority CSS and JS files, or how crawling is occurring on images if you are trying to optimize for image search, can easily be spotted with this tactic.

In Excel, seeing crawl frequency by content type is as easy as filtering by URL or URI stem using the Ends With filtering option.

Quick Tip: You can also use the “Does Not End With” filter and use a .html extension to see how non-HTML page files are being crawled — always worth checking in case of crawl budget waste on unnecessary js or css files, or even images and image variations (looking at you Wordpress). Also, remember if you have a site with trailing and non-trailing slash URLs to take that into account with the “or” operator with filtering.

Spying on bots: Understand site crawl behavior

Log File Analysis allows us to understand how bots behave by giving us an idea of how they prioritize. How do different bots behave in different situations? With this knowledge, you can not only deepen your understanding of SEO and crawling, but also give you a huge leap in understanding the effectiveness of your site architecture.

See most and least crawled URLs

This strategy has been touched up previously with seeing crawled URLs by user-agent, but it’s even faster.

In Excel, select a cell in your table and then click Insert > Pivot Table, make sure the selection contains the necessary columns (in this case, the URL or URI stem and the user-agent) and click OK.

Once you have your pivot table created, set the rows to the URL or URI stem, and the summed value as the user-agent.

From there, you can right-click in the user-agent column and sort the URLs from largest to smallest by crawl count:

Now you’ll have a great table to make charts from or quickly review and look for any problematic areas:

A question to ask yourself when reviewing this data is: Are the pages you or the client would want being crawled? How often? Frequent crawling doesn’t necessarily mean better results, but it can be an indication as to what Google and other content user-agents prioritize most.

Crawl frequency per day, week, or month

Checking the crawling activity to identify issues where there has been loss of visibility around a period of time, after a Google update or in an emergency can inform you where the problem might be. This is as simple as selecting the “date” column, making sure the column is in the “date” format type, and then using the date filtering options on the date column. If you’re looking to analyze a whole week, just select the corresponding days with the filtering options available.

Crawl frequency by directive

Understanding what directives are being followed (for instance, if you are using a disallow or even a no-index directive in robots.txt) by Google is essential to any SEO audit or campaign. If a site is using disallows with faceted navigation URLs, for example, you’ll want to make sure these are being obeyed. If they aren’t, recommend a better solution such as on-page directives like meta robots tags.

To see crawl frequency by directive, you’ll need to combine a crawl report with your log file analysis.

(Warning: We’re going to be using VLOOKUP, but it’s really not as complicated as people make it out to be)

To get the combined data, do the following:

Get the crawl from your site using your favorite crawling software. I might be biased, but I’m a big fan of the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, so I’m going to use that. If you’re also using the spider, follow the steps verbatim, but otherwise, make your own call to get the same results.

Export the Internal HTML report from the SEO Spider (Internal Tab > “Filter: HTML”) and open up the “internal_all.xlsx” file. From there, you can filter the “Indexability Status” column and remove all blank cells. To do this, use the “does not contain” filter and just leave it blank. You can also add the “and” operator and filter out redirected URLs by making the filter value equal “does not contain → “Redirected” as shown below: This will show you canonicalized, no-index by meta robots and canonicalized URLs.

Copy this new table out (with just the Address and Indexability Status columns) and paste it in another sheet of your log file analysis export.

Now for some VLOOKUP magic. First, we need to make sure the URI or URL column data is in the same format as the crawl data. Log Files don’t generally have the root domain or protocol in the URL, so we either need to remove the head of the URL using "Find and Replace" in our newly made sheet, or make a new column in your log file analysis sheet append the protocol and root domain to the URI stem. I prefer this method because then you can quickly copy and paste a URL that you are seeing problems with and take a look. However, if you have a massive log file, it is probably a lot less CPU intensive with the "Find and Replace" method. To get your full URLs, use the following formula but with the URL field changed to whatever site you are analyzing (and make sure the protocol is correct as well). You'll also want to change D2 to the first cell of your URL column =" Drag" class="redactor-autoparser-object">https://www.example.com"&D... down the formula to the end of your Log file table and get a nice list of full URLs:

Now, create another column and call it “Indexability Status”. In the first cell, use a VLOOKUP similar to the following: =VLOOKUP(E2,CrawlSheet!A$1:B$1128,2,FALSE). Replace E2 with the first cell of you "Full URL" column, then make the lookup table into your new. crawl sheet. Remember to sue the dollar signs so that the lookup table doesn't change as you. apply the formula to further roles. Then, select the correct column (1 would be the first column of the index table, so number 2 is the one we are after). Use the FALSE range lookup mode for exact matching. Now you have a nice tidy list of URLs and their indexability status matched with crawl data:

Crawl frequency by depth and internal links

This analysis allows us to see how a site’s architecture is performing in terms of crawl budget and crawlability. The main aim is to see if you have far more URLs than you do requests — and if you do then you have a problem. Bots shouldn’t be “giving up” on crawling your entire site and not discovering important content or wasting crawl budget on content that is not important.

Tip: It is also worth using a crawl visualization tool alongside this analysis to see the overall architecture of the site and see where there are “off-shoots” or pages with poor internal linking.

To get this all-important data, do the following:

Crawl your site with your preferred crawling tool and export whichever report has both the click depth and number of internal links with each URL. In my case, I’m using the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, going exporting the Internal report:

Use a VLOOKUP to match your URL with the Crawl Depth column and the number of Inlinks, which will give you something like this:

Depending on the type of data you want to see, you might want to filter out only URLs returning a 200 response code at this point or make them filterable options in the pivot table we create later. If you’re checking an e-commerce site, you might want to focus solely on product URLs, or if you’re optimizing crawling of images you can filter out by file type by filtering the URI column of your log file using the “Content-Type” column of your crawl export and making an option to filter with a pivot table. As with all of these checks, you have plenty of options!

Using a pivot table, you can now analyze crawl rate by crawl depth (filtering by the particular bot in this case) with the following options:

To get something like the following:

Better data than Search Console? Identifying crawl issues

Search Console might be a go-to for every SEO, but it certainly has flaws. Historical data is harder to get, and there are limits on the number of rows you can view (at this time of writing it is 1000). But, with Log File Analysis, the sky’s the limit. With the following checks, we’re going to be discovered crawl and response errors to give your site a full health check.

Discover Crawl Errors

An obvious and quick check to add to your arsenal, all you have to do is filter the status column of your log file (in my case “sc-status” with a W3C log file type) for 4xx and 5xx errors:

Find inconsistent server responses

A particular URL may have varying server responses over time, which can either be normal behavior, such as when a broken link has been fixed or a sign there is a serious server issue occurring such as when heavy traffic to your site causes a lot more internal server errors and is affecting your site’s crawlability.

Analyzing server responses is as easy as filtering by URL and by Date:

Alternatively, if you want to quickly see how a URL is varying in response code, you can use a pivot table with the rows set to the URL, the columns set to the response codes and counting the number of times a URL has produced that response code. To achieve this setup create a pivot table with the following settings:

This will produce the following:

As you can see in the above table, you can clearly see “/inconcistent.html” (highlighted in the red box) has varying response codes.

View Errors by Subdirectory

To find which subdirectories are producing the most problems, we just need to do some simple URL filtering. Filter out the URI column (in my case “cs-uri-stem”) and use the “contains” filtering option to select a particular subdirectory and any pages within that subdirectory (with the wildcard *):

For me, I checked out the blog subdirectory, and this produced the following:

View Errors by User Agent

Finding which bots are struggling can be useful for numerous reasons including seeing the differences in website performance for mobile and desktop bots, or which search engines are best able to crawl more of your site.

You might want to see which particular URLs are causing issues with a particular bot. The easiest way to do this is with a pivot table that allows for filtering the number of times a particular response code occurs per URI. To achieve this make a pivot table with the following settings:

From there, you can filter by your chosen bot and response code type, such as image below, where I'm filtering for Googlebot desktop to seek out 404 errors:

Alternatively, you can also use a pivot table to see how many times a specific bot produces different response codes as a whole by creating a pivot table that filters by bot, counts by URI occurrence, and uses response codes as rows. To achieve this use the settings below:

For example, in the pivot table (below), I’m looking at how many of each response code Googlebot is receiving:

Diagnose on-page problems 

Websites need to be designed not just for humans, but for bots. Pages shouldn’t be slow loading or be a huge download, and with log file analysis, you can see both of these metrics per URL from a bot’s perspective.

Find slow & large pages

While you can sort your log file by the “time taken” or “loading time” column from largest to smallest to find the slowest loading pages, it’s better to look at the average load time per URL as there could be other factors that might have contributed to a slow request other than the web page’s actual speed.

To do this, create a pivot table with the rows set to the URI stem or URL and the summed value set to the time taken to load or load time:

Then using the drop-down arrow, in this case, where it says “Sum of time-taken” and go to “Value Field Settings”:

In the new window, select “Average” and you’re all set:

Now you should have something similar to the following when you sort the URI stems by largest to smallest and average time taken:

Find large pages

You can now add the download size column (in my case “sc-bytes”) using the settings shown below. Remember that the set the size to the average or sum depending on what you would like to see. For me, I’ve done the average:

And you should get something similar to the following:

Bot behavior: Verifying and analyzing bots

The best and easiest way to understand bot and crawl behavior is with log file analysis as you are again getting real-world data, and it’s a lot less hassle than other methods.

Find un-crawled URLs

Simply take the crawl of your website with your tool of choice, and then take your log file an compare the URLs to find unique paths. You can do this with the “Remove Duplicates” feature of Excel or conditional formatting, although the former is a lot less CPU intensive especially for larger log files. Easy!

Identify spam bots

Unnecessary server strain from spam and spoof bots is easily identified with log files and some basic command line operators. Most requests will also have an IP associated with it, so using your IP column (in my case, it is titled “c-ip” in a W3C format log), remove all duplicates to find each individual requesting IP.

From there, you should follow the process outlined in Google’s document for verifying IPs (note: For Windows users, use the nslookup command):

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en

Or, if you’re verifying a bing bot, use their handy tool:

https://www.bing.com/toolbox/verify-bingbot

Conclusion: Log Files Analysis — not as scary as it sounds

With some simple tools at your disposal, you can dive deep into how Googlebot behaves. When you understand how a website handles crawling, you can diagnose more problems than you can chew — but the real power of Log File Analysis lies in being able to test your theories about Googlebot and extending the above techniques to gather your own insights and revelations.

What theories would you test using log file analysis? What insights could you gather from log files other than the ones listed above? Let me know in the comments below.

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[thewriteboy]

The Plight of Muse Hill

Chapter Two: Miscreants

Tristan Carter woke up at 7:00 AM MON DEC 23, according to his currently hysterical alarm clock. After turning the alarm off with resolve to go and get, the way he knew go-getters should, he promptly shoved his face back into his pillow for half an hour. He spent some time agonizing over the lost time, but, in the end, he decided he didn’t know what he would have done with an entire hour anyway. He got out of bed reluctantly and grabbed a towel on his way to the bathroom for a shower.

Tristan started to perk up under the stream of hot water. Once he was sufficiently awake, he began to get excited. He had two favorite people; one of these people was his twelve year old brother, Warren, and the other was Cassandra Murgatroyd. Cassandra, or Casey, had been Tristan’s best friend since they’d met on Halloween night, while out trick-or-treating on his ninth birthday. From practically day one, they had been getting into trouble together. Tristan couldn’t be sure when they had stopped getting caught doing the things they had been told not to do, or when they had started breaking the law, but he was sure the two events coincided. Today they planned to commit the misdemeanor breaking and entering without intent to commit a felony on the premises, because not much else could be said to be as fun in as small a town as this one. Tristan finished washing himself, but was reluctant to turn off the hot water and step out onto the cold tile beyond the shower curtain.

After he was dried off, he sauntered back to his bedroom with his used towel draped over his shoulder; his mom was at work, his dad was out of town, and his younger brother was still in bed, so Tristan felt no shame whatsoever in crossing the hallway fully nude. The experience was strange and felt scandalous, but was not at all unpleasant. He slung his towel on his bed when he reached his room and then closed the door so he could see himself in his full length mirror.

For the most part, Tristan didn’t care about his appearance, but he could never stop from brooding over his own reflection. He didn’t mind being short, which was good because he was barely 5’7” and probably would stay that way, or how short he had to keep his light brown hair so it would cooperate, or that, at the age of seventeen, he still had absolutely no facial hair; however, he did agonize a little over how thin and unmuscular he was. Of course, if he had really wanted to change that he would’ve had a workout routine, but the solution to slightness, in his opinion, worse than the problems. His teeth were straight and he took good care of them, so that was good. The one thing he truly cared about when it came to his appearance, though, was the one thing he truly liked about his appearance: his eyes, which were precisely the color of amber. This was very different from the rest of his family.

In fact, almost everything about his appearance was dissimilar to his family, all of whom were tall, and had blond hair and blue eyes. For years, this didn’t strike Tristan as odd, but when he finally noticed the vast difference, he started questioning other things as well (e.g. he shared neither his facial features nor key personality traits with his family).

It was his thirteenth birthday when he finally asked if he was adopted. The question had been burning within him for months by this point, and he couldn’t resist any more – relatives from both sides of his family had come for his big day, and it bothered him deeply that it was evident in one way or another that they were all related to each other. The question fell off his tongue and gracelessly onto the table at dinner almost immediately after he blew out the candles on his Halloween themed cake, with no less than nine members of his extended family present. Everyone at the table froze mid-whatever-they-were-doing and stared blankly at him, except Warren, who wore the most humorous expression of surprise. In the end, he got his answer: yes, he was adopted. And he hated that. The fact that he was adopted didn’t change how much he loved his parents or his brother; the fact that he was adopted had never changed anything, really, except maybe Tristan's perspective a little. Eventually he got over it and moved on. He had asked about his birth parents, of course, but never truly felt the need to meet them. With the parents who had chosen him, he knew in his heart, he had everything the parents who hadn’t wanted him couldn’t give.

Tristan glanced at his clock: 7:47. He dressed quickly in many layers of warm clothes and went downstairs. He wasn’t in the mood for breakfast, but he scarfed down some pop-tarts and a glass of milk anyway. He fed Barker – Barker was the family dog, a giant, fluffy black, white and brown Collie, whose name was inflicted upon him by an overly excited eight-year-old Warren – and went to the front door, passing through the living room, which was dominated by an enormous Christmas tree that had been decorated to death. Before leaving, Tristan took his warmest jacket and favorite beanie off of the coatrack, pulled them on, and picked his truck keys up off the table by the door.

Tristan was the very proud owner of a truly ancient Ford F-150. The truck was old and had a huge number of miles on it, sure, but its former owner had taken excellent care of it and it was still in fairly good condition. Tristan had gotten it for his sixteenth birthday. Tristan crossed the lawn to the street where it was parked and hopped in the cab. The truck had never, in the year and almost two months he had had it, failed to start on the first try.

He was in front of Casey’s house in two minutes. He blew the horn and waited, knowing it would be few minutes before she emerged. Tristan beat his thumbs on the steering wheel rhythmically while looking out the windshield at his surroundings. White. That is what he saw, but that could be said about any place in or around Muse Hill this time of year. The houses all around weren’t hard to see under the snow, they just weren’t the most prevalent thing at present. Casey lived in the neighborhood adjacent to Tristan’s, and, while the houses here weren’t truly any nicer, they were newer and somewhat better looking. Tristan looked at the clock at 7:59, and knew that, if the clock on his recently installed stereo’s display was precisely accurate, Casey would be walking out of her house in one minute. Casey was always exactly where she said she would be at precisely when she said she would be there. As if on cue, the front door soon opened and possibly the most glamorous girl Tristan had ever seen was revealed. Tristan’s face fell somewhat in disappointment; the girl was an unwelcome sight.

Before Tristan could start panicking, though, Casey walked around her sister (who was walking slowly, as though she didn’t have anywhere important to go and had come outside for lack of anything better to do, like when one wanders aimlessly around his house out of boredom to eventually find himself staring blankly at the contents of his refrigerator) and smiled broadly at Tristan. Tristan smiled back instantly and realized, for the millionth time just how deeply, profoundly hopeless he was. Since that fateful Halloween night, Tristan had been obsessed with Casey, and they were instant best friends. A few years later, when Tristan had started going through puberty and had started experiencing all sorts of strange attractions and urges, and started noticing – ahem, noticing – girls, it was Casey he noticed, and practically nobody else. Yet, unfortunately, and also fortunately, about the time Tristan began noticing girls, Casey did too. This was fortunate because 1) Tristan knew how romance could get in the way of (and ruin) friendships from movies he’d seen and books he’d read, and 2) Tristan’s ego was spared being rejected out of disinterest or something else that would have marked him as faulty. This was unfortunate, though, because Tristan wholeheartedly believed that, though he hated himself for it for the pain he was inflicting on himself and for the strain it would inevitably put on their friendship, he was helplessly in love with her. Deborah (Debby), Casey’s sister, Tristan had learned the hard way, was a poor substitute with an awful personality, despite her ridiculously good looks – this substantiated, for Tristan at least, the trite expression claiming that God doesn’t give with both hands.

Casey wasn’t the least bit butch. She was pretty in a conventional way. She was tall (taller than Tristan was, at any rate) and thin, and it was quite possible she might have had decent curves constantly hiding behind her shapeless clothes that somehow she pulled off flawlessly. Her hair was bright red and cut short, styled deftly around her round face that boasted soft, friendly features. Her eyes were grass green and accented with a little brown eyeliner, the only makeup she wore. Her pretty smile revealed bright white teeth. Her skin was pale and almost entirely without blemish. Anyone would have been lucky to be with her.

Casey approached, opened the passenger door and hopped onto the seat. She was still smiling as she pulled something out of her purse, “It’s finally finished!” she exclaimed brightly.

“What is?” Tristan asked before he realized what she was holding. It was blank CD – had been a blank CD – in a clear plastic case.

“The playlist. I mean, it only took a few minutes to burn the CD, but it’s finally done in that it’s taken us so long to agree on the music.”

They had been trying to put together a compilation of their favorite songs for weeks. It wasn’t difficult for either to choose ten of their favorite songs, but it was difficult for both to agree on the other’s choices, as the Venn diagram of music Tristan liked and music Casey liked was, with rare exceptions, two circles that did not touch. It wasn’t at all surprising that Casey had put the songs on a CD immediately after they had finally agreed on which songs to use and in what order to use them.

Casey took the disc out of the case, put it in the CD player and pressed play.

The drive to the edge of town took ten minutes. Today’s outing would be a very tame one. Very straight forward. They would drive to the barbeque restaurant at the edge of town, park there, and walk the next half-mile to the abandoned warehouse. They had passed the warehouse countless times in their lives and had always been curious about it. Today they would visit it and see what there was to see. Tristan and Casey went on these outings just for the fun of it, for the thrill of adventure, the rush provided by the idea of getting caught, because there was little to do in the small town of Muse Hill except bend the rules. Not all of their adventures were illegal, though, and none of them caused anyone major harm, so they were unconflicted. All they were going to do today was get into the warehouse, explore it a bit, and get out. Only that. Nothing else. Breaking and entering would be the extent of their excitement. Perhaps they would get lunch together afterwards.

The first song on the playlist was the longest and took up the entire trip to Porky’s; it was also Tristan’s favorite, so he was distracted from navigating the road, which was covered in snow and ice. Casey spent a good several minutes playing it, the song, on thin air and Tristan shuddered to think what sound she would be making on a real guitar.

They trekked the half mile the rest of the way to the warehouse in about ten minutes, all the while wishing they were still in Tristan’s Truck. They had decided to leave the truck at Porky’s because, strictly speaking, they weren’t allowed to leave Muse Hill, and the Warehouse was just a little past the border. The street that passed by the warehouse was a busy one and some passerby might have recognized the truck as Tristan’s parked on the side of the road in front of the warehouse where he was trespassing in an area he wasn’t supposed to be in the first place. It was far less risky to walk.

The warehouse was enclosed by a tall chain link fence. On the side of the fence facing the road was bolted a metal sign warning away prospective trespassers, which Casey mocked (“Well, I guess we have to go back now.”) since there was no evidence of a security system or surveillance cameras. Once they reached the gate, Casey pulled her lockpick out of a jacket pocket, and knelt to start on the single padlock standing in their way.

Tristan took this time to look around. The endless snow was somewhat drier, more powdery here than at his house seven miles away: it had fallen more recently. All he could smell was the distinct scent of chilled air. Lining the road and surrounding the warehouse were hundreds of evergreens. It was then, looking at the bases of the trees, that he saw something unexpected. It was mostly hidden behind the line of trees on Tristan’s right, probably a hundred yards away, but it couldn’t be mistaken. And it was magnificent. A buck, whose shoulders probably came up higher than the top of Tristan’s head, with enormous antlers, the time of year notwithstanding, stood, peeking out of the foliage, with one front hoof raised slightly. Tristan tiptoed toward Casey without looking away from the deer, careful not to make too much noise or move too suddenly, afraid of scaring it off despite all the distance there was between them and it. He touched Casey’s shoulder and winced when she yelped. But her startled utterance didn’t send the buck running. Tristan pointed covertly and whispered in her ear. Casey didn’t see it at first, but once she stood up, she saw it immediately and a second later, a broad, delighted smile broke out over her face.

Both Tristan and Casey stayed as motionless as possible and stared at the stately creature, which didn’t move either . . . until it did, that is. When it did move, it was almost as though it hadn’t moved at all, but had switched positions instantaneously. One second it was standing, and the next it had collapsed. In fact, it had been tackled and was now on its stomach, one of its front legs bent the wrong way, with something small and dark, impossible to identify, on its back. The abrupt change in the scene the two teenagers were taking in was accompanied by a disturbing crunch and a terrible, high-pitch bleat. Tristan and Casey watched in shocked horror as whatever had taken down the buck dragged it back into the trees.

Casey, trembling, took one step forward, outstretched one hand, began to utter an expletive, but did not finish: "holy sh-", then did nothing else; Tristan felt his heart beating very fast and very hard in his chest, but couldn’t think how to respond to what he had just seen.

#my writing #writing #story

[trigafy]

New Post has been published on

New Post has been published on http://hypnotherapyhypnotist.com/mind-play-a-guide-to-erotic-hypnosis/

Mind Play: A Guide to Erotic Hypnosis

Mind Play: A Guide to Erotic Hypnosis

Product Description

All kinds of people are secretly (or not so secretly) fascinated by the erotic possibilities of hypnosis. Many of us know that hypnosis doesn’t really have the kind of mind-melting power we see in movies. Still, we can’t help but get turned on at the thought of either controlling someone, or being controlled by someone, into doing things we’ve been told we shouldn’t do … but really, inside, kind of want to.

In this book, Mark Wiseman (Wiseguy) will teach you how to put your partner into a hypnotic trance safely and effectively. Then the fun begins as you learn how to:

Create or intensify arousal and desire

Turn their entire body into an erogenous zone eager for your touch

Get kinky with hypnotic bondage, flogging, or tickling

Give them intense pleasure using his Five-Point Palm Exploding Orgasm technique

and more!

Whether you are new to hypnosis or have already learned the basics, Mind Play will give you the tools you need to become a skilled, responsible erotic hypnotist.

Price: $21.64

Building a Positive State of Mind Hypnosis Session

http://www.freehypnosissessions.com/building-a-positive-state-of-mind-hypnosis-session.html

This hypnosis session will give you positive suggestions that will help you to create a wonderful positive state of mind.

Before listing to to this session it is best to think about four positive experiences that have happened in your life. This may be the day you got married, passed your driving test, or got a promotion at work.

Please note that this session is hypnotic in nature so please do not listen to it whilst doing something that requires your full attention.

To get the maximum benefit from this session we recommend listening to it in a place in which you will be the most comfortable.

PLEASE NOTE: Screen Savers can cause the session to stop. Check your computer settings and change if required to enjoy uninterrupted.

This hypnosis session was recorded live at

http://www.freehypnosissessions.com/

MP3 Download Now Available

The mp3 version of this self hypnosis session is now available for you to download.

Listening to this session on mp3 give you the flexibility of of being able to listen to it away from your computer.

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Free Hypnosis Script

If you are a hypnotherapist and would like this hypnosis script you can download it from my website Hypnosis Tutorials.

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Background Music

Music by Healthy Visions – www.healthyvisions.net

Hypnosis has long history of help Hypnosis is a state of mind connected to deep relaxation, narrowed focus and increased suggestibility. Everyone has been in this state, for example while being engrossed in a good book or a TV program and not being aware someone has entered the room. News story posted on 2017-05-31T07:32:00 There are two commonly held theories of hypnosis: the State Theory and the Non-State Theory. The first categorizes hypnosis simply as a mental state. The second defines it as an imaginative role play. Either way, hypnosis is an extremely relaxed state of mind, making the power of suggestion even more powerful. How deeply the individual chooses to accept that suggestion varies from person to person. Here we will take a brief look as at some of the myths of hypnosis.

1. Hypnosis is the work of Satan – Take the word hypnosis out of that statement and substitute it with anything else and you have probably heard or read about someone saying the same thing. Hypnosis is relaxing the mind, and if that means we relax our mind enough to let down a few social or psychological barriers in order to achieve a goal, then how can that be an evil thing? Anything can be viewed as evil if one does not understand it.

2. Hypnosis is magic – This myth is closely related to the misconception that hypnosis is somehow evil or derived from black magic. Once again an idea that is a product of not understanding how it works.

3. You are asleep or unconscious when under hypnosis – You are not asleep or unconscious, simply in a relaxed mental state. Awareness of everything around you is there, but your body may feel so deeply relaxed that it has gone to sleep. Your mind is still alert and benefiting from the suggestive therapy.

4. Hypnosis only works on certain people – Hypnosis can work on anyone. The reality is those who do not have the willingness to participate just will not benefit from the session. If concentration is an issue, the hypnosis will not be effective either. An open mind will always be suggestible, more so than a closed one.

5. Hypnotists have special powers – This myth is 100% Hollywood stereotype. Hypnotists only have knowledge of the mind and experience with hypnosis. It takes a lot of practice to accomplish induction of a hypnotic state of mind on a patient. But it takes even more skill and superior ethics to use the skill in positive ways to help people.

6. People who are easily hypnotized have a ‘weak mind’ – An easy assumption to make, especially if you do not fully understand the process of hypnotism. In reality, those who are creative, have a good ability to use their imagination and can focus, are the best subjects for hypnotism. Some of the world’s most accomplished scientists, engineers and medical professionals have succeeded by using their imagination and creativity, and therefore they do not have ‘weak minds’, but are highly susceptible to the suggestive state of hypnosis.

7. In hypnosis, one can be made to do or say anything – In a deep state of hypnosis, the power of suggestion is heightened. This is the whole reason for its use as a therapy for things like addiction. But your own personal values are never absent so you will not be inclined to do anything you wouldn’t normally do. In fact the shock of the suggestion may even bring you out of the hypnotic state.

8. Hypnosis is bad for your health – This is another myth that falls under the umbrella of ‘I don’t understand it so it must be bad for me’. One of the main requirements, and benefits of hypnosis is the relaxed state of mind and body. Any doctor will tell you that relaxation is a benefit to all systems of the body. How can that be bad?

9. It is possible to become ‘stuck’ in a hypnotic state of mind – Another stereotype courtesy of the film industry. Hypnosis is a natural state of mind, and may often cause one to fall asleep. Plus, it is very common during a hypnosis session, but you will always wake up. In fact, a lot of people use self-hypnosis as a way of achieving a natural, drug free sleep.

10. Patients become dependent on their hypnotists – You will not become dependent on a hypnotist unless you allow yourself to be. Remember that in hypnosis, as with any therapy, you are in full control. If there are things happening that you do not like, it is your job as the client to speak up. A good hypnotist will help you to feel empowered for change, not stifle it.

ChristianHypnosis.org provides christian hypnosis CDs and programs that are designed for Christians who believe that God is all powerful. The programs are designed for believers who believe that through God’s power, anything is possible.For more information about christian hypnotherapy, visit us online today!

[radicalspirit-blog]

Lights And Shadows (pt 3)

In a small dark apartment just down the peninsula from the city, a woman is rolling over onto her side under her pale blue blanket. She silently looks toward the foot of the bed where there is an older man, in his 60s, getting dressed. After he puts his shoes on, he reaches into his pocket and pulls a wad of twenty dollar bills out and puts them on the dresser. "As usual, that was real nice, Shauna. Don't sleep the day away. I don't know if I can see you next week as my wife's nosey mother will be visiting with us for a few days. But I'll get ahold of you before the holidays start up." And he walks out the door, back to his boring suburban life, leaving Shauna to her very different life, full of self discovery and frustrating johns. Shauna sits up and looks towards the door for a moment and then at the cash for services rendered. She wraps the blanket around her and gets up to make a fresh pot of coffee on the electric burner that substitutes for a stove. "Not if I get money for airfare to get out of this town first." She counts the cash to herself, "Damn, barely enough for rent for this little cave and a lunch special at the burger joint." She let's out a low sigh while glancing out the window, "Looks like more rain." She wipes a tear, trades the blanket for her pink terry cloth robe then pours herself a cup of strong black coffee and starts her day. Another day, another dollar or less. It's a good thing that Jimmy is a natural at sales, his commissions more than make up for lack of hours on the sales floor. It doesn't hurt that even on his worse days, he can put aside the pain in his personal life and turn on the charm. When he was in school, his aspirations were to be a famous jazz musician. His room was always cluttered with keyboards, guitars, percussion instruments, whatever he could get his hands on that made music. During his senior year in college, money was really tight and he had to slowly sell each instrument and a month before graduation he was offered a sales position in a higher end shoe department at a clothing store near Union Square. It was only a matter of time before he was talked into working at Macy's on Union Square. He always enjoyed talking about fashion to women. Most of his friends growing up have been the girls of the neighborhood. Plus, he was tired of living on macaroni and cheese and tuna. Since then, he's become one of the top sellers in the department. The floor of the store is mostly designer and trendy women's clothing and his department is on the opposite end of purses so he can easily watch the women who come in from their tourist busses or over from downtown, or Pacific Heights, to shop for a specific outfit or two. Well, a girl has to have the right shoes for the occasion and Jimmy is just the one to sell the ideal pair and then point them in the direction of the perfect accessories. This encourages his coworkers in nearby departments to send him customers just as often. One of the salesmen in an adjoining department, selling the higher end trendy, is Blake. Jimmy and Blake never talk much. They're cordial and often send a customer to the other to get something that matches perfectly. Blake is maybe a year or two younger than Jimmy. He has wavy hair like Jimmy's but lighter, a dirty blonde, and cut very short on the sides. The single big wave he keeps long in front swoops down to almost touch his round tortoise shell glasses. They frame pale greenish-gray eyes that are complimented by his round boyish cheeks and big, bright smile that always has a hint of mischief. As Jimmy is bagging up some of the more expensive pairs of pumps, in three colors, for a stylish woman in her 50s, Blake quietly walks into Jimmy's department. She's dressed in a navy pinstriped blazer and skirt with an ivory colored silk dress shirt and a modest length pearl necklace with a tear-shaped opal hanging from it. Her shoulder length hair that has just a hint of gray is styled reminiscent of Mary Tyler Moore. The woman is clearly an executive from the financial district. Blake overhears the conversation between Jimmy and his appreciative customer. "Thanks for visiting us again and I know you're going to love those. The heel might look a little high but the shoe is so well made you won't feel any bit uneasy. And if you need any stretching to soften the leather on the red pair before your event don't hesitate to bring them by." "Oh Jimmy, you're such a dear. What would us old socialites do without you? Are you sure you can't meet my niece when she's in town in December? I just know the two of you would get along fine. Maybe you can take her to one of those AIDS dance-athons that you've told me about in the past. You do still go to those?" "Well, it's been a while since I've been to one. I've been taking a little break from things lately. Besides Mrs. Masden, you know I can't date a customer. Macy's wouldn't approve. But thank you so much." " I understand how we have to all dance to the tune of our employees. Mine definitely do. Even when it's a silly policy. And as for taking a break from things, don't take too long. The world needs your kind heart and big smile. Anyways, thank you again and I'll let you know how the burgundy ones work for the reception next week. I'm sure I'll be in at least one more time before the holiday madness starts. Till next we meet darling boy." "Yes, let me know, thank you. And don't behave yourself." As Blake comes up from behind, "Oh, Blake, you're off already? It's only 9." "I won a bet with a coworker so he's covering my last hour. I was watching you work that last one. Boy, am I glad you like it in shoes." "That's Mrs. Masden. She's a regular. By day, she runs a job agency downtown. By night, she's a busy Pacific Heights socialite. I think she holds two dinner parties a week, and always for some big cause or another." "What was that about her niece?" "Apparently, her niece, who is studying to be a doctor in the east coast, is coming to visit and Mrs. Masden is trying to fix us up." "For what? I mean, you're not nearly as nelly as most of the queens around here but she can tell you're queer, right?" "No idea. And thanks for reaffirming my masculinity." "Sure, anytime Mister. So, what are you doing tonight after your shift? I was going to Tower Records for the new Cocteau Twins compilation. Maybe you can join me at Cafe Flor for some wine and check it out together." "Umm..." "Come on, how long have we been working practically right next to each other and never hung out?" "I appreciate the offer, I do. But times are a little tough for me right now. And, besides, shouldn't you be going home to your boyfriend?" "He's the one that suggested I should get to know you. And, besides, he is busy with work this weekend." "Oh, I didn't know you guys were in an open relationship." "Yes, it's something we do so we don't get too needy with each other." " I guess that makes sense. If it works for you two." "So, see you around 10:00? Its not anything serious that I'm asking you out to. Let's just hang out, have a few drinks, talk music..." "Well, I did promise someone that I'd get out more. Okay. I'll try to finish up and get out of here a little early. It's been a little slow with the rain so that shouldn't be too hard." "It's never too hard for me." "What?" "Nothing. See you at the Cafe. If you do get there before 10, poke into Tower. I might still be in either the Goth section or the Classical section if I lose track of time. And I usually do." "I know how that is. I do it all the time in music stores and bookstores. Sure, I'll see you around that time." Jimmy gives a little wave to Blake as he walks towards the door and a group of trendy teenaged girls wander into his department. "Well, this will take up the next hour," he mumbles to himself before he turns back around, smiles and approaches them. An hour later, Jimmy is in the Castro and rushing in the rain over to Tower Records. Just as he's about to pass the entrance to Cafe Flor, Blake jumps out in front of him. Jimmy, who hates being late and is rushing, doesn't even notice him until he bumps into him. "Oops, sorry sir. Oh, it's you." Blake gives him a quick hug. "That's okay. You can bump into me anytime you like." "Haha. Were you waiting long? I got busy right after you left and could barely get them to leave to close up on time." "I've just been here long enough to get a glass of their merlot. It's not the greatest but it's not horrible. Want to try a glass? Or are you a beer and pretzels kind of guy?" Blake leads Jimmy over to one of the tables on the side of the cafe that is covered but away from the more crowded tables. "This is my favorite spot in the the city for people watching. Let me buy this round." "Thanks, they have a nice sangria. I tried it when Drew and I came here once," as he's setting his backpack down on the wooden bench alongside the glass front of the cafe and takes off his wet jacket and baseball cap. "And, if we get to a second round, it's on me." Sitting in that narrow section with the little row of white marble cafe tables between two windows overlooking Market Street, Blake and Jimmy start to talk about the day at work and the customers and coworkers. Then, Blake reaches into his leather shoulder bag and takes out his Walkman and the new cd he just purchased. He waves it in front of Jimmy's face a little, unwraps it eagerly and pops it into the player. "You must hear this," as he hands a pair of small headphones, that are little more than a flat curved wire between two round foam cushions, to Jimmy. "I give you the honors of hearing this first." "Don't you want to hear it too?" "It's a compilation of their imports and I have most of it. Besides I want to hear what you think of them. You have heard of the Cocteau Twins, right?" Jimmy puts on the small headphones as Blake presses the play button. The music starts with a drum machine and a guitar strumming very simple chords. A voice starts singing and Jimmy doesn't know what to make of this ethereal singer. The woman is singing in a soprano that floats over the instruments. And he doesn't have the vaguest idea what language she's singing in. But it's as if her voice is one more instrument in this new wave-ish space waltz. "I don't want to sound stupid but what language is she singing in?" "Who knows. I think she makes it up as she goes. What do you think?" "It's like nothing I've ever heard before. But I like it. There's something otherworldly and all so romantic about it." Nice description. People either love them obsessively or hate them. My partner hates that he can't understand what she's singing about. He wants words that he can sing along to. I think it's all of that Motown and r&b that he grew up listening to. He prefers that I play them on my headphones or when he's not home." "Really? It sounds like great music to make out to." "Think so? Maybe we can try that out later?" "Wow, you're incorrigible." "And you're irresistible." "Blake, it's only been a few months since I lost Drew. I'm not ready for anything heavy. I don't even know if I'll ever be." "Jimmy, you sweet boy, I'm not looking for anything more than a new friend and maybe a little action once in a while. I love my partner and I'd never leave him, not even for someone as adorable as you. But we rarely have sex so I'm free to get my needs met with other people. I hope that's not weird for you." "No. It's different. But it's not weird." They sit silently for a moment. Then Blake puts the earplugs back on Jimmy's head. "You keep listening and I'll go get you that sangria." "Thanks," Jimmy says as Blake gets up and starts walking toward the entrance. Jimmy hits play and thinks to himself as the singer starts up in her strange non-language, "Well, this is very different and maybe that's what I need. Something very different." When Blake returns with the sangria and another merlot for himself, they share the earplugs and listen to the rest of the Cocteau Twins. They also listen to a few bits and pieces from other CDs that Blake pulls out of his shoulder bag. "Want one of my designer cigarettes?" Blake asks as he pulls a silver antique cigarette case out. "They're very smooth." "I rarely smoke but sure, I'll try one." For another hour they sit under the awning, protected from the steady heavy downpour of rain that rarely happens in San Francisco, huddled together smoking, trying each other's drinks and listening to music. "So," Blake finally says, " tell me about yourself. Where did you grow up? What brought you to this wonderful city? How old were you when you came out?" "I'm from here. Grew up in the Mission." "Darling, no one is from here." I am. I grew up in the Mission with an aunt and about seven other kids that she raised. I guess I came out when I was twelve but I don't know if I was ever in the closet. There were so many people in the house that no one really noticed me or cared. I usually did what I wanted to as long as I got good grades and was home in time for dinner." "Lucky you. I'm an only child from an overly-protective fundamentalist mom. I moved here from Denver as soon as I was old enough to get away, the day after my eighteenth birthday. I had my first gay experience on the back of that bus that brought me here. Dear old Mother still doesn't know, or want to know, I'm not sure which is more accurate." "You never told her?" "I have tried. I've brought up the subject a few times but each time she changes the topic of conversation. I mention Gary and she will only refer to him as my roommate. I think she's decided to go the grave thinking that her boy will someday meet a nice Christian girl and make lots of green-eyed masculine babies. Hey, want to go back to your place and fuck?" Jimmy chokes on the sip of sangria he just took, "What? Wow. Uh, well, I don't know." "Come on. I'm not talking about a lifetime commitment. We won't have to pick out matching drapes in the morning. Just a nice night of escaping in sweaty passion between two horny young men." "It's a really nice offer and I do think you're attractive but..." "But nothing. You look like you haven't gotten laid in ages." "Feels like years. But...I'm not sure about this." "Why you're practically a virgin again. We won't do anything you won't enjoy." "It would be nice to cuddle with someone a little but maybe next time." "Okay, I'll let you off this time. But not forever. I've watched you from my department too long."

[alrightpoppins]

all the questions b/c why not :)

you’re my new best friend.

this thing is 50 questions long so it’s under the cut 👍

1. do you have any recurring dreams? what are they?

lately i’ve had a recurring dream of beating the shit out of my cousin.. so there’s that

2. what is your favourite kind of fruit?

hmm.. either clementines, pears, or peaches

3. sweet or savoury?

savory

4. what is your smallest/pettiest fear?

ants. i freak the fuck out if there are ants around me.

5. what is your least favourite vegetable?

probably sweet potatoes. that’s like the only vegetable i can think of that i dislike. i hate sweet potatoes.

6. what is your favourite art movement?

either surrealism or pop art

7. do you drink milk?

no i really should.

8. what was the last line of the last book you read?

…i can’t remember the last book i finished… fuck i miss having time to read.

9. do you like bitter food?

 i can’t really think of any but probably not. i’m too bitter to eat bitter foods too.

10. what is the most significant event in your life so far?

i just did some deep ass thinking and like.. it had to have been my dad leaving. like i don’t even remember that but my life would be 100% different if he hadn’t so i have to say that.

11. what is one thing ( a book, movie, etc ) that has greatly affected you?

 i’m gonna nerd out…

 the wizard of oz bc that’s been my favorite movie since i was 2 years old and if happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow why oh can’t i?

harry potter bc oh mY GOD. that’s like a whole world that is so fucking special and welcoming and magical and do you know how much a fucked up little kid needs magic bc it’s a lot man.

also… supergirl. bc alex danvers is so fucking special to me and her personality, her family values/dynamics, her coming out story are all so relevant and important to me and i cry about it a lot okay??

12. what is your favourite breed of dog or cat?

PITBULLS. i mean all dogs i love every single one of them but pitbulls are the best. and cats… idk i guess fat ones 😂

13. list your top 5 favourite turtle names.

like names that i would choose for a turtle? i love this question.

bubba, roscoe, franklin, squirtle, crush

14. what job would you have if you could have it without going through all of the school or experience that is required?

either a veterinarian or a children’s psychologist

15. are there any names that you dislike so much that you would dislike the person with the name? what are those names?

my dislike of names always comes from disliking a person with that name. and then it ruins the chances of me liking someone else with the same name. for instance: jason

16. what is your favourite letter?

L, J, or G because i like writing them in cursive

17. are there any instruments you wished you played?

i really wish i could play the drums and piano

18. list your best friends.

ellie, nicole, sam, jake, angie, my mom, my grandma

19. would you rather be a skeleton or a ghost?

ghost. definitely.

20. do you prefer fish or lizards/snakes? (as pets)

i’ve never had a lizard or snake so i guess fish.

21. art or music?

music is art??

but if you mean music or visual art, i’d say music.

22. what is your favourite type of flower?

gardenias. i’m trash.

23. soup or salad?

salad.

24. are you good at keeping plants alive?

i haven’t attempted this since i was like 6.

25. do animals tend to like you?

yes which is good bc i love them.

26. what is the worst book you’ve ever read?

i can’t really say. the only one that i never finished was Go Ask Alice.

27. do you collect anything?

not anymore.

28. how many pillows do you sleep with?

as many as i can possibly fit on my bed.

29. whats the latest you’ve ever woken up?

well i woke up at 2pm today. let’s just say that that isn’t my record.

30. how many pictures are on your walls?

sO MANY I CAN’T EVEN TELL YOU. i fucking love pictures.

31. what age did you stop keeping stuffed animals on your bed?

i still have stuffed animals on my bed lmao.

32. what is your favourite candy?

probably gummy bears or 100 gram bars.

33. what is your favourite baked good?

the iced lemon cookies my aunt made for christmas this year. new discovery.

34. do you have a camera? if so, what kind?

yes i have a polaroid camera.

i also have a nicer one but i haven’t used it in a long time. i don’t know the exact model, it’s a fujifilm.

35. do you wear jewelry?

yep. every day i wear my cross, the prayer bracelet sam got me, my rainbow ring, and my class ring. i usually have another 2 bracelets and another ring too.

36. sunrise or sunset?

idek. both man.

37. do you like to listen to music with headphones or no headphones?

either way. i blast it in my room and car. headphones in public.

38. what was your favourite show as a child?

when i was like 6 it was boy meets world…. also murder she wrote.

39. describe your favourite spot in your house.

probably my bed lmao.

40. do you like to be warm or cold?

i’d rather be cold than hot but i’d always prefer warm.

41. the best joke you have.

i’m made of sarcasm, not planned jokes.

42. whats the weirdest thing that you’ve seen happen in a public place?

i’ve seen furries walking around campus before. scary shit.

43. CD or digital?

digital is more convenient but i still buy CDs when i can. i’m a tactile person.

44. who do you miss right now?

poppop. jocelyn. my friends from school. the usual suspects.

45. if you could combine two places in the world, which two places would you choose?

probably somewhere green and scenic in the mountains with either my hometown or NYC

46. describe the worst substitute teacher you’ve ever had.

one time i had a sub in my german class who joined in with some kids and made fun of our teacher and the weight of student who was absent that day. he also let us watch The Interview on youtube on fire.

there’s also mr. finestien who i simultaneously love and hate. he’s adorable and nerdy and means well but if he subs a math class he straight up continues the lesson we’re on and it was like there wasn’t even a sub.

47. do you believe horoscopes?

i think they’re fun and maybe nice bc they can tell you what you wanna hear/give a basis for a little hope. but no i don’t particularly believe in them.

48. are you spiritual?

i’m more spiritual than i am religious.

49. describe your pets ( or family if you dont have pets )

my uncle has a dog named Chaos who lives in the back of my house. he’s a doberman rottweiler mix but he’s tiny as heck, very skittish, and pees when he’s excited.

then there’s Bear. he was my other uncle’s dog but now he’s my grandma and mom’s dog. he’s huge and fluffy. he means well but he’s kind of aggressive and bites/growls at/snaps at people sometimes. he’s always sorry after.

and then there’s Jazzy. she’s my dog and from the same litter as Bear. they’re german shepherd, siberian husky, chow chow mixes. she’s bigger than bear and looks nothing like him. she’s got bright blue eyes that i love a lot. she acts big and tough, fights with Bear a lot and is mean to Chaos. but when she’s out of the house, she’s a little bitch. she’s literally run from a cocker spaniel before. she’s just like me bc she has trust issues, is lazy, likes to be alone, is very stubborn, and has a bum hip. she also eats everything in sight and is sometimes food aggressive. she only really listens to me. 

50. are you good at getting over mistakes?

NOPE. i’m bad at admitting that i was wrong in the first place so getting over it is a time. i learn from them though bc i hate being wrong so much i wanna make sure i don’t fuck up again.

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