#thats the old one this isnt crisp enough for the new one

[lilacponds]

HE HE HO HO ZAREYL LORE

ok lets see where to start!! zareyl is drow who grew up in the underdark with a really abusive mother 😀 she raised all her childern to extremely strict standards with harsh punishments whenever they werent up to her standards (which was often). he was never allowed to leave the house so the only socialization he had were his tutors (which kept themselves distanced from the children), his older sister, and occasionally his dad (who was not allowed to dote on the children, but would sneak time with them against the mother's wishes). his dad actually teaches him how to play the pan flute and gives him his own flute as a gift <3

mom finds out about these stolen moments, and she is Not Happy!!! and to teach the kids a lesson - theyre around... i dont remember the exact ages, around 70 years old for Zareyl and 80 for his sister Inwyss? which in elf years is something closer to, idk, 15 human years roughly, to guesstimate. and she decides to just! murder her husband in front of the two of them.

thats the straw that broke the camels back for Inwyss - so she ran away. but Zareyl stayed, because they had two younger brothers - one of which was a literal newborn - and he was afraid of what would happen to them if he did. at least if he stayed he could make his mom focus her punishments on him instead.

so his life miserably goes on, making sure to be there for his brothers and show them the love and care their mom wouldnt. he doesnt speak a lot about their dad because hes scarred and it hurts, but he refuses to tell them it was their mom that killed him. and at one point, when he sees her focus start going towards his brothers as well, he decides enough is enough - he sneaks out of the house, bumbles his way to find some poison, and tries to kill her. spoiler alert, he is wildly ignorant about poisons, and barely had any money to himself anyways, so he just makes her seriously ill. terrified that she was going to kill him in front of his brothers like she did his father, he decides the best course of action for them is to do what his sister did and leave. he tells them he loves them and will be back one day, apologizes over and over, and leaves them the pan flute his dad left him, as a trinket and a promise.

so he runs away! and he goes to the surface, learns a lot about nature and some about people. eventually he gets recruited in this adventurer's guild, which was actually pretty defunct and him and the new people he meets are tasked, if they will, with bringing it back to old glory. hes like, fuck it, its something to do, itll help me actually have someplace to stay, and id like to help other people. (spoiler alert: we've been doing pretty damn good for ourselves!)

his group (the guild is divided in two groups usually, though the members of the group swap around from time to time - but theyve been with the same group for a few months at the start) has this particularly handsome tiefling, who isnt afraid to show his distaste for zareyl for the simple act of being a drow. and you know what, zareyl doesnt mind that! he finds his honesty disarming, in a good way. he has trust issues, and heres a guy that isnt afraid to let him know he doesnt like him, and whats more honest than that? eventually they get to know each other better and they become friends, and at this point in time zareyl has fallen HAAARD for him. there was a point in a mission where zareyl kind of fell unconscious, bitch almost drowned, and Quies (the tiefling) did CPR on him - except that Zareyl wasn't unconscious, just paralyzed, and so he thinks back to that fucking kiss every week of his life. they also slept together in the same bed once and Zareyl barely got a wink of rest.

they have also adopted a false god baby together. 🤭 everyone was like "its a FALSE GOD, the last one was burning people to a crisp, you should kill it before it grows up to be evil" and we were like "um actually, fuck you, this is a literal baby and we don't believe in the concept of 'youre destined to be this and it cannot be changed', touch this baby and youre dead". so his name is Sedd and hes being taken care of by someone they trust as we keep on adventuring and they dote on him when they are back at the guild

ANYWAYS his current mission? going back to his hometown, to get his brothers. he feels so much guilt over leaving them, and hes terrified of what has happened to them in the meantime - but with a good guild with a solid set of people he trusts as staff (and a few kobolds), he finally has a home for them to go to where they can be safe and grow up properly. so that's where he's headed, and he's terrified, but his friends are there with him to support him. (im lowkey hoping we get to fight and kill his mom, but that might be too traumatizing for the brothers, so we'll see)

#ANYWAYS THATS ALL IM LATE TO DND NOW LOL #Charlie chatters

[haeroniel-doliet]

Not me actually doing some practicing here this fine evening 👀

Basically i found out that theres a new Krita build?? And that it lets me record as i draw without having to install other software!!

(cue me struggling for hours on making it work bc you need: other software to make it work....)

Id share my first video but i havent uhm figured out how to crop video yet/ didnt manage to format the video right but yeah learned a lott here too think i'll be fine for the next one i try!! So yeah i messed around with new looking brushes (im bad at using anything but what im used to even if its not great lmao) and trying to draw from the reference in 20 and 60 seconds.. those didnt turn out too good so to stroke my fragile ego i gave myself however long it takes to get bored/finished sketching her out, with only one lapse of focus it got to about 40 mins!!

Yay me :)

Anyway i was gonna continue/make new dinluke doodles/plans bc hey!! It feels good to post stuff people like??

End of: did not figure out a faster/better way to sketch ... Yet. Not quite sure what im trying next honestly? Maybe i need to look at some other artists paint again (or i fuck around and find out some more!! Yeaaaa not frustrating at all and most likely what ill do anywayyyy im stubborn :))

Oh and i did this yesterday (same exercise but i did not time the last one) which is why i was so ready to try try try again (it takes days of build up to even start... My brain is EXCELLENT)

#art woes #oh to finally draw a woman again in a more than super sketchy way hehe #someone send me good vibes!! i got doctors calls tomorrow i dont wanna do!! #art tag #thats the old one this isnt crisp enough for the new one

[uwuowotf2waslife]

Mercs reaction to coming back from a long away mission and finding out s/o had been cuddling into his left behind shirts/blankets bc it smelled like him and they missed him so much it was the only way they could sleep?

this isnt a headcanon, this is a canon if i ever saw one

Scout: my boy always gets extra exhausted after a mission, so he just gets into his& S/Os room and plops in the bed without looking,probably still in his work clothes. At some pointin the night, he will wake up to use the loo. Returning he sits down and feels something funny under his butt, it isnt soft like a bedsheet and it feels somewhat familiar. He scoops it up and inspects it..it feels excactly like one of his shirts...now,maybe...he searches with his hands a bit more and he feels more of his clothes like a blanket around you. His heart has officialy melted and he needs to contain himself from jumping onto you and hugging the light out of you.He will spoon you and kiss your shoulder, prepare to be drown in kisses and affection, he wont stop untill your or his bladder is about to burst

Soldier: he might be the messiest but he always cleans after finising a mission. After he has done a shower and scrub all that mud and blood from him , he puts a nice pair of pyjamas trousers and hes about to hit the bed when he releases you are on his bed- thats fine you have been together for a while and lowkey he loves to sleep next to you, your heartbeat lulls him-but you are holding onto something. He turns the light in the hallway and opens the door slighlty so he can look but it wont wake you. Its his jacket, the red one he ussualy wears to battle...congratulations, you are now his waifu material. He closes the light and carefully slips on the bed next to you, softly he pulls the jacket off you and snuggle you, he even gives you soft forehead kisses.

Pyro: they never take off their suit, only for bathing and they are sure to always have at least 2 spares in case something happens to the one their wearing.Their suits inside smells like hell, but they change it once the smell gets too much and bathe everyday with special soaps and make sure they wash their suits once everyday other day.So the one time they cant find their spare, they are having a mild panic attack. They are running up and down the base, trying to find it; it cant be gone, when they left for the mission they made sure they had a spare in their closet.They are about to hold Scout on gunpoint to confess but they have an idea, they havent looked at S/Os room. They drop Scoutand go to S/Os room...they see them all cuddled up with their spare...theyknow they should be angry, but they can’t. Their suit is like their skin,and seeing you cuddling it, it makes them sniffle a little. You missed them so much, you took one of their spares and risked to be burned to a crisp by them if they had a bad mindset that day just to be with them.They lock the door behind them and pull of their suit - something they do when you are alone- and gently rock you awake. You smile at them and pull them to lie with you on the bed and they oblige. Que soft make out with they rub circles on your arms and hands.

Engie: its very rare for him to go for missions, but when it happens it happens he guesses. He isnt that exhausted but his back hurts from being crouched all day so some lying down would do him some good. He opens his rooms doo and he yeets the goggles out of his eyes- you aresleeping on his bed wearning his flanel shirt and holding one of his shirts in your chest.He curses himself for not having a polaroid but damn hun, how can you be so damn cute? He undresses as fast and quiet he cans and softly scoots you over a bitso he can cuddle you...he has a funny idea and pulls one of the bundle of the shirts over him. He basically makes himself a lump covered with shirt and trousers. He pinches you so you wake up, look around mumble something and pulling the shirt lump closer you..but wait why is it heavy and why is it warm...you pull your face closer to look at it better and suddently two strong pair of arms come and hold you. You scream and almost jump off the bed but he keeps you there and peppers your face with suprose and swrry kisses.

Demo: after every succesfull mission, its a known fact that Demo gets plastered. So either Heavy or Soldier will yeet him on his bed because they want the sofa for themselves to watch a movie. S/O of course wakes up and holds him in a position where he is least likely to vomit or drool. During his sleep, they get more and more tangled together. He wakes up by a throbbing headacke and try to block the sun with the first thing his hand finds. You stir next to him and bring him some water and painkillers. He glups it down without even openinghis eyes and pulls you down for some more cuddles. Once the painkillers kick in he opens his eye and realises his been using his own shirt asa blindfold, so he throws it away and suprise, he is lying on and is tangled by his own clothes...was he that plastered? but you jus tsaid Heavy yeeted him here, so that means..aww you sweet lil bunny, he is pulling you in for a tight hug and gives you a soft kiss.

Heavy: he isnt that tired, but after so many hours in an airplane his legs hurt so much and no matter of stretches will help. He really needs to lie down. He knocks on the door and waits for a respond, you just mumble a ‘come in’ so he opens the door and steps inside. His heart explodes right here and there. You are the cutest thing he has ever seen in his entire life, all wrapped up in his sweater. He pulls you up and swings a bit, holding you against his chest, You mished old Misha so much you wore his clothes to sleep? Well, now ,from now youll sleep on Mishas chest to never miss him again.

Medic: he is about to collapse,so he does the only logical thing that comes to mind; wash his hands, take off his shoes and pass ou thappily oh his bed with his S/O by his side. He gets all comfy and hes about to spoon when he feels something different on  his S/O, that weirdly feels like one of his medical robes. He has a smug smirk on his face but he is way too tired to do anything silly so he rubs your shoulder and pulls you for a cuddle. You wake up and feel Medic sprawled on the bed next to you-hes a huge  blankethog-so you give him a small kiss and snuggle a bit closer only for him to pounce and get you under him. “ You missed me so much schwatz, now you can wear me too” he gives you small kisses on both the head and the nose.

Sniper: he is no stranger to missions, he always liked extra work- keeps his mind sharp and his aim even sharper, but hed be a liarif he said he didnt miss you...perhaps way more than you think. He even semi-jogs his way to his S/O room, because his heart is pounding so hard he feels its gonna pop out of his chest. His mind is full of insecurities, why the lights are closed, why you arent on the common room? maybe you gotbored of him, maybe you found...the trail of thought chokes him so much he doesnt see you on the bed...but holly molly, he takes of his glasses and desperately tries to find his polaroid in his bag and snap a few pics of you. You are his angel, so pure and wrapped in his trusted rugged flannel shirt. Once hes satisfied he pets your hair and rubs your cheek untill you wake up. Then he lies on top of you and gives you lots of kisses and soft nothings. You kiss him back and just drown in his affection.

Spy: its not uncommon for him to leave for missions here and there, more than the other mercs. He isnt that tired,but he needs a bit of a lying down after a long flight and barely enough nicotine to keep him sane. He leaves the dufflebag on one of his couch in his smoking room and gets in the shower. He wonders where you are, but figures maybe you have some work or you are out for errands or something. Once his done, he puts a new balaclava and hes about to go for a nice nap when he notices you sprawled up with one of his work suits snuggled on your chest. Call him soft, call him an old romantic dilf, but this dilf smiles from ear to ear. You missed him so much, you slept with his suit...he means that much to you? he really wants to wake you up with kisses but he decides to just light a cigarrete and absorb the view. Once hes done, he lies next to you and pulls the shirt away from you, and just wraps his limbs around you and lets you snuggle on his chest. You mumble his name and then just snuggle tighter, yeap his heart has shattered. He gives you a soft kiss on the crown of the headand mumbles some apologises.Please hold him, he is having a small breakdown.

#tf2 imagines #tf2 headcanons #tf2 x reader #all #so #fluff to cure the sad #this is so wholesome #tf2 fandom

[ruiyuki-archives]

Star Tear AU - Momo ver.

This is an AU I wrote on the todomomo discord server eons ago. Anything posted to this blog will be transcripts of old original work and not really edited, save for formatting. I have no guarantees if I will ever finish these AUs either so these will only be kept as an archive.

Original transcript posted to tdmm discord: Aug 2020

Momo ver. Alternate timeline: Todo ver. Part 1 || Todo ver. Part 2 || Todo ver. Part 3

ALRIGHT YALL NEW TROPE ALERT ➡ STAR TEAR DISEASE

Basically the cousin of Hanahaki Disease. Unrequited love causes a person to cry star tears accompanied by the sound of twinkling and if the feelings are not returned said person goes colour blind

And I just !!!!

tdmm AU where Momo gets star tear disease and the first time she cries in front of Todo after the exam with Aizawa she cries star tears???

And she doesn’t know what it means and neither does Todo but maybe Aizawa does and recognizes what it means but idk

So Momo goes on this whole literary quest to research what it means. And Todo volunteers to help bc umm?? Even the pressure point in her foot doesnt stop this phenomenon so he wants to figure it out too

And along the way they dig through the UA library on study dates and dig through the bookstores and dig through the interwebs together

Spending more and more time together, Momo starts to realize she’s feeling something. that is until one night she finds it on the web what star tears mean

Its her unrequited love for Todoroki

And her realizing this just makes it w or s e

Bc the consequence of not having her feelings returned means she goes colour blind

Or you know what, im just gonna alter it and make it more angst. She goes fully blind, ya lets do that.

SO MOMO

Poor bby is grappling with this realization and coming to terms with it all on her own; recognizing that if she doesnt let Todo know after all this time spent together she’s come to love him....... she'll go blind

But ofc its Momo... poor bby selfless Momo....

Her feelings and her own and not a responsibility of Todo to like her back and cure her of this disease so there is NO WAY she’s gonna burden him with that

Plus they’re both too busy tryna be heroes and shouldn’t have this as a distraction

So ofc Momo's not gonna tell Todo

And she cries and cries even more star tears that twinkle in fill her room in the dark like galaxies in the sky.

Its really beautiful.

She'll accept that she'll go blind never to see the face of her loved ones again. Her parents. Her friends....... Todoroki.

And that potentially she might have to give up her dream of being a hero if the blindness compromises it.

But she'll accept that.

The next day she wakes up and cant see a colour

And slowly it begins.......

She loses green first. Its hard to distinguish green from yellow

Then yellow goes

Then orange

Then one by one colour fades over weeks and weeks

Ofc shes not telling anyone.

She fakes it in class, during hero training, during her internship

That when Ochako and Hagakure asks "isnt the colour dress cute?" holding up a lovely chartreus and gold dress, she lies and says yes even though she sees gray

Which breaks her even more

And so she cries alone at night some more star tears

And it keeps going

All the while Todo noticing from beside his desk......

something is off...

But he doesnt ask her. Not yet.

Because after weeks of spending time with her researching, he believes they’re close enough that she'll share with him what’s going on

He didnt question it when she told him "its ok Todoroki san, we can stop researching"

"Did you figure it out?"

"Yes. Its nothing to be concerned about anymore"

He doesnt question it when he notices her in the morning at breakfast,,, the little speckles of star dust glimmering at the corner of her eyes

And he doesnt question himself either when he starts to think the twinkling tears she cries when she thinks she is alone,, makes her look really beautiful

Its those some odd moments when he passes the classrooms on the way back to the dorms at sunset that he sees her alone by the window,, looking out,, as the sun paints the sky reds pinks yellows and oranges,,, that she stares out and star tears fall from her eyes, twinkling in the setting light

And he thinks to himself that she is really beautiful,, a shadow against the setting sun

So he watches and thinks some more

That shes beautiful even without the sunset. Beautiful in class answering the hardest question. Beautiful in battle when her tactics win over her opponent. Beautiful studying when he notices her little motions when shes concentrating.

But while Todo thinks that to himself, Momo cries. Little star tears in her eyes.

She cant see the sunset anymore.

.

.

.

He doesnt think its serious when she tells him to disregard the matter

But when he happens to run into her when visiting his mom at the hospital, and she’s on her way out from the optometry & ophthamology department to get this whole eye thing checked out, thats when he realizes

Oh. This is serious.

And he starts trying to get her to talk but she’s being all avoidy and tight lipped

Cuz from Momo’s doctors’ appointment, the doc told her there’s no cure unless she gets over the feelings herself or her feelings are returned

And really now, she still thinks its her burden to bare not his

So logically the only thing she thinks she can do to slow down the blindness from the tears is to shut down her feelings for him. Put them in a box. And become cold.

Todoroki hates that.

That she’s being avoidant and cold when he knows something is wrong and wants to help her but she is being so not Momo anymore

He wants the kind, loving, selfless, pure hearted, strong Momo he's grown to learn and respect and know back

And that’s when he realizes he really cares for her

Not just admiring her beauty. Or respecting her battle instincts and leadership

That he realizes he really likes her

Perhaps even loves her.

So thats that.

Until its mission time.

Cuz its not angst until someone gets hurt and the other realizes they’ve been keeping a secret all this time sooooooooo

Smth smth UA kids vs a new baddie or minor villian or idk it could be dabi for all i want bc i put dabi in everything lmaooo

But who they’re fighting is not important

The important part is tdmm are on the same team

Maybe deployed as partners even

And theyre fighting back to back against some grunts

And at this point Todo is frustrated he’s not getting through to Momo just after he shook his own world realizing he likes her

And Momo's being all cold but civil and she is completely colour blind.

Theres no undoing the damage in her eyes. She can see in muted muddy tones and grayscale.

So for plot convenience lets say the villain has some kinda colour distortion quirk that mixes up the perception of colour from the true colour in a form of illusion or smth idk

So when the grunts in all black uniform end up attacking them, to Todo and Momo, one looks dressed in red, another in green, others in blues yellows purples

tdmm do pretty well fending them off until Todo notices 3 of them in blue green and purple about to attack Momo at once

And she’s ready to fend them off but doesnt notice a 4th one in red coming in for a swift sneak atttack right behind the green one

But Todo does notice

And he shouts

"YAOYOROZU THE RED ONE"

But she cant tell

And the knife lands deep in her shoulder

And Todo burns the rest to a crisp

You can imagine what the conversation is in the aftermath, when Momo has her shoulder bandaged up and Todo tending his own wounds

"Yaoyorozu.. please be honest with me. Why didnt you avoid the red one when I shouted?"

Because, he knows, that the heroine Creati he's trained along side with for so long would have been able to anticipate the grunts assault

That she would have expected a sneak attack amidst a simultaneous attack

But the fact that she didnt. Couldnt. Avoid it definitely means shes been handicapped

And Momo, upon being asked, hurt and tired from their battle finally relents

She cant lie to him any longer.

"It was because... i couldnt tell. I couldnt distinguish their colours. I havent been able to for a few weeks now.... I've..."

A star tear falls from her eyes.

"I've lost my colour vision Todoroki-san"

Tiny galaxies fall from her eyes as she finally explains to him what these tears are

And Todo is speechless as she talks, only able to hear the twinkles against her words broken against sniffles and hiccups

And when sh’es said all she knows - that this is a disease that will turn her blind, that there is no cure and it comes as a consequence of loving someone who doesnt love you back, that she doesnt want to burden the person she loves with her responsibility, that she has been trying bury her feelings to save herself ...

He finally asks: "Who is it.  Tell me who it is that you love Yaoyorozu"

.

.

.

.

"You. Its you Todoroki-san"

And his heart broke.

He pulls her into a hug,, so tight she thinks she might be crushed

And its his turn to cry against her

Because all this time she was doing this for him

"Im sorry Momo. Im so sorry. You dont have to suffer alone anymore. Because we're partners, long before I even realized it"

"Eh?"

He looks into her eyes, unwavering

"Im in love you too."

The tears that fall from her next are no long starlight.

Epilogue/trivia:

Momo loses her colour vision following the colour wheel starting with green ➡ yellow, orange, red, etc until blue is last to go

Shes most heartbroken about losing red and blue cuz those are the colours she associates with Todo (when she cant see the sunset anymore its when she realizes she lost red and that’s why she’s crying)

Since the damage of the disease cant be restored, she has to deal with greyscale vision for some years

Eventually Eri rewinds it for her once Eri can control her power

but for those some years Momo is so busy!! cuz she goes into genius mode and starts creating (and probably working with Hatsume) vision impairment accessibility tools? Yes

and bc I have an unhealthy obsession with the todofam, Natsuo probably ends up getting a case of the disease for some odd reason if he ever broke up with his gf and Todo upon hearing it is like NO GO TELL HER PLS

He’s not gonna let anyone else on the other end feel the guilt that he did for Momo

> archives masterpost

#todomomo #todoroki shouto #momo yaoyorozu #tdmm star tear au #ruiyukis unfinished aus #sorry not sorry #for spamming the tag #this ones my baby #im so attached to it #much like tdmm learning to love #angst with a happy ending #oops heres a bandaid for your heart

[irregulardiaryposts]

00:53 21/06/2021

Hello again <3

so i think im gonna write about my mental health today because i dont feel like i have anyone who understands fully apart from myself maybe so i need to Organise my Thoughts. as a kid i had a pretty normal childhood, a mum a dad and a brother - pretty nuclear right. but as a child i felt like my family maybe wasnt quite right, that this wasnt supposed to be what family is? perhaps. - i was scared of my mum a lot because she wasnt very understanding of me - and i was a great kid, never getting into trouble, very good at school, no issues whatsover. the thing that really shows how i thought of my relationship with my mum was when i was like maybe 8 or so having a parents night and at it my teacher had nothing bad to say apart from i was kinda bossy in group settings (im sure i dont need to explain how misogynistic that actually is- i was not bossy i was a natural leader) and when i got home my mum told me off for that and i felt like she was kinda cold to me and not taking all the good things about me into consideration when telling me off for that.

i feel like thats a really defining moment in my life when i realised i cant expect adults to Understand me, realised how people treat young girls, also started my defiant behaviour maybe or was kinda one of the key moments that made me dislike certain authorities in my life, that if people wont understand me regardless of how i explain myself then i wont bother trying to be understood by people who wont matter to me. anyway yes i was scared of my mum-like petrified sometimes- but my dad wasnt great either, he also had his shortcomings. i feel like he never really cared about me like he was kinda apathetic towards raising me like a parent - i feel he would be better suited as an uncle to someone rather than a dad - the funny childish guy that makes kids laugh -not the uncaring dad that cant be bothered to really learn about his kids. and i feel im sitting here complaining about my parents when the fact is that a lot of adults should never be parents, society has conditioned people into thinking the only way to be fulfilled in life is to live vicariously through your kids when life gets to such a boring and monotonous place where you feel the need to create a new life to spice things up lmao. i feel a lot of parents regret having kids but they cannot express that regret because it was their choice and they should deal with that, also saying you regret it would be pretty horrible to the kid.

so while yes i am complaing about my parents i dont think they were Bad in any way just not that great yaknow. also i just notice all these things growing up and i feel its been pretty impactful to understanding myself and my parents. also just some anecdotes from my childhood - i used to watch my dad play video games like the uncharted games i think theyre called, and whenever i got scared i used to hide behind the couch until the scary part was over (usually a lot of guns and high energy fight scenes thats too much adrenaline for a 7 yo) and sometimes when i would take out my dad/brothers game i would get them to fo the hard parts and do other stuff myself - i dont remember many games i played apart from one of the spidermen games where u could just web around the city and not progress apart from sometimes you would come across some strippers and i accidently got into a fight with them (also hot women with umbrellas they use to fight- maybe i went near them on purpose) i would yell to my dad and get him to do it for me. also on new years eve whenever my mum was working and we werent going to any family parties we would make a bunch of food and put it out in the kitchen - wed make like homemade onion rings, chips, have crisps and dips, and a bunch of junk basically and watch like austin powers or some shit and genuinely miss those times they were so simple. but a lot of thats tainted now from what happened. also my brothers always been annoying as shit but when we were kids we couldnt be in the same room without arguing which like whatever thats how kids are esp brothers and sisters for some reason.

i think thats majority of the background needed for the rest. wait this is a little addition but i meant to mention this here so ill put it in- basically sometimes on holidays i would geniunely think my parents hate each other/ were getting a divorce like once when we were in florida in 2012 my dad convinced my mum (as well as me and my brother convinced her since we liked them) we convinced her to go on a water slide thing that u had to walk up the stairs for, it was outdoors, and it was kinda tall and then we got in one of the big donut things and it swooshed from side to side a lot and was generally pretty scary i suppose for someone who doesnt like rides esp since you had to hold on to the handles there were no buckles or anything, and so when we got off the ride my mum was big mad at my dad and like wouldnt talk to him and stuff like that which was pretty uncomfortable to have to be the 8 year old mediator of that but there was also another occasion i think (maybe also at florida) where they were made at each other and i asked my mum if they were getting divorced and all she said was 'ask ur dad' like???? no sort of consolation to this child who thinks their parents hate each other nooo just petty 'ask him' and theres also been other times when they fight/ are mad and they dont feel the need to hide it from us so i felt quite anxious around my parents sometimes.

so ahnyway . yes. when i had just turned 13 my parents split up and it fucked me up in a multitude of ways. also i cant beleive i stopped being a proper kid at 13, like as soon as i turned a teenager life hit me like a fucking truck. so the context as to why they split is still kinda lost to me ngl but they didnt tell me much anyway since i was young but my mum basically said my dad didnt love her anymore and he wanted to separate. its kinda funny because leading up to this my dad had been sleeping in the living room for like a few weeks and there was on and off fighting i could hear and i basically thought they were fighting over me and that i was in trouble and it kinda used to keep me up coz i could hear loud voices when they thought i was asleep- which is probably the cause of why i get veryyyy mad and angry when i hear my mum at like 1 am downstairs when shes drinking and im trying to sleep, probably something ive internalised (is that the word?) and made me respond so strongly to those type of noises.

anywayyyyy yes i thought i was in trouble when they were actually just getting a divorce so ... yeah you can really tell i was young and didnt understand adult issues or really couldnt figure this out myself from all the arguing and him sleeping downstairs lmao. anyway my dad moved out and it was just me my mum and my brother now and at this point my brother wouldve been about to turn 18, so although still kinda shit, not really as affected my it as a 13 yo, just to keep in mind. so i was devastated obviously and my whole world was kinda shattered but i had to hold it together a bit, also i was sometimes my mothers own therapist having to say things like 'everything happens for a reason' 'itll get better' in response to her deteriorating mental health and her questions that would be really hard for me to answer like 'why did he leave' etc (bish im a child be there for me not wallow in ur own pity, u have ur whole life to sort this out youre an adult, im a 13 you and only months away from wanting to kms hun think of ur CHILD please) anyway this left me feeling like a burden if i were to share my mental state because when my mum shared her stuff she was burdening me (AGAIN i was 13 she is an adult) so that made me bottle a lot of things up also the fact that i had no one to share it with because she works as a nurse and now shes a single mother and so she works almost all hours of most days and i dont see her much, my brother was either working at this time or just didnt give enough of a shit about me to make sure i ate.

i went from being catered to for every meal because i didnt know how to cook to suddenly no one being there for me so i had to learn how to do it myself. needless to say that lead to a bunch of unhealthy eating habbits like eating the same things every day - frozen pizza, cheese toasties, i cant think of anything else probs because i didnt make anything else just ate chocolates or didnt eat breakfast coz i woke up at 2pm. just general unhealthyness both in substance and like how healthy that was for my head yk. also this is during the summer btw so it gave me the option to be incredibly depressed - im not saying that as an edgy teen thing to say im being 100% genuine i was very depressed like textbook style - not eating or overeating, not showering/ taking care of myself, extreme lack of energy and hated doing social things coz i had to put on a farce that i was okay meanwhile i couldnt wait to get into my bed and sleep the next day and a half away.

i very vividly remember at the start of the summer holiday my friend asked me if i wanted to go out and do something and i rememeber just crying at that because i had no reason to say no but i just didnt want to and felt like i couldnt do anything and so i lied and said i wasnt feeling well and then put my phone down and curled up in my bed and cried coz i was frustrated and upset and i couldnt really understand what was wrong with me and why i was Like This.

god i didnt take into account how tired i was and how late it is when i started this huh, this isnt even half of it, but i have obligations in the mornign, the last until uni or whatever so ill put this in my drafts and finsih it somethime. alrigtht it is 02:08 btw z_z. also ive just now decided im gonna re organise my tumblr so if this ends up being an actual blog thing i can navigate it easier by adding tags and such. anywau goodnight.

20:21 30/06/2021

MOTHERFOIUHIFIUDVMKCVKM V

MY LAPTOP SHUT DOWE IN THE MIDDLE OF THSAT SO ITS ALL GONE BASICALLY I WAS DEPRESSED BURTNOUT GIFTERD KID AND IT SUCKED YADDa YADDSZ ANYTWAY

so

23:01- well. yes earlier i wrote a little about the ages 13-16 and how they sucked but whatever it got deleted the more pertinent stuff happened in the last year or so anyway.

um yeah so i started the last year of highschool as a 16 year old with a fucked up brain and never having learned any study techniques or work ethic in the slightest. i took 3 uni-level courses only one i actually wanted to do, most people take 2 at most or even 1/0 but do other classes. honestly it fucking sucked this year for school but i scraped all passes so thank god for that. so i started the year quite optimistic, or as much as i could be and in all fairness the content of this year wasnt actually that bad considering i was doing 3 hard classes but corona really truly fucked everything up and by November i had mentally dropped out of my classes but of course i still had to go to them. i feel like im an oddly independent teen because ive never had a solid parental presence in a while, like i had to do a lot for myself and maybe i should thank myself for getting me through it all because i really did pull through.

my thoughts keep drifting from what im writing coz i wanna talk about different things and im just thinking maybe i shouldve just posted the last one then added a reblog when i could be bothered to write and not force myself because if theres ever a reoccurring theme in my life is that if i force myself to do anything i will hate it with my entire being, so maybe i should just do a short synopsis and write about something else afterwards.

so i took 3 hard classes, slowly lost all motivation because in jan it switches to online classes and i could Not deal with those it was horrible, and i became more of a "troublesome student" in one of my classes *cough* maths *cough* and almost got "kicked out" of taking the class just because the teacher was a control freak but like wanted to control all of our actions and behaviour, also i think i may have adhd and another kid in my class i think he does too and surprise surprise the teacher "dislikes" him too but its only a farce because he doesnt actually dislike him its only so that i cant call him out for singling me out when other students behave "badly" too. but anyways maybe ill come back to this in a while when i can be arsed explaining my complicated relationship with my parents.

the only reason i wanted to write this today was so that i could tag the post with like june 2021 or something and not june/july, but i might make another post later, Anyway happy end of pride month i supose, hope u figure it out me!

#why does tumblr break up the paragraphs like this #there isnt supposed to be paragraphs #maybe i should change that #anyway off to fix all my post so far and tag the all like -> #june 2021 entry #2021 the year of fun

[dwestfieldblog]

THOSE WHO DO NOT WANT TO HEAR MUST FEEL

This temporary apocalypse could be seen as a globally overdue Long Night of the Soul, an initiation of sorts which might result in a deeper understanding of what actually matters for human evolution (despite the very best efforts of the scum who are trying to reverse any spiritual progress because it weakens their hold.) There are several ways in which the negative side could truly take over, starting with the horror nightmare prospect of DT (aka ‘Just Another Scumbag’ as Bannon once called him) re ‘elected’. The realistic pessimist in me is sure that if he wins, this planet in this dimension is finished. His winning will be a final signal to the world to give us up. In my lifetime, we have never been so close to the mass breakout of totalitarianism and utter lack of empathy than we are now. Actual fascist populists, not some wet Liberal bleating but the real thing, ready to go live. Covid has bankrupted hundreds of thousands of businesses, millions have lost their jobs, migration from the truly poor and dangerous countries continues...into the becoming poor and dangerous countries. Those who live there and are already ruined by the disasters in every home will be easy prey for the populists. Speaking of whom...

Steve Bannon has spent a great deal of time and other people’s money in setting up a network to overthrow the (arf arf arf) ‘deep state’ and replace it with... a new deeper state...still run by the rich, who will use the populists, who in turn will use the mass of the angry and frightened...etc etc...And power, as most people recognise it, will stay in the hands of the unhuman swine with the most gold and the least soul. WER NICHT HOREN WILL, MUSS FUHLEN...

‘...the human nervous system properly programmed, can edit and orchestrate all experience into any gestalt it wishes. We encounter the same dismal and depressing experiences over and over again because they are repeating tape loops in the central programmer of our brains. We can encounter ecstasy over and over by learning the neurosciences that orchestrate all in coming signals into ecstatic tape loops.’ R.A.Wilson. Prometheus Rising, Hilaritas Press.

It takes a lot of effort and Will to do this but what else is worth it other than to attempt to break out of the vicious cycle and evolve? Even I have managed this when I focus on choosing it. Giving up ingrained behavioural habits often hurts; this is, however, a choice. It doesn’t have to unless you are a masochist.

Flew to England for three weeks in August, full flight sold out, all of us wore masks (apart from one 6 foot 6 mad eyed American who kept pacing up and down the cabin.) Right up to the point where we were all given a bottle of water, some crisps and two biscuits...All masks off at the same time, all passengers attempting not to breathe while we drank and ate. Love seeing how many in both countries wear masks under their nose or even only on their chin. As Bill Hicks would say ‘Any questions why we’re f.....d up as a race?’ As Jonathan Pie does say; ‘Put a f...... mask on.’ I have been coughing since February, and drinking heavily, so not especially optimistic about getting C19.

I avoided almost all of the news while in UK, watched five minutes in total on the TV and only read headlines in the paper. It was enough. Since I have been back in Prague I have continued to avoid the news other than that which I am told by friends and students but I can tell from daily receiving over one hundred emails that things are truly breaking. Hexagram 23 and total Weltschmerz is upon us. Mental health is twisting up globally. One by one, all my friends are suffering serious damage, one way or another. Hearts are breaking apart and many damnable souls, who should be burning, are not. People are afraid to breathe or to embrace, looking to the very worst set of leaders in my lifetime for answers and being manipulated en masse to mass crises.  

(Jaz Coleman....On the Day the Earth went Mad...watch the video, listen. Feel. Weep. Rage. Change.) QUI NOLERUNT AUDIRE DEBERE SENTIRE.

Love the interviews I saw with those who voted for Trump and realised they made a mistake...after FOUR YEARS. What clued them in? Which particular excremental atrocity of his foulness gave them the alert? Will the Electoral College let him ‘win’? Before I left, I saw the Trump interview where he said ‘It is what it is’, with regard to the massive number of deaths in the USA. ‘We are below the world’. Blood pressure rising, I even checked his Twitter account where he published two letters, one from the eternally unlovely NRA and the other from the American Police Federation, assuring him he was the best president to ever serve their interest and they would back him to the hilt. His plan to stir the US up into open civil war continues and Putin sits back and smiles. As does Jared it seems, the smug sadist advisor in the same style as (England’s off Broadway Trump) Boris’s Dominic Cummings.  Herd Immunity? Well yes it might work at some point after a few years and millions dead. You evil alien bastards. The  main individuals in the British Government will make millions from a no deal Brexit, perfect timing. The country will die.

The newest PC bullshit has got even the wonderful JK Rowling into trouble just for speaking her mind politely about transgender issues. I love PC... it is how dumb useless Liberals can act out their secret fascist impulses and feel hard of c..k and wet of p...y...feel good to be so righteous... same with overly ill humoured religious folk,  but the PC tribe cannot use God to justify anything so they are a bit weaker...You morons... ‘People who menstruate’, People with a cervix’? PEOPLE? Really? Women is a bad word is it? Too specific? (Well it has the word men in it, so seems almost inclusive.) You bastards are annihilating language; raping semantics...get another hobby you ridiculous cretins. (Be sure the populists well understand how to manipulate such fools.)

Extinction Rebellion is being used (among a multitude of other groups in other countries, hello Black Lives Matter) by the Kremlin to stir up shite, they are mostly well meaning on the road to Hell. Stop being so dumb and stop helping those who are against you at home and abroad. Dogmatic faith leads to mistrust, violence and hatred, says the lone derranger...And as for the absurd Q Anon, it is those who seek a Deeper State who are using you to do it. Well done.

Jacob Blake, shot seven (count them) times in the back by police even though charged with no crime and paralysed was handcuffed to hospital bed. That goofy twat of a 17 yr boy who wanted to be a policeman, shooting at blacks because he believed he had carte blanc (arf) from Trump to defend his country against ‘terrorists’...he will probably escape much punishment because... he was bullied at school...WHO WASNT?? The only people who weren’t were bullied at home. Guns ‘open carry’ in various states as the NRA rejoice in what they encourage. ‘Your first amendment means I can say your second amendment sucks d...s’. JimJeffries. Damn straight. By the time even I was 17, I had grown out of wanting to kill half the world. Wannabe cops are a little slower. 

Everything is the new normal. Too late for a mid life crisis unless I die at 108 but I never forget that statistically there is more chance of being killed by death than anything else. ‘Heres to my love! O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.’ Walking... see three funeral services shops in the road leading to/away from the hospital, clever businessmen...walking...masks off, between two conveniently placed flower shops and smoking outside the fuming crematorium in black suits and highly polished shoes. Waiting. That’s us.

I MISS YOU MARLENE. I MISS YOU MARLENE. I MISS YOU MARLENE. Nice headline seen on US newspaper...‘Can any good from cyberstalking your online crush?’I wondered that after falling in fascination with a woman in Germany who wrote like a poet and wove a spell of stories to charm and beguile. I would have walked from London to Hamburg to see if she was real. Everyone expresses love and the need for it in different ways. Reprogramming a deeply imprinted circuit is usually uncomfortable and so it proved for both of us. We shall see...if there is time. ‘One of us is crazy and the other one’s insane’

I can remember one of the days I Changed (seven years old?) We had a history lesson and were told about English kings and their ‘Divine Right’ to rule. Because God told them. And they told the people. And the people believed them. I remember the light in the classroom, where I was sitting, the smell of the tables, old unused ink wells, pencil shavings... and just thinking whatever a child’s version of F..K OFF...THATS BULLSHIT ISNT IT? would have been. That was the first moment I started questioning the class system, gullibility and bastards. A couple of years later, the absolute freedom of being, sent to collect the class register, walking down the empty corridors and not in the classroom...a beautiful feeling of being OUTSIDE. Free. Two of many experiences which have never left me. (The Angel Choir, the Rituals, the EYE across the Multiverse dream, the Reconnection...) Even if Freedom turns out to be as much of an illusion as everything else, it is still as beautifully sensual to me as music.

One summer night in 1990 after my 3rd breakdown, I had a dream. I think. Bear (or even bare) with me on this, I know how this sounds but it is only reporting what I saw in my mind. Two Aliens, thin and shadow like, came though my open bedroom door in the night (I could see the silhouettes) and one took a long shiny silver needle like a hypodermic for a horse and stood behind me and pushed the needle in through the top and centre of my skull, penetrating my brain. I FELT it slowly being pushed in, it hurt but I was paralysed. There was no voice but I heard (try not to laugh) ‘So now you have Superintelligence’. They moved out, the door closed, I slept. As usual with me, I remember every single dream I have ever remembered as if they were films I have watched over and over...and after a dream, the atmosphere stays with me for 23 whores. Later that day, I picked a big hardback book to find some info on something (A Cyclopaedia) with pages as thin as a bible. I sat almost motionless and without food for eight hours, DEVOURING every subject in it. Economics, geometry, geopolitical events, medicine, beliefs, systems.....the next day I finished ninety percent of it and went on to read books by five philosophers from second hand shops, started watching insects, stopped swearing, worked out, and read and read and read. All the knowledge I hadn’t cared about in school and college I picked up that one summer. It led to making new friends, new possibilities, new work, new love and led me to fly to Prague in this sequence while continuing to practice many ‘New age’ techniques by a writer called Stuart Wilde. They all worked and I continued...with regular fallings and breakthroughs.

‘Religion was invented when the first scoundrel met the first fool’. Faith is believing what you know not be true’. The seeker finds a belief and stops thinking for themselves...‘Every ideology is a mental murder, a reduction of dynamic living processes to static classifications, and every classification is a Damnation, just as every inclusion is an exclusion.’RAW

I had a four hour conversation with a Christian bloke, thirty, intelligent, believes in Satan as an actual being with horns. Etc. He couldn’t quite see any flaw in saying that any prophet who saw angels, white light and heard the voice of God, healed, etc but was not actually Christ, was only being tempted and used by the devil. He told me to watch the beautiful side of evil...

‘Every act of authority is, in fact, an invasion of the psychic and physical territory of another’. Human progress ‘is the concrete manifestation of some person’s refusal to bow to Authority.’  

‘WE GOT ELECTED ON DRAIN THE SWAMP, LOCK HER UP, BUILD THE WALL. THIS WAS PURE ANGER. ANGER AND FEAR IS WHAT GETS PEOPLE TO THE POLLS. THE DEMOCRATS DON'T MATTER, THE REAL OPPOSITION IS THE MEDIA, and the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.’ Said Bannon, who also said. ‘Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. Thats power.’ Has he met Putin yet? Is he also on speed dial along with Boris and Trump? People! Create better leaders. NOW.

Happy birthday Aleister Crowley on the 12th October and Happy Halloween to all readers, stay healthy and sane (arf) Remember you are magick...buy the re-release of Musick to Play in the Dark by COIL and become moonlight... And those in America, if you actually do truly believe in a good God...go and vote and remove that evil ego and his cohorts in the White House with absolute overwhelming victory or we are done in this lifetime. Be healthy.

LOVE!!!

[trendingnewsb]

Dr. Daves Field Guide to Bad Cocktails

If the idea of sitting in a dark, elegant bar, lapping at a small, icy pool whose waters have a way of smoothing the furrows in your brow and oiling the trunnions of your tongue appeals to you, then as dark as these times may be there is at least one recompense. It is now possible to get a perfect cocktail, or close enough, in every city in America. Ten years ago, it was not. That is a positive good, then, and sometimes a very positive one indeed.

But it doesnt always go that way, though, does it? You do your part OKgetting to the bar, finding a seat, putting your damn phone away, ordering a drink, looking expectantand the bartender does a stylish job of picking bottles, measuring and mixing, and pours your drink into a steaming-cold glass with a precise, crisp flourish. Then you take a sip. Oh no. The drinks list billed this Transitive Nightfall of Diamonds as a subtly-accented take on the classic Dry Martini. What you got instead is potpourri-tasting gin, cilantro-infused vermouth and aggressive splashes of bitter gentian aperitif and crme de violette, with a huge swatch of bergamot peel squeezed over the top. It smells like Victorian hand soap. It tastes like Victorian hand soap. It costs $15, before tip.

The expansion of the Cocktail Renaissance (as its aficionados have come to call it) from a few bars in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and a couple of other places to hundredswho knows, thousands?of bars practically everywhere has depended on a concurrent expansion in the amount of bartending and mixological talent and knowledge. But good bartending has expanded not as air does when filling a balloon, where theres an equal amount of it in every part, but more like how Legos fill a hallway when, on your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, you kick over the huge tub of them your kid left out. Although it doesnt happen with every step, every part of the hall holds the danger of putting your foot down on something fun that has turned diabolical.

What I mean to say is, not all tattooed young bartenders are the modern-day Jerry Thomases they think they are, and not every cocktail they make is the nectareous, brow-smoothing trunnion oil you hope for when you order it. Some, alas, are just plain bad.

The badness of many modern cocktails has been discussed widely and often, and by discussed I mean ranted about. Its easy to go off on the excesses of eager young mixologists who apparently watch too much Adventure Time and let its deadpan randomness infect the drinks they come up withlamb-fat washed rye-corn-barley eau de vie, citrus colloid, Indonesian palm sugar and brick dust, finished with a beet-Malibu foam; like that. What we need, however, is not more rants, as fun as they might be, but some basic science.

Before we can solve the problem of bad cocktails, we need to know the different ways a cocktail can go bad. We need a botany, a zoology, a classification. Every creeping thing that slideth over the bar must be known by his kind, that thou mayst order him no more. (I think it said that in the Bible somewhere, although I might be getting some of the words mixed up.)

Thats not a simple task. At first glance, it seems like cocktails follow Dostoyevskys happy-family rule; that the good ones are more or less all alike, or at least fall into a handful of common patterns (bitters-sugar-booze; bitters-vermouth-booze; sugar-citrus-booze, etc), and the bad ones are each awful in its own peculiar way.

Upon soberish reflection, though, one can identify two main realms of error, each with its inevitable subdivisions. The Strategic and the Tactical. Here, then, is a subjective, preliminary and open-ended attempt to sketch out the different ways mixed drinks can go bad. In this, Ive left out the main one, statistically speaking, which is the old Garbage In-Garbage Out: shoddy, artificial ingredients mixed sloppily together will rarely yield anything drinkable. Fortunately, most modern cocktail bars are out of that phase, at least. These, then, are higher-order errors, the kind you can make with booze that costs more than $20 a bottle and mixers that dont come out of a gun or a #5 can.

But before I get into the details, let me just say that as a mixologist Ive made drinks that fall into just about every one of the following categories and foisted them on the general public, whether at bars Ive consulted for, at charity events, at parties, during my occasional bartending shifts, or via the printed or pixelated word. I write, in other words, from inside the House of Bad. Its partly from making so many wrong drinks that Ive learned to make the occasional right one. Bearing that in mind, Im going to give examples here, some of mine, God help me, but many drawn from actual bars, lightly disguised (the purpose of this isnt to assign individual guilt, of which there is plenty to go around).

STRATEGIC ERRORS

Drinks with strategic errors will never be right because theyre wrong from the get-go; not even an Audrey Saunders, a Jim Meehan or an Alex Kratena, some of the top bartenders out there, could make them taste good without major surgery to the recipe. Here are a few of the most common mistakes.

Historical Errors

Warning signs: David Emburys recipe

Bad drinks, like disease, have always been with us. Some of them have interesting backstories. That does not mean they should be revived. Some of the most respected mixologists from the past, including Charles H. Baker, Jr., author of the legendary, and damned amusing, Gentlemans Companions, and particularly David Embury, the great theorist of mixing drinks, did not know how to balance a cocktail. Even the great 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book has far more wretched drinks in it than brilliant ones. Some whole periodsthe shockingly booze-forward 1950s; the sweet and sticky 70sare largely devoid of good drinks (the 70s ones, for instance, tend to require major surgery to make them drinkable, such as Jeffrey Morgenthalers addition of 125-proof Bookers Bourbon to the Amaretto Sour). You fish in these waters at your peril.

I learned this lesson back in 2005, when I was asked to provide an opening cocktail for a dinner featuring a few of New Yorks top French chefs, including Jacques Ppin and Andr Soltner, two of my culinary idols. I chose the Henri Souls Special, a drink recorded in Ted Sauciers 1951 drinks compendium Bottoms Up. Soul was the formidable presence behind Le Pavillon, New Yorks leading French restaurant in the 1940s and 1950s, and since Ppin had gotten his start in the city there I thought it would be an appropriate tribute.

Here, however, was the drink: 2.5 ounces Cognac, 1 teaspoon sugar, half a teaspoon lemon juice and two pieces of orange peel, shaken with ice and strained into a cocktail glass. OK, perhaps a trifle strong, I thought, but that was how they liked em then. That may have been true, but it was not how they liked em now: Ppin took one sip and left his on a convenient shrubbery-pot, and few people got through more than a few sips. They were right: the drink tasted like California jug wine fortified with rubbing alcohol. A good story does not fix a bad drink.

Also, see below under tactical errors.

Thematic Errors

Warning signs: garnishes fashioned to resemble known objects

A very fertile source of bad drinks is the idea that the drinks name should determine its ingredients. This can make for perfectly lovely drinkstake the Rob Roy, a Manhattan where Scotch whisky has been substituted for American ryebut it is risky, as it can lead to the choice of ingredients for reasons other than flavor and texture. A prime example is the drink I came across recently called the Indian Itch, where a few slices of the little, blisteringly-hot green Jwala pepper so common in Indian food were muddled in Indian rum, shaken with pineapple juice and a hearty pinch of curry powder (thats right, curry powder), strained into an ice-filled glass and topped with ginger ale. Yes, it conveyed the idea India. No, it did not also convey the idea drinkable.

A great deal of modern mixology flirts with this error: many modern drinks are thematic, and use unorthodox ingredients, from distilled dirt (seriously) to pigs eyeballs (again, seriously), to reinforce their themes. Are such drinks always bad? No. Should you be wary? Again, pigs eyeballs.

Volume Errors

Warning signs: bartender is either unenthusiastic or too enthusiastic at your order

By volume here I mean not the amount of liquid in the drink, but the amount of flavor. Some drinks have too little, but given the choice between, say, light, blended Irish whiskey shaken with lemon juice, simple syrup and a dash of elderflower liqueur, and Navy-strength gin, green Chartreuse, Fernet-Branca, Pimiento Bitters and rich, concentrated and sweet Pedro Ximnez sherry, Ill take the dull one. Two or three strong-flavored ingredients played against each other can work well, but with each additional one you risk the whole thing falling apart.

Unclubbable Ingredient Errors

Warning signs: herb garden behind the bar

The unclubbable ingredient is the one thing you add that refuses to get along with others, either by being loud and bullying and entirely blotting them out or by being passive-aggressive and persistent and speaking through all the silences. Smoky Scotch, Chinese baijiu, some mescals, absinthe, Fernet, and some pot-still rums all are dangerous in this way. But so are herbs, such as tarragon, chervil, and the like. They dont drown out the other flavors like the big spirits do, but they have a persistence that makes them linger when all the other flavors are gone. Thats not to say they cant be used well, just that they very often are not.

Brown Drink Errors

Warning signs: over 5 ingredients

Just as all colors, when blended, create brown, theres a flavor profile drinks tend to take on when theyve got too many ingredients. Sorta sweet, sorta bitter, sorta herbal, a little bit fruity, maybe sourish, too. Inexperienced mixologists, faced with a drink that doesnt quite work, have a tendency to keep adding ingredients until the thing tastes OK. Eventually, almost any drink, as long as it doesnt have an unclubbable ingredient, can be made to taste OK if you add enough stuff. But just mediocre isnt worth $15. For that, you want a drink that is focused; that doesnt taste like a little of this and a little of that, but rather has a point of view and a harmonious identity. The only way to get there is to strip away ingredients and start over with different ones; ones that get along well together. Knowing what those are takes experience. The older the mixologist, the fewer ingredients he or she tends to use. As the great jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge once told Dale DeGroff, dean of American bartenders, when I was younger I used to play all the notes; now, I just play the right ones.

So much for strategic errors.

TACTICAL ERRORS

Drinks with tactical errors are fundamentally sound, but something has gone wrong in their execution. Here, Im not going to bother with simple incompetencereaching for the wrong ingredient, under-stirring, pouring fruit-fly infested liquor or spoiled lime juice, serving a drink in a warm glass, things like that. Thats just bad bartending, not bad mixology.

Historical Errors

Warning signs: Imbibe, by one David Wondrich, and a collection of other history books behind the bar

Some drinks are bad because their makers have gotten hold of a piece of knowledge from the wrong end and are letting it mess them up. For example, a common error I encounter occurs with the New York Sour, a whiskey sour with a float of red wine and one of my favorite drinks. Sometimes when I order one the bartender will add egg white to the drink. Historically, some sours used egg white, but never this one. The egg white produces a layer of froth on top of the drink, which clashes with the layer of red wine also being added to it, and you end up with a drink topped with an unattractive, pinkish muck, rather than a visually-striking, thin red line. Here, history has trumped common sense.

Another historical error involving egg whites occurs when the bartender, following an old recipe, adds a whole egg white to a drink, not realizing that eggs were much smaller in 1918 than the supersized jumbo ones we get in 2018. A little egg white adds a nice texture; a lot, and youre tasting egg white. Nobody wants to taste egg white.

Arts & Crafts and Food Tech Errors

Warning signs: more than two house-made ingredients on the cocktail list, or bar uses purchased simple syrup

Its fine to make your ingredients if you can do them masterfully and theres no other way to get them. Alas, too many bars make theirs just to say that they did. I cant count the number of times Ive had an overly sour Jack Rose (apple brandy, lime juice and grenadine) because the bar makes its own grenadine from pomegranates and sugar rather than using the commercial stuff. Admittedly, the ingredients of the supermarket brands are fairly appalling, but at least theyre really sweet and brightly colored, which is why grenadine was called for in the first place. Nobody ever talked about the stuffs flavor. A good house-made grenadine will duplicate the heavy sweetness and intense red color of the commercial stuff, leaving out the high-fructose corn syrup, the artificial flavors and the dyes (okay, sometimes a little food coloring helps). A bad one, as one encounters more often than not, will be sour and brownish and will neither adequately sweeten nor color the drink. Then there are the clumpy orgeats, the gritty tonic waters, the weird-tasting bitters, the infused vermouths that no longer taste like vermouth. Homemade ingredients can be great, but they have to be great, so to speak. Nothing so-so should go in a drink, no matter who makes it.

Which brings us to the other side of the equation; the crappy commercial products that are mucking up a perfectly good drink. Otherwise-crafty bars that purchase things like simple syrup (sugar and water, mixed), lemon and lime juice and Bloody Mary mix should be avoided. Theyll charge you three times what the corner tap will for the same quality of drink, or worse.

Helping a Brother Out and Helping a Sponsor Out Errors

Warning signs: More than 10 bottles youve never heard of; no bottles youve never heard of

These are the booze versions of the Arts & Crafts/Food Tech errors. We live in an amazing time where literally hundreds of new, small distilleries are making every kind of spirit imaginable. Some of them are even good at it. Many of them, though, are not quite there yet. When I see a local gin I havent heard of being used in my Martini, I start to get very worried. The Martini is a pitiless drink, and it demands a tight, focused gin. All too many of the new brands, in an understandable move to differentiate themselves from whats already out there, employ wide ranges of non-traditional botanicals. These can make for a weird Martini. A Martini should not be weird.

The same goes for whiskey. Too many of the new brands are under-aged, which mean that Old-Fashioned will be hot and fumey and redolent of the wet-dog aroma of new-make grain spirit. Thats not what you want. On the other hand, if the bar carries only big national brands, or has the whole line of Large Producer Xs flavored vodkas or rums on display behind the bar, it might not be the place for a fine cocktail.

Glassware Errors

Warning signs: All the drinks look like a giant, translucent version of a kids cup-and-ball game

Many new cocktail bars, having expensive and elaborate ice programs, like to show off by putting as many drinks as possible in bucket glasses (basically, large whiskey glasses), each holding one huge ball or cube of ice. Thats fine for an Old-Fashioned. Its not fine, or even acceptable, for a vast range of other drinks that want to be straight up in a stemmed glass. If I have one more Last Word served to me on the rocks I swear I shall go to a mountain cave and speak no more.

We could go on with all this, and perhaps in the future we shall. In the meanwhile, be warned and drink well.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/dr-daves-field-guide-to-bad-cocktails

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2sPnBLC via Viral News HQ

#IFTTT #Viral News HQ

[tuthillscopes-blog]

Genius by numbers: why Hollywood maths movies don't add up

check it out @ https://tuthillscopes.com/genius-by-numbers-why-hollywood-maths-movies-dont-add-up/

Genius by numbers: why Hollywood maths movies don't add up

From The Beautiful Mind towards the Theory of all things anf the husband Who Understood Infinity, Hollywood loves a math wizzard. Why cant it get past the fevered prodigy scribbling equations on home windows?

In the Tina Fey sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, wealthy Manhattanite Jacqueline Vorhees wails to her assistant that they cant manage to get divorced. Despite the fact that shed get $1m for each year of her marriage.

I spend 100 grand per month. Ill be broke in ten years, she wails. No, thats wrong, counters Kimmy (Ellie Kemper), who scribbles some sums having a marker on Mrs Vorheess window. So $100,000 occasions 12 several weeks. Thats $1.2m annually. Divide that into $12m, you will find, youd be broke in ten years. However if you simply invest a lot of it, presuming a 7% rate of return, while using compound interest formula, your hard earned money would almost double.

Kimmy turns round triumphantly: Mrs Voorhees, I mathed, and you may get divorced! Mrs Vorhees eyes Kimmy narrowly. Individuals aren’t, she complains, erasable markers. What she doesnt mention is the fact that math isnt a verb. Not.

The scene is, amongst other things, Feys satire from the Hollywood cliche of genius squiggling on glass. In A Beautiful Mind (2001), for example, Russell Crowe, playing troubled maths star John Forbes Nash Jr, writes formulae on his dorm window. This scene is echoed in The Social Network (2010), where Andrew Garfield sets the equations for Facebooks business design on the Harvard window while Jesse Eisenbergs Mark Zuckerberg looks on. Within the opening scene of excellent Will Hunting (1997), janitor prodigy Matt Damon writes equations on the bathroom mirror.

So why do a lot of Hollywood maths whizzes forego paper? Stanford mathematician Keith Devlin explains. Depicting a math wizzard scribbling formulas on the piece of paper is much more accurate, however it certainly doesnt convey the look of the person amorously involved with mathematics, along with seeing someone write individuals formulas in steam on the mirror or perhaps in wax on the window, neither is it as being cinematographically dramatic.

Good point. Whenever we see a Beautiful Mind and appear with the window at our Russ, Hollywoods most built math wizzard (counterexamples on postcards, please show your workings), we pass beyond incomprehensive equations and convince ourselves were seeing Genius at the office. Even when, as some critics have complained uncharitably, Russs pi glyphs, greater-than and fewer-than symbols and the like dont seem sensible.

But theres one other way maths movies can confound the Monotony Equation, namely by departing a black hole in which the maths ought to be. The Man Who Knew Infinity, the brand new film starring Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons concerning the great Indian math wizzard Srinivasa Ramanujan, is intriguing in this way. Although we have seen Ramanujan doing maths, mostly the show has an interest in other activities how he falls deeply in love with his wife, the discomfort of separation as he travels from Madras to review at Cambridge, the racism he suffers in England and, most stirringly, the narrative arc from lowly clerk to globally recognised math wizzard.

IMG 2 TT

Hollywoods most built mathematician Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. Photograph: Universal Studios

That said, the film has its charming moments. When Hardy visits Ramanujan in a nursing home, he complains about the boring number of the cab that brought him there. Ramanujan begs to differ: 1,729 is the smallest that is expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. Today 1,729 is known as the Hardy-Ramanujan number. How does that work, you may be wondering? Like this: 1729 = 13 + 123 = 93 + 103.

Ramanujans mentor GH Hardy (Irons) is an atheist and rationalist, exasperated that this Indian prodigy cannot produce proofs for his work and, worse, is doubtful that proofs can explain the inexplicable. You wanted to know how I get my ideas, says Ramanujan. God speaks to me. But while the film may sketch two different mathematical philosophies, we leave the cinema with a warm glow that comes from anything but hard thinking.

If you want to learn some more about Ramanujans contribution to mathematics, rent High School Musical. Freeze-frame it at the moment brainy Gabriella Montez challenges her teacher. On the board are two of the equations of the inverse of the constant pi (1/) that Ramanujan offered in his first paper published in England. Shouldnt the second equation read 16 over pi? asks Gabriella. Of course it should.

Cinema often struggles with dramatising difficult ideas, particularly if they are abstract. One way of overcoming that problem is by metaphorical explanation. For instance, in Nicholas Roegs Insignificance (1985), a Marilyn Monroe-like character demonstrates relativity using toy trains and flashing lights. In The Theory of Everything, Jane Hawking uses a pea and a potato to explain the difference between quantum theory and general relativity, while her husbands friends explain Hawking Radiation with beers and crisps.

Movie explanations of difficult stuff, though, may obscure rather than enlighten. Whats more, some directors know this and have fun pointing out the shortcomings of their medium and those of their audiences. In Adam McKays The Big Short (2016), for example, Margot Robbie sits inside a tub sipping champagne and describing how sub-prime loans work. Her explanation is doubtless coherent, however when Im searching in a beautiful lady inside a bubble bath, I am not considering credit default swaps. So sue me. Later within the film, chef Anthony Bourdain chops fish in the kitchen while describing how collateralised debt obligations work. Finally, Selena Gomez plays roulette as one example of the thought of gambling on other bands gambles.

Each scene works as a parody of explanation. They are members of a movie that mocks you, you poor jerk, as well as your intellectual aspirations. You are not ever likely to know how difficult stuff works from watching movies, however much youd prefer to.

Sometimes, though, cinema can provide a genuine understanding of the intellectual process. In Agora (2009), Rachel Weisz as ancient philosopher Hypatia does a test on the shipped to test relative motion. If, she hypothesises, you drop huge sack in the mast as the ship is continuing to move forward, it’ll fall around the deck several ft behind the mast. The sack is dropped and falls much nearer to the mast than she predicted. Hypatia claps her hands in delight. However, you were wrong! states the ships captain. Yes, but it’s definitive proof! The sack behaves as though the boat were stationary.

What am i saying?

I do not know. However the identical principle could be relevant to our planet. It may be getting around the sun’s rays without us realising.

Hypatia, in other words, infers an innovative heliocentric cosmology from her falsified hypothesis. The show thus generously provides for us what we should are effectively denied in Good Will Hunting or perhaps a Beautiful Mind the news about how someone clever is considering an issue. Furthermore, its an antidote to Hollywoods vision of genius. It shows that getting stuff wrong reaches least as vital within the story of human intellectual progress to be right constantly.

Maths is frequently reduced to simply a MacGuffin. In Rushmore (1998), for example, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) is studying the newspaper while his teacher informs his class that around the blackboard may be the hardest geometry equation on the planet. What credits would anybody solving it get, asks one student. Well, thinking about Ive never witnessed anybody understand it properly, including my mentor Dr Leaky at Durch, I suppose if anybody here can solve this problem, Id ensure that none individuals have to spread out another math book again throughout your lives.

Thus enticed, Fischer folds his paper and would go to the blackboard, and squiggles his solution while nonchalantly sipping espresso. The show at this time is not to declare but Fischers genius. Will we really believe Jason Schwartzmann can compute the region of the ellipse? Sure. Whatever.

Genius squiggling can there be once more just to assist Hollywood tell the sentimental story it never tires of: namely the storyline of somebody usually borderline demented by definition insufficiently recognised sticking it towards the establishment.

IMG 3 TT

Genius squiggling Rushmore

None of this should suggest we cant learn maths from movies. In Tina Feys Mean Girls (2004), for example, Lindsay Lohan plays a finalist in the Illinois high school mathletes state championship. Will her Northern Coast High team place it to individuals prep school toffs opposite? Heres the initial question: Two times the bigger of two figures is three greater than five occasions the smaller sized, and the sum of the four occasions the bigger and three occasions the smaller sized is 71. Do you know the figures? First got it yet? 14 and 5. Within the finish, Lohans team end up being the new condition champs because she wins the sudden dying tie-break. Exactly what does the scene prove? That individuals individuals who thought She no longer can do maths should certainly talk to her.

Possibly probably the most resonant maths scene in Hollywood cinema, though, comes in an exceedingly old comedy. Within the Abbott and Costello movie Within the Navy (1941), Lou is really a ships prepare. Hes baked 28 doughnuts, which he reckons is just enough to give 13 to each of his seven officers. But seven adopts 28 four occasions, objects Lous straight man. Not too, states Lou, who procedes to prove it around the blackboard inside a masterclass of cheating and illusion. The scene demonstrates an over-all truth, namely that whenever Hollywood does maths, it doesnt always accumulate.

The Man Who Knew Infinity is released on 8 April.

Find out more: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/06/mathematics-movies-the-man-who-knew-infinity

#Culture #Film #Mathematics #Rushmore #Russell Crowe #Science #The Big Short #The Man Who Knew Infinity #Tina Fey