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The back of this print is stamped "week ending Sep 10, 1955" -- but I think it was taken a week or two earlier than that, probably when cousins Sherry and Ricky were visiting Omaha before the beginning of their school year back in the Washington, DC area...
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Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted.
11. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
Sitting on my deck today I watched this thunderhead grow with uncontrollable speed. An impressive power of what a mix of water, heat and wind can do.
I remember, when in my 20s, then an avid rock climber, when such a cloud buildup caused serious anxiety. Being in the process of scaling a mountain face and seeing a thunderstorm coming was not a good sign. More than once I was stuck on a cliff face while lightning, thunder and rain made my life miserable and occasionally dangerous.
See the younger me: www.flickr.com/photos/dragonflyhunter/2799820544/in/album...
Those days are long past. I watched this thunderhead rise skyward as if Thor himself was coming. Its belly eventually flattened and grew dark forming an anvil shaped cloud that started pushing lightning and rain groundward. The storm cloud passed south of my house. All I got was a couple drops of rain from it. I took a few steps to safely take shelter in the house before I got wet.
Boulder, Colorado, VERY Cold and windy, shaking uncontrollably so used high shutter speed, sky kept getting better.
A large man clad in a military outfit stands in an empty room, accompanied by an armed soldier. He taps his foot impatiently and pulls back his sleeve, revealing a watch.
"That freak was supposed to be here 6 minutes ago."
The General hears a sudden ZZZzzZZT noise behind him, and a cool gust of air from behind gives him goose bumps.
"I find it fascinating what people say in ones absence. I can't blame them for thinking it, but words hurt, y'know."
The voice makes the general nervous, but he keeps his posture.
"Ahh, the man himself, Clockwork: The King of Time...is late."
He mocks.
"I think of myself as more of a /master/ of time. I have controlled the uncontrollable man-made illusion known as time. We invented the id---
"Fine, Clockwork: Master of Time. I've heard of your constant lectures, and I'm going to tell you right now, cut the crap, and cut to the chase."
The General cuts in. He is intimated, possibly even frightened, but can show no sign of it.
"Ohoho, your reputation serves you right General. Down to business then, shall we?"
"Yes, let's get on with it then."
Clockwork opens his hand to show a small mechanical device. The General's eyes widen, and his mouth began to gape in awe.
"The Incelifier: it speeds the cells of the user to a vibrate, allowing them to move at speeds previously unheard of! So it appears as though they move so fast the naked eye sees nothing but a blur."
The General could hold his smile in no more. Like a child on Christmas, his face lit up with excitement.
"I don't even want to know how you managed to get your hands on this."
"Well, I'll tell you anyways, I made it! It was my life's work, and there is only two in existence. I plan on keeping the other one, the Decelifier. It slows the particles of all things in the general area, other than the user of course." CW explained as he handed it to the General.
"Magnificent."
The General hardly got the word out. He motioned his guard forward, who he'd almost forgot existed. The soldier stepped forward and handed the dealer a map.
"I'll have my men drop a brief case here at exactly 0200 hours tomorrow night, you'll find every penny and nothing less. It's been a pleasure doing business with you."
"Oh no no no, the pleasure was all mine."
Clockwork fondled his favored crowbar behind his back excitedly.
The General extended his hand to the deranged genius. Clockwork smiled wide under his mask and grabbed it. He gave him a quick, limp, shake. The General's smile turned to a disgusted look at the surprisingly weak farewell, as he is met by a gush of wind. With Clockwork leaving the same way he had came; mysterious and disturbing.
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The General sighed, and spun around. He pulled out a pistol and shot the guard, turning his head at an angle as the body slumped to the floor. He pulled out a To-Do-List and wrote down "Clean up mess" under all of the other unfathomable deeds and acts. He began to whistle a cryptic toon as he folded the paper and put it in his pocket. He then walked down the stairs, and ducked under the boarded door. Hopping in his Jeep the General drove off, his figure eventually disappearing into the night.
I shot this on Saturday evening, after Scotch came home from his Friday morning throat surgery on his almost completely paralyzed larynx. He's going to have to tolerate his portrait being taken a bit longer now, though I'm fairly certain he won't have any objections.
He's had health issues since arriving in Los Angeles at the very end of December and while some were just symptoms of aging, the most prominent issue was Laryngeal Paralysis which ultimately seemed to be what would cut his long life short. It was manageable last Fall when it first came up and the cool weather suppressed a lot of the associated problems. The move here began in mid december and was in part a chance photograph my way across the country but also to take a seasoned canine roadtripper on the ultimate 4,000+ mile late in life car ride and eventually his first chance to see the ocean.
Out here, the condition began to worsen pretty quickly, even with the cooler, breezy winter conditions and once the temperatures began to rise again, I started to worry he wouldn't survive the summer. He stayed in most of the spring and summer in the air conditioning and his activities became very limited, despite his best efforts to continue doing the things he loved. Trip after trip to the vet for things including getting a urinary tract infection, contracting ecoli, and losing his hearing caused him to be terrified of the car since that seemed to be the only time he was forced to go anywhere. When he finally hit 13 at the end of October, I was extremely relieved because I thought maybe he'd be able to stick around through the fall and winter, however his conditions worsened dramatically after, with his terribly labored breathing switching to silent, very strained gasps for air. Even 5 minutes out and back in for the bathroom would cause either 45 minutes of uncontrollable panting or this fish out of water type gasping until he'd wear himself out enough to fall asleep.
About a week ago, I realized that he was dying and even though he was happy, his body wouldn't allow him to function properly. I tried everything I could to keep him calm and comfortable, while figuring out how to deal with all this myself. When it finally seemed like he may only have a few days left, I began to panic and decided the only chance he had would be to see if the surgery was still an option. When I called Thursday morning, they asked if a visit on Monday would work and I told them I didn't think he'd survive until then so he went in first thing Friday. If he was still a candidate for the surgery, he would have it later that morning and sure enough, I got the call around noon that the surgery was a success and "textbook" and that he'd be ready to come home with a new lease on life after this last minute reprieve of sorts.
I've never had to deal with a senior dog before Scotch entered that phase of life and for the first 3 years of his life, thinking he'd make it to old age seemed entirely unlikely as he dealt with numerous issues including seizures, extreme nervousness and anxiety and the inability to productively socialize with other dogs as a result. As he got older and healthier, I still sort of expected those seizures to return or some byproduct of those conditions to affect his health but overall he stayed very healthy. However, this past week, I finally realized I would have to make a decision very soon on whether or not his suffering was too much for him to endure.
I'm sure if you've read my descriptions about him over the last year or so, it may seem like I'm obsessed with him or too emotional about his outlook and to some degree that's true but really, he's more than just a dog to me. He represents a time period in my life that I've tried to hold onto for a long time. After my baseball career ended and I struggled to figure out my purpose, Scotch entered my life during a time when life was starting to look up. Over the last 13 years, nearly every aspect from that segment of my life have slowly disappeared: friendships ended, relationships came and went, all my belongings and reminders got lost or simply fell apart from age and he somehow became the very last link I had to all that. Through all the good times and bad, the one constant has been Scotch and I appreciate that more each day.
So anyway, extremely relieved Scotch is still around and I imagine as a result, the descriptions with his portraits will slowly become much more positive and optimistic. It sort of started to feel like I was writing an obituary with each posted portrait and sometimes I'd end up deleting the shot since what I wrote up was so depressing to read. I don't know how much time he will ultimately have but hopefully he can live out the rest of his life without much pain and discomfort and enjoy each day to the fullest :)
SCOTCH
Age 13
Hollywood, California
November 5th, 2016
SETTINGS
Canon T4i
EF40mm f/2.8 STM
ISO 200
f/2.8
1/13th second
I had intended to photograph the stars tonight but when the temp dropped to minus 5 for some reason i had this uncontrollable urge to get fish and chips so off i went. people say i should take photography more seriously i cant think what they mean
I can't leave. If this gem has some importance, this could be my key back home.
What will I come back as? I have no idea, but I can't fear the future when my present is in dire need of help.
How does the gem work though? I can't just swing it at Ron and hope it does something.
Ron: "So, you've found the gem."
I quickly turn to where I assume his voice came from, the gem pointed ahead of myself.
Ron: "And you don't know how to use it."
Ron points his gun at me but I begin to scramble away. He's right, I have absolutely no idea how to use this and he has the upper hand unless I find something to defend myself.
Ron: "Running is smart, but your mind is failing with everyone else in here dead. Wasting more time gives me more power you see?"
I trip and fall to the floor; I try to get up but cannot. It's almost like I've gone numb.
Ron quickly gets to me while I'm on the floor, motionless.
Ron: "I've really played with your mind here, Victor. This is your body and you've let your own fear and disgust take control?"
I try moving my arm but it is of no use.
Victor "Do it. Kill me."
Ron: "And waste the perfect time to make you suffer?"
I begin to shake uncontrollably, my mind is almost rebooted, all of my fears and mistakes flash before me. I begin to sweat as I try and take my mind off of them but I can't.
Ron: "Afraid of Orr? That old man? He's as useless as you."
He's right. I'm afraid of a lot of things. What am I to do? I can't simply deny what is blatantly obvious to myself.
Ron: "Afraid of not being smart? To impress who? Your father who you also hate for no reason? Do you hate him because you know you're inferior, or is it because you think he hates you? Oh wait, I am you, I know it's both. It must hurt having no confidence in yourself. Luckily, I feed off of it."
A tear rolls down my cheek and onto the floor.
Ron: "Now you're crying? This really was easy. You were just made into a cyborg, y'know. I don't know why Silas kept your brain in here but I thank him. You're unfortunately not going to see me ruin your life, but maybe you will. There are ways around death in here, not that you'll be smart enough to find them."
Ron's right. I am afraid, I'm also afraid of myself. I begin to remember, I begin to remember something profound; an accomplishment. I suddenly stop shaking, I stop remembering, and my arms feel free.
I begin to think about more; I need to overpower whatever is holding me down. I begin to remember touchdowns, parties with my friends, pre-game rituals with my friends, until I reach a soft spot in my mind. My family. Though our situation was never the best, I found comfort in what little I remember of us all being together.
I find the strength. I quickly turn to Ron and extend my arm ahead of me, pointing the gem as precisely as I can. Nothing happens as Ron bursts out in laughter.
Ron: "I could plant one insignificant thing in your mind and make it significant to give you some sort of hope."
Ron grabs me as I go numb again.
Ron: "You want a view? Your dad had a view when I killed him. Maybe I can land you two near one another."
Ron pulls me towards the bridge in the middle of STAR Labs laughing.
Ron: "I hate making an event of this but your humiliation makes my day. Or in this case, my whole life."
He places me on the side of the railing. I look to the ground to see bodies strewn throughout the grounds.
Ron: "Want to play a game of 'I Spy'?"
Victor: "Just... kill me."
Ron grabs the back of my skull and tilts it down to the ground again.
Ron: "I said, we're playing a game! I spy, someone in a blue suit, dark brown pants and red blood all over."
Victor: "Stop."
Ron: "You see your father? You see what you will look like in a few seconds?"
Ron releases his grip from my head and begins to laugh again.
Ron: "I am so close but I just can't kill you. So. Close."
My sadness turns into rage; He's taunted me more than enough. That's when I remember, in the story with the Re-Gou Ruby. This is the Re-Gou Ruby. The pharaoh got power from it due to being vengeful.
I clench my fist as the Re-Gou begins to glow. My right arm turns silver, as I raise it, a blue bolt blasts into the bridge. I look to see Ron hold onto the bridge as his arm begins to vanish. He screams in pain as his eye begins to glow too.
Ron: "Oh god please no, I don't want to die, I don't want to die! Help me!"
I consider helping him, as he is myself, though the worst version of myself.
Ron: "Help me, Victor! Everything hurts! Please oh god!"
I fall to my knees as I begin to cry again. I wanted out but Ron's in pain, but who knows the consequences if I save him this time?
Ron: "I'm not ready to go. Please... Please!"
Ron begins to cry as I get to my feet. I inch forward trying to steady my arm.
Victor: "Ron, I'm sorry bu-"
Ron chokes as he pleas for his life.
Ron: "Don't kill me-please..."
He begins to sob as I inch forward.
Ron: "D-do it. I understand. Just tell mom one thing for me."
I can't handle it. This isn't real. He would've killed me with no hesitation. But he didn't. In the midst of my thoughts, the cannon fires right through Ron's head and a side of the bridge.
His decapitated body falls; its slow descent makes me fall to my knees again. I didn't kill him. I didn't. I begin to shake uncontrollably as I look over the edge. There, Ron is on the ground residing right next to my father. I look away as I feel nothing but pain, I look to the moon as I curl up in a ball. The light emitted from the moon grows stronger until I am almost blinded by it.
==================================================
*beep*
*beep-beep*
*beep-beep-beep*
Silas: "Victor? Victor! I have a pulse!"
So this is victory, or maybe even natural selection? This world is where just surviving means taking the hardest hits, what sacrifices must we make to just survive? A thought lingers in the back of my mind that maybe I shouldn't have been so lucky to be alive now, or maybe I didn't want to be...
Today's story and sketch "by me", you may recall the story awhile back of the uninhabited hard water Planet Z-D20 discovered by Rescue Randy, he discovered it when it broke his fall, while traveling at four thousand miles per hour, just after almost being sucked into a black hole when his experimental (DJNS), Dimension Jumper Navigation System, sent his Galaxy Glider somewhere midway through the Tachyon Two, faster than light wormhole, hurling through the Cosmos into the direction of a very large nasty black hole, how nasty no one knows, and lucky for Rescue Randy the most interesting living tissue crash test dummy in the Cosmos. He avoided the black hole only because of his lighting fast reflexes, he slammed the gliders controls into full (PMS), Plasma Matter Splatter, reversing the gliders trajectory away from the gaping black hole, known as the really big sucker near the Octane Star Cluster. But unfortunately without power and hurling uncontrollably until it could strike something solid like the Planet Z-D20, which it did, but if you have been following this Blog, you know he was saved by a school of intelligent sharks that live on Z-D20. Today I have traveled through the mancave Stargate in the 56 F-100, to search for Randy, he left the mancave a week ago to visit his shark friends on Z-D20, he took the Galaxy Skiff you see on the beach he loaded with twelve cases of Anchovy Moon Pies, and has been missing eversense. Above you see JB with two of his gal pals who are helping in the search for Randy, until next time taa ta the Rod Blog.
The house where we all lived in Omaha, from 1955 until the spring of 1956
**********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted.
11. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
This was taken in the spring of 1956, after my parents had moved back to New York, and left me behind in Omaha to finish the school year. I stayed with a family down the street from us; this kid (Rudy Duda) was a classmate of mine in school.
**********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted.
11. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
chaie time on my studio's roof top !
sorry folks for not being able to drop by your streams, I'm stuck with uncontrollable amount of work which pretty much seems to have become part of me till June !
thank you Allah jii for the weekends ....... my recharging source !
E X P L O R E D
Mirit Ben-Nun’s art exists within and beyond reality. She moves away from reality with aggressive and dense colorfulness which reveals an inner testimony of a threatened existence of women. The lines, points and shapes do not reproduce facts but emphasize the special charge of emotional coping.
Mirit Ben-Nun shows a rebellious spirit and tries to reach out to things not through wholeness but via searching for their expression and manifestation.
She explores personal identity and through it tries to define a complementary art, thereby illustrating the world and the nature of human culture. She focuses on the expressive dimension because of the exposure afforded by the uncontrollable moment that so much affects life in a rapidly changing global world.
The discourse between the inner world and the emerging reality is hyperactive and generates in Ben - Nun an endless sequence of works.
From the depths of feelings, dreams, anxieties and expressions arise rigid and exciting meanings of existence whose essence expresses adaptation difficulties and restlessness.
Dora Woda
What wouldn't I give to have a Moroccon in his 'jilaba', looking like one of those Carthusian monks in the mountains of Chartreuse France, trundling up that street, an old woman in her head scarf coming up her walking stick firmly clenched . . . what wouldn't I give to have a mother walking there, on the left, with a couple of almost uncontrollable young children and her shopping . . .
That would have been a picture with a story. This is merely a chronicle of my travels . . .
. . . and that is the tragedy of my 28 day trip to Morocco
. . . I am distraught :(
_35A0974
Mirit Ben-Nun’s art exists within and beyond reality. She moves away from reality with aggressive and dense colorfulness which reveals an inner testimony of a threatened existence of women. The lines, points and shapes do not reproduce facts but emphasize the special charge of emotional coping.
Mirit Ben-Nun shows a rebellious spirit and tries to reach out to things not through wholeness but via searching for their expression and manifestation.
She explores personal identity and through it tries to define a complementary art, thereby illustrating the world and the nature of human culture. She focuses on the expressive dimension because of the exposure afforded by the uncontrollable moment that so much affects life in a rapidly changing global world.
The discourse between the inner world and the emerging reality is hyperactive and generates in Ben - Nun an endless sequence of works.
From the depths of feelings, dreams, anxieties and expressions arise rigid and exciting meanings of existence whose essence expresses adaptation difficulties and restlessness.
Dora Woda
The KF-38-2 robotic unit was meant to work as a maintenance robot in one of Octan Corporation factory. But a malfunction in his IA program turned it into a violent and uncontrollable unit. Before the security could disable it, it destroyed half of the factory it was assigned to.
Instead of recycling it, an Octan officer registered it on the Mech Wrestling Federation, where it became one of the most feared combatants. Despite its small size, it's powerful legs allows it to move fast and jump high, accessing its opponent electronics and weak points and tearing them apart.
My entry for the Mech Wrestling category for Andromeda's Gates Space Olympic Games
This print has "Sep 55" stamped on the front, but it was taken during a Colorado camping trip, on the way back from Utah in the summer of 1955. I'm guessing it was about the third week in August.
(I have no idea why I have a bandage on my lower face. A cut? I was too young for acne at that point :) )
**********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted.
11. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
So for all you that haven't found out via email, Facebook or Instagram my son was admitted to urgent care early Monday morning.
My husband and I woke up to my son coughing uncontrollably at 4:30 am. We took his temperature and he was at 104. We put cool towels on him and gave him Motrin to bring down the fever. I also put some vicks vapor rub on chest and back to help him with the cough. We managed to it down to 101 in about an hour. Shortly after that he was vomiting so right away I rushed to urgent care.
My son has been going through a lot of health issues the past two months. My son has always had terrible sinuses, sometimes snores when he sleeps, has has a cough for over a month and he also get's ear infections a lot.
We recently saw an ent specialist last week Wednesday the doctor sent us to have an X-ray done of his ears, nose and throat. It was a chaotic week last week so I had planned to take him Monday to have it all done and then Sunday night happened.
While driving to urgent care my son was literally vomiting on him self as I'm trying to rush to urgent care and drive safely and try and not loose it. He was crying, I was crying. I only wished I had asked my husband to come with me cause when everything was going on I just said I could handle it go to work I will keep you updated. My son was a champ through it all. He got an antibiotic shot on his butt and from what the nurse and doctor said he did better than most of the kids they see there. The doctor sent me to get an X-ray done of his chest and it wasn't till Tuesday that we got the results which revealed that Troy was in the first stage of phenomena on his right lung. This was the worst of my fears. I was not expecting anything like this. And as a mother all you wish is that it could be you not your baby.
He's a fighter though. The first two nights were the hardest. I forgot what it's like only getting 4 hours of sleep and taking shifts with the husband so we both could get "some" sleep. Last night he did much better though he didn't cough as much and had no fever.
He's going to be on some strong antibiotics for 10 days. He hasn't been eating much and I'm pretty sure he's already lost a few lbs :( I know he will make it through this. I am so proud of him, he has inspired me so much. I know if it was me I wouldn't be as strong and brave as him. He's my pride and joy and make's me sooo proud.
Thank you all sooo much for your emails and prayers.
+more in comments
We took these last week I know the one I posted he kind of looks sad but he was actually smiling in most of them I just really loved how tender his eyes looked in this one. My beautiful baby boy. :)
My boy is napping right now so I will be making it to your beautiful streams :)
February 14, 2011
A-Z through the DSM IVr
H: Histrionic Personality Disorder
People with this disorder are usually able to function at a high level and can be successful socially and professionally. People with histrionic personality disorder usually have good social skills, but they tend to use these skills to manipulate other people and become the center of attention. Furthermore, histrionic personality disorder may affect a person's social or romantic relationships or their ability to cope with losses or failures.
People with this disorder lack genuine empathy. They start relationships well but tend to falter when depth and durability are needed, alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. They may seek treatment for depression when romantic relationships end, although this is by no means a feature exclusive to this disorder.
They often fail to see their own personal situation realistically, instead tending to dramatize and exaggerate their difficulties. They may go through frequent job changes, as they become easily bored and have trouble dealing with frustration. Because they tend to crave novelty and excitement, they may place themselves in risky situations. All of these factors may lead to greater risk of developing depression.
Additional symptoms include:
-Exhibitionist behavior.
-Constant seeking of reassurance or approval.
-Excessive dramatics with exaggerated displays of emotions, such as hugging someone they have just met or crying uncontrollably during a sad movie (Svrakie & Cloninger, 2005).
-Excessive sensitivity to criticism or disapproval.
-Inappropriately seductive appearance or behavior.
-Excessive concern with physical appearance.
-Somatic symptoms, and using these symptoms as a means of garnering attention.
-A need to be the center of attention.
-Low tolerance for frustration or delayed gratification.
-Rapidly shifting emotional states that may appear superficial or exaggerated to others.
-Tendency to believe that relationships are more intimate than they actually are.
-Making rash decisions.
Well I'm full of mixed emotions right now...
On one hand Valentines Day sucked big time...but I knew it would. But I only cried once today so far...so I'm doing better than I expected. I'm guessing all the chocolate consumption helped too...but yeah, it's been a really, really rough day. I'm just glad it's almost over...
On the other hand I really am proud of this picture and like how it came out...hopefully I can redeem myself after my HORRIBLE attempt at a picture yesterday. ugh...if I could take it down I totally would. It was a disgrace....
One more thing: I'm trying to figure out how to make some money so I can move to California and be with Garry. I dunno if anyone would be interested in a book of my pics or of editing techniques I use or if anyone would take part in some kind of photo auction of some sort...please let me know what you guys think. I'm desperate for money...I can't be here anymore I NEED to get to Garry...at this point I'd rather be homeless with him than here with all the riches in the world but without him.
Drew, Ken and Christie
"be a little inappropriate
'cause I know that everybody’s thinkin' it
when the light's out
shame on me
to need release
uncontrollably
I Wanna Go all the way
takin' out my freak tonight"
[...was feeling creative so I made this set inspired by Britney's Femme Fatale album (March 29)]
The most perfect and satisfactory reason to shape the hips, is that one can wear whatever women wear AND most important of all, what ever tranny´s dare. This is especially the case where the infamous ”too short skirt” is in consideration and especially as we witness above, when no skirt at all is used and is replaced by, what is known among women as a sweater/cardigan, but is WAY long enough to function as a dress in the T-girl universe.
It is only fair to say in defense of women that this sweater practically IS too short to function as a dress, resulting in potentially embarrassing situations plus one has to constantly pull it down. But what is considered annoying and even embarrassing among women, is considered QUITE sexy and attractive among trannys.
To day I really boosted the hips to the max. - Don't know why really, just felt like trying. But dear spirits what a result. Personally I am a ”leg man” (and woman... I guess...) but I really find hips is almost.. ”part” of that leg attraction.
Feast my eyes on a pair of beautiful legs and if the hips are just as perfect and harmoniously feminine.. trust me, looking further up the body I have VERY little critic what so ever to the rest.
But truly.. if such perfect legs are wearing sexy high heels, invitingly shining soft nylon stockings and a tight short skirt... my mind becomes VERY uncontrollable in its direction and focus, and my heart holds it breath so long, I need to forcefully tell it to breath again.
If women truly knew the power of these things and dared harness it's magic. They would not only hold men enchanted in their grasp, they would rule the world. *LOL* If women united world wide and denied men sex for some demand or reason, men would come crawling, begging within a week, bringing presents along with promises (though empty as they would be) of fulfilling any wish women wanted.
If any hypocrites ever claim that ”men are the strong sex”, know that in truth men are by far the most pitiful and pathetic. It IS no mere coincidence that far more than 9 out of 10 prostitutes on this entire planet are women. Further more if men denied WOMEN sex, demanding something in return, the world would never have heard such magnitudes, volumes and cheerful laughter from women, as women would most likely consider it a an invigorating experience, along side which treat it like a blissful vacation knowing very well men them self would crack up like puddle, before women themselves even get close to the state of being ”spontaneous desperate”.
Mirit Ben-Nun’s art exists within and beyond reality. She moves away from reality with aggressive and dense colorfulness which reveals an inner testimony of a threatened existence of women. The lines, points and shapes do not reproduce facts but emphasize the special charge of emotional coping.
Mirit Ben-Nun shows a rebellious spirit and tries to reach out to things not through wholeness but via searching for their expression and manifestation.
She explores personal identity and through it tries to define a complementary art, thereby illustrating the world and the nature of human culture. She focuses on the expressive dimension because of the exposure afforded by the uncontrollable moment that so much affects life in a rapidly changing global world.
The discourse between the inner world and the emerging reality is hyperactive and generates in Ben - Nun an endless sequence of works.
From the depths of feelings, dreams, anxieties and expressions arise rigid and exciting meanings of existence whose essence expresses adaptation difficulties and restlessness.
Dora Woda
I was just walking around in Lavender Canyon and came across this little fellow. The wind was blowing pretty hard that day, certainly hard enough to blow this butterfly away uncontrollably, and discovered it on this flower with its head into the wind and its wings folded back for streamlining. He was smart though. The flower was on the sheltered side of a large sage bush that created a shelter from the storm.
As I approached I was cautious to not scare him, but as I snapped and moved closer, he was more afraid of the wind than he was of me. I was able to get a few nice shots before I moved on to let him weather the storm in peace.
Lavender Canyon is locate in Canyonlands National Park in Utah.
The Hunter in the Red PVC Cap is still giving an impromptu rock and roll guitar rendition on his knee. Don't miss that.
the situation on the Tiger front has been grim for quite sometime. The Planet Earth is slowly relinquising its flora and fauna as humankind expands in uncontrollable numbers and fritters away Nature and its resources in a headlong dive to extinction for almost all.
Continuing the series
Tiger Tiger, Fading Bright !
The tigers in India are facing the toughest odds and are on the brink of being wiped out. There is a big industry based on tiger claws and bones etc that drives up the demand for the killing of this beautiful beast.
Men will buy a enlargement (is enhancement the right choice of word ?) of libido anytime anywhere but Chinese men will pay top dollars for tiger remains to increase theirs.
If you wonder why all the grand conservation efforts to save the tiger are failing, go no further then the politics of funding tiger conservation. It has been known for years that it is allegedly a big sham with mega bucks and mega publicity but almost nil results.
If you have the time it would be interesting to read some interesting thoughts and the current day reality on the tigers in an exchange between Thatzme and Aditya Singh from Rajasthan.
One can only hope that one sees a tiger in the wild in one's life time as the future generation may not have that privilege anytime soon. So if you are young and in India, head out and go see the elusive tiger before it is too late.
India has only 1150 - 1600 tigers that are available in the wild as per the Minister of Environment Jairam Ramesh.
Will Viagra be the Saviour of the Indian Tiger ?
This is an enactment of the situation at a Kerala street show during Onam in Thrippunithra near Cochin on the Atthachamayam day.
DSC_0841 jpeg via ACR
*****To join Blythe a Day March 2020, go to: www.flickr.com/groups/blythe_march_2020/
Ava as young Miss Havisham, who, in "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens, is an old woman who has never taken off her wedding dress or removed the wedding breakfast after being jilted decades earlier by her fiancé, Mr. Compeyson, on the day they were to be married.
19th Century England:
"That's no pup; it's a little fox," said Miss Havisham's cousin Matthew.
The words shocked her--though she did believe them...
It only took a day or so for Miss Havisham to realize what she perceived to be a "little pup," whom she had named Jack after saving him when she saw him laying injured on a hillside, was too uncontrollable to be kept indoors. First, Miss Havisham wondered, though he was so irresistibly cute, why did he nip at her fingers when she tried to pet and hold him? Next, he had pillaged the kitchen, eating whatever he could and knocking dishes and pans hither and thither, leaving the room in a chaotic mess.
Wondering what to do with him, Miss Havisham asked her cousin Matthew to visit and offer advice.
"I can't just abandon him," she said as she thought of the little fox. "And he is still recovering. Plus, I love him. What shall I do?"
Matthew convinced Miss Havisham that it would be unkind to keep a wild animal indoors and to make him dependent on her.
Hence, she decided to try to find a middle ground between putting the little fox out into a wilderness he could not yet survive and treating him as if he were her own. She asked Matthew to put together a crate where Jack could rest that they could put in the garden and thus to let him recover outside and decide for himself when he was strong enough to return to the wilderness once again. In the meantime, Miss Havisham decided that she would bring him food.
Thus, Miss Havisham's misadventure with the little fox was solved...
Or was it?
TO BE CONTINUED.
" Steer your thoughts towards a better direction. It's your time to refresh and elevate." ✨
Meva: M&M Gillian Blouse / Exclusive @ 13th Stree Event (Sept)
maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Springgate/179/161/24
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5 Signs Your Aura Attracts the Wrong Crowd 🚫
www.flickr.com/photos/161478161@N05/53217283562
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After you change some personalities
1. You prioritize the quality of their hearts.
2. You don't love animals.
3. You choose yourself.
4. You have your boundaries.
5. You stand up for yourself.
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1. You prioritize the quality of their hearts.
☑ You're not afraid to assess their sincerity early on.
☑ You don't believe matters of the good heart require extended time.
You'd not give them 3-6 months or 1-2 years to change and demonstrate sincerity and a good heart so, you'll check at that point. Because you recognize that sincerity and a good heart don't need time, they should be assessed here and now, whether someone possesses them or not.
2. You don't love animals.
☑ You don't tolerate inhumanity. Anything deserving of a unique love, time, and attention must inherently possess a sense of humanity.
☑ You'll establish boundaries for your pet's demands, ensuring it doesn't expect more than its status permits.
For instance, you won't find yourself constantly changing your pet's food. Take the scenario where you initially bought liver-flavored kibble. When your pet refused it, the next day, you switched to lamb-flavored kibble, giving up on the liver flavor. After consuming only a 1/3 of the box, your pet became bored and started eating less. So, you purchased chicken-flavored kibble. Even after consuming of the half of chicken box, your pet still didn't eat much, leading you to try chicken and rice flavor, then chicken and spinach, and even chicken mixed with pumpkin. You kept changing the food out of fear that your pet wasn't eating enough, wasn't staying healthy, and you were concerned about its well-being, all without considering the cost and what you should reasonably expect in return.
You may eventually give up on pellet food altogether, choosing wet food instead. If that didn't work, you switched to raw meat. You even upgraded to premium raw meat, fueled by concerns that your pet might not enjoy it or that it wouldn't provide enough nutrition.
" Love and kindness should always be balanced with reasonableness, and it's important to set limits and boundaries to prevent them from becoming uncontrollable."
Establish boundaries. If the animal doesn't respond positively to your care, expresses dissatisfaction, or fails to appreciate your efforts, consider releasing it back into its natural habitat. Don't worry about how it will survive without your assistance. In this world, there are always people who cherish and care for animals, they will soon find themselves in a new place. Instead of feeling sorry and pitying them for letting go, prioritize your compassion and empathy toward yourself first.
3. You choose yourself.
☑ Respect yourself and your own needs before others.
4. You have your boundaries.
☑ Set boundaries and be strict about them.
☑ Don't let anyone cross the line.
☑ Don't give space to things that are unfair.
" Always remember that people may take advantage of you or treat you poorly only if you allow them to. Bad people engage in harmful and unfair behavior because good people appear weak and discouraged. Therefore, strive to remain strong and maintain firm boundaries."
5. You stand up for yourself.
☑ You have to be fearless and have the ability to deal with conflict, dislike, and hate from people who disagree with you or won't let you stand up for yourself.
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" What might you lose in this process to embrace these five personas?
You'll find yourself surrounded by positive influences because those with negative intentions will be less likely to be drawn to you and exploit you unfairly. Gradually, they will fade from your life, and you won't encounter new ones with similar intentions.
While you may initially perceive this as a significant loss, remember that there are still good and kind-hearted people in the world waiting to be discovered ."
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We all know about Boris the Bonker, but who would have thought all the rest of em` were all so uncontrollable rampant.
Yet again I`m not sure what Loretto the artist is getting at, other than they are all a complete shambles & also Corbyn rides a bike.
Quickly, Mirror Master jumps out of the Mirror World into our world. He grabs a large metal bar and gets ready to swing it at the mirror so that Barry cannot leave the Mirror World. Inside the Mirror World, Barry jumps from mirror to mirror quickly to get to the portal before Mirror Master can break the mirror.
“Run, Barry, run!” Iris yells out
Barry gets to the last mirror and launches himself into the air.
Mirror Master begins to swing the metal bar.
The bar crashes into the mirror, but not until the Flash gets his head out of the mirror. Barry jumps into our world as the mirror shatters into a thousand pieces. A large shard lodges itself into Barry’s neck and thus causes him to drop to the ground quickly.
“Barry!” Iris yells as she runs to Barry’s side. She grabs him and lifts his back up into the air. “Barry, it’ll be alright! Wally! Hurry!”
As Wally approaches, Mirror Master aims his gun at another mirror and quickly shoots it so that he can leave quickly. He brings the pipe with him so that he can break the mirror behind him. He successfully does this before Wally can arrive next to Barry and Iris.
“Barry! What happened, Iris?”
“He got hit by the mirror.”
“I’ve got to get him to the hospital!”
”D-d-don’t… Iris... I…”
“Barry! Don’t leave me. Barry, you can’t do this.”
”Iris, I-I can’t feel my legs…”
“Don’t worry, Barry, I’ll get you help.”
”Don’t b-bother…”
“What?”
”It’ll be too… t-too late.”
“No, Barry, don’t leave me!”
”I can feel it… My heart is slowing… By the time I get there, I’ll be gone…”
”Stop that, Barry! Let me take you to the hospital!”
“Barry, I love you. I don’t want you to go.”
”Let me take you to Bruce, he has to have some kind of device that will help you.”
”No, he can’t help. No one can.”
“Barry, I love you.”
”I love you too, Iris… I always have…”
”Barry! Let me take you.”
“We were supposed to grow old together.”
”I’m so sorry.”
“No I am… It’s my fault…”
”No it’s not. I-I… should’ve st-stopped him when I-I had the chance… (COUGH)(COUGH)”
“Barry, don’t do this.”
”I love you, Iris.”
”Barry…”
”Take over here, Wally. I trust you.”
Barry Allen’s heart beat begins to stutter. Wally tries to check it, but he cannot feel it any longer. Wally jumps to his feet and grabs a metal chair. He throws it into a wall. The chair flies through the wall and into the next room. Iris begins crying uncontrollably as Barry’s eyes close.
“I love you, Barry.” Iris says as Wally takes Barry into his arms and begins to run him to the nearest hospital. He barges into the building and sets him onto a gurney. He yells for help and a nurse runs to his side.
“What happened?”
”He has a glass shard lodged in his neck. You need to help him.”
“He has no pulse.”
”Can’t you help him?”
“I can try. I need a doctor over here!” A doctor runs over to the gurney that Barry is laying on. The nurse rolls him into an operating room and closes the door behind her. Wally slumps down onto a nearby bench and waits for results.
Moments later the nurse slowly comes out of the room and sits next to Wally.
“We… We got the glass shard out of his spine, but unfortunately…” Wally doesn’t let her finish. He wraps his arms around her and begins crying on her shoulder. The shocked nurse wraps her arms around Wally to comfort him. The two sit there in silence as the nurse comforts Wally. “It’ll be okay…”
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So, yeah... Almost (if not more than) two years have gone by since I began writing Flash stories for the DCSG. When I first started I was promised to write Wally, as well he's my favorite, but we had to somehow kill off Barry to make way for Wally. This led to one of the main things that was supposed to happen in the group wide event "DOOM." If you remember about a year ago, me and Chris, SupremeDalekDunn, had began kicking off this event with the small Batman&Flash and Superman&Flash stories entitled "Countdown to Doom" and well... the countdown seemingly never stopped.
So here we are today, I asked Chris just a few weeks ago if it would be alright if I went ahead and did this myself, and he surprisingly (at least to me) said yes. So, I got to writing and building to make this volume one of the best things I've written, and while I'm not 100% sure if I accomplished this, I really had fun writing this and cannot wait to write Wally in the near future.
Oh, one more thing, there are still a couple issues left in this volume, so stay tuned for those. :D
Utah Wind Celebration/Kite Festival; Spanish Fork, Utah
,,,>^..^<,,,
Many of you know that I do volunteer work at the Humane Society. I go to play with the cats mostly, holding them or letting them plop down in my lap. I look forward to seeing them every week, and most of them are more than anxious for attention.
While making my rounds this evening, I passed by a cage with a beautiful black-and-white cat inside. Her fur was sleek, and she had what looked like a milk moustache on her mostly black face. Her name was Oreo. She was lying on her side, her golden eyes looking right at me through the cage door. I spoke to her gently, but she didn't move. She didn't even blink. I hesitantly opened the cage, but there was still no reaction. And then I touched her, and I knew that she was gone.
I told a staff member, who placed the kitty in a box and took her away. I said that I didn't understand how this could happen, because Oreo was only 3 years old, had received all her shots and an examination, and hadn't been sick. The staff member had no answers; she told me that this very rarely happens, and she was so sorry that I had to see it.
I moved on to another kitty, who was more than happy to purr in my arms. I tried to concentrate on him and give him all the love and attention that he needed, but I kept seeing Oreo's golden eyes in my mind. I couldn't shake the feeling I had, although I can't really describe what feeling that was.
About 15 or 20 minutes later, I decided that I needed to leave. I usually stay until close and I wanted to stay for the sake of the other kitties, but I just couldn't do it.
I remained composed until I got into my car; then I began to sob uncontrollably.
I know that animals die every day, many without a home. But as I sobbed in my car, all I could think about was Oreo lying in that cage, watching people walk by and wishing that someone would hold her, and then passing away in there, scared, alone, and broken-hearted.
Perhaps I'm anthropomorphizing her, but I believe that even animals want love and security. Oreo was so close to getting that...
I've attempted to distract myself this evening, but every once in a while, I feel that emotional shudder in my chest. I'm sure it's just my state of mind right now, but when I looked at this photo, I thought of heaven. I thought of being free and happy and surrounded by love.
All cats go to heaven, right?
Chapter 7
The Daring Kind
She must have been able to read the discomfort in his eyes, assuming her actions had left her lover speechless.
She appeared happy to accept that for an answer and backed away, still smiling smugly, towards the staircase.
The diamond dangling from the coronet was still flashing its Morse code-like flickers, tapping the message to him that signalled, come get me!
Happily, she tapped his cheek, then turned and disappeared back around the corner with a swish of her gown, trilled affectionately to ‘Gaston” as she did…
“A most welcome home darling Gaston!”
He then heard her say merrily from her hiding spot...
“You have till the count of 25 luv , so get a move on”.
He stood there, jaw opened wide beneath his mask, his eyes had watched as her gown had wispily whipped around the corner behind her, whilst listening as she was giggling quite excitedly to herself at her cleverness!
He just didn't know what to think.
So of course, He obediently followed her directions.
“Bloody “ell” he muttered, thinking, had he just had fallen into a cat thief’s wildest dream!
He opened the door to the green satin wrapped damsel’s bedroom, and pulling out his torch, lit its pencil-thin beam.
Wishing only now that only the real Gaston didn’t decide to show his mug and spoil all the fun!
Once Inside, the torchlight quickly found her oak jewel case on the mantel of an old stained oaken dresser.
The high case matched the dresser and drawers below it perfectly, and it appeared that it was all uniquely Chippendale!
It sat across from a matching four-poster, with a sea blue satin coverlet and matching silken sheets.
“Nice of her to point out where her jewels are kept!” He thanked the clueless girl!
He swiftly went over and began opening the many drawers of the jewellery case, or jewellery coffin as some would churlishly call it!
The thin light of his torch lit up a sinfully copious display of jewels, note quite as valuable as the ones discovered in the master bedroom, but it was a damn close race all the same!
He happily began pulling out the drawers and sliding the prettily flickering contents into an already bulging case.
Rudely discarding the empty drawers unceremoniously upon the floor.
The lady he hoped, would appreciate the dedicated “realism “that this’ Gaston’ of her’s was going to put into her play, and he was just the person to make it realistic!
He reckoned this with a rather nefarious smile spreading upon the bearded face, covered by its thin black mask.
At that precise moment, he heard the door creak slowly open….
She was coming in quietly, and soon the lady proved her mettle to be quite the actress!
He heard her gasp behind him as he continued on his work!
“ No, not my jewels, Do anything to me but don’t take my family jewels!”
He turned around to face the damsel, holding the pearl filled final drawer in his thin black-gloved hand.
She stood there with her left hand to her mouth, while her right ringed gloved fingers played with her necklace. The diamonds flickered quite as she held it up!
She then teased, delighted at his captured attention! …
“You want these, do you not Mister Burglar, I can see it in your eyes!”
Looking upon her, he tipped the drawer full of pearls into the black bag, then dropping it empty onto the pile strewn about at his feet.
Then he eagerly, purposefully, moved towards her, lustfully eyeing the pretty victim’s savoury jewels.
She shivered as if she read his mind, that he would take her jewels and flee into the night with them.
But she was not ready to have him do that, so she commanded him in a softly brisk tone…
“Not yet!”
Putting up a nicely ringed finger to indicate he should come no further!
Surprisingly to himself, for he had no real reason to listen, he obediently stopped in his tracks to await her next command.
As it turned out, he was soon very glad he had done so!
Then he eagerly, purposefully, moved towards her, lustfully eyeing the pretty victim’s savoury jewels.
She shivered as if she read his mind, that he would take her jewels and flee into the night with them.
But she was not ready to have him do that, so she commanded him in a softly brisk tone…
“Not yet!”
Putting up a nicely ringed finger to indicate he should come no further!
Surprisingly to himself, for he had no real reason to listen, he obediently stopped in his tracks to await her next command.
As it turned out, he was soon very glad he had done so!
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Chapter 8
One must be Methodical
Dropping her hand, she questioned him…
“What have you forgotten to do, my dear thief?”
He stood still, hoping she would just obligingly tell him what to do next.
She happily did so...
“My closet! Gaston your always forgetting any good burglar worth his salt checks a damsel’s closet for brooches and such left on by ladies far too lazy to remove them from one's party frocks. I swear Gaston You would make a horrible burglar in real life. You would positively starve if it were not for being directed by someone like me!”
She chortled at her wit.
He just smiled, thanking her inwardly for being ever so much a big help to her poor Darling ‘Gaston’!
He turned to his right and headed straight to the closet, curious as to what he was expected to find inside?
Opening the door, a long floor length mirror was revealed, allowing one to see into the interior of the bedroom behind him.
Including the reflection of his most helpful victim as she stood there in all her jewelled and tight-fitting emerald satin attired glory!
She keenly watching his progress with an eager interest, as he stole a look at her reflection, muttering happily to himself…
“Best get this over with quickly, then attend to the lady and her finery!”
He turned to look back inside, and was met with a designer like an assortment of colourful dresses, gowns, and other fancy attire!
A quite nice, if not downright beguiling, display of soft velvets, slinky silks, sleek satins, frilled lace, and shiny leather.
He quickly began his task at hand, letting his thinly gloved fingers feel through the wonderfully sleek fabrics for anything hard and metallic.
On one velvet number he felt something like a necklace around its top, he pulled it out, but disappointedly it was a rhinestone collared frock.
He tossed it onto the bed and resumed his search as she could be heard softly giggling behind him...
“Nope, nothing on that one, but don’t quit just yet!
He stole a glance at her from the mirror, then he turned back into working the closet.
The glance revealed that his ‘mentor’ was watching him eagerly, her whole being quivering in anticipation head down to spiky heeled foot!
He fingered a satiny white ruffled blouse, he decided he had better keep tabs on this one, still not sure what exactly her game was all on about?
He muttered to himself…
“They were her jewels after all, weren’t they? Indeed, rather valuable for mere playthings!”
There had to be something inside here!
He thought as he let drop the satin blouse and plunged his gloved hands inside again and felt around.
This time he was rewarded by feeling a slight prick of something solid and sharp.
He pulled out a luxuriously long black satin number and saw it had two ruby clips attached to its bodice.
He held it up to the mirror so she could see.
she clapped gleefully, watching him pull free the ruby clips from the evening gown and casually flipped them into his bag on the floor.
“Well done Gaston!”
He looked up at her, as the slinky black gown was indifferently added to the growing pile on her bed.
He could see by her reflection that she was excitedly eating it up.
Then she suddenly resumed back into her character of being the hapless victim.
And began to miserably plead…
“Please mister burglar don't take everything of mine! I am sure there is nothing more inside!”
He smiled, wondering how she would react when she eventually found out that indeed, she was a hapless victim of her game!?
Turning his attention once again to her closet he moved aside the hangers, revealing a set of shelves set in the back that contained a nice selection of sensible shoes, wedged pumps, glossy spiked heels and designer style purses.
One purse caught his ever-appraising eyes, a small gold clutch with what looked like (and probably was) a diamonded clasp!
He pulled it out and tossed the expensive bugger into the bag.
“Oui , Good eye Gaston! It's almost like you were a real thief.”
She gurgled this, shivering in delight, as her earrings and necklace flickered along with her figure, like uncontrollable wildfires.
He watched the enticing show from her reflection in the handy door length mirror.
Then he turned back to the closet.
For, as he was moving the dresses over to look into the shelves, his eye had caught sight of a black leather jacket with a belt studded by what must have been a thousand rhinestones.
He now pulled it out and searched its pockets, mainly to tease her a bit further, for he imagined that “Gaston” would do such a thing!
So, he was utterly surprised when his gloved fingertips felt something cold and a bit weighty in a side pocket!
He slipped it out and found he was holding a solid gold cigarette case, which he added to the ever-growing collection in his bag!
His “Mentor” trilled as he did so, exclaiming with happy surprise...
“I had wondered where that had gotten off to luv! The matching lighter should be there too!”
He reached back in, and there it was, as well as a small ivory and ebony gold ringed cigarette holder.
Both of which quickly joined their companion in the now bulging bag.
He then pulled off the shimmery belt.
Even with rhinestones, it was worth a pretty penny he reasoned.
As started to pitch it into the case, he heard the Lady helpfully exclaim in the background, a good idea she said excitedly.
“Save that for when you tie me up to take my jewels!”
Shaking his head, why not? he tossed the belt to the helpful lass’s feet…
Thinking he was quite finished with the closet as he held the leather jacket, he for no rhyme or reason, took the time to hang it back up rather than adding it to the pile on the bed.
But It was as he did so that something, a most decidedly not rhinestone something, flashed in the dim lights in the gap that had been made where the leather jacket had hung!
He eagerly reached in and pulled out a lovely long brown, silky soft, liquidly appearing gown.
Holding it up triumphantly, he looked down at the dazzling sparkles of a magnificent gem-encrusted brooch that was suspended from the gown’s wide centre waistline.
“Good show Gaston!”
She exclaimed in the background.
His eyes left the brooch and looked into the mirror at her.
She was clapping, rings and bracelets, earrings and Coronet, the whole lot, erupting into a million pinpricks of fire as she did so!
He felt his manhood rising precariously as he looked her over, feeling the effect, even from this distance, her primitively carnal arousal!
She eagerly continued, spilling her emotions into her words!
“Mon Mari, I was going to tease you later if you were to ‘ave missed that one, and I was sure you were going to!”
“Tsk!” he said to himself. wonder what the teasing part would have entailed!
At the same time his mind was picturing this, he automatically, without taking his eyes off the mirror, pulled off the brooch and nonchalantly pocketing the breathtakingly pretty jewel before throwing the scintillatingly downy soft feeling soft gown onto the shiny pile already laying strewn about the bed.
It flashed through his mind that the fancy dresses strewn about could have been the striplings from that many jewel encrusted maidens, like this one, and what a delightful haul that would have been to carry out!
Savouring those thoughts, he turned once again to focus his attention, on the rather all too helpful Miss, his eyes traveling unabashedly up and down her figure.
Time was a-wasting!
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Chapter 9
Wasting Time?
He eagerly started to move towards her...
“Almost!”
She said with a giggle, her flashily ringed finger raised again, stopping him as he had started to move towards her as she admonished him…
“Not quite yet! You forgot the most important part of burgling a lady’s chamber! “
Again, he stood staring, not quite knowing what the devil this peculiarly eager to be robbed damsel in distress was going on about now!?
But quite recent experience told him it should be to his thieving benefit to take more precious time and hear her out!
So, he stood questioningly waited to hear what the most important part was?
Which she then, quite helpfully, spelled it all out to him…
“You didn't check the lingerie drawer, Gaston! Any real burglar would have done so!”
He observed her winking at him …
“Come along Gaston l, get into your role my darling…!”
He looked at her, smirking to himself…
“Indeed, lady, I will!”
Curiously He turned and looked down upon the drawer in the stand next to her bed.
“No silly, still in the drawer beneath my now pilfered jewel case!”
She was looking down mischievously at the Drawers set in the ancient oak antique Chippendale dresser.
He turned, hesitating…
Should dear Gaston know which one it was?
He decided to just start at the top and began opening them one by one and pray he did not invoke her to start having any doubts as to his true nature!
He went over and started to pull open the top drawer.
She could be heard giggling in the background…
“Moved it on you didn’t I from the last time!? “
Her most welcomed words relived a bit of his anxiety, the gig was still not up, she still hadn’t guessed that he was the real thing, and not some love lost Beau sadly burdened with the moniker of Gaston, of all things!
“Ahh, there you go my darling!”
She said as he opened the next…
The drawer was found to contain, as promised, piles of wispy thin satin and silks, in all colours of a shimmering rainbow! Curious as to what further riches he was meant to find, he greedily swirled the expensive lingerie about, soon finding a pile of glistening silver all carefully laid out on one side.
A silver brush comb and matching mirror, all studded with jewelled handles, and a pair of silver handcuffs!
He lifted the jewelled vanity pieces...
He had once drooled over a similar set discovered in a museum's case!
“Oops, she giggled, forgot those were there, just leave ‘em luv!”
But he continued to place them into the case at his feet and was surprised when she did not protest.
Instead, she said reasonably…
“But of course, they are jewelled, just be careful with ‘em please my darling?”
Buy then he was already curiously looking inside, lifting the handcuffs…
He heard his victim give out a hoarse moan behind him!
The handcuffs and keys he lifted and threw on the satin comforter of the bed, wondering how many times she and her Gaston had put them to use?
He picked up the now quite hefty leather pouch and looked over at his smirking victim.
“Come mister thief!”
She instructed lustfully …
“Finally time to do your worst!”
“With pleasure” he murmured to himself, studying most hypnotic swaying of her long jewelled earrings…
“To all my just gratification, Madam!”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Chapter 10
Lusting Gratification
He came over from the fancy oak dresser and finally stood before her.
The lady’s head came up to his chin, her pretty face looking up with innocence, into his.
She was smiling most provocatively, one hand still holding the clasp of her cloak, the other resting upon the shimmery brooch pinned onto the cloak over her right breast.
He, for no real reason, found himself wondering if the broach’s placement meant she was left-handed.
“Okay mister burglar, take me broach, I see your eye’ in it!”
For the first time, but not the last, he almost felt sorry for the show that poor Gaston was missing out on, but glad deep down that he, on the other hand, was not!
He reached down and pried her fingers from the brooch, and as he unpinned the precious jewel, she pushed against him so his fingers brushed against a rather perked, notably heaving breast.
Obligingly he allowed his fingers free reign to fondle her tits!
With a deep sigh, she listlessly allowed both her hands to fall to her sides as she leaned into him, her eyes turned upward gazing lustfully at him with her imploring hazel green eyes.
Huskily she murmured…
“That’s it, not too quickly now…”
He unsteadily managed to unfasten the broach, his fingers a bit encumbered by the game she was playing with her body as she leaned in against him.
Pulling it off, his fingers brushing her soft figure, he let the broach plop into the pouch at his feet…
He then reached up and undid the jewelled clasp of her long green satin cape, exposing is silvery lining… and finally revealing the playful lady’s gown as it lay in full glory down along her enticingly Horney diminutive figure!
As well as revealing her remaining ornaments, in all their exquisite glimmering glory!
Tongue-tied in awe; he watched the cape slither down from her arms.
She looked up into his face, lustful eyes sparkling with delight at his unbridled rapture at seeing her...
Though not for a second realizing quite what it was about her that had captured his total drooling interest!
“Cat ‘ave your tongue there laddie?”
She purred, her hazel eyes opening doe wide, offering no quarter as to their needful meaning.
He just let his eyes travel up and down the now fully exposed figure, quickly taking it all in.
He thought with satisfaction …
“The only thing that had more shine than those doe-like eyes were the diamonds that fell ever so dripping, ever so invitingly, from alluring points along down her scintillating figure!”
Her green satin gown was fitted to show off every delightful curve of her figure.
The bodice was not decorated by rhinestones or anything else that would have taken away one’s eyes from the jewels the wearer was sporting.
Those jewels consisted of a brooch equally as magnificent as the one he had plucked from the brown satin gown found hanging in her closet.
Besides, now could be viewed her long wide necklace dripping down to just above her visibly heaving breasts. The fine piece was set with blazing diamonds, smaller round ones surrounding a steady stream of larger egg-shaped ones that matched the one that hung from her forehead.
She smiled at his amazement.
“Gaston, you almost act as you have never seen these before!”
She scolded, while playfully lifted the necklace, letting it flow charmingly through her emerald green satin gloved fingers.
“Or are you really getting into robbing me, you naughty man!”
She let her other hand playfully pat the side of his mask.
For a second, he thought she was going to pull it up to kiss him, thus spoiling the game.
So, he quickly grabbed her by the wrists under the pretense of studying her rings and bracelets, thus successfully diverting her mind away from the thought.
“Ahh mister burglar, you want my pretties, I can tell, do you desire them more them Moi? One can imagine that you do! Quickly now, put yonder chair to use and ensure sure your victim cannot slip away whilst you wrestle the jewels from her very body!”
Liking this game more and more, he quickly fetched over the chair she was indicating.
Happy to oblige, it would make things far easier at the end he thought to himself with a dash of relief!
The chair was another sturdy Chippendale, Victorian-era straight-backed. Its' position, reflection in the closet door he had left open, would allow them both to watch from all angles. Dear Romeo ‘Gaston’ could not have planned it better!
He sat it down behind her and she started to sit.
He grabbed her by the wrists, keeping her upright. He looked into her wide-open eyes, yet she was the one smirking like the cat eyeing the canary in its cage!
“Good Lord he thought wryly. What did you get yourself into mate?”
she asked him sweetly, honey dripping with each syllable.
“What do you have in mind for your victim?”
He briskly turned her around and began to unzip her gown, feeling its slick material, quite luscious even under the thin gloves he wore.
“Good show Gaston!
she chirped in approval…
“Make your victim feel vulnerable!”
She kicked off the gown and it fell in a pile on the carpet, with the brooch on top, sparkling like a lighthouse on top of an Irish island of shimmering green. She was looking up at him, clad only in a scant mint coloured silken slip that hung delightfully tight against her now quite overly perked figure.
She stooped down giving him a purposely good view of her ‘fin arrière’, tightly outlined by her silken thin slip. She reached down and retrieved her cape, covering the cold oak back of the high-backed chair with it and slipped onto it, too fast for him to react.
“Damn! He had planned to nick that pretty cape with its expensively wrought clasp as well!”
“But he reasoned, all is fair in love, games, and theft!”
He went over and undid the satin sash of her green gown, eyeing the brooch, but not taking it...
“Not yet my pretty!”
He said to himself with promise, as he slipped the sash off.
He turned back around, again she was still smirking like the cat that had now caught the canary, though this time it looked like she had bloody thing in her mouth. He looked down at her gloved hands, the bracelets were there, but judging by her now bare fingers, it was not a canary she had sucked into her mouth.
Without letting on to her mischievous game, he went behind her and she quite helpfully placed her gloved hands behind the chair, her fingers beckoning, trying to get him to notice her missing rings. But he had other ideas for that part of her game…
And it did not involve Gaston snogging ‘er to get at em!
He employed the sash by tying her waist to the chair.
He could feel her shiver deliciously from her head to toe, squirming playfully in the chair.
Then in her throes of passion, she almost slipped off the chair, made slicker by the cape upon which she perched, sitting in an equally slippery slip, and he had to catch her and pull her back, feeling her shiver pleasurably as he held her.
Her dangling earrings were flickering like mad throughout the show, beckoning quite invitingly in his face as he was kneeling, causing him to shiver in much the same manner as her.
He then rose and going to the bed picked up the set of the handcuffs. Going back, he held her eyes steady with his, as she tried to come across as if she was imploring him not to do it, the rings hidden in her mouth preventing her to speak out!
As he approached, she kicked off both of her emerald rhinestones covered spiked heels, playfully missing him.
He smiled at her mischievously, going around and handcuffing her wrists together as she squirmed!
Then he came back around, and bent down in front of her, his hand reaching back and snatching up the rhinestone belt from her leather jacket.
He reached down, and taking an ankle in turn, strapped them both securely together!
She was not going anywhere without dragging the chair with her!
He had kept the keys on the bed, she could reach there to undo herself, but he was planning to be long gone before she would manage to accomplished that feat!
She was now ready, bound up the way she was, to be mercilessly stripped of the rest of her jewels!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Chapter 11
The Subtle Touch
He went down behind her and she arched back in an attempt to watch what he was up to!
He looked over at their figures image in the mirror, her coronet, necklace, and earrings vividly sparkling in the reflection, like fire on a distant mountain he thought drooling with anticipation…….
He methodically decided to start with her Bracelets….
Holding her left wrist with his left hand, he let his right-hand travel up her squirming figure till he reaches her breast. Cupping it he began to with a slipping motion, massage it through her thin satiny slip.
She curled her figure against her bindings, closed her eyes, and began to whimper and moan lustily, opening her mouth just enough to keep her rings hidden inside!
As his right hand subtly pleaded her breasts, his left hand travelled down to a cuffed diamond bracelet. He began rubbing it up and down her gloved wrist in sync with his right hand, eventually worked it open and slipped it off from around her wrist, tossing it neatly into his pouch.
He repeated the performance on her right wrist as she continued moaning in total satisfaction.
If she noticed her twin bracelets were being removed in the process of having her breasts massaged, she did not appear to care.
Then, playing along with the lady’s game, he fruitlessly felt for her rings, hearing her muffled giggles above him as she squirmed.
“Mmmm,” she said, through gritted teeth not being able to open her mouth due to her rings.
He could see that what she was unable to voice, it was readable in her expression, reflected from the handy mirror!
Then he moved his hands, grasping her by the silken sides of her slip, and began to tickle her mercilessly, she started to uncontrollably giggle, then stated to sputter, finally letting loose with a gasping laugh!
This sent the three sparkling rings she had been holding inside her mouth, spinning out and plopping onto the green silk of her lap, where they slithered down between her knees!
“Dirty Play, Gaston!”
She admonished, snapping her legs closed to hide the rings, tears in her eyes as she laughed out her words…
“That wasn’t how… !
He hushed up her words by quickly plunging his gloved fingers down inside her slip, grasping and kneading her breasts in unison
Her whole being tingling with the exquisite pleasure, made her forget entirely how she had wanted him to play the game with her rings!
But he was now entirely in control of the situation, and she felt her whole figure limply wilt under his command!
He left his right hand inserted down her slip to carry on with the task, subtly extracting his left to then run fingers through her long blonde, luxurious feeling hair, pulling it back behind her head, where it hung down in a gold coloured silken mass!
Figuring if he did, she would lean right back to look up at him!
Which is exactly what she did, playing right into his trick!
Her eyes, though, were still tightly shut, as her focus went off to some erotic location, as she was reeling in the vivid pleasures of her game.
Her green satin gloved fingers tried to adjust her bonds so she could reach back out behind her, and he knew for what and responded appropriately by rising so she could reach her objective.
Then it became his turn to be the one moaning softly through gritted teeth…
He silently thought, while groaning inwardly…
“Easy on the family jewels there, missy!”
“Oh, My Darling Gaston!”
she responded, apparently, hopefully, waiting for a response.
He gave her one, though not verbally…
He leaned against the backside of the chair, getting as close to her as he could!
She began to grope quite furiously and he thought of a monkey he had seen once in the city zoo doing one such number on a banana.
He was also finding it increasingly difficult to keep his mind on the task at hand.
So, he pulled away from her grasp a little, allowing her fingers the barest of touch!
He then gently pulled back her blonde hair, and quickly started caressing her now sweating earlobes, taking advantage of where this lady’s reeling mind was otherwise occupied!
Slowly, carefully stroking up and off, he pulled out the gold hooks attached to her sparkling earrings from each pierced ear.
Freeing both of her lovely long earrings in turn and letting them drop, glimmering into his leather pouch!
He kept on caressing, deeply thrusting his right hand in and along her breasts for several minutes taking precious time with the task as to keep her mind away from what he was accomplishing from behind her trussed up back.
Meanwhile, his left hand moved up into a new position.
Her entire being was squirming, so enraptured and enthralled, that she never even felt him picking up the ends of the thin coronet: lifting oh so carefully, each end of shiny gold braided ends that were woven into her hair, and began gently lifting out each one free!
As he pulled it delicately away, she did not even miss the egg-shaped diamond as it stopped brushing against her sweat glistened brow!
Once he had freed the shimmering piece, he eagerly lifted to admire it!
She broke his trance by purring, opening her eyes as he quickly hid the jewelled coronet!
“Well, my Gaston! I can feel you desire me again, my darling! It has been quite a long time for you also!”
But though she may have felt that something growing between her captor’s legs, she had no inkling that he had been busy lifting her pricey jewelled headpiece!
Nor did she now hear it being dropped in the pouch at her foot!
So, oblivious that her earrings and coronet were gone, the bound, satin slip clad lady, quite seductively began murmuring these words as her fingers continued their gentle free play between his legs.
“You want me don’t you luv!”
She asked this seductively, wistfully as her eyes opened wide and looking up into his, catching him hovering over her, his eyes from the slits in his hood, looking down upon her.
He had stopped fondling her breasts with his right hand and placing that hand on her shoulder was looking down upon her with lust-filled eyes!
But she was entirely misreading the object of his also lustful gaze…
She again closed her eyes with a heavy sigh!
As his eyes went to what he now really wanted from her!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Chapter 12
The Fondling Theft
He smiled as he looked down upon her throat, watching the diamond and emerald necklace moving up and down in conjunction with her heavy breathing!
For the small fortune in diamonds, dribbling nicely down as her throat was arching back in her ecstasy, was sending a rippling cascading fire of colour from its’ gemstones!
This was, for the most part, the blame for a stiffly obvious condition of his John Thomas!
“Kiss me, Gaston!”
The enraptured miss cried out yearningly at that point.
In her bliss, his victim moved open her knees ever so slightly, uncovering several small glittering objects!
The rings! He had almost forgotten all about them!
Seizing the moment, his hand had delved down, then up in between her legs!
He pried open wider her legs, finding no resistance atoll.
He then obliged her sweet fantasy
As her thoughts of being kissed vanished into the aire in a fit of convulsive ecstasy.
She screeched, her whole figure thrashing against her bindings as the intensity of sparking feeling erupted from the sensitive area he had invaded!
He reached into her lap, his fingers plunging in against her silken slip, scooping the rings inside, inserting two fingers, pushing inside a portion of her slip with the bundle of 3 rings, deep up within her vagina!
Her whole being exploded into enveloping, exquisitely painful jolts of pleasure as her long waiting orgasm took full effect.
He had ardently moved against her and he felt her fingers curling around his manhood, he pulled away quickly before she could cause him some pain from a reflecting grasp!
“Gaston,!” she screamed her eyes closed shut tight in pulsating ecstasy!
He had begun groping about inside her vagina, searching inside the slip he had pushed up for the rings that were laying somewhere there, unseen!
He soon found and scooped out each glittery ring one by one, pushing them deeply up and into her pulsating “Labia Majora”, before pulling them from the now damp silk and tossing them each neatly into his bag.
As he pulled out the last ring, along with her now wet portion of slip, she said, her voice hoarse with expectations,
“Sure you found everything mister burglar Gaston?”
He reached down and randomly pulled up her hairpiece from the top of the glistening pile in his pouch and dropped it down between her legs.
She opened her eyes, looking down
“When did that fall off?”
Forgetting her hands were bound, she had tried to feel up for her hair…
Like she had done with her rings, she firmly clamped her legs tightly over the jewel, extinguishing its flicker as it laid there shimmering brightly!
“Not part of the game, luv… I borrowed that from Lilly, silly! “
She giggles at her rhyme, light-headed from the lingering effects of her prickling arousal and orgasm!
He smirked, thinking!
Hmmm, where is this Lilly, and is she another one wondering about, wearing the good ‘ice’ this evening? But, back to the job at hand!
He bent down and tried to open her knees…
She resisted, struggling against her bindings as she tried to work her hands-free to stop him!
He hoped she was still playing her game, and not having second thoughts about it.
It could make things rather unpleasant!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Chapter 13
Pleasant Reflections
But apparently, the gig was not up yet!
For an old memory had been invoked back to her conscious mind.
With this thought, she said lustily, her dry throat cracking her words…
“Ah yes, you are right my dear Gaston! Recreating that time in the film we were watching, when a thief lifted some jewels from those ladies at a party, after promising them he was reformed!”
“Yes Gaston, you remembered that game..!”
she said with a sultry gasp, before uttering one last word.
“Except …”
He froze not sure if he should follow-through, not wishing to upset any apple carts of fantasy she was expecting.
Then she went on….
“I should have told you that the Tiara was out of bounds, of course, you wouldn’t ‘ave known it was mine, being absent for so many years…!”
He looked down at her and saw that she was again watching him with some queries.
Was she having some doubts as to what game was being played?
he was curiously wondering?
He removed his hands from her leg!
She sighed happily!
“Thank you, you are a gentleman as well as a thief! Dear sir!”
He then reached up and lifted her necklace, fingering its beckoning lure.
She said nothing...
So apparently, this beauty was still in play!
it was time for the coupe de grace!
He eagerly contemplated as he eyed the magnificent necklace, the last and best piece of his victim's worn jewels.
He again grasped her breasts, fondling them through the silken slip with his right hand.
Whilst his left travelled up her slick backside, reaching the back of her throat, and her necklaces’ jewelled clasp!
Using two gloved fingers, he neatly popped open the clasp and watched as the two ends fell open and hung down over her shoulders.
Curious as to what reaction she would give,
She did not disappoint
She quivered and moaned, then, began choking out the words in quite in a seductive, huskily hoarse-voiced manner.
“Gaston, Mon Mari!”
Her eyes were glazed over, reflected in the mirror, wide open with crazed excitement!
Suddenly an epiphany of an idea enters his head
letting one ned of the necklace noticeably drag up and over her shoulder, he released his hold, with a cascading fiery slither, it fell inside between her heaving breasts.
His right hand still fondling those breasts, he felt the necklace and worked it past so it slipped further down, landing in her lap!
Her diamonded necklace had joined its jewelled mate, the forbidden fruit, the jewelled coronet!
He then did the job properly, feeling along with the outside first, then reaching inside and giving great attention to all of her sweet spots.
Finally reaching the bottom, he again located her clit and began to manipulate it!
“Oh good, lord !”
she exclaimed, pleasurably leaning forward as much as her bindings would allow
As he fondled and groped, going all out to give her already intensely aroused figure as much over stimulation as possible!
Said figure, which had been ratcheting impulsively during the entire performance, now shot straight rigid as his fingers began once again searching the area between her legs!
She let out a piercing squeal as he hit home several times.
And as she closed her eyes tightly with each plunge of his right hands’ fingers finding their mark contorting her figure into exquisite convulsions, he took the opportunity to reach in with his free left hand and grabbed the now unprotected jewels from her lap!
As he pulled her jewels free, she slumped back into the chair, her whole being exhausted from her ecstatic struggles!
He slipped the shimmering strings of diamonds, necklace, and coronet, down on top of their pilfered, glittering mates…
Quite a haul he thought as He looked at her body, eyes clamped shut, still grasping to control her pinnacle reached desires!
She never even noticed that her borrowed headpiece had also been scooped up along with her necklace as he had quickly, unobtrusively also taken it to be deposited inside his bag
He went over to the piled green gown laying on the floor.
Lifting it he carried it over to his victim.
Holding it up he watches as the dazzling brooch was reflected in her, now open, slightly glazed over, doe wide eyes.
He slipped off the jewel, mindlessly pocketing it with the other, as he laid the gown reverently out over her lap.
Her only reaction was to close her eyes and groan happily.
“Okay Gaston you win, she murmured huskily, now untie me!”
“This Gaston did win!
He thought smirking to himself as claimed the now weighty pouch from the floor!
He began to stroll briskly towards the bedroom door exit, preparing himself for when she would realize the truth and start her desperate pleading.
It didn’t take long he heard her exclaim from behind his back before reaching the door…
“Hey, Gaston ! Where do you think you are going, lad?!”
“I said game over, no didn’t I ?!
She must have been looking down, for she began to bleat on like an annoying lost lamb…
“And you give me back that Tiara, it is not supposed to have been part of the game!”
He spoke aloud for the first time, lecturing…
“It is more of a Coronet than a Tiara my sweet!”
The burglar boldly closed the door behind him, distinguishing any further comment from the now indignantly squealing young, distressed Damsel.
He retraced his steps out to the second-floor sitting room’s balcony.
Then made his exiting the way he had come.
Climbing from the ancient wrought iron fire stairs conveniently located down off the second-floor balcony!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
......the Fox River
I finally took a hike into this abandoned railroad abyss that once was the Chicago and Great Western line through St. Charles, Illinois. Thanks to Duane for suggesting this and being with me because I would have never done this alone.
Behind us is Route 25, the first of three overpasses we walked under as we headed west towards the Fox River. The next overpass is 3rd Street and then 2nd Street.
After a very cloudy morning, the sun found its way out from behind the clouds for the last 90 minutes of daylight. The 12F degree temp was enough to make my eyes water and my nose run uncontrollably but the wind was knocked down a bit due to the sloped land on either side.
We tromped through loads of dead weeds, stepped over large fallen trees, checked out graffiti on the concrete overpasses, made note of the beer of choice from discarded beer cans, wondered why there was a boat in there, tires and a couch, not to mention we froze our tooshes looking for photo opps.
As we approched the opening where the tracks actaully cross the Fox River and being 2 or 3 stories above ground, the winds picked up and the cold just ripped through our winter gear. I felt a bit uneasy for some reason and couldnt deal with the windchill but Duane went ahead several yards to get the shot of the tracks going over the bridge. I just stayed back and admired the view of the police department down below to the left.....lol.
None the less, what a fun adventure, a bit eerie, and rediculously cold but totally worth it to explore the abandoned tracks of what used to be one of the great railroads of it's time.
p.s. Duane ~ I finally got all those prickly weed things off my coat.....lol.
AI Future Worlds Oracle Series - Copper Blue Goddesses - Albha Cypreas Azure by Daniel Arrhakis (2023)
Since the time when Artificial Intelligence emerged, fears have grown among humanity about whether it could supplant man himself and radically transform society.
Despite all governmental and planetary regulations, its development became uncontrollable from the moment large multinational companies became omnipotent.
One of the series that became the most controversial, Oracle, was developed by one of the most influential and powerful Tycoons and consisted of the integration of hybrid quantum computing systems with the power of artificial intelligence associated with bionic robotic models.
If the use of these technologies in War was already controversial, the Oracle series proved to be even more dangerous, as these supposed Intelligent Artificial Goddesses could predict future events, the possibilities of revolutions or even political transformations within society itself.
But if this seemed like it could be an added value, over time it was realized that they ended up dictating their own future events, which led to suspicions that after all, it was the big companies that were directing the future of governments and their own people, as in fact always they had done so.
But worse, the direction seemed to be heading in the direction in which the majority of human society would truly be expendable in the hands of a powerful and untouchable elite.
After major protests and regulations worldwide, the Oracle series was discontinued, until it was eventually terminated.
Some of those models produced in that era became the object of great demand by museums and private collectors and they are the subject of these series that I present to you now.
As for the Oracle series, it continued to be produced in secret by large multinationals and secret government programs, but that's another story...
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Desde a época em que a Inteligência Artificial surgiu, cresceram os receios entre a humanidade sobre se ela poderia suplantar o próprio homem e transformar radicalmente a sociedade.
Apesar de todas as regulamentações governamentais e planetárias, o seu desenvolvimento tornou-se incontrolável a partir do momento em que as grandes empresas multinacionais se tornaram onipotentes.
Uma das séries que se tornou mais polêmica, Oracle, foi desenvolvida por um dos mais influentes e poderosos Tycoons e consistia na integração de sistemas híbridos de computação quântica com o poder da inteligência artificial associada a modelos robóticos biônicos.
Se o uso dessas tecnologias na Guerra já era polêmico, a série Oráculo se mostrou ainda mais perigosa, pois essas supostas Deusas Artificiais Inteligentes poderiam prever eventos futuros, possibilidades de revoluções ou mesmo transformações políticas dentro da própria sociedade.
Mas se isso parecia poder ser uma mais-valia, com o tempo percebeu-se que acabavam por ditar os seus próprios acontecimentos futuros, o que levou a suspeitas de que afinal eram as grandes empresas que estavam a dirigir o futuro dos governos e dos seus próprios povos, como de facto sempre fizeram.
Mas pior, a direção parecia estar a caminhar num sentido em que a maior parte da sociedade humana seria verdadeiramente dispensável nas mãos de uma elite poderosa e intocável.
Após grandes protestos e regulamentações em todo o mundo, a série Oracle foi descontinuada, até ser finalmente encerrada.
Alguns desses modelos produzidos naquela época tornaram-se objeto de grande procura por museus e colecionadores particulares e são o motivo principal desta serie que agora vos apresento.
Quanto à série Oracle, ela continuou a ser produzida em segredo por grandes multinacionais e programas governamentais secretos, mas isso é outra história...
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A new Series "Ai - Future Worlds" created by Daniel Arrhakis with a Futuristic Surrealistic Sci-Fi intriguing mood based in the role of Artificial Intelligence in our future society.
Stories imagined by Daniel Arrhakis with images created with the help of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Art techniques.
'Boggart...' - on the Pendle Sculpture Trail, Aitken Wood, Barley, Lancashire UK
Boggart is one of numerous related terms used in English folklore for either a household spirit or a malevolent spirit inhabiting fields, marshes or other topographical features. In Northern England, at least, there was the belief that the boggart should never be named, for when the boggart was given a name, it would not be reasoned with nor persuaded, but would become uncontrollable and destructive. Within the folklore of North-West England, boggarts can cause mischief in homes but tend to live outdoors, in marshland, holes in the ground, under bridges and on dangerous sharp bends on roads.
Seeing the sculpture put me in mind of Gollum (taken April 2019)
©SWJuk (2020)
All rights reserved
The back of this print is stamped "week ending Sep 10, 1955" -- but I think it was taken a week or two earlier than that, probably when cousins Sherry and Ricky were visiting Omaha before the beginning of their school year back in the Washington, DC area...
**********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted.
11. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
Pictured is the device to measure radiation. Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in early 1985 was the greatest technological catastrophe in the USSR. An uncontrollable fire at the powerplant caused a collapse of the protective roof and escape of an enormous amount of radioactive material. Chernobyl was located next to Kyiv, and by a sheer luck the wind blew it in the direction opposite of the city. This catastrophe affected thousands of lives, left many children orphans or sick for life, demonstrated heroism of common soldiers and firefighters who stopped the spread without the benefit of protective equipment. The Chernobyl museum is located in the building that in 1985 housed the regional fire department and served as the headquarters of the operation to contain the fallout.
На фото - аппаратура по измерению радиации. Авария на Чернобыльской АЭС в начале 1985 г. был самой страшной техногенной катастрофой в истории СССР. Вышедший из под контроля пожар разрушил крышу и привёл к выбросу громадного количества радиоактивного материала в воздух. По счастливой случайности ветер дул в сторону от многомиллионнового Киева. Катастрофа затронула напрямую тысячи жизней, оставила много детей сиротами или больными на всю жизнь, продемонстрировала героизм простых солдат и пожарных работавших без какого-либо защитного оборудования. Музей находится в здании, где в 1985 году располагалось киевское областное управление пожарной охраны и ставшим штабом ликвидации последствий аварии.
so I got some new bricks (bricklink order finnaly :) and using new camera
in the year 2020 tention between the NAC (north american coalition ) and the sp (shanghi pact) we're high because the mobalization of NAC forces along the northern border of China to comabat the Russian and Mongolian advances causing war zones on Chinese land with high civilian casualtys , conferences were held to settle the tention but NAC officials would not prevail so they ordered the officials back to America because the very possible declaration of war but he Chinese saw this as the Americans gearing up to attack there homeland so riots were uncontrollable and they killed many officials so the NAC dispatched spec ops drone units to exfill high value officials
so this is my new series tell me your thoughts because I really like the idea and I have made some units already
" "…September 11 is still part of the archaic theater of violence aimed at striking the imagination. One day it might be said: 'September 11' – those were the ('good') old days of the last war. Things were still of the order of the gigantic: visible and enormous!
…(however) nanotechnologies of all sorts are so much more powerful and invisible, uncontrollable, capable of creeping in everywhere. They are the micrological rivals of microbes and bacteria. Yet our unconscious is already aware of this; it knows it, and that's what's scary."
Jacques Derrida
Welcome to Sirmione, a picture perfect town on Lake Garda...This image was taken on the day I thought I was quite literally going to die! We had hopped on the ferry across from our resort (Garda) it had been already been raining that morning, but had seemed to have cleared up until half way across the lake the sky got blacker and blacker and the storm kicked off! For those of you that don't know I have a chronic phobia of storms and spiders, both turn me into an uncontrollable wreck. When I saw fork lightening coming down, hitting not only buildings but the water near our boat I was terrified, poor hubby didn't know what to do with me. When we reached Sirmione it was no better, and I tried to hide under the seat of the ferry instead of getting off, hubby eventually pulled me kicking and screaming off the boat and into the town, all the while begging me to stop screaming as onlookers would think he had beaten me up. In the relative safety of the lanes between the narrow buildings in town center and amongst crowds other people (that the lightening might target instead of me) I calmed down (slightly) but I can safely say that my fear since this day is even worse than before! Trust me when I say you would never want to be out with me in a similar situation. This image is definitely the calm after the storm!
Sirmione is a comune in the province of Brescia, in Lombardy (northern Italy). It is bounded by other communes of Desenzano del Garda and Peschiera del Garda in the province of Verona and the region of Veneto. It has a historical centre which is located on a small peninsula that separates the lower part of Lake Garda.
Explored 08.05.09 - #428
“It was a pit stop, not a destination. I had my whole life mapped out.”
“So what happened?”
“I guess that map didn’t turn out to be mine after all”
- Sarah Dessen, Along for the ride
This book, as lame as it sounds managed to change my life. And that quote was something I had been needing to hear for a long time.
OKAY, no depressing obnoxious huge rants today. Time for something … fun. Like TAGGED FACTS.
1) At the hospital, some guy told me he liked brushing his teeth so much because it makes him feel like hes making out with his truth brush…I’m traumatized.
2) I have this fear of intersections. I hate crossing them and how the people watch you. So of course today I get a rock in my sandal right before one and pretty much limped across…I think I knew the person in the car. Fml
3) My niece (the little thing you’ve seen in pictures) turned to me yesterday and said, when im in the bath I wash my eyebrows…then I sliiiiiiiick em back. Hand gestures were included. Ive never laughed so hard in my life.
4) I feel like my addiction to shoe shopping is kind of like herpes. Once you get it (or buy a pair of shoes) you just can’t give it back to that person (or salesperson) and you just HAVE to sport it (or them).
5) Id really really like to live in Ikea. I mean who wouldn’t want to live in the coolest Home Furnishing store ever?
6) If you’re ever looking for a very good looking guy who’s smart and non Tech retarded I’d suggest Best Buy. If you don’t have one of those , you’re local electronic store. Trust me…they’re all babes. I just about died. And they’re FORCED to be nice and say hello to you. It’s great.
7) I have this disorder…some type of OCD I swear. Say you’re colouring in a picture…I can’t colour two sections that are beside each other the same colour. Like red beside red. It bothers me uncontrollably.
8) My online shopping has become a problem. I don’t even notice im searching up sites until I’ve already made a wish list and finished making a plan as to how im going to afford them…have I mentioned im broke?
9) I’ve come to the conclusion that since I can’t afford actual therapy for my spending compulsions and addictions im going to go buy that “hairapy” shampoo and pray to god it just soaks through my skull and fixes me. My friends say that most likely wont happen.
10) im very confused by something. The fact that the Irish’s mascot is a leprechaun (mascot not being the right word) but the irish are also known for their drinking…so I have a hard time understanding that…because as a leprechaun wouldn’t it be a bitch to get on the bar stool?
And oh hey flickr. I love you all. For those who take the time to read my crazy long descriptions…it means the world : )
Ps. The background of this are maps I drew. It was only a concept but I found it really cool when its done and…kind of calming. As lame as I sound oh goodness. Im leaving now.
The school that I attended in Omaha, 1955-56.
**********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
11. Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved
3 February at 13.00 - 16.00 Rasmussen Quinteto feat. Leo Minax
Sophisticated jazzy folklore based on the highlands of Brazil! Steen Rasmussen has once again invited Leo Minax, one of Brazil's great vocalists, to Denmark. Together they deliver contemporary Brazilian music as we know it from Gilberto Gil, among others. Sophisticated jazzy folklore based on Brazil's highlands,
Minas Gerais, where Leo Minax has his roots. In addition, they delve into the songs of the bossanova's first man, Antonio Carlos Jobim, which Leo Minax interprets uncontrollably beautifully. Line-up: Leo Minax (BR, voc, g), Steen Rasmussen (p), Lis Wessberg (tb), Bastian Sjelberg (b), Martin Andersen (dm) 10 February at 13.00 - 16.00
This is a picture from the rear of our house; from the way everyone was dressed, I'm guessing that the photo was taken sometime in the summer of 1955.
Almost everywhere we lived, Dad planted a garden in the back yard; and although I belonged to the local school 4H club (having taken a school aptitude test that said I would never be competent at anything other than farming), I had no interest at all in the garden. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Bubbles.
But it did produce a lot of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and other vegetables that we had for dinner every night, all summer long.
*********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
Are you feeling down? Sad? Depressed? Even having thoughts of suicide?
Four out of five doctors agree, that viewing Mike Jones' photos once a day can lead to feelings of extreme pleasure. Happiness. Elation. Exuberance. You can get your life back. Feel the way you did years ago, in happier times by viewing one of Mike Jones' photos each day. Depression hurts. But there is a cure. Mike Jones' photography may be the answer. Ask your doctor if Mike Jones' photos are right for you.
warning... Looking at Mike Jones' photos for prolonged periods of time may lead to eye damage such as near sightedness, astigmatism, blurred vision, or blindness. Other possible side effects include headaches, nausea, dizziness, sleepiness. Fainting, or vomiting has been reported in less than 18% of patients. Weight gain, muscle twitching, bladder problems, and uncontrollable urges to urinate. Diarrhea, anal leakage and excessive flatulence have also been reported. Do not operate heavy machinery within four hours of viewing Mike Jones' photos. Do not look at Mike Jones' photos if you are, or may become pregnant. Other possible side effects may include itching, twitching, sneezing, wheezing, shortness of breath, uncontrollable muscle spasms, sexual urges with farm animals. For erections lasting longer than 18 hours consult your doctor immediately. Other, more common side effects include, seizures, narcolepsy, gynecomastia (man boobs), crying spells, rectal bleeding, Itchy watery eyes, panic attacks, insomnia, Uncontrollable bloody projectile vomiting, death. aaaaaaannnnnnddd... Drymouth.
I was up early with the birds this morning with great Anticipation i waited,
Anticipation or being enthusiastic, is an emotion involving pleasure (and sometimes anxiety) in considering some expected or longed-for good event, or irritation at having to wait. Robert Plutchik listed anticipation as one of the eight basic emotions in his psychoevolutionary theory. See also hope. A name for pleasured anticipation is excitement.
Anticipation can be shown in many ways; for example, some people seem to smile uncontrollably during this period, while others seem ill or sick. It is not uncommon for the brain to be so focused on an event, that the body is affected in such a way. Stage fright is a type of anticipation, stemming from the actor or actress hoping that they perform well.,
Hope i got this one right!!
I had the good fortune of being invited by friends to "come play holi" with them. Other Indian friends had warned me the streets would be chaos so decided I might as well just join in! on a fourth floor roof for some shots such as this across the buildings. She's just innocently enjoying the fun of the world's biggest water fight, dropping water bombs and buckets of water onto passersby. and laughing uncontrollably when she gets hit by return fire.
Evil Baby Teapot:
✨Evil Baby Little Teapot Earrings ✨
______________
Text:
Myths, legends, rather stupid so that the ladies do not masturbate and become good women according to the old women of the village, Two daughters of rich families went out at night, we had been friends for a long time, and tired. We ran through the damp and dark streets in the direction of the abandoned mansion, our expensive dresses had been wet all the way, the rain did not stop even when we reached the gate of the fence that surrounded that old house. and all the water made us hurry to enter that house.
closing the door behind us we found a normal, old, broken, abandoned mansion. The air entered without rest through various gaps, including the recently closed door, which only had the name of the door, Nothing special, nothing to scare, just nature making its way through garbage in the shape of a house.
We began to explore each room, each rotten wooden plank of the house creaked in our exploration of the house, accompanied by our conversation about that story that was labeled as terrifying by the people and comic by us, a nonsense which was said
"The daughter, a descendant of a deceased rich man and a wealthy lady, lived in that mansion with her mother and her entourage of butlers and servants, Her beauty and decorum accompanied her mastery of love for tea. But that was not what The only one that he loved, there was something much more that he adored, his nights, afternoons and mornings of caresses and pleasures that he gave to his body at every hour he could, causing all the people to comment on his impudent acts, a girl without shame, and She looked uncontrollably with eyes full of lust at each woman who crossed her sight, her mother tired of punishments, ties, wounds to educate her and stop those acts of her daughter, calling her temptations of the devil, the mother went crazy, tying her to a chair, began to skinning her hands and arms, until she only left her bones, and tired of her gaze, that even with her, her own mother looked excitedly, she took them out with a fork from each basin, making them eat them.
The lady tired of all the madness, she fell asleep tired of so much madness in the room of her daughter, that she had died from loss of blood. But she came back from her death, tearing her mother one last time with the bones of her hand, masturbating her, and suffocating her with the kiss full of blood on the lips of the one she gave birth to a few years ago. . The stories passed from generation to generation.
It is said that if you meet her you can escape by accepting a cup of tea, and denying a second, and leaving with respect, but if you are a woman. if you masturbate, she will not let you go, she will catch you and use you to please her infinite lust desires "
Loud laughter echoed through the mansion from our voices, when we remembered such stupidity, while we remembered such a stupid story while we opened the door of the last room, which looked like the tea room, the silence took over the place like the cold, our breath had ceased. The air was heavy, a few steps in front of us she was, pouring herself a warm cup of tea, her low black hair was decorated by two bows, a black dress decorated with pale ruffles, in her ears two teapot-shaped earrings jingled, the The eye sockets had an eternal emptiness, and what was most striking was that from the middle of his forearms to the hands that held the tea set, he was only bone. leaving them both petrified
Her lips moved delicately "Do you want a cup of tea?" a Hispanic language, a question of if we wanted you. those whispers that made us break our calm, and jump completely terrified. causing the floor to give way and my friend fell to the ground floor being trapped by prodridal wood, while she asked me for help but at that moment the only thing that changed in my mind was to run, go out, save me. but it was impossible, every door to the outside was closed, I only had to go upstairs, all the steps to escape led me to a bedroom deteriorated by time, with a large painting, in which three people appeared, the tea girl, one lady and a gentleman. but she appeared without her being able to finish appreciating the painting. He threw himself at me, completely ripping the skirt of the dress, censoring my voice, sealing my lips with his, and taking ownership of my own pussy with the bones that formed his hand, a passionate movement, an atrocious fear and a pleasure forcibly combined with the terror, trying to escape, desperate movements but the sheets clung to my extremities as if they prevented my escape, the pleasure was greater, and between moans and sudden movements, the arm threw the kettle from the nearby table to the floor, causing the sheets give in, breaking and letting me escape, Jumping out the window to the outside, out of that mansion, out of that great pleasure, walking through that abandoned garden with my bare feet, passing the gate of that house, remembering my friend locked there, but the terror that makes me run as far away possible from that cursed place.
It has been 7 years since that incident, since that night I suffered the worst of nightmares and the greatest of pleasures, 7 years since I arrived at my home with my clothes completely torn, and sticking a chef's knife in my pussy to avoid feel pleasure forever, avoid masturbating in my whole life so that I could never catch myself again, but since that day, when I look through the binoculars that house from my window, I see her, blowing kisses towards me, with the skirt of her dress raising it with her hands and the head of my friend, decapitated, coming out of her damp and wet pussy, although that place has been demolished for 5 years
Crazy or cursed? or maybe excited?