2009 freelander floor plan twin beds
Vindictive Roommate Want to go to Court After Letting Her Boyfriend Live Here Rent Free Off-Lease, Constant Lease Violations
2024.05.29 08:05 Beneficial-Age1696 Vindictive Roommate Want to go to Court After Letting Her Boyfriend Live Here Rent Free Off-Lease, Constant Lease Violations
My roommate and I didn't know one another very well before moving in together, but I had that "good feeling" that things were just lining up for me, so when we started looking at moving into a house together, I was ecstatic. The idea was the her (let's call her Maggie) and I would move in ASAP and usher in a third roommate as soon as one of our many friends needed a place to move into. One of my friends was high on our list of considerations, but then they had a brief fling and Maggie eventually (once we had already been arguing over other issues) blew it out of proportion. It's interesting to note that, when we got the house, Maggie proposed the idea of throwing themed house parties in the basement with small local bands performing. These parties are very popular in our small college city. I had started a great deal of the legwork for planning our first one when Maggie left for a vacation. While packing her car, she left the backdoor wide open and wandered around the house, property, and even neighborhood while walking her dog. In the meantime, my cat made her way outside, and my roommate locked up and left town. When I got back I searched the neighborhood in tears devastated and sobbing, asking neighbors if they'd seen her. By sunset, she made her way back to the house and my roommate's flight landed shortly thereafter. All I got was a half-hearted "glad she's alright" kind of message. Additionally, Maggie had given the door code to our house to her boss who regularly makes OVERT sexual advances toward Maggie despite being in a monogamous relationship. When Maggie returns from vacation, she says nothing and continues carelessly leaving the backdoors open. I inform the landlord of the issue, confront her about the problem, and tell her not to use the backdoor until it's fixed (it doesn't stay latched shut unless locked at the time, and she never locks anything). Each of us very upset about all of this, our friendship is effectively ruined, and we had JUST started our lease. Now, if you recall the detail about wanting to use the house to throw parties, you'll recall that id already put one together. I even had a small band that was going to be touring through from Atlanta stop by. My roommate made efforts to sabotage the party, but seeing as there were no drugs or alcohol, and we were done by noise complaint hours, there was nothing she (OR the landlord's husband who showed up before the party and tried to shut it down) could do about it. The cops even cruised by in the dead middle of the party and didn't do anything. The landlord even did an inspection the next day and didn't find anything of interest except empty pizza boxes and soda cans. Cue my roommates boyfriend. Now, me personally, I am not fond of men and definitely not in my home. I am a lesbian and have a lot of trauma related to men; I have an eating disorder and find it almost impossible to eat when they're around. When they first meet, he won't even tell us his real name (so we'll call him by the fake one, John), and she basically all but moves him in without a second thought. Things are mostly quiet for a few weeks or months, but sometime around the end of summer I asked if my friend from before could get the final go ahead to move in, and Maggie told me that she wasn't comfortable with it anymore because of their fling and told my friend that JOHN wasn't comfortable with it. Later, Maggie proposes the idea of John moving in which I disagree with for reasons stated before, but she doesn't get the message and continues to let him live there and even asks me again if I'm not sure, to which my stern no was ignored. At this point, I reach out to the landlord who basically tries to tell me I SHOULD let John move in before I basically have to twist her arm into telling Maggie to follow the lease, which she proceeds to not do. Over the next eight-ish months, they cause damages all over the ground floor, constantly take up the kitchen and living spaces, and isolate me to my bedroom, a renovated attic. I never cook, lose weight, lose money to eating out, lose money to John who is living in my house rent and utility free, oftentimes while Maggie isn't even around, making noise gaming in the living room. I think it's also worth noting the context that Maggie makes much more money than me, has a car while I do not, and works right across the street while I work across town. I work for many more hours than her, but she fabricates her timesheets, so God knows how much she's making. She's constantly travelling and going to concerts, so she's making it work and then some. As move-out approaches, you can imagine my glee. I want to be freed of this terrible living situation and never speak to the person who put me in it again. We never got a third roommate (at least not a paying one), and I paid an absolutely OUTRAGEOUS amount of money for one person living in an attic with limited access to all the utilities and space they're paying for. But THEN the AC runs out of Freon. Because I've recently gotten a new number and my landlord didn't think to provide any notice besides firing off a text to an undeliverable number, I didn't hear about any of it. All I know is that one day I get up and it's 85°+ in my room, I have to leave for work, and there's no one who can come watch my cat in time. There's a note on the thermostat that says not to run the AC, but I realize I have to ignore it for my cat's safety while I go to work. I send a text to the landlord with my new number letting her know that if the repairman needs to be rescheduled I need to be notified so that someone can be with the animals while the air is off, and she threatens to pull the breaker over the phone and then again in a group chat with Maggie. The tenants that are moving in after me are already having issues with the landlord trying to charge them for their ESA, so she has already lawyered up which is why I think her next response to the affect of "we'll just have to wait for freon, I suggest you put a fan in your window" seemed much more coached. However, she didn't offer to install a window unit or even prorate the rent, and it's been over a week without AC. Anyways, that's getting ahead of myself. After this exchange, I send my mom over to monitor the situation, and she says the breaker was never pulled, but when I got home from work, the AC was off so I turned it back on. Maggie then fired off an angry text in the group chat about how I'm gonna blow the motor and "cost money" (as if it would cost either of us a dime). I tell her that I'm more worried about safety (I'm heat sensitive with a family history of epilepsy and my cat is 9 years old and doesn't breath super well) and that I'm basically gonna run the air when she goes to sleep anyway, so she goes out and RIPS THE THERMOSTAT OFF THE WALL and hides it from me. I ignore this AND the subsequent request for a utility payment of about $175. She has since been blowing my up about the utility bill and trying to confront me in person, all of which I have blatantly ignored. I got home from work last night and ignored her request, went upstairs to find she'd gone through everything outside of my room (my room is locked up when I'm not home) including my food-obsessed stash of vomit, moldy dishes, and rotten food, and taken all the perfectly good food and drinks out of the mini fridge she'd lent me and put them on the ground. She'd also attached a note about the utility bill to my door, which I calmly tossed downstairs before going into my room and going to bed for the night. Today, the note was reattached to the bottom of the staircase with a second note that said "court case will be filed with failure to pay." The way I see it, if she sues me, it's a FREE opportunity for me to countersue her. If I sued for John's portion of rent and utilities for the eight months he was blatantly living there ALONE, I'd already be at $3,500. If I asked for full rent for those eight months and nothing more I'd be at $7,000, $2,000 over the maximum amount I could actually win in small claims court. Thing is, I think she's bluffing. The court costs alone wouldn't be worth what she MIGHT win and definitely not worth the risk that she loses a countersuit. Do I tell her that, or let her find out her own way? Or (even though I very likely will not) do you think I should just pay the utilities?
submitted by Beneficial-Age1696 to legaladvice [link] [comments]
2024.05.29 07:26 ThrowRAZestyclose- Hello
Oh, very long post. Sorry.
Hello, everyone! I know it’s been a while. Being completely honest with you, I am not okay… well, I’m feeling better now. I’ve been feeling horrible, hella anxious, and, yeah, depressed. I don’t even know how to start this post or how to explain what has happened. Maybe it’s really nothing, but it took a toll on my mental health.
Thank you for all your comments and messages. For real, thank you for your concern. It wasn’t my intention to worry you all, but yeah, I wasn’t having a great time. I’m still fighting against my own demons, but it’s all better now. So, thank you, really. I appreciate it so much. I wish we all could go out for a coffee in real life or something.
I’ll let you know what has happened.
A lot of things happened around Mother’s Day, and it brought up old feelings and bad impulses against myself that I had left long in the past. There was a day when I simply didn’t want to exist anymore, to say it kindly. I know my hormones are not being helpful, and the only feeling I can trust right now is my love for hubby and baby and our upcoming little girls. I honestly don’t know what I would do without them. They are my entire world and universe. They simply save me. And I need to be strong for these babies, they are not doing so well. Maybe that’s also part of what made me feel so down like this.
I was already feeling down a few days before Mother’s Day and didn’t feel like celebrating. I know my mom had betrayed me and done unforgivable things up to that point, but I couldn’t help but feel sad because… well, I no longer have a mom. I asked the aunties and grauntie not to acknowledge the day for me, and they understood. Grauntie did call me early in the morning, and it made me sob hard, we talked for about an hour, so go figure. Hubby and I got her a big gift to show our appreciation and gratitude because he says she has also stood as a mother figure for him during these chaotic months. Oh, yea, grauntie is a great woman, and she laughed so much about her nickname, btw, she loves it. Baby calls her that now, well “grantie.” Aunties started saying happy mother’s day the next day lol.
Anyway, hubby didn’t let the day pass for me. He brought me breakfast in bed, he cooked all day, and since we decided to stay home, he brought healthy junk food (approved by my doctors, he made sure about that) for us to stay in bed, or on the couch, watching movies, Bluey, and a marathon of my shitty show that he doesn’t like (but he enjoys in secret lol). He gave me some presents and flowers that baby picked herself. I don’t know when this man took the time to also help baby make a craft for me without me noticing. It was very cute. We decided to stay home, turn the lights off, and stay upstairs pretending we weren’t really there. We both couldn’t help but be concerned and a bit anxious about ILs showing up. We stayed locked upstairs just resting, snuggling, and cuddling.
I will try to summarize what happened when they showed up.
Baby was taking a nap in her room, and we were into our own stuff when they interrupted. We tried to ignore them, but MIL kept insisting, saying she knew we were home. She kept ringing the bell and then knocking on the door. They claimed they were visiting us because we couldn’t attend her reunion. It was only MIL and SIL (not beast SIL), and they were carrying bowls with food. Later I noticed it was only food they know I am allergic to or that I don’t like. After some minutes, we decided to just get rid of them. Hubby changed and went downstairs to warn them he was calling the police (he did that for proof that he asked them to leave, knowing they were not going to go away). MIL was very calm and kept saying shit, but hubby didn’t engage in her conversation. Important information: she asked a lot about me and baby, about our safety. I stayed upstairs, and peeking through the window, I noticed their car was parked on the other side of the street, out of the range of our door cam. Fucking creepy BIL was inside, I guess waiting for them.
I picked up my phone to take a picture of him and I had some unread texts from good SIL warning us ILs were coming and saying things like “be careful,” blah blah. She also said good BIL was heading over here so he could help take them out of our place, I guess. I gotta give points in favor of BIL because he stood up for hubby and even called their mother a liar.
So, we called the police on them, but they also called the police on us, on hubby. Fucking idiots. Fucking MIL. They called the police on hubby saying they believed there was a case of domestic violence happening in our house. They said we didn’t open the door and they were scared because they suspected I’ve been in danger and they hadn’t heard my voice or baby inside. To this point, we are not sure who made the call, but I believe it was creeypy BIL. Hubby had to open the door to talk to the officers, I also had to go out because they wanted to speak to me. Mind you, I was so stressed and just wanted to help hubby with the bullshit that I didn’t realize I was only wearing a top and leggings because, mind you again, I was comfy in my house before they decided to arrive. So, yea, they saw my belly and they officially know that I am pregnant. I, somehow, feel so violated by them knowing. Ugh, fucking idiot creepy BIL’s face and smirk and his eyes all over me still give me the chills. Good BIL had arrived at this point too, so he also saw me but his reaction was the most normal of all. I guess he just got sad. I know he wanted to get close to me but he didn’t dare. Good, I guess.
A female officer separated me from the drama and asked me a bunch of questions in private. I brought her inside the house because baby was still sleeping upstairs. She kept glaring around, like looking for something suspicious, I suppose. The other officer talked with hubby and with a neighbor and he very soon concluded the accusations were all bullshit. They just asked to check on baby because MIL kept insisting. We had to explain that baby was actually her grandkid because she kept asking about her daughter, I just wanted to punch her in the face. I went to pick baby up, she was still asleep, and the cop I was talking with was nice enough to keep both of us inside the house. Baby ended up waking up and crying with all the trouble from outside, anyway. MIL heard her crying and she lost her calm, started to raise her voice. I couldn’t control myself and I poked my head out and told MIL that of course, baby was crying and it was all her fault, and I called her a bitch 🙄 This led to a verbal fight, just imagine everyone involved… and the cops. SIL was crying. I stayed inside but close enough to the door because I was worried about hubby. I overheard him asking if it was done and if he could go inside with us. They were leaving, officers were making them go away but MIL couldn’t just leave without causing more distress and told hubby she wished I bleed out and die while giving birth and that she hopes my baby is not his (because they changed the game, now I am the cheater). I instinctively opened the door to stop hubby from reacting but he was just there standing and staring at her. Ok, background: I had preeclampsia when baby was born, then after being sent home I got very ill and had to be rushed to the hospital because I got an infection. Hubby and everyone got super worried when I had to go back to the hospital. It was bad. Hubby thought the worst and he obviously talked with MIL about it, back at the time so yeah, she knew where to hurt him. Hubby said to good BIL something like “yes, this is the family you keep choosing.” He was like in shock. Hubby and I just went back inside and we hugged. Good BIL tried to talk to us but we ignored him, I know he was upset. He recently sent me a text I haven’t answered back. I have seen hubby sad and vulnerable, but the only time I’ve seen him actually cry was when his father passed away. This time he cried too and couldn’t let us go an inch away from him. I held back my tears. We were very jumpy and uncomfortable so we took some blankets and went to sleep in the other house. There’s no furniture, no lights, and no water yet in my dad’s house but it was better to know we were nowhere to be found. It was like camping for baby, she even asked for vampire stories that we invented for her right there. Then, hubby and I just hugged and cried our eyes out to sleep. I was simply angry and sad and upset that they took away our peace. I cried because this bitch keeps hurting my family, because they are making us run away from our own house, from wverything we have built and for what!? I am thankful we have my dad’s house to escape but it brings me bad memories and I also got a bit triggered that night, I guess. We talked a lot that night and we came to the same conclusion: the only thing that matters is that we have each other and we will never let them win.
No, it wasn’t enough for a RO. Police didn’t want to try for charges because all they saw was a family drama, which it was if you see it as an isolated incident. No, they didn’t go against the beats RO. We told and showed and give everythign to our lawyer.
Then my mom happened. I had a few voicemails from her, and I was weak, so I listened to them. This happened the next day. I waited for hubby so I wouldn’t have to listen to them alone. This was the biggest mistake of my life. We planned to have a nice dinner at home to save Mother’s Day and as an excuse to have a date but I ruined it all. I don’t know why I listened to all of them. She started all calm, victimizing herself but calm. She said happy Mother's Day to me, started to talk about baby, about me, and about my brother. She said she is very sad to be a mother without her kids. She said it would be easier if we were dead (yes, she said that), she would cope better with that truth. It escalated with each voicemail, to the point where she blamed me for what happened with her POS boyfriend and me. I had never heard her say something like this to me while growing up. Never. She claims she’s now all lonely because of me. She said she should have aborted me when she had the chance, as my dad suggested. This… I made me go numb. She accused me of seducing this man and that’s why he fell for me. Only thing I can think is that this POS has been manipulating her, idk but it hurt like hell. She told me that I should have stopped him. She blamed me too because, after that incident, she had lost all opportunities to recover her relationship with my dad. She then basically said our dad never really loved me and my brother, and that’s why he left and never came back. I started to spiral and, well, I barely remember my dad since they divorced. He came back when everything exploded, but before that… I don’t really have memories. I don’t know, she made me question a lot of things. Her tone was calm and sweet, which made it worse. She didn’t use the words or phrasing I am using right now either, her discourse made sense, this is basically what she meant. Of course, she also called me a bad mom too, and I couldn’t help but think about all the things good SIL said about baby and how I didn’t notice it. I started to blame myself for the condition of my baby twins. I am not a bad mom, I know that, but it got me right there. I thought about baby being bullied by her cousins, about MIL throwing up the food I packed for her right in front of her, about our little baby eating food from the floor and trembling because she was frightened. I can’t take out of my mind the image of baby trembling. And I cried as I hadn’t cried in a while. And then I started to remember a lot of other things about my life. I questioned myself again if my mom ever really loved us because growing up, it felt like she did, and I was so grateful I had my mom with me because she was by my side all the time after the POS happened. She was there when I started to struggle in my teens, when I wanted to die, when I started to hurt myself. My dad was there too, and I have beautiful memories with him, he stood for us, I became really close to him, he helped us a lot during that time, but there are a lot of blank spaces where he’s not around. He got another girlfriend, and that time he stayed close to us in the same city but he stopped visiting. Until we went to college, he got together with his current wife, and flew away. He was there if we ever needed money, he paid for our education, but I never reached out to him asking for any other type of help. We barely talked, I tell you he didn’t even knew hubby or baby. To be fair, he was comming over for our wedding but we had to cancel it because of covid. I kept spiraling about it. I got tangled in my mom’s words. I remembered the POS boyfriends I had and how I let them mistreat me, do whatever they wanted to do with me. I let that happen, but I now realize my mom was comfortable with it. I got over that and stopped letting it happen because of the aunties and therapy. Not my proudest moment, but I broke my phone after listening to all her audios.
My train of thought ended up the same: I am so, so thankful I met hubby, and the only thing that matters is that we have each other. Hubby and baby and the twins are the only things that kept me alive these days. They are my world. Still, I was/am? dealing with urges to hurt myself. It’s alright when I am with the baby, it’s alright when I am with hubby, but night time and the moment I open my eyes in the morning… it has been tough. My mom put me in a very bad place. I let her put me in a very bad place again, but it will be the last time. She won’t take the good from me. No way. Hubby says she’s trying to isolate me and he might be right but she won’t get it.
Hubby says I should talk with my dad. I’ve been very distant with him lately, and I know he can feel it. I want to talk with him too about this, but I don’t even know what to say. I miss the aunties, I’ve been distant with them too. Last weekend, hubby and I went out to eat with one of them (the auntie that wrote the text when I told them I’m pregnant) and her husband. It was nice, we had fun. I’m telling them it is two girls this week. I didn’t want to tell them before because I am really scared about my babies. They are a bit smaller than they should be, and even if they are just supposed to be small babies, it worries me, it is not good for twins. Also, they suspect baby B has a heart condition :( I told this to the auntie, she’s the only one of the group that knows about all the difficulties of my pregnancy, and it helps a lot that she knows. I can’t help to be worried, but I can be positive and happy and excited for them. I have to be positive and happy and excited for them. I know the love aunties will give them even in my womb is much needed now. And hubby and I are doing and will do whatever it takes to keep them safe.
So, I said fuckyoumom and changed my mood, Hubby was worried because we really don’t have ANYTHING for the twins, and we are also in the process of moving. He had tried to convinced me to start looking for stuff to clear my mind but I wasn’t in the mood. Well, we finally started to look for cribs now (very difficult task tbh) and we bought their first onesies :) I’m letting the aunties shop for them too now (they’ve been insisting a lot lol) and it is very funny when they start sending pictures of plushies or toys or clothes (I love them because they keep thinking about the big sister). They are still trying to win points to be the godmothers lmao. I called grauntie last week and apologized for not being so communicative lately, and she started to come over again during the mornings, she’s been helping me with house shores and with my feelings. This has also helped hubby a lot because he was worried I was home alone. I cried so much with grauntie about my mom, and she showed me some of her Facebook posts. I just wish she would stop posting baby’s pictures. Grauntie also encouraged me to talk to my dad. And we went out to look for baby stuff together. She also knows about my pregnancy problems, but she’s confident we all will be alright.
The most important thing of all: we told baby she’s going to be a big sister :) She believed my belly was growing because I ate a watermelon seed lol If you want to know her reaction, I’ll make another post about it because I don’t want to mix it with all the shit above.
We ended up having a late Mother’s Day (also a pretext to be close to each other) the next Sunday after the actual day. It was nice and it cheered me up. It was a surprise from hubby.
My car is all fixed now and bills were sent to the beast family but they haven’t paid. We have the RO but the idea of them still scares me a bit from time to time. We’ve been calm these days at home but we have been going to visit the other house from time to time to get used to it. We’ve been planning where to place our furniture and how to decorate just to clear our minds. Hubby said maybe we will be able to start moving in a week and a half or two complete weeks. Yup, we’re moving even if we only have our bed there. I have mixed feelings about it but I know it’s for the best.
What his family and my mom don’t realize is that their bullshit only makes hubby and me stronger as a couple. He relies on me and I rely on him, we don’t fall. We always come to the same conclusion that we are simply meant to be together and for our kids. I can feel how our love and respect to each other grows stronger. And I am holding tight to this. As I said before, the only feeling I can really trust right now is my love for my little (and growing) family. The love they give me is something I have never doubt, not even in my darkest moments. I still have urges from time to time, I feel anxious and sometimes I can’t sleep as right now but all this love keeps me sane within my not so sane moments. I’m alright, I’m getting better (also yes, I’m going to therapy and having more sessions than usual).
I know I always say this but I can’t be thankful enough for hubby… You know? Hubby always says that I saved him, but I believe it is the opposite.
We’re going to be alright. I have always known that.
And I’m back hehe
submitted by ThrowRAZestyclose- to u/ThrowRAZestyclose- [link] [comments]
Hello, everyone! I know it’s been a while. Being completely honest with you, I am not okay… well, I’m feeling better now. I’ve been feeling horrible, hella anxious, and, yeah, depressed. I don’t even know how to start this post or how to explain what has happened. Maybe it’s really nothing, but it took a toll on my mental health.
Thank you for all your comments and messages. For real, thank you for your concern. It wasn’t my intention to worry you all, but yeah, I wasn’t having a great time. I’m still fighting against my own demons, but it’s all better now. So, thank you, really. I appreciate it so much. I wish we all could go out for a coffee in real life or something.
I’ll let you know what has happened.
A lot of things happened around Mother’s Day, and it brought up old feelings and bad impulses against myself that I had left long in the past. There was a day when I simply didn’t want to exist anymore, to say it kindly. I know my hormones are not being helpful, and the only feeling I can trust right now is my love for hubby and baby and our upcoming little girls. I honestly don’t know what I would do without them. They are my entire world and universe. They simply save me. And I need to be strong for these babies, they are not doing so well. Maybe that’s also part of what made me feel so down like this.
I was already feeling down a few days before Mother’s Day and didn’t feel like celebrating. I know my mom had betrayed me and done unforgivable things up to that point, but I couldn’t help but feel sad because… well, I no longer have a mom. I asked the aunties and grauntie not to acknowledge the day for me, and they understood. Grauntie did call me early in the morning, and it made me sob hard, we talked for about an hour, so go figure. Hubby and I got her a big gift to show our appreciation and gratitude because he says she has also stood as a mother figure for him during these chaotic months. Oh, yea, grauntie is a great woman, and she laughed so much about her nickname, btw, she loves it. Baby calls her that now, well “grantie.” Aunties started saying happy mother’s day the next day lol.
Anyway, hubby didn’t let the day pass for me. He brought me breakfast in bed, he cooked all day, and since we decided to stay home, he brought healthy junk food (approved by my doctors, he made sure about that) for us to stay in bed, or on the couch, watching movies, Bluey, and a marathon of my shitty show that he doesn’t like (but he enjoys in secret lol). He gave me some presents and flowers that baby picked herself. I don’t know when this man took the time to also help baby make a craft for me without me noticing. It was very cute. We decided to stay home, turn the lights off, and stay upstairs pretending we weren’t really there. We both couldn’t help but be concerned and a bit anxious about ILs showing up. We stayed locked upstairs just resting, snuggling, and cuddling.
I will try to summarize what happened when they showed up.
Baby was taking a nap in her room, and we were into our own stuff when they interrupted. We tried to ignore them, but MIL kept insisting, saying she knew we were home. She kept ringing the bell and then knocking on the door. They claimed they were visiting us because we couldn’t attend her reunion. It was only MIL and SIL (not beast SIL), and they were carrying bowls with food. Later I noticed it was only food they know I am allergic to or that I don’t like. After some minutes, we decided to just get rid of them. Hubby changed and went downstairs to warn them he was calling the police (he did that for proof that he asked them to leave, knowing they were not going to go away). MIL was very calm and kept saying shit, but hubby didn’t engage in her conversation. Important information: she asked a lot about me and baby, about our safety. I stayed upstairs, and peeking through the window, I noticed their car was parked on the other side of the street, out of the range of our door cam. Fucking creepy BIL was inside, I guess waiting for them.
I picked up my phone to take a picture of him and I had some unread texts from good SIL warning us ILs were coming and saying things like “be careful,” blah blah. She also said good BIL was heading over here so he could help take them out of our place, I guess. I gotta give points in favor of BIL because he stood up for hubby and even called their mother a liar.
So, we called the police on them, but they also called the police on us, on hubby. Fucking idiots. Fucking MIL. They called the police on hubby saying they believed there was a case of domestic violence happening in our house. They said we didn’t open the door and they were scared because they suspected I’ve been in danger and they hadn’t heard my voice or baby inside. To this point, we are not sure who made the call, but I believe it was creeypy BIL. Hubby had to open the door to talk to the officers, I also had to go out because they wanted to speak to me. Mind you, I was so stressed and just wanted to help hubby with the bullshit that I didn’t realize I was only wearing a top and leggings because, mind you again, I was comfy in my house before they decided to arrive. So, yea, they saw my belly and they officially know that I am pregnant. I, somehow, feel so violated by them knowing. Ugh, fucking idiot creepy BIL’s face and smirk and his eyes all over me still give me the chills. Good BIL had arrived at this point too, so he also saw me but his reaction was the most normal of all. I guess he just got sad. I know he wanted to get close to me but he didn’t dare. Good, I guess.
A female officer separated me from the drama and asked me a bunch of questions in private. I brought her inside the house because baby was still sleeping upstairs. She kept glaring around, like looking for something suspicious, I suppose. The other officer talked with hubby and with a neighbor and he very soon concluded the accusations were all bullshit. They just asked to check on baby because MIL kept insisting. We had to explain that baby was actually her grandkid because she kept asking about her daughter, I just wanted to punch her in the face. I went to pick baby up, she was still asleep, and the cop I was talking with was nice enough to keep both of us inside the house. Baby ended up waking up and crying with all the trouble from outside, anyway. MIL heard her crying and she lost her calm, started to raise her voice. I couldn’t control myself and I poked my head out and told MIL that of course, baby was crying and it was all her fault, and I called her a bitch 🙄 This led to a verbal fight, just imagine everyone involved… and the cops. SIL was crying. I stayed inside but close enough to the door because I was worried about hubby. I overheard him asking if it was done and if he could go inside with us. They were leaving, officers were making them go away but MIL couldn’t just leave without causing more distress and told hubby she wished I bleed out and die while giving birth and that she hopes my baby is not his (because they changed the game, now I am the cheater). I instinctively opened the door to stop hubby from reacting but he was just there standing and staring at her. Ok, background: I had preeclampsia when baby was born, then after being sent home I got very ill and had to be rushed to the hospital because I got an infection. Hubby and everyone got super worried when I had to go back to the hospital. It was bad. Hubby thought the worst and he obviously talked with MIL about it, back at the time so yeah, she knew where to hurt him. Hubby said to good BIL something like “yes, this is the family you keep choosing.” He was like in shock. Hubby and I just went back inside and we hugged. Good BIL tried to talk to us but we ignored him, I know he was upset. He recently sent me a text I haven’t answered back. I have seen hubby sad and vulnerable, but the only time I’ve seen him actually cry was when his father passed away. This time he cried too and couldn’t let us go an inch away from him. I held back my tears. We were very jumpy and uncomfortable so we took some blankets and went to sleep in the other house. There’s no furniture, no lights, and no water yet in my dad’s house but it was better to know we were nowhere to be found. It was like camping for baby, she even asked for vampire stories that we invented for her right there. Then, hubby and I just hugged and cried our eyes out to sleep. I was simply angry and sad and upset that they took away our peace. I cried because this bitch keeps hurting my family, because they are making us run away from our own house, from wverything we have built and for what!? I am thankful we have my dad’s house to escape but it brings me bad memories and I also got a bit triggered that night, I guess. We talked a lot that night and we came to the same conclusion: the only thing that matters is that we have each other and we will never let them win.
No, it wasn’t enough for a RO. Police didn’t want to try for charges because all they saw was a family drama, which it was if you see it as an isolated incident. No, they didn’t go against the beats RO. We told and showed and give everythign to our lawyer.
Then my mom happened. I had a few voicemails from her, and I was weak, so I listened to them. This happened the next day. I waited for hubby so I wouldn’t have to listen to them alone. This was the biggest mistake of my life. We planned to have a nice dinner at home to save Mother’s Day and as an excuse to have a date but I ruined it all. I don’t know why I listened to all of them. She started all calm, victimizing herself but calm. She said happy Mother's Day to me, started to talk about baby, about me, and about my brother. She said she is very sad to be a mother without her kids. She said it would be easier if we were dead (yes, she said that), she would cope better with that truth. It escalated with each voicemail, to the point where she blamed me for what happened with her POS boyfriend and me. I had never heard her say something like this to me while growing up. Never. She claims she’s now all lonely because of me. She said she should have aborted me when she had the chance, as my dad suggested. This… I made me go numb. She accused me of seducing this man and that’s why he fell for me. Only thing I can think is that this POS has been manipulating her, idk but it hurt like hell. She told me that I should have stopped him. She blamed me too because, after that incident, she had lost all opportunities to recover her relationship with my dad. She then basically said our dad never really loved me and my brother, and that’s why he left and never came back. I started to spiral and, well, I barely remember my dad since they divorced. He came back when everything exploded, but before that… I don’t really have memories. I don’t know, she made me question a lot of things. Her tone was calm and sweet, which made it worse. She didn’t use the words or phrasing I am using right now either, her discourse made sense, this is basically what she meant. Of course, she also called me a bad mom too, and I couldn’t help but think about all the things good SIL said about baby and how I didn’t notice it. I started to blame myself for the condition of my baby twins. I am not a bad mom, I know that, but it got me right there. I thought about baby being bullied by her cousins, about MIL throwing up the food I packed for her right in front of her, about our little baby eating food from the floor and trembling because she was frightened. I can’t take out of my mind the image of baby trembling. And I cried as I hadn’t cried in a while. And then I started to remember a lot of other things about my life. I questioned myself again if my mom ever really loved us because growing up, it felt like she did, and I was so grateful I had my mom with me because she was by my side all the time after the POS happened. She was there when I started to struggle in my teens, when I wanted to die, when I started to hurt myself. My dad was there too, and I have beautiful memories with him, he stood for us, I became really close to him, he helped us a lot during that time, but there are a lot of blank spaces where he’s not around. He got another girlfriend, and that time he stayed close to us in the same city but he stopped visiting. Until we went to college, he got together with his current wife, and flew away. He was there if we ever needed money, he paid for our education, but I never reached out to him asking for any other type of help. We barely talked, I tell you he didn’t even knew hubby or baby. To be fair, he was comming over for our wedding but we had to cancel it because of covid. I kept spiraling about it. I got tangled in my mom’s words. I remembered the POS boyfriends I had and how I let them mistreat me, do whatever they wanted to do with me. I let that happen, but I now realize my mom was comfortable with it. I got over that and stopped letting it happen because of the aunties and therapy. Not my proudest moment, but I broke my phone after listening to all her audios.
My train of thought ended up the same: I am so, so thankful I met hubby, and the only thing that matters is that we have each other. Hubby and baby and the twins are the only things that kept me alive these days. They are my world. Still, I was/am? dealing with urges to hurt myself. It’s alright when I am with the baby, it’s alright when I am with hubby, but night time and the moment I open my eyes in the morning… it has been tough. My mom put me in a very bad place. I let her put me in a very bad place again, but it will be the last time. She won’t take the good from me. No way. Hubby says she’s trying to isolate me and he might be right but she won’t get it.
Hubby says I should talk with my dad. I’ve been very distant with him lately, and I know he can feel it. I want to talk with him too about this, but I don’t even know what to say. I miss the aunties, I’ve been distant with them too. Last weekend, hubby and I went out to eat with one of them (the auntie that wrote the text when I told them I’m pregnant) and her husband. It was nice, we had fun. I’m telling them it is two girls this week. I didn’t want to tell them before because I am really scared about my babies. They are a bit smaller than they should be, and even if they are just supposed to be small babies, it worries me, it is not good for twins. Also, they suspect baby B has a heart condition :( I told this to the auntie, she’s the only one of the group that knows about all the difficulties of my pregnancy, and it helps a lot that she knows. I can’t help to be worried, but I can be positive and happy and excited for them. I have to be positive and happy and excited for them. I know the love aunties will give them even in my womb is much needed now. And hubby and I are doing and will do whatever it takes to keep them safe.
So, I said fuckyoumom and changed my mood, Hubby was worried because we really don’t have ANYTHING for the twins, and we are also in the process of moving. He had tried to convinced me to start looking for stuff to clear my mind but I wasn’t in the mood. Well, we finally started to look for cribs now (very difficult task tbh) and we bought their first onesies :) I’m letting the aunties shop for them too now (they’ve been insisting a lot lol) and it is very funny when they start sending pictures of plushies or toys or clothes (I love them because they keep thinking about the big sister). They are still trying to win points to be the godmothers lmao. I called grauntie last week and apologized for not being so communicative lately, and she started to come over again during the mornings, she’s been helping me with house shores and with my feelings. This has also helped hubby a lot because he was worried I was home alone. I cried so much with grauntie about my mom, and she showed me some of her Facebook posts. I just wish she would stop posting baby’s pictures. Grauntie also encouraged me to talk to my dad. And we went out to look for baby stuff together. She also knows about my pregnancy problems, but she’s confident we all will be alright.
The most important thing of all: we told baby she’s going to be a big sister :) She believed my belly was growing because I ate a watermelon seed lol If you want to know her reaction, I’ll make another post about it because I don’t want to mix it with all the shit above.
We ended up having a late Mother’s Day (also a pretext to be close to each other) the next Sunday after the actual day. It was nice and it cheered me up. It was a surprise from hubby.
My car is all fixed now and bills were sent to the beast family but they haven’t paid. We have the RO but the idea of them still scares me a bit from time to time. We’ve been calm these days at home but we have been going to visit the other house from time to time to get used to it. We’ve been planning where to place our furniture and how to decorate just to clear our minds. Hubby said maybe we will be able to start moving in a week and a half or two complete weeks. Yup, we’re moving even if we only have our bed there. I have mixed feelings about it but I know it’s for the best.
What his family and my mom don’t realize is that their bullshit only makes hubby and me stronger as a couple. He relies on me and I rely on him, we don’t fall. We always come to the same conclusion that we are simply meant to be together and for our kids. I can feel how our love and respect to each other grows stronger. And I am holding tight to this. As I said before, the only feeling I can really trust right now is my love for my little (and growing) family. The love they give me is something I have never doubt, not even in my darkest moments. I still have urges from time to time, I feel anxious and sometimes I can’t sleep as right now but all this love keeps me sane within my not so sane moments. I’m alright, I’m getting better (also yes, I’m going to therapy and having more sessions than usual).
I know I always say this but I can’t be thankful enough for hubby… You know? Hubby always says that I saved him, but I believe it is the opposite.
We’re going to be alright. I have always known that.
And I’m back hehe
2024.05.29 07:08 GhoulGriin Best 26-Gun Safes
 | submitted by GhoulGriin to u/GhoulGriin [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/qosy12q8ta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c19da07b5abac0e2fb77457bb2f1eeac04badc7 In this roundup, we take a look at the top 26-gun safes on the market. Whether you're a gun enthusiast or just looking to keep your valuables secure, our selection of high-quality safes will meet your needs. Explore these impressive options and find the perfect fit for your home or office. The Top 19 Best 26-Gun Safes
Reviews🔗Winchester 26 Long Gun Safe - Secure and Spacious Storage for Your Firearmshttps://preview.redd.it/f25m8269ta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=305c28a222e908f67ebeef18201b04cd9b72169a As a reviewer who has been using the Winchester 36 Long Gun Safe in my daily life, I can confidently say that this is a great investment for anyone looking to keep their firearms and valuables secure. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the sleek, powder-coated gun metal gray finish, which added a stylish touch to the safe while also enhancing its durability. One of the standout features of this gun safe was its electronic lock with an override key. Having both an electronic keypad and a backup key gives me peace of mind knowing that I won't be locked out in case of a power failure or if the electronic lock fails. The solid steel locking bolts provided robust security, ensuring that my firearms are kept safe and secure at all times. The interior of the safe was spacious enough to accommodate up to 26 long guns, making it an ideal choice for gun enthusiasts and collectors alike. Additionally, the adjustable shelves allowed me to customize the layout according to my needs, providing ample storage for other valuables as well. However, there were some cons worth mentioning. The door of the safe had a bit of play in it when closed and locked, which could be improved upon in future models. Furthermore, the instruction manual could have been more comprehensive, especially when it came to resetting the combo on the electronic lock. Overall, I would recommend the Winchester 36 Long Gun Safe to anyone looking for a reliable, well-made safe with ample storage and good security features. It may not be perfect, but at this price point, it's hard to beat. 🔗Wasatch 24 Gun Fire and Water Safe with Anti-Theft Electronic Lockhttps://preview.redd.it/5qpfinl9ta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=35797f25be480baa83d06fb6c9fae65eda13da8b I recently had the opportunity to try out the Wasatch 24 Gun Fire and Water Safe with E-Lock 24EGW, and I must say, I was impressed. This fireproof and waterproof safe is perfect for gun enthusiasts who want to protect their precious belongings from potential damage. One of the most impressive features of this safe is its backlit electronic lock, which comes with an Alarm-U function. The alarm notifies you of any attempted theft, and the backup key provides an extra layer of security. I loved that it offered external hinges, allowing for a full 180-degree opening, making it effortless to access my safe. The interior door storage and 3-spoke handle design were another bonus that I found extremely useful. Additionally, the safe is equipped with 3 1.5-inch active locking bolts and 2 dead bolts that effectively deter any potential intruders. However, I did notice that the safe is quite heavy, which can make transportation difficult. The size of the box also seemed to be larger than originally estimated, which was a bit of a hassle. Overall, my experience with the Wasatch 24 Gun Fire and Water Safe with E-Lock 24EGW has been positive. I feel confident that my valuables are safely guarded, thanks to its impressive fire and water resistance capabilities. While there were a few minor drawbacks, they do not outweigh the fantastic features of this safe. 🔗Secureline Premium 24 Gun Safe with Keypad Accesshttps://preview.redd.it/ycz2hd1ata3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5dc37ce955a1ddcf2de7c101cdab52c86bc2f44a The Remington Express SAR5924E safe has become my best buddy in storing my gun collection. The safe is spacious and accommodates up to 24 long guns and 4 handguns, which is perfect for my needs. I also appreciate the fully programmable SecuRam electronic lock feature that keeps my valuables secure. The fire protection provides an added sense of security, knowing my guns will be kept safe even in the wildest of conditions. This safe also passed the inspection of the California DOJ, which gives me even more confidence in its reliability. The delivery process, however, was a bit of a nightmare. The safe weighs an impressive 590 pounds, so when the delivery person told me they wouldn't be able to get it up the driveway without getting help, I had to take it upon myself to arrange additional assistance. It's definitely worth considering the delivery logistics before making a purchase. Overall, the Remington Express SAR5924E safe has performed exceptionally well in my hands. The features align with my priorities and ensure my valuables are well protected. 🔗High-Security, Fire-Resistant 24 Gun Safe with Expandable Storage and Alarm Featureshttps://preview.redd.it/hws2epcata3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=32ff2763696c5cea639774cde39290583740392c The Heritage 24 gun safe truly lived up to its name with its solid construction, providing a sense of peace in my daily life. One of the most impressive features was its electronic lock – it was both user-friendly and secure. The built-in LED light bar and factory-installed outlet with USB ports were handy for storing and charging valuable items. However, not everything was perfect. I've experienced a few minor inconveniences. The weight of the safe could be a challenge, so I had to ensure proper installation for maximum security. Additionally, I found the keypad to be rather flimsy and the button response to be inconsistent at times. Overall, the Heritage 24 gun safe with electronic lock proved to be a valuable addition to my home, offering the peace of mind I was looking for. 🔗Sports Afield Preserve 6-Gun Safe with Electronic Lock and Triple Seal Protectionhttps://preview.redd.it/84ytclmata3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=834dcb7ceb9747108d9099c47bc0c5a1b6495122 In my daily life, I found the Sports Afield SA5924P Preserve to be an excellent gun safe to protect my valuables. This safe was easy to assemble and has a sleek design that fits perfectly in my home. The fully programmable electric lock and 2 backup keys allowed me to access my safe quickly and easily, providing me with peace of mind. The interior of the safe was fully carpeted, providing a uniform appearance and protecting my guns from scratches. I was impressed with the storage capacity, as it accommodated up to 24 long guns and 4 handguns. The UL approved power outlet and 4 pre-cut anchor holes made for a convenient installation, while the waterproof washers ensured my safe would stay dry. However, I did encounter a few drawbacks. The safe was quite heavy, which made it difficult to move if not bolted down. Additionally, the alarm on the safe was a bit sensitive and would go off at every little movement, which proved to be quite annoying. Overall, the Sports Afield SA5924P Preserve is a reliable and secure gun safe that has served my needs well. Its combination of features, such as the fully programmable electric lock and the UL approved power outlet, make it a great choice for gun owners. 🔗Secure Haven Gun Safe with E-Lock and Custom Featureshttps://preview.redd.it/p6euam3bta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=01b3689b24c8bde9d6e5cc79db2fc6200108e936 As a sports enthusiast, I've always been on the lookout for reliable equipment and accessories, so when I came across the Haven SA5942HX Gun Safe from Sports Afield, it caught my attention. The first thing that struck me was its impressive size – it can store up to 48 long guns and 8 handguns, making it perfect for gun owners like me who need secure storage space for their firearms. One of the standout features of this gun safe is its pry-resistant recessed doors with 1.5" steel bolts, ensuring that the contents are well-protected against unauthorized access. It's also California CDOJ Approved and has a 75-minute fire rating, providing peace of mind in case of emergencies. Customization-wise, the Haven SA5942HX doesn't disappoint either. It comes with a deluxe door organization kit that allows for better organization, and adjustable shelving to accommodate various firearm sizes. Additionally, it features UL Rated dual outlets and 2 USB ports, offering convenience when it comes to charging or using the built-in LED motion lights – features I found very useful. In terms of construction, the 14-gauge steel body feels solid and well-built. The safe has a weight of 722 pounds, ensuring it's not easy to move without proper tools. The interior is surprisingly sleek, thanks to the 4 bar LED lights. While I appreciate the overall quality and functionality of the safe, some minor setbacks include the need to remove a sticker on the keypad for better visibility, and a less-than-perfect shipping experience. Nevertheless, I believe that the Sports Afield Haven SA5942HX Gun Safe is worth considering for its custom features and high-quality construction. 🔗Stylish and Secure 30-Gun Storage Safehttps://preview.redd.it/kcnqfpdbta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6ab64c2309ea379d7bc5f99dc1b1942ed2c7b00 I recently got my hands on the Sports Afield Journey Series 30-Gun Safe and let me tell you, it's been a game-changer for me! This safe is the perfect solution for anyone looking to secure their valuable firearms. The fully programmable electric lock makes access super convenient, with backup keys just in case. I was pleasantly surprised by the space it provides; accommodating up to 30 long guns was no issue at all. The fully carpeted interior and sidewalls are a nice touch, offering not only a uniform appearance but also protection against scratches. The pre-cut anchor holes and bolt-down kit include everything needed for easy installation. The only downside I noticed is that it doesn't come with lights inside, but I easily fixed that by installing my own. Overall, I'm extremely satisfied with this safe's durability, ease of use, and visual appeal. In terms of usage experience, the Journey Series safe has exceeded my expectations. Its sturdy construction and easy-to-use lock make it a reliable choice for securing my prized possessions. The adjustable shelves allow for customizable storage solutions, while also maintaining a sleek look. However, one minor inconvenience is the lack of an internal light. I had to install my own after delivery. Additionally, while the safe is marketed to hold up to 30 long guns, it's more realistic to expect 15-20 depending on their size and attached accessories. Despite these minor drawbacks, I would highly recommend the Sports Afield Journey Series 30-Gun Safe for anyone in need of a secure and stylish way to store their firearms. 🔗Stylish Hide-A-Bed Sofahttps://preview.redd.it/r0v7i0sbta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f1fa293117c0161c1e8c5d7c8811eade91998cf The Winchester Ranger 26 Gun Safe is truly a game-changer for me as a firearms enthusiast. I've always struggled to find a safe that could store all my long guns efficiently while also being compact enough to fit in my home. This safe delivers on both counts, boasting a capacity for up to 35 long guns despite its space-saving dimensions. One of the standout features for me is the GunStiXX system, which allows vertical storage of long guns. This innovative design not only maximizes capacity but also makes it incredibly easy to access and retrieve my firearms when needed. The adjustable shelving system adds another layer of convenience, allowing me to customize the interior according to my unique storage needs. I also appreciate the external solid steel strap hinges on this safe. Not only do they offer full fire protection, but they also eliminate any vulnerabilities tied to internal hinges, providing added peace of mind. The door panel organizer is another thoughtful touch, providing quick access to handguns and offering ample storage space for documents and accessories. However, there are a few downsides to this otherwise excellent product. The weight, at 594 pounds, can be quite cumbersome to move around, even with assistance. Additionally, while the locking mechanism is reliable, it may require some getting used to for those unfamiliar with high-security safes. All in all, the Winchester Ranger 26 Gun Safe stands out as an exceptional choice for gun owners seeking efficient organization, quick access, and robust security in a compact package. It's definitely worth considering if you're in the market for a new gun safe! 🔗Secure Colonial Series Gun Safe with 75 Minute Fire Protectionhttps://preview.redd.it/ug42299cta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8c9b9c1e299de3d988ccc78773f3fd469dd0bec4 I recently had the pleasure of using the Colonial Series fireproof gun safe from Liberty Safe when I needed a secure place to store my firearms. Not only did it offer impressive fire protection, but it also had an easy-to-use electronic lock system. Installing this safe in my home was a breeze, and the delivery team was incredibly helpful and made things a smooth process. One of the standout features of this safe was its construction quality. It felt sturdy and well-built, which gave me confidence in its ability to protect my valuable possessions. I also appreciated the spacious interior design, which provided ample storage for my firearms. However, I noticed that the door needed a bit of adjustment to ensure a proper fit, which might be an issue for potential buyers. Another noteworthy aspect of this safe was its level of security. It provided top-notch protection against unauthorized access, and I had complete peace of mind knowing that my firearms were safely stored away from prying eyes. Overall, I was incredibly satisfied with my purchase of the Colonial Series fireproof gun safe, and I would highly recommend it to anyone in need of a reliable and secure storage solution for their firearms. 🔗High-Capacity 90-Minute Fire Rated Gun Safehttps://preview.redd.it/09hcu4octa3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e4f059423e86793cd21e9d763e6aa38b16bfc968 I've been using the AMSEC NF6032 90 Minute Fire Rated Gun Safe for a few weeks now, and it's been a game-changer for my gun storage needs. The sleek granite exterior with a charcoal finish adds a touch of style to my collection, while the PDO configuration allows me to store a mix of long guns and shelves for easy access. One feature that really stands out is the 3-layer fire insulating material on the 1/4" steel plate door, providing an extra layer of protection for my firearms. However, one downside I've noticed is that the safe is made in China; while it still comes with an American Lifetime Warranty, it would have been great to see more of the manufacturing process happening in the United States. The safe also includes a AMSEC exclusive no hassle quick release band, which makes it easy to open and close the safe without any hassle. Inside, the interior is spacious enough to accommodate a mix of guns and accessories, but the placement of the handles could have been on the outside for easier access. Overall, I'm very happy with this gun safe and would recommend it to anyone looking for a reliable and stylish way to store their firearms. 🔗Assemble-In-Minutes Modular Gun Safe with 12+ Long Gun Capacityhttps://preview.redd.it/qy4gmz7dta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=956ae271fdbd639ab89f89fa8db0a8aff7527480 I recently had the chance to try out the Snapsafe 75010 Titan Modular Gun Safe, and I must say, it exceeded my expectations for a gun safe. The modular design made it a breeze to assemble, and the locking mechanism is incredibly secure. I especially appreciated the customizable interior and the ability to move it easily when needed. One feature that really stood out to me was the solid steel exterior walls, which provided excellent protection against pry-bar attacks. The fire rating is also a significant advantage, giving me peace of mind that my valuables would be safe in the event of a fire emergency. However, there were a few minor issues I experienced with this gun safe. The handle felt a bit too flimsy and could use some reinforcement. Additionally, the sound of the lock engaging was quite loud, which could be a concern for those who value stealthiness. Overall, the Snapsafe Titan Modular Gun Safe is a top-notch option for anyone in need of a reliable and customizable gun safe with excellent fire protection. While it's priced a bit higher than some alternatives, the added features and superior performance make it well worth the investment. 🔗Winchester 26 Gun Safe: Fire-Tested, Secure Storage Solutionhttps://preview.redd.it/4tbxv0idta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0f4b114275088b5582da881c53275a30297f64ae I've been using the Winchester Ranger 26 for a while now, and it's become a staple in my daily life. This safe is a beast, weighing in at 602 lbs! It's sturdy and well-built, with a composite steel door that has a 1/4-inch solid steel outer plate. The robust construction of this safe adds to its burglary protection. The interior dimensions are impressive, measuring 55 inches high, 27 inches wide, and 17 inches deep. It's large enough to accommodate 28 long guns, along with some additional storage space. I particularly appreciate the 4-way gear-driven locking bolt system, which operates 12, 1-inch solid steel locking bolts. The non-electronic lock is a feature I didn't expect but love, providing added peace of mind. The exterior vault-style hinges allow 180-degree door swing for complete access, and the composite steel body forms with robotic continuous welds, making it pry-resistant and durable. Additionally, the double layers of UL-rated fireboard in the door and body provide an impressive 60-minute fire rating at 1400 degrees Fahrenheit. The included door panel organizer and adjustable shelving add a nice touch of organization. Using this safe has been a breeze, with smooth operation and easy access to my valuables. It's clear that the quality is top-notch, making it a worthy investment for anyone seeking secure storage for their firearms and important documents. 🔗Remington Gun Club 4-Gun Fireproof and Waterproof Gun Safehttps://preview.redd.it/ywgai3udta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22fba6aada3b7197f25e23d812e35117ae8b7708 I've been using the Remington Gun Club 36 Plus Gun Safe for quite some time now, and I must say it's lived up to its reputation of offering consistent, secure, and feature-filled protection for my collection. The fireproof and waterproof capabilities are a lifesaver, as I've always been worried about those catastrophes. The programmable electronic lock gives me peace of mind, knowing that my collection is safely locked away. As for the interior, the full carpeting and quilted door organizer make it feel like a VIP treatment for my guns. The only drawback I've noticed is slightly limited storage capacity for a truly extensive collection, but other than that minor inconvenience, I'm absolutely pleased with its performance. 🔗Affordable Fireproof Electronic Lock Gun Safe with 30-Gun Capacityhttps://preview.redd.it/exqdmwzeta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af23234dbf301c85d48c57355c834e8006deca12 In my daily life, I've been using the Sports Afield 30-Gun Fireproof Electronic Lock Gun Safe, Black, and it has been a game-changer for securing my precious firearms and valuables. The exterior dimensions of the safe are quite impressive, measuring 18.5 inches deep, 55 inches tall, and 27 inches wide. It's perfect for accommodating a variety of long guns and ammunition. One of the key highlights of this safe is its fireproof capabilities; it's tested to withstand up to 45 minutes of fire at 1,400°F. This peace of mind is invaluable when it comes to safeguarding my family's irreplaceable firearms. The safe features a rugged steel construction with three active steel bolts, two deadbolts, and pry-resistant recessed doors, ensuring maximum security. What sets this safe apart from others is its fully programmable electronic lock, which offers both convenience and added security. The interior is fully carpeted and equipped with adjustable side shelves, allowing for a customized layout to fit my specific needs. The safe is both spacious and user-friendly, making it an excellent choice for storage. However, despite its strong points, the safe is quite large and may not fit in all spaces, making it a potential downside for some users. Overall, the Sports Afield 30-Gun Fireproof Electronic Lock Gun Safe, Black, has been a reliable and effective tool in safeguarding my firearms and valuables, and it's a product I would recommend to anyone seeking a sturdy and secure storage solution. 🔗Secure 26-Gun Fireproof and Waterproof Gun Safe with Electronic Lockhttps://preview.redd.it/nsdapmdfta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6960cc5f5b8678bd6770362e625ec6d4b727fc32 Imagine coming home to a gust of wind, the door flying open, and a glimpse of your Remington Gun Club safe sitting in the middle of your living room. After the initial shock, you'd be left with a bit of a headache. You're not alone. A reviewer shared a similar experience, but with an additional issue - a missing shelving component. However, there's a bright side. Despite the unexpected circumstances, the reviewer had no complaints about the quality of the safe itself. The fireproof and waterproof features were highly praised, especially the Triple Seal protection and the programmable electronic lock with EMP-attack resistance. For those who can tolerate the flimsy handle and gouge, this safe might just be a steal for the price. Buyer's GuideA 26-gun safe is a type of firearm storage solution designed to keep your firearms secure and safe from potential threats such as fire, theft, and accidents. This comprehensive guide will help you understand the features, considerations, and advantages of 26-gun safes to make an informed purchasing decision.Size Considerationshttps://preview.redd.it/cxnj2o0hta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=87fd52405ae5d3b6353c1021b30abf60b9ec724b When selecting a 26-gun safe, the first factor to think about is the size of your firearm collection. Consider the number and types of firearms you want to store and the dimensions required for those items. Ensure you measure the height, width, and depth of your firearms and the space needed for any accessories, magazines, or additional items. Storage CapacityThe storage capacity of a 26-gun safe can vary depending on the safe's design and construction. Look for safes with shelves, gun racks, and compartments specifically designed for your firearm types. Items should be organized in a way that makes them easy to access and store. Additionally, ensure that the safe's storage capacity meets your current and future needs.Security FeaturesSecurity is of utmost importance when buying a 26-gun safe. Look for safes with features such as solid construction, digital locks, and heavy-duty locks. The safe should withstand potential attempts at forced entry, like drilling or sawing. It should also have a fireproof rating to prevent damage from fires or explosions. High-quality manufacturers offer warranties for their products, which can provide additional security and peace of mind. https://preview.redd.it/4ew2vkchta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94f175f6e06be75e381bb67a083a4e3c08b53386 Materials and ConstructionThe durability of a 26-gun safe depends on the materials and construction methods used. High-quality 26-gun safes are typically made from 10 gauge or heavier steel. Look for safes with a welded or seamless construction, as these will provide better security against unauthorized access. The safe should also have a fire-resistant coating or lining to prevent damage from fires and heat.Additional FeaturesBesides the essential features mentioned above, look for 26-gun safes with additional features like lighting, adjustable shelving, and keyed access for separate compartments. These features can make your experience using the safe more comfortable and convenient.Placement and Installationhttps://preview.redd.it/3vdo2tvhta3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ba07951350b9bbfd6353069c163edc251cd7a5ff The ideal location for a 26-gun safe is a cool, dry area away from direct sunlight and electrical appliances. Some safes can be installed into the floor or wall for extra security. Before purchasing, ensure the safe fits your desired location and that any installation requirements are accounted for in your budget. Maintenance and CareYour 26-gun safe needs regular maintenance and care to keep it in top condition. Ensure you maintain the lock, hinges, and other safety mechanisms as per the manufacturer's instructions. Also, clean the interior and exterior periodically to remove dust, dirt, and debris. Keeping your safe well-maintained will not only prolong its life but also ensure it works optimally for years to come.FAQhttps://preview.redd.it/13okrcbita3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d16d5654a2050d95649399c6bd5af9f2cb771fc What exactly is a 26-gun safe?A 26-gun safe is a type of safe designed to store firearms. The name refers to the number of individual gun compartments the safe can accommodate. These safes typically have additional storage spaces for ammunition, gun accessories, and valuable items.Why do I need a 26-gun safe?A 26-gun safe provides a safe and secure storage solution for your firearms. It protects your weapons and valuable items from theft, fire, and damage. Additionally, it helps maintain the integrity of the firearms by keeping them in optimal conditions.What features should I look for in a 26-gun safe?
How do I choose the right size for my 26-gun safe?To choose the right size for your 26-gun safe, consider the length, height, and width of your firearms, as well as any additional items you plan to store. Make sure the safe has enough space to accommodate your needs without overcrowding the compartments.How do I install a 26-gun safe?Installing a 26-gun safe usually requires professional help. The safe should be placed on a secure, anchored surface to prevent theft or misplacement. It is recommended to consult the safe's manual or a professional for proper installation.What is the recommended way to maintain a 26-gun safe?To maintain your 26-gun safe, regularly clean and inspect the locking mechanism to ensure it functions properly. Additionally, consider using a fire-resistant and humidity-control dehumidifier to protect the firearms and preserve their condition.What are the most popular brands for 26-gun safes?
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2024.05.29 06:44 CaptainTinyDragon I need to tell someone about this.
I don’t know where else to say this. No one believes me, no one that hasn’t seen it already. But I have to say something so here it is and the world can decide.
I was a good worker. I showed up for my shifts and did what my written job description said, never missed a day or a chance for a day off. My goal was to be average, to not be good enough to noticed and given more responsibilities, but also not be bad enough to be noticed and put on watch. It’s what I’ve done all my life. Fly under the radar, be easily missed during inspections and blend into the crowd. I got B’s in school, had no intention of going to college or university, not like I’d ever be able to afford it, just wanted a secure job to let me afford my underachieving lifestyle. Took me almost ten years to find something like that, drifitng from one job to another, leaving when too many people started to notice I was much better at the job than I let on.
And eventually I found the perfect fit for myself. I was an overnight security operator, don’t get excited it’s a fancy title for spending all night watching security monitors, for a commuter train. I can’t say which one or where for the safety of others and myself. The job was simple, watch the camera feeds of my designated train and write a report for anything unusual. On a rare occasion make a statement to the police, and I mean rare occasion. In my five years doing that job I spoke to the police maybe twice before the incident.
I think that’s enough background so onto the point. It was a regular Thursday night, shift started at 10pm, working with Larry, Bob, and Sue (not their real names for their safety and more importantly, mine) watching the cameras. Made some notes, forgotten umbrella (wasn’t raining), camera glitch, group of 4 drunk men, person in hoodie doing the drug addict lean (you know the one). The camera glitch was expected, an extension to the rail line was recently completed which included a very long tunnel through a hill side, which about the middle of it was so deep that the cameras would cut out for about 2-3 seconds. It was actually pretty amazing that we got any signal from the trains in the tunnel at all. The wonders of signal boosters. But something about that night caught my attention. I didn’t know what it was at first, just felt something was off. I ignored it that night because at 3 am, everything feels weird. At the end of the shift, about 930am I made my report for the night, handed the desk over to Bill (again, not their real name) and went home on the same train system I monitored.
But the feeling was still in my head. Something happened on the train that night that I wasn’t consciously aware of. I ignored it still, drank my favorite cheap whiskey and went to bed. The feeling stayed with me the next few days. That damned feeling that you know something isn’t right but you can’t figure out. It’s like when you accidently put your phone in a different pocket than normal. So finally on Monday night (you have no idea how busy security monitors get on weekends) when my trains were in the depot getting cleaned I brought up the Thursday night footage and scrolled through it. Same things I made note of were there but the feeling was still there. So I went through it again. And again. The fifth time through I finally found it.
On the third wagon, almost in the blindspot between the cameras, at 2:58am was a regular person just playing a game on their phone. The camera glitched for 2 seconds, and they were gone. I though maybe they just moved completely into the blindspot but no, they were gone. Didn’t get off the train, didn’t reappear. I checked the entire recording of the night. I had no idea what to do. I should have told someone, or made a report, or anything. Instead, I told myself that was really weird and kept doing my thing. Flying under the radar, trying to be mostly invisible.
Two weeks later on Monday night, I saw it again. The camera glitch, and someone disappearing. I scrolled back the footage to make sure. Again, I did nothing. This time telling myself it was just shadows on the lense or the plastic bubble around the camera was dirty. But you know what they say; once is odd, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a pattern. The third time I did something. I made a report. Yeah, real brave i know. Making a comment about “shadows on the lense after tunnel glitch” on my daily report. But that night I started looking into missing people cases. Larry asked what I was doing, I said reading the news while my train was getting cleaned. Better than Bob, who was usually watching youtube and/or playing games on his phone while his train was still making rounds.
Anyways, I found some leads. 3 missing people, last seen heading to the public commuter train before disappearing. But there were more, so many more. Dozens over the past several years, all last seen heading into the area above the new tunnel. Unsurprisingly, they had all been alone at the time.
I won’t go into detail about how this troubled me for nearly a year. Just know that eventually curiosity got its way. On a night off I got my jacket and went out to a train station. Late spring night, a bit colder than prefered, 2am train. The last circuit before this train would make for the depot for maintenance. And I was on it. It would take nearly an hour to reach the tunnel and I was scared but I had to know. Like all those times you watch or read some horror and the character starts reaching for the obviously dangerous thing, you mock them endlessly but I understood now. Fear of the unknown is strong and just seeing what is obviously evil will help you put it out of your mind. But I knew the rules. Be ready to run, have two exits planned, don’t look back.
I sat near the door because I didn’t want to stand the whole time. And when the train finally barreled into the tunnel I started to regret my choice. It was nearly a mile long and just enough room for the train and a very brave worker on each side. I watched my watch 2:59am and ticking closer to 3am. Tick, tick, tick. Who knew a twenty year old analog watch could be so ominous? But then my watch stopped. I looked out the windows and the train had stopped. Not rolled to a stop like trains need to do, just complete dead stop and I didn’t notice. But the lights on the walls were stretched out, the effect that you can only see when you’re moving past them really fast in the dark. My first thought, being a sci-fi fan was that time stopped, yet I moved.
Then I heard a scream and footsteps at the end of the train behind me. I thought about the rules of survival I made and then thought about time being stopped, would the doors open? WOuld I be safe jumping from the train? I’ve seen what happens when someone gets clipped by a train (one of the reasons I had to speak to police) and it’s messy. I heard another scream, desperate and afraid, then the sound of someone tumbling to the floor and something scratching over the floor. A phone bounced off my foot and spun to a stop in front of me. I looked down at it as the screams behind mean grew more horrified and pained. I dared a look at the window to see the reflection of what was happening. And the best I can say is smoke pouring over someone but it was completely shredding the person like a blender but not making a noise and vacuuming up the shreds. Some mental fortitude I didn’t know about kept me from puking and stock still. The screams eventually came to a wet gurgling end and in the reflection I saw a pair of lights flick on in the smoke. Looking back they were eyes but in the moment they were two neon blue lights looking at the window, then making eye contact with me in the reflection. I held my breath.
The smoke soundlessly glided up the aisle and I kept still, not moving at all, keeping my eyes exactly were they were focused before. It drifted closer and closer to me and by god I wanted to cry. It hovered there letting me catch a scent and I want to say it smelled like something burning, or like rot and death, or anything bad. But it was worse, so much worse. It smelled like cooked pork, lightly burnt. It hovered for what felt like hours beside me, I was desperate for air, my eyes were burning from not blinking and those neon lights were staring into my soul. Then the train wobbled as it passed a bend. I have no idea when the thing disappeared or when time resumed, felt like I blacked out for a moment but I know that's not what it was.
I sat there in my seat blinking and breathing deeply to recover. And then I looked down. The phone was still on the floor near my feet. I left it there but I kept staring at it, like when you notice broken glass on the ground and focus on it so you can avoid stepping in it. At the next station i got off the train and went to an always open fast food place. I got a coffee and started writing this. It would be two hours until a train back towards my apartment, one that takes the old long route around the tunnel.
I didn't sleep that day. How could I after watching someone get shredded and devoured? So I sat at my PC and wandered through my games library all day. Think I fell asleep a couple times for maybe an hour. Next night I went to work like normal, focused on my usual behavior. But after two hours I was called into my supervisor's office.
It was relatively normal, they check in with night shift people every few months to make sure we're doing okay. See if we want to change to day shift for mental health. Was all normal until he put his clipboard down and off to the side. He took a deep breath and looked at me, like really looked. That deep penetrating look when someone can see through your lies.
“You saw it.” He said. Three simple words that felt like he was telling me I had a fatal incurable illness. I just nodded. “You have two choices now. Like all of us that know. Either you leave and find a new job and never speak of the incident because you will be a suspect in the disappearance; or you keep doing your job as you always have but with a raise to ignore the camera glitches.” I sat for a while assuming I had to make a choice then and there.
That conversation has been burned into my brain. I still remember it verbatim. And I wish I could say I made the morally correct choice. But I'm an underachieving coward always looking to take the easy path. So I still watch the cameras through the night, but with some extra money to ignore the occasional camera glitch on the extension. I found out accidentally that Larry and Sue also knew about the incidents and made the same choice I did. And we all knew the same amount of nothing and we prefer it that way.
So that's why I'm putting this out there. Maybe someday someone better than me can figure this out.
I still can't eat pork.
submitted by CaptainTinyDragon to nosleep [link] [comments]
I was a good worker. I showed up for my shifts and did what my written job description said, never missed a day or a chance for a day off. My goal was to be average, to not be good enough to noticed and given more responsibilities, but also not be bad enough to be noticed and put on watch. It’s what I’ve done all my life. Fly under the radar, be easily missed during inspections and blend into the crowd. I got B’s in school, had no intention of going to college or university, not like I’d ever be able to afford it, just wanted a secure job to let me afford my underachieving lifestyle. Took me almost ten years to find something like that, drifitng from one job to another, leaving when too many people started to notice I was much better at the job than I let on.
And eventually I found the perfect fit for myself. I was an overnight security operator, don’t get excited it’s a fancy title for spending all night watching security monitors, for a commuter train. I can’t say which one or where for the safety of others and myself. The job was simple, watch the camera feeds of my designated train and write a report for anything unusual. On a rare occasion make a statement to the police, and I mean rare occasion. In my five years doing that job I spoke to the police maybe twice before the incident.
I think that’s enough background so onto the point. It was a regular Thursday night, shift started at 10pm, working with Larry, Bob, and Sue (not their real names for their safety and more importantly, mine) watching the cameras. Made some notes, forgotten umbrella (wasn’t raining), camera glitch, group of 4 drunk men, person in hoodie doing the drug addict lean (you know the one). The camera glitch was expected, an extension to the rail line was recently completed which included a very long tunnel through a hill side, which about the middle of it was so deep that the cameras would cut out for about 2-3 seconds. It was actually pretty amazing that we got any signal from the trains in the tunnel at all. The wonders of signal boosters. But something about that night caught my attention. I didn’t know what it was at first, just felt something was off. I ignored it that night because at 3 am, everything feels weird. At the end of the shift, about 930am I made my report for the night, handed the desk over to Bill (again, not their real name) and went home on the same train system I monitored.
But the feeling was still in my head. Something happened on the train that night that I wasn’t consciously aware of. I ignored it still, drank my favorite cheap whiskey and went to bed. The feeling stayed with me the next few days. That damned feeling that you know something isn’t right but you can’t figure out. It’s like when you accidently put your phone in a different pocket than normal. So finally on Monday night (you have no idea how busy security monitors get on weekends) when my trains were in the depot getting cleaned I brought up the Thursday night footage and scrolled through it. Same things I made note of were there but the feeling was still there. So I went through it again. And again. The fifth time through I finally found it.
On the third wagon, almost in the blindspot between the cameras, at 2:58am was a regular person just playing a game on their phone. The camera glitched for 2 seconds, and they were gone. I though maybe they just moved completely into the blindspot but no, they were gone. Didn’t get off the train, didn’t reappear. I checked the entire recording of the night. I had no idea what to do. I should have told someone, or made a report, or anything. Instead, I told myself that was really weird and kept doing my thing. Flying under the radar, trying to be mostly invisible.
Two weeks later on Monday night, I saw it again. The camera glitch, and someone disappearing. I scrolled back the footage to make sure. Again, I did nothing. This time telling myself it was just shadows on the lense or the plastic bubble around the camera was dirty. But you know what they say; once is odd, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a pattern. The third time I did something. I made a report. Yeah, real brave i know. Making a comment about “shadows on the lense after tunnel glitch” on my daily report. But that night I started looking into missing people cases. Larry asked what I was doing, I said reading the news while my train was getting cleaned. Better than Bob, who was usually watching youtube and/or playing games on his phone while his train was still making rounds.
Anyways, I found some leads. 3 missing people, last seen heading to the public commuter train before disappearing. But there were more, so many more. Dozens over the past several years, all last seen heading into the area above the new tunnel. Unsurprisingly, they had all been alone at the time.
I won’t go into detail about how this troubled me for nearly a year. Just know that eventually curiosity got its way. On a night off I got my jacket and went out to a train station. Late spring night, a bit colder than prefered, 2am train. The last circuit before this train would make for the depot for maintenance. And I was on it. It would take nearly an hour to reach the tunnel and I was scared but I had to know. Like all those times you watch or read some horror and the character starts reaching for the obviously dangerous thing, you mock them endlessly but I understood now. Fear of the unknown is strong and just seeing what is obviously evil will help you put it out of your mind. But I knew the rules. Be ready to run, have two exits planned, don’t look back.
I sat near the door because I didn’t want to stand the whole time. And when the train finally barreled into the tunnel I started to regret my choice. It was nearly a mile long and just enough room for the train and a very brave worker on each side. I watched my watch 2:59am and ticking closer to 3am. Tick, tick, tick. Who knew a twenty year old analog watch could be so ominous? But then my watch stopped. I looked out the windows and the train had stopped. Not rolled to a stop like trains need to do, just complete dead stop and I didn’t notice. But the lights on the walls were stretched out, the effect that you can only see when you’re moving past them really fast in the dark. My first thought, being a sci-fi fan was that time stopped, yet I moved.
Then I heard a scream and footsteps at the end of the train behind me. I thought about the rules of survival I made and then thought about time being stopped, would the doors open? WOuld I be safe jumping from the train? I’ve seen what happens when someone gets clipped by a train (one of the reasons I had to speak to police) and it’s messy. I heard another scream, desperate and afraid, then the sound of someone tumbling to the floor and something scratching over the floor. A phone bounced off my foot and spun to a stop in front of me. I looked down at it as the screams behind mean grew more horrified and pained. I dared a look at the window to see the reflection of what was happening. And the best I can say is smoke pouring over someone but it was completely shredding the person like a blender but not making a noise and vacuuming up the shreds. Some mental fortitude I didn’t know about kept me from puking and stock still. The screams eventually came to a wet gurgling end and in the reflection I saw a pair of lights flick on in the smoke. Looking back they were eyes but in the moment they were two neon blue lights looking at the window, then making eye contact with me in the reflection. I held my breath.
The smoke soundlessly glided up the aisle and I kept still, not moving at all, keeping my eyes exactly were they were focused before. It drifted closer and closer to me and by god I wanted to cry. It hovered there letting me catch a scent and I want to say it smelled like something burning, or like rot and death, or anything bad. But it was worse, so much worse. It smelled like cooked pork, lightly burnt. It hovered for what felt like hours beside me, I was desperate for air, my eyes were burning from not blinking and those neon lights were staring into my soul. Then the train wobbled as it passed a bend. I have no idea when the thing disappeared or when time resumed, felt like I blacked out for a moment but I know that's not what it was.
I sat there in my seat blinking and breathing deeply to recover. And then I looked down. The phone was still on the floor near my feet. I left it there but I kept staring at it, like when you notice broken glass on the ground and focus on it so you can avoid stepping in it. At the next station i got off the train and went to an always open fast food place. I got a coffee and started writing this. It would be two hours until a train back towards my apartment, one that takes the old long route around the tunnel.
I didn't sleep that day. How could I after watching someone get shredded and devoured? So I sat at my PC and wandered through my games library all day. Think I fell asleep a couple times for maybe an hour. Next night I went to work like normal, focused on my usual behavior. But after two hours I was called into my supervisor's office.
It was relatively normal, they check in with night shift people every few months to make sure we're doing okay. See if we want to change to day shift for mental health. Was all normal until he put his clipboard down and off to the side. He took a deep breath and looked at me, like really looked. That deep penetrating look when someone can see through your lies.
“You saw it.” He said. Three simple words that felt like he was telling me I had a fatal incurable illness. I just nodded. “You have two choices now. Like all of us that know. Either you leave and find a new job and never speak of the incident because you will be a suspect in the disappearance; or you keep doing your job as you always have but with a raise to ignore the camera glitches.” I sat for a while assuming I had to make a choice then and there.
That conversation has been burned into my brain. I still remember it verbatim. And I wish I could say I made the morally correct choice. But I'm an underachieving coward always looking to take the easy path. So I still watch the cameras through the night, but with some extra money to ignore the occasional camera glitch on the extension. I found out accidentally that Larry and Sue also knew about the incidents and made the same choice I did. And we all knew the same amount of nothing and we prefer it that way.
So that's why I'm putting this out there. Maybe someday someone better than me can figure this out.
I still can't eat pork.
2024.05.29 04:26 InteractionProud7297 need honest criticism
i'm working on a novel and would like to know if anyone could tell me any improvements i could make to the first chapter and prologue
Prologue
The day had started the same way it had for the past two years. The only difference was that I was going home. The hallway was crowded with people walking to and from their classes. Everyone was crowded next to each other so the halls were making the area feel claustrophobic. All the people talking mixed with the summer heat made me feel like I was locked in a sauna. I walked with Preston to the last class we would ever have together and as usual he was smiling. I never got why he always smiled even in situations where people should be sad he still smiled. He knew what today meant for me and he tried to keep light of the situation. I kept my head down away from what was ahead of me. My mind was too clouded about returning to see my family to notice anything in front of me. I walked into another student. It felt like I had walked into a wall. I knew immediately I had walked into tree. I stumble onto the ground and the commotion around me slows down to make room for us. He turned his bulky body around and apologized profusely without saying a word even though I had walked into him. He helped me off of the ground before hurrying down the hall.
“Alexandria, are you doing okay?” Preston said he had tilted his body downward so I had to look down to look him in his eyes. The way he was standing made him look like an idiot but he didn't seem to care. The way he acted made me laugh, which caused his smile to widen.
“I'm doing fine, just got lost in my head.”
“Thinking about how you’ll leave soon,” he said
“Was it that obvious?” He was the only person I told about me being an exchange student. I came to spend high school in Newkinawa and he was the only person I ever hung out with.
“I see what you mean,” he said “Newkinawa is a beautiful place with beautiful people to live in it…myself included”
“You wish,” I say with a smile we continue walking through the hallway “I'm just not excited to go back yet”
After I say that his smile grows wider “So you will miss me after all”
“I wouldn't say that much” I responded whilst smiling.
We had made it to our last class only to see it closed with a sign labeled “Uma incident” Uma was a student known for messing with the chemistry lab and destroying school property in the process. I've never actually met her but Preston says “She's a little weird but still nice”
“Guess class is canceled for today,” Preston remarked with a smile “Wanna go out to the court till the bell rings.”
“Sure let's go” I respond
The place we ate every day was outside. It used to be a tennis court before I moved in. Now they put trees and flowers all over the place. Preston really liked the blue color of the flowers but it just never clicked for me. I look over at Preston and he's staring up at the sky. There are a number of clouds in almost enough to block the sun but it still pokes its rays through and lands on Preston's face. The clouds swim in front of the sun till they block out the sun's light. Preston faces towards me.
“I'm gonna miss you Alexandria” he says
“You know you can just call me Alex,” I replied. I start to smile again. “I'll miss you too!" He smiles toward me again as we get up to leave as the clouds start to clump together and rain slowly falls. As we're walking back to the school there's a loud tearing sound followed by screams as the ground shakes.
The ground tears itself apart as the dirt and stone erupt from the ground. The sky blackens and a pale blue light escapes the earth. Then creatures erupt from the ground in a violent ejection from the earth creating a white pillar diffusing as they reach higher in the air. Some are clawing their way out of the cracks like maggots out of a corpse. People are swept into the updraft screaming for their lives.
The creatures descend like a tidal wave and tear apart any people caught in their path. They storm out of the crack in hundreds as more cracks in the earth form. Me and Preston started running away as people were screaming behind us. A girl running next to us has her legs slashed by a creature. The monster begins to tear open her chest as she chokes on her own blood. The monster shovels her lungs and innards into its decrepit mouth. Me and Preston keep running until we're met at the entrance of the school and we catch the attention of a monster as it begins to savagely rush toward us. The monster resembles ghosts my father told me about. But this one looks monstrously horrific. It floats in the air and opens its mouth so wide it nearly replaces its entire torso; its jaws hold savage teeth each the same old gray color of its body. Its eyes glow a rotten yellow color through the dark. It stretches out its arms showing its giant hands and claws like fingers. It swipes at us leaving a giant claw mark on the door behind us but Preston ducks my body down to avoid the attack. We run around it as the monster swaps its focus to another bystander. Screaming past us. Me and Preston run into the parking lot as people scream around us. We hide next to a car.
“What the hell is happening!?” I yell to Preston. More of the creatures fly over us and swoop down to people like vultures on roadkill devouring the fleeing people.
Preston starts to breathe heavily ”we need to get out of here and someplace safer”. As we were talking one of the monster phases through the car we were hiding next to forcing us to run into the street.
“Lets go to your house till things cool down” i say to Preston through panted breaths
“Wait couldn't we head to your house instead” Preston says.
“Why would that matter your house is closer anyways” i respond
“But-” Preston is interrupted by two creatures swooping above us to grab another person. The two monsters begin to pull the person apart while he writhes in pain before having his flesh be torn in half and having his organs be devoured.
“Come on lets go!!” I say as I grab his hand and run even faster.
By the time we reach Preston's house any living person is gone. On the street are just corpses laying torn and mutilated on the roads and sidewalk. The air in the neighborhood feels cold despite the season being summer. When I walk down the street I can still hear the occasional horrific wail the monsters give off. We move closer to Preston's house and I can see him sweating. He looked more worried than before when the creatures were chasing us and he kept darting his eyes away from his home.
“Preston, are you feeling okay?” he doesn't respond to my question and keeps darting his eyes. He walks slowly behind me and as I reach for the door handle and when I touch it it feels nearly freezing. I wrap my hoodie around my hand and slowly open the door. The house is quiet so me and Preston creep further into his house. The inside is cold and damp as if we were locked in a freezer. The further we move into the house the louder a subtle chewing sound is heard.
“It sounds like rats are eating a dead cow over there” I whisper. Preston continues to stay silent behind me. We slowly walk closer towards the kitchen and the sound gets louder and louder and louder until we reach the room.
We're met with a rancid smell of vomit and blood. My blood starts to run cold and every instinct in my body is telling me to run. I can feel Preston breathing get heavier as we get closer. We turn the corner and see Preston's mom lying on the ground dead with one of the creatures hunched over slurping her intestines. The sight causes me to vomit alerting the monster to our presence. The creature turns around and its mouth turns into a mortifying grin as it flies into Preston's moms body. The corpse begins to rise and spur splashing blood over the kitchen. When the corpse stops spasming it picks itself up from the ground and with glazed over eyes it holds its intestines in its hand and gives us the same grin it did when it was outside her body. The possessed corpse lunges at me and starts to chase me around the kitchen. The body is running into the walls and cabinets spraying its blood and other loose organs around the area as I'm avoiding its assault. The corpse leans over and ejects one of its loose intestines towards me, wrapping me in it. It pulls me towards it so fast I'm flung towards the ground. The corpse limbers over to me and raises its free hand aiming for my head. The creature's deranged smile causes the corpse’s cheeks to tear apart. It places both of its bloodied and demented hands on my face and starts to press my skull into the ground. I struggle to breathe. The room starts to get dark and blood escapes my head.
Until Preston jumps on top of his mothers corpse with a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabs it in the head. The possessed body tries to shake him off but he keeps stabbing, blood gets in on his face and tears start to escape his eyes. The creature violently ejects from the corpse's mouth causing her head to nearly explode and Preston stops stabbing the body. The body falls over in a splash of blood and organs. The monster leaves phasing through the roof leaving Preston crying over his mother's body. As the blood mixes with the tears he collapses to his knees crying. I walk over and hug him as the air around us turns bitter and the chill of death leaves the room and us with it.
Chapter 1 Eclipse
It's been 2 months since the apocalypse started. We've kept ourselves alive by looting grocery stores and houses, we hide from the creatures as we have no way to fight back against them. Preston came up with the idea to call them glanter’s. He’s looking better since we left his family home but I can tell something is wrong with him that he's not telling me. Everytime I ask him about it he tells me it's no big deal. I asked him earlier today and he just told me
“don't worry about it, I'm over it” without even looking at me. Now we're walking through the street and I'm walking behind Preston, I can barely see his head past the giant bag we're both carrying on our backs we use to carry supplies. I look up at the sky and it's still pitch black except for the moon giving us any amount of light. Preston turns around to face me.
“Let's check out that house, it might have some cool stuff in it” he points to a white house to our right. The house is a two story building with steps leading to the front door. There's a generator poking out from the backyard. The driveway is empty save for a couple of dried blood stains and tire marks. It's similar to the other houses in the neighborhood except for a couple broken windows.
“Sure why not” We head over to the house and I see something shining on the side of the house in the corner of my eye. I turn my head to look at it closer but it quickly disappears before I can see it clearly.
“Probably squirrel or something” I mumble to myself. Preston walks up the stairs to the house and I walk up the steps behind him as a breeze blows past my face. Preston tries to turn the door knob but the door is locked. I start to pull out a lockpick I grabbed at the store earlier. I motion towards Preston to move out of the way as I kneel down to pick the lock. It takes me a couple of minutes to unlock the door so I walk inside the house and Preston follows behind me while closing and locking the door. The doorway of the house leads to a dark room so I take a flashlight out of my bag to illuminate the area. Were put into the living room and bookshelves are on the walls and a large TV sat in front of a large black couch with smaller chairs surrounding it. Dust is covering every surface of the room and spiderwebs litter the corners of the walls. The area smells like moth balls and there's a lack of blood anywhere nearby.
“Guess the owners got out before the Glanter’s got in, '' I say to Preston. When he doesn't respond I turn around and he's already looking further into the house. When I find him he's managed to find a flight of stairs that lead to a lower portion of the house.
“I'll check on him later,” I think to myself as I headed towards the kitchen to see if we could restock on food. I walk past a bedroom and remark on how childish it looked. The walls were painted with blue and green stripes and a bunk bed sat on the right wall. There's a chest at the foot of the bed so I walk over and lift the top off of it. The box is layered with children's toys, a multitude of dolls, bears, and figures all jut out of the box. I notice a small robot toy and inspect it in my hands.
The cold metal makes my hand shiver and the sharp body shape makes the robot bigger than my hand. There's red lining around the robot's buttons surrounded by the cold gray of the robot's “skin”. It reminds me of a toy my little brother had. My heart feels heavy as I worry about what happened to my family. If they're alive, dead, or worse…possessed. The thoughts send a chill down my spine but I push them aside for now. I put the toy in my bag and exit the bedroom.
I can see the kitchen is down the hallway so I walk down the hall and enter. The kitchen is pretty clean except for a couple of dishes in the sink and the dust. There's a table seated for 3 people in the center of the room. I start opening the cabinets in search for any food or water. There's boxes of cereal leftover on top of shelves and a mix of chip bags and cookies in neat boxes stationed in the cabinets.
“Score,” I say to myself as I begin to put the snacks into my bag. When the cabinets are empty I look inside the fridge. The inside of the fridge ran out of power so most of the food inside is rotted. There are a couple of bottles of water in the front so I shove those in my bag. There's also a bag of oranges that still seem to be healthy in the back. I grab them and toss them on the table. There's rotten sandwich meat hidden in the drawer of the fridge.it smells like a dumpster outside of a butcher shop. I wrinkle my nose at the smell. I look around the kitchen for any bread with no luck.
I continue to look through the fridge until I hear Preston scream from another room. Immediately I bolt out of the kitchen leaving my bag behind and run towards the lower part of the house. I run down the stairs and nearly trip on the steps. The stairs lead to a big room. There are posters to tv shows and movies I don't recognize. The walls are painted black and there's a bear skin rug on the floor. I notice Preston standing next to a really big TV hyperventilating. I walk over to him and ask him.
“Are you ok? What happened?”
He talks through deep breaths “I… saw a… spider.”
“What?!” I respond in confusion.
“It was really big and I had jumped at my face”
“Sure it was.” I say while laughing “Let's go upstairs there's some food in the fridge we can eat”
“Wait, I think you should check this out.” He says while pointing towards one of the walls. I grab Preston's flashlight off the floor and face it towards the wall. Hanging halfway off the wall is a large map labeled Newkiwana scavenger hunt of 76.
“I think we should take it,” Preston says “You can read a map right?”
“A little but I'm not the best at it,” I say to him “can you read a map?”
“it shouldn’t be too hard it’s mainly pictures any way I'm sure I can figure it out”
I walk over to the wall where the map is hung there are trophies covering tables and shelved in their own personal cases one of them reads “1st place 100-meter swimming competition for 1986 Zack Hemmingway” and another one reads “2nd place 100-meter swimming competition for 1989 Zack Hemmingway”
“Guess this guy really liked swimming,” Preston remarks while staring at a wall of newspaper clippings. All of them are about the same person in swimming competitions. All labeled different things like “a new record for Zack “the dolphin” Hemmingway”,
‘Zach Hemmingway our star plans for the future” all the newspapers are about this kind he has paler skin and a bulky enough build to swim pretty well. Most of the pictures have him coming out of the water in a pool, his long black hair soaked and sitting at his shoulders. Another one has him sitting at a desk over a pile of books and his hair in a knot , “vicious wipeout ends the Dolphins career”, and “ex-swim champ Zack Hemmingway found in a drunken stupor outside strip club.
“Everyone has their own hobbies I guess,” I say as I take the map off of the wall and fold it up. “Sucks what happened to Zack though” I walked over to Preston’s bag and put the rolled map in one of the pockets. I walk back up the stairs and Preston grabs his bag and follows behind me.
We make our way towards the kitchen and Preston starts looking through the fridge for anything to eat. I grab an orange from the table and throw it at his head. The fruit bounces off his head and rolls on the floor. He turns around and grabs the fruit from the floor
“Why did you throw an orange at me?”
“It's the only food we have unless you plan on eating spoiled a sandwich“ He starts to peel it while walking towards the table. We both take a seat and start to eat the oranges from the bag. He plants his feet on top of the table and bites into the fully peeled orange. I grab a water bottle from a bag and start to drink from it as Preston says.
“I saw a dvd player in that man cave downstairs we could watch a movie if it still has power”
“Sure it could be fun.” Me and Preston spend the rest of our time eating until the bag of oranges is emptied and we head back downstairs. Preston grabs the DVD player from under the table and blows the dust off the top of it; he plugs it into the wall as I plop myself onto the couch. He plugs the DVD player into the TV and sits on the recliner next to me. He presses a few buttons on the remote and the TV lights up. I squint my eyes at how bright it is. It's the most amount of light I've seen that didn't come from a flashlight. I notice there's a box filled with DVDs. I pull the box over towards me. I ruffle through the box and see movies like Silence of the Lambs, Terminator 2, and Home alone.
“Dude some of these came out just before the world turned inside out” I say to him.
“Really? Let's play one.” He responds. I toss him Terminator 2 and he puts it into the DVD player.
We spend the next couple hours watching movies and laughing together. It's some of our only moments of peace we’ve had since the end of the world and to me it's the most fun I've had yet. We're putting in the next DVD when there's a loud crash outside and the TV shuts off. Preston goes behind it to see if it's still plugged in.
“I think the generator outside is busted” i say
“It seems that way” Preston replies while backing away from the tv” i'm gonna go check it out”
“Don't worry I got it” I say as I hop out of my chair. Preston waves goodbye as I head up the stairs. I make my way back through the hallway leading to the living room and front door. I reach the door and start to turn the knob. I open the door wide as a car speeds down the street. I step out of the door to see what had happened when I hear the screech of a glanter. It cuts through the sky like an unholy opera singer. A group of them fly by and chase the car as I rush back inside the house. I slam the door shut and look through the window as I see a couple of smaller glanters grab and shake the car violently looking for the driver. They tear at it, ripping off doors and breaking the windows. The driver screams as the seats cover with blood and he's ripped out of the car as multiple smaller glanters tear and bite off parts of his body like piranha's until his body is completely devoured. I run back to the man cave to warn Preston about what had happened. I spot him laying in his chair spinning a DVD disc on his finger.
“It's not safe outside right now”
“Why not?
“There's glanter's outside, they just ate a dude in his car”
“Did they see you come inside?”
“I don't think so , they flew off before I went inside.”
“well we're not dead so I'm gonna say they didn't see you. But let's stay here for a couple more hours just to be safe”
“Sounds good i'm gonna go find the master bedroom.” I start to walk back up the stairs to the house
“ Hold on why do you get the master bedroom” Preston says while walking after me.
“Because I'm gonna find it first” I say as I start to run to find the bedroom. He chases after me in pursuit of the bedroom. Me and Preston run around the house looking for the master bedroom. We look through room after room finding closets, the garage, a bathroom and a door leading to a balcony in the back of the house. I manage to run into the bedroom and yell out to Preston.``Found it!!”
He comes walking into the room breathing heavily from the running. We both check out the room. The walls are painted a cream yellow and the bed takes up most of the room's center. The bed has burgundy sheets poking out from its bottom and a quilt with multi-colored floral designs lay sprawled out on top of it. There's a wardrobe built into the wall and a black leather couch sits comfortably on the left wall.
“Dibs on the bed” I say as I jump on top of it. I stretch out on top of the quilt and search for a comfortable part to sleep in.
“Where am I supposed to sleep then?” Preston complains
“You can sleep on the couch it looks soft enough” I respond while pointing towards the couch “I saw some spare blankets in one of the closets”
“Alright i’ll be right back” he mumbles to himself “why do i always get the couch”
“ I'll be right here if you need me,” i call after him. I sit up on the bed and start to look around the room more. I notice the entrance to the wardrobe is cracked open slightly. I hop out of the bed and grab a flashlight from my bag as I walk into the wardrobe. I turn on my flashlight and stare in awe at how many clothes are in there. The room is only half as big as the bedroom but it's still bigger than any closet I've ever had. The wardrobe is full of shirts, dresses, pants, and shoes for men and women. I immediately start to look through the shoes to see if any fit my size. I throw a pair of black high heels behind me as Preston finds me in the wardrobe. He looks around before asking me.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding a new pair of clothes to wear cause I've been wearing the same pair of jeans for waaaaay too long”
“Fair enough. Is there any guy stuff in there?”
“Yeah right there” I hook my thumb behind me to point to the other end of the closet.
“I'm sure they won't mind if we take a couple of things…they're probably dead by now anyways,” Preston says with a slight grin on his face. The way he said made me spin my head to look at him but he was already on the opposite end of the wardrobe looking at suits.
I shake away the thought and continue looking for any pair of sneakers in my size. 40 minutes pass before I walk out of the wardrobe holding a new pair of jeans and a black guns-N-roses t-shirt. I toss the clothes on top of the bed and check to see if the shower in the bathroom still works. I turn the dial and wait for a moment. The shower head chokes a little before water comes pouring out. I reach my hand under the showerhead to feel the water. The water is cold, it causes my hand to shiver when I take it out. I shake the water off and say to myself.
“Good enough” as I start to take off my old clothes and get in the shower. The cold water bounces off my skin, it sends shivers down my spine but I still get the old dirt from the last few months off of me. I step out and see a couple of dry towels hanging off of the door. I grab one and dry my body off and grab another to wrap around my head and dry my hair. I step out of the bathroom and Preston is still inside the wardrobe. I put on my new clothes while his back is turned and walk over towards him when I'm finished.
“Still haven't found anything,” I ask him
He turns around “Nothing yet, the only thing interesting was this coat.” He holds a leather coat up to me. The coat is made of black leather and has a skull covered with blue flames on the back. There's a black shirt inside the coat with a skeleton hand making a thumbs-up embroidered on the front.
“ That's pretty cool, it's better than what you're wearing right now at least” he's outfitted in a blue hoodie with holes on the chest and tears at the sleeves. He also has a shirt with a faded picture of a blue flower printed on it.
“I guess you're right” he gets up from the floor and exits the wardrobe. He lays the clothes on the couch along next to the blanket and pillow he brought into the room.
“The shower works so you can get yourself clean In there,” I say to him
“You know, a shower sounds really good right now.” He gets up from the floor and grabs a pair of pajama pants that were laying next to him. He leaves the wardrobe and enters the bathroom, closing the door behind him. After a moment the water turns on and I hop on the bed to get ready to sleep. I squirm myself into the quilt and rest my head against one of the pillows. I shut my eyes and fall asleep listening to the passive sound of the shower like rain on a car.
I'm in a void. It feels like I'm standing in a puddle of water that reaches to my knees. I wade my way forward looking around for anything in the darkness. In the distance I can see 3 figures l. I moved closer to them and their silhouettes get clearer. I realize they are my dad and brothers. I start to run towards them kicking up water behind me until something grabs my leg. It pulls down violently forcing me under the water without a breath of air. I kick at the thing grabbing me until something grabs my other leg. I look down and see two glanter's each with a monstrous smile on their faces. They stare back at me and one of them tugs my leg harder than before and tears it off of my body. The water around me turns red as the glanter laugh's. The other smiles wider as it starts to fling me around the water forcing any air left in my lungs to be forced out as I scream in pain. The glanter throws me away and I can see my family slowly fade into the distance as I'm flown away.
I struggle to swim back to where I was, one of my legs is missing and the other is broken. The glanter's find me again and I try to get to the surface to escape them. I'm flapping my arms in any attempt to escape as one of the glanter's flies in front of me and grabs my arm. I look at the monster with tears in my eyes as it bites my arm and tears my body away from it. It flings my body away and with my remaining arm I clutch the wound as the water floods into my body leaving me in the void I started in. I look around and the glanter's seem to have left. I turn behind me and see my family again, this time I'm closer than before.
I grit my teeth and drag my body towards them slowly as I leave a trail of blood and tears behind me. I finally reach my family and grab one of my father's shoes. I stare up and he looks at me. His stare causes me to feel cold as a grotesque smile grows on his face. I stare in shock as my brothers each have the same look as my father.
I shoot up from my sleep panting heavily in a cold sweat.
“It was just a dream..just a dream…just a dream” I look at my hands as tears fall into them. I look around the room and see Preston sleeping peacefully on the couch. The room feels frozen in place as a chill runs down my spine. I get out of the bed and walk out of the bedroom. I make my way through the dark hallway and find the entrance to the balcony I saw earlier. I creak open the screen door and head outside. The Balcony is pretty large, about the size of the kitchen in the house. There are some chairs knocked over next to a table and I pick one up to sit on it. I look out into the expanse of the neighborhood, houses lined up next to each other, dozens broken apart by roads, and dead bodies scattered across the roads.
I look up in the sky and sit back in the chair. The sky looks empty except for the moon giving this world its only source of light. Without the moon, we’d be left in darkness. It hangs in the sky alone, no stars, no clouds, nothing but itself, and the void of the sky. I think back about the dream I had. My dad and my brother's all dead and possessed and then they kill me. I start to tear up thinking about it. I try to wipe away the tears but it’s no use. I'm too scared for my family. I don't know where they are if they're alive if they're worried about me I don't know anything! I start to quietly cry into my hands. I don't know how long I'm sitting there until I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn my head to face it and I see Preston. He was smiling and looking at me. I turn away to wipe my tears and he walks next to me.
“I heard you sneaking out of the bedroom so I followed you to see where you were going.” he says “but that's not my question.” he pauses and looks at me “my question is what’s got you feeling so down?” he leans over the railing of the balcony
“It's nothing, I just came out here to clear my head.” I say as more tears escape from my eyes in big slow drops that ride down the sides of my face.
“if you don't feel like telling me you don't have to but i'll be here if you ever change your mind”. He looks up at the moon before turning to face me and his smile widens “I'll always be here with you…trust me I'm not going anywhere”
I stare up at him and wipe away my tears as a smile grows on my face to match his. I get up and stare over the balcony with him. “So where are we heading next?” I say to him, Preston pulls the map we got from the man cave downstairs out from his pocket.
“After I got out of the shower I decided to take a look at the map for anything interesting we could see.”
“Ok did you find anything?” i ask
“I did,” he points at a spot on the right of the map. “We should head to the museum”
“I didn't want to go to a museum before the apocalypse why would i want to go now?'' I ask him.
“Well the best part of museums is the cool stuff right”
“Yeah what about it”
“The only problem is that you could only look at the fossils and armor but you could never take them.”
“So you want to rob a museum?” Prestons eyes light up at the question
“Exactly they might have a really cool sword I could use, or I could sharpen a dinosaur tooth and use that as a weapon, there might be a cursed shield that can summon the dead to fight for you. This opportunity is too good to pass up. We need to go!”
“That does seem pretty cool but wouldn't carrying that stuff weigh us down. What if a glanter is chasing us and we can't run fast enough because of the stuff we took from the museum.”
“We’ll only take things that are light. Even then I could just block the glanter with my newly acquired 2000 year old shield.”
“Fair enough we can go in a couple hours” I yawn and stretch out my arms. “Cause I'm feeling way too tired to walk all the way over there right now.”
“Alright i'm heading back to my couch and THEN we’ll head out to the museum” he leaves the balcony and heads back to the master bedroom leaving me alone on the balcony.
“Thanks Preston I'm not leaving either” I say into the sky. I turn around and walk back inside the house, closing the balcony door behind me. I walk back into the bedroom and Preston is hunched over and holding a flashlight looking at the map. He’s drawing lines through roads and marking X’s in different areas.
“What are the X’s for?” i ask him
“They’re places that glanter’s usually stay around. I'm marking them off so we remember not to go through them, or at least be more cautious.”
“Cool. Did you find where we are right now?” He points to an area where the lines all converge out of.
“Right around here is where the neighborhood ends. So if we follow this path we can make it to the museum in one piece” I pat him on the back and take the map from his hands.
“Get some sleep Preston, we have a full day tomorrow” he grins to himself before laying down on the couch. I put the map back into my bag and hop on the bed to get to sleep. I cover my body in the quilt and roll over facing away from Preston as he falls asleep. I nestle myself into the bed and slowly fall asleep to get ready for the next day.
I'm awoken by Preston shaking the bed I'm sleeping on. My eyes open and the room is foggy, I wipe away the sleep from my eyes and focus my attention towards Preston. He's practically jumping out of his skin with excitement, he's already fully dressed for the trip and shaking the bed with a wide smile on his face.
“Ok ok i'm up the air feels heavy as a groggy feeling fills my body. I wipe my eyes and the room starts to clear up. I turn to face Preston. He's still shaking my bed to wake me up, he’s already fully dressed and nearly jumping out of his skin in excitement.
“Ok ok, i'm up you can stop shaking the bed” i say
“Then get up we’ve got a long walk ahead of us” he says as he stops shaking the mattress. He grabs the map from my bag and points to one of the red lines.
“We're gonna follow this way to the museum. We’ll move past the hotel around the ice skating rink and around the park. We’ll mainly stick to walking through the streets, we might have to go rooftop hopping to avoid any glanter’s if we see them but i'm sure we won’t reach that point.” he explains
“Wait, wait, wait, why are avoiding the skating rink and the park” i ask
“ everytime we go near the park there's weird noises and light coming out of it”
“And why can't we go to the ice skating rink?”
“I didn't think it would be important”
“It couldn't hurt to check it out at least”
“Fine we could make a detour”
“Ok and how do you plan on getting on top of roofs?”
“I'm sure we'll figure it out when we get to it”
“Ok man as long as you’re sure '' I yawn and step out of the bed. Preston starts to put the map in his bag. I walk into the bathroom with my clothes and change out of my pajamas. Minutes later I walk out and see Preston sitting on the couch twiddling his thumbs.
“Finally you're out” he smiles at me before handing me my bag and slinging it over his shoulder. We took a last look inside the kitchen to see if we missed anything. Afterwards we leave for the outside. The cold air bites at my face but Preston walks down the stairs, his face buried in the map. I jog to catch up to him as we both head into the street.
“Hey Preston, could I see the map?”
“Sure” he hands over the map and continues walking. I look at the map and the numerous lines drawn on roads. I look at the corner of the map and notice a small map key with numerous symbols for different areas like a library, school, hospital, and more. There's even a way to tell how far away each location is. The text reads “1 inch=5 miles” I quickly count how far we are from the museum.
“Dude this museum is like 100 miles away.”
“Yep it'll be a long walk, it'll take us a while to get there”
“Did you plan on us walking there the whole time?”
“We might find bikes or something.” he pauses “well i did think we would walk the whole way”
“This is gonna take us weeks to get there!”
“Did you have anything else planned?”
“Well…i guess not but we should still try to find some bikes or something”
“Ok if we see any way to travel faster we’ll take it”
“Alright cool” I hand him the map back and he folds it back up and puts it in his bag. We walk further until we leave the gated neighborhood we started in. Preston takes the map back out and looks at it before he turns right and continues walking. I follow him staring forward at the expanse of the road. The outside of the neighborhood is surrounded by roads all leading to different parts of Newkinawa. We walk past a sign that reads “Coretown 20 miles ahead” I nudge Preston towards the sign and he checks the map again.
“Yep, the museum’s in Coretown. Would you believe the residents were pretty proud of it. Should be a fun place to explore” he says
“Yeah but it’ll take us a million years to get there.” i complain
“Lighten up, I'm sure it will be worth it”. We continue walking down the road slowly making our way to Coretown.
submitted by InteractionProud7297 to writers [link] [comments]
Prologue
The day had started the same way it had for the past two years. The only difference was that I was going home. The hallway was crowded with people walking to and from their classes. Everyone was crowded next to each other so the halls were making the area feel claustrophobic. All the people talking mixed with the summer heat made me feel like I was locked in a sauna. I walked with Preston to the last class we would ever have together and as usual he was smiling. I never got why he always smiled even in situations where people should be sad he still smiled. He knew what today meant for me and he tried to keep light of the situation. I kept my head down away from what was ahead of me. My mind was too clouded about returning to see my family to notice anything in front of me. I walked into another student. It felt like I had walked into a wall. I knew immediately I had walked into tree. I stumble onto the ground and the commotion around me slows down to make room for us. He turned his bulky body around and apologized profusely without saying a word even though I had walked into him. He helped me off of the ground before hurrying down the hall.
“Alexandria, are you doing okay?” Preston said he had tilted his body downward so I had to look down to look him in his eyes. The way he was standing made him look like an idiot but he didn't seem to care. The way he acted made me laugh, which caused his smile to widen.
“I'm doing fine, just got lost in my head.”
“Thinking about how you’ll leave soon,” he said
“Was it that obvious?” He was the only person I told about me being an exchange student. I came to spend high school in Newkinawa and he was the only person I ever hung out with.
“I see what you mean,” he said “Newkinawa is a beautiful place with beautiful people to live in it…myself included”
“You wish,” I say with a smile we continue walking through the hallway “I'm just not excited to go back yet”
After I say that his smile grows wider “So you will miss me after all”
“I wouldn't say that much” I responded whilst smiling.
We had made it to our last class only to see it closed with a sign labeled “Uma incident” Uma was a student known for messing with the chemistry lab and destroying school property in the process. I've never actually met her but Preston says “She's a little weird but still nice”
“Guess class is canceled for today,” Preston remarked with a smile “Wanna go out to the court till the bell rings.”
“Sure let's go” I respond
The place we ate every day was outside. It used to be a tennis court before I moved in. Now they put trees and flowers all over the place. Preston really liked the blue color of the flowers but it just never clicked for me. I look over at Preston and he's staring up at the sky. There are a number of clouds in almost enough to block the sun but it still pokes its rays through and lands on Preston's face. The clouds swim in front of the sun till they block out the sun's light. Preston faces towards me.
“I'm gonna miss you Alexandria” he says
“You know you can just call me Alex,” I replied. I start to smile again. “I'll miss you too!" He smiles toward me again as we get up to leave as the clouds start to clump together and rain slowly falls. As we're walking back to the school there's a loud tearing sound followed by screams as the ground shakes.
The ground tears itself apart as the dirt and stone erupt from the ground. The sky blackens and a pale blue light escapes the earth. Then creatures erupt from the ground in a violent ejection from the earth creating a white pillar diffusing as they reach higher in the air. Some are clawing their way out of the cracks like maggots out of a corpse. People are swept into the updraft screaming for their lives.
The creatures descend like a tidal wave and tear apart any people caught in their path. They storm out of the crack in hundreds as more cracks in the earth form. Me and Preston started running away as people were screaming behind us. A girl running next to us has her legs slashed by a creature. The monster begins to tear open her chest as she chokes on her own blood. The monster shovels her lungs and innards into its decrepit mouth. Me and Preston keep running until we're met at the entrance of the school and we catch the attention of a monster as it begins to savagely rush toward us. The monster resembles ghosts my father told me about. But this one looks monstrously horrific. It floats in the air and opens its mouth so wide it nearly replaces its entire torso; its jaws hold savage teeth each the same old gray color of its body. Its eyes glow a rotten yellow color through the dark. It stretches out its arms showing its giant hands and claws like fingers. It swipes at us leaving a giant claw mark on the door behind us but Preston ducks my body down to avoid the attack. We run around it as the monster swaps its focus to another bystander. Screaming past us. Me and Preston run into the parking lot as people scream around us. We hide next to a car.
“What the hell is happening!?” I yell to Preston. More of the creatures fly over us and swoop down to people like vultures on roadkill devouring the fleeing people.
Preston starts to breathe heavily ”we need to get out of here and someplace safer”. As we were talking one of the monster phases through the car we were hiding next to forcing us to run into the street.
“Lets go to your house till things cool down” i say to Preston through panted breaths
“Wait couldn't we head to your house instead” Preston says.
“Why would that matter your house is closer anyways” i respond
“But-” Preston is interrupted by two creatures swooping above us to grab another person. The two monsters begin to pull the person apart while he writhes in pain before having his flesh be torn in half and having his organs be devoured.
“Come on lets go!!” I say as I grab his hand and run even faster.
By the time we reach Preston's house any living person is gone. On the street are just corpses laying torn and mutilated on the roads and sidewalk. The air in the neighborhood feels cold despite the season being summer. When I walk down the street I can still hear the occasional horrific wail the monsters give off. We move closer to Preston's house and I can see him sweating. He looked more worried than before when the creatures were chasing us and he kept darting his eyes away from his home.
“Preston, are you feeling okay?” he doesn't respond to my question and keeps darting his eyes. He walks slowly behind me and as I reach for the door handle and when I touch it it feels nearly freezing. I wrap my hoodie around my hand and slowly open the door. The house is quiet so me and Preston creep further into his house. The inside is cold and damp as if we were locked in a freezer. The further we move into the house the louder a subtle chewing sound is heard.
“It sounds like rats are eating a dead cow over there” I whisper. Preston continues to stay silent behind me. We slowly walk closer towards the kitchen and the sound gets louder and louder and louder until we reach the room.
We're met with a rancid smell of vomit and blood. My blood starts to run cold and every instinct in my body is telling me to run. I can feel Preston breathing get heavier as we get closer. We turn the corner and see Preston's mom lying on the ground dead with one of the creatures hunched over slurping her intestines. The sight causes me to vomit alerting the monster to our presence. The creature turns around and its mouth turns into a mortifying grin as it flies into Preston's moms body. The corpse begins to rise and spur splashing blood over the kitchen. When the corpse stops spasming it picks itself up from the ground and with glazed over eyes it holds its intestines in its hand and gives us the same grin it did when it was outside her body. The possessed corpse lunges at me and starts to chase me around the kitchen. The body is running into the walls and cabinets spraying its blood and other loose organs around the area as I'm avoiding its assault. The corpse leans over and ejects one of its loose intestines towards me, wrapping me in it. It pulls me towards it so fast I'm flung towards the ground. The corpse limbers over to me and raises its free hand aiming for my head. The creature's deranged smile causes the corpse’s cheeks to tear apart. It places both of its bloodied and demented hands on my face and starts to press my skull into the ground. I struggle to breathe. The room starts to get dark and blood escapes my head.
Until Preston jumps on top of his mothers corpse with a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabs it in the head. The possessed body tries to shake him off but he keeps stabbing, blood gets in on his face and tears start to escape his eyes. The creature violently ejects from the corpse's mouth causing her head to nearly explode and Preston stops stabbing the body. The body falls over in a splash of blood and organs. The monster leaves phasing through the roof leaving Preston crying over his mother's body. As the blood mixes with the tears he collapses to his knees crying. I walk over and hug him as the air around us turns bitter and the chill of death leaves the room and us with it.
Chapter 1 Eclipse
It's been 2 months since the apocalypse started. We've kept ourselves alive by looting grocery stores and houses, we hide from the creatures as we have no way to fight back against them. Preston came up with the idea to call them glanter’s. He’s looking better since we left his family home but I can tell something is wrong with him that he's not telling me. Everytime I ask him about it he tells me it's no big deal. I asked him earlier today and he just told me
“don't worry about it, I'm over it” without even looking at me. Now we're walking through the street and I'm walking behind Preston, I can barely see his head past the giant bag we're both carrying on our backs we use to carry supplies. I look up at the sky and it's still pitch black except for the moon giving us any amount of light. Preston turns around to face me.
“Let's check out that house, it might have some cool stuff in it” he points to a white house to our right. The house is a two story building with steps leading to the front door. There's a generator poking out from the backyard. The driveway is empty save for a couple of dried blood stains and tire marks. It's similar to the other houses in the neighborhood except for a couple broken windows.
“Sure why not” We head over to the house and I see something shining on the side of the house in the corner of my eye. I turn my head to look at it closer but it quickly disappears before I can see it clearly.
“Probably squirrel or something” I mumble to myself. Preston walks up the stairs to the house and I walk up the steps behind him as a breeze blows past my face. Preston tries to turn the door knob but the door is locked. I start to pull out a lockpick I grabbed at the store earlier. I motion towards Preston to move out of the way as I kneel down to pick the lock. It takes me a couple of minutes to unlock the door so I walk inside the house and Preston follows behind me while closing and locking the door. The doorway of the house leads to a dark room so I take a flashlight out of my bag to illuminate the area. Were put into the living room and bookshelves are on the walls and a large TV sat in front of a large black couch with smaller chairs surrounding it. Dust is covering every surface of the room and spiderwebs litter the corners of the walls. The area smells like moth balls and there's a lack of blood anywhere nearby.
“Guess the owners got out before the Glanter’s got in, '' I say to Preston. When he doesn't respond I turn around and he's already looking further into the house. When I find him he's managed to find a flight of stairs that lead to a lower portion of the house.
“I'll check on him later,” I think to myself as I headed towards the kitchen to see if we could restock on food. I walk past a bedroom and remark on how childish it looked. The walls were painted with blue and green stripes and a bunk bed sat on the right wall. There's a chest at the foot of the bed so I walk over and lift the top off of it. The box is layered with children's toys, a multitude of dolls, bears, and figures all jut out of the box. I notice a small robot toy and inspect it in my hands.
The cold metal makes my hand shiver and the sharp body shape makes the robot bigger than my hand. There's red lining around the robot's buttons surrounded by the cold gray of the robot's “skin”. It reminds me of a toy my little brother had. My heart feels heavy as I worry about what happened to my family. If they're alive, dead, or worse…possessed. The thoughts send a chill down my spine but I push them aside for now. I put the toy in my bag and exit the bedroom.
I can see the kitchen is down the hallway so I walk down the hall and enter. The kitchen is pretty clean except for a couple of dishes in the sink and the dust. There's a table seated for 3 people in the center of the room. I start opening the cabinets in search for any food or water. There's boxes of cereal leftover on top of shelves and a mix of chip bags and cookies in neat boxes stationed in the cabinets.
“Score,” I say to myself as I begin to put the snacks into my bag. When the cabinets are empty I look inside the fridge. The inside of the fridge ran out of power so most of the food inside is rotted. There are a couple of bottles of water in the front so I shove those in my bag. There's also a bag of oranges that still seem to be healthy in the back. I grab them and toss them on the table. There's rotten sandwich meat hidden in the drawer of the fridge.it smells like a dumpster outside of a butcher shop. I wrinkle my nose at the smell. I look around the kitchen for any bread with no luck.
I continue to look through the fridge until I hear Preston scream from another room. Immediately I bolt out of the kitchen leaving my bag behind and run towards the lower part of the house. I run down the stairs and nearly trip on the steps. The stairs lead to a big room. There are posters to tv shows and movies I don't recognize. The walls are painted black and there's a bear skin rug on the floor. I notice Preston standing next to a really big TV hyperventilating. I walk over to him and ask him.
“Are you ok? What happened?”
He talks through deep breaths “I… saw a… spider.”
“What?!” I respond in confusion.
“It was really big and I had jumped at my face”
“Sure it was.” I say while laughing “Let's go upstairs there's some food in the fridge we can eat”
“Wait, I think you should check this out.” He says while pointing towards one of the walls. I grab Preston's flashlight off the floor and face it towards the wall. Hanging halfway off the wall is a large map labeled Newkiwana scavenger hunt of 76.
“I think we should take it,” Preston says “You can read a map right?”
“A little but I'm not the best at it,” I say to him “can you read a map?”
“it shouldn’t be too hard it’s mainly pictures any way I'm sure I can figure it out”
I walk over to the wall where the map is hung there are trophies covering tables and shelved in their own personal cases one of them reads “1st place 100-meter swimming competition for 1986 Zack Hemmingway” and another one reads “2nd place 100-meter swimming competition for 1989 Zack Hemmingway”
“Guess this guy really liked swimming,” Preston remarks while staring at a wall of newspaper clippings. All of them are about the same person in swimming competitions. All labeled different things like “a new record for Zack “the dolphin” Hemmingway”,
‘Zach Hemmingway our star plans for the future” all the newspapers are about this kind he has paler skin and a bulky enough build to swim pretty well. Most of the pictures have him coming out of the water in a pool, his long black hair soaked and sitting at his shoulders. Another one has him sitting at a desk over a pile of books and his hair in a knot , “vicious wipeout ends the Dolphins career”, and “ex-swim champ Zack Hemmingway found in a drunken stupor outside strip club.
“Everyone has their own hobbies I guess,” I say as I take the map off of the wall and fold it up. “Sucks what happened to Zack though” I walked over to Preston’s bag and put the rolled map in one of the pockets. I walk back up the stairs and Preston grabs his bag and follows behind me.
We make our way towards the kitchen and Preston starts looking through the fridge for anything to eat. I grab an orange from the table and throw it at his head. The fruit bounces off his head and rolls on the floor. He turns around and grabs the fruit from the floor
“Why did you throw an orange at me?”
“It's the only food we have unless you plan on eating spoiled a sandwich“ He starts to peel it while walking towards the table. We both take a seat and start to eat the oranges from the bag. He plants his feet on top of the table and bites into the fully peeled orange. I grab a water bottle from a bag and start to drink from it as Preston says.
“I saw a dvd player in that man cave downstairs we could watch a movie if it still has power”
“Sure it could be fun.” Me and Preston spend the rest of our time eating until the bag of oranges is emptied and we head back downstairs. Preston grabs the DVD player from under the table and blows the dust off the top of it; he plugs it into the wall as I plop myself onto the couch. He plugs the DVD player into the TV and sits on the recliner next to me. He presses a few buttons on the remote and the TV lights up. I squint my eyes at how bright it is. It's the most amount of light I've seen that didn't come from a flashlight. I notice there's a box filled with DVDs. I pull the box over towards me. I ruffle through the box and see movies like Silence of the Lambs, Terminator 2, and Home alone.
“Dude some of these came out just before the world turned inside out” I say to him.
“Really? Let's play one.” He responds. I toss him Terminator 2 and he puts it into the DVD player.
We spend the next couple hours watching movies and laughing together. It's some of our only moments of peace we’ve had since the end of the world and to me it's the most fun I've had yet. We're putting in the next DVD when there's a loud crash outside and the TV shuts off. Preston goes behind it to see if it's still plugged in.
“I think the generator outside is busted” i say
“It seems that way” Preston replies while backing away from the tv” i'm gonna go check it out”
“Don't worry I got it” I say as I hop out of my chair. Preston waves goodbye as I head up the stairs. I make my way back through the hallway leading to the living room and front door. I reach the door and start to turn the knob. I open the door wide as a car speeds down the street. I step out of the door to see what had happened when I hear the screech of a glanter. It cuts through the sky like an unholy opera singer. A group of them fly by and chase the car as I rush back inside the house. I slam the door shut and look through the window as I see a couple of smaller glanters grab and shake the car violently looking for the driver. They tear at it, ripping off doors and breaking the windows. The driver screams as the seats cover with blood and he's ripped out of the car as multiple smaller glanters tear and bite off parts of his body like piranha's until his body is completely devoured. I run back to the man cave to warn Preston about what had happened. I spot him laying in his chair spinning a DVD disc on his finger.
“It's not safe outside right now”
“Why not?
“There's glanter's outside, they just ate a dude in his car”
“Did they see you come inside?”
“I don't think so , they flew off before I went inside.”
“well we're not dead so I'm gonna say they didn't see you. But let's stay here for a couple more hours just to be safe”
“Sounds good i'm gonna go find the master bedroom.” I start to walk back up the stairs to the house
“ Hold on why do you get the master bedroom” Preston says while walking after me.
“Because I'm gonna find it first” I say as I start to run to find the bedroom. He chases after me in pursuit of the bedroom. Me and Preston run around the house looking for the master bedroom. We look through room after room finding closets, the garage, a bathroom and a door leading to a balcony in the back of the house. I manage to run into the bedroom and yell out to Preston.``Found it!!”
He comes walking into the room breathing heavily from the running. We both check out the room. The walls are painted a cream yellow and the bed takes up most of the room's center. The bed has burgundy sheets poking out from its bottom and a quilt with multi-colored floral designs lay sprawled out on top of it. There's a wardrobe built into the wall and a black leather couch sits comfortably on the left wall.
“Dibs on the bed” I say as I jump on top of it. I stretch out on top of the quilt and search for a comfortable part to sleep in.
“Where am I supposed to sleep then?” Preston complains
“You can sleep on the couch it looks soft enough” I respond while pointing towards the couch “I saw some spare blankets in one of the closets”
“Alright i’ll be right back” he mumbles to himself “why do i always get the couch”
“ I'll be right here if you need me,” i call after him. I sit up on the bed and start to look around the room more. I notice the entrance to the wardrobe is cracked open slightly. I hop out of the bed and grab a flashlight from my bag as I walk into the wardrobe. I turn on my flashlight and stare in awe at how many clothes are in there. The room is only half as big as the bedroom but it's still bigger than any closet I've ever had. The wardrobe is full of shirts, dresses, pants, and shoes for men and women. I immediately start to look through the shoes to see if any fit my size. I throw a pair of black high heels behind me as Preston finds me in the wardrobe. He looks around before asking me.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding a new pair of clothes to wear cause I've been wearing the same pair of jeans for waaaaay too long”
“Fair enough. Is there any guy stuff in there?”
“Yeah right there” I hook my thumb behind me to point to the other end of the closet.
“I'm sure they won't mind if we take a couple of things…they're probably dead by now anyways,” Preston says with a slight grin on his face. The way he said made me spin my head to look at him but he was already on the opposite end of the wardrobe looking at suits.
I shake away the thought and continue looking for any pair of sneakers in my size. 40 minutes pass before I walk out of the wardrobe holding a new pair of jeans and a black guns-N-roses t-shirt. I toss the clothes on top of the bed and check to see if the shower in the bathroom still works. I turn the dial and wait for a moment. The shower head chokes a little before water comes pouring out. I reach my hand under the showerhead to feel the water. The water is cold, it causes my hand to shiver when I take it out. I shake the water off and say to myself.
“Good enough” as I start to take off my old clothes and get in the shower. The cold water bounces off my skin, it sends shivers down my spine but I still get the old dirt from the last few months off of me. I step out and see a couple of dry towels hanging off of the door. I grab one and dry my body off and grab another to wrap around my head and dry my hair. I step out of the bathroom and Preston is still inside the wardrobe. I put on my new clothes while his back is turned and walk over towards him when I'm finished.
“Still haven't found anything,” I ask him
He turns around “Nothing yet, the only thing interesting was this coat.” He holds a leather coat up to me. The coat is made of black leather and has a skull covered with blue flames on the back. There's a black shirt inside the coat with a skeleton hand making a thumbs-up embroidered on the front.
“ That's pretty cool, it's better than what you're wearing right now at least” he's outfitted in a blue hoodie with holes on the chest and tears at the sleeves. He also has a shirt with a faded picture of a blue flower printed on it.
“I guess you're right” he gets up from the floor and exits the wardrobe. He lays the clothes on the couch along next to the blanket and pillow he brought into the room.
“The shower works so you can get yourself clean In there,” I say to him
“You know, a shower sounds really good right now.” He gets up from the floor and grabs a pair of pajama pants that were laying next to him. He leaves the wardrobe and enters the bathroom, closing the door behind him. After a moment the water turns on and I hop on the bed to get ready to sleep. I squirm myself into the quilt and rest my head against one of the pillows. I shut my eyes and fall asleep listening to the passive sound of the shower like rain on a car.
I'm in a void. It feels like I'm standing in a puddle of water that reaches to my knees. I wade my way forward looking around for anything in the darkness. In the distance I can see 3 figures l. I moved closer to them and their silhouettes get clearer. I realize they are my dad and brothers. I start to run towards them kicking up water behind me until something grabs my leg. It pulls down violently forcing me under the water without a breath of air. I kick at the thing grabbing me until something grabs my other leg. I look down and see two glanter's each with a monstrous smile on their faces. They stare back at me and one of them tugs my leg harder than before and tears it off of my body. The water around me turns red as the glanter laugh's. The other smiles wider as it starts to fling me around the water forcing any air left in my lungs to be forced out as I scream in pain. The glanter throws me away and I can see my family slowly fade into the distance as I'm flown away.
I struggle to swim back to where I was, one of my legs is missing and the other is broken. The glanter's find me again and I try to get to the surface to escape them. I'm flapping my arms in any attempt to escape as one of the glanter's flies in front of me and grabs my arm. I look at the monster with tears in my eyes as it bites my arm and tears my body away from it. It flings my body away and with my remaining arm I clutch the wound as the water floods into my body leaving me in the void I started in. I look around and the glanter's seem to have left. I turn behind me and see my family again, this time I'm closer than before.
I grit my teeth and drag my body towards them slowly as I leave a trail of blood and tears behind me. I finally reach my family and grab one of my father's shoes. I stare up and he looks at me. His stare causes me to feel cold as a grotesque smile grows on his face. I stare in shock as my brothers each have the same look as my father.
I shoot up from my sleep panting heavily in a cold sweat.
“It was just a dream..just a dream…just a dream” I look at my hands as tears fall into them. I look around the room and see Preston sleeping peacefully on the couch. The room feels frozen in place as a chill runs down my spine. I get out of the bed and walk out of the bedroom. I make my way through the dark hallway and find the entrance to the balcony I saw earlier. I creak open the screen door and head outside. The Balcony is pretty large, about the size of the kitchen in the house. There are some chairs knocked over next to a table and I pick one up to sit on it. I look out into the expanse of the neighborhood, houses lined up next to each other, dozens broken apart by roads, and dead bodies scattered across the roads.
I look up in the sky and sit back in the chair. The sky looks empty except for the moon giving this world its only source of light. Without the moon, we’d be left in darkness. It hangs in the sky alone, no stars, no clouds, nothing but itself, and the void of the sky. I think back about the dream I had. My dad and my brother's all dead and possessed and then they kill me. I start to tear up thinking about it. I try to wipe away the tears but it’s no use. I'm too scared for my family. I don't know where they are if they're alive if they're worried about me I don't know anything! I start to quietly cry into my hands. I don't know how long I'm sitting there until I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn my head to face it and I see Preston. He was smiling and looking at me. I turn away to wipe my tears and he walks next to me.
“I heard you sneaking out of the bedroom so I followed you to see where you were going.” he says “but that's not my question.” he pauses and looks at me “my question is what’s got you feeling so down?” he leans over the railing of the balcony
“It's nothing, I just came out here to clear my head.” I say as more tears escape from my eyes in big slow drops that ride down the sides of my face.
“if you don't feel like telling me you don't have to but i'll be here if you ever change your mind”. He looks up at the moon before turning to face me and his smile widens “I'll always be here with you…trust me I'm not going anywhere”
I stare up at him and wipe away my tears as a smile grows on my face to match his. I get up and stare over the balcony with him. “So where are we heading next?” I say to him, Preston pulls the map we got from the man cave downstairs out from his pocket.
“After I got out of the shower I decided to take a look at the map for anything interesting we could see.”
“Ok did you find anything?” i ask
“I did,” he points at a spot on the right of the map. “We should head to the museum”
“I didn't want to go to a museum before the apocalypse why would i want to go now?'' I ask him.
“Well the best part of museums is the cool stuff right”
“Yeah what about it”
“The only problem is that you could only look at the fossils and armor but you could never take them.”
“So you want to rob a museum?” Prestons eyes light up at the question
“Exactly they might have a really cool sword I could use, or I could sharpen a dinosaur tooth and use that as a weapon, there might be a cursed shield that can summon the dead to fight for you. This opportunity is too good to pass up. We need to go!”
“That does seem pretty cool but wouldn't carrying that stuff weigh us down. What if a glanter is chasing us and we can't run fast enough because of the stuff we took from the museum.”
“We’ll only take things that are light. Even then I could just block the glanter with my newly acquired 2000 year old shield.”
“Fair enough we can go in a couple hours” I yawn and stretch out my arms. “Cause I'm feeling way too tired to walk all the way over there right now.”
“Alright i'm heading back to my couch and THEN we’ll head out to the museum” he leaves the balcony and heads back to the master bedroom leaving me alone on the balcony.
“Thanks Preston I'm not leaving either” I say into the sky. I turn around and walk back inside the house, closing the balcony door behind me. I walk back into the bedroom and Preston is hunched over and holding a flashlight looking at the map. He’s drawing lines through roads and marking X’s in different areas.
“What are the X’s for?” i ask him
“They’re places that glanter’s usually stay around. I'm marking them off so we remember not to go through them, or at least be more cautious.”
“Cool. Did you find where we are right now?” He points to an area where the lines all converge out of.
“Right around here is where the neighborhood ends. So if we follow this path we can make it to the museum in one piece” I pat him on the back and take the map from his hands.
“Get some sleep Preston, we have a full day tomorrow” he grins to himself before laying down on the couch. I put the map back into my bag and hop on the bed to get to sleep. I cover my body in the quilt and roll over facing away from Preston as he falls asleep. I nestle myself into the bed and slowly fall asleep to get ready for the next day.
I'm awoken by Preston shaking the bed I'm sleeping on. My eyes open and the room is foggy, I wipe away the sleep from my eyes and focus my attention towards Preston. He's practically jumping out of his skin with excitement, he's already fully dressed for the trip and shaking the bed with a wide smile on his face.
“Ok ok i'm up the air feels heavy as a groggy feeling fills my body. I wipe my eyes and the room starts to clear up. I turn to face Preston. He's still shaking my bed to wake me up, he’s already fully dressed and nearly jumping out of his skin in excitement.
“Ok ok, i'm up you can stop shaking the bed” i say
“Then get up we’ve got a long walk ahead of us” he says as he stops shaking the mattress. He grabs the map from my bag and points to one of the red lines.
“We're gonna follow this way to the museum. We’ll move past the hotel around the ice skating rink and around the park. We’ll mainly stick to walking through the streets, we might have to go rooftop hopping to avoid any glanter’s if we see them but i'm sure we won’t reach that point.” he explains
“Wait, wait, wait, why are avoiding the skating rink and the park” i ask
“ everytime we go near the park there's weird noises and light coming out of it”
“And why can't we go to the ice skating rink?”
“I didn't think it would be important”
“It couldn't hurt to check it out at least”
“Fine we could make a detour”
“Ok and how do you plan on getting on top of roofs?”
“I'm sure we'll figure it out when we get to it”
“Ok man as long as you’re sure '' I yawn and step out of the bed. Preston starts to put the map in his bag. I walk into the bathroom with my clothes and change out of my pajamas. Minutes later I walk out and see Preston sitting on the couch twiddling his thumbs.
“Finally you're out” he smiles at me before handing me my bag and slinging it over his shoulder. We took a last look inside the kitchen to see if we missed anything. Afterwards we leave for the outside. The cold air bites at my face but Preston walks down the stairs, his face buried in the map. I jog to catch up to him as we both head into the street.
“Hey Preston, could I see the map?”
“Sure” he hands over the map and continues walking. I look at the map and the numerous lines drawn on roads. I look at the corner of the map and notice a small map key with numerous symbols for different areas like a library, school, hospital, and more. There's even a way to tell how far away each location is. The text reads “1 inch=5 miles” I quickly count how far we are from the museum.
“Dude this museum is like 100 miles away.”
“Yep it'll be a long walk, it'll take us a while to get there”
“Did you plan on us walking there the whole time?”
“We might find bikes or something.” he pauses “well i did think we would walk the whole way”
“This is gonna take us weeks to get there!”
“Did you have anything else planned?”
“Well…i guess not but we should still try to find some bikes or something”
“Ok if we see any way to travel faster we’ll take it”
“Alright cool” I hand him the map back and he folds it back up and puts it in his bag. We walk further until we leave the gated neighborhood we started in. Preston takes the map back out and looks at it before he turns right and continues walking. I follow him staring forward at the expanse of the road. The outside of the neighborhood is surrounded by roads all leading to different parts of Newkinawa. We walk past a sign that reads “Coretown 20 miles ahead” I nudge Preston towards the sign and he checks the map again.
“Yep, the museum’s in Coretown. Would you believe the residents were pretty proud of it. Should be a fun place to explore” he says
“Yeah but it’ll take us a million years to get there.” i complain
“Lighten up, I'm sure it will be worth it”. We continue walking down the road slowly making our way to Coretown.
2024.05.29 04:07 apehasreturned Booking the AEW World Title in 2024 - Part Two: The Master
 | Part One Here! submitted by apehasreturned to FantasyBookingElite [link] [comments] We pick up following Blood and Guts, where AEW Champion Swerve Strickland led his team to victory over the Elite. It’s been an insanely brutal and bloody reign for Swerve so far, and with enemies and allies alike climbing the ladder towards a shot at the gold, he’s starting to grow slightly paranoid. With a second trip to Wembley approaching, the talk of the town is who’s going to win the Owen and go for AEW’s top title at Wembley - if Swerve even makes it there, the fans knowing that his wars of attrition are leaving him worse for wear with each passing defence. Road to All In London The lineup for the Owen is being narrowed down coming out of Blood and Guts, with MJF, Jay White, Bryan Danielson, Will Ospreay, Darby Allin, Hangman Page, Konosuke Takeshita and Katsuyori Shibata all in the running. With blockbuster match after blockbuster match being fought to determine the finalists for Calgary, we eventually come down to two: MJF and Will Ospreay, set on a collision course for the ages. Swerve’s troubles don’t end there, though - after leaving the Mogul Embassy, his old allies smell blood in the water, and the EVPs are all too happy to make Strickland’s life more miserable by announcing a title match with Brian Cage for the Dynamite opener in Alberta’s largest city. AEW World Title: Swerve Strickland (c) vs. Brian Cage Cage gets a good showing in here, using his remarkable athleticism to nearly put the champion away early, but once Swerve gets rolling, it’s clear that there are levels to this game. The Machine goes for a Liger Bomb, Swerve reversing into a hurricanrana to leave him prone for a HOUSE CALL, FOLLOWED BY A SWERVE STOMP! ONE! TWO! THREE! Swerve Strickland def. Brian Cage (11:51) to retain the AEW World Title After the bout, Swerve’s handed his title, and he keeps it hugged tight to his chest as he grabs a microphone. He says everyone’s been working their asses off around him to try and take this from him, but the champion promises he’s not afraid. He welcomes the challenge, because there ain’t nobody like Swerve Strickland in SWERVE’S HOUSE. He says he’s looking forward to seeing who comes out on top in the main event, and heads off backstage to watch it with Prince Nana. Owen Hart Foundation Tournament Final: MJF vs. Will Ospreay This gets a lot of time, with no limit on a tournament final. Let them cook. MJF is in worse shape than Ospreay, having been flung straight into a tournament after a series of surgeries left him held together with duct tape, but Ospreay’s in a worse headspace, his typical unending confidence hampered by a few narrow wins en route to the final. However, it’s two spectacular in-ring talents, and they go ham in pursuit of victory, MJF wanting to headline Wembley for the second straight year and Ospreay looking to win the AEW World Title in a stadium in his home country. The back-and-forth gives way to MJF getting control, working the arm extensively to warm Ospreay up for the Salt of the Earth. However, an appearance by Adam Cole gives an unknowing Ospreay the opportunity to turn the tables with a handstand reversal to a Heatseeker, following it with a Hidden Blade for two. Ospreay considers working on the shoulder, MJF crying out in agony with each blow to the surgically repaired joint, and eventually, Will has him in perfect position for the Storm Driver 93. He knows MJF’s neck and shoulder are in such a state that this would be an automatic victory, but he hesitates just long enough for MJF to roll him up… ONE! TWO! THRE-KICKOUT! MJF grabs the arm to go for a Salt of the Earth, Ospreay rolling him back into a pin of his own, followed by another HIDDEN BLADE! STORMBREAKER! ONE! TWO! THREE! OSPREAY’S GOING TO WEMBLEY! Will Ospreay def. MJF (31:02) to win the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament Out comes Swerve, standing toe to toe with his challenger as confetti falls around them. Ospreay leans on his trophy, grabbing a microphone as it becomes rapidly apparent his confidence is back. He says that All In is on the horizon, and last time AEW was at Wembley Stadium, he won as an outsider… yet Swerve lost. Now, Ospreay’s in AEW full time, mowing through all the competition, and now it’s time that the Kingpin get a shot at the crown. Swerve chuckles before his smile turns into a sneer, growling under his breath that Ospreay will have to kill him to take the AEW Title away - and he’s seen that despite being called the Assassin, he can’t do that. The next week on Dynamite, Ospreay and Swerve are scheduled for a face to face promo in the ring, the title match official for All In. It’s electric as they stand opposite one another in the squared circle, trading some quick verbal barbs that they both brush off before getting down to brass tacks, Swerve holding the microphone and beginning to speak. “Will, you’re impressive, man. You can be as athletic as the day is long, but it’s not ‘heavy is the body that wears the crown,’ it’s ‘heavy is the head,’ and there ain’t nobody like me. This is a mental game, and you don’t have what it takes there. You blew yourself up and broke your own neck when you went for the IWGP Title. You were betrayed by the Don Callis Family and somehow didn’t see it coming. You were beaten on your home turf by your sworn enemy because you got in your own head. You had the win of a lifetime against Bryan, and then you felt so bad about it that you neutered your arsenal. You don’t have what it takes… in your head or in your guts. There’s only one head fit for this crown, and it’s mine.” Ospreay scoffs, trying to keep his cool, but he doesn’t wait long before grabbing the microphone out of Swerve’s hand to an “oooh,” from the crowd. “Ain’t nobody like you, bruv? How dare you talk down to me. How dare you condescend me, belittle me, you arrogant bastard? I came here to AEW and started taking heads, just like I did in Japan, and there were people there just like you. People who said ‘ah, he’s not got it in him to be the next big gaijin. He’ll never be the champion,’ and now there’s you, saying I don’t have what it takes because I don’t have the mentality. YOU don’t have the mentality to do what I do. To fly from the UK to here twice a week, to raise a family, to spend a whole career an ocean away from home, to wear the crown on your head that says you’re the greatest wrestler on Earth. Nobody’s done that but ME, and when that championship’s fastened around my waist, mate, it’s going to prove what everyone already knows - that Will Ospreay’s on another level, and Swerve Strickland… he’s punching up.” Now it’s Strickland’s turn to try and keep a lid on his anger, stepping toe to toe with his challenger and holding the title inches from his face. He tells Ospreay to listen close, before saying that the years of hard work Ospreay put in everywhere but home aren’t gonna be enough to help. He’s gonna be in front of his family, he’s gonna be in front of his friends, he’s gonna be in front of his people, and he’s going to let them all down, because he’s an impressive athlete, but he’s not the guy. Finally, Ospreay snaps, throwing a SHORT HEADBUTT, AND NOW BOTH MEN ARE THROWING FISTS! IT’S UTTER BEDLAM! The bell starts ringing to try and encourage them to break it up, but neither man is stepping down now, furiously exchanging blows as security rushes to the ring to divide them. Swerve grabs the championship, hoisting it high as he spits venom at Ospreay, the challenger spewing a string of words that probably won’t make air. They keep trying to break free and take another swing, commentary asking what on Earth they’ll do when they’re finally let loose at Wembley Stadium, pride and the promotion’s top prize on the line. Swerve Strickland (c) vs. Will Ospreay All In London Wembley Stadium is packed to the gills as All In goes on the air, and they’re fit to burst as the first theme they hear is that of the Commonwealth Kingpin. Justin Roberts announces that our opening match is for the AEW World Title, and Ospreay receives plenty of fanfare and fireworks as he makes his way to the ring, looking more motivated than ever. He’s clearly jonesing in the ring, eagerly awaiting Swerve’s arrival as his compatriots cheer him on… and then Chaka Khan hits. Strickland may be in enemy territory, but the crowd can't help but sing. Oozing charisma as he enters the squared circle, the AEW Champion seems more than ready to put the Assassin down, the electric crowd letting both men soak in the moment as the bell rings. HERE WE GO! SWERVE VS. OSPREAY, LIVE FROM WEMBLEY, AEW TITLE ON THE LINE! AEW World Title: Swerve Strickland (c) vs. Will Ospreay From the bell, Strickland and Ospreay are exchanging words as they gravitate towards one another, Ospreay calling for a lockup. They settle into a collar and elbow, Ospreay using his size to his advantage to try and muscle Swerve into the ropes, but Strickland reversing the momentum to cinch in a side headlock. Will still drives Swerve into the ropes, eventually breaking free and whipping Strickland across the ring, the champion building up speed as he ducks a clothesline attempt from the challenger and nails a Tijeras to send Ospreay flying. Ospreay’s quickly back up to his feet, Swerve attempting a slip behind for a German Suplex, but Will countering with a headlock takeover, kipping up and throwing a superkick that’s narrowly avoided by Swerve, who drops flat to his back, picking Ospreay’s leg and floating into a handstand to bring Ospreay down with a headscissors. Will kips up once more to break free, Swerve scrambling to stand up before OSPREAY THROWS A HIDDEN BLADE, SWERVE DIVING OUT OF THE WAY AT THE LAST MOMENT BEFORE CATASTROPHE! Strickland quickly pivots as Will looks to get to his feet, attempting a HOUSE CALL, BUT NOW IT’S OSPREAY’S TURN TO DODGE AS BOTH MEN END UP STANDING! Gritting his teeth, Swerve goes for another lockup with Ospreay, this time quickly kicking him in the gut for a snapmare, cinching in a chinlock to talk some smack. The Aerial Assassin lands a few elbows to the body as he strives to get back to his feet, finally breaking free before being grounded again by a Tijeras from Swerve. Strickland grabs hold of his challenger again, Ospreay furiously backpedaling into the corner to avoid a lifting inverted DDT, only for Swerve to send him through the ropes for a HANGING NECKBREAKER! Ospreay rolls out to the apron instinctively, Swerve kicking out one of his legs and stepping through the middle rope to SLINGSHOT INTO A DDT ON THE APRON, BUT OSPREAY HANDSPRINGS STRAIGHT TO HIS FEET ON THE FLOOR! Strickland gets cocky, thinking he landed the shot, and turns around to see Ospreay charging at his legs. Swerve leaps up, still on the apron as Will overshoots, the champion pivoting for an APRON PUMP KICK, OSPREAY DUCKING IT AND LEAPING BACK ONTO THE APRON! SWERVE TURNS AROUND ONCE AGAIN… AND OSPREAY FLIES IN WITH AN APRON OSCUTTER! Tumbling to the floor, Swerve tries to get to his senses and figure out how he came out on the rough end of the sequence on the apron, but Ospreay gives him no time to think with a ROBINSON SPECIAL OFF THE APRON, STRAIGHT THROUGH THE BACK OF HIS HEAD! He props Swerve against the barricade, chopping him across the chest before scrambling to the top rope for a SKY TWISTER PRESS TO THE OUTSIDE - ONLY FOR SWERVE TO AVOID IT, NAILING OSPREAY WITH A GERMAN SUPLEX ONTO THE FLOOR! With Ospreay stunned, Strickland slides back in to break the count, measuring his man before effortlessly delivering a FOSBURY FLOP OUT TO RINGSIDE, WIPING OUT THE CHALLENGER! Turning the tables on Ospreay, now it’s Swerve’s turn to lay in some chops against the barricade, only for Will to dump him over the barrier and into the crowd. He follows it up with a hook kick over the guardrail to stagger the champion, running the length of ringside and LAUNCHING HIMSELF STRAIGHT INTO A PUMP KICK FROM THE CHAMPION! Swerve hops up onto the barricade, grabbing hold of Ospreay in a front facelock before MUSCLING HIM UP AND OVER WITH A BRAINBUSTER, OFF OF THE BARRICADE AND RIGHT DOWN ONTO THE FLOOR AT RINGSIDE! He rushes to roll Will back between the ropes, hooking both legs… ONE! TWO! TH-NOOO! Swerve jumps to the middle rope to deliver a diving European Uppercut to the back of the head before Ospreay can quite get to his feet, following it up with a DISCUS LARIAT! The assault on the head is relentless, Swerve looking for a DDT before being driven into the ropes, Will trying to earn a momentary reprieve. Instead, Strickland pummels him with Muay Thai knees to the body, heaving him up for a LIGER BOMB! ONE! TWO! THRE-KICKOUT ONCE MORE! Swerve lets out a frustrated roar, deadlift Ospreay up to attempt another powerbomb, but Ospreay manages to drop to the apron for a gamengiri, followed by a PIP PIP CHEERIO! ONE! TWO! KICKOUT! Desperate to keep momentum on his side, Ospreay quickly delivers a rolling elbow, following it up with a SNAP DRAGON SUPLEX, BUT SWERVE RIGHT BACK UP TO HIS FEET, NAILING A GERMAN! He swivels around, only to see Ospreay landed on his feet, BOTH MEN THROWING HIGH KICKS BEFORE COLLAPSING TO THE CANVAS! Wembley rallies behind Ospreay as both men struggle to get to their feet, barely stirring before the challenger begins pounding the mat, leaning back onto his hands for a kip-up before Swerve simply spins to punt him in the face and bring him back to the mat. Strickland rises to his feet, looking for the House Call, but OSPREAY HAS NONE OF IT, CATCHING THE LEG FOR A STYLES CLASH! ONE! TWO! THR-NOO! Following through, Ospreay attempts a Hidden Blade, Swerve ducking it before rushing towards his opponent and INTO A SPANISH FLY FOR A NEARFALL! Ospreay grabs the back of Swerve’s head, paying him back for the focused assault with a flurry of Kawada Kicks to the face, followed by an attempt at a delayed vertical suplex, Strickland floating over and landing on his feet. The champion runs the ropes, Ospreay stopping him in his tracks with a dropsault and an enziguri, continuously building momentum with a STUNDOG MILLIONAIRE TO FINALLY DROP SWERVE TO HIS BACK! Unleashing a war cry, Ospreay has a gleam in his eyes as he looks towards the top turnbuckle, dragging himself through the ropes to the apron before clambering up to the high rent district, turning his back to Swerve for another SKY TWISTER PRESS, SWERVE ONCE AGAIN ROLLING IN TOWARDS THE TURNBUCKLES… BUT OSPREAY ROLLS STRAIGHT THROUGH TO HIS FEET! Strickland flashes his grill to the camera in the corner with a smile, Ospreay looming behind him before BLASTING STRAIGHT THROUGH HIM WITH A HIDDEN BLADE! ONE! TWO! THRE-SWERVE POWERS OUT! It’s been just over fifteen minutes of insanity as Ospreay smells blood in the water, knowing if he connects with a Stormbreaker, he can wrap this up. However, that certainty would only be cemented if he were to nail a Storm Driver 93, but he refuses to go to such lengths, hooking the arms… BUT SWERVE COUNTERS WITH A BACK BODY DROP, ONLY FOR OSPREAY TO LAND ON HIS FEET! HE BREAKS INTO A SPRINT, REBOUNDING OFF THE ROPES FOR A SPRINGBOARD OSCUTTER - STRAIGHT INTO A HOUSE CALL! SWERVE INTERCEPTED HIM! ONE! TWO! THRE-NOOOO! Strickland can’t believe it, but he’s got Ospreay dead to rights, spinning him around into position for a Tombstone. Strickland looks to the hard cam, a smug sneer on his face as OSPREAY REVERSES WITH A SEGA MEGA DRIVER, SPIKING HIM DOWN ON HIS HEAD! ONE! TWO! THRE-NOOOO! Ospreay is in disbelief, even a tribute to Mad Kurt not being enough to put Swerve down, but he’s staying on the ball as he hooks Swerve’s arms to go for a STORMBREAKER, ONLY FOR SWERVE TO FLOAT OVER FOR A LIFTING INVERTED DDT! Will’s rally wasn’t enough to get him out of trouble, and STRICKLAND FOLLOWS IT UP WITH A SECOND HOUSE CALL! SWERVE IMMEDIATELY ON THE ATTACK ONCE MORE, POSITIONING OSPREAY FOR A JML DRIVER… BUT WILL CLEARS HIS HEAD, COUNTERING WITH A POISON RANA! SWERVE UP TO HIS KNEES, BUT OSPREAY FOLLOWS IT WITH A SPRINGBOARD OSCUTTER! HIDDEN BLADE TO THE BASE OF THE SKULL, AND NOW… STORMBREAKER! ONE! TWO! THREE! WILL OSPREAY IS THE AEW WORLD CHAMPION! Will Ospreay def. Swerve Strickland (20:10) to win the AEW World Title Later in the night, Kazuchika Okada defeats Kenny Omega to win their fifth encounter, establishing himself firmly as the Number One Contender to the AEW World Title, giving the new champion only two weeks to prepare to face off with one of his greatest foes - a foe he’s only managed to beat cleanly once, while falling to the Rainmaker eight times. Road to All Out Ospreay gets to celebrate on Dynamite, cutting a promo saying he’s geared up to finally put this to bed. He says he’s glad he’s starting his title reign like this, because he’s certain he can beat Okada, and he’ll not have to worry about the spectre looming over him anymore. Every time there was a title on the line, every time the stakes were high, he failed against the Rainmaker - but the stakes were high at Wembley, and he won. He proved Swerve Strickland wrong, and now it’s time to prove Kazuchika Okada wrong. Out steps the Rainmaker, taking the EVP Elevator up onto the stage to say that Ospreay has already proven him wrong; he thought, years ago, that Ospreay was a talent worthy of being in Okada’s stable of CHAOS, and Ospreay proved him wrong when he betrayed his leader, only for Okada to beat the brakes off him at the Tokyo Dome. Okada says that Ospreay should be all too familiar with Okada being the top champion, the Ace, and he plans to finally bring that vision to AEW by restoring the world to its natural order and beating the Aerial Assassin for a ninth time. The Rainmaker’s ego is peaking, having avenged his loss to Kenny Omega just a few days prior, and he says that Omega’s a taller mountain to climb than Ospreay. However, he says he’s sure there’ll be room in the Elite’s ranks for Ospreay, should he come to his senses and want to fall back in line behind the Rainmaker. Ospreay declares that at All Out, he’ll prove to Okada and the world that he’s eclipsed the onetime Ace, while Okada insists that Omega was just the beginning - in just a few days, it’ll be time for the Rainmaker Era to start back up. All Out With All In having just occurred recently, All Out is a package deal with the Wembley show, ensuring a huge audience for what’s certain to be an all-timer main event between the Rainmaker and the Assassin. Both men want to walk out with the gold more than anything in the world, making an already personal rivalry all the more exciting as the coin drops for the last match of the night. Okada appears in a new robe, debuted two weeks prior at Wembley, and as he rises from the Elite Elevator, he’s looking more daunting than ever. There’s only one feud the man had ever lost, and he’d just avenged it against Kenny Omega - this is the most dangerous he’s ever been, and as Will Ospreay makes his way to the ring, Okada doesn’t even turn to face him. The champion is furious, but the challenger sees him as a formality standing between him and another epic World Title reign, refusing to even acknowledge him as they’re both introduced by Justin Roberts. They head to their respective corners, and THE BELL RINGS! IT’S OKADA AND OSPREAY, WORLD TITLE ON THE LINE! AEW World Title: Will Ospreay (c) vs. Kazuchika Okada Both men are hesitant to open themselves up to a big counter in the early goings, especially given how well they know each other, so they try and psych each other out a different way - by waiting. The crowd greets them with a deafening reception as they slowly circle the centre of the ring, eventually meeting with a lockup that sees Okada immediately put his height to good use, bearing down on Ospreay with an attempt at a test of strength. He pushes Ospreay down to the mat, even getting his shoulders down for a moment, but the champion bridges up off the canvas. Okada jumps up and drives his legs down into Ospreay’s body, but Ospreay maintains the bridge with both men’s weight, Okada getting back up and shooting for a lateral press that gets a one count. Transitioning into a side headlock, Okada talks some smack, the Young Bucks supporting him at ringside while taunting the champion. However, Ospreay’s put on plenty of muscle mass over the years, making it all the easier for him to slowly make his way to his feet, twisting free and securing a side headlock of his own on the Rainmaker. Okada sends him into the ropes, Ospreay clinging to the top as Okada instinctively goes for a flapjack. Momentarily confused, Okada gives Will the opening to run in for a dropsault, attempting to follow it with an enziguri that’s ducked, Ospreay springing up… and into a flapjack, the inevitability of the Rainmaker’s plans coming to fruition putting the champion in a bad spot early. Continuing with his somewhat lackadaisical pace, Okada keeps treating Ospreay like he’s not that big of a deal, shoving him into the corner for a double pat on the chest, followed by a stiff forearm across the jaw as the referee steps in. Ospreay lunges at him, Okada grabbing the arm for an Irish Whip into the opposite corner, rushing the champion with a big boot, but Ospreay SLINGSHOTS RIGHT OVER HIM, LANDING ON HIS FEET BEHIND THE RAINMAKER FOR A KICK TO THE HAMSTRING! Ospreay hones in with a swift roundhouse to Okada’s other leg, trying to take out his base, but Okada shrugs it off by catching the leg on a third kick attempt before driving his shoulder straight into the bridge of Ospreay’s nose, following it with a DDT that makes it look like Ospreay just died. The champion goes full scorpion, folding over himself like PAC as Okada grabs hold of the wrist to attempt an early Rainmaker. He gets Ospreay up to his feet, a smirk on his face as he winds him up, but Ospreay cuts through his grip with a sharp elbow before rolling Okada up with a victory roll reversal, straight into a DOUBLE STOMP TO THE GUT! Okada rolls right out of the ring and into the waiting arms of the Elite, Ospreay lining up to try and take him out with a dive before being halted by the Bucks, who leap into the way with their hands up. Ospreay shouts at them to move before going for it anyway, launching himself with a PESCADO, STRAIGHT INTO A BOOT TO THE STOMACH BY THE RAINMAKER! THE BUCKS GAVE HIM TIME TO RECOVER! Taking advantage immediately, Okada sends Ospreay crashing into the barricade, Ospreay crying out before Okada sends him into the aisle on the crowd side of the barrier. He measures his man as he heads to the opposite end of ringside, the Bucks gassing him up as he takes a running start for a CROSSBODY OVER THE GUARDRAIL, LANDING ON HIS FEET AFTER TAKING OUT THE AERIAL ASSASSIN! Okada dusts himself off, his signature look of superiority clearer than ever as he drags Ospreay back to ringside, laying in a few boots to the body before spitefully laying in another DDT, this time on the floor. He breaks the count before continuing to pummel Ospreay at ringside, the Bucks taunting the champion with each consecutive shot he takes. Okada works over the champion’s neck, digging a knee into the back of it as he postures with his stablemates before securing a waistlock for a GERMAN SUPLEX ON THE FLOOR, BUT OSPREAY FLIPS OUT OF IT! He flings himself at Okada with a Hidden Blade attempt from behind, the seemingly omniscient Okada ducking at just the right moment before throwing a boot - but Ospreay’s just too quick, slipping under it and LAYING IN A HOOK KICK, FOLLOWED BY A BACK SUPLEX ON THE OUTSIDE TO THE RAINMAKER! Ospreay backs the Bucks away, threatening to put their faces through the back of their heads before sliding back into the ring and EFFORTLESSLY SOARING THROUGH THE AIR WITH A SKY TWISTER PRESS TO THE FLOOR! He sends Okada back between the ropes, following him with a PIP PIP CHEERIO, BUT OKADA CUTS HIM OFF AGAIN BY KICKING OUT THE ROPES! Ospreay is left hung up on the top, Okada turning him over for a DRAPING NECKBREAKER OFF THE TOP! ONE! TWO! THR-KICKOUT! It’s been virtually all Okada thus far, and he continues to methodically wear Ospreay down with a targeted offensive on the neck of the AEW World Champion. Whenever Ospreay tries to get some momentum going, Okada’s able to reverse it, the style Ospreay honed in New Japan having paid dividends against plenty of other AEW talents, but not the man who defined the style for over a decade. Soon enough, Okada looks for the Rainmaker again, and Ospreay finds his opening by reversing it into a SPANISH FLY! ONE! TWO! KICKOUT! Ospreay looks like a bullet fired from a gun the second Okada’s constant pressure is taken off his shoulders, the champion bolting out to the apron to connect with a PIP PIP CHEERIO, NAILING IT BEFORE OKADA HAS TIME TO REALIZE WHAT HIT HIM! Okada tries to evacuate out the other side of the ring, but Ospreay’s having none of it, grabbing him by the trunks and pulling him back in for a SNAP DRAGON SUPLEX! ONE! TWO! TH-NOOO! Okada sits back up just in time for Ospreay to strike him with a standing round kick to the ear, filling the Rainmaker’s head with cobwebs before flattening him to the canvas with a superkick, finishing the sequence with a RUNNING SHOOTING STAR PRESS! ONE! TWO! THR-ANOTHER KICKOUT, BUT OSPREAY’S FINALLY GOTTEN CONTROL AWAY FROM THE CHALLENGER! With the Chicago crowd rallying behind him, Ospreay struggles to get to his feet, the twenty straight minutes of punishment taking a heavy toll on the champion. However, he’s certainly up before the stunned Okada, with the challenger still attempting to get his wits about him when Ospreay charges with a ROBINSON SPECIAL, STRAIGHT TO THE BASE OF THE SKULL! Okada gets to his feet on instinct alone, the Assassin positioning himself behind his prey and circling him before running the ropes for an OSCUTTER! ONE! TWO! THR-NOOO! Ospreay unleashes some Kawada Kicks on the challenger, letting out his aggression before lighting him up with a flurry of chops, Okada attempting to stand on business and throw some of his own, only for Ospreay to obliterate him with a superkick. Okada is left leaning on the ropes, Ospreay beckoning him towards the centre of the ring before attempting a SHOTGUN DROPKICK, SENDING HIM STRAIGHT THROUGH TO THE APRON! With Okada prone, Ospreay looks for the OSCUTTER ON THE APRON, BUT OKADA CATCHES HIM IN A STRAITJACKET! He attempts a Straitjacket German Suplex on the apron, Ospreay avoiding catastrophe with a back headbutt to the bridge of the nose, followed by a stiff back elbow to send Okada tumbling to the floor. Ospreay vaults over the ropes to break the count, finding himself in the perfect spot for an old favourite as Okada gets to his feet at the base of the ramp. Measuring his man, Ospreay leaps into motion with a SASUKE SPECIAL, BUT OKADA CATCHES HIM! WHAT STRENGTH FROM THE RAINMAKER, AND NOW… OH MY GOD, A TOMBSTONE PILEDRIVER ON THE FLOOR! Okada’s confidence is peaking, the Tombstone on the floor having been a hallmark of so many of his defining victories and none of his defeats. Knowing this, he rolls Ospreay straight back into the ring, the work on the neck having paid dividends as he immediately secures wrist control, hoisting Ospreay up into position for a RAIIIINMAKERRRRRR! HE GOT ALL OF IT! ONE! TWO! THRE-OSPREAY SOMEHOW LIFTS THE SHOULDER UP! Frustrated, Okada hurls Ospreay’s lifeless corpse into the corner and simply starts stomping a mudhole in his face, grinding his boot into the champion’s features before the referee pulls him away. Okada bickers with the ref as the Bucks sneak up on each side of Ospreay, Will instinctively grabbing a hold of Matthew, who scrambles backwards. However, Will stays latched onto him, forming a fist around Matthew’s tie and being pulled through the ropes… ONLY FOR NICHOLAS TO SUPERKICK OSPREAY STRAIGHT INTO THE RING POST, SPARING HIS OLDER BROTHER! Blood begins to spill from the side of Ospreay’s head, dripping onto the ring post and ring skirt as it becomes clear he hit his head damn hard against the steel. Okada pushes past the referee and continues to beat Ospreay down, relishing each moment of offence as he sends the champion packing to the outside with a petulant boot to the side of the head. He rolls out to the floor, the Bucks handing him a bottle of water to cool himself off with after such a brutal match, and now Okada gets to admire the Elite’s handiwork as crimson teardrops start dotting ringside, a bloody mask obscuring Ospreay’s face. Okada keeps beating ass, commentary noting that this is now the longest we’ve seen these two duke it out for, nearly 40 minutes having elapsed. Excalibur notes Ospreay seems harder than ever to put down, but Okada’s showing the same sort of dominance he has in the past, with Schiavone sounding worried that it might just be a matter of time. Looking to finally put an end to things, Okada starts raining closed fists on Ospreay’s head wound, hurling him into the timekeeper’s table. Eventually, he lays Ospreay out on it, clambering up with him before flipping off the camera and calling for another Tombstone. He flips Ospreay around… but Ospreay drops to the floor behind him, sweeping out Okada’s legs before nailing a CHEEKY NANDO’S AGAINST THE GUARDRAIL, LEAVING OKADA SPLAYED OUT ON THE TABLE! Ospreay scrambles towards the ring post, blood pouring down onto his chest as he makes the long climb up the turnbuckles for a FROG SPLASH THROUGH THE TABLE, AND THROUGH OKADA! The count was broken by him hitting the top rope, sparing both men the risk of being counted out as they lie their motionless. Chicago wills them to their feet, Ospreay sending Okada back into the ring before using the surge of energy and momentum to get the challenger up for a STORMBREAKER! HE GOT HIM! OSPREAY’S GONNA DO IT! Ospreay leaps atop Okada, grabbing the leg and leaning back into a deep cover, putting all his weight across the challenger’s shoulders… ONE! TWO! THRE-OKADA’S FOOT IS HOVERING OVER THE BOTTOM ROPE, OSPREAY TOO ENTHUSIASTIC WITH HIS PIN! The Bucks look like they’re about to have panic attacks as an exasperated, mentally battered Ospreay fights back tears, a fraction of an inch away from redemption. However, he knows he’s got control, so all he has to do is take this one home. Both men are in deep waters now, and with both being renowned for their gas tanks, it’s clearly come down to a war of attrition, both men knowing that it’ll all come down to landing the one big move that’ll keep one of them down. They’ve both sustained plenty of damage, but as Ospreay staggers over to the downed Okada, he gets this look in his eyes - the look of a man who has the chance to do the funniest thing ever against a man he resents oh so much. Ospreay grabs Okada’s wrist, the crowd letting out an “oooh” as it becomes clear he’s going for his own parody of the Rainmaker, traditionally a ripcord Spanish Fly. Okada is on dream street as Ospreay positions him, pulling the wrist to whip Okada around… but the Rainmaker is still wise to Ospreay’s moveset, keeping an arm near his side to stop Ospreay from latching on for a Spanish Fly. However, he wasn’t wise enough, Ospreay digging into Kenny Omega’s toolkit with a RAIN TRIGGER, BLINDSIDING OKADA WITH A HUGE HIT HE DIDN’T SEE COMING! Okada falls into the ropes, trying to keep himself upright by keeping a firm grip on the top rope, only to be uprooted by a POISON RANA, OSPREAY SPIKING THE CHALLENGER RIGHT ON HIS HEAD! He stumbles to the corner, Okada looking to find his footing as he gets to his knees… AND EATS A HIDDEN BLADE STRAIGHT TO THE FACE, OSPREAY MOWING STRAIGHT THROUGH HIS CHALLENGER! ONE! TWO! THRE-OKADA GETS THE SHOULDER UP, AND THE GRUELLING BOUT CONTINUES! Justin Roberts is starting to sound pretty nervous as he makes the 50 minute time call, informing both competitors that there’s only ten minutes left in their longest bout against one another to date. Ospreay crawls towards the ropes, driven by pure determination as he peels off his elbow pad, winding up for the Hidden Blade of a lifetime as Okada slowly starts to stir. Both men have taken each other’s biggest shots, but Okada’s in the champion’s sights now, Ospreay waiting until he’s in the perfect position before CHARGING AT FULL TILT INTO A DROPKICK FROM OKADA! Somehow, Okada’s still got pristine form this late into the match, but there’s no time to linger on his magnificence as he rises to his feet, dazed and confused, in desperate need of a dagger against Ospreay. He leans over to hook Ospreay’s wrist, calling for a second Rainmaker, and now he ripcords him in, ONLY FOR OSPREAY TO BLAST HIM WITH A HIDDEN BLADE TO THE FACE ONCE AGAIN ON THE REBOUND! Okada somehow keeps hold of Ospreay’s wrist, tumbling into the ropes and dragging the champion with him, gritting his teeth and letting out a primal roar before CLOBBERING OSPREAY WITH A SHORT ARM LARIAT, BRINGING THEM BOTH DOWN TO THE MAT! Ospreay gets the slightly better landing tactically, turned completely inside out and managing to drape an arm over… ONE! TWO! THRE-NOO! Okada’s kickout flips Ospreay onto his back, the Rainmaker now making an exhausted pinfall attempt… ONE! TWO! THRE-KICKOUT! WHAT’S IT GOING TO TAKE FOR ONE OF THESE MEN TO STAY DOWN? Puddles of Ospreay’s blood stain the canvas as both men lie there, the unimaginable exhaustion washing over both of them as they fight to be the first man to a vertical base. Commentary discusses the importance of securing the upper hand at this moment, and somehow, it’s Ospreay who’s up first, although only by a matter of seconds. Okada decks him with a forearm, the Rainmaker doubled over trying to catch his breath, but Ospreay clocks him with one of his own, followed by a ROLLING ELBOW TO DROP OKADA TO A KNEE! Ospreay ponders a moment, considering going for a Storm Driver 93, and as Justin Roberts says there’s five minutes remaining, he goes for it. He hooks Okada’s arms in a butterfly, muscling him up off his feet… but Okada drops down to his knees, Ospreay too exhausted to lift 250 pounds into position if that 250 pounds is still fighting back. The champion knees Okada in the face before going for it again, but this time, Okada shifts his weight back and SWINGS OSPREAY OVER HIS OWN SHOULDER FOR AN AIR RAID CRASH NECKBREAKER! Ospreay goes down like a sack of potatoes, clutching the back of his neck in pure agony, unable to function properly as Okada scrapes him off the canvas and positions him for an EMPHATIC COBRA FLOWSION, DRIVING OSPREAY’S NECK INTO THE MAT ONCE AGAIN WITH A RESOUNDING THUD! The challenger rises to his feet behind his foe… AND SPREADS HIS ARMS, THE CAMERA ZOOMING OUT TO ENCOMPASS THE CHICAGO CROWD! OKADA HITS THE RAINMAKER POSE, AND HE’S READY TO STUNT ON OSPREAY ONCE MORE! Ospreay’s in the perfect position for the Rainmaker, only a few minutes left on the clock, but both men’s movements have become lethargic and feeble after all they’ve been through. Matthew and Nicholas pound the mat to encourage Okada as he painstakingly leans over to latch on to Ospreay’s wrist, the champion fighting as best he can with a few back elbows, all of which miss the mark. Okada drives a forearm into the back of Ospreay’s neck, dropping him to his knees again before finally heaving him up for the Rainmaker, winding up… AND WHIZZING RIGHT BY OSPREAY, WHO COLLAPSES FROM EXHAUSTION! Okada falls in a heap behind him, but he’s still in better shape than Ospreay with moments remaining. With the last of his adrenaline, Okada scrambles up and picks Ospreay up once more, positioning him for a Rainmaker… BUT OSPREAY DUCKS, THIS TIME BREAKING INTO A SPRINT TO GET OUT OF THE WRISTLOCK! HE BOUNCES OFF THE ROPES, OKADA TOO TIRED TO SPIN AROUND IN TIME, AND NOW OSPREAY NAILS AN UNPROTECTED HIDDEN BLADE TO THE BACK OF THE HEAD! He’s got to roll him over, the seconds counting down as Ospreay simply digs his shoulder into the Rainmaker’s arm to slowly turn him onto his back, struggling to hook the leg… ONE! TWO! THRE-KICKOUT! OKADA GOT THE SHOULDER UP! Ospreay can’t believe it, fighting to get his feet under him, frantically attempting to hook Okada’s arms to get him into position for a Storm… ding ding ding. Will Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada fought to a draw (60:00), for Ospreay to retain the AEW World Title Road to WrestleDream With Ospreay having been unable to put away the Rainmaker within an hour, it’s pretty clear that a rematch has to be on the horizon, but the question is where. Both Grand Slam and WrestleDream are coming up, and on Dynamite, Okada lays down the gauntlet for the PPV, saying that he intends to win the AEW Title at a show paying tribute to one of his idols in Antonio Inoki. However, Ospreay’s not off the hook until October just yet - Grand Slam still stands in the way, and a battle between two of his fantastic previous opponents is set to determine his challenger for the event. Those opponents? Swerve Strickland and MJF. In the end, MJF manages to pull out the win, securing a title challenge right next door to his home at Grand Slam. Ospreay walks in insecure, just as he did in the Owen Finals, but this time with good reason - his first title defence was hardly a successful one, and he might not even have the chance to make up for it if he doesn’t manage to put away the longest-reigning AEW World Champion ever, in their home state. The pressure’s on for the Assassin, and with challengers hounding him, all he can do is try and build momentum with wins week over week. He doesn’t bother trying to match MJF on the stick, the next challenger eviscerating the champion with promo after promo until the go-home show, where a fed up Ospreay simply snipes him with a Hidden Blade to cut him off. Grabbing the microphone, Will promises to prove the title belongs around his waist, telling MJF that he wants the same Max who dominated the AEW main event scene for over a year. (Cont'd in Comments) |
2024.05.29 04:05 SnoglinMcSmellmore Hotel Beds
Hello fine people of Sydney. I am planning a trip that includes 2 adults and one toddler. I need a hotel room with two beds. I have noticed many hotels have "twin" beds. In the U.S. twins beds barely fit a full size adult, so there's no way 2 twins would fit 3 of us. Is the twin bed in Sydney as small as I think it is? Thank you in advance! WeI look forward to visiting. Also happy to take suggestions for fun toddler activities.
submitted by SnoglinMcSmellmore to sydney [link] [comments]
2024.05.29 03:22 PianoIndividual2879 Seeking Advice on Renting Out Our Basement: Renovation Costs and Legal Concerns
Good evening, dear community!
My wife and I are considering renting out our two-bedroom basement. We live in a bungalow with a spacious basement featuring high ceilings, located two hours from Toronto. Since it's just the two of us, we don’t need all that space. However, our basement currently lacks a separate entrance and some features aren't up to code. For instance, there aren't smoke detectors in every bedroom, and our furnace doesn't have a sensor to shut it off in case of smoke.
To make it rental-ready, we need to undertake major renovations, estimated to cost around 50,000 CAD. Here’s the breakdown:
Once renovated, the basement will be a compliant, separate apartment with two large bedrooms, a new kitchen, and a separate entrance. We plan to rent it out for 1,400-1,900 CAD per month, either by room or as a whole unit.
However, I’m concerned about potential tenant issues, such as those who might stop paying rent and take a year to evict. I learned that having roommates instead of tenants makes eviction easier if problems arise. To classify them as roommates, I need to share a kitchen or bathroom with them. Our basement has a large utility room housing the water heater, electrical box, and furnace. This room is big enough for a bed, desk, and chair, so I could theoretically use it as my "bedroom."
I have several questions:
submitted by PianoIndividual2879 to OntarioLandlord [link] [comments]
My wife and I are considering renting out our two-bedroom basement. We live in a bungalow with a spacious basement featuring high ceilings, located two hours from Toronto. Since it's just the two of us, we don’t need all that space. However, our basement currently lacks a separate entrance and some features aren't up to code. For instance, there aren't smoke detectors in every bedroom, and our furnace doesn't have a sensor to shut it off in case of smoke.
To make it rental-ready, we need to undertake major renovations, estimated to cost around 50,000 CAD. Here’s the breakdown:
- Architectural drawings: 4,000 CAD
- Separate entrance: 15,000 CAD
- Electrical and fire upgrades: 10,000 CAD
- Kitchen (10ft): 5,000 CAD
- Kitchen appliances: 4,000 CAD
- WasheDryer: 3,000 CAD
- Drywall, patching, new door, and paint for adding another bedroom: 4,000 CAD
- Unexpected expenses: 5,000 CAD
Once renovated, the basement will be a compliant, separate apartment with two large bedrooms, a new kitchen, and a separate entrance. We plan to rent it out for 1,400-1,900 CAD per month, either by room or as a whole unit.
However, I’m concerned about potential tenant issues, such as those who might stop paying rent and take a year to evict. I learned that having roommates instead of tenants makes eviction easier if problems arise. To classify them as roommates, I need to share a kitchen or bathroom with them. Our basement has a large utility room housing the water heater, electrical box, and furnace. This room is big enough for a bed, desk, and chair, so I could theoretically use it as my "bedroom."
I have several questions:
- Am I breaking any laws by living in a utility room without a window, given that I am the property owner? (The rented rooms will be code-compliant.)
- Can my tenants be considered roommates in this case?
- What do you think of our plan overall? Are we aiming for something unrealistic?
2024.05.29 03:19 PianoIndividual2879 Seeking Advice on Renting Out Our Basement: Renovation Costs and Legal Concerns
Good evening, dear community!
My wife and I are considering renting out our two-bedroom basement. We live in a bungalow with a spacious basement featuring high ceilings, located two hours from Toronto. Since it's just the two of us, we don’t need all that space. However, our basement currently lacks a separate entrance and some features aren't up to code. For instance, there aren't smoke detectors in every bedroom, and our furnace doesn't have a sensor to shut it off in case of smoke.
To make it rental-ready, we need to undertake major renovations, estimated to cost around 50,000 CAD. Here’s the breakdown:
Once renovated, the basement will be a compliant, separate apartment with two large bedrooms, a new kitchen, and a separate entrance. We plan to rent it out for 1,400-1,900 CAD per month, either by room or as a whole unit.
However, I’m concerned about potential tenant issues, such as those who might stop paying rent and take a year to evict. I learned that having roommates instead of tenants makes eviction easier if problems arise. To classify them as roommates, I need to share a kitchen or bathroom with them. Our basement has a large utility room housing the water heater, electrical box, and furnace. This room is big enough for a bed, desk, and chair, so I could theoretically use it as my "bedroom."
I have several questions:
submitted by PianoIndividual2879 to canadahousing [link] [comments]
My wife and I are considering renting out our two-bedroom basement. We live in a bungalow with a spacious basement featuring high ceilings, located two hours from Toronto. Since it's just the two of us, we don’t need all that space. However, our basement currently lacks a separate entrance and some features aren't up to code. For instance, there aren't smoke detectors in every bedroom, and our furnace doesn't have a sensor to shut it off in case of smoke.
To make it rental-ready, we need to undertake major renovations, estimated to cost around 50,000 CAD. Here’s the breakdown:
- Architectural drawings: 4,000 CAD
- Separate entrance: 15,000 CAD
- Electrical and fire upgrades: 10,000 CAD
- Kitchen (10ft): 5,000 CAD
- Kitchen appliances: 4,000 CAD
- WasheDryer: 3,000 CAD
- Drywall, patching, new door, and paint for adding another bedroom: 4,000 CAD
- Unexpected expenses: 5,000 CAD
Once renovated, the basement will be a compliant, separate apartment with two large bedrooms, a new kitchen, and a separate entrance. We plan to rent it out for 1,400-1,900 CAD per month, either by room or as a whole unit.
However, I’m concerned about potential tenant issues, such as those who might stop paying rent and take a year to evict. I learned that having roommates instead of tenants makes eviction easier if problems arise. To classify them as roommates, I need to share a kitchen or bathroom with them. Our basement has a large utility room housing the water heater, electrical box, and furnace. This room is big enough for a bed, desk, and chair, so I could theoretically use it as my "bedroom."
I have several questions:
- Am I breaking any laws by living in a utility room without a window, given that I am the property owner? (The rented rooms will be code-compliant.)
- Can my tenants be considered roommates in this case?
- What do you think of our plan overall? Are we aiming for something unrealistic?
2024.05.29 03:14 redlight886 February 1998 PLAYBOY Interview with Conan O'Brien [additional content]
PLAYBOY Interview With Conan O'Brien Interview by Kevin Cook For Playboy Magazine February 1998
A candid conversation with the preppie prince of "Late Night" about his rocky start, his show's secret one-day cancellation and how David Letterman saved the day.
He was polite. He was funny. He gave us a communicable disease.
At 34 Conan O'Brien is hotter than the fever he was running when we met in his private domain above the "Late Night" sound stage. A gangly freckle-faced ex-high school geek he is "one of TV's hottest properties" according to "People" magazine. The host of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" has become his generation's king of comedy.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Congested too, but O'Brien has far more to worry about than his head cold. A perfectionist who broods over one bad minute in an otherwise perfect hour of TV, he worries he might be anhedonic, "I have trouble with success," he says, "I was raised to believe that if something good happens something bad is coming." Sure things look good now "Rolling Stone" calls "Late Night" "the hottest comedy show on TV." Ratings are better than ever, particularly among 18- to 34-year-olds, the viewers advertisers crave.
But O'Brien only works harder. Despite his illness he taped two shows in 26 hours on three hours' sleep. He smoothly interviewed Elton John then burst into coughing fits during commercials. Later in his crammed corner office overlooking Manhattan traffic Conan the Cool gulped Dayquil gel caps. He coughed spewing microbes.
"Sorry, sorry," he said. Of course O'Brien can't complain. He came seriously close to falling to being banished behind the scenes as just another failed talk show host.
At his first "Late Night" press conference he corrected a reporter who called him a relative unknown, "Sir I am a complete unknown," he said. That line got a laugh, but soon O'Brien looked doomed. His September 13, 1993 debut began with O'Brien in his dressing room preparing to hang himself only to be interrupted by the start of his show. Before long his career was hanging by a thread. Ratings were terrible. Critics hated the show. Tom Shales of "The Washington Post" called it as "lifeless and messy as roadkill." Shales said O'Brien should quit.
Network officials held urgent meetings discussing the Conan O'Brien debacle. Should they fire him? How should they explain their mistake?
In the end of course he turned it around. The network hung with him long enough for the ratings to improve and the host of the cooler-than-ever "Late Night" now defines comedy's cutting edge just as Letterman did ten years ago.
Even Shales loves "Late Night" these days. He calls O'Brien's turnaround "one of the most amazing transformations in television history."
O'Brien was born on April 18, 1963 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, a doctor, is a professor at Harvard Medical School. His mother, a lawyer, is a partner at an elite Boston Law firm. Conan, the third of six children became a lector at church and a misfit at school. Tall and goofy, bedeviled with acne, he tried to impress girls with jokes. That plan usually bombed, but O'Brien eventually found his niche at Harvard where he won the presidency of the "Harvard Lampoon" in 1983 and again in 1984 - the first two-time "Lampoon" president since humorist Robert Benchley held the honor 85 years ago.
After graduating magna cum laude with a double major in literature and American history he turned pro. Writing for HBO's "Not Necessarily The News." O'Brien was earning $100,000 a year before his 24th birthday. But writing was never enough.
He honed his performance skills with the Groundlings, a Los Angeles improv group. There he worked with his onetime girlfriend Lisa Kudrow, now starring on "Friends." But Conan was not such a standout. In 1988 he landed a job at "Saturday Night Live" - but as a writer, not as on-air talent. In almost four years on the show O'Brien made only fleeting appearances, usually as a crowd member or security guard. His writing was more memorable. He wrote (or co-wrote) Tom hanks' "Mr Short-Term Memory" skits as well as the "pump you up" infosatire of Hanz and Franz and the nude beach sketch in which Matthew Broderick and "SNL" members played nudists admiring one another's penises. With dozens of mentions of the word that hit was the most penis-heavy moment in TV history. It helped O'Brien win an Emmy for comedy writing.
In 1991 he quit "SNL" and moved on to "The Simpsons" where he worked for two years. His urge to perform came out in wall-bouncing antics in writers' meetings. "Conan makes you fall out of your chair" said "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening. O'Brien's yen to act out was so strong that he spurned Fox's reported seven-figure offer to continue as a writer. He was driving for the spotlight.
By then David Letterman had announced he was turning shin - leaving NBC taking his ton-rated act to CBS. Suddenly NBC was up a creek without a host. The network turned to Lorne Michaels, O'Brien's "Saturday Night Live" boss. Michaels enlisted Conan's help in the host search planning to use him in a behind-the-scenes job. But when Garry Shandling, Dana Carvey and almost every other star turned down the chore of following Letterman, Michaels finally listened to Conan's crazy suggestion, "Let me do it!" Michaels persuaded the network to entrust it's 12:30 slot which Letterman had turned into a gold mine to an untested wiseass from Harvard.
O'Brien was working on one of his last "Simpsons" episodes when he got the news. He turned "paler than usual," Groening recalled. The Conan moseyed back to where the other writers were working, "I'll come back with the Homer Simspon joke later. I have to go replace Letterman," he said.
NBC executives now get credit for their foresight during those dark days of 1993 and 1994. They snared the axe and now reap the multimillion-dollar spoils of that decision. In fact, the story is not so simple. We sent Contributing Editor Kevin Cook to unravel the tale of O'Brien's survival, which he tells here for the first time. Cook reports:
"His office is chock-full of significa. There's a three-foot plastic pickle the Letterman staff left behind in 1993 - perhaps to suggest what a predicament he was in. There's a copy of Jack Paar's 'I Kid You Not' and a coffee-table book called 'Saturday Night Live: The First 20 Years.' His bulletin board features letters from fans such as John Watters and Bob Dole and an 8" x 10" glossy of Andy Richter with the inscription: "To Conan - Your bitter jealousy warms my black heart. Love and Kisses Andy."
"Of course it's all for show. From the photos of kitch icons Adam West and Robert Stack to the framed Stan Laurel autograph, from the deathbed painting of Abraham Lincoln, to the ironic star taped to Conan's door - they're all clever signals that tell a visitor how to view the star. Lincoln was his collegiate preoccupation: stardom is his occupation. Somewhere between the two I hoped to find the real O'Brien.
"As a Playboy reader he wanted to give me a better-than-average interview. I wanted something more - a definitive look at the guy who may end up being the Johnny Carson of his generation."
"Here's hoping we succeeded. If not I carried his germs 3000 miles and infected dozens of Californians for no good reason.
O'Brien: Yes, this is how to do a Playboy Interview -- completely tanked on cold medicine. I'll pick it up and read, "Yes, I'm gay."
Playboy: We could talk another time. O'Brien: (coughing) No, it's OK. I memorized Dennis Rodman's answers. Can I use them?
Playboy: You sound really sick. Do you ever take a day off? O'Brien: No. The age of talk show hosts taking days off is over. Johnny Carson could go to Africa when he was the only game in town -- "See you in two weeks!" But nobody does that now. I will give you a million dollars on the first day Jay takes off for illness.
Playboy: Do you ever slow down and enjoy your success? O'Brien: If anything, the pace is picking up. Restaurateurs insist on giving me a table even if I'm only passing by, so I'm eating nine meals a night. Women stop me on the street and hand me their phone numbers.
Playboy: So you have groupies? O'Brien: Oh yes. And other fans. Drifters. Prisoners. Insomniacs. Cab Drivers, who must watch a lot of late night TV, seem to love me lately. They keep saying, "You will not pay, you will not pay, you make me happy!"
Playboy: How happy did your new contract make you? O'Brien: Terrified. The network said, "We're all set for five years." I said, "Shut up, shut up! I can't think that far ahead." Tonight, for instance, I do my jokes, then interview Elton John and Tim Meadows. We finished taping about 6:30. By 6:45 my memory was erased and my only thought was, Tomorrow: John Tesh. And I started to obsess about John Tesh. Sad, don't you think?
Playboy: Not too sad. You got off to a rocky start but now you're so hot that People magazine recently said, "that was then, this is wow." O'Brien: I try not to pay much attention. Since I ignored the critics who said I should shoot myself in the head with a German Luger, it would be cheating to tear out nice reviews now and rub them all over my body, giggling. Though I have thought about it.
Playboy: Tell us about your trademark gag. You interview a photo of Bill Clinton or some other celeb, and a pair of superimposed lips provide outrageous answers. O'Brien: We call it the Clutch Cargo bit, after that terrible old cartoon series. They saved money on animation by superimposing real lips on the cartoons. I wanted to do topical jokes in a cartoony way -- not just Conan doing quips at a desk. TV is visual; I want things to look funny. But we're not Saturday Night Live; we couldn't spend $100,000 on it. Hence, the cheap, cheesy lips, You'd be surprised how many people we fool.
Playboy: Viewers believe that's really the president yelling, "Yee-haw! Who's got a joint?" O'Brien: It's strange. You may know intellectually that Clinton doesn't talk like Foghorn Leghorn. Ninety-eight percent of your brain knows the president wouldn't say, "Whoa Conan get a load of that girl!" But there are a few brain cells that aren't sure. When Bob Dole was running for president we had him doing a past-life regression: "My cave, get away." And then back further, "Must form flippers to crawl on to rocky soil," he says. There may be people out there who believe that Bob Dole was the first amphibian.
Playboy: Do you ever go too far? O'Brien: The fun is in going too far. It's a nice device because you get Bill Clinton to do the nastiest Bill Clinton jokes. We'll have Clinton making fart noises while I say "Sir! Please!"
Playboy: Are you enjoying your job now, with your new success? O'Brien: Well, there are surprises. I hate surprises. Like most comics, I'm a control freak. But I am learning that the show works best when things are out of control. Tonight I ask Elton John if he likes being neighbors with Joan Collins. He says he isn't neighbors with Joan Collins. He lives next door to Tina Turner. So I panic -- huge mistake! But Elton saves the day. "Joan Collins, Tina Turner, it doesn't matter. Either way I could borrow a wig," he says. Huge laugh, all because I fucked up. Later he surprised me by blurting out that he's hung like a horse. The camera cuts to me shaking my head: That crazy Elton. What can I do? Of course, I'm delighted that he went too far.
Playboy: That "What can I do?" look resembles a classic take of Jack Benny's. O'Brien: There's an old saying in literature: "Good poets borrow; great poets steal." I think T.S. Eliot stole it from Ezra Pound. Comics steal, too. Constantly. When I watched Johnny Carson, I noticed that he got a few takes from Benny and Bob Hope. When a comedy writer told me how much Woody Allen had borrowed from Hope, I thought, What? They're nothing alike. Then I went back and watched Son of Paleface, and there's Hope, the nervous city guy backing up on his heels, wringing his hands and saying, "Sorry, I'll just be moving along." Now look at early Woody Allen. You see big authority figures and Woody nervously saying, "Look, I'll just be on my way." Of course Woody made it his own, but he must have watched and loved Bob Hope.
Playboy: Who are your role models? O'Brien: Carson. Woody Allen. SCTV. Peter Sellers. When Peter Sellers died I felt such a loss, thinking, There won't be anymore of that. There's some Steve Martin in my false bravado with female guests: "Why, hel-lo there!" And I won't deny having some Letterman in my bones.
Playboy: You were surprise as Letterman's successor. At first you seemed like the wrong choice. O'Brien: I didn't get ratings. That doesn't mean I didn't get laughs. Yes, I had a giant pompadour and I looked like a rockabilly freak. I was too excited, pushed too hard, and people said, "That guy isn't a polished performer." Fine! But it isn't my goal to be Joe Handsomehead cool, smooth talk show host. Late Night with Conan O'Brien is supposed to be a work in progress, and now that we've had some success there's a danger of our getting too polished and morphing into something smoothly professional. Which would suck.
Do you know why I wanted this show? Because Late Night with David Letterman played with the rules and it looked like fun. Here was a place where people did risky comedy every night for millions of people. We had to keep this thing alive. There should be a place on a big network where people are still messing around.
Playboy: How bad were your early days on the show? O'Brien: Bad. Dave left here under a cloud: his fans and the media were angry with NBC. Then NBC picks a guy with crazy hair and a weird name. And the world says, "Harvard? Those guys are assholes." I sincerely hope that the winter of December 1993, our first winter, was the worst time I will ever have. I'd go out to do the warm up and the back two rows of seats would be empty. That's hard to look at. I would tell a joke and then hear someone whisper, "Who's he? Where's Dave?"
Playboy: You had trouble getting guests. O'Brien: Bob Denver canceled on us. We shot a test show with Al Lewis of The Munsters. We did the clutch cargo thing with a photo of Herman Munster. Unfortunately, Fred Gwynne, who played Herman, had recently died, and Al Lewis kept pointing at the screen, saying, "You're dead! I was at your funeral!"
Playboy: For months you got worried notes from network executives. What did they say? O'Brien: They were worried. The fact that Lorne Michaels was involved bought me some time. But Lorne had turned to me at the start and said, "OK, Conan. What do you want to do?" Now television critics were after me and the network was starting to realize what a risk I was. Suggestions came fast and furious. I kept the note that said, "Why don't you just die?"
Playboy: Did they suggest ways to be funnier? O'Brien: They were more specific and tactical. The network gets very specific data. Say there was a drop in ratings between 12:44 and 12:48 when I was talking to Jon Bon Jovi. I'll be told, "Don't ever talk to him again" Or they'll want me to tease viewers into staying with us: "You should tease that -- say, 'We'll have nudity coming up next!'"
Playboy: You did come close to being cancelled. O'Brien: We were cancelled.
Playboy: Really? You have never admitted that. O'Brien: This is the first time I've talked about it. When I had been on for about a year, there was a meeting at the network. They decided to cancel my show. They said, "It's cancelled." Next day they realized they had nothing to put in the 12:30 slot, so we got a reprieve.
Playboy: Were you worried sick? O'Brien: I went into denial. I tried hard not to think, Yes, I'm bad on the air and my show has none of the things a TV show needs to survive. We had no ratings. No critics in our corner. Advertisers didn't like us. Affiliates wanted to drop us. Sometimes I'd meet a programming director from a local station where we had no rating at all. The guy would show me a printout with no number for Late Night's rating, just a hash mark or pound sign. I didn't dare think about that when I went out to do the show.
Playboy: Are you defending denial? O'Brien: How else does anyone get through a terrible experience? The odds were against me. Rationally, I didn't have much chance. Denial was my only friend. When I look back on the first year, it's like a scene from an old war movie: Ordinary guy gets thrown into combat, somehow beats impossible odds, staggers to safety. His buddy say, "You could have been killed!" The guy stops and thinks. "Could have been killed?" he says. His eyes cross and he faints.
Playboy: How did you dodge the bullet? O'Brien: There were people at NBC who stood up for me. I will always be indebted to Don Ohlmeyer, who stuck to his guns. Don said, "We chose this guy. We should stick with him unless we get a better plan." He was brutally honest. He came to me and said, "Give me about a 15 percent bump in the ratings and you'll stay on the air. If not, we're going to move on."
Playboy: Ohlmeyer started his career in the sports division. O'Brien: Exactly, his take was, "You're on our team." Of course, it wasn't exactly rational of Don to hope I'd be 15 percent funnier. It was like telling a farmer, "It better rain this week or we'll take your farm away."
Playboy: What did you say to Ohlmeyer? O'Brien: There wasn't time. I had to go out and do a monologue. But I will always be indebted to Don because he told me the truth. Wait a minute -- you have tricked me into talking lovingly about an NBC executive. Let me say that there were others who were beneath contempt -- executives who wouldn't know a good show if it swam up their asses and lit a campfire.
Playboy: Finally the ratings went your way. Hard work rewarded? O'Brien: Well, I also paid off the Nielsen people. That was $140,000 well spent.
Playboy: Ohlmeyer plus bribery saved you? O'Brien: There was something else. Just when everyone was kicking the crap out of the show, Letterman defended me.
Playboy: Letterman had signed off on NBC saying, "I don't really know Conan O'Brien, but I heard he killed someone." O'Brien: Then I pick up the paper and he's saying he thinks I am going to make it. "They do some interesting, innovative stuff over there," he says. "I think Conan will prevail." And then he came on as a guest. Remember, this was when we were at our nadir. There was no Machiavellian reason for David Letterman, who at the time was the biggest thing in show business, to be on my show.
Playboy: Why did he do it? O'Brien: I'm still not sure. Maybe out of a sense of honor. Fair play. And it woke me up. It made me think. Hey, we have a real fucking television show here.
Of six or seven pivotal points in my short history here, that was the first and maybe the biggest. I wouldn't be sitting here -- I probably wouldn't even exist today -- if he hadn't done our show.
Playboy: The Late Night wars were hardly noted for friendly gestures. O'Brien: How little you understand. Jay, Dave and I pal around all the time. We often ride a bicycle built for three up to the country. "Nice job with Fran Drescher!" "Thanks, pal. You weren't so bad with John Tesh." We sleep in triple-decker bunk beds and snore in unison like the Three Stooges.
Playboy: You talk more about Letterman than your NBC teammate Leno. O'Brien: I hate the "Leno or Letterman, who's better?" question. I can tell you that Jay has been great to me. He calls me occasionally.
Playboy: To say what? O'Brien: (Doing Leno's voice) "Hey, liked that bit you did last night." Or he'll say he saw we got a good rating. I call him at work, too. It can be a strange conversation because we're so different. Jay, for instance, really loves cars. He's got antique cars with kerosene lanterns, cars that run on peat moss. He'll be telling me about some classic car he has, made entirely of brass and leather, and I'll say, "Yeah, man, I got the Taurus with the vinyl." One thing we have in common is bad guests. There are certain actors, celebrities with nothing to say, who move through the talk show world wreaking havoc. They lay waste to Dave's town and Jay's town, then head my way.
Playboy: You must be getting some good guests. Your ratings have shown a marked improvement. O'Brien: Remember, when you're on at 12:30 the Nielsens are based on 80 people. My ratings drop if one person has a head cold and goes to bed early.
Playboy: Actually, you're seen by about 3 million people a night. Your ratings would be even higher if college dorms weren't excluded from the Nielsens. How many points does that cost you? O'Brien: I told you I'm an idiot. Now I have to do math too?
Playboy: Do you still get suggestions from NBC executives? O'Brien: Not as many. The number of notes you get is inversely proportional to your ratings.
Playboy: What keeps you motivated? O'Brien: Superstition. We have a stagehand, Bobby Bowman, who holds up the curtain when I run out for the monologue. He is the last person I see before the show starts, and I have to make him laugh before I go out. It started with mild jabs: "Bobby, you're drunk again." Bobby laughs, "Heehee."" Then it was, "Still having trouble with the wife, Bobby?" But after hundreds of shows, you find yourself running out of lines. It's gotten to where I do crass things at the last second. I'll put his hand on my ass and yell, "You fucking pervert!" Or drop to my knees and say, "Come on, Bobby, I'll give you a blow job!"
"Ha-ha. Conan, you're crazy," he says. But even that stuff wears off. Soon, I'll be making the writers work late to give me new jokes for Bobby.
Playboy: Did you plan to be a talk show host or did you fall into the job? O'Brien: I was an Irish Catholic kid from St. Ignatius parish in Brookline, outside of Boston. And that meant: Don't call attention to yourself. Don't ask for too much when the pie comes around. Don't get a girl pregnant and fuck up your life.
Playboy: Were you an alter boy? O'Brien: I wanted to be an alter boy, but the priest at St. Ignatius said, "No, no. You're good on your feet, kid," and made me a lector. A scripture reader at Mass. He was the one who spotted my talent.
Playboy: What did you think of sex in those days? O'Brien: I was sexually repressed. At 16 I still thought human reproduction was by mitosis.
Playboy: How did you get over your sexual repression? O'Brien: Who says I got over it? My leg has been jiggling this whole time.
Playboy: What were you like in high school? O'Brien: Like a crane galumphing down the hall. A crane with weird hair, bad skin and Clearasil. Big enough for basketball but lousy at it. My older brothers were better. I would compensate by running around the court doing comedy, saying, "Look out, this player has a drug addiction. He's incredibly egotistical."
I was an asshole at home, too. My little brother Justin loved playing cops and robbers, but I kept tying him up with bureaucratic bullshit. When he'd catch me, I'd say, "I get to call my lawyer." Then it was, "OK, Justin, we're at trial and you've been charged with illegal arrest. Fill out these forms in triplicate." Justin was eight; he hated all the lawsuits and countersuits. He just cried.
Playboy: Were you a class clown? O'Brien: Never. I was never someone who walked into a room full of strangers and started telling jokes. You had to get to know me before I could make you laugh. The same thing happened with Late Night. I needed to get the right rhythm with Andy and Max and the audience.
Playboy: So how did you finally learn about sex? O'Brien: My parents gave me a book, but it was useless. At the crucial moment, all it showed was a man and a woman with the bed covers pulled up to their chins. I tried to find out more from friends, but it didn't help. One childhood friend told me it was like parking a car in a garage. I kept worrying about poisonous fumes. What if the fumes build up? Should you shut off the engine?
Playboy: For all your talk about being repressed, you can be rowdy on the air. O'Brien: The show is my escape valve. When I tear off my shirt and gyrate my pelvis like Robert Plant, feigning orgasm into the microphone, that shows how repressed I am -- a guy who wants to push his sex at the lens but can only do it as a joke.
Playboy: Aren't you tempted to live it up? O'Brien: I always imagined that if I were a TV star I would live the way I pictured Johnny Carson living. Carousing, stepping out of a limo wearing a velvet ascot with a model on my arm. Now that I have the TV show, I drive up to Connecticut on the weekends and tool around in my car. I could probably join a free-sex cult, smoke crack between orgies and drive sports cars into swimming pools, and my Catholic guilt would still be there, throbbing like a toothache. Be careful. If something good happens, something bad is on the way.
Playboy: Yet you don't mind licking the supermodels. O'Brien: At one point a few of them lived in my building, women who are so beautiful they almost look weird, like aliens. To me, a woman who has a certain approachable amount of beauty becomes almost funny. It's the same with male supermodels. They look like big puppets. So while I admire their beauty I probably won't be "romantically linked" with a model. I'd catch my reflection in a ballroom mirror and break up laughing.
Playboy: The horny Roy Orbison growl you use on gorgeous guests sounds real enough -- O'Brien: Oh, I've been doing that shit since high school. It just never worked before.
Playboy: Your father is a doctor, your mother an attorney. What do they think of their son the comedian? O'Brien: My dad was the one who told me denial was a virtue. "Denial is how people get through horrible things," he said. He also cut out a newspaper article in which I said I was making money off something for which I should probably be treated. So true, he thought. But when I got an Emmy for helping write Saturday Night Live, my parents put it on the mantel next to the crucifix. Here's Jesus looking over, saying, "Wow, I saved mankind from sin, but I wish I had an Emmy."
Playboy: Ever been in therapy? O'Brien: Yes. I don't trust it. I have told therapists that I don't particularly want to feel good. "Repression and fear, that's my fuel." But the therapists said that I had nothing to worry about. "Don't worry Conan you will always be plenty fucked up."
Playboy: When a female guest comes out, how do you know whether to shake her hand or kiss her? Is that rehearsed O'Brien: No, and it's awkward. If you go to shake her hand and her head starts coming right at you, you have to change strategy fast. I have thought about using the show to make women kiss me, but that would probably creep out the people at home. I decided not to kiss Elton John.
Playboy: Do you get all fired up if Cindy Crawford or Rebecca Romijn does the show? O'Brien: I like making women laugh. Always have, ever since I discovered you can get girls' attention by acting like an ass. That's one of the joys of the show -- I'm working my eyebrows and going grrr and she's laughing, the audience is laughing. It's all a big put-on and I'm thinking. This is great. Here is a beautiful woman who has no choice but to put up with this shit.
But it's not always put on. Sometimes they flirt back. Sometimes there's a bit of chemistry. That happened with Jennifer Connelly of The Rocketeer.
Playboy: One guest, Jill Hennessy, took off her pants for you. Then you removed yours. Even Penn and Teller took off their pants. O'Brien: Something comes over me. It happened with Rebecca Romijn -- I was practically climbing her. Those are the times when Andy and the audience seem to disappear and it's just me and this lovely woman sitting there flirting. I keep expecting a waiter to say, "More wine, Monsieur?"
Playboy: Would you lick the wine bottle? O'Brien: It's true, there's a lot of licking on the show. I have licked guests. I have licked Andy. Comedy professionals will read this and say, "Great work, Conan. Impressive." But I have learned that if you lick a guest, people laugh. If I pick this shoe off the floor, examine it, Hmmm, and then lick it, people laugh. I learned this lesson on The Simpsons, where I was the writer who was forever trying to entertain the other writers. I still try desperately to make our writers laugh, which is probably a sign of sickness since they work for me now. Licking is one of those things that look funny.
Playboy: Johnny Carson never licked Ed McMahon. O'Brien: We are much more physical and more stupid than the old Tonight Show. Even in our offices before the show there's always some writer acting out a scene crashing his head through my door. A behind-the-scenes look at our show might frighten people.
Playboy: One night you showed a doctored photo of Craig T. Nelson having sex with Jerry Van Dyke. Did they complain about it? O'Brien: I haven't heard from them. Of course I'm blessed not to be a part of the celebrity pond. I have a television show in New York, an NBC outpost. I don't run with or even run into many Hollywood people.
Playboy: You also announced that Tori Spelling has a penis. O'Brien: I did not. Polly the Peacock said that.
Playboy: Another character you use to say the outrageous stuff. O'Brien: Polly is not popular with the network.
Playboy: You mock Fabio, too. O'Brien: If he sues me, it'll be the best thing that ever happened. A publicity bonanza: Courtroom sketches of Fabio with his man-boobs quivering, shaking his fist, and me shouting at him across the courtroom. I'm not afraid of Fabio. He knows where to find me. I'm saying it right here for the record: Fabio, let's get it on.
Playboy: Ever have a run-in with an angry celeb? O'Brien: I did a Kelsey Grammar joke a few years ago, something about his interesting lifestyle, then heard through the network that he was upset. He had appeared on my show and expected some support. At this point my intellect says, "Kelsey Grammar is a public figure. I was in the right." Then I saw him in an airport. Kelsey didn't see me at first: I could have kept walking. But there he was, eating a cruller in the airport lounge. I thought I should go over. I said hello and then said, "Kelsey, I'm sorry if I upset you." And he was glad. He looked relieved. He said, "Oh, that's OK." We both felt better.
....See my other post with the last third of the interview
submitted by redlight886 to conan [link] [comments]
A candid conversation with the preppie prince of "Late Night" about his rocky start, his show's secret one-day cancellation and how David Letterman saved the day.
He was polite. He was funny. He gave us a communicable disease.
At 34 Conan O'Brien is hotter than the fever he was running when we met in his private domain above the "Late Night" sound stage. A gangly freckle-faced ex-high school geek he is "one of TV's hottest properties" according to "People" magazine. The host of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" has become his generation's king of comedy.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Congested too, but O'Brien has far more to worry about than his head cold. A perfectionist who broods over one bad minute in an otherwise perfect hour of TV, he worries he might be anhedonic, "I have trouble with success," he says, "I was raised to believe that if something good happens something bad is coming." Sure things look good now "Rolling Stone" calls "Late Night" "the hottest comedy show on TV." Ratings are better than ever, particularly among 18- to 34-year-olds, the viewers advertisers crave.
But O'Brien only works harder. Despite his illness he taped two shows in 26 hours on three hours' sleep. He smoothly interviewed Elton John then burst into coughing fits during commercials. Later in his crammed corner office overlooking Manhattan traffic Conan the Cool gulped Dayquil gel caps. He coughed spewing microbes.
"Sorry, sorry," he said. Of course O'Brien can't complain. He came seriously close to falling to being banished behind the scenes as just another failed talk show host.
At his first "Late Night" press conference he corrected a reporter who called him a relative unknown, "Sir I am a complete unknown," he said. That line got a laugh, but soon O'Brien looked doomed. His September 13, 1993 debut began with O'Brien in his dressing room preparing to hang himself only to be interrupted by the start of his show. Before long his career was hanging by a thread. Ratings were terrible. Critics hated the show. Tom Shales of "The Washington Post" called it as "lifeless and messy as roadkill." Shales said O'Brien should quit.
Network officials held urgent meetings discussing the Conan O'Brien debacle. Should they fire him? How should they explain their mistake?
In the end of course he turned it around. The network hung with him long enough for the ratings to improve and the host of the cooler-than-ever "Late Night" now defines comedy's cutting edge just as Letterman did ten years ago.
Even Shales loves "Late Night" these days. He calls O'Brien's turnaround "one of the most amazing transformations in television history."
O'Brien was born on April 18, 1963 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, a doctor, is a professor at Harvard Medical School. His mother, a lawyer, is a partner at an elite Boston Law firm. Conan, the third of six children became a lector at church and a misfit at school. Tall and goofy, bedeviled with acne, he tried to impress girls with jokes. That plan usually bombed, but O'Brien eventually found his niche at Harvard where he won the presidency of the "Harvard Lampoon" in 1983 and again in 1984 - the first two-time "Lampoon" president since humorist Robert Benchley held the honor 85 years ago.
After graduating magna cum laude with a double major in literature and American history he turned pro. Writing for HBO's "Not Necessarily The News." O'Brien was earning $100,000 a year before his 24th birthday. But writing was never enough.
He honed his performance skills with the Groundlings, a Los Angeles improv group. There he worked with his onetime girlfriend Lisa Kudrow, now starring on "Friends." But Conan was not such a standout. In 1988 he landed a job at "Saturday Night Live" - but as a writer, not as on-air talent. In almost four years on the show O'Brien made only fleeting appearances, usually as a crowd member or security guard. His writing was more memorable. He wrote (or co-wrote) Tom hanks' "Mr Short-Term Memory" skits as well as the "pump you up" infosatire of Hanz and Franz and the nude beach sketch in which Matthew Broderick and "SNL" members played nudists admiring one another's penises. With dozens of mentions of the word that hit was the most penis-heavy moment in TV history. It helped O'Brien win an Emmy for comedy writing.
In 1991 he quit "SNL" and moved on to "The Simpsons" where he worked for two years. His urge to perform came out in wall-bouncing antics in writers' meetings. "Conan makes you fall out of your chair" said "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening. O'Brien's yen to act out was so strong that he spurned Fox's reported seven-figure offer to continue as a writer. He was driving for the spotlight.
By then David Letterman had announced he was turning shin - leaving NBC taking his ton-rated act to CBS. Suddenly NBC was up a creek without a host. The network turned to Lorne Michaels, O'Brien's "Saturday Night Live" boss. Michaels enlisted Conan's help in the host search planning to use him in a behind-the-scenes job. But when Garry Shandling, Dana Carvey and almost every other star turned down the chore of following Letterman, Michaels finally listened to Conan's crazy suggestion, "Let me do it!" Michaels persuaded the network to entrust it's 12:30 slot which Letterman had turned into a gold mine to an untested wiseass from Harvard.
O'Brien was working on one of his last "Simpsons" episodes when he got the news. He turned "paler than usual," Groening recalled. The Conan moseyed back to where the other writers were working, "I'll come back with the Homer Simspon joke later. I have to go replace Letterman," he said.
NBC executives now get credit for their foresight during those dark days of 1993 and 1994. They snared the axe and now reap the multimillion-dollar spoils of that decision. In fact, the story is not so simple. We sent Contributing Editor Kevin Cook to unravel the tale of O'Brien's survival, which he tells here for the first time. Cook reports:
"His office is chock-full of significa. There's a three-foot plastic pickle the Letterman staff left behind in 1993 - perhaps to suggest what a predicament he was in. There's a copy of Jack Paar's 'I Kid You Not' and a coffee-table book called 'Saturday Night Live: The First 20 Years.' His bulletin board features letters from fans such as John Watters and Bob Dole and an 8" x 10" glossy of Andy Richter with the inscription: "To Conan - Your bitter jealousy warms my black heart. Love and Kisses Andy."
"Of course it's all for show. From the photos of kitch icons Adam West and Robert Stack to the framed Stan Laurel autograph, from the deathbed painting of Abraham Lincoln, to the ironic star taped to Conan's door - they're all clever signals that tell a visitor how to view the star. Lincoln was his collegiate preoccupation: stardom is his occupation. Somewhere between the two I hoped to find the real O'Brien.
"As a Playboy reader he wanted to give me a better-than-average interview. I wanted something more - a definitive look at the guy who may end up being the Johnny Carson of his generation."
"Here's hoping we succeeded. If not I carried his germs 3000 miles and infected dozens of Californians for no good reason.
O'Brien: Yes, this is how to do a Playboy Interview -- completely tanked on cold medicine. I'll pick it up and read, "Yes, I'm gay."
Playboy: We could talk another time. O'Brien: (coughing) No, it's OK. I memorized Dennis Rodman's answers. Can I use them?
Playboy: You sound really sick. Do you ever take a day off? O'Brien: No. The age of talk show hosts taking days off is over. Johnny Carson could go to Africa when he was the only game in town -- "See you in two weeks!" But nobody does that now. I will give you a million dollars on the first day Jay takes off for illness.
Playboy: Do you ever slow down and enjoy your success? O'Brien: If anything, the pace is picking up. Restaurateurs insist on giving me a table even if I'm only passing by, so I'm eating nine meals a night. Women stop me on the street and hand me their phone numbers.
Playboy: So you have groupies? O'Brien: Oh yes. And other fans. Drifters. Prisoners. Insomniacs. Cab Drivers, who must watch a lot of late night TV, seem to love me lately. They keep saying, "You will not pay, you will not pay, you make me happy!"
Playboy: How happy did your new contract make you? O'Brien: Terrified. The network said, "We're all set for five years." I said, "Shut up, shut up! I can't think that far ahead." Tonight, for instance, I do my jokes, then interview Elton John and Tim Meadows. We finished taping about 6:30. By 6:45 my memory was erased and my only thought was, Tomorrow: John Tesh. And I started to obsess about John Tesh. Sad, don't you think?
Playboy: Not too sad. You got off to a rocky start but now you're so hot that People magazine recently said, "that was then, this is wow." O'Brien: I try not to pay much attention. Since I ignored the critics who said I should shoot myself in the head with a German Luger, it would be cheating to tear out nice reviews now and rub them all over my body, giggling. Though I have thought about it.
Playboy: Tell us about your trademark gag. You interview a photo of Bill Clinton or some other celeb, and a pair of superimposed lips provide outrageous answers. O'Brien: We call it the Clutch Cargo bit, after that terrible old cartoon series. They saved money on animation by superimposing real lips on the cartoons. I wanted to do topical jokes in a cartoony way -- not just Conan doing quips at a desk. TV is visual; I want things to look funny. But we're not Saturday Night Live; we couldn't spend $100,000 on it. Hence, the cheap, cheesy lips, You'd be surprised how many people we fool.
Playboy: Viewers believe that's really the president yelling, "Yee-haw! Who's got a joint?" O'Brien: It's strange. You may know intellectually that Clinton doesn't talk like Foghorn Leghorn. Ninety-eight percent of your brain knows the president wouldn't say, "Whoa Conan get a load of that girl!" But there are a few brain cells that aren't sure. When Bob Dole was running for president we had him doing a past-life regression: "My cave, get away." And then back further, "Must form flippers to crawl on to rocky soil," he says. There may be people out there who believe that Bob Dole was the first amphibian.
Playboy: Do you ever go too far? O'Brien: The fun is in going too far. It's a nice device because you get Bill Clinton to do the nastiest Bill Clinton jokes. We'll have Clinton making fart noises while I say "Sir! Please!"
Playboy: Are you enjoying your job now, with your new success? O'Brien: Well, there are surprises. I hate surprises. Like most comics, I'm a control freak. But I am learning that the show works best when things are out of control. Tonight I ask Elton John if he likes being neighbors with Joan Collins. He says he isn't neighbors with Joan Collins. He lives next door to Tina Turner. So I panic -- huge mistake! But Elton saves the day. "Joan Collins, Tina Turner, it doesn't matter. Either way I could borrow a wig," he says. Huge laugh, all because I fucked up. Later he surprised me by blurting out that he's hung like a horse. The camera cuts to me shaking my head: That crazy Elton. What can I do? Of course, I'm delighted that he went too far.
Playboy: That "What can I do?" look resembles a classic take of Jack Benny's. O'Brien: There's an old saying in literature: "Good poets borrow; great poets steal." I think T.S. Eliot stole it from Ezra Pound. Comics steal, too. Constantly. When I watched Johnny Carson, I noticed that he got a few takes from Benny and Bob Hope. When a comedy writer told me how much Woody Allen had borrowed from Hope, I thought, What? They're nothing alike. Then I went back and watched Son of Paleface, and there's Hope, the nervous city guy backing up on his heels, wringing his hands and saying, "Sorry, I'll just be moving along." Now look at early Woody Allen. You see big authority figures and Woody nervously saying, "Look, I'll just be on my way." Of course Woody made it his own, but he must have watched and loved Bob Hope.
Playboy: Who are your role models? O'Brien: Carson. Woody Allen. SCTV. Peter Sellers. When Peter Sellers died I felt such a loss, thinking, There won't be anymore of that. There's some Steve Martin in my false bravado with female guests: "Why, hel-lo there!" And I won't deny having some Letterman in my bones.
Playboy: You were surprise as Letterman's successor. At first you seemed like the wrong choice. O'Brien: I didn't get ratings. That doesn't mean I didn't get laughs. Yes, I had a giant pompadour and I looked like a rockabilly freak. I was too excited, pushed too hard, and people said, "That guy isn't a polished performer." Fine! But it isn't my goal to be Joe Handsomehead cool, smooth talk show host. Late Night with Conan O'Brien is supposed to be a work in progress, and now that we've had some success there's a danger of our getting too polished and morphing into something smoothly professional. Which would suck.
Do you know why I wanted this show? Because Late Night with David Letterman played with the rules and it looked like fun. Here was a place where people did risky comedy every night for millions of people. We had to keep this thing alive. There should be a place on a big network where people are still messing around.
Playboy: How bad were your early days on the show? O'Brien: Bad. Dave left here under a cloud: his fans and the media were angry with NBC. Then NBC picks a guy with crazy hair and a weird name. And the world says, "Harvard? Those guys are assholes." I sincerely hope that the winter of December 1993, our first winter, was the worst time I will ever have. I'd go out to do the warm up and the back two rows of seats would be empty. That's hard to look at. I would tell a joke and then hear someone whisper, "Who's he? Where's Dave?"
Playboy: You had trouble getting guests. O'Brien: Bob Denver canceled on us. We shot a test show with Al Lewis of The Munsters. We did the clutch cargo thing with a photo of Herman Munster. Unfortunately, Fred Gwynne, who played Herman, had recently died, and Al Lewis kept pointing at the screen, saying, "You're dead! I was at your funeral!"
Playboy: For months you got worried notes from network executives. What did they say? O'Brien: They were worried. The fact that Lorne Michaels was involved bought me some time. But Lorne had turned to me at the start and said, "OK, Conan. What do you want to do?" Now television critics were after me and the network was starting to realize what a risk I was. Suggestions came fast and furious. I kept the note that said, "Why don't you just die?"
Playboy: Did they suggest ways to be funnier? O'Brien: They were more specific and tactical. The network gets very specific data. Say there was a drop in ratings between 12:44 and 12:48 when I was talking to Jon Bon Jovi. I'll be told, "Don't ever talk to him again" Or they'll want me to tease viewers into staying with us: "You should tease that -- say, 'We'll have nudity coming up next!'"
Playboy: You did come close to being cancelled. O'Brien: We were cancelled.
Playboy: Really? You have never admitted that. O'Brien: This is the first time I've talked about it. When I had been on for about a year, there was a meeting at the network. They decided to cancel my show. They said, "It's cancelled." Next day they realized they had nothing to put in the 12:30 slot, so we got a reprieve.
Playboy: Were you worried sick? O'Brien: I went into denial. I tried hard not to think, Yes, I'm bad on the air and my show has none of the things a TV show needs to survive. We had no ratings. No critics in our corner. Advertisers didn't like us. Affiliates wanted to drop us. Sometimes I'd meet a programming director from a local station where we had no rating at all. The guy would show me a printout with no number for Late Night's rating, just a hash mark or pound sign. I didn't dare think about that when I went out to do the show.
Playboy: Are you defending denial? O'Brien: How else does anyone get through a terrible experience? The odds were against me. Rationally, I didn't have much chance. Denial was my only friend. When I look back on the first year, it's like a scene from an old war movie: Ordinary guy gets thrown into combat, somehow beats impossible odds, staggers to safety. His buddy say, "You could have been killed!" The guy stops and thinks. "Could have been killed?" he says. His eyes cross and he faints.
Playboy: How did you dodge the bullet? O'Brien: There were people at NBC who stood up for me. I will always be indebted to Don Ohlmeyer, who stuck to his guns. Don said, "We chose this guy. We should stick with him unless we get a better plan." He was brutally honest. He came to me and said, "Give me about a 15 percent bump in the ratings and you'll stay on the air. If not, we're going to move on."
Playboy: Ohlmeyer started his career in the sports division. O'Brien: Exactly, his take was, "You're on our team." Of course, it wasn't exactly rational of Don to hope I'd be 15 percent funnier. It was like telling a farmer, "It better rain this week or we'll take your farm away."
Playboy: What did you say to Ohlmeyer? O'Brien: There wasn't time. I had to go out and do a monologue. But I will always be indebted to Don because he told me the truth. Wait a minute -- you have tricked me into talking lovingly about an NBC executive. Let me say that there were others who were beneath contempt -- executives who wouldn't know a good show if it swam up their asses and lit a campfire.
Playboy: Finally the ratings went your way. Hard work rewarded? O'Brien: Well, I also paid off the Nielsen people. That was $140,000 well spent.
Playboy: Ohlmeyer plus bribery saved you? O'Brien: There was something else. Just when everyone was kicking the crap out of the show, Letterman defended me.
Playboy: Letterman had signed off on NBC saying, "I don't really know Conan O'Brien, but I heard he killed someone." O'Brien: Then I pick up the paper and he's saying he thinks I am going to make it. "They do some interesting, innovative stuff over there," he says. "I think Conan will prevail." And then he came on as a guest. Remember, this was when we were at our nadir. There was no Machiavellian reason for David Letterman, who at the time was the biggest thing in show business, to be on my show.
Playboy: Why did he do it? O'Brien: I'm still not sure. Maybe out of a sense of honor. Fair play. And it woke me up. It made me think. Hey, we have a real fucking television show here.
Of six or seven pivotal points in my short history here, that was the first and maybe the biggest. I wouldn't be sitting here -- I probably wouldn't even exist today -- if he hadn't done our show.
Playboy: The Late Night wars were hardly noted for friendly gestures. O'Brien: How little you understand. Jay, Dave and I pal around all the time. We often ride a bicycle built for three up to the country. "Nice job with Fran Drescher!" "Thanks, pal. You weren't so bad with John Tesh." We sleep in triple-decker bunk beds and snore in unison like the Three Stooges.
Playboy: You talk more about Letterman than your NBC teammate Leno. O'Brien: I hate the "Leno or Letterman, who's better?" question. I can tell you that Jay has been great to me. He calls me occasionally.
Playboy: To say what? O'Brien: (Doing Leno's voice) "Hey, liked that bit you did last night." Or he'll say he saw we got a good rating. I call him at work, too. It can be a strange conversation because we're so different. Jay, for instance, really loves cars. He's got antique cars with kerosene lanterns, cars that run on peat moss. He'll be telling me about some classic car he has, made entirely of brass and leather, and I'll say, "Yeah, man, I got the Taurus with the vinyl." One thing we have in common is bad guests. There are certain actors, celebrities with nothing to say, who move through the talk show world wreaking havoc. They lay waste to Dave's town and Jay's town, then head my way.
Playboy: You must be getting some good guests. Your ratings have shown a marked improvement. O'Brien: Remember, when you're on at 12:30 the Nielsens are based on 80 people. My ratings drop if one person has a head cold and goes to bed early.
Playboy: Actually, you're seen by about 3 million people a night. Your ratings would be even higher if college dorms weren't excluded from the Nielsens. How many points does that cost you? O'Brien: I told you I'm an idiot. Now I have to do math too?
Playboy: Do you still get suggestions from NBC executives? O'Brien: Not as many. The number of notes you get is inversely proportional to your ratings.
Playboy: What keeps you motivated? O'Brien: Superstition. We have a stagehand, Bobby Bowman, who holds up the curtain when I run out for the monologue. He is the last person I see before the show starts, and I have to make him laugh before I go out. It started with mild jabs: "Bobby, you're drunk again." Bobby laughs, "Heehee."" Then it was, "Still having trouble with the wife, Bobby?" But after hundreds of shows, you find yourself running out of lines. It's gotten to where I do crass things at the last second. I'll put his hand on my ass and yell, "You fucking pervert!" Or drop to my knees and say, "Come on, Bobby, I'll give you a blow job!"
"Ha-ha. Conan, you're crazy," he says. But even that stuff wears off. Soon, I'll be making the writers work late to give me new jokes for Bobby.
Playboy: Did you plan to be a talk show host or did you fall into the job? O'Brien: I was an Irish Catholic kid from St. Ignatius parish in Brookline, outside of Boston. And that meant: Don't call attention to yourself. Don't ask for too much when the pie comes around. Don't get a girl pregnant and fuck up your life.
Playboy: Were you an alter boy? O'Brien: I wanted to be an alter boy, but the priest at St. Ignatius said, "No, no. You're good on your feet, kid," and made me a lector. A scripture reader at Mass. He was the one who spotted my talent.
Playboy: What did you think of sex in those days? O'Brien: I was sexually repressed. At 16 I still thought human reproduction was by mitosis.
Playboy: How did you get over your sexual repression? O'Brien: Who says I got over it? My leg has been jiggling this whole time.
Playboy: What were you like in high school? O'Brien: Like a crane galumphing down the hall. A crane with weird hair, bad skin and Clearasil. Big enough for basketball but lousy at it. My older brothers were better. I would compensate by running around the court doing comedy, saying, "Look out, this player has a drug addiction. He's incredibly egotistical."
I was an asshole at home, too. My little brother Justin loved playing cops and robbers, but I kept tying him up with bureaucratic bullshit. When he'd catch me, I'd say, "I get to call my lawyer." Then it was, "OK, Justin, we're at trial and you've been charged with illegal arrest. Fill out these forms in triplicate." Justin was eight; he hated all the lawsuits and countersuits. He just cried.
Playboy: Were you a class clown? O'Brien: Never. I was never someone who walked into a room full of strangers and started telling jokes. You had to get to know me before I could make you laugh. The same thing happened with Late Night. I needed to get the right rhythm with Andy and Max and the audience.
Playboy: So how did you finally learn about sex? O'Brien: My parents gave me a book, but it was useless. At the crucial moment, all it showed was a man and a woman with the bed covers pulled up to their chins. I tried to find out more from friends, but it didn't help. One childhood friend told me it was like parking a car in a garage. I kept worrying about poisonous fumes. What if the fumes build up? Should you shut off the engine?
Playboy: For all your talk about being repressed, you can be rowdy on the air. O'Brien: The show is my escape valve. When I tear off my shirt and gyrate my pelvis like Robert Plant, feigning orgasm into the microphone, that shows how repressed I am -- a guy who wants to push his sex at the lens but can only do it as a joke.
Playboy: Aren't you tempted to live it up? O'Brien: I always imagined that if I were a TV star I would live the way I pictured Johnny Carson living. Carousing, stepping out of a limo wearing a velvet ascot with a model on my arm. Now that I have the TV show, I drive up to Connecticut on the weekends and tool around in my car. I could probably join a free-sex cult, smoke crack between orgies and drive sports cars into swimming pools, and my Catholic guilt would still be there, throbbing like a toothache. Be careful. If something good happens, something bad is on the way.
Playboy: Yet you don't mind licking the supermodels. O'Brien: At one point a few of them lived in my building, women who are so beautiful they almost look weird, like aliens. To me, a woman who has a certain approachable amount of beauty becomes almost funny. It's the same with male supermodels. They look like big puppets. So while I admire their beauty I probably won't be "romantically linked" with a model. I'd catch my reflection in a ballroom mirror and break up laughing.
Playboy: The horny Roy Orbison growl you use on gorgeous guests sounds real enough -- O'Brien: Oh, I've been doing that shit since high school. It just never worked before.
Playboy: Your father is a doctor, your mother an attorney. What do they think of their son the comedian? O'Brien: My dad was the one who told me denial was a virtue. "Denial is how people get through horrible things," he said. He also cut out a newspaper article in which I said I was making money off something for which I should probably be treated. So true, he thought. But when I got an Emmy for helping write Saturday Night Live, my parents put it on the mantel next to the crucifix. Here's Jesus looking over, saying, "Wow, I saved mankind from sin, but I wish I had an Emmy."
Playboy: Ever been in therapy? O'Brien: Yes. I don't trust it. I have told therapists that I don't particularly want to feel good. "Repression and fear, that's my fuel." But the therapists said that I had nothing to worry about. "Don't worry Conan you will always be plenty fucked up."
Playboy: When a female guest comes out, how do you know whether to shake her hand or kiss her? Is that rehearsed O'Brien: No, and it's awkward. If you go to shake her hand and her head starts coming right at you, you have to change strategy fast. I have thought about using the show to make women kiss me, but that would probably creep out the people at home. I decided not to kiss Elton John.
Playboy: Do you get all fired up if Cindy Crawford or Rebecca Romijn does the show? O'Brien: I like making women laugh. Always have, ever since I discovered you can get girls' attention by acting like an ass. That's one of the joys of the show -- I'm working my eyebrows and going grrr and she's laughing, the audience is laughing. It's all a big put-on and I'm thinking. This is great. Here is a beautiful woman who has no choice but to put up with this shit.
But it's not always put on. Sometimes they flirt back. Sometimes there's a bit of chemistry. That happened with Jennifer Connelly of The Rocketeer.
Playboy: One guest, Jill Hennessy, took off her pants for you. Then you removed yours. Even Penn and Teller took off their pants. O'Brien: Something comes over me. It happened with Rebecca Romijn -- I was practically climbing her. Those are the times when Andy and the audience seem to disappear and it's just me and this lovely woman sitting there flirting. I keep expecting a waiter to say, "More wine, Monsieur?"
Playboy: Would you lick the wine bottle? O'Brien: It's true, there's a lot of licking on the show. I have licked guests. I have licked Andy. Comedy professionals will read this and say, "Great work, Conan. Impressive." But I have learned that if you lick a guest, people laugh. If I pick this shoe off the floor, examine it, Hmmm, and then lick it, people laugh. I learned this lesson on The Simpsons, where I was the writer who was forever trying to entertain the other writers. I still try desperately to make our writers laugh, which is probably a sign of sickness since they work for me now. Licking is one of those things that look funny.
Playboy: Johnny Carson never licked Ed McMahon. O'Brien: We are much more physical and more stupid than the old Tonight Show. Even in our offices before the show there's always some writer acting out a scene crashing his head through my door. A behind-the-scenes look at our show might frighten people.
Playboy: One night you showed a doctored photo of Craig T. Nelson having sex with Jerry Van Dyke. Did they complain about it? O'Brien: I haven't heard from them. Of course I'm blessed not to be a part of the celebrity pond. I have a television show in New York, an NBC outpost. I don't run with or even run into many Hollywood people.
Playboy: You also announced that Tori Spelling has a penis. O'Brien: I did not. Polly the Peacock said that.
Playboy: Another character you use to say the outrageous stuff. O'Brien: Polly is not popular with the network.
Playboy: You mock Fabio, too. O'Brien: If he sues me, it'll be the best thing that ever happened. A publicity bonanza: Courtroom sketches of Fabio with his man-boobs quivering, shaking his fist, and me shouting at him across the courtroom. I'm not afraid of Fabio. He knows where to find me. I'm saying it right here for the record: Fabio, let's get it on.
Playboy: Ever have a run-in with an angry celeb? O'Brien: I did a Kelsey Grammar joke a few years ago, something about his interesting lifestyle, then heard through the network that he was upset. He had appeared on my show and expected some support. At this point my intellect says, "Kelsey Grammar is a public figure. I was in the right." Then I saw him in an airport. Kelsey didn't see me at first: I could have kept walking. But there he was, eating a cruller in the airport lounge. I thought I should go over. I said hello and then said, "Kelsey, I'm sorry if I upset you." And he was glad. He looked relieved. He said, "Oh, that's OK." We both felt better.
....See my other post with the last third of the interview
2024.05.29 03:12 sumthingrandomlol Reston Apts - Faraday Park vs The Point at Reston
hey all! i recently toured both Faraday Park and The Point at Reston. i liked both places and i’m currently trying to make a final decision of which way to go. i was looking here to mainly get more opinions on each of the places to see if it could help my decision.
i am looking at the JR 1 Bed for Faraday and the Studio 1.2 for The Point if that helps! i wasn’t able to tour the exact floor plan i want for The Point as it isn’t available any time prior to me having to move into it.
submitted by sumthingrandomlol to nova [link] [comments]
i am looking at the JR 1 Bed for Faraday and the Studio 1.2 for The Point if that helps! i wasn’t able to tour the exact floor plan i want for The Point as it isn’t available any time prior to me having to move into it.
2024.05.29 03:11 sumthingrandomlol Faraday Park vs The Point at Reston
hey all! i recently toured both Faraday Park and The Point at Reston. i liked both places and i’m currently trying to make a final decision of which way to go. i was looking here to mainly get more opinions on each of the places to see if it could help my decision.
i am looking at the JR 1 Bed for Faraday and the Studio 1.2 for The Point if that helps! i wasn’t able to tour the exact floor plan i want for The Point as it isn’t available any time prior to me having to move into it.
submitted by sumthingrandomlol to Reston [link] [comments]
i am looking at the JR 1 Bed for Faraday and the Studio 1.2 for The Point if that helps! i wasn’t able to tour the exact floor plan i want for The Point as it isn’t available any time prior to me having to move into it.
2024.05.29 02:23 Yanpretman New LO - Suggestions and tips on LO welcome!
 | So far, so stable - no major stutters, everything seems stable enough far! submitted by Yanpretman to Fallout4ModsXB1 [link] [comments] TOPPERS: (mods that force themselves to the top) Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch You and what Army 2 HUDFramework Workshop Framework ECO + NEO All DLCS MERGED Legendary Effect Overhaul [SMM] Settlement Menu Manager Plenty ‘o’ exploration Capped Out – A Loot and level Minutemen Edits HUD: Immersive HUD (iHUD) FOV 100 Overhauls: Seventy-Six Weathers Commonwealth Warfare – Realistic gun Sounds Commonwealth Warfare – Explosions Modern UI Sounds Settler and Companion Dialogue Overhaul Settler And Companion Dialogue Overhaul LITE (fixes radiant crap and bugs) Building additions: More Fortifications (Xbox) Commonwealth Caps - Xbox KCore’s Simple – Missed Settlement Objects Kcore’s Simple – Filled Workbenches Kcore’s Simple - Cash register Kcore’s Simple - Bunk Beds Kcore’s Simple - Clinic Beds Do It Yourshelf Updated Quaz Craftables The Master Plan The cabin in the woods Box Houses Guard Tower Red Rocket Reborn Alternate power sources Minutemen Morale Pack Miscellaneous Settlement Items Workshop Decorations Pack Full [XB1} Weapon Wall Racks Workshop Turret Pack Alternate Guard Sources XB1 Cooking 101 Cooking 101: Far Harbor Body & Settlers Overhauls: Icebreaker Settlements – Settler Lots More Female Hairstyles Lots More Male Hairstyles Settlers Extended (Standard) Weapons & Animations: Tactical Reload - Framework (755b) See through Scopes Pip-Boy 2000 (disabled when doing a Vault survivor run) Pipboyflashlight (see above) Pip-Boy 2000 flashlight fix (See above) West-Tek Optics Pack The Attachment Pack Glock 19x (1k Textures) SV-98 with Damage Modifiers Hyper Merge #3 Running with Hands Animations Shotgun and Rifles Tactical animations Ony’s Standalone Run/Jog animations F1 3rd person Idle - Friendly CQB sidearm Training VRP - Bundle VRP - Hunting rifle Double Action Revolver Reanimated Stronger Lasers Smokeable Cigars and cigarettes Immersive Animation Framework Armor: More Clothes Textures CoMa – Commonwealth Mashups The Commonwealth Camper Upgradeable Vault suit Vault Suits redone Kellog’s Plate Armor Nextgen CC VSult Minutemen Enforcer Armor + patch Vault Leather Outfit Vault Tourist Outfit K9 harness Settlements: Caravan and Guards Rich Vendors+ [Complete] Another Pine Forest Taffington Fishing Pier Move-in Ready: Somerville Farm Do you D*** Job Codsworth Scavenger’s Apartment Scavenger’s Settlement (XB1) Makeshift Homes Nahant Bar and Grille Roadside Pines Motel Home plate Exterior Norespawns – Tenpines Bluff Norespawns - Nordhagen Wall Norespawns - Abernathy wall Norespawns - Junk Sanctuary Wall NoRespawns – Home Plate NoRespawns – Murkwater Construction Site NoRespawns – Red Rocket Truck Stop NoRespawns – Repaired Jamaica Plain Norespawns – Repaired Croup Manor NoRespawns – Repaired + Cleaned Starlight Better Drumlin Diner 2.0.0 Railroad Safehouse Bunker Hill General Atomics Galleria and Bowling Alley Bunker Hill Revamp Diamond City Outskirts (The Hole) Diamond City Plus Broadway Diner Settlement The Castle 3.0 Project Apocalyptic Commonwealth BUILDING: Scrap Everything – Ultimate edition Brute Force Scrapper Place Anywhere {XB1} Building Budget Extender Commonwealth GECK: Take back the Commonwealth Conquest – Build New Settlements Misc Overhauls and usables: (Misc mods and mods that request being put near the bottom) Less Vertibird Encounters Standard SKK Workshop Ownership Utilities SKK Dynamic Damage Manager Cheat Terminal Faster Enemy Respawn Automatron Unlocked Skip DiMA’s Puzzles In-game Third Person Camera NPC’s Travel Simply better Sneaking Start Me Up Redux - Vanilla Dialogue Prompts Workshop Framework – Script Override Amazing Follower Tweaks FO4 (bottom) Issues encountered so far: - Combination of The Hole and Caravan and Guards make Diamond city a lot more interesting, but has issues crashing on entering interiors (not a lot, but save to be sure) - Combination of Do your *** Job Codsworth and Norespawns - Sanctuary home gives a bit of a freaky texture on the floor, but nothing too off-putting - Tactical Framework - I don't know what it is with this mod, but i have to download the DLC version first, load the game, then exit and disable to allow my dlc guns to reload before the clip is empty, idk why - Theres a bit of stuff you have to do with holo's at the start right away, such as SKK dynamic (xp modifier), NPC's travel, Do it yourshelf, Start me Up Redux, IHud, in-game camera config (the most important one)- its all worth it, but you do need to set some stuff up before you can fully enjoy the game. Please let me know what you guys think, or any mods that seem a perfect fit in this LO! |
2024.05.29 02:20 ihavenoselfctrl Urgent Lease transfer @ Accolade! $1210 a month
 | OPEN TO GIRLS- Hello! I am unable to continue at UCF and am looking to transfer my lease at Accolade West for the next school year! My rent is $1210 a month for a 4 bed 4 bath unit and electric and water will be split evenly between each roommate. I haven't moved in yet or found roommates so as of when I am posting this you should be able to pick your own roommates and be able to pick any available room from the floor plan, but I also don't yet know the unit location or number. submitted by ihavenoselfctrl to UCFstudenthousing [link] [comments] Some info about the unit: your bedroom comes with an attached private bathroom and the unit includes a living area, kitchen, washer & dryer unit, smart TV and balcony. Accolade also has trash collection on each floor and has a shuttle stop to UCF main on the property. This is a standard unit, which means there is no pool view nor will this be top floor. Currently, rent for this type of unit goes for $1215+ so you would be getting a slight (or significant depending on when you see this) discount. I appreciate any inquiries and am happy to give any additional details about the lease. Any fees related to the transfer will be covered by me. Below is the floor plan, and I recommend checking out Accolade's website since I don't have any pictures of the unit. Thank you! :) https://preview.redd.it/118rw5hqe93d1.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eec24b1cfccc1169aa3bf95eeea7b65f58962eed |
2024.05.29 02:12 AlteredTenor New (to me) rig, what’s next?
 | Just bought this bad boy (2015 Luxury at 116k miles) a few weeks ago and I’m absolutely floored by how much I love it! Had to immediately start the mods on it with Summer coming in hot! submitted by AlteredTenor to LexusGX [link] [comments] Some things I’ve added so far: - Prinsu Roofrack - Smoked Sequential turn signals: Surprised at how good these are from Amazon. Highly recommend! - LED 4500K interior lights: night and day difference (see last pic for after shots)! - Auto open/close side view mirror module Immediate wants (any recommendations?): - 270/Batwing awning - Tailgate Table: Might be doing DIY since the absolutely beautiful metal ones from Victory or Bison Gear are a bit pricey for me. Anything I should watch out for as I drill holes? - Tow hitch: Should I get OEM ones? I am thinking about pulling a camper in the future. I’ve also been seeing Pedal Commanders out there, not sure how good or absolutely necessary those are Future: - Tires: I’m not planning on doing a lift (or at least any time soon) since I don’t want to mess with the towing ability and still be able to fit in the garage. I want the aggressive look, but still have good MPG. I also don’t want to do much trimming if any. What do yall have? - Wheels: Black or Bronze to go with the White exterior - Headlights/Tailights - Window Tint with UV protection on the drivepassenger window: Any dos and donts or to watch out for. - Chrome delete (door handle, Emblems, side/window panels): Would you guys recommend Plastidip? I’d say I’m pretty handy with that. Or should I ask someone to wrap it? Lastly, if you’re around the Twin Cities I would love to meet up and/or go off-roading! (PS you’d be with a noob 😅) |
2024.05.29 02:07 spacedr33 SUBLET for VDC Summer 2Bed1Bath
 | Hi everyone, if anyone is interested in housing for this summer from June 22- August 31, my roommate and I are subletting a Vista Del Campo 4Bed2Bath Floor Plan. 2 beds and 1 Bath are available (also has a patio)! The monthly payment is $1,077 per person. My phone number is (818)-404-9005 if you guys are interested! :) submitted by spacedr33 to UCI [link] [comments] Floor Plan. |
2024.05.29 01:54 Fluffy-Conference657 SUMMER LEASE
 | Hi everyone! If anyone is looking for housing for the summer from June 22nd to August 31st, my roommate and I are subletting a Vista Del Campo 4Bed 2Bath floor plan. 2 beds and 1 bath are available. If anyone is interested my phone number is 818-718-2222. The monthly rent is $1077 per person. submitted by Fluffy-Conference657 to UCI [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/4v22mwej993d1.png?width=1658&format=png&auto=webp&s=d79c4f1ed32d171ca6b854feaea8b874dafb42a9 |
2024.05.29 01:07 Hallo_kitty222 The lady in the purple dress
The lady in the ripped purple dress
Hi Courtney love your content I've been watching you for about 3 years and since I have a phone now I can finally tell you about some of my Paranormal experiences
When I was around 6 years old my dad Had gotten a new cable plan So when the cable guy came over do what he needed to do me and my siblings were downstairs with our mom On our pull out couch that we had in the living room at the time Me and my twin sister were playing on our 3D S I was the closest to the stairsI remember playing Mario kart with my twin sister
when all the sudden I see it out of the corner of my eye up at the top of the stairwell next to the bathroom is a tall lady with dark soaking wet hair Gray blue skin and a purple ripped dress the dress looked like it had been through hell and back Being 6 years old at the time it absolutely freak me out and I right away told my mom about it But when Me and my mom looked up at the top of the stairs she was gone Me and my mom both look at each other and my mom said to me it's probably just your imagination you'll be OK Not really thinking anything of it that night I went to bed
I had a nightmare of the lady in the purple dress I was saying that she needed help but then randomly started chasing me and cackling with a knife in her hand i woke up Drenched in sweat I got out of bed To get a glass of water At the end of the hallway was the lady in the purple dress that I had just dreamed about and saw previously at the top of the stairs She looked at me started screaming and everything went black I woke up in my bed with a wet towel on my forehead My mom ran in the room to check if I was OK
I told her to tell me everything since I couldn't remember a thing of what had just happened She told me that she heard my door open heard me walk out and all the Sun heard a loud thud only to get out of bed to see my limp body She panicked she screamed for my dad and my dad carried me back into my bed while my mom went to go grab me the cold towel Saying that I must have overheated and if I could to tell her what had happened what did I feel I told her I saw the lady again And to describe her with great detail of what her face looked like and everything
I told her she freaked out and said if you ever see her again please let me know I will contact a Priest I'm 18 now and I have not seen that woman since🙂
submitted by Hallo_kitty222 to spoopycjades [link] [comments]
Hi Courtney love your content I've been watching you for about 3 years and since I have a phone now I can finally tell you about some of my Paranormal experiences
When I was around 6 years old my dad Had gotten a new cable plan So when the cable guy came over do what he needed to do me and my siblings were downstairs with our mom On our pull out couch that we had in the living room at the time Me and my twin sister were playing on our 3D S I was the closest to the stairsI remember playing Mario kart with my twin sister
when all the sudden I see it out of the corner of my eye up at the top of the stairwell next to the bathroom is a tall lady with dark soaking wet hair Gray blue skin and a purple ripped dress the dress looked like it had been through hell and back Being 6 years old at the time it absolutely freak me out and I right away told my mom about it But when Me and my mom looked up at the top of the stairs she was gone Me and my mom both look at each other and my mom said to me it's probably just your imagination you'll be OK Not really thinking anything of it that night I went to bed
I had a nightmare of the lady in the purple dress I was saying that she needed help but then randomly started chasing me and cackling with a knife in her hand i woke up Drenched in sweat I got out of bed To get a glass of water At the end of the hallway was the lady in the purple dress that I had just dreamed about and saw previously at the top of the stairs She looked at me started screaming and everything went black I woke up in my bed with a wet towel on my forehead My mom ran in the room to check if I was OK
I told her to tell me everything since I couldn't remember a thing of what had just happened She told me that she heard my door open heard me walk out and all the Sun heard a loud thud only to get out of bed to see my limp body She panicked she screamed for my dad and my dad carried me back into my bed while my mom went to go grab me the cold towel Saying that I must have overheated and if I could to tell her what had happened what did I feel I told her I saw the lady again And to describe her with great detail of what her face looked like and everything
I told her she freaked out and said if you ever see her again please let me know I will contact a Priest I'm 18 now and I have not seen that woman since🙂
2024.05.29 01:04 TownLarge9628 The Arlie Sublease
Hi there, I’m posting on behalf of my friend who is trying to get out of his lease for the 2024-2025 year. It would be for the 4 bed 4 bath B floor plan, it would be a deluxe bedroom, I believe that the rent is $840 so about $100 cheaper than what they’re offering now. If you have any question feel free to DM me or comment so we can get the process started. Thanks
submitted by TownLarge9628 to utarlington [link] [comments]
2024.05.29 01:02 Indigo_realm First week 2kg down! 38F UK
38F SW 101kg CW 97.8kg GW 60kg UK based
Hello lovely community! This is my second time writing on this forum. I am extremely happy to have found this and can say I am going to keep going as long as I can.
Tomorrow is day 6 of my first week, I have lost 2kg! I know this must be watemuscle but it feels good to see the scale moving down. Though I am much more about body size than the numbers on a scale. I have started using Mounjaro as a weight loss medication, I do not have any other conditions other than being fat. I am active and will get back in to more exercise but at the moment I am looking to see how my body reacts to the new drug. This is my experience thus far:
Did the injection in my right thigh 11:20am. The jab was painless, did not feel it. I had a surge of energy for the rest of the day and did notice by the night I was not that hungry. I usually am fasting until 1pm most days, I have been doing intermittent fasting for the last 3 months with slow steady progress. Mounjaro is to help kick me in the backend a bit more.
The next day I felt good but I began to have a bit of nausea and stomach pain. It got worse through the day and my appetite was not there. I did eat at 12pm some sourdough bread and cheese. I didn't over eat, just two slices. By 2pm I was in a lot of discomfort and it got progressively worse. I ended up doubled over in pain on the floor by 5pm. I was having a lot of sulphur like burps, really bad stomach cramps and diarrhoea since 1pm. I ended up being sick - coming out both ends at 7pm and was not well until my stomach was completely empty. It was several times through the night and into early morning. It was very unpleasant. I believe I caught some bug or food poisoning but I can't be sure, my GP will meet me and say so in the next days. I stayed in bed the next day afraid to even drink water, I did take two glasses of electrolytes slowly to be sure I wasn't depleted of minerals and water. That night I was able to eat banana and salt crackers without any issues. After that ordeal I was completely back on track and have been feeling great.
The food Noise is GONE. I can't believe it, but it's really true, like, this works! I don't crave any sugar and all fatty processed foods do NOT look appealing to me. I have to remind myself to eat. What I love is not to not eat but to take control of WHAT to eat because all that noise isn't there to distract. I am a very busy mum of 3 kids and I'm always snacking on the wrong foods to get a quick fix. Being in a eating window sometimes makes it worse because when I open my window I end up gorging on too much food. Anyways, this drug is seriously a game changer. I am so happy with it and hope that 2.5mg is enough for me for many months or for my entire treatment. I plan to use it 6 months and continue with fasting. IF I need it then I might push to be on this for 8 -10 months.
This is not my first Rodeo, I did lose 100 lbs 40ish kilos like 15 years ago and kept it off until I fell pregnant and now my body is so thrown off that I put on weight just looking at cakes, nevermind eating them! I have stuck to my healthier lifestyle that I changed 15 years ago, no sugar drinks, no flavoured drinks, no ultra processed foods, home cooked meals and with lots of veggies etc... but like I said my body has changed since being pregnant and I want to see If this can reset me.
lastly, I want to say that I think I have realised that I might not be able to do intermittently fasting on this because today I did feel unwell until I gave in and ate at 11am, breaking my fast much earlier than I would like. I rather eat small healthy things and feel good than push to do long fasting windows. I will have to see how it goes. I am a little nervous about my next injection in two days. fingers crossed I feel fine after.
submitted by Indigo_realm to Mounjaro [link] [comments]
Hello lovely community! This is my second time writing on this forum. I am extremely happy to have found this and can say I am going to keep going as long as I can.
Tomorrow is day 6 of my first week, I have lost 2kg! I know this must be watemuscle but it feels good to see the scale moving down. Though I am much more about body size than the numbers on a scale. I have started using Mounjaro as a weight loss medication, I do not have any other conditions other than being fat. I am active and will get back in to more exercise but at the moment I am looking to see how my body reacts to the new drug. This is my experience thus far:
Did the injection in my right thigh 11:20am. The jab was painless, did not feel it. I had a surge of energy for the rest of the day and did notice by the night I was not that hungry. I usually am fasting until 1pm most days, I have been doing intermittent fasting for the last 3 months with slow steady progress. Mounjaro is to help kick me in the backend a bit more.
The next day I felt good but I began to have a bit of nausea and stomach pain. It got worse through the day and my appetite was not there. I did eat at 12pm some sourdough bread and cheese. I didn't over eat, just two slices. By 2pm I was in a lot of discomfort and it got progressively worse. I ended up doubled over in pain on the floor by 5pm. I was having a lot of sulphur like burps, really bad stomach cramps and diarrhoea since 1pm. I ended up being sick - coming out both ends at 7pm and was not well until my stomach was completely empty. It was several times through the night and into early morning. It was very unpleasant. I believe I caught some bug or food poisoning but I can't be sure, my GP will meet me and say so in the next days. I stayed in bed the next day afraid to even drink water, I did take two glasses of electrolytes slowly to be sure I wasn't depleted of minerals and water. That night I was able to eat banana and salt crackers without any issues. After that ordeal I was completely back on track and have been feeling great.
The food Noise is GONE. I can't believe it, but it's really true, like, this works! I don't crave any sugar and all fatty processed foods do NOT look appealing to me. I have to remind myself to eat. What I love is not to not eat but to take control of WHAT to eat because all that noise isn't there to distract. I am a very busy mum of 3 kids and I'm always snacking on the wrong foods to get a quick fix. Being in a eating window sometimes makes it worse because when I open my window I end up gorging on too much food. Anyways, this drug is seriously a game changer. I am so happy with it and hope that 2.5mg is enough for me for many months or for my entire treatment. I plan to use it 6 months and continue with fasting. IF I need it then I might push to be on this for 8 -10 months.
This is not my first Rodeo, I did lose 100 lbs 40ish kilos like 15 years ago and kept it off until I fell pregnant and now my body is so thrown off that I put on weight just looking at cakes, nevermind eating them! I have stuck to my healthier lifestyle that I changed 15 years ago, no sugar drinks, no flavoured drinks, no ultra processed foods, home cooked meals and with lots of veggies etc... but like I said my body has changed since being pregnant and I want to see If this can reset me.
lastly, I want to say that I think I have realised that I might not be able to do intermittently fasting on this because today I did feel unwell until I gave in and ate at 11am, breaking my fast much earlier than I would like. I rather eat small healthy things and feel good than push to do long fasting windows. I will have to see how it goes. I am a little nervous about my next injection in two days. fingers crossed I feel fine after.
2024.05.28 23:15 DairyFarmerOnCrack Luxon's War on Nature Explained
Dr Russel Norman produced this excellent summary of Luxon's War on Nature, links included.
It can be challenging to keep up with this many environmental attacks, coming from different Ministers and in different stages of development. To make it clearer, I have tried to list all the anti-nature policies below, provide some background, and give an indication of their stage in the policy process.
When you list them all like this, it really is entirely fair to describe it as a ‘war on nature’.
Firstly, this bill gives three individual ministers with no particular knowledge or expertise the ability to green light pretty much any project they like with almost zero environmental constraints.
There are panels who will provide advice to Ministers on individual projects, however these panels are handpicked by the Ministers and the Ministers are free to ignore the panels’ recommendations. The Ministers have publicly and clearly voiced their disdain for environmental considerations.
They can approve an industrial incinerator next door and you don’t even have the right to make a submission on it. It’s a pretty wild level of disregard for the general public, but of course those who have connections to the government will have plenty of chances to lobby ministers at fundraising dinners and suchlike.
This results in poor decision making. One of the things about public submissions is that information comes to the surface that was otherwise hidden. In the Pakiri sand mining case for instance it was revealed through public submissions that the sandmining company was not telling the truth about its actual sandmining practices and that its expert had overestimated the annual sand replacement by a factor of ten.
Under this regime, it isn’t what you know, or whether you have a good project, it’s who you know.
This is patently the case with the South Taranaki seabed mining proposal which was rejected by the Supreme Court. Independent judges who tested evidence submitted and cross examined in open court found that the applicant simply couldn’t demonstrate that their project wouldn’t cause immense harm.
But this is all replaced by closed panels giving advice to Ministers who will make decisions with zero public scrutiny. It’s banana republic stuff.
An example of this is the conflict between seabed mining and offshore wind in the south Taranaki Bight. A normal rational decision-making process could look at both, but in this case, it will come down to which companies can woo the three Ministers the best.
Ministers could be corruptly influenced by bribes in cash or in kind, by jobs for their families, by jobs for themselves post-politics, or by campaign donations. Advisers who provide access to Ministers and determine which corporations get onto the list will be equally incentivised to act corruptly.
Already, some of the companies that Ministers have invited to apply for fast track are their donors. Mining company executives have had secret dinners with Ministers that were only revealed by accident and journalists asking questions. How many secret dinners will we never find out about?
Even the Ministry for the Environment analysis can be summarised as the bill:
‘could diminish local voices, violate Treaty of Waitangi commitments, significantly impact human and environmental health, open legal risks for the ministers involved, provide an unprecedented back door for prohibited projects, and erode the value of conservation land’
This single bill, if it proceeds and if businesses have the gall to use it, will cause widespread harm. It could include seabed mining, incinerators imposed on local communities, mining most everywhere including the conservation estate, marine farms everywhere, industrial irrigation driving water pollution, etc etc etc. It is a war on nature but it is also diminishing democracy and opening the door to corruption.
Land and Water Aotearoa found that ‘There is not a single monitored lake shallower than 10 metres in very good condition.’ Environment Canterbury in 2024 found nitrate levels increasing in 60% of the wells it tested. Many parts of the North Island with intensive dairying such as the Waikato are also heavily polluted.
Under pressure from the environment movement and the majority of New Zealanders, the last government brought in a series of national regulations to place some constraints on agribusiness pollution, particularly the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management. Agribusiness virulently and vociferously opposed these regulations.
The new government is setting about undoing these regulations with its war on nature.
The purpose of the delay is to weaken or remove the national regulations before the regional councils develop their new regional freshwater plans which must be consistent with the national regulations.
Intensive winter grazing is a widespread practice in Otago and Southland in which feed crops are grazed intensively through winter. This results in cows, often pregnant, living in mud sometimes up to their bellies with massive sediment flows into rivers and lakes. The sediment smothers freshwater ecosystems.
Te Mana o te Wai was the foundation for hearing panels rejecting applications to take water and cause more pollution in Hawkes Bay and Southland recently. Giant dairy polluter Fonterra and agribusiness lobby groups objected to this use of Te Mana o Te Wai and appealed the decisions.
The new Government aims to ensure that commercial users can get first consideration ahead of ecosystems or human health. This also means the lessons of the world’s biggest crypospridiosis outbreak in Havelock North are abandoned .
As you can see it is an intensive and extensive attack on the rules protecting freshwater as part of the broader war on nature.
Even as recently as 2009 Landcare Research reported that ‘Agricultural intensification over the past 10 years has led to the highest rate of native vegetation loss since European colonisation.’ Landcare Research was deeply unpopular with the government and agribusiness after making this finding.
In response to the widespread destruction of biodiversity on private land the National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity was introduced in 2023 after many years of discussion and consultation. The purpose is ‘to maintain indigenous biodiversity across Aotearoa New Zealand so that there is at least no overall loss in indigenous biodiversity’. A part of this national policy statement is a requirement for councils to identify ‘Significant Natural Areas’ in their area as a precursor to providing for their protection.
The idea of rules to protect biodiversity ran up against agribusiness, the key driver of the ‘highest rate of native vegetation loss since European colonisation’, and hence Federated Farmers deeply opposed these rules.
As part of the RMA amendment bill announced in April 2024, the Luxon Government plans to remove the requirement that councils identify ‘’Significant Natural Areas’’, and hence biodiversity on private land will not even be identified let alone protected so its destruction can continue unabated.
Across the whole country this draft policy statement will lead to more transport pollution and fewer trips by public transport walking and cycling. It also centralises much of the decision making around transport by preventing Councils from building cycleways alongside roads funded by central government money.
As part of the draft policy statement they removed climate as a requirement for consideration in transport decision making.
They are moving to increase speeds around schools which not only increases injuries it discourages families from sending their kids to school by bike or foot because they know that speeding cars are more dangerous.
This sits alongside the attacks on traffic calming measures such as raised pedestrian crossings, which the NZ Herald has been busy providing misinformation about. Many Councils are resisting the idiots in Wellington, thank goodness, and are lowering speed limits anyway.
Kiwirail lost its Climate Bonds certification as a result and will repay the $350m it borrowed plus interest.
The cost to the Government of breaking the ship build contracts is thought to be in the hundreds of millions. It’s an expensive mistake which a future government will have to fix.
While we can’t simply replace traffic jams of internal combustion engine cars with traffic jams of electric cars, nonetheless EVs are part of the low carbon solution.
They abolished the Auckland Regional Fuel tax of ten cents a litre which was used mostly to fund the building of the first stages of the Eastern Busway and new commuter rail carriages. The Eastern Busway has now been reduced in size, as the fourth phase is unfunded.
They cancelled the Auckland light rail project. This project was troubled, with the previous government heading down the most expensive track, but there are still better options than just cancelling it.
There’s even more but you get the sense of it. Their transport policy is plainly designed to increase climate pollution as part of their war on nature.
This is particularly the case for practices like bottom trawling, where heavy nets are dragged along the ocean floor destroying corals and sponges in order to catch fish near the bottom.
Over the last decade the environment movement and the majority of New Zealanders have been slowly pushing governments towards improving oversight of the fishing industry and restrictions on their most destructive practices. But the new government wants to go backwards…
The other countries in this forum are trying to restrict bottom trawling because of the immense harm it causes. As the last country actively bottom trawling in the international waters of the South Pacific, New Zealand is opposing these constraints, but under the last government had agreed to some modest restrictions.
The new government has changed its position, opposing protection of vulnerable coral habitats from trawling, and does not support any kind of restrictions on bottom trawling.
These cameras were finally rolled out over the last few years to about 120 fishing vessels and have so far resulted in a dramatic increase in reporting of dolphin and bird killings and fish dumping.
But Shane Jones, Minister of Fishing and recipient of seafood industry campaign donations, doesn’t like them and wants to review them. Another option the government is canvassing is to hand them over to Fishserv, the fishing industry owned company that oversees the Quota Management System.
None of these are good options but where it ends is still unclear.
The population of one of the species, the southern bluefin tuna, has collapsed 92% since the height of fishing madness in the 1960s. This follows the collapse of orange roughy fishery, hoki, scallops, crayfish etc etc.
And with regard to killing endangered New Zealand sea lions the new Government decided there would no longer be an upper limit on the number of sea lions that the fishing industry can drown in trawl nets.
This will no doubt be the tip of the iceberg as more change emerges from the Minister.
On the demand side are the battles around fossil fuel electricity generation and internal combustion engines vehicles.
But the supply side is also critical because, as the International Energy Agency found back in 2021, we can’t afford to bring more fossil fuel supply online if we are to avoid catastrophic warming. The head of the IEA said: “If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now – from this year.” We know that once oil companies spend vast amounts to find and develop new fossil fuel reserves they will continue to sell them into the global fossil fuel market.
Hence the decision by the New Zealand Government in 2018 to stop issuing new offshore oil and gas exploration permits was a critical step forward in the global fossil fuel battle. Other countries have now joined this movement and there is a growing group of governments and civil society groups supporting a Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty.
The announcement by the Luxon Government that it will restart the issuance of offshore oil and gas exploration permits is a global leap backwards. It’s another sign that their fighting a war on nature, not fossil fuels
The Government is looking to subsidise the industry by providing insurance against future policy changes. They are also looking to remove the requirement that oil companies provide a clean up bond to cover future clean up costs. These clean up bonds were introduced after Tamarind oil company went bankrupt leaving the taxpayer with a $300m bill to clean up after them.
The Government is falsely claiming that the recent electricity shortages are linked to the 2018 decision to stop issuing new permits for oil and gas exploration – an argument that is transparently false.
They want to move away from the global standard accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as standard called GWP100. They want the world to adopt a standard called GWP*. Under GWP* New Zealand’s methane is recategorised as not causing warming! Agribusiness likes GWP* because they won’t need to cut emissions!
The New Zealand agribusiness lobby groups are part of this project, and now they have the former head of Federated Farmers in Government, they have their chance to push it. The Government has established a panel to look into the measurement of the warming of methane emissions. I would be very surprised if the panel does not recommend the adoption of GWP*.
Both the Climate Commission and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment have concluded that there is no basis to review the science around the measurement of the warming effect of methane.
The purpose of all this is to avoid having to cut emissions by doing things that actually work like reducing fertiliser use and stocking rates.
When Lawyers for Climate Action went to court to try to use the ZCA to actually force emissions cuts on the government, the Climate Minister, James Shaw, went to court to argue that the Paris Agreement climate goals referenced in the ZCA were merely ‘aspirational’ and not binding on the New Zealand government.
This was in spite of Shaw saying publicly that the ZCA made the Paris target legally binding on the government. Shaw won the case and the climate lawyers lost. The new Government is very fond of the ZCA because it is just ‘aspirational’.
submitted by DairyFarmerOnCrack to newzealand [link] [comments]
It can be challenging to keep up with this many environmental attacks, coming from different Ministers and in different stages of development. To make it clearer, I have tried to list all the anti-nature policies below, provide some background, and give an indication of their stage in the policy process.
When you list them all like this, it really is entirely fair to describe it as a ‘war on nature’.
1. Fast track approvals bill is a fast track to destruction
The premier vehicle for the government’s anti-environmental war on nature is the Fast Track Approvals Bill, currently before Parliament’s Environment Select Committee. This Bill has been well traversed elsewhere but it is worth noting here a few things.Firstly, this bill gives three individual ministers with no particular knowledge or expertise the ability to green light pretty much any project they like with almost zero environmental constraints.
There are panels who will provide advice to Ministers on individual projects, however these panels are handpicked by the Ministers and the Ministers are free to ignore the panels’ recommendations. The Ministers have publicly and clearly voiced their disdain for environmental considerations.
No public input
Secondly, there is no opportunity for public input.They can approve an industrial incinerator next door and you don’t even have the right to make a submission on it. It’s a pretty wild level of disregard for the general public, but of course those who have connections to the government will have plenty of chances to lobby ministers at fundraising dinners and suchlike.
This results in poor decision making. One of the things about public submissions is that information comes to the surface that was otherwise hidden. In the Pakiri sand mining case for instance it was revealed through public submissions that the sandmining company was not telling the truth about its actual sandmining practices and that its expert had overestimated the annual sand replacement by a factor of ten.
Under this regime, it isn’t what you know, or whether you have a good project, it’s who you know.
Court decisions overturned
Thirdly, this process can overturn court decisions in which projects have already been declined due to environmental impacts.This is patently the case with the South Taranaki seabed mining proposal which was rejected by the Supreme Court. Independent judges who tested evidence submitted and cross examined in open court found that the applicant simply couldn’t demonstrate that their project wouldn’t cause immense harm.
But this is all replaced by closed panels giving advice to Ministers who will make decisions with zero public scrutiny. It’s banana republic stuff.
Blocking renewable energy projects
One of the impacts of this kind of Government-by-Ministerial-Fiat is that that rational and evidence based decision making is put to one side in favour of individual favours.An example of this is the conflict between seabed mining and offshore wind in the south Taranaki Bight. A normal rational decision-making process could look at both, but in this case, it will come down to which companies can woo the three Ministers the best.
Corruption
Finally, this is a process which is wide open to corruption, as corporations pushing projects that cause environmental harm seek to be placed on the fast track list, with a virtual guarantee of approval.Ministers could be corruptly influenced by bribes in cash or in kind, by jobs for their families, by jobs for themselves post-politics, or by campaign donations. Advisers who provide access to Ministers and determine which corporations get onto the list will be equally incentivised to act corruptly.
Already, some of the companies that Ministers have invited to apply for fast track are their donors. Mining company executives have had secret dinners with Ministers that were only revealed by accident and journalists asking questions. How many secret dinners will we never find out about?
Even the Ministry for the Environment analysis can be summarised as the bill:
‘could diminish local voices, violate Treaty of Waitangi commitments, significantly impact human and environmental health, open legal risks for the ministers involved, provide an unprecedented back door for prohibited projects, and erode the value of conservation land’
This single bill, if it proceeds and if businesses have the gall to use it, will cause widespread harm. It could include seabed mining, incinerators imposed on local communities, mining most everywhere including the conservation estate, marine farms everywhere, industrial irrigation driving water pollution, etc etc etc. It is a war on nature but it is also diminishing democracy and opening the door to corruption.
2. Dismantling freshwater protections
One of the truly remarkable things about Aotearoa is the scale of ground and surface water pollution and its impact on biodiversity and human health. This government’s war on nature is set to make it worse.Things are pretty bad already
The Ministry for the Environment concluded that ‘Most of our indigenous freshwater fish and freshwater bird species… are either threatened with extinction or at risk of becoming threatened’. Intensive industrial dairy has poisoned the well across much of the South Island – Canterbury, Otago and Southland have poisoned rivers and groundwater.Land and Water Aotearoa found that ‘There is not a single monitored lake shallower than 10 metres in very good condition.’ Environment Canterbury in 2024 found nitrate levels increasing in 60% of the wells it tested. Many parts of the North Island with intensive dairying such as the Waikato are also heavily polluted.
Under pressure from the environment movement and the majority of New Zealanders, the last government brought in a series of national regulations to place some constraints on agribusiness pollution, particularly the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management. Agribusiness virulently and vociferously opposed these regulations.
The new government is setting about undoing these regulations with its war on nature.
Delaying regional freshwater plans
This began in December 2023 when Andrew Hoggard, the former head of agribusiness lobby group Federated Farmers and now Associate Agriculture Minister, announced that regional councils would be given a further three years to update their freshwater plans to make the plans consistent with the new national regulations introduced by the last government.The purpose of the delay is to weaken or remove the national regulations before the regional councils develop their new regional freshwater plans which must be consistent with the national regulations.
Replacing the National Policy Statement
He also announced that they would start the process of systematically weakening the national regulations by replacing the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management (NPSFM) with a weaker version.Removing rules on intensive winter grazing
This was followed up in April 2024 with the announcement of an amendment to the RMA which will remove the rules controlling intensive winter grazing.Intensive winter grazing is a widespread practice in Otago and Southland in which feed crops are grazed intensively through winter. This results in cows, often pregnant, living in mud sometimes up to their bellies with massive sediment flows into rivers and lakes. The sediment smothers freshwater ecosystems.
Ensuring Te Mana o Te Wai doesn’t apply to consents
Also included in this amendment to the RMA is a direction to regional councils that a national regulatory instrument called Te Mana o Te Wai must not be applied to the assessment of individual resource consent applications. Te Mana o Te Wai states that, when making decisions on the allocation of freshwater, the needs of ecosystems come first, the needs of human health second, and other uses such as irrigation third.Te Mana o te Wai was the foundation for hearing panels rejecting applications to take water and cause more pollution in Hawkes Bay and Southland recently. Giant dairy polluter Fonterra and agribusiness lobby groups objected to this use of Te Mana o Te Wai and appealed the decisions.
The new Government aims to ensure that commercial users can get first consideration ahead of ecosystems or human health. This also means the lessons of the world’s biggest crypospridiosis outbreak in Havelock North are abandoned .
Freshwater Farm plans to be weakened or abolished
Alongside this Freshwater Farm Plans, which were a requirement for agribusiness managers to plan to reduce their water pollution, will be weakened if not abolished altogether.As you can see it is an intensive and extensive attack on the rules protecting freshwater as part of the broader war on nature.
3. Removal of requirement to identify important areas of biodiversity
A large part of New Zealand’s remaining biodiversity is on private land with very little legal protection, which is leading to dramatic losses. This happens through wetland drainage, agricultural intensification, subdivisions etc.Even as recently as 2009 Landcare Research reported that ‘Agricultural intensification over the past 10 years has led to the highest rate of native vegetation loss since European colonisation.’ Landcare Research was deeply unpopular with the government and agribusiness after making this finding.
In response to the widespread destruction of biodiversity on private land the National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity was introduced in 2023 after many years of discussion and consultation. The purpose is ‘to maintain indigenous biodiversity across Aotearoa New Zealand so that there is at least no overall loss in indigenous biodiversity’. A part of this national policy statement is a requirement for councils to identify ‘Significant Natural Areas’ in their area as a precursor to providing for their protection.
The idea of rules to protect biodiversity ran up against agribusiness, the key driver of the ‘highest rate of native vegetation loss since European colonisation’, and hence Federated Farmers deeply opposed these rules.
As part of the RMA amendment bill announced in April 2024, the Luxon Government plans to remove the requirement that councils identify ‘’Significant Natural Areas’’, and hence biodiversity on private land will not even be identified let alone protected so its destruction can continue unabated.
4. Transport – more motorways, fewer cycleways and less public transport
Land transport is New Zealand’s second biggest climate polluter after agribusiness and yet this government has embarked on a radical policy agenda to increase pollution. The war on nature can be illustrated just by listing some of the initiatives:Cuts to public transport
They have cut funding to public transport, walking and cycling and increased funding to motorways as part of the draft Government Policy Statement on land transport. Auckland Council pointed out that entire suburbs would be left without access to public transport as a result of the cuts and that fares would increase.Across the whole country this draft policy statement will lead to more transport pollution and fewer trips by public transport walking and cycling. It also centralises much of the decision making around transport by preventing Councils from building cycleways alongside roads funded by central government money.
As part of the draft policy statement they removed climate as a requirement for consideration in transport decision making.
Impact on young people
They have removed the subsidies for young people to use public transport at discounted rates, not only making the cost of living crisis harder for them and their families but pushing them towards car transport.They are moving to increase speeds around schools which not only increases injuries it discourages families from sending their kids to school by bike or foot because they know that speeding cars are more dangerous.
This sits alongside the attacks on traffic calming measures such as raised pedestrian crossings, which the NZ Herald has been busy providing misinformation about. Many Councils are resisting the idiots in Wellington, thank goodness, and are lowering speed limits anyway.
Interisland ferry funding removal
They cut the funding for the interisland ferry terminals and cancelled the new ferries which have lower emissions. The ferries connect the train network as well as the roading network.Kiwirail lost its Climate Bonds certification as a result and will repay the $350m it borrowed plus interest.
The cost to the Government of breaking the ship build contracts is thought to be in the hundreds of millions. It’s an expensive mistake which a future government will have to fix.
Ending subsidies for low-emissions vehicles
They ended the subsidies for low emissions vehicles resulting in a collapse in EV and small car sales and once again Ford Rangers at the top of the list (guzzling gas and killing pedestrians and cyclists).While we can’t simply replace traffic jams of internal combustion engine cars with traffic jams of electric cars, nonetheless EVs are part of the low carbon solution.
Removing council’s transport plans
The Government has moved to end Wellington’s transport plan with its focus on public transport walking and cycling and move towards more cars. There remains uncertainty as to the future solution but clearly they want more cars.They abolished the Auckland Regional Fuel tax of ten cents a litre which was used mostly to fund the building of the first stages of the Eastern Busway and new commuter rail carriages. The Eastern Busway has now been reduced in size, as the fourth phase is unfunded.
They cancelled the Auckland light rail project. This project was troubled, with the previous government heading down the most expensive track, but there are still better options than just cancelling it.
There’s even more but you get the sense of it. Their transport policy is plainly designed to increase climate pollution as part of their war on nature.
5. The war on dolphins, seals and marine life
The government’s war on nature is not only being fought on land. It extends to the oceans too.Marine biodiversity
The majority of Aotearoa’s biodiversity is to be found in the oceans around us and the main driver of biodiversity destruction in the oceans is the fishing industry.This is particularly the case for practices like bottom trawling, where heavy nets are dragged along the ocean floor destroying corals and sponges in order to catch fish near the bottom.
Over the last decade the environment movement and the majority of New Zealanders have been slowly pushing governments towards improving oversight of the fishing industry and restrictions on their most destructive practices. But the new government wants to go backwards…
South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation
There is an obscure inter-governmental organisation called the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) that is meant to regulate fisheries in the international waters of the South Pacific.The other countries in this forum are trying to restrict bottom trawling because of the immense harm it causes. As the last country actively bottom trawling in the international waters of the South Pacific, New Zealand is opposing these constraints, but under the last government had agreed to some modest restrictions.
The new government has changed its position, opposing protection of vulnerable coral habitats from trawling, and does not support any kind of restrictions on bottom trawling.
Cameras on boats
After the various scandals led to a 2016 Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Primary Industries’ regulation of the fishing industry, the Key Government agreed to implement cameras on boats to better monitor illegal behaviour such as fish dumping, dolphin killing etc.These cameras were finally rolled out over the last few years to about 120 fishing vessels and have so far resulted in a dramatic increase in reporting of dolphin and bird killings and fish dumping.
But Shane Jones, Minister of Fishing and recipient of seafood industry campaign donations, doesn’t like them and wants to review them. Another option the government is canvassing is to hand them over to Fishserv, the fishing industry owned company that oversees the Quota Management System.
None of these are good options but where it ends is still unclear.
Increasing catch limits
In spite of the collapse of numerous fisheries, the Minister of Fisheries decided to increase catch limits.The population of one of the species, the southern bluefin tuna, has collapsed 92% since the height of fishing madness in the 1960s. This follows the collapse of orange roughy fishery, hoki, scallops, crayfish etc etc.
And with regard to killing endangered New Zealand sea lions the new Government decided there would no longer be an upper limit on the number of sea lions that the fishing industry can drown in trawl nets.
This will no doubt be the tip of the iceberg as more change emerges from the Minister.
6. Increased climate pollution
Aside from the long list of policies above that will increase climate pollution (e.g. transport), the government has introduced other policies to increase emissions. The impacts from these policies mean the government’s war on nature will be felt internationally.Restarting offshore oil and gas exploration
The global battle against fossil fuels has both a supply and demand side.On the demand side are the battles around fossil fuel electricity generation and internal combustion engines vehicles.
But the supply side is also critical because, as the International Energy Agency found back in 2021, we can’t afford to bring more fossil fuel supply online if we are to avoid catastrophic warming. The head of the IEA said: “If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now – from this year.” We know that once oil companies spend vast amounts to find and develop new fossil fuel reserves they will continue to sell them into the global fossil fuel market.
Hence the decision by the New Zealand Government in 2018 to stop issuing new offshore oil and gas exploration permits was a critical step forward in the global fossil fuel battle. Other countries have now joined this movement and there is a growing group of governments and civil society groups supporting a Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty.
The announcement by the Luxon Government that it will restart the issuance of offshore oil and gas exploration permits is a global leap backwards. It’s another sign that their fighting a war on nature, not fossil fuels
The Government is looking to subsidise the industry by providing insurance against future policy changes. They are also looking to remove the requirement that oil companies provide a clean up bond to cover future clean up costs. These clean up bonds were introduced after Tamarind oil company went bankrupt leaving the taxpayer with a $300m bill to clean up after them.
The Government is falsely claiming that the recent electricity shortages are linked to the 2018 decision to stop issuing new permits for oil and gas exploration – an argument that is transparently false.
Changing the way methane warming is measured
The global livestock lobby has a policy agenda to change the way that the climate warming of methane is measured. This is to make it look like methane causes less warming than it really does.They want to move away from the global standard accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as standard called GWP100. They want the world to adopt a standard called GWP*. Under GWP* New Zealand’s methane is recategorised as not causing warming! Agribusiness likes GWP* because they won’t need to cut emissions!
The New Zealand agribusiness lobby groups are part of this project, and now they have the former head of Federated Farmers in Government, they have their chance to push it. The Government has established a panel to look into the measurement of the warming of methane emissions. I would be very surprised if the panel does not recommend the adoption of GWP*.
Both the Climate Commission and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment have concluded that there is no basis to review the science around the measurement of the warming effect of methane.
More cash for magic bullets
The New Zealand Government has given hundreds of millions of dollars to look for magic bullets to reduce methane emissions from dairy cattle and other livestock. So far no magic bullets have been discovered but the new Government has thrown another $18m at this greenwashing.The purpose of all this is to avoid having to cut emissions by doing things that actually work like reducing fertiliser use and stocking rates.
Zero Carbon Act – greenwashing law retained
It is noteworthy that a Government conducting a war on climate and biodiversity policy has kept the Zero Carbon Act (ZCA) in place. But there is a good reason for that – the ZCA was largely a greenwashing exercise as was revealed once it was tested in court.When Lawyers for Climate Action went to court to try to use the ZCA to actually force emissions cuts on the government, the Climate Minister, James Shaw, went to court to argue that the Paris Agreement climate goals referenced in the ZCA were merely ‘aspirational’ and not binding on the New Zealand government.
This was in spite of Shaw saying publicly that the ZCA made the Paris target legally binding on the government. Shaw won the case and the climate lawyers lost. The new Government is very fond of the ZCA because it is just ‘aspirational’.
He Waka Eke Noa – its job is done
One final piece of the puzzle is pricing agribusiness emissions. This was delayed throughout the course of the last government by the He Waka Eke Noa process. This will now be either quietly euthanised or kept as another greenwashing figleaf, but we can be sure there will be no price on agricultural emissions – they will be subsidised by the rest of usUpdate
We have now found out that the politician chairing the select committee considering the fast track bill, David MacLeod, has illegally failed to declare $180,000 in donations. Moreover, some of those donations come from a major shareholder in the seabed mining company TTR. TTR is planning to use the fast track legislation to circumvent the Supreme Court decision blocking its seabed mining plans. In fact one of the decision-making Ministers under the Fast Track law, Chris Bishop, wrote to TTR inviting them to apply to use the fast track. So a major shareholder of TTR gave campaign money to the National Party MP who chaired the select committee on the fast track bill while the National Party Minister invited TTR to apply for a fast track.2024.05.28 23:01 gayistheway18 Twin Flame caught my Catfish “Ex” Part.2 (it’s a long one)
Let me start off by saying if you haven’t read part 1, you should!
My name is Lani (27f) and this is my crazy catfish story. I hope you’re ready for a rickety roller coaster ride because you’ll get one with this story. I was assisted in this telling of my story because the journey is his too later down the road. Don’t be afraid to put your input or if you’ve gone through something similar. I will try to provide context as best as I can if you have any questions and I will provide a photo or a few because we both worry she is doing this to others.
Back in 2017 Ashley and I met off an anonymous app called whisper. I was only looking for friends at that time. Since, I was still wary since you have no idea who the person behind the screen is. Anyways, we exchanged Snapchat user names from there, talked here and there. (Her snapchat user is niteowl42020 btw) But, not much.. Because, I was always super busy. But, around February 2018 we started catching feelings. Then, started dating on march 3rd 2018. We acted like any other couple always finding something to talk about and laughing over stupid shit. But, one thing I found off about her is she would have to get off FaceTime around 12 in the afternoon (my time) every day. Ashley would say “I am going to work” Then, around 5 (my time) we would call all night and fall asleep on the phone. I didn’t think much of it. So, I didn’t pay no mind. But, this went on for the whole 6 years of our relationship and it was comfortable to me anyway. January 18th 2019 she “proposed” to me over the phone. I agreed, I know I sound crazy. But, I thought she was the one.. The first thing that popped into my mind is “what the actual fuck am I doing? Who accepts an online proposal?!” But, a week later I brought up how I wanted to meet up with her. But, she always made up an excuse of how she wanted to move to a better house. So, I could have a stable future with her. But, that wasn’t good enough for me. So, I decided that I would take it into my own hands and look at flights. Then, I hit a roadblock when I realized I never even knew her address. So, the arguments were the same old shit because I wanted to come see her and she wouldn’t let me come for a visit. I even brought up the idea of her visiting, she refused that as well because of “work” and that’s when I started seeing huge red flags in her behavior. She became possessive. Constantly asking where I was, who I was with and what I was doing. She would get mad at me when I wouldn’t text her. I was literally driving like who the fuck texts and drives? Not me! Then, she would get mad at me about lacking in communication. But, she wasn’t great at it herself. Teamwork makes the dreamwork, right? She would expect me to be in bed by a certain time every night. Even when I had my days off from work and I worked from 10-7 usually. The time that was convenient for her was she’d want to be asleep was at 9 (my time) Which would be 2 her time, I didn’t understand why. But, it was our routine because she wanted it to be. Until it wasn’t it for me anymore. She would constantly request me to take pictures of my work schedule. So, she knew when I was working or not. She also would ask me to alter my schedule to suit her needs sometimes which made me uncomfortable. Anytime I was hanging out with my cousins having a girl’s day. She would ask for me to provide proof which came across as lack of trust. But, I took the photos anyway because I didn’t want conflict. Now, looking back was controlling behavior that I struggled to see. I have this friend, but we are just going to call her A. She ended up coming over for thanksgiving dinner. I didn’t tell Ashley beforehand, the plan of A coming over wasn’t set in stone. Since, she had work that morning. My family typically has parties almost every weekend. So, needless to say we were having a party that night. She ended up saying “have fun” in the most obnoxiously guilt ridden way possible. I felt so belittled. But, I wasn’t gonna let that stop me from having a good time. So, I had two drinks and then A offered me a joint. I didn’t want to it turn down. Because, like I said I wanted to have a good time. Anyway, Ashley was on FaceTime with me. I proceeded to take a hit she told me “that was enough” But, I took another one instead and she looked at me like she wanted to punch me in the face. Literally, she look so internally enraged that she looked miserable. As if somebody ruined her party instead of her ruining my party with my family. All of this happened around 10 (my time) But, she was catching an attitude with me because she was tired and tried to force me to go to bed. Even though, I wanted to continue to party. But, we ended up in a heated dispute because she wanted to be in control over what I was and wasn’t doing. On March 16th of 2024 I met this guy named Joey (29f) on a dating app. I specifically was on there searching for friends. We hit it off instantly because he was a vibe. So, I felt like I needed his number. We exchanged numbers and the next day we texted. Some time went by and we grew into close friends really fast. We would speak everyday when I couldn’t talk to Ashley. One day, I felt like I should mention that we were friends. Because, I felt like I didn’t want to hide him from her. Which is normal right? Well, Ashley ended up having a disgusted yet confused expression on her face saying “What the fuck? How did you meet?” I told her exactly how we met and that I was just on the app for friends which was the truth. She also wasn’t giving me the proper friendship I needed in the relationship. I wanted her to be not only my partner but my best friend. Some time passed and my friend Joey said “I know she plays Fortnite because you mentioned it to me. So, why doesn’t she play with me or something?” and I had to tell him that she told me the reason why is because she “isn’t a people person” which he found really odd. Because, I would get along with her friends and she didn’t want to know or be around any of mine. Joey kept telling me he had this weird feeling that Ashley wasn’t being truthful about something. But, I didn’t see it that way because you’re supposed to trust your partner and she seemed to always be honest with me. So, I got slightly defensive. But, for some reason I had this feeling that I could trust him too. Which felt very confusing to me. With each time we spoke we gotten closer, how is that possible right? I said to myself I only wanted friends. But, I felt myself falling for a man I hardly knew. Yet, it felt so familiar like I have known him forever. I didn’t know how to tell Ashley.. So, I just kept trying to push my feelings off for him until I couldn’t anymore. Our relationship grew so unhealthy and toxic. I couldn’t stop thinking about Joey as well. It felt like she was pushing me towards him because even when I tried pushing away from him… I couldn’t. I needed to see him more and talk to him more. I ended up asking him “Do you want to hangout on IMVU with me?” (For context IMVU is a 3D chatting app where you are avatars and can meet people from all over the world which he happened to have as well) and he said “Sure, if that’s what you wanna do” we chatted on there for a bit and I was flirting with him but he was weird about it because he’s not into “IMVU stuff” he kept saying “You look better in real life” which was so cute and sweet. So, I hung up on Ashley while she was sleeping and FaceTimed with Joey. Needless to say if he wanted to have phone sex that night, I would’ve been so down. The attraction and chemistry between us was insane and intense. It’s electrifying in the most beautiful way. I wanted to break it off with her because I felt like he’s what I wanted and needed. But, I didn’t. I pushed it off. If you ask me “why?” at that time it would’ve been because I was so accustomed to her company and I loved her.. But, as a friend. Then, the 7th of April I confessed my feelings to him. Because, I yet again hung up on her to talk to him. I know it sounds bad on my part in a way. But, I was so unhappy. I tried for so long to be happy with her it just wouldn’t work no matter how hard I tried. After, I confessed my feelings he also confessed his for me and I knew then what I had to do. But… I just couldn’t just end it like that. He was trying to be supportive even though I know now that it hurt him to the point he cried. For a man to cry.. That’s a lot of love he has for you. On the 8th I gave her an ultimatum of if we either meet this year or it’s over. But, deep inside I really wanted to be with him instead of giving her that chance. I even told her “one foot is out the door” and she kept victimizing herself towards me to make me feel guilt ridden. Even though, I knew I was over her she was still trying to manipulate me into believing the same story. Which was “you can come here when I have a better house that isn’t falling apart” and it was the same excuse she made every time I mentioned wanting to meet up with her. On the 9th I said “fuck the ultimatum” I want to be with someone who actually cares about me. Cares about my feelings and who treats me like his best friend as well as the love of his life. So, I chose the person who’s been my rock since we met and where my heart truly belonged. Thus, ending the relationship with Ashley. On April 14th Joey (my boyfriend) asked me to be his girlfriend in the most sweetest and loving way that I could’ve ever imagined. I felt like I was floating on air the entire night. This man is literally my whole existence, he has been my biggest supporter throughout this entire shit show of my so called “last relationship” because the lies were going to unravel very soon. Sooner than I could’ve ever imagined…
This is the part everyone has been waiting for the catfish segment We’ve finally reached the 18th of April I was on FaceTime with my boyfriend, sharing my screen to show him what my “Ex’s” brother’s facebook profile. I mentioned how similar they looked and he was curious so I showed him. I went back to his profile, then tapped back the home icon on facebook and then he told me “No wait! Baby, go back to the profile real quick!” So, I did what he asked of me because he sounded worried. But, this is where it gets scary for me because he’s staring and then he looks intensely at his phone.. I’m just confused at this moment like “what’s going on?” Repeating over and over “What is it, baby?” At this point his face is dropped and he looks like he’s overthinking. (I now know he was because he wasn’t sure if it would hurt me more or not. But, he felt deep inside after an internal battle I should know the truth and I deserved the truth) I feel worried because I don’t know what’s happening.. He says “Babe, can I take over the screen share?” I’m still confused so I say “Ok, but why?” Then, I see before my very eyes that there is an image of a man and what looks to be my “ex fiancé” which has me super confused and upset. I was feeling overwhelmed. He then shows me that it says “Married to Ashley B*N” I’m like “Why is her last name B*N?” She told me her last name was “Foret” (i’ve tried to look her up, look into and found nothing… Many times) But, he tapped on the profile. When he tapped on it I seen that she’s been married since 2014, her baby that she told me she adopted that was “our” baby (The baby was supposed to be biologically her cousin’s baby but she didn’t want her as well as her being unfit) was actually her and her husband’s biological child. Mind you that little girl has called me “mommy” for a whole year! Imagine how confused I felt. Like, She’s only known me through a screen but I did feel connected to her because I have known her since she was born. I didn’t know I was in a fake relationship this whole time because I never knew she was even married. How can somebody hide the fact they have a husband or wife from somebody for that long? Well, she did somehow. My man went through all the pictures with me that we could see and I cried. I cried because of all the years and tears i’ve wasted on somebody I didn’t matter to. But, I needed to know why still. So, I reached out to her brother the same day I provided proof and with some time and convincing we got into a video chat via facebook messenger. From there I found out Ashley from what he knew hasn’t actually ever dated women but she did when she was younger use women for nude photos of themselves, she never actually worked a day in her life so when she told me she “worked” all the time it was a lie, she also told me she was born in 1995 but in reality she was born in 1990 which would mean she is 6 years older than me! I felt so disgusted at that point I literally felt sick to my stomach and felt like I was going to throw up. I also found out from her brother that none of her family knew about me at all. Only her grandmother which she took advantage of because she was old and her memory was basically fully deteriorated. So, if she even brought me up they would’ve just thought she was crazy. I had an impossible time sleeping but the whole time my twin flame was there for me trying to make it easier by calming me down and soothing this endless trauma I was faced with. He ended up finally reaching out to her and getting into contact through text messages seeing as she blocked him as well as me from facebook (she blocked me way before I even knew she even had facebook since she said she had no social media besides snapchat and twitter which she made for me currently known as X, now I see why because she was hiding her double life) she blocked him on facebook because he sent a long message stating how Ashley broke me and he had to mend my heart after she shattered it. Which isn’t a lie because she broke me a long time ago but this was the final straw. Needless to say she was telling him how she couldn’t talk to me because she seemed to just not be able to face me. She wouldn’t even at least respond to texts and it had to be because I knew the whole truth. My man blocked her because he got tired of her runaround bs too. I wanted proper closure but I never got it from her. Which i’m ok with today because my man has been healing me and her brother is the one that gave me closure. Because, she couldn’t step her titties up and apologize from the damage she’s done. But, i’m in a much better place and hopefully it gets better from here. I’ve recently found out she hid everything on her facebook because she doesn’t want to be found out anymore it seems. Her husband also wants to work it out after her years of cheating which is beyond me. But, yet again it still makes me question am I even the only one she’s done this to? Because, I really don’t think so. I think she may actively be doing it still. I’m not sure.
To end this on a more positive note Yes, we are both together and still thriving. We have plans in the future for us, we have both saved each other in many ways since we met and will continue making each other’s lives easier. So, this isn’t only a catfish story. But, it’s a love story too. Without loss there could never be gain. Without pain there could never be pleasure. Without the sun there could never be rain. Without you there could never be a me. I love you forever and always, my twin flame.
submitted by gayistheway18 to catfish [link] [comments]
My name is Lani (27f) and this is my crazy catfish story. I hope you’re ready for a rickety roller coaster ride because you’ll get one with this story. I was assisted in this telling of my story because the journey is his too later down the road. Don’t be afraid to put your input or if you’ve gone through something similar. I will try to provide context as best as I can if you have any questions and I will provide a photo or a few because we both worry she is doing this to others.
Back in 2017 Ashley and I met off an anonymous app called whisper. I was only looking for friends at that time. Since, I was still wary since you have no idea who the person behind the screen is. Anyways, we exchanged Snapchat user names from there, talked here and there. (Her snapchat user is niteowl42020 btw) But, not much.. Because, I was always super busy. But, around February 2018 we started catching feelings. Then, started dating on march 3rd 2018. We acted like any other couple always finding something to talk about and laughing over stupid shit. But, one thing I found off about her is she would have to get off FaceTime around 12 in the afternoon (my time) every day. Ashley would say “I am going to work” Then, around 5 (my time) we would call all night and fall asleep on the phone. I didn’t think much of it. So, I didn’t pay no mind. But, this went on for the whole 6 years of our relationship and it was comfortable to me anyway. January 18th 2019 she “proposed” to me over the phone. I agreed, I know I sound crazy. But, I thought she was the one.. The first thing that popped into my mind is “what the actual fuck am I doing? Who accepts an online proposal?!” But, a week later I brought up how I wanted to meet up with her. But, she always made up an excuse of how she wanted to move to a better house. So, I could have a stable future with her. But, that wasn’t good enough for me. So, I decided that I would take it into my own hands and look at flights. Then, I hit a roadblock when I realized I never even knew her address. So, the arguments were the same old shit because I wanted to come see her and she wouldn’t let me come for a visit. I even brought up the idea of her visiting, she refused that as well because of “work” and that’s when I started seeing huge red flags in her behavior. She became possessive. Constantly asking where I was, who I was with and what I was doing. She would get mad at me when I wouldn’t text her. I was literally driving like who the fuck texts and drives? Not me! Then, she would get mad at me about lacking in communication. But, she wasn’t great at it herself. Teamwork makes the dreamwork, right? She would expect me to be in bed by a certain time every night. Even when I had my days off from work and I worked from 10-7 usually. The time that was convenient for her was she’d want to be asleep was at 9 (my time) Which would be 2 her time, I didn’t understand why. But, it was our routine because she wanted it to be. Until it wasn’t it for me anymore. She would constantly request me to take pictures of my work schedule. So, she knew when I was working or not. She also would ask me to alter my schedule to suit her needs sometimes which made me uncomfortable. Anytime I was hanging out with my cousins having a girl’s day. She would ask for me to provide proof which came across as lack of trust. But, I took the photos anyway because I didn’t want conflict. Now, looking back was controlling behavior that I struggled to see. I have this friend, but we are just going to call her A. She ended up coming over for thanksgiving dinner. I didn’t tell Ashley beforehand, the plan of A coming over wasn’t set in stone. Since, she had work that morning. My family typically has parties almost every weekend. So, needless to say we were having a party that night. She ended up saying “have fun” in the most obnoxiously guilt ridden way possible. I felt so belittled. But, I wasn’t gonna let that stop me from having a good time. So, I had two drinks and then A offered me a joint. I didn’t want to it turn down. Because, like I said I wanted to have a good time. Anyway, Ashley was on FaceTime with me. I proceeded to take a hit she told me “that was enough” But, I took another one instead and she looked at me like she wanted to punch me in the face. Literally, she look so internally enraged that she looked miserable. As if somebody ruined her party instead of her ruining my party with my family. All of this happened around 10 (my time) But, she was catching an attitude with me because she was tired and tried to force me to go to bed. Even though, I wanted to continue to party. But, we ended up in a heated dispute because she wanted to be in control over what I was and wasn’t doing. On March 16th of 2024 I met this guy named Joey (29f) on a dating app. I specifically was on there searching for friends. We hit it off instantly because he was a vibe. So, I felt like I needed his number. We exchanged numbers and the next day we texted. Some time went by and we grew into close friends really fast. We would speak everyday when I couldn’t talk to Ashley. One day, I felt like I should mention that we were friends. Because, I felt like I didn’t want to hide him from her. Which is normal right? Well, Ashley ended up having a disgusted yet confused expression on her face saying “What the fuck? How did you meet?” I told her exactly how we met and that I was just on the app for friends which was the truth. She also wasn’t giving me the proper friendship I needed in the relationship. I wanted her to be not only my partner but my best friend. Some time passed and my friend Joey said “I know she plays Fortnite because you mentioned it to me. So, why doesn’t she play with me or something?” and I had to tell him that she told me the reason why is because she “isn’t a people person” which he found really odd. Because, I would get along with her friends and she didn’t want to know or be around any of mine. Joey kept telling me he had this weird feeling that Ashley wasn’t being truthful about something. But, I didn’t see it that way because you’re supposed to trust your partner and she seemed to always be honest with me. So, I got slightly defensive. But, for some reason I had this feeling that I could trust him too. Which felt very confusing to me. With each time we spoke we gotten closer, how is that possible right? I said to myself I only wanted friends. But, I felt myself falling for a man I hardly knew. Yet, it felt so familiar like I have known him forever. I didn’t know how to tell Ashley.. So, I just kept trying to push my feelings off for him until I couldn’t anymore. Our relationship grew so unhealthy and toxic. I couldn’t stop thinking about Joey as well. It felt like she was pushing me towards him because even when I tried pushing away from him… I couldn’t. I needed to see him more and talk to him more. I ended up asking him “Do you want to hangout on IMVU with me?” (For context IMVU is a 3D chatting app where you are avatars and can meet people from all over the world which he happened to have as well) and he said “Sure, if that’s what you wanna do” we chatted on there for a bit and I was flirting with him but he was weird about it because he’s not into “IMVU stuff” he kept saying “You look better in real life” which was so cute and sweet. So, I hung up on Ashley while she was sleeping and FaceTimed with Joey. Needless to say if he wanted to have phone sex that night, I would’ve been so down. The attraction and chemistry between us was insane and intense. It’s electrifying in the most beautiful way. I wanted to break it off with her because I felt like he’s what I wanted and needed. But, I didn’t. I pushed it off. If you ask me “why?” at that time it would’ve been because I was so accustomed to her company and I loved her.. But, as a friend. Then, the 7th of April I confessed my feelings to him. Because, I yet again hung up on her to talk to him. I know it sounds bad on my part in a way. But, I was so unhappy. I tried for so long to be happy with her it just wouldn’t work no matter how hard I tried. After, I confessed my feelings he also confessed his for me and I knew then what I had to do. But… I just couldn’t just end it like that. He was trying to be supportive even though I know now that it hurt him to the point he cried. For a man to cry.. That’s a lot of love he has for you. On the 8th I gave her an ultimatum of if we either meet this year or it’s over. But, deep inside I really wanted to be with him instead of giving her that chance. I even told her “one foot is out the door” and she kept victimizing herself towards me to make me feel guilt ridden. Even though, I knew I was over her she was still trying to manipulate me into believing the same story. Which was “you can come here when I have a better house that isn’t falling apart” and it was the same excuse she made every time I mentioned wanting to meet up with her. On the 9th I said “fuck the ultimatum” I want to be with someone who actually cares about me. Cares about my feelings and who treats me like his best friend as well as the love of his life. So, I chose the person who’s been my rock since we met and where my heart truly belonged. Thus, ending the relationship with Ashley. On April 14th Joey (my boyfriend) asked me to be his girlfriend in the most sweetest and loving way that I could’ve ever imagined. I felt like I was floating on air the entire night. This man is literally my whole existence, he has been my biggest supporter throughout this entire shit show of my so called “last relationship” because the lies were going to unravel very soon. Sooner than I could’ve ever imagined…
This is the part everyone has been waiting for the catfish segment We’ve finally reached the 18th of April I was on FaceTime with my boyfriend, sharing my screen to show him what my “Ex’s” brother’s facebook profile. I mentioned how similar they looked and he was curious so I showed him. I went back to his profile, then tapped back the home icon on facebook and then he told me “No wait! Baby, go back to the profile real quick!” So, I did what he asked of me because he sounded worried. But, this is where it gets scary for me because he’s staring and then he looks intensely at his phone.. I’m just confused at this moment like “what’s going on?” Repeating over and over “What is it, baby?” At this point his face is dropped and he looks like he’s overthinking. (I now know he was because he wasn’t sure if it would hurt me more or not. But, he felt deep inside after an internal battle I should know the truth and I deserved the truth) I feel worried because I don’t know what’s happening.. He says “Babe, can I take over the screen share?” I’m still confused so I say “Ok, but why?” Then, I see before my very eyes that there is an image of a man and what looks to be my “ex fiancé” which has me super confused and upset. I was feeling overwhelmed. He then shows me that it says “Married to Ashley B*N” I’m like “Why is her last name B*N?” She told me her last name was “Foret” (i’ve tried to look her up, look into and found nothing… Many times) But, he tapped on the profile. When he tapped on it I seen that she’s been married since 2014, her baby that she told me she adopted that was “our” baby (The baby was supposed to be biologically her cousin’s baby but she didn’t want her as well as her being unfit) was actually her and her husband’s biological child. Mind you that little girl has called me “mommy” for a whole year! Imagine how confused I felt. Like, She’s only known me through a screen but I did feel connected to her because I have known her since she was born. I didn’t know I was in a fake relationship this whole time because I never knew she was even married. How can somebody hide the fact they have a husband or wife from somebody for that long? Well, she did somehow. My man went through all the pictures with me that we could see and I cried. I cried because of all the years and tears i’ve wasted on somebody I didn’t matter to. But, I needed to know why still. So, I reached out to her brother the same day I provided proof and with some time and convincing we got into a video chat via facebook messenger. From there I found out Ashley from what he knew hasn’t actually ever dated women but she did when she was younger use women for nude photos of themselves, she never actually worked a day in her life so when she told me she “worked” all the time it was a lie, she also told me she was born in 1995 but in reality she was born in 1990 which would mean she is 6 years older than me! I felt so disgusted at that point I literally felt sick to my stomach and felt like I was going to throw up. I also found out from her brother that none of her family knew about me at all. Only her grandmother which she took advantage of because she was old and her memory was basically fully deteriorated. So, if she even brought me up they would’ve just thought she was crazy. I had an impossible time sleeping but the whole time my twin flame was there for me trying to make it easier by calming me down and soothing this endless trauma I was faced with. He ended up finally reaching out to her and getting into contact through text messages seeing as she blocked him as well as me from facebook (she blocked me way before I even knew she even had facebook since she said she had no social media besides snapchat and twitter which she made for me currently known as X, now I see why because she was hiding her double life) she blocked him on facebook because he sent a long message stating how Ashley broke me and he had to mend my heart after she shattered it. Which isn’t a lie because she broke me a long time ago but this was the final straw. Needless to say she was telling him how she couldn’t talk to me because she seemed to just not be able to face me. She wouldn’t even at least respond to texts and it had to be because I knew the whole truth. My man blocked her because he got tired of her runaround bs too. I wanted proper closure but I never got it from her. Which i’m ok with today because my man has been healing me and her brother is the one that gave me closure. Because, she couldn’t step her titties up and apologize from the damage she’s done. But, i’m in a much better place and hopefully it gets better from here. I’ve recently found out she hid everything on her facebook because she doesn’t want to be found out anymore it seems. Her husband also wants to work it out after her years of cheating which is beyond me. But, yet again it still makes me question am I even the only one she’s done this to? Because, I really don’t think so. I think she may actively be doing it still. I’m not sure.
To end this on a more positive note Yes, we are both together and still thriving. We have plans in the future for us, we have both saved each other in many ways since we met and will continue making each other’s lives easier. So, this isn’t only a catfish story. But, it’s a love story too. Without loss there could never be gain. Without pain there could never be pleasure. Without the sun there could never be rain. Without you there could never be a me. I love you forever and always, my twin flame.