Pre show jams (me) - Honky Red, WSMFP - For What it’s Worth, Buffalo Springfield - Blue Ridge Cabin Home, Flatt & Scruggs - Lawnchair, The Talismen - Rollin in my Sweet Baby’s Arms, Stanley Brothers
CHECKINS: AL, CO, Delta, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, NY, OR, WI, WV
Start: 8:17pm CT
SET 1: 1. Bronzeback> 2. Secrets, 3. This Old World, 4. Dig a Little Deeper in the Well (Roger Bowling, Jody Emerson)> 5. DUSTTTTTT, 6. Nothing’s Working, 7. Hello, City Limits (Johnny Elgin, Benny Martin)> 8. New Camptown Races (Frank Wakefield), 9. Love and Regret, 10. Taking Wata, 11. Pickin instrumental 12. MMATC (lost service halfway through this damn it)
End: 9:27pm CT
Break jams (me) - GDTRFB, Dead 6/9/76 - My Florida Sunshine, Bill 4/21/23 - No Rain, M.O.E. 5/28/23 (Blind Melon) - Angel from Montgomery, Daniel Donato (John Prine) - On Your Way Down, Little Feat
Start: 9:53pm CT
SET 2: 1. These Old Blues (Larry Sparks), 2. Highwayyyyyy Hypnosisssssss, 3. Hellbenderrrr, 4. Hollow Heart, 5. Sweet Revenge (John Prine), 6. Must be Seven> 7. OLE SLEW FOOOOOOOT, 8. Leaders, 9. Southern Flavor (Bill Monroe)> 10. Everything’s the Same 11. PICKIN UP THE PIECES (WIIIIIIDESPREAAAAAD), 12. Red Daisy, 13. Summertime 14. Pyramid Country> 15. Little Maggie
ENCORE: 1. Catch and Release (Solo Mic, just Bill), 2. Standing in the Need of Prayer (John P. Kee) (Solo Mic, Full band), 3. Ridin the Midnight Train (Ralph Stanley)
END 11:21pm CT
Just made it to the beach. Wish me some luck catching fish, I want some seafood! Safe travels to all who are going home from the show tonight, to the person flying delta, to the person packing up for their road trip, and to those going to Indy. Love y’all! See y’all tomorrow [on reddit]!

So when you think of cities with high culture and vibrant music scenes on the east coast, what springs to mind? Obviously New York. Thanks to Drake, we all know about the growing music scene in Toronto. You prahbahbly musta tawt a Bawstan tew. Maybe Montreal or Philadelphia or even Baltimore crossed your mind.
Hah. Baltimore.
Time to check your cultural bias, pal. You passed over a quiet little city on the south shore of Lake Ontario, nestled in the Genesee River valley. It has a history as a hotbed of Abolitionism and Women’s Rights. It is the home of Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, Western Union, Ragu and other innovative companies. It has a lively music scene, great nightclubs, world-renowned universities, thriving museums, arts & culture festivals, and live theatre. It is a true cultural gem that many folks overlook.
Yep. You bet your ass I am talking about Rochester, New York.
Since we know that Stoner Rock can come from anywhere, it should be no surprise that Rochester has produced one of the leading bands in this genre. This week we are going to check out a band you are going to want to listen to. If you know them, you love them. If you haven’t heard of them, you are going to thank me.
This week’s band is KING BUFFALO.
About Them
Hold on a sec. King Buffalo? Not King Rochester?
To be fair, King Rochester sounds like the villain in a Disney movie. Kinda hard to imagine that on a T-Shirt. King New York sounds like a particularly obnoxious Yankees fan (and yeah, finding a Yankees fan that isn’t obnoxious is a tough go). King Albany sounds like a car made by Kia.
But King Buffalo? That just works.
Our heroes didn’t start out together. King Buffalo were made up of members of two other Rochester area bands.
Randall Coon and Scott Donaldson were playing together in Velvet Elvis. That five piece band played heavy rock with space-based themes in the early 2010’s. Sean McVay and Dan Reynolds were in another band called Abandoned Buildings Club (side note: kinda neat that their initials were ABC), who had a pure psychedelic rock vibe. When both VE and ABC appeared to be having limited success, the four musicians decided to merge their talents into one band. Coon had handled vocals and guitar in Velvet Elvis and Donaldson had been rock solid on drums. McVay had done vocals and guitar in Abandoned Buildings Club and Reynolds had anchored the sound with his bass. All the pieces were there for a classic Beatles-esque lineup.
So out of the wreckage of ABC and VE, KB arose. The four members gelled so well that they were able to record their first demo - aptly titled Demo - in just two days. Their sound was immediately compared to tourmates and close friends All Them Witches. But where ATW were bluesy and sludgy, King Buffalo had produced songs full of space. Oh, there were heavy riffs for sure - but there were passages of music that were contrastingly lighter and further apart. The best example of these contrasts can be found in the more than 11 minutes of Providence Eye. The first six and a half minutes come at you at a lulling pace, enveloping you in the moment. You get swept up in the rolling riffs. But then the drop happens and you suddenly realize the song has been building to this peak. The tempo picks up and you ride a relentless rollercoaster until you hit the Black Sabbath-inspired outro, which takes you home. It is an emotional experience. The two other tracks - In Dim Light and Pocket Full of Knife are smaller essays on the same theme.
It was clear right from Demo that King Buffalo had some serious talent. But if you have listened to the band you will notice that one thing is starkly different on Demo than from any of their other releases: the vocals. Randall Coon was the lead vocalist on these recordings. If you play them up against anything since by the band they stand out. Our very own QotSA may have successfully had multiple vocalists on multiple tunes, but King Buffalo was destined to have Sean McVay take over the mic. Shortly after 2013’s Demo, Coon left the band to do a solo project called Skunk Hawk.
King Buffalo stood at a crossroads: did they look to replace Coon, or should they carry on as a Power Trio? The choice for them was obvious. McVay, Reynolds and Donaldson knew that they had fantastic potential together. They decided they didn't need anyone else.
Side note: Regular readers of these write ups know that All Them Witches just went through this exact crisis in 2019. What I didn’t share then is that ATW are close friends with KB. I would not be surprised to learn that ATW had some serious conversations about their lineup with the boys from KB before they, too, decided last year to pare down to just three members.
To re-christen their new lineup, in 2015 King Buffalo went in on a split EP with Swedish band Lé Betre (I mean, hooking up with a Swedish partner is a dream of mine, so I see the appeal.) They re-recorded their standout tune Providence Eye with McVay on vocals, as well as two new tracks - Like a Cadillac and New Time. New Time opens their side of the EP with an infectious, descending riff that hooks you immediately. It is clear from the lyrics - No wasting around, it’s a new time - that they had moved on from Coon. Like a Cadillac follows up and is a three and a half minute jam that leaves you wanting more. The re-recorded version of Providence Eye closes out their side of the split EP and leaves no doubt that they are in charge. It is a tighter, heavier version, and the amazing outro is so low down that it will make you want to rob your own house.
With their lineup now set, it was time to put together enough music to tour on. In 2016, King Buffalo released Orion. Here you can witness the melding of their influences into something majestic and fantastic, and it is here that they really develop their signature style.
To explain this style, you need to understand basic song structure.
Most pop songs tend to go verse - chorus - verse - chorus - bridge - chorus - chorus. Sure, you could add in a solo for the bridge, or a detailed intro or outro, or another verse - but this is a tried and true formula. Some variation of this dominates the pop charts to this day.
Not with King Buffalo songs. These guys are the masters of the drop, and you hear it in most of their tunes. QotSA fans are no strangers to that long build and release; it is an integral part of tunes like The Evil Has Landed, God is in the Radio, Song For The Dead, and I Appear Missing. One of the sickest drops ever recorded happens in the middle of the Them Crooked Vultures tune No One Loves Me & Neither Do I. It is where the music turns around, and a new riff takes over, often along with a pace change. It is then that you realize that the song has built to this climactic moment, and you are engulfed by the music.
King Buffalo does this better than anyone else, and you hear it clearly articulated, again and again, on the album Orion.
Take the song Kerosene for example.
A rolling bass riff from Reynolds establishes the song right out of the gate. Donaldson produces punchy drum beats with cymbal crashes at the end of each phrase. McVay’s slide guitar rounds out the intro. McVay’s vocals - very Ozzy like, if Ozzy had any semblance of self-control - frame the first verse, which ends in a fuzzy, heavy riff with crashing cymbals. This same pattern is repeated a second time and the drop is teased at just past three minutes in, but does not happen quite yet. The listener’s anticipation builds as the airy, soaring solo from McVay calls out in contrast to the rolling bass. After the guitar solo bridge, the band goes right back into the chorus. But then it happens: THE DROP. Just past 5 minutes in, the song takes a complete and abrupt turn for a totally different riff that is at the same time heavier and brand new, and yet has been there all the while.
What King Buffalo does brilliantly is subvert your musical expectations.
The standard structure is V-C-V-C-B-C-C.
Kerosene is V-C-V-C-B-C-DROP-OUTRO. Just when you subliminally expect something the same, you get something different.
The entire album is like that. Orion hardly sounds like a debut. It is a mature and deliberate soundscape built by talented musicians who are making significant choices about their art. Songs like Drinking From The River Rising open with an expansive and elastic topography, but drill down to the molten lava of heavy riffs and distorted fuzz. Sleeps On A Vine begins with one of the most zen riffs you’ve ever heard and ends in a tumultuous and heavy sonic assault that is pure controlled chaos. Every song on the album is a study in contrasts that leaves you with auditory whiplash and a burning desire for more.
They are that good.
King Buffalo were able to tour on their new material, and did so extensively. They played clubs and larger venues, often with friends and fellow Stoner Rockers All Them Witches and other bands like The Sword and Elder. In 2017, the released the EP Repeater as a follow up. It is just three songs (The vinyl ad reads, All songs on one side! No need to flip!) but it is a heck of a musical journey. The title track off the EP is 13+ minutes long and is one huge build. When the fuzz finally drops after almost 8 minutes, it is a true cathartic moment. It sneaks up on you, and is so welcome when it hits - especially after McVay’s repetition that “Every Day is the Same* - that you intrinsically understand how great it is when things finally change for the better. Too Little Too Late is an instrumental tune that is both enveloping and expansive. It is a terrific bridge to the final track, Centurion, which is an unbelievable groove. Centurion has three minutes of set up leading to an unreal fuzzy drop that is so dirty it will get you evicted from your apartment.
The influence of their touring with All Them Witches can also be seen on their next full length release, 2018’s Longing To Be The Mountain. Ben McLeod from ATW produced the album. ATW, The Sword and Elder are all thanked in the liner notes. The album picks up right where Repeater leaves off, with KB experimenting with long form songs like Morning Song and the title track, and shorter jams like Sun Shivers, Cosmonaut, and Quickening. Reynolds and McVay pepper the songs with synthesizer sounds that add colour and texture to the overall compositions. Donaldson drums with impeccable precision to provide each song with a safe mooring to return to, driving the guitars forward at the same time as he holds the rhythm in check. This is most clearly evident in Eye Of The Storm. The result is a rich tapestry of expansive and flowing music full of heavy jams and storytelling that will leave the listener wanting more. Their signature build-to-sonic-explosion style does not let fans down.
The success of Longing To Be The Mountain allowed for extensive touring across North America and Europe. It also led to appearances at bigger gigs, like at Rockpalast and the Stoned & Dusted desert rock event in 2019. Anyone that has seen any of their live work knows that King Buffalo are simply hypnotizing on stage. Reynolds’ bass work is reminiscent of Geddy Lee with his complex and flowing style. Donaldson brings controlled power to the drum kit, and is ready to cut loose when the drop comes. And McVay has become a true front man, comfortable with the lead voice on guitar and the microphone.
Their next release, Dead Star, dropped in 2020 and generated all kinds of buzz in the Stoner Rock scene. Of course, the tour planned to support it got axed when the entire world went into lockdown. But the (short album? EP?) is simply fantastic. Red Star Pt. 1 & 2 continues their long form examination and has everything you’d expect from them. Echo of A Waning Star is a lament of just over 3 minutes that is near-perfect. Ecliptic sounds like the soundtrack to a John Carpenter movie and is a complete jam with serious cool 1980’s vibes. Dead Star, the title track, is almost Radiohead-esque in its evocative and regretful take on death and decay.
But the standout track has to be Eta Carinae, which has one of the greatest musical drops and turn-arounds you will ever hear. The entire song pivots just past four minutes in and becomes a 70’s anthem worthy of Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. If you listen to no other tune here today, you have to check it out. It will absolutely get stuck in your head.
The band dropped their first live record, Live At Freak Valley, in 2020. This is a really nice retrospective/greatest hits album kinda deal. What stands out is just how fucking tight the band is live. With some bands, live versions veer wildly from the recorded ones - and not at all in a good way. This record is the opposite. You can clearly hear on Orion and Kerosene that KB are just that good live.
In the wake of the global pandemic, King Buffalo decided to musically capture the moment in time. They decided to release a trifecta of albums. 2021 saw them drop The Burden of Restlessness and then Acheron. The third record in this trio is 2022’s Regenerator. It is really important to consider all three records in this Triptych at the same time, for they are a sonic cycle.
TBOR is a descent into despondency. Acheron is about hitting rock bottom, and being in Hell. Regenerator is about finding a way to claw yourself back into the light. Each album stands on its own, but together they form a sweeping epic journey that we can all relate to.
TBOR is an album where the protagonist gradually loses the will to exist. There is a cry of deep frustration in Burning, a not-so-subtle reference to a plague in Locusts, a study in being confined indoors in Silverfish, and an outright statement that our hero is sinking in Loam. In fact, the lyrics tell us: “Still I press my face into the ground/I’m waiting for the hammer to fall.”
It is not a happy album.
Just when you think things have to get better, we get the 4-track jam of Acheron. In this record, our hero has fallen to his lowest point. He has descended to Hell. The title track - the first one on the album - makes this clear, when it says: “Waking up under the ground/Silver asleep on my tongue.”
Just in case you didn’t get the classic reference, Acheron is the river one must cross in Greek mythology to get to the underworld. Souls going to Hell had coins placed in their mouth to pay Charon, the ferryman, to take them across the river to Hades. So our hero did sink into the Loam in the last album, and finds himself in Hell. This theme is reinforced in Zephyr, who was the Greek God of the West Wind, and Shadows, which references what the Greeks used to call dead spirits - Shades. And just in case you had any doubt, the final track on the album is Cerberus, named after the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades.
What is even cooler about Acheron is how it was recorded. Instead of a studio, they recorded the album underground in a cave.
Now that is commitment.
The final album in this cycle is 2022’s Regenerator. While the first two records were about descent, despondency, and hitting rock bottom, this record is about regaining hope and optimism, and finding a way to come back. We hear this clearly in the lyrics of the record’s final track, Firmament, which says: “Out of the loam I rise, embraced by the etheThe river below relieves my hands of silver” - clearly calling back to the tracks Loam and Acheron. And in case you didn’t know, in Greek mythology the Firmament means the Sky or the Heavens.
Our hero has left Hell behind, and ascended into Heaven.
References to positive mythology are all over this album, from the album art to the tracks Mercury and Avalon. It is a total jam. But the best song on the album might just be Mammoth. If you don’t like the guitar on this song, you and I can’t be friends.
I got a chance to see KB perform last year when they toured with Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. They are fucking tight. They were the opening act, but were the absolute highlight of the show. I want everyone to hear this band because they really are something special.
Go check them out.
Links to QOTSA
We know that QotSA front man Josh Homme and Kyuss invented Stoner Rock in the 1990’s. They were the genre-defining band. King Buffalo (and other bands like All Them Witches) have picked up this proverbial torch and are now bringing the sound to the next generation of fans. King Buffalo drummer Scott Donaldson is known to be a huge QotSA fan. Perhaps he saw them live when they played in Rochester in 2014 in support of ...Like Clockwork.
It is also sometimes easy to forget that Josh was not the only architect of the low desert sound. Original Kyuss Drummer and co-founder Brant Bjork wrote many Kyuss tunes and continues to be a leader in the music scene today. King Buffalo have played with Bjork at festivals three times: Freak Valley Festival, Black Deer Festival and the aforementioned Stoned & Dusted. There is also a planned collaborative project between Bjork and King Buffalo that may be coming our way soon.
The future is bright, my friends.
Their Music
Providence Eye
In Dim Light
Pocket Full of Knife
King Buffalo songs from the Split EP with Lé Betre
Kerosene -- live in 2016
Drinking From The River Rising
Orion - entire album on Genesee Live
RepeateCenturion -- Recorded Live in the Quarantine Sessions put out by the band
Live at Rockpalast in 2019 - includes songs from LTBTM
Longing To Be The Mountain - Quarantine Sessions
Quickening -- everything is cool until the snake head pops out. Red Star Pt. 2 -- the official video
Ecliptic
Eta Carinae
Dead Star - Full Album
Silverfish
The Knocks
Loam
Hours
Acheron
Shadows
Mammoth
Firmament
Show Them Some Love
/KingBuffalo - C’mon, everyone -- there are just over 500 subscribers. Those are rookie numbers. You gotta pump those numbers up.
Previous Posts
Tool
Alice in Chains
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
Rage Against The Machine
Soundgarden
Run the Jewels
Royal Blood
Arctic Monkeys
Ty Segall
Eagles of Death Metal
Them Crooked Vultures
Led Zeppelin
Greta Van Fleet
Ten Commandos
Screaming Trees
Sound City Players
Iggy Pop
Mastodon
The Strokes
Radiohead
All Them Witches
ZZ Top

Even though Great Commission Churches officially dissolved in 2020, many of their churches are still active with the same leadership, same problematic teaching, and same toxic culture. We have been able to gather a list of them and they will be labelled by splinter group. If we have forgot to add a church or need to update information about a church (whether they are still active or inactive or if they have changed their affiliation), please let us know ASAP. Also, PLEASE NOTE, we are sharing the names and websites of these churches to warn others, NOT to harass the church members already involved. We will NOT support any calls for violence or calls to harass anyone involved with these churches. Any such calls will be met with an immediate ban.
Without further ado, here is the current list:
M28 Alliance

• Desert's End Church / The Well at ASU - Tempe, AZ
• South LA Christian Life at USC - Los Angeles, CA
• Beggars' Gate - Loveland, CO
• Summitview Community Church - Evans, CO
• Summitview Church / 242 at CSU and Front Range - Fort Collins, CO
• Parker Firehouse Church - Franktown, CO
• The Firehouse Church - Denver, CO
• Vintage Faith Church / Campus Fellowship at KSU - Manhattan, KS
• Anchored Faith Church - Edina, MN
• Candlewood Church / Omaha Campus Fellowship - Omaha, NE
• Rio Church - El Paso, TX
• The Rock Church - Draper, UT

SECA (Southeast Church Alliance)

• Freedom Bible Church - Enterprise, AL
• Gator Christian Life (University of Florida) - Gainesville, FL
• Awaken Church (The Awakening at UNF) - Jacksonville, FL
• The Rock (Miami) Church - Miami, FL
• Seminole Christian Life (Florida State University) - Tallahassee, FL
• Atlanta House Church Network - Atlanta, GA
• Oak Ridge Community Church - Clarksville, MD
• Niner Christian Life (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) - Charlotte, NC
• Grace Community Church (North Carolina State University) - Raleigh, NC
• Blacksburg Ablaze Church (Virginia Tech) - Blacksburg, VA
• Evergreen Community Church - Manassas, VA

C1 Network

• Glen Arbor Community Church - West Chicago, IL
• Eagle Creek Community Church / The Rock at IUPUI - Indianapolis, IN
• Grace Church (at Purdue) - West Lafayette, IN
• Grace City Church - Madison, WI (INACTIVE)

Reliant

• LifeHouse Church - Decorah, IA
• Grace Church (at Purdue) - West Lafayette, IN
• Living Hope Church - Rochester, MN

Other - Unknown Affiliation Status - Former GCC Churches

• Stonebrook Community Church - Ames, IA (SBC)
• Tri-State Community Church - Dubuque, IA
• Hometown Church (formerly Evergreen Church) - Bloomington, Lakeville, and New Hope, MN
• Cottonwood Community Church - Grand Forks, ND
• Sower Church / Christian Challenge at UNL - Lincoln, NE
• Linworth Road Church (formerly Solid Rock Church) - Columbus, OH
• Cedar Creek Community Church - Eau Claire, WI
• Coulee Rock Community Church - La Crosse, WI

First, thanks for all the advice about where to live in the East-Side suburbs, I found somewhere in O'Fallon, IL that seems really nice. I should be all moved in early next week and will have a couple of days free before I start my new job.
Was thinking about visiting Six Flags, since I haven't been as a child and figured it'd be less crowded on a random Wednesday or Thursday than the weekend. I'm a big fan of theme parks and roller coasters and will visit one or two each year, usually during the fall since there's fewer people and they're in full swing for Halloween. Last year, I visited Silver Dollar City on a random Wednesday in October and walked onto every ride and did Halloween at Worlds of Fun, but I bought a fast pass for that.
How busy would the park be during the summer weekday? I know there's a charity event one of the Hospitals do, would it be better to just buy a ticket for that or wait for Halloween? Don't mind paying for the fast pass.

As confirmed yesterday in this stream, Blitz Birthday activities are starting soon. On June 8th the birthday event “Lost and Found” event should start according to the above mentioned stream , so this means that probably there will be a tank sale like it happened last year. This post, like the one I did for Black Friday, aims to predict tanks that might be sold in this event on the basis of recent offers in shop and past year activities. If you want to simply read my predictions, jump to the Sample Line-Up section

What is Lost and Found and birthday sale all about?

This point is dedicated strictly for newer players, but it can also serve as a refresher for those, who forgot what the Birthday sale Event is all about.
Last year's bonus level event included collector tanks, a background picture, a crate with a guaranteed tank and other small rewards. These goods were purchasable with in-event coins that were included in tanks sales, as well as in gold purchases. You can find here more details.
This year “Lost and Found” seems to include basically the same rewards, in addition they have the same price as last year. This means that the crate with a guarantee should cost more than 100€/$, so it's not worth it to get it.

Bonus Level 2022 and Black Friday 2022

Let's recall what took place during previous events…
The Bonus Level Event 2022 took place last June during the celebrations of WoT Blitz Birthday and following Premium Tanks were sold for gold at discounted price:

Tier	Tank	Price	Coins	Sold In BF 2021?
10	Object 260	15.000	130	no
9	Kpz 70	9.000	85	yes
8	Progetto 46	7.500	70	no
8	Skoda T27	7.500	70	no
8	Kanonenjdpz. 105	6.500	70	no
8	T-2020	5.500	65	yes
8	T-54 first prototype	4.500	55	no
8	Fcm 50t	4.000	55	no
8	Chieftain T/95	4.000	55	no
7	FV201 (A45)	2.500	40	no
7	AT 15 A	2.000	30	no
6	Churchill Mk. VI	1.500	20	no
6	Ac IV Sentinel	1.000	20	no

​
During Black Friday 2022 following Premium Tanks were sold for gold at discounted price:

Tier	Tank	Price
10	Object 907	15.000
10	Amx 30B	12.500
9	K-91	9.000
9	T-55a	8.000
8	Skoda T 56	8.500
8	Object 274a	8.500
8	Lansen C	8.000
8	T54E2	7.500
8	Keiler	6.500
8	Kanonenjdpz. 105	6.000
8	TS-5	5.000
8	59-Patton	4.500
7	M41D	3.000
7	AMX 13 57	2.500
6	Type 64	2.000
6	Pudel	1.500

In addition we can divide Tier VIII into two subcategories: High-end with a price of 5.5k gold or higher and Low-end with price tag below 5.5k gold respectively

Birthday Sale 2023 Structure:

After analysing data from last year events, following tanks are most likely to appear in the Birthday sale:

1 Tier X Premium Tank
1 Tier IX Premium Tank
~8 Tier VIII Premium Tanks: ~3 High-end and ~5 Low-end, one more Low-end than last year
~3 Tier VII Premium Tanks, one more than last year
2 Tier VI Premium Tanks

Alongside discounted tanks listed above, other collector tanks are expected to be offered in the “Lost and Found” side event, available for purchase through in-event currency. Thanks to WG we can already tell what those tanks are:

Sold for First time in the event is the Churchill VIII, a tier 6 premium tank that features an 84mm derp gun. Seems something different from current premiums. Do not worry if you can’t grab it this time, it’s gonna be in store in a few months.
Kunze Panzer is a german tier 7 light tank. Featured in a marathon during Birthday celebrations in 2021, it’s a nice light tank, with great alpha but low shell velocity., It was sold in shop before, and even in auctions last year
P 43/’06 Anniversario is a tier 6 european medium tank. Featured for the first time in the 6th Blitz birthday as a free reward, it’s almost a copy of the tech tree p43 bis, but better. Never sold in shop nor in auction, so this is your only chance to get it this year.
Lastly Y5 tanks feature three tanks across tiers VII-V, that are almost carbon copies of respectively Comet, Cromwell and T-34. However, apart from tier 5, they are nothing amazing and inferior to their tech tree counterparts. Never sold in shop nor in auction, so this is your only chance to get it this year.

The “Lost and Found” is confirmed to take place from 8th June till 18th June, before the main progression event starting on 16th June

Birthday Sale 2023 Predictions:

This section in contrast to previous ones is far more speculative, since there's simply no way to accurately tell which tanks exactly will show up on the Birthday Sale…
There are tanks that are almost impossible to show up on Birthday Sale sale, such as:

1. Newly released Premium Tanks or such that have been sold only once outside or in crates
2. Premium Tanks that appeared in the Bonus Level 2022 and Black Friday 2022 are less likely to appear, but they are not totally excluded. Two tanks featured in Bonus level 2022 were sold the prior Black Friday.
3. Premium Tanks that have recently been in the shop. This means Tier X that were sold this year, and Tier IX and below tanks sold within last 4 months
4. Halloween Tanks: the Annihilator hopefully will never come back to the shop. Smasher technically is not a Halloween Tank, but It most likely will be sold in a draw as rumoured here Premium Tanks that were released throughout 2023 in F2P events: Object 244, Super Hellcat, T23E6 Eagle 7, CS-52 LIS

Now let's move to the interesting part, which is predicting which tanks may appear during the Birthday sale…
Tier X:
Some Tier X were sold in Personal offers this year only for players that have spent a decent amount of cash in the game. Nevertheless, most tier X collectors were sold in shops in dedicated offers so far this year, apart for the following tanks:

121B
Object 260
M 60
VK 90.01 P
AMX M4 54

The most sought-after tanks in this last, the AMX M4 54 and VK 90.01 P were sold during last auction so I think they are unlikely to show up soon. Object 260 was sold last year, so I think it won’t be part of the Birthday event. This leaves two medium tanks as possible deals:

M60
121B

Tier IX:
Tier IX has very few Premium/Collector Tanks, so there's no need to get in greater detail here:
Only one Tier 9 satisfies the conditions I have listed above, the Object 752. However, I think T-55a could be considered also as an option, as it was sold for cash only in late March, and was part of the Black Friday last year.
Thus, there are two Tier 9 Collectors/ premium tanks as possible deals:

Object 752
T-55a

Tier VIII:
As mentioned above, it's possible to distinguish between high-end and low-end Premium Tanks in Tier VIII on the basis of their Price and in some cases Release Date
Tier VIII - High-Ends:

Titan 54D
WZ 112-2
E 75 TS
Chrysler K
SU 130PM
AMX CDA 105

These tanks were not sold in the shops in the last 4 months, nor were featured in events.
Titan 54D, AMX CDA 105 and SU 130Pm were last sold in auctions, and apart from the french tank destroyer were sold at higher price than other tanks then.
Chrysler K ,E-75 TS and WZ 122-2 were sold repeatedly the last two years as part of bundles, respectively with IS-2Sh, Le Kpfz 41 90mm and T-34-3. However these bundles have been absent from stores for the last 4 months.
Tier VIII - Low-Ends:

Kv-5
Vk 168 01.P
IS-2Sh
Turtle Mk1
ISU 130
Type 59
Super Pershing
Amx CDC
Panther 8.8
O-47

KV-5 and ISU-130 were sold in cheap bundles last year like the Le Kpfz 41 90mm did recently, although not this year IS-2Sh was sold alongside Chrysler K last year as I said above, so it makes it a candidate for the birthday sale.
Vk 168 01.P, Type 59, Super Pershing are old premium tanks that were sold originally at least 5 years ago. They are powercreep on most stats, so that it makes them cheap.
Panther 8.8, AMX CDC, O-47, and Turtle Mk.1 are newer premiums, but they do not perform greatly or they don’t offer compelling experience above other premiums. The German, French and blitz nation mediums are mediocre single shot mediums in a tier where Chimeras and Bourrasques can outperform them in battle. Turtle Mk1 was first released as a poorly balanced tank destroyer that was slightly improved in January 2022. Nevertheless, this assault Td is outperformed by the cheaper Jagdtiger 8.8.
Tier VII.
Tier VII is slightly less popular and it offers less options to choose from:

IS-2 (1945)
Vk 45.03
T-34-85 Rudy
Panther M/10
AMX 13 57
SU-122-44

Most of these tanks were not sold this year, thus making them more likely to appear in store during the sale event.
Tier VI.

Su 100Y
Bretagne Panther
Churchill Mk VIl
Loza’s Sherman

Premium/Collector Tanks from Battle Pass are not likely to appear in the Black Friday 2022 event because of the their nature, in addition one of them are offered every month after purchasing the Battle Pass
Again, these tanks have not been sold yet in store this year.
At the very end please keep in mind that those are just predictions, so don't take them for absolutely granted.

Birthday Sale 2023 Sample Line-ups:

Now let's quickly summarise the predictions I made above into two line-ups, including also a selling price:
Line-up .1:

1 Tier X Premium Tank: 121B - 12.5k gold
1 Tier IX Premium Tank: Obj. 752 - 10k gold
8 Tier VIII Premium Tanks: WZ 112-2 - 7k gold, Chrysler K - 6.5k gold, Amx CDA 105 - 6k gold, KV 5 - 5.5k gold, Super Pershing - 5k gold, Panther 8.8 - 4.5k gold, ISU 130 - 4K gold, AMX CDC - 4K gold,
3 Tier VII Premium Tanks: AMX 13 57 - 3.k gold, Vk 45 03 - 3.k gold, T 34-85 Rudy - 2.5k gold
2 Tier VI Premium Tanks: Bretagne Panther - 2.5.k gold, Su 100Y - 1.5k gold

Line-up .2:

1 Tier X Premium Tank: M60 - 15k gold
1 Tier IX Premium Tank: T-55a - 8.5k gold
8 Tier VIII Premium Tanks: TItan 54D - 7.5k gold, E-75 TS - 5.5k gold, SU 130PM - 7k gold, Turtle Mk 1 - 5.5k gold, VK 168 01.P - 5k gold, Type 59 - 4.5k gold, IS-2Sh - 4.5k gold, O-47 - 4k gold
3 Tier VII Premium Tanks: SU 122-44 - 3k gold, IS-2 (1945) - 2.5k gold, Panther M/10 - 2k gold
2 Tier VI Premium Tanks: Churchill Mk VI - 2k gold, Loza Sherman - 1,5k gold

The prices to buy each line-up amount to 78k gold , this is similar to the Bonus Level event last year.

Summary:

Congratulations!
If You have read anything above, Thank You!
Keep in mind this post was done in a few days, so unlike previous predictions it might feel less polished. I thought the Birthday Sale was scheduled around June 20th, unlike what Alexandra confirmed on stream June 5th.
I hope you found this post interesting enough to read it fully or at least you found my predictions accurate. If not, leave a comment explaining why.

Hi! I don't do super well with heartfelt-emotional messages. Which is why Im writing this here, at least for now. I also have zero confidence in my ability to not ramble while typing this, because I have so many thoughts in my head right now. This will likely be quite long. So heads up! I have a super complicated relationship with my parents. It's a very long story, and again, this is gonna be long enough so I wont get into it. But in result of our long, tumultuous status; I, at 23, have come out to all of my friends, my 5 siblings, my cousins/aunts/uncles (that I am close with, i have a hugeee family haha) and my grandma, (who I consider to be a second mother in many ways, I actually came out to her while living at her house with my brother.) But I have not told my parents. And its created a really odd atmosphere for many years now, as Ive had the tremendous privilege of being able to talk and act mostly openly/freedly with almost everyone in my life daily for the past 7 years, apart from when Im at home. And ONLY when my parents are here. They are both gone a lot for work and other things, sometimes for weeks at a time.
Im moving in August, from Chicago IL to Alaska. I have a job, living arrangements, transportation, a path/network set out for me to pursue further into my degree, and my finances all sorted. And I am so, so, so sosososo excited to go. I have worked so hard for this, and for the remainder of my time here of this summer Im planning to continue on working as much as possible to pay off my loans asap, and Ive even been networking, emailing, volunteering, and helping with projects with old professors and a few other folks from my school, just to secure myself as much as possible before I go. Between a few mental and physical health scares, and the stress of everything going on now, Ive been pulling my hair out 😂, but through EVERYTHING, my friends and family have remained so kind and supportive. They are truly the reason I have made it as far as I have.
I have only told a handful of people so far that Im leaving because I just recently accepted the specific job offer (and corresponding living arrangement), so Im waiting to tell most of them in person :) however, once again because of the "status" of our relationship, my parents weren't included in the handful of people Ive told about the move yet. All the folks that Ive told so far about the move have asked me what my parents said when I told them, and everyone was slightly surprised to learn that I haven't mentioned it yet. With all of the general excitement and emotions that Im feeling right now about moving, I started thinking a little deeper about my relationship with my parents. Or more specifically: I started thinking about how I want them to view me as I am. Im leaving. Im an adult. And for as long as I can remember now, my parents have been my own personal bullies/doubt at worst, or strangers at best. My relationship with my mom has been much less strained as the years have gone by, but even still, Im hesitant to go to her for anything aside of casual conversation. But Ive grown so much, and I have so much more growing to do. Im ready to start the rest of my life. And with that, I need to take that leap with no weight on my shoulders. I want to be able to be completely who I am. And I know that that could end poorly. But Im strong enough to take the bad with the good now. Im strong enough to fight for my own happiness. And I always have my family here who loves me. I reached out to a few friends in the community after I accepted the job offer, and I asked them for advice on how to come out my mom. It was the first time I was nervous to really "formally" come out. After mulling over it for quite some time, waiting for my dad to leave for work, and accepting some incredibly helpful advice and wonderful support from friends; I did it. I just came out my mom. Like an hour ago. And it went good. Not "great", but not bad. It went, well. She had a ton of questions haha, which I totally anticipated, but I stood my ground. I told her that I wasn't ready to tell my dad just yet, and she actually understood. And after all of it, she hugged me. She told me that I was her daughter, and that she would always love me. And that she wanted me to be my own person, and to follow the path that makes me feel the most myself.
Im honestly still in shock. For as awkward as the whole night ended (neither one of us really knew what to say after 😂 we don't get super personal like that *often*, as you can probably imagine atp lmao) I can honestly say that I feel 100lbs lighter right now. Im so relieved. I told my siblings immediately after, and they were so excited with me, and Im just so content right now. And im so fucking grateful. Im so, so so so sososo endlessly, beyond words grateful, to all of my loved ones, and folks from the community who have stood by me, and who came before me, and continue to support me and all others who are in the same position, there is truly not enough in this lifetime that I could do to repay all of the kindness Ive been shown.
sO, yeah very long, TLDR: I came out to my mom tonight, I feel so many things but mostly Im just grateful

When I was brand new to NovelAi I had no idea how 2048 tokens really looked as text. So for anyone looking at the tiers, trying to decide how many tokens they want for Clio with the new update, I've tokenized Part of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (public domain since 2021).
That way new users can more easily visualize what the AI's maximum context is for each tier. According to the UI Clio uses the NerdStash Tokenizer, as different tokenizers will convert text to tokens their own way.
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In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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WORLD IFA/ORISA FESTIVAL AND PILGRIMAGE 2023/2024
Preamble The Pilgrimage for this year took a new turn. The Pilgims who attended this year's event was unprecedented. So far, we recorded the highest number of Pilgrims. Also, people came from Rep Du Benin, Rep Du Togo, Cote d'Ivoire, Yoruba people from Gambia were in attendance. Also in attendance were Pilgrims from USA, Venezuela, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, etc. Those who could not attend physically sent their various Ifa messages on Ogunda Ose. Messages came from Brasil, Cuba, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Ecuardo, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbedos, Jamaica etc. It was truly a Pilgrimage and Festival of World dimension. It is completely beyond the shores of Yoruba land!!!
Health Right from the 20th of May when all Pilgrims converged at Ado Ekiti, our Medical teams were busy attending to the medical needs of the people, both Pilgrims and indigenes of the communities that we went to. The health of the people is one of our major priorities.
Transportation and Logistics: Because there were more Pilgrims who attended this year's Festival and Pilgrimage, there were more vehicles which conveyed the Pilgrims to the various Holy Sites. Everything went smoothly, all thanks to the Green Circle International and the Ekiti State Ministry of Arts and Culture. The Director of Arts and Culture deserves our special mention. His diligence made everyting stress free for us throughout the 9-day period.
Our thanks and gratitude go to all the Royal Fathers who stood by us throughout the Pilgrimage period.
Our thanks also go to His Exellency, the Governor of Ekiti State who graciously released Oke Igeti, the home of Orunmila to us. Not only that, the Governor promises to develop Oke Igeti to Holy site of International standard. The International Council For Ifa Religion will forever be grateful to you sir. I enjoin all Ifa devotees throughout the world to please remember the Governor of Ekiti State in your daily prayers. Ase!!! In view of this heartwarming development, i enjoin all devotees throughout the world to come and see the seats of Orunmila-In-Council; the misterious water that Orunmila was using to initiate and heal people; the wonder Opon Ifa that Orunmila was using for consultation at Oke Igeti. This Opon Ifa is made of quartz stone. Come and see the Ope Awonyin that Orunmila was using; come and marvel at the Irosun trees that produce iyerosun powder for Orunmila and his Awo. In short, come and see Ifa wonder at Oke Igeti!!! All these become possible through the grace of the Governor and our Royal Fathers, especially the Ewi of Ado.
E JE KI A FI IBA FUN ORUNMILA NITORI O JE ASIWAJU RERE!!!
WORLD IFA CONSULTATION AT THE FOOT OF OKE IGETI, ADO EKITI ON OJO ABA META, SATURDAY, MAY 27, 2023.
Elders in 17 countries were present for the World Annual Ifa Consultation in Oke Igeti. Eleven countries physically gave messages on Oke Igeti while eight other countries sent their messages via internet and other social media.
The Odu that was revealed during consultation is Ogunda'See, Ogunda Ose. Ifa came with the IRE of cool prosperity for all devotees in the next 12 months and beyond.
For this reason, all Ifa and Orisa Temples need to feed Ifa with one white pigeon each. Each temple also needs to feed each Orisa in the Temple with one eku emo, brown rat. If there are 20 Orisa in a particular Temple, there is the need to procure 20 eku emo and give one to each Orisa in that Temple.
Each member also need to procure six catfish, three to feed Ori and three to feed Ifa.
For those who are born by this Odu during Ikosedaye or Itenifa, there is the need to feed Ifa with one eku emo, apart from the materials mentioned above.
MAIN MESSAGES OF OGUNDA OSE FOR THE YEAR 2023/2024

1. Ifa says that all Temples around the world will be blessed with success and prosperity. Ifa says that all Temples shall also be blessed with free gifts that will change our lives for good.

Ifa advises each Temple to offer ebo with 4 hens, 16 pigeons and money. There is also the need to feed Ewiri, the blacksmith's anvil as recommended by Ifa. On this Ifa says:
Ogunda'see ni o m'ese oyun A o m'ese osika l'ona Dia fun Ewiri Ti yoo maa f'enu re fa ifa wo'le Ebo ni won ni ko waa se O gb'ebo, o ru'bo Ko pe, ko jinna E waa ba'ni ni jebutu ire
Translation Ogunda'see does not know the footprint of a pregnant woman We cannot identify the footprint of a wicked person on the road Ifa's message for Ewiri, the Anvil Who will use his mouth to attract free gifts to his home He was advised to offer ebo He complies Before long, and not too far Join us in the midst of all ire of life

1. Ifa says that apart from feeding Ewiri, the Anvil, there is equally the need for all Temples to procure sekere made with cowries. This sekere is to be played regularly in all Temples. Doing so will attract wealth and prosperity into our Temples and all members will benefit from the grace of the Divinities. On this, Ifa says:

Ogunda Sense Babalawo Sekere to dia fun Sekere Ti n s'awo re'lu il'Aje Ebo ni won ni ko waa se O gb'ebo, o ru'bo Nje Sekere ma rin, maa yan Ara a re l'okun Ara a re l'Aje gbe n so
Translation Ogunda Sense, Ifa cast for Sekere, When going to the land of prosperity, She was advised to offer ebo She complied Sekere walk and match majestically, Your body is filled qith Okun beads, Your body germinates wealth and prosperity

1. Ifa says that even though success and prosperity are guaranteed for members of all Temples this year, Ifa however warns all men never to maltreat their spouses for any reason whatsoever. Ifa also advises all women never to provoke their spouses. Ifa says that women in the Temples will be protected and blessed by Orunmila this year. What all women need to do is to support, assist encourage and bless their men to succeed.

Ifa advises each Temple to offer ebo with 4 rats, 4 fish, 4 pigeons, 4 hens, 4 guinea fowls, 4 roosters and money in the multiples of four. There is also the need for each Temple to feed Ifa with a mature she goat. On this, Ifa says;
Ewekewe inu igbe okan soso ni n so Dia fun Ifajinrin Ti n s'omo bibi inu Agbonniregun Ebo ni won ni ko waa se O gb'ebo, o ru'bo E ma na 'Fajinrin aya Awo E ma na 'Fajinrin aya Awo Eeyan to ba na 'Fajinrin Yoo ri'ja Ifa E ma na 'Fajinrin aya Awo
Translation All mysterious leaves in the forest germinate only one, Ifa's message for Ifajinrin, The child of Agbonniregun, She was advised to offer ebo, She complied , Do not maltreat 'Fajinrin, the wife of Awo, Do not beat 'Fajinrin, the wife pf Awo , The person who maltreats 'Fajinrin, With face the wrath of Ifa, Do not maltreat 'Fajinrin, the wife of Awo

1. Ifa assures all devotees that they will be protected against all forms of violent or untimely death. Iga says that no matter how dire the situation may be, they will be protected and spared. Ifa advises all Temple members to make Orunmila their sanctuary. Each Temple is advised to offer ebo with one mature he goat, lead and money and feed Ifa with one mature she goat.

Orunmila wi o m'oju jo emere Emi naa wi, mo lo m'oju jo emere Orunmila ni omo Ogun to m'oju jo emere To dabi wipe yoo kuu Orunmila ni ko nii ku Orunmila wi o lo m'oju jo emere Emi naa wi, mo lo m'oju jo emere Orunmila ni omo Ija to m'oju jo emere To dabi wipe yoo kuu Orunmila ni ko nii ku Orunmila wi o lo m'oju jo emere Emi naa wi, mo lo m'oju jo emere Orunmila ni omo Osoosi to m'oju jo emere To dabi wipe yoo kuu Orunmila ni ko nii ku Orunmila wii, o lo m'oju jo emere Emi naa wi, mo lo m'oju jo emere Orunmila ni omo oun to m'oju jo emere To dabi wipe yoo kuu Orunmila ni ko nii ku Orunmila ni bo ba se bi ise omo toun ba ni Oje kii ku l'emere Sunmunu, omo oje a d'agba
Translation Orunmila declares that he looks like someone destined to die young, I chorus that he looks like someone destined to die young, Orunmila says that the child of Ogun who, appears like someone destined to die young, Orunmila says that he will not die young, Orunmila declares that he looks like someone destined to die young, I chorus that he looks like someone destined to die young, Orunmila says that the child of Ija who appears like someone destined to die young, Orunmila says that he will not die young, Orunmila declares that he looks like someone destined to die young, I chorus that he looks like someone destined to die young, Orunmils says that the child of Osoosi who appears like someone destined to die young, Orunmila says that he will not die young, Orunmila declares that he looks like someone destined to die young, I chorus that he looks like someone destined to die young Orunmila says that the child of Agbonniregun who appears like someone destined to die young, Orunmila says that he will not die young, Orunmila declares that the lead does not die young, The child of oje, lead is boung to enjoy long life

1. Ifa says that Temple members looking for the blessing of the fruit of the womb shall be blessed according to their hearts desire. Ifa advises those looking for the fruit of the womb to offer ebo with 4 rats, 4 fish, 2 hens one she goat and money. Out of these ebo materials, 2 rats, 2 fish and one hen will be used to feed Ifa. On this, Ifa says:

Orunmila wi o da'see Mi o da'see Bara a mi Agbonniregun Orunmila wi eyi to da'see si'kun omo eku Oyun lo maa fi ni Omo lo maa fi bi Orunmila wi o da'see Mi o da'see Bara a mi Agbonniregun Orunmila ni eyi to da'see si'kun omo eja Oyun lo maa fi ni Omo lo maa fi bi Orunmila wi o da'see Mi o da'see Baraa mi Agbonniregun Orunmila wi eyi to da'see si'kun omo eye Oyun lo maa fi ni Omo lo maa fi bi Orunmila wi o da'see Mi o da'see Bara a mi Agbonniregun Orunmila wi eyi to da'see si'kun omo eran Oyun lo maa fi ni Omo lo maa fi bi Orunmila wi o lo da'see Mi o da'see Bara a mi Agbonniregun Orunmila wi eyi to da'see si'kun Apetebi aya Akapo toun Oyun lo maa fi ni Omo lo maa fi bi
Translation Orunmila declares the menstral fluid is no longer flowing, I chorus that it in no longer flowing, Agbonniregun my father, Orunmila says that the fluid that ceases to flow in the womb of the rat, It will lead to pregnancy, The outcome will be babies, Orunmila declares that the menstrual fluid is no longer flowing, I chorus that it is no longer flowing Agbonniregun my father, Orunmila says that the menstrual fluid that, ceases to flow in the womb of the fish , It will become pregnancy, The outcome will be babies, Orunmila declares that the menstrual fluid is no longer flowing , I chorus that it is no longer flowing Agbonniregun my father, Orunmila says that the menstrual fluid that, ceases to flow in the womb of the bird, It will become pregnancy, The outcome will be babies, Orunmila declares that the menstrual fluid os no longer flowing, I chorus that it is no longer flowing Agbonniregun my father, Orunmila says that the menstrual fluid that ceases to flow, It will become pregnancy , The outcome will be babies , Orunmila declares that the menstrual fluid is no longer flowing , I chorus that it is no longer flowing Agbonniregun my father , Orunmila says that the menstrual fluid that, ceases to flow in the womb of the beast, It will become pregnancy , The outcome will be babies , Orunmila declares that the menstrual fluid is no longer flowing , I chorus that it is no longer flowing Agbonniregun my father , Orunmila says that the menstrual fluid that ceases to flow in the womb of Apetebi the wife of my Akapo It will become pregnancy The outcome will be babies

1. Ifa assures all devotees that they will be protected against untimely death, especially the type that affects multitudes. Ifa warns that all devotees needs to avoid the consumption of mushrooms of any kind in the next 12 months.

Ifa advises each Temple to offer ebo with one mature he goat and plenty of different mushrooms. On this, Ifa says:
Gagamaniwa Dia fun orunlojo esun A bu fun Etipatiro Won ni ki won ru'bo Ki won ma baa ku iku ajoku Etipatiro nikan lo nbe leyin to n s'ebo Nje gbo esun lo n ku Etipatiro nikan ni kii ba won ku iku ajoku
Translation Gagamaniwa, He cast ifa for 165 different mushrooms , And also for Etipatiro, They were advised to offer ebo, For them not to experience death in multitudes , Only Etipatiro complied and offered ebo, All myshrooms die, Only Etipatiro was spared ,

1. Ifa says that Ifa and Orisa Temples and their devotees will be blessed with success, good luck, prosperity and longevity.

Ifa advises each Temple to offer ebo with one he goat, one she goat and money. There is also the beed to feed Ogun with one rooster, roasted corn, roasted yams and palm oil. On this, Ifa says:
Ewu l'ori arugbo Kasan l'orun aj'ewa Akutapa okete Dia fun Olori-Ire Tii s'omo Ogunda Ose Ebo ni won ni ko waa se O gb'ebo, o ru'bo Gunnugun kii ku l'ewe Kangere, ma d'agba ma d'arugbo, kangere Akalamagbo won kii ku l'ewe Kangere, ma d'agba ma d'arugbo, kangere
Translation Grey hair fills the head of an aged person, Veins appear round the neck of beans consumer, When big rat dies, its limbs are stretched before it is smoked , Ifa's messages for Olori-Ire, the Lucky One, The offspring of Ogunda Ose , He wasadvised to offer ebo, He complied, The vulture never dies young, I will live to my old age, And Akalamagbo vulture never dies young, I will live to my old age,

1. Ifa says that Ifa and Orisa devotees throughout the world will be blessed with all ire of life. Ifa however warns that we need to be contented with the blessings that Olodumare has given to us. We must not be greedy; we must not cheat; we must not tell lies and we must not be diabolic in all our undertakings in life

Ifa advises each Temple to offer ebo with one he goat, one she goat, four pigeons and money. There us also the need to feed Ifa with one she goat.
Apaadi to d'oju de ogiri T'ogiri nii se Dia fun Orunmila Baba n sunkun oun o ri're pe Ebo ni won ni ko waa se O gb'ebo, o ru'bo Nje ti'nu-t'eyin mi re e o Labalaba kii s'ede Ti'nu-t'eyin mi re e o
Translation Any potshwrd that faces the wall, Belongs to the wall, Ifa's message for Orunmila , When lamenting and complaining his inability to have all ire of life, He wasadvised to offer ebo, He complied, I harbor no secret anywhere, The butterfly harbors no diabolical plan, This is me in and out

1. Ifa warns all devotees not to be foing out in the dead of the night. All Temple leaders and administrators need to warn all their members to desist drom going out in the night. It is to protect members from danger.

Ifa advises each Temple to offer ebo with one he goat three guinea fowls and money. On this, Ifa says:
Alapandede nii ko si'le ana a re koro Oko eni nii wo'le to'ni Dia fun Oru Ti n loo gbe Olowo n'iyawo Ebo ni won ni ko waa se O ko'ti ogbonyin s'ebo Nje Oru o ma m'Olowo Ifa k'eni ma rin l'oru
Translation The bat flies into its mother's nest quietly, One's husband is he who has the right to enter one's room, Ifa's message for Oru, the Dead of the Night, When going to marry Olowo as wife, He was advised to offer ebo , He failed to comply, The dead of the night has no respect for any honorable person, Ifa warns all not to go out at night

1. Ifa advises all devotees to take very good care of their hygiene. They need to eat healthy meals. This will help chase ailments away from all members. There is the need for Temple leaders to lay emphasis on personal and enviromental hygiene to members of their congregations.

Ebo materials here are one he goat, three guinea fowls and money. Special akose can also be prepared for members suffering from any ailment
Ogunda-see o m'ese oyun Aba o m'ese onde Oosa gbagbe, ko la'se e pepeye A ti nba won rin A o mo'nu u won A o m'eke A n b'eke l'owo Dia fun Olofin Won ni ko ru'bo Ki arun-un kange-kange o ma baa se e O gb'ebo, o ru'bo Ipepe la mu sin'ra Agbon la fi gb'arun danu
Translation Ogunda Ose cannot detected the footprint of a pregnant woman, The chain cannot detect the legs of its captive, Orisa forgot to separate the toes of a duck, We are miving with them, We do not know their mind, We do not know the liar, We are shaking hands with cheats, Ifa's messages for Olofin, When he wasadvised to offer ebo, In order to avoid being inflicted with ailments He complied, We have used strong barks to strengthen our body , And used basket to chase ailments away

1. Ifa says that there is the need for all Temples to offer ebo for the protection of the young ones in the Temples against untimely death and calamity.

Ebo materials here are one completely black she goat, one completely black female sheep and one completely black hen. These materials will be used to feed Iroko tree. On this, Ifa says:
Okun ya di'na O mi lengbe sihin-in O mi lengbe sohun-un Dia fun Iya Irenre-Molode To yoo ma f'omo re da'jo Ebo ni won ni ko waa se O gb'ebo, o ru'bo Ewure dudu mo mu bo Iroko Ki'ku o ma pa Irenre-Molode omo o mi o Aguntan dudu mo mu bo Iroko Ki'ku o ma pa Irenre-Molode omo o mi o Adie okoko dudu momu bo Iroko Ki'ku o ma pa Irenre-Molode omo o mi o
Translation The sea overflows its bank, It flows to this side, And flows majestically to the other side, Ifa's message for the mother of Irenre-Molode, Who had been losing herchildren to death, She was advised to offer ebo, She complied, A black she goat i have procured to feed Iroko May death not snatch away Irenre-Molode my child A black ewe i have brought to feed Iroko May death not take away Irenre-Molode my baby I have brought a black hen to propitiate Iroko May death spare the life of Irenre-Molode my child

1. Ifa warns all devotees not to inflict pain on those who had once helped them in one way or the other. Members must never pay good deeds with evil. Not heeding this warning may lead to serious repercaution for the culprit

Ebo materials here are three he goats and money. On this, Ifa says:
Oka lo m'ori jo ade Okuuku lo fi fifa jo ere Dia fun Ogun Ti a bi l'ode Ire Ti won o ja a lo wo ni'luu Ibese Ebo ni won ni ko waa se Oore qaa d'ese n'Ibese Oore d'ese Eyin ara Ibese E ma ma s'oore mo o Oore d'ese n'Ibese o
Translation The head of a cobra resembles a crown, The cloth weaver's box drags like a python, Ifa's message for Ogun, Who was born at Ire town, And was trained in Ibese land, He wasadvised to offer ebo, Good deeds has turned to a sin in Ibese town, Benevolence has become a sin, Inhabitants of Ibese, Dont display benevolence anymore, Good deed has become a sin in Ibese town
AFFILIATED IRUNMOLE AND ORISA OF OGUNDA OSE

1. Ifa
   
2. Ori
   
3. Esu Odara
   
4. Ogun
   
5. Egungun
   
6. Egbe
   
7. Sango
   
8. Osun
   
9. Orisa Oko
   
10. Iroko
    

TABOOS OF OGUNDA OSE

1. Must never kill or eat a snake
   
2. Must never deny responsibility over pregnancy issue
   
3. Must never pay good deeds with evil
   
4. Must never eat mushrooms
   
5. Must never wear black or red dress
   
6. Must never go out at night
   
7. Must never cheat, lie or be diabolical
   
8. Must never snatch another person's spouse or lover
   
9. Must never give false promises
   
10. Must never fail to take care of personal hygiene
    

ABORU ABOYE
Solagbade Popoola, ficssmn President, International Council For Ifa Religion

Thanks!!

I am an audiobook narrator and would like to giveaway some audiobooks! Leave a comment or DM me if you see one you would like!
All I ask is to leave a review (could be just a couple sentences) on audible when you're done with the book. Good and bad reviews are absolutely welcome! The honesty makes my heart rage with eternal happiness.
​
Mystery and Thrillers
The Brajj (complete series) written by Jacqueline Patricks
First time in an audio box set, all three books in The Brajj Trilogy, plus the prequel short story "Captain Lewis' Broken Dreams".
"Highly recommended, especially if you are a fan of Dr. Who or Stargate." (Readers Favorite)
"Dreams of the Queen is one of the most unique "other world" books I've read." (Pavarti Tyler, best-selling author of Chalk)
"I was addicted from start to finish." (Bibliophile Ramblings)
A wormhole to another world. A team of scientists and soldiers. Unimaginable evil, unexpected mysteries, unending destiny. An epic adventure across time and space.
Listen to the science fiction trilogy from the nominee for Top Female Author of 2017 by The Author Show. Awarded the IndiePENdent’s Seal of Good Writing, Dreams of the Queen is the first book in The Brajj Trilogy, a multi-genre, sci-fi thriller.
Dr. Cass Baros is haunted by dreams of an alien world, and will do anything to find it.
Relentlessly, she works her science team and her fiancé, Dr. Julian Saunders. Captain Lewis’ military Spec Op team joins the scientists. Egos clash and agendas cross. Trapped, the team is plunged into a dangerous adventure beyond their control. They struggle to unravel millennia old secrets in an alien world where nothing is what it seems, especially the aliens.
Dr. Baros and her team are tossed between allies and enemies, genius and madness, and a betrayal frightening enough to cause the destruction of worlds.
​
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The Reunion written by Richard McCrohan
In this new novella by Richard McCrohan, novelist Jonathan York is flying back to his hometown of Hillcrest for his 50th high school reunion. He hasn’t returned since he left for college in 1971. A long weekend of old memories and rekindled friendships is what he is warmly looking forward to. And to reunite with his old crew. But what Jonathan is going to find waiting for him is a 50-year-old dark secret and a long forgotten past that threatens to rip apart the rest of his life.
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Children of the Yew written by Tony Torzillo
When Wesley O’Keefe first realized he didn’t age, he could’ve been hung as a witch. Now, he’s eager to be studied by a microbiologist looking for a cure to cancer. All Wesley wants is to share his miracle with the world. In the year 2042, technology has made it almost impossible for him to assume new identities, and after 300 years, he’s tired of watching loved ones wither up and die.
Yet, opening that Pandora’s Box does not come without consequences. Powerful people will do whatever they can to hoard this miracle for themselves—no matter whom they have to step on, ruin, or kill. From bioterrorism to neural scans and artificial intelligence, they will use whatever means are available to them to meet their end. Wesley’s past will catch up to him in ways he could have never imagined, and he will find that he has more to lose than he ever knew.
When the superstitious past meets the technologically progressive future, ancient grudges can be catastrophic, and agelessness can spread like a virus.
​
Goodbye to the Sun written by Jonathan Nevair
A rebel pilot teams up with a war-torn diplomat in a bid to win her people's freedom—but an impossible choice awaits....
Tucked away in the blue sands of Kol 2, the Motes are on the brink of cultural collapse. Razor, a bold and daring pilot, leads a last-ditch gambit against their local oppressors, the Targitians. The plan is to abduct visiting Ambassador Keen Draden and use him as a bargaining chip to restore her people's independence in the Sagittarius Arm. But when the operation unravels, Razor is forced to renegotiate terms with the arrogant diplomat.
Light years away on Heroon, a radical resistance blossoms. The alluring rainforest planet haunts Keen. All his problems started there during the Patent War, but it's where Razor's troubles may find a solution. The moral tide ebbs, exposing an impossible choice that links their futures together more tragically than they ever thought possible.
Goodbye to the Sun is inspired by the Greek tragedy Antigone.
​
Shawtuck Asylum written by Richard McCrohan
In 1859, the Shawtuck Lunatic Asylum opened in rural Delaware County as the new standard for the treatment of the mentally ill. But now this huge, Gothic structure sits brooding and abandoned, brought down by a long, sordid history of depravity, mistreatment, and murder. It may be rotting up on Shawtuck Mountain, but it's not alone.
Oswald "Oz" Patterson is the new sheriff of Delaware County. After a near-death experience as a cop in the South Bronx, he decided to move away from the inner city and live a safer life. But Oz will find that he has only traded one nightmare for an even worse one.
​
Kassius Kanex written by MK Schultz
Kassius Kanex loves his home and family but hates his job and wants to quit. A chance meeting with strange men looking for directions inspires a change in Kass. He is led down a new path that not only rescues him from his perceived career imprisonment, but also leads to the fulfillment of his destiny.
When his family becomes endangered by his new life, Kass’ full identity is revealed. His truth previously existed dormant inside of him, but Kass is now awakened. Following a visit to three doors of mystery, his true essence is discovered and a choice is made.
Danger and suspense build as more truths come to light, and Kass wonders if things will turn out better or worse. He still hides one secret, though, and its admission will change everything.
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Romance
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Snake: Missoula Bad Boys, Book 2 written by Piper Stone (each book in this series is a standalone novel)
She's determined to make me whole again. I just plan to make her mine.
I left Missoula to serve my country and came back a bitter, broken man. But when Chastity Garrington made my recovery her personal crusade, I decided I had a mission of my own.
Mastering her.
Her task won't be easy, and the fire in her eyes tells me mine won't either. Yet, the spark between us is instant, and we both know she'll be wet, sore, and screaming my name soon enough.
But I want more than that.
By the time my body has healed, I plan to have claimed her heart.
Publisher's Note: Snake is a standalone novel, but is the second entry in the Missoula Bad Boys series. It includes spankings and rough, intense sexual scenes. If such material offends you, please don't download this audiobook.
​
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Dream Rider written by Kimberly Dean
As a Dream Weaver, Zane Oneiros isn’t supposed to hitch rides on the dreams of his charges, but he can’t help himself when the dreamer is Emily Hutchins.
In the waking world, Emily is his work friend. Beautiful, conscientious, and prompt. Zane is known for being brash, fun-loving, and a bit too reckless with the powers handed down to him from the Greek gods of ancient past. Could an introvert extrovert romance even work?
All Zane wants to know is if Emily thinks about him while she sleeps...if there’s any hope for friends to become lovers...or if he’ll be stuck in the work friend zone forever. Yet when he and Emily start sharing dreams—and a kiss—the entire daytime world flips upside down.
Sweet, strict Emily is suddenly adventurous, and in more ways than one. Happy as Zane is about the change in their relationship, he worries that he’s meddled where he shouldn’t. For Emily isn’t sleeping well, and her behavior is spiraling out of control. Soon Zane is battling to get the old Emily back and make their dreams turn real, not the nightmares.
​
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Brutal Heir written by Piper Stone
The evening started with dinner in Paris. It ended with me as his captive.
When I went to an author convention, I didn't expect to find myself enjoying a rooftop meal with the sexiest cover model in the business, let alone screaming his name in bed later that night.
I didn't plan to be targeted by assassins, rushed to a helicopter under cover of armed men, and then spirited away to his home country with my bottom still burning from a spanking either, but it turns out there are some really important things I didn't know about Diavolo Montoya.
Like the fact that he's the heir to a notorious crime syndicate.
I should hate him, but even as his prisoner, our connection is too intense to ignore, and I'm beginning to realize that what began as a moment of passion is going to end with me as his.
Forever.
Publisher's Note: Brutal Heir includes spankings and rough, intense sexual scenes. If such material offends you, please don't download this book.
​
​
Debt of Loyalty: Eagle force, Book 2 written by Piper Stone
A drug lord took her captive. I took her back...and I'm not giving her up.
After she was kidnapped in broad daylight, I was hired to bring Willow Cavanaugh home, but as the daughter of a wealthy family, she's used to getting what she wants rather than taking orders.
Too bad.
She'll do as she's told, or she'll earn herself a stern, shameful reminder of who is in charge. But it will take more than just a well-spanked bare bottom to truly tame this feisty little rich girl.
She'll learn her place over my knee, but it's in my bed that I'll make her mine.
Publisher's Note: Debt of Loyalty is a stand-alone novel which is the second entry in the Eagle Force series. It includes spankings and rough, intense sexual scenes. If such material offends you, please don't download this audiobook.
​
​
Beautiful Seduction: Sinners and Saints Book 3 written by Piper Stone
He saved my life. Then he claimed me as his.
In my late-night hunt for the perfect pastry, I never expected to be the victim of a brutal attack...or for a brooding, blue-eyed stranger to become my savior, tending to my wounds while easing my fears. The electricity exploded between us, turning into a night of incredible passion.
Only later did I learn that Valentin Vincheti is the heir to the New York Italian mafia empire.
Then he came to take me, and this time he wasn't gentle. I shouldn't have surrendered, but with each savage kiss and stinging stroke of his belt his beautiful seduction became more difficult to resist. But when one of his enemies sets his sights on me, will my secrets put our lives at risk?
Publisher's Note: Beautiful Seduction is a stand-alone novel which is the third entry in the Sinners and Saints series. It includes spankings and rough, intense sexual scenes. If such material offends you, please don't buy this book.
​
​
Blood Crown: Freedom's Harem, Book 1 written by Elizabeth Brown and Torri Heat Narrated by myself and Katrina Medina.
In a world where men rule and slavery is the common practice, being the only queen and abolishing slavery puts a large target on your back.
Ashera is a queen in a world of kings. She took her crown and has paid for it in blood. Not everyone is willing to let her rule in peace, however, especially not the neighboring kingdoms for whom human slavery is still very much in practice. Ashera continues to bleed for her crown while showing each kingdom that men aren’t the only ones who can rule. But when a resistance against Ashera’s rule grows, she’s forced to realize that she can’t create widespread change on her own. She’ll need to win the hearts of the men who rule alongside her if she’s to crush the resistance and free all of humanity.
Seducing them is easy; she’s a succubus with lithe curves and a wicked tongue. It’s getting them to change their minds that is the challenge. Especially when she’s faced with an unruly and violent vampire prince, an over-the-top dramatic fae prince, an angelic king, and a demonic assassin. They’re all alpha males in their own right, each one thinking they know what’s best for their queen. Unfortunately for them, she has no intention of listening.
This is a fast-burn reverse harem.
​
Let me know which one you would like and I'll send you a promotional code to download the audiobook!

Last summer I made it a project to go to all the parks I could in Bloomington and Monroe county. I missed a few, but I thought I would give some highlights. Even as a townie, there were some I had never been to, and many have been updated in recent years. Most frequently, I go to parks with kids ranging in age from 5-10, but I will list features that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. Full info with addresses etc can be found here .
Bryan Park -- A Bloomington classic. Everyone should go to Bryan Park at least once. There are two main playgrounds, a baby/young kid one, which is fenced in, and a bigger kid one down the hill. There is also a smaller playground on the eastern side of the park. Paved/accessible trails border and go through the center of the park, and there are many mowed fields you can run and sprawl in. Nice park for a picnic. The City also hosts events here throughout the summer.
Broadview Park -- Smaller park on the near-westside. There is a fun climbing wall/barrel structure that inspired my kids to play pirates. This playground is one of the only fenced-in locations, useful if your kid is a runner.
Butler Park (9th Street Park) -- Another park with nice large fields to play in. Good sledding hills in the winter. The playground features some unique climbing equipment (ropes with a circle thing in the middle), as well as boardwalks, slides, etc. Access to the B-Line trail, and also hosts the People's Market in the summer on certain weekends.
Goat Farm Park / Rogers Family Park -- Newly renovated trail system! This park is now accessible from the Rogers Rd / High Street roundabout, as well as Elliston Dr (at Sherwood Oaks Park). Large native prairie area, interspersed with paved multi-use trails. Wonderful area to walk, ride bikes, rollerblade, etc. No playground in this section, but it is adjacent to Sherwood Oaks Park, and if you continue up the trail, Olcott Park.
Griffy Lake Nature Preserve -- Another Bloomington classic. Footpath trails in the woods (not accessible), as well as a new, accessible walkway for fishing and enjoying the lake. If you haven't been to Griffy in a few years, you should check out the new walkway, and the new / improved Griffy Loop Trail. Also, be sure to check out the dam-side trails. This area is scheduled for improvement in the coming years, but still has nice trails and a neat view of the dam. Good area to fly kites, as well.
Highland Village Park -- Smaller playground surrounded by mowed open field, and a paved trail encircling the park. Fun spinny toy with balls in it, younger kid played with for a long time, as well as swinging step stones that were a challenge for bigger kid.
Leonard Springs Nature Park -- Footpath hiking through the woods, as well as a large staircase. There is a waterfall here, and a wetland at the bottom. Nice spot to find frogs, toads, skinks, and other wildlife. Limited parking.
Lower Cascades Park -- Another one recently updated, be sure to check it out if you haven't been lately. The playground is GIANT, with a huge "big kid" area featuring multiple levels of equipment and boardwalks, as well as a "little kid" area adjacent. This is the playground most-requested by my 6 year old. The City has put a lot of work into improving the river bank area, with new limestone steps going down to the river. They have also completed a paved wooden boardwalk leading up to the waterfall, which is super nice and accessible for wheelchairs, strollers, etc. Limestone shelter houses def give the taste of Old Bloomington.
Miller Showers Park -- No playground. You can walk / bike around the paved loop and talk to your kids about traffic and the water features ( "a state-of-the-art stormwater retention facility and beautiful gateway to the city of Bloomington.")
Olcott Park -- Awesome park on the southside. This playground has a nice mix of equipment for babies/little kids and bigger kids. There are long, low boardwalks and small slides suitable for toddlers. There are also taller features which interest bigger kids. Mature trees surround the playground giving a nice amount of shade. There are sports fields here as well, which are frequently in use. The whole park is surrounded by a paved walking trail, much of which goes through woods, and connects to a paved trails that heads to Sherwood Oaks Park / Goat Farm.
Park Ridge Park -- Hidden gem on the eastside! This park is small, but has a unique, super-TALL, 3-story play structure. Excellent if your kids like heights, pretending to be in an eagle's nest, rocket to space, etc! Surrounded by mature trees, the whole park is well-shaded. There is also a picnic area with a shade canopy set up. Directly behind this park, there is a long paved walking trail that borders the train tracks and some apartment buildings. It crosses Pete Ellis (near the post office) and then lets out near 10th and the Bypass. Nice for walking, riding bikes, etc.
Park Ridge East Park -- Basic playground with large fields surrounding, and several tennis courts. Extra large climbing wall. Easy walk to Bruster's Ice Cream.
RCA Community Park -- Big, sprawling park on the west side. Pickleball courts seem to get good use. The playground is great if your kids like "floor is lava" / "ninja warrior" type games, because there are lots of more challenging climbing and jumping type structures. There is a small baby area, but most of the equipment on this playground is better for bigger kids. There are also large open fields, and an big wooded area with trails (some accessible, some not) throughout.
Sherwood Oaks Park -- Basic playground, tennis court and basketball court. The playground is kind of lackluster, but the real draw here is the creek access. There are multiple areas here where you can access Jackson Creek, with large banks of geodes, fossils, and sandstone to play and explore. There is a pedestrian bridge going over the creek, which is really nice, with areas to play on either side. LOTS of wildlife, including fish, crawdads, aquatic sow bugs, turtles, frogs, banded water snakes (non-venomous), fishing spiders, deer, etc etc. If your kid loves water, nature, fossil-hunting, skipping rocks, etc, it's a great spot.
Southeast Park -- Small playground surrounded by tennis courts, and connected to a paved trail. The walking trail is quite nice and leads through a wooded area and under a (non-sketchy) bridge.
Switchyard Park -- Another one you shouldn't miss! This park really has something for everyone. With the playground specifically, there are super-cool, Dr Seuss-inspired hills and tunnels built in, two really nice limestone slides, and the best rope-climbing structure in town. There is also a splash pad active in the summer. Beyond that, there is a skate park, a dog park, pickleball courts, basketball courts, community gardens, amphitheater, wide open spaces for sprawling or picnics, on and on. There is a large pavilion which the City uses for events, as well.
Waldron, Hill and Buskirk Park (3rd Street park) -- This park has recently been renovated, it's on my to-visit list! Short walk to the Chocolate Moose.
Winslow Woods Park -- Hidden gem of a nature park in town. There is a small, but fun playground, bordered by Winslow Woods. The woods have extensive foot trails through them, great for exploring. There are numerous sinkholes and on area that looks like a cave entrance to me, but I didn't go poking around too close. This park is next to the Community Orchard, as well, which is neat to check out.
Jackson Creek Park -- Monroe County Park. The playground is really lackluster, but this is your other option if you want creek access. I will say this park is a lot more isolated compared to the others, and I felt it was too remote to hang out just me and the kids.
Karst Farm Park -- Monroe County Park. Fantastic county park on the far west side. Do not miss! Multiple playgrounds and sports fields. They also have a splash pad, which is far superior to the one at Switchyard---really fun water features, and it is fenced-in. The only thing is that their splash pad has limited days, so be sure to check before you head over. The playground next to the splash pad is amazing for both big and little kids. Multiple boardwalks and levels to play on, music features, new bouncy turf for the ground, shelter houses and shade canopies, absolutely a great park.
Beanblossom Bottoms -- Part of the Sycamore Land Trust. This is a wetlands nature preserve with boardwalks and foot trails leading through it. Super unique nature preserve in southern Indiana, full of wildlife and a natural environment you rarely see around here anymore. Be sure to wear bug spray and look out for snakes.
​
Parks with fenced in playgrounds: Byran Park, Broadview Park
Parks with accessible creeks: Sherwood Oaks Park, Jackson Creek Park, Lower Cascades Park, Bryan Park (mostly overgrown / grassy, not stone banks)
Parks best for kids who love to climb: Switchyard Park, RCA Park, Park Ridge Park
Best accessible walking trails: Goat Farm/Sherwood Oaks/Olcott (all connect), Switchyard (B-line goes throughout), Southeast Park
Best playgrounds with shade: Park Ridge Park, Olcott Park
Best playgrounds for bigger kids: Switchyard Park, RCA Park, Lower Cascades

The media dismisses him as a rogue conspiracy, anti-vaxx, fringe nut job etc. At the same time, individuals in online venues from the left, right and center alike frequently praise him for his tough stance on corruption, his environmental activism work, his research-intensive books and his even-tempered, respectful way of speaking.
After following the man for several years with no partisan bias of my own, I now strongly believe that everyone should hear what he himself has to say, that nearly anyone would find him more agreeable after hearing his positions. In past interviews he has addressed the major criticisms against him and, in my opinion, he has done a nice job of laying them to rest. Also, his arguments don’t require blind faith, emotional involvement or fanatical devotion to believe.
I recommend bypassing traditional media (that includes Google) and go to the source. He is banned from instagram as well now apparently. You’ll be doing yourself a favor, those platforms suck anyway.
A brief list of resources for learning about the Kennedy '24 campaign:
The Official Kennedy ‘24 Website
Official Twitter u/RobertKennedyJr
A comprehensive hub of RFK podcasts and media appearances
All In Podcast (an excellent interview)
RFKJrForPresident subreddit
RFK Jr views on Vaccines
Are vaccines a dealbreaker issue for you? I beg you to read some of the following quotes from RFK himself (then head over to some of those links above if you want to know more):
"I am for vaccines. I have been tracking mercury in fish for 30 years and nobody has called me antifish. [...]But we are also seeing an explosion in neurodevelopmental disorders and we ought to be able to do a cost-benefit analysis and see what's causing them. We ought to have robust, transparent science and an independent regulatory agency. Nobody is trying to get rid of vaccines here. I just want safe vaccines."
Exclusive Q&A: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Trump's proposed vaccine commission
“People who advocate for safer vaccines should not be marginalized or denounced as anti-vaccine. I am pro-vaccine. I had all six of my children vaccinated. I believe that vaccines have saved the lives of hundreds of millions of humans over the past century and that broad vaccine coverage is critical to public health. But I want our vaccines to be as safe as possible.”
– Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury—a Known Neurotoxin—from Vaccines.
Worried your vote will be wasted on an underdog contender?
There might be more hope than you think. Here’s a great read on the matter: Why I believe RFK Jr. will be the 2024 Democratic nominee (The Hill)
Why I personally like RFK Jr. for president:

• He’s well equipped to handle the corruption of private enterprises inside state agencies
• He brings Americans together instead of driving them further apart
• He has noteworthy support from all sides of the aisle
• He actually has a fighting chance to win in 2024, believe it or not
• He is humble, transparent and respectful
• He’s only been in politics since early 2023
  
• Can you (sincerely) name a better candidate?
  

A Longer version (but still short)
I started following RFK Jr at the beginning of the pandemic because I wanted an alternative perspective than what the pharma-owned media was saying. Usually when they smear someone’s reputation, it means somebody very rich and powerful is threatened by what that person might say. It usually makes me wonder why, although I had no bias at the time. I just wanted to hear both sides. After reading his book The Real Anthony Fauci, I realized this is a man who doesn't go off half-cocked with his ideas. When he makes his views public, you can be reasonably certain he has read every ounce of literature available on the matter.
Kennedy has a solid grasp on a wide range of issues, however many of the big corporations in news, media and tech are deliberately misrepresenting and oftentimes censoring him altogether. This is because his work over the past few decades has proven him to be a worthy defender for the interests of the many over the interests of the few. In other words, he fights for us, the people, and that’s proven fact. This is what the corporate elite don’t want you to know and what big news outlets are being paid/coerced to cover up. As an environmental lawyer, Kennedy has opposed big industry players in court on many occasions and won; and this has earned him a reputation as a threat to their profits and dominance.
His two most foundational priorities are:
1) Remake Public Institutions to Serve the Public
Kennedy proposes to tackle the rampant corruption known as "corporate capture" inside our federal agencies and regulators. That basically means rooting out corruption and special interests that currently dictate policy.
One Prime example is how he talks about banning pharmaceutical ads which account for 75% of all revenue for televised news outlets.
2) Heal the Divide
Kennedy wants to unite Americans on values we hold in common instead of generating controversy, fear and anger to boost viewership numbers and fracture us along every cultural line.
You can tell he means what he says on this when you watch him speak in interviews. He does not stoop to the shameless tactics of other candidates and campaigns. He speaks critically, clearly pointing out errors and flaws without getting emotional and divisive. Also, he gives credit to his opponents when credit is due, something unheard of in American politics.
Examples of left-wing, right-wing and indpendent sources on giving RFK Jr. a chance:
Counterpunch: Should the Left give RFK Jr a Chance? A smart, detailed, and poignant appeal to the left to see RFK, Jr. as the person we need for this post-Covid moment.
The American Conservative: The Courage of RFK Jr Describes how many of RFK, Jr.’s campaign priorities have cross-appeal to conservative values.
The Berkshire Eagle: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the candidate to heal the great divide This opinion piece argues the issues that matter to RFK, Jr. are not liberal or conservative, but “self-evident conclusions of a patriot.
Conclusion:
If you’ve had enough secrecy, surveillance and censorship, I encourage you to look into the Kennedy ‘24 campaign and hear how he proposes to remake public institutions to serve the public and bring transparency to government.
If you want more unity and less bi-partisan stalemate, I encourage you to look at the Kennedy campaign. His focus is on the values Americans hold in common, respectful dialog and reconciliation across races, parties, and divisions. Listen to any of his podcasts or speeches and see for yourself how RFK rises above the “us versus them” rhetoric that other politicians exploit for attention. He has notable appeal throughout the left, right and center voters, something unprecedented and vitally important amid the polarized climate that’s crippling our efforts for progress.
If Kennedy is elected it would demonstrate that democracy isn’t dead. It would demonstrate that people are losing faith in the media and waking up to the institutional propaganda and censorship that permeates our public discourse. It would prove that money cannot buy American values. It would prove that the parties are capable of coming together when it matters, that we don’t have to be divided on every single issue.
Thank you if you made it this far!
#Kennedy24

The media dismisses him as a rogue conspiracy, anti-vaxx, fringe nut job etc. At the same time, individuals in online venues from the left, right and center alike frequently praise him for his tough stance on corruption, his environmental activism work, his research-intensive books and his even-tempered, respectful way of speaking.
After following the man for several years with no partisan bias of my own, I now strongly believe that everyone should hear what he himself has to say, that nearly anyone would find him more agreeable after hearing his positions. In past interviews he has addressed the major criticisms against him and, in my opinion, he has done a nice job of laying them to rest. Also, his arguments don’t require blind faith, emotional involvement or fanatical devotion to believe.
I recommend bypassing traditional media (that includes Google) and go to the source. He is banned from instagram as well now apparently. You’ll be doing yourself a favor, those platforms suck anyway.
A brief list of resources for learning about the Kennedy '24 campaign:
The Official Kennedy ‘24 Website
Official Twitter @RobertKennedyJr
A comprehensive hub of RFK podcasts and media appearances
All In Podcast (an excellent interview)
RFKJrForPresident subreddit

RFK Jr views on Vaccines

Are vaccines a dealbreaker issue for you? I beg you to read some of the following quotes from RFK himself (then head over to some of those links above if you want to know more):
​

"I am for vaccines. I have been tracking mercury in fish for 30 years and nobody has called me antifish. [...]But we are also seeing an explosion in neurodevelopmental disorders and we ought to be able to do a cost-benefit analysis and see what's causing them. We ought to have robust, transparent science and an independent regulatory agency. Nobody is trying to get rid of vaccines here. I just want safe vaccines."
Exclusive Q&A: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Trump's proposed vaccine commission

​

“People who advocate for safer vaccines should not be marginalized or denounced as anti-vaccine. I am pro-vaccine. I had all six of my children vaccinated. I believe that vaccines have saved the lives of hundreds of millions of humans over the past century and that broad vaccine coverage is critical to public health. But I want our vaccines to be as safe as possible.”
– Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury—a Known Neurotoxin—from Vaccines.

​
Worried your vote will be wasted on an underdog contender?
There might be more hope than you think. Here’s a great read on the matter: Why I believe RFK Jr. will be the 2024 Democratic nominee

Why I personally like RFK Jr. for president:

Quick list:

1. he’s well equipped to handle the corruption of private enterprises inside state agencies
2. He brings Americans together instead of driving them further apart
3. He has noteworthy support from all sides of the aisle
4. He actually has a fighting chance to win in 2024, believe it or not
5. He is humble, transparent and respectful
6. He’s only been in politics since early 2023
7. Can you (sincerely) name a better candidate?

A Longer version (but still short)

I started following RFK Jr at the beginning of the pandemic because I wanted an alternative perspective than what the pharma-owned media was saying. Usually when they smear someone’s reputation, it means somebody very rich and powerful is threatened by what that person might say. It usually makes me wonder why, although I had no bias at the time. I just wanted to hear both sides. After reading his book The Real Anthony Fauci, I realized this is a man who doesn't go off half-cocked with his ideas. When he makes his views public, you can be reasonably certain he has read every ounce of literature available on the matter.
Kennedy has a solid grasp on a wide range of issues, however many of the big corporations in news, media and tech are deliberately misrepresenting and oftentimes censoring him altogether. This is because his work over the past few decades has proven him to be a worthy defender for the interests of the many over the interests of the few. In other words, he fights for us, the people, and that’s proven fact. This is what the corporate elite don’t want you to know and what big news outlets are being paid/coerced to cover up. As an environmental lawyer, Kennedy has opposed big industry players in court on many occasions and won; and this has earned him a reputation as a threat to their profits and dominance.
​
His two most foundational priorities are:

1) Remake Public Institutions to Serve the Public

Kennedy proposes to tackle the rampant corruption known as "corporate capture" inside our federal agencies and regulators. That basically means rooting out corruption and special interests that currently dictate policy.
One Prime example is how he talks about banning pharmaceutical ads which account for 75% of all revenue for televised news outlets.
​

2) Heal the Divide

Kennedy wants to unite Americans on values we hold in common instead of generating controversy, fear and anger to boost viewership numbers and fracture us along every cultural line.
You can tell he means what he says on this when you watch him speak in interviews. He does not stoop to the shameless tactics of other candidates and campaigns. He speaks critically, clearly pointing out errors and flaws without getting emotional and divisive. Also, he gives credit to his opponents when credit is due, something unheard of in American politics.
Examples of left-wing, right-wing and indpendent sources on giving RFK Jr. a chance:
Counterpunch: Should the Left give RFK Jr a Chance? A smart, detailed, and poignant appeal to the left to see RFK, Jr. as the person we need for this post-Covid moment.
The American Conservative: The Courage of RFK Jr Describes how many of RFK, Jr.’s campaign priorities have cross-appeal to conservative values.
The Berkshire Eagle: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the candidate to heal the great divide This opinion piece argues the issues that matter to RFK, Jr. are not liberal or conservative, but “self-evident conclusions of a patriot.

Conclusion:

If you’ve had enough secrecy, surveillance and censorship, I encourage you to look into the Kennedy ‘24 campaign and hear how he proposes to remake public institutions to serve the public and bring transparency to government.
If you want more unity and less bi-partisan stalemate, I encourage you to look at the Kennedy campaign. His focus is on the values Americans hold in common, respectful dialog and reconciliation across races, parties, and divisions. Listen to any of his podcasts or speeches and see for yourself how RFK rises above the “us versus them” rhetoric that other politicians exploit for attention. He has notable appeal throughout the left, right and center voters, something unprecedented and vitally important amid the polarized climate that’s crippling our efforts for progress.
If Kennedy is elected it would demonstrate that democracy isn’t dead. It would demonstrate that people are losing faith in the media and waking up to the institutional propaganda and censorship that permeates our public discourse. It would prove that money cannot buy American values. It would prove that the parties are capable of coming together when it matters, that we don’t have to be divided on every single issue.
Thank you if you made it this far!
#Kennedy24

Jesus ran like a scalded dog to Barsun’s apartment. This was a matter of urgency because the most precious commodity in the universe had been pilfered. Someone had stolen a SOUL from the Guf (in other words they had a real shitshow on their hands.) This was no mere Brink’s hold up. It was beyond imagining. It was unprecedented and it was a complete and utter surprise. The fact that he passed Shiva, Ghandhi (just an advisor) and Buddha (same) demonstrated to him that the wheels have fallen off the cart. Thor called him down and told him that he had not one soul to have escaped Valhalla. Jesus couldn’t outrun the news it seemed, and he was divinely hauling ass. I guess news travelled faster than his divine feet in a set of Crocs could carry him. When asked he would later admit that they were not in fact good running shoes.
There was a soul missing from the Guf. The warehouse of all souls. This same missing soul was now occupying one electronic being. They had no plans for this. In fact, Jesus was totally against artificial sentients with souls. Every God he knew felt the same way and, since he knew them all he also was aware they had not released a soul. This is not supposed to happen and had never happened. Everyone was terrified of one thing that he would not speak aloud and would not contemplate. That fact was badgering him every step. Someone had fucked up big time or someone is tampering with the whole shebang.
There was potentially someone more powerful than them. They weren’t almighty. Fuck. He needed a stiff drink and a blunt. Desperately. Barsun may have had 8 legs and 8 eyes and the basic appearance of a Trilobite, but he had the easiest of ways about him. When Barsun walked into a room everyone calmed down. The Ytrillians assumed it was Barsun entering the room. Later on modern Ytrillians had attributed this common occurrence to pheromones. Thing is this: it was indeed Barsun entering the room. Pheromones had dick to do with it. He was Jesus’ best friend and the first he turned to outside the Father. Jesus had even discussed things with Quetzalcoatl, and he could not figure exactly how this could of happened either. None of his souls were missing. Jesus already knew this, but the formality had to be observed.
Jesus walked to the door and kept trucking as Barsun opened it at just the right moment. Something was different in the flat and he knew instantly. He was jealous enough that it broke his train of thought. “Where did you get all of the blacklight posters and beads? There was a poster of the 23rd psalm. He walked up to it and read Yea thou I walk through the shadow of death…..pretty much standard except at the end ….For I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley. He began to laugh raucously. “I must have one of those. Now.” Barsun moved to take it down and roll it up for Jesus to take with him. That is how close they were. “I can’t take it but I will get one with no problem. Where did you get it?”
Barsun replied “eBay.”
Jesus was stunned truly and looked at the God and said “You are cheating on Goodwill. You are committing retail adultery. I cannot believe you did that.” Barsun replied “Well you use Amazon.”
He had him there. It just seemed inconsistent with everything else in the flat having come from Goodwill. It just wasn’t right.
Barsun indicated a Bean bag chair for Jesus. He reclined in the same. Given his body type it was amazing how some furniture made for humans was so useful to him. There was going to be a brisk trade springing up in the next two years. Things were about to get interesting for a few sentient races and He was excited for them.
Barsun inhaled through his eight spiracles and stated. “I know about the Guf. And no, it is not an accounting error. I know. This simply cannot be. No one else had access and Gods were diligent and cautious with the souls under their care. However impossible it is clear: It is a fact.
They weren’t at the top of the food chain. Or were they? There were….implications here……
Jesus asked out loud the question. “If we aren’t the ones in overall control then who are we?” Barsun knew the question was coming and he had thought it through. “We are the exact same beings we have always been. Able to do tremendous amounts of good for the most part. We have not changed. I do think it curious that none of us saw this coming as well.” He paused before he continued; thinking how disturbing and exciting this news was. For once they had a surprise and the thought thrilled him that something just upset his view. And for the first time ever he had felt fear. It was exhilarating. It was the best thing to happen ever. He continued “ Someone tweaked the system. However, I am not afraid because of one thing. I sense no wrongness around the event. Nothing unusual has gone down and no one has died, the universe is whole. If it hasn’t caused any problems, then what are we concerned about? Only thing I can come up with is Ego.”
Jesus knew he was right. He did not want to think about it, but he had the exact same experience. He looked at Barsun and knew he too had felt the same emotions. They were both thrilled.
Onboard the HRMS Saratov in Luna Orbit.
Yuri was sitting at his station in the number one chair. People had been calling him number one behind his back. It was a very very very old joke that apparently had more staying power than a tattoo. It just never went away on it’s on. He was running the optimal plot outbound from Sol. They were moving Sub Light at 0.2C enroute to designated warp space. The scientist did not like it when warp drives threw off their Cesium clocks. There is a reason they were protected. They were everywhere and were critical to accurate computing. Not being a programmer himself, he had no real grasp of why. He just followed regs and the Terran Space Treaty of 2225. There were places to depart and places to return. Both had to be strictly adhered to as vessels coming out of warp would have massive radiation bow waves that had to be dissipated in a safe direction. It only took one event where 23,000 Luna colonists died as a result of poor judgement for the players to get a treaty together. Meanwhile the killer of so many had paid the price for his arrogance. His first officer had warned him that it was going to happen. Out of just pure Ego thousands of lives were lost. They could have prevented it. They were required to study such disasters in training but one story stuck in his head and he never forgot it. He could remember the major players involved and he had written a paper on it in His academy days. He remembered the details of the Tenerife disaster very well . Over 500 people killed by hubris and not a little incompetence.
He had started down this line of thought after he had looked at the final roster of nations in the flotilla. This was not unusual as Earth’s forces were fully integrated with common technology and ships. All drive hardware and power systems were identical to their counterparts. They worked as a whole to such a degree that there was really only one fleet. The Terran fleet. They all liked the sound of it. Political boundaries on Earth hadn’t moved for slightly more than two centuries. Not one inch. Turns out that nearly free energy was a great equalizer and the key to a post scarcity civilization. Who would think it?
It all came down to teamwork. There were Corvettes from Cuba The CSS Havana and the CSS Holguin. The pride of the human fleet the IRNS Vikrant was going as well. The admiral felt honored. The George Washington from the New England Confederacy and the SSS Atlanta from the Southern Democratic Republic were also on hand. One thing Yuri did not understand; why would The Northeastern Confederacy and The Southern Democratic Republic not unify. Their fleets were fully integrated and there was an open Border along Virginia that was un defended. Passports worked in both countries and there were no restrictions on residence. It worked for them. They weren’t fighting. The Middle Asiatic Republic sent the Karachi and the Kabul. Both were light carriers carrying a mix of MiG-29Z and F-15 Mk 82 Eagle fighter aircraft. They had little to do with their namesakes except for the identical aerodynamics. Primarily trans atmospheric fighters they were capable of brief spaceflight. The other significant difference besides the addition of reaction thrusters was the material they were made of. They consisted of a Ceramic Graphene matrix that could withstand the temperatures of reentry. The whole concept of stealth had gone away with the advent of gravimetry. So; Why reinvent the wheel? Pick something optimized for aerodynamics without regard to stealth features. Today fights were won by the best missileer and gunfighter. You could not hide. So best be the most optimal aircraft. Besides: Stealth was slow. Top speeds of aircraft dropped during the brief stealth era. Averages were back over Mach 2 now since speed was life for a fighter pilot.
Why pick the MiG29 and the F-15? They were the pinnacle of aerodynamic performance. There has been little to no new knowledge about aerodynamics to come out since those times. They were manufactured via vapor deposition 3D printing. A molecular composite they were strong and had reduced radar cross sections. Armed with a mix of missile and cannon they delivered quite a bit of firepower and were more than a match for any invading spaceborne forces. These fighters would destroy drop ships by the hundreds. Some even wanted to bring back the MiG-21. It would make a lot of sense.
Humans have the Ruslan (his personal favorite) trans atmospheric transport or the C-301 Starlifter. Both aircraft had mixed mode propulsion with highly refined cero-ferrous gas turbines. They were capable of both open or closed cycle operation. Smaller countries often used refurbished secondhand equipment from other countries for a small fee. This made certain there were adequate forces to bear and that all participated. It was in everyone’s best interest. No one wanted some weakling holding their flank.
Both the Ruslan and Starlifter transports were good at different things as the Ruslan carried large payloads but was inefficient in transport atmospherically whereas the Starlifter was great at theater transport but had a smaller payload. This is why it was a mix of these two aircraft. They were complementary. Many think there is a great rivalry going on between the two countries, but both had each other’s technology as well. It was convoluted but both countries ultimately had the same master. They work together. It may be anticompetitive, but it also was efficient. Yuri continued to think along this veia until he heard the Ship’s AI speakeing to the Admiral. “Something terrible has happened.” What do you mean Jezz?” Jezz replied to him “I do not know but I can feel tragedy. I am sick with it what has happened. The Admiral told her to “Get on the web and see what is going on?” “I am Sir and I can find nothing.” The Admiral looked to Yuri and gave him the Conn. Something was about to go to shit and Yuri knew it. He could sense it to. Fortunately the Bridge was deserted and no one else heard the exchange. The crew were running battle simulations from the CIC. Thank God for small favors.
45 minutes later a graviton packet arrived with news that was indeed terrible. He was the only one to know it too. The Galileo had been lost with all hands. They had just recovered the emergency buoy that had warped in. They had been attacked and the Admiral knew who had done it. Or at least thought he did. An AI had killed 50 innocent unarmed souls (that were spying I know) that could not fight back. They had raked them with Maser Fire. He pinched the shit out of himself. In fact, he left a bruise but all it did was confirm what he already knew: shit was about to get real up in here.
First thing was to compose himself as he had to determine who if any crew had family on the ship. This included some 8,000 people of all ratings from anywhere in the squadron. He had one very difficult personal notification he would have to make. Captain Pearls brother Nico was on the Galileo.
This was all so tragic but there was one thing that kept forcing its way to the forefront of his mind and he could not ignore it. How did she know? How did Jezz feel this precognitively? This actually did scare him and if he thought too much about it he would start to feel very queasy. This was outside his skill set. He did not know if this was technological, spiritual or philosophical but he could say this: none of those disciplines actually fit the situation.
It was all a bit much. He had to go to the Atlanta. He spoke to the bridge. “Full stop fleet and await further instructions.” “Aye Aye Sir.” Up in here.
Aboard the SSS Atlanta. A tall dignified black man wearing his dress blues and a gold ring on his left hand that you could hardly read. He had worn it a century. His was the same uniform he had 20 years ago. He could still wear it and he was proud of that fact. His only regret was the fact he had yet to have a family until 10 years ago when he had adopted his son Chris. They were inseparable but Chris was 5 thousand light years away give or take and that made him anxious. And now he had to let someone he held dear that her family was changed forever. He smelled of Hoyt’s cologne and peppermint. He went to her quarters. The lighting was somber and it was dead silent in there. Couch was empty but there she was in a sway back chair it had lots of gold leak and was nicely carved. He had found her crying. She already knew and he was going to shitcan someone when this was over. Then he realized what had happened. How had she known? She had sensed him and she had known it was bad.
He still had to tell her.
By the time he was back on the Capatob he was spent. It was all he could do to restrain her. She was enraged and was out for blood. He had never sensed such fury. Someone had fucked around and now they were going to find out. He had talked with her an hour and she seem to be calmer, but he was going to have to watch her. He knew how she was. There were stories that were all no doubt true. She was a legend and would go down as one of the greatest hermaphrodite to ever live. They were going places and the shit was on. And now there was an unfortunate motivation. That was a dangerous combination right there. Make it personal and logic can go out the window. Make it personal and there will be no civility in victory. She was just the kind of human that was the perfect storm squared. The puddle of gasoline and someone flipped a match. It was a very volatile mix.
He was a bit of a cynic and a practical man. If she wanted to go there he would let her. She would either be a hero or a Martyr. He was perfectly OK with that. Being a practical man it also served his other purpose. She would eclipse him in the history books. At least he hoped so. He did not want his hands on this. The first contact situation with the twist of a western and an incalculable amount of science fiction had indelibly marked the mind of every member of the Greater Terran Fleet. They had read all of the possible scenarios from every Sci Fi author. If you pressed them they would finally admit it. The fleet really liked Heinlein. They had been trying to get at least a Heinlein corvette on the roster for years. They had thus far been unsuccessful. They needed a champion for the cause and they were trying to get One Fleet Admiral to order it to be. The Admiral took some joy in tormenting them. He was going to help them out but he was milking it for a favor. That was going to come in handy. “You can have your Heinlein but I am going to need this in return”. He was just being practical. All good commanders were excellent manipulators after all.
It is plain as day and the idea of a Heinlein proves my point but there was an even bigger more academic question that eclipsed all others. Who was right? Who came closest? No one would talk about it but they were all thinking the same thing.
The Admiral broke a taboo and called it out. He felt it was time. They needed a little friendly wager and a reason to get through the battle. They were going to have a pool where everyone had to pick the author. They buy in was just 5 UCreds. If you don’t live through the battle you cannot win. So: don’t die. Who came closest to the real thing? Which author or story came close to what was about to happen.Once a story was picked it was dead to all others. There was potentially some reward in alacrity. He knew it was a bit of a sucker’s bet since someone had to judge wo was closest and this would be highly subjective and entirely his decision. (Author’s note: I am a veteran of the US Army with several deployments around this dirt ball. I can say the military is the most Fascist organization around today. It has to be. Paradoxically it is the most “fair” in that everyone gets treated the same: like shit.) At least it would be a distraction and would give them something else to focus on. He had a very bad feeling about this. They were going to go in and kick the doors in on an alien civilization. They were going to war. No one would admit it, but everyone knew it. This was not to be discussed. That was an order. This is an exploratory rescue mission answering a distress call.
Vegan Fleet Academy Alpha Centauri B. 6, June 62425 Gregorian.
Planetary Admiral Kenneth Alexander looked out on a sight he never thought he would see. Lots of young people sitting politely in their chairs listening to what he had to say. He wrote the fucking book. There it was on the lectern right in front of him. He had written a book on astral navigation to make a little extra cash and because there was an over reliance still on electronic means to navigate. Sailors needed to be able to navigate in any situation with a sextant, a star map database and gravimaetric readings without the need of an AI or targeting computer (Insert Star wars joke here). The book could have been half as thick in his opinion but the publisher insisted he needed a little more explanation. The Admiral gave students too much credit. He truly felt it should be taught in grade school. He was called a fanatic when he suggested that kids on track for Ensigns should have had basic instruction. His argument being that Ensigns started service in the year in which they turned sixteen. That meant there were some 15 year-olds in the mix. Start teaching them early. They should show up to basic already familiar with side arms and rifles. He was a fanatic.
As far as that damned accursed book goes the fact he had 500 copies actually printed and bound meant there were few of them around, but sitting right about center in of the second row sat a copy of his book. He felt like the guy who saw the first unicorn. He never saw one in the wild before and this book was well worn. It was 50 years old after all but printed on plastic synthetic paper and woven fiberglass for silicone bindings held together with silicone adhesives meant that the damn things were waterproof and actually quite practical. The book required no batteries and even had a quick and dirty position fix protocol in a special section. This particular specimen wasn’t falling apart, this one was just worn out.
The way he carried the book was clear. He was oblivious of the significance. He had found it in a used bookshop for free. They were using it as a doorstop, and they just gave it to him. He had become engrossed by it and at 13 years of age he was finishing his PhD. The admiral sensed this in a psychic flash and pulled back he had poor control still. He was never going to get used to the change “OK everyone come on let’s get back to it the party is over. We have to finish this section and then we will get out of here. There is no class tomorrow so we will have the Parade of the Caisson tomorrow with Captain James Cook on interspecies governmental relations…. Someone was tapping on his shoulder getting his attention. She could have all of it. She whispered way too close for someone who did not prefer women but about perfect for him. He was in the latter camp. “We need you to speak tomorrow sir Captain Cook had a equipment malfunction over Hawaii and is delayed Sir. Pleeeease Sir?” With just enough breathiness that it made him jittery. He was an old perv. He was just that way. The lady in question was 100 years old however but, maybe it was still cradle robbing? He just had a thing for Afro’s in the natural state. It was distracting.
“Godddamnitalltohellwhatinthefuckdoyouwant?” This was a perfectly reasonable thing to say. He had just been asked to do the one thing he vowed to never do again. They wanted him to speak and air his opinions? This is the most dangerous thing you can do in society. He had no politics per se’ beyond one or two things. He was a professional and he would do his job as long as the checks kept coming. He was not a politician and he did not like politicians, of any stripe. What he had learned was ironclad. Never be honest or always be truthful. Pick one or the other was his personal philosophy. He always chose honesty when he needed to hide a truth. No one believed the truth. No one believed the truth because they were put off by it. He always thought back to when he was 12 or so when he got ribbed and harassed about masturbation. His uncle Gerry was kind of a cruel fuck and liked to torment him. He Gerry asked him if he was J.O’ing a dozen times a day or something. He had replied “That is about right.” This had brought down the room and gotten great laughs and Gerry quit running his mouth at him. Fuck you Gerry. You little bitch. In his opinion the media obfuscated everything not by making up lies but by omitting certain facts to fit their agenda. No one took major media seriously. The only objective newspaper he was aware of was the National Enquirer. Yeah I know it sounds stupid but it is true. Reality was anything but and people had come to be comfortable being lied to and even preferring it. All of this is roiling in his head and he has been put on the spot to boot. Add to that the fact that at least some of the outburst was audible. No one seems to have heard it, however. This settles the age-old question. It was only said if it was heard. No one heard the statement therefore…….. The mental gymnastics weren’t that bad. He could deny it. It happens. But he still had to give an answer .“What is in it for me?” Jannel the beautiful woman replied “absolutely nothing sir. This will not benefit you in any way and may once again be picked apart. As such I would advise against doing it. Still I am asking you. My ass is in a vise and the DEAN is having a temper tantrum so I feel like I am being spitroasted by the devil and a lamp post in a not so good way, but I would consider it a great personal favor if you will do this despite your misgivings and likelihood of misadventure.” So fast and so well enunciated.
“Sure. I will do it. Goddammit.” Honesty must be rewarded.

“Rookie Blue” S1E1 - “Fresh Paint”
Written Work
u/WinnieHiller
Objective: Quickly detain the officer so that I can flee the scene.
Who Am I?
My name is Lucas. I am 17 years old and I’ve been the one to take care of my sister since my parents never cared to. They have too many problems on their own with hard drugs and always left us to find our own ways to make money or get food. My father is very violent, caustic on alcohol so we rarely stay at home. I never grew up with any role models so I’ve never really learned how to move up in the world. All I know is to protect my sister from the dangers of drugs and violence in this neighborhood. She needs me and I need her. I hope to save enough money to take us somewhere better. I was tipped off by a friend that my sister overdosed and I ran immediately to the address of some drug dealer. My sister was laying lifeless on the floor. I felt a sudden cold rush down my spine. Complete shock and disbelief. I asked for answers on what happened. The f*cking guy just laughed it off, said it was her f*cking fault. The devil was taunting me right to my face. I shot him dead. Ran off from the scene before his friends could get me. I hid the gun in an abandoned building, somewhere only I would know. I realized on my way back home that if they find the gun, they’ll track it back to me. So I’m headed back to retrieve the gun.
Who Am I Talking To?
I am talking to a police officer that just showed up. He’s definitely here to arrest me and put me in bars for life.
Where Am I?
I’m in an abandoned apartment building on the second floor. Located in a run-down, high crime area of North York, Toronto.
What Do I Want From The Person I’m Talking To?
I want him to stand down and cuff himself quickly so I can flee the scene with the gun(direct evidence).
What’s At Stake?
Being imprisoned for life for one action I regrettably made.
Key:
> O = The police officer
> Me = Lucas
> IL = Imaginary Line from Officer Andy
> T = Tactic
> - = Interrupting
Pre-Conversation:
The whole block is swarming with blaring patrol cars. Oh my god! I hear someone in the room across from me! An officer is standing between me and the exit door. Sh*t couldn’t be any worse right now. I have to seize him before I can escape. I really fucking hope he doesn’t try anything. I don’t want to harm anyone else at this point. I’ve already killed a man.
Dialogue:
Officer: Ow… god!
[Examines the cut.]
Officer:Oh…Ugh…Crap.
[Takes off the sterile gloves. Continues to examine the cut and tries to shake off the pain.]
[With his back facing me, I approach him with a gun after I hear the wincing from the next room over.]
[T: Stop him from trying anything. ]
Me: Don’t move!
[Shakily pointing a 9mm at him. Finger on the trigger.]
Officer: Hi. -
[T: Threaten him that I WILL shoot him if he moves at all.]
Me: -I said don’t move!
Officer: I know.
[T: Demand that he put his hands in the air. I’m not risking the chance of him quick-drawing on me.]
Me: Now put your hands in the air.
[The officer raises his hands up.]
O: Alright.
[T: Get him to drop on his knees so I can cuff him.]
Me: Get down on the ground!
O: Alright.
[T: Show appreciation for his cooperation so far. I really don’t want to shoot the guy. I’m relieved he didn’t resist.]
Me: Good.
[Police sirens blaring in the background. I look out the windows frantically . Taking in that they may be after me.]
O: Wow, you’d really make a good cop.
[T: Force him to detain/cuff himself. I’m not going to risk him trying anything.]
Me: Now reach down and take out the cuffs.
[The officer reaches for the cuffs slowly.]
[T: Press him to go faster. I don’t have time to wait here any longer.]
Me: C’mon, take them out!
IL: It’s not easy to cuff myself.
[T: Scare him into being faster with the cuffs. Do you want me to shoot you!? Hurry the f*ck up!]
Me: Take them out and put them on!
IL: I’m trying!
[T: Re-inforce threatening to shoot him if he doesn’t hustle./ I’m not waiting any longer. Get them on!]
Me: Cuff yourself! C’mon!
[The officer cuffs himself.]
O: Why don’t you just tell me what your name is? Okay? Whatchu doing with that gun?
[T: Implicate that I had just stumbled upon the gun. I have no previous association with it besides discovery.]
Me: I found it.
IL: Where did you find it exactly?
[T: Point out where I found it. Inside the desk drawer in the other room. Is that good enough of an answer for you officer? That’s all I know.]
Me: It was here, Okay?
O: Yeah, I know. I came here to look for it.
[Remind him that I’m deadly f*cking serious about him not trying anything or I’ll shoot. Do you not listen!? Are you stupid? Do you want to die?]
Me: I said don’t move!
O: Okay! Sorry it’s a habit! Alright?... Listen, um.. [Reaches for the lockpick to uncuff himself] Tell me why you uh, you shot the guy in the other room. Huh…
[T: Ask for clarification about what he’s talking about.]
Me: What?
IL: What’s the matter?
[T: Clarify if he was at the scene where I shot the drug dealer.]
Me: What, you were in there?
IL: Me and some others.
[Interrogate him to see whether or not he saw my little sister there at the scene. If he knows what they did with her after I ran.]
Me: You and who else?
O: Uh, uh there was my training officer and a prostitute. Um…[Still picking the lock] There was a girl on the floor. She was overdosing.
[I am frantically looking out for any cop to burst through the door at any moment. Any friend of the victim I killed, looking for vengeance. Paying no attention to his hands being uncuffed.] Uh.. couple of… people-
[ Shake him into telling me more details about my sister. I need to know if she’s really dead.]
Me: And what happened to her?
IL: The girl?
[T: Make him understand that I really need to know. ]
Me: What happened to the girl on the floor?
O: She’s okay. She’s okay. She’s um… breathing. She didn’t die. She’s at the hospital right now.
[I attempt to head out, flee the scene. Before the cops come to catch me. I need to see my sister in the hospital. ]
O: Hey, I wouldn’t even think about running okay? There’s a lot of cops out there. Okay? So why don’t you just tell me what happened, okay?
[I shake my head, denying to confess the true situation. ]
O: You can’t be, can’t be 18. So, everything’s gonna be fine. You’re gonna be okay. I can help you. Alright?
[The officer starts to stand up.]
[T: Order him to stand down .Do I look like I’m playing around here?]
Me: Hey, I told you to stay down alright!?
O: Alright, alright.
[The officer whips out her firearm and points it at me. I seize up. I can’t shoot the guy.]
O: Don’t move! Alright, please don’t move. Any sudden movements and I gotta pull the trigger. That's procedure. Actually technically, I should’ve done it already. C’mon , just please, put the gun down. Okay? Slowly, put the gun down. C’mon man! Okay, please don’t make me shoot you. This is my first day. I’m begging you please. C’mon, c’mon. C’mon, I can help you. Okay? Just put it down.
[I start to lower the gun and give up on fleeing the scene.]
[T: Reveal how young my sister was. That it’s criminal that the drug dealer would even give her such a dangerous dose.]
Me: She’s 15.
O: Who?
[T: Clarify who I am referring to. ]
Me: My sister.
O: Your sister is involved?
[T: Specify that she was the young girl laying on the floor.]
Me: The-The girl inside.
[The officer cautiously moves forward towards my gun.]
O: Tell me what happened when you were there.
[T: Explain how I honestly believed she was gone. Lifeless, just laying there , stone cold. Not only was she just sprawled across the floor, but there was no sign of life, no heartbeat.]
Me: She was just laying there. And she wasn’t moving. [ I hand her the gun in defeat.]
[The officer takes the gun from me and distances himself. Still holding his gun towards me.]
O: Okay, okay.
[T: Justify that all these emotions we’re rushing at me, hitting me like a bullet train.]
Me: It all happened so fast.
O: What antagonized you to shoot?
[T: Blame the drug dealer for killing my little sister. He had the nerve to laugh and blame my innocent , 15 yr old sister for her dying.]
Me: That guy-the g- the guy-
O: What guy? What guy? The drug dealer?
[T: Point the fact that I wouldn’t have shot the guy if I knew she was still alive.]
Me: I thought she was dead.
O: Then what happened?
[T: Explain that I wanted some sort of understanding of what happened to her. And they weren’t giving any answers.]
Me: We kept asking, “What happened? Tell me what she took.” And he just laughed.
O: Why did he laugh?
[T: Show that this murderer had no heart and was practically spitting in my face.]
Me: Like it was funny.
O: Did he explain what happened to her?
[T: Explain that the man had the nerve to blame my 15 year old sister for her actions. A grown man can’t even take responsibility for his actions. No care in the world.]
Me: He said. He said that it was her fault.
O: What else did he say?
[T: Convince her that the man was cruel. Had no care to help her out. Just left her to die. ]
Me: He said he was leaving her there. Leaving her there on the floor like a piece of garbage!
O: I know. And you stopped him from leaving right? And then you came in here and hid the gun. And you just came back for the gun. Right?
[T: Make her understand that in conclusion, I would have never done this if I knew my sister wasn’t dead. ]
[I murmur and wimper under my breath to him.]
Me: I just didn’t mean to do it.
O: C’mon, I’m sorry man. It’s okay. [Approaches me with cuffs]Sorry I gotta do this though. Alright? It’s okay. [Cuffs me.]
O: Okay…Whew, okay. Okay. Let’s go , okay?

Company Name	Title	City
HelioHire	Senior Data Scientist	Chicago
Solomon Page	Administrative Assistant	Chicago
Reed Smith LLP	Docketing Specialist - (Hybrid Schedule)	Chicago
The Computer Merchant, LTD.	HR Coordinator	Chicago
ABF Freight	Road Driver, Full-time	Chicago Heights
ABF Freight	Road Driver, Full-time	Chicago Ridge
Collabera	Financial Support	North Chicago
Weber Shandwick	Senior Manager, Resource Management	Chicago
The Kraft Heinz Company	Scrum Master	Chicago
Elevance Health	Business Strategy Planning Director	Chicago
Chowbus	Warehouse Operations Associate_Mandarin Speaking Required	Chicago
American Eagle Outfitters Inc.	Todd Snyder - Stock - US	Chicago
The University of Chicago	Stock Clerk II- Class C	Chicago
Advanced Technology Services	Supply Chain Specialist II	Chicago
Dart Container	Warehouse/Production Supervisor - Overnights	Chicago
Office Depot	Warehouse Worker FT 11pm Start	Chicago
Accenture	Blue Yonder Warehouse Management (WMS) Software Consultant	Chicago
PeopleReady	Forklift Operator	Chicago
CSX Corporation	Freight Conductor - Chicago, IL	Chicago
Servpro	Warehouse Manager	Chicago
Grande RCN Wave	Warehouse Technician I	Chicago
Abbott	Clerk 1 Warehousing	North Chicago
Mindlance	Warehouse Specialist I	North Chicago
Select Source International	Warehouse Specialist I	North Chicago
UCS Forest Group	Warehouse Associate (Morning Shift)	West Chicago

Hey guys, here are some recent job openings in chicago. Feel free to comment here or send me a private message if you have any questions, I'm at the community's disposal! If you encounter any problems with any of these job openings please let me know that I will modify the table accordingly. Thanks!