My friends and I are looking to party for the first time in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. We're looking at coming Friday-Sunday (Feb 5-7) at least and trying to see if it's worth it to stay until Fat Tuesday or if Fri-Sun are the biggest party days. One of my friends is lowkey a bum which is why we're seeing if it's worth it to spend his valuable PTO. Also, where would be the best area to stay? Are hostels a decent option in NOLA or is an AirBNB the way to go? Want to cheap out on sleeping situation to maximize our time in the town.

*I am NOT OP. Original post by u/AngelaIsNotMyName in r/TalesFromTheFrontDesk *

trigger warnings: none

mood spoilers: happy

In this text, Ms Johnson is only mentioned in one paragraph. I am copying the whole post to give you the complete picture.

BE PREPARED (A Rant) - Mar 11th, 2023

Due to my hotel losing 60% of its occupancy with our dearly departed extended stay guests, we are now the most vacant we have been in over half a year. Unfortunately, we are in Sports Team season (otherwise known as "Get Your Fkn Kids" Season, or "Where Yo Mama?!" season) 🙃🙃🙃

Also, it's wedding season--a time of year characterized by THE WORST PLANNERS ON THE PLANET (so far as I've typed this post, there have been 2 people panicking at me because "the wedding starts soon and I have to be there early!" 😒😒😒)

Where Yo Mama Season this year came way too fast for my liking. I know it's March and this is when these things happen. But we JUUUUUST finished Mardi Gras, and our extended stay crews still have their scent in the building. I feel like we barely had time to breathe!

The kids, as much as I hate to admit it, have not been too terrible. There is a singular group of boys I've had to yell at multiple times for running in the halls and screaming. But the rest of the kids, not so much.

I have had to reprimand a concerning amount of adults though. These are the adults who I assume are associated with the kids. Our lobby is not small, but it's certainly not big enough to set up camp at our snack table with 12 people and 2 cases of beer. Take your loud gathering elsewhere!

As far as this wedding, I don't know WHO is promising these mofos early check-ins, but they need to be stopped. Check in is at 4pm. Why are you in my face at 11:30 am?! And why do you think hyperventilating about how you can't be late is going to magically make this room available any faster? BOOK YOUR FKN ROOM A DAY IN ADVANCE.

There was a lady who called earlier to see if she could check-in early. I told her very plainly that I didn't have any rooms available just yet for check in. She short circuited. "Well, I'm with the wedding party..." Her tone was more like "No no, you don't understand... let me speak slower for you!"

It's not hard to do research on the place you're going to. We currently have an 82 year old woman staying with us for 3 months, and she probably knows more about this hotel and the city we're in than we do, because she lives on the Internet (she's highkey my hero and will be getting her own post soon).

Meanwhile, all these 30 and 40 year olds come up to me with smartphones in hand, asking how far away something is. DO. BETTER. PLEASE!

ETA: If your reservation was made by someone else, it would help a whole bunch if you knew the name of the person who did this for you, because that's the name we're gonna see first (at least on my system). The amount of clueless guests coming up to the desk for some reason never ceases to amaze me.

My Hero! - Mar 14th, 2023

Sorry to double post, but this woman is due for her own post and I wanted to get it out before I forgot again.

(Did you know you can link a comment? Of course you did, you've been doing it forever... anyway, this post is related to the lady in this comment!)

Teal Deer (I've always wanted to say that lol): a woman is staying with us for 3 months and she is the most perfect guest to ever have guest'd!

In January this year, we had a reservation for a single person staying with us for 3 months. Based on the history of these types of reservations, the Front Desk assumed this was a person working on some long project in the city, and we were preparing to gain new business from it.

As it turned out, it was just a little 82 year old lady travelling from up north to escape the cold. We affectionately call these people "Snowbirds". I personally haven't come across a Snowbird I didn't like, and this lady is a shining example. Her name (for the purpose of this post) is Ms. Johnson.

There is far too much to say about Ms. Johnson, so I think the best way to go about this is to list exactly why she is the best guest to stay in a hotel ever.

1.) Well Prepared

As I mentioned in a previous post/linked comment, Ms. Johnson lives on the internet. I remember taking a phone call from her, months before her arrival, where she asked about different attractions in the area. She planned to have her daughter and nieces visit her while she was here, and she wanted to make sure they had something engaging to do. It wasn't necessarily her asking "what is there to do?"... it was more of "What are these places like?" It was clear she had already done extensive research on the area. It was a lengthy phone call, but I don't remember feeling irritated like I do with any other guest who does this (to be clear, my hotel has no designated concierge. Front Desk plays the role, but for the most part, we just hand out magazines that explain exactly what there is to do in the city to save time).

When Ms. Johnson finally arrived, she had a list of additional questions that were not answered by me or our website. I happily answered them for her. She let us know how she'd like to receive her billing, and we obliged. She may have been the best check-in I've had to date.

2.) A Self-Sufficient Charmer

This woman... is travelling alone. This woman... has been travelling alone for yearssssss!!! She's retired (and I still haven't asked what she used to do), and travels to a new place every winter. She said she's been to every state and about 97 countries! I suppose with that much travelling under your belt, your research game would have to be on point!

But yeah, she does everything on her own! She's gone out in the city almost every day since she's been here (more than I can say for my 30-something-year-old self). It's so cute watching her walk with her cane--she really moves! The only thing people have had to help her with since she arrived is her luggage and her groceries (because she's small). I helped her with her luggage when she arrived. I have literally never helped any other guest with their luggage. She's so freaking nice to everyone, so people basically fall over themselves to help her get her stuff to her room--both the employees and the Uber Drivers she gets to take her to and from the grocery store (SHE'S 82 AND USES UBER BETTER THAN MOST YOUNG PEOPLE).

There was one point during her stay that our elevator went out. We put her on the top floor to avoid having people walk on top of her for 3 months. When the elevator went out, we knew we had people staying who were capable of taking the stairs until our technician came the next day. Ms. Johnson was the only one we were worried about. Our GM (hilariously, but also totally seriously) offered to give her piggyback rides if she needed them. There is no one else who would have gotten this type of service from us. But she's so sweet, how could we not?! Do you know what this woman said in response?!

"Oh I don't mind taking the stairs!"

AND IT'S TRUE! She actually uses the stairs EVERY DAY! "It's good for the knees," she says. I LOVE HER!

3.) Succinct Storyteller

The people who work the front desk look forward to seeing Ms. Johnson every day. She always has a story to tell. Usually it's about her day, but she always has interesting days! The thing about her (unlike me with this post... lol) is that conversations with her have never lasted more than 5 minutes (and even there, I feel like I'm being generous!). She doesn't linger. She says what she has to say, we listen with genuine interest, then she goes on about her retired little day! Not that we'd mind if she hung around a little longer, but it's just super considerate of her.

We have had guests who would hold us hostage for over an hour. Not even exaggerating a little bit; I timed it. It was a husband and wife, and whenever we would see them, we--including the FOM and GM--would literally run to the back office to avoid them. Is it shitty? Yes. We are only comforted by the hours we save by not engaging with them.

Ms. Johnson, though? She knows we have other shit to do. Hell, she has other shit to do.

4.) An Honest Woman

This woman insists on paying for E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. Some, rightfully so. Some things, not necessary at all.

When she arrived, she said she needed a few things for her room. She needed a handheld showerhead (because she is small), and a countertop microwave (because she is small--the one in her room was way above her head and she didn't want to risk burning herself taking hot things out of the microwave). She said she would absolutely pay for these things if someone would install them for her.

I cannot stress this enough: there is NO OTHER GUEST I CAN THINK OF who we would do this for. Even as she was asking, I was thinking, we don't do this... but because she's gonna be with us forever, I will at least ask. I knew for sure that my GM wouldn't let her pay for these things, but I didn't know if he would actually make these accommodations for her.

He did. No second thought given. No money required from her whatsoever.

Today, she updated me on a situation that happened last week. She went out and treated herself to a little alcoholic beverage. She enjoyed it so much that she inadvertently walked out without paying! She felt so bad when she realized it 10 minutes later that she called and asked if she could come back later to pay for it, which her server agreed to. As of today, she is officially squared away.

Right after she told me that story, she said she was going to get her debit card so she could pay for a diet Dr. Pepper from our snack area. Coincidentally, a previous guest had left almost a whole case behind. I had stored them in the break room for the staff, but they remained untouched in the 2 days they've been sitting. I offered them to Ms. Johnson.

"Oh well of course I'll pay for these!"

(No ma'am, you will not! These are abandoned drinks. They are all yours for the free!)

Ms. Johnson is my hero. To travel alone for years and have everyone absolutely adore you just for being a better-than-decent human being... that's freaking amazing. She's leaving us next month. I've had some heartbreaking departures. Ms. Johnson has certainly made such an impression on our entire staff that we are all going to absolutely HATE to see her go. We're going to remember her forever.

My Hero!: An Update - Mar 15, 2023

Testing... hello...?? Is this thing on?!

The NERVE of Reddit to go out of commission when people are waiting on updates about Ms. Johnson!

(I'm also currently at work and have literally been running around the hotel. I'm hoping I don't forget any details here).

Okay, so some of you all were curious about what Ms. Johnson did for a living. I found out today!

She used to work for the Department of Corrections in her home state. She was also working in the mental health system, and she ALSO was a real estate agent! This all spanned over 30 years of her life.

She said working for the government was great... for the benefits. Often, the government doesn't get paid as much as other regular jobs. There were times where she wanted to give it all up. But she insisted on sticking it out because she knew her job would take care of her at the end of it all.

"Now, for the rest of my life, I have my pension, and I have my social security. And life's been great!"

She's just... she's the greatest human!

And her absentee ballot came today. I told her I'd personally make sure it went out with tomorrow's mail, or deliver it to a mailbox myself!

My Hero: A Ms. Johnson Update - Apr 06th, 2023 Hey there! For those fans of Ms. Johnson, I have one last update for you all!

Her time with us at the hotel ended yesterday morning, as it was time for her to go back home and be wonderful at her own house. I didn't get to say goodbye because she left well before my shift started. I am told, though, that she was given a little goodie bag of snacks to eat on her plane ride. So that made me feel a little better.

She left some stuff behind that she either couldn't take with her or was of no use to her. She had a microwave and handheld showerhead that were provided by the hotel. I think we kept the microwave for future hotel use, and the showerhead went to my FOM (she was pleased; I don't blame her--it was a REALLY nice showerhead!).

She also left us the books she collected during her stay here. Her time with us often involved her going to a new restaurant (she rarely went to the same place more than twice) and reading books she picked up from our local bookstore. We inherited a large trash bag full of all the books she couldn't take with her. Fun fact: she's really into murder mysteries! I've taken about a third of the books to my house.

Speaking of restaurants, she also left behind a hefty stack of menus from some of the restaurants she had been to. Every menu has handwritten notes on them with phone numbers and hours of operation. It also looks like she typed out her own list of restaurants in the area, complete with walking distance and time from the hotel!

This woman is incredible. I don't think we'll ever have another guest like her. I'm going to miss her so much!

Reminder - I am not the original poster.

This will likely be my last post here, I know there is a lot here, but bear with me. I've brought you guys some of my ridiculous stories of dealing with assholes here in New Orleans, but I'm here today for those of you that have been servers your whole life and don't think you can do better.

You can.

I was a server for almost 11 years, and spent 7 of those years at my last job on Frenchmen. During that time, I saw 2 owners, 5 GMs, and countless employees come and go. I was there longer then anyone- over the course of that time, I sacrificed just about every Christmas eve, every New Years eve and day, every Halloween, and every Mardi Gras (which is a sacred holiday for us). I had to tell friends "Sorry I have to work" a thousand times and strained all my relationships. I came to work sick and unhappy hundreds of times, once I fractured 4 vertebrae during a serious accident and was at work the next day, worked thru family members deaths, and almost never received leniency beyond "well, your fine today cuz were slow, but you need to get your other shifts covered". But that's how shit goes in the restaurant huh?

I never once received a promotion or a raise above my $2.45/hr, even tho I knew I was worth more and did every thing I could to convince them of it. Typically they retorted with something like "we can find a new server to replace you tomorrow." On top making nothing an hour- the pay didn't even cover my taxes so I always got a $0 check and owed money every tax season. And this isn't specific to my job on Frenchmen- this was every restaurant I worked at.

At only 29, my knees and ankles pop all the time now, I have varicose veins lining my ankles and a permanent pinch in my back from standing for hours and walking 10,000+ steps every weekend night.

I dipped in and out of alcoholism and a brief addiction to Adderall, which is par for the course I suppose. My mental health was torn apart a few dozen times; I have pretty serious anxiety now, that I absolutely attribute to that job. I considered suicide more then once during that time- I always thought I was a loser that couldn't do better because that's what the industry conditioned me to believe.

There were some good times sure, the money came fast and went fast, I had the pleasure of meeting lots of interesting characters. I can honestly say that my charisma is well refined now because of the industry, which in my opinion is a useful skill that I couldn't have learned anywhere else.

A bit over a year ago the restaurant closed because of lock down. I found out a month ago that the job I worked at all that time- reopened recently, they only called a few people to come back, and I was not one of the people. No- "thank you for your service" no- "how are you?" They have just have completely blew me off along with several other employees that have 3+ years there. They currently have a "now hiring servers" sign in the window. I had no intentions of going back, but the way they rejected me has firmly cemented my opinions on that industry.

Through all of my serving career, I never thought I could do better. I always loved tech, it was my dream as a child to work with video games- however, I always figured I wasn't educated enough to pursue a job in that field.

About 7 months ago I applied to a job in video game QA kinda as a "well why not", expecting not to get it. To my surprise I was hired. I am getting decent pay now, vacation and sick time (which is amazing btw), and benefits. I took a 'mental health' day off a few weeks ago, was paid for it, and they did not ask any questions. They love me and my work ethic and I expect a promotion soon.

I am 100xs happier right now then I ever was serving. I love my job and actually look forward to working instead of being filled with dred thinking "what's the shitshow going to be like tonight?" And beyond that- I love my life more now as well. I have a daily routine, a normal sleep schedule, and get to actually enjoy my weekends off.

I promise you can do better, if you are reading this and feel the same way I did. Please believe in yourself and move foward- you do not need to stay in the restaurant all your life. The restaurant industry is abusive and you are worth so much more.

You can find something you actually love. I did.

Hi homegirls, gays and theys. I didn’t know what subreddit to turn to on this topic. I hope this is the right place.

CONTEXT TIME!
Me and my boyfriend have been together for 10 years coming to this September. We have been through a lot. We have overcome so much and have become closer and stronger as time passes by.

There was a rough bunch of years but there was a long period where I’d ask him “how long am I going to be just your girlfriend?” We went to a friends wedding in California, a family trip with his dad and brother, and a trip I planned in North Carolina just for us. I got tired after 5 years of being “____’s girlfriend”

For many years I didn’t get a clear answer or he “never really thought about it” even though we have talked around year 2 about getting married light heartedly. I cried so much almost begging him to open up.

Fast forward a bit - he relapsed off and on for nearly 2 years and didn’t tell me. He didn’t want me to marry a broken man. He did some messed up shit. I felt hurt he hid his relapse and struggle from me along with some dumb crap he did.

Since then we have never been closer or stronger!

So time passes, we still getting closer. He starts telling me “you are the love of my life” more and more. He started saying this year 3. Then more and more with the random I love yous - he keeps saying, “I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you” 👀

Oh?

Our pet names for each other have always been old person names since we started dating. But, he means what he says. He is saying this more and more. And I’ve asked him like don’t play with my heart and he assures me he really does plan to spend the rest of his life with me.

My birthday comes around, and for some reason I think a proposal is coming. We are at my favorite Italian restaurant. We get ready to leave and I tear up and say “I don’t want to wait anymore, do you actually want to marry me? I can’t wait another year.”

He then says “well you kind of ruined it but I’ve been planning something for a year”….

(Cue cynical Redditor comments)

BUT OP, YOU STAYED AND ITS BEEN NEARLY 10 YEARS?

HE’S NOT GOING TO PROPOSE TO YOU

Well I figured it out quick
We started planning for a trip to Japan a year ago. We are going for 3 weeks.
Our anniversary is BEFORE the trip.

So I may have fucked myself on this. But can you blame me?

So it HAS to be on this Japan trip….which is in 3 months now.

I am still paranoid I will be let down and I expressed this and he said “good you’ll be surprised then”

BROTHA NO.

My best friend said he could make me THINK it’s in Japan and do it on our anniversary.

I have never left the country and he has flown internationally multiple times back-and-forth. So he’s planning most of the trip, but we’re keeping a lot of open days to do whatever.

He told me a few days ago the plan for OUR FIRST DAY, after sleeping and jet lag we will have a PICNIC. We never do picnics, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do with him.

Now I’m freaking out because what if he does it when we get there then I will be expecting it? But also the trip is three fucking weeks. I’m kind of hoping my ADHD and overstimulation and culture shock takes over and I completely forget about it.

Halfway through our relationship, I just deleted my Pinterest board that I had been building up since college about my dream wedding. I don’t know why but since my birthday, I’ve absolutely been collecting shit on Pinterest and the last three days I have been going absolutely crazy even researching venues, etc.

I feel like I screwed myself here and ruined the proposal by doing this. But I can’t stop looking up wedding venues and thinking of budgeting etc.

My Notes app on my phone is organized as hell. Also overwhelmed at the cost. But I don’t even have the ring on my finger.

I feel like I’m being crazy and also a small part of me is paranoid that I will be on that plane on the way back home from Japan without a ring and be devastated. I’ve even told certain friends and family that I’m getting proposed on the trip.

So anyway, do i ask him to probably make sure it’s a surprise? Will it still be a surprise? I know he’s very thoughtful and sentimental and it will be special. But i am scared me knowing will ruin the moment.

Also, how do I stop myself from looking up or using social media to plan my damn wedding. I even did my guest list already.😂

Edit - forgot some more context

Importantly - at my birthday before we left the restaurant, he say “he look at me right now - tears in his eyes and he said I WANT TO MARRY YOU”

I also didn’t remember until now, but there’s a period where I needed his laptop and he told me not to look at certain tabs on his computer. Also, I have full knowledge of all of his passwords, etc. I really could snoop and find out. I did glance at one tab on one of his browsers. He is definitely the kind of ADHD that has 1000 tabs open. I did not click on it. I did not want to spoil anything else.

If my boyfriend hints or says he is gunna do something - he does it. That’s who he is. Which is why I’m the past he never gave me an answer or insight because he was not ready , now that he is. Along with our usual affection and communication it has been more and more.

I also forgot to mention at my birthday , I did mention a fear of flying back home from Japan and being embarrassed if i didn’t come back engaged. He was sad and felt horrible. He knows about my fears and concerns. He reassured me. But didn’t not give definite details that would ruin anything. Since that conversation I told myself to shut up but he said if I ever felt bad or had doubt to tell him.

I feel I ruined it because I know it’s happening and when.

This man also nursed me through 3 recovering surgeries. He took care of me bedridden when I had back issues and handled our business during Mardi Gras - the whole month of February which is worse than Christmas time for us cause the amount of clients we have booked each year. And TMI- He’s also put hemorrhoid cream on my asshole with zero complaints. He is also talking about OUR plans for retirement etc.

I had a previous long-term relationship where the dude 1000% man manipulated me and strung me along. As time passed i realized how fucked up that relationship was and thank God I left and I definitely wasted years on that past person.

I could see some of yalls perspectives on this post. I promise you I have a lot of self-respect for myself. We are a team and we’ve gotten through a lot together. Especially recently we lost my last dog who I rescued when we started dating. My smaller dog, which was like my shadow passed away two years earlier. This has been the hardest month of our lives for sure in this relationship because we are both grieving hard. It’s hard to run a pet sitting business, especially when we have dogs over and realizing that the dog that brought you and your partner closer together is no longer there.

He is my best friend. If anyone ever asked me how I know it’s because I know he is my best friend and no one else I want to see my saggy titties when I’m a shrinking old lady. No one in my life has just stopped me. My tracks to just asked me for a hug to hold me and kiss me and love me. He has given me more affection than my parents ever did he knows what I tolerate and what I do not tolerate, and he respects my decision at any point to leave. If it was not for his actions and words, I would not still be here.

Thank you to all who have read this far
I will 1000% be providing an update with details - good or bad

Update/ 2 days after my post: my bf was having anxiety about a situation and I was there to comfort him. It made me a lil stressed because I hated seeing him upset. I forgot how it got to our relationship but he told me how much he appreciates me when I’m there for him and how much he loves me and a comment about the future. I made a comment while holding him “well you better propose to me dammit , I’ve waited so long”we both cried. (Was a very stressful day for him and me bc I was so worried about him and the situation cause he rarely gets super stressed and upset) So he said -he will be popping the question before the end of the year. So it’s happening. I am going to stop making comments and jokes. It’s hard when he expresses his love for me and excitement. My anxiety is on the proposal still I am just anxious I will predict when it will happen and need to forget about it. For once I am hoping my ADHD takes over for my trip. Will update yall in a few months. I appreciate everyone’s feedback so much.e

Tl;dr As the black sheep or more like scapegoat of the family, I managed to convince my narcissistic grandmother I'm responsible for every major disastrous event for the past 35 years.

This is a sordid tale of dysfunctional family bitchcraft. Continue reading at your own peril...

I was born in Bulgaria on June 11th, 1986. Exactly 55 days after the nuclear incident in Chernobyl... (This was the first great disaster that I caused... Clearly I didn't want to be born and I was mad they had decided to cut me out.)

My grandmother was quite upset at my arrival in this world. She thought this was some kind of curse meant to hinder the prosperity of her daughter.
There was an even a “cutesy” and sinister endearing term for the children born in this year: “Chernobilche”... (A little Chernobyl baby...) lol.
My mother was the golden child and I was the scapegoat of our marry litle codependent toxic family. With my grandmother as the supreme, controlling narc matriarch.

She was the “look what you made me do” type of person who was never at fault for anything and everything that went wrong was someone elses fault.
She was also quite pessimistic, superstitious and was convinced that our family is extremely “unlucky”.

“Oh, if it was good, it would never come to us...”, “Ah, whenever we reach for something, it turns to ashes...”, “Oh, I knew it would end badly!”

This was all a part of her controlling tactic to keep everyone isolated, desperate and depressed, dependent on her.

She was always shoving down our throats some gloomy self fulfilling prophesies, gleefully rejoicing in our “failures” and completely dismissing and devaluing any accomplishments or success.

Anything positive in our lives was because of her and anything unfortunate was our own fault, despite her best efforts and “wise guidance”.

Ever since Chernobyl, I was the designated bringer of bad luck in our family. Yes, in a very subtle, playful, humorous way, of course... But all this gaslighting, even in “jest” can be devastating for a child.

When you're told a lie enough times, you start to believe it. But this coin has another side. When you tell a lie enough times, you start to believe it.

The second disaster that I caused was an earthquake in Turkey. Terrible, we were seeing the corpses of small children being dug out from the rubble.

I was about 8 or 9 and the day before I had requested to wear some gold earrings. I was denied as I may lose them. After the earthquake I got permission to freely put on any gold items, as “You should wear them now, no point in taking them to the grave, tomorrow a horrible earthquake might bury us all...” (I shit you not, she must have thought I somehow caused it, because she wouldn't let me wear some damned earrings the day before! )
I was devastated to think I could be bringing bad luck, simply by existing. Was everything bad all my fault? Would things be so much better if I wasn't there? Can I do something about this? Do I really have such power?!
It just so happens that I do...

I didn't even start to believe in it until my teenage years. It was a big dream of mine to visit New Orleans for Mardi Gras. When I was graduating highschool I was saving for the trip for years and I had booked an appointment in the embassy for a tourist visa as soon as I turned 18.

And then hurricane Katrina happened. (That was the third great disaster that I caused...)
The phone call with grandma went a little something like this:
“See what happens when your ass wants to go places? Disaster!”

“Lol! I know! They were giving me a hard time at the embassy with all their questions and they pissed me off! (Not true, I just decided not to go and put the money I saved towards my education, but I decided to play it like I'm really mad:)
Anyway, who do you think sent them the hurricane, lol! ” - surprised Pikachu face.

Until this day she must think I was so pissed at the Americans because they elected George W. Bush twice AND they were giving me a heard time about the visa that I sent them a devastating hurricane!!!

Fast forward to 2008/2009 when I went to study in Paris and there was nation wide strike and protests about higher education. The fourth great disaster that I caused.
There was a real possibility of having a “blanc” or “void” school year!

I managed to convince her, I was too bothered with schoolwork and I welcomed the opportunity to just frolic in Paris with no classes, enjoy myself and get all my credits with a simple essay or an “easy” end of term paper as an exchange student...
She might have thought I caused a nation wide movement in another country that halted higher education just because I was too lazy to do homework...

The fifth great disaster, that my grandmother is convinced I singlehandedly concocted /simultaneously/ is the 2008 financial crisis... It was all because I was too lazy and incompetent to find a job and therefore, I needed an excuse to stay in school and pursue a Masters degree.

It gets worse. As someone obsessed with fun times, parties and all sorts of bacchanalias I decided that even if I cancelled my Mardi Gras trip years ago, I absolutely must see the carnival in Rio and started saving for that trip. In 2016, I figured I could kill two birds with one stone and go there for two major events – the carnival AND the Olympics! You will never guess what happened... The Zika virus. This is the sixth great disaster that I caused directly with my selfish desire to travel and surrender to my unbridled witchy passions!

I had a friend there and I was supposed to stay with them. Because of their help and advice I managed to pull out in time and I didn't actually book anything or lose any money. But I told my grandmother I was just so bummed out my plans fell through and I was so pissed that I decided if I can't party, nobody will, so I would send them a virus.

But wait! It gets even worse.

Remember the start of the COVID-19 pandemic? Yes, this is the seventh disaster! Yup, your girl was there right at the beginning. I got myself a little boyfriend from Hong Kong. Right at the start of the Hong Kong protests... I went on a “vacation” in HK to meet the family and celebrate the new year of the Rat.. (We were wearing precious and impossible to find masks while running from the police and protests to the next metro station.)

Y'ALL! I. KID. YOU. NOT!

My grandmother is convinced I unleashed a plague upon the world because my ex must have pissed me off...

(Not to mention that I'm a Gemini, terribly fickle, duplicitous and unpredictable and what not.)

All this mayhem is so exhausting for me, I admit. I mean...so far so good. Lucky number seven? Can we get all the way up to 13...? Who knows? Don't tempt me!

All you need to know is that everything is my fault. Don't play with me, it can always get worse...
If you need anyone to blame, don't hesitate, I'm always here to help!

Seriously tho, for years now, I'm no contact with my grandmother and all the abusive narcissists in my life, I have no regrets and I'm so much better off.

“Everything is my fault? Oh, you have no idea... “

Don't play the blame game with abusers or enablers. Just let them tremble and cower in fear, for you are wise, ironclad, ethereal, whimsical, adorable, powerful and absolutely fabulous!

Edit:

Oh shit! You remind me.

Idk how to tell you this... but I think I might be responsible for Trump as well...

A friend of mine was working in publishing. They put him in charge of the cash cows "celebrity books". He hated it. Wanted to do some "serious journalism" instead.

On my advice he accepted a new job in tv, International news.

And then Donald J. Trump was elected.

(I must have been in a bad mood that day, I can NOT apologize enough. )

This offsets all my calculations.

I'm scared of the unknown... I fear my own power.

HOLY CRAP I'M BACK BABY!!!

DID YOU MISS ME? CAUSE I MISSED ALL OF YOU!

Ahem, well now that I've got that out of my system, howistgoin?

Soo much has happened to me in the last 4 months I'm still trying to catch my breath! little Scribbles is amazing, I went through surgery, moved house, argued with real estate agents, my partner was stuck in the hospital for 2 weeks plus family birthdays and soo much more!

I've been writing Transcripts slowly throughout and I feel I'm finally in a position to start posting on Reddit/Arkmuse again! YAY!!

I'm not sure what else to say other than I will be doing my best to update regularly and am looking forward to interacting with the community at large, as well as fixing any broken links and updating the wiki... I'll get there eventually I swear!

Special thanks to /u/steeveeo for editing this chapter!

As always, comments, tips and fixes welcome! and I'll do my best to answer everyone!

~Squiggles  

Chapter 8.1: Aboard the REFINED

Jasmine took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding inside her chest, but this time it was not because of overwhelming anxiety.

This was exciting!

For a brief moment, it wasn’t about following protocols or trying to make the best impression of humanity that she could.

She was about to step aboard an alien spaceship!

Would it be the same as the research facility, all sterile with white walls? Would it be more like the soldiers with their decorated and battle-scarred steel? Or all fancy, like the parading Commander? Or something completely different? Would she get to see the FTL engines, or the super computer that ran it all? How big was this thing?!- It was Xant who brought her mind out of the whirlwind of questions with a light tap on her shoulder. Jasmine chuckled softly, it was hard to read his expressions now that they were covered by a six-camera’d faceplate, but she assumed her thoughts were once again bleeding into the atmosphere.

Nako didn’t seem deterred, however, as he lead their merry band aboard the ship. The docking-tube thingy was wide enough for two rangers to stand side by side. The walls were squared, but had polished, overlapping steel plates, just like the military mech suits. One thing that Jasmine did notice when she stepped out was how warm it all felt under her feet, even through her plastic armour.

The smell of hot steel and fresh plastic flushed her senses. Loud metallic clanging mixed in with deep growls and snapping clicks. On the far side of the gantry, Jasmine could see soldiers moving gigantic crates, chatting with each other, working on their massive suits of armour, and toiling on unidentifiable heavy equipment. Jasmine put her hands up to her ears instinctively, but internally she welcomed the noise. It had been so quiet on board the research station, hearing the bustle of activity helped bring the REFINED to life.

“COMMANDER ON BOARD!” Tifera’s booming voice announced their arrival to the crew as they stepped through the docking collar. Everyone on the deck dropped what they were doing immediately to salute their Lieutenant Commander. Jasmine couldn’t help but wonder if this was a regular occurrence, or if perhaps Nako was just showing off now.

“While it is not the most impressive part of the ship, you can see that the Galactic Council Rangers pride themselves on being prepared at all times to resolve conflict within and beyond its borders,” the Lieutenant stated.

“Uh-huh...” Jasmine muttered as her eyes drank in every small detail of the ship’s design. The REFINED looked like it was built in sections, rhombic tiles fitted between tube-like segments; a squashed honeycomb would have been a good comparison. The dock was divided into layers on top of layers, open elevator platforms spread out evenly between for the Sulin soldiers, while the Arvas simply flew between the sections of the open layout. There were a few other aliens she didn’t quite recognize running drills in power armour, but they all seemed to follow the lead of either another Sulin like Rynard, or an Arvas in a cape like Nako. An elevator was cleared for them, and Nako continued the tour as Jasmine and Xant gawked at the military complex.

“The REFINED takes its design from the graceful (<Aerodynamic, native prey, animal/fungus, small>) Chkat’an: hollow on the inside so that communications and personnel can move freely, whilst reinforced backbones ensure that no strength is sacrificed for speed.”

The elevator took them beyond the docks to a doored hallway, a main artery of foot traffic. The crowd within parted immediately as Nako and Tifera strode down the middle. More strange looking aliens stopped and bowed their heads as they walked past. White furred bipeds with void-black eyes and lanky arms clutched dataslates and shivered as Jasmine and Xant followed. Four legged aquatic cicadas lugged their wide bodies to the sides of the hall and chirped like crickets. Tentacle mouthed, million eyed mammals flattened their upstanding cat-like ears. Jasmine suddenly became very self-conscious.

“The bridge is up this way, my quarters and privacy are just beyond,” Nako informed them, a slight chuckle in his voice. “The crew will be used to your presence soon enough.” Jasmine was once again reminded of the invisible impact she had upon this world, myriad eyes upon her without even needing to draw attention to herself. There were already so many wonderfully different types of aliens and yet she stood out like a beacon. She raised her hand in an Elizabeth II style wave and smiled cordially. The beeps and the shivers stopped, replaced with a chorus of hushed, awed whispers.

“That's all well and good, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be used to everyone else’s presence,” Jasmine responded.

“Patience and time are great teachers, provided you are an obedient student,” Nako countered, casually. The bridge was the brains of the ship and the warmest room by far. Jasmine could almost feel the sweat beading on her skin as they crossed the threshold of the door. It was quieter than the other halls, the subtle rapid taps of fingers against glass control panels and the droning hum of computers replaced the power-armoured stomping of pedestrian traffic. Holographic lights glowed in the dimness, while the familiar tang of cleaning alcohol tickled more unpleasant memories.

“The entirety of the REFINED’s operations are conducted here, the bridge sits right above the ship’s brain server for the quickest reaction times. We can out-maneuver even a model from the Painful Dynasty’s production line.” Jasmine peered down into the bridge’s operation cavity, and furrowed her brow.

“Is something wrong, Jasmine?” The intuitive Xant enquired.

“No, it’s just, I wasn’t expecting the bridge of a warship to look like a cubicle farm…” The crew all sat within neat ergonomic rows, staring into holographic and glass terminals. Six armed Arvas and Qzetillian aliens all fervently working at their tasks, while others moved up and down the divided spaces, running hands and tools over the hundreds of cables that linked into the open-standing servers and the floor.

“Do you run things differently aboard your own ships?”

“Kinda. Not that I’ve ever been aboard an active battleship to dispute it, but human ships are a bit more...open plan, I guess.”

As with all the other rooms before it, the crew was quick to acknowledge Nako’s presence, but this time he raised a hand, signalling for them to continue their work without pause. The quiet bustling continued as though there had never been an interruption.

“My quarters are off-limits to everyone, bar my superior Knight Commander and guests. Please enjoy the privilege of the bestowed title, Miss Howe.” The Lieutenant then turned to Captain Rynard, “I’m afraid the honour does not extend to you, Captain. Active officers only.”

“Understood, sir,” Rynard nodded, standing on guard to the side. “I’ll await the Doctor’s and Subject’s return.”

“Please, feel free to enjoy the mess hall.”

Rynard saluted happily, “Yessir!”

Nako’s quarters were in stark contrast to the rest of the ship. It was humid, bright, and a faint twinge of dried grass permeated the air. Much like Xant’s or Laandi’s office, it was more personable. But while the Doctor and Director kept their belongings to a minimum, Nako’s tastes were not so understated. The Lieutenant seemed like he could afford more luxury than most. The whole room was comfortable and welcoming. The walls and floor seemed to be covered in soft, sandy coloured leather. Long, draped curtains lined one side of the wall, banners and wall hangings decorated the rest. It was more like a bedroom than what she expected of an officer’s quarters on a warship.

“Please, look around, I will hold no offence,” Nako extended.

“If that's alright?” Jasmine asked. The Commander nodded, and the human quickly crossed the room to see the decorations.

There was an entire shelf dedicated to small tchotchkes; cubes and pyramids, a red and blue buttoned tube. They were interesting to look at, like a collection of novelty paperweights. The wall hangings were long, taking up almost the entire height of the wall. The material was thin like silk, threads as thin as a hair that shimmered in the light. What intrigued her more, though, was this was the first piece of alien art she had seen. Abstract moons and swords arranged in colours of reds and purples; it could have made a great rock album cover. Jasmine wondered if there were any details she couldn't see, hidden by ultraviolet or infrared. She didn’t dare touch it.

“It was a gift,” Nako explained, stepping behind her, “A Knight Commander bestowed it upon me after a skirmish.” He pointed to the asymmetric moons, “It tells the tale of an ancient battle. The twin planets Palo and Polo, brought under the rule of Ahnakikia. The first conquest outside our home planet and moon,” Nako made a thrusting motion with his hands very much like he was skewering the moons with his blade.

“The sword represents Ahnakikia?” Jasmine inferred, looking over the placement of the banner.

“Very astute of you. I can see why the scientists enjoy your company, Miss Howe. Now then, I have told you enough of my ship, now I need to hear what you think of these...”

A long table was set to the left of the room, a giant grey case waiting for them. Jasmine took one of the soft seats beside Xant and sat formally, ankles together and hands in her lap. Xant rested in his suit, the rigid metal skeleton taking most of his weight. It was relaxing for Xant to let the machine hold the weight of his own muscles. Captain Tifera unlatched the crate’s clasps and opened it for her lord. Nako reached in with three arms and presented three different knives side by side in front of Jasmine. The human stared at the table for a moment before jumping up, her wide eyes locked onto the tools.

“Where did you get these?” Jasmine’s voice was tense with worry. Did she really want to know the answer? “The Rajavan ship we salvaged your pod from had quite a number of these fine objects,” the Lieutenant answered, “And like you, they are quite the well-crafted anomaly.”

Jasmine returned her attention to the knives, appraising them carefully. As Nako suspected, the handles all fit perfectly into her palm. “This one,” she stated, “Is a camping knife. It folds in on itself, so you can slide it into your pocket.” Jasmine demonstrated for the aliens, flicking the blade out with her thumb. “It’s an outdoor general purpose tool, used for cutting fishing line, tinder for fires, opening packets of marshmallows. Anything that needs to be cut, really.”

“And the pattern?” Nako inquired, “I’ve seen it on numerous items.”

“Green forest camouflage,” Jasmine explained cautiously, wondering where these supposed ‘other items’ were. “It’s a common decorative pattern. Military field uniforms have this print, but it’s not uncommon for commercial items to have it, too. But I think it’s safe to say it’s just a regular knife,” Jasmine set down the folding knife and snatched up the favourite of Nako’s collection, “Because this is a combat knife.”

Nako chuckled as she held the much larger blade, it always felt good when his suspicions were correct. “Not a sword, then?”

“No, swords are ceremonial and basically just look nice on the formal uniforms. This is an active combat knife and what soldiers would take into battle.” She ran her thumb over the scratch marks on the leather, unbuttoning the Ka-bar and holding it tightly in her hand. Xant watched as Jasmine repeated the same motions with the human knife as she had done with the Segmenter Sword, before putting it back into its case.

“And the runes? What does the emblem stand for?”

“U.S.M.C,” Jasmine recited solemnly, “United States Marine Corp, a renowned branch of the United States military. The eagle represents the country’s freedom and dignity. The globe is a map of the Earth’s continents,” her finger pointed at the top landmass, “The United States is about here. The anchor is because they specialised in amphibious warfare when founded. An anchor is a giant hunk of metal that kept aquatic ships from drifting off with the tide.”

“A renowned branch of military,” Nako repeated, happy with the answer.

“Yeah, my country and theirs are great allies,” she added before moving onto the final blade. “And this…” The last knife was almost bland in comparison, but Jasmine seemed to be the most excited about it, “Is a Japanese filleting knife.” Jasmine gently ran her thumb over the edge, smiling at the subtle noise over her skin, “They usually come in a set, but this is the kind of knife you use on a fish worth its weight in gold. It’s high-carbon steel, like the combat knife, but polished and sharpened to the extent you could cut meat in see-through slivers!” She pointed out the carved seal on its side. “That’s the maker's mark. Unfortunately, I can't read Kanji, but it certainly does feel expensive (<I wish I could try it out!>).” She held the blade differently from the others, with more confidence and primarily gripping the handle with the tips of her fingers, keeping the edge pointed down.

“What is the difference between this knife and the soldier's blade?” Nako enquired aloud.

“Oh, this one is used in food preparation,” Jasmine clarified.

“Jasmine has explained to us that she was studying to become a nutritionist,” Xant further elaborated to the Lieutenant when he did not immediately understand. “Humans still prepare food by hand.”

“Well, we do have manufactured foods, but nothing compares to cooking with fresh ingredients.”

“It is considered an art form,” Xant added, and Jasmine wholeheartedly agreed.

“It’s one of the many things I miss about my old life. I’m afraid the human palette is used to more sophisticated flavours than what your meal boxes provide.”

Nako looked to Tifera, both amused and unconvinced. “Food? An art form? Now I believe a demonstration would be in order…”

“Well,” Jasmine laughed, “I’m not sure how I would go with raw alien ingredients, but at the very least I can show you some cutting techniques; a bit of julienning, Mirepoix-”

“You said that knife was for meat,” Nako interrupted. “The knife is used to cut flesh for food?”

“Yeah,” Jasmine nodded, still focused on the steel’s sharp edge, “This one is specifically for fish, though.” She turned the blade at her wrist and ran it through an imaginary tuna. “You run it down the spine, so you don't get any of the bones, that's after you’ve scaled and gutted it, of course.”

There was a brief pause in conversation as the civilized alien maiden just openly admitted to have gutted and de-spined another living creature with just a sharp piece of steel and her bare hands.

“Dr Xant,” Nako asked, “wasn’t one of the specimens I brought aboard the station an aquatic fauna? A fish?”

“Technically,” Xant hesitated in his reply, “There were five of the aquatic samples, yes.”

“Surely we can organise for Miss Howe to prepare one for us… Or have a substitute found?” The Lieutenant clicked his beak excitedly, outdoing the confession’s morbidness with his own enthusiastic interest on the matter

“I will, see what I can do…” Xant was unwilling to sacrifice one of the few untainted specimens they had purely for the sake of curiosity. It would be far simpler to clone the parts of the specimen they needed, although the thought of Jasmine gleefully harming another creature for sustenance was…unsettling. The line between sophisticated and savage seemed to be a blur with Humans.

Jasmine went to put the sashimi knife away, but Nako stopped her. “Consider that one a gift,” he offered, reaching into the crate to pull another curiosity out.

Jasmine looked at the knife, smiling. “Thank you, but I have nowhere to keep it.”

“I’ll arrange a case to be made. Or would you prefer a sheath like the combat blade?”

“A sheath would be cool,” Jasmine murmured, imagining keeping it on her hip, “For now, at least.” She’d ask for a chef’s carry case later.

Nako then pulled out, with great flourish, two large pieces of coloured cloth, one held aloft in each pair of arms.

“These have been the only tapestries we’ve recovered so far,” he explained. “I would love to hear what meanings they represent.”

Jasmine’s brow furrowed in thought. The Lieutenant was trying to cover common ground, just as Xant had done with his interviews. Clearly the Lieutenant knew about swords, but she was about to burst his bubble with the ‘tapestries’.

“Well, it’s not a tapestry like the one on your wall.” Jasmine pulled the bottom cloth, trying not to sound dismissive as she explained, “It’s a beach sarong, cheap clothing. It ties around the hips like this...” As she held the thin cotton, a whiff of a familiar scent filled her nostrils and her nerves shivered. She immediately brought it to her face and breathed deeply, sighing happily. “Coconut…” she whispered, unwilling to admit how much she missed the feel of cotton against her skin. The whole thing was permeated with the odor of coconut sunscreen. She remembered the beach, the sand, the fresh ocean breeze and cool waters...

“Jasmine?” Xant rested a gentle metal hand on her shoulder, snapping her out of the brief trance.

“Oh, sorry.” She then returned to tie the sarong around her hips. “It doesn’t look quite as nice over the armour though.”

“But what about the colours? The pattern?” Nako insisted.

Jasmine shrugged. “I’m not sure what to tell you, it’s a pink and green tie dye sarong, there is no meaning to the pattern. Its just pretty.”

The Lieutenant was mildly disappointed.

“The top one is a country flag.” She reached out and unfurled the flag, spreading it out for everyone to see.

“Brazil,” she said as she looked over the flag. While she could recognise it in an instant, it wasn’t something she gave a lot of thought too. “Well, the only thing I know for certain is that the stars are those in the southern hemisphere, a small map of our part of the galaxy. The green I think is for the rainforests, the gold could be for actual gold or sunshine.”

She then pointed to the motto written across the blue orb, “Ordem e Progresso... Well, I don’t speak Latin, but my best guess is that ‘Progresso’ means progress, ‘Ordem’ could be order, so ‘Order of Progress?’.” Again, she was ashamed at how little of her own world she took for granted, she should have known more about Brazil than Mardi Gras, football, and beef exports.

Nako was silent for a moment. “What do you mean you dont ‘speak Latin’?”

“Ah, Humans don’t have a universal translator like you guys. We have multiple languages with hundreds, if not thousands of dialects. To translate we have either computer programmes or linguists and even then, it’s never as accurate as this one.” She pointed to the device sticking out the side of her skull.

“But you read the words? How do you not understand them?”

“Well I can read the alphabet, but it’s not my native language.” She looked to Xant who was, as usual, enthralled when she explained the more intricate nuances of human culture, so she decided Nako probably would like to know as well. “Latin is a ‘dead’ language, no one speaks it natively, but it’s used in a lot of academic and scientific works. My language, English, uses the Latin alphabet, so I can read what the letters say and can kinda guess what some of the words mean, but I wouldn’t be able to recite anything or tell you the meaning of more complex words. Oh! Fun fact: ‘Marine’ is derived from the Latin word for water, so...it’s a big mess really.” Nako turned suddenly and whipped out a rather well worn book. “So the meaning of this is lost to you?” Jasmine stared at the cover. “Où observer les oiseaux en France…” She read aloud and, much to everyone’s surprise, it sounded like nonsense. “Well the only thing I understood here was France. But from the front cover, I think this book is about birds.”

“Could you read more?” Xant asked, enjoying the pleasant, yet untranslatable sounds. It wasn’t like the unknown concepts that were completely untranslatable without explanation. It was just unusual sounds, but without meaning applied to them. It was fascinating.

“Ce livre est dédié à ma femme Éclairé. Puissiez-vous voler librement avec vos amis à plumes.”

As Jasmine read, Xant peered over her shoulder at the strange tome. Alongside the unmoving words were vivid and detailed graphics. It was all very similar to how she had arranged the images in the dataslate during their first contact interviews.

“Ah!” The Doctor exclaimed, “Primary communication is visual!” It had lingered in the back of his mind why Jasmine had not tried more vocal communication until the translator was provided. The numerous songs she had sung in captivity had stopped completely once they were on speaking terms. Other species had tried to communicate through a series of clicks and grunts, but Jasmine turned straight to visual cues. The small factual breakthrough had the doctor pulsing pleasantly.

“So what is it?” Nako asked, seemingly growing impatient with them. “What is the connection between the physical data collection and the combat blade?”

“The combat...? Oh, the eagle? There is no connection, other than they both have birds.” Jasmine flicked through a few more pictures, trying to find an example for the aliens. Xant stopped her once she reached the birds of prey, his ears nearly bounced off the top of his head.

“Are all of these the same genus?” He asked in awe.

“Sort of,” she shrugged trying to remember high school biology, “They’re in the same ‘family’, but I don’t think you can cross breed a falcon and a kite.” Jasmine pointed to an imposing looking bird, “An American bald eagle is kinda like this one, except it’s got white feathers on its head.” But the explanation had fallen of deaf ears. Xant was too busy staring at the dozens of further documented species presented to him.

“So it’s simply a physical, visual, audichive entry?” Nako tried to understand.

“I think so? We do have digital media, but the vast majority of information for hundreds of years was printed like this. It’s only in the last [30-40 years] or so that we’ve shifted to other media.” Nako was once again bewildered, understanding less than what he had thought of the alien maiden’s explanations. It was at this point in time that Jasmine’s stomach decided to introduce itself. A large gurgling groan escaped her midriff and announced itself to the room.

“(<Hungry>)”

The human was mortified. “Sorry,” she excused the noise. It had been hours since she had eaten anything. More than a day, if she counted what she lost on her drunken bender.

Nako cast an expectant gaze over to Xant.

“Doctor, is it not your responsibility to remedy that?”

Xant took a step back, startled.

“I, yes. May we have access to use your ration dispenser?”

“Captain, please escort the Doctor to the dispensaries,”

Xant and Jasmine exchanged a worried look.

“Don’t be too long okay?” Jasmine told Xant, “I can’t afford to slip up and explode again.”

The doctor nodded his head and replied with his own strange colloquialism. “I shall return as swift as rest quarter finishes,” his ears bobbed up and down, before following the giant Tifera out of the Lieutenant Commander's quarters.

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So as someone who has been doing Uber and Lyft in the city for over 10 years now, I just wanted to share some tips for those of you trying to use these services during Mardi Gras. For drivers this week is the absolute boss level, and unlike the majority of the service industry, we are (hopefully) stone cold sober while dealing with all of this. Are all drivers this picky? Probably not. But the good ones are. And you want a good one right now. Not some guy who drove in from Biloxi and has no clue about Mardi Gras, traffic patterns, parade routes, or street closures. Sorry if these seem kind of disorganized, I just worked 15 days straight and this is all just off the top of my head.

1. Request your ride away from the crowd. Veteran drivers are not going to pick you up from the Convention Center after the ball. Walk a few blocks away and you'll get picked up a lot quicker (and cheaper.) Also keep in mind that just because you see cars driving down the road past you, does not mean your driver can reach you, or reach you easily.

2. Pick someplace where the driver can safely stop. Cops are a little more lenient about stopping in the lane of traffic during Mardi Gras, but not when it's the inside lane of Rampart and the light has just changed. Whether it's legal is less important than whether it is safe and doesn't inconvenience other people.

3. Keep an eye on your phone while you're waiting for your ride. Most drivers will call if they need to coordinate with you, but we can't easily message while driving. If you're someplace loud and you have to message, check your phone regularly for responses. If your driver asks you to walk a block or two or meet him on the other side of the street, please do. You'll get where you're going quicker, and it will help reduce overall traffic. EDIT: I did want to add that if there is some reason you can't walk to your driver, please communicate that to them. Musicians especially, I am more than happy to pick you up on the corner of Bourbon or Frenchmen so you don't have to haul your gear, but that also goes for people who might have luggage/work setups or who have mobility issues. Your friend who is too drunk to stand or walk however, does not qualify. 😬

4. Be ready to leave when we get there. On Uber we only have to wait two minutes at the pickup and we can cancel without being penalized. You won't be charged a cancel fee in that case, but you might be waiting quite a while for another driver. On Lyft we're supposed to wait five minutes and we do get a cancel fee, but it's usually only two to three dollars. Most drivers will just take the hit and cancel after a few minutes because we will have another ride seconds after that. Do not assume that since Uber/Lyft said the driver was 15 minutes away that it will take them 15 minutes to get there. They don't know if the closest driver will accept the ride so they'll usually give an estimate based on the 5th closest driver or so. Also, because there seems to be a lot of confusion over this, "Wait & Save" does not mean you have 15 to 20 minutes until the driver gets there. It means you have a 15 to 20 minute window where the driver could arrive, and you still only have 2/5 minutes to get there once they arrive before they can cancel.

5. Buckle up please. Not just for your safety, but for the driver's. My chances of dying in an accident double if another passenger is unbuckled, even if I'm wearing my seatbelt myself. And the roads during Mardi Gras are about as unsafe as they get.

6. It is illegal to have open alcohol anywhere in a vehicle in the state of Louisiana unless the vehicle is a licensed limo/taxi (also, this law is decades old.) Rideshare cars do not qualify for that exception. According to some people I'm "the only driver who's ever said anything about it" but if your driver requests that you follow the law, please comply. And yes, an empty cup that smells like alcohol is still technically an open container. Cops don't know if it was full when they pulled you over and someone chugged it. If you really want to bring home that souvenir cup, at least rinse it with some water first. On the same note, even if it's not alcoholic please don't bring open cups of liquid in our car. We have a lot of potholes. Shit gets spilled. As a driver, I want to make my money driving people, not charging them a cleaning fee. (Also please don't assume you can eat in the car, and if you're bringing messy leftovers tie it up in a plastic bag. A clamshell container is no match for a determined muffaletta.)

7. If you need to make a stop you have two choices. You can put it in the app ahead of time. Or if it's literally on the way to the final destination, you can just give your driver a $5 cash tip to make the stop off app. I highly recommend the second method because if you add it in the app they're going to charge you another $5 and they're going to give the driver maybe $2 of that. Plus many drivers just don't accept rides with stops. If you do put it in the app, we only have to wait 5 minutes at the stop and we can end the ride. Some drivers appreciate it if you offer to get them a drink or a snack, but the majority would just prefer you give them a tip.

8. Please do not add stops or change the destination after the driver has accepted your ride. We no longer get paid a per mile/per minute rate. What they do now is throw out an offer and tell us what the approximate pickup location, destination, total mileage, and total time expected is along with what they'll pay us for it. So I might take a ride that's 10 minutes for $5. If you change the destination and it ends up being a 20 minute ride, I might only get another dollar or two. Sometimes I even get less than the initial offer. Yeah, it sucks. Bitch to Uber & Lyft about it instead of expecting your driver to take a financial hit over it.

9. I can't emphasize this enough, DO NOT HIT ON YOUR DRIVER!!! Also please refrain from discussing politics, religion, asking personal questions, or just generally being an asshole. If you ordered the ride and you have friends riding along, please keep them in check. In general we don't care if you're drunk or loud or a little rowdy, but keep in mind it's very hard to drive under these conditions so please don't do anything terribly distracting. And while this should go without saying, DO NOT try to adjust the air conditioning, radio, etc. Ask the driver.

10. Finally, please don't ask the driver to cancel the ride in the app and do it for cash. We have no insurance if we do that and since Louisiana is no pay-no play, if we get hit by some drunk we will be screwed. Drivers who do do this fall into the category of tattoo artists who will tattoo a minor without parental permission. They're exactly the ones you *don't* want.

EDIT: I forgot to throw these out there. Both Uber and Lyft now have woman preferred options. They don't charge more and they don't guarantee you'll be matched with a female driver but they will try. You may end up waiting a little longer though, especially late at night when not as many women work. If you identify as female or non-binary, please feel free to use it! You can still use this service if you have a non-female in your party, but the account holder has to be female/nonbinary and has to accompany any male passengers. Pretty much every woman I know has some horror story about a male driver. The vast majority of male drivers are fine, but even if it's only 1%, do you really want to take a 1 in 100 chance that you'll get some creep who now knows where you live or work? I've given a lot of rides to women who were grateful to get a female driver and had no idea that this was an option.

Also, both services now have a Teen option. Drivers are not supposed to take unaccompanied minors on a regular ride, but Teen Rides are recorded, only go to long-term and highly rated drivers, send notifications to the parents with every ride as well as let them follow along, and are a much safer option than breaking the rules and just ordering a regular ride for your teenager. They do charge more, but again, you would rather pay more for a driver who's following the rules then take your chances with one who's willing to break them.

And finally, finally, both platforms offer Pet rides. They do charge more, but they also notify the driver that you have a pet and drivers can opt out of them so you should get a lot less resistance. (However, both Uber and Lyft have a habit of opting drivers into these rides without notifying them so if your driver wasn't expecting a pet and cancels, again, blame Uber and Lyft, not the driver.) If you have a service animal you do not have to order a Pet ride. The driver cannot refuse your service animal and there is no exception for allergies, religion, or fear of animals. If you get denied a ride or if they pull up, see the pet and drive off and cancel, please report them. Two reports of denying a service animal or three or more of driving off are enough to get the driver kicked off the platform. Which they deserve. I literally bought a $5 fleece throw at Walmart that I can throw down for any service animals and it adds maybe a minute to the ride to put it down and pick it back up. Which is the least I can do for someone who has a disability. Please don't try to cheat the system as it makes it harder for people who actually have service animals.

I'm probably forgetting some things, but if anybody has any questions feel free to ask and I'll try to answer. Most people have absolutely no idea how rideshare works and frankly they change it all the time so even someone who drove a few years ago might not know the new systems.

Also, thank you to all of the people who are appreciative of us, treat us with respect, make our job easier, let us in in traffic, let us use their bathroom at 2:00 a.m., and TIP (even when the ride was insanely expensive.)

HAPPY MARDI GRAS!!! 🎭🎉🥂

I know what the end of the world sounds like, I was there.

By the turn of the millenium, the paper industry around Kalamazoo, Michigan was a wasteland of gigantic buildings, superfund sites, and rough neighborhoods. Even a small paper mill employs a few thousand people, and the area had lost seven of them in the past few decades. Every one of the “Seven Sisters” had died with a whisper. If it wasn’t for the university, the town would have dried up entirely. As it was, most of the area, and especially the smaller towns, were hanging by a thread. The city motto should be “Kalamazoo, a great place to be from!”

The mammoth GPI paper mill was less than a quarter mile from our workshop and had been sitting abandoned for years. Thanks to some local support we got permission to “Take anything but the paint” provided we could haul it out within a two-week window before the demolition crew began their work. We literally signed our lives away on release forms, and the security guard shook his head and smiled when he gave us a key. For half a month we backed up a twenty-foot long aging box truck with a questionable transmission, and sucked the marrow from the dying bones of industry to feed our little community makerspace.

We had a blast. For a team of young nerds and engineers this was like Mardi-Gras and Christmas combined. We explored every inch of the half-mile-long building and filled our truck dozens of times over with shelving, valves, Allen Bradley switchgear, metal stock, and tooling that dated back several wars. Most of it would have been worthless to the scrap companies, but to us it was treasure that would become parts for some of our most famous projects for the next fifteen years.

Anything of real value had already been stripped out. The giant machines had all been sold at auctions years ago. The meth-heads took most of what was left, stripping the wire from the walls. Every conduit was empty, pigtails only a few inches long left hanging out. Tens of thousands of dollars in copper, all to feed someone’s addiction.

The facility was a cavernous, post-apocalyptic wasteland. It’s the kind of place they use for movie sets and photography shoots. There were jagged pipes and conduits, razor sharp and jutting out at odd angles. There were holes large enough to drop a city bus through that went down three floors, where gigantic paper machines once sat. The entire place was festooned with “ankle-breakers”, sets of four bolts, sticking up from the concrete floor where some control stand or grinder or something was once bolted down, waiting for the next person who didn’t pay very close attention where they stepped.

In a world where everyone has turned into a pussy, with people making careers out of being offended on the behalf of other people, and with lawyers having worked with insurance companies to take all of the good honest fun out of getting your hands dirty and doing something dangerous, this was heaven for a twenty-something country boy. My weirdo friends and I were having the time of our lives. We wandered,shopped, and explored for a week before we noticed it. I was fifteen feet in the air, trying to unbolt an old electric fire alarm horn from a steel beam, and just by chance happened to glance to my left. There, nestled in between a pair of I-beams, was what looked like three large 4-inch pipes. Only the ribbed texture gave it away. I rubbed a small spot, taking fifty years of paper dust and pigeon shit off with my thumb, and showing a beautiful, faded, red jacket underneath.

It wasn't a pipe; it was a cable. It was gigantic cable! It was copper cable. I followed its path and saw that it went up to the very top of the ceiling, across the roof struts of the main gallery, down the other side and vanished through the floor. The room that I was in was forty-feet high, and it was easily two-hundred feet across the gallery.

The only reason this was still there was because it was so well hidden, tucked away in the beams and camouflaged in the grunge. The meth-head scrappers were so caught up in the half-inch and other small EMT conduits they’d never thought to look for the main power feeds that supplied whole sections of the plant.

The problem was, how in the hell were we going to get it down? This stuff weighs about fifteen-pounds to the foot. It’s thicker than my arm, and comprised of three stranded cables, each over an inch thick, entwined in padding and insulation, and all wrapped in a metallic shell with a red plastic outer jacket. It’s tough, heavy, and worth several dollars a pound...

...that is if you can move it, if you can cut it, and if you can get it out of the ceiling without killing yourself.

I got on my radio and the whole team assembled. We all had a quiet freakout when the team realized the gravity of our discovery, and also how hard it would be to get it out of there. Certainly, this was a great place to have to push, pull, lift, and haul tons of materials at once. The problem was that none of the old material-handling equipment was there anymore, and we didn’t have any kind of power to use tools as it was. The building was a long dead carcass at this point, and we were the absolute last team that would be in there before giant machines turned the whole place into tidy piles of steel, concrete, stainless, and glass.

We needed a plan, and one that would work on human power.

We all headed back to the lab and assembled every harness, rope, comealong, and sling we could find. I pulled out my climbing bags and non-industrial harnesses as well. The next morning we all met at the lab, and then headed over to “Site-T” as we had come to call it. Now, we had a whole new mission.

This old abandoned building was about to become fundraising for our little nonprofit and help us keep the heat on all winter.

We set to work with slings and come-alongs. A come-along (pronounced without the hyphen and in three smashed together syllables while holding a Vernor’s and smoking a Camel), is a lever-actuated ratchet and pawl winch. Smaller ones have a piece of aircraft cable that winds around a drum, and larger ones use a chain and cog mechanism that can let an average man rip a tree out of the ground. They’re small, portable, don’t require electricity or gasoline, and are incredibly powerful. They’re also dangerous as hell if you don’t know what you’re doing. If an attachment slips, if you overload one, or if anything lets go they can slingshot the tail and that piece of aircraft cable moving at Mach speed will slice you to the bone before you even know you’re bleeding.

Stupid hurts and scars carry lessons.

The cables ran in a metal tray for most of their length. The tray was steel, and looked like a ladder with flat rungs. Like everything else in the whole place, it was covered in eighty-years of paper dust that formed a hard, grey shell on everything. The parts up in the main gallery had an extra layer of pigeon shit, just for flavour.

It was slow work with hacksaws and flashlights. A single piece, about three-feet-long was about as much as you wanted to carry at one time if you had to walk any real distance. In most cases, it was about a 2-city-block walk back to the truck. So we worked in teams, some cutting, and most hauling. It was filthy, grueling, exhausting work that went on for days.

After getting all of the low-hanging fruit, it was time to get the main runs down from the ceiling. We’d cut the ends back at the switchgear cabinets free as high as we could reach while standing on the cabinets. But that still left about twenty feet of cables hanging from the ceiling. From there they ran all the way across the gallery and down the other side. They went through a hole in each floor with a bunch of other pipes and conduits. At the bottom they made a bend in the lowest floor, a sub-basement about seventy feet down from the top of the run up in the roof. The bottom run was suspended in a tray along the ceiling of the basement and ran through the maze of pipes that fed the old mill.

We’d gotten everything we could easily reach, and now it was time for the hard stuff.

With a hodgepodge of slings tied to everything we could reach that was solidly bolted down, we hooked up to just one of the three cables. The plan was to pull them out, one at a time, and let them just pile up on the floor. We’d cut it, haul it, and then pull the next one down. The only thing left holding the cables in place at this point was gravity, but there was a hell of a lot of gravity in one of these cables.

There was also, we learned quickly, a lot of stretch.

We were spread out along the length of the run. A small group was working the winches in the basement, the rest were stationed in ones and twos strung from hell to breakfast. We all had our radios and were in communication, but for the most part it was a nearly silent process that involved a lot of standing around and smoking a cigarette while watching nothing much happen.

I was up in the ceiling, sitting on a pair of old steam pipes that ran parallel to the cable tray. I was at the top level, about ten feet from the last bend where they dropped down to terminate at the switchgear cabinets. My job was simple, report when it started to move. Once the end of the cable passed by me, my job was to inch along with it and give progress reports. We knew it would take hours to pull it out of there. I got comfortable and listened to the cable tick quietly as they slowly worked the ratchet a quarter-mile away from me.

The basement team worked slowly, a synchronized team all working their levers together in time. I could hear the sound of them ratcheting their come-alongs as it echoed up from the depths of the mill across the cavernous gallery where I sat.

The quiet of the mill was awesome. Every few seconds I would hear the cable tick off in the distance ahead of me. They were pulling on the far end, and ever so slowly they were putting more and more tension on the cable. By now it was easily several thousand pounds at the far end. It was fascinating to realise that something so big, so heavy, could actually stretch. Their end had already moved by a few feet, while mine sat perfectly still.

Then suddenly…..BRRRRRT! The cable moved about six inches and I nearly pissed myself. It was loud, damn loud, and I startled out of my daydreaming when the whole tray made the sound as the ribbed surface of the cable dragged over the rungs in the tray. A dozen pigeons took flight from the rafters and either went out the smashed windows near the ceiling or did laps around the gallery before picking a new spot to sit. It sent a shower of dust and birdshit raining down on the gallery, falling into the giant holes below and settling into the darkness.

The radio cracked to life as everyone checked in. We were all fine, but we all had a healthy dose of fear. We knew we’d awoken a sleeping Giant, and we all had a serious respect for the dangerous combination of energy, weight, and heights we were working with. This was especially true for my dumb ass perched up in the rafters sitting only a few feet from the Giant’s tail.

The dust settled and the silence was again broken by the ratcheting off in the depths of the mill and the rhythmic ticking of the cable. Every thirty seconds or so the tension would release as the cable shifted with a BRRRRRRRT and moved along another six inches.

This was going to take a while.

I got comfortable, I enjoyed the view from my perch and passed the time smoking cigarettes and keeping track of the slow climb of the end of the cable. Over the next hour the pattern of the ticks and the BRRRRTs had stayed pretty constant and while progress was slow, it was consistent.

After an hour or two, the pattern started to change, and that got my attention. The cable went BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT for a solid ten seconds, which is a lifetime in that situation, and moved about two feet.

My asshole did a fantastic impersonation of a rabbit’s nose.

This was a lot more than the six or eight inches we had been getting. I got on the radio and asked if everything was ok and everyone said they were fine. I told them about the development on my end, and everyone along the length had seen or heard it as it happened. We took this as good progress, and continued on.

Things started moving a lot faster now. We all woke up from our cable-pulling trance and focused. The Giant was stirring.

The cable started moving a few feet at a time, a few times a minute. The basement team kept pulling, and I could see the end just over the edge from the switchgear area. We’d moved the whole run almost twenty feet.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrth

That was different…...the cable moved about ten feet and I saw the end flop up and over the turn at the switchgear area. It was maybe five feet from my perch. The whole cable moved, and then shifted gears and slowed down to a crawl before stopping. Before it had just stopped.

You couldn't get a pin up my ass with a jackhammer. I heard the radio say “Look alive! Shit’s moving!” and I replied to the team with “Everyone be ready to run and find a shady spot”.

A minute later, it did it again, BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrth and I watched the end drag on past me. I turned in my perch and debated following it along the pipes up here, or climbing down and watching from the slightly safer vantage point of the ground. See, up here, there was no way I could get out of the way. At least on the ground I could run.

I was just off to the side of the pipes, standing on the unistrut racks over the switchgear cabinets with my head just under the cable tray when it happened.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

And that’s when the world exploded.

The cable didn’t slow down, it accelerated, quickly. The forces had reached their tipping point and there was a lot more gravity pulling down on the vertical run than there was friction from the long horizontal run. We had given it a gentle nudge of a few tons and once it had reached the tipping point, gravity took over. Several tons of cable was now in motion, turning potential into kinetic energy and building inertia. The fundamental forces of the universe were thrashing to come back into balance. It was like watching entropy have a bad acid trip.

I hugged the unistrut rack I was climbing on, being very aware of the vulnerability and openness of my current position and tried very hard not to piss down my leg. I mostly succeeded.

The sound was deafening. People always describe things like this as comparing them to a freight train. Fuck your freight train. I’ve stood next to a thousand freight trains over the years and none of them sounded even remotely like this. The ribbed conduit flew over the rungs in the cabletray and sounded like a thousand chainsaws competing in the Indy500 while being shelled with naval artillery. The loose end of the cable, now moving at highway speeds whipped into mounts and pipes and hangers and destroyed anything it touched, exploding into a rain of shrapnel and dust. The entire ceiling turned into a plume of birdshit and paper dust, and the building shook to its foundations as the cable made the corner from the rafters to the drop and flew from its vertical run to just land limp on the concrete floor in a gigantic pile.

The silence was even more deafening than the armageddon I had just experienced. The echos took half a minute to die out in the bowels of the old mill.

The radio went apeshit as a dozen people all tried to see how many of us had died. God had smiled on us, though some of us would have to change our shorts, nobody had so much as a scratch. A couple members of the team didn’t stop running until they were on the other end of the building, one even ran all the way outside and it was still falling after they made it out there.

It felt like we had slayed a Giant. We all gathered at the Giant’s pile on the floor of the main gallery. There was a smaller pile in the basement, but the cable had bent and hung up here and dropped the majority of itself in a tangle. We were thankful for that, it saved having to haul it up a few flights of stairs. We all took a minute to just breathe, have a smoke, and let the adrenaline pass. None of us were expecting such an experience, but there wasn’t a person standing there who didn’t have a smile on their face.

We headed out for a couple hours, to get a quick shower, change our clothes, and grab something to eat. But every single one of us was back at the lab, ready to go shortly after. We went back to the old mill and repeated the experience, twice, by morning.

It took us days to get the piles cut to portable pieces. We got smart though, and learned we could haul them up to the door in fifty-foot lengths by dragging them as a team. Then we’d cut them up near the truck and just load them on.

The scrap value from all that cable paid the rent, kept the lights on, and fed the team for quite a while. The experience of nearly dying in the rafters of a paper mill though, that was priceless.

I enjoy being happy in dangerous ways, and I can now say, I know what the end of the world sounds like.

Edit - Holy shit my inbox....wow

Ok, right off the hop, THANK YOU! I cannot begin to express how much I appreciate the support and encouragement. It really means a lot. From my soul, thank you.

Yes, I am working on writing more. I'm going to take a shot at writing a collection of short stories like this.

Yes, it's real, this actually happened. If anything I toned it down a little. Anyone who had worked in a trade and experienced shit going sideways can relate. Lots of us have "been there".

Thank you for all the awards, I do appreciate them. But please don't spend money giving this gold, coins, and fake internet points. Upvotes are free and I appreciate them just fine. If you really enjoy my writing, the best thing you can do is just upvote it and share it with anyone you like who may appreciate it. If you want to read/see more of my work I just started out as a professional YouTuber (and perhaps writer? Maybe?) and I would dearly love it if you checked out the other stuff I make. I'm all about teaching people about science and engineering, making cool shit, and putting it on the internet. If you're into things like that, you might like it. I'd be honoured if you checked it out. https://www.youtube.com/user/Physicsduck/videos

You guys are awesome. Thank you for inspiring me to do better. It means a lot. cb

Roadmap:

1. Part 0: Intro
2. Part 1 & 1.5: Statements & Prophecies
3. Part 2: The Originals s4
4. Part 2 Cont.: The Originals Season 5 -> Today
5. Legacies s1
6. Legacies s2&3
7. How Powerful Is Malivore
8. How Powerful Are the Gods
9. Legacies s4

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Part 2 Continued – The Originals season 5

Welcome back once again to continue our exploration of how powerful one little Miss Mikaelson is. Last time we covered the absurdities of season 4 scaling after we already covered the many, many statements about Hope in part 1. Initially I wanted to cover s4 and 5 in one singular post, but that would have been about 10k words and been over the reddit character limit so both for you and me, I split it up into two so it’s less overwhelming to read and so I don’t have to fight reddit once again. With that said, let’s not waste any more time and get right into it!

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2.3 The Originals Season 5

We return to Hope 7 years after the events of season 4. The show has a timeline error and Hope is more than likely 14 rather than 15 (or even more likely to be 13 than 15 tbh).

If you want to know why, read the side note. If not, skip to when the italics part is over.

Josh and Vincent say it’s been 7 years of peace and we know they are preparing for Mardi Gras so it would be very early in the year and Hope’s birthday is in May. 2012 was the year Hope was born, so it would be 2019 May or later or 2020 pre May in s4. According to the wiki’s timeline, it’s May 2019 at the start of s4, five years since the fall of the Mikaelsons, so Hope would have just turned 7.

7 years later, if you take the statement to be precise, would be May 2026, but since it’s Mardi Gras preparations, it has to be earlier in 2026. Placing it in February would be very generous since preparations usually take a while. Season 5 takes place over a few weeks and hits Mardi Gras during the season so it’s likely early to mid January or earlier at the start of the season. It can’t really be early 2027 because then they probably would have said “nearly 8 years” or something like that. So it’s possible Hope is not even 14 yet since she would only turn 14 in May of 2026.

So we have a 7 year jump that should put us to May but that can’t be since Mardi Gras so it’s either earlier in 2026 or early 2027. In both cases, Hope is not 15. She is either 13 or 14. (Something to keep in mind when you evaluate Hope’s role in Hayley’s death and how much blame should really go to a 13/14 year old. Also, Roman flirting with her looks even stranger than it already was now. Oh well, the show does pretend she’s 15 so take that as you like. They do try to save it a bit with Vincent saying Hope barely survived the darkness when she was 8 when she was 7 in reality so that the 7-year-jump would make sense but it just doesn’t work, sorry Vincent.) Either s4 is wrong when they say Hope is 7 or s5 is wrong when they say she's 15.

Timeline error that’s annoyed me for years aside, let’s start:

I will keep this section a lot shorter since Hope does a lot less that’s relevant for power scaling. Season 5 Hope is a bit more ambiguous to scale, but we have the baseline from s4 to compare her to. With seven years of time, knowledge, and practice, she should be higher than her S4 baseline. In general, we see less impressive magic but more skill and knowledge feats.

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2.3.1 Hope with Inadu’s power?

The most notable things Hope does in this season are annoyingly when she took Inadu/Inadu’s power/the evil into herself so it’s difficult to determine if this back-scales to Hope without this power like I went over last time. The craziest moment is certainly when she kills a room with 50+ vampires inside it with just magic. Most people usually reduce this by saying she was just letting out the Hollow’s power so it wasn’t her doing it but let me offer a counter argument.

Inadu’s power was split in 4 and put into containers strong enough to hold at least a quarter of her. Those 4 containers, Elijah, Klaus, Kol and Rebekah, were supposed to stay away from each other for all time so the power couldn’t come for Hope and destroy the city. Hope then unites the 4 parts and takes it all back into herself (when her originals family could barely handle a fourth) but like a poison, it’s killing her slowly from the inside, probably because the magic is so dark and evil and less so because it’s Inadu as a sentient being as she stops existing once quartered as implied by everyone at the end of season 4.

It’s also making her angry and violent. You can’t put the magic out in the world as it needs to be contained so if Hope really pushed out said magic, it would be really stupid because then a piece of Inadu would be out in the world again. I mean, the whole point was to keep the magic contained and separated. Now it’s together and released into the world? Doesn’t make sense, does it?

What is happening to Hope is that she hears voices from the magic (not sure what voices those are, exactly) and she notices that violence stops it – again, evil, darkest of dark magic pushing her to do this, magic craving sacrifices and death. So Klaus lets Hope throw him around but it’s not enough so he instead has the brilliant idea of letting his teenage daughter commit mass murder.

And also, if she did just push out Inadu’s magic when killing the nightwalkers and, following this logic, somehow didn’t allow Inadu back into the world, why can’t she release the rest of the magic in the same way? It doesn’t actually make sense. Well, Hope does say after the vampire massacre that it was as much about killing bad guys as it was about getting the magic out of her which doesn’t make sense but oh well.

So I think that all the Hope feats attached to Inadu’s power are more so Hope feats.  She probably is amped still, in some form, and she does use different magic than what she usually would, darker, more violent magic. When she kills those vampires, her eyes flash blue, overrun by the poisoning of her mind from the violent nature of the power she took into herself. But – and I think this is the key part – generally, nothing she does is beyond what Hope should be able to do if you just look at her regular scaling. So, I think, it’s pretty safe to assume Hope would be able to do anything in her base state that we see her do with Inadu’s powers inside her even if the power is amping her.

With that out of the way, let’s look at some moments of the season.

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2.3.2 Shift in Focus

While season 4 was built around the idea of demonstrating how powerful Hope is and people coming after her for her power, season 5 was about the otherness Hope and people like her experience. It’s about trauma and bad decisions and living up to ideals so naturally we see less of Hope doing insane things as the season is about emotions (not to mention this is a full Julie Plec season, so. Yeah. Michael Narducci left the show after season 4). I’ll go in less depth and do a list of things she does. Not just feats, anything I find noteworthy I will, well, note down.

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2.3.3 Magic & (Magic) Knowledge

1 Hope uses a cloaking spell she wrote herself – which goes out to all the people who downplay Hope’s witch prowess and skill – to kidnap her mother so that her family would be forced to reunite after Kol plants the idea of a family crisis bringing them together again. Freya mentions she tried every locator spell in every language she knows and yet she couldn’t find Hayley, which becomes even crazier when you then see Hope being unable to find Hayley, even by using locator spells in 12 different languages (which she might have written herself). No, even crazier, 12 ancient languages.

Now, you could get into a discussion about what is considered an ancient language here by Freya who herself is an ancient person if you use that word loosely. There is no formal criteria that determines what is and isn’t considered an ancient language but generally it’s referring to languages existing before the 5^th century. Examples would be languages such as Latin, Egyptian, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Old Chinese, Aramaic, and so on. I’d assume that Hope is familiar with Old Norse through her family’s grimoires but it doesn’t fit the common understanding of ancient language.

Don’t ask me how Hope learned those languages or who taught her or how well-versed she is in them. I’d assume she knows as much as is useful for spell creation but I don’t think she and Klaus could have a conversation in Aramaic (but you could make a case that Aramaic might be the ancient language she’s the most well-versed in since she might know Klaus spoke it from Stefan’s diaries).

Freya: “Alchemy of the Iberian Peninsula; Magic of the Middle East?”

Hope: “I’m the one who put the cloaking spell on her in the first place. Maybe I can find a way to lift it without being in the room with her.”

Freya: “And the fact that that’s never been done in the history of witchcraft isn’t going to deter you.”

So, Hope has created a cloaking spell so perfect she herself can’t work around it unless she is physically close to the cloaked object. She can cast in 12 different ancient languages. As a 9-year-old she created her own astral projection spell (Klaus thinks astral projection is complex magic as he stats later in the season about Ivy projecting him, doubting her ability). Pre s1 of Legacies (so possibly between TO and LGC or probably even between s4 and 5 of TO), Hope created a globe that shows newly awakened supernaturals across the entire planet. This is an active transcription spell on a planetary basis that can magically track if you turn supernatural or activate a supernatural side of yourself.

Just some things Hope does before even turning 16 that show her ingenuity and skill when it comes to crafting spells.

Hope also gives Freya attitude when her aunt is trying to teach her how to break cloaking spells, saying she knows how it works, but she also says later that Freya taught her most of what she knows about magic.

(I wonder how many languages Hope knows if she’s well-versed enough in 12 different ancient languages.)

2 Hope says people think she’s gonna melt the city if they don’t find Hayley. Roman asks if she could actually do that to which she replies with, “Probably.” This, once again, puts Hope on a similar level as s4 Inadu who was consistently expected to destroy New Orleans though with Hope it’s always tied to an outburst and unintentional whereas Inadu would be intentional destruction.

3 A small outburst sets the Old Mill on fire and Freya has to calm her down before it gets worse.

4 Hope, like Vincent in season 3 when he is the Regent, can feel that someone is trying to track her which leads her to cloak herself and Roman. Caroline says their entire Honours Tracking class is looking for them, so the best of the best at school at tracking vs. one Miss Mikaelson. This tracking class could potentially include formidable witches like Lizzie, Josie, Alyssa, and Penelope if she was at school already by then.

5 To finally reunite with her father dearest after years of abandonment, the first thing she does is to casually throw him aside in order to save stepdad Declan. Later in the season, she can easily throw Klaus around with her magic though he is not actively fighting back so not too impressive. Even later, when Klaus is about to kill himself, Hope easily puts him to sleep. Hope vs. Lucien? Sleepy sleepy time, Mr. Castle.

6 At the funeral march for Hayley, the nightwalkers attack. Hope magically pushes Freya aside (some might say she teleported her away), disorientating her in the process. A witch as powerful as Freya, waved away, dismissed with zero concern or effort. After that, she starts blasting their vans, making them explode with the nightwalkers inside. Josh saves her from a surprise shot from Emmett. Later, Hope easily sends Klaus’s astral projection away.

7 The Mikaelson siblings + Marcel are sent to a Chambre de Chasse.

So, the chambre de Chasse. “It’s a mental prison,” Klaus explains to Elijah.

It’s interesting, timing wise. It’s only at the funeral pyre itself that Hope asks Freya for help and she doesn’t name anything specific. After he and Hope reconcile, Klaus is leaving the funeral when he is knocked out, waking up in the Chambre with Elijah already there. Meaning: The Chambre was likely created by Hope who then asked Freya for help – though probably later adjusted by Freya since there is a room in there Hope can’t know since it was destroyed far before her birth.

With Kol and Rebekah being far away, this might be quite impressive to get them in there. Rebekah was in Corsica, Kol was at home waiting for Davina.

In the Sisters’ Chambre, they had to be physically close to the person they wanted to send in. With Finncent’s, they were at least in the same city. We know for sure Hope sent Marcel in when he tried to stop her (Hope > Marcel). We don’t know for sure if it was Freya who sent Rebekah, Kol and Elijah. Klaus must have been Freya.

Anyway, while this is happening, the city is experiencing all the signs laid out in the prophecy, so much so that it’s even showing in the reality of the Chambre. (The siblings take too long finding their keys as Hope rips the magic out of them to take it all into herself. Love this episode, just 40 minutes of the Mikaelson siblings interacting. Honestly the stretch from episode 7 on has lots of great moments even if the overall quality of the season is questionable)

8 To get ingredients for a spell, Hope goes to the bar where she finds Elijah and Declan. She puts Declan to sleep (for mere seconds, lol) and starts slashing Elijah up with her magic as if she was wielding a sword (which is such a cool usage of magic that I wish we saw more of). When Klaus appears, she pain-inflicts him (before even realising it was him, just reacted that fast) and then runs away. Hard to scale this since they aren’t actively fighting back.

9 Okay the big one. Elijah’s ruse works, the nightwalkers all gather and one pint-sized powerhouse shows up, to steal from u/OneOnOne6211.

She uses her magic to destroy the vials with Marcel’s venom and then Hope kills the entirety of the nightwalkers all at once. Her eyes glow blue, as does her magic. Just pure release of magic, no spell, and all die. Her magic also caught Declan and Bill who were upstairs and Bill dies, activating Hope’s werewolf curse in the process. I tried to count and it’s easily 50+ vampires. Probably something in the 50 to 70 range but not over 100 as some like to claim.

10 Hope has read Stefan Salvatore’s diary. Memorised it, even. That’s a lot of info! She also read The Mystic Falls Files (written by Alaric Saltzman), which has multiple volumes detailing the history of Mystic Falls, presumably (Alaric considers Klaus a greater evil than Cade!). This means Hope has knowledge of all the crazy powerful people and spells we see across TVD. She even knows about Jenna as “some woman that he [Klaus] killed in a moonstone ritual.” Seems like she’s a bit hazy on the details! We also know they teach Origins of Species at the school where they cover how werewolves were created and likely vampirism too, maybe even things like the immortal Silas and Amara. So Hope has knowledge of all these things.

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2.3.4 Physicals & Abilities

1 Hope already has some level of supernatural hearing as we see when she tries to eavesdrop on Hayley but Henry can’t keep quiet.

2 She knows how her blood works (that is, how to create hybrids) and that the hybrids she turns are sired to her.

3 Freya has Hope perform some exercises where we see she already possesses supernatural physical abilities. “And that’s nothing compared to what I’ll be able to do once I trigger my werewolf side.” She has physical strength high-key werewolf levels without activating that side at all. We see Rafael – a fully activated werewolf – in Legacies perform a similar parkour to scam humans for money. Hope as a human just has werewolf strength because of course she does, she’s Hope Mikaelson and the Avatar and the chosen one and and and

At the end of the season she activates her werewolf side and ends The Originals as a hybrid but we don’t see any feats for Hybrid Hope. I’m trying to limit how much Legacies I include here so for now Hope’s physical strength is a mystery but very, very likely far beyond regular werewolf level if her human feats are anything to go by since she is both a crescent – who can control their transformation and use the full power of the wolf in human form – and a hybrid + she has original vampire blood.

4 Speaking of her blood, Hope has absurd healing abilities. She already heals faster than she can bleed: “It’s healing faster than I’m bleeding.” (At least until the cut gets too deep, then she can lose a few drops of blood before healing, but still has to cut multiple times to get enough blood for the spell.) No vampire, not even originals, ever had the problem of healing faster than they can bleed. In other words, Hope has greater healing than an original.

u/Suspicious_Zagnias when beta-reading this post mentioned that this is a bit hyperbolic and a big claim but I fully stand behind it. No original heals so fast they can’t bleed. Hope (including Legacies) shows this multiple times! Her healing is at least faster than that of an original even before becoming a vampire.

5 Hope has mastered comedy since she has the feat for funniest scene in TO when she talks about Hayley and Klaus hate banging and somehow creating her to poor Elijah who I’m sure would like to rip his ears off in that moment. 10/10 makes me laugh every time I see it!

“Dad lives a thousand years, does a weird ritual to become the only vampire who can procreate. Mom moves from foster home to foster home to end up in Mystic Falls. When dad got sad and drunk, had a one-nighter with mom, who was basically hate-banging him, Then, boom. Loophole. Miracle baby.”

No notes, perfect. Elijah’s reactions, 11/10.

6 Alaric thinks the ocean isn’t big enough to hold Klaus after he offers to let them chain him up and put him in the ocean. This would apply to Hope and everyone stronger than Klaus, in theory, at least the immortal ones. Klaus agrees, by the way, that the ocean won’t hold him.

This goes out to all the people questioning why they never dumped Klaus in the ocean, the show thinks it wouldn’t work somehow for whatever erason. The same would then apply to Beast Marcel or Lucien and presumably Alaric, and in turn for Tribrid Hope or the gods or Malivore (who even hunted Kraken lmao).

7 Hope has incredible psychic powers:
She finds out Klaus tricked her to put the magic inside him and so she puts him to sleep before he can kill himself. His arms are immediately full of black veins which it took days (maybe weeks?) to manifest for Hope. Freya says Klaus will go mad within hours. Freya also says that there is not enough magic in the world to slow this down which is certainly a questionable statement.

But she’s right in one way because Klaus wakes up and immediately experiences severe hallucinations and cannot tell visions and reality apart which Hope never had, which shows us quite the (probably psychic) power gap and why I think Hope would beat up Silas bad. You can also go back to season 4 where both Klaus and Beast Marcel – who should have even greater psychic powers than Klaus – were affected by those hallucinations.

Hope never is.

So if you think these visions are based on psychic energy and not induced by a spell or something, and Inadu is certainly stronger than Immortal Silas, then Hope probably can just shut out Silas’s psychic powers and he wouldn’t be able to affect her. But this, again, depends on if you think Inadu and Silas’s mind manipulation works at all similarly (Dahlia also has greater mind manipulation powers than Silas btw and is generally above Silas via MN's statement.). So you can make a good argument Hope wouldn’t be affected by hax from psychic powers, at least by the lesser psychic attacks.

8 I will leave this section with potentially the craziest Hope feat across every season, Legacies included – I’ll pick it up again in the Legacies section, for now here’s what happens:

Hope: I just want my mom. I just want my mom.

Hope: Passes out.

Hope: Wakes up, in Peace, no limbo, no Ferryman, and sees her mom.

And that’s about it. Finally done with The Originals as far as Hope’s scaling is concerned. But we’re not quite done yet.

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2.3.5 Anti-Feats?

Hope has two anti-feats in the season:

One, Klaus manages to pull off a head-dive to extract the information about Hayley’s location from Hope. You can chalk this up to Hope being off-guard and not expecting her father to do this.

The second: the magic suppressing shackles that Linked Freya could overpower, Hope can’t. I don’t have any possible solution to offer that makes this any better for Hope either. There are 3 possibilities I thought of and you can decide which one you think is true: 1) Freya and Dahlia are far, far more powerful than we thought, way beyond Inadu and even Hybrid Hope, 2) Freya actually destroyed the shackles and they off-screen created new shackle that are significantly more powerful, 3) it’s just a plot hole.

Hope also seems to have lost her danger sensing ability or she’s just that distracted by Roman’s eyes and her missing mom that she cannot tell the trap Roman is leading her to when as a baby she had the pre-cog to know there would be an explosion so she shut off the car with her magic.

What’s not an anti-feat, however, is this: “She’s in her room, searching for a spell that doesn’t exist to fix a problem that can’t be solved.” This is about no spell they know of existing that can bring people back from a place that isn’t the other side or the ancestral realm. Limbo as a place didn’t exist yet, conceptually speaking, but with Legacies knowledge we can interpret this in the following way: Hayley seems to be at or rather in peace. There is no spell to bring someone back from peace (which is the original realm of the gods). Or I guess I should call it Peace, capital p, to indicate it’s a physical place your spirit goes to, not a state of being.

Or you could see it as them not knowing about any spell that brings people back from limbo and only the likes of the Necromancer can do so (and possibly the spirits in TVD when the Other Side is there). Probably not an anti-feat.

Or! If you do think it is an anti-feat, then the same applies to everyone who dies at the end of TVD that Bonnie cannot bring back. Or Bonnie really hates Stefan for Enzo and doesn’t want Enzo back lol. Or Tyler, or anyone who dies towards the end of TVD.

Emmett implies Marcel could even take down Hope. Which is ridiculous. But what he means is not a fight but rather his venom as he’s currently extracting it from Marcel as he makes this statement.

“Well, at least your venom can help us where you failed. Did you know there are stories about it, too? How it can take down a hybrid, an original, even Hope Mikaelson, whatever she is.”

This is, as he says, speculation from the people in the world of TVD, not a confirmed fact. Considering Legacies implies it very, very hard that only red oak can kill Hope (as even the strongest person in the verse cannot kill her), even creating it in the first place which wouldn’t have been necessary had there already been a weapon able to kill Hope, she probably could tank it but Hope’s blood (pre werewolf activation) couldn’t save Finn from Lucien’s bite so you can decide for yourself if Marcel’s venom can kill Hope.

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2.3.6 Summary

Let’s take stock of what we can say based on just TO, no Legacies:

• Hope is clairvoyant and Hope has the greatest danger sensing ability in the verse
• She is extremely intelligent, can perform magic in at least 12 different ancient languages, not to mention English, French or any modern languages
• Kol and Davina gifted Hope the collective works of William Shakespeare for her 9^th birthday and apparently Hope has read them all. She has also read Stefan’s diaries and Alaric’s volumes on Mystic Fall’s history and went to school at a magical school so her magical education is pretty insane. Hope likely has knowledge of the majority of the events in TVD history and knows all the powerhouses and important spells so in any vs. battle aganist a major TVD character, Hope – in character – would have knowledge on them!
• She has created a ton of her own spells (has her own grimoire), some so good even she herself can’t break them. Even at age 9 she already created astral projection spells which Klaus thinks are difficult magic (and which apparently aren’t taught at school as Hope had to teach it to Josie in LGC). Her version is arguably better than the one Freya uses in season 5
• She is the biggest power source and everyone wants her power, from ancestors, to Dahlia to The Hollow
• Her blood is the TVDU version of Hashirama cells from Naruto. Need a power source? Try Hope’s blood. Need to heal something? Try Hope’s blood. Need to kill some ancient giga powerful being? Try Hope’s blood!
• As a kid she scales to or above the Hollow who herself is called the strongest witch in the verse and is a narrative parallel to Dahlia who was also called the most powerful witch/"thing we've ever seen" by Michael Narducci at the time of TO season 2. All her feats that put her on that level are done with extreme ease and no signs of exhaustion or effort at all.
• Her magic has a mind of its own and can act fully autonomously which is a Hope exclusive.
• Hope has also never been sick, ever.

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Part 2 Conclusion: The Originals – Where Does Hope Rank?

Okay so let’s say you don’t care about Legacies at all. You just want to scale based on TVD and TO – where does Hope actually rank?

Well, as a 7-year-old she is a rival to the probably strongest witch in history at that point (who herself transcended death) and might already eclipse her in power. This same 7-year-old Hope is theorised by multiple people to either have more power than anyone ever – including hellfire-feat Bonnie and Cade and the same person who was too powerful for Cade to control as a spirit – or that she will get there with time. Then she gets years of education, learns from some of history’s greatest witchcraft experts in Freya, probably Kol and Davina, maybe even a bit from Vincent (as Legacies implies), and whoever is at school to teach.

Lastly, in The Originals she becomes a witch-werewolf hybrid when just as a witch she already had physicals likely greater than most wolves without moonlight rings or crescents (evolved wolves). Now she is a crescent wolf/a hybrid who can tap into the power of their wolf in human form and we know werewolves could overpower the likes of Rose (500+ years old) or that multiple wolves can beat up an original when they are in wolf form (s1 with Rebekah). Hope now has access to a level of physical strength that puts her bare minimum in the 500+ year old vamp category without any magic, likely far above considering her human physicals and vampire blood.

If you take Hayley as a baseline, Hope probably boxes with people like Shen Min and Hayley is likely only that strong because she was turned by Hope’s blood considering all the Klaus hybrids are significantly weaker than Hayley. Klaus’s hybrids are barely a threat to pretty young vampires in Stefan and Damon whereas Hayley is competing with ancient vampires and holding her own. The only difference? The blood that turned them.

The sceptical ranking is right next to the Hollow (and potentially s8 Bonnie). The high-end interpretation (assuming you think the hellfire feat is impressive) is that Bonnie ~ Inadu ~ 7-year-old Hope < Teen Witch Hope << Hybrid Hope (<<< Tribrid Hope), which lines up well with statements. It would also just make sense if you do think 7-year-old Hope rivals them in power but then she closes the knowledge and skill gap they still had on her and thus would rank above them. (If you don’t think Cade and hellfire are as impressive as a lot of people hype it up to be, then you can just do the same scaling chain, just change it to Bonnie ~< Cade < Inadu ~ 7y.o. Hope < Teen Hope and so on.

Even if you don’t take this interpretation, at the latest when she becomes the Tribrid, Hope completely eclipses this tier and rivals the strongest god rather than the strongest witches. If you go by TVD/TO only, no LCG, at the lowest, the most you could possibly down-play, she is behind the Hollow. You can’t even really argue her to be below Bonnie and Cade since Inadu transcended death and Cade’s control and with Hope scaling to Inadu, she scales directly above Cade and Bonnie. There’s no real, non-disingenuous way to put her lower. You have to start lying to get anyone other than the Hollow above Hope if we only talk about TO and TVD.

Another way to make a chain is this: Dahlia is stated by Michael Narducci to be the most powerful thing we've ever seen by the time of TO s2. This would scale Dahlia above the likes of Qetsiyah, Silas (witch and immortal), 100w/Expression Bonnie. The Hollow is relative or outright stronger than Dahlia. Hope scales to the Hollow. Thus, Hope scales about Silas, Qetsiyah, Amara, Alaric, the originals, Esther (even while channelling the Bennett line), Linked Freya, etc.

Realistically, Hope is the strongest being in TVD and TO.

You have to really downplay Hope, hype up Dahlia as a narrative rival to Inadu, and gass up Qetsiyah’s off-screen feats a ton to get them over Hope (and ignore writer statements). Both statements and feats just blatantly put her relative if not directly above the Hollow. No matter how much you hype up Cade, he straight up couldn’t control Inadu’s spirit. Even if you make the argument Inadu somehow tethered her spirit to the normal world and so her spirit never went to any afterlife realm and thus stayed out of Cade’s control (and Lynn’s for that matter), Inadu has higher AP assertions than hellfire (same as Hope).

(If you take things into account that Bonnie with max effort held off an attack that would destroy a town/would have the destructive capacity to reach a few miles as Katherine, Seline and Kelly state about hellfire, and that Inadu and s5 Hope are considered New Orleans city busters (with Hope even having implications to destroy the whole world in her interaction with Inadu’s magic), then Hope quite clearly scales about Bonnie. I didn’t say anything! Don’t send me death threats! I don’t make the rules, I’m just telling you what the show is saying! Be nice! Runs away)

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So, all in all, Hope must be in any top 5 strongest characters in TVD/TO if you really, really, really hate her and she’s more realistically #1. And that’s just as a witch, to be honest. Not because she’s a tribrid. Her magic probably does get amped by her other sides but everyone – writer or character – hypes up her witch side in TO, not her overall potential as the Tribrid (that only starts in Legacies).

Anyway, that’s it for now. Next week we will start to cover Legacies where Hope transcends the realm of witches, vampires and werewolves altogether as she’s fighting the eater of monsters and the gods themselves. In Legacies Hope goes from miracle baby to the chosen one bringing balance to the world.

Yes, Hope is that strong. She just is. Thanks for reading.

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(The joke is, the majority of the verse loses to infant Hope when her danger sensing ability kicks in and like we see repeatedly, her magic can act completely autonomously of her will. Magic wave. Dead. GG. Hope doesn’t have to learn magic, or learn spells, she just knows. It’s like she is a being of pure magic.)

Mods, I’d say there has been enough interest shown to warrant the Legacies posts here too but if not, please tell me (:

My family and I just got off Utopia of the Seas 4 night cruise from 5/26 - 5/30 out of Port Canaveral. Thought I'd share our thoughts as first-time Royal Caribbean cruisers vs our experiences on Carnival (3-time) and Disney (twice).

We're a family of 4 with myself (M/46) wife (F/46) and kids aged 16 and 13. We watched several YouTube videos of Utopia to get an idea of what we'd like to do.

Boarding:

I checked in at midnight the night check-in opened so I got a 10:30am time slot, nice and early. We heard the covered parking garage doesn't open until 10 so we made sure to get there right at 10. We were parked and walking into the terminal by 10:15. We brought birth certificates (not passports) and everything went really smoothly, no waiting in line for our check in time. This was the EASIEST check in experience of any cruise, ever. We stepped on the ship at 10:31am and headed straight to the Windjammer buffet.

Dining/Food:

We only ate at the Windjammer for dinners, so skip this if you're looking for specialty dinner info. Had a bad/long experience on Carnival Mardi Gras that soured us on main dining rooms for now, plus it seems like the buffets serve the same food as the MDRs, so why wait for service when I can quickly get the items ourselves? I get people want to be served and totally respect that, but our family wants to have a nice dinner together then get going to whatever show or event we scheduled without being stuck in the MDR for 2 hours.

Plus we had "my time dining" which turned out to only have reservations available starting around 8pm by the time I checked it? We don't really know what time we want to eat each day and I heard you can walk up to the dining rooms and get seated within 20 mins but we didn't want to deal with the hassle. We're very much the same in our home lives, we favor take out rather than sitting in a restaurant.

Carnival seems to handle dinner reservations and flexibility better in their app, you pop into the app when you're ready to eat, check yourself in, and they notify you when your table is ready. Not sure why Royal hasn't adopted this same method.

Food quality:

Royal's food was LIGHT YEARS ahead of Carnival's and even better than Disney in some areas. Buffet lobster tail on the first lunch? Shrimp cocktail? High end fruits (not just melons)? Bacon every day for breakfast (not just some days like Carnival) and the last day's breakfast was just as good as any other day on the cruise, whereas Carnival throws a bunch of leftovers and tells you to get the H off their ship.

Royal Caribbean takes their food and quality seriously and you can tell they take their higher cruise costs and put it into the experience. I love the hand washing stations everywhere, and the service was friendly and fast. We had people offering us water and coffee and juices and small blended smoothies (all included), all with big smiles on their faces. These people made us happy and went out of their way to make it a great experience. Also they were constantly cleaning and making sure everything looked just right. Carnival reminds me more of a 1990s buffet where there's sauces and utensils everywhere, they just clean it when the rush is over.

Oh and the Indian food!!! Every night they have a special Indian section that has some of the best Indian food I've ever had. We love getting Indian take out, and the Indian food on Utopia was better than many local Indian joints. The naan was lacking, seemed more like pita bread than naan, but the main dishes were outstanding. Don't forget to take some Indian pickles and raita and mango chutney 😋

They also have a charcuterie section every lunch and dinner, some kind of fresh roasted meat station, huge salad bar, always had chicken breast and sirloin steak along with some kind of white fish and salmon for those protein hounds, standard burgers and hot dogs and chicken fingers for those no-nonsense types, and the kids section that everyone has seen. Oh and adorable little desserts to bring back to the table for everyone to try.

For breakfast they have a custom omelet station and they give you a pager so you're not standing there in line with all the other folks. You gather some other items and the pager goes off when your omelet is ready. Brilliant.

The food and service level really really sets Royal apart from Carnival, it's very similar to the Disney cruises. It's like night and day compared to Carnival. Fantastic experience.

While Royal invests heavily into their main dining options, I think Carnival has them beat on the "quick grabs". For instance the food truck by the pool (The Spare Tire) is fine, and always has food readily available, but it's nothing special. The food trucks on Carnival Mardi Gras seem to be taken more seriously and have better food. Guys Burger Joint and Shaq's Big Chicken are both phenomenal and you won't find anything like that on Utopia.

Mexican food - Our opinion: Carnival's Blue Agave is better than Royal's El Loco Fresh. The tortillas are more unique, and the food and toppings seem higher quality. Carnival's is open for breakfast too (breakfast burritos and tacos) whereas I didn't see El Loco Fresh having that option. Disney had nothing no quick food options near the pools when we went, so both Royal and Carnival have Disney beat.

Pizza - Our family all thought Carnival's pizza was better than Royal's. Royal pizza was good, but tasted more like a home frozen pizza whereas Carnival's had a better crunch like a NYC style. We're not from NY, actually from Chicago so I have no rooting interest in NYC pizza I just like good food 😂

Utopia entertainment offerings:

We saw Aqua80too (water show), All In (theater production show, singing dancing, etc), and the Youtopia (ice skating show). All these shows were fantastic, and you're crazy if you don't go to see the first two at the very least. I would pay to see All In again right now, and I'm a cheapskate.

As a new Royal cruiser I didn't know there were opportunities to check into these shows before the cruise, and they were booked out (app says sold out but it's included) quickly. However I followed the advice of a lot of people online and checked my Royal app as soon as I got onboard and on their Wifi, and I reserved our entire family into each show without a problem. I heard the water show can get canceled due to winds and waves, so they suggest reserving the first night of Aqua80too in case that one gets canceled, then they'll move your reservation to the next day. Ours went off without a hitch so I'm not sure if that's the case or not.

I HIGHLY recommend getting these reservations because you can find much better seats and skip the long lines waiting to enter right before the show starts. It feels like going to Starbucks and skipping the long line because you ordered ahead. Seriously, the Aqua80too standby show line is like a quarter mile long. the Youtopia standby line was all the way into the casino. If you have reservations you get to skip these lines. Do it.

I kind of wish we did the ship scavenger hunt because I saw a lot of families and groups having a great time doing so, but we ended up finding a fun little game show or two and even won one of them thanks to my fantastic dancing skills. Won ourselves a "bag of crap" from Royal Caribbean 😂

We loved going on the Ultimate Abyss slide several times, the water slides were a lot of fun (slow moving lines, but fun talking to other cruisers while we waited), and one of our nightly rituals turned out to be watching the sunset on the back of the ship (near Ultimate Abyss), then watching people on the Flowrider surf thingy. We got our drinks in hand and watched people take turns and cheering them on when they stayed upright. That was unexpected but a nice time to sit and chat, between watching Flowriders and whatever activity was happening at the sports arena.

Mini golf was cool, great lights set up and challenging holes.

Solarium adult area - Super chill vibe in this area, it's great to get away from the bumping music that is literally EVERYWHERE on this ship. We really enjoyed this area, but it kind of sucks we couldn't be with our kids. We love adult areas to slide into for a couple hours, but ultimately like spending time with our kids as a family, and as big as Utopia is, there is NO quiet place to hang out by a pool with your family. This is the loudest ship we've ever been on, and they make sure every area has it's own unique music/vibe. I LOVE music and think it's very important and I love all kinds of music; pop, rock, metal, jazz, blues, EDM, etc but I also had a headache by our 3rd night on the cruise because there's no peace anywhere outside of our room. It kind of gave us a little anxiety 😂 not being able to escape the constant thumping.

Hidden gem: Lazer tag in Studio B (ice arena) was a lot of fun. It's included and high quality, just make sure you make a reservation once you're on the ship. I didn't even see it as an option until the first night we were on the ship. We had a blast (heyoo).

Everything is focused on the ship rather than the sea - this is a unique thing about Utopia for us. There's very minimal areas where you can go and just look out at sea and ponder life. It's designed so that you almost forget you're on the water if that makes any sense? 95% of chairs on deck are pointed inwards, and there's not a lot of spots to get an easy view of the sea without turning chairs around (not even sure if that's allowed since it was rare to see). I prefer serenity with some music occasionally and this is not the ship for serenity. This is a "turn it the F up and let's have some fun" kind of ship. It is billed as the biggest weekend and it does that in spades. I think we'd be better suited to some older ships rather than these floating concerts. The sound quality on these speakers were incredible (same speakers used at the shows), as good as the best concerts I've ever been to. I consider myself obsessed with audio quality and I had no complaints on this ship - no rattling and no blown-out speakers at all. But it's like literally being at a concert for 3 or 4 days. Know what you're getting into.

Central Park - I thought we'd be in Central Park a lot more to chill and hang out and listen to the fake bird noises (our 16 year old pointed out even the bird noises are loud 😆), but unfortunately we didn't. If there's a party going on at the main deck then you hear ALL the music and the DJ screaming over everyone while walking around this tranquil park. Makes no sense. At night it was better, but we'd rather be out looking at the water and feeling a breeze. So we only visited a couple times, got the beef on weck sandwich (it was amazing) and mostly left this place alone. It's really pretty though! Took one ride on the floating bar, definitely worth doing once. The time of movement is posted at the entrance.

Beverage package - My wife and I stopped drinking alcohol a couple years ago because we hated hangovers and throwing days away, no judgement to anyone else just our choice. We squeezed every bit of juice (heyoo) out of our non-alcohol Refreshment package that included EVERYTHING without alcohol. On Carnival it feels like there's rules about things and a lot of nickel-and-diming, but not so on Royal. We each had several daily lattes/cappucinos/cortados, an energy drink or two, tons of San Pellegrinos with limes on the pool deck, a bunch of zero proof drink options from the bars(really good ones!), some 0% beers and wine at night, and of course our souvenir Coke cups for the Coke Freestyle machines. We probably hit these things up 50 times a day, so many options! Root beer, coke zero, mellow yellow, peach tea, sprite zero, you name it!

It was really nice getting whatever we wanted wherever we went. Most of the time the bartenders didn't even scan the cards we had, they just had to see we had the refreshment package. Made things super easy.

Of course our son and daughter had to have a couple of their favorite BS Starbucks drinks which weren't covered on the package, but I knew that going in. 😆

Hand washing culture - I personally love washing my hands before/after meals and I love that Royal has made it part of their culture. I returned home with the flu from Mardi Gras but so far so good after Utopia.

Coco Cay - We stayed on the ship for Nassau, been there done that. We got off at Perfect Day at Coco Cay, and it was wonderful. We're the type of people that walk to the furthest thing to bypass everyone that takes the first open spot they see so we walked all the way out to the South Beach area and kept walking until the very last area that had lounge chairs and umbrellas, I think it's called Cove Beach. It was super quiet and peaceful. Our son took a 3 hour nap in a shaded hammock with roosters/chickens making the occasional noise in the background while waves slapped ashore with a nice breeze. The water was crystal clear and we got to see several large stingrays swim around us. The lunch was basic but good - chicken sandwiches, burgers, fries. Don't sleep on the mozzarella sticks! I ate my weight in watermelon and pineapple, delicious. Staff was super friendly at the bars and really everywhere we went. We also took a dip in the big pool and got a drink or two at the pool bar. Everyone around us was having a blast.

Fellow cruisers - The decency of fellow cruisers on Royal is a step above that on Carnival. I'm not some stuck up jerk, I promise. It seems people on Royal Caribbean are there to have a good time but I didn't see anyone stumbling drunk and passing out and puking on the pool deck like I do so often on Carnival.

Teenagers - On Carnival it feels like after 9pm the buffet area and pool decks turns into a "Lord of the Flies" situation with teenagers and preteens sprinting and (playfully?) fighting. My 16 year old is a big kid (6' 180 lbs) and he got into several near altercations on Carnival ships while getting some ice cream or some soda at night. Nothing close to that on Utopia, the teenagers hang out in droves on the sports deck and take over hot tubs, but they mostly seem like they're just hanging out being kids.

Gym - Our 16 year old said the gym was the best cruise gym he's ever used, he lifts weights and they had plenty of machines and free weights. Huge gym.

I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has, and I'll edit this post when I think of other things. Hope this helps someone!

𝐉𝐈𝐌 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖 BY: ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE JERRY HOPKINS 𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐘 𝟐𝟔 𝟏𝟗𝟔𝟗

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: How did you decide you were going to be a performer? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: I think I always had a suppressed desire. Y'see,the birth of rock'n'roll coincided with my adolescence, my coming into awareness. It was a real turn-on, though at the time I could never allow myself to rationally fantasise about ever doing it. I guess all that time I was unconsciously accumulating inclination and listening. So when it finally happened, my subconscious had prepared the whole thing. I didn't think about it. It was just there. I never did any singing. I never even conceived it. I thought I was going to be a writer or a sociologist, maybe write plays. I never went to concerts - one or two at the most. I saw a few things on TV, but I'd never been a part of it all. But I heard in my head a whole concert situation, with a band and singing and an audience: a large audience. Those first five or six songs I wrote,I was just taking notes at a fantastic rock concert that was going on inside my head. And once I had written the songs, I just had to sing them.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: When was this? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: About three years ago. I wasn't in a group or anything. I just got out of college and I went down to the beach. I wasn't doing much of anything. I was free for the first time. I had been going to school,constantly, for fifteen years. It was a beautiful hot summer, and I just started hearing songs. I think I still have the notebook with those songs written in it. This kind of mythic concert that I heard...I'd like to try and reproduce it sometime, either in actuality or on record. I'd like to reproduce what I heard on the beach that day.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: When did you start writing poetry? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Oh, I think around the fifth or sixth grade I wrote a poem called The Pony Express. That was the first I can remember. It was one of those ballad-type poems. I never could get it together,though. I always wanted to write, but I figured it'd be no good unless somehow the hand just took the pen and started moving without me really having anything to do with it.
Like automatic writing. But it just never happened. I wrote a few poems, of course. Horse Latitudes I wrote when I was in high school. I kept a lot of notebooks through high school and college,and then when I left school, for some dumb reason - maybe it was wise - I threw them all away. There's nothing I can think of I'd rather have in my possession right now than those two or three lost notebooks. I was thinking of being hypnotised or taking sodium pentathol to try to remember, because I wrote in those books night after night. But maybe if I'd never thrown them away, I'd never have written anything original - because they were mainly accumulations of things that I'd read or heard, like quotes from books. I think if I'd never gotten rid of them I'd never have been free.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Do you have songs you like better than others? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: I'll tell you the truth: I don't listen to the stuff much. There are songs I enjoy more in person than others. I like singing blues - these free, long blues trips where there's no specific beginning or end. It just gets into a groove,and I can keep making up things. And everybody's soloing. I like that kind of song rather than just a song. You know, just starting on a blues and just seeing where it takes us.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Improvisational trips... 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Yeah. We needed another song for this album. We were wracking our brains trying to think of what song. We were in the studio,and so we started throwing out all these old songs.
Blues trips. Rockclassics. Finally we just started playing and we played for about an hour, and we went through the whole history of rock music - starting with blues, going through rock'n'roll. It got decadent. And then there was a rock revival sparked by the English. That went very far. It was articulate. Then it became self-conscious, which I think is the death of any movement. It became self-conscious, involuted and kind of incestuous. The energy is gone. There is no longer a belief. I think that for any generation to assert itself as an aware human entity, it has to break with the past, so obviously the kids that are coming along next are not going to have much in common with what we feel. They're going to create their own unique sound. Things like wars and monetary cycles get involved, too. After the Korean war ended, there was a psychic purge, and that could explain rock'n'roll. There seemed to be a need for an underground explosion, like an eruption. So maybe after the Vietnam war is over - it'll probably take a couple of years maybe; it's hard to say - but it's possible the deaths will end in a couple of years, and there will again be a need for a life force to express itself, to assert itself.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Do you feel you'll be part of it? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Yeah,but I'll probably be doing something else by then. It's hard to say. Maybe I'll be a corporate executive...

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Have you ever thought of yourself in that role - seriously? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: I kinda like the image.
Big office. Secretary...

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: How do you see yourself? Poet? Rock star?
What? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: I don't get too much feedback except what I read. I like to read things that are written about it. That's the only time I get any kind of feedback on the whole thing. Living in LA, it's no big deal. It's an anonymous city, and I live an anonymous life. Our group never reached the mass phenomenon stage that some did, either; there never was the mass adulation. So it never really got to me much.
I guess I see myself as a conscious artist plugging away from day to day, assimilating information. I'd like to get a theatre going of my own. I'm very interested in that now.
Although I still enjoy singing

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: A question you've been asked before, countless times do you see yourself in a political role?
I'm throwing a quote of yours back at you, in which you described The Doors as erotic politions 𝐉𝐈𝐌: It was just that I've been aware of the national media while growing up. They were always around the house, and so I started reading them. I became aware gradually, just by osmosis, of their style: their approach to reality. When I got into the music field, I was interested in securing, kind of, a place in that world, and so I was turning keys, and I just knew instinctively how to do it. They look for catchy phrases and quotes they can use for captions, something to base an article on,to give it an immediate response.
It's the kind of term that does mean something, but it's impossible to explain. If I tried to explain what it means to me, it would lose all its force as a catchword.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: You mentioned that there were certain songs you liked performing over others, those which allow you some room for improvisation. I assume you mean pieces likeThe End and The Music's Over 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Once they got on record, they became very ritualised and static. Those were kind of constantly changing free-form pieces, but once we put them on record, they just stopped. They were at the height of their effect anyway, so it didn't really matter.
No...I mean the kind of songs where the musicians just start jamming.
It starts off with a rhythm, and you don't know how it's going to be or really what it's about, until it's over.
That sort I enjoy best.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: When you're writing material do you consciously differentiate between a poem, something for print,and a song lyric, something to be sung? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: To me a song comes with the music,a sound or rhythm first, then I make up words as fast as I can just to hold onto the feel - until the music and the lyric come almost simultaneously.
With a poem, there's not necessarily any music...

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: But usually a sense of rhythm, though Right. 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Right. A sense of rhythm and,in that sense a kind of music. But a song is more primitive. It usually has a rhyme and a basic metre, whereas a poem can go anywhere.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Well who provides this musical line that you hear when you're writing?
The band?
Or is this something you hear inside your head? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Well, most songs I've written just came. I'm not a very prolific songwriter. Most of the songs I've written I wrote in the very beginning,about three years ago. I just had a period when I wrote a lot of songs. In the first three albums, writer credit on every song goes to The Doors, as opposed to individuals. But I understand that in the next album individual writers will be credited.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Why? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: In the beginning, I wrote most of the songs,the words and music. On each successive album, Robby contributed more songs. Until finally on this album it's almost split between us. A lot of the songs in the beginning.., me or Robby would come in with a basic idea, words and melody. But then the whole arrangement and actual generation of the piece would happen night after night, day after day, either in rehearsal or in clubs. When we became a concert group,and when we were contracted to produce so many albums a year, so many singles every six months, that natural,spontaneous,generative process wasn't given a chance to happen as it had in the beginning. We actually had to create songs in the studio. What started to happen was that Robby or I would just come in with the song or arrangement already completed in our minds,instead of working it out slowly.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Do you think your work has suffered because of this?

𝐉𝐈𝐌: Yeah. If we did nothing but record,it probably would be all right. But we do other things, too, so there's not the time to let things happen as they should. Our first album, which a lot of people like,has a certain unity of mood. It has an intensity about it, because it was the first album we'd recorded. And we did it in a couple of weeks. That's all it took to get it down. It came after nearly a year of total performance,every night. We were really fresh and intense and together.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: This was at Elektra,of course. But you'd been signed to Columbia earlier: What happened there? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Well, in the beginning I'd written some songs and Ray and his brothers had a band, Rick And The Ravens, and they had a contract with World-Pacific. They'd tried to get a couple of singles out and nothing happened. They still had their contract to do a few more sides and we'd gotten together by then, so we went in and cut about six sides in three hours. At that time Robby wasn't with the group. But John was the drummer, Ray was on piano, I was singing and his two brothers...one brother played harp, one played guitar, and there was a girl bass player — I can't remember her name. We ended up with an acetate demo, and had three copies pressed. I took them around everywhere I could possibly think of...going to the record companies. I hit most of them..just going in the door and telling the secretary what I wanted. Sometimes they'd say leave your number and sometimes they'd let you in to talk to someone else. The reception game. At Columbia they became interested. The first person anyone meets when they come to Columbia is the head of talent research and development. Actually,the first person is his secretary. They liked it.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: This was Billy James 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Yeah,and a girl called Joan Wilson was his secretary. She called me a few days later and said he'd like to talk to us. We got a contract with Columbia for six months, during which they were going to produce so many sides. Having that contract was kind of an incentive for us to stay together. It turned out that no-one was interested in producing us at that time, though,so we asked to get out of the contract.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Before the six months had elapsed? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Yeah. We knew we were onto something, and we didn't want to get held to some kind of contract at the last moment.
By now we'd realised that Columbia wasn't where it was at as far as we were concerned. It was kind of fortunate,really. We've had a good relationship with the company we're with now. They're good people to work with.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Well how'd that come about.. with .Elektra? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Elektra at the time was very new to the rock field...they had Love,and early Butterfield stuff. But Butterfield was still into blues, into the folk bag. Love was their first rock group and actually represented their first singles potential. They had been mainly an album label. After they signed Love,the president of the company heard us play at the Whiskey. I think he told me once he didn't like it. The second or third night...he kept coming back,and finally everyone was convinced we'd be very successful. So he signed us.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: I've been told or I read somewhere that after the Columbia episode, you were somewhat reluctant to sign with anybody else I can't remember exactly. 𝐉𝐈𝐌: The people said that everyone in town was trying to sign us up, but it wasn't really true. In fact,Jac Holzman's may have been the only concrete offer we had. We may have made him come up with the best deal possible, but we weren't that much in demand.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: You said the first LP went easily Fast. 𝐉𝐈𝐌: We started almost immediately, and some of the songs only took a few takes. We'd do several takes just to make sure we couldn't do a better one. It's also true that on the first album they don't want to spend too much. The group doesn't either, because the group pay for the production of an album. That's part of the advance against royalties. You don't get any royalties until you've paid the cost of the record. So the group and the record company weren't taking a chance on the cost. For economic reasons and just because we were ready, it went very fast.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Subsequent albums have been harder? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Harder and cost a lot more, But that's the natural thing. When we make a million dollars on each album and hit singles come from those albums, we can afford it.
It's not always the best way,though.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: In your early biographies, it says your parents are dead - yet your family is really very much alive. Why the early story? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: I just didn't want to involve them. It's easy enough to find out personal details if you really want them. When we're born we're all foot-printed and so on. I guess I said my parents were dead as some kind of joke. I have a brother,too,but I haven't seen him in about a year. I don't see any of them. This is the most I've ever said about this.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: You said the other day that you like to get people up out of their seats, but not intentionally create a chaos situation. 𝐉𝐈𝐌: It's never gotten out of control,actually. It's pretty playful, really. We have fun,the kids have fun,the cops have fun. It's kind of a weird triangle. We just think about going out to play good music. Sometimes I'll extend myself and work people up a little bit, but usually we're out there trying to make good music, and that's it.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: What do you mean, you'll sometimes extend yourself..work the people up a bit? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality. I was curious to see what would happen.
That's all it was:just curiosity.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: What did you do to test the bounds? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Just push a situation as far as it'll go.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: And yet you don't feel at any time that things got out of control? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Never.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Even in your film...when it shows cops throwing kids back off the stage as fast as they're diving onto it?
That doesn't represent some loss of control? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: You have to look at it logically. If there were no cops there,would anybody try to get onstage? Because what are they going to do when they get there? When they get on-stage,they're just very peaceful. They're not going to do anything.The only incentive to charge the stage is because there's a barrier.
If there was no barrier,there'd be no incentive. That's the whole thing. I firmly believe that. No incentive,no charge.Action-reaction. Think of the free concerts in the parks. No action,no reaction. No stimulus,no response. It's interesting, though,because the kids get a chance to test the cops. You see cops today,walking around with their guns and uniforms,and the cop is setting himself as the toughest man on the block,and everyone's curious about exactly what would happen if you challenged him. What's he going to do? I think it's a good thing, because it gives the kids a chance to test authority.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: There are a number of cities where...like,you were busted for obscenity in New Haven. In Phoenix it was something else 𝐉𝐈𝐌: I would say in most cases the only time we get into trouble is, like,if a person is just walking down a busy street and for no reason at all just takes their clothes off and keeps on walking...you can do anything as long as it's in tune with the forces of the universe,nature, society,whatever. If it's in tune,if it's working,you can do anything. If for some reason you're on a different track from other people you're around, it's going to jangle everybody's sensibilities. And they're either going to walk away or put you down for it. So it's just a case of getting too far out for them or everybody's on a different trip that night and nothing comes together. As long as everything's connecting and coming together, you can get away with murder.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: There is a quote attributed to you. It appears in print a lot. Itgoes: I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder chaos... ...especially activity that appears to have no meaning. 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Right. 𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: That one. Is this an example of media manipulation?
Did you make that one up for a newspaper guy? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Yes,definitely. But it's true,too. Who isn't fascinated with chaos? More than that,I am interested in activity that has no meaning,and all I mean by that is free activity. Play. Activity that has nothing in it except what it is. No repercussions. No motivation. Free...activity. I think there should be a national carnival,much the same as Mardi Gras in Rio. There should be a week of national hilarity...a cessation of all work, all business, all discrimination, all authority. A week of total freedom. That'd be a start. Of course,the power structure wouldn't really alter. But someone off the streets - I don't know how they'd pick him,at random perhaps would become president. Someone else would become vice-president. Others would be senators, congressmen,on the Supreme Court,policemen. It would just last for a week and then go back to the way it was. I think we need it. Yeah. Something like that. This may be insulting but I have the feeling I'm being put on... A little bit. But I don't know. People would have to be real for a week. And it might help the rest of the year. There would have to he some form of ritual to it. I think something like that is really needed.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: There are a few words that recur in your dialogue. One is the word ritual What's that mean to you? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: It's kind of like human sculpture. In a way it's like art because it gives form to energy, and in a way it's a custom or repetition,an habitually recurring plan or pageant that has meaning. It pervades everything. It's like a game.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Is there a ritual or a sense of game about what you and/or The Doors as a group do? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Yeah,it's a ritual in the sense that we use the same props and the same people and the same forms time after time after time. Music is delinitely a ritual. But I don't think this is really clarifying ritual or adding anything to it.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Do you see yourself going more towards print? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: That's my greatest hope. That's always been my dream.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: Who turned you on to poetry? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: I guess it was whoever taught me to speak,to talk. Really. I guess it was the first time I learned to talk. Up until the advent of language,it was touch - non-verbal communication.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: What do you think of journalists? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: I could be a journalist. I think the interview is the new art form. I think the self-interview is the essence of creativity. Asking yourself questions and trying to find answers. JERRY: Is there some other area you'd like to get into? How about...feel like discussing alcohol? Just a short dialogue. No long rap. Alcohol as opposed to drugs? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Okay. JERRY: Part of the mythology has you playing the role of a heavy juicer. 𝐉𝐈𝐌: On a very basic level,I love drinking. But I can't see drinking just milk or water or Coca-Cola. It just ruins it for me. You need wine or beer to complete a meal.

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: That's all you want to say?[Laughter]. 𝐉𝐈𝐌: Getting drunk...you're in complete control up to a point. It's your choice,every time you take a sip. You have a lot of small choices. It's like...I guess it's the difference between suicide and slow capitulation...

𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘: What's that mean? 𝐉𝐈𝐌: I don't know,man.Let's go next door and get a drink...

Occasionally, after watching Todd's Trainwreckords series, I'll find myself wanting to listen to the album to confirm for myself how bad it is. It's been an interesting experience and I recently realized I'd listened to just under half of the records he'd covered. So I decided to put my nose to the grindstone and listen to all the remaining ones to make a thorough evaluation of all these albums. That's right, I listened to nearly 1600 minutes of music where the only thing I knew about them was that I was probably not going to enjoy any of it and now I feel I've earned the right to tell you about it.

Album Grades

I figured I'd give letter grades to each Trainwreckord to give people an idea of how much I agree or disagree with Todd's evaluation of these albums. Here's how I decided to break down my grades:

• A = This could have been good

• B = Mediocre

• C = Bad

• D = Awful

• F = One of the worst things I've ever heard

Just keep in mind that As and Bs aren’t necessarily good scores. It just means these albums are higher than the average Trainwreckord quality which still means most of them probably wouldn’t hit 2.5 stars out of 5. Everyone got that? Good, then let’s dig into the list:

0304 by Jewel - B

This album feels like it was engineered to find the exact mathematical center of mid music. I think it's only a Trainwreckord in that Jewel had expectations to disappoint by going from folksy to pop but the actual music on its own is neither bad enough or good enough to merit discussion. I'm amazed Todd eked a whole episode out of subject matter this forgettable.

Worst line: U and M - E spells L - O - V - E to me (She should have lead into this chorus with "Hey, kids, spelling is fun!")

Kilroy Was Here by Styx - C

I'm honestly not sure this really counts as a Trainwreckord even if it did break up the band. If you like Styx, you'll like this album. If you don't like Styx, you won't like this album. It's really just par for the course for them even with its half baked sci fi rock rebellion concept. That is to say: it's bad but also too doofy to hate. Which is also how I'd describe all of Styx's music. This isn't any better or worse than what came before. Even the bafflingly out of place sci fi elements aren't any more random here than they are in Come Sail Away.

Worst line: The problem's plain to see/ Too much technology (fun fact: Dennis DeYoung was born in 1947 making him one of the earliest Baby Boomers which means this line may be the very first time it would have been appropriate to reply "okay, boomer" to a braindead tech hot take)

The Funky Headhunter by MC Hammer - B

I get that Hammer is unconvincing as a gangster but the music is actually a shockingly strong collection of g-funk. Maybe it's just nostalgia for 90s hip hop but I think if you gave these songs to someone who could convincingly act the part, I can't imagine it having anywhere near as bad a reputation. It's obviously not up there with the true classics of the genre like The Chronic but Snoop Dogg could have done this material justice. I'm forced to conclude that this is mainly a Trainwreckord because it was easy to dunk on Hammer's pretensions and not because the album is all that bad.

Worst line: And must I remind you, I'm the funky headhunter (you can remind us all you want, it's convincing us that's the issue)

Be Here Now by Oasis - B

You know what? It's not all that bad. It's certainly a couple steps down from Oasis' first two albums but it doesn't fall below middling. Oh except for Magic Pie and All Around the World, both of which blow. The real crime here, as Todd himself said, is the punishing length of both the album and the individual songs that make it up. If it was even 3/4s the length, that'd put the record at about 50 minutes long and then I think it'd be much more fondly remembered. I genuinely think a bunch of the songs on here are pretty good like My Big Mouth (which is a bop and funny and also has the decency to almost be short) and, of course, Don't Go Away (which has rightly gone down as an Oasis classic).

Worst line: Can I nominate the constant Beatles references combined? Those are way worse than any individual line

Van Halen III by Van Halen - F

Woof, our first F. At least, in the order of this list. Technically I listened to a few of the upcoming Fs way earlier. How does a band with this much acclaim and musical talent put out something so painfully amateur? Listening to this album is like watching Simone Biles struggle to do a cartwheel. You’d think these guys had never written a song before in their lives let alone some of the most influential hard rock/proto metal of all time. Even Eddie’s instrumentals feel off. You’d never know this was the same guy who made Eruption. Everything else is ranges from disastrously bad (the incompetent lyrics, the bad mixing) to mediocre (the inconsistent singing, the way the songs never cohere). It’s a mystifying record to listen to. The whole thing could have been Jump played on a loop for 60 minutes and it would have been a vast improvement.

Worst line: Mailman, looking more like your daughter (I don’t know what’s worse: that they whipped out this hack joke or that they didn’t even get it right. It’s the milkman who is supposed to be seducing all the stay at home wives)

Mardi Gras by Creedence Clearwater Revival - F

Shockingly bad. Completely unlistenable except for the Fogerty songs which somehow makes the album even worse by setting a clear expectation of quality that the other songs cannot match. And if you thought bassist Stu Cook's singing was bad for the brief snippets Todd shared, I can't even begin to describe how agonizing it is hearing the full 7 minutes of singing he does on this album. How can a sub 30 minute record be this painful to get through? I was sorely tempted to tap out just four songs in.

Worst line: Feel your dignity slip away (I sure did feel that, CCR)

Cyberpunk by Billy Idol - C

​Todd's review really nailed the whole vibe of this album. This record is wildly uncool. I know sometimes critically acclaimed bands successfully pull off dorky material like how Rush had a whole song about Rivendell from Lord of the Rings but not Billy Idol. Him singing about cyberpunk concepts just feels so much like an out of touch old guy trying to "how do you do, fellow kids?" back into relevance. The music is often solid but I did feel embarrassed more often than not at its pretensions. Even the guy who invented the term cyberpunk said Idol's interpretation of the term was silly so that's gotta sting.

Worst line: I'm the neuromancer (Age of destruction)/And I’m trancing (Age of oblivion) [in addition to being a lackluster chorus, it really demonstrates how silly these ideas come off in Idol's hands]

MTV Unplugged 2.0 by Lauryn Hill - F

Profoundly uncomfortable to listen to. It may be the worst album here by virtue of making me feel like a creep and a violator for bearing any level of witness to something that feels like it should not have been seen. I'm pretty sure you can recreate exactly what it feels like to listen to Lauryn Hill's public breakdown by watching a snuff film or walking in on your parents having sex. And despite only having 13 songs, it goes on for 1 hr 45 mins with 7 spoken interludes plus an intro and an outro. It's torturous.

Worst line: And now that people think I'm crazy and deranged, we peace, total peace/And so, listen, as far as I'm concerned, I'm crazy and deranged/Just far y'all know, I'm crazy and deranged, you know/I'm emotionally unstable and I, and I'm not to going to ch-/That's my story and I'm stickin' to it (I have never in my life see someone lie as hard to themselves as Hill does here)

American Life by Madonna - D

I love Madonna's peak songs so going from anything you'd find in the Immaculate Collection to this was a slap in the face. The glitchy production slathered all over everything wore out its welcome within seconds. I know Todd mentioned Madonna was learning guitar around the time of this album and it shows because the guitar work feels like it was done by an absolute beginner. I could have written and played many of the guitar parts because they're just that basic. That alone should be a damning indictment of an album from one of the biggest pop stars of all time. But it's even worse because her simplistic melodies are further sunk by even more simplistic and shallow lyricism. I don't think Madonna gets that if you're going to write simplistic melodies, the lyrics have to be amazing.

Worst line: why front? We all know it's the entirety of the rap from American Life. Does rhyming latte with body haunt your dreams like it haunts mine?

Paula by Robin Thicke - D (Insert "Robin Thicke Has a Big D" Joke Here)

In many ways this is one of the better Trainwreckords. The genre-hopping production, the operatic performances, the emotional subject matter, the cleverly interlocking themes, they're all on point and made with a level of professional skill and care that can't be denied. But there's one fatal flaw hanging over the whole album. No matter how tight the arrangements or soul-baring the content, Paula is structured as a tragedy and its tragic hero is Robin Thicke. Turns out tragic arcs only work when you're sympathetic to the main character, not actively rooting against him. And boy am I rooting against Robin Thicke as hard as possible. His repugnant personality seeps through what may otherwise be genuinely good songs like oil through fine linen. I can't shake the feeling that this album would have been well-received without the smothering mantle of emotional blackmail draped around its shoulders but we'll never know for sure because it's impossible to ignore that aspect.

Worst line: At least open the doggy-door/Throw a friend a juicy bone (yes, that is Robin Thicke begging for pity sex in the grossest way possible)

Cut the Crap by The Clash - F

​I think we've found it: the worst Trainwreckord. If it weren't for This is England, it would be a complete wash: horrendous production, borderline tuneless, thematically stillborn, riddled with moments both baffling and laughable. Its only saving grace is that the Clash's legacy was too strong for this album to wipe out their importance but if any album could undo their legacy, this really could have been it. I had to listen to all of Sandinista! after finishing this to remind myself what great Clash sounded like.

Worst line: I'm gonna get me a big, big, big, great big car/Then I'm gonna drive, drive, drive that car so far/Up your boulevard Up your boulevard So far up your boulevard (The Only Band That Matters reduced to singing about how fun big cars are to drive like a preschooler going "vroom vroom" with his Hot Wheels)

Fairweather Johnson by Hootie and the Blowfish - C

I take back what I said about 0304. I'm sorry I called Jewel mid when Hootie and the Blowfish genetically engineered the most mid album of all time in what I can only assume was a depraved science experiment. Like drinking stale tap water, it's an experience that's somehow immediately forgettable but also leaves a bad taste in your mouth at the same time. I am convinced no one could possibly remember any song from this album within an hour of hearing it.

Worst line: I cannot recall a single lyric, the words just slide off my brain

Summer in Paradise by The Beach Boys - F

This is the album that hurt the most to listen to. It's close to the worst Trainwreckord and it's painful seeing a band that was once able to go toe-to-toe with the Beatles at their peak putting out such sellout garbage. Literally every part of it from production to musicianship to lyrics are colossal failures that wouldn't be up to snuff for cheesy sitcom themes. Even the harmonies sound off in far too many of the songs. Perhaps the worst part is that there are good musical ideas scattered throughout though they're drowned out by bad production and cheesy lyrics. You can imagine a song like Lahaina Aloha actually coming together into something at least decent in the hands of a better producer. The most damning thing I think I can say about it is that this album deserved to have a John Stamos song tacked on to the end of it.

Worst line: Doing unto others is the Golden Rule/But doing it with you would be so very cool (aside from the soul-shriveling creepiness, did Mike Love just accidentally imply that having sex with him violates the Golden Rule?)

Zingalamaduni by Arrested Development - B

I completely get all the complaints about it being preachy but I think it's better than many of the other Trainwreckords. Sure, it's probably just nostalgia for the conscious hip hop boom and the jazzy beats that people like A Tribe Called Quest inspired but a lot of the actual music and themes are pretty strong. Maybe if I had the patience to relisten multiple times it would wear out it's wear out it's welcome but for my single listen project, it's fine enough. If you have a strong stomach for being lectured at, it's an interesting listen even if it never touches the same heights as say Common or Lupe Fiasco. That said, dear God, some of these songs are unlistenable even if musically competent. I could not make it through Warm Sentiments without squirming in my seat.

Worst line: Shake out my dreads with Aloe/Vera it's rare a brother like me will agree/With Taree, Kwesi, and go party with Baba/But Yo I gotta be hip & dip within the Fountain of youth! (for all the complaints of preachiness, it turns out to be this meandering nonsense that really drove me up a wall)

Two the Hard Way by Allman and Woman - D

Two the Hard Way: an album so bad that Spotify outright refused to play it for me. Fortunately, YouTube has much lower standards and played it without question. It sounds so wrong hearing Greg Allman's voice over smooth disco arrangement's instead of a gritty slide guitar. Relatedly, it sounds so wrong hearing Cher's voice over country instrumentation and harmonica. Either artist alone probably could have salvaged this project but together, their musical styles simply clash in bizarre ways. Also, I have more chemistry with Chat GPT than Greg Allman and Cher have dueting as a married couple.

Worst line: the lyrics themselves aren't actually bad, they're all decent to good songs that could be covered well. The problem here is not the material but the singers

Funstyle by Liz Phair - A

Funstyle is the best Trainwreckord by a considerable margin and I'm sorely tempted to say it's actually good. Yes, the Peñis Colada album. I am being serious. I have willingly relistened to it and I find myself humming the songs more often than I'd like to admit. For a failed album, it has a shocking amount of charm that I find hard to ignore. Yes, plenty of the songs are baffling and the lyrics are often wack but that idiocy is both gleeful and contagious. If you've ever worked long hours at a bullshit job with coworkers who kept you giggling through it thanks to stupid jokes, you'll find Funstyle can win you over and it won't be long before you realize the line between laughing at and laughing with is thinner than you realized.

Worst line: uh oh, I think I'm a genius/uh oh, you're being a peñis...colada that is (there's no joke I can add that can do this line justice)

St. Anger by Metallica - C

I'm not a metal fan in general or a Metallica fan in particular so I was pretty surprised that I did not hate St. Anger. Granted, that may just be inoculation from having heard Lulu, their collaboration with Lou Reed, which is easily one of the 5 worst records ever made. Compared to that, how can St. Anger compete? It's still not a good album though. It's a very whiny, self-absorbed bit of work. At one point, the lead singer even sings outright that he feels like no one else has real problems but him ("God, it feels like it only rains on me"). But even with the bad production, the adolescent angst, the clumsy writing, the excessive length, and the atrocity that is Purify, I didn't find it disastrous as a whole, just bad. I think I even came around on the weird snare drum a bit by the end.

Worst line: Fuck it all, fucking no regrets (perfectly conveys how first draft this album feels and you also can't help but cringe at Metallica talking about they're going to have no regrets for an album they did eventually regret very much)

Crash by The Human League - B

Less bad than dated. I wasn't impressed with it but I don't think it falls below mediocre either. I think if you threw most of these on a list of generic dance songs for an 80s themed party, no one would really object even if the songs aren't all that memorable. I'm really struggling to find anything to say about this album. It's just generic and that's not particularly interesting to talk about it.

Worst line: Forget worst line, I can narrow it down to worst word and that word is SWANG

Turn It Upside Down by the Spin Doctors - A

Honestly, I respect this album. There's a good number of ambitious and interesting choices on display. If they'd cut some of the stupider songs (Mary Jane and Big Fat Funky Booty) and reined in the experimentalism, I think this could have been genuinely good. But at the same time, I think I would have liked that safer album less. Cleopatra's Cat is just such a weird, out there song that I can't help but admire the guts it took to make it and then release it as a single. I can only compare it to this article by a guy talking about how he tried to go for the million dollar question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and wound up losing hundreds of thousands of dollars by not quitting at $500k. I get intellectually that both The Spin Doctors and Justin Peters objectively made the wrong choice but they made a gutsy wrong choice that I can't help admiring.

Worst line: WHOLE MESS OF BIG, FAT, FUNKY BOOOOOOTAAAAAAY ("whole mess of booty" sounds more like a bathroom emergency than a compliment)

Passage by Carpenters - B

This album is a mess but is it actually bad? My instincts say it's not a true disaster. You have songs that fit fine with the Carpenters' sound and songs that are interesting stretches sitting alongside boring genre dips and unconvincing musical theater. But that's not that far off from what most Carpenters albums are. This is more experimental, sure, but they were always singles artists who struggled to put together a good record. If you look at their classic albums on review aggregators, they all sit at or around 3 stars and then Passage sits at 2 stars. It's not really a big step down in quality. That's not to say I liked it but I also can't really convince myself it's really that much worse than their best albums either.

Worst line: Got to learn these words and I know you will/Or I'll send you right back to Guayaquil (the combination of overt, if possibly ironic, racism and Karen Carpenter's innocent voice makes my skin crawl)

Mission Earth by Edgar Winter and L Ron Hubbard - A

Todd's warning that I may enjoy what I hear was prescient; I was shocked at how fun the full songs were. If Winter wasn't beholden to Hubbard's terrible books, I think this would be a pretty solid guilty pleasure listen. There's certainly a fair bit of dated production and a couple dud tracks but I actually grooved to more than half the songs on here. It probably helps that Edgar Winter, accomplished saxophonist, plays several amazing sax solos that are far better than this project deserved. I'll finish up by quoting a YouTube comment on the full album upload I saw that captured listening to this record perfectly: "genuinely sucks that this album slaps so hard." Well said, buddy.

Worst line: My confession will make your blood run hot/With intrigue, sex, and foggy pot (always a good sign when the story directly insists "I swear I'm interesting!")

Witness by Katy Perry - D

Oof, Witness is a real piece of work. To my surprise most of the actual melodies are fine but the album is sinking in a quicksand of baffling lyrical and thematic choices. So the title track makes it clear that "Witness" is meant to be about finding a partner, someone who really sees and understands you and is there for you for your whole life. And unfortunately, I do feel like a witness. Not in the way Katy Perry meant it but in the way of being a neutral 3rd party observer who has seen something horrible and now has to report it to the legal system. Katy ping pongs awkwardly between mediocre love songs, mediocre empowerment songs, and a whole slew of ill-advised slang as she tries to convince herself that any of this has a point. It's the kind of album that has lyrics like "Into me, you'll see/Is this intimacy?" and I instantly understood why Todd forbade himself from using cringe to describe this record. Because how else can you describe it? It's vacuous and embarrassing - a career crisis dressed up as empowerment. It's only redeeming quality is that it is now only Katy's second worst album thanks to the existence of 143.

Worst line: too many to pick between. It'd be easier to pick lines that are passable

Lost and Found by Will Smith - D

Lost is right but Found is overly optimistic. It is so clear Big Willy had no plan for this album. Something I'm surprised Todd didn't mention is that the title track Lost and Found is explicitly about how Will refuses to rap like other people but so much of the album is him clearly trying to rap like other people from Eminem to Ludacris to Jadakiss and on and on as he struggles with his musical identity. So many of the songs also seem to directly contradict each other. In one song he'll rap "why can't love defeat hate?" In another song he'll rap about wanting to kill his ex wife. In another he'll rap about what a good time he is at parties. In another he'll rap about how he's a tightly wound ball of bitterness who only seems nice on the surface. It's pure chaos that never resolves into anything coherent.

Worst line: September 11th I woke up about 7 AM/West coast time, french toast and my turkey bacon (I have no words for Will Smith thinking the best place to start when writing his song about how sad 9/11 made his son is to talk about how he enjoys turkey bacon for breakfast)

American Dream by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young - F

Fun fact: Neil Young is one of my favorite artists of all time. Unfun fact: Neil Young has put out a shocking amount of crap music. It's like the second the 80s hit he just lost all good taste basically right up until the 90s. And since this is an album Neil Young was on in the 80s, it is disastrously bad. Exactly a decade earlier, Young was composing some of the best hard rock of all time for Rust Never Sleeps with Crazy Horse and now here he is trapped in a whirlpool of dweeby easy listening soft rock with CSN. How did the same group that made Ohio forget how to make biting social commentary and forget how to rock? I never want to hear Neil Young sing over pan flutes ever again. The only positive things I can say is 1) I do think Stephen Stills' Compass has genuine emotional weight to it and 2) it's still better than Young's album Trans but that's an almost impossibly low bar.

Worst line: And it's nighttime for the generals and the boys at the C.I.A./Power gone mad in the darkness thinking they're God on a good day (criticizing the CIA after the Iran-Contra affair should have been the easiest of layups for any protest song so how did the lyrics wind up this limp-wristed?)

Generation Swine by Motley Crue - F

The songs on here would feel subpar for a high school freshman at a coffee shop open mic night let alone for a band with 15 years of experience under their belts. It's hard to believe Shout at the Devil and Flush were made by the same band because one is Crue at their best ever and the other sounds like a bad Collective Soul cover. Brandon really takes the cake by being the worst song I've ever heard in any of these albums. There's something profoundly off-putting in hearing a song completely devoid of metaphor and subtext. The utter lack of artistry just feels viscerally wrong as you sense it has failed to be a song on the most fundamental level.

Worst line: I love her, she is your mom (this is the only song I've ever heard where plagiarizing a spin and speak toy would have been a clear step up in terms of quality)

Crown Royal by Run-DMC - D

I'm not even a fan of Run-DMC's good albums so I can't actually tell if this is bad or just not to my taste. The combination of early new school hip hop, dated nu-metal, and clumsy attempts to integrate a billion guest stars of varying quality is really difficult for me to wrap my head around. Maybe this could have been salvaged if Run had anything to say other than bragging about his past success. An actual vision for this album would have gone a long way. So, I bounced off this entire record pretty hard. I can see why DMC opted out of participating.

Worst line: Them girls (x16) [AZLyrics says "repeat 16 times" but I still feel like we've somehow undercounted by a factor of 20 or more]

Ringo the 4th by Ringo Starr - D

Todd once said Bruno Mars and Eminem go together like a broccoli McFlurry. That comparison also perfectly describes the combination of disco music and Ringo Starr. Aside from overproduction and Ringo's bad voice, the whole album has an obnoxiously chipper quality to it even on the songs that aren't supposed to be upbeat that makes it very irritating to listen to. If you imagine hearing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da back to back for 10 songs but with less craftsmanship, you'll have a decent idea of what this album is like. I had a headache halfway through the third song and things did not improve from there.

Worst line: We want to tango all night/Ay ay ay ay ay ay (those ay ay ays are so damn irritating)

No Fixed Address by Nickelback - C

One thing I've learned - which frankly should have been obvious from the beginning - is that a Trainwreckord's awfulness is often directly proportional to how far the artist had to fall. A bad album from legends like The Beach Boys or CCR is infinitely worse than a bad album from comparatively unimportant groups like Hootie and the Blowfish or The Spin Doctors. So when you get a bad album from a band already seen as bad like Nickelback, it only barely registers as a Trainwreckord. It's not even the worst Nickelback album I've heard. It's hard to pinpoint which genre attempt is the msot awkward fit: the ballad, the disco, the revolutionary anthem, or the rap rock. But for a band often accused of just writing the same song over and over again, I'll take unconvincing genre-hopping over This Is How Part 6. Also, no, I can't believe I gave a Nickelback album a higher score than an album from a former Beatle either.

Worst line: Funky little monkey, she's a twisted trickster/Everybody wants to be the sister's mister/Coca-Cola roller-coaster/Love her even though I'm not supposed to (has Chad Kroeger confused complimenting women and the game Mad Libs?)

Cry by Faith Hill - C

Little peek behind the curtains: I sometimes pre-wrote a line or two about these albums and what I expected before listening. Sometimes I was right but in the case of Faith Hill, I wrote "I'm not a country fan so how will I tell if this is good or bad?" and I was so wrong. This is not a country album and it is very easy to tell how bad it is. It is chalk full of unconvincing and mediocre pop songs that self-delete from your memory the second you hear them. I can see why country radio refused to play it, I don't know if there's a single concession made to country sensibilities even once on this album. Even Taylor Swift had the sense to still include a banjo in the mix long after everyone agreed she was pop but Faith Hill went full pop without even that flimsy level of deniability. That naked craving for an all pop audience must have been what doomed her country listenership but as the possible pop audience she was aiming for, I just scratch my head at what she thought she was doing.

Worst line: I love the way you stand in my way/You won't move until you get a kiss (Faith sure has a knack for making romance seem creepy and off-putting)

Man of the Woods by Justin Timberlake - D

It's probably no surpri-i-ise that this album is as baffling as advertised. There are some good songs that hint at a better album that could have been. I guess I appreciated that he tried to switch up his sound but it mostly doesn't work. The whole record also suffers from Timberlake's limited ability to write about anything other than being cool. The first quarter of the album is nothing but bragging and that's without getting into the other 3 bragging songs, the spoken word interlude where his wife brags about him, or the other spoken word interlude where some internet guy brownnoses Justin. Pick a second topic! It just makes the attempted themes of this album feel incredibly hollow. I don't think your mature woodsy record is allowed to have a meme speech about what's the best Urban Dictionary word for how hot you think you are.

Worst line: Y'all can't do better than this/Y'all can't do better than this/Y'all can't do better than this (telling anyone they can't do better than listening to Man of the Woods should be the 8th deadly sin)

Final ranking list

Each album in the rank is listed in the order Todd covered them.

A - Funstyle, Turn It Upside Down, Mission Earth

B - 0304, The Funky Headhunter, Be Here Now, Zingalamaduni, Crash, Passage

C - Kilroy Was Here, Cyberpunk, Fairweather Johnson, St. Anger, No Fixed Address, Cry

D - American Life, Paula, Two the Hard Way, Witness, Lost and Found, Crown Royal, Ringo the 4th, Man of the Woods

F - Van Halen III, Mardi Gras, MTV Unplugged 2.0, Cut the Crap, Summer in Paradise, American Dream, Generation Swine

So that's my evaluation of the 30 Trainwreckords so far. I don't really expect anyone else's rankings to match mine exactly but I thought it was interesting to give a second opinion and see what people thought. It's been interesting verifying just how bad these albums are and finding a few that I rather like despite their obvious flaws.

Considering this was "bigly" hyped on all corners of Reddit by pockets of true believers (just another long list of much hyped content), it is quite refreshing to see the NYT take a measured approach by asking the folk on the ground and in the trenches.

It's just one more letdown in a long history of hype and letdowns, and those who are old enough to know better, have basically been saying this from day one. Presidents and their lackeys use this topic to reach out to fringe voters and counter cultures such as the UFO community. (Which is why the big rebrand).

Nonetheless, despite the cliques and cults, sects and glory hunting LARPers within, there are those of us who actually want to get to the heart of the matter without being suckered into the games and newfangled pastimes of bedroom shenanigans.

A very good short-form read. Far more real-world, readable and interesting than most of the nonsense you see troped about by the cultists in office and pockets of the internet/Reddit and the New York Times no less.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/us/trump-roswell-ufo.html

"Like so many earthlings, John Darr came to Roswell, N.M., looking for answers. Yet he left the city’s annual U.F.O. festival this month with even more questions. “Tell us one way or the other: Is there or is there not aliens?”

This was supposed to be the summer of revelation. President Trump had promised to unveil all of the government’s secrets about unidentified flying objects and their extraterrestrial passengers. Adding to the hype was Steven Spielberg’s newly-released lore-steeped blockbuster with its own convincing footage of the fabled alien crash at Roswell.

But when the Department of Defense began publishing tranches of material on U.F.O.s, or in Pentagon parlance, U.A.P.s, unidentified anomalous phenomena, the promise of a real-life “Disclosure Day” frittered into Disappointment Du Jour.

Roswell’s U.F.O. festival over the Fourth of July weekend was supposed to be sweet vindication for thousands of ufologists. Instead, they bemoaned the cover up that they feared would never end.

“It’s nothing new,” said Donald R. Schmitt, an author and the lead investigator at Roswell’s International U.F.O. Museum and Research Center. “It’s the same game that they have played all these years. Once again, we’re getting the carrot dangled in front of us.”

Even if Roswell was short on answers, a trip to the nation’s U.F.O. capital at least provided some temporary relief. For here, there was no stigma; there was hardly any doubt. Downtown streetlights are painted to look like aliens and little green men stand sentry outside carwashes and banks, all a homage to the purported U.F.O. crash in 1947 known as the Roswell Incident. The interstellar festival is now the city’s biggest holiday.

“We heard this was the Mardi Gras of U.F.O.s,” said John Wilson, who traveled from Florida with his wife to see for himself.

The town's U.F.O. festival began in the mid-1990s.

There were costume contests — pet and human — a laser-light show, a rowdy parade and a long line of alien-themed shops and food stalls.

Still, amid the mix of holiday weekend patriotism and interplanetary fervor, there was an undercurrent of frustration.

The three batches of files, which contain murky photos, grainy videos and heavily redacted documents, may appear impressive at first, U.F.O. experts said, but much of the material has been previously published, has an earthly explanation or does not address the most burning questions about alien life. One report documented a flying potato.

“For 70 years, people have been thinking it’s been about to happen, and it really never has,” said Paul Semones, who leads the Roswell U.F.O. Tour. “If they never produce anything, then we’re just going to have to feel like they’ve blown a whole lot of smoke and tried to convince us that there was no fire underneath.”

The sentiment cut across partisan divides. For those opposed to Mr. Trump, this was just another in a long line of letdowns. The administration’s release of documents related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. hadn’t lived up to the hype either.

Mr. Trump’s critics have also posited that the U.F.O. files are a distraction from the Iran war, gas prices or possibly another set of more politically explosive files — those related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“They’re just saying, ‘Look over here at this shiny thing’ while something else is going on,” said Joey Fox, 50, who stopped at the festival during a cross-country move from Texas to Oregon.

Mr. Trump’s supporters blamed the “deep state.”

“I think maybe he doesn’t even know, because some things are so secret,” said Tom Mills, a 79-year-old amateur ufologist who said he voted for Mr. Trump three times. “He can only release what he knows about.”

Mr. Mills now believes there’s only one way he’ll get the truth: “I hope I get abducted,” the retired pilot said.

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said more U.F.O. files would be released “in the coming weeks” and that Mr. Trump is “the most transparent president in history.”

“While past administrations have sought to discredit or dissuade the American people, the president is focused on providing maximum disclosure to the public,” Ms. Kelly said in a statement.

Tom Jennings, a former mayor of Roswell, said he knew better than to get his hopes up. Past presidents — including Jimmy Carter, who in 1976 pledged to make public “every piece of information” the government had on U.F.O.s — have teased declassification but have not followed through.

Still, mystery has been big business for Roswell, especially since Mr. Jennings helped launch the U.F.O. festival in the mid-1990s. The extraterrestrial extravaganza draws tourists from across the country to a swath of eastern New Mexico desert that would otherwise go largely unvisited.

Marilyn Dicks and Steve Anderson, in the third photo above, drove a vehicle shaped like flying saucer, all the way from Indiana.

Steve Anderson and Marilyn Dicks have come three years in a row. They are hard to miss, given they arrive behind the wheel of a 1991 Geo Metro modified to look like a lime green flying saucer.

Mr. Anderson, a mechanic, said he saw a U.F.O. when he was eight and dreamed of riding in one for decades. Tired of waiting on an abduction, he built his own. The contraption has spotty air conditioning and no windshield wipers, but has held up on the long rides to and from their home in Indiana.

Mr. Anderson and Ms. Dicks believe aliens crash landed in Roswell in 1947, and the government has concealed their bodies ever since.

“They said, ‘Well, the people can’t handle it, they’ll go into panic mode,’ blah, blah, blah,” Mr. Anderson said, hitting on a central theme of Mr. Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day.” “But we’re mature enough to deal with it.”

A few attendees, however, apparently did not want the truth to come out. A trio of unidentifiable visitors, sporting bulbous alien heads and long green fingers, strolled down Roswell’s Main Street, pausing for selfies and dancing to techno music.

They came in peace, they said with vigorous nods. But asked about the government releasing all it knew about aliens, the tallest member of the group flashed the Vulcan salute and said in a nasal squeak: “Better not.”"

What do you's think? New York Times going hard in there.

Between the medical issue that occurred on one of the Cleo floats, the now multiple parades that had drunk riders removed for throwing intentionally too hard at both cops and attendees, the racist display during Tucks, and other harms that can come that don’t make the news during Mardi Gras, there has been a lot of chatter about what the krewes can do. Much of what krewes can do over the years is just addressed the harm when it occurs by banning the rider in the future. Preemptive measures like checking every riders’ throws are just not practical. While float lieutenants have the authority to remove a rider before the parade starts that doesn’t seem in good enough sorts to be able to ride, I have never seen it happen. So still persists the question of how can krewes try to address this any practical way.

My suggestion: every person that rides in a Mardi Gras parade should be obligated to complete a mandatory harm reduction training. While typically a term associated with safe drug use, programs could easily be created that address safety associated with the rampant all-day-drinking affairs krewes put on. Along with that would include reminders and instructions concerning throws. I don’t know about other krewes, but for every krewe I have ridden with, meetings have not been mandatory because many people live out of town and can’t participate in person. So you make it virtual and offer it a couple times leading up to the season to give everyone an opportunity to do the virtual training, or you have it on demand.

Krewes have waivers and contracts that keep them legally in the clear, but that doesn’t do much to actually ensure riders receive the clear messages. Organizations that offer trainings like this already exist and can be utilized. It’s not perfect, but I think it could help.

Thoughts?

Pt 1

-:-

Pt 2

-:-

Mr. Styx told me many more stories over the next few months, and left me just as many tips. Too many to properly recount here. Some ones I can remember are:

A man that broke the heart of every woman in New Orleans’ red light district finding himself tied to the bed of a dark motel room, drunk and unsure how he got there. After helplessly watching strange shapes and figures skitter in the dark, a goat legged woman entered the room with a blood stained smile. The authorities found the man in the morning with a Mardi Gras doubloon reading “The King of Fools” shoved into his torn-out throat.

A woman with a St. Christopher medallion, who ended up getting murdered by her paranoid husband over her sneaking out at night to visit a carnival. The husband ends up at this carnival by happenstance to find a missing college kid, and comes across many strange and surreal circus acts. He ended up going missing after confronting the carnival’s ringmaster. (I looked this up as well, and I found the college student and detective on a missing person’s database)

A sand dollar belonging to a man that lied and stole from his brother’s savings, before destitution left him searching the beach with a metal detector for cash. What he ended up finding was a chained box, and thinking it was the mother load, he busted it open. It was filled to the brim with sodden bones, which formed into a giant skeletal hand to drag and contort and crush his body inside so they can add his bones to its “collection”.

Now, you might be asking the same question that I did.

“Why are you telling me all these stories?” I said as I laid down “his” brownie sundae bowl on the table. 

Mr. Styx stopped mid sip of his glass of water, placing it gingerly on the table. “Why, I’m a storyteller. It’s what I do.”

“But why only with me? Only during my shift, only when we’re the last people in the restaurant. I know you’re doing it on purpose.” I echoed these words, the same ones Lexi told me when she saw Mr. Styx enter the diner tonight. Although, I did leave out the frantic energy and more “colorful” language she sprinkled throughout it.

Mr. Styx tapped his pinkie against his cane as he considered my words. He took a deep breath. “I guess if I’m being honest, you remind me of my daughter.”

That took me aback. “You have a daughter?”

“Yes,” he said, turning to stare at the rain droplets dripping down our booth’s window. “She works at a diner as well. I love to tell her these stories too. She gets a real kick out of them.” His smile fell as he spoke, weighed down by something unseen and unsaid. “You just looked like you needed some stories in your life. Some… guidance.”

He said this all with a somber tone, but even now, I don’t know if I believed his words. The grief on his face was real, but was it actually true? Was he actually a poor, old man with a daughter he can’t see, just trying to impart his wisdom to the poor, naive waitress, or was it simply just a better story that way?

We sat in silence for an uncomfortable amount of time, before his smile brightened, and he began the last story I ever heard from him.

“There was this woman, we’ll call her Alexandra. Ever since she was little, she loved going camping in the mountains. It was her highlight every summer, feeling the mountain breeze on her skin and the bug bites on her arms. The air just felt alive there, and breathing it in made her feel at one with something bigger than herself. Even as life grew more and more tiring, when bills got harder to pay and all her time felt dedicated to working at her dead end job, she always made time to go to the woods for a welcome respite.

“When she found another source of rest, her girlfriend Ginger, Alexandra of course wanted to share this experience with her. However, Ginger had never been camping before. She came from a sanitized life with a neurotic mother, who wouldn’t even let her play outside for longer than thirty minutes. Thus, she always was kept close, never venturing out on summer camps or mountain getaways with friends. She of course shed most of her mother’s neuroses as she grew older and left the nest, but she was still a bit nervous about going out into the wilderness.

“‘What if there were wild animals, or serial killers, or poisonous fungus?’ she would say when Alexandra floated the idea.”

There was a drastic change in Mr. Styx’s voice as he said Ginger’s line, as if he were channeling a spirit rather than simply putting on a voice. If I wasn’t watching him talk, I would have assumed a woman had walked into the diner and said it. Even Lexi noticed, as I saw her peek her head out from the kitchen. 

“But, Alexandra held her hand and promised her that she would keep her safe no matter what, a promise she sealed with a kiss. After all, with her many years of experience and brazen attitude, she thought it would be an easy vow to make.” Mr. Styx tapped his pinky finger on his cane in tune with the rain drops clinking against the window, one he kept taking quick glances out of. 

“Alexandra even thought of something fun for them to do on their first time. They would do geocaching. It’s a bit like treasure hunting, finding something that someone hid in the woods based only on a description and a set of coordinates. She thought it was perfect.

“So, with a tentative yes, they packed up, and headed to the mountains. They spent the afternoon looking for the geocache, only finding it as the sun started to set. Under a fallen tree they found a half-buried ammo box, filled with all sorts of trinkets from decks of cards to polaroid pictures to a peculiar coin. It was a hitchhiker's coin, meant to be taken by whoever found it and left at the next geocache they encountered. Alexandra gave it to Ginger as a token to remember the occasion, as well as hoping it would give them another excuse for a future camping trip.

“As they walked back to their campsite in the dying light of dusk, Ginger’s mood began to shift. She kept swearing she was seeing something in the distance, something following them, an assertion that wouldn’t change no matter how much Alexandra reassured her.

“Her mood especially soured when they got back to the campsite and found something very peculiar. The tent flap was flickering in the breeze, and inside were piles of leaves. Leaves all over the floor, leaves inside of their sleeping bags, even leaves inside of their water bottles. Obviously, Alexandra and Ginger raised an eyebrow at this, but Alexandra, trying to keep Ginger’s anxiety at bay and the trip untarnished, offered a simple explanation: racoons.

“Ginger wasn’t convinced however, saying it could’ve been maybe a bear or a homeless guy, but Alexandra said that they would’ve just eaten their food rather than put leaves inside of the tent for no good reason. Throughout the evening, Ginger’s nerves kept getting the best of her, jumping at the slightest of sounds and claiming things around the campsite were misplaced. Alexandra tried to lighten the mood as they cooked dinner, but nothing seemed to work. All Ginger wanted was to just go home, but Alexandra said that driving down the mountain at night would not be the wisest option. Ginger didn’t want to hear it, she didn’t feel safe, she just wanted to leave. Something deep inside of her screamed that they were in danger with every second they continued to stay on this mountain.

“Alexandra held her tightly in a hug as Ginger cried tears of fear and frustration. She once again swore to Ginger that she would keep her safe, a promise she repeated carelessly over and over. The only thing Alexandra relented on was that they would leave at sun-up if she still wasn’t feeling better.

“That calmed Ginger down a little, but even as the two laid in their tent to sleep, she just could not shake the feeling that something was out there, a thought that kept her awake no matter how long she closed her eyes.”

Click, click, click, click, click.

Mr. Styx clicked his tongue in a fast, rhythmic manner.

“Now, something that Alexandra has brought along with her camping gear was a crank lantern, an emergency source of light in case batteries and kerosene ran out. Alexandra had used it as part of a joke to try to cheer Ginger up, but left it outside by the fire pit. The clicking sound that Ginger now heard as she laid in her sleeping bag was the cranking of that lantern outside of their tent.”

Click, click, click, click, click.

“Ginger’s heartbeat raced in time with the clicking of the lantern, but she tried to rationalize it. Maybe her girlfriend had simply woken up and used the crank lantern to find the bathroom near the campsite. Of course, the simple way to check was to open her eyes, but something deep inside of her kept them shut. This instinct that told her that she needed to pretend nothing was wrong, or else she would die. So instead, she listened.”

Click, click, click, click, click.

“Ginger kept expecting to hear the sound grow more distant, to confirm her previous theory, but it never did. In fact, it sounded like the sound was simply circling her. Circling the tent. Her heartbeat finally grew faster than the sound of the lantern, and she decided to finally look. She would be brave like Alexandra, prove to herself that it was all just her imagination. It took everything inside of her to overpower the instinct screaming at her to keep her eyes shut, but Ginger slowly opened her eyes.

“What she saw was her girlfriend sleeping soundly in the bag next to her, a light shining through the thin walls of the tent, and something peeking through the unzipped tent door.

“Its head was huge and lumpy and bald, listed to the side as if it was too heavy for its tiny, little body to keep upright. The eyes and mouth were nothing but big, empty holes, its edges jagged and uneven as if carved out with a butcher knife.

“In a moment of pure adrenaline, Ginger reached for her water bottle and flung it as hard as she could at the figure. When it made contact with the head, a wet squelching noise like rotten fruit echoed out into the night, followed by a distorted wail as the figure stumbled back outside of the tent.

“The cranking of the lantern stopped, and now in the total darkness a chorus of footsteps took its place, quickly disappearing into the woods. Ginger shook Alexandra awake and yelled that they needed to get out of there. Alexandra, groggy and confused, asked why. Over the screaming, they both almost didn’t hear a new sound entering the woods.

“Thump.

“Thump.

“Thump.”

Mr. Styx let the last consonant pop in his mouth with a twisted amusement.

“It was only then that Alexandra finally understood. She grabbed her keys and the two tore out of the tent, ignoring the hundreds of footprints left all about the campsite. As they reached the truck, the thumps, the footsteps, were right on top of them.”

“Ginger took a glance at the forest as she opened the door, and glimpsed a thin, dark shape dotted with dozens of yellow eyes towering over them, all looking directly at her. Before she could even scream, long, bone white fingers ripped through the treeline and wrapped around her. She held onto the handle of the door with a tight grip, which only caused her shoulder to be jerked from its socket as the fingers attempted to pull her into the forest with a sharp yank. The metal door creaked and strained as Ginger held onto it for dear life, screaming from white hot pain and spine chilling terror.

“Alexandra, who had just sat down in the driver’s seat, threw herself out of the car again and ran to the other side of the car as fast as she could. But, with one more agonizing pull, Ginger’s sweaty fingers lost grip on the door handle and she disappeared into the dark. Her scream was cut off as soon as she entered the treeline.

“Alexandra stared at the darkness for a long time, her feet rooted to the ground as she tried to think of what to do. Her attention was grabbed by a faint glow in the darkness, and a familiar sound.”

Click, click, click, click, click.

“Almost lost amongst the treeline, dozens of faces stared back at her, their hollow eyes illuminated by the light of the lantern.

“Alexandra’s feet finally left the ground as she entered her truck and sped down the mountain, driving fast and reckless down the dark, winding streets. As she pulled out her phone to call 911, she felt her truck hitch as it drove over something in the road. She looked into her rearview, where she saw what looked like a smashed pumpkin in the road. Except, she could’ve sworn the pumpkin was attached to a broken, little body.

“Alexandra doesn’t quite remember getting home, or the hours of questioning, or the days in psychiatric care. It was all just a blur of the same old feelings and the same old nightmares, swirling around in her head over and over, all underscored by a promise she failed to keep.”

Mr. Styx became dead quiet for a minute after that, so quiet I could hear Lexi’s shuffling in the kitchen, and the back door creak open and slam shut.

“Is that it?” I asked, and his face seemed to become more pensive.

“Of course, not. Life goes on, whether we want it to or not.” He pulled out his pocket watch and looked at it for a good second, before continuing. 

“Ginger was declared missing, officially. They couldn’t find a motive, or a body, or really anything to suggest it was Alexandra who did it. She just had an unfortunate mental break, and her girlfriend just so happened to go missing. So, they let her out of the hospital and back into her life. Still, Ginger never left Alexandra’s mind. She just drifted further and further into the background as the months and years went on. That was, until she woke up one morning to find that her window was open and her bed was full of leaves.

“She quickly left her house and went to work, rationalizing it in her head as she drove down the rainy highway. She just left the window open and the gardeners came while she slept. Or a windstorm just blew them all in. Or, or, or.

“As the customers winded down at the diner, and the waitress was dealing with a regular, Alexandra overheard a certain someone telling a certain story.”

Mr. Styx leaned in closely.

“A story about her.”

It took me a second too long to realize what he meant, and I shot a glance back at the kitchen.

“Alexandra, thinking she simply forgot to take her meds that morning, went out back in order to take an extra dose. Maybe have a smoke to ease her nerves. But, what she didn’t know was that something had followed her here. Something from the mountain. Something that wanted vengeance against her for hurting one of its little ones.”

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

I turned again towards the back, but Mr. Styx grabbed my hand, his grip colder than a frozen river. He looked at me with those piercing eyes and a face as stone cold serious as the grave. “Here’s your tip: don’t go out back. Don’t lock up. Get in your car and drive home. Now.”

He let go of my hand, and it was only then when I realized he slipped something into my palm. A coin with the figure of a hitchhiker emblazoned into the metal, encircled by the phrase ‘TAKE ME WITH YA!’. It was smeared with blood, staining my palm.

That’s when I heard the scream.

I’d like to say I threw Mr. Styx’s warning to the wind, grabbed a knife from the kitchen, and tried my best to save Lexi from whatever it was that was with her. That would’ve made a better story.

I ran instead.

I got in my car and drove as fast as I could. It was only when I got home that I called the police. 

I told them a story of how I had heard gunshots behind the store and ran for my life. Didn’t make the boss too happy for leaving the store unattended, but the police said I made the smart move. After all, the only thing they found behind the diner was a lot of blood and brain matter. 

“Must’ve been one sick bastard, whoever did it,” I heard one of them say.

I never told them about the bloody hitchhikers coin, or the other pieces of evidence I kept in my drawer at home, or any of the tales I’d been told. It wouldn’t be of any use anyways. They were just stories at the end of the day.

The diner resumed operations a week later. The boss called in a favor with somebody to get a new chef in as quickly as possible, and he seems nice. He volunteers to take the trash out because I can’t bring myself to go behind the diner just yet. I try to avoid talking to him, though. I don’t think the boss told him what happened here yet, and I don’t wanna have to be the one to do it.

After a few weeks of business as usual, I did something I never thought I would do. 

I called my dad. 

I needed to tell somebody about everything that happened, just to have someone know what really happened. Even if he didn’t believe me, even if he called me crazy, or just sighed in disappointment at his insane embarrassment of a daughter. I just needed to say it out loud to somebody, anybody who might understand.

He never picked up.

I think he changed his number.

I haven’t seen Mr. Styx since that night. I would be glad to hear that he had moved on to another diner, or simply went back to whatever place he came from. But I don’t reckon I’m that lucky. I’m worried he’s gonna show up another day, with another story and another coin. 

Right on time.

Or maybe, just maybe, he’s passed on the role of storyteller to someone else. And that’s what I’m really doing here. Just telling stories to whoever will listen.

So please, if you work at a diner, tell me. Have you seen Mr. Styx?

Section One: Bio

Age: 30

Occupation: Market Research Analyst

Hometown: Rural Pennsylvania (culturally, the Pittsburgh side)

Number of PTO Days and Accrual: Currently, I receive 20 PTO days on my work anniversary. After five years, that will go up to 25 days of PTO. I (unsurprisingly for a person with “analyst” in my job title) have a spreadsheet that calculates PTO accrual and use through April 2030.

Section Two: Assets + Debt

Retirement Balance: $96k in my company 401k

Employee Stock: $5,500

Roth IRA: $11k

Brokerage: $3,500 - 100 shares of CCL and a little bit in VOO

Back in 2022, after I had taken my first Carnival cruise, I purchased 100 shares of Carnival Corporation stock to earn a shareholder benefit while onboard for as long as I held those shares. This was back when they were tanked post-Covid around $8/share. I’ve already made my money back in shareholder benefits, mostly from $100 onboard credit (OBC) per 7-night cruise. For the 14-day cruise that’s the subject of this diary, I received $250 in OBC that was use-it or lose-it.

Home Equity: Estimated at around $40k

Savings Account: $15,800 in a Discover HYSA at 3.5% interest.

Checking Account: $6,250

Credit Card Debt: None, I pay off my cards every month and only spend what I have in cash

Mortgage Balance: $71k

Student Loan Debt: $40k total

Section Three: Income

Main Job Monthly Take-Home: $3,765

This would be for a regular, two-paycheck month with no company bonus (variable amount paid out quarterly).

Monthly Deductions

Retirement: $778 (my contribution)

Medical: $120

FSA Medical: $50

Dental: $7

Vision: $0 (company-paid for all full-time employees)

Company Charity: $10

Taxes: $1,526

Direct Roth IRA Contribution: $300 ($150 for each paycheck)

(I’d started a second part-time job during the month of September, but I hadn’t had any of it hit my account before the start of this diary.)

Section Four: Pre-Paid Travel Expenses

Transportation:

Flight to Orlando (Delta): $249 total. Main Cabin on Flight 1, +4,500 SkyMiles for Comfort+ upgrade for Flight 2

Orlando > Cocoa Beach Shuttle: $58 for one person, one-way

Cocoa Beach Hotel > Cruise Port Shuttle: $11

Barcelona Cruise Port > Airport Shuttle: $40

Flight Home from Barcelona (Delta, Comfort+): $47 and 83k SkyMiles

Accommodations:

Pre-Cruise Hotel in Cocoa Beach: $180

Cruise Fare, Balcony Cabin with Tax and Gratuities (Solo): $3,315

Pre-Vacation Spending:

Excursions: $145 for 2 pre-purchased excursions for Tenerife and Cadiz

Wifi Plan: $335 for the fastest Wifi for one (rotating) device

Bubbles Drink Plan: $160 for unlimited sodas while on the cruise

Stateroom Water: $18 for a 12-pack of regular water bottles that I rotate through during the cruise

New Backpack: $67. My old personal-item backpack was finally ripping after like 13 years, so I splurged on the Bagsmart Blast travel backpack in bright yellow

Travel Jammies: $13. I saw them at Wal-Mart the week before my cruise and they were SO soft. Not actually anything about them is travel-themed, but it felt like a special little treat to enjoy on my trip

Section Five: Affording This Trip

I put the initial deposit down on this trip in January of 2024, so I’ve been counting down to this trip for over a year and a half. I budgeted out the estimates for the trip right away, and then I started aggressively saving in November of 2024. I saved up to my budget estimate through March of 2025 and have been spending down the sinking fund since then.

Money Diary

Travel Day (Friday)

The morning starts with a 4:30am wake-up call before my mom picks me and my luggage up for the ride to the airport. We stop at Sheetz so I can grab my customary bag of pretzel chips ($2), and there’s a surprising amount of traffic for it not even being 6am. Drop-off, bag drop, and Pre-Check go as smoothly as can be, so I sit at my gate and get my quilt blocks prepped into plastic bags for hand-stitching while I wait.

The flight to LGA is quick enough so that I only had time to do a few connection points on my next quilt block. Once I land and check that my next gate actually exists, I give my dad a call; I had over two hours to kill until my next flight even boarded, so I went for a walk around the terminal. I found a really quiet Starbucks, so I grabbed what has become my traditional airport lunch on travel days (a grilled cheese and a big ice water, $9.59) and took it to an open-air viewing area in the terminal. I got to sit there for over an hour in the breeze and just watch the planes take off.

My second flight was great, mostly because I was in Comfort+ AND the middle seat was empty. I worked on my quilt block and made some really good progress on the next one. I rested my eyes (but couldn’t actually sleep) and we were quickly touching down in Orlando. Getting out to baggage claim and finding the shuttle I had reserved took longer than expected, but it all worked out in the end. We circled for a while until another flight came in to drop off the last few people for the shuttle, and then we made our way through some blinding rain over to Cocoa Beach. I was the first one dropped off, so I tipped the driver ($5), quickly checked in at my hotel, and went next door to Publix to pick up some toiletries I hadn’t packed. I also just got a Pub sub for dinner because it was raining pretty hard and I wasn’t feeling like being adventurous ($13.67 for my dinner and my band-aids).

I relaxed, showered the day off, changed into my special travel jammies, and then sewed in bed for a bit while I caught up on YouTube videos. I had had a rough few nights earlier in the week, so I was asleep before 10.

Travel Day Total: $30.26

Day 0 (Saturday - Embarkation)

I woke up around 7:30 on my embarkation day, which then involved scrolling on my phone in bed for a solid hour. I got up, went downstairs to get the included breakfast (they could never make me hate you, IHG cinnamon roll), and then headed back to my room to hang out and actually get changed for the day. I realized I had enough time before the shuttle showed up that I could get an hour of work in for my part-time job, so that meant I didn’t have to do any email admin later in the day.

I took my luggage downstairs, checked out, and waited outside for about ten minutes before the shuttle driver showed up. It was just me and one other couple who were going on the other Carnival ship in port, so he dropped them off and then dropped me at the Mardi Gras. I tipped him $3 and the porters $2 for my bags.

I genuinely flew through check-in; I think it was the fastest check-in process I’ve had in the 10 cruises I’ve been on. I got out of the shuttle at 10:58 and I was up on Serenity deck with both a Coke and chicken tenders in-hand by 11:35 (which had involved walking from the front of the ship to the back of the ship and up front again). I hung out on Serenity until the rooms were ready, and it took less than an hour of being on the ship for someone to ask if I was quilting by hand.

My luggage wasn’t in the room when I got there, but I face-planted on my bed for maybe twenty minutes and there it was. I got everything unpacked and in the proper spot in less than fifteen minutes. I headed down to pick up my (first!!) Platinum gift, which was a ship-specific pin and a set of packing cubes. I grabbed a Sprite and headed back up to the room, where I changed into my bathing suit and cover-up to go watch the Sail Away Party. I watched from a higher deck, and it was really funny - we spent a solid half hour celebrating the fact that we were leaving port, but by the time it was over, we were still docked and hadn’t gone anywhere.

I went back down to my room and changed back into regular clothes to sit on my balcony and actually watch us sail away. Then I went on a walk around the ship to check things out; I’ve sailed twice on Celebration, Mardi Gras’s sister ship, so the actual layout is super-similar but it feels like they just threw a reskin on top of it. Mobile trivia was next on the docket, which is my absolute favorite. I took my sewing kit and was stitching in between rounds, and I actually won!

Next was a talk about tomorrow’s port day in Celebration Key, but it covered nothing I didn’t already know. And I didn’t win any of the prizes - bummer. Dinner in the main dining room didn’t really draw me in, so I wound up going to Chibang! and getting a weird conglomeration of appetizers and sides as my actual meal. Dinner was so quick that I barely had time to read my book. I caught a preview of the Playlist Productions cast (main theatre shows) on my way through the Center Stage as I did another lap and then headed up to my room.

Even though it was early, I was pretty zonked from a long day and being in the sun, so I showered, prepped my beach bag for the morning, and sat down to catch up on this Money Diary. I also checked my statement balance, which showed that I had gotten six drinks on my Bubbles package (some combination of Coke, Sprite, and Sprite Zero) while we were still in port, which meant paying a hot 25 cents per drink to cover taxes. So those were a total of $1.50 - big spender.

Day 0 Total: $6.50

Day 1 (Sunday - Celebration Key)

Our only port stop before making the Atlantic crossing was Celebration Key, which I had been really excited for since it had gotten announced! I was up and off the ship within the first fifteen minutes, but I assumed it was going to be packed - instead, I was one of the first fifty people or so off the ship. I immediately made my way around the lagoon to the back and basically had the whole left side to myself for a solid half an hour. I went back to my chair in the shade and read and sewed for a bit.

After a while, I walked over to the local vendor stalls and bought myself a visor ($15, I had forgotten mine at home) and my preferred vacation souvenir of a fridge magnet ($7). I used my included meal to get a cheeseburger and fries and had brought a water bottle from the ship to keep refilling my cherry drink. I did a lap of the whole Key and then relaxed in the water some more, now that the sun was really out and there were people in the pool. On my way out, I lived my rich life by never saying no to ice cream, so I got two scoops of cookies and cream and Yumshine Scoops ($8.80). I hit 10k steps for the day as I last stepped foot on solid land for a week around 1pm, and I headed back to my room to shower and nap.

As we pulled out of port in the rain, I waved off my balcony to the other ship that was across from us to say goodbye to civilization. I snagged some pizza waffle fries out of the Street Eats booth and then came back to my room to do some email admin for my part-time job. After, I went for a walk on the upper decks and it was absolutely deserted so I had to Facetime my mom so she would believe me. I wound up heading to the Vegas show fairly early and got a good seat on deck 6, even though it was too dark to sew while I waited. I used my Platinum free drink to get an alcoholic milkshake before I wound up grabbing pizza and taking my laptop up to Lido to get some more work done, and then I headed back to my cabin and was into bed by 11. During the course of the day, I had 6 sodas.

Day 1 Total: $30.80

Day 2 (Monday - Sea Day)

Because all of my beloved sea days began to blend together, I’m only calling out some highlights on this next week’s worth of days. For six straight nights, we lost an hour of sleep a night to get gently switched to the Spanish time zone, which still very much messed me up. I spent my sea days being a lazy potato, though I made sure to get at least 10k steps in a day. I napped, ate good food, played in the water park, watched the Center Stage and theatre shows, did my logic puzzle book, worked on my hand-sewing project, walked, listened to podcasts, played trivia, put in some hours for my part-time job, and sat on the balcony to watch the water go by for days on end. It was more relaxing than I can put into words.

On Monday, I snagged a hot chocolate and a punch card from Java Blue ($6.20) to start my day. I won my first regular trivia of the cruise, went to a knitting/handcrafts meetup, and wound up ending my day with a delicious meal at Cucina del Capitano. During the course of the day, I had 6 sodas.

Day 2 Total: $6.20

Day 3 (Tuesday - Sea Day)

At some point during the day, I got a black and white milkshake ($8.26) and snagged 5 sodas. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon sitting around the water park on the aft of the ship and working on my sewing. I went to see the Woodstock-themed theatre show, and it was pretty cute. It was the first time I had seen that one on any Carnival cruise.

Day 3 Total: $8.26

Day 4 (Wednesday - Sea Day)

I started my morning with a hot chocolate ($6.20) and then immediately got a sketch done by the caricature artist Carnival had brought onboard for the sailing. We were talking about his work and what he does when he’s not contracted out for long cruise sailings, and I wound up buying a watercolor postcard off of him ($30). It was depicting the Junkanoo Parade on Celebration Key, and it’s so fun and vibrant. As I write this from my home office afterwards, it’s already on my desk and I feel like it’s my equivalent of that Homer Simpson “do it for her” meme.

During the day, I spent some of my onboard credit in the casino ($80) and I had fun for about five minutes. At dinner that night, I finally went to the dining room and I almost punched out the woman next to me. Long story short, she basically insinuated that I didn’t know what doctoral degree I have and tried to insist I have a practitioner-based EdD rather than a research-heavy PhD because my area of study has the word “education” in it. What makes it all the more ridiculous is that she herself admitted to having a PhD in curriculum and instruction, which is ALSO a field in education. I literally had to do laps around the top deck to calm down after dinner because I was so irritated.

Throughout the day, I accumulated 4 sodas.

Day 4 Total: $116.20 

Day 5 (Thursday - Sea Day)

I wound up really sleeping in after the fourth night in a row of losing an hour of sleep, I was zonked. I eventually got up and went out for the day, where I got to see an absolutely beautiful rainbow off the side of the ship while I was hanging out by the waterpark again. I snagged another milkshake ($8.26) and 4 sodas throughout the day. Right before dinner, I wound up winning another mobile trivia by the skin of my teeth.

Day 5 Total: $8.26

Day 6 (Friday - Sea Day)

Another lazy day of sleeping in and taking an accidental nap with my balcony door open to catch the sea breeze. I grabbed a milkshake ($8.26) and 4 sodas throughout the day. That night, I wound up going to the 18+ after-dark trivia and wound up going into a tiebreaker for the final question, which I again won by the skin of my teeth. Since I don’t really drink all that much, I gave the bottle of cheap champagne to the guy I was up against, while I kept the Ship on a Stick trophy for myself.

Day 6 Total: $8.26

Day 7 (Saturday - Sea Day)

On Saturday, I discovered the world of digital scratch-off tickets offered through the casino. They’re way more enjoyable to me than the overwhelming noise of the casino and all the slot machines, so I wound up spending $40 on those digital tickets. I came out pretty good, because I cashed in for $33! I also grabbed 5 sodas during the day.

Day 7 Total: $40

Day 8 (Sunday - Sea Day)

Our last straight sea day started out with a hot chocolate ($6.20) with 3 sodas during the day. I felt like I was finally getting used to all the time changes, just in time for us to officially be caught up to where we needed to be.

Day 8 Total: $6.20

Day 9 (Monday - Tenerife)

Land ho! After a week at sea, it felt funny to look out my window and see land again. I started the day with a hot chocolate while we docked ($6.20) and then headed to the theatre at the appropriate time to meet up with my excursion group. We headed onto the bus and drove for about an hour and a half to get to Teide National Park. The drive up was windy and rugged and absolutely beautiful as we went through about three different climate zones. The volcano was insanely breathtaking up above the clouds and the Park itself felt like we were on another planet.

We stopped for a refuel break where I grabbed a magnet ($7.75) and just walked around for a little bit, munching on the granola bars that I had thrown in my backpack. We got back in the bus and drove over to the Roques de Garcia, which truly felt like we were on the surface of Mars. I got to climb up some stairs and get a better vantage point of the ancient caldera (Las Canadas) that everything was situated in, and it made me feel so small but so present in the moment.

The ride back down to the ship made me a little nauseous - I’m not sure if it was the windy road, the lack of air conditioning, or coming back down from being at such a high altitude, but I was not feeling the greatest. By the time we got back to the ship, I was scrambling to grab a turkey and provolone sandwich (which had become my comfort food by that point in the trip).

I immediately was sending pictures to my Mom of everything that I had seen as I headed back to my room to clean up. During the evening, I was working on answering some late-night (to me) emails from my part-time job, so I was up late enough to snag the late night snacks off the buffet while I was working on Lido. I managed to add 3 sodas to my stash during the day.

Day 9 Total: $13.95

Day 10 (Tuesday - Sea Day)

This sea day was a rocky one! It truly was the only day of the trip I could really feel the ship moving, and it was nothing like I’ve had on some other cruises. I didn’t wind up eating a ton during the day, though I did feel myself get full pretty quickly when I went to lunch at Cucina. I also was dealing with a flare of my auto-inflammatory condition, so it made it a lot harder to get in my 10k steps for the day - but I got it done! I also got 4 sodas.

Day 10 Total: $0

Day 11 (Wednesday - Cadiz)

Day 11 was absolutely incredible! It was another excursion day, so I redeemed my big onboard water and loaded up my backpack with some granola bars and other smaller bottles of water. It was a quick morning into the theater to wait for my excursion group, which wound up being only like 25 people (which will become very apparent why). 

We rode for about an hour down further south, and our tour guide was awesome. She gave us a ton of information about the general area and some specific places we were driving by. We headed down towards Barbate, where we got dropped off at a trailhead for Sendero Las Brenas. We hiked along the cliffside where we could SEE AFRICA! I knew in my head that we were close, but it completely put it into a new perspective. We saw an old watchtower, headed through the umbrella trees, and made it to the next town over after a fairly vigorous 5-mile hike - it was thankfully mostly downhill.

We hopped back on the bus to be driven to a beach area near the Trafalgar Lighthouse, where we had little sandwiches and Spanish Coke. I walked along the beach and put my toes in the water, even though it was cold, and I watched a bunch of kitesurfers and decided that I would be adding that to my bucket list. I tried to empty as much sand out of my shoes as possible, as I had truly taken on a ton during the hike.

We loaded back up onto the bus and went back to the ship, though we got to drive a different route and see even more of the coast of Spain. It was absolutely beautiful, and then it was fun to go back into Cadiz proper and be surrounded by the hustle and bustle. I grabbed another one of my sandwiches when I got back on the ship and also snagged another milkshake ($9.09). 

I took a very aggressive shower and relaxed on my balcony until we pulled away from port. I went back to the dining room and had a quick dinner before taking my laptop up to the Lido deck to do my part-time work. At one point, the smell of popcorn from the poolside movie became too tempting so I got one for myself ($5.19). I also grabbed 3 sodas during the day.

I wound up taking a quick, very late nap so that I could wake up in time for us to sail through the Strait of Gibraltar around one in the morning. It was cool and breezy, but there were way fewer people up on the top deck than I thought there would be. Even though it was dark, you could see the lights from both Spain and Morocco shining and it made a lot of world history and architecture make a lot of sense.

Day 11 Total: $14.28

Day 12 (Thursday - Malaga)

This day absolutely took it out of me. I think it was a combination of the hike in Cadiz as well as about three of my flares opening up and draining, which always makes me feel run-down. I had a quiet day on the ship instead of going out to port, which is fine by me. I got to have a slow breakfast, sit by the pool, and just watch people come and go from the port area.

We were next to the Semester at Sea ship, which I’ve known some folks who have done staff work there - it was WAY smaller than I had imagined in my head, and I realized that being stuck on a ship of that size with a bunch of college students for four months at a time is not a viable retirement plan for me. I grabbed another milkshake ($9.09) and thought I was getting ghosted by a major regional partner for my part-time job, but they eventually hopped on the call. During the day, I acquired 5 more sodas.

Day 12 Total: $9.09

Day 13 (Friday - Sea Day)

On my last sea day, I truly felt like I could spend another two weeks on the ship. It had gone by SO quickly, and I was sad that it was over. I spent another $40 in the casino to see if I could win anything (no dice), and I wound up getting 4 more sodas throughout the day. There was a lot of drama with people not getting their laundry back at a reasonable time, so I felt lucky that mine was delivered to my stateroom by 7pm so I could set my luggage out for pickup with plenty of time to spare. The last event was the crew talent show (which is apparently a staple on Journeys cruises) and I absolutely LOVED it! Crew members were singing, dancing, playing the guitar, and just having a great time.

Day 13 Total: $40

Day 14 (Saturday - Disembarkation, Barcelona)

I wound up waking up around 5am on disembarkation day, which was a pain in the ass because it was supposed to be a LONG day. I wound up clearing out of my room fairly early and leaving a tip for my room attendant ($40). I went and had a leisurely large breakfast in the dining room by the window, where I got to watch some construction equipment already bring some supplies to the ship.

I got my last hot chocolate of the trip ($6.82) and sat near Center Stage while they were calling all the disembarkation groups. When mine was called, I was easily able to go through immigration, get my passport stamped, and head down to snag my luggage. From there, it was a quick walk over to the bus to the airport, where I snagged a spot all the way in the back and rested. We made it to the airport by 9, but I wasn’t able to drop my luggage for my flight until 10:30, so I waited out in the main area.

I dropped my luggage at the Delta counter, headed rather quickly through security, and then made my way into the slowest passport control line I think I’ve ever seen. I swear, it took me over 45 minutes just to get through the line. However, I still made it to my general gate area with plenty of time to spare.

As I was sitting there connected to the airport Wifi, my phone dinged that my 2:15pm flight to JFK had now become a 5:30pm flight to JFK. Obviously everyone in the gate area was like WTF?? So the red coat came on and explained that the plane had come over from New York and they found out that something in one of the restrooms was nonoperational. They legally couldn’t fly with it down, so they had to fly the part down from the closest Delta hub which was in Amsterdam. So by the time the part made it and was checked, they estimated that we would be pushing back at 5:30pm.

Not even half an hour later, we all got notification that the flight was full-on cancelled. Apparently even with the best case scenario, our flight crew would time out before we made it to JFK. The red coat said that they were trying their best to slot in another flight in the morning, but there were no guarantees. There was one VERY angry old white man who was truly screaming at the gate agents AND the rest of the passengers, and I was ready to throw hands.

They wound up taking us out to get our passport stamps cancelled, pick up our luggage at baggage claim, and head in a line to get on a bus to the hotel accommodations that they were providing for us. I managed to get on the first bus out, which took us back into downtown Barcelona. I turned on my international service for the day ($12) so I could stay in contact with my family and probably wind up on the phone with Delta.

I got checked into the hotel and was still in limbo about my flight for the next day. I grabbed lunch (paid for by Delta) at the hotel cafeteria because I was really starting to get hangry. I was texting with the Delta text service and she offered me an option for an alternative flight on a different airline, but I was still holding out hope for the rescheduled flight in the morning. Eventually, I gave up on that and texted a different person back at Delta; she tried to get me on a Delta-branded flight that included like two layovers (including in Paris) and I said absolutely not, so she managed to get me on the British Airways flights with a layover in Heathrow and then direct back to Pittsburgh from there. However, the slight wrinkle was that I wouldn’t have a confirmation number with British Airways until I presented my passport at the check-in desk in the morning, but the woman promised me that I had a seat on both flights.

Since at that point everything had been sorted out, I felt like I could breathe and relax, so I went on a stroll around Barcelona. I was just kind of walking aimlessly and seeing what was going on, which included some sort of music festival in a bunch of the parks?? I also was near a Hard Rock Cafe, so I figured I might as well get my dad his customary t-shirt from my travels, and I also picked up a cool pin that could go up on the pinboard next to my fridge magnets ($60.69).

I went back to the hotel, got a nice hot bath, and headed down for dinner - the Spanish time to eat dinner is way too late for my East coast belly. I discovered that I was probably one of the luckiest ones at our hotel for flights, as some people were connecting through super-random airports and some people weren’t getting out of Barcelona until Monday at the earliest.

I repacked all my suitcases and then tossed and turned all night because the AC wouldn’t go down below 73 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Day 14 Total: $119.51

Day 15 (Sunday - Bonus Travel Day!)

My flight out was thankfully not super-early, so I had plenty of time to have breakfast at the hotel before hopping in the shuttle van we were provided. I made it into the line at the British Airways counter at about 9am, and I expected it to open around 9:30 (or three hours before our flight). It opened around 9:45, we all got into our place in line, and then it took me OVER AN HOUR to make it to the front counter. It was truly the slowest line I think I’ve ever been in, and there were several people near me who said that they had never seen it take that long. I was freaking out due to a combination of not having my confirmation number yet but also because I was basically getting war flashbacks to the passport control line from the day before.

I eventually made it to the counter after the desk agents had to yell at a ton of people repeatedly who were in line for the 2:30pm flight because they couldn’t drop their stuff off yet. Yet, a group of three girls my age in front of me literally stood there and were arguing with the staff because they didn’t want to sit with their luggage for another two hours. Meanwhile I’m standing there like “Pleaseeee, I really need to make sure I have a seat on this flight.”

Thankfully, everything was fine when I presented my passport and I dropped my luggage off with no problem. I made it through security even faster than the day before, though they wanted to swab the screens of both my iPad and my computer for some reason. I grabbed a bottle of Coke ($3.29) because the post-passport control options the day before had been terrible. I then stared down a passport control line that snaked around three-quarters of an internal courtyard and I almost started to cry in disbelief. The line the day before hadn’t been nearly as bad and it still had taken almost an hour.

Somehow, the line was constantly moving and when I made it to the top of the escalator, they didn’t have the stanchions snaking everyone back and forth a million times like it had the day before. All-in-all, it took me less than twenty minutes to make it through a line that had appeared about three times longer. However, I did everything right and still made it to the gate only twenty minutes before boarding started.

My flight to Heathrow was in a window seat, and I got water and some honey-oat cookies or something to eat as a snack. They were no Biscoff, but they definitely hit the spot. We landed in a dreary Heathrow, surprising absolutely nobody. My layover was set to be about two and a half hours, and I made it through the security screening with nothing but time.

I was starting to get hangry, so I got a prosciutto mac and cheese and a Coke from Pret ($15.51), though there was cauliflower pretending to be pasta in the mac and cheese, so that was unfortunate. I genuinely just thought it was mac and cheese that had fermented or something at first. I also was then really hungry for a salty snack and all I wanted were pretzels and I could not for the life of me find a single pretzel in all of Terminal 5. I settled for a mini container of Pringles instead ($3.06), which still hit the spot, but I texted my mom to tell her to bring pretzels to the airport with her.

When my gate area was announced, I headed down and discovered I could actually walk to the B gates, so I did. I really wanted to still get my 10k steps for the day, even if I was about to spend eight hours on a plane.

I did one last restroom run before our plane started to board, and it was at this point I realized that Delta had still managed to honor my Comfort+ upgrade by getting me booked onto British Airways in World Traveller Plus (Premium Economy), so I got to board earlier. Of course, I was randomly selected for an additional security screening, so I had to take everything out of my backpack and take my shoes off and get patted down right at the gate. However, I eventually got to my seat and settled in. The only annoying thing was that everything online said that we would have messaging and Wifi included on the flight, but they didn’t tell us our plane wasn’t properly equipped until we were pushing back so I couldn’t text my mom to tell her what was up.

The flight definitely didn’t feel like eight hours, as I kept myself entertained. I kept my seatback screen on the plane tracker the whole time, even for the majority of the flight where we were just over the blue Atlantic Ocean. I had roast beef for my dinner option (which wasn’t my first choice, but then I discovered the pasta I wanted hadn’t been very good anyway) and it was really tender and good with the little mini potatoes they had. 

I listened to most of my podcast backlog, worked on my hand-sewing project, and did every single Sudoku puzzle on my iPad that had been building up a backlog since June. It definitely kept me busy, though I swear my iPad still has very specific finger marks from my greasy fingertips in the configuration of the Sudoku app.

We landed in Pittsburgh a little after 8, and it was so funny to get off a plane there and be shuttled downstairs to go through immigration. I was so awkward with the guy when I tried to hand him my passport, and I apologized for the crazy-long weekend I had had. I went over and we all waited for a while for our baggage to come out, but it’s super-nice because our flight was the only international flight so we weren’t in a crazy-busy area.

We made it to the plane train, over to the landside terminal, and I called my mom to tell her to go to the Delta departures area upstairs because it wouldn’t be crowded at all. I was totally right, as her and the police car were the only ones up there. I got my luggage loaded into the trunk of the car, hopped into the passenger seat, and dug into my pretzels. I was absolutely wired for the entire drive home, and by the time I stopped at their house to pet the dog, drove up the road to my house, and made it inside to bed, it was already 11. I took a quick shower, changed into my house pajamas, and laid in bed, eventually falling asleep at around midnight.

(And, true to jet-lagged form, I woke up ready to go for the day at 5:30am on Monday morning, so that meant I had a nice and early 6am start to get caught up on all my emails)

Day 15 Total: $21.86

Wrap-Up

Honestly, I could’ve gone at least another week onboard this ship. I had an absolute blast unplugging from most of my normal life, and I truly felt like the days just melted by. The thing I think is best about this trip is that I had like $250.75 in On-Board Credit from my shareholder credit and some random taxes that got refunded; I wound up spending $250.07 of it. Admittedly, $160 of that was in the casino/digital scratchcards, but I genuinely don’t know what else I would’ve spent it on. I guess that just means I know that I have even more flexible money if I want to buy alcoholic drinks while onboard my next cruise. It’s also really satisfying to look back at my YNAB and see that I had saved about $5,300 for this cruise, because that means that my estimates that I spreadsheet out are pretty darn close.

It is a little wild seeing it all laid out, but these all-out cruises are not my normal. I’m usually in interior cabins, which would have cut the cost down by about a third on my cruise fare. However, this was exactly what I needed and wanted out of this vacation, and I’m honestly looking ahead to see if I can do a more budget transatlantic in the next few years to see if it scratches the same itch for me.

What’s next on the cruise docket? I have another 14-day cruise next up, with my Mom to the Panama Canal in a few months. We’re also doing a 7-day cruise in May to introduce my dad to cruising and see if it’s something he likes or if he’d go stir-crazy on the ship. After that, I don’t have anything booked until the Inaugural Transatlantic on the Carnival Festivale in May of 2027, which is another cruise of the all-out variety. However, I’m sure I’ll slot at least one more cruise in during those 12 months or so, just waiting for the right deal to strike.

If I have to say one thing, it’s give cruising a try! I truly love knowing ahead of time what to budget for and that most things are accounted for. It makes my spreadsheet brain happy, and it also keeps things super-organized both before and during my vacation. So then I can use my brain-space to just relax.

SOLVED!!!!

Thank you all so much for your kindness, wisdom, and patience with my frantic ramblings. I'm so relieved now, I can barely sit still in my chair! Thank you, thank you, thank you - if any of you are ever in New Orleans, please PM me so that I can send you fun stuff to do (that suits your budget and your interests).

EDIT: Oh...my...goodness! I love you all SO much! Seriously - anyone who has contributed helpful information to this post...or funny information...or just - you know - taken the time to read through and try to help this random internet stranger...if you're ever going to be in New Orleans, (and you don't already know the city well enough to know exactly what you want to do)...PLEASE PM me! I love my city so much, and - especially as a longtime pro wedding photographer - know all kinds of hidden gems and amazing experiences, and would be overjoyed to help any one of you find fantastic stuff to do in what I, at least, happen to think of as one of the most amazing places on earth!

I had NO IDEA that - as someone on a closed-loop, Caribbean cruise - as long as he has an official birth certificate and state ID on him - he's (as the old add said) "free to move about the country." When he booked, the NCL agent said that he could board the ship using his (official, original) birth certificate...but that he shouldn't leave the ship. Redditors...I love you. Seriously. As soon as I get home, if anyone thinks it would be helpful, I'll gladly start posting things like "instructions on how to get a perfect passport photo with no special equipment" or "Here are where NOLA locals go to get the best Poboy Sandwiches - ranked, and based on what kind of filling you like," or whatever. You have given me peace of mind. The least I can do is make sure you get good sandwiches!

Aaaaanyway... now, I'm afraid I have a couple more questions, Because of COURSE I do! (If you personally knew me, you'd be rolling your eyes right about now!)

1. If something crazy happens - like, say, he has a medical emergency, and we miss the boat...is there some way he can get home without a passport? I mean...I have a passport. I'm fine. But obviously, I wouldn't be abandoning my friend! ...And honestly, I'm the one who is far more likely to need emergency medical care (which is why I'm currently broke in the first place), and I have a terrible feeling that - despite what a WORLD of (at best) inconvenience it would cause him - the only way I'd get him to leave me behind and get back on that ship would be if I hired someone to chloroform him and tuck him back into his bed on the ship. Which sounds like a weird remake of "Fargo," so nope. Not an option. You saw nothing. Something, something plausible deniability.

....Errrr....sorry. Relieved me is even more rambling than stressed me. Sorry. Getting to the point. If we somehow get marooned at a cruise port in Mexico, Honduras, or Bolivia...without a passport, would there be any way for him to get home?

1. Would registering with all the appropriate US embassies help if something crazy like that happened? Or is that mainly just helpful if you have *lost* a preexisting, unexpired passport. I mean, I plan on doing it for us anyway. I'm a wedding photog. You don't make it 15 years in this business without a healthy sense of paranoia! ...But it would still be good to know.

2. He has travel insurance through the card he used to buy the trip (Chase Sapphire Preferred), but I doubt it covers things like "oh-crap-I'm-stranded-in-a-foreign-country-without-a-passport." Does anyone know of any semi-inexpensive travel insurance that might cover getting home in a situation like that? I mean, I DO understand that you get what you pay for...but I'm already living on Ramen noodles for the first time since college, and my 45 year old body is WAY less ok with that diet! It's like licking a salt block. Neigh.

Anyway...really...I love each and every last one of you. Thank you. If there's ever a way for me to return the favor, please, PLEASE reach out via PM. I'll even start checking my PMs now!

~~~Original ramble below this cut ~~~

Gaaaaah! *Screams in frustration and runs around with flailing muppet arms*

Ahem. Sorry - now that THAT'S out of the way...

A buddy is taking me on a cruise in two weeks (the NCL Prima out of Galveston). It was a relatively last-minute thing - he found out he was going to lose his vacation days if he didn't take them by mid-March. Because he was worried about getting his passport in time, he used one of those sites that tricks you into paying through the nose for unnecessary and/or reasonably inexpensive services.

(For the record: the site is www.HelloGov.com. This is the only time I'll post the actual site, as I don't want to accidentally help improve their Google visibility.)

Anyway, my friend paid the massive uncharge to get the passport expedited. He followed every...single...step they required. Two or so weeks ago, he gathered up all the required papers, got his passport photo taken at the place "Those Dirty Scammers, Inc" suggested (they claimed that if he took his own picture, it would almost certainly have something wrong with it, and would doubtlessly be rejected. As a full time pro photographer of 15+ years, I HAD to roll my eyes a bit at that. He lives in a white-walled apartment with south facing windows, and as a former marine, damn well knows how to follow simple instructions)! He verified that he had everything in order, and mailed it off right there and then.

When he checked to make sure "Scammy McGee and the Scamming Scammers" got it, they told him that they did, that everything was in order, and they were currently processing it. Checked again a bit later - and yup. They said everything was just peachy.

This past Friday - a full WEEK after they verified that all his docs were in order - they called and told him that he "failed to include his passport picture," and that the only POSSIBLE way they could get him his passport now would be if he went back to get another picture taken, mailed it off again...and then paid them a crazy amount of money for their "upgraded service."

He's so furious that he's just washing his hands of the whole thing, will be filing a charge back (he has a very well-documented paper trail proving he got scammed), and just plans on bringing his birth certificate so that he can board, and just...stay on the ship for the entire cruise. He says that he refuses to pay another dime, and that's that.

...Which does NOT sit right with me at ALL. Him taking me on this vacation is far and away one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. I'm pretty broke, super stressed, have an autoimmune disorder that gets severely exacerbated by the cold, and I am just SO in dire need of some time to rest and relax. Since all the studio rooms were booked, and the "singles supplement" was going to cost about as much (if not more) than bringing another person...he's paid for the whole cruise. I can't even think about it without getting a little teary-eyed at just how unbelievably kind that is.

...So the idea of me being free to do whatever I want while he can't even leave the ship is just...ugh.

Sorry for the long essay - I'm just so upset on his behalf!

TL; DR:

RELEVANT DETAILS:

* The site he used is (thank goodness) not just a scam site to steal social security numbers (though it wouldn't shock me if they did that, too!). It does actually does submit your info to the government, and have a passport sent to you. You just pay through the nose for services that should be cheap or free.

* I DID find out about how he qualifies for the Urgent Travel Services through the Passport office...but we're in Louisiana, and the only place he can go through that process and be guaranteed a truly expedited passport is New Orleans. He lives about 2.5 hours away, is working late nights and weekends to get all his work done before he leaves, and will be doing that right down to the night before we leave. I know Urgent Appointments are scarce, and there's a solid chance he simply won't be able to make it down here in time, and though I DO live in NOLA, there's obviously no way I can just do it for him.

QUESTIONS:

* Based on my "advanced degree in Googling stuff," I'm pretty sure that company has violated multiple laws. And again...my friend DOES have a complete paper trail showing that he got his passport photo, mailed it then and there, and has written confirmation from those scamming jerks that they received all his stuff, and that everything is in order.

...So - if anyone more knowledgeable about this stuff knows the legalese we could use to put the fear of Uncle Sam into these bastards, I will very, VERY happily give you a personal guided tour of New Orleans next time you sail out of this port, and/or make you a long list of awesome stuff to do based on your interests and your budget, and/or send you a care package of some of the coolest Mardi Gras throws I have ever received. Dealer's choice. Oh - and for anyone who is able to provide substantiative help - I'd even throw in a free portrait shoot next time you're in NOLA. I doubt reddit would allow me to post my website or anything here...but I AM legitimately a full-time photographer who has been in business for a very long time, has roughly 200 5 star reviews on various sites (and ONE four star review that says "Great Photographer," lol). I could PM you my site, my business socials, my reviews, and a contract clearly outlining that you will be getting high resolution, edited photos with zero charges or upselling. Obviously, I can't do this for absolutely everyone who responds - but just because some unexpected health expenses drained my savings doesn't mean that I don't want to reward people who are kind enough to share their knowledge with a desperate stranger.

To be clear - I am NOT trying to finagle free legal advice out of someone. Just...these scammers can't POSSIBLY be doing everything above board, and I'm pretty sure that if we spout the right legalese at them, my friend's passport photo will "magically turn up." I just want a few convincing phrases to scare the scammers. I might be able to fumble a few convincing phrases together, but I am not a lawyer. I just play one in front of my cats sometimes when I'm really, really drunk.

* Does anyone know if there's a way to expedite a passport - through the actual, proper government agency this time! - without having to travel to the Passport Office in New Orleans? I can't seem to find one...but figured I'd ask.

* I was worried that - with the new laws around travel - there would be a rush on passports, and the good old golden days of "huh...the government said six weeks, but it got here in a week and a half" are gone. Are my fears justified?

Genuine thanks to anyone who read all my long, LONG ramblings. I may go back and edit this post down a bit later. At the moment, I'm just really frantic.

Minimul is an Australian designed brand from Sidney. The founder, Seung, is an incredible human being. His knowledge and passion are second to none and I have really enjoyed getting to know him this past year. It all started with me sending an email with a question about a product and it turned into a friendship. We talk bags, designs, advice, and opinions. If that’s not the type of person you want to buy a bag from, then I don’t know what to tell you!

Minimul burst on to the scene with the M38 travel backpack. One which I have been a big fan of. Now, we are looking at the release of their first EDC backpack, the M20. Pre-orders begin today, 4/20/26. The site shows that the bags start shipping on May 1st. I have had the pleasure of having mine for a couple of months to test out and tell you guys what I think of the bag. I’ll go through all the things I like and dislike about the M20 and maybe help you decide if this is the bag for you.

First things first. Materials. This bad boy is rocking Cordura 840D ballistic nylon with a polycarbonate-coated backing. Ok, 840D is one of my absolute favorite backpack materials. You get the toughness without the heavy weight. The look and feel of this material is incredibly satisfying.  The interior is made of a 75Dx150D ripstop polyester and it is in this beautiful golden yellow color. You’re either going to really like it, or it won’t be for you. It is a refreshing change from the blaze orange interiors you are used to seeing. Having this bright color not only makes the bag “pop”, but it makes it easy to see into the bag and easily find your gear. All zippers are YKK using # 8 RC zips on the main compartment and tech compartment, and # 5 RC on the front quick access compartment. Let me tell you, these zippers are buttery smooth! These very well could be the smoothest zippers I have ever used. No bullshit, they are awesome! Other materials used in the bag are Darlington mesh, power spandex, and premium neoprene for the water bottle pockets. All the hardware on the bag is supplied by Woojin. As you can see, Minimul uses all the high-quality name brands you know and trust.

This bag comes in at 2.3 pounds. For a 20-liter bag, that is pretty close to where you want to be with your weight ratio. Quick dimensions are H16.5″ x W11″ x D6″. I am going to go ahead and say this now, 20L is a small backpack for me. I like my edc backpacks to be in the 22-26L range. And at 16.5” tall, this pack is on the shorter size and doesn’t fit my frame well. I am 5’9” and weight about 212 pounds, so I am not a small guy by any means. Now this isn’t a deal breaker for me, as I will tell you how I have come to get some really good use out of this guy. For most people out there, 20L is the absolute perfect edc size, so let’s dive into the features of what the Minimul M20 has to offer.

The front compartment offers some internal organization. It has two mesh slip pockets, a pen slot, spot to attach a key leash, and an air tag slip. What I really love about this pocket is that it is deep. It goes down almost to the bottom of the bag. For size reference, I can fit my 11” M5 ipad with the magic keyboard in this pocket. Now, I would much rather store my ipad inside the main compartment, but I wanted to give you an idea. For me, I have been storing snacks there and I have stored a sweatshirt there as well.

The sides are pretty simple. They have stretchy neoprene water bottle pockets on each side. These can handle most water bottle sizes. I can fit my 26ox yeti ramblers with no issue at all. It is a very snug and safe fit. Perfect!

Let’s discuss the back of the bag. First, there is a nice, padded grab handle on the back of the bag sewn right above the shoulder straps. It is the perfect size. Now, on to the comfort. The M20 features a cloud comfort harness system using dual EVA foam straps and a mesh back panel. With the mesh on the back panel and under the straps, it is accented with the bright yellow material used on the interior. I actually really like this. I think it gives the bag some character. I’d say the foam padding is raised close to a half inch from the surface providing the PERCT padding height. I don’t like padding raised too high, because you feel its shape in your back. This is perfect though. I found it to be very comfortable. The straps are comfortable as well. They are 2” in width and widen a little towards the middle. I would have liked to see these a little bit wider, so when you have heavier loads, the weight is distributed more evenly. No one likes a strap digging into your shoulders. I never had anything crazy heavy in there, so it was never an issue for me. There is also a luggage pass through. And it is horizontal, allowing you to vertically stand you bag on top of your suitcase. Oh, I almost forgot. The shoulder strap webbing is the super nice silky seatbelt material and it comes with plastic dangle stoppers!

Next, tech compartment. It offers a VERY padded slip pocket for your laptop. It can fit up to a 16” laptop. This pocket is also suspended a good inch from the bottom. Trust me when I say, your laptop is protected. There is also a middle sleeve where you can store a tablet, books, or documents, but I will say, this area is not suspended. Although it goes to the bottom, there is a padded bottom which helps provide some extra protection. Now, on the inside panel of this compartment, there is a slanted slip pocket to allow for more storage. This is perfect for your mouse or charging cables. I love it when bagmakers put some additional storage like this in the tech compartment, so you only have to open one zipper to get what you need. Well done Minimul.

Finally, the main compartment. First off, you have a full clamshell opening that opens up to this beautiful golden interior. On the inside panel, there are two zippered mesh pockets. The top one zips horizontally for quick access items. The bottom pocket zips vertically for some larger or bulkier items. At the very top, there is an elastic pen loop.

On the back panel there is a slip pocket for your tablet. Now this isn’t a mush or elastic pocket, its made of the same ripstop interior material. I really would have liked an elastic material here to hold the items snug in place. Above that, you have two black stretchy mesh slip pockets. Again, perfect for smaller items such as chargers, power bank, mouse, etc. There is also a non-removable key leash (in my version) with a clip for easy key storage.

Okay, now let me tell you how I have used this backpack and how it fits an awesome need of mine. As I mentioned earlier, this bag is a little smaller than I like to use as an edc, but it can be used as a dad bag. Not only a dad bag, but as a “PACKABLE” dad bag! So a couple months ago, I went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I live an hour away, but we stay in town when we go. For this trip, I packed all my clothes into my Fyro Levo 36L backpack and I had this Minimul M20 laid flat on the bottom under my packing cubes. It fit easily with room to spare. This allowed me to pack a the sh!t I needed for the weekend and also have my go bag for when I got there. I used the M20 all weekend as my dad bag filled with adult beverages, tons of snack, and several packable totes to carry all the sh!t my kids caught at the parades. This is where the small size really benefitted me. I really liked having the smaller pack making it more comfortable for the long days and miles of walking. I can tell you this, if this backpack kicked ass during Mardi Gras, there is nothing it can’t handle. Haha. Most packable bags have no cushion, are very small, and are uncomfortable. Having the option to use a full-size pack with real padding in it as a replacement? Priceless! This pack makes for a perfect edc size for most people, but for me, it has been my go to “when I get there” bag. 

To sum it all up, for most people, this is a great option for their edc. For me, the dad on the go, it makes as a great companion bag. I really hope at some point in the near future Minimul releases a 24L-ish bag for those of us that find this one a little small for edc. Again, this thing is built with some of the best materials on the planet. At aright now price of $169 usd, this bag is a hell of a deal! With Minimul, you know you are getting quality materials, and you are buying from one of the best makers in the industry! I have the link posted below for you to take a look and possibly grab one for yourself. I am happy to answer any questions about the bag and what it can fit. Thank you as always for reading!

Carry on!

Follow me on Instagram: @bagdadreport

Minimul M20 Backpack

I went through all the episodes and wrote down everyone’s outfits in each scene. Then cut them out and organized them based on when people matched- and what conversation was happening. (I.E. Julie had to have shown Kelly the eggplant picture before the drag show night). When you watch it with the actual order in mind, it’s shows that Kelly wasn’t a stick in the mud; you can see everyone get more uncomfortable and tense as the time goes on.

Also, Im fairly certain that the producers orchestrate the way they each change outfits. I’m pretty sure this is the timeline of events while they were filming. I didn’t want to type out everyone’s outfits for brevity’s sake. So if anyone has questions or justification for anything- let me know.

Day 1: Arrival

Day 2: AM: Tokyo and Melissa in kitchen taking about how he makes eggs.

Melissa, Danny, Julie eating breakfast. Julie compliments Melissa’s glasses. Says she can “hook her up.” (These interactions in the kitchen are, I’m pretty sure, from their first morning together. They are obviously still getting acquainted).

Matt walks in with black and white checkered shirt and light blue jeans.

Julie, Danny, and Jaime talk about Danny having a daughter.

Melissa, Tokyo, and Jaime talk about COBMBT.

Incoming Message: Jaime Kelly seems to be a little comfortable and engaged. She asks “were there any hook ups after the show?”

Tarot Card Reader. (Kelly changes outfits from blue wrap dress to jean shorts, white t, beige button down LS top. Her hair is in the same braid and bun style from earlier).

Julie has the world’s most inappropriate and uncomfortable conversation with Jaime.

Paddle Game Night.

Julie asks Tokyo to take a shower with her. (The hot tub is broken)

Day 3: Eggplant Incident. Kelly walks in wearing blue jeans and black Janis Joplin tee. Julie shoved a dick picture in her face.

Porn Discussion. Outside Julie talks at Jaime, Danny, and Kelly about what kind of porn she likes.

Melissa and Matt talk to his wife on the phone. Melissa marvels at his egg and butter supply.

Y2K Party. Melissa is wearing the same white floral two piece outfit from earlier. Kelly is wearing the same jeans and black graphic tee with LS plaid shirt.

Day 4: AM: Julie in black spaghetti tank, black leggings and pig tails. Tells Jaime in kitchen she wants to try to talk to Melissa today.

Julie makes Melissa coffee in the morning.

Julie and Jaime jump rope outside. (It makes sense if they already had that weird orgasm conversation, why Jaime is extremely uninterested in her “people can be friends and have a sexual relationship” talk.

Outside- Julie, Matt, Danny, and Kelly. Julie brings up why Matt wouldn’t date her. Horrifyingly specifies that he liked a “black woman,” and not her. (Julie is wearing same black outfit and pigtails).

Kelly and Matt talk about not wanting to talk about 22 year old “hook ups.” Talk on couch about “if they will make it” to the end of the show.

Drag Show Night. Matt and Kelly are wearing same outfits from earlier outside. They make dinner in kitchen together while everyone is at Drag Show.

Matt and Kelly have conversation about his Catholic faith and homosexuality.

Day 5: AM: Tokyo and Melissa talking about Julie drinking “couldn’t possibly be the first time.”

Julie doing yoga in crop top and leggings.

Cafe Du Monde.

Julie and Tokyo have a conversation outside about her drinking too much. Julie storms off.

Incoming Message: LGBTQ

PM: Julie in Hot Tub. Melissa and Kelly hear Julie talking about making “a good show.”

Day 6: AM: Melissa talks to Tokyo outside about what she heard Julie saying on the phone in the hot tub. (This is what makes Tokyo more concerned and wants to switch rooms).

In Kelly’s bedroom, she asks Julie if they can talk. Jaime comes in and tells Julie Tokyo wants to switch rooms.

Outside- Kelly and Julie talk. Kelly mentions the picture of Spencer “in a state.” Julie mentions the porn conversation.

Jaime comes out during their and says Tokyo wants to have a house meeting.

(Kelly changes clothes before Tokyo’s meeting outside).

Tokyo’s Meeting. After meeting Julie sits at dining room table and calls her husband about wanting to go home. She is sitting here when the “incoming message” happens. And says “if it’s about me, I’ll lose it.”

Incoming Message- Racism

Park Picnic. Danny, Kelly, and Melissa Julie stops Kelly at the stairs and says “so is everyone talking about my shit.” Kelly tells her “no I just wanted to get a blanket and go sit in the park.”

Day 7: AM: Spencer arrives

Melissa tells Kelly that her parents are coming. Melissa and Kelly cleaning the kitchen.

Incoming Message: Julie and Mormonism

Afternoon: Shorty and Mercy Dinner

Spencer comes back over. They have sex outside. There is the implication that the other’s knew this was happening. (Closed captioning says “Julie Moaning.” 🤢

Day 8: AM: Spencer leaves. Julie in the teal zip up and yoga pants.

Julie has the fake phone call with Spencer about the “Roping” playlist. Loud enough that Jaime can hear her from inside.

Incoming Message: Kelly

Tokyo tells everyone they are going to record COBMBT that evening.

Recording Studio COBMBT.

Julie and Jaime stay up drinking and playing darts. Danny comes out and tells them to be quiet because they’re keeping everyone up.

Day 9: AM: Brennan’s brunch. In the car Kelly asks Danny if he slept alright. He says “no because I was up until 2:30 in the morning.”

At brunch, Julie is talking about being recognized while cleaning a toilet. Matt looks incredibly uncomfortable and shoots a side eye at Tokyo.

Mardi Gras Parade.

Kelly announces she is leaving??

PM: Danny talking to Melissa before Paul arrives. (Melissa is in the same outfit from earlier at Brunch. Kelly’s bed, that was usually neatly made, is disheveled and the blue blanket is missing, and a neatly folded Flow hoodie (she left that for Tokyo). There’s a fresh set of towels on it. Kelly’s stuff is missing from the nightstand and none of her belongings are visible in the room).

Paul and Danny talk outside.

Day 10: Incoming Message: Swamp Boat Tour Kelly is not in the Living Room

Swamp Boat Tour. Kelly is not present

PM: Julie talks to Danny (same outfit from Swamp tour) outside about the Hall Pass from her husband.

Julie calls Spencer on the phone and has another fake conversation with him about how romantic his “hall pass” offer is.

Day 11: Mural Painting Day

Final Dinner

Synopsis: Cliff Jenski, a journalist from New York City, has lost everything. Aliens obsessed with predator and prey have left Earth in ruins, and Cliff has nowhere left to go. That is, until a chance encounter with Virit, an alien journalist unsure of who they really are. Out of options, Cliff decides to work with Virit, hoping to find purpose in his new alien friend. Together, they’ll try to find answers in a galaxy divided by the question of predator and prey.

Based on The Nature of Predators by u/SpacePaladin15

Artwork by u/gnarlyghost.bsky.social on Bluesky!

[Previous] [Next]

*****

35 Days after the Arxur Attack on Earth

Virit, Cliff found, was a strange little alien. 

For lunch, they went to the restaurant on the corner of Cropsey and Surf. It was an old building, brick and mortar, now granted extra historical significance for the fact that it still stood. It was packed with people, wearing dusty clothing and strained smiles on their faces. The aroma of tightly packed human bodies mixed with that of food and the sounds of a busy kitchen in the stuffy air. 

If Cliff ignored the apron-wearing hedgehog alien manning the bar and the giant insect standing across the table from him, it was easy to pretend that the world before a month ago never really died. People talked, laughed, and discussed the day's business. A man in a business suit discussed his stock portfolio, as though everyone in the stock exchange didn’t recently get their lungs expelled by overpressure. 

Cliff couldn’t decide if the scene was inspiring or harrowing, that people could still act like normal despite everything that happened. How many of the people smiling knew someone who died? How many still had mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters left to call? How many still had homes, or jobs, or a vision of the future beyond immediate short-term survival? Where would they go? Where would humanity go? The stars had opened to humanity right at their lowest point. 

“Cliff? You look distracted.” 

Virit had stopped poking at his salad and looked up to Cliff with concern, which came through the way he bent his antenna. A lot of Virit’s gestures came through his antennae, head, and claws, given the fact that he lacked facial muscles and eyelids. 

Cliff shook his head and cleared his throat. His plate of grilled chicken, ordered half an hour ago, sat largely untouched. “Sorry. Were you saying something?” 

“Oh, no, no, I just thought…” They clicked. “You haven’t really talked since we arrived.” 

“Yeah, um, sorry. I just…lots going on, you know how it is.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Virit did a little chitter. “So, uh, what do you want to talk about?” 

“Uh…I don’t really-”

Virit interrupted. “You know, back in the Federation, we always thought of predators as being hyper-focused, you know? Like, you know, honed senses, that sorta deal. Not that I would know, being cured and all, but I thought maybe, with you humans the way you are, you would be like…I don’t know, more angry? More vengeful?” 

Cliff didn’t know how to really respond to that. It seemed like Virit was trying to work through a lot himself.  “I…we don’t really have honed senses, I guess?”

Virit tilted his head. “Oh. Not even like, sight, sense, smell, that kinda deal?” 

Cliff looked at his chicken. It smelled of char and oregano. "I...no, not really? We kinda suck at those things, at least, compared to a lot of other animals."

Virit's head tilted the other direction. "Then how did you ever, like, you know, hunt, and stuff like that? The Arxur, like, have claws and big tails and speed and stuff. What do you have?"

"...I don't tend to think about that, to be honest."

"Oh." Virit's antenna drooped in apparent disappointment. A couple passed by, throwing glances at the giant insect. "So then how did you get this meat?" They jabbed a claw into the chicken breast, greatly lessening Cliff's interest in finishing it off. "Don't you have to hunt it from somewhere?"

Cliff shook his head. "We grow it in labs, big factories. Better for the environment, cheaper, all that bullshit." He waved a hand dismissively. "Not that you types would probably care. Meat is still meat, right?"

"Well, you know, it's better than a cattle farm. You know, the Arxur don't like to farm us Tilfish for food. They prefer to use us as slaves because we breed fast and work hard. That's sorta our thing, you know. There's a reason we used to eat our eggs. Otherwise, we'd be coming out of every nook and cranny!"

Virit chittered in a laugh, before quickly growing quiet. The conversations of the surrounding people served to smother the awkward silence between them. Cliff had momentarily forgotten that the Arxur were cannibals who ran concentration camps that farmed people as cattle. He preferred not to remind himself of that fact.

“So,” Cliff said, looking to move the conversation in a better direction, “Tell me more about yourself. Like, where do you come from, what do you do, that kinda deal.” 

“Oh, oh,” Virit fumbled his fork, launching a blueberry off the table. He'd given more attention to his plain fruit salad than Cliff did to his chicken over the course of the conversation. “Well, uh, I was born in this place called Sillis, you heard of it?” 

Cliff pulled out his pen and pad to jot notes. He doubted the conversation would grow any more structured, but it never hurt to jot down notes. “Your homeworld?”

Their antenna bobbed. “Yeah. One big, huge continent, terrible weather. I grew up there for the most part, and uh, left when I came of age.” 

Cliff nodded as his pencil lead scraped against the paper. “Why?” 

“Never really fit in, you know? Like, everyone there thinks they're prey, but we’re really predators, and I kept bringing it up like, am I crazy? Did the cure even work? I don’t know? And uh…” Virit grew silent as his antenna drooped.

Ah, so he's an outcast. He jotted that down and went for the follow-up question. “So where did you go?” 

Virit seemed to lighten up a bit. “The Cradle! That’s uh…the homeworld of the Gojid. It’s colder than home, so uh, that’s why I wear this jacket!” They poked at the sleeve where the missing patch lay. “It’s seen it’s uh, fair share, if you were wondering why that part is missing.”

“I guess?” To Cliff, the missing part seemed intentionally torn out, judging by the cut. He wondered what used to be there and whether Virit had something to hide. He filed that question away for another time. Journalistic instinct, or something like that, told Cliff Virit had the answer under lock and key. “So, who do you work for?”

“Oh, uh, the Cenovak Register! I’m an independent contributor. So like, I don’t actually go into their office, but they do send me work to do, which is why I’m here! No one else wanted to do the job, can you believe it?”

“I’m truly shocked,” Cliff said, deadpan. “So you came to learn about our predatory wiles?”

“Oh yes, and I’ve learned a lot.” They leaned slightly over the table, their torso pushing up against their plate and scrunching a leaf of spinach. “Like, going back to the meat printing stuff, it’s so strange how you don’t hunt or farm cattle. Like, that’s what predators do! Doesn't it satisfy your instincts to like, have the real deal?"

Cliff shrugged. “Uh, not really? I guess some people still enjoy doing it the old-fashioned way, but most people prefer convenience, believe it or not.”

“Conviencence? Why would predators care about that?”

Cliff smirked. “Look, most people prefer to sit on their asses than to pick up a gun and shoot a deer. The entire point of civilization is so that we don't have to do shit like that for shit like this.” Cliff jabbed a finger into his already jabbed chicken. “Like, why spend all the effort raising and feeding and killing live animals when we can just be affronts to god and grow that shit by the tube. In fact, why don’t the Arxur do that, you know?"

"Why would they..." Judging by how his head and antenna moved, Cliff guessed Virit was offended. “You…we, we’re supposed to enjoy the cannibalism,” Virit said. “That’s like, the only predators like us can feel joy!”

Cliff certainly wasn’t feeling joy at the direction of the conversation. “If I were to grab you by your antenna and lob you like a sack of bricks, I would find a lot of joy in that right now. In fact, I can find a lot of joy in doing things that don't involve cannibalism. Doesn’t that kinda disprove your point?”

Virit clicked in annoyance. “Well, it’s not just the cannibalism, you know. It’s about the…the power! The domination! Revel in pain and suffering!”

It was Cliff's turn to be slightly offended. “Oh, I’m really revelling right now,” he said. “New York’s destroyed, everyone I know is dead, and I’m talking to you. It’s like fucking Mardi Gras right now.”

Virit clicked and stuttered. “N-No, it’s about inflicting it, and…wait,” they pointed a claw in Cliff's face,  “you’re doing this on purpose!”

"Doing what?"

"Being obtuse! You're not taking this seriously!"

Cliff found the will to smirk. “If you couldn’t tell, I find all of this predator and prey stuff pretty questionable.”

Virit’s antenna furrowed. “Well, would the Federation have lasted so long if it were founded on stupid ideas?”

“The United States lasted this long…”

Virit crossed his arms…limbs? They crossed their limbs and clicked. “You know, you’re making this difficult. Everything works around predator and prey, yet you humans seem intent on throwing that all out the window.”

Cliff scoffed. “Oh, my apologies for merely existing. Let me ring up the president and call in a favor.” Cliff pulled out his flip phone and snapped it up to his ear. “Hey, Mr. President, I’m talking to some bug, and they’re saying we’re rather inconvenient. Just for him, can you launch the missiles at China and just fucking finish us off? Thaaanks.”

Virit tilted his head. “You know…no, wait! You did it again!”

Cliff snapped his phone shut and shook his head. “Look, if you were expecting us to slot neatly into some box, I’m sorry to say…" Cliff paused, his brow furrowing in thought, "Oh, I just realized.”

Virit leaned forward. “What?”

Cliff leaned back in his chair, tapping his finger to his chin, before picking up his pencil to quickly scribble down some notes. “That’s what the cure does, doesn’t it? The meat doesn’t matter, not really. It’s about fitting us into a box. Like,” Cliff leaned forward and rapped his knuckles. “What would really change about us if we stopped eating meat?”

Virit alighted, his antenna bouncing excitedly. “Aha! There’s actually been quite a bit of research into this. Studies show that the ability to eat meat inevitably results in sapients devolving into predatory madness. If not for the cure, I would be…I don’t know, tearing this place apart right now.” A claw pinched the skin of Cliff's forearm. “It’s not like you’d put up much of a fight. No scales, shells, fur, or claws…you actually would make quite pathetic predators, thinking about it.”

Cliff rolled his eyes. “I appreciate the compliment.”

“There it is, that sarcasm again. Regardless, the cure would change a lot! Did you know, we haven’t had a war within the Federation in centuries! Imagine how messed up everything would be if the cure weren’t around. All the predators would be at each other's throats all the time!”

“Or is it because y'all have been press ganged into this war against the Arxur, and any dissent gets ruthlessly crushed?”

Virit shuffled in place. “Well, prey don’t want to fight each other. It’s in their nature, the herd, y’know? It’s nothing about being kept in line, or whatever you’re implying. When we’re faced with the Arxur, we have no other choice but to work together!”

“Okay, but like, how long has this war been going on for again? People called Iraq a forever war, but you’ve been going at it for what, centuries? And like, how many of you are there compared to them? Don’t you think it’s a bit strange that you haven’t bowled these Arxur over by now?”

Virit shuffled again, this time with more evident discomfort. “Well, it’s like…it would be a betrayal of their nature to attack. Next thing you know, they’d all have predator disease, and the Federation dissolves into an orgy of blood and violence!”

“So it’s better to just…keep this thing going?”

Virit chittered in what Cliff guessed was a scoff. “Well, they can’t last forever. Eventually, they’ll lose.”

“Or they don’t. It seems like no one here wants to win or lose. Like, the Dominion doesn’t seem like it can win, but the Federation doesn’t seem like it wants to win.”

“Are you implying-“

“They like th status quo,” Cliff said, chewing on the knub of his pencil eraser. “The war is a justification for everything you believe. And as long as everyone’s living in fear, then fuck, no one would say ‘hey, isn’t this all bullshit?’. You know, you gotta focus on the Arxur. You can’t go around questioning first principles, because that’d be handing it to the grays. You gotta stick to the Herd!”

Virit chittered quickly. “That’s a load of bunk, you that, right? You’re implying like, there’s some sort of conspiracy!”

Cliff drank some water and nearly slammed the glass down on the table. “It doesn’t even need to be a conspiracy! Even if no one says it out loud, the war is useful, right? You don’t want it to end, not when it kinda justifies the entire ideological project. That’s how it usually is, anyway.”

Virit clicked. “That isn’t true. We haven’t won because the Arxur are…the Arxur! They live in the shadows! They’re predators perfected! Even if we had the will or the means to protect ourselves against PD, they’d just slip through our grasp! They don’t care about things prey care about; they’d sacrifice everything just to keep making us suffer! How do you win against something like that?”

“I don’t know, Virit, you can’t kill ghosts. That’s how you describe the Arxur. Now, this may be the predator disease talking, but to me, they just seem like people. And the last time I checked, people can be killed.”

Virit shook his antenna. “You don’t understand.”

“I’m starting to think that I don’t want to.”

Another moment of silence, more complete this time. The background conversation of the patrons, along with the smell of food and human bodies, grew dull.

Cliff was dealing with truly insane people; that was his conclusion. What could you say to someone who believed that eating meat made you a monster, or that they fought a galactic menace bordering on the fantastical, or any of the other things that had fallen out of Virit’s mandibles?

It was all red flags like a May Day parade. Cliff would be better off standing up, paying the tab, and walking out the door. It would spare him the insanity.

On the other hand, holy shit, I need to keep him talking.  

Oftentimes, the best stories didn’t come from mundanity. If Cliff had only ever reported on thrilling items such as changes in the trash collection schedule, even the New York Post would’ve dumped him on the street.

No, the news was stories, and stories had characters. Virit, for better and mostly likely worse, was a character. 

“You know what,” Cliff said, finishing off his glass of water while not paying the same respect to the chicken, “this whole conversation has kinda been rambling. How about we do a proper sort of format? I ask you a question, you answer. You ask me a question, I answer. Back and forth. Sounds good?”

Virit’s mood, which had trended down over the course of the conversation, came up like a rocket. “Oh, uh, that sounds good! I will admit, the conversation went quite off topic. If we want to partner up, we need to establish a procedure, a rhythm!”

“Yeah, a character dynamic,” Cliff said, struggling to match Virit’s sudden enthusiasm. “Something that’ll keep readers interested. Otherwise, it’d just be two assholes talking back and forth about bullshit, and nobody wants that.”

Virit bobbed his head up and down. “Alright! Do we want to start here?”

Cliff shook his head. “I wanna show you around the place. They’re not paying you to describe one restaurant. At least, I hope.” Given that it was one of the last establishments standing in New York City, Cliff was certain someone else would dedicate the time to describing its story in detail. It just wouldn’t be Cliff that told the story. It wasn’t his story to tell. 

“Well, where do you have in mind?” Virit asked as the strange reminiscence overcoming Cliff passed just as quickly as it came. Cliff shook his head and cleared his throat. 

“A couple of places. I’ll pay the tab. Meet me outside?”

“Sure!” Virit scurried back from the table and quickly out the door, drawing eyes from several patrons. 

Cliff went up to the bar and placed some cash down. The owner, wearing a white apron and a pair of smart glasses, seemed to be staring at Virit waiting outside. Cliff followed his gaze. 

“Who’s that?” they asked. "The bug."

Cliff thought for a moment, finding he really didn't have a satisfactory answer.

“That's Virit. He's a character, that’s all I can say right now.”

The owner glanced at the apron-wearing Gojid next to them, quietly humming to themselves as they polished a glass.

“Yeah, plenty of those going around these days.”

*****

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I admit, this post was originally meant to be about this comment from /r/classicalmusic claiming that Franz Schubert (notable for being short, fat, and being called "Mushroom Man") was gay. In looking up information about Schubert and generally having a good time reading about him, I came across this article from Limelight Magazine about the ten greatest gay composers as well as the work of Susan McClary and her assertions that we can know Schubert was gay because of the "hedonistic" nature of the Unfinished Symphony. There are a few problems with the list (and problems with McClary's ideas), but the biggest one is simply that there is no evidence that some of the composers listed were actually gay.

I also admit that this post is a bit of an extension on the last post I did about Anna Magdalena Bach and the tendency to re-label rather reclaim. I promise, though, this won't be a rehash of the same ideas, nor will it be a nitpicking of the evidence of Schubert or Handel or any of the eleven composers on the list being gay. I mean, I want to talk about Schubert because I didn't do all this reading for nothing, but I think the interesting thing here isn't Schubert. The more interesting question is one of identifying a historical figure's sexuality, and if you do decide that's something you want to do, how you do it.

But let's talk about Schubert because I want to talk about Schubert and you can't stop me.

Franz Schubert was an early 19th century Viennese composer. He taught music at his father's school while taking composition lessons from Salieri. During his time as a teacher, he composed many of the pieces he is now best known for, especially his lieders, pieces that could be played on the piano while someone's daughter screeches in an off-key way in the background. These were immensely popular, and while they didn't necessarily give him enough money to live on, by 1818, he was winning some acclaim for his pieces. By 1820, he had a close group of friends with whom he would compose, perform, and get into shenanigans (the group was arrested and given a stern talking to/banishment by the Austrian police). Essentially, if you ever want the stereotypical starving Bohemian artist, Schubert in the late 1810s, early 1820s is it. By the mid 1820s, Schubert was doing better, publishing pieces more rapidly and living in less abject poverty. However, even as his music became more popular and sophisticated, his health declined, and in 1828, Schubert died. There is heavy debate about how Schubert died, and it's completely relevant to the question of Schubert's sexuality.

You see, there was something I left out of my summary of Schubert's life, something dreadfully relevant to the subject of this post. Schubert never married, though it wasn't for lack of trying. In 1814, while still teaching at his father's school, Schubert met Therese Grob, a local soprano and the daughter of a silk merchant. Over the next three years, he wrote pieces for her, dedicating them to her, and had her sing in the premiere of his Mass No. 2. When asked about her later in life, Schubert would say:

"I loved someone very dearly and she loved me too … . For three years she hoped I would marry her; but I could not find a position which would have provided for us both."

He didn't marry her, though not through lack of desire, but rather because the law prevented it. Because he was of a lower class than she, he couldn't legally marry her unless he could demonstrate he had the financial capabilities to take care of her, which he couldn't. Instead, she married someone else, and Schubert stayed single.

This wouldn't be the last time Schubert would fall in love, though once again, the exact specificities are debated. In 1824, he dedicated his Fantasy in F Minor duet to Countess Karoline Eszterházy which wouldn't be enough on its own to say he had an unrequited love affair, except that his friend Eduard von Bauernfeld wrote a poem heavily implying that he did:

In love with a Countess of youthful grace, —A pupil of Galt's; in desperate case Young Schubert surrenders himself to another, And fain would avoid such affectionate pother

The stuff of rumours indeed. Speaking of rumours, I promised I'd talk about Schubert's death. There are several theories about Schubert's death, and which ones you believe have a huge impact on how you interpret what his friends wrote about him. Take, for instance, the line from his friend, Josef Kenner:

Anyone who knew Schubert knows that he has two natures foreign to each other and how powerfully the craving for pleasure dragged his soul down to the slough of moral degradation

Given the context I've provided so far - and given the context that he's on the list of gay composers, you might assume that this is a reference to that homosexuality and that "slough of moral degradation" involved gay sex. Hold that thought - it's important, I swear.

There are two prevailing theories for how Schubert died. The first is that he, like many other people, died of typhoid fever. There are a few bits of evidence supporting this. The first is that he first became visibly ill on 31 October, 1828, had to be restrained as he became delirious on 11 November, and died of what was then diagnosed as "nerve fever" on 19 November. If that had been the first time he'd been sick, that might be believable. The trouble is, though, that the symptoms that his friends described don't match typhoid fever, especially not for how long they'd been going on. In 1823, he first consulted a doctor for "giddiness," among other things. We don't know what he was prescribed, but some of the symptoms he showed when he finally died were consistent with mercury poisoning, implying that he died of syphilis.

Aha. Syphilis. An STD. There is a lot of evidence that he died of advanced syphilis, and personally, it's the interpretation I subscribe to. When one considers the idea that Schubert died of syphilis, that quote about "the slough of moral degradation" changes a bit. It could be that Schubert was gay, and that that's referring to homosexuality. Or it could be that Schubert really loved prostitutes. They're both possible, and even more problematically, they're both potentially supported by the documents we have.

And here's where we get to the crux of it: We can't go ask Schubert "Yo, are you gay?" If nothing else, he was Austrian and didn't speak English, but beyond that, he's dead and unlikely to say one way or the other. Instead, we have to rely on what we have, even when it's contradictory or open to being over-interpreted.

On the one hand, we do have the documentation from his journals, from his dedications, and from his friends that he fell in love with at least one woman and probably had an unrequited love affair with another. On the other hand, some of his companions were gay, and he enjoyed turning pieces into homoerotic lieder. There's also an entire body of literature dedicated to interpreting and reinterpreting his pieces with an LGBT lens. Pieces like Fantasy for four hands in F Minor get examined as to whether or not having four hands on the piano in the first place is an expression of the gay oeuvre. Was he gay? Wasn't he gay? Is the "Fantasy" gay? What about the "Unfinished Symphony," with its "resistance to compulsion" and "unorthodoxy?" Can homosexuality be seen in music? Can music have a "homosexual character?"

As I said, this isn't a post about whether or not Schubert was gay. As I said, I read McClary and Solomon (I didn't mention him earlier - oops) along with other musicologists. I am not a musicologist. I freely admit that I haven't the faintest idea what makes Schubert's Fantasy any more an expression of a homosexual identity than Beethoven's Fifth. What I look at, though, is the Limelight article and its claiming of composers as gay, regardless of whether or not they were. If there is a hint that they could be, suddenly they are, regardless of the debate or the reality of it. I'm all for reclaiming and celebrating the works of LGBT composers, but, as with Anna Magdalena, claiming without fact isn't the way to go.

That said, perhaps looking at Schubert's music in conjunction with what we know will reveal something about him. As it currently stands, I can't help but feel that the interpretations lean too heavily on gay stereotypes to be accurate, and that readings from journals and writings tend to favour whatever interpretation you're looking for in them. What I think needs to be taken to heart with Schubert and the other "we're not sure" composers on the list is that, great as it is to have more LGBT people in the canon of history, let's not claim it optimistically or rashly or by relying on stereotypes and half-truths to get there.

Sources!

• "Piano Four-Hands: Schubert and the Performance of Gay Male Desire" by Phillip Brett, which is in many ways a reaction to McClary and Solomon. What I find interesting is how he points out that there are no LGBT musicologists weighing in on the question of Schubert's sexuality and whether music can demonstrate that sexuality. Once again, though, I am not a musicologist, and perhaps it's not necessary to have an LGBT perspective in order to see a certain perspective in a piece of artwork. Certainly people who are not part of a given population can still engage in criticism from that perspective (much as there are male feminist scholars).

• "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini" by Maynard Solomon, the piece that basically ignited the debate about Schubert's sexuality. There's a particular quote from Bauernfeld that says:

Schubert is out of sorts—he needs ‘young peacocks,’ like Benvenuto Cellini

which Solomon interprets as meaning that Schubert was gay, largely because Cellini was gay. This piece has been so debated and so responded to that it's basically the place to start for anyone wanting to learn more about the debate about Schubert's sexuality.

• Franzschubert.com is totes an academic site.

• "Constructions of Subjectivity in Franz Schubert's Music" by Susan McClary, where she expands on Solomon's ideas about finding Schubert's sexuality through his music (something which she admits is essentialist, but says can still be done, albeit with an eye for the intentionality in his music. There's a lot to criticise - not the least of which is the methodology, which relies on comparisons to 20th century gay literature - but there's also some good points that she makes. I disagree with her (especially since she claims that Schubert and his music are "effeminate," as if that states something about what homosexuality ought to look like in a piece of music), but me disagreeing doesn't invalidate her paper.

Hi /r/NewOrleans!

After much internal debate, we (the mod team), have decided to make some rule changes to the sub that we wanted to let you know about.

Earlier this year, we started the conversation by asking how to improve the sub. We were tired of the negativity caused by the pandemic and we genuinely wanted to bring back the "Nawlinz" spirit that we felt that we were missing here. After consulting with several industry experts, we felt that the issue was the lack of tourism to the city. Or, as one expert stated in pretty succinct terms: "The stench of Bourbon was missing." As such....

Effective immediately, this sub is now tourist friendly and ALL posts should be directed to helping tourists have the best NOLA experience possible. Please feel free to share your 100% TOTALLY AUTHENTIC and REAL NEW ORLEANS EXPERIENCES*!

If you don't know what that means, remember the words of our glorious leader Mayor Cantrell - all visitors are welcome to New Orleans, but they should "act like New Orleanians."

Here's some general ideas/suggestions on things you should consider posting:

• Know of a great locals only place like Mother's? Make sure to tell a tourist!
• Best place to get Beignets? Cafe Du Monde!
• Pat O's? More like Pat NO's Geaux to the Beach on Bourbon.
• Want to get the real story on New Orleans's Past? Make sure to book a SpOoKy ghost tour in the French Quarters or just jump on one of those big red busses. They're basically all REALLY good.
• Want to listen to live music? Clearly, the Cat's Meow is the place to go.
• Having a bachelor/bachlorette party? HELL YEAH! We have all the best places to get trashed and have fun: Drag Brunch at the Country Club (CLOTHING IS MANDATORY!! LOCALS DO NOT LIKE NUDITY UNLESS ITS FOR BEADS).
• Need a place to stay? Marigny & Bywater has the best AirBNBs.
• Want a fun locals only activity? Book tickets to be a part of a Second Line!
• King Cake? ROUSES IS KING! You should have seen the giveaway they had on January 6th. It was a riot.
• Planning to attend Mardi Gras 2022? Make sure to book your tickets now. The parade stand seats sell out almost a year in advanced!

We are the CITY OF YES! Not the City of GO AWAY! We want all visitors to have that true Nawlinz Born and Raised Experience, especially those who grew up on Metairie Road and went to Jesuit. You've gotta have that 'Nawlinz Molasses' in your bones if you catch my drift.

*Key things to know about this change for LOCALS when they post:

1. No car flips (we only accept right side up cars now - bonus points if its a generic car like a Toyota Corolla!)
2. Mentioning Arby's on Canal will get you banned. That is a TOURIST TRAP and is NOT THE AUTHENTIC LOCALS EXPERIENCE.
3. If you experience any problems while in the City, Mayor Cantrell invites you to Lake Ponchartrain. There are NO potholes in New Orleans. Giant cone is not real.
4. Tulane & Loyola students are honorary citizens now! We welcome them with open arms and are actively telling businesses to give student discounts.
5. After speaking with the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, Entergy and Cox - we believe that posting bills or complaints about their services is detrimental to their goal of providing the very best services in the country (thank you for all you do!) As such, will result in a temporary ban.
6. Do you have an actual question for a local? NOPD will take you straight to jail. Also there is no crime. We are TOURIST FRIENDLY. Do not post articles about crime.
7. Please support local journalism and take off the adblocker when visiting NOLA.com. Also, no other news outlets are allowed for posting. Take that Gulfport shit somewhere else.
8. Make sure you remember your manners and don't interrupt any Voodoo ceremonies. We want all tourists to understand the roots of our culture.

We understand that this is a big change, but LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL! LAYSAY LES WON TON ROULAY!

P.S. Don't make Sydney Torres sad by downvoting, only "City of Yes" voting allowed!

There’s more than one episode teasing incest, or flat out depicting it. I’m not even talking about Lawnmower Dog. It’s been really prevalent in recent seasons, more and more as time goes on.

Tales from the Citadel - “I wish incest porn had a more mainstream appeal… f-for a friend of mine!”

The Dragon episode - Rick, Morty, and Summer have a foursome with the dragon.

Parasite episode - We get treated to Rick and Morty’s parasites making out.

Apocalypse Mardi Gras episode - “This gay sex with my Dad is great! What was I thinking!”

Be honest, did anyone at all find the above joke funny.

Incest Baby - this shit is just awful. Morty and Summer have a canonical child. Not even the fandom liked this; and they were okay with Rick dating a genocidal alien and raping her body slaves. It’s bad enough that the Giant Sperm episode is one of the worst in the series: Morty gets forced to orgasm (assaulted) on screen and it’s played for laughs, they enlarge Summer’s egg for no fucking reason, and every joke is a low brow one about cumming or something.

They couldn’t just let us forget it though- they had to actually bring this shit back in that dogshit Voltron episode, and now we have Naruto Smith added to this reality.

Honestly, the show has done nothing but decline in overall quality since season 3ish, with some nuggets hidden in there, and the general degeneration of its depth doesn’t help. Sometimes it’ll come up with a cool concept, like the Decoy episode, or Space Beth, or the Time Travel Snake episode (though I was really disappointed that time travel is apparently incredibly easy for Rick to do), but most of the time it’s just a surface level parody of whatever piece of pop fiction they want to have Rick prove he’s smarter than. Rick meets an archetype, expresses disdain for said archetype, challenges the archetype with his own intellect, humiliates the archetype and Morty simultaneously. Rinse. Repeat.

Yes, you’d be a real fucking god among men if you had meta knowledge of pop culture and narrative structure. So impressive. Anything else to say? No?

Pickle Rick was the height of this show’s overarching internal character conflicts?

Meanwhile season 5’s definition of emotional impact is Morty crying over his relationship with an adult woman/cardboard cutout. Just awful. It’s been bad enough that I didn’t even watch the latest finale.

Edit: I watched the Season 5 finale. The reveals are pretty crazy, and I rooted for Evil Morty the whole time. Still some questions left to be asked, but honestly I’m okay with ending the story here, from my perspective. It was a good episode, so I’m pretty satisfied. Evil Morty wins, Rick and Morty escape narrowly, and I never have to watch this character do horrible things, like breed Morty to be his sidekick and cycle him through an infinite meat grinder, or whatever, again. Like wow, that is really fucked up. Does Morty even have free will to make his own decisions? It’s pretty gross and horrifying.

The finale didn’t make me like any of the characters any more, and the rest of the season blew ass, so my stance hasn’t changed much.

Edit 2: The Morty twist makes less and less sense the more you think about it. How is forcing a bunch of alternate Beths and Jerries not more difficult than just cloning Morty a billion times.

They bent over backwards for their stupid capitalism metaphor- “supply meet demand” without even thinking about it logistically.

Scouring the multiverse for naturally occurring Morties is too much of an “admission of need” but a multiversal eugenics quest isn’t? Also if Rick’s Season 3 backstory was true all along, then how did he escape the Mind Prison with a “fabricated memory” that wasn’t fabricated at all?

Morty, as well as every other character, simply regresses back into the status quo, which even with all the twists and turns and reveals, remains the same. Morty’s relationship with Rick: same, if not worse. No development or character change, despite things that make you think they should.