Wonder nails las cruces

This guest post by SHRIMOYEE NANDINI GHOSH is based on two essays about the men and women of Kunan Poshpora, that appeared in the Kashmir Reader dated 1 September 2013, and 13 January 2014.

Beneath the horrors of the mass rape committed by Indian troops in the twin villages that night in February 1991, lies the untold story of systematic torture of men, carried out by the same forces with the precision and deliberation of a planned military operation.
In June 2013, a Public Interest Litigation filed in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, by fifty Srinagar based women, supported by human rights group Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil society (JKCCS) had resulted in a Magisterial order for the further investigations of the mass and gang rape by Indian army personnel of the women of Kunan, and neighbouring hamlet Poshpora, in Kupwara District of North Kashmir on the night of February 23rd-24th 1991. The police, it appears from the lack of any remotely investigative activities in the villages to have done little if anything, by way of following the court order in the last six months. On 14 September, 2013 they asked for and were granted an additional three months time for further investigations, without notice to the survivors who are legally represented in the case.
However, the closure report, which police had failed to file for twenty – two years, and which had been presented before the Magistrate of Kupwara just weeks before the Public Interest Litigation, in March 2013, had yielded several important previously unavailable official documents. These included a hand drawn police map, a nominal roll of 125 army personnel (including several officers) who were admittedly part of the operation and in Kunan-Poshpora that night, statements from victims, witnesses and army men mentioning specific locations, times and incidents, and the official medical reports of some of the rape victims. JKCCS had decided after some deliberation that if the police did not appear to be doing any investigations, they would themselves, aided by the new documents, attempt to rescue from oblivion the events of that night. Over the last three months, they have been engaged in a process of interviewing villagers, explaining to them what the police papers say, seeking clarifications, and attempting to piece together as coherent a narrative as possible given the constraints of resources, the lapses of memory, the reticence of rage, grief and repeated recounting, and the deaths of crucial witnesses. On 24th August 2013, I accompanied a team of human rights lawyers and researchers from JKCCS to the village of Kunan, on one of their visits. I was told that their interviews with those of the women who wished to speak was almost complete, and the day’s planned interviews were mostly with men from the village. Previous conversations, as well as police statements showed that interrogation centres had been set up in the village during the operation, and witnesses referred to extreme and extensive torture of men, but this was not specifically recorded in the First Information Report, and formed no part of the official list of crimes that occurred that night, which consists of rape, house trespass and illegal confinement.
As in the police documents, Kunan Poshpora has become inscribed as a story of rape in Kashmir’s public memory. But something else also happened that night. A crime so commonplace in that age of cordons and crackdowns that even the men who were its victims, barely thought to mention it, attending instead like the rest of us to the outrage of the raped women. As Ahmad Ameen put it, ‘They let us go home after the crackdown, in the morning at about 9 am.’ [Some men were bleeding; others were barely conscious and had to be carried. One man told us he crawled home on all fours].‘That’s when we realised what had happened. What they had done in every house. Then all hell broke lose.’ Several of the men were somewhat laconic when the interviews began. ‘Joh karte hai, wahi kiya’, Rahim Dar said. ‘They did what they do.’ And indeed they had– with wood, water, electricity–those universal implements for the infliction of finely calibrated pain. JKCCS believes on the basis of preliminary conversations that between hundred to a hundred and twenty men from the two villages were tortured that night. A total of twelve men were interviewed during the course of the day I visited, by three teams of researchers. I think it was after the fourth time I heard mention of medical treatments for sexual dysfunction, that the true irony of the ‘emasculation’ metaphors that are so abundant in talk about the Kunan-Poshpora rapes dawned on me. What I often dismiss as misplaced patriarchal indignation had been repeatedly made flesh that night. ‘Oh! Come on’ I want to say aloud, every time I hear or read the words ‘rape’ ‘our women’ and ‘impotency’ in close proximity–‘It’s NOT about you!’, but this time it was. And it involved wires, needles and a portable DC battery.
A kind of unmooring from the realms of human language has characterised the description of the Kunan Poshpora rapes. District Magistrate S.M Yasin’s report speaks of being unable to put down in ‘black and white’ the acts committed by the ‘beasts’ for instance, and the rape survivors themselves talk of the chaos of a toofaan, of foul smelling shaitaans apparating through their black-outs and disassociated states as they lay in the dark . But, as I listened to the men, ranging in age from 90-year-old Lal Dar (68 at the time of the torture) to 40 year old Manzoor (18 in 1991) their torture seemed to bear a somewhat different relationship to language and the world. What happened to them was nailed to a scaffolding of banal bureaucratic and military terms—interrogation, information, identification, search, cordon, crackdown—and tethered to mundane physical objects and familiar places–-buckets, logs and planks of wood, helmets, torchlights, batteries, wood sheds, barns, streams and trees. As the men spoke I began to picture that night, not as an endless orgy of a horde of rampaging beasts, but as a quiet and efficient military operation, carried out by trained men. Four companies of men from the 4th Rajputana Rifles, 68th Mountain Brigade commanded by a Colonel K.S. Dalal, in fact, as the army itself admits in police statements. Alpha and Delta Companies were deployed in the outer cordon, Bravo and Charlie in the search and interrogation. While teams of ten to twenty soldiers, sometimes headed by an officer who they were heard referring to as ‘Sir’, went on a systematic house to house search, rooting men out of their beds, demanding to be taken immediately to militants or hidden weapons, strip searching them and burying them in the snow, their comrades were otherwise engaged. Most of the commissioned officers were deployed at the ‘interrogation centres’ according to the army. Two kuthars (large barn like outbuildings for storing grain, fodder and cattle) within yards of each other, belonging to Asad Dar and the village numberdar (revenue official) Aziz Shah, and Abli Dar’s home, on the main lane of Kunan’s maze of winding alleys, were quickly commandeered and their lofts or rooms converted into make shift ‘interrogation centers’, while their compounds formed a holding space for the men. All three were provided with the same basic equipment – a bench fashioned out of planks of wood, a large wooden log, a bucket of chilli water, a couple of wires connected to a radio battery forming a crude live-circuit, assorted sticks and ropes, a few chairs, and somewhere to suspend the men from–but adaptations were made according to available resources and geography. For instance, in Asad Dar’s yard through which the village stream ran, repeated dunking in its icy depths formed part of the standard procedure. At two of the compounds, Aziz Shah’s and Abli Dar’s where firewood was stored in the wood-shed a bonfire was lit, around which parka-clad soldiers chatted and drank, and villagers recovered from their water treatments. At Asad Dar’s kuthar a tall, fair and somewhat chubby faced officer sat on a chair before a wireless set, giving orders and flashing his torchlight. Downstairs, in all three yards, men squatted or stood in the snow waiting for their possible turns on the equipment. Occasionally when they went up, they saw a neighbour or brother who was before them in line, slumped on the floor at the head of the stairs. Some like Salim Dar, whose brother was a surrendered militant, paid a visit to two of the three centers. He still walks on crutches as a result.
The village of Kunan has changed in twenty-two years. It is no longer ‘the huddle of thatched and wooden houses’ that journalists described in 1991 (‘Indian Villagers Tell of Mass Rape by Soldiers’, The Independent, March 19, 1991). Buildings have been torn down, and rebuilt in brick, cement and tin. The chashma (natural spring) that emerged from the earth behind Aziz Shah’s kuthar has dried up, and only a muddy depression now marks the spot. Ghulam Afzal walked with us around the hamlet amidst squawking chickens and curious children, pointing out the sights– ‘this is where the Abli Dar’s old kuthar stood, that there- is his new house…this is the wood shed in which I hid, this is the nallah along which Naba ran, this used to all be clear ground then…’ For some reason, seeing those buildings brought home to me an intimation of what it was like to be a man from Kunan-Poshpora on that night, in a way even their words hadn’t.
What was it like, I found myself imagining, to be squatting in your own snowy barn yard, drowning in your tin bucket, broken and blubbering on your hard granary floor, blinded by chillies from your own store? And then all the hypotheticals began, as my mind ran on and on. How did it feel I wondered to hear the sounds coming from the village? Yah Khudaiyo! Yah Khudaiyo! Could you hear them over the sounds of the interrogation? Pakistan, Militants, Samaan, Information, Bol Saala! Could you hear them over the groans of your neighbours? Could you hear them over your own yells? Which was worse–to definitely identify the scream of a loved one, or merely contemplate if it was them, through the fog of your insensibility? What was it like to be told you could leave in the morning, to be given painkillers by the army doctor, (Capt. Dr Shyam Sundar accompanied the unit according to his own police statement), to come home and realise what had seemed so far like a recurring nightmare—another crackdown, agonising but vaguely familiar –had been another kind of visitation altogether? And then, to unable to leave or get help for two days, because of the army siege around the village? To have no family or neighbours to turn to, because everyone you knew, was in precisely the same state as you? What kind of courage did it take to be Abdullah the compounder, from neighbouring Trehgam who snuck into the village using the back route through Chopan Mohalla, to deliver what analgesics and first-aid he could knowing it to be hopelessly inadequate? Or most unimaginably of all, to be Abdul Wani. To return from an over night business trip to Srinagar and find your front door broken, your two sons in bed electrocuted, your wife and three daughters raped, and your family’s barn turned into the village torture chamber? How does one live with such knowledge? And having held one’s peace for twenty two years, how does one begin to tell a stranger with a note book, not about what was done to the women, not about what was done to the never to be named teenaged girls, but what was done to you, to your own aging and scarred body, all those many years ago?
That night is full of other kinds of silences, not as innocent but just as tortured. What can one say of Abdul Ghani, the police constable who was related to several families in the village who accompanied the soldiers on their rounds, and signed a ‘No Objection Certificate’ (NOC) the next morning stating that the villagers had no complaints? He appears in many accounts like some kind of will o’ the wisp with a torch light— relaying messages between houses and family members; accompanying one man back to his home to fetch more firewood, allowing him to peep in through the windows and see his wife on the kitchen floor but not to enter; giving water to a woman with a broken spine; getting locked in a cow shed for remonstrating with soldiers; carrying a cousin home on his back in the morning, weeping as he related what he had witnessed. How do we begin to disentangle the betrayal, the subversion, the unlooked for kindness of it all? Constable Abdul Ghani Dar’s statement of what he heard, saw, and did that night, would have formed a crucial part of the prosecution evidence, if the case ever comes to be tried in a court of law. But ‘unidentified gunmen’ murdered Abdul Ghani in his bed in 1993, pumping thirty bullets into his gut, rendering his words hearsay, and obliterating them from the legal record.
Several other critical eyewitnesses have died in twenty two years, including Sharif-ud-din Sheikh who led the fight to get the police report registered and the case heard in the State Human Rights Commission. Some have died as a result of their rape or torture that night, others from age, bullets or disease. By some estimates from villagers, fifteen of the rape survivors have had hysterectomies. Along the way I lost count of the many other surgeries, unsuccessful treatments, chronic aches, intolerable pains and nameless ailments I heard described. One, however stood out. Lal Dar, whose knee was shattered by a rifle-butt early in the proceedings, and who spent most of the night sprawled in the snow outside his home watching the comings and goings of the men, said that he subsequently had two surgeries, the second to remove his knee cap. He said he could not bend his left leg any longer. He finds it hard to pray.

A Meeting in the Park
Impressions and reflections on meeting the survivors of the mass rape at Kunan Poshpora, at the Sher- e-Kashmir Park in Srinagar on Human Rights Day, 2013

It came as a surprise. I don’t think any one, even amongst the organisers of the event at Sher- e Kashmir Park, on December 10th, had expected that women from the two villages would come. It was assumed that the survivors would be represented by members of the Village Committee, elderly men folk from Kunan and Poshpora, themselves survivors of the mass torture that took place on the night of February 23rd-24th, 1991. But the women had come, almost thirty of them. They had arrived in Srinagar by Matador van, leaving their homes in Kunan and Poshpora at seven in the morning, when the frost was still hard on their windows. I had met some of them before, but it was different seeing them here in Srinagar. I couldn’t remember all their names; their biographies had come detached from their faces. Many of them hugged me.
I remembered S. though, one of the more outspoken survivors I had met— her sharp, twinkly eyes behind thick, black rimmed granny glasses, her wide smile full of crooked teeth, in a face wrinkled and brown like a walnut. We had met at Kunan, in August 2013, when I accompanied a legal research team, from Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) who was representing them in their recently renewed litigation against the Indian army. She had spoken fiercely about the injustice of it all; the many outrages that she read about everyday in the papers, her desire to see such criminals behind bars for life. Her anger was loud and visceral. But when it came to the actual events of that night, she had refused to answer any questions. She had a terrible headache, she said. She could not wait, she had blood pressure, she was dizzy—she had to leave, she always felt like this when she thought of that night, she would not talk to us anymore. It was the only interview that had to be abandoned half way. Today, she was complaining about the long journey, ‘bumping-bumping-bumping all the way.’ ‘We should have come by Sumo’, she grumbled. But, it seemed to me that despite this, she couldn’t quite mask her delight at being out in the sunshine. In the open, amidst the falling leaves, outside the shadows of their men folk, their kitchens, their village, the women grew garrulous. S. told me of her daughters, one married to a doctor, the other working at the Social Welfare Department. At one point, Gul Fatima, from the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, wife to a disappeared man, came over to the group of Kunan Poshpora’s women. ‘Where are you from?’ she asked them. ‘From Kupwara’ S. replied, naming the district. Then, a shadow seemed to cross her face. ‘Kunan – Poshpora’ she said. We’re here from Kunan Poshpora.’
Many of the women from Kunan Poshpora, did not wish to be photographed. The cameras made them uneasy. Some of their children, and grand children they said, did not know their stories. They huddled together and covered their faces with scarves, but the photographers persisted. It felt undignified– cringing behind shawls, cowering under ‘We Demand Justice for Kunan Poshpora’ posters, being asked to join the circle and sit in the appropriate place like an errant schoolgirl, when one had wandered away to avoid the cameras. In 2004, Manipuri women activists protesting the rape and killing of Thangjam Manorama had shocked us by their dramatic inversion of the figure of the cowering and shamed raped woman. Stark naked, they had stood in front of the Assam Rifles Base at Imphal, holding a banner that read ‘Indian Army Rape Us’. The photograph had made headlines across the world. I thought of it as I pleaded with a particularly intrusive photographer on behalf of the women to ‘please respect their privacy’. At this, he turned around and asked me, ‘Why have they been asked to come here, then?’ .I didn’t really have a good answer. It is true. We do need them. We want to have their pictures. We want to put faces to their tragedies, to commemorate their losses and violations. We need them to remind us that we remember, that we have not lost the battle against forgetting yet.
After I got home, the women of Kunan Poshpora, and their attitude to the news-cameras, made me think of a question. Would the agitations against the Shopian rapes in 2009, have been so angry, so volatile, so strong, if Asiya and Neelofar had lived? If they had survived, would we have heard of them at all? And if we had, what particular stories would we hear? Perhaps their rapes would have been covered up, as so many have been in the villages of Kunan and Poshpora, in the name of marriages, families, reputations, futures, for the sake of preserving innocence. A raped dead body makes for an uncomplicated heroine– worthy of both victimhood, and martyrdom. But a living rape survivor is a different being altogether. Her speech and her silences are more fraught. The women of Kunan Poshpora have been voices, not victims through these twenty three years. They have spoken back to the forces of occupation, before media crews, independent fact finders, the police, the state human rights commission and the courts of law. But, they constantly remind us– by covering up before our cameras, by getting dizzy, by blanking out, by her reticence before our questions, that we are all incriminated in her secret yet public shame.

https://kafila.online/2014/01/20/kunan-poshpora-the-other-story-shrimoyee-nandini-ghosh/

Hi,
So I'm starting a lease on a house. But now that we have the electricity/water connected, grabbed the keys, and working on filling the property condition report, we noticed that so many things are wrong with the place such as 1. Ducted heating not working 2. Split system aircons not going to heat mode 3. One of the aircon is turning on and off by itself 4. None of the FOB for the garage is working 5. Faucet seem to be close to bursting 6. One of the robes are so wobbly and the nails are not pinned properly that it seems to be a safety hazard. 7. So many more 😭
Now, we are starting to think that it's probably not worth moving there but we have paid the first month rent and the bond. The lease is fixed term for 12 months.
From what i read it seems like we can apply to VCAT to break the lease without penalty due to the place below standard? But i wonder if they'll give back our first month rent? And what are the steps i should take in this matter?
Thank you so much btw i wish y'all having a better day than me 🥹👍

About a month ago, I applied to a job opening and was promptly rejected, despite meeting all of the technical qualifications to a T.
Three weeks later, a recruiter reached out to me about a position that "I'm a good fit for". She was right - sure enough, it was the same job. I let her know that I would gladly pursue the opportunity, but I was already rejected from that position. The recruiter said, not to worry, just re-apply, I'll get you in.
So of course, I now get an interview scheduled with the company. 🙄 I crush all the interviews and nail the technical assessment. Just got the offer letter yesterday and accepted today.
Not only did this company waste their time, my time, and the recruiter's time, but they also wasted their money, because they have to pay the recruiter a commission they wouldn't have otherwise. They also went an extra month without filling this position. Hope the wait was worth it. I know I enjoyed being trapped in my shitty job an extra month for no reason. 👍
I've had three jobs in this career path so far, and all of them only because I knew someone who knew someone. At this point, I'm wondering if anyone without a rockstar resume should even bother directly applying to jobs anymore! Just connect with everybody on LinkedIn (🤢) and send your resumes to the recruiters who will actually get you an interview.
Thank God capitalism is so efficient!
/rant

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Im a 21yo male and I’ve been biting my nails all my life, unhealthily so. My nails look terrible.
I tried this stuff this nail hardener stuff that tasted horrible and it barely worked, I ended up picking at my nails anyway, and now I’ve just been trying out of sheer willpower but I always end up breaking. I forget to be on guard and muscle memory kicks in and a few minutes later I’ll realize I’ve been biting my nails and broke my streak.
I’m a fairly attractive guy but it’s a big insecurity of mines and I know people assume I’m weird because my nails are freakishly bitten down. It makes me feel embarrassed that my nails are so disgusting. It’s just a habit I’ve never broken and it’s gotten so much worse these past few years as I’ve gone through so much. It’s hard to admit but it’s genuinely why I go out less and why my social life/skills are deteriorating.
I’ve resorted to wearing black wool gloves often to get around this, but people still often ask my I’m always wearing gloves, especially when not fit for the weather. Without gloves, I’m nervous to even shake someone’s hand. I always try to hide my hands because I’m hyper aware and inevitably I’ll see the person I’m talking to begin eyeing my hands, then doing mental gymnastics wondering wtf is up with my ugly nails. How do I stop?! How do I make my nails grow fast? How can I fix them NOW! Please!

This is a lot so bear with me, I (18f) just finished my first year of community college. Me and my friend took this class and this guy kinda joined our duo, im gonna call him dave (24M), it’s a small class so it’s like 12 people and dave initially seemed friendly so it was ok. He’d walk us to our cars and then try and hug us, which was kinda weird. On a day i was gone he asked my friend for a ride and he suggested they get something to eat. She took him to a restaurant where he ordered a full meal and didnt bother paying, so she paid the whole thing. He also says things like “ i don’t have any friends” “everyone leaves me”.
i totally get why now. On that day I was gone my friend said that he told her I was cute, but not to tell me which was weird because I was 17 at the time. I also didn’t believe it because I don’t think too well of myself and I really wanted to believe he was just weird and wanted friends. My friend expressed to me that she was uncomfortable, so we started politely distancing and trying to ignore him, then I turned 18.
He started to try and talk to us again. He then proceeded to ask me out three times and when I said no and that i didnt feel comfortable with him talking to me like that, he would ask me questions about my sexuality, it’s really infuriating. During class, he sits to my left, separated by a walk way. But I constantly see in my peripheral vision him staring at me, it makes me feel so uncomfortable. He would always try to touch me too, one day i had gotten to class before him and he walked in and pet my head before sitting down, it was horrible, from then on i tried to be as late as possible to avoid him doing that again. It felt gross too, like why did he think that was a good decision?? The guy I liked sits right behind me so my friend said that was why, to like scare him off but to be honest that was the nail in the coffin for my distaste for dave.
The second to last day of the class, my friend was sick and couldn’t come, so after the lecture was over, dave told me “ i told (my friend) that you were cute at the start of the semester” i said “oh um thank you ?” expressing the awkwardness of the situation in hopes he would go away, then he said “it has been an honor to know you this year ” he was starting to say something else but at this point i was tired of it so i just walked away, which i thought would communicate that i didn’t want to talk to him, so i thought he would finally get the message.
unfortunately when i thought dave was a friend I told him about a guy in class, the one who sits behind me, im gonna call him Vance, we went to high school together and had mutual friends. i’ve always thought he was super cute and i mistakenly told dave that i liked him and since then it has been daves mission to keep me away from him, which is horrible because vance is actually really intelligent and interesting. This included interrupting our conversations or literally standing in the way.
Now, for the last day i dressed up a little bit, every time I have finals I like to pick out a nice outfit and do my makeup and hair, i don’t know why but it gives me confidence for the last test. When i got there vance was already sitting down so we were talking a little bit which was nice, and he wore glasses for the first time , glasses are 100% my kryptonite so i decided that i was gonna give him my number at the end of class because why not.
we had to give a speech as our final, after that was done our professor wrapped it up and the semester was over. I was turning to vance, to give him my number , as i met his eyes he smiled at me and it was a warm smile so I was actually feeling really good about it and then dave stood right in front of him and tried to give me a fist bump for the speech. Vance was leaving so I started leaving class too and then dave started talking about the parts of my speech that he liked. Then he blocked the outside hallway with his arms and said “do you really think you’re leaving without a farewell hug” i swear i vomited in my mouth, i just stood there and waited for him to leave , i didn’t really know what to do and then he said “ you look so pretty today, i like your makeup, are you trying to get my attention or were you going to ask me out today?” all of this in front of vance.
it was humiliating, my professor saw this unfold too , at this point i gave up and just pushed past dave then he GRABBED MY ARM and said “hey we’re still gonna talk right, it’s been wonderful knowing you and i want to keep in touch“ i swear if looks could kill , but i looked back and not only was vance looking right at me but dave had an actual grip on my arm.
I pushed his arm with my other hand pretty forcefully, to get him far enough away from me so i could walk away fast enough. He tried catching up with me but i entered a different building and saw my friend and practically ran to him and once dave saw him he stopped walking after me. But it was so humiliating to experience.
I am a germaphobe and I have issues when people touch me, especially when its out of the blue. I violently washed my hands after this but even now I can still feel his hand on my arm. I couldnt even make it five minutes away from campus until I had to pull over and just cry in my car. Its just so upsetting that he wouldn't stop bothering me. Its like why cant i just exist? He tried texting and calling me but I blocked him. And all throughout the semester he would make little comments to me or compliment me in class and it makes me so sick. It’s crazy because a similar situation, less intense, happened over winter semester and I told dave (before he started getting weird) how uncomfortable I was when that guy wouldn’t respect my boundaries and how embarrassing it is to be looked at like an object, like i wasn’t allowed to say no. So he knew how that would make me feel. I was explaining this to another one of my friends and he told me I should feel complimented that i get attention like that, but I don’t. When he held my arm, and i pushed him away everyone saw, i felt humiliated. I feel like my skin is crawling still. Even writing this and thinking back to it, i can’t help but shake a little bit.
Now I am mad at myself for not saying anything but I didnt want to escalate a situation that wasn’t there or have him say stuff about me because he definitely would. I just hope when he transfers that he doesnt bother any other poor girl.

Folding my office job
I raise my glass and thank Mark and Marjolein, my managers, for everything. Meanwhile I could only think about the online poker tournament that I was playing while having dinner. What were the odds of me actually advancing to day 2 of a big online tournament? Around 400 players out of 30.000 advanced, so mathematically around 1.33%.
I had realized that advancing would mean someone else had to play the first part, as I not just had a goodbye dinner of work, it was my own goodbye dinner.
After coming in as an intern, I got a job offered at a rapidly developing high tech auction platform that was doing really well.
I took the challenge and liked it, especially at the start.
However after around two and a half years I found myself looking outside the window a few times a day too much.
More than once I felt myself being captured between the office walls, especially after 14:30.
Most people would tell you; that’s life.
This seemed the right moment to find out if that statement was true. Recently I had bought a house, I knew I could rent it out for a good amount of money.
This would be a bit of stable income, aside from the money I already had.
After doing some calculations I realized that I could take a gap year with relative financial risk. I am Dutch after all.
On my way home I was following the tournament while traveling by train. One of my good friends took over on my behalf.
Officially not legal, neither is renting out my place without paying taxes. But I’ve never had any trouble with working in gray areas.
Before I could reach home, the misfortune had come and I busted out of the tournament at 350th place for 1,100$.
Not a bad result but definitely not what I would’ve hoped for at the start of the day. It feels kinda cruel to play for 14 hours, advance to day 2 and not be able to play yourself. Hence, I knew this could happen.
I will leave for Vegas in two days, my first trip to Sin City.
Viva las Vegas
I’m not sure if I did it because it just was that way or because I thought it would make a good story, but within 36 hours after the goodbye office job dinner I found myself sitting on a plane to Vegas.
A nice 10 day journey, which I had booked at the start of the year. I can still remember telling my (ex) girlfriend I booked Vegas. I expected her to be happy for me, but that was probably naive. Women, especially (ex) girlfriends, are not happy when impulsive young men leave for Vegas.
Once in the plane I felt this feeling of excitement, this was exactly what I should do; live life the fullest.
Once I arrived I would take a cab, the driver kept asking me if he should pull over somewhere to buy some booze or cannabis. Cannabis was recently legalized, but coming from Holland I was not too impressed with that. I wouldn’t be the type to go on a mad one by myself the first night and friendly instructed him to drive me to the hotel. It was around midnight by the time I could check in and there was my first surprise. 350$ added resort fees per room. Well that’s a nice welcome to Vegas I thought by myself. However the room was nice and I was buzzing to be in this city.
Two days later I was joined by two good friends who I’d always go on poker trips with.
We mostly had been to Dublin, but Vegas was new for everyone.
On the second day I’m playing day 1 of a 500$ event, it was literally the softest event I’ve ever played. Some people barely knew how to hold their cards, yet paid 500 dollars to play. Poker is a crazy world.
After advancing to day 2 with an under average stack I got a text from Gary.
Now Gary is the biggest character you will ever meet. Brings me back to the story of how I met him.
I’m in Dublin and it’s my first big poker event, there’s this kid who literally looks like a 15 year old. I figure he must be good at poker to put up this kind of money at his age. We happen to be at the same table within 30 minutes. He makes a crazy kamikaza bluff, it was literally a suicidal play.
24 hours later I walked into him in the Regency hotel in Dublin where the tournament back then was held, he’s all sweating and looking exhausted. I ask him: ‘How are you doing man? Did you advance yesterday in the tournament?’
‘Awh no bro, I busted out of the tournament (I was not surprised). I have been playing here ever since, but I haven't slept yet. I’m down 2 grand for fuck sake.
I wish Gary the best of luck and recommend him to go to sleep, at that time I wouldn’t know I would tell him the exact same thing at least another 300 times in the five years after.
Anyways back to Vegas, Gary lets me know he just arrived in town and we should go for a drink. He’s with a friend of his, Patrick a.k.a. Clicki.
I knew Clicki, I once transferred him 1000$ online, a short term loan. I’d only see the guy once and never spoke to him, yet was giving him a 1k loan. Gary said he was good for it. That’s the poker world.
Gary and Clicki seem to have a hell lot of fun at the craps table in a video they send me. I advanced in the tournament and am off the next day, so I decided to pay them a visit in the Flamingo casino.
There was one other guy, his name was Matt. Despite being white he talked like some American rapper and he kept telling me that he could have me sign an NBA contract first thing in the morning because of my height.
One thing was immediately clear, this group was here to party.
We are getting strong mixers for 10$ a drink, this would go a bit against my normal standards but it was Vegas after all.
Gary, not surprisingly already in fairly drunk shape after arriving 2 hours in Vegas, tells me there was this woman who wanted to sleep with him.
I told him he should totally go for it and after not seeing him for one hour he came back. I will never forget him telling me he just fucked a whale, she was so fat he thought he was riding her legs.
Matt, Clicki and I were all dying of laughter, especially after seeing his face when he realized he didn’t use a condom.
Another two hours later, it must be around 3am, we find ourselves at the hotel room of Clicki, there’s plenty of booze, and illegal substances, around. Gary, who is staying there as well, tells us we should leave the room. He has a tournament the next morning at 11 and according to him this was the opportunity of a lifetime for him. You could ask yourself how serious you could take a man, who just drank all night (and fucked a whale), talking about the opportunity of a lifetime the next morning. Matt, Clicki and I go on looking for a bit more trouble and end up at a random hotel room in Planet Hollywood.
I wake up the next day around 1 in the afternoon and am wondering if Gary has shown up for his so-called opportunity of a lifetime.
By this time Rien and Gertjan, two close Dutch friends, had arrived in Vegas. While having pancakes together I receive a text from Gary.
He tells me that he doesn’t feel too well, yet the poker tournament is going the right direction and he doubled his stack. I tell him it’s just a bad hangover; hang in there and drink enough water you’ll be fine.
At this time I’m texting Clicki to see how bad his hangover is, he tells me it’s pretty rough, he hasn’t slept at all yet he’s playing a 1000$ tournament. I can’t believe my ears and realize that he just jumped into a tournament that could easily go on for 12 hours without a single minute of sleep and probably still being fairly intoxicated. A quick text back from Clicki: ‘Keep the backer happy’ I doubt if the backer would be happy when he would know in which state he’s currently playing, but Clicki wouldn’t be Clicki if he didn't end up cashing the tourney nonetheless. At that time I didn’t know Clicki and I would have our fair share of adventures in Thailand, Taiwan and Cambodia 6 months later.
Apparently Gary kept feeling very bad, to make things worse he took an unknown substance offered by a total stranger that was at his table.
This resulted in him telling me he thought he was going to have a heart attack, should he call an ambulance he was asking me? I told him that he would be better off taking a cab to the hospital if he insisted on going, especially the way American healthcare is set up.
Around half an hour later I receive a ‘selfie’ of Gary, on a stretcher, in an ambulance. He’s heading straight to the hospital, his stack worth around 1000$ still being in play were least of his concerns.
Later that night I’m picking up Gary from the hospital with Rien and Gertjan, he turned out to have an anxiety attack. We’re in the cab to drop Gary off at the Palms hotel and it’s dead silent. Suddenly Gary says; Lad’s, lads I’m still in the tournament. I advanced! YES! The fact that the estimated value of his stack dropped from approximately 1000$ to around 290$ didn’t seem to bother him too much.
None of us cashed the tournament eventually and Vegas turned out to be a cool, yet expensive experience. The total trip had cost me around 5000 dollars, definitely not the dream start just after quitting your job.
Gary, who had planned a three week trip, eventually got his mom to book a ticket home after eight days. His time in Vegas must have been turbulent including the hospital, getting robbed by a hooker and losing all his money.

​
Most importantly: the casting of Ariel obviously is the biggest problem with the production. And everybody can plainly see that, but not anybody is allowed to just say it, because of absurd and oppressive accusations and arguments, for example -
"Mermaids are mythological, they don't have a race, who cares if she is black now, you racists."
Spongebob Squarepants is not even half-human, yet if they suddenly painted him blue, everybody would obviously dissociate. Not because folks are prejudiced against blue, but because Spongebob would look like a freaking alien to us.
We're very, very obviously not talking about "mermaid representation" and "being historically accurate," you morons, we're talking specifically about Ariel, a specifically established character in a specifically established story stamped in time as a classic. It's not race, it's basic association: red hair, floppy bangs, blue eyes, fair skin, green tail, period.
The only person talking about race is you, the person calling folks racist.
"Representation for blacks matters, stop being salty."
But you just yelled about how 'mermaids were mythological and that the element of race was not only irrelevant but an entirely stupid thing to associate with the character'...? So what is this angle supposed to be if not hypocritical? If her race does in fact matter, mythological or not, because representation does in fact matter, then that would mean it absolutely does in fact matter that you changed her race to begin with.
"Halle IS Ariel, she was born to play this role."
The number one and only prerequisite to meet while emulating a freaking cartoon character is the appearance. And everybody knows it, stop trying to triggegaslight innocent, unsuspecting audiences everywhere. Everything else is performance, wardrobe, direction, script, etc. Like what if I told you "Denzel Washington was born to play Johnny Bravo because he can do the voice well-ish enough"...? Would you be able to take me seriously? No? How about if I accused you of a hate crime?
"Nobody complained about Jasmine or Belle looking different!"
Are you stupid...? For one, they didn't look all that different.
a. Jasmine matched more or less the same as her cartoon counterpart, in appearance and in energy, only she was prettier and like barely one shade lighter; what's more, that was a fantastic singer and actress: and even so, YESSS, everybody complained, there was a collective Wilhelm fucking scream/race war until all of the idiots simmered the fuck down upon the revelation that the cartoon wasn't specifically Indian or Arabic or anything but a fictitious hodgepodge of both-ish loll and that the actress looked the part enough-ish, which didn't actually matter, because she wasn't even the star, Aladdin was, and they fucking NAILED him in recreation, NAILED him, and wasn't that so satisfying to witness as a viewer...? hm...?
b. Belle matched more or less the same as her cartoon counterpart- ONLY in skin and hair color and general cuteness or softness of face; she was a hideous dumpster fire compared to the cartoon, in appearance and in energy, and she was a horrific actress and singer; and yes, people complained like crazy... and no matter how hard they did and always will, it will actually still never be enough. She sucked for that role as much as this new girl does for Ariel.
But yeah: none of these bitches looked much different from their cartoon versions. What they did to Ariel is like... if you made the cookie monster pink and instead of cookies, he was into cupcakes.
"The bad reviews are coming from one source: racists."
No, you're the racist for saying so though. And a manipulative fucking asshole.
"You all . . ."
"You all" nothing, because I am not white, I am not a blue-eyed Danish redhead, many of us having this fit are not and have zero cultural or physical identification to Ariel. I am not defending myself and/or my people through Ariel, you're the only one doing that here, that is exactly why it is so impossible to get through to you with objective ass points lol. I am not racist against you and/or your people using Ariel as the tool to unleash my hidden racism demons, get it the fuck together you asshole, wtf. This is "personal" to me, only insofar as it toys with my childhood memories and it reminds me of my disdain for disney, the media, politics, and the way the idiot masses are so easily pit against each other through their transparent, haphazard, lazy brands of manipulation and insulting pseudo-representation. "You all" nothing when I'm trying to say "We all," wtf is the problem. These remakes mortify all of humanity, just let me say it. It's "BLM' all over again, when one time I accidentally said "ALM" because I wasn't up to speed yet and didn't know it was a patented hate crime, and I was nearly trampled to death for it. yet my neighbor who posted a black box on instagram was being paraded on society's shoulders as the second coming of MLK jr. like What the fuck kind of role am I supposed to play, can I just be myself and have people just figure I'm not a freaking psychopath or not? Can I just make honest observations without people assuming my stance has shit to do with my own race, gender, or anything personal? This shit is sick people. If you think it is wrong to change the race of established characters in reanimation, then that should apply to all races, all ways, otherwise, you are kinda racist, and/or if you think media representation is insanely important, then you should be fixated on creating original representation, at the very least, not using another culture's or thanking and defending the company that is actually using you for their representation. And if you think I am racist for fucking saying this, you have mental problems. That's it.
​
~.~.~
​
And then of course this girl is an abusive fucking bitch.
For example-
Halle and Disney:
"black mermaaaid! extry, extry! come get your black mermaid!! that's right, look at my skin color, you racists, look at all of these freaking racists and their backlash! all they see is color-> i'm BLACK! so let's talk about how important ariel's dreadlocks are to MY story in 15 interviews, and let's also talk about black girls who can now look up to me because i'm black! but it's not about race you guys! but like remember to go back to seeing in color again in time for when The Color Purple hits theaters too because i actually am being black in that one so don't mix them up okay? anyway: BLACK!"
Innocuous Interviewer Along the Way:
"so, black mermaid, you say?! how beautiful! cool! gorgeous voice! ariel incarnate! shining star, world peace, god bless you!"
Halle and Disney:
"WhaT?! how dare you see my skin color and say my skin color? cancel all racists! who told you i'm black!? who told you to notice and care?! i'm so oppressed you guys, look what i ~\endure*~ see this is exactly what i've been talking about during marketing since 2020 :( i'm black :( stop saying it though :( only me say it +* you see it, but no reminding me :( so racist :( okay anyway, as i was saying, mermaid dreadlocks are really important for my people, this is our roots, and i wish white people would stop complaining that my hair looks and acts different from that white girl's in their own culture's dumb culture-less original. mermaids are not real and neither is white culture, okay, everybody knows that, there's no such thing. they're being racist."
​
It's like, bitch:
- The Little Mermaid is fucking Nordic- Denmark, you asshole. Hence her physical features in the cartoon. The greatest deviation from that in the cartoon is that Eric's seaside looks more Mediterranean, which is fine because we were still being generally whitey-European- and we had a Jamaican crab for fucking flair. We weren't running off to the Caribbeans (?) of some Victorian 18th century (?) where a black female ruler somehow existed (?) in some insanely prosperous, productive Utopian royal-yet-peasanty bubble island (?) and adopted some *actually* danish-esque shipwrecked bastard who floated there on a raft (?) for the first of many times in his life now apparently made purely of milestones marked by what ship wrecked him at what age (?) and is now to be white king of this highly exclusively black village-empire-colony-dynasty (?) only if he can get past this millennial helicopter parent of a matriarch-monarch because that's her only order of business in all the land (?).
Like, you do understand how much this is not even *your* or anybody's representation, right...? You stole from a realer narrative to pedal your flimsy fake one while shouting at "white people" that "mermaids are mythological so nothing about anything matters except getting blacks on TV"...?
- And also hence her fucking name, Ariel a spirit of the air, or of the North/Nord; and hence the fucking meaning of the name a light or a lion of god, as in her light skin and/or her fiery red hair. NO, "lion king" and/or an untamed orange mane is not the fucking association, and even if it were, you already played in The Lion King! Remember?! You and Beyonce fucked that one up like five minutes ago! Give it a fucking rest get the fuck out of here you parasitic supremacist.
Fucking nobody even cared about your race in the first place,
the masses mostly cared about the basic associative image of the basic ass drawing done thirty years ago and has thus obviously just naturally cemented itself as an intensely nostalgic icon.
You brought race into this, so then FINE:
EVEN on the level of your racially charged and biased freaking playing field:
you're still the only one in this equation who is a flagrant fucking racist, because YES actually, this icon most definitely is already rooted in a specific culture's set of creations and unique representation,
and we didn't even see it that way or think of it like that,
until you fucking forced us down here to witness your ridiculous claims!
You forced a whole category of demographics to go up in arms to have to defend themselves as well as a whole established culture there when you literally:
a. claimed racial ownership of their classic,
b. insisted "white people have no culture,"
c. insisted the "color of the mermaid didn't matter,"
d. insisted the "color of the mermaid being black though did matter,"
e. labeled folks who saw this paradox "racist" without a second thought,
d. and then psychologically/verbally attacked/alienated everyone based on your:
i. inflamed entitlement,
ii. shameless ignorance,
iii. false empowerment,
iv. capacity to be so easily manipulated by disney,
v. and blind racism. like against everybody.
Literally, from start to end of this weird conquest of yours.
​
Leave fucking classics alone!
If you switch them up just to float your own culture's propaganda,
I am going to make fun of you and your culture, lol,
And I am going to enjoy it, and I am not even a racist,
And doing so wouldn't make me a racist.
As I said, it would make you the racist.
Because wtf are you doing repainting narratives and characters.
​
Don't dangle irrelevant shit in people's faces,
Otherwise people are going to mock your irrelevance.
That's it.
Your culture's not stupid,
But you look stupid right now here in this doing this shit.
And yes, it's funny and it's fun to laugh.
What else is there to even do?
You replaced all the actual entertainment value with this shit lol.
THIS is the entertainment I've extracted from it thus,
This, writing this, hating you, is fucking fun,
More fun than digesting your product, whose fault is that?
Be grateful I'm still this engaged and part of it.
This is still a great contribution to your stupid agenda thing.
You're welcome, as usual.
But it's not more fun than just enjoying things labeled as
"Your personal favorite childhood memories,"
in this case to me, "The Little Mermaid,"
so fucking quit it.
This was me coping, and good on me for making a tragedy fun,
But let's not exploit this valve that is my soul lol.
​
Now please go ahead and collect your freaking ethnicities, all of you, every last fucking culture out here, and leave the plot of all of our already established films alone.
(yeah Aladdin Remake, i'm also talking to you, and you hang back after class, because i have another lecture for you specifically)
​
Create new films for representation if that's what you want!
Don't infiltrate the homes of unsuspecting families just trying to eat popcorn and fart and laugh at their old favorite hits together.
​
THIS was the first era in my life where I was unable to post a FILM review onto Google Reviews, Rotten Tomatoes, and Reddit for a film. That's all I've been doing for like a decade lol, all of a sudden: CENSORED. And this was the first era in my life where I MADE DAMN SURE not to use curse words or ANY kind of term or even fucking tone that might be anything darker than neutral. I mean... all of this pent up frustration now, and guess who I am going to take it out on? The face of this entire debacle: that black girl and that white film director.
THIS was a serious moment where multiple credited sites like imdb and rotten tomatoes "updated" their "rating formats" and openly filtered/cherry-picked top reviews repeatedly like fighting against currents despite how aware the people have been of it. That is so fucking unsettling.
And they are doing this claiming it's because "all these black-hating racists keep review-bombing"
WHILE the number one movie on our planet right now is about a black spider-man lmao, yes, a literally equally black-washed white fictitious character-- during the same era where the WHITE spiderman has a black MJ, to boot.
See? Nobody cares. If anything, everybody's in love.
And this black mermaid movie is actually number two, at least in america, so great, wonderful, people sincerely gave fucks enough like all this to go watch it! Plus, this singer, along with actress Zendaya for example, are like reigning supreme over their entire generation as we all applaud genuinely and throw roses, so like just mother fucking shut the fuck up already. what white movies are even out!? Fast and Furious part 600 is all people of color and that was number one for like a month before all this, what racism? where racism? how, when, who, what the fuck. Nobody is review-bombing a fucking thing, this remake just happens to suck really hard, the girl happens to be a horrible actress and a very evidently, observably miscast dullard, especially because that one singular image of that one cartoon character was not to be tampered with, plus too many people are insulted by the whole pandering thing.
The End.
​
So my review of this freaking sham is therefore:
I believe this moment in history will be taught in history classes to display an era where an entire culture was racist without even knowing it, whilst accusing itself of being racist in a whole other way for a whole other reason allegedly concerning the miscasting of a mermaid cartoon, almost as if consciously to distract itself from understanding how inherently racist it itself just fucking was; during this chaos of utter confusion, obviously puppeteered by the media, the media took further advantage by pitting these idiots all against each other to make money for their new cartoon film and/or continue laundering blood money as they do through the clogged vessel that is Hollywood, as well as you know, harvest the globe of their hateful, confused, stressed-for-no-fucking-reason energy, vampires that they are, ensuring humanity at large is just replaying the same thirty-odd years on loop on loop over and over unto infinity in a downward spiral toward hell for these demons to continue leeching off us until, I don't know, God decides to do shit about it and set us all free.

This is my first time posting in this sub! I just have to start with, I’m at a loss. I have not been on my metformin, spironolactone, and Syeda(birth control) I usually take because my doctor wants me to try the diet/lifestyle route. Unfortunately that has been difficult for me because my household isn’t supportive of a low carb and low sugar diet and doing it on my own is near impossible. I also go for quick meals and snacks that are easily available and those tend to be unhealthy. I work in EMS and unless I meal prep which I find time to do that hard, the snacks are not healthy either.
My symptoms include hirsutism chin, sideburns, upper back, and belly, hair loss, acne along my jawline and my chest, back, and arms, oily skin, mid section weight gain, fatigue, headaches, anxiety, depression(situational too but worse from PCOS), insomnia, GI issues such as constipation and bloating, pain in my abdomen from ovaries, and irregular periods I can’t even keep track of or know when they’re coming.
The supplements I currently take from what I have researched are vitamin D due to a previous deficiency, Zinc for acne and hirsutism, Turmeric for acne and inflammation, probiotics for GI, Biotin for hair skin and nail health, multivitamin high in iron, and extra choline for fatigue and memory.
I feel like what I currently take isn’t helping enough. I wonder if I should cut some supplements out or try new ones. There’s overwhelming information from multiple sources on the internet I just don’t know where to turn to anymore that provides reliable information. My doctors don’t seem to want to educate me on PCOS other than throw pills at me and tell me to change my diet. I’ve heard positive things about fish oil, ashwaganda, and spearmint. I don’t want to rely on multiple pills to treat this but I just want to be normal. I feel like having PCOS is playing a woman on expert mode difficulty. It sucks!
Anyways I would love to hear what you’ve learned about PCOS. What hormones are affected by it? I didn’t know there were so many affected in various ways. Also what methods have you tried that worked for your symptoms? Anything would be so helpful to give this girl some motivation and hope again!

Had an issue with an order where my one coat black was shipped to me opened and leaking in the box. It ended up ruining a shirt I had and getting all over the place…
After I sent an sincere email with photos, in two days I received an apology and partial refund and a new nail polish. I didn’t expect this at all and I’m genuinely grateful for Holo Taco. Thank you Elise! 😭💗
I literally repurchased my One Coat Black because I’m struggling with a completely bruised nail bed and wearing this awesome polish helps people not notice it…
Usually I don’t send emails/complaints as I work in the service industry as well and understand how it can be frustrating sometimes.
So thankful for this wonderful company!

I was thinking about when they had the insight that the Dancers speak in rhythmic patterns when discussing important things. The first thing the Alliance guys do is send back haiku. I just wonder... mightn't haiku be the worst possible kind of poetry to send?
Specifically... haiku don't have to adhere to a given meter or rhythm. Also, they use a lot of visual imagery and conventions (e.g., Iger's "seasonal references") which the Dancers won't understand.
I'm thinking they'd have been better served to use a style with a strong rhythm. Thinking Song of Hiawatha here...

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,

I mean... Longfellow lays down a beat you can drive nails with.
Thoughts?