advice needed TW:Rape
in early 2021, “X” and i were very close friends who worked together and we always flirted.we started staying after work to talk and get to know each other. i just went through a bad breakup with my ex who we dated three years. x and i started to become friends with benefits and he talked about having a relationship and taking it to the next level. i wasn’t sure because he was 10 years older than me. i was 18 and he was 28. We would have sex and stuff in his room and sometimes his roommate named “Y” would come in and watch us and told us to do certain positions and stuff. this made me so uncomfortable and x knew that and he said that y would be out of town or at work. then one day, x and i were having sex and y walks in and they both rape me. i told them no and i was scared to leave. i left and had a mental block of it. i honestly forgot about it for two weeks because i was shocked that that happened. i told the police and i could tell they didn’t believe me. luckily all of my coworkers believed me and they were my #1 support system and my work fired x on the spot. my family that i lived with said it was my fault. i dropped the case and wanted to move to be with my family. it’s early 2023 now and it still hurts and i still have trauma. do you have advice to help me ?

advice needed TW:Rape
in early 2021, “X” and i were very close friends who worked together and we always flirted.we started staying after work to talk and get to know each other. i just went through a bad breakup with my ex who we dated three years. x and i started to become friends with benefits and he talked about having a relationship and taking it to the next level. i wasn’t sure because he was 10 years older than me. i was 18 and he was 28. We would have sex and stuff in his room and sometimes his roommate named “Y” would come in and watch us and told us to do certain positions and stuff. this made me so uncomfortable and x knew that and he said that y would be out of town or at work. then one day, x and i were having sex and y walks in and they both rape me. i told them no and i was scared to leave. i left and had a mental block of it. i honestly forgot about it for two weeks because i was shocked that that happened. i told the police and i could tell they didn’t believe me. luckily all of my coworkers believed me and they were my #1 support system and my work fired x on the spot. my family that i lived with said it was my fault. i dropped the case and wanted to move to be with my family. it’s early 2023 now and it still hurts and i still have trauma. do you have advice to help me ?

advice needed TW:Rape
in early 2021, “X” and i were very close friends who worked together and we always flirted.we started staying after work to talk and get to know each other. i just went through a bad breakup with my ex who we dated three years. x and i started to become friends with benefits and he talked about having a relationship and taking it to the next level. i wasn’t sure because he was 10 years older than me. i was 18 and he was 28. We would have sex and stuff in his room and sometimes his roommate named “Y” would come in and watch us and told us to do certain positions and stuff. this made me so uncomfortable and x knew that and he said that y would be out of town or at work. then one day, x and i were having sex and y walks in and they both rape me. i told them no and i was scared to leave. i left and had a mental block of it. i honestly forgot about it for two weeks because i was shocked that that happened. i told the police and i could tell they didn’t believe me. luckily all of my coworkers believed me and they were my #1 support system and my work fired x on the spot. my family that i lived with said it was my fault. i dropped the case and wanted to move to be with my family. it’s early 2023 now and it still hurts and i still have trauma. do you have advice to help me ?

advice needed TW:Rape
in early 2021, “X” and i were very close friends who worked together and we always flirted.we started staying after work to talk and get to know each other. i just went through a bad breakup with my ex who we dated three years. x and i started to become friends with benefits and he talked about having a relationship and taking it to the next level. i wasn’t sure because he was 10 years older than me. i was 18 and he was 28. We would have sex and stuff in his room and sometimes his roommate named “Y” would come in and watch us and told us to do certain positions and stuff. this made me so uncomfortable and x knew that and he said that y would be out of town or at work. then one day, x and i were having sex and y walks in and they both rape me. i told them no and i was scared to leave. i left and had a mental block of it. i honestly forgot about it for two weeks because i was shocked that that happened. i told the police and i could tell they didn’t believe me. luckily all of my coworkers believed me and they were my #1 support system and my work fired x on the spot. my brother that i lived with said it was my fault. i dropped the case and wanted to move to be with my family/friends . it’s early 2023 now and it still hurts and i still have trauma. do you have advice to help me ?

Listen, I'm not a really good player, I'm aware of that fact, game! I understand that some of the losses truly are my fault.
But when on the last match of my placements I magically start losing, then there is something weird going on. And if it would be at LEAST BALANCED MATCHES THEN IT WOULD BE OK, BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, EVERY SINGLE ONE A FRICKING STOMP.
Yes I'm mad.
PLEASE TELL ME that some massive changes to that stupid ranked system are coming, because I'm losing my mind over here!

A couple of days ago I did the worst award/honor winning seasons in the last 25 years. I'm going to do the same but for best and I'll try to think of modern examples if that goes back too far. I'm not necessarily judging this from a best player perspective but best season. Awards/honors to be omitted from this are all-defensive team, all-rookie team, stat leader titles like steals leader, all the charactecommunity work awards, and All-Star Game MVP (b/c nobody gives a shit in the ASG)
MVP - Lebron James 12-13
One of the all time greatest peaks in basketball, averaged 27/8/7 on 64% TS and was runner up for DPOY. He would win a championship/FMVP in this season too. Other answers for this would be Shaq in 99-2000 or Steph in 15-16
FMVP - Lebron James 15-16
Not trying to nut hug Bron or anything but I would get hate if I didn't say this, he came back from a 3-1 series against a 73-9 team. He led both teams in all 5 stats with 30/11/9/2.6/2.3. Other answers are again Shaq in 2000 for putting up a monster 38/17/2 on 58 TS%, Duncan's near quadruple double game in 2002-03, Wade in 2005-06 turning into MJ. But you also can't ignore Giannis in 2021 against the suns (35/13/6 on 66 TS%)
DPOY - Rudy Gobert 2020-21
This one will get some heads scratching as Gobert has a lot of haters but statistically this was a pretty historical season for defense. If you would rather interpret it as best player to be DPOY, then definitely Giannis in 19-20. Other answers are Draymond in 16-17, or take your pick for Ben Wallace's 4 DPOY seasons
Sixth Man - Manu Ginobili 2007-08
Not the season with the most PPG in the last 25 years (20/5/5) but my gut says to go with this one because it's Manu and he led the teams in points, it also makes you question the standards of the award. It leads in WS if you think that should be considered
ROY - Tim Duncan 1997-98
Timmy was an elite big man pretty much immediately as he got into the NBA as he finished all-nba first team (!!!) in this year with a statline of 21/12/3 on 58 TS %. Other answers for this are Lebron in 03-04 as he put up 21/6/6 straight outta high school. But CP3 in 05-06 was also very good (16/6/8), same with Blake Griffin after two years of being hurt
Hustle Award - Marcus Smart 2021-22
I said this was a dumbass award b/c it is, but Smart is the best player to win it. He won DPOY in the same season (I think it was undeserved but whatever)
Most Improved Player - Tracy McGrady 2000-01
This one might be questioned and rightfully so, but McGrady was a complete beast in Orlando as he went from 15/6/3 previously (wasn't getting full minutes in Toronto however) to 27/8/5. But other answers for this are Giannis in 2016-17, and let's give a quick shoutout to Ryan Anderson in 2011-12
All-NBA First Team - Lebron James 2012-13
Already said I think it was the best season in the last 25 years and the other answers given for the MVP one applies to first team
All-NBA Second Team - Joel Embiid 2021-22
Get your tomatoes ready but he finished 2nd in MVP voting behind Jokic so I gotta give it to him. But other perfectly acceptable answers are KD in 2015-16 (who I would probably pick for best player to win it), CP3 in 2014-15, Wade in 2005-06 Lebron in 2020-21 and give it up for guys like Blake Griffin in 2013-14, Jermaine O'Neal in 2003-04, or Zo in 1999-00
All NBA Third Team - Kobe Bryant 2004-05
I think you can infer why the media voted Kobe third team this year. Sure the Lakers finished 34-48 but that team around him is teeeeerrible and was like the 3rd worst offense without him. But yeah come on with 28/6/6, he was a top 5 player in the league easily. Other answers are 2006-07 Wade who missed a lot of games, 2018-19 Lebron, 2017-18 Steph. Maybe I'm off base with this one
Like said in the previous post I'm skipping defensive/rookie teams, so here are some bonus non-players
Coach of the Year- Gregg Popovich 2013-14
I think this one easily takes the cake in which the Spurs played the best basketball system we've probably ever seen, one of the best teams ever who doesn't have that great of a roster on paper but they just totally outclassed the Heat in the final. 2002-03 Popp was also very good for defense. 2004-05 D'Antoni with the Suns revolutionized basketball, and 2015-16 Kerr and the Warriors finished 73-9
Executive of the Year: RC Buford 2013-14
Like Pop before, this was more so an accumulation of his team building for over a decade prior, he was the head scout for when Duncan, Manu, and Parker was drafted and then GM when they traded for Kawhi. I went back and forth for this one in which I originally had Danny Ainge in 07/08 for the KG/Ray Allen trades and also Bob Myers in 2014-15, but he didn't draft Steph or Klay. He did for Draymond and Barnes though. Can't ignore Jerry West in 2003-04 for completely turning the Grizzlies around or Dumars with the Pistons in 2002-03
Western Conference Champion: 2016-17 Warriors
Pretty easy pick and spoiler alert, they are the best champion in the last 25 years. Unstoppable team with Steph - Klay - KD - Draymond - Zaza (sigh) as the starting lineup, Iggy as the 6th man. They literally ruined basketball and went 16-1 in the finals. But credit to the 2000-01 Lakers, 2013-14 Spurs, 2017-18 Warriors, and 2011 Mavs in our hearts
Eastern Conference Champion: 2012-13 Miami Heat
While Wade was getting washed at this point, Lebron was peaking and the additions of Shane Battier and Ray Allen were very big, but honestly take your pick between them or the 2012 Heat. Shout out to the Cavs from 2015-2017 though, and again the 2003-04 Pistons in our hearts
NBA Champion: 2016-17 Golden State Warriors

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I found this article, from the Financial Times, to be very enlightening as to how this shit show was quickly managed in order to contain a much bigger dilemma that the Swiss Gov was facing. The problem of course is that even though the Swiss Gov and its financial institutions may think the problem has been contained, in my opinion, IT HAS JUST BEGUN!
Yes, the Swiss Gov had to do SOMETHING but unfortunately they waited too long whereas it simply became too late to act, no matter what they did. The REAL ISSUE is that the previous & current Swiss Govs knew all about the criminal shenanigans of their banking sector for many MANY years (no need to list that here for those who know but the list is long) and yet, they kept doing next to NOTHING to reign them in to ensure all their business doings were on the up-and-up. I guess when times are good, the Swiss Gov was only too happy to get their part of the dirty money tax pie from the banks.
But NOW they're acting like this was all a BIG SURPRISE and/or NEVER EXPECTED. What a bunch of 2-face lyin' greedy douchebags for risking the well-being of their country and its citizens. So does this mean they will change the laws to REALLY regulate their banking industry? Will some of these criminal bankers and their enablers go to jail? In the end, who's really at fault for this financial shit show?
I think the banks were just pawns for the Swiss Gov and financial elites to continue to support the Swiss' banking sector's misdeeds. I think it's time to call a Spade, a Spade, and declare Switzerland's banking system and financial industry equal to that of the Cayman Islands with the following motto... Give Us Your Money. We Will Ensure Profits/Anonymity No Matter What. And Wash & Hide It For You.
Btw, Yellen and JPow, don't go getting all higher-than-mighty on us with a "I told you so BS statement" 'cause YOU & the US Gov are in the SAME FUCKING BOAT! The Swiss financial debacle is coming home to roost here in the US real god damn soon. Knock! Knock! Mother Fuckers.
Edit : Corrected some formatting for easier read.
Weblink and excerpts from the article...
https://archive.is/GSqHa
- Global markets were already anxious after US regulators had seized control of Silicon Valley Bank following the withdrawal of $42bn of deposits in a single day. The same was happening at Credit Suisse. It was losing more than SFr10bn of wealthy clients’ money daily, adding to SFr111bn that had disappeared after a social-media rumour in October that it was on the verge of bankruptcy.
- On Wednesday, the so-called “trinity” of the Swiss National Bank, regulator Finma and the minister of finance summoned Credit Suisse chair Axel Lehmann, who was in Saudi Arabia for a conference, and chief executive Ulrich Körner for a call. In the same meeting where they authorised the SFr50bn backstop, they also delivered another message: “You will merge with UBS and announce Sunday evening before Asia opens. This is not optional,” a person briefed on the conversation recalls.
- “Resolution [a government-controlled wind-down] would have been a disaster for the financial system and introduced the threat of contagion around the world,” says another person involved on the UBS side. “Our interests were also aligned because a failure is not good for the Swiss wealth-management brand. So we said, on the right terms, we would help.”
- Until last week, the Swiss establishment had always been committed to a two-bank model. In 2008, it opted to rescue UBS with taxpayer money after it suffered dramatic losses in the financial crisis, rather than allow it to be acquired. However, public anger at that arrangement still endures today and a repeat was politically unthinkable.
- “This is no bailout,” Swiss finance minister Karin Keller-Sutter stressed when the deal was announced on Sunday night. “This is a commercial solution.”
- When both sides realised a deal was inevitable, they hired advisers. Credit Suisse has long retained Centerview, the investment bank led by Blair Effron who was assisted by Tadhg Flood, but Lehmann and Körner also recruited ex-UBS investment banker Piero Novelli to separately advise the board. Rothschild provided a further fairness opinion to directors. JPMorgan advised the UBS management team, while Morgan Stanley advised the UBS board. The acquirer gave each bank a tree-based code name: Credit Suisse was Cedar and UBS Ulmus, the Latin word for elm.
- Credit Suisse used different monikers: it referred to itself as Como while UBS was Geneva, after the lakes. Through the process there was almost no direct contact between the two sides, an arrangement that increasingly infuriated those at Credit Suisse, who were intentionally kept in the dark about the price and terms of the takeover.
- “By Thursday, we were all together in Zurich, and it was clear that the government was going to push one way or the other for a solution by Monday morning, at all costs, to protect Swiss national interest, and banking interest more generally, on a global basis,” says the person close to Credit Suisse.
- Keller-Sutter, the finance minister, was a key figure throughout the negotiations, including co-ordinating with foreign officials and regulators in the US and Europe. She was under extreme pressure from global regulators, who had been demanding faster and more decisive action to stop panic spreading in markets. In particular, the US and the French were “kicking the shit out of the Swiss”, says one of the people advising UBS. Janet Yellen, the US Treasury secretary, had several conversations with Keller-Sutter over the weekend.
- By Friday evening, when it was revealed that UBS was exploring a state-mandated takeover, Credit Suisse had lost another SFr35bn in client deposits over the preceding three days, according to a banker involved in the deal, and international banks from BNP Paribas to HSBC were cutting ties. Regulators concluded that it would probably not be able to open on Monday.- Another potential bidder, however, was waiting in the wings: Larry Fink’s BlackRock.
- BlackRock was open to a variety of options, including a partial acquisition or working with others. Such a scenario would potentially have made it easier for Michael Klein, the former Citigroup executive and Credit Suisse board member, to preserve an already arranged deal to merge his advisory boutique with and take control of the Swiss lender’s investment bank. “The most credible alternative was BlackRock . . . But it wasn’t what the Swiss government wanted,” says a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
- By late Friday, BlackRock had indicated it did not want to buy the entire bank. Credit Suisse responded by proposing a minority investment, including some kind of wealth management partnership. BlackRock ultimately decided to halt its work on a bid.
- Growing frustrated with the lack of communication from UBS, Lehmann decided he would write a letter instead to Kelleher and the Swiss authorities. Drafted by general counsel Markus Diethelm — who had joined from UBS in June — it was delivered on Saturday evening and contained a number of reasons for **why the planned transaction was unacceptable.**These included the insistence by UBS for walkaway provisions, including a material adverse change clause linked to a spike in its credit default swap spreads.
- In response, on Saturday evening Kelleher called his counterpart at Credit Suisse from outside a restaurant to tell him UBS was prepared to offer $1bn in stock for the whole group, about SFr0.25 a share, far below the SFr1.86 closing price on Friday. The government then informed Credit Suisse it would introduce emergency legislation to strip both sets of shareholders of the right to vote on the deal. Credit Suisse was outraged and refused to sign. It was opposed to the CDS clause because the optionality of walking away from the deal would have killed it once it was made public. Such a condition would have led to chaos, say people with direct knowledge of the negotiations.
- Its Middle Eastern shareholders were also incensed. “You make fun of dictatorships and then you can change the law over the weekend. What’s the difference between Saudi Arabia and Switzerland now? It’s really bad,” says one person close to one of the three major shareholders.
- The final terms were still so favourable to UBS they were “an offer we couldn’t refuse”, a person on the negotiating team told the FT. An adviser to Credit Suisse described them as “unacceptable and outrageous” and a “total disregard of corporate governance and shareholder rights”.
- UBS was lent on to increase its price and reluctantly agreed, ultimately boosting the offer to $3.25bn in stock. But in return it negotiated more support from the state, including a SFr100bn liquidity line from the SNB and a government loss guarantee of up to SFr9bn, after it had borne the first SFr5bn itself.

- Under pressure to get a deal done before the end of the day, the trinity started to ramp up pressure on both sides, threatening to remove the Credit Suisse board if they did not sign off.

- In order to make the deal more palatable for Swiss citizens and the bank’s equity investors, the government also decided to impose losses on SFr16bn of Credit Suisse’s additional tier 1 (AT1) capital bonds. While these are designed to take losses when institutions run into trouble, normally they are not triggered if shareholders receive money as part of a takeover. However, the small print of the bond documentation allowed Swiss authorities to disregard the normal order of priority and wipe out bondholders.
- The details were hammered out so fast, UBS chief executive Ralph Hamers was unable to answer analysts’ questions about the treatment of Credit Suisse’s debt at a presentation later on Sunday night after the announcement. “We will have to come back to you,” he told the assembled analysts.
- A press conference was hastily convened in Bern, where the trinity was joined by the chairs of UBS and Credit Suisse on stage to present a historic deal. “The failure of a systemically relevant bank would have had severe repercussions,” said Keller-Sutter. “Switzerland needs to be aware of its own responsibility beyond its own borders.” Next to her on stage, Credit Suisse’s Lehmann was asked, “Who is responsible for this disaster?” He chose to blame Twitter.

Looking to buy a used truck. It wont be a daily commuter - more like a farm truck - we arent too concerned about tow capacity. We currently have a 1995 Ford f150 that we have to constantly take into the shop so we are looking for something will not break down as much.
We are trying to decide between a 2014 Ram 1500 and a 2003 Chevy Silverado 1500 HD.
2014 Ram 1500 - 3L V6 EcoDiesel Engine, 4x4 with 127k miles for $19,800 - dealership says its under extended warranty through dodge which will get transferred to buyer at no additional cost. Dealership had a check engine light come on the exhaust system sensor but they fixed it. Pictures look clean, the listing says everything is in running order.
2003 Chevy Silverado 2500 LS 6.6L Duramax diesel, 4x4 with 170k miles for $17,500. Sold by owner. He says nothing is wrong, kept in garage, well maintained. New fuel injectors recently.
Which is the better bet?

Looking to buy a used truck. It wont be a daily commuter - more like a farm truck - we arent too concerned about tow capacity. We currently have a 1995 Ford f150 that we have to constantly take into the shop so we are looking for something will not break down as much.
We are trying to decide between a 2014 Ram 1500 and a 2003 Chevy Silverado 1500 HD.
2014 Ram 1500 - 3L V6 EcoDiesel Engine, 4x4 with 127k miles for $19,800 - dealership says its under extended warranty through dodge which will get transferred to buyer at no additional cost. Dealership had a check engine light come on the exhaust system sensor but they fixed it. Pictures look clean, the listing says everything is in running order.
2003 Chevy Silverado 2500 LS 6.6L Duramax diesel, 4x4 with 170k miles for $17,500. Sold by owner. He says nothing is wrong, kept in garage, well maintained. New fuel injectors recently.
Which is the better bet?

Hi, My 2019 MacBook Pro 13inch recently started to crash every so often at random. I tried all the different solutions to doing a clean install of the OS. It seems to also do it while the laptop is in sleep mode. If anyone has any idea or something that I can do to fix it then it would be much appreciated, Please see the below problem report;
​
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff8002b485f3): Kernel trap at 0xffffff8002ae4ab9, type 14=page fault, registers:
CR0: 0x0000000080010033, CR2: 0xffffff8a4a8a4a28, CR3: 0x0000000016c9d000, CR4: 0x00000000003626e0
RAX: 0xffffff8a4a8a4a00, RBX: 0xffffff801a25ead8, RCX: 0xffffff8a4a8a4a00, RDX: 0xffffff8019400000
RSP: 0xfffffff61d93f660, RBP: 0xfffffff61d93f6b0, RSI: 0x000000002b2a2928, RDI: 0x0000000000000000
R8: 0xffffffa07f1c0ff8, R9: 0x0000000000000009, R10: 0xffffff801a25eaa0, R11: 0xffffff801a25ea68
R12: 0x0000000002a5538c, R13: 0xffffff7f80000000, R14: 0xffffff802954e300, R15: 0xffffff801924abf8
RFL: 0x0000000000010016, RIP: 0xffffff8002ae4ab9, CS: 0x0000000000000008, SS: 0x0000000000000010
Fault CR2: 0xffffff8a4a8a4a28, Error code: 0x0000000000000000, Fault CPU: 0x0, PL: 1, VF: 5
​
Panicked task 0xffffff94f4e2c208: 205 threads: pid 0: kernel_task
Backtrace (CPU 0), panicked thread: 0xffffff94f4bf7b30, Frame : Return Address
0xfffffff61d93f040 : 0xffffff80029eb38d
0xfffffff61d93f090 : 0xffffff8002b58ed6
0xfffffff61d93f0d0 : 0xffffff8002b48120
0xfffffff61d93f120 : 0xffffff8002985951
0xfffffff61d93f140 : 0xffffff80029eb66d
0xfffffff61d93f230 : 0xffffff80029ead19
0xfffffff61d93f290 : 0xffffff80031e072b
0xfffffff61d93f380 : 0xffffff8002b485f3
0xfffffff61d93f500 : 0xffffff8002b482e2
0xfffffff61d93f550 : 0xffffff8002985951
0xfffffff61d93f570 : 0xffffff8002ae4ab9
0xfffffff61d93f6b0 : 0xffffff8002ae76c2
0xfffffff61d93f6d0 : 0xffffff8002aec268
0xfffffff61d93f700 : 0xffffff8002aeb80f
0xfffffff61d93f7d0 : 0xffffff80030ccc9c
0xfffffff61d93fb80 : 0xffffff8002b56968
0xfffffff61d93fbb0 : 0xffffff80029841c6
0xfffffff61d93fc40 : 0xffffff8002b56679
0xfffffff61d93fc90 : 0xffffff8003965112
0xfffffff61d93fce0 : 0xffffff800396956f
0xfffffff61d93fd00 : 0xffffff8003137525
0xfffffff61d93fd50 : 0xffffff800318ae36
0xfffffff61d93fdd0 : 0xffffff80030f9f6c
0xfffffff61d93fe40 : 0xffffff80030f6c4d
0xfffffff61d93fe90 : 0xffffff80030f4200
0xfffffff61d93fee0 : 0xffffff80030f409a
0xfffffff61d93ff20 : 0xffffff8003112dae
0xfffffff61d93ff60 : 0xffffff80031123e7
0xfffffff61d93ffa0 : 0xffffff800298519e
Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
com.apple.driver.AppleACPIPlatform(6.1)[F8E41E64-8AD3-31A6-A3BD-24BBCAB5878C]@0xffffff8003959000->0xffffff80039d0fff
dependency: com.apple.driver.AppleSMC(3.1.9)[30BFD2FB-028B-3394-9DD5-2F5BD03E15C7]@0xffffff80040a0000->0xffffff80040bcfff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOACPIFamily(1.4)[7B82417D-1B41-324A-8B06-22FD04EB13ED]@0xffffff8004fea000->0xffffff8004febfff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.9)[802B9CA4-B851-396E-8DA4-B30E751EC48F]@0xffffff8005459000->0xffffff8005488fff
​
Process name corresponding to current thread (0xffffff94f4bf7b30): kernel_task
​
Mac OS version:
22D68
​
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 22.3.0: Mon Jan 30 20:42:11 PST 2023; root:xnu-8792.81.3~2/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: 10E5D254-4A37-3A2A-B560-E6956A093ADE
roots installed: 0
KernelCache slide: 0x0000000002600000
KernelCache base: 0xffffff8002800000
Kernel slide: 0x00000000026dc000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff80028dc000
__HIB text base: 0xffffff8002700000
System model name: MacBookPro15,4 (Mac-53FDB3D8DB8CA971)
System shutdown begun: NO
Hibernation exit count: 3
​
System uptime in nanoseconds: 2037662310733
Last Sleep: absolute base_tsc base_nano
Uptime : 0x000001da6e236504
Sleep : 0x000001da513e5bf3 0x00000001d1aabfe4 0x000001cb21fbfee6
Wake : 0x000001d45ae479e0 0x00000001ce5fbb59 0x000001d443078c27
Compressor Info: 2% of compressed pages limit (OK) and 1% of segments limit (OK) with 2 swapfiles and OK swap space
Zone info:
Zone map: 0xffffff802748e000 - 0xffffffa02748e000
. PGZ : 0xffffff802748e000 - 0xffffff802948f000
. VM : 0xffffff802948f000 - 0xffffff84f5c8e000
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Here is the original post.
WELL. This is a doozy. I gotta vent this out, because a part of me feels like I'm going crazy. I (27F) sent my parents an email and my siblings individual texts late enough at night so they would read it in the morning. I was afraid that if my parents read it while they were still awake, that they wouldn't be able to sleep. In the original post, many of you awesome people commented that it might be best to send my decision via email, and I agreed that this was the best action.
I shared my email with 2 friends before sending, because I was afraid of saying anything that would cause any sort of rift in my relationship with my parents. My friends thought it was well-written and could tell I had thought everything through. My friend, who is also exmormon, said, "I think it’s great. It’s clear about why you’re writing, why you’re sharing it with them, what your boundaries are. I personally think the context behind your decision is helpful and doesn’t come across as oversharing. I also like that you emphasized how much you care about your parents/family."
At the start of the email, I told my parents how much I love and respect them both (I do, I love them so, so much) and thanked them for raising me. I then told them that I'm leaving the Church (and I noted that I am not removing my records [because I didn't want to break their hearts, but I didn't say that]). I included a few reasons why (SEC investigation, tithing, LGBTQ+, temple) and answered a couple of questions I knew they would want to ask if I had told them in person.
Here are the boundaries I set in my email:

• Please take a day or two to process my decision before replying. "I know emotions will be high, and I want to avoid contention."
• I am not interested in hearing debates, arguments, or opinions.
• "There isn't anything you can tell me that I don't already know; my beliefs are deeply held and personal, and I am unwilling to discuss them face-to-face."
• "I am still determining if or when I can speak about this face-to-face, and I will let you know if or when I am ready."
• "Please do not share my decision with friends or extended family, as I am still trying to figure out how and when to approach this topic with them."

The next morning, I woke up to several texts from my mom (my dad texted me he loved me always). My mom told me she was sorry about my struggles and loved me. She wanted to let me know that everything is okay. She did beg for me to call three times. I told her that I know she has a lot to say, and I would prefer it over email. She asked if we could just talk while she drove around for an errand. I conceded, and at first, she talked about how extended family is doing, and then she started talking about religion and how my dad says the SEC investigation was actually a sham (he's a finance guy) and that my only problem seems to be "the gay stuff." She asked if I would consider reading my dad's email about the SEC. I was uncomfortable, but I said I would...to get off the phone.
An hour later, my mom asked if she can call again (I ignored it) and asked if I could follow a request: That for the next few days I make this decision between me and God, and to stay off of forums and reading other people's opinions (Hi, exmormon Reddit!). She asked if she could explain over the phone. All I said was, "I understand completely!"
Throughout the day, she texted me if I thought of her request. It felt suffocating, and I didn't know how to say no. Why should she dictate what I can and can't read about and do with my time?
I was with my best friends, and I asked how I should respond. These friends have been in therapy for a while (I'm still looking for a good therapist), and they were helping me with learning how to set boundaries. I didn't know how to kindly say no to my mom. My friend, we'll call her Rae, offered, "Mom, I love you. This is really personal, and you are right. It is between me and God. So I will do what I need to to keep it that way." I thought that sounded good, so I sent it. Note: Rae has a big personality (which I love her for), and she constantly says how it is (but is never unkind). She is an active member of the Church.
My mom then blew up my phone with texts and phone calls (I didn't answer), asking me if I consulted with anyone with that text, saying I sounded snarky like I didn't write it myself (I responded that I wrote it and they are my feelings), how she thought we had a good relationship, that I was backtracking from when I said I would read my dad's email. She said she felt like those weren't my words, that she wants our relationship to be just ours, and that I speak to her more understandingly than that. I never responded after that.
I had made plans with my parents the next day to go to their house to do laundry (I REALLY needed to do my laundry). I shouldn't have gone.
My parents tiptoed around me like I was a pariah. I started crying. My mom sat beside me on the couch (my dad was chilling on the other end of the couch) and said, "We need to discuss our relationship." She then started to berate me for informing them of my decision to leave the Church via email.
Here are some awesome highlights of how that argument went (occasional paraphrasing) (and it's easier for me to write it in bullet points):

• Mom: "If you seriously can't have crucial conversations face-to-face, then you should really go to therapy."
• Mom: "If we can't have personal discussions and you can't talk about important things with me, then we might as well end our relationship now." She said this about four times and actually walked away. (for 3 seconds because I begged her to sit back down).
• I told her I felt incredibly disrespected the day before because she ignored my boundaries, consistently texted me, and called me when I specifically asked them not to. She said she thought our relationship was better than this; that my parents deserved to hear me tell them to their faces and not through email. That I broke their hearts by not telling them in person. She said she thought we were friends and could talk about anything.
• She told me the boundaries in my email were "cruel" and punishing them. "How would you feel if your daughter and friend emailed you saying you can't talk at all anymore? That she's basically cut us off from her in an email?" I told her that wasn't what I said, that I was trying to figure out IF or WHEN I'd be able to talk face-to-face about my decision. I told them I set those boundaries to preserve my mental health. She bulldozed over that saying "No, you said that you would NEVER be able to talk about it ever again." I said, "No, I said IF or WHEN!"
• To reply to, "I thought we were friends," I told her that I never feel good enough around her. Every time I brought something up about the Church I disliked or thought was wrong, she would treat me like a problem that needed to be fixed. She'd always tell me, "You take on people's emotions and opinions as your own. Stop reading blog articles." She'd study and find scriptures to tell me why I was wrong about something. She told me she thought she was helping me. Unrelated, but she always talks about my weight and judges what I'm eating. She gives a lot of unsolicited advice.
• She cried because she learned I had told my friends about my decision to leave the Church before her.
• I told them I haven't slept the past 2 weeks since I decided to leave. My mom scoffed and said they haven't slept in two days.
• My mom said that she is entitled to her feelings (true), but the gist she was telling me was, "You've made your bed, now lie in it."
• She told me I can't talk about my relationship with her to my friends. She said, "That text you sent had RAE WRITTEN ALL OVER IT." (Note: She's met Rae like maybe 3 times and not for long). She then insulted Rae, saying she was a mean person. I have never in my life heard my mom talk so badly about somebody. It hurt and angered me even more since it was someone I cared so much about. I shut that down hard (Rae and my other friends have been more of an emotional support system than my mom--I can talk to them about anything). I said, "I can't have a SUPPORT SYSTEM?! How good of a relationship is it if I can never tell you no? What kind of relationship between 2 adults is that?" She said that she wanted our relationship to be ours, not have my friends in the middle of it. She also said that I was making my decision to leave the Church between me, God, and Rae. I told her that didn't make any sense, because if she wanted to talk about my decision and tried to sway me, then my relationship was between me, God, and her. She said, "No, that's not true." She only repeated what she said to talk over me.
• She told me she was afraid that I ruined my relationship with my sister (my sister and I live together) because I sent my decision over text (individually to each sibling). She said my sister had been sobbing multiple times the past few days, and I am clueless not to know that she is upset by the fact that I sent it via text. We may be sisters and roommates, but we don't talk in-depth about religion or politics or anything really. We hang out with the same friends (not me and Rae's friend group) and send each other Taylor Swift TikToks. I love my sister, I really do, and I saw no issue with sending it over text.
• She told me that she and my sister are so upset, because women need to sit down and talk about things. That women want to have deep discussions over things like this. So, I'm guessing my brothers saw my texts and were like, "Ok, sounds good."
• My mom insinuated multiple times in this argument that our relationship has permanently changed, that I had ruined it, and I would need to work hard to fix it. I think that was the hardest thing to hear.
• At one point she said, "Maybe I should go to therapy too." (I currently can't remember what that was in response to)
• My mom said she wasn't surprised that I was leaving the Church, that I struggled with a lot of things. I was a little surprised at that, because then why are we shouting at each other over it?
• I tried to tell her reasons why I sent it over email: I was scared of their reaction (she scoffed at that), that I wanted to avoid a fight (LOL) because I loved them. I told them a part of me was afraid that they would hate me for leaving (she DEFINITELY scoffed at that). I asked her, "Do you know how scary it is to be the only person in your family to leave the Church?! I didn't know how to navigate it; I did my best!" I begged (BEGGED) her to try and understand why I would send my decision over email. She didn't acknowledge what I begged her to do.
• She told me that she would tell who she wanted about my decision to leave the Church, and that I couldn't control when and how she told people. I said, "You can't do that; this is my personal decision to tell." She said, "No, this is now a family decision, because it affects our family, and I am going to tell who I want." (Meaning because I am eternally affecting the family.)
• She said, "Oh, this is always about me, is it? This is always about me. This is always my fault. You wrote in your letter to dad that he is your best friend, but you didn't write that in mine." (I recently wrote gratitude letters to my parents. I told my mom in hers that I loved her so much and couldn't live without her.)
• She said that I should have known she would struggle with my boundaries.
• THE KICKER: My dad sat there and said nothing this entire time. At one point my mom yelled at him, "Aren't you going to say something??? It's always me that has to be the bad guy?!" She then picked up a Hydroflask and threw it (violently) on the floor. My dad did say, "Fine, I'll say something." And now I don't remember what he said LOL.
• At this point, I am absolutely sobbing. She apologized for making me feel like less of a person when I told her about my concerns about the Church. She said the saddest thing about this all was she thought we were friends.
• I was sobbing and could barely talk. My dad said, "I think it's time for a group hug." I said, no, it wasn't. My parents sat on both sides of me and held me.
• I sobbed, sobbed, sobbed.
• And then apologized over and over again for sending my decision over email. Which I am now disgusted at myself for doing.

Eventually, when I calmed down, my parents asked if they could set up a dinner appointment so we could talk about my decision in a public place where "emotions won't get high." I said yes, and it's tonight.
I grabbed my laundry and as I was leaving, I was relieved and thought to myself, "That went better than I thought it did." But then as I drove home, I became angrier and angrier. "What the fuck was that???"
I was with my parents yesterday and felt like I couldn't look at my mom the same way ever again. I feel like this has brought out an incredibly ugly side of her that I may have seen the signs growing up, but ignored. In the argument the day before, she held our relationship over my head multiple times and gave me an ultimatum. Yesterday, she made a snarky joke about Rae and my other friends. I was uncomfortable and annoyed. But I kindly told her, "You know my friends absolutely love you, right?" Because they do, and they've told me so. She snidely said, "Well, obviously they don't know me." ??? So she's saying if they actually knew her, they'd hate her? Anyway, I could tell she definitely hasn't let many things go. I couldn't look at her for a while after that, and she protested multiple times, "It was a joke!"
I know that was a lot. But I need to know, am I crazy? Was I really that wrong? Did I actually warrant all of the things she said to me? Should I have told them my decision in person? Should I have not sent the boundary that Rae helped me with? Was I wrong to ask for advice from my friends? I'm hanging out with Rae and my friends tonight after the dinner with my parents (I'm thinking of canceling the dinner), and now I feel like I can't tell my friends about what I went through with my mom, because now the vibe is she dislikes them, though she says she actually does like them, and my mom would be pissed to know that I told them. Is it wrong to tell my friends how it all went? They aren't curious about the gossip but out of genuine concern for me. I'm afraid they and my mom will all hate each other.
I don't understand, because my mom and dad are fun and loving. I had a great childhood. I feel as if a rug has been pulled out from under me.
I started looking at moving out of the state. Maybe separation from my mom is best. And now I am vigorously looking for a therapist.
I know it took a long time to read that, so if you're still here, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Through Wednesday, March 29, for ONE WEEK ONLY, we present the Lampblack Quick Deal featuring many short supplements (almost all from previous offers) published by Jason Lutes at Lampblack & Brimstone. Though designed for the Apocalypse Engine FRPG Dungeon World, these attractive and inventive supplements – the popular Perilous Wilds, Servants of the Cinder Queen, and many more – introduce fun techniques of worldbuilding, overland travel, and dungeon creation that help any fantasy campaign.
Published under an open license, Dungeon World inspired many indie designers to create their own DW supplements. One such was Jason, an instructor at the Center for Cartoon Studies (White River Junction, Vermont) and creator of the historical graphic novel Berlin). "In 2014 the one-two-three punch of Fiasco, Dungeon World, and DCC RPG cemented tabletop games as an essential part of my adult life," Jason says. "I was so inspired by these games that I started publishing my own stuff as Lampblack & Brimstone, and I now employ RPGs regularly in the classroom to provoke discussion of story structure, character motivation, and the joys of improvisation." Jason is currently shepherding Jeremy Strandberg's ambitious Stonetop RPG to publication.
The Perilous Wilds (2015, revised 2022) presents tools that let players collaborate to generate and explore a campaign setting. Starting with a blank map (or possibly a random creation from Watabou's Perilous Shores generator), each player in turn defines and names a region, then each adds areas of interest, connectors, and local rumors. Wilds and other Lampblack treatments like Perilous Deeps and Freebooters on the Frontier replace or improve many Dungeon World procedures for exploration, discovery, and improvised dungeons. Titles like Perilous Almanacs, A Book of Beasts, and A Folio of Followers add tons of colorful specifics. These titles originally appeared in our three Dungeon World offers in December 2014, January 2016, and April 2018.
The supplements and adventures in this Lampblack Quick Deal use the Dungeon World rules (not included in this offer). The free Dungeon World System Reference Document with all the rules is widely available; the Dieheart DW resources page lists many links to the SRD.
Pay just US$9.95 to get all twelve titles in our Perilous Collection (retail value $53) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the 2022 Revised Edition of The Perilous Wilds, plus its Survival Kit; the expansion Perilous Deeps; the DW sourcebooks Perilous Almanacs, A Book of Beasts, A Folio of Followers, Freebooters on the Frontier, Mad Vandel's Map Pack, and 20 Dungeon Starters; the adventure front Servants of the Cinder Queen; Funnel World, which adapts the Dungeon Crawl Classics "funnel" campaign kickoff procedure to Dungeon World; and we've added Lampblack's recent mini-RPG of animals doing human things, Adam Schwaninger's Peace Was Never an Option.
This Lampblack Quick Deal gutters and extinguishes just one week from now, Wednesday, March 29.
https://bundleofholding.com/quick/Lampblack

"Fragile Ego, Fragile Body, Weak Mind, Weak Spirit"
In Part One, Part Two, and Part Three, we've built a timeline and tracked the story of an old man who came back to professional wrestling. Disgruntled and broken, he had abandoned the business to which he’d given himself for fifteen years. They were a tumultuous fifteen years, but within that time he reached the height of the industry. He held the attention of every single person who was a wrestling fan and even many of whom weren’t fans at all. To get to such heights, he plumbed the depths of cruelty and villainy in character, going places many of his peers wouldn’t dare touch. He attacked the sobriety of recovering alcoholics and substance abusers. He preyed upon the anxiety and insecurity of those with mental health issues. He lied, he gas-lit, and he betrayed on the way to the top. Even for someone as vile as himself, however, it simultaneously became all too much and not enough. At the mountaintop, sick of himself and everything around him, he walked away.

“I was never gonna get healthy physically, mentally, spiritually or emotionally, staying in the same place that got me sick in the first place.”

Who could fault him? But then he came back seven years later to, as some have called it, “Wrestling Paradise”. In that Paradise, as he turned uphill, he crossed the path of a Snake slithering deceitfully among the weeds. The Snake bit him and at first, it seemed only a surface wound that would easily heal in time. That Snake’s venom, however, was slow-acting and allowed the bite to be all but forgotten as the Snake slithered out of sight and out of mind. Then one day, he’s finally back upon that mountain top, having gone a different route than before – a longer and more winding route, but seemingly nobler and more sustainable. Many of our faithful heroes weren’t buying it. They knew him before and have studied his ways, knowing he could quickly revert back to the evil and destruction he was for so long. He brushes away their suspicion to assure both us and himself: he’s a new man. He feels at peace with himself and he is bathing in the adulation of his friends, his fans, and his peers… until suddenly on that mountain top, the Snake leaps out and reminds him of the venom coursing through his veins.
September 4, 2022 – MJF returns to All Elite Wrestling and steals Punk's ovation in Chicago.
The final words of the PPV broadcast:

What does this mean for AEW?

Shortly before midnight, a live stream goes up on YouTube for the post-event media scrum.
The stream has a longer delay than usual before the presser begins. Bloodied, battered, sweat-soaked hair in his eyes, draped in a towel… CM Punk looks like pure hell as he sits down to take – and to ask – questions from a group of wrestling reporters.
The mic goes to Nick Hausman first:

“Hi! Nick Hausman here from Wrestling Inc–”

Punk cuts him off:

“--I’ll start, Nick. Show of hands. Who here fancies themselves a journalist? You a journalist Nick?”

Nick:

“... I try my best.”

Punk:

“You still do improv?”

Nick:

“Not for a little bit..”

Punk:

“When you did improv, who’d you do improv with?”

Nick curiously uses a shoot name:

“I did it with Scott Colton.”

Punk:

“Okay, so you fancy yourself a journalist. Would you say you’re friends with Scott Colton?”

Nick:

“Uh… no. I haven’t talked to Scott in some time.”

Punk:

“So you’re not friends with him?”

Nick:

“No… Scott and I do not see eye to eye.”

Punk, to the whole room:

“Oh wow… Well that makes two of us. My point is, if you fancy yourself a journalist, even if it’s for the silly world of professional wrestling, and you have journalistic integrity… people who report things, mostly that are bullshit and slanderous lies against myself… you should probably disclose who you’re friends with.”

Punk, directly to Hausman, somewhat quietly:

“You blew my spot… If you’re not friends with him, I apologize.”

Nick:

“I’m not friends with him…”

Punk, ignoring him, continues on:

“I haven’t had anything to do with Scott Colton for almost a decade. Probably wanted nothing to do with him even longer than that. It’s fucking unfortunate that I have to come up here and speak on this when I’m on my time and this is a fucking business. Why I’m a grown-ass adult man and I decide not to be friends with somebody is nobody else’s fucking business. But my friends, if I fall backwards, will catch me. Scott Colton, I felt, never would have.
My problem was I wanted to bring a guy with me to the top that did not want to see me at the top, okay? You can call it jealousy, you can call it envy, whatever the fuck it is. My relationship with Scott Colton ended long before I paid all of his bills. I have every receipt. I have every invoice. I have every email. I have an email where he says ‘I agree to go our separate ways, I will get my own lawyer and you do not have to pay anymore.’
That’s an email that I have and the only reason the public did not see it is because when I finally had to counter-sue him, through discovery we discovered he shared a bank account with his mother. That’s a fact. As soon as we discovered that fact and we subpoenaed old Marsha, he sent the email ‘Oh, can we please drop all this?’ Now, it’s 2022. I haven’t been friends with this guy since at least 2014, late-2013.

CM Punk and Colt Cabana weren’t even faced with the famously divisive legal bills until 2015 when WWE’s doctor filed a defamation lawsuit against them. Colt didn’t file suit against Punk over legal fees until 2018. The timeline here is very fuzzy and totally unreliable. The line about Colt's mother sticks out like a sore thumb, but if you've read previous installments, wrestlers' relationships with their mothers have been referenced before and most notably in recent promos.
Punk continues:

The fact that I have to sit up here because we have irresponsible people who call themselves EVPs and couldn’t fucking manage a Target and they spread lies and bullshit and put into the media that I got somebody fired when I have fuck all to do with him, want nothing to do with him, do not care where he works, where he doesn’t work, where he eats, where he sleeps… the fact that I have to get up and do this in 2022 is fucking embarrassing. If y’all are at fault, fuck you. If not, I apologize. What did I ever do in this world to deserve an empty-headed fucking dumbfuck like ‘Hangman’ Adam Page to go out on national television and fucking go into business for himself? For what? What did I ever do? Dave [Meltzer]?… I didn’t do a goddamn thing.

At this point, Punk calls on a guy in the front row and asks his name. The guy is wearing a Pittsburgh Penguins shirt.
Punk:

“Fuck the Pittsburgh Penguins.”

Tony Khan interjects, referring to an article where he had briefly discussed the rumors about Colt Cabana’s “sidelining” in weeks prior:

“I made it very clear in Forbes and I just wanna make it clear again–”

Punk cuts off Tony Khan, the company owner, his boss:

“It’s not his position to make it very fucking clear! There’s people who call themselves EVPs that should have fuckking known better. This shit was none of their business. I understand sticking up for your fucking friends, I fucking get it. I stuck up for that guy more than anybody. Okay? I paid his bills until I didn’t and it was my decision not to.”

TK:

“Yeah but I shouldn’t have no-commented when Nick first said it, it’s my fault, I should’ve taken it head-on”

Punk:

“I appreciate that, but I’m trying to run a fucking business. And when somebody who hasn’t done a damn thing in this business [Hangman Page] jeopardizes the first million dollar house that this company has ever drawn off of my back and goes on national television and does that, it’s a disgrace to this industry, it’s a disgrace to this company. Now we’re far beyond apologies. I gave him a fucking chance, it did not get handled, and you saw what I had to do, which is very regrettable, lowering myself to his fucking level. But that’s where we’re at right now. And I will still walk up and down this hallway and say ‘If you have a fucking problem with me, take it up with me. Let’s fucking go’.”

Nick Hausman finally gets to ask his question to Punk, and it’s regarding the return of MJF.
Tony Khan is the one who answers:

“If I may… I am the one who asked him back because MJF’s a big star in this company and this is one of the biggest events. A year ago, CM Punk debuted here and I thought it was right for the fans. I felt that, for the fans, one of the best things we could do is bring MJF back.”

After rolling his eyes and stuffing a muffin in his mouth, Punk jumps in:

“It’s because he wants me to work with pricks. Constantly.”

TK brushes it off:

“...Nevertherless… Two of the top wrestlers in the world. It’s a big match down the line.”

At this point, Tony Khan looks like he’s about to vomit.
Punk:

“Oh, sorry, I keep fucking bringing this up… When it came down he was going to sue, I asked to talk to him. He denied… When I offered him money, it wasn’t enough [Punk is banging on the table for emphasis]. He went ahead with the lawsuit and sued. It’s his fucking funeral. He shares a bank account with his mother, that tells you all you need to know about what his character is.”

Nick Hausman:

“Well… You were always very nice to me.”

Punk:

“I appreciate that. I’m sorry I’m a little bit snippy. I’m hurt, I’m old, I’m fucking tired and I work with fucking children.”

TK:

“I regret not answering your question the first time you asked it…”

Punk:

“We’re all learning here, Tony. It’s okay.”

Punk goes on to plug Mindy’s Bakery in Chicago, the supplier of his muffins.
The scrum moves onto its next question, this time for Tony.

“You saw the reaction to MJF when he came out at the end of the night. He was cheered over Punk… the hometown guy… Do you have any worries about MJF… becoming this sort of anti-authority figure?”

Tony Khan gives some boilerplate word salad about how it’s great to have two compelling and charismatic figures, while Punk makes snarky faces and continues chomping on his muffins.
Punk doesn’t want to talk about MJF. He goes back into his rant:

“I’ll tell you why I’m upset about it. If you’re an EVP, you don’t try to middle your top babyface, try to get your niche audience on the internet to hate him for some made-up, bullshit rumor. Really pisses me off. Stepping on your own dick… Trying to make money, sell tickets, fill arenas, and these stupid guys think they’re in Reseda.”

Next question regards how “modern talent can take advice from some of the older guys” to “help grow as a company”. Tony lets Punk give the answer.

“We have a locker room full of pretty brilliant minds… When I came back, when I cut my promo my second week here, I thought it was pretty decent. I kinda blur the lines a little bit, ya know, ‘What’s he doing? Crazy Phil, going into business for himself’, when really I was just defending myself. Mix that in with attacking Moxley, calling Kingston the second best Kingston – which is a pretty great line – but our locker room for all the brilliance and wisdom it has, isn’t worth shit when you have an empty-headed dumbfuck, who hasn’t done anything in this business, do public interviews and say ‘I don’t really take advice.’ Who the fuck do you think you are? I’m on a team with Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa, and I don’t need to work on my swing? … Fucking go fuck yourself… Grow up.

Bonds, McGuire, and Sosa are most famous for hitting insane amounts of home runs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, breaking numerous historic records, rejuvenating interest in MLB, and most notably, using banned PEDs which would ultimately ostracize them from the baseball community and block them from enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
A question comes up for Punk from an old friend in the press pool: What’s his message for MJF?
The notion of having to speak directly to MJF seems to sap all of the energy from Punk. All of the piss and vinegar leaves him. He’s quiet now and reserved now… almost sheepish. It’s like he’s speaking to the mirror once again.
Punk:

“Do I have to answer this… I guess… I don’t know. I’m tired of wrestling these pricks. I’m tired of wrestling with these kids who think they know everything… But I’m not the boss… He won number one contender. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Max is supremely talented, but this goes for him and every other individual in the locker room that doesn’t wanna be here. The grass is not greener on the other side. The grass is greener where you water it. Max likes to shit where he eats instead of watering the grass. So we’ll have to see how that goes.”

Next question:

“A year ago we were in this room. It was after Adam Cole, after Brian Danielson… You said it had the feeling of ‘Bash at the Beach’ [1996]...

Punk, sarcastically:

“Oh boy… Did I say that?...”

Reporter continues:

“A year later… What's your honest assessment of the last year, personally and professionally?”

Punk:

“Look, I know it sounds like a pretty ridiculous statement, but in five years, I think you’ll see the impact of it. There’s a chance I’m wrong. We’ve got an uphill battle in a lot of respects… There’s just so much drama and turmoil going on. I like to believe in the place I work. We do have a very, very strong roster and we have a lot of brilliant minds backstage. If young talent is willing to actually listen and receive advice… There’s always gonna be people who think they should be the top guy and wanna be pushed. I get that. That was me… I always wanted more.”

Meltzer asks about Punk’s foot injury from a few months before. You’ll remember, he wanted to soak in the adulation of the crowd the next show after Double or Nothing where he won the belt, and he got hurt doing a reckless stage dive.

“...This is the worst injury I’ve ever had… This was really hard for me. I really wanted to have this great Summer and do good for Tony. I wanted to sell tickets and draw money, help with ratings. And it all came crashing down… I missed Forbidden Door in the United Center… I have pride in my work and I really wanted to carry the title through the summer and just help grow the business, so it was mentally devastating.”

The final question concerns the significance of the victory over Jon Moxley. Both the reporter and Tony Khan make note of the fact that it is Moxley’s first clean pin defeat in three years.
Punk:

“Oh man. Well I guess people are REALLY mad at me then, huh?... We came from the same place. Felt a lot of the same things… Guys could’ve helped us out a little bit more, passed the torch… I’m here to elevate everybody. And I’m not saying I elevated Moxley, but maybe I did. Because I think that’s what all of our jobs are: to reach back and get everybody to that level. We have different philosophies about pro wrestling, but it’s all pro wrestling. When done right, it’s magic.”

The scrum session for Punk officially comes to an end, but Punk pauses things and calls out Bryan Alvarez:

“Alvarez… I saw that video man. You were so incredulous that I went into business for myself.”

Alvarez explains how he said he only pointed out some were pro-Punk and some were anti-Punk about the whole thing [his worked shoot challenge to Hangman].
Punk dives deeper:

“...I’ve eaten shit on this subject for a very, very long time. I am very sad today that I had to get up here and say his name. He doesn’t fucking deserve it. But facts are facts. Name two people that have made the most money off CM Punk. [He looks at Tony Khan] I don’t think you’re there yet. The first one is Vince McMahan. The second one is Scott Colton. I hope you all have a good night. Please be more responsible with the news you get from certain people and just remember, we’re human beings.”

Punk packs up his muffins and his drinks, gives his dog Larry a shout out, and runs down the Pittsburgh Penguins. He gives Tony Khan one of his sodas.

“Contrary to popular belief, I am a very nice guy.”

Punk walks off the podium after nearly 25 minutes.
The rest of the scrum is often overlooked, but on closer examination, it’s no less interesting, and seems to be developing a common theme.
Next up come the reigning tag team champions, Swerve Strickland and Keith Lee. Midway through their match against The Acclaimed, the audience in Chicago was nuclear hot for the challengers. Sensing this, Swerve In Our Glory began working heel en route to a successful defense of their titles.
One of the first questions concerns “problems” between the pair that have flared up in recent weeks, with the two not always on the same page and Swerve eliminating Lee in a battle royal.
Swerve:

We didn’t really have problems. We had a dip in the road and we fixed that. You know what fixes everything? Winning. I can get violent and ravenous in that ring when I have to… If I have to push the envelope and bring Keith Lee to that level to defend these titles… So many people were against us having them in the first place… I’m always like that. Super King Petty. I read all of y’all. I read everybody in here. I literally listen to all your podcasts. First thing y’all said when we won the titles… No congratulations, nothing about Keith Lee almost losing his life fighting COVID, nothing about where I come from and both of us being let go… When we finally climbed the mountaintop, there was so much ridicule and bullshit against us about how we don’t deserve this. [You said] these opportunities should have gone… everywhere else… I’m not gonna apologize. I’m gonna gloat.”

The next reporter asks Tony Khan if he gave consideration to calling an audible on the match due to how over The Acclaimed were, changing the finish on the fly. He’s skittish to answer, so the question is rerouted to the talent.
Swerve, on how people felt The Acclaimed should’ve won:

“I couldn’t care less.”

Tony starts putting over how great of a match they just had, then puts over how great The Acclaimed are. He begins hinting that it makes sense to possibly have a rematch at Grand Slam in just over two weeks.
Swerve is beside himself:

“Wow. Why? Why??... How much more we gotta keep proving??”

Keith Lee starts trying to rationalize how it makes sense but Swerve is pissed.
Tony Khan:

“People are asking... Look, I think it would be one of the best thing we could do at Grand Slam–”

Swerve cuts off Tony, even putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him, and Tony gives him a hell of a look.

“Tony… Tony… This is just another tag team they all want the belts on instead of us!”

Keith Lee:

“I find it interesting in our losses, we had to go down the ladder, but you wanna do this rematch… But I’m not gonna speak to that.”

TK:

“I’ll take some time to think about it, but I just think it’d be a great match for the fans.”

Swerve:

“...It is what it is, but miss me with it altogether… listen man. That’s what you wanna do… I mean, you pay the bills man so you do what you gotta do… But don’t be surprised if somebody gets hurt. Are we done? Are we done?”

Keith Lee, nervously laughing:

“I’m not a part of that statement.”

This portion of the scrum ends abruptly.
Next up is Toni Storm, who has secured the AEW Interim Women’s world championship. Brief chatter about how the women in the locker room all feel devoted to helping each other and elevating each other as a whole, before a reporter asks:
“We’re in a situation now where we just saw Jon Moxley come off a run where he was an interim world champion, and he made his thoughts very clear about how he felt about the word ‘Interim’. How do you feel about that?”
Toni Storm:

“Yeah. It’s not ideal. Thunder Rosa says she’s injured… Okay. So when she says she’s not injured, she can come back and lose to me, and that’ll be the end of that.”

Tony Khan, laughing nervously:

“Well, that’s a… That’s a statement…”

A few questions allow the new champ to put over the depth of the locker room and how AEW has been very good to her after her career was in limbo. Then it circles back around to Thunder Rosa:

“We had formed kind of a friendship… But I want her to know that I’m not just going to sit in her corner and cheer for her and be her little friend… I didn’t come here to make friends. I’ll be cool. I’ll be civil. But when she comes back, I’m gonna whip her ass.”

Toni Storm’s portion wraps up.
At this point, the new trios champions – Kenny Omega, Nick Jackson, and Matt Jackson – should be arriving at the podium. Someone to the side alerts Tony Khan that it will be Chris Jericho coming up next instead. Tony looks surprised. He starts reading and responding to messages on his phone. A reporter randomly asks Tony about the contract tampering allegations, but he declines to comment on it. He stalls for about five minutes before Jericho gets to the podium.
After commenting on what a pleasure it was to finally wrestle against Brian Danielson and call a match on the fly (“there’s very few people in the world you can do that with”), Jericho takes a question from Nick Hausman:

“I asked Tony about this earlier this week… There was a mandatory backstage talent meeting that Tony confirmed happened. Reportedly you spoke at that meeting, Chris. Wondering if you could tell us what you said to the roster and what kind of advice you’re giving to talent… and to management… right now at this point in AEW?”

Jericho:

“The specifics don’t need to be discussed… and that was one of the things that was addressed: don’t leak shit that’s supposed to be private among us. My message is always to remind people how special AEW is and don’t take that for granted… I always want to remind guys, please don’t ruin or potentially ruin this amazing world that we’ve created.”

TK:

“We don’t want guys going into business for themselves… or girls…”

Jericho:

“We don’t. Where I came from, working for twenty years, with Vince… That would never happen [Note: it happened all the time…] and I’m trying to let people know we’re getting to the point where these things are unacceptable. We will start doing things that Tony would do in the NFL or at Fulham. We are a pro sports, multi-million dollar company with a huge contract, with another huge television contract coming up soon. A lot of guys don’t have that experience and don’t realize how special this is. So that’s what I try to do whenever I have them, and Tony has them… Now it’s just a little more frequent, just to remind everyone: stay on course… both guys and girls.”

Meltzer asks Jericho about having to constantly reinvent himself. Jericho says he’s not big on nostalgia, but tapping into the past and bringing up history always helps tell a compelling story:

“... We’re building a whole story around it. It fits in with the whole Heel-Jericho delusion: ‘I’ve found the fountain of youth! I’m better than ever! I’m the best wrestler in the world!’ I can say that stuff as a heel. It’s so funny: when I lose a match, it’s a great match. When I win? ‘Oh, 51-year-old Jericho is burying the young guys!’ So I can kinda use that. That intrigues me… That little kernel of truth, that I always like as a heel, that I can over blow to the point where people are like, ‘Shut the fuck up already, man!’... So let’s use that to our advantage, hide behind it…”

Tony Khan then recounts a story about how he had first seen Chris Jericho in person at an ECW show in 1996 in Chicago, the same show from which a photo was shown on Dynamite the week earlier when Jericho was the young Lionheart. He recounts how when Jericho left ECW, they chanted “You Sold Out!” He also mentions a sign he had at the ECW event that night: “Shane [Douglas] ♥️’s Shawn [Michaels]”, alluding to the famous grudge between those two men.
The story between Douglas and Michaels is notorious and quite relevant here.
“The Franchise” had originally been in WWE in 1990, where he made a name for himself filling in for the injured Michaels as Marty Janetty’s tag partner in The Rockers. Caring for his ailing father, Douglas stepped away from wrestling full-time but intermittently appeared for WCW, then ECW, where he finally became a top guy. When he returned to WWE in 1995, HBK and the rest of the Kliq had assumed nearly full control of backstage politics and were tyrannical in the locker room. Michaels invited Shane Douglas into the fold. Considering them childish, he declined. The rest of his tenure in WWE would be smothered after rejecting Michaels and The Kliq. HBK vowed never to do the job against him, and even faked an injury to avoid dropping the Intercontinental title to him. Douglas left the company the following year after Vince was infuriated that Douglas would not wrestle at Madison Square Garden, despite a doctor explicitly telling him that if he worked through his back injury it would risk paralysis.
The scrum moves on, and eventually Denise Salcedo asks Jericho about MJF’s return.
Jericho:

“I said to him, ‘When you come back, you’re going to be a babyface…’ and he said, ‘I don’t wanna be a babyface, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.' ...It’s easier to make people hate you than it is to make them like you. But once they start really hating you, that’s when they start really liking you. He’s almost at that point. That’s my prediction: he’s gonna be one of our top babyfaces, whether or not he wants to be, very, very soon… A game changer.”

At this point, the Jericho portion wraps up, and as he stands to leave he says something to Tony Khan, in a whisper, but very much able to be picked up on a live mic. What he said was either, “We gotta talk after” or “We called the cops”, but follow-ups to the local police department revealed no call was made so it is very likely the former. What’s indisputable is that he said “Some shit happened” directly in front of the cameras and the microphones. TK says to Jericho, “I’ll meet you in my office afterwards.” There is zero sense of urgency around anything as Jericho leaves thanking the press pool and Tony sits down to field his final questions.
A few “no comments” are issued to questions regarding WWE's alleged contract tampering as well as a proposed super-show with WWE. Tony Khan says he has good feelings toward WWE but they’re not exactly reciprocated, and from there he doesn’t comment any further.
A reporter asks:

“Leading up to All Out, there were unfortunately some reports that the AEW locker room and talent were facing some adversity… In comparison to a sports team, a big win usually pushes them over that threshold of challenges they were facing. With the overall success of tonight, do you think that will help the locker room overcome those roadblocks?”

Instead of taking this softball as it was pitched, TK leans into the premise:

“I think there’s still a lot of wrestlers in professional wrestling who don’t get along… now more than ever, those things are apparent. But I also think that the industry has thrived on creative tension for a long time. Yeah, you might say, what if it doesn’t manifest in a match right away? In the late 90s and early 2000s, which was the business, the interest, and the general peak of pro wrestling in many ways… There was certainly a big group of pro wrestlers who didn’t like each other. A lot of times they weren’t even in the same companies and they would rip each other, and it wasn’t gonna produce a match… But that is what we produce, is wrestling matches…
There’s a lot of matches between people who don’t get along and it’s not always an easy road to get people in the ring. But when you can get people in the ring to settle their differences, it’s really exciting. And there’s a lot of people… some people even here have gone out and blatantly slammed me in public. I have a pretty calm demeanor… I’m willing to put up with a lot of abuse… but there’s only so much knocking me and slamming me I can put up with. On the other hand, I will do what’s right for business when I have to…”

Brandon Thurston asks him about the business aspect of the weekend, and Tony admits it was challenging with a lot of direct competition, some of it seemingly targeted directly to hit the AEW bottom line. Then, Tony’s general tone shifts he legit cuts a promo:

“I have to face the competition out there. When I compare myself to Jim Crockett promotions… This weekend, I think, I got a taste of the same medicine Jim Crockett promotions took. But I have a lot more fucking money than Jim Crockett did. I’m not gonna sit back and take this fucking shit.”

Probably the most uncharacteristic thing I have ever heard Tony Khan say.
The next question centers on the start of the scrum:

“You see without a doubt your biggest star, your biggest mainstream attraction… He goes off the rails a bit toward your EVPs and another of your big young stars. You, as the leader of the ship, how do you diffuse the situation?”

Tony Khan:

“That is a dicey situation. It is contentious and frankly challenging. But, I have to do what’s best for the sake of the company. Everybody you’re talking about are great wrestlers with big reputations… Some of them have been around from the beginning of the company. Some have been around for about a year now… The fact is, these are people that drive revenue, and they help create jobs for everyone. I’m not gonna comment on what you heard here tonight, but like I said earlier this week… It’s no secret that a lot of professional wrestlers don’t like each other. Now it’s probably more out in the open than it’s been in a while. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing for the pro wrestling business given the product that we produce: matches.”

The next reporter asks about the ongoing role of The Elite within the company and Tony puts them over as invaluable assets in putting together and organizing the shows, as well as mentoring younger talent and helping to grow revenue streams.
Before Tony wraps up the scrum, he singles out a young man in the press pool to ask a question. The young man asks about CM Punk’s dog, Larry, who had ran out in front of the crowd earlier.

“... Well… Larry is a live wire… he got a taste of the live crowd… I thought he had a good time. When he arrived, he seemed like he was in good spirits.”

Tony then leaves the podium.
In the coming hours, news would steadily emerge from backstage. As the story goes, the EVPs of All Elite Wrestling went to CM Punk’s locker room accompanied by Megha Parekh, AEW’s Chief Legal Officer and Director of Human Resources, along with Christopher Daniels, Fallen Angel and Manager of Talent Relations.
While in the locker room, CM Punk punched Matt Jackson, a chair hit Nick Jackson in the eye, and Ace Steel bit Kenny Omega on the arm. Larry the Dog was in peril also, later seen being carried by Megha away from the area. Brandon Cutler, Pat Buck, and Michael Nakazawa were all present. At some point Chris Jericho made his way to Punk to tell him he was a cancer to the locker room and detrimental to the company as a whole, only to be told in turn that it was none of Jericho’s business and he should leave. Aside from Megha, all parties present (aside from Jericho who arrived late) were immediately placed on paid administrative leave, pending investigation.
News dropped quickly that Punk would be out for six-to-eight months regardless of anything else due to his torn triceps suffered that night in the main event.
Aside from the injury, none of this has been 100% confirmed. None of these details exist on any official record. All accounts are, at best, third-hand information. The facts of the story changed wildly from the first 48 hours to the first two weeks, with absurd initial claims such as the Young Bucks (super)kicking down the door to Punk’s locker and Larry losing teeth in the maelstrom. To this day, no one other than those present know with any degree of certainty what happened inside that room.
But what happened outside that room was a remarkable shattering of perception about CM Punk, the Elite, but most importantly, AEW itself. In the immediate aftermath, massive fans such as myself couldn’t help but feel as if something was taken away from us. In the months since, so much has been made of getting AEW back to the old days, regaining that old feeling that made us fall in love at the beginning. We want to go back to what Jericho called the “amazing world” created by everyone at AEW, but none more so than by the Elite.
How could CM Punk so grossly and directly attack the founders and shapers of this company which, up to then, was widely hailed as the only place a wrestler would want to be? I thought back to the very last thing said to AEW cameras by Cody Rhodes, a founder whose absence loomed large that night in Chicago. A lot of people don’t realize his final words in AEW weren’t those uttered by a ladder, inside a ring where he famously claimed credit for construction of the Forbidden Door. No, it was in the bowels of the arena after his unification match with Sammy Guevara, over eight months before All Out… There, he talked about how proud he was of everything he had helped to build. Fighting back tears, he talked about how he would never feel more at home than he does in an AEW ring. “It’s Paradise, right?”
… Paradise.
Paradise… Paradise… Paradise Lost… The Fall of Man… Snake in the Garden…
Oh, enough already! I’m grasping at straws to find some connection that can't exist. How would a guy whose contract expired at the end of 2021 be even remotely connected to stuff throughout the next year and culminated on 9/4/22?
Huh... 9… 4… 2+2… 944?
What was it that I noticed back in Part Two?

June 27, 2011: Punk delivers his landmark Pipebomb promo in WWE.
He would ultimately leave WWE and professional wrestling altogether 944 days later.
On January 1, 2019: All Elite Wrestling is founded.
944 days later, tickets for Rampage: The First Dance sell out within minutes.

Okay. But still, what does any of that really have to do with The Elite, in particular Cody? Hell, if anything Cody might be more inclined to side with Punk than the Elite. His history with Punk went back all the way to 2007 and they worked shows together for the next seven years. Both guys left WWE with similar frustrations. Cody would certainly know what it’s like dealing with the Bucks… From Cody’s last match in WWE to the creation of AEW, he was tied at the hip with Nick & Matt Jackson. As soon as he hit the indies, he linked up with them and many other AEW stalwarts in Reseda, California. You can learn a lot about people in…
Huh. That’s interesting.
May 16, 2016: Cody’s last match in WWE.
December 16, 2018: Cody’s last match before signing with AEW.
... 944 days.
Well, that’s actually pretty wild. These guys must have a really firm grasp on the history of their careers to line up Easter eggs like that. But really, that’s all they are: Easter eggs. The Elite and Punk are all famous trolls, so they may have been hoping some obsessive fool like myself would catch on and get pulled into the rabbit hole.
The trail stops at All Out, though. We can’t go into the future and see what happens 944 days from that media scrum, and the paths of most people involved in Brawl Out seem so divergent it’d be impossible to predict with any sort of accuracy. Punk is sidelined indefinitely, perhaps permanently. Kenny and the Bucks are back in action but their contract situations have started bubbling up in dirtsheets, so we can assume Hangman won’t be far behind in those rumors.
Meanwhile over in WWE, Cody Rhodes is sitting pretty. He’s getting massive cheers the AEW fanbase refused him toward the end, when his vision lost alignment with ours. Each passing day he climbs toward a mountain top of his own. In less than two weeks from now he will go to WrestleMania and try to overcome the most impenetrable obstacle in that company: the Bloodline.
If Cody succeeds at WrestleMania, his personal story would have a crowning achievement nearly every wrestler in history would envy. The fact that he bet on himself so many times and always won is remarkable. He’ll look even better considering the stains and scars imposed on “Paradise” after his departure. Maybe he could’ve helped avoid the embarrassment of All Out, but we’ll never know and that’s not for him to dwell upon. His primary focus should be on the Tribal Chief and stopping that historic reign in its tracks at...
​
​
... 944 days.
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PART FIVE WILL EXAMINE THE FALLOUT FROM BRAWL OUT, THE CORONATION OF MJF, RIPPLE EFFECTS ACROSS PROMOTIONS, AND SPECULATE ON THE FUTURE…
I AM TAKING A DEEP, DEEP DIVE INTO ELITE LORE... SO IT’S GONNA TAKE A MASSIVE AMOUNT OF WORK AND MIGHT NOT BE HERE QUICKLY, BUT I THANK YOU FOR STICKING WITH ME THIS FAR AND I HOPE YOU’LL STAY ONBOARD FOR THE END OF THE RIDE!

State of Play

I use to have a bay window. Back when I was six years old I lived in a small three bedroom, one bath house and it had this bay window that was sort of the forefront of the home. That section was where I’d play with my action figures. That section was where I guess you could say made the world that I was living in currently, bigger, larger than my own self. My imagination was at its high when posted up at that bay window. If you ask anyone who really seen me in action over at the bay window, they would tell you it seemed like I was invincible.
As much as I’m not really here to talk about bay windows and little coming-of-age homes, I’m just as equally here to tell you how much it plays apart in what I am here to talk about, and that’s the state of play. I recently wrote on my Facebook page on how it’s important to let kids be kids, be silly in a sense. It’s important to let their minds flourish with the most outlandish ideas in my opinion. That thought, has awarded me the opportunity to think like I do today. The opportunity to choose how I would like to process ideas and drive my emotions into certain directions and in result, be my own person. What does this have to do with the Paradise video? Everything.
I’ve lost touch. Wait, correction. I’ve been in and out of touch with the “state of play” idea. Life, more specifically adulthood sort of takes over and puts you in the position of immediate choices. Some people don’t grow straight with that sort of responsibility or, again, more specifically, the immediate choices, the “state of urgency” I’ll call it. I, me, ironically grew comfortable with the “state of urgency”. I’m good under pressure, focused and able to drown out noise. The “state of play” idea may seem to be the contrast to the “state of urgency” but the more I thought about it for this piece, I thought how similar they really are, or how they really complement each other. The eureka moment being that in the “state of play” mindset, you are in the moment of “state of urgency” because whatever is that task at hand while submissive to that “state of play” world, is most definitely urgent. Adulthood just makes you forget how similar they are. Think about Peter Pan and the Lost boys. I’m not going to dive too deep into that rabbit hole but you can sort of see where I’m going with all of this. Don’t grow up or DO IN FACT grow up because growing up is the only way you’ll find the similarities. Next.

Fly on the Wall

I crack open a beer in a low light setting painted in hues of purple and dust. I can’t speak on the bands psychological state but I can speak on what I see and what I see is growth. Something growing right before your eyes may seem like watching paint dry but, have you ever watched paint dry? It’s beautiful. What’s even more astounding is having the patience to watch something grow. I’m a father of two so I know what I’m talking about. The low light setting sends a guitar chord into existence, meaning, this is all real now. Another lesson I’ve learned while being this “fly on the wall” during a jam session is that nothing is real until you’ve played it. Once that thought became a stamp onto my brain, I thought about the chords I might play in life. I have plenty of streaming thoughts, ideas flowing into the nothingness that become the nothingness, a sea of nothingness. The jam session helps me realize how persistent these guys make ideas real. A strum on the guitar then a cord on the bass becomes a sonnet worth acknowledging, remember, In this world, in this “state of play”, IS, the “state of urgency”. The urgency makes it real right. It raises the question as I crack another Juicifur, in which if you have ever looked at the can of a Juicifur beer, it can send you into a world of possibilities while in that “state of play” mindset. The question being, how urgent are my ideas? Are they as urgent as these guitar strums, bass plucks? Purple dust, I take a sip and its fucking deep. We’re in it now boys I say to myself as NOW they’re laying down the foundation of something bigger than any of us in this room. “That section was where I guess you could say made the world that I was living in currently, bigger, larger than my own self” referrer back to paragraph one.
Flying Coach is their name, was their name, maybe still maybe THEIR name. I can’t say at this moment because I’m not them. What I’ve witnessed though is Flying Coach in my opinion. I’ve listen to their first album The Flying Five Family Funtime and comparing that to me being the “fly on the wall” during the jam session was all too familiar. So for the sake of this essay, they’re fucking Flying Coach. I hear the seat belt buckle tone go off and I’m prepared to ascend into what I’ve been calling the “state of play”. Listening to them jam out was only the slap in the face moment, “wake up”. I woke and from my slumber came the realization of adulthood and its way of saying, “I want to play”.

Fuckable Foundation

As I bleed the words out now, writing this, that’s the same effect I had when coming up with idea for the Paradise video. Talking Paradise though, I referred back to their album. Why Paradise? It’s simple. That’s my favorite song. Selfish as that may seem, in questioning the option to giving THEM the choice of what song should be made into a video I only referred back to the jam session that night. Low light levels and hues of purple dust you tend to become one of them in a sense. I trusted them to take me on a journey into the unknown and they did. Ultimately, I came out the other end KNOWING. As you’ve just read, KNOWING, everything up to this period (.) I wanted to pay it back in a way and do the same as they did for me. So I bleed. First reference for you, “I Bleed” by the Pixies from their 1989 album Doolittle, I played that song as typed up a five page essay on the “state of play” and it’s comparison to “the state of urgency” and youth and adulthood and fucking flies on walls, NOT actually “fucking” but fuck man i would say love was in the air at that moment and everywhere I look around it just got even more intimate. Making love to the essay I wrote led me to the birth of concept. As confusing as that may sound in terms of the actual human reproductive process, sex being conceiving, the act of creating, my process I guess, was that the essay I wrote was only foreplay.
So now I need to actually fuck. My belt is coming off to Drew Barrymore**. Second reference, I watched her opening performance to** the 1996 film Scream and I knew I wanted this to be the foundation to the video. A girl running up the stairs when she should be running out of the house, in which she did but that’s not the point. The whole idea being a “slasher film” type video. Blowing my load to this idea alone though, wouldn’t be all that intimate I thought. I didn’t want a one-night-stand type of idea. I want this idea to stick around for a while, I wanted it to know that I appreciated it. The sex had to have landmarks not pop-up shops. I referred back to my five page essay on the “state of play” and noticed the phrase I wrote in it, “He who dies with the most toys, wins”. It’s a quote by Malcolm Forbs, famous publisher of Forbs magazine. I referenced that quote in the essay because I seen it on a t-shirt once. As the sex became deeper that quote become prominent to the idea. “Toys”, being the idea of a slasher type of scene made up of toys. So instead of a live action video, it would be me playing with a bunch of toys in the world of Wes Craven’s 1996 film Scream, THUS my fuckable foundation.

Mad Scientist Soundtrack

“We all go a little mad sometimes” the character Billy Loomis says, played by the actor Skeet Ulrich referencing to what Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins says in the 1960 film Psycho. “we all go a little mad sometimes” I heard while thinking about this idea as a whole. It’s mad, but it’s ALIVE and if I were a mad scientist creating my monster I’d have to step away from the sound of “Paradise” By Flying Coach. If I wanted this thing to have a tone, a feeling, I wouldn’t find it in that song. This is for the betterment of the song though. Too many music videos these days cater to the material almost TOO literal. Maybe that has something to do with the new age viewer and their lack of attention and/or short term attention but that’s a whole other issue to talk about. I’ll address it by finding a contrasting sound to Paradise, something that sounds NOT paradise. I thought about that HBO show “The White Lotus” and its opening theme song, it’s soundtrack in general actually. I related to that in terms of “NOT paradise”. I thought about how the composer to that show may have had that same exact idea**. Reference three, Cristobal Tapia de Veer, the composer to** the White Lotus soundtrack. I listened to his music while figuring out how I wanted this video to sound. Again, on mute, this video is “NOT Paradise”. A mad scientist creating his monster would definitely be listing to Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s sound. I went mad to this.
Is this too rough? Am I hurting you? I thought about how acts of passion may bring out the worst of us. Fucking to a song called, “She who brings the gifts” really put that idea into motion. I honestly don’t know what lead me to thinking of the 2018 film Hereditary but it makes sense. I had to cling to this idea of passion bringing out the worst in someone but also stick to the innocence of childhood, “toys” for the sake of the video. How would this be visually represented? Reference four, Ari Aster, writedirector of the 2018 film Hereditary did it best when opening his film up to a doll house, A slow zoom into this idea of dooming passion. The part that made sense was my idea revolving around toys. A doll house would be a perfect fitting for the aesthetic. The whole thing would take place inside a doll house while the camera witnessed the story unfold.

Bird for Hire and “The Shape”

Scenes of a murder while hearing the tone of de Veer’s compositions all wrapped up in this “state of play” doll house setting was my targeted vision. At this point yes, I am going a little mad. It’s a wild and crazy idea but it’s so fucking passionate that it’s NOW a “landmark idea”. What makes it personal though? What makes it personal to the band? I have all sorts of blood in this thing it’s almost Hereditary. How can I let the band have some of their DNA be a part of this monster? Cum a little closer… They have a huge bird, on their album cover. As big as the idea seems to be for the sake of the cover art, I believe that that bird represents their most intimate image. My interpretation is that, in the world of Flying Coach, small things have big impacts, like the possibility a plane carrying 244 sols on board going down because of a small bird getting sucked into its engine system cause complete catastrophe. That’s what their cover art says to me. How can I relate that idea into the video? Who’s the plane in my video? Well obviously it’s the victim, the girl running up the stairs when she should be running out the house. Who’s the bird? At first I thought maybe the masked killer was the bird but then I thought why can’t the “bird” be the bird. To make my idea even more unique and mad, I thought about the killer just having a bird as his weapon of choice instead of the conventional knife, ax, chainsaw like you see in slasher films. This leads me to be drawn into who this masked killer really is.
I thought how I would never want Scooby Doo to solve this case. The masked killer is just a masked killer. He is who he is and nothing more. This brings me to “The shape”. If you’re a movie/film enthusiast like I am then you would have watch tons of “making of” “behind the scenes” docs like I have. Reference five, Halloween/Friday the 13th. In John Carpenters 1978 film Halloween, the mask that Michael Myers wears is actually a Captain Kirk mask, more specifically a William Shatner mask painted white with the eyes cut out. I wanted this idea and in vain of the original concept, instead of Captain Kirk, I chose Spock, Kirks right hand man in Star Trek. I chose to have my “shape” masked killer be a Spock figurine with the face painted blue. Blue being catchy on the eyes, with the eyes cut out. His persona would pair in the likes of Myers and Voorhees in the sense that they’re just them and nothing more, no mystery behind them. I also refer “it/him” to “them” because in the video you can come to an idea maybe that there is more than one. I like to leave that thought up to the viewer.

AI just figured it out

A gangbang of “Shapes” didn’t quite bring me to the point of edging though. I pretty much had the video in my head at this point and time was ticking to start putting pen to pad. I needed to have something “in the can” as Hollywood calls it. As ambitious as this idea started to form it was nearly impossible for me to execute without some sort of short cut. Midjourney came knocking on the doll house door like The Wolf from the 1994 film Pulp Fiction. Midjourney is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) art program that recently hit the web within the last past year. I won’t get into too much detail on how it works because they have numerous videos out there explaining the technology and its conception. The idea of me using this new technology as a tool to create the video was to me, a step above anyone else making ANYTHING today. Once I decided on using this as a tool, I felt like I was breaking new ground for the filmmaking world as a whole. I can hold the spirit stick of “it has never been done before” with this new idea and how I was to execute it. I think that’s what really separates this video from the norm. Take out all the sport fuck, meaning, all the bullshit, meaning, all the intricate backstory shit you’ve been reading up to this point. Take out all of that, and you still have something truly unique with the Paradise video.
“Make video horizontal again” I read on a hat as I was scrolling through Instagram advisements. I thought about how it’s so true. How we now live in a vertical world of viewing. It’s sort of strange also as to that’s how we decide to chew on content. The evolution process has had us go from monkeys to vertical video viewers. We didn’t gain an extra eye, we just skewed what the eyes should be looking at. In the thought of us looking at things long ways now, I became hung up on how I wanted to look at this particular video. It only makes sense for me to make the video horizontal for the sake of story but then I knew people might just think, “ew, fucking horizontal. Skip”. I would never fall lame to social constructs and their tribal-like influences but for this, I was sort of into exploring the psyche of the viewer themselves. Like one would tickle ones butthole, because remember, we’re still in foreplay, I decided to tickle the butthole of the masses and give them what they wanted by deciding on vertical video. I mean the path of the righteous “Shape” was already going to be strange enough. It’s nuts, so let’s play with them.

Cream color Wallpaper

Reference six, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. “Chivo” as his peers like to call him is a multi-awarded cinematographer. You might have noticed his most notable work in the 2014 film Birdman or the 2015 film The Revenant and if we’re sticking to sexual analogies for the sake of this essay, Chivo would be the strongest tongue to ever play the game. I chose him as a reference to lighting in saying to myself, Chivo plus John Carpenter, PLUS Ari Aster, introducing him into this world of animation might be a cool thing to see. Not just because he’s an award winning cinematographer but because of his lighting. If I wanted a whimsical tone I would have went with Robert Yeoman who does a lot of Wes Andersons stuff. I thought as a director for this project as to what needed to be divvied out accordingly. Chivo was the best fit for this project. So “Emmanuel Lubezki type kitchen lighting” goes into the Midjouney AI art prompt and it pops out what I need for the video. As easy as that sounds it’s hard to actually know what you want. For instance wallpaper played a huge part when it came to its lighting. These are all things that they’ll ask you on set. Set decorators I imagined hounding me with swabs of textures and colors of creams, colors in creams. “What’s a good lamp” they ask as I’m deciding on window shapes and design. This all went into the creation of the doll house effect.
It’s all about texture really. Feeling, i had to caress this monster before its climax. This video had to be sold in reality meaning, you had to believe it was actually something physical I was running a camera through. I learned that texture in visuals, texture in ANY visual are important but I noticed that THAT idea gets lost in most music videos today. I heard a movie review guy on YouTube state that it’s mostly tone and texture that frightens him. I thought about texture in pictures other than horror. What are romantic textures like? Action textures. A dramatic texture, not lighting, but to actually allow your audience to feel like they can physically feel a divorce or a miscarriage. I thought about this for the Paradise video and having Chivo’s lighting I knew I wanted to take drastic advantages. Maybe this beast would say, “stop, no”. Lust can only get you so far in this game of passion and if we’re playing for time, “stop, no” has to be persuaded to “yes, keep going”.

Was that Real?

Reference seven, the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project I remember infecting everything media when it first came out. I remember the wild west days of the internet and its vulnerability to content. Before content was what is considered content today, creativity was law. A thirty second video of a person doing the griddy wasn’t going to cut it back in the Windows 98 days. You’d hear about this video going around about this group of kids filming a documentary about a witch who killed children, then get lost in the woods while filming the doc. The seed of an image, grainy, shaky, eerie in asking yourself, “Why keep filming”. This short term urban legend eventually hit the press and supposedly the whole video was going to be released in theaters. It was called The Blair Witch Project. The wild west internet couldn’t keep up with its traffic at the time as people were flooding Ask Jeeves in asking, “is the Blair witch real”. No one knew what it was, this was all new, anything could be anything and everything was fucking exciting about it. Like watching a snuff film you WATCHED these kids get lost, freak out, cry, scream, beg for their lives as a fucking wooded witch terrorized them eventually, killing them. WTF! I mean ask Jeeves, go ahead and ask him. Still, nothing in 1999 was answered about this video. This idea of “WTF is happening”, I wanted for the Paradise video. I mean it was already WTF type of vibes but I think I can bring it closer to that, the concept being, a Blair Witch Project type of discovery but on TikTok. So as you watched mom do the griddy and baby laughing hysterical calling it “cute”, you flip your thumb up and there’s Paradise, this strange VHS looking video. VHS being the key ingredient I needed to get the panties off.

It was Nuttin’

The sex was okay. It’s not like painting. With painting your’re fucking right off the bat. It’s a continuous high. Assembling the video was tedious and not that I’m oppose to tidiness but, I’m trying to find that constant point of interest. Making something like the Paradise video, there was always a constant set back. My dick wouldn’t get hard at certain moments. I think the thing that keeps you afloat with something like this is the passion, the will to see the outcum. In the end I thought about “The Shape” (the killer) in the video and how he feels about the whole thing. How in the end his bird was always meant to be inside her and the meaning of word “paradise”. I figured that these are his words not ours. We don’t know what the fuck paradise is. He does though. He lives in a constant state of play, with urgency and as long as this video plays, he gets to play and she stays urgent. You only can understand this by growing into adulthood and until you understand the balance of adulthood, you can’t understand the balance between the “state of paly” and the “state of urgency” thus between the two, you’ll never be able to call it, “Paradise”.
"Lucky Day in Hell" by Eels

I'm looking to start shopping around for Toyota Tacoma and Ford F150 trucks.
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Wanted to know if there are any dealerships I should look for (or avoid).

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THE ROLE Become a part of the core team that maintains, extends and improves our video backend based on state of the art technology. Collaborate with a highly skilled and passionate team of multi-national engineers to build and operate our video services.
THE VIDEO BACKEND TEAM Our team develops the software which drives our carrier-grade streaming platform, covering the full processing chain from content ingest, transcoding, storage and stream delivery. We work closely with the Playback team - our counterpart to bring streaming features into applications, and with the Ads Backend team - whose engineers focus on our solutions for server-side dynamic ad insertion.
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Plus: We’re sharing: Free access to the best streaming experience on the market We're developing: Your own development budget, German classes and Zattoo all-company hack days We’re inclusive: ‘Zattooies’ are a fun, engaged, and diverse team made up of 47 nationalities We’re healthy: Health checks, team sports, organic fruit, vegan options and more! We’re responsible: We are carbon neutral, an active employee Green team, discounted BVG tickets and free bike rentals We’re sociable: A calendar of events with fireside chats, lunches, in-house bar, BBQ’s, monthly socials, summer party and an annual off-site event
Read more / apply: https://www.golangprojects.com/golang-go-job-fxx-Video-Backend-Software-Engineer-C-Golang-Berlin-Zattoo.html

Now I’m extremely late , Deadpool has been my second favorite comic book character ( behind Spider-Man ) since I was a kid ; but I couldn’t afford the game nonetheless the console when I was younger . Luckily I’m 17 now , and my girlfriend bought me the game the other day and I must say …
Going into this I assumed the game would be average at best due to how much hate I’ve seen on it , but man I disagree . I finished the story in one swoop since I’m off today , and it was just ridiculous and over the top fun from the opening . I know that some people ( mainly referring to this video https://youtu.be/55huF8QVJbk and some other opinions I’ve seen ) wanted this game to explore the deeper story of Wade’s character , and although I do think that would’ve been fine - I just feel like the game didn’t need to be that . It’s very self aware that it’s nothing but a long action filled killing spree that doesn’t take itself serious whatsoever , and I’m perfectly fine with that . I don’t believe that every game as to be an Arkham / Insomniac fleshed out story ( although those are some of if not the greatest comic book adaptations ever created ) that really dives deep into the characters . Although that would be phenomenal, a 5 hour Deadpool adventure featuring the X-Men and unapologetic gore isn’t bad either .
I know that Deadpool’s character gets misconstrued very often , but I don’t think they got Wade ALL WRONG in the game . As a DP fan , I can admit that the “modern” Deadpool jokes can get very irritable , and in the movies ( love the movies btw ) a lot of the jokes are very 😐ish if that makes sense ; but this game actually had extremely high highs and not a lot of lows in terms of the comedy for me . The 4th wall trope can get old fast , but the way that they integrated it into the story hit the nail on the head for me everytime . Obviously the usual Deadpool sex jokes weren’t hilarious , but that’s almost expected .
One word that I kept seeing along the years was “repetitive” , and I honestly couldn’t disagree more . There are way too many combat options for the game to get repetitive in my opinion . Every mission had something insanely different and I never really found myself bored at any point . The game isn’t perfect whatsoever , but I never felt like all the enemies were the “same” because they weren’t , like at all . Seeing hoards of various different enemies attacking you at once was overwhelming but in a nice way . Kind of like the Arkham games on a much , much smaller scale .
I can understand why someone would think that the game “ruined” Deadpool’s image , but I wouldn’t say that’s the game’s fault . I would’ve liked to be able to change outfits like in the Arkham / Spider-Man games , especially since we see Wade in his black suit at the start of the game . The dodging system was a little wonky and it was difficult to handle the waves of enemies all at once , but once you get the combat down it’s incredibly enjoyable .
For what it was and for what it was intended to be , I’d honestly give the game an 8.4/10 maybe . I honestly think if the budget was larger this would’ve been one of the greatest games of my life lol , but maybe that’s bias . What did y’all think of the game ?

What the fuck is even wrong with me, oh my fucking god. I have a friend who genuinely cares about me now. We've got plans and he makes me happy. I'm starting to catch up on school work. I'm going out on walks for four hours straight, just wandering about the place, exploring.
Yet I still want to die. I want to smash my head into the concrete, smearing my brains across the ground. The words echo in my head. Not good enough. All your fault. The words that are carved into my thighs and my frontal lobe. The words that are uttered to me every fucking day.
I've lost my entire support system. No more emailing my teachers. Mental health services were supposed to call, but the fucking bitch who was supposed to help, and I don't care she is a bitch, cut me off for over a month, called me back for another meeting after we constantly bothered the service because I attempted again, and then she was supposed to call me yesterday, but decided to go on a three week fucking holiday instead. The only person I have left is an Internet friend, but I can't tell him any of this shit cuz I've only known him a week and it'd be wrong as fuck.
I just wanna slit my wrists man. It failed last time but I've been cutting deeper in general recently. I know I could do it now. I want to run away from everything and shoot myself. I want to smash my head in. It hurts. Everything is going so shitty and even though there's a tiny sliver of hope, I still want to fucking kill myself. And I feel horrible because of it.

https://www.rufftalkvr.com/blog/there-are-no-games-to-play-january-march-2023-edition/
When I read posts about how there are no games to play on the Quest, I simply can’t relate. I’m a voracious consumer of VR games, experiences and demos and currently have over 330 of them on my headset (not including my PCVR library). These experiences are a combination of both old and new items, and my wish list and library just keeps growing week after week with new releases, recommendations and game updates. This year, I wanted to keep track of all the games I’ve played and keep coming back to and catalogue them here in hopes that they may give you some fresh ideas of games to play, or reasons to revisit older games due to their updates or improvements.
Some of the games listed below, I can forsee playing all year long, and to be fair, others I've tried are not my cup of tea, but they may interest you enough to try them out. In either case, here are my quick thoughts on the 21 games I’ve played so far from January to March of 2023 along with links to them on the store.

1. Bocce Time! ($8.99) From the developer: In Bocce Time! you'll head down to a peaceful park or atmospheric pier to test your bocce skills across 12 distinct courts. Jump into a quick match to 1v1 a random opponent online, create and join private rooms with up to 8 players, or play against AI across 3 difficulties to unlock additional ball customization options. With full cross-play, everyone's invited to join the fun! It's Bocce Time! My thoughts: This game has seen so many updates since it’s release and if you haven’t checked it out, there’s a free trial that opens up the whole game so you can try it out for yourself. With two parks (10 courses), an AI bot to challenge (that has great quips), collectible balls and support for up to eight people, this is a wonderful social game to play with friends. The Walkabout Mini Golf vibes are strong with this game, so players of that game will feel right at home. The latest update unlocked the entire park as a play area, and ensures that you and your friends will have unlimited options for where to play from. Along with Discord tournaments available if you're feeling competitive, this game is a real hidden gem and has grown a lot since its release. Absolutely worth a go, especially at that price point.
2. Golf+ ($29.99) From the developer: GOLF+ is the ultimate VR Golf experience and the exclusive VR Golf game of the PGA TOUR. Join your friends for a round on Pebble Beach, Pinehurst No. 2, TPC Sawgrass and more. Want something more casual? Hang out at Topgolf for a night of music and games. My thoughts: Simply one of the best games on the app store. With all the great new updates such as Beat the Pro and new courses dropping every so often, it's one game that will be on my Quest until the next headset comes out. With the official PGA licenses, a variety of match options and support for four players, it’s an essential Quest game to play alone or with friends.
3. Little Cities ($19.99) From the developer: Escape to the charming world of Little Cities, the most loved VR city building simulation game. Create your own little city and watch it come to life – from a humble village to a bustling metropolis. Design the layout and strategically plot amenities to make a perfect city where your citizens love to live. My thoughts: The latest update added citizens to the game. This adds a lot more flavor to your city and brings more life to your city. It’s a pretty simple SimCity style game that should keep you entertained for a few hours. I enjoyed this one, but wasn’t blown away. The extra DLC courses and achievements will give you more play time if you find yourself enjoying this one though.
4. Compound ($19.99) From the developer: "COMPOUND is a randomized, rogue-lite, free-roaming shooter for Virtual Reality veterans. Duck and dodge around enemy fire in a tough-as-nails retro FPS with multiple locomotion options. Prepare to die - a lot - until you are good enough to reach the heart of The Corporation and take back what belongs to everyone..." My experience: Essentially Doom on Quest. The awesome blocky aesthetics work perfectly in this world. With a great gameplay loop and exciting gunplay this one will easily get its hooks into you. I found myself saying "just one more run" more often than I had time for. This single player shooter has so many achievements and difficulty levels that it kept me busy for quite some time. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and still have more to do. A must buy for any fan of the genre.
5. Walkabout Mini Golf ($14.99) From the developer: 8 unique 18-hole courses to master. Unlock NIGHT MODE for more challenging versions of all courses. Play solo, 1v1 online quick match, or create a private room with up to 8 players. Extremely accurate physics feel just like the real thing. Collect over 188 custom balls hidden throughout. Solve treasure hunts on each hard course to earn special putters. My thoughts: What more needs to be said about this excellent game? It’s on my constant rotation of games to play alone, with friends, or even with strangers - as the community is so warm and welcoming. The community is truly one of the best, and there are several discord servers for tournaments, weekly meetups and more. An essential game that every Quest owner should have.
6. VR Pool ($19.99) From the developer: ForeVR Pool brings the coolest pool halls from around the globe straight to your living room! Challenge friends, family, and in-game pros to a game of 8-ball pool – no table required. Battle 12 bots to level up and take on Legendary challengers. Join a Quick Match or jump into a private multiplayer party! Friend in town? Share your headset with Pass & Play. Up the ante and stake in-game coins in matches against other players. My thoughts: This was pretty feature-light and choppy when it first launched, but it now has 9-ball in addition to 8-ball. If you bought it early, it's worth a quick revisit. It sticks pretty true to the ForeVR formula with its aesthetics and collectibles. The graphics aren’t going to win any awards and frankly put me off of it when I first booted it up, but the physics hold up and it’s a good time against the AI or a friend. With 2v2 matches coming soon, that is where this game could really be worth revisiting for some multiplayer fun and friendly smack talk.
7. After the Fall - (Played on PC $29.99, available on Quest $29.99) From the developer: Welcome to ‘The Line’... Decades have passed since the apocalypse turned 1980s Los Angeles into a snow-crested wasteland, overrun by mutated undead. Starting out in an underground camp with up to 32 other player survivors, you take up arms as a new Harvest Runner. Your mission? Venturing out above ground to expand the Line’s reach into the city and fuel mankind’s survival for another day. My thoughts: What a fun game. The gunplay and sheer amount of enemies on screen via PC is just stunning. You're set in an apocalyptic world and must shoot your way out while gathering resources. The atmosphere is stunning, and the graphics are top notch as well. While I’m sure it’s downgraded a bit to run on Quest, don’t let that hold you back. You can play this co-op with up to three other players and bots will fill you out to four. The teamwork this game offers is wonderful. Find a friend or two and jump in this one, or play with the ever-full lobbies of people looking to join up. The latest Descension update adds two new maps and a ton of other bug fixes and gameplay additions. It's a great time to jump in with a friend!
8. Cosmoniuous High (Played on PC $29.99, available on Quest $29.99) From the developer: From the creators of award winning titles 'Job Simulator' and 'Vacation Simulator', comes a new original creation—the comically catastrophic Cosmonious High! Welcome to your alien high school that's definitely completely free of malfunctions! After crash-landing into your first day, you'll unlock powers, explore the halls, and save the school from cosmic chaos. My thoughts: I would consider this is the third entry in the Job Simulator series - even though it's technically not in the same world. I’d really recommend you play them in order to fully appreciate the experience this game has to offer. Job Simulator was the first game, with jokes and fun interaction. Vacation Simulator expanded on that idea with similar characters, and what Cosmonius does is take the ideas of object interaction and conversations and cranks it up to the max. I had so much fun experimenting, talking with NPC’s, exploring the school and seeing what story the game had to offer. This is one of those games that just speaks to people like me who likes to push the boundaries to see what you can do in a game and rewards players for experimenting. It's a heartwarming game that continues to get quality of life and accessibility updates.
9. The Invisible Hours - (Played on PC $29.99, but coming out on Quest, currently available in the Rift store.) From the developer: The Invisible Hours is a complex murder mystery playable with or without a VR headset. Players freely explore an intricate web of interwoven stories within a sprawling mansion. A group of strangers receive a curious invitation from the enigmatic inventor, Nikola Tesla, offering each of them the chance to make amends for their darkest wrongdoings. When the last guest arrives at Tesla’s isolated mansion laboratory, they find him dead – murdered. Disgraced Swedish detective, Gustaf Gustav, vows to find the killer amongst the other guests: a blind butler, a convicted murderer, the world’s most famous actress, Tesla’s former assistant, the son of a wealthy railroad magnate, and rival inventor Thomas Edison. But none of these people are what they seem. My thoughts: I heard so many great things about this game and it's really more of an interactive story than anything. You find yourself moving around the mansion, piecing together the intricate story and learning how all these people relate to one another and their hidden secrets. I had a great time with this game, it had a unique concept that kept me fully engaged throughout.
10. Pokerstars VR (Free) From the developer: PokerStars, the world’s leading poker brand, has combined live and online poker in a truly immersive VR experience. Featuring Quest Pro support with face and eye tracking, advanced haptics, and mixed reality passthrough! My thoughts: This is one of my go-to games with friends. Once you get past the initial low-stakes tables where kids play and go all-in on many hands, you’ll find a new set of players that actually play smart poker and like to chat. If you have some friends, you can create your own private room and avoid that all together. It’s a relaxing game where you can meet new people and just chill in VR. It’s my social game where I go to unwind. Recent updates have seen them add craps and social poker rooms with slots and roulette. If you're looking to relax and play some poker, this free to play game will hit the spot. You can easily play this game for free and not ever spend a dime.
11. Path of the Warrior ($19.99) From the developer: We interrupt this broadcast with breaking news...chaos in the streets of Rage City tonight! The myriad local gangs, once at constant war with each other have now unified under a mysterious new crime boss...Mr. S. Thugs have flooded the entire city, unleashing a wave of terror. The police are overwhelmed and the public is in imminent danger! Can anyone put a stop to the crime wave? Can anyone save Rage City? My thoughts: This fighting game is one that you can blow off steam with. It harkens back to the old Double Dragon or Final Fight arcade days and I highly recommend you play through this game with a friend as you’ll be laughing your way through it at the absurd combos and interactive objects and scenery you can use to defeat your foes. Find a bit of open room to play in, and punch your way through the game.
12. Half Life Alyx Mod: The Undertow - (PC only, Free) From the developer: You play as Alyx, tasked with delivering a mysterious briefcase to the owner of an underground night club, upon arriving you realize this deal might not be so straight forward... Expected Playtime: 50min - 1hr. Features: Full-fledged Story with Voice Acting, Custom Sounds, Assets, and Gameplay, Unique Puzzles & Engaging Combat, Full Single-Controller Support and Drinkable Vodka (Finally). My thoughts: I’ve been working my way through some Half Life Alyx mods that bubble up to the top via Reddit or online posts. This one found its way into my queue and while it had a really unique setting, it was extremely buggy in one spot, to the point where I had to restart a section close to 20 times. I didn't find the end game satisfying, and with so many other great mods, it was a miss for me.
13. Sheaf - Together EP (PC only, Free) From the developer: Enter virtual reality to listen to the debut EP “Together” of synthwave producer Sheaf. No gameplay involved -- just sit back, relax, and enjoy the music while you drive through a retro low poly world. The EP features 3 tracks, and each track comes with its own scenery, tailor made to fit its mood. You can start each track separately from the main menu. My thoughts: As noted in the developer description, this is really more a zen-like experience where you’re sitting in a car that drives down a road while chill music is playing. Certainly different from a lot of other “zone out” experiences that focus on geometric shapes, but the blocky visuals really conflicted with the chill vibe it was going for. Not really my jam, but if you like chill experiences, it might be for you. You certainly can't beat the price.
14. Shooty Fruity ($19.99) From the developer: Do your job whilst shooting guns! Shooty Fruity combines job simulation with exhilarating combat that makes you feel like a true action hero - whether McClane, Wick or Rambo. Take on new roles and unlock weapons to fight your way through your career. Scan shoot repeat! My thoughts: I kept seeing this game show up in sales and various feeds so I finally tried it out. After 30 minutes I just was not having any fun at all. While the enemies were silly (various fruits and vegetables), the gun mechanics were lackluster. I just did not get into the gameplay loop of shooting and scanning groceries. It was just too repetitive for me and for that reason I can’t recommend it.
15. What the Bat? ($24.99) From the developer: From the creators of WHAT THE GOLF? comes a silly VR game about navigating life with baseball bats for hands. Swing your way through over 100 levels of batting, cooking, shooting, smashing, parking, painting, pickling, petting, and WHATnot. My thoughts: I was a huge fan of What the Golf on iOS, and was quite excited when I heard about this sequel. The “high” price point turned me off for a while, but when UploadVR gave it their “game of the year” award, I finally pulled the trigger. I had high hopes, and it was fun… at first, but the gimmick started to wear really thin on me rather quickly. It just didn’t seem to have the same magic the first game had. I kept going through it in hopes that something would change, or capture that original feeling, but honestly, it was a grind to finish such a short game. I understand I’m probably in the minority here, but I was quite disappointed.
16. Superhot ($24.99) From the developer: Multi-award winning, smash-hit SUPERHOT VR blurs the lines between cautious strategy and unbridled mayhem. The definitive VR action experience. Time moves only when you move. No regenerating health bars. No conveniently placed ammo drops. It's you, alone, outnumbered and outgunned. Snatch weapons from fallen enemies to shoot, slice and dodge through a truly cinematic hurricane of slow-motion bullets. It’s like nothing you have ever played before. Something is different here. Lose track of what’s real. My thoughts: You know it, and you probably love it. Like so many others, so did I. This was one of my first VR experiences years ago and I finally saw it through to the end. This game can be quite demanding for some levels requiring accurate shooting, movement and timing. This game offers a really unique take on gameplay and multiple ways to get through some levels really increase the replayability. With the unique achievements to strive for you have a real winner. A must own for all gamers.
17. Tube Be Continued (Demo) (Full game $14.99) From the developer: Hello! Welcome to TUBE Industries: a hamster owned and operated tube puzzle emporium! Prepare for a tube-based, puzzle-filled, HAM-PACKED adventure with our charismatic leader: The BOSS. Here at TUBE Industries we provide the puzzles and you provide… the brains. No shady business here! My thoughts: I like to look at the new App Lab games that come out every now and then and I’m a sucker for a good puzzle game. This is a game where you connect mazes together for hamsters to run through. It was a weird story that sees you working with a Hamster CEO trying to save his company from the Board, which are all hamsters. Really weird stuff, but while the demo was fun, the puzzles were a bit on the simple side and ultimately, I just did not think it was worth buying at this point. That being said, if the demo grabs you I could see this being a fun few hours with new content planning to be added.
18. Dart Racer (Free) From the developer: Dart Racer is an arcade racing game where you compete against AI during race and other players on the online leaderboards - features multiple race tracks and environments - steering based on throttle differential - interactive tutorial - customizable game and comfort settings - optional hand tracking. My thoughts: Now this is podracing! It really did feel like I was doing some classic Star Wars podracing, but it was quite tough to learn the controls. Once I got that figured out, there certainly was some fun to be had, but unfortunately, it just was okay for me and I dropped out after a bit. Give it a try for free, and keep in mind there are plenty of motion assists to play with so you don't get sick.
19. Nock ($9.99) From the developer: Nock is bow and arrow soccer. Skate and fly around a pitch while using a bow and arrow to blast the ball into the other team’s goal. Compete in multiplayer ranked matches, or play casual custom games with your friends! Like a real sport, Nock is easy to learn but difficult to master. Block arrows let you create obstacles and you can even use your body to make a goal or save. A fast-moving ball can knock you out. Skill-based matchmaking keeps every game extremely close and competitive. Casual modes let you challenge yourself against bots or play with friends in custom matches. My thoughts: Rocket League but with archery. While I’m not a fan of archery games in general, this game really had the physics dialed in. I always felt like I was in full control of my movement and bow and arrow. Nothing ever felt like it was off, and the aiming was spot on. Every hit of the ball, or miss was my fault. An absolute blast with with up to four friends, and that’s how I recommend you play it - with friends. But there are leagues and tournaments readily available if get into the game. That being said, I’m pretty terrible at it, and will only play with friends who can tolerate my terrible skills.
20. Into the Radius ($29.99) From the developer: An atmospheric open-world single-player survival shooter. You find yourself in the middle of the blighted zone, cut from the outside world. Your guns and your wits are all you have left. Fight the deadly enemies, dodge dangerous anomalies, and collect wondrous artifacts on your way to the Radius center to find your way out. My thoughts: I found myself constantly saying “I can’t believe this actually runs on a Quest.” The amount of items you can interact with, areas available to explore, systems to learn and missions to accept can be quite overwhelming. Honestly it took me about 5-7 hours of gameplay, tutorials and youtube videos until finally the game “clicked.” After this one fateful mission where I was over encumbered with items, low on ammo with minimal health and dealing with enemies at every turn, I was totally immersed and was having the time of my life. It was an absolute blast and despite being so tense - a joy to play. I did tone down the difficulty a bit, which made it much more playable and less punishing. Truly a great game if you like the loop of scavenging, planning your route ahead and making sure literally every bullet counts. While it lacks in story, it does have a lot of environmental details and little things that you have to find for yourself. If you like survival games, it’s almost perfect.
21. Surgineer ($9.99) From the developer: Have you ever dreamed of being a real surgeon? Well… you are not gonna learn that here. Welcome to the most unrealistic surgery simulator where everyone can instantly become a terrible doctor. You will have to solve hilarious surgical procedures ranging from CPR to brain transplant or even removing alien eggs from a poor patient using a robotic arm! You always thought you had that surgeon in you? You better have a bulletproof malpractice insurance before getting your virtual hands on a patient! My thoughts: At such a low price point, I wasn’t expecting much. I remember playing Surgeon Simulator back in the day and this looked like that. Much to my disappointment it was much more terrible than I had hoped. Absolutely no fun was to be had here. I constantly fought with the controls, many times had no clue what to do and finally gave up in frustration. I understand part of the appeal is the wonkiness of it, but this game requires someone with a lot more patience than me to get some fun out of it.

There you have it, 21 different games played in three months. I would say there are plenty of games to play and enjoy on the Quest. I hope you find a few that you might not have heard of, or that you might find worth revisiting. Let me know on the Ruff Talk Discord channel if you have a game you enjoy that I should try, I'm always open to recommendations. You can also find this article on the RuffTalkVR Blog Until then, I hope your next VR experience is a memorable one.