from SFSS

A path that splits into two

A man returns from a trip to the future remembering just one small (but disturbing) thing about his adventure.


Under 1-minute read.

Before Williams went into the future he bought a camera and a tape recording-machine and learned shorthand. That night, when all was ready, we made coffee and put out brandy and glasses against his return. “Good-bye,” I said. “Don’t stay too long.” “I won’t,” he answered. I watched him carefully, and he hardly flickered. He must have made a perfect landing on the very second he had taken off from. He seemed not a day older; we had expected he might spend several years away. “Well?” “Well,” said he, “let’s have some coffee.” I poured it out, hardly able to contain my impatience. As I gave it to him I said again, “Well?” “Well, the thing is, I can’t remember.” “Can’t remember? Not a thing?” He thought for a moment and answered sadly, “Not a thing.” “But your notes? The camera? The recording-machine?” The notebook was empty, the indicator of the camera rested at “1” where we had set it, the tape was not even loaded into the recording-machine. “But good heavens,” I protested, “why? How did it happen? Can you remember nothing at all?” “I can remember only one thing.” “What was that?” “I was shown everything, and I was given the choice whether I should remember it or not after I got back.” “And you chose not to? But what an extraordinary thing to—” “Isn’t it?” he said. “One can’t help wondering why.”

Image: Kate Jewell / A choice of public right of way / CC BY-SA 2.0

#hiltonyoung

 
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from Midus

Publicat la 17 noiembrie 2017

Dollar Bill Blues, în interpretarea lui Townes Van Zandt, și atmosfera aparent calmă din Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie), în ciuda acțiunii tensionate, mă atrag ca un magnet. Le regăsesc adesea în recomandările YouTube, la secțiunea Listen Again.

Mai demult, mi se întâmpla același lucru cu Extreme Ways (Moby), după ce văzusem The Bourne Identity. Numai că acolo lucrurile se desfășoară într-un ritm cu totul diferit. Acțiunea are viteză, nu glumă! Cel puțin în comparație cu dramele pe care obișnuiesc să le urmăresc.

Together We Will Live Forever, Death Is the Road to Awe, Stay With Me și Xibalba, toate compuse de Clint Mansell pentru coloana sonoră a filmului The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky), m-au condus către un comentariu interesant de pe YouTube.

Autorul lui ne îndemna să nu ne mai îngrijorăm atât pentru viitor și să nu rămânem ancorați în trecut. Să trăim ziua de astăzi, pentru că ea este singura care contează cu adevărat.

Mi-am amintit de un pasaj din Seize the Day, romanul lui Saul Bellow, în care Dr. Tamkin vorbește despre trecut, viitor și importanța prezentului. Ideea este aproape aceeași: trecutul nu ne mai poate ajuta, viitorul ne aduce neliniști, iar singurul moment pe care îl putem trăi cu adevărat este prezentul. Here and now. Seize the day.

Acesta este momentul prezent. Trecutul nu ne folosește la nimic. Viitorul e plin de neliniște. Numai prezentul este real – clipa. Trăiește-ți clipa.

![Seize the Day](https://i.snap.as/ayKbNrED.png)

Comentariul făcea trimitere la Kabbalah și la o interesantă teorie despre dualitatea spațio-temporală.

Despre dualitate aș putea spune câte ceva, cel puțin dintr-o perspectivă științifică. Despre Kabbalah, însă, nu știu aproape nimic. Cel puțin deocamdată.

Now I am listening to Together We Will Live Forever.

 
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from Noisy Deadlines

  1. Before, After, Alone by Emma Newman (Planetfall #4.5) by Emma Newman, 161p: This is a short stories collection from the Planetfall series. The stories dive a bit deeper into some characters, giving us some snippets of what they've been up to after events in the books, or within the book’s timeline. But the story that stayed with me the most was “Albert and the Kraken” which doesn't have any of the book’s characters in it.

  2. Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher, 259p: I enjoyed the found family dynamic in this one and the updated fairy tale vibes. There were some interesting bits, like the scene with the Toothdancer and also Agnes, the fairy Godmother, was great. The challenges in the story were not that hard, and that made the plot very predictable. But overall, it was a fun read, it feels like a cozy spooky read.

  3. Scandalous Desires (Maiden Lane #3) by Elizabeth Hoyt, 393p: I did not like this book. The whole plot with the orphan baby and Silence being caught in this forced proximity situation with the pirate hero Mickey O'Connor did not work for me at all. I guess I didn't expect it to have so many sad backstories, from both Mickey and Silence. There is murder and drama and a bit of mystery. I kept reading because I wanted to know who was the Ghost of St Giles, which is revealed at the end. Not sure I will continue the series.

  4. Red Team Blues (The Martin Hench Novels #1) by Cory Doctorow, 216p: This was my first fiction book from Cory Doctorow, and I enjoyed it! I struggled a bit with the whole cryptocurrency techno jargon, but I think I got the overall concept. I liked the older main character, Martin Hench, who is a forensic accountant with expertise in money laundering and he knows all the Silicon Valley dirty secrets. I think it was a great techno-thriller that got me out of my comfort zone. I was not ready for a gruesome murder scene in the story, but that did not scared me away. I want to read to the next in the series.

  5. How to Focus (Mindfulness Essentials) by Thích Nhất Hạnh, 130p: This book works best with previous knowledge about Buddhism mindfulness. It has super short chapters presenting concepts of meditation and concentration, but it does not take too much time explaining these concepts. There are nice nuggets of wisdom that made me smile. It was nice as a refresher of mindfulness and concentration techniques, but it might be hard to follow without previous knowledge.

#readinglist #books #reading

 
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from Geslingerd Tussen Mezelf

Titel: Veel te moe

Ik ben veel te moe om nog te schrijven. En nog tevreden moe ook, vandaag. Een zalige zonzusdag gehad. De vriend van mijn lieftallige zus had me via mijn zus een prachtige cd cadeau gedaan met pianomuziek van Valentin Barray. K heb hem een kaartje geschreven ter bedanking. Mijn zus en ik lachten ons net nog een deuk. Het was een heel gezellige namiddag. Mijn verslaving en drang tot nog een pil zijn verdwenen als sneeuw voor de zon. Nu begint de vermoeidheid er door te komen na een nacht zonder slaap.

 
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from Geslingerd Tussen Mezelf

Titel: Veel te moe

Ik ben veel te moe om nog te schrijven. En nog tevreden moe ook, vandaag. Een zalige zonzusdag gehad. De vriend van mijn lieftallige zus had me via mijn zus een prachtige cd cadeau gedaan met pianomuziek van Valentin Barray. K heb hem een kaartje geschreven ter bedanking. Mijn zus en ik lachten ons net nog een deuk. Het was een heel gezellige namiddag. Mijn verslaving en drang tot nog een pil zijn verdwenen als sneeuw voor de zon. Nu begint de vermoeidheid er door te komen na een nacht zonder slaap.

 
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from Kevin Turby

Je passe la grande majorité de mon temps à travailler. Je ne suis plus sur les réseaux, je ne regarde plus les nouvelles. Je suis, en quelque sorte, hors du monde.

Je ne me compare qu’à moi-même. Je ne vois le monde qu’à travers le prisme que je construis. Je suis en dehors de la horde et même si à première vue cela peut sembler effrayant, cela a ses bienfaits.

À quel moment la solitude devient-elle une souffrance ? La limite n’est pas très claire pour moi.

Lorsque notre vie est en accord avec nos valeurs ? Quand nous arrivons à voir le ciel plutôt que la fange ? Quand notre pourquoi dépasse notre personne ?

J’ai l’opportunité d’avoir un impact sur 24 enfants. Tous les ans. C’est une responsabilité et un honneur incroyable quand on prend un peu de recul.

C’est peut-être ça : vivre en accord avec son moi profond.

Je n’y suis pas encore. Mais j’y travaille.

 
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from The Morning Patrol with Mastelek

The sound of healing

The sun was already high when I crested that last ridge, my Groundcover boots scuffed with dust, lungs drinking the thin, rare air of the Highveld. I had come up here to outwalk something I could not name, tightness in the chest, noise in the head, the low hum of a life that had begun to feel borrowed. Then I heard it: water rushing over rocks.

Not the polite murmur of a garden fountain, but real water, quick, bright, alive, roaring its way down a narrow gully in the hillside. I followed the sound like a child seeking treasure and found the stream: no wider than a jeep track, yet fierce with purpose, sliding over granite boulders that had been polished over aeons of water wear, flashing sparks of silver where the light struck.

I knelt. The moment the water touched my ears everything else stopped.

The sound folded time the way wind folds grass. Suddenly I was young again, barefoot on Oakvilla farm in the Natal midlands, following the little streams that spilled off the Inyosi River after rain. Those streams were my secret kingdoms. I knew every pool where the Platanna frogs floated. I knew the places where Leonorus grew thick along the banks, with its orange claws of flower, and how, if you brushed past, the sunbirds would explode out of them in a whirr of emerald and crimson, dancing drunk on nectar.

I would lie on my stomach for hours, chin on my folded arms, watching tadpoles flick like black commas through the transparent water. The stream never hurried, yet it never waited. It simply carried everything downstream: sticks, leaves, worries, time.

Now, decades later, the same music played in a different key. I eased myself down onto a flat rock still warm from the morning sun and let the water have me. Each note of it rinsed something loose, deadlines, arguments, the dull ache of roads not taken—and sent it spinning away over the rocks and stones. The tightness in my chest loosened its fingers one by one. My shoulder pains dissipated. My breath slowed until it matched the rhythm of the stream: in, over, out, gone.

A kingfisher, beautiful, but there it was, flitted across the water, a streak of impossible colour, and for one heartbeat the years collapsed entirely. I was both the boy and the man, both the child lying spellbound on a Midland farm and the tired adult sitting on a rock in distant hills, and neither of us had anywhere else to be.

The water kept talking, soft and relentless, washing the dust from my soul the way it washed silt from the hill. When I finally stood, the light had shifted and the shadows were longer, but I carried no weight at all. Only the bright, running sound of the stream inside me, carrying me forward the way it always had, light, clean, and free.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

 
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from Nightjar

~ after Marge Piercy

A person wishes for work that is real, the (sometimes) blessing of a physical job; a quiet lunch among the trees

a real camera to catch the light

a bath dinner a book

a deep-bone tired

One can only wish for such completeness.

#poetry

 
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from The Morning Patrol with Mastelek

Religious Apartheid | Separation & segmentation

In the valleys of Kranskop, where the mist clings to the hills like unspoken regrets, my family’s story with kwaSizabantu, or KSB, as it’s known, unfolds like a wound that never quite heals. It began not with the mission’s polished facade of revival and redemption, but with the brutal blade of shunning, a practice so ingrained in KSB’s doctrine that it severs bloodlines as easily as one might clip a withered branch. Shunning isn’t mere disapproval; it’s excommunication from the soul, a deliberate isolation enforced under the banner of purity and obedience to God. It a religious Apartheid, a disgraceful and unholy separation. To leave, to question, to simply choose a different path is to invite the silence of the forsaken. And in our family, it struck first at the heart of my father, Mastelek mkulu.

The ripples of Bible House, a fervent evangelical group led by the charismatic Anton Engelbrecht, reached and touched our home. My father’s siblings, drawn by promises of spiritual fire and communal living, threw their lot in with the movement, which would later morph into the sprawling KwaSizabantu Mission under the iron guidance of Erlo Stegen. Bible House preached instant obedience, confession of sins in excruciating detail, and a hierarchy where leaders spoke as the voice of the divine. But for those who resisted, like my father, the cost was exile. Overnight, he became a ghost in his own bloodline. Phone calls went unanswered; visits were met with locked doors and averted eyes. “It’s for your soul” they said. “You’re choosing the world over Jesus.” He didn’t join, not out of rebellion, but because his faith was quieter, less armored in absolutes. My mom and him raised us with something sorely lacking at KSB, integrity and true strength in faith. Faith was never blind obedience.

A decade passed before reconciliation came, bittersweet and incomplete. Bible House dissolved into KSB, as Erlo Stegen consolidated power on a 140-hectare farmstead bought for the cause using ill gotten gains. My father was extended an olive branch as his family reconciled, leaving Bible House but not joining KSB. He was the prodigal. But you see, he had been right all along. By then, KSB had grown into a self-sustaining empire: schools, farms, even a bottled water brand called aQuellé, drawn from the mission’s own springs and marketed as “purity in every drop.” It had ballooned into a network of control, where obedience wasn’t optional, it was the air you breathed.

The shunning didn’t fade with time; it calcified. I saw it devour my cousin Karen, a girl I’d known growing up. Married to Albu van Eerden, both deep in KSB’s fold, she turned inward to embrace the devil by shunning her own children. Tabitha, her daughter, bright, questioning Tabitha, who dared to seek a life beyond the mission’s walls, was cut off without ceremony. No birthday calls, no hospital visits during illness, just the void. Karen’s other children fared no better; one by one, they were deemed worldly, their imagined sins confessed by their mother publicly before the congregation. And then the wall went up. What drives a mother to this? To stare into the eyes of her flesh and blood and see only a threat to her salvation? It’s not a love of Jesus, its the twisted teachings of KSB, a love that demands you “die to self,” even if it means burying the living. Witnesses before South Africa’s Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL) have described it as systemic: families torn asunder, weddings boycotted, children orphaned by decree. One ex-member recalled parents refusing to attend their child’s marriage because it defied the mission’s courtship bans, no dating, no autonomy, just arranged unions blessed by the elders. In KSB, love is conditional, doled out like rations in a siege.

At the helm of this machine stood the Stegen brothers: Erlo, the founder, a missionary whose fake Zulu revival birthed the mission, and Friedl, his quieter but no less commanding sibling, who preached “instant obedience” from pulpits echoing with the ghosts of German pietism. Their rule was absolute, laced with secrecy that one critic, their own brother Manfred, likened to “Nazi-style” control, decisions shrouded, dissent crushed. Manfred, once a pillar, grew disillusioned, peeling back the layers of abuse: forced confessions that veered into voyeurism, underpaid labor on mission farms, and a doctrine that policed thoughts as fiercely as actions. For his candor, he was shunned, barred from the community he helped build, his warnings dismissed as betrayal. Even Friedl, in his nineties and confined to a wheelchair, wasn’t spared the blade. Accused of straying from the “Way,” he was isolated by the very obedience he once demanded, wheeled away from fellowship like yesterday’s sermon. The irony was poetic, almost karmic.

Karma, in our family’s telling, runs deeper still. Friedl’s wealth, stemmed from a betrayal that scarred another lineage: the Witthofs, a vulnerable German family whose patriarch’s will he assisted in executing. The widow, grieving and isolated, trusted him implicitly. But Friedl, with executor powers unchecked, transferred their fertile farms into his own name, a brazen heist that funneled resources into his own and Erlo’s growing empire. It echoed an earlier theft: Bible House’s coffers, siphoned by Hogart Joosten in the movement’s chaotic infancy, providing the seed money for KSB’s expansion. These weren’t footnotes in revival history; they were the foundation stones, built on wool pulled over grieving eyes. Friedl’s late-life shunning? To us, it was the universe’s quiet accounting, a reminder that no throne of piety stands forever.

Today, as scandals swirl, allegations of sexual assault, child labour, and cultic control probed by commissions and ignored by corrupt police, KSB soldiers on, its aQuellé bottles gleaming on shelves despite attempts at boycotts. The mission’s defenders cling to a narrative of salvation, but I see the cost: fractured families, silenced voices, a society where “helping people” means breaking them first. To those who still quench their thirst with aQuellé, who tithe to this golden calf, take a hard look. Is this the obedience Jesus craved, or the cage we build when faith turns feral? My father’s reconciliation with his family taught me grace is possible, but only if we see the shadows. Shunning isn’t divine; it’s the cult’s cruelest chain. And in breaking it, we reclaim not just our families, but our souls and humanity.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

 
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from The Morning Patrol with Mastelek

Tailgating

Growing up in a family with ties to the cult of kwaSizabantu (KSB), I found myself dragged into some truly peculiar social obligations. My cousins on my dad Mastelek’s side were die-hard devotees of KSB—where “Reverend” Erlo Stegen reigned supreme as the spiritual patriarch. He wasn’t just a preaching bible puncher; he was the architect of lives, dictating everything from daily routines to eternal destinies. And when it came to matrimony, Erlo’s word was law. These weren’t your typical love stories blooming from stolen glances or whirlwind romances. No, sir—these unions were meticulously arranged under his watchful eye, with a strict code that forbade any premarital “shenanigans,” as my dad would euphemistically put it. Courtship was a controlled affair: supervised interactions, no physical contact beyond a chaste handshake, and certainly no funny business that might sully the purity of the occasion. It was all about divine alignment, or so they claimed.

My parents, bless their skeptical souls, weren’t exactly enthusiastic participants in this fervor. They accepted the wedding invitations more out of morbid curiosity than genuine familial duty—a chance to peek behind the curtain of this ultra-strict world without committing to its doctrines. “Need to see what they are up to,” my dad would quip under his breath. And when these events coincided with my holidays, I’d inevitably tag along, wondering what fresh oddity awaited.

I remember one wedding in particular, when I was already knee-deep in my university days at Maties, feeling worlds away from the rigid piety on display. The ceremony was held at Claridges, that elegant old Bible House venue where these austere KSB affairs occurred. We sat through the vows, a sea of somber faces nodding in approval as the couple pledged their lives under Erlo’s orchestrated blessing. No frills, no flair—just scripture, hymns, and a palpable sense of enforced holiness.

After the “I dos,” the congregation filed into the adjoining hall for the reception. That’s when my dad, ever the opportunist, leaned over and muttered, “Come on, son, help me check the tires on the car.” I shot him a puzzled look—our tires were fine—but I followed anyway, leaving Mom to scout out our table for the impending meal. Now, these KSB weddings were bone-dry affairs; alcohol was taboo, a sinful indulgence that had no place amid the godly gathering. Lemonade, tea and maybe some grape juice were the strongest libations on offer.

We slipped out to the parking lot, and Dad popped the boot of our car. He peeled back the mat covering the spare wheel, revealing his hidden stash: a bottle of fine Scotch whisky and a couple of tumblers tucked away like contraband. “Just a quick toast to survival,” he winked, pouring us each a generous tot. There we stood, tailgating in the shadow of the venue, sipping the amber liquid and chuckling about the irony of it all—the puritans inside preaching temperance while we savored our secret rebellion.

Refreshed and a tad warmer, we rejoined the festivities for the main course. Mom eyed us suspiciously, her knowing glance saying she’d pieced it together without a word. The meal dragged on with speeches extolling Erlo’s wisdom and the couple’s virtuous path. But after the plates were cleared, Dad nudged me again: “Think we should double-check those tires, just to be sure.” I nodded, playing along, but then Mom piped up, “I’m coming with you this time.” I was gobsmacked—Mom, the picture of propriety, joining our covert operation?

Back at the car, the plot thickened. Dad hadn’t just planned for us; he’d smuggled a bottle of sweet Hanepoot wine especially for her. We poured another round—Scotch for us, wine for Mom—and there we were, the three of us, laughing quietly in the boot’s glow, toasting to our little family insurgency. It was a moment of pure, unadulterated joy amid the starchiness. We returned just in time for dessert, our spirits lifted far beyond what any sermon could achieve.

Looking back, we were undoubtedly the happiest attendees at those weddings. While the KSB faithful celebrated their arranged bliss with hymns and handshakes, our family found our own brand of merriment in those parking lot interludes. Erlo Stegen is turning in his grave.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

 
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from Roscoe's Quick Notes

Browns vs Steelers

Today's Game of Choice.

Unless I'm called away, I intend to follow the (5-2) Cleveland Browns vs the (5-2) Pittsburgh Steelers NFL game, with its scheduled start time of Noon Central Time. Go Steelers!

And the adventure continues.

 
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from The Morning Patrol with Mastelek

My Life as Julius Caesar

It’s strange how some affinities feel less like admiration and more like recognition. Julius Caesar has lived inside me since I was a boy in that old and dusty Oakville farmhouse, long before I had words for past lives or soul memory. I must have been seven or eight when I first saw him, not in a history book, but as a flickering image projected on the bare dining-room wall. An old reel-to-reel projector had been rigged up, and there he was: Caesar, played by Rex Harrison, commanding the screen while the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, gazed at him with a fire that burned straight through the grainy film and into my chest.

In that moment I didn’t think, “What a great leader.” I thought, “That’s me.” Not in some infantile way. It was deeper, spiritual. I knew the weight of the laurel wreath before I knew what laurel even was. I felt the Nile breeze on my face though I had never left Natal.

And to this day I still have dreams about this.

I am always in a red tunic, the dye still bright, the gold-threaded hem brushing against bronze. The segmented Roman armour, lorica segmentata, fits as though it was forged for my body yesterday. In one hand a gladius, perfectly balanced, almost weightless until it meets resistance, then suddenly alive, singing. The battles change: sometimes the forests of Gaul, mist curling between the oaks; sometimes the dust and blood of Pharsalus; once, memorably, the deck of a trireme off Actium, though history says I wasn’t there. Doesn’t matter. I’m there now.

I fight with a clarity I have never known while awake. Every parry is instinctive, every thrust economical and final. There is no fear, only purpose. Men fall, but I do not gloat; I simply move to the next threat, the next moment that must be shaped. Often I wake shouting in Latin, my voice hoarse, heart racing, sheets twisted. Yet the feeling is never distress. It is triumph, clean and ancient. I reach for my phone to check the time and its always the eleventh hour, and I smile in the dark. The sword skills I wield in dreams still seem to protect me in waking life. Debts get paid. Doors open. Enemies, seen and unseen, keep their distance.

Now, older, I understand there is richer meaning beneath the spectacle.

To dream repeatedly of being a great conqueror, especially one who was both adored & assassinated, is rarely about simple ego. The psyche chooses its symbols with precision. Caesar represents the part of the soul that refuses to accept imposed limits, the part that says, “If the world will not bend, I will cross the Rubicon and make it bend.” The red tunic is Mars, the god of war but also raw life-force. The sword is discrimination, the ability to cut through illusion, to separate what serves from what destroys. To dream of wielding it masterfully, without hesitation or wound, is the unconscious announcing: You have the power to shape your fate. You have done it before. You are doing it now.

And Cleopatra, ah, she is there too, sometimes watching from a marble balcony, sometimes fighting beside me with a dagger. She is the other half of the archetype: the feminine wisdom that knows power is not only force alone, but seduction, strategy, the long game. When Caesar & Cleopatra appear together in the soul’s theatre, they are saying: Integrate. Marry the general and the queen within you. Rule with both the sword and the serpent.

These dreams are not escapism. They are remembrance. They are confirmation that the same fire that burned in a Roman on the Ides of March still burns in this man in a quiet Douglasdale suburb, tempered now by time but no less fierce. Every time I wake with the taste of iron in my mouth and the echo of battle in my ears, I am reminded: I came back to finish what was started. The conquest is no longer of provinces, but of fear, of mediocrity, of every small voice that says stay small.

I was Julius Caesar once.

I crossed the river.

I still am.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

 
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from Geslingerd Tussen Mezelf

Titel: Jammer.

Jammer dat ik al een heel stuk geschreven had en nu pas een account heb dus nu niet weet waar mijn stuk is. Ach ja, anoniem gepubliceerd en ik heb de link nog ook 😊. Fijn. Zalig zo anoniem bloggen... Dus...toch niet jammer, maar een stakend kortetermijngeheugen na nacht geen slaap.

 
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from Rippple's Blog

Stay entertained thanks to our Weekly Tracker giving you next week's Anticipated Movies & Shows, Most Watched & Returning Favorites, and Shows Changes & Popular Trailers.

Anticipated Movies

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Most Watched Movies this Week

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Hi, I’m Kevin 👋. Product Manager at Trakt and creator of Rippple. If you’d like to support what I'm building, you can download Rippple for Trakt, explore the open source project, or go Trakt VIP.


 
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from blog//x2600.cc

5:55 AM. At laundromat. Prepping clothes for donation. Essential laundry was yesterday. Roosters Call espresso/coffee from Casey's to my right.

Gonna grab a “bird bath” (at least the (lightweight) way I do a bird bath) and shave while here. General freshen up.

Last night, in the new AM hours, I heard a rustling a foot from my face, where a banana peel sat, and glancing over, the full torso of a skunk stood, starting to nibble at the tropical delicacy.

I don't think my legs or arms brought me to a standing position – I think my spine and skin cells launched me into a half-sprint on-sight, and I was five headstones down before I knew what was what, and before the skunk could react.

I looked back, and saw nothing in the darkness. I used the PIN on my phone and turned on the flashlight, scanned the perimeter: no skunk. I then turned off phone flashlight, turned on 1200 lumen flashlight and put the beam on High. Rescanned, still nothing. Safe.

I then collected myself and resituated the camp. I took the trash to the dumpster, and realized the entire encounter lasted less than three seconds.

No spray. No issue. Just immediately carnal reaction, and then resolution.

Afterwards, I slept fine.

Halloween the eve before was uneventful. Distance idiots yelling and partying. Me, ignoring it all as I drank coffee in the moonlight and smoked cigarettes. Grateful to have a full phone charge and some cool temps. Everyday is Halloween for me, anyway :)

 
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