A horny twist of a classic tale. How The Dick Stole Christmas tells the story of a small town called “Hoeville” on Christmas Day. Living in Hoeville is an unfriendly bum who hates Christmas, they called him ‘The Dick’. When the Dick decides to try to score some extra cash by stealing peoples presents, Roxie and Ashlyn decide to show him the true meaning of Christmas, Hoeville style. Beginning with some powerful lesbian sex, turned into a holiday threesome that’ll have you beating your meat and nutting faster than baking a Christmas cookie. Happy holidays from Bang Bros."

Couldn't hold myself back any longer. Vincent Broadhead acts as a kind of Parliamentary adjutant in the Brian Donlevy Hammer film, Enemy from Space. Donlevy's Professor Bernard Quatermass discovers that aliens are taking over in a small English locale, but intend to infest the entire world. He gets Broadhead to take him along on a government tour of an industrial plant Quatermass that suspects is being run by the aliens.
During the tour, Broadhead separates from the group and Quatermass goes looking for him. Eerie shots ensue of Quatermass searching the vast plant (filmed at a Shell Oil refinery) but fails locate Broadhead - until he hears an unearthly scream from one of the containment buildings and to his horror sees a slimy, blackened and steaming Broadhead stumbling down an access ladder.
"Don't touch me!" Broadhead yells as his hands leave a tarry, glutinous trail down the building's white paint. In mortal pain he explains to Quatermass that he was inspecting the "synthetic food" assembly line and fell into it. Its chief component is a gnawing acid compound of ammonia (which we later find is the prime element of the alien's native atmosphere). Quatermass gets a bit of the mess on his coat and later on cuts away the patch and submits the sample as evidence.
Broadhead dies and Quatermass makes his escape.
I watched this film on a local TV station after school when I was maybe 10 years old. The "burning Broadhead" scene terrified me and haunts me to this day - I still get a little squeamish whenever I re-watch it.
Its savagery is only matched later in the film when the aliens take a group of humans and use their bodies to block alien-toxic emissions from a pipe that feeds the pressure domes in which millions of aliens are living in a seething mass. Screams are heard, and soon blood is seen dripping from an overhead pipe. Quatermass mutters, "Gentlemen...that pipe has been blocked with a human pulp!"
That scene, too, has haunted me all these years as an example of extreme alien horror. May Quatermass and Hammer Films live in the hearts of all true aficionados of horror.

I'll jump right in and start from the beginning, but I think you already know where this is headed...
​
So, I grew up in Kansas, and although the state government grew increasingly republican, the county I lived in was all liberal democratic. At one time I was in the boy scouts. This was early 2010s or so. I personally never went far in it because it was hosted at a church that was far away, I was very socially awkward and never liked social interactions in general, and it was a cub scout group that did primarily boring things like tying the same knots over and over and also listening to hour long presentations about fire safety or whatever. I never really got to go outside but was there for the free food. I believe I was in second grade or maybe third grade, and only even got to go to like 10 meetings or so. My dad took drove me to them and after he left, for military service overseas, my mother just quit paying for it, and never approved of it anyway. She didn't like me hanging out with him.
​
In fifth grade I moved to another state, where I currently reside, where the government is completely liberal and democratic. The main motivation for the move, I was told, was my mother hated the Kansas Republicans cutting off educational programs and welfare benefits. But I believe the real reason was to keep me away from my father. He was in the same state after returning from service in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and by the time we moved into this state, he had already been assigned away. Fortunately, the reassignment was stonewalled by many completely unpredictable things. This was the year that NATO ISAF became NATO RSM, and OFS became OEF. I believe the changes were initiated by CJTF OIR, after pretending to be successful with UN SCR 2254, which was written as a response to a rising conflict in Syria that resulted from, among other things, al-Qaeda splitting from Daish. Remember that the CJTF is a mechanism for NATO to create operations and carry them out with non-NATO forces. NATO RSM led the effort in OEF, which is a counterterrorism campaign targeted against Daish. None of that matters anymore because a year or two ago, all NATO forces were withdrawn by the Doha agreement.
​
I suspect the non-NATO forces will be flocking to Syria in the coming months but honestly, I've never been able to keep track of what they've been up to. My mother said my father was away overseas constantly, in Germany, Israel, or someplace random, but I learned that none of it was true. He was at home, and she spun misinformation using the narcissistic technique of hounding him for information over the phone, making him guess about an unpredictable future, and then deliberately ignoring updates whenever a decision was actually made. He was in Hawaii on a cruise ship when I thought he was in Tehran.
​
The way women manipulate people like my mother did to me here is important for the story on this post. So, keep that in the back of your mind for now.
​
So as a kid I remember the giant fuss that feminists made over the boy scouts. They said that girls should be allowed to join, and the program should be renamed to just "the scouts". There where little carboard signs everywhere with this bullshit on them, as well as the effort being reported in the local news.
​
The girl scouts, apparently, is not as fun as the boy scouts. I suppose they don't go outside, go camping, or go on field trips. Instead, they sit around in a classroom and learn cooking and cleaning or whatever. I don't know, I was never a girl scout. It was the fact that boys have so much more fun that was considered misogynistic by the feminists.
​
So, in many troops now, girls can join. In the cub scouts that I was in, there weren't any girls, as far as I can remember, but the counselors themselves where girls, which I think was unusual, given that men usually do that.
​
I don't understand why the girl scouts can't just restructure their own program. Allow the girls to have the same fun stuff. There's no reason why they can't do that and stay completely on their own.
​
Of course, the girl scouts are run by women. These women are in charge and made it lame. They design the whole program, run the whole show, and believe that somehow, their failure is the fault of men and boys.
​
But it's not our fault. The fault is literally the women with the full power and responsibility over their own schedules. They could easily make any renovations to the girl scouts that they want.
​
Boys just know how to have more fun. We know how to get along and we're not afraid of actual life, and the great outdoors. But then the women want to infiltrate our group. And change it completely. My cub scouts experience was pretty lame, because these liberal women removed anything that was actually fun. They ruin the girl scouts and now want the same for the boy scouts.
​
We are not misogynist because we live our lives freely and have more fun. I think we never should have let the girls in, they are so miserable and whiny. The amount of narcissism they have is so insane and crazy to me. They have no right to barge in and change things according to a political agenda. What needs to be done is some self-introspection as to restructure the girl scouts. If they want to stop selling cookies and go camping or swimming or hunting or whatever, then why not let them do it? Why do they have to come over to the other side? We did not design the girl scouts. Women designed the girl scouts. Women ruined it and blamed all the men of the world as if we somehow had any control over what they do. I will not be made to believe that I have any responsibility at all for the fact that the women counselors ruined girl scouts all by themselves.
​
Also, women should not be in the military. I'm sorry, but it comes down to the biological fact that they are not naturally gifted in the areas that a good solider requires. Number one being the oath of honesty that the military enforces. If my father ever behaved like my mother, straight up lying about his location or his credentials, he would be court-martialed immediately.
​
Now that I think of it, isn't it strange that feminists have an obsession with tearing down any institution that stands for honor? As if men are not allowed to be honorable? Just a final thought...

Your gender? Don’t care! Age? Roughly same as mine (I’m 40) Location? Anywhere!
About me: I’m a cat mom. Lover of all things Disney, especially the parks. Finding a pen pal that also loves Disney would be fantastic.
I love inks and fountain pens. Books. Taylor Swift. Live music. Cruises.
I have lots of fun inks and I’d love to have someone to write letters with and use the inks. Bills are boring. Real mail is so much fun.
Also love movies (studied film for awhile). Fave is Everything Everywhere All At Once and 2005’s Pride and Prejudice.
I lived in England for awhile so it would be fun to have a pal there, or at least in that area. I speak very little French and Spanish (read even less) but would love to change that!

Grown up Number 1 and Number 262 are married and have a little girl named Lilly. She's number 1000 and the leader of sector V. The other members include Number 5 and Number 2's son Ben, Number 3 and Number 4's twins Michael and Korra, and Cree's daughter Eliza. They fight against the Happiest Children From Down The Block. During one fight to get their birthday cookies, Lilly gets captured. She is taken to meet the DCFDTL and Father in an underground location in France. A robot replica is left to fool Sector V and her parents. The real Lilly is tortured and brainwashed to the point that she believes that Father is her guardian and forgets about her parents.
Sector V was fooled but not her parents, especially Number 1. He knew the robot wasn't his baby the moment he looked at her. Suffice to say, him, Number 262 and both sector Vs, the old and the new generation, go on a rampage of rescue and revenge.

Hello.
I've been trying to locate the title of this movie for the longest and unfortunately I've had no luck anywhere. I'm hoping someone will remember this film.
It starts with a unhappy woman who gets kidnapped. She wakes up in a room naked with other with naked people. They are locked in this room covered with some form of white powdery substance. They don't know why they all were kidnapped, as they at first have nothing in common.
Every so often people dressed in white looking hazmat suits would come in and spray them down with some form liquid. Turns out the white powder was flour. The liquid, I believe, was beer to "soften" their organs. And the room they were in was a large oven under a big restaurant.
They were all chosen because while they all were from different walks of life, they all had one thing in common. No one would go looking for them.
Help me find this title. I really wish to see this movie again.

Hi. My grandma, 65, fell very sick from early November to Christmas of 2022. By Dec 26, she was unable to walk or eat, with no independence whatsoever. That day, we took her to the ER and she was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer (she smoked for over 50 years) that had metastasized to her liver and many other locations within her torso. She was in the hospital for a few weeks and then a rehab facility until February 1. Following that, she had 4 chemo treatments which ended around the 20th of April. Her health was seemingly fantastic, her personality was back, her hair was growing back, and she was really enjoying life.
Two weeks ago, she started stumbling and veering to the right when she walked. A couple days later, she said her right leg wouldn't work and her face was dropping to one side, paired with slurred speech. Another trip to the ER told us her lung cancer had spread to her brain, with many tumors on the left side of the brain.
Tomorrow, she starts whole brain radiation for 10 M-F days. She is very sick right now despite taking steroids twice a day, daily. She's fallen twice this week by trying to walk unassisted, and she has no energy.
I'm really worried about how the next few weeks will go. I live with my grandma and I have since I was 3 so she's basically been my second mom for 18 years. I really care about her comfort and wellbeing and this is extremely difficult. Does anyone have a similar experience they can share? Do you have tips for helping my grandma feel more comfortable during this situation?
We've never received a prognosis for how long she has left from the doctors during this process so we all feel really uncertain. We just want to make the rest of her life as enjoyable as possible because she has poured so much into us during our lives.
Thank you for reading and for any tips you might have to share.

Link download: https://bestgraphicai.com/go/affiliate-youtube-success--paul-murphy

Here’s what you’ll get in Affiliate Youtube Success

Section 1
You may find some welcome movies explaining the course and what you will study here. In his videos, he discusses the influence of YouTube. He outlines how consumers conduct product searches in his speech on the "power of 3."
Another video on avoiding negative outcomes uses Richard Branson as an example. Additionally, he contrasts paid and free Facebook traffic as well as Google and Facebook traffic.
Section 2
This lesson walks you through the process of setting up your channel, prepares you mentally, and covers daily chores and objectives.
His discussion on selecting a niche is followed by a source (an already-existing website) with a list of potential niches. then explains where you may locate things on websites like CJ, Offerfault, and Clickbank.
Each of the seven videos lasts an average of five minutes. This information can be found online in a rather generic part.
Section 3
His "magic first page formula" is covered in Module 3, which is a sizable module. speaks about using the Tube Buddy plugin and keyword research in addition to further channel setup.
Other videos on another keyword tool and a discussion about the significance of providing something of worth. He concludes by talking about how to develop a "hook" and how to develop "stunning" thumbnails (using Canva.com). The majority of this information is available in other free tutorials on YouTube, but you will need to look for it.
Section 4
You will learn about funnels and how your customers will move from your YouTube video to an opt-in form, bridge page, affiliate product, and finally to your email sequence in this module.
Section 5
You may learn how to set up links on your videos here, whether it be through a direct link or a landing page, which is advised. He continues with a discussion on funnel integration, the different sorts of funnels to build and why, and how to set up the opt-in page and lead magnets.
How to set it up for maximum conversions is explained in a video on your bridge page. He also has email templates and sample sequences. Also visible are exit pop-ups.
Section 6
This module has 8 videos, the longest of which is under 13 minutes. A evaluation of your channel follows a discussion of your "money videos" in the first video. The topic of Youtube analytics is covered, and you'll learn how to interpret the data to figure out what the metrics are really telling you.
Following are more videos about link statistics & data. You'll discover how to improve your films by including tags and other elements.
PBNs are briefly covered, but he claims that he rarely uses them. Paul likes to keep things under the white hat. Just as a side note, PBNs are great for usage with videos, but you must know how to use them!

I wasn't going to do a trip write up at all, but I'm planning a return trip in the Fall and I realized some of the things I learned on my first trip might be useful for other people, so here we go! I don't often see post write ups from people who are specifically into rhythm games/ arcades/ anime stuff
 
Dates: March 8 - 24, 2023 Background: Planned this trip mostly for myself but one of my friends decided to tag along fairly last minute. I had planned to spend the whole trip in Tokyo but the one thing she wanted to do was Kyoto, so we added a side trip + a very pleasant day at a Ryokan. I used Wanderlog to plan (HIGHLY recommend, this site is amazing), and my basic daily itinerary was morning shrine > pick an area to explore and have 1-2 major things per day. The person I was travelling with ended up taking a long ass time to get ready each day, so most of my morning stuff got cut or rearranged. Costs: I will fully admit I did not budget for food/ shopping, 100% vibes. I simply do not acknowledge what I spent

• Flight: $1,500 (Delta from MSP > SEA > Haneda. Direct from MSP had not resumed yet)
• Hotels: ¥314,000 (Roughly $2,300 USD for all 3 hotels total) [¥205,000 (Tokyu Stay Tsukiji, 15 nights) + ¥30,000 (Tokyu Stay Kyoto, 2 nights) + ¥79,000 (Kyokoyado Muromachi Yutone Kyoto, 1 night)]
• Shinkansen: ¥42,000 for 2 round trip tickets from Tokyo/Kyoto and back. Roughly $300 USD, machine did not take foreign CC only cash

Highlights

• The Kingdom Hearts concert, I maxed out my luck on this trip and we were able to see this on it's last night in Tokyo. Absolutely incredible!!
• Sushi Yuu, Roppongi (omakase sushi for about ¥20,000 per person, we paid more with drinks)
• ShibuyaSky, the open air viewing makes the experience so much better, plus there's a bunch of different spots to hang out up on the observation deck
• Fushimi Inari, the whole shrine blew me out of the water, absolutely must experience in person
• TeamLabs Planets, so few things live up to the hype and this is one of them
• Golden Gai, the bars were so much fun, got the full experience of a salaryman pissing on the side of the konbini

Lowlights

• Caffeine- if you are addicted to non carbonated caffeine like I am be prepared to be disappointed. The monsters are only 40mg compared to America's 150mg+. I'm glad I brought caffeine pills
• Tsukiji market is really not worth going out of your way for, it's nice if you're near it but it's really just a fish market + insane lines for most of the food
• I'm still mad about how bad the food was at the Square Enix cafe is, at least we got coasters + placemats out of the deal. This was genuinely my only bad experience in Japan
• Everything on this subreddit told me that people in Tokyo don't really care about tattoos, however they do really seem to care about colored hair. I have very long, bright ombre hair and I was a bit of a sideshow attraction, including people taking photos of me in public multiple times. Probably the most frustrating part of the trip was being stared at constantly
• Japanese thrift stores love old American clothes, I was definitely let down by the majority of these

Goals:

• Buy anime stuff
• Play rhythm games
• Go thrift shopping
• See cherry blossoms
• Collect shrine stamps (goshuin)

Advice:

• TAX FREE SHOPPING: This has to be first because no one mentions it?? There are 2 types of tax free, discount and rebate. Everywhere has a minimum for tax free. Don Quijote you have to go to the separate tax free counter, and they will seal the bags shut. You're not supposed to use the tax free items in the country - I didn't know this and did it anyways? There seems to be no repercussions unless they open your bag and count every individual KitKat. I had to open the bags to repack everything anyways. The places that do rebates are generally malls, you bring your receipt + passport and they'll give you the 10% back in cash (minus a fee). When you get to the airport, you scan your passport after you drop your luggage, indicating you made tax free purchases. You do not need to keep your receipts anymore
• Don Quijote does sell luggage but Ginza Karen is cheaper
• Besides the standard things that every single trip report has (get a suica, you'll walk a lot, etc etc), the biggest thing I learned is not to go to an area without at least 1-2 specific goals in mind. For example, I had given us like a half day to go around Shibuya/ Harajuku, but because we didn't look into what malls or stores we might like to go to, we ended up wandering pretty aimlessly and not really enjoying the area. This happened a few different areas we went to, so I decided that in the future I would pin some stores on Google Maps and try to make it to those specific stores
• Install LINE and set up an account. It's crazy how much connects to LINE. For me the biggest thing was 1) making Sushiro reservations and not having to sit in the store for an hour plus waiting for our table and 2) being able to grab a chargeSPOT to charge my phone. I brought a battery pack but at this point it must be like a decade old, it took the entire night to recharge and died on me during the day a few times. I have a Pixel 6 Pro and was literally constantly charging my phone
• If you're coming from the Americas, don't try to do something on your first night. Get your Konbini dinner and go the fuck to sleep
• Getting from place to place can take longer than expected, you'll have to navigate the stations, find the entrances (sometimes hidden in malls) and exits (sometimes closed), don't make plans too tight together
• Navigating Kyoto was so much more confusing. At first our Suica cards didn't work because we apparently didn't tap out at a station in Tokyo, so we were buying day passes and paying in cash on the bus. Some of the buses have 0 English and 100% Kanji (navigation difficulty: extreme). Suica cards DO work in Kyoto so if you're having issues go to a gate with an attendant and they can help
• It can be weirdly hard to find bathrooms, most konbini have them but you're supposed to ask the cashier if you can use them. I speak very basic Japanese but hammed up the gaijin card here and would just ask to use the toilet in English, no one ever told me no Weeb specific advice:
• If you want to do pop ups (like the Jujutusu Kaisen Animation exhibit), a Japanese e-sim will be a lifesaver. You need a Japanese phone number to do SO much, they really make it extremely frustrating to make reservations without it. I did manage to make reservations for the Square Enix cafe though, the write-up is on my profile. (Was it worth it? Absolutely not, worst food all trip, -3/10)
• Prices are all over the place for figures, especially prize figures. There's a solid chance you might buy something and see it cheaper at the next shop, however going back/forth between shops in Akihabara can be a huge pain in the ass. I'd recommend 1) making a list of things you want the most and 2) setting a per item budget and a total budget. A lot of the anime stuff was cheaper in Kyoto as well
• You can find a ton of gachapon stuff at Surugaya, so you can just buy what you want and don't have to gamble. Surugaya bins are organized by series
• Use collabo-cafe.com to find cafes and pop up events you might be interested. Plan ahead because reservations can be hard to come by

 
Now on to the super detailed trip report! Here's the big album if you don't want to look through photos separated by day. Warning for flashing video
 
Day 1 (travel)

• Landed in Haneda around 3pm. Immigration + customs took about an hour (we did the visit Japan web ahead of time and had both QR codes ready). There was virtually no lines anywhere
• It took about an hour to navigate to the hotel. I chose to stay at the Tokyu Stay Tsukiji because 1) it was really cheap, 2) it was close to the Ginza line, and 3) it had a washer in the room. Although the location was slightly inconvenient for late nights, I'd say it was totally worth it for the ability to grab food in Tsukiji market, and the room was pretty large compared to some other areas of Tokyo. In fact, the room was so cheap that when we went to Kyoto, we opted to not check out of the Tsukiji room and just leave the majority of our possessions there. This didn't cause any issues and made travelling on the Shinkansen way easier
• I thought we were built different and could do some stuff this evening. We ended up walking to the Donki and being assaulted by sound in every direction. 7/10 didn't discover the 2nd floor until days later. At this point exhaustion kicked in and we got a Lawsons dinner and crashed

Day 2 (Akihabara, photos)

• Going to Akihabara on our first day in Japan sure was a choice. Thankfully neither of us suffered jetlag on the way in. Checked out like 10 different game centers and a ton of anime shops. Managed to find the only Monster Rehab of the whole trip here
• Konbini lunch + strong zero! That flavor was terrible :')
• Dinner at the Monster Hunter cafe (no reservations required). Expectations were low but my travel partner is a huge MH fan. The food wasn't bad but the drinks were awful. The ambiance is nice and there were definitely some regulars there playing MH on the consoles they had set up
• The new Namco game center had like 12 brand new Taiko cabs and all of them had phone mounts so you could film yourself playing! I was really intimidated by everyone there being extremely good so we didn't play any games here

Day 3 (Shibuya & Harajuku, photos)

• Breakfast at Tsukiji outer market since we were already there
• Went to Shibuya Loft for the Bravely Default pop up shop
• Checked out Tower Records
• Ate lunch at Japanese McDonalds
• Went to Takeshita Street. TBH this felt like in-person AliExpress, I'm sure the charm of the early 2000s is long gone
• Visited Hachiko
• Shibuya Sky Observatory

Day 4 (Asakusa, photos)

• Started at Kaminarimon Gate & went down Nakamise shopping street. It was very crowded on a Sunday but I enjoyed it immensely, you just need some patience to get where you want to go. I liked trying all the food, most of the food stalls here were cash only
• Senso-ji temple, bought Goshuincho to collect stamps
• Ate lunch and dinner in the area, there's a ton of food options
• We ended going all the way over to Yoyogi park as well but nothing was in bloom. Because it was overcast the park looked really sad

Day 5 (Shinjuku & Kabukicho, photos)

• Now is the time to come clean, I'm a huge Yakuza/ RGG fan. In the morning I had my Majima birthday cake delivered by PRIROLL. I pre-ordered it and chose the delivery day where we didn't have morning plans. It comes frozen and needs to defrost in the fridge. While we left Majima to chill, we made the pilgrimage to Kabukicho to see the iconic gate. It was raining in the morning so we hit up some arcades then went shopping
• There's a really cool mall that seems anime-centric (I believe it's called Shinjuku Marui Anex). It had a Godzilla store, Cinnamoroll Cafe, a JJK pop up, and best of all... A Surugaya. These stores have bins where everything is ¥100-300 and we ended up buying way too much in every one we came across
• Went back to Kabukicho and explored a bit, went to Golden Gai and drank at a handful of bars. Almost missed the last train because I drunkenly insisted on a final game of MaiMai. 10/10 staying in Kabukicho next time

Day 6 (Ikebukero & Rippongi, photos)

• The plan today was to check out Ikebukero and Roppongi, but we ended up spending so much time at the first mall that we didn't really do anything in Roppongi besides get dinner. Went to the Pokemon Mega Center and the cafe. The main cafe was closed so it was just take out, all the food was really cute but the waffles were kind of terrible
• Gashapon no Depato Ikebukuro was super overwhelming. A lot of the smaller gashapon stores are somewhat organized by what is in the machines, this one just felt chaotic, and it went on forever
• Sushi Yuu was incredible, I didn't take photos of every single course but I was so full that couldn't finish my dessert at the very end. The owner speaks some English and I made our reservations by messaging him on Facebook

Day 7 (Yokohama, photos)

• We didn't get to Yokohama as early as I would have liked - I took us out way into the suburbs to try to find this Yakuza plushie from the claw machines. I looked up the locations on the Sega website, unfortunately this machine was extra rigged and I couldn't win it >:[ On the bright side all the rhythm games had no one else playing them
• Took the cable car over and went to the Cup Noodle museum. Unfortunately we didn't have a reservation so we had to come back later. Found some cafes in the area and had a late breakfast
• The museum was really small, the main draw is making your own Cup Noodles. Entrance costs 500 yen and this is an additional 500. We had some trouble navigating this part because no one spoke any English
• Had dinner at a pie restaurant that was 10/10
• Explored a bit of Yamashita park (Yakuza 7, anyone?) I was kind of disappointed I wasn't able to see this during the day
• Walked around Yokohama Chinatown & visited the local Round 1 ;)

Day 8 (Kyoto, photos)

• I bought the Shinkansen tickets to Kyoto the evening before, so we weren't able to get great seats. The machines are also a huge pain in the ass and don't take American CCs, so plan ahead here
• It took us longer than expected to figure out how to use the tickets and read the signage, so we weren't able to get food before and I had to have one of the train bentos. I knew it was going to suck and it was worse than expected :(
• You can bring a full sized suitcase and just put it in front of you, seeing other people do this was unexpected
• My travel partner was destroyed at this point so she rested in the room. I went to the National Garden and Imperial Palace alone. The sakura were just starting to bloom and the weather was great, loved it. The National Garden is SO huge that I only ended up walking up the west side before I tapped out
• Checked out Heian-jingu shrine + the giant torii, I went to another smaller shrine with a great view but I can't remember the name
• We did photoshoots at ESPERANTO Kyoto. There's basically no reviews from foreigners about this place but it was fantastic!! Their online booking form didn't work for me, so I emailed asking for a reservation. I emailed in Japanese and English and they replied in English. They gave me time options and I replied with what package and room each of us wanted (the website says they require a deposit but they told me they didn't need one). When we got there they did our hair and makeup, and then you pick your kimonos out. The photographer spoke pretty decent English and we didn't have trouble communicating with anyone else here. They had our photos edited and printed about 30 minutes after we picked which ones we wanted. The whole thing took about 3 hours (it was longer because we used the same set room). I don't want to include my photos but I did add a video of my hairstyle because she knocked it out of the park
• Ended the day with okonomiyaki, one of my favorite Japanese foods

Day 9 (Kyoto, photos)

• Fushimi Inari day! I ended up walking this alone, I did not realize how long it was going to take or the fact it was actually like 10,000 stairs. My knees were very upset on the way down
• It was not as busy as expected, I went at roughly noon on a Friday. Most people tap out before the actual mountain climb
• The Goshuin at Fushimi Inari are on paper, you can paste them into your books later. Even if you don't have a Goshuincho I'd recommend buying them because they are very cute!
• Shrine cats!!!! You can buy photos of them to help pay for their food
• After Fushimi Inari I somehow managed to walk to Tofukuji Temple (I did the garden but not the bridge) and Daigo-ji Gojunoto pagoda and garden. I wanted to cut my legs off after today

Day 10 (Kyoto, photos)

• I started my day at the Kyoto Round 1, I had visited it on day 8 as well. This one is ace because it was literally always empty 10/10
• Decided to explore Gion a bit, ended up at the Machiya Starbucks and had the best thing I ate all trip (a custard dorayaka, I regret not going back for another)
• Ended up at Kiyomizu-dera Temple totally on accident. It wasn't super impressive in early spring but the view was still fantastic
• Ended the day at the Ryokan (Kyokoyado Muromachi Yutone). Ended up picking one without an onsen because we are both covered in tattoos, and I didn't want to deal with finding a private one. The cypress tub was a great trade off, and the food was incredible

Day 11 (Tokyo - Concert, photos)

• Today we travelled back to Tokyo and went to the Kingdom Hearts concert. I ended up trying for the lottery for tickets back in like December 2022. Winners were announced the first weekend in January and you only had a few days to buy tickets. I have a friend of a friend living in Japan who did me the biggest solid ever and bought our tickets. I met up with her during the trip for the hand off. The seats are randomly assigned and we had AMAZING seats near the front. This was also the performance Nomura was at!
• We weren't supposed to take photos during the performance so I just have some before. Also, I made Organization XIII beads that attach onto my dress with magnets and I am very proud of it, so please excuse the bathroom selfie :D
• The concert was about 3 hours long and after all the travelling we were beat. We ate dinner, played our nightly games of Ongeki, and passed out
• Bonus video of the music box that plays Dearly Beloved

Day 12 (Ginza & Sumida, photos)

• We were really starting to tucker out at this point. We managed to drag ourselves to the Ginza art Aquarium in the AM and the Tokyo SkyTree in the afternoon. Today was the Equinox so everything was crazy busy, the line to buy tickets for the SkyTree was literally like 2 ish hours long so we bought them online and went shopping in the mall
• The Art Aquarium was really cool, but a lot of the fish were in really small tanks. I didn't include photos of those :(
• The SkyTree just let people up as fast as they could so it was extremely crowded at the top, and not super enjoyable imo
• I spent the evening at the arcades in Akihabara :D

Day 13 (Tokyo - JJK Exhibit, photos - flashing video warning)

• Today I went off in the am to see if I could buy a ticket to the Jujutsu Kaisen animation exhibit in person. The online site wouldn't let me buy a ticket because I didn't have a Japanese phone number. UNFORTUNATELY you couldn't buy tickets in person. I got super lucky again and 2 foreign exchange students from Europe were trying to do the same thing, however they did have a Japanese phone number and the site allowed you to get 3 tickets at a time. They were able to grab them for all 3 of us for that evening
• Putzed off to Hie Shrine, anyone that tells you it's a mini Fushimi Inari is lying
• Went back to Akihabara, found a Miku racing pop up!
• Went back to... Ginza? for the JJK animation exhibit, it took about an hour to go through. I included a ton of photos so just skip today if you're not interested in that show

Day 14 (Tokyo - TeamLabs Planets & SquareEnix Cafe, photos)

• TeamLabs was so cool! I didn't include many photos since it's 95% selfies. Make sure you explore a bit as the string light room had a couple of different areas that are easy to miss, and it's possible to accidentally skip the hanging garden, which was beautiful! TeamLabs took us about 2.5 hours but we were 100% those bitches taking forever to get a million photos
• Since we were staying in Tsukiji we ended up just slowly walking back to the room for a much needed nap
• Back to Akihabara yet again! More rhythm games, some awful food at SE

Day 15 (Shinjuku, photos)

• This was our last full day in Japan, we honestly didn't want to do anything but we managed to drag our asses to Shinjuku National Garden for the cherry blossoms. Unfortunately it was sprinkling a bit, at least it kept the crowds away
• Managed to check out Meiji Jingu, but at this point my travel partner was sick of walking and tapped out
• I went back to Kabukicho, walked around a bit and ended up back at an arcade (bless Ongeki for having stools)

Final thoughts (Misc, photos)

• We were literally so annihilated by the trip that we took a taxi to the airport, it was about ¥8,000 from Tsukiji ($60 USD ish)
• I ended up buying a 24" suitcase from Ginza Karen for ¥6,000. It was 100% full of stuff I purchased. We also used one or those giant ¥500 bags from Donki as a carry on
• My Goshuincho was my favorite souvenir, I'm so proud of all the stamps I collected (I did get doubles at some shrines). I plan to bring this back late 2023 to try to finish it
• I have the old school GoogleFi plan and don't have to do anything extra to have international data. Lots of places & stations have free WiFi but you'll need to put your email in
• I don't really sleep that much and my schedule in the US is already busted, but it took me about 2 full weeks to get back on normal human hours. I'm tired again just writing this up and looking through all my photos
• My main regret is not trying more food, we ended up waiting until we were dying of starvation and ate at the konbini a lot (typical)

 
Edits for formatting

Valid theories as to why Nine Mile Hole was so very special to Forrest Fenn are out there, if one cares to look carefully enough. But nobody yet to my uncertain knowledge has pointed to hints in The Thrill of the Chase or other evidence that explain why Fenn might have been so emotional about his journey to the special place that he cryptically described in the poem. Yes, it was the place he wanted to die, and that alone would be a good enough reason for emotion. Yet the sort of sentimentality that Fenn betrayed about the place – for example when he read the poem out loud – suggests something even deeper and more sorrowful: a sense of loss that is larger than the man himself.
It so happens that there truly is a source of information that reveals why Nine Mile Hole was so sacred to Forrest Fenn: an emotional connection had been forged as a result of dual tragedies. It is contained in poetry masquerading as prose written by Ernest Schwiebert, an expert on flies and flyfishing, in his seminal Nymphs: Stoneflies, Caddisflies, and Other Important Insects including the lesser mayflies, Volume II (2007).
The existence of this text and its importance to the chase was originally revealed by Vertigo, who first shared it on The Hint of Riches forum. Later, Vertigo reposted the excerpt from the Schwiebert text on Medium here along with the other results of his excellent research. All the Vertigo entries are a must read if you want to try walking in the shoes of Forrest Fenn. I won’t repeat that portion of the Schwiebert text previously shared by Vertigo in its entirety although I will include a few of the most relevant excerpts to help tie everything together.
What I want to focus on here is the emotional and motivational parts of the tragic story that Schwiebert eloquently told in the paragraphs that Vertigo did not quote. This material is critical in my opinion to understanding the importance of Nine Mile Hole and what happened there to make it the place where Fenn wanted to die.
To summarize, the fires that devastated Yellowstone in 1988 were in part the result of government mismanagement of forest fires on Federal land, much of which was due to political games (e.g. to discredit members of the other political party). These fires created havoc and destruction in the Madison watershed and its fisheries that went largely unacknowledged by environmentalists and the public at large. Only those who had fished those flywaters in the decades before the fires could truly understand the extent of the negative impact on the river and its riparian ecosystem.
Among other casualties, the brown trout hideout at the famous Nine Mile Hole was spoiled, and the spring-fed pond secreted in the woods nearby was literally wiped off the map. Its crystal clear waters – a quarter mile up a cold rivulet from the legendary hole on the Madison – had once rewarded the most tenacious Brown with the perfect spot to spawn. Now there was only brown sludge in its place. To someone who had intimately known Nine Mile Hole, its matronly crystalline pond, or any other riverine wonder of the Madison watershed in Yellowstone, it was enough to utterly break their heart.
Forrest Fenn's feelings about the ordeal were very much in the same vein as those expressed by Ernest Schwiebert. The difference was that the latter man did not need to keep a secret and therefore could lay bare his emotional injuries.
Indeed, the 1988 fires must have devastated Fenn similarly if not more so. But this grand tragedy was not quite as catastrophic to him as being diagnosed with cancer and given slim odds of surviving it. The year 1988 was not particularly kind to the man.
Fortunately, the forests and rivers of Yellowstone always seem to recover from the worst tribulations that nature could manage to throw at them, and so did Fenn. But not without a profound impact. The battle for survival and the scars left behind had connected Fenn to his special place at a level so primal and emotionally raw that it was almost umbilical. How could there ever be another consideration when it came to the somber task of choosing the place to take his last breath?
And then came the FBI raids in 2009. The Feds had had a hand in destroying his Shangri-La in Yellowstone in 1988, and now it seemed they wanted to finish robbing him of treasure while desecrating his reputation and castle in Santa Fe.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, he said to himself through sublime gritted teeth and with a resolve that only the gravely aggrieved can muster. I'm going to carry out my plan. In Yellowstone Park, damn the consequences!
The following is taken from Nymphs: Volume II, starting on page 237. Unless noted otherwise, boldface is mine for emphasis.
I note that Vertigo excluded an important portion of the first paragraph of the story so I will re-quote this paragraph in its entirety. He then faithfully reproduced the next 7 paragraphs, which I won't repeat but will highlight a few excerpts. See Vertigo's Medium post for the full text of the 7 paragraphs, or "DYODD" and buy the book.
Schwiebert's account contains several additonal paragraphs beyond the 7 quoted by Vertigo that are just as important in my opinion, plus there is a footnote that helps enormously to shed light on things. I quote these in their entirety as fair use in order to support the theory being advanced in this entry.

But the entire Yellowstone was ravaged by a series of wildfires in the drought of 1992, and one of the worst of these fires had crossed into the park from Bridger National Forest in Wyoming, just north of Grand Teton National Park.⁶ The great lodgepole forests of the Bechler and Firehole watersheds had become a tinderbox, and vast acreages of primeval timber were surrendered to the fire. Magnificent stands were transformed into fire-blackened cemeteries of snags. Entire mountainsides were utterly scorched as steep timber-filled ravines became incandescent chimneys filled with fire. Slopes of unstable volcanic soils were stripped of their trees and rendered vulnerable to the erosive impacts of winds, rains, and melting snowpacks. Frightening shrouds of talcum-fine soil and ash were carried aloft as storms worked across the Yellowstone Plateau. Gullies were quickly cut into unstable hillsides, and large alluvial fans of gritty clay and ash were formed at many places along the Madison, Gibbon, and Firehole. Such fans were visible immediately below Seven Mile Bridge on the Madison, and there was much worse damage at its famous Nine-Mile Hole, which had been the most popular pool.

Schwiebert makes an error here: the great drought and fires were actually in 1988 as he correctly states in Footnote 6; see near the end of this post.
The next 7 paragraphs are faithfully reproduced in full by Vertigo … I highlight a few key lines. Following this, I start to quote the paragraphs that are excluded from Vertigo's work.

Nine-Mile lay just below the highway, in a beautiful corridor of primeval lodgepoles and ponderosas …
It was a striking place with secrets. There was a crystalline springhead pond across the water, about a quarter mile beyond the river, and completely hidden behind a dense screen of intervening conifers.
Large brown trout were known to enter this minor lodgepole tributary in October to mate and lay their eggs …
I once caught a good fish in the little pond itself … a handsome five-pound hen that had apparently spawned and wintered, and then elected to stay.
The cold spillages of the crystalline creek entered the river in the uppermost shallows at Nine-Mile …
It was a spring-hole worth knowing. Large trout often gathered there in hot weather, basking in its cool temperatures where the ledge rock shelved off into a secret pocket. I could usually count on at least one good fish there, because most anglers simply fished the primary currents of Nine-Mile without covering the pocket below its aquatic weeds.
The fate of Nine-Mile, however, was a terrible surprise.

Compare to page 141 in TToTC with the following words bolded and in red: "Cancer is a terrible word." Boldfaced and redlined text is used within the memoir in only four places, twice in reference to cancer and twice to suggest a warning that something is scalding hot: "DO NOT TOUCH!". The reason for this editorial oddity should be obvious: red for fire, and the red boldface connects cancer to fire.

The fish-filled secret below the weeds was smothered with silt and trash, and the spring-hole itself was gone. I became curious about the fate of the forest pond, and forded the river to inspect it. Dour rivulets of slurry came spilling through the trees, and I was astonished when I reached the tarn.
Its crystalline shallows were completely filled with slurry and trash. A tiny paradise had been destroyed. The outlet was clogged with refuse and silt, and the barrage of trash had raised the water in the lake until its overflows were forced into several braided channels farther downstream. No trout could ascend such gritty rivulets to spawn, and no freshly hatched juveniles would use its spatterdock riches to reach smolting size. Nine-Mile itself had been irrevocably changed, and after dutifully suiting up, I found myself angry and unable to fish.

Compare to "There'll be no paddle up your creek, Just heavy loads and water high."
Consider why Schwiebert was "angry": the full extent of the devastation was perhaps preventable if Forest Service management had actually cared about the ecosystem within their purview instead of trying to score political points.
Schwiebert continues the story as follows, not quoted by Vertigo.

Some ecologists have argued that postfire impacts have largely proved beneficial because natural lightning-strike fires are obviously implicit in our natural forest ecosystems. The science of such truths remains clear. Lodgepole cones do not surrender their seeds without exposure to hot temperatures associated with natural fires, and the argument that ancestral fires have played a substantial role in the ecological history of such forests is sound.
Such apologists further contend that once-dangerous thickets of deadfalls and dry tinder in these lodgepole forests had healthily been purged, and argued that these Yellowstone fires had cleansed its historic forests. The new grasslands created were alleged to have improved bison and elk habitat because both are grazing species, but both bison and elk lacked major predators then and had become much too plentiful before the fires. The ecosystem did not need more bison and elk. Other apologists waxed poetic about the beneficial impacts of the fires on avifauna and their prey within the boundaries of the Yellowstone, but none mentioned their horrendous impact on the famous Yellowstone trout streams.
Some fishing writers have written pieces echoing the doubtful thesis that everything had been improved through the purging of the fires, and that the fishing had also been helped. One reported unusual numbers of larger fish in the Firehole. This was irresponsibly wishful conjecture on the part of observers who lacked a fifty-year perspective on the Yellowstone and its fisheries, and were not competent to pass such judgment. The truth is much less felicitous. Several key tributaries had become so choked with postfire sedimentation, ash, and charred debris that their fish, including large trout that had never seen anglers, had been displaced from their headwaters to find refuge in the Firehole itself.
Such fish were not a happy portent.

Compare the above paragraphs to Fenn on page 141 of TToTC where he follows up the redlined and bolded "Cancer is a terrible word" with "The disease it defines represents nature in its most repellent form."

Fires also ravaged the hillsides along the lower Gibbon. Steeper slopes had quickly eroded, forming labyrinthine networks of raw gullies and wounds leaving the narrow highway below Gibbon Falls buried under great alluvial fans of mud, gritty precipitates, and trash. Heavy equipment had cleared the right-of-way, leaving great windrows of marl in many places, and the Gibbon became choked with waist-deep strata of raw sediments and ash. The great beauty of the box canyon below the Gibbon Falls had been charred and scarified by fire, leaving a river littered with postfire trash and mud winding through cemeteries of charred lodgepoles. I did not attempt to fish, and decided to investigate the fire damage along the Firehole.
The fires had decimated its remarkable lodgepole forests in many places between the Cascades of the Firehole and the Fountain Flats above Nez Perce Creek. I turned south on the old freight road toward Ojo Caliente, and found more fire damage there, but worse burns had overwhelmed the shores of Goose Lake. Its trees had been killed in fires of such temperature and intensity that their fire-seared trunks looked like they had been coated with shiny black lacquer. Fire had smoldered in the great mattresses of dead needles that once carpeted the entire forest floor, and when I used a tire iron to root deep into the burned earth, I found that fire had festered into its thick mattresses of pine needles to depths of eight and ten inches. Goose Lake was now encircled with skeletal lodgepoles that had been killed and charred by fire, although damselflies were still emerging from its shallow margins, swimming ashore to climb the blackened deadfalls and split their nymphal skins.
The scars were much worse beyond the lake.

Compare to cancer as above and to the poem words "Tarry scant": the word tarry could also mean covered by tar in addition to its more common interpretation of delay.

I reached the river and simply sat in the car, staring at its crippled forests with tears in my eyes, remembering the circling seasons I had enjoyed in these uncommon meadows. There were decades of happy memories from this place. I had shared a number of wonderful picnics at Feather Lake with old friends like the late John Hemingway, the late John Daniel Callaghan, and Bud Lilly. I particularly remember awakening from a post-lunch nap on the lodgepole bench at Feather to find Hemingway looking upstream toward the geyser plumes at Midway.
"Know what's wrong with this place?" Hemingway said with a sigh.
"No," I confessed.
"We don't own it," he said.
The narrow trace and cul-de-sac were no longer sheltered in a theatrical corridor of lodgepoles and big ponderosas, and a place of remarkable beauty had been utterly sacrificed and lost. The Firehole still flowed under the fire-blackened bench, a glittering necklace of bright water, with great billows of steam still rising from the geyser basin upstream. I had shared this place with a long parade of people across more than fifty years, and the morning was filled with echoes. I left the car and was surprised by the silence. There were no birds, no brash camp robbers arrived to beg for table scraps, and no skittish chipmunks scuttled across the forest floor. There was nothing for buzzards to scavenge, and no voles to interest circling hawks. The pale September sky was empty. Wind stirred in the blackened snags, which groaned and creaked. The meadow had offered some remarkable sport over the years, and I had hoped to fish, but there was no thought of fishing now.
I drove slowly back along the washboard trace toward Ojo Caliente, through its fire-scarred mausoleum of trees, as a big storm was starting to gather and build along the Pitchstone Ridge. Its conifers had also been ravaged as the wildfires crossed into the Firehole watershed, leaving its summits a raw wasteland of charred earth and gritty ash. The sun had quickly surrendered to an ominous gunmetal sky, and as the storm finally broke along its battlements, immense clouds of loose soil and ash billowed high into the darkening gloom. Such spiraling squalls of silt and windmilling ash would eventually reach the little Firehole itself, and further despoil its hyaline currents. I suddenly understood how profoundly its watershed had been changed.
And it utterly broke my heart.

😪
Footnote 6 on page 735 is revealing. It reads:

There is much credible evidence that these fires had begun outside Yellowstone Park, in the Absaroka headwaters of the Yellowstone in the Shoshone National Forest, and in the Teton National Forest north of Jackson Hole. The fires were fought on national forest tracts, but firefighters were withdrawn once the fires entered the national park itself. The fires were permitted to burn inside the national park for short-term political purposes, because 1988 was an election year. Our natural-fire policy had actually emerged under Presidents Nixon and Ford, and was based on sound forest science, but its application became a regional political issue when both Nathaniel Pryor Reed and Cecil Andrus refused to extinguish a number of controversial fires on federal land. Political opponents fought the Yellowstone fires aggressively outside the national park because the blazes had apparently begun in campfires and lightning strikes on the national forests. Firefighters had been deployed while these fires were still burning on tracts of commercial saw timber, but were stopped once the fires had crossed into Yellowstone. Some of the worst damage occurred on the Firehole and Thoroughfare, and these fires were not fought until they threatened park installations at Canyon and Fishing Bridge, and the historic art sauvage hotel located at Old Faithful. Andrus was no longer Secretary of the Interior when I met him, but during an interview in his office at Boise, I sought his opinion of the Yellowstone fires. Andrus still believed that the bipartisan natural-fire policy had been supported by good science, and pointed out that more than twenty petrified forests within park boundaries suggest that Yellowstone had survived worse destruction, although that perspective is little comfort to anglers who will never again enjoy the pristine Madison and Firehole of recent memory. He agreed that Yellowstone itself was not large enough to protect its aggregate ecosystem, and further conceded that a zealotry that had continued to advocate natural-fire policy in the worst drought summer in recorded history had perhaps been unwise. But he shook his head over the political tactics of appointees in the Forest Service, who had protected tracts of commercial saw timber while later permitting the Yellowstone itself to burn, and had further attempted to discredit the Carter Administration during the election of 1980.

From TToTC page 26: "One day my father gave me a spanking at school for running across some stupid desks, then that night he gave me a spanking at home because I got a spanking at school. The more I thought about that the more I felt put upon. When I explained to him that I'd been double jeopardized he told me that those things didn't count in a dictatorship. That's when I started to mistrust governments."
From TToTC page 147: "Now I feel that my father is sitting on the edge of a cloud somewhere watching. If he knows everything about me he's pretty busy lighting candles, some of them on both ends. But I hope he knows that I've been sometimes guilty only by innuendo, and that's why I wrote my epitaph with such profundity: I wish I could have lived to do, the things I was attributed to."
In 2009, the FBI raided Fenn and several other art dealers – and alleged looters – of Native American artifacts in the Southwest. The raid resulted in the confiscation of just four items from Fenn (none of which could be proven as having been obtained by him illicitly).
https://www.sfreporter.com/news/coverstories/2009/08/19/stealing-the-past/
This was more than just a nuisance … Fenn's reputation had been impugned and two other dealers who were arrested after the raids committed suicide. These guys were likely people he knew or may have even been his friends. A third man arrested in the case also committed suicide; he was a government informant who essentially helped the federal agents entrap the Four Corners dealers.
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/dealer-blame-fbi-for-seller-suicides-in-four-corners-looting-case/article_f8613507-1b71-513a-ba21-43a6b0622c0b.html
Fenn was supposedly very angry and threatened Tony Dokoupil with legal action when the reporter spoke with old "pothunting" acquaintances and revealed some unsavory information about Fenn's artifact-collecting past, for example: "... Fenn wasn't just taking a treasure or two but returning to caves and stripping them clean …" In the end, the publicity of appearing in Newsweek magazine at such an early stage in the treasure hunt must have overridden Fenn's desire to keep some of those things that he "was attributed to" under wraps.
https://www.newsweek.com/forrest-fenn-wants-you-find-his-treasure-and-his-bones-64427
The FBI raids – based on purchases of artifacts by a government informant using government money to entice dealers to specifically sell him contraband, and which were conducted by multi-agency SWAT teams – were highly controversial for many locals. No doubt Fenn was pissed off at the Feds more than ever at that point. Despite the epitaph he wrote for himself, he certainly did not want to be remembered as "the old guy in Santa Fe raided by the FBI".
Less than a year later, he published his memoir with its treasure hunt poem. Little chance the timing was just a coincidence.
Finally, does anybody find it intriguing that Fenn rarely if ever talked about the 1988 fire in Yellowstone? It happened the same year he got cancer (or did it?), and he talked plenty about that personal ordeal. The fire and its aftereffects utterly destroyed some of his most cherished places where he had fished for trout and melded with nature since he was a young boy, including his (probably) favorite fishing hole at TOP SECRET "Nine-Mile" and not to mention the magical wood on the far bank of the river with its secluded crystal pond to which he would have gone alone and sat under pine trees, napping, daydreaming, watching wildlife, marveling at the mountain and river vistas, and writing poems or love notes to his wife. Yet not a peep from him about the conflagration that ravaged all of that? Curious.

Today's map: Outaouais-Eastern Ontario by Billi-Michaud (★★ / 1k+)

Link to the challenge here Deadline: June 7, 12.50 am UTC (June 6, 8.50 pm in Eastern Ontario and Outaouais)
Hello! Today I drew a regional map from Canada. It features an area at the border between Ontario and Québec: on one side, we have Eastern Ontario, the easternmost part of Canada's most populous province- the chunk of province where national capital Ottawa is located alongside cities such as Kingston and Pembroke; on the other side, Outaouais is the region of western Québec across the Ottawa River from the capital, centered on the city of Gatineau. No photospheres, good luck!
There were five perfect scores in yesterday's Madrid map- well done to daniblonds, fbrasseur, giorgeauws_, MDspaceman and solarsensei. With this result, the latter clinched the weekly classification and is now also the lone leader in the June rankings.
always remember to post your score in this thread if you want it to count towards the leaderboards!
Weekly leaderboard (May 29 - June 4)

solarsensei	5	1	0
giorgeauws_	3	2	1
fbrasseur	3	1	0
MDspaceman	3	0	1
gobluetwo	2	1	1
Milyly	2	0	0
ParticularAirport217	1	1	1
exohugh	1	1	0
daniblonds	1	0	0
Davey1473	1	0	0
GeoFogg	1	0	0
rtlewis123	0	0	1

Monthly leaderboard (June)

solarsensei	3	0	0
giorgeauws_	2	1	1
MDspaceman	2	0	0
Milyly	2	0	0
ParticularAirport217	1	1	1
fbrasseur	1	1	0
gobluetwo	1	1	0
daniblonds	1	0	0

Recent winners

May 29	South Carolina	solarsensei	24312
May 30	Costa Coffee's	Davey1473, fbrasseur, GeoFogg, giorgeauws_, gobluetwo, MDspaceman, solarsensei	25000
May 31	Japan Toyama 富山県 NIIKAWA 新川広域圏	exohugh, fbrasseur	25000
June 1	Province du Luxembourg [Belgique/Belgium]	Milyly	25000
June 2	An Urban World Nick Edition	giorgeauws_, gobluetwo, solarsensei	25000
June 3	American Horror Story Filming Locations	MDspaceman, Milyly, ParticularAirport217, solarsensei	25000
June 4	Comunidad de Madrid	daniblonds, fbrasseur, giorgeauws_, MDspaceman, solarsensei	25000

Hello there! My name is Ariel. I’m 42, queepan and nonbinary (they/them,) and am seeking an older or mixed group that’s queer and trans friendly. I’m a writer with an academic background in film and media studies, so narrative storytelling is one of my great loves. I put a lot of work into designing my characters and making them feel like real, complex human beings (or human-adjacent, as the case may be.) Typically I will design them with an eye towards conceptual symbolism, because I love to play with subtext and semiotics.
As a player, I strive to be kind, thoughtful, respectful and engaged. I care a great deal about the boundaries and agency of my fellow players and DM, and would expect the same consideration in return. A campaign that uses safety tools, such as lines and veils or a consent checklist, is always a huge plus for me. I personally prefer darker and more serious campaigns where roleplay is prioritized and realistic choices (and consequences) are encouraged. I don’t have too many limits when it comes to content, but I do ask that my DM (and fellow players) be mindful of the manner in which things are portrayed. Sensitive topics can either add valuable nuance and catharsis to a story, or come off as cringy and offensive, depending on the subtext and skill with which they are handled.
I’ve been playing and DMing 5e pretty consistently for a couple of years now, and would consider myself comfortable with the system, though not yet an expert. I love to RP, and I love the process of gradually getting to know the other characters in the party. I love the way characters grow and change over time, revealing more and more of themselves through the course of the campaign. I love having a DM who makes space for RP and is just as enthusiastic about our characters as we are. I love being a part of a group that values cooperative storytelling; where everyone brings their own unique narrative thread to the campaign, but no one is trying to tell their story in isolation. Ideally, by engaging with and building off of each other, we would weave our stories together into a kind of living, breathing tapestry.
I’m located in CDT (GMT-5.) I currently DM a game of Call of the Netherdeep on Fridays, and Thursdays are a bit iffy for me, but every other evening is potentially available. An ideal session length for me would be 3-4 hours.
I am most interested in playing the following:
-Curse of Strahd (first choice)
-Rime of the Frostmaiden
-Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
-Journeys through the Radiant Citadel
-Tomb of Annihilation
-The Wild Beyond the Witchlight (I have DMed this previously)
-Narrative based Homebrew games (especially if they’re set in Exandria, Ravenloft or a well-developed homebrew setting.)
I understand that the odds are not in my favor in terms of finding a campaign this way, but I figured I’d give it a shot. I personally believe that no RP is better than bad RP, so I will only consider groups that genuinely feel like a good fit.
If you’re a DM who thinks I might be a good addition to your table, I’d love to hear from you! I’d be happy to fill out an application or answer any additional questions you might have.

To Whom it may concern, With the amount of disclosure and whistle blowing going on I feel compelled to share information as it was shared to be from my Grandmother before she passed away. NAME REMOVED (MJP) was my grandmother and served as a GS13 Civilian Employee with the Air Force at Wright Patterson Airforce Base. She referred to herself as The Author of the Air Force Inventory Control System. Her initials MJP appeared on every line of code that she either wrote or approved which was later discovered to be nearly 70% of all the COBOL code in the system. Her status and position within the Inventory Control System gave her access to many top secret details including Nuclear Arms Details, Aircraft Capabilities, Base Locations, etc... She once recounted a story during the Vietnam war about a plane that went missing that was carrying Nuclear Warheads. The entire pentagon (as she recalled) was worried because the plane was lost and they were worried that the technology could fall into the wrong hands. She was watching a nation news update on the war and they were reporting from a runway in Vietnam. The reporter was talking about how the rains had created so much mud that planes could no longer take off and they were stuck. In the background she noticed the tail number of the missing aircraft sitting there in a background shot of the camera and picked up the phone and called the Pentagon from her home phone. She was connected to the appropriate General and told him that she found thier missing plane and that the pilots were probably drunk somewhere not realizing that everyone is looking for them. (This is not the story I am wanting to share but rather an attempt to establish credibility and the status of my Grandmother within the Air Force). When I was 16 years old I spent a summer living with my grandmother. I lived there for just under 90 days, it was only the 2 of us. I spent many days board and besides trying to learn to play her organ and talking to my girlfriend long distance on the phone, I had lots of time to kill. While looking for movies I found a box of home recorded VCR tapes that were all about UFOs. I asked my Grandmother why she had all these recording and she told me that she was very interested in what people were reporting about UFO and she would try to record most of what she saw on TV on the topic. I asked her if there was anything interesting and she replied that she thought it was all interesting that's why she recorded it. I spent many hours watching through her box of recordings and eventually watched one about all the weird coincidences about Wright Patterson Airforce Base. Because I knew she worked there I asked her about it. Besides saying that there were always rumors that there were hidden "Layers" on the base and that she always remembered that tons of civilians worked on the base and that no one really knew what everyone doing (herself included). She recalled (just as the VCR Recording had just discussed) that there were rumors that companies were taking items off the base to research them. She talked about how her inventory had every asset the Air Force had and she had detailed information and that she struggled to see how people could remove items without her knowing, but she did know that there were secrets. She had some items in the inventory that had no additional information and just serial numbers. Those items most of the time would have locations associated with it, but they would move at times from base to base without proper transport information. When my uncle died many years later I went to her home for the funeral. During that time period I was asked to spend a day with her while everyone else worked out the funeral details. She was deep in thought as you can imagine after loosing a son and she began to tell me her life story. I'll skip to the Air Force Part. She started as a secretary but had very high eval scores and she would volunteer for any special project when they asked for her help. The first special project was to help standardize an inventory system for the punch cards that were being used in the mid 50s, shortly after they switched to magnetic reel and needed a new inventory system for that as well. Additionally they would receive computer updates on the telegraph machine. Not Morse Code but instead binary. They had an evaluation with the secretaries on accuracy of transferring the print outs of the telegraph binary into the computing machines. She was selected as one of the girls that would take the print outs and re input them into the computers. She realized that it was faster and more accurate to transfer the code if she read it like we read English and then just retype the English back into binary into the system. Worked like a charm. She was reading binary on a daily basis in the same way that anyone else would read the New York Times. Most of what she was reading was computer nonsense but the translation into letters made her very fast and accurate. She eventually became the head of computer storage inventory cataloguing all the reels and storing them in storage facilities. When the Air Force decided to turn their entire inventory into a digital system instead of a paper system she was selected with several other women to learn COBOL, a new computing language. After all the women were taught the new language her scores were the highest plus she already had experience in leading during the inventory management work she was already doing so they chose her to be the team lead. Her and that group of women would go on to write the first digital database for the Air Force. Their daily code would be sent out a night to 2 other bases (California and Virginia I believe) and those bases would build simultaneous software databases that later would receive nightly transmissions to keep them up to date with each other. She said that no one knew the Air Force inventory like her. She would be the one that pulled the data from the database and send it to the Pentagon for all the updates. She shared a funny story about how when Nixon was giving a State of the Union address he was giving an update about the Vietnam war and he started feeding false information. The Air Force losses were way higher then what he stated and she jumped up and started screaming and the TV that he was a lier, because she created the report for the president and she new what the real number were. Then after awhile she couldn't figure out who was lying. Was it the President? Or was it someone between her and the President? She went on to say that she new that there were secret bases and that there were item in inventory that someone was hiding what the items actually were. She couldn't understand that if she knew exactly how many nuclear bombs the Air Force had and exactly where they were located then what would they need to keep more secret then that. She suspected that it was aliens. There were rumors all over the base that the military had aliens and alien technology. That the loads of civilians on the base were working to crack the code on alien technology so that humans could use it, but she never had proof. On 2 different occasions she was asked to go to a private briefing room at Wright Patt. These were two different rooms in two different locations. The first time, the room had a wall filled with "Televisions" but they were the biggest Televisions she had ever seen. This was in the 60s and she had never experienced anything like it. They were also in Color. She noticed that the wall did not seem thick enough to hold all these TVs but that she was positive it was not a projector. Another time she went into a room and the briefing started on what can best be described as a white board. She said they often used chalk boards and she was very familiar with what a chalk board looked like. This one was different. For starters it wasn't the typical color of a chalk board and it didn't make the right noise when the person was writing. Later the instructor flipped over the board and said that they were going to watch a film. The other side of the board played a movie like she was at the theater. She looked around for a projector or at least the light of the lens and she couldn't find one. In the Late 90s when she got her first LCD TV she knew she had seem something like it before and couldn't believe that she now had alien technology in her house. While she was coding she had a routine. She would write code for 15 minutes then get up from her desk, light a cigarette and walk to the breakroom to refill her coffee. She would then take a lap and go back to her desk all of that took her about 10 minutes. She was in the breakroom so much that she got to know everyone in the building. She also told me that she was a lonely woman (her husband had died) and she secretly wished that one of the men would show interest in her, but she said no one did. This is the point of the story and I am missing a detail that I wish I remembered but I don't. One day she was in the breakroom one of her friends from the base was there and had a look on her face like something was terribly wrong. My Grandmother said that when you work for the government you learn to never ask questions, but the woman just looked offaul and maybe her mother had died or something and so my grandmother asked it she was okay. The Woman told my grandmother "Don't you know Jeanie (her nickname), The last one died today." My Grandmother said she kept on her poker face but had no idea what the woman was talking about. The woman continue "It's okay Jeanie we can talk about it. I know who you are, I know your clearance, I know that nothing happens here that you aren't aware of. The last alien died today. We have so much more that we want to learn." My Grandmother just sipped her coffee and said "I haden't heard." Then walked out the door. She went on to say that she was too scared to ever talk about it. She gave me the exact date of the conversation but I have sadly forgotten the date. She stated that after that she feared for her life. She didn't know how many more secrets she could keep. The government was constantly asking her to give them information and then doing coverups. This was during the Vietnam war and everything was very stressful. The stress was killing her and she started to develop ulcers. The ulcers eventually became chronic and she was forced into disability in 1976. She said that she learned to never trust what the government wants us to believe and that aliens are real. She also said she believed that companies were using alien technology to make all the advancements that we have now. She then pointed to items in her house like her TV and her laptop and said we couldn't have done all this without help. I know this is just a story but it's a true story from my life.

I (34F) have so many insecurities that I battle on a daily basis. My first high school boyfriend was very VERY emotionally and physically abusive towards me. Being so young and naive, I didn’t know any better- I thought “it’ll get better”, “I’ll act how he wants and I won’t be hit or I won’t be told I’m ugly”. I remember one day I helped his family string up Christmas lights and where his bedroom window was located, it was easy to get on the roof and put the lights. As he was directing me, he got angry that I wasn’t doing exactly what he wanted so he came up, out the window, grabbed and yanked me so hard that he sprained my wrist. Eventually with the help of my best friends, I got out and I’m better for it.
Fast forward yearssss later, I’m getting out of a marriage that made me so unhappy and I started seeing someone who is completely different in every way possible. The feelings are different, the connection and communication are different. We just click and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. He’s a wonderful man, inside and out. He’s hardworking, dedicated and I swear I question everyday why someone like him would ever in this real world want to be with me. I’m lucky to have such a thoughtful man in my life. So much so I’m scared to think of what life would be like without him.
Now I’ve known this man for 14 years, he’s been in my life all this time and I HATE that he was right there in front of me and I was too blind to see. Touching on my insecurities again, they are a battle which he’s helped me through tremendously. He doesn’t know everything about my past, including my first boyfriend. I’m grateful for him putting in the effort to help me feel good about myself mentally and physically but even while I’m with him, I just don’t feel good enough for him. I don’t feel deserving of a man like him and I don’t know how to get past that.

Company: CoinList
Location: Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Antarctica Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Belarus Belgium Benin Bhutan Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island British Indian Ocean Territory Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Central African Republic Chad China Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Comoros Congo Congo, The Democratic Republic of the Cook Islands Croatia Curaçao Cyprus Czechia Côte d'Ivoire Denmark Djibouti Egypt Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Guadeloupe Guam Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Heard Island and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Caledonia New Zealand Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island North Macedonia Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Palestine, State of Papua New Guinea Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Réunion Saint Barthélemy Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Saint Martin (French part) Saint Pierre and Miquelon Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Sint Maarten (Dutch part) Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Svalbard and Jan Mayen Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tokelau Tonga Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Minor Outlying Islands Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vietnam Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Åland Islands 📍
Date Posted: June 02, 2023 📅
Apply & Description 👉 https://jobboardsearch.com/redirect?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=bot&utm_id=jobboarsearch&utm_term=himalayas.app&rurl=aHR0cHM6Ly9oaW1hbGF5YXMuYXBwL2NvbXBhbmllcy9jb2lubGlzdC9qb2JzL3Nlbmlvci1zb2Z0d2FyZS1lbmdpbmVlci04NDg5NTY2NTA=