Check out the link for 20% Off Budget Car Rentals Coupon & Promo Code. Once on the website, you'll have access to a variety of Budget Car Rentals coupons, promo codes, and discount deals that are updated regularly to help you save on your purchase.

Before i start my very large rant, I would just like to say, I love my parents and am grateful for everything they have done for me HOWEVER, I just can’t seem to add up the remnants of my past 18 years. Okay, so where do I begin ? I’m 19 this year and I don’t think I can handle the constant loop of unproductive days followed by waiting for what seems to be FOREVER to go to bed to avoid everything. I was a bright kid who talked using dramatic gestures and the people loved me. I’m not sure what happened but I then became this extremely shy kid who had major separation anxiety/social anxiety. I cried during my first year of school and cried for many more years. I loathed the idea of being around other kids and demanding teachers for 7 hours and I never woke up without trying to find a way to call in sick until i was in 10th grade. I’m lonely, I feel sad and jealous seeing others at the shops. Eventually, I feel as though I’ve transcended into a void. I feel numb. Growing up, I had friends, some that left quickly others that were my friends for many years. I always felt left out . My parents are religious but aren’t strict upon it to a large extent. They did, however, use religion to deprive me of what would have made many childhood experiences and memories. I was allowed to go out with friends, maybe twice in my life without supervision , the other four with my parents being there. I begged for a phone and got one in high school but wasn’t allowed to message or call any of my friends ( I lived near my school, so the phone wasn’t really of any use ). My life consisted of going to school, then back home. Any outings had to be with family. I never face timed , or went to houses. I never watched any popular shows or movies because any show/movie that involved human actors was deemed inappropriate by my mother so I was never able to relate with any of my friends. My friends often told me that I probably didn’t consider them as friends since I “never wanted to hang out”. In reality, I didn’t want to make my parents look bad and simply told my friends that I didn’t have time to go to their plans. My 14 year old sister stays in her room all day with the door closed, when I until now have someone barge in on me. I always told to get out of my room and be with family so I basically lived in the living room. Remember the COVID-19 lockdown? I did all my zoom meetings in the living room when I had a perfectly spacious room. My father told me that he liked this new house better because everyone is together. No double storeys to keep people separated and the rooms are all near each other. After graduating high school, I thought I would become a more improved version of myself in uni ( college, whatever you want to call it ) but boy was I gullible. I got my learners license 3 years ago but I don’t have my license because : 1- Anxiety 2- I saw no point in having one. It’s not like I was going places. I made all my classes online except for one day on campus. Despite all of my parent’s friends asking why I didn’t take the bus or train, whenever I brought up their comments, my parents would answer for me. “ Oh but you’ll be scared since you’ve never used public transport. You’ll be so lost or even miss your train!” True but I’m not scared. So my mum offered to drive me there. Getting ready, she’d tell me not to wear baggy clothes because it didn’t look nice. She’d also comment on how certain things made me look like a ball ( thanks to that extra 15kgs lockdown gave me ). Then she’d tell me to wear something different in case people notice that my pants were the same as last time. Then, she’d ask why I used my own shade of foundation, I needed a lighter one because fair skin looks nicer than tanned. She’d finally end up wearing something that looks like all her other black coloured clothing and we’d drive off.Around 40 minutes away, she decides to stay at uni since there’s no point in driving all the way back. I definitely didn’t enjoy it when she walked with me all the way to my class on the first day. Or when I have to walk back to the units coffee shop to meet my mum and walk back to the car together. Don’t get me wrong, its lovely spending time with parents but being privileged plus being heavily dependent on your parents gives other the impression that you’re an ignorant and spoilt snob. Or you’d get made fun of for not knowing how the outside world works. She makes sure to emphasise how she never has time because she always has to take the kids to school and take me to uni. Anyways, then I’d go back home, try to study with all the noise, end up wasting my entire day making empty promises to myself and have nothing done. Then at around 10-11pm, mum would announce that she’s tired and when she’s tired, we have to give her all of our electronics ( phone, iPad, laptop, switch, everything ). Then I’d have to wait until she waked up in the morning until I get my things back and thankfully she charged the phone but oh god she forgot the iPad this time, looks like lectures will have to be watched later. Nowadays, she tells me that I can keep my IPad /laptop with me until late so that I can study. I refuse each time. Why? I don’t enjoy pity. So now I sit here, not doing my skincare, not happy with my weight, no motivation to study, not bothered to complete simple tasks such as making my own bed, not going out with friends despite my parents getting mad and telling me that they aren’t stopping me from doing so. Well, surprise surprise, I’m pretty sure that none of my friends message me anymore since I never put in the time for them. Now, I watch my 14 year old sister FaceTiming and messaging all her friends. I look back and see my 9 year old sister FaceTiming her friends on her iPad, playing Roblox together. It’s messing me up and I sure as heck am jealous. My parents do love me but all of this pointing out my flaws, treating me like a child, not allowing me to be able to grasp a single fragment of a childhood memory really has turned me into this miserable, anger consumed person. I need to learn to suppress certain feelings while emphasising others. E.g. I could be so emotionally driven, anything would make me cry ( children’s movie, celebrities being cheered at, etc ) but I also can’t tell the difference between nervousness and anxiety. When I see my mother or sister cry, I feel awkward, sometimes annoyed. I’m not moved yet I remember what I need to do in steps and I only take action out of guilt so step one, see if they need to be alone, step two coax them, step three move in for a hug and so on. SO so sorry for this rant, was never given psychological help so I’ve kept most of my problems to myself. This would only accumulate to a quarter of my issues. Any advice is greatly appreciated !
P.s - I can’t move out ( religious reasons ) and I’ve never ignored my parents as it would make them fume with rage so I can’t do either of the two.

People wish to rent an ideal vehicle for a special occasion to show personality and elegance. If you are looking for the best vehicle, you can opt for a Fortuner. Bride and groom family members often demand Fortuner on rent for marriage for a different purpose. When traveling with such a car, the passenger feels great heaven on wheels. You can rent it at an affordable price only from the rental agency. They arrange the best car that accommodates guests comfortably.

Nanda Devi Adventure Resort Auli

Hotel location - near Car Parking, Auli, Auli Laga Joshimath, Uttarakhand 246443
Call now - 7500101155, 01352680927, 7895254355
#resortinauli
#aulibestresort
#budgethotelinauli

Hi all looking for legal advice on how to handle this bizarre situation that happened today.
My dad found someone’s pet parrot hanging around in a random parking lot. He assumed it was a lost pet, put it in his car, and took it to a vet to see if they could find the owner. He eventually had to call animal control to take the bird.
While he was waiting for animal control, the police showed up at my family’s home and asked if the owner of a blue Toyota was at the home (the car my dad was driving around with the bird). My brother asked if it was about the parrot and they said yes. We let them know the situation and apparently there was a video of my dad picking up the parrot from a security cam near the parking lot he found the bird at and the owner reported his pet was stolen. My brother let them know that our dad was waiting on animal control to come take the bird but they told us not to wait for animal control and to just bring it down to the sheriff’s office. The cops were laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation as were we. We let our dad know and he went to the sheriffs office to drop off the parrot. Once he got there and said he was dropping off the parrot he was arrested. The police told him the owner wanted to press charges. My dad is currently still in jail waiting to be released and it looks like he will have to go to court.
What the hell are we supposed to do here? Do we need to hire an attorney? Would he be protected by any Good Samaritan laws? The dude was just trying to help someone find their lost parrot and now he has to spend tonight in jail.
This is in California btw.

The Critic
Alastor Vyle was an empty, pathetic, mediocre man with an inflated ego. He was the type of bully who avoided introspection by criticizing others. In particular, he liked to criticize creative people. He had never produced anything creative himself, but he took satisfaction from tearing down the work of others. He would pretend to have high standards and superior knowledge, but really he had very little idea of what he was talking about. If his opinions failed to match reality, it didn't matter to him, because constructive criticism was never the point. It was always about hurling insults and accusations at another person until he destroyed their self confidence. His narcissism made him feel like making someone else give up on their passions somehow granted him a victory. Every time he broke someone down, his greatest hope was that they would commit suicide, so his insults were always aimed directly at destroying his victim's self worth.
Maybe Alastor's failure as a human being was rooted in his relationship with his abusive father, or perhaps it stemmed from the fact that his mother had taken methamphetamines more than a couple of times while she was pregnant with him. In any case, he had failed to learn basic respect for others. He was always concerned only for himself, his own reputation as a dominant man, and his own secret feelings of inadequacy. So, maybe that's why he missed the signs that he should have simply avoided confrontation with his last victim.
There are some creative people who are constantly worried about whether their art will be appreciated by other people. For them, harsh criticism can be devastating. These unfortunate ones have a tendency to elevate the worth of a critic's opinion, and let it shape their own decisions. They were Alastor's favorite targets. But, there is another type of creative person; the one that knows precisely what he is doing, and understands how to shape his own intentions, to shape reality to his own ends. This kind of man is never anyone else's prey. This kind of man ought never to be provoked, especially by some narcissistic blowhard with no skills of his own.
Alastor had been having a bit of a rough day. His supervisor at the box factory where he worked had told him that his performance was unsatisfactory, and if it didn't improve quickly, Alastor would be looking for another job. Then, the barista that he liked to hit on, at the coffee shop he always stopped at on the way home, told him in no uncertain terms that she was not interested in him. She insisted that she was never interested, would never be interested, and would report him to the authorities if he persisted in harassing her. He was in a foul mood when he arrived at his apartment. He wanted to let off some steam, to push down all those prickly feelings of failure. Briefly, he considered taking his baseball bat behind the building and finding an alley cat or possum to beat to death, but he had nearly been caught doing that just the week before. Internet trolling seemed the more attractive option. He sat back in his gaming chair and powered up the computer, then logged on to a website for amateur writers. Alastor had been a member of the site for more than two years, but had never contributed a single story. That wasn't why he was there. It was just his hunting ground.
He spent an hour or so downvoting perfectly fine stories by first time authors, leaving them nasty little critiques with no specific details. It felt good to him, but didn't really settle his rage as much as he wanted. For that, he wanted something bigger, that he could really chew up. After some more searching, he came across an unusually long story that seemed a bit more quirky than some of the others. It was a tale of ritual magic gone wrong, and the dense prose seemed almost to be a warning to the reader. Alastor didn't bother reading it all. Actually reading anything gave him a headache, and if it wasn't about him, it wasn't worth it. He just skimmed through the paragraphs looking for something to attack. He noted that the author seemed to make liberal use of common tropes, the style being an homage to the entire weird fiction milieu. He chuckled coldly to himself, having found his angle of assault. The review that he left was vicious, claiming the story to be a stupid, gross, waste of time. He made wild accusations of everything from plagiarism to slapping together a hodgepodge of nothings. He heaped on every insult he could think of, gleefully imagining the harm he was hoping to do to the author. When he was done, he read it through, out loud to himself, and laughed. He pressed the send button and closed the page. Then he moved on to his favorite porn site to celebrate.
An hour later, he noticed that he had received a notification from the writing website. He sneered. This ought to be good for a laugh, he thought. He clicked the message open. It was a short paragraph, from the author of the story Alastor had mocked. The language was strange to him, still English, but with many archaic words and phrases. The gist of it seemed to be something about balancing a scale and removing an obstacle or impediment of some kind, and that was it. He couldn't derive any further meaning from it. He didn't know how to respond, so he simply sent a derisive laughter emoji, and went to bed. It was unsettling, though, for some reason. Alastor did not sleep well.
The next morning did not see an improvement in his mood, or his luck. His cup of coffee tasted strange, and when he went to change out the grounds, he found the chamber full of cockroaches. Disgusted, he angrily tossed the whole coffeemaker into the trash can. He decided to go to work without coffee, or breakfast. When he got out to his car, the entire windshield was coated in bird excrement. A hundred or so starlings sat cackling on the electrical wires over the street. He flipped them an obscene gesture. Alastor didn't have time to wash the car properly. He just used the windshield spray and wipers, which made a smeary mess before running out of fluid. Cursing with every choice word he knew, he got out and wiped the driver's portion of windshield with a used fast food napkin that he found in the crack of the passenger seat. The drive to work was more stressful than usual. It didn't get much better after he arrived. From the moment he clocked in, his boss was riding him hard, and Alastor wasn't feeling up to dealing with it. By lunchtime, he was wound up tight. The supervisor made one more disparaging comment, and Alastor snapped. His screaming fit of rage could be heard throughout the building. The dirtiness of the names he called that man was almost eloquent. Naturally, he was fired on the spot, and escorted to his car by security.
He screamed obscenities non stop, as he drove away, for the next three minutes. Still seething, he decided to stop at his usual coffee shop. The line wasn't long, so he started to relax, just a tiny bit. When it was his turn, he stepped up to the counter and ordered a tall black coffee with a cheese danish, without looking at the barista. He heard a muffled sound, and looked at her. It was the same girl that he usually hit on, and she was looking at him with disgust. Belatedly, he remembered what she had told him about leaving her alone. He should've gone somewhere else for his coffee, but now it was too late. He told her that he hadn't known she would be there, and to just get him his blasted coffee. He couldn't keep the stress and anger out of his voice. The next thing he knew, he was being pulled away from the counter by a very large, very strong, security guard. Soon after, the police arrived. They talked to the barista, her manager, and the security guard, all within ten minutes. Then they drove him off to lockup. He kept telling them it was just a mistake, that he hadn't meant any harm, but they were not inclined to listen. When they left him alone in the cell, they didn't even apologize for the bodily filth left by the previous occupant.
Flies buzzed around the cell, dozens of them breeding in the filth. They pestered him all night long, landing on his face, his neck, his hands and arms, biting and buzzing. He slapped at them, but it did no good. As he lay on the bench, hating his life, one of the blasted things flew up his nose. He coughed, spit, snorted, and blew his nose forcefully, trying to expell the cursed thing, but nothing came out other than sputum. He covered his face with his shirt and lay still, resigned to misery for the remainder of the night.
Morning arrived, and Alastor was released before breakfast. He was the incarnation of wretchedness. His car had been impounded, and he spent several hours reclaiming it. When he opened the driver's door, a large rat leapt out and bit his arm. He threw the rat to the ground and stomped on it hard. He lifted his foot for another stomp, but the rat managed to escape. Alastor drove home, not even thinking of going to the hospital for the rat bite. He locked himself in his apartment, filled the tub with hot water, then lowered himself into it's warm, wet embrace, with a cold bottle of beer in one hand, and another sitting on the floor. He tried to relax in the hot water, but his skin was itchy. He scrubbed at himself with bar soap and a loufa. His distracted thoughts kept running back to that weird message from the author. He couldn't remember the words, no matter how he tried. His mind was spinning. He kept thinking about stories he had read, and movies he had seen, wherein the main character realized that he was a work of fiction, and met his author, or something similar. God, there were so many of them. Why were there so many stories about writing that makes reality? What was that about, and why did it deserve to be it's own trope?
The itching was getting worse. Alastor scratched at his chest with his fingernails. The skin felt lumpy, and something was moving underneath. Alastor stared in horror as small lesions began to form all over his exposed skin. Fat white maggots smeared in his blood wriggled out of the lesions, only to immediately bite down into the surrounding flesh. Terrified screams escaped his throat, expelling maggots and sputum onto his chest. Weeping profusely, he tried furiously to wash away the maggots with bathwater. More of them emerged. Thousands more, in rapid succession, eating their way out of his skin until it was gone, and he was horribly alive, watching it all helplessly. The maggots writhed and chewed, devouring muscle and sinew, while Alastor's brain witnessed everything through his untouched eyes. Finally, he realized the truth. It was a curse. The author had written this fate for him, and trapped him in this story by some sort of spell. It was insane, but nothing else could explain all that had happened. He had brought down a curse on himself, with his arrogance, selfishness, and rudeness. It had never occurred to him that someone could hurt him with words on a screen.
Alastor Vyle saw his own end, as a rightful consequence of his hateful words directed at a stranger. Unfortunately for him, he had chosen a stranger that fought back, and had the power to make him pay.

TLDR: This idea will incentivize people to collect trash and properly dispose of it by offering them cryptocurrency tokens and NFTs. The proposal includes ideas for using tracking, photo, live video and potentially augmented reality glasses while ensuring proper disposal or recycling to further incentivize participation.
My attempts to share this idea on Cryptocurrency didn’t gain as much attention as I hoped so I’m trying here. I'm extremely hopeful that discussions about this idea will help bring it into reality. Currently, I do not have the ability or network to make this idea come to life, but maybe someone else does. So any programs/coders please take this and make my dream come true. P.S. I do not personally want to gain any monetary value from this, but I would definitely love to participate in cleaning the world.
The DAO COIN is called Clean World Coin, which is abbreviated as CWC. The TOKEN is called Pick UP People, which is abbreviated as PUP. The NFT is called Garbage Gone Crew, which is abbreviated as GGC. The APP is called Utopia.
My idea is that people will be able to download the app, take pictures or live video of how they are collecting trash, and get paid while doing so, say on foot with "shoes and trash bags". A one-of-a-kind NFT will be created by the team and given to that person. The NFTs will be upgradable and require maintenance through CWC coin to maximize token rewards.
The tokens will be able to be cashed out from the app or exchanged for immediate use. The app could also offer savings incentives to help get upgrades and improve the economy and amount of trash collected. Proper disposal will be required and tracked, with a couple of legitimate ideas in mind, such as pictures and location tracking. In the near future, augmented video glasses could work too. Who knows, maybe the glasses could even carry data on how much trash it has seen and picked up and disposed of properly, and that data/glasses could live on forever cleaning the world.
Another part of this must have recycling and reuse built-in. If trash picked up reaches those locations, rewards will be higher, and the Clean World Coin will help build facilities around the world to ensure this happens. My plan to make things work is that individuals will be paid tokens depending on location, time spent, rigs, efficiency, load size, and how it's disposed.
In high-density areas, people will be able to scan their bags and drop them anywhere for pickup. As the bags pass through the system, they are tracked with QR codes on their way to be properly disposed. Disposal sites will use current technologies and any innovative techniques that align with CWC's standards. Already a lot of cool things are happening, and this should help the process for everyone involved. As the Clean World Coin economy progresses, more efficient technology will be added. The CWC coin could hopefully become its ecosystem that takes care of the world through AI and robotics, but people will definitely be involved in the beginning and possibly build legacies that carry on forever in the CWC community.
Think of all the possibilities on NFT collection rigs, such as shoes, bags, cars, trucks, dump trucks, boats, ocean arrays, scuba gear, particle collectors, "plastic in the air is a problem too", AI robots, and so on. Augmented glasses, I think, will be a big part of this. They could record video/pictures of locations and amounts of trash in real-time and store data for the app. The glasses and even all the NFTs could keep separate data for the NFT that records milestones and could carry on to the next individual or collection rigs and could be synced to any augmented glasses or collection rigs NFT. This would be totally separate from the individual's person when they no longer can collect trash.
The economy of CWC could become so big that trash is no longer a thing, but the value should hold based on the fact that as less trash becomes available to find, the rewards should increase, and there could be more remote trash or new issues the CWC community could take on. Trash is technically the deflationary item that drives up value.
Curbside pickup for households could also be paid, meaning everyone makes money for their trash no matter what, even a mixed bag of trash, but obviously much less tokens and depending on quantity and contents. And if the load is excessive, pay tokens, but at a very reasonable cost.
If someone sorts, cleans, labels, and scans items, they will be rewarded with more tokens based on the quality and quantity of the items. Then, the mixed bag could go to official micro CWC sites that sort and send them to larger recycling/repurposing facilities to receive their share of tokens for the process.
In conclusion, the proposed app that rewards individuals for collecting and disposing of trash through tokens and NFTs, along with recycling and reuse built-in, is an innovative way to encourage responsible waste management and clean up the environment. The use of this app and its ideas can provide real-time data to individuals, making the process more efficient. The Clean World Coin economy has the potential to grow and eventually eliminate trash as a problem, benefiting future generations.

Looking for the best Maruti Suzuki car workshop near you in Jaipur? Look no further than Auric Motors, your trusted Maruti Suzuki Nexa service center. With experienced technicians and state-of-the-art equipment, we offer top-notch maintenance and repair services for your Maruti Suzuki vehicle. Contact us today to schedule your appointment.
​
https://reddit.com/link/125h4ay/video/habf4i6izmqa1/player

Posting here cause I’m not really sure where to ask, and need quick help so I’m sorry if it doesn’t really fit!
For the past couple weeks, my SO and I have been getting increasingly worse headaches (behind the eyes, forehead , temples), mine less intense I think, we’ve both been ridiculously tired and wanting to sleep way too much. I have been extremely irritable, lashing out or snapping at small things that just feel like the last straw, usually in hindsight I feel guilty for overreacting and not staying calm enough to have a conversation or discussion on the issue. I’ve had a cough (dry, tickling, some congestion that’s lesser now, I just assumed I had a cold or something for a couple weeks). I’ve been slightly nauseous for the last several days (not nearly to the point of wanting to throw up, just a consistent mild nausea). Most of the time when I stand up after sitting, I get dizzy, my vision gets spotty or dark for a few seconds, and I have a wave of tingly, lightheadedness, dizziness (I’ve kind of “always” had an issue with this, but normally it’s very quick and not worrisome, like I just stood up too fast) but the last 3-4 days, bad enough that the room spins a bit, and I sometimes have to sit back down to let the dizziness pass. On my part, increasing severity of these symptoms weren’t too noticeable because I’ve been dealing with a lot of stress lately, I just figured I was letting myself get too worked up over everything (wrecked car, struggling to come up with rent money, not being able to find a job, one after another little problem that has to be dealt with, just life honestly) but tonight it occurred to me that I felt similar to when I was living in an old apartment and we found black mold in the walls, after a couple weeks of symptoms. There is a slight possibility that mold could be the issue, but we haven’t seen any, our apartment/shop doesn’t smell musty (a small, one bedroom apartment above two small office rooms that are connected to a large shop that we use for woodworking and similar things, also there’s an attached garage, vents do connect all three areas I think, the only window in the apartment is in the living room, doesn’t open, so it can be stuffy at times, not great insulation so it never seems too bad to me. One interior door in the main shop leads to stairs up to the apartment, an exterior door connects the shop to the other side/garage). Asking about CO poisoning because obviously, the symptoms I mentioned could fit a lot of different things, but I’m not sure what else to check. And probably not very good ventilation, no windows except the one, only one door in the main shop, which usually stays closed since it’s been cold, we’ll open it and the exterior garage door if we need to air it out more, but the ceiling is maybe 20’, with open holes/gaps that need fixed, so there is somewhat consistent air movement. We did have, for several months, a torpedo heater in the shop that we ran diesel in, about two weeks ago, it stopped working and we haven’t had it running since. We do occasionally have vehicles in the garage area, the door is open if they are running, but there is a window ac unit in the wall between the garage and a back room of the shop, and also a vent that connects to upstairs. Any thoughts or suggestions? If it is or is likely carbon monoxide poisoning, what would be the first thing to do to get rid of it? Does carbon monoxide stick around in low levels like that? We both have a relief of symptoms if we’re gone during the day, but we both work out of the shop so it’s not like we’re only here outside of an 8 hour work day. Also, we did (3 days ago) pour epoxy resin on a tabletop, it’s still in the process of curing, so that was another possible cause that we considered, but this would be the second time we’ve done it in a month and neither of us had quite the same symptoms at that time).

Hi all,
My partner and I are planning a west coast USA road trip in August this year. We are 30ish and have never been to the USA before. I am hoping to run this itinerary past some Americans for any feedback or advice as we don't know any here in NZ! Really looking for a sanity check.

• Day 1 - Fly Auckland to San Fransisco then recover from flight.
• Day 2 - San Fran sight seeing. Mainly interested in doing an Alcatraz tour and seeing the Golden Gate Bridge.
• Day 3 - Rent a car and drive to Yosemite. See a few of the easily vehicle accessible sights.
• Day 4 - Full day in Yosemite National Park.
• Day 5 - Drive south to see General Sherman tree and Sequoia National Park, stay in Three Rivers.
• Day 6 - Drive from there to Anaheim. Drop rental car off.
• Day 7 - Full day at Disneyland.
• Day 8 - Full day doing a Los Angeles sight seeing tour.
• Day 9 - Rent another car and drive to Las Vegas. Stay on the strip. Do Las Vegas stuff at night.
• Day 10 - Visit the Hoover Dam and other Las Vegas activities.
• Day 11 - Drive from Las Vegas to Bright Angel Point (north rim Grand Canyon), stay there the night.
• Day 12 - Drive to Bryce Canyon and do some sightseeing. Stay near there.
• Day 13 - Drive to Arches National Park and do some sightseeing. Stay near there.
• Day 14 - Drive to Eagle (CO) because it's about half way to Fort Collins.
• Day 15 - Drive to Fort Collins and visit a strongman expo.
• Day 16 - Attend day 1 of a strongman event.
• Day 17 - Attend day 2 of a strongman event.
• Day 18 - Drive to Denver, drop rental car off, fly back home.

Is there anything listed above that sounds off? We would be super grateful if anyone has any advice or suggestions regarding this itinerary. Thanks so much!

Yesterday i was in Gawal Mandi, near tabarak restaurant allied bank street, i was there for my cars central locking work, suddenly heavy firing started people started running and looking for shelter,
Allah ka shukar hai, Allah ne bacha lya, jaan bach gyi, koi goli ya injury nai aye muje, larai kisi aur ki thi aur public ki jaan khatray me agyi thi,
​
we should be saying shuker everytime, cuz we never know when we are caught in someone else's fight.

This is part 3 of a week long game we started early in the week.
Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/useJamesonRhymecomments/123swtw/about_6_dates_to_marry_first_date_the_picnic_who/
Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/useJamesonRhymecomments/124em91/6_dates_to_marry_second_date_disneyworld_who/)
But to recap, I’m fixing you up on a blind date with 6 people. Each day, you will eliminate the contestant you are least interested in. At the end of the week, we’ll see who democracy has chosen for you.
Yesterday, the sub eliminated Penn.
You called Penn up to break the news, and thankfully they were understanding.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Redditor. I rather enjoyed our chats. You’re a great hang, but I understand. I’ve been single for a while so what’s a little while longer? I’m sure I’ll find the one soon and I hope you do too. Thanks for two great dates- you’re top notch.”
For the third round, your dates are taking you out to someplace that they love and you’ll get to experience a bit of what makes them tick.
Select the person you’d like to eliminate and tomorrow, you will go on a fourth date with the remaining 3 people. You can also revisit the links up top to review the first and second dates if you want to refresh on your previous experience with each of the remaining prospects.

Jessen

“Hey there’s an open window. That’s perfect, let’s go in!”
Jessen leads you through a busted out window into the cement decay of an abandoned building that looks like it hasn’t been inhabited since the 70’s.
“Are you sure this is okay?” you ask.
“Totally! I do this all the time. I love finding new abandoned buildings to explore and see what I find. It’s like modern archeology. My parents don’t know though, so don’t say anything if you meet them.”
“Sure. How did you get into this?”
“Mmm. That parts kinda weird. But long story short, I used to cut myself a lot when I was really depressed. I’d come to places like this because nobody was here. But don’t worry, that’s all in my past now. These days I just explore and mess around. You can throw a brick at a wall or break a window and who cares. It’s just fun. Wanna try it? Take this rock and throw it at anything.”
“Uh…ok.”
You take the rock and half-heartedly throw it at a cinema poster on the wall.
“See. Who cares, right? Wasn’t that fun?” Jessen then walks over and kicks a small filing cabinet over.
“Take that, you stupid filing cabinet!” Jessen says laughing. “I’ve been trying to learn to look at the bright parts of life. But sometimes it feels good to kick over a filing cabinet.”
You guys spend an hour or so there talking about life. You learn that Jessen is a receptionist at a dentist’s office, but doesn’t really like the job, but also doesn’t know what else they’d do. Money is not an issue because they live at home and their parents cover a lot. So for now, Jessen is just killing time in life.

Brux

You’ve found yourself at a nice park on the outskirts of town. Sitting on a bench facing a large green area, Brux hands you some fabric and a needle and begins teaching you how to knit.
“It’s a little tricky at first, but you’ll get the hang of it,” Brux assures.
“So you knit here a lot?”
“When I can. It’s super peaceful and I like the fresh air.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m surprised you’re into knitting. You don’t seem like one of those fashion-obsessed types.”
Brux smirks lightly. “You calling me a slob?”
“No, no, I-“
“Relax, I know you didn’t mean anything by it. Some things are more about the process than the result.”
“I guess you have a ‘point’ there!” you say, making a mock stabbing gesture toward Brux with your needle. But in a flash, Brux drops everything, grabs your needle hand, bending it behind your back, and shoves your torso toward your knees. After a second, they release their grip and apologize profusely.
“I’m so sorry!! It was a total reflex, I didn’t mean to do that! Please forgive me,” Brux says with a heavy blush as they help you back upright.
“Okay sure…but you need to tell me what’s up. Last time we met, you Houdini’d my wallet out of my pocket without me ever feeling a thing. Today you Bruce Lee’d me into a pretzel in the space of one second. I get that it was a reflex, but not a lot of people have that reflex. What’s the deal here???”
“It’s actually just from work.”
“Work?”
“I’m a stunt double. I work on films and stuff. My specialty is martial arts, so I stand in for a lot of the female macho types.”
“What?? Why am I just hearing this?”
“I don’t like to tell people because then they get all weird and start asking about celebrities and whatever. But I’m not a big red carpet type. It’s just a job for me. My parents put me in martial arts from an early age and I got scouted at a tournament and so I started taking film gigs because…money. But it’s not my identity. Sitting here on a bench with my yarns and good company is more my speed.”

Blue

And now for something complete different. After the blast you guys had at Disneyworld, this was a total contrast.
“Alright, we’re here!” Blue says as they park their SUV in a space beside a mountain. “This is the best hike in town!”
Blue then takes a swig of their energy drink and belches loudly as you guys open your car doors to get out. That burp sounded way louder than it needed to.
“Wow, you’re a rugged one, aren’t you?” you comment.
“I guess! I do a lot of camping and hiking and all that.”
Finally! That was the perfect segue to bring up that burning issue that’s been in the back of your mind. Sure, Blue was a sculpture-ready work of art, but that first date…
“Oh, so you do a lot of outdoor stuff? I guess that skill came in handy for that, uh, accident at the picnic the other day. I’m so glad you weren’t sick or anything. I was worried.”
“Accident? I didn’t have an accident. I took a dump. Just like everyone does- and a fat one at that!” they said with a comically exaggerated wink and a click of the tongue.
“But right behind a tree?” you say, trying to force a laugh so things don’t get too awkward.
“Life’s too short to hold onto energy. You see the peak on that mountain? That’s the challenge. You see this apple and granola bar? This is energy. Energy in, energy out, keep moving. Anyway, I grew up in a house with a dad and three brothers. We were always outdoors. But I’m kinda the high-fiber, water guzzling health nut in the family. My dad always jokes that my dog should carry a plastic baggie for me when we go out! But anyway, I’m human. I poop. Who cares. Now let’s get going- I’m about to take you on the best hike of your life and I can’t wait to see the smile on your face!”
Blue lets out a roar as they grab your hand and drag you toward the trailhead.
One thing about Blue you noticed is that they are always overflowing with energy. But they were a great hiking guide and knew all about the types of animals and plants you encountered. Blue shared lots of survivalist info and you could tell they were a master of the outdoors. You knew from previous conversations that they were a department store model and cashier at Abercrombie & Fitch, but you learned today that they’re in training to become a wilderness survival guide specializing in beginners who, as Blue described, “have never experienced the pure awesomeness of nature”.

Naeve

You didn’t even need a car. Naeve had you meet them in a rougher part of town and you set out down the street on foot. Soon, you understand why Naeve told you to dress down a bit. Naeve as usual is wearing thrifted indie clothing, so no change was necessary for them.
“I want you to meet some of my buds around here.” they say as they led you to a tent up the way.
“This is Jim. He’s the funniest guy you’ll ever meet.”
Jim is a homeless guy with a friendly smile. He’s been homeless since the Pandemic and Naeve occasionally brings him food when possible. Over the next couple hours, you accompany Naeve, meeting the homeless of all walks of life. You learn that Naeve was homeless for a few months, but they didn’t even seem to mind it that much. Now they live in a rent-controlled apartment near the homeless encampment but still stays in touch with the others and does everything possible to encourage local restaurants and grocery stores to donate food that’s about to go to waste. Naeve also participates in local activism to help reduce homelessness in the city and pass socially focused legislation.
“See, that’s what I call a perfect exchange,” Naeve said. “We had a great time, met some cool cats, and it didn’t cost us a dime. People today waste too much money. The world is already free entertainment!”
One thing you notice about Naeve is that they don’t need good looks to feel confident. They may be on the lower end of average, but they have a knack for relating to anyone and matching their energy. They kept you included in all the conversations and by the end, you felt really knowledgeable about a portion of society you didn’t know anything about.
**************
Who do you want to eliminate?
If you hit the bell, I'll let you know tomorrow when Date 4 happens with the remaining 3 people ;-)
View Poll

Posting here cause I’m not really sure where to ask, and need quick help so I’m sorry if it doesn’t really fit!
For the past couple weeks, my SO and I have been getting increasingly worse headaches (behind the eyes, forehead , temples), mine less intense I think, we’ve both been ridiculously tired and wanting to sleep way too much. I have been extremely irritable, lashing out or snapping at small things that just feel like the last straw, usually in hindsight I feel guilty for overreacting and not staying calm enough to have a conversation or discussion on the issue. I’ve had a cough (dry, tickling, some congestion that’s lesser now, I just assumed I had a cold or something for a couple weeks). I’ve been slightly nauseous for the last several days (not nearly to the point of wanting to throw up, just a consistent mild nausea). Most of the time when I stand up after sitting, I get dizzy, my vision gets spotty or dark for a few seconds, and I have a wave of tingly, lightheadedness, dizziness (I’ve kind of “always” had an issue with this, but normally it’s very quick and not worrisome, like I just stood up too fast) but the last 3-4 days, bad enough that the room spins a bit, and I sometimes have to sit back down to let the dizziness pass. On my part, increasing severity of these symptoms weren’t too noticeable because I’ve been dealing with a lot of stress lately, I just figured I was letting myself get too worked up over everything (wrecked car, struggling to come up with rent money, not being able to find a job, one after another little problem that has to be dealt with, just life honestly) but tonight it occurred to me that I felt similar to when I was living in an old apartment and we found black mold in the walls, after a couple weeks of symptoms. There is a slight possibility that mold could be the issue, but we haven’t seen any, our apartment/shop doesn’t smell musty (a small, one bedroom apartment above two small office rooms that are connected to a large shop that we use for woodworking and similar things, also there’s an attached garage, vents do connect all three areas I think, the only window in the apartment is in the living room, doesn’t open, so it can be stuffy at times, not great insulation so it never seems too bad to me. One interior door in the main shop leads to stairs up to the apartment, an exterior door connects the shop to the other side/garage). Asking about CO poisoning because obviously, the symptoms I mentioned could fit a lot of different things, but I’m not sure what else to check. And probably not very good ventilation, no windows except the one, only one door in the main shop, which usually stays closed since it’s been cold, we’ll open it and the exterior garage door if we need to air it out more, but the ceiling is maybe 20’, with open holes/gaps that need fixed, so there is somewhat consistent air movement. We did have, for several months, a torpedo heater in the shop that we ran diesel in, about two weeks ago, it stopped working and we haven’t had it running since. We do occasionally have vehicles in the garage area, the door is open if they are running, but there is a window ac unit in the wall between the garage and a back room of the shop, and also a vent that connects to upstairs. Any thoughts or suggestions? If it is or is likely carbon monoxide poisoning, what would be the first thing to do to get rid of it? Does carbon monoxide stick around in low levels like that? We both have a relief of symptoms if we’re gone during the day, but we both work out of the shop so it’s not like we’re only here outside of an 8 hour work day. Also, we did (3 days ago) pour epoxy resin on a tabletop, it’s still in the process of curing, so that was another possible cause that we considered, but this would be the second time we’ve done it in a month and neither of us had quite the same symptoms at that time).

I’m a novice rider but since my car recently died for good I’ve been considering replacing it with an e-bike, specifically most likely one of the Lectric’s, either the Xpedition or the Xpremium.
They’re both heavy bikes (~75lbs with the batteries in) and have 20” tires (3 or 4” wide). The Xpremium folds, the Xpedition does not.
My understanding is the rack on Metro buses only allows 55lb bikes or less, but that you can take a folding bike on Metro buses if it has 20” or smaller tires. Does that also apply to e-bikes? What’s folks experience taking their e-bike on Metro?
It wouldn’t be a deal breaker if I couldn’t use Metro buses, but it would be a knock against the idea. I’ve got a lot of trepidation anyway as I’ve actually learned to ride 3 times as a kid (you can forget if you only get to basic proficiency then don’t do it for years in between), and likely need to relearn yet again. I’m a big guy too (~340lbs) so crashes are probably gonna be riskier for me than most, and LA city streets don’t seem friendly per se to cyclists.
I live in DTLA near the Whole Foods and Ralph’s and work from home so it sort of makes having a bike just to get me around town for leisure activities seem maybe feasible? And a lot cheaper than a new car! Any tips or opinions on the feasability of this or riding in LA, taking your e-bike on metro, etc. would be appreciated!

Once upon a time, it was commonplace for online games to have subscription fees. The earliest popular graphical online games, including Ultima Online and EverQuest, all had recurring service fees, as did many games that came after, such as Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft.
That model has largely given way to the "freemium" model where the publishers give the game itself away for free, but much of the game's content is locked behind the choice of either extended play times "grinding" for materials, or the option of skipping that grind with a real-money payment.
However, some games have both, and that usually includes the longest-lived and most-successful ones. Sega's ten-year-on Phantasy Star Online 2 is free-to-play, but has extensive cash purchases and also has a "premium" subscription available. In Final Fantasy XIV and the venerable World of Warcraft, the subscription fee is still required despite the presence of a cash shop.
carmeet
Grand Theft Auto Online has a lot of similarities to what we usually think of as qualities of "MMO" games. While it isn't "massively multiplayer" on a local scale—sessions normally include a maximum of 32 players—there are tens of thousands of players online at any given moment. It has named player characters with persistent progress and all of the other things we think of from MMO games: equipment, appearance customization, player housing, difficult multiplayer "raid" events, and so on.
With that context in mind, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that Rockstar is launching a subscription service for GTA Online. It's called GTA+, and it costs $6 a month. Ponying up for the premium subscription earns you a cool $500,000 in the in-game GTA$ currency every month and extra GTA$ on "Shark Cards," as well as exclusive benefits. Here's the list of benefits for the first month: The Principe Deveste Eight — along with a complimentary Hao’s Special Works upgrade for it before it is made available to purchase by the general public — plus the HSW Orange Trip and HSW CMYK Glitch Liveries. The Auto Shop located in La Mesa, introduces an assortment of gameplay updates from Los Santos Tuners. Current Auto Shop owners can relocate to La Mesa at no additional cost. Waived LS Car Meet Membership fees. Current LS Car Meet members with GTA+ will be reimbursed GTA$50,000 during this event period. Yacht owners can upgrade to the Aquarius Super Yacht at no additional cost. The Gussét Frog Tee and Broker Prolaps Basketball Top and Shorts automatically added to your wardrobe. The Conveyor Livery for the Mammoth Avenger, HVY APC, and TM-02 Khanjali. A selection of free paints and emblems for the Auto Shop. 3X GTA$ and RP on Hao’s Special Works Race Series. 2X Car Meet Rep on the Street Race Series. It would be easy to criticize Rockstar for this move because the company has already taken $60 of your money for the game. That's to say nothing of the grind-heavy nature of GTA Online that practically forces players to purchase Shark Cards for in-game currency if they want to make progress at any kind of reasonable rate. There's also the fact that the company is charging money for what is honestly an extremely minor update on the current-generation consoles.
In the interest of fairness, though, we'll note that many players who bought GTA V (including GTA Online) purchased it nearly a decade ago. Just like other major online games, GTA Online has seen years of additional content and improvements through continual updates, and that stuff does cost money to create.
deveste eight The Principe Deveste Eight, one of the rewards for subscribing this month.
If you own GTA V, you don't actually have to pay Rockstar anything to play it for the rest of eternity, so giving players an option to spend a little every month to support continued development is fair. However, the list of benefits, at least for the first month, is pretty weak.
There's another caveat, too: this program is only available to players on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles. We've asked Rockstar if GTA+ will be coming to the PC version, and will update this post if we get a response.

I am a firm believer that action films require a male lead in order to be effective in the action market. Nearly every one of these films is about revenge, taking on a spirit of vengeance, or taking on the role of justice. But the strange part of this is that both vengeance and justice are feminine deities in mythology, and at multiple levels. The male action hero is less about taking revenge or enacting justice and is more about understanding their role in taking revenge, which can result in not wanting revenge at all or realizing there is something more grand to the journey they enter. This is why mystery and whodunit stories appeal to women, because women enjoy aspects of revenge and justice, while being less interested in the more masculine aspects like enlightenment and the hero’s journey.
That statement alone is enough to set any wokescold’s blood a’boiling, because it’s a factual statement.
None of this means it’s impossible to make an action movie with a female lead, it just means it will be built differently with themes exclusive to the female role. I’ve talked about the movie Furie here and there when talking about female roles in stories because it’s a clear example of how to do it right when the female role is meant to be a tiger mother archetype. The story is simple: a mother has her child kidnapped by bad guys and she goes out to retrieve her child and save her from the dangerous world they live in. This kind of story is very primitive, with how it’s no different than if a tigress lost her cub and had to find it in the wilderness. The tiger mother finds her strength by being more feminine, closer to mother earth, and using her nurturing spirit to stay dedicated to her main goal: protect her cub.
Not only protect, but also allow her cub to flourish in the world by making sure her child studies hard, gets a good job, and gives the air of “not being good enough” because that is what the world tells us every day. We will never please the world and feel comfortable at any moment for any reason unless we willingly let our guard down, and that’s when the snake devours the cub. The tiger mother views the world as harsh, unforgiving, and a constant threat of corruption that will swallow their child whole. They are not paranoid, they are realistic. They are not carefree, they are careful. This mentality causes them to become very authoritarian, and so the tiger mother might as well be called the empress, because they are to be the empress of both their world and the world of their child’s.
A fury is one of the Furies from Greek mythology, who are the 3 goddesses of vengeance. Nemesis came before them as a goddess of revenge, but it is more like Nemesis handles anger between gods and the furies cast curses upon humans. In the movie Furie, there is a detective who is after the same villain, with the villain being this drug lady(as in female version of drug lord) and she is the dark sorceress of the streets. The Drug Lady represents the terrible chaotic side of the earth mother, with her minions being these evil demons who kill and rape anything in their path. The entire story of Furie was a mythological tale presented in modern day Vietnam in one of the most beautiful depictions of such a tale I’ve seen in a while.
This is not meant to be a hero’s journey other than the journey of the detective, who gains a gift from the tiger mother in the form of protection while he also saves her in the end, meaning there is a supportive synergy going on in their relationship. The authoritarian femme fatale assisting the masculine authority is a story about control between both family and society. An action movie like this is why I love action films when they have effort put into them, because there is deep subject matter being played out through simple interactions between individuals and between that we get epic fight scenes.
Let me tell you: these fight scenes are awesome.
It’s not just about a woman beating up a bunch of dudes. It’s about how she struggles to get through each fight but will still carry on because that’s what a mother does for her child. It’s no different than when a noir hero fights his way through hordes of goons in order to enact his revenge. All of these little fights represent thoughts in our head like “give up” and “go back”, which are meant to detract us from our main goal. Get hit too much or get surrounded and we are forced to play defense or hide behind something, which is no different than being like a turtle hiding in their shell. The turtle, the hermit, only works in isolation and it’s meant to be the moment of introspect.
All of that is a way of saying that the action hero should only play defense to plan a better attack, because the world around them will not give up on the onslaught. These are the moments in an action movie where someone is healing or planning a new attack, with the occasional doubt hitting them near the end. The movie Furie has these moments, specifically for the tiger mother to heal and make a plan to get her daughter back, which enhances the movie’s credibility. We need these high and low points of an action movie for rest, progression of story, getting to know the characters more, and also we don’t expect a budget to be constant expensive action all the time.
If anything, the furie in this movie is a representation of Alecto, goddess of unceasing anger, due to her dedication that goes beyond the death of those who wrong her. In the mythology, the furies are three sisters who live in the underworld, specifically Erebus(meaning darkness), which is why it’s appropriate to have this movie mostly at night and involve the criminal underworld. Whenever an action movie involves the criminal underworld as a setting, they are mirroring the underworld of mythology in a form of katabasis, a journey into the underworld. Think of something like Orpheus or Dante or Jesus making a trip into the underworld in order to achieve a goal. The underworld in this case is always related to something like a wilderness or a hedonistic primitive state of mind that’s full of everything unlawful because the primitive state is before society and order is established.
The male enters the underworld to become enlightened and the female lives there because it’s their domain.
Rape, murder, theft, drug use, kidnapping, everything that we are able to do as humans but only do once our shadow has taken over. The shadow, the darkness within us, is what is so present in the underworld that the entire world is enveloped in darkness, under this shadow. When taken symbolically, this movie works beautifully and it makes sense to have the evil villain kidnap the child of our tiger mother heroine and also try to harvest her organs. This villain, named Thanh Soi, appears to be something like a big bad wolf who goes around and devours children. Being a female antagonist, she represents the ruthless underworld and chaos that causes the world to be so treacherous and causes the tiger mother to be so dedicated.
I have nothing but praise for this first movie because it sticks so close to mythology and fits itself into an alchemical form of storytelling. It’s no surprise this movie was nominated for awards and it probably would have won a lot of them if people respected the beautiful choreography and neon noir aesthetics. I would even go far enough to say that it’s one of my favorite action movies of the decade, if not in the top 10 of all time. It provides a female action heroine in a way that works because she is entirely feminine in her approach to everything, down to her not really having a hero’s journey because that’s reserved for the male assistant she has, who is in the form of a detective.
Sadly, thanks to the colors pink and purple always being present in these neon noir movies, we have encountered a massive issue in how these kinds of movies will be made in the future.
For a quick reminder, noir is the film genre where a cynical hero enters an existentialist journey that changes them for the worst because they were touched by the darkest elements of the world. In noir, the femme fatale always aids in bringing this male hero to his downfall, because the femme fatale is a representation of Lilith and this existential crisis our hero enters represents the fallen state of Adam. These stories are aided by German expressionism and poetic realism, to both ground and extend the story into an almost surreal world that we can relate to. The inner mind of the hero gets reflected out onto the world to cause this expressionism, which allows aspects like elongated shadows and warped environments to symbolically fit into the story and make it look fascinating.
Neo-noir is a postmodernist form of this genre that takes some of the aspects of noir and tries to experiment with more current trends, keeping some of the aesthetics and aspects that resulted from decades of pulp stories being told and merged together in what I would like to call “mental slop” that is created in media by merging elements together after years of experimentation and deconstruction. No longer does it have to do with a cynical hero or an existential crisis, because now the barriers of the genre are removed and people simply recognize it as noir for some vague aspects that might relate to noir, such as dealing with a criminal underworld or the snappy way hardboiled dialogue would be written.
A good way to put it is that neo-noir holds noir “themes” and “sensibilities”.
This is further continued into neon noir, which is not a fully established genre quite yet, but is noticed recently with the increased popularity of retrowave and cyberpunk. The neon lights of the 80s are brought into this neo-noir story to create a contrast between two colors, similar to how noir was filmed in black and white. This is an aesthetic choice and is usually in the form of contrasting purple against a blue because these are complimentary colors. Lights are very present in this new genre, but the light is less of a source of clarity and more like a new form of obscurity. The expressionism in these movies are used for mood enhancing, due to the tranquility of blue and the excitement of red.
All of this is important to note because postmodernists will take everything that works about these factors and then try to avoid anything that makes sense about it. They go by whatever they feel and hope their experimentation doesn’t blow up in their face. Sometimes it works, like in the case of the movie Drive, and other times it doesn’t like in the sequel to Furie called Furies.
Everything was set up for this sequel. There was no way for it to be worse. It had more money, it had Hollywood investing in it, and the concept of the tiger mother can be used as much as any typical action hero setup could be used. Just have a villain who runs a crime syndicate, have a person who was wronged by this crime lord, they seek out revenge, and it ends with the villain being defeated.
Simple, right?
Well… this movie didn’t do that. I mean, it did, but it didn’t in the way that works. There’s a villain, a male drug lord who runs a casino and kidnaps women to sell their bodies for sex. There is a person who is wronged, who is a woman that lost her husband and child at the hands of this drug lord. This woman is seeking revenge and she defeats the villain at the end.
But she’s not the protagonist. She’s not even A protagonist. In fact, they made her the actual villain of the story. The villain… kills the villain. They probably thought they were doing a “Darth Vader killing off the Emperor” kind of thing, but they weren’t.
We are told in the beginning that this woman is to be like a mentor, the fairy godmother who protects our protagonist and guides her through this treacherous world. She’s meant to be a sort of adopted tiger mother, the way lesbians do it, and instead turns into the wicked stepmother by the end. But it seems I’m getting ahead of myself, so I’ll explain this story in a more coherent manner.
This sequel is a prequel. It happens before the first movie. We are introduced to a character named Bi(pronounced like BEE) who claims in a monologue that she was “destined for darkness”. Hey, makes sense. The Furies were born from Nyx in one of the mythologies, so being born from night to be destined for darkness is a sort of match made in heaven for this kind of character.
She becomes a homeless wreck after a drunk man tries to rape her and killed her mother. She killed him and is forever reminded of that moment every time she gets blood on her hands(a running theme we will see later). This is where a lady named Jacqueline finds her and brings her under her wing, hiding her with two other girls. Symbolically, we can determine these three girls are meant to be the furies: Alecto (“Unceasing in Anger”), Tisiphone (“Avenger of Murder”), and Megaera (“Jealous”).
Already, this entire thing fell apart and deviated from the mythology.
I say this because the other two girls are nothing like the furies of mythology and I can only assume Bi is meant to be Tisiphone because her mother was murdered. But she already got her revenge, so there’s not much for her to do in that regard. The girl named Hong is meant to be a cute Harley Quinn style psycho and the girl Thanh Soi is meant to be a butch biker. The two girls want their own forms of revenge against the drug lord that runs the streets they live in, mostly because both used to be slave girls and want to free their fellow women who have been enslaved. Jacqueline convinced them that she wants to free the slave girls as well, and all of this training that she puts them through is for this mission, but there’s a catch.
Jacqueline kept her relationship with this drug lord secret, because she was working with him and ended up having her husband and child killed by this drug lord. For years, she planned out revenge and set up several spies within his ranks, including the boyfriend of Hong. All of this is revealed in the end, so we go through the whole movie believing they are out for vigilante justice against crimes, specifically against women, when it was all because a bitter mother was betrayed after trusting a man too much. Already, this sounds like a mess, and it is. This prequel makes such a simple story incredibly convoluted and tries to use twists as a plaster for weak narrative and symbol subversion. But there’s a reason for this.
The woman who acted as the main heroine in the first movie also plays the role of Jacqueline. These are two different women in the movie’s setting, being played by the same woman. On top of that, the first movie was directed by a man and now this prequel is written and directed by… this same actress in question, Veronica Ngo. That’s right, she decided to play the villain after she wrote the script and directed the entire thing.
It was designed for this woman to crank herself silly.
And boy does it show in the movie. Quite literally in every scene. I say this because the first movie held shots for a while and had the simple story unfold slowly, with long moments to settle down and let the beautiful environment sink in. In the prequel, we are supposed to enjoy flashing colors as every scene is cut and edited like a movie trailer. I’m not kidding when I say that.
Every. Single. Scene.
Even the scene where Bi is being raped by a drunkard is treated like a movie trailer, with the camera changing all over the place and music playing as she monologues about how everything sucks. This camera is a massive pain to sit through, because it’s either constantly moving, getting splashed with CGI blood, zooming over people’s shoulders, or switching between 5 different conversations before a single thought could be finalized. It does that thing where someone is talking in a different scene and then a few seconds later the camera goes to where the person is talking, as if the transition was meant to be meaningful, but it would be for any little thing.
This is the sign of someone trying to experiment with things but are completely incompetent in what they’re doing. It gets worse when we enter fight scenes that look like they were edited frame by frame to hide the fact that they didn’t know what they wanted the fights to look like. The only time a camera holds for longer than a second is when someone dies off screen or Bi starts to suffer from her PTSD. And boy does she suffer.
They have a moment where she kills a random goon, gets blood on her hands, and when they return to their hideout, she vomits in the sink. She gets flashbacks to her first assault and the day her mother dies, which results in her trying to fight Thanh when she tries to calm Bi down. They fight in the bathroom and one of them knocks a valve loose, which causes the shower to turn on and shower both of them as they try to grapple and fall to their knees. This moment is meant to be a loving embrace between sisters during a time of need and support, with Thanh being a protective sister who is dedicated in making sure the new sister is able to get through harsh mental anguish whenever she is triggered.
This, my friend, is the entire problem with this movie.
I understand it’s meant to be emotional and heartfelt. I don’t deny there is thought put behind a moment like this. The music swells, the colors are somber, the water slowly falls on them as if to say the water purifies their thoughts and cools their head. I get it. But what the hell does any of that have to do with being a fury?
This isn’t about taking vengeance, this all feminist woes being presented for the sake of representation. Hong later on has a birthday party and they all celebrate by singing 90s songs(because this movie is meant to take place in the 90s) and when Bi came into the picture they had a makeover montage. This is an action movie written like a teen romcom without the romance and nothing in it is meant to be comedic. There are light hearted moments, sure, but I would never call it a comedy except for this one moment where a drug addict begs for drugs and the drug lord throws it on the ground for him to snort it, and then the drug lord pisses all over him.
To me, that is funny, but it’s treated as a horrible moment to make us hate the villain who doesn’t even really do anything. One of the most disappointing moments is when the furies sneak into a bedroom with him by disguising themselves as club whores and they have the perfect moment to kill him. Bi messes up by being too obvious with her stab attack and he runs away with a slight wound. This is where we have a fight that is meant to be a key moment: a hallway decorated with silhouettes of dancing women as the place fills up with black suited goons.
This moment is meant to show how brave and powerful the girls are, and all it does is accidentally present a massive stereotype where women can't get the job done and they are granted luxuries by having beautiful bodies while wearing a lot of makeup. When I saw this, I figured at least the action scenes will make up for the lack of theme, and… boy was I wrong.
These action scenes, as I said before, are a mess. Everything is a close up so we can’t see what’s going on and every attack is a wide swing that gets blocked by an arm that comes up 5 seconds too early. There is this back and forth that happens with each fight that makes it look functional and the music keeps it pumping, but it always looks like the fight coordinador told them to do everything wrong as a joke and the director was none the wiser. There are even moments where they use the wrong sound effect, like when someone gets punched and it does the stabbing sound effect.
Sure these are tiny technical things, but it gets worse when I am forced to mention the infamous bike scene.
So, Hong dies at the hands of this guy called Son, who is meant to be the dragon below the drug lord. Her boyfriend sees it, with her boyfriend acting as a spy who has infiltrated the drug lord’s ranks, so he’s standing there shocked and everyone ignores him. The remaining two sisters decided to run away on a bike and ensue in a chase sequence that is some of the worst CGI fighting I’ve seen in a while. There was no reason for any of this, they just put it in because the director thought it would look cool. I have no idea what it is with women and motorcycle chases, but there’s something where a woman on a motorcycle is seen as a “sexy” thing, specifically for women.
Not sexy to be sexual, but it’s something that women find aesthetically pleasing, and I can only imagine that it has something to do with the feeling of a bike vibrating between their legs. It also has to do with the idea of danger, because it’s easier to fall off a motorcycle than it is to fall out of a car with the doors closed. That, and I think it’s a fantasy for women to actually ride them without crashing. It’s the director’s way of saying “See! Women can ride motorcycles too!”, as if refraining from instantly crashing is an achievement.
But considering these are women and they are Asian, the fact they are not crashing instantly is a miracle.
What makes it funny is that in order to say “women can ride motorcycles too”, they put these women on a motorcycle and then transition it into a CGI race through the city with the motorcycle sitting in place in front of a greenscreen. We can easily tell this is happening because the wheels aren’t moving and there is the world’s fakest looking background flying by with whacky angles and movements being made with the camera. Bad guys fly into the screen from behind like TIE fighters in the old Star Wars movies, clearly breaking through the scenery, and I could not stop laughing at how terrible it all looked. And they somehow managed to make it worse by having a moment where one of the girls gets knocked off the bike and the other keeps riding to go up a ramp and onto a roof, only to get knocked off the bike herself and the bike flies off the roof and explodes in a corner.
I think I forgot to mention this but EVERYTHING EXPLODES in this movie. It’s as if the direct thought “hey, this part doesn’t have much substance to it, let’s fill it up with explosions.” There’s even a part earlier where they light a building on fire because it was a place where girls were being held captive. They throw lighters in random areas that have lamp oil or alcohol conveniently placed for them and random areas of the building start blowing up. What are you guys lacing in your cocaine over there, nitroglycerin?
Finally, we come back to the ending, the part of the story that ruined it for the movie. Bi and Thanh go to the drug lord’s hideout, they seek revenge for their lost sister, and meanwhile we have Hong’s boyfriend kill Son because… he was her boyfriend and had sex with her. Way to go movie, that sure shows what men care for. We only fight for those we bang and the sex was really that important for him. Forget meaningful things like a firmly built relationship or a child being made between a man and a woman, those aren’t important to a man. It’s all about the dedication someone has to a girl who sold her body for money.
But you know what? His motives and story aren’t important because we don’t even really see him. In fact, they bring in several characters that we’ve never seen before and act as if we’re supposed to know them. This is when they enter the drug lord’s underground casino, with the casino representing a massive gamble that this entire mission has been taking. However, the concept of gambling doesn’t mean much since the story repeatedly hits us with talk about fate, which is meant to relate to the sisters of fate in Greek mythology. I thought we were going to get some kind of motif going on every time they mentioned fate, but they just said “this is our fate” and that was it.
So they enter the casino and start shooting up the place. I don’t know what guns they are using, but they have enough ammo in their magazines to practically be infinite. There’s even an editing flub where they were supposed to show one of the girls reload, but they just show her pulling the slide back to load a bullet in the chamber, as if that’s enough. At least this part of the movie tries to implement gun-fu, but the way they do it is surreal because it’s entirely for show and there’s nothing practical in any of their attacks. They come with limited ammo and see themselves outnumbered, but they end up shooting people in the hands and feet while fighting as a way to ease off some attacks, to then shoot the enemy in the head.
Fast forward a bit and we have one of the stupidest twists enacted on screen. Jacqueline came with the girls to finish this once and for all, and while fighting she is seen getting stabbed in the back by a henchman. The drug lord watches it happen on a CCTV and celebrates. This looks like a perfect time for Bi to get her revenge on the main villain. But no, that would be the smart thing to do.
Instead, they have Bi and Thanh held at gunpoint in a room after a surprisingly difficult fight against a crackhead armed with a syringe who walked up to them like a zombie, and no I am not making that up. It sounds stupid, because it is, but they put that into the movie because someone decided it would be a good time to include something zombie related in a movie that has nothing to do with zombies. So, they’re held at gunpoint and then Jacqueline barges in and shoots the drug lord’s limbs to make sure he suffers. The boyfriend of Hong also comes in and is like “yeah, let’s get our revenge on this sick bastard”.
Then Jacqueline shoots the boyfriend of Hong. Everyone in the room is like “what the hell is going on?!” and Jacqueline kills off the drug lord and goes “Ok, now Thanh has to kill Bi” and both of them are just as confused as the audience. Even if Jacqueline was this new villain who becomes the new drug lord, it’s not like either of the girls would join her if she continued the sex trade. So, Thanh does the expected and tries to shoot Jacqueline instead, but was too slow and gets shot herself. The final fight is between Jacqueline and Bi, with Bi shooting Jacqueline several times.
But this is the part that made me really pissed: they fire the same gun over 30 times without reloading and then the second the gun is trained on Bi’s head… it’s empty.
The only way for this to be more convenient for Bi is if a bird flew in and airdropped a white turd into the eye of Jacqueline and had it explode for good measure. But because that didn’t happen, we have Bi tired as all hell and she collapses in a room full of dead bodies. Police come in and find her alive, arrest her, and then imprison her for 15 years. The big twist of this, the reason this is a prequel is revealed in this single moment where we see her leave her jail cell.
Who was Bi this whole time?
She was the villain of the first movie: Thanh Soi.
Apparently, the name is meant to be something like “she-wolf” and she took the name in honor of her dedicated sister in battle, Thanh Soi. This means that this entire time, the one we’re to be rooting for ends up being this horrible monster from the first movie that was kidnapping children and harvesting their organs. All because she… didn’t like to get blood on her hands.
If you think that none of this makes sense: welcome to the club.
The first movie was brilliant and coherent all the way down to a mythological level. It hit us deep in our unconscious and is something to be remembered years after watching it for how heartfelt each scene was made. It even brought some sympathy to some of the villains with how one of them was spared by the tiger mother because the guy’s own mother was present. It followed a theme of motherhood, while the second movie tried to follow a theme of sisterhood.
Where motherhood was filled with morals and justice, the sisterhood was filled with contradictions and partying.
I do not believe this was done out of a lack of budget or a rushed job. This was the result of how wokeness infiltrates even some of the least western influenced countries to create senseless garbage that nobody likes. We are not only to sympathize with one villain, but we are told that we have to sympathize with two, while the male villains are completely reprehensible. This movie was designed with woke Charlie’s Angels in mind and it shows with how they took three women to fight for a mentor and the only male on the team is treated like a bag of meat. What makes it more hilarious for me is that I’m constantly told by the woke that it’s bad to give women tragic backstories for why they become villains and there’s no excuse for having rape as part of this tragic backstory.
This is the feminism that is designed to trigger western feminists while hoping that Hollywood accepts it as “feminist enough”. This movie was not designed with men in mind, because female action movies are always plagued with over edited fight scenes, girl power moments, and romcom montages. I wish I was kidding, but I have yet to see a female focused action movie that refrained from doing these pointless representation calls, because the goal is to represent in this way.
She Hulk, Charlie's Angels, feminist Ghost Busters, Men in Black International, Atomic Blonde, Captain Marvel, Gunpowder Milkshake, Lucy, Jupiter Ascending, Disney Star Wars, basically every Disney and Pixar movie now. All of these movies are designed specifically to say women can do stuff guys can and then fail to show them doing stuff guys can. Then they wonder why these movies flop and get memed into oblivion. The only people who care about seeing a woman beating up men are angry women, because that is a low resolution view of what the movie is even supposed to say. The only people begging to see that on screen are women who hate men enough to want to beat them up.
This is not a lot of people. This is surprisingly a small fraction of the population and this is who these movies are trying to appeal to. Everything else around this low resolution declaration is meant to be spectacle for the sake of spectacle.
Why did the motorcycle explode? Because explosions are cool.
Why did the girls light a building on fire? Because fire is cool and it leads to explosions.
Why are they shooting the limbs of people? Because shooting limbs is cool.
Why does the camera get covered in CGI blood every 5 seconds? Because blood splatters are cool.
I’m not going to sit here and say something like that lacks style. It has style and it is spectacular. But when placed in a movie with zero meaning and zero purpose, this baseless spectacle gets lost in a sea of nonsense and there’s nothing to hold onto other than the possible impressive choreography or the impressive practical effects. This movie had a little bit of something, but it could never hold a candle to the dedication and effort put into the first movie. I also want to mention the camera work because this is also tied into woke ideology.
Every time the plot is trying to be expressed or shown, the camera and scenes are given the smallest amount of lingering. For example, a turf war begins after they blow up the slave holding… place and it’s shown as a turf war in two events. A person gets shot and people start getting attacked by random. These events lasted for about 5 seconds each. We’re told that Bi is homeless and fighting the local gang by having her steal a wallet and then have someone shout “hey, this is our turf!” all in the span of 5 seconds. We go from the girls going through an outfit montage during a plan to the girls working at the club of the drug lord in about 5 seconds.
If you didn’t get it by now: everything in this movie goes by the 5 second rule, but only when it is about the plot.
Do you want to know what lasts longer than 5 seconds? Moments where the girls are talking about stuff they like and parts where they pose together to present girl power. So to the woke, it takes the tiniest amount of time to show how someone enters the worst stage of their life, but it takes minutes to let us know that these girls plan to stick together and fight side by side. Everything important is done with quick flashes and everything unimportant is lingered on. This is a tactic of the woke to bring the mundane into the essential.
The goal is to feature tiny bits of important things to let the viewer understand why they are in that position, and then hammer in the idea of wokeness that the director or writer wanted to virtue signal for. The woke do not dedicate their focus on the themes of the story that matter to the audience and instead force the viewer to put up with things the woke writer is focused on so that the propaganda is viewed in the first place. We are promised a story about a mother seeking revenge and instead we are treated with the rise of a villain who became that way because she was abused as a child.
Using the woke lens of intersectionality and critical feminist theory, we can determine that the themes of this movie dwindled into arbitrary concepts like PTSD and girls trying to stay friends till the end. All of these are the result of mental weakness and toxic behavior that is now being given an excuse because the context of why they do these toxic actions are presented, even if it’s for 5 seconds. Now a woman like Bi is able to be excused for harvesting the organs of children and even blame men because it all started when her mother was a prostitute and a random drunk guy raped her. This is the polar opposite from how a tiger mother acts, because we are not trying to give excuses for a dedicated mother doing what a dedicated mother does. The tiger mother is a big part of what causes us to survive and is something to strive for because that’s what allows us to reproduce.
Being raped and then suffering PTSD over it doesn’t.
Thanks to intersectionality, the woke demand to present vices as virtuous and weakness as strength because this is how they take the outliers and bring them to the center. This goes beyond postmodernist subjectivity. It becomes subjective advocacy to obfuscate reality itself and pretend it’s incoherent just because their own agenda is incoherent. This is why every time there is a rule, they will pretend there is an exception to it, just because they don’t understand what that rule is or it’s not detailed in a way that prevents horribly bad faith takes. Every established rule for writing established doesn’t have an exception, just an attempt to reject what’s actually effective. These rules were established because they work and because people respond to them positively.
The woke hate positive results because those are the results that signify the rules work.
I don’t mind a female lead in a movie. I also don’t mind when a female lead is in an action movie. I don’t even mind a sisterhood or girls having magic powers or anything like that. Those things make sense to me when they are done properly, which the movie Furie did when they had the tiger mother as the protagonist and a harvester of child organs as the antagonist. That makes 100% sense to me, both symbolically and entertainment wise.
What I don’t like is when wokeness barges into established IPs and tries to change everything to say absolutely nothing of value. I’ve noticed that these feminist and LGBT stories always try to deal with the same nonsense that is done in a sad attempt to connect with some sort of audience they have in mind. Sexual abuse, PTSD, feeling oppressed, mental disorders, spousal abuse, prostitution, sexual deviancy, leaving their family to be with a sexual partner, drug abuse, being found by a guardian lesbian to feel protected, entering a sisterhood or a group of fellow LGBT agents of destruction.
These types of stories don’t mean anything to normal people. We can see some of these things as a terrible thing to have happen and we can attach a negative symbol to these things, but there’s no way in hell a person who’s never experienced any of this feels represented. The representation of a minority, that just wants to claim oppression because of their own choices or because of something that rarely happens, is a losing game. Normal people will either hate it or not care. I have every reason to blame the director for these horrible decisions and I have every reason to claim her poor decisions are because she fell for woke nonsense as a woman.
But no matter what, I refuse to let such an issue deter me from liking the first movie, even though she’s the main actress. The people featured in a story mean nothing to the story outside of how well they can act the part and be the character. Now we even have to say that the actor must retain the source material and culturally make sense, all because the woke want to bring the outliers to the center and turn every Disney character black. Especially the red heads. I only covered the feminist aspect of wokeness here, so we can leave woke race swapping for another time.
Furie is an amazing movie that will be remembered positively for years to come.
Furies is woke trash that will only be remembered for how terrible it was.