When we were young, we were taught how to act, and told how to behave. The opinions of our peers decided what we would do, who we would date, and how successful our life could be. For those of us who never left our home town, these demands have become forged as the tightest shackles that bind us to the demands and needs of others.
However, once we leave that environment, we find ourselves in a new place with new friends and a new life. We are thus given and provided the opportunity to reconstruct our life. We are provided with the chance for us to define our life for ourselves. We can break forth through the limits placed on us by others.
Not only is this desirable, but it is often necessary. For true growth, and to be the most that you can be, comes from you defining how you will live, and under which terms that you will define your life.
The 25th Law of power
Law 25Re-Create Yourself
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.
The book “The 48 Laws of Power” is a classic work that defines methods and techniques by which a person may obtain power. Power can be defined many ways. It might be money, sex, relationships, ownership, control, or as pure military might.
The book goes into great detail on this subject, providing multiple examples that illustrate each technique.
The 48 Laws of Power is a world famous book that describes numerous techniques for obtaining power. The power can be used for good or bad, it is up to the user.
One of the laws, or techniques, of power is the ability to recreate your life on your terms. This is law #25. Indeed, it is a powerful technique. For unless you have lived a charmed life, humans need to grow and expand beyond themselves. We are like a snake that sheds it’s skin, or a caterpillar who undergoes chrysalis to become a butterfly. We need to constantly strive, adapt and grow. For that is how we obtain experience.
For example motivational speaker Les Brown was classified as developmentally disabled. He was told that the best he could do was to become a janitor or a field laborer. Yet, he refused to believe that. With everyone of his classmates laughing at him, and most teachers shaking their head in sorry distain, we went ahead and forged a new life for himself.
He took on a new role; a better role as a motivational speaker.
Or consider, another radio talk show host; Rush Limbaugh. Always controversial, and bombastic, he was constantly hired and fired from jobs. No one wanted to touch him. We was considered a “wild card” and uncontrollable. Yet, by honing his abilities, and working on his strengths, he preserved and became a very famous and a very rich talk show host.
Often times, we need to move away from the thoughts, ideas, concepts of what other people think of us. Do you want to be treated as a successful businessman and not the class clown? Then you need to move away from your school mates. Do you want to be considered to be a brilliant scientist? Then you need to move away from people who call you a “book worm with no common sense”. Do you want to become a suave and sophisticated “ladies man”? Then, you need to remove yourself from the women who make fun of you and who don’t appreciate you qualities.
Now, you shouldn’t become confused. It is often more than just moving away geographically. You have to learn and hone the skills that you desire. If you want to become a “world renowned doctor”, you will need to study and cultivate your presence globally. If you want to be a “Ladies Man”, you will need to hone your relationship skills, and work on your presentation. If you want to live the life on your terms, you will have to work at it.
Have a Dream
We all need an objective. This is something that we can visualize and conceptualize. It is something that we can embrace as a target and an ideal that we can achieve.
"Bronco Billy McCoy: I've got a special message for you little pardners out there. I want you to finish your oatmeal at breakfast and do as your mom and pa tell you because they know best. Don't ever tell a lie and say your prayers at night before you go to bed. And as our friends south of the border say, 'Adios, amigos.' "
Have a Plan
Without a roadmap we are just lost in the wilderness. We need a plan to follow with a set goal to achieve. So set a goal. Describe the person who you want to be. Go into great detail. List what you want to be and what you don’t want to be.
In the movie “Bronco Billy” all the members of his travelling fair were misfits. They were shoe salesmen, draft dodgers, and losers, who decided to step outside of their world and become something different. Here is a man who wanted to be an Indian chief.
You don’t need to use Microsoft Project to generate a plan, but you do need to take active steps. Get a notebook. It is cheap. Do not rely on your computer or cell phone to do this task. They are full of distractions. Go old school.
One cheap notebook. One pen (or pencil).
That notebook is your roadmap. Title it what ever you want, but in short it should be about one thing and one thing only; who you want to be.
Also note that it is going to be a journey. Right now you are NOT ready to be who you want to be. Some changes will be necessary. Indeed, you will need to change some things. Additionally, you will need to learn some things, and prepare some things as well. You will need to plan it out.
This rule applies to both men and women. It is not gender specific. In the movie “Bronco Billy”, a sad and unhappy, but filthy rich socialite ends up transforming her life into HER idea of what she wants.
For instance, using the “Ladies Man” example above, you will need to read books on how to seduce. You will need to subscribe to websites, forums and feeds with like minded people. You will need to establish goals and a training program. The training program will not only be about learning new things, but it will also be about unlearning old bad habits.
You will need to do daily positive affirmations. These are sentences that you repeat to yourself over and over to undo the programming that you have endured over the years. For instance;
I am calm, cool, and collected.
I am always happy, smart, know what to say.
I am lucky.
I dress right, my hair is perfect, and I know how to handle myself.
Positive affirmations need to be written down, and repeated daily. They work. Let them do their magic.
Work your plan
Once you map out your goal and how to get there; do it. In life, it is better to be 60% ready than wait forever to be 100% ready. You need to learn the basics and then plan on “faking it until you make it”. Close your eyes and make it happen.
Trust me, you won’t die.
"Bronco Billy McCoy: Now look! I don't take kindly to kids playin' hooky from school. I think every kid in America ought to go to school... at least up to the eighth grade.
Young kid: We don't go to school today, Bronco Billy. It's Saturday!
"
You will experience hurtles and problems. So what? That is life. For instance, let’s suppose your dream is to move to Bangkok, Thailand and become a go-go bar owner. It is obtainable, but it will be a lot of work. You might need to break your plan into smaller bite-sized bites and then work those pieces.
Let’s suppose your dream is to become a sheep rancher in New Zealand. It is possible, but you will need to know some basics about sheep herding, and you will need to work on the immigration paperwork.
In the pursuit of our dreams there will be setbacks and troubles. However, they will never end your dream. It will just put it aside for a spell. Do not give up. Never give up. Never, and I do mean NEVER let ANYONE ever steal or take your dream away from you.
No matter what you do, you will need to have a plan that not only covers the physical changes that you need and want to bring about, but also covers the emotional and behavioral ones as well. But you know what? You can do it, because it is in YOUR nature.
You do not need a machine to make the world-line switch. You can do this on your own.
It gets easier over time…
"Lorraine Running Water: Do you understand what Bronco Billy and the wild west show are all about? You can be anything you want. All you have to do is go out and become it! "
The longer you work towards your dream, the easier it becomes. You always become what you think about. But actuating your thoughts with physical and tangible actions you will be able to achieve your dreams, and trust me you will be amazed how successful you will become.
You can achieve your dreams. You only need to have a plan. Keep it simple and direct and work it relentlessly. It is the one thing for you and you alone. Never let anyone steal it away from you.
When I was planning on moving to China, I studied Chinese. I had no one to practice with. I had no one to listen to. So I did it on my own, while the people around me snickered and made fun of me. You will overcome the nay-Sayers and losers. You just follow your dream and stick with your plan.
Don’t let anyone steal that from under you.
Other Sources
In the movie “Bedazzled“, a man who is helplessly in love, signs away his soul for a change to spend life with the girl of his dreams. The devil gives him six opportunities to remake himself (all, of course, with a devilish twist). The point in the movie is that you can remake yourself to obtain objectives, but that there will be a tradeoff in the process.
I won’t go so far as to say that you cannot change because it will have undesirable effects. But, I will say that what ever the image that you want to become… make sure that it is an extension of WHO YOU ARE inside.
Only you can choose who you will be? Scenes are from the movie “Bedazzled”.
Conclusion
"Antoinette Lilly: Are you for real?
Bronco Billy McCoy: I'm who I want to be."
The movie “Bronco Billy” is a full embodiment of the lessons of Law #25 of the “48 Laws of Power”. All of the members within his little band of entertainers were redirecting their lives toward their dreams. While it is only a Hollywood movie, and received moderate praise by the “geniuses” in Hollywood, the lessons are important and valid.
It certainly deserves a second look. Especially today with the way things are in the world today.
Don’t give up.
You can recreate your own life in the form that you want it to be in. If you are tired and exhausted in living the life as it is today, you can exit it. You are not tied to anything. You really aren’t. You can bail.
Set a goal.
Make a Plan.
Follow the Plan.
Implement it.
Live your dream. Do not let anyone stop you.
Be like Bronco Billy. Live your dream. You don’t have to be a poor shoe salesman in New York city. You can recreate your life into something that appeals to you. Don’t be afraid. Follow your dream.
Takeaways
The 25th Law of the 48 Laws of Power suggests that we can create the life that we want to live. We should not accept the life that others want us to live.
This is attainable.
To achieve this dream, we need to set a goal, learn, and work towards that goal.
The movie “Bronco Billy” is all about the 25th Law of Power.
By watching the movie, you get a very good understanding of what the 25th Law of Power is and how it can be applied to your life.
FAQ
Q: Is my dream achievable, even if it sounds crazy or unobtainable?
A: Yes. However, it does need to be realistic. You cannot dream about being a turtle. However, you can dream about being a caretaker for turtles in Bora Bora.
Q: My spouse thinks it is a waste of time to pursue any dreams. What do I do?
A: This is a common problem. You have a choice. You can either enlist your spouse to share in your dream, or you will be forced to follow the dream without them. In any event, if you are forbidden to live your dream… that is not a life, no matter how anyone else tries to rationalize it.
Q: How can I find the time to do all that I need to do to obtain my dream?
A: If you do not find the time, your dream will never materialize.
Q: Where can I find the movie “Bronco Billy”?
A: Try Netflix or any decent torrent site. Torrents are free, and most movies can be downloaded in a few days. Rare movies might take weeks.
Life is too short to be unhappy. It is like a bowl of cold chili. It is up to you to make it the best best life that is possible. You need to set your foot down and take command of your life. Make your dreams happen.
Posts Regarding Life and Contentment
Here are some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this post, you might like these posts as well. These posts tend to discuss growing up in America. Often, I like to compare my life in America with the society within communist China. As there are some really stark differences between the two.
More Posts about Life
I have broken apart some other posts. They can best be classified about ones actions as they contribute to happiness and life. They are a little different, in subtle ways.
Stories that Inspired Me
Here are reprints in full text of stories that inspired me, but that are nearly impossible to find in China. I place them here as sort of a personal library that I can use for inspiration. The reader is welcome to come and enjoy a read or two as well.
If you could wind the clock back to a time in your life… where you could experience that time… undo your mistakes… and life life better, fuller and more gusto. What would you do and where would you go?
For me, well… for me… it would be 1976.
And there’s a lot of things that I would do differently. I’ll tell you what.
Everything from girls wanting me, and me being too shy to do anything about it, to investment decisions, to me beating the shit out of antagonists that really needed to be forever busted down.
And yeah… I would fully embrace the Disco and culture of that time.
So guys. It’s an exercise, I know.
And when I am 110 years old, I will probably want to relive this moment in time. As I lament not enjoying life to its fullest.
SIGH.
So guys, have a great day… and really ENJOY it. To its fullest.
Could Russia reach a GDP of 10 trillion under better management?
A screen grab from the video that has gone viral in Russia shows bewildered migrant workers from India tasked with shoveling a children’s playground in Moscow after a massive blizzard. They are staring at the snow that they see for the first time in their lives not knowing what they have to do with it and why they can’t just leave it be.
Kremlin has literally purchased 70,000 Indian workers for some of the rupees that India has paid for Russian crude oil deliveries with promises of 70,000 Indians later this year.
And now suddenly Indians are everywhere in Moscow on top of 2 million Middle Eastern tourists.
The Chinese are opening businesses throughout Moscow catering to an ever growing diaspora and university students who have taken up so many seats in colleges that Russian parents are pressured to pull their kids out and send to trade schools instead.
In the meantime, a Russian legislator is spending his time at work shopping online.
State Duma Deputy Artyom Kiryanov decided to enter the new plenary session with new clothes was caught buying a 105,000-ruble jacket, two months of an average worker’s wages.
Kiryanov asked ChatGPT how to respond convincingly to allegations and said that his job was to fight counterfeit goods.
“I head the expert council on economic cleanup and anti-counterfeiting, where my colleagues and I, among other things, combat illegal online stores. And I just happened to receive a link to one of these black-ops stores selling counterfeits and evading taxes,” the deputy explained. This is exactly when your keen journalistic eye caught my eye.”
Kremlin blocked WhatsApp strong arming Russians to move to state-controlled messenger Max claiming that it’s safe and proof against cyber fraud.
A Russian hackers group breached Max after spending 12 months hacking the messenger’s security. 15.4 million accounts containing full names, usernames, and verified phone numbers were leaked. The encryption was also breached. As evidence, they published data from a database belonging to State Duma deputy Brykin.
So much for cyber fraud proof state messenger.
What Women Leave Out About Dating
What is normal in the United States that British find weird?
Ermm. Not being able to drink in public.
What if I told these were bottle’s of beer sat on a park bench in a public place? Now for the Brits the concept of sitting on a park bench with a beer in your hand is pretty normal. Ive sat on public seating on next to a road drinking beer. I’ve walked down the road drinking beer. I’ve carried beer in a box down the road. All very normal in the UK. There are a few locations where their are no drinking zones for very specific reasons.
So imagine you will. Your in a bar in the US. Your at a party celebrating an upcoming wedding.
Well let’s suppose you have a beer bottle in your hand not unlike the dashing chap with the green top on.
Your busy chatting to the guests, getting to know your brothers wife’s friends.
Some of those friends go outside the front door and are chatting away outside. And then you casually saunter on through the doorway out into the open. You walk over to the guests and start to engage in conversation. But moments in they grab you and start bundling back into the bar in a rush without even saying anything. You are being escorted to the rear of the bar as you look back you see a copper walking upto the bar door and start peering through before you lose site of the copper as your taken out though the back.
Your like what the actual fuck is going on?
To which it is then explained to you that your not allowed to walk around with beer in your hand. I’ve always wondered why you see American movies where someone has clearly alcohol in a brown paper bag. Apparently this doesn’t break the law, which seems non sensical because if everyone is doing it and its clearly alcohol, it doesn’t take long to figure what their doing once you understand Americans are scared of seeing Alcohol in public places.
You won’t see this in the UK. A. Alcohol in a public place is about as normal as it gets. B: trying to hide something in such an obvious way makes no sense whatsoever.
Now I’m not clear if being caught with an exposed beer bottle in public would have led to arrest or an on the spot fine. But the Americans around me went waiting to find out.
Winnie didn’t know what a city was like.She asked me about them, one night, her voice floating up from the bottom bunk in the darkness, drowning in the sea of cricket song.The windows were open, like they were every evening. We might as well have been sleeping out in the swamp for all the noise. Leaves rustled as frogs trilled to one another, and the heavy air vibrated with the wings of moths and mosquitos–but we were safe from them. The screens were closed.The sounds of the marsh were our lullaby.They also hid conversations from Aunt Beth’s sharp ears.“Dunno, never been to one,” I muttered, turning over. The springs squealed beneath me.“Okay, but what do you think they’re like?”“Lots of people,” I said. “Lots of cars.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then say what you mean next time.”
She paused, and somewhere in the marsh a bullfrog bellowed. “I meant, why can’t we go there?”
This time I was silent.
“Luz?”
“I don’t know, Winnie. Go to sleep.”
Winnie was up a lot at night. Sometimes I could hear her moving around in the kitchen in the wee morning hours. I wondered if it came from being blind.
When I closed my eyes, I saw black. I had no idea what Winnie saw. I was about to ask her when her voice hissed up at me again.
“I know you’ve talked to Aunt Beth.”
“No, I haven’t.” My tone was a little bitter, and she heard it.
I’d asked Aunt Beth about the cities lots of times. She always made some stupid answer about the importance of getting your hands dirty and really living, and how cities weren’t good for that sort of thing.
Aunt Beth knew a lot about farming. Not much about kids, though.
I thought about cities a lot. I knew about the traffic, the people, the weird clothes they wore. And I knew a lot about cities from the past–New York City, Sofia, Beijing, San Francisco.
“Where’s the closest one?” Winnie asked, and I could hear her yawn.
“Long ways away.”
Torpor. 200 miles.
“How far?”
She didn’t need to know, but I told her anyway. “400 miles, round trip.”
She scoffed. “Heck, I thought it’d be farther. I could get there on the ASV in three hours.”
I had thought that before, too.
The whole bed creaked and bounced as she rolled over. “How do you know this stuff?”
“Books.”
“You gotta read them to me, Luz. I gotta know this stuff.”
This time I scoffed.
The cricket song swelled.
If Aunt Beth found out we were ever talking about cities–boy, would we be in bog water.
If she ever found out that two days after Winnie’s questions I snuck out at 23:00 to unplug the ASV from its battery, she would exile me to the marshlands forever.
The ASV was old, older than I was. It ran pretty smoothly, though. You couldn’t get much height out of it anymore, but it was still real fast. My brother Ethan had installed a GPS thing in it and called it Sal. The name stuck.
The marsh grass flattened as I tore over the fields, and in the bog places the water rippled underneath me. The humming of the engine drowned out the marsh noises.
The night was pitch-black. The shadows were eerie, long and otherworldly in the headlights. Gradually the familiar swampland turned to open meadows, and in the wide sky I could actually make out two stars–usually I could only see the one.
Dratted light pollution.
Meadows turned to dirt roads, real old ones that had probably been used back before Air Suspension Vehicles had been a thing. Back when they used old rubber and rusty hunks of metal to get around.
This was our border. This was the line we were never, ever supposed to cross, this back road.
My hands felt chill and my face hot as I sped over it.
Three hours is actually one heck of a drive, especially at 1:00 in the morning when your eyelids are drooping and you have to force yourself not to fall asleep at the handlebars.
It’s even worse when it’s 2:00 and you realize the gravity of what you’ve just done.
I had to stop for a minute in the middle of the woods to gather my thoughts. And by gathering my thoughts, I really meant forcing myself to breathe really hard five or six times until I felt the oxygen swelling my brain.
“What did I do?”
I was alone. In the dark. Farther from the farm than I had ever been in my life.
“What did I do?”
Aunt Beth was asleep. Winnie was asleep. Ethan was asleep.
“What did I do?”
I could be killed. Right now, I could drop dead in the middle of nowhere, and no one would ever know.
Alternatively, I could be killed in the city.
And then I would definitely be killed at home, when Aunt Beth inevitably woke and realized I was gone and the screen had been popped out of the bedroom window.
Poor Winnie. She would get so many mosquito bites. And then she would kill me, too.
Winnie.
If I was going to die anyways, I might as well figure out what a city was like so my last words could be ones describing that great mystery of life to my distraught sister.
The GPS chirped. “You are three minutes from your destination.”
“Thanks, Sal.” The sound of my own voice made me feel less alone. I revved the engine and tucked my helmet back on over my braids.
The lights from Torpor came into view only thirty seconds later. Bright, white, illuminating everything. My eyes burned from the sheer fluorescence of it all.
The woods stopped in a straight line, like the trees were afraid to approach the huge expanse of glowing buildings. All the pictures of NYC’s skyline couldn’t have prepared me for the height of these skyscrapers–they reached into the sky, pierced it like a needle. The clouds around them glowed.
Crazy.
If this was the sole reason Aunt Beth kept us away from these places, I didn’t blame her.
I followed the road–it had become a paved one a while back, but I hadn’t noticed when–up to a shiny chain-link fence. Torpor was still miles away, shining like a bluish-tinted candle on the plain. I fiddled with the little lock on the gate and decided it wasn’t worth the effort to pick it; I could lift Sal over the fence anyway.
It took some heavy lifting, and some awkward maneuvering, but I managed to get Sal safely on the other side. Leaping the pathetic gate–it was just another border to cross, really, and my success over the first one still had me elated–I hopped on and rode up to the city, my eyes watering.
“Arrived,” Sal said.
Riding through the outskirts, I passed my first houses, if that’s what they really were. They looked nothing like the cabin back home. For one thing, they were gray and awfully drab-looking. Each one had a garden, a little tree growing out front, and a little house beside the big one. Garages, for the ASVs and other vehicles, I guessed.
Some of the flowers on the lawns were beautiful, bright, and flourishing, like the plants in the swamp.
Others were dead.
There were a few other mobiles on the road. All the fancy kind, which sat six and had a roof, and a real steering wheel instead of handlebars.
Why stay out so late at night? Was that a city folk thing? Darkness was for sleeping.
But then again, I guess they never really had darkness in Torpor.
I rode past the suburbs and into the heart of the city.
Signs. There were lots of signs. And noises. Voices coming from everywhere: every wall, every building. Mobiles began to crowd the streets. Mine was the only one exposed to the night air; all the others had tops. They shrieked their horns at me when the lights ahead flashed red and I sped past.
Turns out red lights mean ASVs are going to swing out at you. I learned that real quick.
Red, stop. Green, go. Someone honks? Jump out of your seat, spin around, and find the culprit staring back at you from behind with the blankest expression you had ever seen. It was the same face Ethan made when I asked him about quantum mechanics, just to mess with him.
That was how the script went.
For all the angry noises they were making, city folk were pretty calm.
Then some idiot in a four-seater veered out into the road ahead and crashed into the mobile right in front of me.
The screech and clash of metal was deafening. The car ahead dropped to the pavement, the Air Suspension destroyed. I braked, sliding to a halt right before hitting the hunk of wrinkled steel in front of me.
“Hey!” I screamed, yanking off my helmet and jumping off Sal. “Hey, are you okay?”
The man in the crushed mobile waved a hand weakly out the window as the idiot scooted off. I shrieked after him, but he disappeared in the glowing traffic.
What was I supposed to do?
I ran over to the twisted vehicle, where the man’s hand was still swaying back and forth. The mobiles behind us honked and zoomed by.
“Are you okay?” I repeated, yelling through the open window near the sidewalk. “Hey! Are you hurt?”
The man lay in the driver’s side. A hat hid his face from view. His arm had gone limp.
I feared the worst and longed for the comfort of my bed at home, in the ocean of swamp sounds and darkness, for the quiet morning hours when Winnie got up to make herself a snack.
Was she awake now? Did she know I was gone?
Was she whispering questions up to my empty blankets, climbing up the ladder, feeling the abandoned bed? Running to Aunt Beth, to Ethan? Sprinting out to the barn, the empty barn where the ASV was supposed to charge?
The hat shifted. The man’s head turned. There was a little blood running down his forehead.
“Are you okay?” I asked again.
“I’m fine,” the man said. And he simply blinked at me. “I mean, it hurts, but I’m okay.”
“I need to call someone. Hang on, okay? I’ll get help.” I climbed up, off the sidewalk–I didn’t even realize I had been kneeling–and faced the nearest building. Was it an apartment, maybe? Surely someone there would have a telephone. Surely I could ring the police.
“Hey, little girl!” someone called.
Not the man in the ASV–he had gone quiet. It was a woman’s voice.
“What’s with all the noise?”
I searched the face of the building to find the speaker. A tall woman, standing on the third floor balcony, her hair dark and loose.
“Help!” I called up to her.
“Girl, you’re being way too loud,” she yelled back, leaning against the balcony railing. “Are you off your meds?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” She was off her rocker, for sure, but all I could do was hope she would help me. “Do you have a phone? Can you call an ambulance?”
“Why?”
I stared up at her, dumbfounded. “He’s hurt!” I gestured to the car.
“I’m fine,” the man called from inside.
“He’s fine,” the woman said, and she disappeared into her apartment. “Take your pills tomorrow,” she laughed, closing the glass door behind her.
I turned to the man. “You’re not fine.” I poked my head in through the window. “Where’s the hospital?”
“Two blocks from here. But hey, it’s my time.”
I blinked. “What?”
“My time to go.”
“No, it’s not.” I prodded his shoulder. “Don’t be an idiot!”
He shook me off. “Let me be.”
I wanted to go home. I wanted Aunt Beth.
The man faded out of consciousness.
“Help me!” I screeched, and some pedestrians walking by heard me and jumped. “Help me!”
How many people passed by? Thirty? What were they doing out so late at night, unbothered by the lights and the noise and the injured man on the side of the road?
“Hey, girl, calm down,” the man said suddenly, waking up. He began inching towards the open window.
I panicked. “No. Stay still!”
“No,” he returned, in a perfectly normal tone of voice. “I’m going home.”
He opened the ASV door and shuffled out onto the sidewalk as a gaggle of teenagers passed. His head was still bleeding.
I was powerless to stop him. He stood up and marched on, down the pavement, limping.
I was left with the shell of a mobile and a face sticky with tears.
No anger. No sadness. Only blank expressions.
I was surrounded by aliens. They couldn’t be human.
“Hey.” Someone poked me in the back. I whirled around and found a boy standing behind me.
“Are you okay? I saw what happened.”
His voice reminded me of Ethan’s. He was probably around Ethan’s age, too. “He just walked away,” I said, rubbing furiously at my tear-stained cheek. “Why didn’t anyone listen–?”
“Where’s your stuff?”
I paused mid-sob. “What?”
“Your medicine.” His voice was gentle.
“I don’t–I don’t have any.”
He gave me a quizzical look. “Oh. Do you need some?”
I stared at him. “What are you, a pharmacist? No!”
The boy’s eyes flitted from me, to the crushed ASV, and finally to Sal.
“I just want to go home,” I said, sniveling into my sleeve. “I just need to go–”
He interrupted. “You’re not from Torpor?”
“No.”
“Somnum, then?”
“I don’t know where that is!” I scooted over to pick my helmet up off the ground, tucking it under my arm and sitting back on the sidewalk. “I’ve never been to a city in my life!”
When I say the color drained out of his face faster than water in a sink, I mean it.
“What do you mean? You don’t live in a city?” His voice was a harsh whisper.
“No!”
“But I thought–” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
I studied him. An anomaly of emotion in a numb city. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked finally. “What’s wrong with them?”
“Oh.” He contemplated Sal. Then he answered me with a question, like Aunt Beth sometimes did. “What’s the point of life?”
I opened my mouth to tell him I didn’t have time for this, but he cut me off.
“Never mind, doesn’t matter what you think. People say it’s to be happy.” He sank to the ground beside me, tucking his arms around his knees.
That didn’t sound right to me, but I let him talk.
“So what’s the point if you’re not happy?” he asked. I opened my mouth again, but he didn’t let me answer. “There isn’t one. So they made it so anyone could be happy, whenever they wanted, for as long as they wanted. If they can afford it, I guess,” he added. “I guess a better word for it would be complacent. Takes away all the negative feelings, you know?” He swirled his finger around his ear.
“That’s insane.”
“Hey, they’re doing what makes them happy.” He said it bitterly.
“That–” I swung my arm towards the crashed mobile “–is not happy!”
“I didn’t say I agreed with it. Works pretty well for people who don’t want a conscience anymore, either,” he said, after a thought. “Can’t feel guilt.”
For a minute we sat on the sidewalk together, hating the blaze of traffic.
“But why?”
“Better not to feel anything. Better for society if no one has to be sad or angry–that’s what they think. What I used to think, actually.” He pulled his jacket tighter around himself. “Two months clean.” He smiled sadly.
I stared at him.
“Is he gonna be okay?”
“Who? The man? I don’t know. The police’ll find him, eventually.”
“So there are police.”
“Oh, yeah. We got police.”
“And hospitals?”
“’Course.”
I frowned. “But nobody cares to call?”
He shrugged. “Some do, some don’t. They can’t feel anything when they see something like that happen, so a lot of the urge to help is gone. Negative feelings, you know?” More cars honked, and swerved around the wreck. “They could still do something if they wanted. They could choose to. But they’re lazy. Getting rid of their feelings just makes being lazy easier.”
“Like you.” I made my way over to Sal. Her handlebars were familiar in my hands. “You’re lazy. You didn’t call.”
“Don’t got a phone.”
I glared at him. He shrugged again.
“Look, I’ll find one, okay? I’ll make sure someone takes care of him.”
I left him standing there on the sidewalk, beside the wrinkled mess of a mobile.
The city was a blur. Whether it was my tears or my speed that made it look that way, I don’t know. Both.
I climbed the gate.
I left, thinking how blind that lady was, with her numb thoughts and her empty laugh.
I had almost died in the city. And I was going to die when I got home, if not because of Aunt Beth then out of pure exhaustion.
And I could never, never tell Winnie about it. And I would never, never go back.
Winnie would never know what a city was like.
Spiced Coconut Quinoa And Shrimp
I love a good leftover makeover for dinner and this spiced coconut quinoa and shrimp recipe is a great one. It’s a tasty, one-pan meal, packed with veggies, protein and cooked quinoa and it makes the perfect cold weather recipe, because it’s filling and a bit spicy.
I know! I know it’s a weird combo! Like, did Dr. Evil come up with this recipe? No, no. All me. I guess I’m the bad guy. I actually came up with it, because I was looking through my photos from Budapest and started salivating when I saw a photo of the noodle dish I ate there.
I wanted to make it at home, but kinda healthier, and mostly with what I already had in the pantry and the freezer…so this delicious weirdo was born.
And before you dismiss it, it tastes really good! Plus, it’s the perfect way to use up cooked quinoa. (she said, hiding the other 300 ingredients up in her sleeve.)
When you make this spiced quinoa and shrimp, you get to:
use up leftovers,
add a lot of vegetables,
eat something healthy,
don’t make a huge mess that you need to clean,
like the taste of it.
Don’t know about you, but that’s all my goals when it comes to food. And it’s ready in like 10-15 minutes. Here’s the recipe and I have some step-by-step photos below.
Yield: 2
Spiced Coconut Quinoa And Shrimp
No Ratings
Use up your cooked quinoa with this easy dinner recipe ready in no time! This spiced coconut quinoa and shrimp is perfect healthy cold weather recipe!
Prep Time5 minutes
Cook Time10 minutes
Total Time15 minutes
Ingredients
6oz/180g shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 cup cooked quinoa (around ⅓ dried)
1 cup coconut milk
1 1/2 tsp curry powder
1 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper / or to taste
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup cabbage, thinly chopped
2 broccoli florets, chopped
1 medium-sized carrot, cut in strips
2 tbsp scallions, finely chopped
2 tbsp fresh dill or cilantro, finely chopped
Instructions
Chop all the vegetables.
Sauté the quinoa with half of the minced garlic, crushed red pepper, curry powder, ginger and cinnamon for a minute.
Then add in some salt and pepper, the coconut milk and the shrimp. Cover the pan with a lid and reduce heat to medium low to simmer for 5 minutes.
Then stir in the rest of the garlic, shredded cabbage, carrot, broccoli and cover with a lid again. Leave at low for 2-3 minutes, so that the vegetables cook a bit, but still have texture and vitamins. Lastly stir in the scallions and the fresh dill or cilantro.
Chop chop chop all the vegetables. As you see, I also had a mushroom thrown in there, but ended up not loving it, so I just fished it out of my meal and abandoned it. Much better without it. I feel as if I’ve decluttered.
Once you’ve chopped everything, sauté the cooked quinoa with half of the minced garlic, crushed red pepper, curry powder, ginger and cinnamon (with this one I told myself – you never take any risks and did it!!). Stir for a minute. Then add in some salt and pepper, the coconut milk and the shrimp. Cover the pan with a lid and reduce heat to medium-low to simmer for 5 minutes.
Then stir in the rest of the garlic, cabbage, carrot, broccoli and cover with a lid again. Leave at low for 2-3 minutes, so that the vegetables cook a bit, but still have texture and vitamins. Lastly stir in the scallions and fresh dill or cilantro and enjoy.
Serve immediately.
If you have other leftovers, you might enjoy some of my ideas on what to do with them here.
I made these Mediterranean fish bowls with fried Branzino fillets, salad and tzatziki sauce this summer and somehow forgot to post the recipe. But procrastination can’t stop me! The pan-fried Branzino is here, and it would be great for dinner and you can meal prep it for the week, too. Just pack into airtight containers, and heat it up for a few minutes in the oven before serving with the salad and tzatziki.
This is one of the recipes I pretty much grew up with. My family loved having fried white fish like Branzino with salad (usually tomatoes and cucumbers), bread (I miss you), and of course – garlic sauce or tzatziki! You always need the bread, especially when you didn’t catch the fish in the grocery store and don’t know how to turn it into fish fillets without bones. My grandpa always said – chew thinly. Not many people like a fish bone stuck to the back of their throat. Who knew. A piece of bread to the rescue – the soft part should fix it.
On a more positive note, another favorite way to serve fried fish was with mashed potatoes and tzatziki…it’s SO good.
Now that I’m older, wiser and more gluten-intolerant, I used gluten-free ground oats for the coating of the Branzino fillets. You can use oat flour or regular flour as well, the important thing is to rub the fish with salt before coating with the flour. Sometimes I just mix the flour with salt on the plate and then coat the fish in that. I can’t seem to measure salt in anything other than pinches, I appologize – you need around 3!
If you want you can mix in pepper, paprika or other spices into the flour, to make the fish spicy. I like mine only with salt – like you’d usually have fried fish in Greece or Italy.
Here’s the recipe, I’ll add some step-by-step photos for the fried Branzino below:
Yield: 3
Fried Branzino with Salad and Tzatziki
5.0 Stars (2 Reviews)
Mediterranean fish bowls with fried Branzino fillets, salad and tzatziki sauce – a delicious fish recipe for dinner. The pan-fried franzino would be great for meal prep for the week, just pack into airtight containers, and heat it up for a few minutes in the oven before serving with the salad and tzatziki.
Prep Time15 minutes
Cook Time15 minutes
Total Time30 minutes
Ingredients
Fried Branzino
14oz/400g branzino fillets
1/2 cup ground oats
3 good pinches or salt
olive oil for frying
Mediterranean Bean Salad*
1 tomato, chopped
3/4 cup white beans, cooked, no fluids
a good handful of basil leaves
1 Cucumber, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, thinly chopped
1 cup arugula, roughly chopped
1/2 avocado, chopped
1/2 onion, thinly chopped
1 tbsp capers, drained
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tbsp olive oil, or to taste
1 tbsp lemon juice, or to taste
Tzatziki
1 cup Greek yogurt, (around 10% fat)
1 small cucumber (around 1/2 cup thinly chopped, washed, peeled if not organic**
1 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves
1-2 tbsp finely chopped fresh dill
a pinch of salt
Instructions
Pat dry the fillets and season with salt, rubbing along the fish on each side. Add the ground oats (or flour) to a larger plate that would fit the fillets. Then roll the Branzino fillets in the flour to coat them properly. Tap fillets gently to shake off excess flour.
Heat oil in a pan (enough to properly cover the surface – around 2 tbsp), then add some fish – it should sizzle. Add the Branzino fillets to the pan and fry on each side for 3-4 minutes, flipping with a spatula – the fillets should be golden brown. Sometimes I like them really crispy and would let them fry a bit longer flipping twice.
For the salad, add all ingredients to a bowl and season with lemon juice, salt and pepper and mix. For the tzatziki, same instructions – add all ingredients to a smaller bowl and mix, adding salt and pepper.
Serve the seabass with salad and a dollop of tzatziki.
**I did not use a cucumber, as I didn’t have any leftover after the salad (the sauce was still good – it’s more like yogurt sauce)
Did you make this? Tell us about it!
Pat dry the fish fillets and season with salt, rubbing along the fish. Add the ground oats (or flour) to a larger plate that would fit the fillets. Then roll the Branzino fillets in the flour to coat them properly.
spread the flour aka coating mixtureplace filletsflip to coat evenly and shake off excess flour
Tap the fillets to shake off excess flour
Fry for 3-4 minutes on each side or until golden brown
Serve with salad and tzatziki
This 1963 TV Episode Is Still DEEPLY Unsettling Today
“Need I remind you of the severe penalties we face if we’re caught outside the fence?” Rignon was barking at Caprin through a clenched jaw. She looked over at him and smiled. A glistening sheen of sweat streamed down his forehead and temples.”If you’re nervous, just go home. I can manage on my own.” She gazed out at the fields beyond the fence, savoring the beating of her own heart, soaking in the still morning air. She’d spent the better part of the last year finding every opportunity she could to stand at the fence and gaze out at the landscape beyond. Rolling hills, the hint of a forest canopy, and the ghostly silhouette of mountains. Real, actual mountains. These called to her. They knew her name. At night when she closed her eyes she tried to picture what it would be like to stand among their towering peaks, to scale their long slopes. She couldn’t even guess how far away they were, but they often seemed to burst through the clouds, and the way the sun dipped below them she knew they had to be massive.”Caprin! You can not manage on your own! You won’t last a minute without me!”Without glancing over at him she grinned. “How do you know? Nobody’s gone out beyond the fence for a hundred years.” Her tone was purposefully defiant, targeting just the right buttons. She knew she’d won when Rignon let out a long sigh. She could feel the air around him dissipate as his muscles relaxed. She was sure he was rolling his eyes, but she continued to gaze out over the field. “Come on, I know you’re dying to know what’s out there just as much as I am.” She elbowed her friend playfully and before he could offer any further protests, she hurdled the fence in one swift bound, exactly as she’d practiced a hundred times in her imagination.
“But…” Rignon began, but leaving him with a quick, sly grin she dashed out into the field toward the foothills.
“Come on!” she called out over her shoulder. “The mountains are waiting for us!” She ran as fast as she could, the wind blowing through her hair as she pumped her legs and let the long, untamed grass grapple with the toes of her shoes. The morning was quiet and cool, and she couldn’t wait to see what was on the other side of the hills.
“Wait!” Rignon’s quiet voice rang out from far behind her. She turned and stumbled backwards, laughing at her friend as he bounded toward her with a grimace on his face. He was always so nervous. He always resisted her antics until the last minute. But in the end, she knew why he enjoyed being her friend.
He caught up to her just moments before cresting the hill. “Glad you decided to join me,” she teased. “I’d probably be dead already if it weren’t for you.”
He glowered. “There are reasons we’re forbidden from exploring beyond the fence. This is dangerous.”
She watched the top of the hill ahead eagerly as they walked, panting, up the slope. “Did I ever tell you,” she wheezed, “about the time I saw a tiny light coming from the side of one of the mountains?”
“Yes,” he groaned. “A million times. You got in so much trouble for even talking about it around my family.” He chuckled. “Grandma still doesn’t like that I spend time with you.”
At long last she could see the ground leveling ahead. A few more steps and they’d be able to see the forest.
“You know,” Rignon continued, “grandma was telling me about…”
“Shh!” Caprin blasted, holding out a silencing hand. “Look!” she gasped, instinctively hunching lower as she continued toward the top of the hill.
“What?” he asked, glancing at her to ascertain where his attention should be. “It’s just a fo…”
“No!” she snapped. “Look farther!” She pointed out at a spot in the middle of a vast sea of trees.
Rignon breathed in sharply and ducked down also, crouching as he hurried to his friend’s side. “What is it?” he whispered.
There, barely peeking out from among the thick forest, halfway between the hills and the base of the mountains, a brightly glowing dome broke through the treetops, a vast megastructure with a glass canopy. It was unlike anything Caprin had ever seen.
“I don’t know,” she sighed breathlessly. “It’s beautiful.”
Rignon grabbed at her wrist nervously, barely managing to wrap his fingers around her forearm before she wandered away. “Alright,” he declared. “We’ve seen enough. Time to go home.” He tugged weakly at her and she easily yanked herself free.
“No,” she breathed, staring unblinkingly at the distant dome. “We need to go check it out.”
“Caprin,” he pleaded. “We live good lives. You have a good home, with good parents. We are safe and we have plenty of food and water. When it rains we are dry inside our houses. We enjoy music and plays and stories. And all of that depends on one rule: do not venture beyond the fence.”
She turned her head and scowled at him. “But why? Why not go beyond the fence? What is out here that should remain undiscovered?” She looked back at the dome in silence. “Something is inside that glowing glass bubble, and I intend to find out what.” She paused and clenched her fists. “Go home if you want,” she said. “Go home if you love ignorance and secrets. But I am going to go and discover something. I…” she trailed off, unsure how to say exactly how she felt. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “Rignon, I need this. I can’t confine myself to a fenced-in existence. There’s more out there.” She pointed back behind her at the forest. “See? You can see that there is something more.” She glared at him a moment longer, and just as his lips parted to speak she added, “I’m going.”
He just watched her go. She could tell because she didn’t hear a sound from his mouth or his feet as she descended the hill toward the edge of the forest. Her temples were pounding and she felt flush all over. She took some deep breaths and marched on with determination. The first trees stood at the base of the hill. She paused and looked up at the crest behind her. Her whole life was on the other side of those hills now, and there, at the top, stood her best friend. Silently, she urged him to run down the hill to join her, but she knew he wouldn’t. He just stared at her, full of shock and horror.
She shook her head and turned to plunge into the forest.
“Wait,” he called out like a distant memory. “Come back with me,” he cried. “We aren’t explorers. We are safe within the fence!”
She ignored him and let the cool shadows of the trees embrace her, swallowing her up into a new world full of mystery and discovery.
***
Rignon remembered watching her disappear into the darkness between the trees. He had stood there, watching and waiting for her to return. When the sun was high overhead he returned home, defeated and empty inside.
Now he leaned his head against the window in his bedroom letting the coldness spread through his forehead into his skull. Raindrops trickled down the glass in erratic, wandering paths while even darker clouds gathered high overhead. He pictured the great forest beyond the hills, the trees thirsty for water, and he wondered if the water would run down the glass dome the same way it trickled down on his window. Is that were Caprin would be watching the rain, from inside the dome?
He took a slow, deep breath and exhaled, blasting the cold glass with a layer of steam that quickly faded. He closed his eyes and let his shoulders droop, wondering how much harder he could press against the glass before it would shatter.
There was a knock at his door. He didn’t move. The door cracked open. Still, he gazed out through the wet glass silently. The door closed again and soon his bed dipped.
His grandmother’s raspy lungs filled and she exhaled dramatically. “How long has it been?” she creaked.
He needed no clarification and he knew the precise answer. “Twenty nine days,” he mumbled.
“Wow,” she hummed, then she welcomed a long stretch of silence into the conversation.
Rignon let the glass tug up on his forehead and he closed his eyes again, Caprin’s face glowing back at him with excitement, just as it had when he’d joined her beyond the fence.
Grandma sighed again. “I’m very proud of you.” She paused again, but only for a moment. “You’ve always done your best to be a rule follower, even when that Caprin girl tempted you with her rule-breaking antics.” Unexpectedly, she chuckled.
Rignon turned to face her, expecting to see a look of disapproval on the woman’s wrinkled face. But she really was smiling.
“You know,” she continued. “Every society needs rule followers, but humanity would have died out long ago without the rule breakers.” Still smiling, she shook her head slowly. “You know, my own grandmother was a rule breaker. She used to tell me forbidden stories about the world outside the fence.”
His heart jumped. “Really?” He was short of breath. His mind was spinning. Something pricked the back of his brain, like a tiny bolt of lightning.
She huffed through her nose and shook her head, closing her eyes. “Whether I want to admit it or not, rule breaking runs in our genes.”
Rignon stared at his grandma with wide eyes. He opened his mouth to let one of the billion questions in his head start to pour out, but nothing happened. He was frozen.
She peered at him and shrugged her shoulders in as though receiving a hug while smiling warmly. “I loved those stories, and I so wanted to pass them on to my children, but my mother was a stickler for the rules, and she taught us to fear everything on the other side of that fence, geographically and temporally.” She took in a long breath and let it go with an air of regret. “Rignon, your parents are going to kill me, but I’m so old I’m as good as dead anyway.” She grinned. “You should go after your friend. Go and discover what she did.”
His heart was pounding violently in his tight chest. He couldn’t be hearing her correctly. “What?” he choked.
She shrugged. “Just be sure to tell me all about it someday, if you ever make it back.”
He jerked his head to the side. “If I ever make it back?” He clenched his jaw. “Is it dangerous?”
“Oh no,” she laughed, a twinkle in her eye. “But you probably won’t want to come back. I’ve only ever heard stories, but the truth is that we are trapped inside the fence. Most of these people would leave in a heartbeat if they knew what was out there.”
He stared at her for a moment. “So why haven’t you left?”
She smiled. “Because,” she said. “I liked it just fine here with my family. Following the rules didn’t hurt anything. My curiosity was never quite stronger than my desire to feel safe. They told us to stay inside the fence, and in return we were given everything we could ever need. Nobody is going to take care of you out there Rignon. It’ll be just you and Caprin versus the world. If that’s what you want, then you should go.”
He hesitated. He wasn’t really sure what he wanted. On the hill he had made his choice, hadn’t he? A flood of churning doubts and fears crashed down on him and for a brief moment he allowed himself to drown there, to be swept away and spun around, tossed and buffeted by a storm that he knew he could blow away with a single breath. So when he was done allowing himself to drown, he took a deep breath and blew, feeling himself relax as he settled on the truth.
He blinked and his gaze locked on grandmother’s steely pupils. “I belong with Caprin,” he said.
The warmth in her smile intensified. “I know,” she said. Her hazel eyes shimmered with tears. “I know you do.” She fell onto him, wrapping tightly around his body and pinning his arms against his breathless chest. She squeezed and watered him with her tears for a moment, and when she finally released him he got to his feet and glanced out the window.
“I’ll need my rain gear,” he said.
She grinned through her wet cheeks. “I already set it out by the door for you.”
He smiled, turned to the door, and left.
Disco Dazzle and the Disco Duck Derby
A Race Where Everyone Wins (Because Winning is Sharing the Spotlight)
It began, as most fabulous things do, with a sparkling declaration.
Mr. Ducky, resplendent in his best newsboy cap, stood atop the old cider barrel in the barnyard. In his wing, he held not a scroll, but a shimmering, foil-wrapped megaphone that bent the light into rainbows.
“Friends! Fowl! Country-cats!” he announced, his voice a buoyant baritone. “I am pleased—nay, thrilled—to announce the first-ever, one-of-a-kind, history-making DISCO DUCK DERBY!”
A hush fell, charged with curiosity.
“The rules?” Mr. Ducky continued, puffing his chest. “Simple! A race from the pumpkin patch to the old willow tree! The prize?” He paused for dramatic effect, then gestured with a flourish.
Zephyr, floating nearby with a look of mischievous approval, snapped his fingers. There, hovering above the barrel, appeared a solid-gold turnip. It gleamed with a ludicrous, undeniable splendor. It wasn’t just a vegetable; it was a symbol. Of victory. Of validation. Of being the one.
“May the best duck win!” Mr. Ducky concluded.
And that’s when the chaos began.
The Scramble for the Shiny
What started as a friendly waddle quickly devolved into glorious, glitter-soaked anarchy. The Duck Choir, normally harmonizers of hymn and honk, shed their choir robes to reveal competitive streaks a mile wide.
Duck #1 “accidentally” laid a banana peel on the track (sourced from Chef Remy’s compost). Duck #2 retaliated with a tactical glitter-bomb, turning rivals into sparkly, disoriented sitting ducks. Duck #3 tried to tunnel under the starting line, muttering about “underground shortcuts.”
It was less a race and more a feathery, squabbling scrum. The farm watched, a mix of horror and fascination on their faces. The air, once light, grew thick with the sour tang of competition. Doris fainted twice from the “sheer lack of sportsmanship!”
Sir Whiskerton watched from the fence post, his monocle catching the glint of the gold turnip. “A prize meant to unite,” he murmured, “has become a magnet for mess.”
But Disco Dazzle saw something else.
He saw not malice, but longing. He saw ducks so desperate to be seen as the best that they’d forgotten how to be good. He saw a track laid for speed, when it was begging for style.
He didn’t sigh. He smiled. A slow, knowing smile. He adjusted his oversized sunglasses, gave his bell-bottom jumpsuit a confident swish, and stepped forward. His platform sneakers squeaked a perfect, funky rhythm on the packed earth.
The Reframe
“A’ight, a’ight! Hold up, feathered fam!” Dazzle’s voice cut through the squabbling, not with a shout, but with a smooth, bassy calm. He walked right into the middle of the pre-race pile-up.
He looked at the banana peel. Looked at the glitter. Looked at the tunnel entrance. Then he looked at the golden turnip, and finally, at the ducks themselves—panting, plotting, eyes fixed on a finish line that promised everything.
“Y’all got it twisted,” he said, shaking his head. “This ain’t a race.”
A stunned silence. Mr. Ducky sputtered. “But the rules! The turnip!”
“This,” Dazzle said, raising one paw in his signature Pose of Possibility, “is a parade. Y’all just forgot the music.”
With that, he reached into the small boombox perpetually strapped to his side—the one that had coaxed the sun back—and pressed play.
A beat dropped. Not frantic, but infectious. A smooth, groovy bassline that seemed to pulse up from the ground itself: Thump-a-thump… slide… thump-a-thump… shine…
He didn’t stop the race. He transformed it.
“The track ain’t for runnin’,” he declared, starting to move his shoulders in time with the beat. “It’s for strollin’. The finish line?” He pointed to the willow tree. “That’s a stage. And every single one of you gorgeous beings has a solo waitin’.”
The Parade of Solos
The change was instant, and magical.
The duck eyeing the banana peel looked at it again. Instead of a hazard, he saw a prop. He waddled over, balanced it on his beak, and began a wobbly, utterly charming juggling act.
The glitter-bomb duck looked at her sparkly rivals. Instead of adversaries, she saw a backup chorus. She organized them into a shimmying, shimmering line that did the Electric Slide.
The tunnel-digger duck popped back out of his hole, not with dirt, but with a daisy chain. He offered it to the nearest judge (a bewildered but delighted Porkchop).
One by one, the ducks crossed the “starting line.” But they didn’t race. They performed.
A duck with a hat did a soft-shoe routine.
Two ducks performed a synchronized swimming routine on dry land.
One simply closed his eyes and sang a soulful, honking rendition of “What a Wonderful World.”
The farm erupted. They weren’t spectators anymore; they were the world’s most enthusiastic audience. Clucks became claps. Oinks became ovations. Even Genghis tapped his monocle in time.
And then came the winner.
A small, unassuming duck named Puddles, who had been hanging back, nervous. When it was his turn, he tripped over his own webbed feet and landed—SPLOSH—right in a mud puddle left over from the morning’s dew.
The crowd gasped. Puddles froze, mortified.
Then Disco Dazzle caught his eye. Dazzle didn’t look concerned. He looked expectant. He gave a slow, encouraging nod.
Puddles looked down at the mud. Looked at his reflection in the brown water. And something clicked.
He didn’t get up. He started to move. A spin on his back. A kick that sent a graceful arc of mud-drops sparkling in the sun. A full-bodied, glorious, breakdance-esque splatter-spin that was part accident, part artistry, and 100% pure, unfiltered joy.
The farm lost its mind. The cheers shook the willow leaves.
The Victory That Wasn’t
When the last note faded and the final duck had taken its bow, Mr. Ducky, tears in his eyes, floated the golden turnip to Puddles. “The winner! By crowd acclaim!”
Puddles, now more mud than duck, took the gleaming turnip. He held it, feeling its impossible weight. Then he looked out at the beaming, cheering faces of his fellow ducks—no longer rivals, but co-stars. He looked at Disco Dazzle, who was just smiling, one paw raised.
Puddles waddled through the mud. He stopped before Dazzle and held out the turnip.
“For the cat who made us all stars,” he honked softly.
Dazzle looked at the offering. He didn’t take it. Instead, he gently guided Puddles’s wing, turning him toward the edge of the field, where Steve the Scarecrow stood, swaying gently in the aftermath of the music.
Dazzle took the turnip and, with a reverence that hushed the crowd, placed it gently on the scarecrow’s shoulder. It glowed there, not as a prize, but as an ornament.
“Nah, sugar,” Dazzle said, his voice thick with feeling. “Some crowns look better on legends. And some victories?” He turned to face every single creature gathered. “Ain’t meant to be held. They’re meant to be shared.”
The Moral of the Story
As the sun began to set, painting the sky in disco-ball colors, Sir Whiskerton summed it up from his perch.
“The greatest victories,” he purred, “are not the ones you clutch to your chest. They are the ones you release into the air—like a beat, or a laugh, or a glitter-bomb of goodwill. They are the moments you realize the spotlight is big enough for everyone, and it shines brightest when shared.”
Mr. Ducky, sniffling, pulled out his megaphone one last time. “New slogan!” he announced. “The Disco Duck Derby: Now with 200% more shared spotlight!”
That night, the golden turnip remained on the scarecrow’s shoulder, catching the moonlight. And if you listened closely, you could hear the faint, funky hum of the farm itself—a community that had learned, once again, that the real gold was in the groove, and the real win was in the we.
Jingle on. (Or, in funky farm-ese: Compete… reframe… dance… share.)
The End.
How do you feel about Canada warming up to China recently? Shouldn’t this give us a reason to bring them into the union? We don’t want a communist neighbor.
This is the first visit to China by a Canadian prime minister in eight years.
Eight years ago, in December 2017, Justin Trudeau also visited China.
Later, due to Canada’s illegal detention of Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou, Sino-Canadian relations plummeted to a freezing point.
During Justin Trudeau’s tenure, Canada followed the US in imposing restrictions on Huawei and pursuing the “Indo-Pacific Strategy,” virtually severing Sino-Canadian relations.
In fact, Mark Carney is not the only Western leader to visit China recently; German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron also plan to visit China.
Some insightful people believe that this clearly shows that some Western countries have been cornered by Trump and have no choice but to seek China’s protection.
The collaboration in the security field was proposed by Mark Carney.
As is well known, the scope of cooperation in the security field is very broad，extending beyond traditional military defense to include human security, economic stability, cyber defense, health, governance, and environmental protection, involving a wide array of state and non-state actors through dialogues, joint training, capacity building, and multilateral agreements to address shared threats and promote peace and stability.
As a founding member of NATO, Canada’s Prime Minister stated during a visit to China that Canada and China could become “strategic partners,” and even extend cooperation to the security field. Isn’t that intriguing?
This marks the first time in history that a single Western country has requested security cooperation from China. 😂😂😂
In reality, as long as Trump doesn’t promote “America First” and instead follows the Democrats’ example in promoting so-called “democratic alliances” and “shared values,” these Western countries will once again fawn over the US as before.
It is well known that Canada is a country that is extremely obsequious to the United States. If it weren’t for Trump’s intention to annex Canada and make it the 51st state of the United States, Canadians would not have defied the United States.
What’s even more interesting is Denmark. Russia doesn’t consider Denmark an enemy, but Denmark sees Russia as its biggest threat. China is far away, yet Denmark considers China an enemy. Denmark is an ally of the United States, and now the US wants to annex Greenland.
To put it bluntly, this is a farcical reality where allies are treated like suckers and ideology is used as a fig leaf. Denmark, in its confused state, harbors hatred towards China and defense against Russia, only to be taught a lesson by its own “big brother,” the United States. 🤣
In this world, there are no permanent friends, only permanent interests.
In the future, the world in Cold War 2.0 may see two major camps:
One centered on Beijing, emphasizing free trade and technological innovation, known as 北京公約組織, or 北約, Its Chinese pronunciation is the same as NATO.
The other centered on Washington, D.C., externally raising trade barriers and closing markets, internally having a dominant country (For example, the United States) artificially arrange industrial chains and division of labor, known as 華盛頓公約組織 or 華約, Its Chinese pronunciation is the same as Warsaw Pact.
After the United States annexes Canada and Greenland, it will become the world’s largest country by land area, called the “United States Supervised Realm⁺,” or USSR for short. 😂
MAGA says Mark Carney is a corrupt leftist bought off by China, but I wonder how MAGA views Javier Milei?
Javier Milei, a Trump supporter, a superstar in the MAGA universe, and the far-right Argentine president, is also planning a visit to China!!!
Milei repeatedly touted the China threat during his campaign. As a staunch Trump supporter, Milei has followed the US lead, declaring decoupling from China. In the technological sphere, Argentina has consistently followed the US in restricting China. These measures have earned Milei the praise of American conservatives, making him almost a “shining star” in Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) universe.
Now, he has actively applied to visit China, but China has not yet approved his request.
It seems that a hungry stomach is more honest than campaign slogans!
I estimate that in 2026, many more US allies will visit China. America’s hegemonic behavior has eroded the trust of these allies. 😁
Dell RTO Policy Failing – Company Culture is DEAD for Big Tech
Do pizza outlets like Pizza Hut and Domino’s really add extra cheese if one orders extra cheese for a topping?
Jason Thomas
I worked at pizza hut for 9 years.
While there, we did put extra cheese on a pizza. It was a measured amount. We got yelled at for putting too much cheese sometimes, but I always felt like it was just nice to give the customer a little extra.
What was total BS was if you ordered a two topping pizza. I don’t remember the exact numbers, it has been 15 years since I worked there, but I think a pepperoni pizza had 60 slices of pepperoni. A ham pizza had 60 slices of ham. But for a dollar more, you could get a pepperoni and ham pizza that had 30 slices of pepperoni and 30 slices of ham. Similar issue with other toppings, but it was most obvious with that exact combination.
The reasoning here is that a pizza cooks to a certain doneness in the oven. With too much toppings, it won’t cook right. And if you ordered 5 toppings, and we put the single topping quantity on 5 times, that would be true. But a 2 topping pizza just didn’t need that severe of a reduction, in my opinion. Some reduction, yes, but not half. They paid extra money for that extra topping. Why can’t they have extra?
I argued about it with my boss, but that was because I was young and stupid thinking that the fact that I had a good point made a bit of difference against corporate policy. I was, and still am, right. But I also know that being right is irrelevant. Those decisions are made way, way above the store level.
Some pizza restaurants do tho gs differently, but I can promise you that any good one will reduce the quality of each topping when you order several toppings. It just won’t cook right if you don’t.
I recommend if you like your pizza a certain way, just order at different places until you find a place that makes it the way you want.
What has turned ICE and DHS agents into such cruel, dishonest, and unprofessional thugs and bullies and no longer honest law enforcement agents serving to protect the public?
Back when I was fresh out of law school, I clerked for a federal appellate judge. I had a front row seat to a particularly upsetting case. This was in 2003, when most of us thought, like you seem to, that ICE (then “INS”) was just doing a job.
The appellant was a teenage girl who had been brought to this country as a babe in arms by her parents, who were fleeing the civil war in Eritrea. While they certainly should have qualified for asylum, given the genocidal nature of the war (literal genocide—“kill everyone of that ethnic group”—not the “lots of people die in a war” situation that most people these days seem to imagine is genocide), they gave up on it because the asylum process, even in the 1980s, was horribly backlogged and arbitrary. So she was what would later be called a “DREAMer.” Until her mid-teens, she didn’t even know she wasn’t a citizen.
Anyhoo, she was working a summer job during high school, tending a retail store cash register, when some crook came in and talked her into letting them use a credit card number without the card that they had “lost.” Obviously (to anyone but a teenager) it was a scam, and the owner had to repay the true cardholder. The owner filed an insurance claim. His carrier required him to make a police report. The police, in turn, arrested the girl (over the owner’s protests) as a ‘co-conspirator,’ since she was the one who actually entered the card number into the system. She pled guilty, was sentenced to time served, and went home.
Which should have been the end of it. But somebody at the court, or the sheriff’s office, decided she hadn’t suffered enough for her “crime,” so they illegally sent the sealed juvenile record off to INS, with a note that she was an “illegal alien.” The INS, hearing of an illegal alien who had committed the heinous crime of being defrauded, promptly grabbed her and began extradition proceedings.
To extradite her to a country where she knew no-one, didn’t speak the language, and would be shot as part of the ongoing genocide as soon as she stepped off the airplane.
Because she took a summer job and was badly trained. Death sentence. This was pointed out to INS. They didn’t give a sh*t.
The case went up through administrative appeals and court appeals. At every stage, INS fought tooth and nail for the right to klll this kid. I’m glad to say that at the appellate court level, three judges finally had the common decency to reverse and tell the INS to get its head out of its a$$.
My point being, ICE was NEVER just “honest law enforcement agents serving to protect the public.” They were brutal, racist thugs from the jump.
Why can a military tank not have wheels instead of tracks?33 more answers
A lot of great answers here, but one very important point has been largely ignored:
GROUND PRESSURE
Contrary to popular belief, the main reason why tanks use caterpillar tracks is not to increase friction on muddy ground; it’s not like putting snow tires on your car in the winter. The main reason is to decrease ground pressure.
Soviet/Russian MBTs have around 10 to 15% less ground pressure than their NATO counterparts, dramatically improving their performance on soft terrain like mud and snow.
Believe it or not, many modern MBTs actually have lower ground pressure than an average man standing up. This means if a tank crewman were standing in muddy ground next to his tank, he would sink lower in the mud than his tank would.
This is why wheels don’t work for MBTs: they would sink into the ground if they had wheels. Wheels have a far smaller footprint than tracks, and with the same weight of tank, it would cause the tank to dig into the ground. Even on hard terrain like a paved road, the wheels would start deforming the asphalt.
Now you understand why almost all wheeled AFVs are lighter than 20 tons, any heavier and they would sink, even in an 8×8 configuration.
Wheeled tank destroyers like this Chinese ZTL-11 are all the rage now. The new trend emphasizing operational mobility favors sub-20 ton AFVs. In this weight class, wheels are king.
Personally, I believe wheely bois are the future of AFV development. They will never fully replace tracks, but they will become the preferred AFV choice in most future scenarios.
There simply isn’t a large scale land war between the major powers on the horizon (I don’t believe a Russia-NATO WWIII is likely at all), one that would require WWII-style head-to-head MBT engagements. And even if there were to be one, modern APS systems will eventually supplant passive armor anyway.
The fact is, the deadliest threats to AFVs are no longer other AFVs. A 70 ton M1 Abrams is just as easy to kill as an 18 ton Stryker if they’re hit by a flying suicide drone. The 10 tons of frontal armor on the Abrams won’t do it any good in many, if not most, combat scenarios in the coming decades.
This is the real threat to AFVs in future wars: swarms of suicide drones launched from simple and cheap carriers. Passive armor does nothing against threats like these.
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Wheels are not just replacing tracks on tanks and other maneuver AFVs, they’re also becoming increasingly popular as self-propelled artillery:
Russian 2S35–1 152mm SPA truck
These new trend towards truck-mounted artillery is just another example of militaries around the world favoring operational mobility over armor. A traditional 155mm armored SPA like the American M109 Self-propelled howitzer is extremely capable, but it always weighs almost 30 tons. This greatly limits its deployment options.
What do semi-truck drivers do when they realize that they’re taller than the clearance while driving?
On the rare occasions when I drove a semi (no license, bad idea, I was a hitchhiker and game for it anyway) this never happened.
However, years later (still decades ago) I was driving a rental flatbed ten wheel with a bunch of preassembled roof trusses strapped on it. It was 13′6″ tall. I’d measured before I set out. I was driving along as carefully as I could manage, when I got to a bridge marked 13′3″. But. It was an arched bridge. My load was only tall on the left side. I stopped, got out, walked up and measured… sure enough, the lowest part of the arch was 13′3″ but the middle was clearly a good bit taller, perhaps as much as a foot. Certainly more then the additional three inches I’d need.
(not this bridge, but just to show what I mean. Only it looks like this one is 12 feet in the middle. Would not have worked!)
I backed up, drove down the road gently with my driver’s side wheels on the center line, positioning the tall part of my load in the middle of the arch.
No ugly scraping noises. No cracking of wood. No sudden stop. Just crawled slowly through the arch and away I went, back up to normal driving speed.
I always wondered if real truckers got maps that showed the heights of all underpasses. But if so, I didn’t have one. I’d have driven a long ways out of my way to go a route that didn’t have an underpass shorter than my load!
How can Trump commandeer Venezuela’s oil when it is under legal contract to Russia, China, and some others?7 more answers
Kanthaswamy Balasubramaniam
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He can’t
He isn’t going to
I. Who will buy this Oil?
Certainly not Europeans. They can’t refine Venezuelan crude.
Indians?
Nopes. Our Plants can’t process too much Venezuela crude. The refining is expensive , costs as much as 18% higher.
He can’t just refine the crude in US refineries and sell Petrol to Europe
Crude is a downstream product. Can be mixed. Can be varied.
Petrol is a finished product. Has to be EXACT. You need EXPORT ORIENTED REFINERIES. You need continuous access to massive quantities of additives. You need dedicated shipping
So what does he do with 50 million barrels of Venezuelan Crude??????
II. What does he gain?
50 million barrels crude is $ 4 Billion at the most
That’s a mere ONE DAY INTEREST on US Debt
Thats literally the ₹4000/- KIDNAP comedy of Goundamani and Senthil 😁
For China, it’s 2 days trade surplus
They could literally pay this tomorrow to Trump
They would say “Take this HAFTA and buy yourself a nice mansion”
III. How much is 50 million barrels?
Around 4 days worth of US use
It’s not BILLION
It’s just Million
So what is he doing?
Simple
He is CONVINCING HIS BASE!!!!!
These numbskulls !!!!
He attacked Venezuela
It didn’t turn out as he expected
Venezuelans didn’t rise and revolt and throw out the socialists and welcome the Americans as saviors
So he is convincing his base that HE WON and the price of the win is 50 Million Barrels
These guys can’t do math
They would see 50 Million barrels as a huge win!!!!
The Reality
US doesn’t need 50 Million Barrels Oil
Not Venezuela Crude
It can’t even be part of the SPR
He will SELL TO THE US IMPORTERS
They will pay money, a discounted rate
They may refine this into Petrol and resell back to Venezuela or Cuba or Colombia, at a discounted rate, after all THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE USD to pay 😁
So Trump will use their frozen assets in US
So now Venezuela actually benefits from this. Rather than have a frozen asset, Venezuela gets some Petrol in exchange.
So it’s just BLUSTER as usual
What is something electrical engineers know that others don’t?
You might have seen that there are lot of pebbles and stones spread on the ground at substations.These stones are spread on the ground because-
This ensures that when you stand on ground, the surface area of contact between your shoes and ground is minimum so that the contact resistance between you and the ground is very high.This will reduce the fatality in case you accidently come in contact with live parts.
It also ensures that no vegetation grows inside the substation as plants cannot grow on pebbles.
You might have observed that whenever there is a power cut and UPS switches from mains to UPS mode ,there is a change in sound made by fan and other appliances, this is because UPS is basically an inverter which converts DC voltage from a battery to AC.The AC so produced has lot of higher harmonics which produce a lot of vibrations in the fan which leads to fan making more noise when operated through UPS.
Humming noise in transformer is due to a phenomenon called magnetostriction which involves changes in dimmensions of core material of transformer when it is subjected to alternating magnetic field.
I am including two additions from comment of HS Badarinath.
Transformers are placed over a trapezoidal enclosure filled with broken stone for the following reasons:
In case of the transformer catching fire the oil within the transformer is released and flows down into the lower chamber and lead to a sump. The broken stone reduces the amount of oxygen available and the fire is contained.
During winter snakes have a tendency to take shelter under the warm transformer. The broken stones prevent the snakes from seeking the warm shelter.
Supercat 😸😸 Superman movie with my pets. Mainly 1978 version.
