Dollar tree albuquerque photos
Left Brain vs Right Brain
2023.03.22 12:45 UntappedPower333 Left Brain vs Right Brain
 | This show is following a Kabbalistic structure. For anyone familiar, the left pillar of the tree is called the pillar of Severity (severance). It refers to the left Brain that severs the whole into parts. Sphere 8 in particular, which is what Mark S and MDR represent, our verbal thought faculty, which breaks the whole into pieces so we lose our connection to things. submitted by UntappedPower333 to SeveranceAppleTVPlus [link] [comments] The Right pillar, the pillar of Mercy, is supposed to balance that out. Life like a seesaw.....(helly interrupts him from talking about BALANCE by hitting him in the "TEMPLE" ((was his Forehead/pineal/3rd eye)) with the SOUND box we HEAR the board through.) O and D represent the 7th sphere, the faculty of imagination (images/video). Notice that they deal with images and forms. They created Hatchets when MDR was going through a very volatile orientation with Helly. After Helly calmed down they started producing watering cans, water being the symbol of that which cools the fire in you among many other concepts. Remember during Orientation, Cobel said Mark(verbal faculty) can't mess up this part because....ITS A VIDEO! Mark always wants to TALK. He interferes with Ms Casey watching Helly (Casey means watchful) by taking Helly to Talk. When Helly comes back from the hanging he asks, "Do you want to talk about it?" So O and D plays a major role in the healing of man, which is what this is about! What do the license plates say? Clearly Set(h) (a reference to the devil concept) is interfering with O and D. The ideoGRAPHIC cards are important (images). Set(h) is also preventing MDR from doing its work. Constant parties with VERY WATERY FOODS and with DEVILED eggs. Dylan himself stated they only really finish 1 out of 5 files! That's trash!! The Employee Handbook says that "If the work suffers, in the long run, so does the world!" Remember, Burt gave Irving the new totes because he didn't want Irving distracted from his work. Set(h) wants to SEVER all connections!! please cue scene of Set(h) slowly cutting Dylans belt to get in the security room! The same belt that was tying Burts hands earlier in the show. Look at the Gala! Notice how Set(h) was taking pictures, and yes they are images, but compared to video, it refers to the segmentation of video. So they can show still photos which don't show the whole picture, so they can fool you! That which is heard is hearsay, but that which is seen and experienced is proven. The only video shown at the gala is outtie Helly. In the Alley, where it was dark and violent, people breaking glass bottles and just being "hellish", there was NO VIDEO ALLOWED! Which brings me to JUNE (Hottest month of the year), a "HELL of a guitar player". In the scenes where she is playing guitar, she wears black and red, a symbol of evil. They were singing any Lumon songs in the alley where again, no video allowed. However, Alexa told Mark S, he fits right in!!!! I will conclude with the missing 7199-G ideographic card, which was DELAYING set(h) plan in O and D. When I searched 7199-G, it shows it is a vacuum tube, it is mainly used in guitar amplification! If you don't make the connection, guitar is sound and the music June is singing are words! Not Images! There are no images allowed!! In addition. When researching the vacuum tube, it all started with a guy named Ambrose! Remember the second CEO, the black sheep, his name was Ambrose! His invention was also responsible for RADAR!!! There is so much more, have fun! |
2023.03.22 12:27 ErraErra88 Dream Disney Dreamlight Valley changes/additions
 | submitted by ErraErra88 to DreamlightValley [link] [comments] ErraErra88 So I have been playing this game since day one and I love it. I don’t mind the long updates it helps me gather Dreamlight and resources, gives me time to decorate, and harvest lots of pumpkins 💰💰🤣. But these are some of the changes/additions I would LOVE in the game:
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2023.03.22 12:10 FelicitySmoak_ On This Day In Michael Jackson HIStory - March 22nd
1967 - Michael,at 8 years old & in the 3rd grade, makes his first ever solo public performance during a concert at the James Garnett Elementary School in Gary. He performs “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound Of Music.
Anita Hill, Michael's teacher who taught him his solo number, remembers him as a student: "Michael was the only child in my class who agreed to sing alone. He helped motivate the other students. Michael always behaved well and was always in class on time"
Anita Hill accompanies Michael on piano that day. According to J. Moffett Walker, a group of musicians were on stage as well, the Beckman Middle School band, led by E. Ferguson. The program states that another student, Morris Carter, sang "Climb Every Mountain" with Michael.
Katherine, Joe and Joe’s father Samuel Jackson attend the show.
This document is the program of this famous show, simply entitled “Instrumental and Vocal Concert”, where we can see the name of Michael Jackson appearing as a soloist
https://imgur.com/a/ft6zsA8
1979 - The Jacksons fly back home from Johannesburg and Michael resumes the recording of the album Off The Wall with Quincy Jones
1982 - Michael is featured on the cover of Jet magazine with Diana Ross
https://imgur.com/a/jEm5T3r
2002- OK! magazine features part one of 25 pages of photos and article from Liza Minnelli and David Gest's wedding celebration. The article includes many photographs of Michael who will also be featured in part two which would be available the following week.
https://imgur.com/a/UFWkQlI
2004 - Michael Jackson has filed a lawsuit against Henry V. Vaccaro Sr. of New Jersey to return MJ memorabilia and close websites displaying the items.
The lawsuit claims that Henry Vaccaro obtained letters, pictures, song lyrics and other items belonging to Jackson through a bankruptcy sale involving the entertainer’s parents and has no right to sell them.
Vaccaro used to head a guitar company, which went bankrupt in 1992. A company owned by the Jackson family agreed to purchase it, but soon defaulted on payments, he said. Vaccaro sued the Jackson family company and was awarded a $1.4 million judgment, which the family said it couldn’t pay.
Neither Michael, Janet nor LaToya Jackson were named in the suit because they had not used money from the company.
Vaccaro said he ultimately was awarded the contents of a California warehouse filled with Jackson possessions by a bankruptcy trustee after paying $65,000, much of which was used to cover the family’s outstanding storage bills.
Vaccaro, 63, said he was awarded the Jackson family’s possessions following nine years of legal wrangling stemming from a failed business venture that wound up in bankruptcy court.
Michael's lawyer,Brian Wolf, said the pop star’s possessions should not have been included in the goods given to Vaccaro. Memorabilia included gold-trimmed costumes, financial documents, letters, awards, one of Jackson’s first outfits from the Jackson 5 and 60 unreleased master tapes -- which contained 26 of Jackson's songs which have never been heard by the public.
The bankruptcy case allowed Vaccaro only to get property belonging to Michael Jackson’s brother Tito and their parents, Katherine and Joe.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeks at least $10 million for copyright infringement and violation of privacy rights, among other claims Jackson is demanding his things back, but Vaccaro said he already has sold the goods to a European buyer.
“It’s gone,” Vaccaro, a construction company owner said.
Wolf said he would ask for a court order for the return of anything already sold.
Vaccaro said he could not comment on specifics of the lawsuit because he had yet to see it. “We’ll take ’em on,” he said. “They don’t have a leg to stand on.”
Before shipping the items to a European buyer whom he has declined to identify, Vaccaro spent 18 months photographing and cataloguing it for his Web site.
Vaccaro has not revealed the sales price but indicated it exceeded $1.4 million.
https://imgur.com/a/GEm6kcm
https://youtu.be/15zY6dNAYio
2005 - Trial Day 17
Michael goes to court with Katherine & Joe. Testimony of Louise Palanker, founder of a stand-up comedy program, Kid's Comedy Club, where kids learn to write and perform their own stand-up comedy.
Prosecutor Gordon Auchincloss continued his direct examination of Palanker by getting her to describe how she trained the Arvizo children in their acting and comedic skills
Palanker told how she would wind up loaning the family $20,000 dollars to renovate a “clean room” for Gavin.
https://imgur.com/a/usjQtBV
2019 - Michael Jackson: On the Wall exhibition started in Germany. It was the first MJ exhibition to be shown after renewed allegations surfaced earlier in the year
Curator Nicholas Cullinan stresses that it was conceived long before the controversial new documentary Leaving Neverland went into production.
Despite the renewed indignation against the deceased pop superstar, the art museum in western Germany has decided to hold the exhibition as planned from March 22 to July 14. "Especially now, when new abuse accusations have come to light, it's important to reassess the 'King of Pop,'" said Rein Wolfs, director at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn.
Rather than being a homage, the exhibition shows Jackson from varying, even critical, angles, the director said at a press presentation ahead of the opening: "I believe it's better to have a platform that enables discussion rather than simply to extinguish a cultural memory."
Cullinan told AP that the show “was never celebratory. It’s about the complexity of Michael Jackson, how he means very different things to many very different people.”
The exhibition features 134 artworks by 53 artists, including different depictions of the pop star by prominent artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Isa Genzken and Yan Pei Ming
Among the artwork on display is an image by Dave LaChappelle, "American Jesus", that shows Jackson lying in the arms of Jesus.
The highlight of the exhibition is Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of, "Equestrian Portrait of King Philip II (Michael Jackson)",which shows him assuming a powerful pose as he rides on a horse with cherubs following behind him. This was the last portrait commissioned by Michael, after encountering Wiley's work in the Brooklyn Museum. The artist started to execute the painting a few months before Jackson’s death, and finished it posthumously
Michael Jackson: On the Wall was produced with the co-operation of the Michael Jackson Estate and received sponsorship from Hugo Boss in the UK.
The Exhibition originally opened in London on June 28, 2018 and was hailed as an instant success. It then moved on to the Grand Palais in Paris, where the show ran through February 14, 2019.
London: 82,525 visitors
Paris:156,307 visitors
Bonn: 22,420 visitors
Espoo: 88,748 visitors
Grand Total: 350,000 visitors
https://imgur.com/a/hgWkE7C
submitted by FelicitySmoak_ to MichaelJackson [link] [comments]
Anita Hill, Michael's teacher who taught him his solo number, remembers him as a student: "Michael was the only child in my class who agreed to sing alone. He helped motivate the other students. Michael always behaved well and was always in class on time"
Anita Hill accompanies Michael on piano that day. According to J. Moffett Walker, a group of musicians were on stage as well, the Beckman Middle School band, led by E. Ferguson. The program states that another student, Morris Carter, sang "Climb Every Mountain" with Michael.
Katherine, Joe and Joe’s father Samuel Jackson attend the show.
This document is the program of this famous show, simply entitled “Instrumental and Vocal Concert”, where we can see the name of Michael Jackson appearing as a soloist
https://imgur.com/a/ft6zsA8
1979 - The Jacksons fly back home from Johannesburg and Michael resumes the recording of the album Off The Wall with Quincy Jones
1982 - Michael is featured on the cover of Jet magazine with Diana Ross
https://imgur.com/a/jEm5T3r
2002- OK! magazine features part one of 25 pages of photos and article from Liza Minnelli and David Gest's wedding celebration. The article includes many photographs of Michael who will also be featured in part two which would be available the following week.
https://imgur.com/a/UFWkQlI
2004 - Michael Jackson has filed a lawsuit against Henry V. Vaccaro Sr. of New Jersey to return MJ memorabilia and close websites displaying the items.
The lawsuit claims that Henry Vaccaro obtained letters, pictures, song lyrics and other items belonging to Jackson through a bankruptcy sale involving the entertainer’s parents and has no right to sell them.
Vaccaro used to head a guitar company, which went bankrupt in 1992. A company owned by the Jackson family agreed to purchase it, but soon defaulted on payments, he said. Vaccaro sued the Jackson family company and was awarded a $1.4 million judgment, which the family said it couldn’t pay.
Neither Michael, Janet nor LaToya Jackson were named in the suit because they had not used money from the company.
Vaccaro said he ultimately was awarded the contents of a California warehouse filled with Jackson possessions by a bankruptcy trustee after paying $65,000, much of which was used to cover the family’s outstanding storage bills.
Vaccaro, 63, said he was awarded the Jackson family’s possessions following nine years of legal wrangling stemming from a failed business venture that wound up in bankruptcy court.
Michael's lawyer,Brian Wolf, said the pop star’s possessions should not have been included in the goods given to Vaccaro. Memorabilia included gold-trimmed costumes, financial documents, letters, awards, one of Jackson’s first outfits from the Jackson 5 and 60 unreleased master tapes -- which contained 26 of Jackson's songs which have never been heard by the public.
The bankruptcy case allowed Vaccaro only to get property belonging to Michael Jackson’s brother Tito and their parents, Katherine and Joe.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeks at least $10 million for copyright infringement and violation of privacy rights, among other claims Jackson is demanding his things back, but Vaccaro said he already has sold the goods to a European buyer.
“It’s gone,” Vaccaro, a construction company owner said.
Wolf said he would ask for a court order for the return of anything already sold.
Vaccaro said he could not comment on specifics of the lawsuit because he had yet to see it. “We’ll take ’em on,” he said. “They don’t have a leg to stand on.”
Before shipping the items to a European buyer whom he has declined to identify, Vaccaro spent 18 months photographing and cataloguing it for his Web site.
Vaccaro has not revealed the sales price but indicated it exceeded $1.4 million.
https://imgur.com/a/GEm6kcm
https://youtu.be/15zY6dNAYio
2005 - Trial Day 17
Michael goes to court with Katherine & Joe. Testimony of Louise Palanker, founder of a stand-up comedy program, Kid's Comedy Club, where kids learn to write and perform their own stand-up comedy.
Prosecutor Gordon Auchincloss continued his direct examination of Palanker by getting her to describe how she trained the Arvizo children in their acting and comedic skills
Palanker told how she would wind up loaning the family $20,000 dollars to renovate a “clean room” for Gavin.
https://imgur.com/a/usjQtBV
2019 - Michael Jackson: On the Wall exhibition started in Germany. It was the first MJ exhibition to be shown after renewed allegations surfaced earlier in the year
Curator Nicholas Cullinan stresses that it was conceived long before the controversial new documentary Leaving Neverland went into production.
Despite the renewed indignation against the deceased pop superstar, the art museum in western Germany has decided to hold the exhibition as planned from March 22 to July 14. "Especially now, when new abuse accusations have come to light, it's important to reassess the 'King of Pop,'" said Rein Wolfs, director at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn.
Rather than being a homage, the exhibition shows Jackson from varying, even critical, angles, the director said at a press presentation ahead of the opening: "I believe it's better to have a platform that enables discussion rather than simply to extinguish a cultural memory."
Cullinan told AP that the show “was never celebratory. It’s about the complexity of Michael Jackson, how he means very different things to many very different people.”
The exhibition features 134 artworks by 53 artists, including different depictions of the pop star by prominent artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Isa Genzken and Yan Pei Ming
Among the artwork on display is an image by Dave LaChappelle, "American Jesus", that shows Jackson lying in the arms of Jesus.
The highlight of the exhibition is Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of, "Equestrian Portrait of King Philip II (Michael Jackson)",which shows him assuming a powerful pose as he rides on a horse with cherubs following behind him. This was the last portrait commissioned by Michael, after encountering Wiley's work in the Brooklyn Museum. The artist started to execute the painting a few months before Jackson’s death, and finished it posthumously
Michael Jackson: On the Wall was produced with the co-operation of the Michael Jackson Estate and received sponsorship from Hugo Boss in the UK.
The Exhibition originally opened in London on June 28, 2018 and was hailed as an instant success. It then moved on to the Grand Palais in Paris, where the show ran through February 14, 2019.
London: 82,525 visitors
Paris:156,307 visitors
Bonn: 22,420 visitors
Espoo: 88,748 visitors
Grand Total: 350,000 visitors
https://imgur.com/a/hgWkE7C
2023.03.22 11:59 nh89ab_ys Why has Dollar Tree stopped promoting eggs? Reason revealed amidst worth surge
submitted by nh89ab_ys to u/nh89ab_ys [link] [comments]
2023.03.22 11:55 y2bebnehd Why has Dollar Tree stopped promoting eggs? Reason revealed amidst worth surge
submitted by y2bebnehd to u/y2bebnehd [link] [comments]
2023.03.22 11:19 BillClintonsHitList Tennessee woman allegedly attempted to take another woman's child at Dollar Tree. Vickie Mitchell was arrested for disorderly conduct
 | submitted by BillClintonsHitList to BidenBuzz [link] [comments] |
2023.03.22 11:05 marco_italia Same street corner, 115 years apart
 | submitted by marco_italia to santarosa [link] [comments] Same corner on Ross & B streets Top photo is 1908, bottom one 2023. Turns out, the Church of the One Tree (built in 1873) used to sit on what is now City Parking Lot 2. That's across the street from the mall parking garage on B street and next to the mostly defunct Brickyard Center. Thankfully, instead of bulldozing a historic building, the city allowed the people of Santa Rosa to take up a collection to pay to relocate the building in 1957. The mostly empty city parking lot, was gratuitously put in at taxpayer expense. Lucky us. /s The Library Digital Collection has a much better photo of this street corner here. Taken just before the church was moved, you can clearly read the B & Ross street sign, and see the same fire hydrant. That made it pretty easy to identify this spot. |
2023.03.22 10:40 tonnie_taller Tennessee woman allegedly attempted to take another woman’s child at Dollar Tree
A Tennessee woman attempted to take another woman’s child at a Dollar Tree store, even purporting that the child was hers. Officers with the Metro Nashville Police Department responded to the store on Mt. View Road on Monday after a report that Vickie Mitchell had attempted to take another person’s child, Mitchell’s arrest affidavit says, … Continue reading Tennessee woman allegedly attempted to take another woman’s child at Dollar Tree
submitted by tonnie_taller to Tonnie_Taller [link] [comments]
2023.03.22 10:03 darrenwool New Lineup Additions
 | submitted by darrenwool to EOTR [link] [comments] |
2023.03.22 09:37 african_reporter PHOTOS: Pastor Alph Lukau’s billion-dollar lifestyle
 | submitted by african_reporter to u/african_reporter [link] [comments] |
2023.03.22 09:24 Hot_Tailor_9687 It's finally here. The Finale of Total Drama Fandom Island
They woke up in an old shack in the middle of Boney Island.
"Darn, we should've been on guard for shenanigans" said Jason.
"Is it really just us left?" asked Sasha in wonder.
"Yep, we're the Final Four, I guess" said Amethyst.
Amethyst: Wow, the Final Four. I can’t believe it, I’m so close!
Jason: I think I’m pretty much in the clear now. I just have to steel myself for any squeamish challenges, and that one million dollars is as good as mine!
Mabel: This is all so exciting! I bet Dipper and the others are going crazy seeing me here in the finale!
Sasha: Everybody left earned their place here in the Finale. Now, I’ve gotta give it my all and earn that one million dollars!
They stretched and warmed up, and met up on the beach. Jason figured out by flying up that they were on Boney Island. Jason tensed as he heard movement in the bushes.
Chef emerged in warpaint. "Campers! I am proud to say you have made it to the Final Four! Your most grueling challenge will now commence, and here's how it all starts: The first leg is a race back to Wawanakwa, but there's only one canoe here on Boney Island: A map of the island shows where the canoe is and I have the only copy. You have to beat me before-"
Mabel knocked him out cold with the grappling gun. Sasha shook her head in amusement. "Kakashi-sensei, you're not, Master Chief, but we will not fail you or your training. Sasha grabbed the map, scanned it and then ran off into the jungle, her gear letting her glide among the trees.
Chef had to smile as Sasha disappeared into the jungle. The other three finalists quickly gave chase. Jason and Amethyst, with their powers now back at full, raced away into the thickets, while Mabel used her grappling gun to make like Tarzan and glided from tree to tree.
Sasha found the canoe first, but she realized it was too big for her to carry alone onto shore, so she thought of a plan. Jason and Mabel arrived soon after, and Sasha thought of a plan.
“Guys, with her powers, Amethyst is the one to beat. We’ve gotta team up against her or else she’ll flatten us!”
Jason nodded. “That makes sense, Sasha. Alright, it’s three against Amethyst”
“Hooray for conniving!” yelled Mabel.
Sasha: I needed to know if I was as good at manipulation as my fellow Corpsmen. I needed to see if I was powerful enough to twist their minds and make them fight each other. Especially Jason and Amethyst. They’re practically gods compared to Mabel and me.
They made it to the shoreline. Mabel hopped on as Sasha and Jason pushed the canoe into the water.
“Aren’t you guys forgetting someone?” asked a voice behind them.
Sasha froze. Even Jason was tense. They were not fighting some villainous enemy, either of them. They were conniving against someone who had been a friend to them.
No! yelled Eren’s voice in her head. This is a competition!
Amethyst laughed. “Oh, I get it. Welp, it was fun pretending we were all in this together, but I guess now it’s time to let the rocks tumble”
“We don’t wanna fight you, Amethyst!” Sasha yelled.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to fight me, neither!”
Amethyst morphed into a gigantic wrestler, and sucker punched Jason just as he flew in to try and poof her. He sailed backwards into the sand and landed with a sickening thud. Sasha screamed, but Mabel was quicker. She aimed and fired her grappling hook at Amethyst’s leg, entwining it in its cord. Sasha grabbed onto the gun and pulled with all her might, sending Amethyst tumbling over them, pushing the canoe into the water.
The canoe drifted away back to Wawanakwa, leaving Jason and Amethyst behind.
“Whew. I’m glad it’s just the two of us, Mabel! We were screwed if those two got a foothold on us.”
“Yeah. Thanks a lot, Sasha!” They paddled as hard as they could towards Wawanakwa.
Chris: Wow! Our underdogs are really kicking it in all cylinders! I’m here at Wawanakwa with the families and friends of our four finalists. They’re here to give them all the cheering and support they’ll need to win! Let’s start with Amethyst’s family from Beach City. Sierra and Topher, you’re on!
Sierra: Thanks, Chris! We’re here with the Gem Community from Beach City here by the campfire!
Topher: That’s right, Sierra. Pearl, we know you didn’t expect Amethyst to win the Wildcard, let alone make the Finals. What do you and the rest of Beach City have to say?
Pearl: Oh, Amethyst, we are so proud! You held your tongue and got by using your wits! Now, there’s only four of you left and I know they don’t stand a chance against OUR Amethyst!
Garnet: Show them the might of the Crystal Gems
Peridot: GET ‘EM, AMETHYST, YOU CAN DO IT!
Bismuth: You got ‘em on the ropes, Deep-Cut! Knock them out!
Steven: Everybody at the Kindergarden’s cheering for you, Amethyst!
Carnelian: Go, sis!
Skinny: You rock!
Holly Blue: Go, Earth Team! Ugh, what am I even saying?
Jasper: SHOW THEM WHAT EARTH GEMS ARE MADE OF, AMETHYST!
Blue Diamond: (on a holoscreen) Do us proud, Amethyst!
Yellow Diamond: Divide and conquer them, that’s the way to do it!
White Diamond: Is this some sort of Earth entertainment activity? How delightful. Go for it, Amethyst!
Spinel: We’re sending you virtual hugs from light-years away!
Ronaldo: I knew you were a lock on for the finals, Amethyst! All the theories were pointing at you!
Beach City Citizens: AMETHYST! AMETHYST! AMETHYST! AMETHYST!
Topher: Wow, what a crowd! Let’s go see Jason’s demigod comrades from Berkeley, California! The floor’s yours, Brick. Jo and Dawn!
Brick: Oh, we’re on? I was busy looking at those cool Roman phalanx formations!
Dawn: Can’t we settle this peacefully?
Jo: Speak for yourself, Granola Girl. I want to sign up with these guys. They’ve got gyms, tracks and hot baths! Say, I’m pretty sure I’ve got the bloodline of some Roman god in me, could I join you?
Hazel: I can certainly see Victoria or Mars in your blood. We can talk about your application after this
Brick: I’m losing my mind over these formations
Frank: Thanks! I drilled them myself
Dawn: What would you like to say to Jason? I can hook you up telepathically
Hazel: All we want to say is we’re proud and honored by our great former praetor, and it’s great to see him again so… er… full of life
Percy: You’ve got this bro!
Annabeth: Winning this silly TV show is a cakewalk for the hero who toppled the giants!
Leo: ZAP THEM, MAN, YOU’VE GOT THIS!
Piper:…
Nico: Give her some room, people….
Coach Hedge: Man, what a bunch of delinquents! Put them in line, Grace!
Piper: No matter what, you’ve already won in our book (literally), Jason.
Roman demigods: intense cheering
Jo: Yeah, now that’s a cheer! Spartans! Awoo! Awoo!
Dawn: Back to you, Chris
Chris: Thanks, Dawn. Up next is Mabel’s Gravity Falls family. Dakota and Sam, take it away!
Dakota: I’m here with my friend at the Future Celebrities Club Pacifica Northwest! What do you have to say to Mabel?
Pacifica: Omigosh, bestie, I’m so proud. Once you win this thing, you’re gonna be a flipping star! We are so getting ourselves a TV talk show after this! We’ll invite cute boybands from Korea and prank them with Soos in a monster suit hiding behind the sofas!
Dakota: That show concept is so fetch!
Sam: I already knew Soos from the online gaming circuit! Man, Mabel’s awesome! Got any words of inspiration?
Soos: Mabel! Don’t be scared to be nice! Be yourself! Don’t change your strategy now! That’s my takeaway from all the reality TV shows I watch
Grunkle Stan: That’s my granddaughter! She’s on TV!
Dipper: I knew you could do it! Just stay true to yourself, Mabel! You’ve got this!
Gideon: We won’t stop looking for a way to get Grunkle Stan’s memories back, baby! Winning this contest will go a long way!
Bill: is a statue
Dakota: How did that get there…
Bill: manifesting from the void. You call this entertainment? Where’s the fire? Where’s the dead contestants? Where’s the {REDACTED]? Come on, Chris McLean, they told me this was the craziest reality show in the multiverse, let’s get sickening! Oh no wait, I still can’t do anything. Oh well, those other campers don’t stand a chance against Mabel. She’s embraced chaos and it’s her weapon now. She’ll get the drop on them. Buy cryptocurrency! Bye! Dissipates
Dipper: Huh, even Bill had something nice to say
Wendy: That’s why Mabel’s gotta win!
Sam: Back to you, Chris!
Chris: Now, we turn to Sasha’s Survey Corps family!
Duncan: We’re here with the totally-rad Survey Corps to get their scoop on Sasha and why she should win this season
Courtney: If I had my way, we could totally turn this into a succinct discussion on social conditioning and the horrors of child conscription, but given the limited time, we can only ask the Corps on Sasha and her journey so far
Mikasa: I speak for everyone when I say Sasha got all the way to the finals because of her combination of strength in body and strength in heart. Even when her strength fails her, the friends she’s made along the way always have her back. That’s why she will win this
Connie: I know, right?! Either Sasha wins, or it’s rigged!
Levi: Just remember your training
Jean: We've got faith in you, Sasha. Go for it!
Zoe: The odds are in your favor, Sasha. This time, the Corps won't have to settle for defeat!
Courtney: Sasha's lucky to have such faithful friends! We now bring you back to the ongoing race back to Wawanakwa!
Sasha was flying in the air. She saw pieces of roast meat flying along with her, with smiley faces, beckoning her to take a bite. She gladly bit in, savoring the juices
“Ouch!”
Sasha shook her head. She was still flying, but not of her own power, but because Jason was carrying her. Then she had bit his arm.
“What in the Three Sisters?! Jason, where’s Mabel?!”
“She tricked you. Amethyst and Mabel have had an alliance since the Merge.”
Amethyst shapeshifted out of boat form as soon as she hit the shore. “Oh man! The look on Sasha’s face when she wakes up!”
“I almost feel bad,” said Mabel. “But I don’t wanna face Sasha in the Triple Dog Dare Challenge. She’ll cream us for sure”
“Oh, I’m winning that, through and through, but Sasha might threaten your spot in the Final Two, so we had to cut her loose”
Chris nodded. “Amethyst and Mabel, congratulations! You’re in the Final Three! It’s Jason vs. Sasha for the third spot!”
Sasha saw her prospects were grim. “Drop me, Grace. You deserve the final spot”
“I won’t do that. Romans fight fairly”
“OK, then I’ll duel you on the beach for the final spot. Corpsmen fight to the end”
“Deal”
They landed and squared off meters away from the shore, knee-deep in the water. Jason drew his coin and flipped it, and a sword materialized from it. Sasha drew her twin blades and squared off. Everyone on the beach was silent as the two giantslayers began their duel.
Both were speedsters in combat, but Jason had the advantage of having the power of the wind itself. He ran circles around Sasha, who was forced to parry and keep on the defensive. Demigods cheered for Jason while the Corpsmen urged Sasha to fight on. Sasha’s dual blades afforded her the opportunity to attack and block at the same time, but Jason gave her few openings. Jason’s advantage was that his blade carried his full force, while Sasha’s dual swords halved her attacking power at the benefit of raising range and versatility. Still, Sasha pressed on, forcing herself to lunge in and try to turn the tide on Jason. Steel clashed against bronze and sparks flew. Jason nicked Sasha in the arm.
Suddenly, something awoke within Sasha. Her grip tightened and she began to move much faster, with more force in her strikes. She began pushing Jason back. She began to flip, turn, feint and tumble in the air, the grace of her Corps training coming into full display. Jason began to betray signs of tiring. Sasha twirled, describing a helicopter in the air, blades teetering towards Jason, who parried with his sword.
This time, Sasha nicked Jason on the cheek.
“She’s doing great! She’s gonna win this for sure!” said Connie
Levi shook his head. “It’s over”
“What?!”
Annabeth Chase nodded in agreement. “Sasha was never going to win”
Leo scoffed. “I’m all for Jason winning, but how come you counting Sasha out like that?”
Annabeth rolled her eyes. “It’s so obvious”
Zoe nodded. “Look at them. Look at where they’re standing. A rather brilliant application of simple physics, really”
Leo scanned the area around them. The lake shone blue against the white sand.
The lake.
“Oh,” said Leo.
“Oh, shit,” said Connie.
Jason grinned. “You’ve given it everything you’ve got, Sasha, well done! Now, it’s my turn.” He stabbed the waters with his sword, wincing as the act reminded him of Caligula, and called down the lightning.
Sasha had no time at all to process what happened as the jolts of electricity raced across the lake and into her.
When she awoke, her friends were all around her, grinning and cheering.
“Oh, guys, I had the weirdest dream! I was on a reality TV show and I made it all the way to the finals, until someone fried me…”
Connie sobbed. “Oh, but you did! You did all of that, baby, you made it to the first ever finals of Total Drama Fandom Island and we are freaking proud of ya!”
“Well done!” Jean was overjoyed.
Zoe beamed, “You showed them the Corps are not to be underestimated”
Chris McLean entered the tent, and beamed at Sasha. “Sasha Braus, you are this season’s third runner up! Thanks to the ton of sponsors we gotten since going multiversal, we can actually afford to give ALL our finalists cash prizes! You’re taking fifty thousand dollars home!”
“Fifty thousa-“ Sasha was dazed. “Whatever are we gonna do with fifty grand?!”
“I’ll tell ya what we’ll do,” said Connie. “There’s like restaurants in this wonderful country where you can eat all the meat you want at a price! As soon as this show’s over, we’re hitting one of those restos!”
“Canada is so beautiful,” murmured Mikasa. “Even the Titans here are friendly, and covered in soft fuzzy fur”
“Hyperboreans are harmless unless you mess with ‘em” said Frank Zhang, peeking in from outside.
Three contestants remained. Jason joined Mabel and Amethyst and headed for the special stage erected by the staff.
“History repeats itself,” said Heather. “Three Gophers remain, and the last Bass places fourth”
“Who do you think will win the Dare?” asked Owen.
“Amethyst and Mabel are pretty unhinged,” said Gwen. “If I were Jason, I’d be very worried”
“The dude shoots lightning like a freaking Sith Lord. The Triple Dog Dare isn’t fazing Jason” countered Duncan.
“Campers, congratulations on making it this far” said Chris. “For your next challenge, we bring you the Triple Dog Dare! Your fellow contestants, even Sasha just now, have written down dares that you must beat, from Patrick to Sasha. Now, instead of a roulette, we’ll just run them down from Patrick to Sasha. Ready?”
“Ready!” said the three in unison
Amethyst: They’re in for it now, I didn’t come all this way to lose
Jason: I’ve been memory-wiped, hit by flying bricks and skewered in the back. Nothing is going to hold me down now
Mabel: No dare is too squeamish for Mabel Pines!
“Alright, who goes first?” Chris asked.
“Ladies first,” said Jason.
“I’m non-binary,” said Amethyst. “So Mabel’s going first”
Mabel bit her lip. Patrick was the first eliminated and his challenge was either going to be stupidly easy or stupidly impossible.
She shrugged. I’ve done both. “Bring it, Patrick!”
Patrick Star stepped forward from the Peanut Gallery. “Mabel, I dare ya to eat a Triple Patty Deluxe in one bite!”
“I’ll do it!” Mabel saw the juicy burger and realized how hungry she was. She opened as wide as her jaw would allow, crushing the burger a bit to shrink it, and shoved it in her mouth. She chewed hungrily, and swallowed.
“Good job! Here’s your present!”
“Thanks, Pat!”
Chris clapped. “Alright, Mabel. Now you get a freebie, and the next time you can use it to pass a challenge to someone else. The first to back out is ELIMINATED.”
“Cool”
“Now, pick who goes next!”
“Go, Jason! I know Bakugou has a special challenge for you”
Jason: Now why on Earth would Bakugou have something in mind for me?
Bakugou stepped forward. “Alright, discount Pikachu, I bought my friend Denki with me. The challenge is to short-circuit him before he does it to you.
Denki Kaminari stepped into the fray. “Hiya, I heard you can fly, too, on top of using lightning. Man that is so unfair!”
“Alright, let’s do this”
The two squared off and fired bolts of lightning at each other. The sparks flew in all direction, even making Amethyst’s hair puff up and Mabel’s braces to glow”
“Cool!” said Mabel.
“I needed the new hairstyle,” admitted Amethyst.
They both strained as the lightning surge moved back and forth.
Deku gasped in the audience. “Wow, Denki could actually match a demigod in electrical output!”
“That’s our friend right there, get ‘em, Denki!” yelled Yaoyorozu.
An explosion sent smoke billowing all over the stage. When it settled. Jason was still standing, while Denki had folded.
Bakugou smirked. “Nice job, punk. Here’s your freebie” Jason caught the party favor as Bakugou flung it to him.
“Jason, pick the next challenger,” said Chris.
“Amethyst? It’s your turn”
LSP flew in with a yellow, sour-faced creature. “Amethyst, baby, your challenge is simple. Kiss the Earl of Lemongrab!”
“A’ight, here goes nothing” She kissed him and felt her lips burn. “Oof, boy, you’re better than Fire Salt!”
“Mmmm, you have proven acceptable” said Lemongrab. “Accept this favor”
“Mabel! Your turn again!”
“Next round, we both pass it on to Jason. We have to force him to quit so it’s us girls for the Finale!” “Got it, Amethyst!”
Mabel watched Brian Griffin walk onto the stage. “Mabel, my challenge is this. Say something nice about my novel, Faster than the Speed of Love”
Mabel felt a shiver down her spine. “It’s nice you thought of the needs of the mentally-challenged in writing this novel”
“Why, thank you, I- HEY!”
Stewie Griffin ran up to the stage. “Yass, Mabel, slay! Drag his arse, okay, here’s your favor”. He dragged Brian back to the seats by the ear.
Mabel turned. “Jason!”
Hermione Granger stepped up. “Jason Grace. I have but a riddle for you. Three students sit at Argus Filch’s detention room. They are either Gryffindors, who always tell the truth, or Slytherins, who tell naught but lies. Student One says “All of us are Slytherins”. Student Two is mum. Student Three says “Exactly one of us is a Gryffindor”. Who is who?”
“I’ve heard this riddle before,” said Jason. “Student One is a Slytherin, since if he were Gryffindor, he would be lying, which he cannot. Since he is a Slytherin, they are not all Slytherins, otherwise he’d be telling the truth. Student Two is mum, which is suspicious, and Student Three can be lying or no. They cannot be all of either. If Three is a Gryffindor, that means Two is a Slytherin, since Three’s statement must be true if he is Gryffindor. If Three is a Slytherin, then Two must be Slytherin also, since if Two was Gryffindor then Three must be telling the truth, but then all three would be Slytherin, making One’s statement true, when we already know it’s a lie. Therefore. One and Two are Slytherin, and Three is a Gryffindor.”
“Brilliant! And well-reasoned. Alright, Jason, here’s your favor”
“My brain fucking hurts,” said Amethyst.
“You don’t have a brain, silly, you got some sorta microchips,” said Mabel.
“Can I eat ‘em? All that logic made my head hurt”
“Alright, Amethyst, you’re up again,” said Jason.
“I just said my head hurts! Sheesh”
Cyborg entered the fray. “Yo, Amethyst! BB over here wants to challenge your shapeshifting skills!”
“Bring it on, BB! I’m ready for ya, anytime!”
“Oh, word, Amethyst? Get ready, coz I am kicking your butt across the animal kingdom!”
The green and the purple squared up. They began slowly, mouse, cow, tiger, rabbit, then picked up the pace, to owls, ravens, peacocks, dinosaurs, onto more complex animals, insects and fantastic creatures. Then Amethyst started morphing inanimate objects, to which Beast Boy threw in the towel.
“Man, I shoulda known better than to challenge you, sis! Here’s your favor!”
“Jason, next!”
Jason: I knew the girls were gonna gang up on me sooner or later. Welp, bring it!
Jett flew in. “Jason, think fast!” She dashed past him, and grabbed Piper and Leo from the audience.
“What the fuck?!” Amethyst gasped.
“What the heck is she thinking?!” said Mabel. “You can’t be lifting up demigods!”
Jett flew to the ceiling of the really-high circus tent, and flung Piper and Leo to the ground in opposite directions.
Jason’s calm smirk shocked everyone. Instead of making like Superman and flying to either of them, he willed the spirits of the winds to catch both of them and land them safely.
Jett beamed at Jason, though Leo tried to throw hands at her, and was intercepted by fellow pyro Phoenix (“Chill, fam, it was all planned out!”).
“I know when to cut my losses, but I’ll damn well try before I do any cutting”
Brimstone smiled in the audience. “That kid’s got potential”
Sage nodded. “He has the calmness and power of a storm”
“Mabel? Your turn”
Mabel breezed through Ponyhead’s Tiktok challenge, while Jason took Gray’s stripping challenge pretty well (“Walking around naked is a literal rite of manhood in Rome”), though several girls had to be restrained from throwing themselves at Jason and Piper had to be restrained from stabbing them. Jason passed it back to Mabel, who found the bugs Raymond challenged her to find. Mabel passed it back to Jason, who solved Lisa’s calculus problem pretty well (“I went to math college!”). Jason passed it back to Mabel, who had to outpun Sans, and took him down a notch with her keen wit. She passed it back to Jason, who did Seraphine’s KPOP song-and-dance number challenge (and once again made the girlies scream). Jason passed it to Amethyst, seeing Mabel could not be fazed. Amethyst nearly floundered on Baljeet’s trigonometry question, but luckily, her Gem did the math for her. Amethyst threw it back to Jason, and Gaara challenged him to a chess match, which he narrowly won. Jason went back at Amethyst, who beat Darcy at her own game when she challenged her to a makeover competition, to which Amethyst simply shapeshifted into what Darcy was wearing, but purple and sparkly. Amethyst passed back to Jason, and Jason beat Barry at a randomized 3v3 on Pokemon Showdown. Jason passed to Mabel, and Mabel had to beat Arthur in a jig-off. Mabel trounced Arthur and passed it back to Jason. Sasha’s challenge was simple: “Jason, Catch!”
Jason caught whatever it was Sasha threw. It was heavy, darned heavy, and it was pretty hot, so he dropped it, but quickly caught it again and again. Finally, Sasha said “OK! Timer’s up! You win!”
Jason unwrapped the heavy, hot object and frowned.
It was a hot brick with a smiley face and a note that said “Oh, kiss me again, Jason-senpai!”
Percy Jackson was cackling in the audience.
“Campers, you worked the house DOWN!!!” said Chris. “Not a single challenge passed off, so now, we gotta base it on how many favors you have!”
Mabel and Amethyst gulped. Their plan to take down Jason had backfired.
“Jason, you got nine favors! Congratulations, you’re in the final two!”
“Mabel, you got five favors, Amethyst, you got four. Congratulations, Mabel, join Jason for the final leg of the Finale!”
“Amethyst, congratulations on being the first wildcard contestant to ever make it to the final three! Well, unless you count Courtney in Action as a wildcard, (which she’s NOT, according to her own lawyer’s affidavit!). You are the second-runner up and you get to take home fifty thousand dollars!”
“Wow, awesome! This’ll help add new stuff at the Kindergarden! We can buy PS5s, or even-“
“Let’s do the budgeting at home, Amethyst,” said Pearl. “Congratulations, we’re so proud of you!”
“AMETHYST, YOU ROCKED!” yelled Steven.
“That’s my Gem in the rough! C’mere,” Sans joined them and proceeded to make out with Amethyst.
“I may have lost the season, but I got the skeleton of my dreams, baby!”
Heather gagged. “Ugh, get a room, you two!”
Alejandro countered. “Oh, but mi amor, you are the same! Third placers who bagged the perfect man for them!”
Heather scoffed. “I’m the lucky one in the relationship? You wish, Burromuerto!” Then she tackled him into a kiss on the floor.
Piper was next to gag. “Are you guys trying to summon my mom?! Please don’t, if she sees me with Jason, she’s gonna freak”
“Your mom’s already here in a way, pumpkin!” Chris said. “We often have coffee together as in-laws. She gives me juicy tips on how to milk all that lovey-dovey drama for all the ratings it’s worth! You guys, the Courtney-Duncan-Gwen love triangle drama was Aphrodite’s whole idea!”
Duncan gasped, Gwen’s eyes bugged. Courtney looked like she was ready to go full-on God of War, scale Olympus and strangle Aphrodite.
Sierra gasped. “What a twist! The fans are gonna go crazy”
“Well, Mabel? It’s down to you and me”
“Uh-huh. Ready to get pummeled, Sparky?”
Jason stopped a laugh. “Sure am. If I remember correctly, the last challenge is a footrace”
They stood there, facing the long obstacle course designed by the fallen twenty campers.
Jason: I am shaking. I never thought it would come down to Mabel and me. But I really want to win this whole thing for the Legion back home, so, sorry Mabel. I’m going all out.
Mabel: I can’t breathe right now. I can’t even move. Why did it have to come down to me and that ridiculously cute guy from California? I’m entering fight-or-flight mode but I know I have to choose to fight
“Campers! This is your last chance to win the one million dollars! Jason, you can take your coin and Mabel can take her grappling gun with her! The obstacle course is the final challenge and the first to reach the finish lines takes all. One last time, you two. DO YOU WANNA BE FAMOUS???!!!!”
They shot off into a sprint. Jason waded through jellyfish. Mabel dodged mini-landmines. Jason bounced off floating pink clouds, Mabel rode a muscular, genetically-enhanced pig, Jason rode a broomstick, Mabel dodged Batarangs, Jason grabbed a gun and mowed down training robots and defused the Spike and Mabel used Dimensional Scissors to get around a chasm. Jason dodged magical attacks, while Mabel swam like an otter across a pond.
They were neck and neck. Piper clutched her blade. Dipper hugged Waddles tight.
Jason rode a skateboard as nuclear waste dripped from the trees, Mabel dodged lasers and bones and skulls flying at her, Jason danced his butt off to activate a hovering bridge. Mabel activated a giant baking soda volcano, propelling her forward, Jason ran through quicksand, Mabel dodged shadows, Jason ran away from Beedrills, and Mabel climbed a mountain of burnt scones, Jason grabbed some Corps gear and rappelled down Sasquatchanakwa’s back. Mabel rode a pink Lion across the lake, punching Fang in the face as she passed.
Jason used his lightning to scare Lion off, throwing Mabel to the ground. Jason jogged past her, towards the finish line. Mabel pulled out her grappling gun and shot for the finish line’s pole. It latched on and she rocketed to the finish line, passing Jason at the last second.
“WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!” Chris boomed. “MABEL PINES, OF GRAVITY FALLS, YOU ARE TOTAL DRAMA FANDOM ISLAND’S FIRST EVER CHAMPION!!”
Jason Grace beamed at Mabel. “Great job, Mabel! You won against all odds. New Rome salutes you!”
Waddles ran up to Mabel and she caught him in a big hug. “Oh, we did it, Mr. Waddles! We won Total Drama Island!!!”
The other campers cheered.
“A jolly good show, Mabel!” said Arthur
“I knew you could do it, Mabel!” said Baljeet
“Mabel, that was awesome!” said Seraphine
“Not bad at all!” said Barry
“Impressive, and here I thought you’d be an early boot,” said Darcy
Demigods and the Gravity Falls citizens cheered wildly. Even the Survey Corps and the Beach City community hooted all around. All the audience from all across the Multiverse clapped in adulation.
“Jason Grace of New Rome, congratulations for being our First First Runner Up! You’ll be taking home one hundred thousand dollars!”
“We can finally afford those Temple renovations I was planning… well, I was planning until I died, so…”
Piper and Leo and the rest of the Seven ran up to hug Jason, or rather pile onto him.
“I’m so glad I came,” said Piper. “When I heard you got brought back from the dead just to compete in some reality show, I cringed. I really didn’t know how to react, where to start. I owed you, Jason, I-“
“You don’t owe me anything, Pipes. I’m happy for you. I want nothing more but for you to keep on being happy with your new life”
They hugged awkwardly, but sweetly.
“Hey, McLean! How about casting me for Season 2, eh?” said Leo Valdez.
“Or me, I really loved this whole season!” said Connie, hugging Sasha.
“Count me in if you’re casting Season 2 now!” said Peridot
“I’m open for participation, Mr. McLean” said Pacifica.
“Me too!” said Squidward Tentacles.
“And me!” said Natsu Dragneel
“What about me?” asked Ron Weasley
“You can’t have a season two without me!” yelled Jessie of Team Rocket.
“Chill out dudes! I’ve got Season 2 greenlighted and you can all email your audition tapes starting tomorrow!”
They all cheered. The Gravity Falls community carried Mabel atop them like a parade float, towards the lake. Percy Jackson smiled. “Think they’re gonna dunk her in?”
Annabeth Chase winced. “I hope not! It’s only fun when, well, you’re with that special someone”
“I wonder who’ll be in Season Two?”
“Wanna file for an audition, Seaweed Brain?”
“It’s one crazy show, but I like crazy sometimes”
Mabel thanked everyone for their support. “I’d never have won without all of you guys. My Screaming Gophers family, and the nice guys at the Killer Bass. Sasha, Arthur, Cyborg, Sans. All of you. I’m so happy I got to meet you all!”
“Oh, I almost forgot!” Chris cleared his throat. “We got the contestants to vote our Mr. and Ms. Congeniality for this season! Congratulations to Gaara and Seraphine!”
“I am honored. No one would’ve believed this ten years ago,” said Gaara, tearing up.
“Oh, you deserve it!” said Seraphine. “You’re a very sweet guy. Thank you, guys, for voting me!”
“You guys get fifty grand each! And that’s not all, everyone not in the Finals is taking home one thousand dollars TIMES the number of challenge wins you got in your entire run!”
Squidward laughed. “Patrick’s STILL not getting anything”
“He won the gift of friendship,” said Spongebob. “Didn’t ya, Pat?”
“That’s true!” said Sasha Braus. “Patrick, we’ll all fondly remember you and each other as we go back to our everyday lives!”
“There’s still one question that’s bugging me,” said Grunkle Stan. “Mabel, what do ya plan to do with your one million dollars?”
Mabel took the giant check from Chris McLean and thought deeply. “I’ve always wanted to expand your gift shop, Grunkle, and- WAIT A MINUTE, GRUNKLE, YOUR MIND-“
Grunkle Stan laughed. “It’s amazing what these Survey Corps scientists can cook up from the spit of a human-Gem hybrid and nectar from those demigods”
Mabel stared at her fellow finalists. “You guys, I…”
“It was horrible when we found out the price he paid to save you and the world from Bill Cipher” said Sasha. “So when we realized we had all the pieces to the puzzle of restoring lost memories, we jumped right at it!”
“Take it from someone who knows, Mabel. It’s a living hell knowing you should know about someone and not remember them” said Jason.
“Think of it as a prize from us for winning!” said Amethyst.
Mabel spent the rest of that day hugging everyone out of sheer joy.
Raymond purred. “Ah, all’s well that ends well, eh?”
Ponyhead beamed. “You bet, baby! Hey, Gorillanakwaz, hit it!”
Arthur Kirkland, Cyborg, Jett, Seraphine and Gaara hit the stage.
Arthur took up the bass, Jett the keyboard, Cyborg the drums and Gaara and Seraphine took the mikes, and an old, familiar tune began.
You never ever leave my mind
My sweet, sweet Caroline
Every time I look into your eyes, I feel like I’m alive
The whole island was vibing to the song and rocking to its melody
Every time I want to say hello, every time I want to stay, I go
Could never find the words to let you know, sometimes
You play my mind a million times
Mabel danced with all her friends, switching from Dipper, to Waddles, to Soos, Wendy and Pacifica, even Gideon. Sasha danced with Connie. Gems, Survey Corpsmen and demigod legionnaires joined hands in a circle and danced around the campfire. Jason waved as Piper danced with her girlfriend Shel, and suddenly, Jett came along and they began to dance, too.
Chris Mclean waved one last time at the camera. “Thanks for joining us here on Total Drama Fandom Island. Stay tuned for Season Two coming to you in May! Eighteen new contestants from all over the fandom multiverse will compete for the crown at TOTAL DRAMA FANDOMS SEASON TWO: FANDOM ACTION!
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"Darn, we should've been on guard for shenanigans" said Jason.
"Is it really just us left?" asked Sasha in wonder.
"Yep, we're the Final Four, I guess" said Amethyst.
Amethyst: Wow, the Final Four. I can’t believe it, I’m so close!
Jason: I think I’m pretty much in the clear now. I just have to steel myself for any squeamish challenges, and that one million dollars is as good as mine!
Mabel: This is all so exciting! I bet Dipper and the others are going crazy seeing me here in the finale!
Sasha: Everybody left earned their place here in the Finale. Now, I’ve gotta give it my all and earn that one million dollars!
They stretched and warmed up, and met up on the beach. Jason figured out by flying up that they were on Boney Island. Jason tensed as he heard movement in the bushes.
Chef emerged in warpaint. "Campers! I am proud to say you have made it to the Final Four! Your most grueling challenge will now commence, and here's how it all starts: The first leg is a race back to Wawanakwa, but there's only one canoe here on Boney Island: A map of the island shows where the canoe is and I have the only copy. You have to beat me before-"
Mabel knocked him out cold with the grappling gun. Sasha shook her head in amusement. "Kakashi-sensei, you're not, Master Chief, but we will not fail you or your training. Sasha grabbed the map, scanned it and then ran off into the jungle, her gear letting her glide among the trees.
Chef had to smile as Sasha disappeared into the jungle. The other three finalists quickly gave chase. Jason and Amethyst, with their powers now back at full, raced away into the thickets, while Mabel used her grappling gun to make like Tarzan and glided from tree to tree.
Sasha found the canoe first, but she realized it was too big for her to carry alone onto shore, so she thought of a plan. Jason and Mabel arrived soon after, and Sasha thought of a plan.
“Guys, with her powers, Amethyst is the one to beat. We’ve gotta team up against her or else she’ll flatten us!”
Jason nodded. “That makes sense, Sasha. Alright, it’s three against Amethyst”
“Hooray for conniving!” yelled Mabel.
Sasha: I needed to know if I was as good at manipulation as my fellow Corpsmen. I needed to see if I was powerful enough to twist their minds and make them fight each other. Especially Jason and Amethyst. They’re practically gods compared to Mabel and me.
They made it to the shoreline. Mabel hopped on as Sasha and Jason pushed the canoe into the water.
“Aren’t you guys forgetting someone?” asked a voice behind them.
Sasha froze. Even Jason was tense. They were not fighting some villainous enemy, either of them. They were conniving against someone who had been a friend to them.
No! yelled Eren’s voice in her head. This is a competition!
Amethyst laughed. “Oh, I get it. Welp, it was fun pretending we were all in this together, but I guess now it’s time to let the rocks tumble”
“We don’t wanna fight you, Amethyst!” Sasha yelled.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to fight me, neither!”
Amethyst morphed into a gigantic wrestler, and sucker punched Jason just as he flew in to try and poof her. He sailed backwards into the sand and landed with a sickening thud. Sasha screamed, but Mabel was quicker. She aimed and fired her grappling hook at Amethyst’s leg, entwining it in its cord. Sasha grabbed onto the gun and pulled with all her might, sending Amethyst tumbling over them, pushing the canoe into the water.
The canoe drifted away back to Wawanakwa, leaving Jason and Amethyst behind.
“Whew. I’m glad it’s just the two of us, Mabel! We were screwed if those two got a foothold on us.”
“Yeah. Thanks a lot, Sasha!” They paddled as hard as they could towards Wawanakwa.
Chris: Wow! Our underdogs are really kicking it in all cylinders! I’m here at Wawanakwa with the families and friends of our four finalists. They’re here to give them all the cheering and support they’ll need to win! Let’s start with Amethyst’s family from Beach City. Sierra and Topher, you’re on!
Sierra: Thanks, Chris! We’re here with the Gem Community from Beach City here by the campfire!
Topher: That’s right, Sierra. Pearl, we know you didn’t expect Amethyst to win the Wildcard, let alone make the Finals. What do you and the rest of Beach City have to say?
Pearl: Oh, Amethyst, we are so proud! You held your tongue and got by using your wits! Now, there’s only four of you left and I know they don’t stand a chance against OUR Amethyst!
Garnet: Show them the might of the Crystal Gems
Peridot: GET ‘EM, AMETHYST, YOU CAN DO IT!
Bismuth: You got ‘em on the ropes, Deep-Cut! Knock them out!
Steven: Everybody at the Kindergarden’s cheering for you, Amethyst!
Carnelian: Go, sis!
Skinny: You rock!
Holly Blue: Go, Earth Team! Ugh, what am I even saying?
Jasper: SHOW THEM WHAT EARTH GEMS ARE MADE OF, AMETHYST!
Blue Diamond: (on a holoscreen) Do us proud, Amethyst!
Yellow Diamond: Divide and conquer them, that’s the way to do it!
White Diamond: Is this some sort of Earth entertainment activity? How delightful. Go for it, Amethyst!
Spinel: We’re sending you virtual hugs from light-years away!
Ronaldo: I knew you were a lock on for the finals, Amethyst! All the theories were pointing at you!
Beach City Citizens: AMETHYST! AMETHYST! AMETHYST! AMETHYST!
Topher: Wow, what a crowd! Let’s go see Jason’s demigod comrades from Berkeley, California! The floor’s yours, Brick. Jo and Dawn!
Brick: Oh, we’re on? I was busy looking at those cool Roman phalanx formations!
Dawn: Can’t we settle this peacefully?
Jo: Speak for yourself, Granola Girl. I want to sign up with these guys. They’ve got gyms, tracks and hot baths! Say, I’m pretty sure I’ve got the bloodline of some Roman god in me, could I join you?
Hazel: I can certainly see Victoria or Mars in your blood. We can talk about your application after this
Brick: I’m losing my mind over these formations
Frank: Thanks! I drilled them myself
Dawn: What would you like to say to Jason? I can hook you up telepathically
Hazel: All we want to say is we’re proud and honored by our great former praetor, and it’s great to see him again so… er… full of life
Percy: You’ve got this bro!
Annabeth: Winning this silly TV show is a cakewalk for the hero who toppled the giants!
Leo: ZAP THEM, MAN, YOU’VE GOT THIS!
Piper:…
Nico: Give her some room, people….
Coach Hedge: Man, what a bunch of delinquents! Put them in line, Grace!
Piper: No matter what, you’ve already won in our book (literally), Jason.
Roman demigods: intense cheering
Jo: Yeah, now that’s a cheer! Spartans! Awoo! Awoo!
Dawn: Back to you, Chris
Chris: Thanks, Dawn. Up next is Mabel’s Gravity Falls family. Dakota and Sam, take it away!
Dakota: I’m here with my friend at the Future Celebrities Club Pacifica Northwest! What do you have to say to Mabel?
Pacifica: Omigosh, bestie, I’m so proud. Once you win this thing, you’re gonna be a flipping star! We are so getting ourselves a TV talk show after this! We’ll invite cute boybands from Korea and prank them with Soos in a monster suit hiding behind the sofas!
Dakota: That show concept is so fetch!
Sam: I already knew Soos from the online gaming circuit! Man, Mabel’s awesome! Got any words of inspiration?
Soos: Mabel! Don’t be scared to be nice! Be yourself! Don’t change your strategy now! That’s my takeaway from all the reality TV shows I watch
Grunkle Stan: That’s my granddaughter! She’s on TV!
Dipper: I knew you could do it! Just stay true to yourself, Mabel! You’ve got this!
Gideon: We won’t stop looking for a way to get Grunkle Stan’s memories back, baby! Winning this contest will go a long way!
Bill: is a statue
Dakota: How did that get there…
Bill: manifesting from the void. You call this entertainment? Where’s the fire? Where’s the dead contestants? Where’s the {REDACTED]? Come on, Chris McLean, they told me this was the craziest reality show in the multiverse, let’s get sickening! Oh no wait, I still can’t do anything. Oh well, those other campers don’t stand a chance against Mabel. She’s embraced chaos and it’s her weapon now. She’ll get the drop on them. Buy cryptocurrency! Bye! Dissipates
Dipper: Huh, even Bill had something nice to say
Wendy: That’s why Mabel’s gotta win!
Sam: Back to you, Chris!
Chris: Now, we turn to Sasha’s Survey Corps family!
Duncan: We’re here with the totally-rad Survey Corps to get their scoop on Sasha and why she should win this season
Courtney: If I had my way, we could totally turn this into a succinct discussion on social conditioning and the horrors of child conscription, but given the limited time, we can only ask the Corps on Sasha and her journey so far
Mikasa: I speak for everyone when I say Sasha got all the way to the finals because of her combination of strength in body and strength in heart. Even when her strength fails her, the friends she’s made along the way always have her back. That’s why she will win this
Connie: I know, right?! Either Sasha wins, or it’s rigged!
Levi: Just remember your training
Jean: We've got faith in you, Sasha. Go for it!
Zoe: The odds are in your favor, Sasha. This time, the Corps won't have to settle for defeat!
Courtney: Sasha's lucky to have such faithful friends! We now bring you back to the ongoing race back to Wawanakwa!
Sasha was flying in the air. She saw pieces of roast meat flying along with her, with smiley faces, beckoning her to take a bite. She gladly bit in, savoring the juices
“Ouch!”
Sasha shook her head. She was still flying, but not of her own power, but because Jason was carrying her. Then she had bit his arm.
“What in the Three Sisters?! Jason, where’s Mabel?!”
“She tricked you. Amethyst and Mabel have had an alliance since the Merge.”
Amethyst shapeshifted out of boat form as soon as she hit the shore. “Oh man! The look on Sasha’s face when she wakes up!”
“I almost feel bad,” said Mabel. “But I don’t wanna face Sasha in the Triple Dog Dare Challenge. She’ll cream us for sure”
“Oh, I’m winning that, through and through, but Sasha might threaten your spot in the Final Two, so we had to cut her loose”
Chris nodded. “Amethyst and Mabel, congratulations! You’re in the Final Three! It’s Jason vs. Sasha for the third spot!”
Sasha saw her prospects were grim. “Drop me, Grace. You deserve the final spot”
“I won’t do that. Romans fight fairly”
“OK, then I’ll duel you on the beach for the final spot. Corpsmen fight to the end”
“Deal”
They landed and squared off meters away from the shore, knee-deep in the water. Jason drew his coin and flipped it, and a sword materialized from it. Sasha drew her twin blades and squared off. Everyone on the beach was silent as the two giantslayers began their duel.
Both were speedsters in combat, but Jason had the advantage of having the power of the wind itself. He ran circles around Sasha, who was forced to parry and keep on the defensive. Demigods cheered for Jason while the Corpsmen urged Sasha to fight on. Sasha’s dual blades afforded her the opportunity to attack and block at the same time, but Jason gave her few openings. Jason’s advantage was that his blade carried his full force, while Sasha’s dual swords halved her attacking power at the benefit of raising range and versatility. Still, Sasha pressed on, forcing herself to lunge in and try to turn the tide on Jason. Steel clashed against bronze and sparks flew. Jason nicked Sasha in the arm.
Suddenly, something awoke within Sasha. Her grip tightened and she began to move much faster, with more force in her strikes. She began pushing Jason back. She began to flip, turn, feint and tumble in the air, the grace of her Corps training coming into full display. Jason began to betray signs of tiring. Sasha twirled, describing a helicopter in the air, blades teetering towards Jason, who parried with his sword.
This time, Sasha nicked Jason on the cheek.
“She’s doing great! She’s gonna win this for sure!” said Connie
Levi shook his head. “It’s over”
“What?!”
Annabeth Chase nodded in agreement. “Sasha was never going to win”
Leo scoffed. “I’m all for Jason winning, but how come you counting Sasha out like that?”
Annabeth rolled her eyes. “It’s so obvious”
Zoe nodded. “Look at them. Look at where they’re standing. A rather brilliant application of simple physics, really”
Leo scanned the area around them. The lake shone blue against the white sand.
The lake.
“Oh,” said Leo.
“Oh, shit,” said Connie.
Jason grinned. “You’ve given it everything you’ve got, Sasha, well done! Now, it’s my turn.” He stabbed the waters with his sword, wincing as the act reminded him of Caligula, and called down the lightning.
Sasha had no time at all to process what happened as the jolts of electricity raced across the lake and into her.
When she awoke, her friends were all around her, grinning and cheering.
“Oh, guys, I had the weirdest dream! I was on a reality TV show and I made it all the way to the finals, until someone fried me…”
Connie sobbed. “Oh, but you did! You did all of that, baby, you made it to the first ever finals of Total Drama Fandom Island and we are freaking proud of ya!”
“Well done!” Jean was overjoyed.
Zoe beamed, “You showed them the Corps are not to be underestimated”
Chris McLean entered the tent, and beamed at Sasha. “Sasha Braus, you are this season’s third runner up! Thanks to the ton of sponsors we gotten since going multiversal, we can actually afford to give ALL our finalists cash prizes! You’re taking fifty thousand dollars home!”
“Fifty thousa-“ Sasha was dazed. “Whatever are we gonna do with fifty grand?!”
“I’ll tell ya what we’ll do,” said Connie. “There’s like restaurants in this wonderful country where you can eat all the meat you want at a price! As soon as this show’s over, we’re hitting one of those restos!”
“Canada is so beautiful,” murmured Mikasa. “Even the Titans here are friendly, and covered in soft fuzzy fur”
“Hyperboreans are harmless unless you mess with ‘em” said Frank Zhang, peeking in from outside.
Three contestants remained. Jason joined Mabel and Amethyst and headed for the special stage erected by the staff.
“History repeats itself,” said Heather. “Three Gophers remain, and the last Bass places fourth”
“Who do you think will win the Dare?” asked Owen.
“Amethyst and Mabel are pretty unhinged,” said Gwen. “If I were Jason, I’d be very worried”
“The dude shoots lightning like a freaking Sith Lord. The Triple Dog Dare isn’t fazing Jason” countered Duncan.
“Campers, congratulations on making it this far” said Chris. “For your next challenge, we bring you the Triple Dog Dare! Your fellow contestants, even Sasha just now, have written down dares that you must beat, from Patrick to Sasha. Now, instead of a roulette, we’ll just run them down from Patrick to Sasha. Ready?”
“Ready!” said the three in unison
Amethyst: They’re in for it now, I didn’t come all this way to lose
Jason: I’ve been memory-wiped, hit by flying bricks and skewered in the back. Nothing is going to hold me down now
Mabel: No dare is too squeamish for Mabel Pines!
“Alright, who goes first?” Chris asked.
“Ladies first,” said Jason.
“I’m non-binary,” said Amethyst. “So Mabel’s going first”
Mabel bit her lip. Patrick was the first eliminated and his challenge was either going to be stupidly easy or stupidly impossible.
She shrugged. I’ve done both. “Bring it, Patrick!”
Patrick Star stepped forward from the Peanut Gallery. “Mabel, I dare ya to eat a Triple Patty Deluxe in one bite!”
“I’ll do it!” Mabel saw the juicy burger and realized how hungry she was. She opened as wide as her jaw would allow, crushing the burger a bit to shrink it, and shoved it in her mouth. She chewed hungrily, and swallowed.
“Good job! Here’s your present!”
“Thanks, Pat!”
Chris clapped. “Alright, Mabel. Now you get a freebie, and the next time you can use it to pass a challenge to someone else. The first to back out is ELIMINATED.”
“Cool”
“Now, pick who goes next!”
“Go, Jason! I know Bakugou has a special challenge for you”
Jason: Now why on Earth would Bakugou have something in mind for me?
Bakugou stepped forward. “Alright, discount Pikachu, I bought my friend Denki with me. The challenge is to short-circuit him before he does it to you.
Denki Kaminari stepped into the fray. “Hiya, I heard you can fly, too, on top of using lightning. Man that is so unfair!”
“Alright, let’s do this”
The two squared off and fired bolts of lightning at each other. The sparks flew in all direction, even making Amethyst’s hair puff up and Mabel’s braces to glow”
“Cool!” said Mabel.
“I needed the new hairstyle,” admitted Amethyst.
They both strained as the lightning surge moved back and forth.
Deku gasped in the audience. “Wow, Denki could actually match a demigod in electrical output!”
“That’s our friend right there, get ‘em, Denki!” yelled Yaoyorozu.
An explosion sent smoke billowing all over the stage. When it settled. Jason was still standing, while Denki had folded.
Bakugou smirked. “Nice job, punk. Here’s your freebie” Jason caught the party favor as Bakugou flung it to him.
“Jason, pick the next challenger,” said Chris.
“Amethyst? It’s your turn”
LSP flew in with a yellow, sour-faced creature. “Amethyst, baby, your challenge is simple. Kiss the Earl of Lemongrab!”
“A’ight, here goes nothing” She kissed him and felt her lips burn. “Oof, boy, you’re better than Fire Salt!”
“Mmmm, you have proven acceptable” said Lemongrab. “Accept this favor”
“Mabel! Your turn again!”
“Next round, we both pass it on to Jason. We have to force him to quit so it’s us girls for the Finale!” “Got it, Amethyst!”
Mabel watched Brian Griffin walk onto the stage. “Mabel, my challenge is this. Say something nice about my novel, Faster than the Speed of Love”
Mabel felt a shiver down her spine. “It’s nice you thought of the needs of the mentally-challenged in writing this novel”
“Why, thank you, I- HEY!”
Stewie Griffin ran up to the stage. “Yass, Mabel, slay! Drag his arse, okay, here’s your favor”. He dragged Brian back to the seats by the ear.
Mabel turned. “Jason!”
Hermione Granger stepped up. “Jason Grace. I have but a riddle for you. Three students sit at Argus Filch’s detention room. They are either Gryffindors, who always tell the truth, or Slytherins, who tell naught but lies. Student One says “All of us are Slytherins”. Student Two is mum. Student Three says “Exactly one of us is a Gryffindor”. Who is who?”
“I’ve heard this riddle before,” said Jason. “Student One is a Slytherin, since if he were Gryffindor, he would be lying, which he cannot. Since he is a Slytherin, they are not all Slytherins, otherwise he’d be telling the truth. Student Two is mum, which is suspicious, and Student Three can be lying or no. They cannot be all of either. If Three is a Gryffindor, that means Two is a Slytherin, since Three’s statement must be true if he is Gryffindor. If Three is a Slytherin, then Two must be Slytherin also, since if Two was Gryffindor then Three must be telling the truth, but then all three would be Slytherin, making One’s statement true, when we already know it’s a lie. Therefore. One and Two are Slytherin, and Three is a Gryffindor.”
“Brilliant! And well-reasoned. Alright, Jason, here’s your favor”
“My brain fucking hurts,” said Amethyst.
“You don’t have a brain, silly, you got some sorta microchips,” said Mabel.
“Can I eat ‘em? All that logic made my head hurt”
“Alright, Amethyst, you’re up again,” said Jason.
“I just said my head hurts! Sheesh”
Cyborg entered the fray. “Yo, Amethyst! BB over here wants to challenge your shapeshifting skills!”
“Bring it on, BB! I’m ready for ya, anytime!”
“Oh, word, Amethyst? Get ready, coz I am kicking your butt across the animal kingdom!”
The green and the purple squared up. They began slowly, mouse, cow, tiger, rabbit, then picked up the pace, to owls, ravens, peacocks, dinosaurs, onto more complex animals, insects and fantastic creatures. Then Amethyst started morphing inanimate objects, to which Beast Boy threw in the towel.
“Man, I shoulda known better than to challenge you, sis! Here’s your favor!”
“Jason, next!”
Jason: I knew the girls were gonna gang up on me sooner or later. Welp, bring it!
Jett flew in. “Jason, think fast!” She dashed past him, and grabbed Piper and Leo from the audience.
“What the fuck?!” Amethyst gasped.
“What the heck is she thinking?!” said Mabel. “You can’t be lifting up demigods!”
Jett flew to the ceiling of the really-high circus tent, and flung Piper and Leo to the ground in opposite directions.
Jason’s calm smirk shocked everyone. Instead of making like Superman and flying to either of them, he willed the spirits of the winds to catch both of them and land them safely.
Jett beamed at Jason, though Leo tried to throw hands at her, and was intercepted by fellow pyro Phoenix (“Chill, fam, it was all planned out!”).
“I know when to cut my losses, but I’ll damn well try before I do any cutting”
Brimstone smiled in the audience. “That kid’s got potential”
Sage nodded. “He has the calmness and power of a storm”
“Mabel? Your turn”
Mabel breezed through Ponyhead’s Tiktok challenge, while Jason took Gray’s stripping challenge pretty well (“Walking around naked is a literal rite of manhood in Rome”), though several girls had to be restrained from throwing themselves at Jason and Piper had to be restrained from stabbing them. Jason passed it back to Mabel, who found the bugs Raymond challenged her to find. Mabel passed it back to Jason, who solved Lisa’s calculus problem pretty well (“I went to math college!”). Jason passed it back to Mabel, who had to outpun Sans, and took him down a notch with her keen wit. She passed it back to Jason, who did Seraphine’s KPOP song-and-dance number challenge (and once again made the girlies scream). Jason passed it to Amethyst, seeing Mabel could not be fazed. Amethyst nearly floundered on Baljeet’s trigonometry question, but luckily, her Gem did the math for her. Amethyst threw it back to Jason, and Gaara challenged him to a chess match, which he narrowly won. Jason went back at Amethyst, who beat Darcy at her own game when she challenged her to a makeover competition, to which Amethyst simply shapeshifted into what Darcy was wearing, but purple and sparkly. Amethyst passed back to Jason, and Jason beat Barry at a randomized 3v3 on Pokemon Showdown. Jason passed to Mabel, and Mabel had to beat Arthur in a jig-off. Mabel trounced Arthur and passed it back to Jason. Sasha’s challenge was simple: “Jason, Catch!”
Jason caught whatever it was Sasha threw. It was heavy, darned heavy, and it was pretty hot, so he dropped it, but quickly caught it again and again. Finally, Sasha said “OK! Timer’s up! You win!”
Jason unwrapped the heavy, hot object and frowned.
It was a hot brick with a smiley face and a note that said “Oh, kiss me again, Jason-senpai!”
Percy Jackson was cackling in the audience.
“Campers, you worked the house DOWN!!!” said Chris. “Not a single challenge passed off, so now, we gotta base it on how many favors you have!”
Mabel and Amethyst gulped. Their plan to take down Jason had backfired.
“Jason, you got nine favors! Congratulations, you’re in the final two!”
“Mabel, you got five favors, Amethyst, you got four. Congratulations, Mabel, join Jason for the final leg of the Finale!”
“Amethyst, congratulations on being the first wildcard contestant to ever make it to the final three! Well, unless you count Courtney in Action as a wildcard, (which she’s NOT, according to her own lawyer’s affidavit!). You are the second-runner up and you get to take home fifty thousand dollars!”
“Wow, awesome! This’ll help add new stuff at the Kindergarden! We can buy PS5s, or even-“
“Let’s do the budgeting at home, Amethyst,” said Pearl. “Congratulations, we’re so proud of you!”
“AMETHYST, YOU ROCKED!” yelled Steven.
“That’s my Gem in the rough! C’mere,” Sans joined them and proceeded to make out with Amethyst.
“I may have lost the season, but I got the skeleton of my dreams, baby!”
Heather gagged. “Ugh, get a room, you two!”
Alejandro countered. “Oh, but mi amor, you are the same! Third placers who bagged the perfect man for them!”
Heather scoffed. “I’m the lucky one in the relationship? You wish, Burromuerto!” Then she tackled him into a kiss on the floor.
Piper was next to gag. “Are you guys trying to summon my mom?! Please don’t, if she sees me with Jason, she’s gonna freak”
“Your mom’s already here in a way, pumpkin!” Chris said. “We often have coffee together as in-laws. She gives me juicy tips on how to milk all that lovey-dovey drama for all the ratings it’s worth! You guys, the Courtney-Duncan-Gwen love triangle drama was Aphrodite’s whole idea!”
Duncan gasped, Gwen’s eyes bugged. Courtney looked like she was ready to go full-on God of War, scale Olympus and strangle Aphrodite.
Sierra gasped. “What a twist! The fans are gonna go crazy”
“Well, Mabel? It’s down to you and me”
“Uh-huh. Ready to get pummeled, Sparky?”
Jason stopped a laugh. “Sure am. If I remember correctly, the last challenge is a footrace”
They stood there, facing the long obstacle course designed by the fallen twenty campers.
Jason: I am shaking. I never thought it would come down to Mabel and me. But I really want to win this whole thing for the Legion back home, so, sorry Mabel. I’m going all out.
Mabel: I can’t breathe right now. I can’t even move. Why did it have to come down to me and that ridiculously cute guy from California? I’m entering fight-or-flight mode but I know I have to choose to fight
“Campers! This is your last chance to win the one million dollars! Jason, you can take your coin and Mabel can take her grappling gun with her! The obstacle course is the final challenge and the first to reach the finish lines takes all. One last time, you two. DO YOU WANNA BE FAMOUS???!!!!”
They shot off into a sprint. Jason waded through jellyfish. Mabel dodged mini-landmines. Jason bounced off floating pink clouds, Mabel rode a muscular, genetically-enhanced pig, Jason rode a broomstick, Mabel dodged Batarangs, Jason grabbed a gun and mowed down training robots and defused the Spike and Mabel used Dimensional Scissors to get around a chasm. Jason dodged magical attacks, while Mabel swam like an otter across a pond.
They were neck and neck. Piper clutched her blade. Dipper hugged Waddles tight.
Jason rode a skateboard as nuclear waste dripped from the trees, Mabel dodged lasers and bones and skulls flying at her, Jason danced his butt off to activate a hovering bridge. Mabel activated a giant baking soda volcano, propelling her forward, Jason ran through quicksand, Mabel dodged shadows, Jason ran away from Beedrills, and Mabel climbed a mountain of burnt scones, Jason grabbed some Corps gear and rappelled down Sasquatchanakwa’s back. Mabel rode a pink Lion across the lake, punching Fang in the face as she passed.
Jason used his lightning to scare Lion off, throwing Mabel to the ground. Jason jogged past her, towards the finish line. Mabel pulled out her grappling gun and shot for the finish line’s pole. It latched on and she rocketed to the finish line, passing Jason at the last second.
“WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!” Chris boomed. “MABEL PINES, OF GRAVITY FALLS, YOU ARE TOTAL DRAMA FANDOM ISLAND’S FIRST EVER CHAMPION!!”
Jason Grace beamed at Mabel. “Great job, Mabel! You won against all odds. New Rome salutes you!”
Waddles ran up to Mabel and she caught him in a big hug. “Oh, we did it, Mr. Waddles! We won Total Drama Island!!!”
The other campers cheered.
“A jolly good show, Mabel!” said Arthur
“I knew you could do it, Mabel!” said Baljeet
“Mabel, that was awesome!” said Seraphine
“Not bad at all!” said Barry
“Impressive, and here I thought you’d be an early boot,” said Darcy
Demigods and the Gravity Falls citizens cheered wildly. Even the Survey Corps and the Beach City community hooted all around. All the audience from all across the Multiverse clapped in adulation.
“Jason Grace of New Rome, congratulations for being our First First Runner Up! You’ll be taking home one hundred thousand dollars!”
“We can finally afford those Temple renovations I was planning… well, I was planning until I died, so…”
Piper and Leo and the rest of the Seven ran up to hug Jason, or rather pile onto him.
“I’m so glad I came,” said Piper. “When I heard you got brought back from the dead just to compete in some reality show, I cringed. I really didn’t know how to react, where to start. I owed you, Jason, I-“
“You don’t owe me anything, Pipes. I’m happy for you. I want nothing more but for you to keep on being happy with your new life”
They hugged awkwardly, but sweetly.
“Hey, McLean! How about casting me for Season 2, eh?” said Leo Valdez.
“Or me, I really loved this whole season!” said Connie, hugging Sasha.
“Count me in if you’re casting Season 2 now!” said Peridot
“I’m open for participation, Mr. McLean” said Pacifica.
“Me too!” said Squidward Tentacles.
“And me!” said Natsu Dragneel
“What about me?” asked Ron Weasley
“You can’t have a season two without me!” yelled Jessie of Team Rocket.
“Chill out dudes! I’ve got Season 2 greenlighted and you can all email your audition tapes starting tomorrow!”
They all cheered. The Gravity Falls community carried Mabel atop them like a parade float, towards the lake. Percy Jackson smiled. “Think they’re gonna dunk her in?”
Annabeth Chase winced. “I hope not! It’s only fun when, well, you’re with that special someone”
“I wonder who’ll be in Season Two?”
“Wanna file for an audition, Seaweed Brain?”
“It’s one crazy show, but I like crazy sometimes”
Mabel thanked everyone for their support. “I’d never have won without all of you guys. My Screaming Gophers family, and the nice guys at the Killer Bass. Sasha, Arthur, Cyborg, Sans. All of you. I’m so happy I got to meet you all!”
“Oh, I almost forgot!” Chris cleared his throat. “We got the contestants to vote our Mr. and Ms. Congeniality for this season! Congratulations to Gaara and Seraphine!”
“I am honored. No one would’ve believed this ten years ago,” said Gaara, tearing up.
“Oh, you deserve it!” said Seraphine. “You’re a very sweet guy. Thank you, guys, for voting me!”
“You guys get fifty grand each! And that’s not all, everyone not in the Finals is taking home one thousand dollars TIMES the number of challenge wins you got in your entire run!”
Squidward laughed. “Patrick’s STILL not getting anything”
“He won the gift of friendship,” said Spongebob. “Didn’t ya, Pat?”
“That’s true!” said Sasha Braus. “Patrick, we’ll all fondly remember you and each other as we go back to our everyday lives!”
“There’s still one question that’s bugging me,” said Grunkle Stan. “Mabel, what do ya plan to do with your one million dollars?”
Mabel took the giant check from Chris McLean and thought deeply. “I’ve always wanted to expand your gift shop, Grunkle, and- WAIT A MINUTE, GRUNKLE, YOUR MIND-“
Grunkle Stan laughed. “It’s amazing what these Survey Corps scientists can cook up from the spit of a human-Gem hybrid and nectar from those demigods”
Mabel stared at her fellow finalists. “You guys, I…”
“It was horrible when we found out the price he paid to save you and the world from Bill Cipher” said Sasha. “So when we realized we had all the pieces to the puzzle of restoring lost memories, we jumped right at it!”
“Take it from someone who knows, Mabel. It’s a living hell knowing you should know about someone and not remember them” said Jason.
“Think of it as a prize from us for winning!” said Amethyst.
Mabel spent the rest of that day hugging everyone out of sheer joy.
Raymond purred. “Ah, all’s well that ends well, eh?”
Ponyhead beamed. “You bet, baby! Hey, Gorillanakwaz, hit it!”
Arthur Kirkland, Cyborg, Jett, Seraphine and Gaara hit the stage.
Arthur took up the bass, Jett the keyboard, Cyborg the drums and Gaara and Seraphine took the mikes, and an old, familiar tune began.
You never ever leave my mind
My sweet, sweet Caroline
Every time I look into your eyes, I feel like I’m alive
The whole island was vibing to the song and rocking to its melody
Every time I want to say hello, every time I want to stay, I go
Could never find the words to let you know, sometimes
You play my mind a million times
Mabel danced with all her friends, switching from Dipper, to Waddles, to Soos, Wendy and Pacifica, even Gideon. Sasha danced with Connie. Gems, Survey Corpsmen and demigod legionnaires joined hands in a circle and danced around the campfire. Jason waved as Piper danced with her girlfriend Shel, and suddenly, Jett came along and they began to dance, too.
Chris Mclean waved one last time at the camera. “Thanks for joining us here on Total Drama Fandom Island. Stay tuned for Season Two coming to you in May! Eighteen new contestants from all over the fandom multiverse will compete for the crown at TOTAL DRAMA FANDOMS SEASON TWO: FANDOM ACTION!
2023.03.22 08:48 MaxTheRealSlayer "The game you couldn't put down, the story you couldn't make up. " - Tetris - I need serious wrinkles on this!
 | So this is my first long-form post. It won't be prefect, but you all are perfect so that's all that matters. I need your help to add to my thoughts from a rabbit hole that I've fallen down! I promise it is worth the read. Put on your tinfoil with me and let's just explore some thoughts. submitted by MaxTheRealSlayer to Superstonk [link] [comments] I think that Apple, Nintendo and GameStop are up to something. Let me explain. At 9 am EST today, we all saw the post made by GameStop on Twitter: GameStop post on Twitter. 2023-03-21 - 9AM -EST Nice! But I didn't think much of it except for a nice throwback to an old classic every gamer and even non-gamer can feel nostalgic towards. Maybe they were excited for their Financial report at 5 PM that day? That was many hours ago but in the last hour or so I started getting hit with ad's on YouTube, facebook, and Reddit. When I saw the ads, I had flashbacks to that Tetris tweet that GameStop made at 9AM. Why, you may ask? Well, apparently there is a new movie coming out to a streaming service on March 31st. Here's the movie poster: An Apple Original Film by Taron Egerton: Tetris Well. Wait, So Apple is starting to advertise their new Tetris movie on the same day GameStop has their most successful financial report and earnings call in over two years, and they post a Tetris Tweet from their company account? Well as a great Chairman once said: The apple doesn't fall far from the tree - Tweet by Ryan Cohen 2022-March-02 -9:51 PM Okay, I get it, I get it. This could all be a chonencindence, but...what if it's not? Aftercall, Apple stock DID suspiciously spike according to google at 5PM, the exact time GME started their earnings call: Apple stock chart price spikes 159.24 to 167.00 in 5 minutes while GameStop has Earnings calls It's quite the anomaly. Consider that at 5:00PM EST when GME had their earnings call, apple spiked from 159.24 to 167.00 for only 5 minutes. That's an increase of roughly 4.873%. Their market cap is $2.53 trillion right now. AKA $2,530 billion. A 4.873% increase in five minutes is equal to about $123 billion. Why did this happen? Was it just because Gamestop was exploding in value during this time so all stocks had this uptick? Well, no actually. Another $Trillion+ company had no such anomaly at 5:00 PM EST, in fact it *Decreased* in value slightly: Google stock chart at 5:00PM EST ...decreased slightly? Well that's all fun but I still don't get it. So I look up the trailer for the Tetris movie. Well first off, (SPOILERS)! I will be showing screengrabs from the trailer with their captions included. Every photo from here on out will be from their trailer found on YouTube. The trailer goes on to show how Tetris was invented. It was this one man's obsession to connect "poetry, art and math" into a game. He see's it in his dreams and "It's the perfect game". : \"It's the perfect game\" - Tetris trailer Throughout the storytelling in the trailer, his character really reminds me of a passionate person who brings his dreams to reality. I'm sure we all feel that GME is our pride and joy of investments, maybe because you think this is a once in a lifetime opportunity?: \"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity\" - Tetris trailer Let's start with: I think weren't wrong, we were early. In fact, I like to think we are Pioneers: \"We're pioneers\" caption - Tetris trailer. HODL What would you do if you were a pioneer, make sacrifices for the greater good of your friends, family, community? Would you bet everything you could safely afford to to win, like an investment you strongly believe in? \"Have to bet the house to win.\" - Tetris trailer Well, I for one can relate. I am pretty invested in this stock whole saga, with my favourite stock. Well anyway, next, we are given this slogan: The Game You Couldn't put down The story You couldn't make up Altogether this reads: "The game you couldn't put down, the story you couldn't make up." Intensity builds up because a lot of this story takes place in ..wait, 'The Soviet Union is about to implode"? Like, Russia? Well they sound like a peaceful country and there is no way this story is related to anything now...at least that we know of yet. and then: \"Oh, come on you guys are the kings of cliffhangers.\" Oh, come on you guys are the kings of cliffhangers? Well..maybe not, because the next scene in the trailer is awfully quiet, and the sound that the coin makes when Mario rams his head into the coin to collect it chimes in: Oh...it's a dude playing Tetris. Well here's a guy playing Tetris, one of the first people ever. Who is he? We are hanging on the cliff at this point as we near the end of the trailer. \"Not too bad\" - ? Wait...he looks familiar. Hiroshi Yamauchi This man is clearly meant to be Hiroshi Yamauchi. He was the president of Nintendo from 1949 to 2022 and sadly passed away in September, 2013. Why is this related to the movie, Tetris? Well Tetris was distributed from the late 1980's to the 1990's by Nintendo while releasing the Game Boy handled device. Lead by Hiroshi Yamauchi. He has a seriously impressive resume and the whole story with Russia, Microsoft, Tetris and Nintendo is quite an interesting read! I'd explain more about it but this is my first time reading on it and I don't want to misinterpret some of the events that went on....but it's worth a read-through, I promise! I'm sure there is very important info in that story. Oh, did I mention right before they show Hiroshi Yamauchi, the song "Final Countdown starts playing? Well...it does: \"It's the final countdown\" - March 31 Well, it's not a Tuesday, but I guess the Final countdown is March 31st. A Friday. Okay, my tits are jacked to the moon. I swear something is brewing between GameStop, Apple, Nintendo..or there is a forecasted implosion of some sort on March 31. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! There is just so much possibility with this. Maybe it's nothing, maybe it is. Drop your comments and lets chat about it. *Not financial advice, and everything in here is my interpretation of a story only, not reality. * |
2023.03.22 08:46 Infamous-Contact-738 Can anyone tell me the name of these trees please ?
 | Sorry for the crap photo.. I see these trees a lot around my area and haven't had the chance to take a photo of one but here they are on street view. submitted by Infamous-Contact-738 to australianplants [link] [comments] |
2023.03.22 08:39 MirkWorks Yoga, The One and The Many by David Gordon White
Over the past decades, yoga has become part of the Zeitgeist of affluent western societies, drawing housewives and hipsters, new agers and the aged, and body culture and corporate culture into a multibillion-dollar synergy. Like every Indian cultural artifact that it has embraced, the West views Indian yoga as an ancient, unchanging tradition, based on revelations received by the Vedic sages who, seated in the lotus pose, were the Indian forerunners of the flat-tummied yoga babes who grace the covers and webpages of such glossy periodicals and internet websites as the Yoga Journal and Yoga International.
In the United States in particular, yoga has become a commodity. as of 2018, no fewer than 36 million Americans were practicing yoga every year. For most people, this has meant going to a yoga center with yoga mats, yoga clothes, and yoga accessories, and practicing in groups under the guidance of a yoga instructor or trainer. here, yoga practice comprises a regimen of postures (āsanas), sometimes held for long periods of time, sometimes executed in rapid sequence, and often paired with regulated breathing (prāṇāyāma). Yoga entrepreneurs have branded their own styles of practice, from the superheated workout rooms of Bikram Yoga studios to storefronts offering “doga”: practicing yoga together with one’s dog. They have opened franchises, invented logos, packaged their practice regimens under Sanskrit names, and marketed a lifestyle that fuses yoga with leisure travel, healing spas, and seminars on eastern spirituality. “Yoga celebrities” have become a part of our vocabulary, and with celebrity has come the usual entourage of publicists, business managers, and lawyers. Yoga is mainstream. arguably India’s greatest cultural export, yoga has morphed into a mass cultural phenomenon.
Many yoga celebrities, as well as a strong percentage of less celebrated yoga instructors, combine their training with teachings on healing, spirituality, meditation, and India’s ancient yoga traditions, the Sanskrit-language Yoga Sūtra (YS) in particular. here, they are following the lead of the earliest yoga entrepreneurs, the Indian gurus who brought the gospel of yoga to western shores in the wake of Swami Vivekananda’s storied successes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But what were India’s ancient yoga traditions, and what relationship do they have to the modern postural yoga that people are practicing across the world today? In fact, the yoga that is taught and practiced in the twenty-first century has very little in common with the yoga of the YS and other ancient yoga treatises. nearly all of our popular assumptions about yoga theory date from the past 150 years, and very few modern-day practices date from before the twelfth century. This is not the first time that people have “reinvented” yoga in their own image. This is a process that has been ongoing for at least two thousand years, with every age seemingly creating its own version and vision of yoga. one reason this has been possible is that yoga’s semantic field – the range of meanings of the term “yoga” – is so broad and the concept of yoga so malleable, that it has been possible to morph it into nearly any practice or process one might wish to choose. When seeking to define a tradition, it’s useful to begin by defining one’s terms, and it is here that problems arise. “Yoga” has a wider range of meanings than nearly any other word in the entire Sanskrit lexicon. The act of yoking an animal, as well as the yoke itself, is called yoga. In astronomy, a conjunction of planets or stars, as well as a constellation, is called yoga. When one mixes together various substances, that, too, can be called yoga. The word yoga has also been employed to denote a device, a recipe, a method, a strategy, a charm, an incantation, fraud, a trick, an endeavor, a combination, union, an arrangement, zeal, care, diligence, industriousness, discipline, use, application, contact, a sum total, and the Work of alchemists. But this is by no means an exhaustive list.
So, for example, the twentieth chapter of the ninth-century Netra Tantra, a Hindu scripture from Kashmir, describes what it calls gross, subtle and supreme yoga. Whereas gross yoga involves combating agents of demonic possession, subtle yoga is nothing more or less than a body of techniques for entering into and taking over other people’s bodies. As for supreme yoga, this is a process that involves superhuman female predators, called yoginīs, who eat people! By means of their supreme yoga, this text says, the yoginīs consume the sins of the body that would otherwise bind a person to suffering rebirth, and so open the way for the tantric practitioner’s identity with Śiva, that is, for his transformation into a god on earth. In this ninth-century source, there is no discussion whatsoever of postures or breath control, the prime markers of yoga as we know it today; and its discussion of the cakras appears, not in its chapter on the three yogas, but rather in its seventh chapter on dhyāna (“meditation”)! More troubling still, the third- to fourth-century YS and Bhagavad Gītā (Bhg), the two most widely cited textual sources for “classical yoga,” virtually ignore postures and breath control, each devoting a total of fewer than ten verses to these practices. They are far more concerned with the issue of human salvation, realized through the theory and practice of meditation in the YS and through concentration on the god Kṛṣṇa in the BhG.
INDIAN FOUNDATIONS OF YOGA THEORY AND PRACTICE
Clearly something is missing here. There is a gap between ancient, “classical,” yoga traditions and yoga as we know it. In order to understand the disconnect between then and now, we would do well to go back to the earliest uses of the term yoga, which are found in texts far more ancient than the YS or Bhg. here I am referring to India’s earliest scriptures, the Vedas. In the circa fifteenth-century BCE Ṛg Veda (RV), yoga meant, before all else, the yoke one placed on a draft animal – a bullock or warhorse – to yoke it to a plow or chariot. The resemblance of these terms is not fortuitous: the Sanskrit “yoga” is a cognate of the English “yoke,” because Sanskrit and English both belong to the Indo-European language family (which is why the Sanskrit mātṛ resembles the English “mother,” sveda looks like “sweat,” udara – “belly” in Sanskrit – looks like “udder,” and so forth). In the same scripture, we see the term’s meaning expanded through metonymy, with “yoga” being applied to the entire conveyance or “rig” of a war chariot: to the yoke itself, the team of horses or bullocks, and the chariot with its many straps and harnesses. and, because such chariots were only “yoked” (yukta) in times of war, an important Vedic usage of the term yoga was “wartime,” in contrast to kṣema, “peacetime.”
The Vedic reading of yoga as one’s war chariot or rig came to be incorporated into the warrior ideology of ancient India. In the Mahābhārata, India’s 200 BCE – 400 CE “national epic,” we find the earliest narrative accounts of the battlefield apotheosis of heroic chariot warriors. This was, like the Greek Iliad, an epic of battle, and so it was appropriate that the glorification of a warrior who died fighting his enemies be showcased here. What is interesting with respect to the history of the term yoga is that in these narratives, the warrior who knew he was about to die was said to become yoga-yukta, literally “yoked to yoga,” with “yoga” once again meaning a chariot. This time, however, it was not the warrior’s own chariot that carried him up to the highest heaven, reserved for gods and heroes alone. Rather, it was a celestial “yoga,” a divine chariot, that carried him upward in a burst of light to and through the sun, and on to the realm of the gods <“Were the eye not of the sun, How could we behold the light? If God’s might and ours were not as one, How could His work enchant our sight?” - Goethe>. Warriors were not the sole individuals of the Vedic age to have chariots called “yogas.” The gods, too, were said to shuttle across the heavens and between heaven and earth on yogas. Furthermore, the Vedic priests who sang the Vedic hymns related their practice to the yoga of the warrior aristocrats who were their patrons. In their hymns, they describe themselves as “yoking” their minds to poetic inspiration and so journeying – if only with their mind’s eye or cognitive apparatus – across the metaphorical distance that separated the world of the gods from the words of their hymns. a striking image of their poetic journeys is found in a verse from a late Rigvedic hymn, in which the poet-priests describe themselves as “hitched up” (yukta) and standing on their chariot shafts as they sally forth on a vision quest across the universe. [*6. Ṛg Veda 5.46.1, quoted in David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 59-67. The authoritative translation of the Ṛg Veda is Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India, 3 vols. (New York: oxford University Press, 2014).]
The earliest extant systematic account of yoga, and a bridge from the earlier Vedic uses of the term, is found in the Hindu Kaṭhaka Upaniṣad (KU), a scripture dating from about the third century BCE. Here, the god of death reveals what is termed the “entire yoga regimen” to a young ascetic named Naciketas. In the course of his teaching, death compares the relationship between the self, body, intellect, and so forth to the relationship between a rider, his chariot, charioteer, etc. (KU 3.3–9), a comparison which approximates that made by Plato in his Phaedrus (246a-256e). Three elements of this text set the agenda for much of what constitutes yoga in the centuries that follow. First, it introduces a sort of yogic physiology, calling the body a “fort with eleven gates” and evoking “a person the size of a thumb” who, dwelling within, is worshiped by all the gods (KU 4.12; 5.1, 3). Second, it identifies that individual person within with the universal Person (Puruṣa) or absolute Being (Brahman), asserting that This is what sustains life (KU 5.5, 8–10). Third, it describes the hierarchy of mind-body constituents – the senses, mind, intellect, etc – that comprise the foundational categories of India’s ancient Sāṃkhya philosophy, whose metaphysical system grounds the yoga of the YS, BhG, and other texts and schools (KU 3.10–11; 6.7–8). Because these categories were hierarchically ordered, the realization of higher states of consciousness was, in this early context, tantamount to an ascension through levels of outer space, and so we also find in this and other early Upaniṣads the concept of yoga as a technique for both “inner” and “outer” ascent. These same sources also introduce the use of acoustic spells or formulas (mantras), the most prominent among these being the syllable AUṂ or OṂ , the acoustic form of the supreme brahman. In the following centuries, mantras would become progressively incorporated into yogic theory and practice, in the medieval Tantras, as well as in the Yoga Upaniṣads.
Following this circa third-century BCE watershed, textual references to yoga multiply rapidly in Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist sources, reaching a critical mass some seven hundred to one thousand years later. It was during this initial burst that most of the perennial principles of yoga theory – as well as many elements of yoga practice – were originally formulated. Toward the latter end of this period, one sees the emergence of the earliest yoga systems, in the YS; the third- to fourth-century scriptures of the Buddhist Yogācāra school and fourth- to fifth-century Visuddhimagga of Buddhaghosa; and the Yogadṛṣṭisamuccaya of the eighth-century Jain author Haribhadra. although it may be slightly later than the Yogācāra canon, the YS’s tightly ordered series of aphorisms is so remarkable and comprehensive as to be identified as “classical yoga.” also known as pātañjala yoga (“Patañjalian yoga”) in recognition of its putative compiler Patañjali, it lays out a program of “eight-limbed” (aṣṭāṅga) meditative practice that has been reprised in countless works and teachings, from tenth-century Java, Indonesia to nineteenth-century New York City.
The Yogācāra (“Yoga Practice”) school of Mahāyāna Buddhism was the earliest Buddhist tradition to employ the term yoga to denote its philosophical system. Also known as Vijñānavāda (“Doctrine of Consciousness”), Yogācāra offered a systematic analysis of perception and consciousness together with a set of meditative disciplines designed to eliminate the cognitive errors blocking liberation from suffering existence. Yogācāra’s eight-stage meditative practice itself was not termed yoga, however, but rather “calmness” (śamatha) or “insight” (vipaśyanā) meditation. The Yogācāra analysis of consciousness has many points in common with the more or less coeval YS, and there can be no doubt that cross-pollination occurred across religious boundaries in these matters. The Yogavāsiṣṭha (“Vasiṣṭha’s Teachings on Yoga”) – a circa tenth-century Hindu work from Kashmir that combined analytical and practical teachings on “yoga” with vivid mythological accounts illustrative of its analysis of consciousness – takes positions similar to those of Yogācāra concerning errors of perception and the human inability to distinguish between our flawed apprehension of reality and Reality itself.
The Jains were the last of India’s great religions to employ the term yoga to imply anything remotely resembling “classical” formulations of yoga theory and practice. The earliest Jain uses of the term, found in Umāsvāti’s fourth- to fifth-century Tattvārthasūtra (6.1–2), the earliest extant systematic work of Jain philosophy, defined yoga as “activity of the body, speech, and mind.” as such, yoga was, in early Jain parlance, actually an impediment to liberation. here, yoga could only be overcome through its opposite, ayoga (“non-yoga,” inaction) – that is, through meditation (jhāṇa; dhyāna), asceticism, and other practices of purification to undo the effects of earlier activity. While strongly influenced by the YS, Haribhadra’s circa 750 Yogadṛṣṭisamuccaya, the earliest systematic Jain work on yoga, nonetheless retained much of Umāsvāti’s terminology, even as it referred to observance of the path as yogācāra.
This is not to say that between the fourth century BCE and the second to fourth centuries CE, neither the Buddhists nor the Jains were engaging in practices that we might today identify as yoga. To the contrary, early Buddhist sources like the Majjhima Nikāya – the “Middle-length Sayings” attributed to the Buddha himself – are replete with references to self-mortification and meditation as practiced by the Jains, which the Buddha condemned and contrasted to his own set of four meditations. In the Aṅguttara Nikāya (“Gradual Sayings”), another body of instruction attributed to the Buddha, one finds descriptions of jhāyins (“meditators,” “experientialists”) that closely resemble early Hindu descriptions of practitioners of yoga. Their ascetic practices – never termed yoga in these early sources – were likely innovated within the various itinerant śramana groups that circulated in the eastern Gangetic basin in the latter half of the first millennium BCE.
Even as the term yoga began to appear with increasing frequency between 300 BCE and 400 CE, its meaning was far from fixed. It is only in later centuries that a relatively systematic yoga nomenclature became established among Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains. By the beginning of the fifth century, the basic principles of yoga were more or less in place, with most of what followed being variations on that original core. Here, we would do well to outline these principles, which have persisted through time and across traditions for some two thousand years. They may be summarized as follows:
At bottom, India’s many yoga traditions are soteriologies, doctrines of salvation, concerning the attainment of release from suffering existence and the cycle of rebirths (saṃsāra). The problem of suffering existence and the allied doctrine of cyclic rebirth emerges about five centuries before the beginning of the Common era, in the early Upaniṣads as well as the original teachings of the Jain founder Mahāvıra and the Buddhist founder Gautama Buddha. The same teachings that posit the problem of suffering existence also offer a solution to the problem, which may be summarized by the word “gnosis” (jñāna or prajñā in Sanskrit; paññā in Pali). as such, these are also to be counted among the earliest Indian epistemologies, philosophical theories of what constitutes authentic knowledge. Gnosis – transcendent, immediate, non-conventional knowledge of ultimate Reality, of the reality behind appearances – is the key to salvation in all of these early soteriologies, as well as in India’s leading philosophical schools, many of which emerged in the centuries around the beginning of the Common era. As such, these may be termed gnoseologies, theories of salvation through knowledge, in which to know the truth (i.e., that in spite of appearances, one is, in fact, not trapped in suffering existence) is to realize it in fact. The classic example of such a transformation is that of the Buddha: by realizing the Four noble Truths, he became the “awakened” or “enlightened one” (Buddha), and so was liberated from future rebirths, realizing the definitive extinction of suffering (nibbāna; nirvāṇa) at the end of his life.
In all of these systems, the necessary condition for gnosis is the disengagement of one’s cognitive apparatus from sense impressions and base matter (including the matter of the body). an important distinguishing characteristic of all Indian philosophical systems is the axiom that the mind or mental capacity (manas, citta) is part of the body**: it is the “sixth sense,” which, located in the heart, is tethered to the senses of hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, and smelling, as well as their associated bodily organs.** What this means is that Indian philosophy rejects the mind-body distinction. In doing so, however, it does embrace another distinction. This is the distinction between the mind-body complex on the one hand, and a higher cognitive apparatus – called buddhi (“intellect”), antaḥkaraṇa, vijñāna (both translatable as “consciousness”), etc. – on the other. In these early sources, the term yoga is often used to designate the theory and practice of disengaging the higher cognitive apparatus from the thrall of matter, the body, and the senses (including mind). Yoga is a regimen or discipline that trains the cognitive apparatus to perceive clearly, which leads to true cognition, which in turn leads to salvation, release from suffering existence. Yoga is not the sole term for this type of training, however. In early Buddhist and Jain scriptures as well as many early Hindu sources, the term dhyāna (jhāna in the Pali of early Buddhist teachings, jhāṇa in the ardhamagadhi vernacular of early Jain scripture), most commonly translated as “meditation,” was far more frequently employed. So it is that Hindu sources like the BhG and YS, as well as a number of Buddhist Mahāyāna works, frequently use yoga, dhyāna, and bhāvanā (“cultivation,” “contemplation”) more or less synonymously, while early Jain and Buddhist texts employ the term dhyāna in its various spellings, exclusively. Both the YS and the noble eightfold Path of Buddhism also employ the term samādhi (“concentration”) for the culminating stage of meditation. At this stage, all objects have been removed from consciousness, which thereafter continues to exist in isolation (kaivalyam), forever liberated from all worldly entanglements. Kaivalyam is also employed in Jain soteriology for the final state of the fully purified liberated soul.
The BhG, the philosophical charter of “classical” Hindu theism, uses the term yoga in the broad sense of “discipline” or “path,” and teaches that the paths of gnosis (jñāna-yoga) and action (karma-yoga) are inferior to the path of devotion to an all-powerful and benevolent supreme being (bhakti-yoga). however, here as well, it is the constant training of the cognitive faculties – to meditatively concentrate on god in order to accurately perceive him as the ground of all being and knowledge – that brings about salvation. In this teaching, revealed by none other than the supreme being Kṛṣṇa himself, the devotee whose disciplined meditation is focused on god alone is often referred to as a yogin. The BhG is possibly the first but by no means the last body of teaching to use the term yoga preceded by an adjective or modifier (karma-, jñāna-, bhakti-), thereby acknowledging – but also creating – a variety of yogas.
Another implication of this concept is the notion that the expansion of consciousness is tantamount to the expansion of the self to the point that one’s body or person becomes coextensive with the entire universe. The 289th chapter of the twelfth book of the Mahābhārata concludes with a description of just such an expansion, and one finds a similar description in the Jain Umāsvāti’s fourth- to fifth century Praśamaratiprakaraṇa. Several Mahāyāna Buddhist sources contain accounts of enlightened beings whose “constructed bodies” (nirmāṇakāya) expand to fill the universe; and the Bhg’s description of the god Krsna’s universal body (viśvarūpa), through which he displays his “masterful yoga,” is of the same order.
Also in this regard, it should be noted that attention to the breath has been a key element of the theory and practice of meditation from the earliest times. Mindfulness of one’s breathing is introduced in such early sources as the Majjhima Nikāya as a fundamental component of Theravāda Buddhist meditation. In early Hindu sources as well, controlling and stilling the breath is a prime technique for calming the mind and turning it inward, away from the distractions of sensory perception. Ātman, the term for the “self ” or “soul” in the classical Upaniṣads and later works, is etymologically linked to the Sanskrit verb *an, “breathe,” and it is via breath channels (nāḍīs) leading up from the heart – channels that merge with the rays of the sun – that the self is released from the body at death to merge with the absolute (brahman) at the summit of the universe (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 8.6.1-6). These descriptions of the breath channels also lie at the origin of yogic or “subtle” body physiology, which would become fleshed out in great detail in India’s medieval tantric scriptures. In these and later works, the breath-propelled self’s rise through the levels of the universe would become completely internalized, with the spinal column doubling as the universal axis mundi, and the practitioner’s own cranial vault becoming the place of the absolute brahman and locus of immortality.
– there were no limits to the places to which consciousness could go. These “places” included past and future times, locations distant and hidden, and even places invisible to view. This insight became the foundation for theorizing the type of extrasensory perception known as “yogi perception” (yogipratyakṣa), which is in many Indian epistemological systems the highest of the “true cognitions” (pramāṇas), in other words, the supreme and most irrefutable of all possible sources of knowledge. For the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika school, the earliest Hindu philosophical school to fully analyze this basis for transcendent knowledge, yogi perception is what permitted the Vedic seers (ṛṣis) to apprehend, in a single panoptical act of perception, the entirety of the Vedic revelation, which was tantamount to viewing the entire universe simultaneously, in all its parts. For the Buddhists, it was this that provided the Buddha and other enlightened beings with the “buddha-eye” or “divine eye,” which granted them of a vision of the true nature of reality. For the early seventh-century Mādhyamika philosopher Candrakīrti, yogi perception afforded direct and profound insight into his school’s highest truth, that is, into the emptiness (śunyatā) of things and concepts, as well as relationships between things and concepts. Yogi perception remained the subject of lively debate among Hindu and Buddhist philosophers well into the medieval period.
It was a widely held precept among ascetic traditions that extrasensory insight into the ultimate nature of reality, a sort of omniscience, could be attained through meditative practice. here, there were two schools of thought concerning the attainment of such insight. The Jains and a number of Hindu and Buddhist schools asserted that the person, self, or consciousness was luminous by nature and innately possessed of perfect perception and insight, and that the path to liberation simply comprised the realization of one’s innate qualities and capacities. Others, including Theravāda and Sarvāstivāda Buddhists, maintained that the path of asceticism and the practice of meditation were necessary to purge cognition of its inborn defilements, and that only once this difficult work had been completed could yogi perception and omniscience arise. In the former case, meditation was the means to realizing the divine within, one’s innate Buddha nature, to see the universe as Self, and so forth. In the latter, the resulting extrasensory insight allowed the ontologically imperfect practitioner to clearly see and truly know a god or Buddha that nonetheless remained Wholly Other. Through such knowledge one could, in the parlance of many of the dualist Hindu tantric schools, “become a god in order to worship god” – but one could never, contra the claims of the non-dualist schools, become God.
The ability to enter into and control the bodies of other creatures is but one of the supernatural powers (iddhis in Pali; siddhis or vibhūtis in Sanskrit) that flow from the power of extrasensory perception (abhiññā in Pali; abhijñā in Sanskrit). Others include the power of flight, clairaudience, telepathy, invisibility, and the recollection of past lives – precisely the sorts of powers that the yogis of Indian legend have been said to possess. here, it is helpful to introduce the difference between “yogi practice” and “yoga practice,” which has been implicit to South Asian thought and practice since the beginning of the Common era, the period in which the terms “yogi” and “yogi perception” first appeared in the Indian scriptural record. On the one hand, “yoga practice” essentially denotes a program of mind training and meditation issuing in the realization of enlightenment, liberation, or isolation from the world of suffering existence. Yoga practice is the practical application of the theoretical precepts of the various yogic soteriologies, epistemologies, and gnoseologies presented in analytical works like the YS and the teachings of the various Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain philosophical schools. Yogi practice on the other hand concerns the supernatural powers that empower yogis to take over other creatures’ bodies and so forth. Nearly every one of the earliest narrative descriptions of yogis and their practices underscore the axiom that the penetration of other bodies is the sine qua non of yoga. The cleavage between these two more or less incompatible bodies of theory and practice can be traced back to early Buddhist sources, which speak of a rivalry between meditating “experimentalists” (jhāyins) and “speculatives” (dhammayogas). In medieval Tantra, the same division obtained, this time between practitioners whose meditative practice led to gnosis and identity with the divine on the one hand, and on the other, practitioners – referred to as yogis or sādhakas – whose goal was this-worldly supernatural power in one’s now invulnerable, ageless, and adamantine human body. The gulf between yoga practice and yogi practice never ceased to widen over the centuries, such that, by the time of the British Raj, India’s hordes of yogis were considered by India’s elites to be little more than common criminals, with their fraudulent practices utterly at odds with the “true” science of yoga, which, revealed in the YS, was practiced by none, save perhaps for a handful of isolated hermits living high in the Himalayas. These four sets of concepts and practices form the core and foundational vocabulary of nearly every yoga tradition, school, or system, with all that follow the fourth- to seventh-century watershed – of the YS and various foundational Buddhist and Jain works on meditation and yogi perception – simply variations and expansions on this common core.
[To be continued… Medieval Developments]
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In the United States in particular, yoga has become a commodity. as of 2018, no fewer than 36 million Americans were practicing yoga every year. For most people, this has meant going to a yoga center with yoga mats, yoga clothes, and yoga accessories, and practicing in groups under the guidance of a yoga instructor or trainer. here, yoga practice comprises a regimen of postures (āsanas), sometimes held for long periods of time, sometimes executed in rapid sequence, and often paired with regulated breathing (prāṇāyāma). Yoga entrepreneurs have branded their own styles of practice, from the superheated workout rooms of Bikram Yoga studios to storefronts offering “doga”: practicing yoga together with one’s dog. They have opened franchises, invented logos, packaged their practice regimens under Sanskrit names, and marketed a lifestyle that fuses yoga with leisure travel, healing spas, and seminars on eastern spirituality. “Yoga celebrities” have become a part of our vocabulary, and with celebrity has come the usual entourage of publicists, business managers, and lawyers. Yoga is mainstream. arguably India’s greatest cultural export, yoga has morphed into a mass cultural phenomenon.
Many yoga celebrities, as well as a strong percentage of less celebrated yoga instructors, combine their training with teachings on healing, spirituality, meditation, and India’s ancient yoga traditions, the Sanskrit-language Yoga Sūtra (YS) in particular. here, they are following the lead of the earliest yoga entrepreneurs, the Indian gurus who brought the gospel of yoga to western shores in the wake of Swami Vivekananda’s storied successes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But what were India’s ancient yoga traditions, and what relationship do they have to the modern postural yoga that people are practicing across the world today? In fact, the yoga that is taught and practiced in the twenty-first century has very little in common with the yoga of the YS and other ancient yoga treatises. nearly all of our popular assumptions about yoga theory date from the past 150 years, and very few modern-day practices date from before the twelfth century. This is not the first time that people have “reinvented” yoga in their own image. This is a process that has been ongoing for at least two thousand years, with every age seemingly creating its own version and vision of yoga. one reason this has been possible is that yoga’s semantic field – the range of meanings of the term “yoga” – is so broad and the concept of yoga so malleable, that it has been possible to morph it into nearly any practice or process one might wish to choose. When seeking to define a tradition, it’s useful to begin by defining one’s terms, and it is here that problems arise. “Yoga” has a wider range of meanings than nearly any other word in the entire Sanskrit lexicon. The act of yoking an animal, as well as the yoke itself, is called yoga. In astronomy, a conjunction of planets or stars, as well as a constellation, is called yoga. When one mixes together various substances, that, too, can be called yoga. The word yoga has also been employed to denote a device, a recipe, a method, a strategy, a charm, an incantation, fraud, a trick, an endeavor, a combination, union, an arrangement, zeal, care, diligence, industriousness, discipline, use, application, contact, a sum total, and the Work of alchemists. But this is by no means an exhaustive list.
So, for example, the twentieth chapter of the ninth-century Netra Tantra, a Hindu scripture from Kashmir, describes what it calls gross, subtle and supreme yoga. Whereas gross yoga involves combating agents of demonic possession, subtle yoga is nothing more or less than a body of techniques for entering into and taking over other people’s bodies. As for supreme yoga, this is a process that involves superhuman female predators, called yoginīs, who eat people! By means of their supreme yoga, this text says, the yoginīs consume the sins of the body that would otherwise bind a person to suffering rebirth, and so open the way for the tantric practitioner’s identity with Śiva, that is, for his transformation into a god on earth. In this ninth-century source, there is no discussion whatsoever of postures or breath control, the prime markers of yoga as we know it today; and its discussion of the cakras appears, not in its chapter on the three yogas, but rather in its seventh chapter on dhyāna (“meditation”)! More troubling still, the third- to fourth-century YS and Bhagavad Gītā (Bhg), the two most widely cited textual sources for “classical yoga,” virtually ignore postures and breath control, each devoting a total of fewer than ten verses to these practices. They are far more concerned with the issue of human salvation, realized through the theory and practice of meditation in the YS and through concentration on the god Kṛṣṇa in the BhG.
INDIAN FOUNDATIONS OF YOGA THEORY AND PRACTICE
Clearly something is missing here. There is a gap between ancient, “classical,” yoga traditions and yoga as we know it. In order to understand the disconnect between then and now, we would do well to go back to the earliest uses of the term yoga, which are found in texts far more ancient than the YS or Bhg. here I am referring to India’s earliest scriptures, the Vedas. In the circa fifteenth-century BCE Ṛg Veda (RV), yoga meant, before all else, the yoke one placed on a draft animal – a bullock or warhorse – to yoke it to a plow or chariot. The resemblance of these terms is not fortuitous: the Sanskrit “yoga” is a cognate of the English “yoke,” because Sanskrit and English both belong to the Indo-European language family (which is why the Sanskrit mātṛ resembles the English “mother,” sveda looks like “sweat,” udara – “belly” in Sanskrit – looks like “udder,” and so forth). In the same scripture, we see the term’s meaning expanded through metonymy, with “yoga” being applied to the entire conveyance or “rig” of a war chariot: to the yoke itself, the team of horses or bullocks, and the chariot with its many straps and harnesses. and, because such chariots were only “yoked” (yukta) in times of war, an important Vedic usage of the term yoga was “wartime,” in contrast to kṣema, “peacetime.”
The Vedic reading of yoga as one’s war chariot or rig came to be incorporated into the warrior ideology of ancient India. In the Mahābhārata, India’s 200 BCE – 400 CE “national epic,” we find the earliest narrative accounts of the battlefield apotheosis of heroic chariot warriors. This was, like the Greek Iliad, an epic of battle, and so it was appropriate that the glorification of a warrior who died fighting his enemies be showcased here. What is interesting with respect to the history of the term yoga is that in these narratives, the warrior who knew he was about to die was said to become yoga-yukta, literally “yoked to yoga,” with “yoga” once again meaning a chariot. This time, however, it was not the warrior’s own chariot that carried him up to the highest heaven, reserved for gods and heroes alone. Rather, it was a celestial “yoga,” a divine chariot, that carried him upward in a burst of light to and through the sun, and on to the realm of the gods <“Were the eye not of the sun, How could we behold the light? If God’s might and ours were not as one, How could His work enchant our sight?” - Goethe>. Warriors were not the sole individuals of the Vedic age to have chariots called “yogas.” The gods, too, were said to shuttle across the heavens and between heaven and earth on yogas. Furthermore, the Vedic priests who sang the Vedic hymns related their practice to the yoga of the warrior aristocrats who were their patrons. In their hymns, they describe themselves as “yoking” their minds to poetic inspiration and so journeying – if only with their mind’s eye or cognitive apparatus – across the metaphorical distance that separated the world of the gods from the words of their hymns. a striking image of their poetic journeys is found in a verse from a late Rigvedic hymn, in which the poet-priests describe themselves as “hitched up” (yukta) and standing on their chariot shafts as they sally forth on a vision quest across the universe. [*6. Ṛg Veda 5.46.1, quoted in David Gordon White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 59-67. The authoritative translation of the Ṛg Veda is Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India, 3 vols. (New York: oxford University Press, 2014).]
The earliest extant systematic account of yoga, and a bridge from the earlier Vedic uses of the term, is found in the Hindu Kaṭhaka Upaniṣad (KU), a scripture dating from about the third century BCE. Here, the god of death reveals what is termed the “entire yoga regimen” to a young ascetic named Naciketas. In the course of his teaching, death compares the relationship between the self, body, intellect, and so forth to the relationship between a rider, his chariot, charioteer, etc. (KU 3.3–9), a comparison which approximates that made by Plato in his Phaedrus (246a-256e). Three elements of this text set the agenda for much of what constitutes yoga in the centuries that follow. First, it introduces a sort of yogic physiology, calling the body a “fort with eleven gates” and evoking “a person the size of a thumb” who, dwelling within, is worshiped by all the gods (KU 4.12; 5.1, 3). Second, it identifies that individual person within with the universal Person (Puruṣa) or absolute Being (Brahman), asserting that This is what sustains life (KU 5.5, 8–10). Third, it describes the hierarchy of mind-body constituents – the senses, mind, intellect, etc – that comprise the foundational categories of India’s ancient Sāṃkhya philosophy, whose metaphysical system grounds the yoga of the YS, BhG, and other texts and schools (KU 3.10–11; 6.7–8). Because these categories were hierarchically ordered, the realization of higher states of consciousness was, in this early context, tantamount to an ascension through levels of outer space, and so we also find in this and other early Upaniṣads the concept of yoga as a technique for both “inner” and “outer” ascent. These same sources also introduce the use of acoustic spells or formulas (mantras), the most prominent among these being the syllable AUṂ or OṂ , the acoustic form of the supreme brahman. In the following centuries, mantras would become progressively incorporated into yogic theory and practice, in the medieval Tantras, as well as in the Yoga Upaniṣads.
Following this circa third-century BCE watershed, textual references to yoga multiply rapidly in Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist sources, reaching a critical mass some seven hundred to one thousand years later. It was during this initial burst that most of the perennial principles of yoga theory – as well as many elements of yoga practice – were originally formulated. Toward the latter end of this period, one sees the emergence of the earliest yoga systems, in the YS; the third- to fourth-century scriptures of the Buddhist Yogācāra school and fourth- to fifth-century Visuddhimagga of Buddhaghosa; and the Yogadṛṣṭisamuccaya of the eighth-century Jain author Haribhadra. although it may be slightly later than the Yogācāra canon, the YS’s tightly ordered series of aphorisms is so remarkable and comprehensive as to be identified as “classical yoga.” also known as pātañjala yoga (“Patañjalian yoga”) in recognition of its putative compiler Patañjali, it lays out a program of “eight-limbed” (aṣṭāṅga) meditative practice that has been reprised in countless works and teachings, from tenth-century Java, Indonesia to nineteenth-century New York City.
The Yogācāra (“Yoga Practice”) school of Mahāyāna Buddhism was the earliest Buddhist tradition to employ the term yoga to denote its philosophical system. Also known as Vijñānavāda (“Doctrine of Consciousness”), Yogācāra offered a systematic analysis of perception and consciousness together with a set of meditative disciplines designed to eliminate the cognitive errors blocking liberation from suffering existence. Yogācāra’s eight-stage meditative practice itself was not termed yoga, however, but rather “calmness” (śamatha) or “insight” (vipaśyanā) meditation. The Yogācāra analysis of consciousness has many points in common with the more or less coeval YS, and there can be no doubt that cross-pollination occurred across religious boundaries in these matters. The Yogavāsiṣṭha (“Vasiṣṭha’s Teachings on Yoga”) – a circa tenth-century Hindu work from Kashmir that combined analytical and practical teachings on “yoga” with vivid mythological accounts illustrative of its analysis of consciousness – takes positions similar to those of Yogācāra concerning errors of perception and the human inability to distinguish between our flawed apprehension of reality and Reality itself.
The Jains were the last of India’s great religions to employ the term yoga to imply anything remotely resembling “classical” formulations of yoga theory and practice. The earliest Jain uses of the term, found in Umāsvāti’s fourth- to fifth-century Tattvārthasūtra (6.1–2), the earliest extant systematic work of Jain philosophy, defined yoga as “activity of the body, speech, and mind.” as such, yoga was, in early Jain parlance, actually an impediment to liberation. here, yoga could only be overcome through its opposite, ayoga (“non-yoga,” inaction) – that is, through meditation (jhāṇa; dhyāna), asceticism, and other practices of purification to undo the effects of earlier activity. While strongly influenced by the YS, Haribhadra’s circa 750 Yogadṛṣṭisamuccaya, the earliest systematic Jain work on yoga, nonetheless retained much of Umāsvāti’s terminology, even as it referred to observance of the path as yogācāra.
This is not to say that between the fourth century BCE and the second to fourth centuries CE, neither the Buddhists nor the Jains were engaging in practices that we might today identify as yoga. To the contrary, early Buddhist sources like the Majjhima Nikāya – the “Middle-length Sayings” attributed to the Buddha himself – are replete with references to self-mortification and meditation as practiced by the Jains, which the Buddha condemned and contrasted to his own set of four meditations. In the Aṅguttara Nikāya (“Gradual Sayings”), another body of instruction attributed to the Buddha, one finds descriptions of jhāyins (“meditators,” “experientialists”) that closely resemble early Hindu descriptions of practitioners of yoga. Their ascetic practices – never termed yoga in these early sources – were likely innovated within the various itinerant śramana groups that circulated in the eastern Gangetic basin in the latter half of the first millennium BCE.
Even as the term yoga began to appear with increasing frequency between 300 BCE and 400 CE, its meaning was far from fixed. It is only in later centuries that a relatively systematic yoga nomenclature became established among Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains. By the beginning of the fifth century, the basic principles of yoga were more or less in place, with most of what followed being variations on that original core. Here, we would do well to outline these principles, which have persisted through time and across traditions for some two thousand years. They may be summarized as follows:
- Yoga as an analysis of perception and cognition.
At bottom, India’s many yoga traditions are soteriologies, doctrines of salvation, concerning the attainment of release from suffering existence and the cycle of rebirths (saṃsāra). The problem of suffering existence and the allied doctrine of cyclic rebirth emerges about five centuries before the beginning of the Common era, in the early Upaniṣads as well as the original teachings of the Jain founder Mahāvıra and the Buddhist founder Gautama Buddha. The same teachings that posit the problem of suffering existence also offer a solution to the problem, which may be summarized by the word “gnosis” (jñāna or prajñā in Sanskrit; paññā in Pali). as such, these are also to be counted among the earliest Indian epistemologies, philosophical theories of what constitutes authentic knowledge. Gnosis – transcendent, immediate, non-conventional knowledge of ultimate Reality, of the reality behind appearances – is the key to salvation in all of these early soteriologies, as well as in India’s leading philosophical schools, many of which emerged in the centuries around the beginning of the Common era. As such, these may be termed gnoseologies, theories of salvation through knowledge, in which to know the truth (i.e., that in spite of appearances, one is, in fact, not trapped in suffering existence) is to realize it in fact. The classic example of such a transformation is that of the Buddha: by realizing the Four noble Truths, he became the “awakened” or “enlightened one” (Buddha), and so was liberated from future rebirths, realizing the definitive extinction of suffering (nibbāna; nirvāṇa) at the end of his life.
In all of these systems, the necessary condition for gnosis is the disengagement of one’s cognitive apparatus from sense impressions and base matter (including the matter of the body). an important distinguishing characteristic of all Indian philosophical systems is the axiom that the mind or mental capacity (manas, citta) is part of the body**: it is the “sixth sense,” which, located in the heart, is tethered to the senses of hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, and smelling, as well as their associated bodily organs.** What this means is that Indian philosophy rejects the mind-body distinction. In doing so, however, it does embrace another distinction. This is the distinction between the mind-body complex on the one hand, and a higher cognitive apparatus – called buddhi (“intellect”), antaḥkaraṇa, vijñāna (both translatable as “consciousness”), etc. – on the other. In these early sources, the term yoga is often used to designate the theory and practice of disengaging the higher cognitive apparatus from the thrall of matter, the body, and the senses (including mind). Yoga is a regimen or discipline that trains the cognitive apparatus to perceive clearly, which leads to true cognition, which in turn leads to salvation, release from suffering existence. Yoga is not the sole term for this type of training, however. In early Buddhist and Jain scriptures as well as many early Hindu sources, the term dhyāna (jhāna in the Pali of early Buddhist teachings, jhāṇa in the ardhamagadhi vernacular of early Jain scripture), most commonly translated as “meditation,” was far more frequently employed. So it is that Hindu sources like the BhG and YS, as well as a number of Buddhist Mahāyāna works, frequently use yoga, dhyāna, and bhāvanā (“cultivation,” “contemplation”) more or less synonymously, while early Jain and Buddhist texts employ the term dhyāna in its various spellings, exclusively. Both the YS and the noble eightfold Path of Buddhism also employ the term samādhi (“concentration”) for the culminating stage of meditation. At this stage, all objects have been removed from consciousness, which thereafter continues to exist in isolation (kaivalyam), forever liberated from all worldly entanglements. Kaivalyam is also employed in Jain soteriology for the final state of the fully purified liberated soul.
The BhG, the philosophical charter of “classical” Hindu theism, uses the term yoga in the broad sense of “discipline” or “path,” and teaches that the paths of gnosis (jñāna-yoga) and action (karma-yoga) are inferior to the path of devotion to an all-powerful and benevolent supreme being (bhakti-yoga). however, here as well, it is the constant training of the cognitive faculties – to meditatively concentrate on god in order to accurately perceive him as the ground of all being and knowledge – that brings about salvation. In this teaching, revealed by none other than the supreme being Kṛṣṇa himself, the devotee whose disciplined meditation is focused on god alone is often referred to as a yogin. The BhG is possibly the first but by no means the last body of teaching to use the term yoga preceded by an adjective or modifier (karma-, jñāna-, bhakti-), thereby acknowledging – but also creating – a variety of yogas.
- Yoga as the raising and expansion of consciousness.
Another implication of this concept is the notion that the expansion of consciousness is tantamount to the expansion of the self to the point that one’s body or person becomes coextensive with the entire universe. The 289th chapter of the twelfth book of the Mahābhārata concludes with a description of just such an expansion, and one finds a similar description in the Jain Umāsvāti’s fourth- to fifth century Praśamaratiprakaraṇa. Several Mahāyāna Buddhist sources contain accounts of enlightened beings whose “constructed bodies” (nirmāṇakāya) expand to fill the universe; and the Bhg’s description of the god Krsna’s universal body (viśvarūpa), through which he displays his “masterful yoga,” is of the same order.
Also in this regard, it should be noted that attention to the breath has been a key element of the theory and practice of meditation from the earliest times. Mindfulness of one’s breathing is introduced in such early sources as the Majjhima Nikāya as a fundamental component of Theravāda Buddhist meditation. In early Hindu sources as well, controlling and stilling the breath is a prime technique for calming the mind and turning it inward, away from the distractions of sensory perception
- Yoga as a path to omniscience.
It was a widely held precept among ascetic traditions that extrasensory insight into the ultimate nature of reality, a sort of omniscience, could be attained through meditative practice. here, there were two schools of thought concerning the attainment of such insight. The Jains and a number of Hindu and Buddhist schools asserted that the person, self, or consciousness was luminous by nature and innately possessed of perfect perception and insight, and that the path to liberation simply comprised the realization of one’s innate qualities and capacities. Others, including Theravāda and Sarvāstivāda Buddhists, maintained that the path of asceticism and the practice of meditation were necessary to purge cognition of its inborn defilements, and that only once this difficult work had been completed could yogi perception and omniscience arise. In the former case, meditation was the means to realizing the divine within, one’s innate Buddha nature, to see the universe as Self, and so forth. In the latter, the resulting extrasensory insight allowed the ontologically imperfect practitioner to clearly see and truly know a god or Buddha that nonetheless remained Wholly Other. Through such knowledge one could, in the parlance of many of the dualist Hindu tantric schools, “become a god in order to worship god” – but one could never, contra the claims of the non-dualist schools, become God.
- Yoga as a technique for entering into other bodies, generating multiple bodies, and the attainment of other supernatural accomplishments.
The ability to enter into and control the bodies of other creatures is but one of the supernatural powers (iddhis in Pali; siddhis or vibhūtis in Sanskrit) that flow from the power of extrasensory perception (abhiññā in Pali; abhijñā in Sanskrit). Others include the power of flight, clairaudience, telepathy, invisibility, and the recollection of past lives – precisely the sorts of powers that the yogis of Indian legend have been said to possess. here, it is helpful to introduce the difference between “yogi practice” and “yoga practice,” which has been implicit to South Asian thought and practice since the beginning of the Common era, the period in which the terms “yogi” and “yogi perception” first appeared in the Indian scriptural record. On the one hand, “yoga practice” essentially denotes a program of mind training and meditation issuing in the realization of enlightenment, liberation, or isolation from the world of suffering existence. Yoga practice is the practical application of the theoretical precepts of the various yogic soteriologies, epistemologies, and gnoseologies presented in analytical works like the YS and the teachings of the various Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain philosophical schools. Yogi practice on the other hand concerns the supernatural powers that empower yogis to take over other creatures’ bodies and so forth. Nearly every one of the earliest narrative descriptions of yogis and their practices underscore the axiom that the penetration of other bodies is the sine qua non of yoga. The cleavage between these two more or less incompatible bodies of theory and practice can be traced back to early Buddhist sources, which speak of a rivalry between meditating “experimentalists” (jhāyins) and “speculatives” (dhammayogas). In medieval Tantra, the same division obtained, this time between practitioners whose meditative practice led to gnosis and identity with the divine on the one hand, and on the other, practitioners – referred to as yogis or sādhakas – whose goal was this-worldly supernatural power in one’s now invulnerable, ageless, and adamantine human body. The gulf between yoga practice and yogi practice never ceased to widen over the centuries, such that, by the time of the British Raj, India’s hordes of yogis were considered by India’s elites to be little more than common criminals, with their fraudulent practices utterly at odds with the “true” science of yoga, which, revealed in the YS, was practiced by none, save perhaps for a handful of isolated hermits living high in the Himalayas. These four sets of concepts and practices form the core and foundational vocabulary of nearly every yoga tradition, school, or system, with all that follow the fourth- to seventh-century watershed – of the YS and various foundational Buddhist and Jain works on meditation and yogi perception – simply variations and expansions on this common core.
[To be continued… Medieval Developments]
2023.03.22 07:43 Visual-Soft5584 Federal Reserve 'between a rock and a hard place' as interest rate decision looms
 | Federal Reserve officials will convene this week for one of the central bank's most uncertain policy meetings in years. submitted by Visual-Soft5584 to Burystocks [link] [comments] Forced to balance the consequences of a banking crisis and inflation that remains well above target, the Fed is expected to raise interest rates by another 0.25% when it releases its latest policy decision at 2:00 p.m. ET Wednesday afternoon. This move would bring the Fed's benchmark interest rate range to 4.75%-5%, the highest since 2006. Fed Chair Jerome Powell will hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET to explain the Fed's decision. "They're in between a rock and a hard place," said Wilmer Stith, bond portfolio manager for Wilmington Trust. "There's a banking crisis and it's really a very tenuous, uncomfortable position for the Fed to be in." During his semi-annual testimony before Congress in early March, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said strong economic data would likely push interest "higher than previously anticipated." Just days later, the 16th-largest bank in the U.S. — Silicon Valley Bank — was taken into receivership by the FDIC, marking the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. By the evening of Sunday, March 12, the Fed, Treasury, and FDIC had stepped in to backstop deposits at the bank and, in effect, deposits across the banking system. Regulators also seized Signature Bank on March 12, and last week the banking industry organized a de facto bailout of troubled lender First Republic. Shares of First Republic reached a record low on Monday as investors fear the bank will be the fourth U.S. bank this month to fail. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testifies before the House Committee on Financial Services on Capitol Hill on March 08, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna MoneymakeGetty Images) This past weekend, Swiss banking giants UBS and Credit Suisse merged in an emergency combination aimed at shoring up the European banking system. This Fed again issued a Sunday evening statement — this time on global swap lines to ensure dollar liquidity remains abundant worldwide. Still, as of Tuesday morning, data from the CME Group showed investors placing an 85% chance on the Fed raising rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday. "If they stop and reverse [rate hikes], that could cause markets to believe they're not fighting inflation when inflation is still a problem, giving you higher mortgage rates and funding costs for corporations and just a tighter vice on the economy," Stith said. After a year fighting one problem (inflation) with one tool (higher interest rates), the Fed has had to firefight a whole new challenge in just the last 10 days. Don't rule out 'further hikes to come' In addition to announcing its latest interest rate decision, the Fed will also reveal its new Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) on Wednesday, which include officials' forecasts for interest rates, inflation, unemployment, and economic growth over the balance of this year and the next two, as well as longer-run expectations. "[While] Chair Jerome Powell will acknowledge the uncertainty and stress the Fed's willingness to adjust policy if the situation in the banking sector worsens, that doesn't necessarily mean that the new Summary of Economic Projections won't still show further hikes to come,” said Andrew Hunter, an economist at Capital Economics. In December, the Fed's SEP suggested rates would peak in a range of 5%-5.25% during this rate hiking cycle. Powell's testimony earlier this month suggested this outlook is what would need altering from the central bank. On March 14, the February consumer price index showed consumer prices excluding food and energy — or so-called "core" inflation — rose 0.5% over the prior month in February, a modest acceleration from the 0.4% gain logged over each of two prior months. On March 10, the February jobs report showed some 311,000 jobs were created last month after more than 500,000 jobs were added to the economy in January. https://preview.redd.it/6awngnoyk8pa1.png?width=904&format=png&auto=webp&s=36cfb0d87a3996768cad9a010fa2beaf5a542e62 This is the strong economic data investors are betting will force the Fed to continue raising rates, though caution is expected given financial stability risks in the banking sector. Back out the banking crisis that has enveloped global markets and these inflation and jobs numbers had made a 50 basis point rate hike likely. Or as Powell told lawmakers on March 7: "If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes." As February turned to March, Fed officials were widely socializing the idea that 5%-5.25% peak range for the Fed funds rate would need to be revised higher. Leading up to this month's bank failures and before the Fed's ten-day quiet period ahead of its policy meeting, many Fed officials were calling to raise rates higher previously forecast. Fed Governor Chris Waller warned in a speech March 2 that if jobs and inflation reports continued to come in hot rates would have to rise more than previously expected this year. Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, a voting member of the FOMC, said earlier this month he'd lean towards pushing rates higher than he previously forecast, while Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said that if data come in stronger than expected then a case could be made for higher rates https://preview.redd.it/qpji7q34l8pa1.png?width=960&format=png&auto=webp&s=0a281e095946df03f00d4ecba4e3bc69b1aaa1d7 "It's a toss up," said Stith. "Do they raise 25 [basis points], but stop quantitative tightening? Do they raise 25 but lower their dot plot significantly? It's less certain now from my perspective that they're going to do the 25, [and] continue to telegraph a higher rate environment. I think that's a bar that's a little too high." Goldman's chief economist Jan Hatzius — who expects the Fed will stand pat on Wednesday — said there is "considerable uncertainty" about the path beyond March, but he's leaving expectations unchanged for 25 basis point hikes in May, June, and July, and now expects the Fed to finish its rate-hiking cycle with rates in a range of 5.25%-5.5%. https://preview.redd.it/wqpa5ce7l8pa1.png?width=921&format=png&auto=webp&s=6448bd4dc99a3d56d2505eb60be099b3f194e20a Liquidity looms In addition to balancing full employment with stable prices, the Fed's dual mandate has an unofficial third arm — financial stability. This "third mandate" is what has been put under the most stress during this month's banking crisis. The Fed has said it would use its regulatory tools to deal with financial instability, and the central bank created an emergency lending facility to offer funding to banks to ensure banks could meet all depositor withdrawals. This program essentially backstopped all deposits — both those insured and uninsured — across the U.S. financial system. So far banks have borrowed only about $12 billion from the program — equivalent to a small fraction of the deposits that were pulled out of Silicon Valley Bank before its collapse. Still, banks have borrowed $153 billion in loans through the Fed's traditional lending program, known as the discount window, marking the largest amount since the 2008 financial crisis. And as the Fed uses its tools to shore up confidence in the system, these efforts have been a collaborative effort in Washington, D.C. Speaking before the Senate last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she is monitoring stress in the banking system to make sure problems at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature don't spread to other banks. Yellen assured Senate lawmakers last Wednesday the U.S. banking system is "sound" despite recent bank failures. https://preview.redd.it/tz6lnbjal8pa1.png?width=960&format=png&auto=webp&s=b9ba6d0e4a1ae019458982b1b9acd9d75fa9e829 These stresses on the banking system may also, in a roundabout way, work to accomplish some of the Fed's goals, particularly as it relates to tightening financial conditions. "The Fed wanted to tighten financial conditions and bam, they got that in a week," Stith said. According to the Fed's latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, most banks were already tightening standards on consumer and business loans by the end of last year. "If credit was restricted enough to seriously hit activity, the risk is that a self-sustaining cycle of rising unemployment, higher delinquency rates and ever-tighter credit standards could eventually emerge," said Capital Economics' Hunter. |
2023.03.22 07:40 Msizela Am I testing too early ??
Hello! If anyone could help :) I got a positive ovulation test 10 days ago on march 12 but also experienced light spotting either March 14 or 15 , I looked it up and it said it might be ovulation spotting. I’ve tested for pregnancy the past 2 days with a clear blue and dollar tree test and all are negative :/ could I be testing for pregnancy too early or would It be accurate?
submitted by Msizela to tryingtoconceive [link] [comments]
2023.03.22 06:44 JundoCohen TEACHINGS OF GENDO JINKAN (PART VI)
 | More reflections by Rev. Jinkan from his 'Cancer Ango' ... about asking for help when help is needed ... submitted by JundoCohen to zenbuddhism [link] [comments] ~~~ This week's update comes early as I have surgery tomorrow afternoon. I will be having more teeth pulled and bone grafts as a few more tumors are removed from me mouth. I had a long week without pain medication. I am over most of the DT’s, but that misery has been replaced by the pain that I was taking the medication for. If the pain wasn’t so bad, I honestly would not take the medication again because the feeling of going through withdrawals a second time was horrible. A trip to a cardiac surgeon left me with an appointment for a heart catheter on the first of next month to determine if they want to do another open heart (it will be me third if they do it). So this week, I felt lost. I was lost in fears, anxieties and the desire to not be in pain. I was lost in me, and I have been lost many times in me life. When I was younger, I moved to Japan to teach English. I had studied and practiced Buddhism for a more than 10 years and wanted to practice zen while I was there, but I also really wanted to see the Tendai Marathon monks. I had read a book about them and I was captivated by their practice. Me dislike for running would never allow me to ever participate in their practice, but I could watch and visit their small temple. So the first free chance I got, I took a bus out of Kyoto and went to Mt. Hiei. I was ill prepared. I had forgotten me guide book and didn’t know where to go. I got off at a stop that a bunch of people who were wearing wagesa [Buddhist shawls] got off at, thinking they were temple members. They proceeded to get on a sky tram, and the lift took us up the mountain. I later would realize the group I followed was a Shin [Shin Pure Land Buddhist] group that went up there for a picnic. No temple at the summit, just gorgeous scenery that me disappointment made me unaware of (it was looking at photos later that showed me what distraction had made me miss). There were multiple paths going down so I picked one and went on me way. I spent hours hiking on trails that occasionally had Japanese signs that I couldn’t read. I passed beautiful trees and moss covered abandoned temples and statues. I paid no heed to these though, because I was lost and fear was slowly creeping in. Hours passed and I wondered if I would be stuck on this mountain to die lost. I am a city kid and I have no survival skills I thought. The only thing I could do was continue down. Blisters on me feet sprouting like an unwelcome crop and heaviness came upon me. I continued down with a drive to survive. I finally reached the bottom and found meself in an unfamiliar city. I didn’t know what to do or where I was. I didn’t speak the language outside of saying "hello" and "I am the number one pervert" (learned when I was working at Disneyland). Filthy, in pain and overcome, I asked for help. It was morning when I had reached the mountain, and it was deep into the night when I reached this village. People came to me aid. They found someone who spoke some English, they fed me and got me a cab. They showed a generosity not often seen in the many big cities I have lived. I obviously got back safe and sound, but all this could have been avoided if I had asked for help. If I had asked on the bus when I realized I had forgotten me travel guide about what stop I should get off on to see the Tendai Head temple, or if I had asked the group picnicking on the summit how I should get down. Luckily the people in that village were the many arms of Kannon Bodhisattva, but I was too caught up in me self to realize it. Whilst walking this Bodhisattva path Buddhism encourages us to both give help and ask for it when needed. The Sangha is a support network to help all. So when I felt lost this week instead of waiting and getting lost on the mountain of self, I asked for help. I talked to me roommates and friends and if that didn’t help, I would have reached out to me fellow priests and Jundo. I feel grateful having to ask for help because I was able to do emotional Takuhatsu and me bowl was filled as I was emptied. If you feel lost in life, practice or on a mountain ask for help. You lose nothing in the asking and you give someone a chance to offer you a kindness enriching both your lives. The biggest help came in the form of me practice. The difference between that mountain and now is me practice. It was me guide book. I never felt alone because I knew I had a sangha there to help and support me. I was able to ask for help because I had abandoned that fearful pride that stops one from reaching out for help. I offer this story to the world hoping it will help and maybe fill someone's alms bowl with hope. Gassho, JinKan https://preview.redd.it/cv3g2ehjd8pa1.jpg?width=206&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a81b3dd56081b7c671d16c9e02ae6c99919a4f3e |
2023.03.22 06:18 Event-decore 9FT Tall Warm White Lighted Tree - Decorative Waterproof Ginkgo LED Tree - Wedding and Party Indoor / Outdoor Centerpieces Tree 1632 LEDS!
 | submitted by Event-decore to u/Event-decore [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/8myg6fjt48pa1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ccacda2ca45cdb0a7a586edc3f3c662ef9db9e89 INTERNAL WIRING! Our trees have easy plug, weatherproof wiring brought though the inside of the trunks and through to each branch. See photos as comparison. ILLUMINATION! Brighter is Better! The hidden LED’s are 25 watt each! These trees will be admired from far distances! They offer ample lighting to brighten any room or outdoor area. WEATHERPROOF! That’s right! Leave it outside. Rain is not a problem. The branches are sealed! Just make sure the outlet is not exposed. Have a Look |
2023.03.22 06:08 87MilknBonez32 Cashback with GooglePay
If you ever leave your debit card at home or are waiting for a new one in the mail and need to get cashback with a tap to pay app like GooglePay or ApplePay, Dollar Tree stores often offer cashback and it even works with Tap to Pay! Dollar Tree's one dollar cashback fee is totally worth it since many POS with tap to pay do not offer cashback.
submitted by 87MilknBonez32 to DollarTree [link] [comments]
2023.03.22 05:49 LaDev Car Break-in, surprisingly amazing outcome
This past Saturday I had been working on my soon to be new home, and after a long day of labor I got home and immediately collapsed and went to bed. I live right outside of Wilmington Delaware, in a condo complex with a C- in crime score. Not particularly bad, not too good either. A convenient location right off the highway to get to the majority of east coast cities.
Sunday morning I woke up, took a shower, and then gunned for the door to go back to work on the house. I gave my wife and daughter a kiss goodbye, grabbed my phone, keys and wallet, and leave. As I’m approaching my car in the parking area I notice my door is slightly open… not a great sign. I opened the door and noticed my glove box and center console have been completely ransacked. Paperwork I had just gotten two days prior now laid dormant on the floor of the driver and passenger seat. I had also forgotten my day bag in the back seat.
It happened, my car had been robbed. Typically I’m great about locking my car door, Saturday night though, I suppose I missed a critical step in ensuring the safety of the contents of my car.
This is an important time in my life right now, I’m in the middle of a house purchase, work is going crazy, and my second kid will be here in two months. I brushed it off, told my wife what happened, and drove to the house I’m working on. During my drive I gave the Non-Emergency line a call. The gentlemen who answered was very kind.
He collected important information and asked for my location. I let him know that I was on the road and that it would be a few hours before I returned home. He asked that I gave the non-emergency line a call back when I’m home so they could send an officer out. Ugh. Now, in my life I haven’t had the best experience with police. Nothing directly involving me, but lots of second hand interaction and stories from family, so I was naturally inclined to assume the local police wouldn’t be useful. Admittedly, I wrote the entire situation as a loss, I felt hopeless.
Over the next few hours I took mental inventory of what was missing. Originally I had only thought that change and a Bluetooth speaker were missing, some of which was in my center console and others in the bag that was in my back seat. I began to fully remember what I had lost: An Android cellphone, an Apple iPhone, Bluetooth Speaker, home purchase paperwork, $10 in cash, and a few other things.
At this point I was mostly nervous about the iPhone, as it was a backup iPhone 12 I got some time ago which had all my Apple Wallet cards on it. Once I realized I logged into Find my IPhone and activated lost mode on the iPhone. I figured the best case scenario would be to ensure my data was protected. The evening settles in, I’ve accepted defeat, and head to bed.
This morning I clock on for work, and as I’m sitting in a work meeting I get a pestering notification on my phone. Lost iPhone has been turned on. I immediately open Find My iPhone to see the device had checked in, but then immediately was turned off. I was frustrated… not only did this person steal my property, they rubbed it in by trying to further use the device they stole.
Only for a moment however I was frustrated. I further read the information on my phone screen and a smile went from ear to ear. That minute or two the phone was turned on was long enough for the iPhone to pick up an address.
I was motivated at this point. I didn’t know what would happen, but I figured hey, what the hell, let’s give the non-emergency line a ring again. I called in, gave them a recap. They collected my information and let me know I should hear back soon. At this point I half expected the officer to tell me too much time had passed for anything to be done… but boy was I totally wrong.
Officer Thomas gave me a call and let me know that he was outside of my condo. He asked for a recap of the situation, what was taken, and if I had any additional information. I shared the Find my IPhone information. Officer Thomas had another officer come along to swab for DNA and collect finger prints off of my car - I was stunlocked! He then let me know that he was filing a warrant for the address listed on my Find my iPhone. I’m not sure what I thought would happen, but given what I was always taught, and believed, I thought I would have eaten dust.
After about an hour or two Officer Thomas and the officer taking DNA and finger prints finished up with me. I made more assumptions… I’m sure nothing will come of it, this is probably the last I’ll hear of it. Officer Thomas then proceed to send me several texts over the next few hours, he wants pictures of the Bluetooth Speaker, Pictures of my Bag, Cell Phone Serial Number, and various credible bits of information.
I scour my iPhone photos going years back finding the best pictures I possibly could for the items stolen. I sent some blurry and dark photos that I had taken, and then also some screenshots from Walmart and Amazon listings for the original items.
Again, I made assumption. I assumed he was just doing his typical paper work for his reports. Mind you, hours earlier I had also filed with my insurance regarding the situation, so at the minimum I was happy to have a police report for my claim.
A few hours pass and I get a missed call from Officer Thomas… I was playing video games and had my headphones up pretty loud. He took the time to text me however and let me know that they had recovered a phone, but it was smashed, and asked if I could send over the devices IMEI.
I sent the information, this time assuming that if they did actually goto the persons house there would be no way they were silly enough to leave a stolen phone right there.
A few hours later go by again, I received a call, and a third officer lets me know that he’s outside and that he’d like me to come out. I step outside and he lets me know that he believe he has my property. Officer Thomas was working overtime to get everything settled today so this officer was stepping in to help get everything tied up so he could go home. I was shocked. Jaw on the ground floored.
The iPhone was taken for evidence. I’m guessing the thief immediately smashed the iPhone once they realized it was out in lost mode. I got everything else back besides the few dollars of cash I had in the glove box.
The entire time I made assumptions against the police. Assumed they wouldn’t help, or weren’t able to. I was wrong every step of the way. Not only did New Castle Police impress me, but Officer Thomas was a godsend.
I cannot say how immensely shocked I am even now. I’m not sure what happened with the person who stole my items and broke into my car. I’d assume it’s more then a ticket, but I’ll have to find out next time I speak with Officer Thomas.
I just wanted to share my story. It may be benign to some, but it was a truly eye opening experience for me. These guys showed me they care about their jobs and their community.
submitted by LaDev to police [link] [comments]
Sunday morning I woke up, took a shower, and then gunned for the door to go back to work on the house. I gave my wife and daughter a kiss goodbye, grabbed my phone, keys and wallet, and leave. As I’m approaching my car in the parking area I notice my door is slightly open… not a great sign. I opened the door and noticed my glove box and center console have been completely ransacked. Paperwork I had just gotten two days prior now laid dormant on the floor of the driver and passenger seat. I had also forgotten my day bag in the back seat.
It happened, my car had been robbed. Typically I’m great about locking my car door, Saturday night though, I suppose I missed a critical step in ensuring the safety of the contents of my car.
This is an important time in my life right now, I’m in the middle of a house purchase, work is going crazy, and my second kid will be here in two months. I brushed it off, told my wife what happened, and drove to the house I’m working on. During my drive I gave the Non-Emergency line a call. The gentlemen who answered was very kind.
He collected important information and asked for my location. I let him know that I was on the road and that it would be a few hours before I returned home. He asked that I gave the non-emergency line a call back when I’m home so they could send an officer out. Ugh. Now, in my life I haven’t had the best experience with police. Nothing directly involving me, but lots of second hand interaction and stories from family, so I was naturally inclined to assume the local police wouldn’t be useful. Admittedly, I wrote the entire situation as a loss, I felt hopeless.
Over the next few hours I took mental inventory of what was missing. Originally I had only thought that change and a Bluetooth speaker were missing, some of which was in my center console and others in the bag that was in my back seat. I began to fully remember what I had lost: An Android cellphone, an Apple iPhone, Bluetooth Speaker, home purchase paperwork, $10 in cash, and a few other things.
At this point I was mostly nervous about the iPhone, as it was a backup iPhone 12 I got some time ago which had all my Apple Wallet cards on it. Once I realized I logged into Find my IPhone and activated lost mode on the iPhone. I figured the best case scenario would be to ensure my data was protected. The evening settles in, I’ve accepted defeat, and head to bed.
This morning I clock on for work, and as I’m sitting in a work meeting I get a pestering notification on my phone. Lost iPhone has been turned on. I immediately open Find My iPhone to see the device had checked in, but then immediately was turned off. I was frustrated… not only did this person steal my property, they rubbed it in by trying to further use the device they stole.
Only for a moment however I was frustrated. I further read the information on my phone screen and a smile went from ear to ear. That minute or two the phone was turned on was long enough for the iPhone to pick up an address.
I was motivated at this point. I didn’t know what would happen, but I figured hey, what the hell, let’s give the non-emergency line a ring again. I called in, gave them a recap. They collected my information and let me know I should hear back soon. At this point I half expected the officer to tell me too much time had passed for anything to be done… but boy was I totally wrong.
Officer Thomas gave me a call and let me know that he was outside of my condo. He asked for a recap of the situation, what was taken, and if I had any additional information. I shared the Find my IPhone information. Officer Thomas had another officer come along to swab for DNA and collect finger prints off of my car - I was stunlocked! He then let me know that he was filing a warrant for the address listed on my Find my iPhone. I’m not sure what I thought would happen, but given what I was always taught, and believed, I thought I would have eaten dust.
After about an hour or two Officer Thomas and the officer taking DNA and finger prints finished up with me. I made more assumptions… I’m sure nothing will come of it, this is probably the last I’ll hear of it. Officer Thomas then proceed to send me several texts over the next few hours, he wants pictures of the Bluetooth Speaker, Pictures of my Bag, Cell Phone Serial Number, and various credible bits of information.
I scour my iPhone photos going years back finding the best pictures I possibly could for the items stolen. I sent some blurry and dark photos that I had taken, and then also some screenshots from Walmart and Amazon listings for the original items.
Again, I made assumption. I assumed he was just doing his typical paper work for his reports. Mind you, hours earlier I had also filed with my insurance regarding the situation, so at the minimum I was happy to have a police report for my claim.
A few hours pass and I get a missed call from Officer Thomas… I was playing video games and had my headphones up pretty loud. He took the time to text me however and let me know that they had recovered a phone, but it was smashed, and asked if I could send over the devices IMEI.
I sent the information, this time assuming that if they did actually goto the persons house there would be no way they were silly enough to leave a stolen phone right there.
A few hours later go by again, I received a call, and a third officer lets me know that he’s outside and that he’d like me to come out. I step outside and he lets me know that he believe he has my property. Officer Thomas was working overtime to get everything settled today so this officer was stepping in to help get everything tied up so he could go home. I was shocked. Jaw on the ground floored.
The iPhone was taken for evidence. I’m guessing the thief immediately smashed the iPhone once they realized it was out in lost mode. I got everything else back besides the few dollars of cash I had in the glove box.
The entire time I made assumptions against the police. Assumed they wouldn’t help, or weren’t able to. I was wrong every step of the way. Not only did New Castle Police impress me, but Officer Thomas was a godsend.
I cannot say how immensely shocked I am even now. I’m not sure what happened with the person who stole my items and broke into my car. I’d assume it’s more then a ticket, but I’ll have to find out next time I speak with Officer Thomas.
I just wanted to share my story. It may be benign to some, but it was a truly eye opening experience for me. These guys showed me they care about their jobs and their community.
2023.03.22 05:47 SkrunklyBob Some photos I took of downed trees at Parrot Park by Embarcadero Center. (Ft. A downed tree we saw at Powell Street.)
 | submitted by SkrunklyBob to sanfrancisco [link] [comments] |
2023.03.22 05:42 Tusccar [WTS] Holosun EPS Carry 2 moa green dot, P320 XTEN Holster, P320 Armory Craft Silver Type 2 Sport Takedown lever
- Holosun EPS Carry 2 MOA Green dot. I bought this and mounted it to test fit but it’s just not for me. Was never carried but full disclosure there is a small mark from factory (shown in photo) that I was going to just sharpie over but I’m sure it could be warranties if wanted. It will also come with the QVO correct screws so you don’t have to use a baseplate for the 407k/507k footprint. $330.
- P320 XTEN holster. This was modded so it can be used with or without a gas pedal from armory craft or gogun. Tiny discoloration in that area but it’s strictly cosmetic. Can include dcc mod 4 for additional ten dollars. $45.
- Armory Craft Silver P320 Type 2 Sport takedown lever. Basically a gas pedal in smaller form factor and in my opinion a bit better looking. BNIB never used $58.
Pics:
https://imgur.com/a/XJWlocX