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XXII MODERN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
WHO IS THE MONSTER? HUMAN MONSTROSITY IN FICTION AND FILM
The real world is where the monsters are.
Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.
MARY SHELLEY, Frankenstein
Adapting to Adaptations: A Look at the Relationship between Book and Film
When talking about adaptations, a common thing one might hear is "That's not how it happened in the book!" But surely there is more to adaptations than simply loyalty between film and book. One must delve deeper to understand the relationship between books and films when an adaptation is made. There is bound to be discussion (when examining adaptations) of what novels can do that film can't and vice versa. Novels are verbal and use words to tell a story, while films are visual and rely on images to do the telling. But there is more to the balance between a book and its film adaptation. Once one fully comprehends the relationship between book, film, and adaptation, one can see that adaptations should be treated as a literary art form of their own. Adaptations are a category of their own and should be treated accordingly.
In order to discuss the relationship between book and film in adaptations and the reasons behind the controversy of that relation, it is important to first look at the history of adaptations in order to understand the background surrounding that industry. By doing so, one can see the way adaptations have evolved throughout the years and the manners in which the opinions regarding adaptations have changed and varied and even adapted to the current era. We will examine the ways in which adapting literature to film is viewed in our society and the reasons behind both praise and critical reception of adaptations.
Although adaptations from page to stage had been done by Shakespeare in the 1600's, film adaptations took quite a long time to come about. It wasn't until Georges Méliés began to see film as a means for personal expression that film was even thought of as literary. Méliés was the first to adapt a work of literature for the screen. In 1902, he adapted Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon into the black-and-white, silent, science-fiction film A Trip to the Moon. Named one of the 100 greatest films of the 20th century by Village Voice, A Trip to the Moon was not only widely popular for its special effects and innovative animation, and for being the first known science-fiction film, but also because it did something else, too: it created a domino-effect. Méliés went on to produce many more adaptations over the next years such as Gulliver's Travels (1902), Robinson Crusoe (1902), and "The Legend of Rip Van Winkle (1905). After him, many French and Italian filmmakers started making their own adaptations of classic books. Americans, of course, followed using novels, poems, plays and short stories.
Adaptations were greeted positively at first, with critics thinking them educational and innovative. Influential film artist D. W. Griffith: "Early movies were met with praise not only for their innovation, but for the promise they offered in educating their audiences." Film critic Stephen Bush said in the 1911 The Moving Picture World, "An epic that has pleased and charmed many generations is most likely to stand the test of cinematographic reproduction… after all, the word "classic: has some meaning. The merits of a classic subject are nonetheless certain because known and appreciated by comparatively few men. It is the business of the moving picture to make them available to all. Jack London believed that motion pictures could break down the "barriers of poverty and environment" and provide "universal education". Paramount magazine (1915) stated: "The greatest minds have delivered their messages through their book or play. The motion picture spreads it on the screen where all can read and understand- and enjoy".
The popularity of adaptations continued to rise over the next years. So much so, that in 1939, nearly every film competing for an Academy Award was an adaptation; adaptations of such classics such as Of Mice and Men, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights. Between 1927 (when the awards were created) and 1977, three fourths of awards for "Best Picture" went to adaptations. Some of the most popularly adapted authors included Balzac, Hugo, Dickens, and Sienkiewicz. Film adaptations remained popular in the following decades.
Nowadays, film adaptations aren't strictly literary classics but rather span across a broad range of genres such as mysteries, thrillers, horror, and romance novels. Some of these more modern adaptations include Silence of the Lambs, The Shining, Carrie, The Godfather, and Pelican Brief. According to 1992 statistics, 85% of all Oscar-winning "Best Pictures" are adaptations. And it's no wonder; there are countless film adaptations that virtually defined their ages and provided catch-phrases and concepts significant to the popular culture. Some of these include Slaughterhouse-Five, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Catch-22, The World According to Garp, and Being There, among many others that addressed important and controversial contemporary issues.
Despite the growing popularity of adaptations, there are a lot of concerns and arguments against adaptations, and they're not all for the same reasons. One such argument is that adaptations work against the uniqueness of film. Film is its own creative art form and using other works to adapt them to film stifles that creativity and prevents original work from being produced. This growing popularity of adaptations not only dissolves the barrier between literature and film, but it creates a stigma that film is there to serve as another medium for which to display literature, rather than existing as its own separate entity capable of narrative merit.
But the disdain against adaptations doesn't seem to stem simply from the viewpoint that adaptations shouldn't be made at all, but rather, that they shouldn't be made into film. "It does seem to be more or less acceptable to adapt Romeo and Juliet into a respected high art form, like an opera or a ballet, but not to make it into a movie" (Hutcheon, 3). So the concern is not that adapting will reduce the quality of the original work, but that it is actually the form or medium it is being translated to that matter. In this case, a film is thought to lower the original, causing the general disdain for adapting works of literature-particularly classics-into film. Director Alain Resnais once claimed he would never shoot an adaptation because "the writer [had] completely expressed himself in the novel and wanting to make a film of it is a little like re-heating a meal."
There are certain authors that actually enjoy adaptations of their work such as William Styron, author of Sophie's Choice, who, although he liked aspects of the film, deliberately chose to stay uninvolved with the process. Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse-Five, thought that Universal pictures created a "flawless translation" of his book, but said that ultimately, he doesn't like the how "clankingly real" and "industrial" film is.
This is not always the case, however. Another argument against adaptations is that combining both mediums could only end up harming them both. Virginia Woolf (1926) in "The Movies and Reality" claimed that alliance between cinema and literature was "unnatural" and "disastrous" to both films; but the short end of the stick would ultimately be the original work since adaptations hurt the books that are being adapted. Hannah Arendt claimed that the problem with adaptations was that films used novels as material to appeal to the masses when it ran out of ideas of its own and that the real issue is that the "material…must be prepared and altered in order to become entertaining". It is these alternations that are detrimental to the original work and the reasoning behind opposition to the practice of adapting classic literature to film.
Consider the case of J. D. Salinger's story "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut" was made into a 1949 film called My Foolish Heart. Except for a framing story, there is little resemblance between the film and the book. The story was transformed from an exposé of the suburban society into a sentimental love story with a happy ending. He was so traumatized by the experience that he decided never to get involved with adaptations again. My Foolish Heart remains, to this date, the only authorized adaptation of Salinger's writings to film. And now the world will never see a film adaptation of Catcher in the Rye because of it. Then there is the case of Willa Cather, whose novel A Lost Lady was adapted very loosely into a film in 1934. The film did not live up to the novel's reputation and is now generally regarded as nothing more than mediocre. As a result, Cather stated in her will that she would not release any rights to any of her literary works.
With this overwhelming amount of negative reception for adaptations, one has to wonder how they're still alive and kicking in this day and age, full of cynical and hyper-critical audiences and critics. Hutcheon theorizes that the explanation behind this is that even though adaptations are thought of as inferior and secondary creations, they are familiar, and people derive pleasure from the familiar. "Part of this pleasure" Hutcheon explains, "comes simply from repetition with variation, from the comfort of ritual combined with the piquancy of surprise" (Hutcheon, 4).
People are innately attracted to the familiar, what they know won't let them down is comforting. This is the reason directors and producers keep churning out adaptations, because they know they will sell. Adaptations inherently come with a pre-established fan base. If the original work has already gathered a following, then the possibilities of making money are greater than with an original script. There is, of course, a variety on the reasons behind this audience's attendance. There are some that will attend an adaptation simply because they want to remember their original experience with the book fondly. There are also those who will want to uphold the standards of the original by scrutinizing every detail and comparing it by evaluating its faithfulness to its source. There will be the people that are so against adaptations that they just want to watch an adaptation crash and burn (which ironically, supports the adaptation with their presence regardless of their intent). And then there will always be those who have never even read the original work, but feel like they should have and will therefore use this adaptation as a means to stay "in the loop". Whatever the case, there is no denying that adaptations sell. This gives some further insight into the phenomenon of the popularity of adaptations despite their reputation as lesser and inferior art.
Despite arguments such as Virginia Woolf's, adaptations can actually end up being mutually beneficial for the original work and the film adapting it. Books helped by adaptations: reprinted books with a picture from the movie with the slogan "Now a major motion picture". There are many instances of "forgotten" books or literature that has slipped through the cracks- whether it is old or new- that film adaptations actually bring back to life, so in a way, adaptations give those books an audience and got them noticed. By the same token, a film can benefit from not only the pre-established fan-base of a book, but also from using its name as a marketing strategy. Such is the case with films such as Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and Emma.
Then there's, of course, the relation of book to film in terms of how faithful the adaptation is to its original source. Many critics' views are that faithfulness is not a matter for textual analysis but rather for work on the way adaptations are received; faithfulness matters if it matters to the viewer. Strictly following the original source to the letter only becomes an issue when the intended audience is expecting it or demanding it. This is especially important when dealing with iconic works such as Victor Hugo's Les Miserables or with works that already have a very large and faithful following like Twilight, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, or Lord of the Rings. There are also many critics and reviewers that put themselves in the role of the viewer who has not only read the book, but is expecting the film to be faithful to it. This is a mistake. Critics should not pretend to be the fan-base of the original work and in turn analyze (and criticize) an adaptation on the basis of its faithfulness to the original book. They should instead view the adaptation as an art form in and of itself and judge it accordingly, focusing instead on its literary and cinematographic merit apart from its "source".
One thing adaptations should never do is pretend that they're not adaptations. This is to say, that there are instances in which a film is not recognized as an adaptation because this is never acknowledged or perhaps the book is not well-known. Although this may be the case, adaptations should strive to be recognizable to anyone who is familiar with the original work, regardless of whether the adaptation is faithful to the source or not. As Catherine Grant stated: "The most important act that films and their discourses need to perform in order to communicate unequivocally their status as adaptations is to [make their audiences] recall the adapted work, or the cultural memory of it…there is no such thing as a 'secret' adaptation" (Grant, 57
Recall; this is an interesting notion that often goes unmentioned when discussing adaptations. But it's actually what, ultimately, the audience, as both readers of the original work and film enthusiasts long for when watching a film adaptation. Author Christine Geraghty focuses less on the way books are adapted and the process involved, and more on the ways in which the film adaptations cause us as viewers to recall things by watching them. Her book Now a Major Motion Picture, delves into the mental and emotional aspects that adaptations have on the audience, specifically for those who have read the original work before watching the film adaptation. She claims that adaptations often carry emotional weight, and that "familiar stories and generic references fold into one another, one setting can be seen through another" (Geraghty, 11). However, this is not to say that film adaptations shouldn't be treated as autonomous works in their own right.
Barbara Tepa Lupack, author of Take Two: Adapting the Contemporary American Novel to Film has a similar train of though. She claims that the reason adaptations have so much controversy and criticism surrounding them is because "when we assess an adaptation we are not really comparing book to film but rather interpretation to interpretation- the novels that we ourselves have recreated in our imaginations out of which we have constructed or own "movie" and the novel on which a filmmaker has worked on a parallel transformation" (Lupack, 10). So we're really comparing our own experience of the book to the director's experience of the book. The reason it is imperial to keep this in mind, is that once we put into perspective our own personal reasons for judging a film adaptation roughly it becomes clearer that there are some unreasonable expectations set for adaptations that are almost impossible to fulfill without leaving at least one malcontent critic. One is far better off enjoying the memories that adaptations stir-up from the original source, or letting oneself be transported to a new unknown word (if one is not familiar with the original work). And if an adaptation is regarded as an art form of its own, then this process becomes simpler and more enjoyable for all.
Whether one is for or against adaptations, disregarding them as lesser art is a mistake because we will ultimately be closing off on the opportunity to experience both cinema and literature in a different light, one that only adaptations can provide. "An adaptation is always, whatever else it may be, an interpretation. And if this is one way of understanding the nature of adaptation and the relationship of any given film to the book that inspired it, it's also a way of understanding what may bring such a film into being in the first place: the chance to offer an analysis and appreciation of one work of art through another." (Lupack, 61-62). It is important to give credit to both the adaptation as well as the original work; although it is true that an adaptation wouldn't exist without the original work, an adaptation should be respected as its own work as well.
Cited Works
Hutcheon, Linda. A theory of adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Geraghty, Christine. Now a major motion picture: film adaptations of literature and drama. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008. Print.
Lupack, Barbara Tepa, ed.. Take two: adapting the contemporary American novel to film. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1994. Print.
Grant, Catherine. "Recognizing Billy Budd in Beau Travail: Epistemology and Hermeneutics of Auterist 'Free' Adaptation" Screen 34, no.1 (Spring 2002):57.
Writing Monsters: What Makes a Monster Scary? by Philip Athans
I'd like to meet the first person who ever ate a lobster.
Imagine being the first woman or man to pick up that horrible, red-brown spider-thing with terrifying claws and twitching antennae and saying, "Yum!" To me, a lobster is a giant bug with claws—I'd have run screaming from a lobster. But now we know what a lobster is and what it tastes like and that it isn't really dangerous. The only thing scary about it is the unknowable mystery of its "market price."
We'll want our monsters to maintain a greater degree of mystery, or at least begin with a greater degree of mystery than that.
Start by asking …
WHAT ARE PEOPLE AFRAID OF?
I asked myself this question while working on a fantasy novel in which I envisioned a world overrun by demons. In an effort to build a sense of increasing danger in the book, each new sort of demon my characters meet is more dangerous, more powerful, and more frightening than the last. To do this, I decided to look at my readers' deepest fears and inject those fears into the demons. So off to the Internet I went in search of the top ten phobias. This is what I found:
1.Arachnophobia (fear of spiders)
2. Social Phobia (fear of a hostile audience)
3. Pteromerhanophobia (fear of flying)
4. Agoraphobia (fear of an inability to escape)
5. Claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces)
6. Acrophobia (fear of heights)
7. Emetophobia (fear of vomit or vomiting)
8. Carcinophobia (fear of cancer)
9. Astraphobia (fear of thunder and lightning)
10. Taphophobia (fear of being buried alive)
Phobias take common fears to the pathological level. If these are the ten most common phobias (and I've found a few different lists, so your search may yield slightly different results), then there's a good chance that someone who is reading your book, seeing your movie, or playing your game will have one or more of them to some degree. And even if your readers don't completely collapse at the sight of a spider, they probably share at least a common uneasiness in the presence of one …or worse, many spiders!
To create that sense of progression and escalation of danger, I simply reversed that top ten list so the final, scariest demon embodies the most prevalent phobia. That means the lowest-level demon comes up from underground and pulls you down and buries you alive, and the "boss" demon is a spider, or something that looks and/or behaves like a spider. As it turns out, those are fairly easy fears to apply to a monster or demon, but what about pteromerhanophobia, the fear of flying? Richard Matheson made quite a splash in 1961 with the short story "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," in which a poor soul suffering from pteromerhanophobia encounters the dreaded gremlin tearing pieces out of the wing of the plane he's flying in. This story became one of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone, a vehicle for a young William Shatner. […]
But please don't think that triggering your audience's phobic responses is the only way to make your monsters terrifying. In a broader sense, monsters are scary because …
THEY ARE UNPREDICTABLE
Can that lobster take your hand off with one of those claws? Turns out, no, but if it could and you weren't expecting it … that would be pretty scary, right? In real life we know they can't hurt us, and that makes them predictable, and predictability is the enemy of horror. But add an unexpected element to a predictable situation and you enhance the potential for fear.
Humans tend to have a pretty good sense of what another human is going to do next. We can tell via body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice when someone is getting angry or upset. We sense when things might get out of control or violent. But monsters don't necessarily give out those human signals. This is a creature, after all, outside our normal experience. Who knows what it'll do next?
We'll discuss setting rules for your monsters and how important it is that you follow those rules, but keep in mind that while you know the rules that govern your monster, your characters don't. In fact, the less your characters know about what a monster can and can't do, the better. It's this unpredictability that will keep your readers on the edge of their seats, playing into the power of the imagination.
THEY HAVE A DISTURBING CAPACITY FOR VIOLENCE
Monsters don't just attack you; they attack you in particularly gruesome ways, as shown
in this paragraph from the short story "The Little Green God of Agony" by horror master Stephen King.
Melissa had seen where the thing came from and even in her panic was wise enough to cover her own mouth with both hands. The thing skittered up her neck, over her cheek, and squatted on her left eye. The wind screamed and Melissa screamed with it. It was the cry of a woman drowning in the kind of pain the charts in the hospitals can never describe. The charts go from one to ten; Melissa's agony was well over one hundred—that of someone being boiled alive. She staggered backwards, clawing at the thing on her eye. It was pulsing faster now, and Kat could hear a low, liquid sound as the thing resumed feeding. It was a slushy sound. (From the anthology The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Four, edited by Ellen Datlow.)
Want to scare the crap out of someone? Go for the eyes. It's up to you to set the degree of "goriness" your story will contain. Movies like The Blair Witch Project are terrifying without spilling a drop of blood, while some contemporary "torture porn" films, like the movie Hostel, are gross, even disturbing, but scary?
I tend to describe "gore" as unmotivated violence—a violent scene done badly, in which all the reader gets is a sense of the quantity of blood and guts without the emotional and psychological (read: character) connection of well-written violent action. … Take a second look at the example [above] from Stephen King. No blood. There is some yucky language in there ("It was a slushy sound.") but mostly we get Melissa's experience of this cringeworthy act of violence and her efforts, however vain, to make it stop.
Exploring truly disturbing events can be difficult for many authors to work through, in the horror genre in particular. But fantasy and science fiction—really any genre of fiction—can ask you to plumb your own psychological depths. So what scares you? A little creature that eats your eyes first? Is that disturbing enough for the psychological sweet spot you're trying to hit? […]
OUR IMAGINATION MAKES THEM SCARIER
Albert Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." And the human imagination is pretty powerful. How many times have you imagined something will be absolutely terrifying—a roller coaster, a job interview, a scary movie—and when it's over you immediately say, "That wasn't so bad."
And another great quote: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Franklin Roosevelt wasn't talking about Godzilla or Dracula, but he may as well have been. This plays back to the idea of unpredictability and "otherness."
We have no idea what to expect from this thing and no way to determine its motives, so we start to fill in the blanks with conjecture, which tends to make something quite a bit more terrifying
than it should be. Our imagination, and thus our fears, becomes the true monster in this case.
This application of our imagination can work in many ways. As stated above, we can fear something we don't know, but a lot of monster stories start with monsters that are scary and then turn out to be
nice. The Beast from Beauty and the Beast is an example from classic fairy tales, and Frankenstein's monster is another, a creature who looks terrifying but is layered, emotional, and yearning for understanding … and later, revenge.
In another way, creatures may seem harmless because they appeal to the softer, friendlier side of our imagination, but become monstrous when their true nature is revealed. Star Trek's tribbles are an excellent example for this. When the crew of the Enterprise first encounters tribbles, their assumptions take over. They imagine the tribbles to be cute and harmless but have no specific information about their true nature. The tribbles slowly reveal themselves over the course of the story to be a sort of plague, like a swarm of locusts. Assumption and imagination can be very dangerous.
Play with the assumptions of your characters in this way, and you'll be playing with the assumptions of your readers right along with them. We also have a tendency to assume that many of the sentient beings we encounter have a certain sense of right and wrong, or at the very least a sense of their role in relation to other beings around them and what they must do to not just survive but coexist and thrive, but monsters can be particularly scary when they seem to lack these assumed morals.
THEY ARE BEYOND OUR CONTROL
Humans generally like to be in charge. We spend a lot of time trying to control our weight, our relationships, our personal finances, our schedules, everything. We even try to control others by taking classes to learn how to train our dogs, motivate our employees, and so on. So what happens when a monster makes its way onto our starship and simply won't follow our rules? It eats what and when—and who—it wants to eat. It bleeds metal-dissolving acid all over the place without regard for the hard vacuum of space just a bulkhead away. You can't negotiate with a monster. You can't calmly tell a Denebian slime devil, "Okay, wait. I'm going to go to the store and buy you a bunch of steak—don't eat me in the meantime." That monster does what it does, and it neither seeks nor respects your opinion.
Simply put, monsters don't play by our rules—and that scares us.
THEY ARE TERRIFYING IN APPEARANCE
Here's another example from H.P. Lovecraft , from the classic short story "Pickman's Model."
It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel. But damn it all, it wasn't even the fiendish subject that made it such an immortal fountainhead of all panic—not that, nor the dog face with its pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose, and drooling lips. It wasn't the scaly claws nor the mould-caked body nor the half-hooved feet—none of these, though any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness.
Frightening, but here's an interesting take on description: Lovecraft goes to great length to describe a foul-looking creature here, but it is made more ominous by also describing what it's doing (gnawing on "… a thing that had been a man …") and what it might do next ("… seek a juicier morsel."). And it's important to keep in mind that not all monsters have to appear classically "scary" in order to be so.
In Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, author Ransom Riggs describes a less traditional but no less unsettling creature.
But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around—they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.
This monster has the ability to hit closer to home, describing the human potential to become inhuman through political, military, and/or social assimilation. Not as frightening as a "nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes," but equally monstrous on the inside.
The Art of Writing Horror: Bringing Creature Features to Life
One of the oldest subgenres of horror is the monster movie. From Edison's 1910 adaptation of Frankenstein to the 1915 film Der Golem, aberrant beings and evil beasts have haunted the screen since the early days. How do we keep them fresh and scary, then, when the formula is so familiar? There must be a way – creature features still delight and terrify us, as evidenced by the blockbuster reboots of Godzilla and King Kong.
Here are a few tips that can give your monstrosities their own terrifying life:
CALIBRATE YOUR PACING: Films must be exciting, of course – especially when they're about bloodthirsty aberrations – but it's easy to waste all of your thrills in the first act and wear your audience out in the process. When the foremost goal of your film is to frighten, this is especially important. Showing your monster for the first time is arguably the most vital and difficult part of making a successful creature feature. And no matter how impressive the effects are, the audience can tire of them after a while. Keeping the monsters at a low dose will help ensure their effectiveness, and give more room for character.
There are endless examples of this. An American Werewolf in London solves the wolfman-movie pacing issue through David's terrifying nightmares, which create psychological drama before the corporeal horror begins. The Descent sets up the dreadful circumstances of its setting before the monsters come into play. Alien is extremely deliberate in its pacing, unveiling its enigmatic mythology patiently until the titular villain finally (literally) bursts into the story. That first appearance is crucial, and it has to hit hard – we can only see the monster so many times before it loses its power.
KEEP YOUR MONSTER HIDDEN: As the granddaddy of tentacled monstrosities, H.P. Lovecraft, noted – the greatest human fear is that of the unknown. Keeping a monster in the shadows, only unveiling its appearance at the last moment, will keep it a mystery; and what we don't understand, we fear. Horror is defined by its focus on dread and the uncanny, which is diminished once we understand too much.
Jaws is so creepy because we don't see the beast as it drags people to their doom; though this is attributed more to production accidents than writing. Joe Dante's The Howling manages to actually terrifying with its werewolves because it keeps them a secret, unleashing them only in the last moments. The Host keeps its focus on human drama, punctuated by emotionally volatile appearances by the monster. Cloverfield only shows its beast fully onscreen once or twice, if that, and it never explains its origins. The creature is the centerpiece, of course, but it must be scary. Only show it at the most crucial moments, and the mystery will remain to haunt viewers after the credits roll.
MAKE YOUR MONSTER UNIQUE: After so many decades of horror cinema, it's difficult to find physical or motivational specificities to set your monster apart. This is essential, though; if we've seen a monster before, we can't truly fear it. That doesn't mean that each new film must invent a mythology from scratch – its approach just needs to be different. Considering the insane amount of folklore material in the world, this isn't too much of a challenge.
Trollhunter and The Hallow both draw on their respective locations' folklore, literalizing myths in intricate and full-bodied ways. Even common beasts, such as a werewolf or vampire, can be given fresh takes – American Werewolf and The Howling both provided unique spins on this creature in the same year, one with dark humor, one with eerie cultish overtones. Hellraiser gives its Cenobites an almost Biblical mythology, lending them a poetry almost unseen in the genre. Then there's films like The Thing or The Void, both of which feature shapeshifting monsters that provide endless visual invention. Whether it be unpredictable takes on classics or an entirely fresh creation, the creatures must speak for themselves. But…
KEEP IT HUMAN, EVEN THE BEASTS: This mantra applies to the design as well – humanoid beasts are uncanny due to their resemblance – but it's most important for the story. While monsters provide the visual threats, the true villains of The Mist are paranoid, desperate people. The Babadook would lose its power without the central metaphor regarding mental illness and grief. As evidenced by its predecessor's lack of honest impact, Cronenberg's version of The Fly proves the need for pathos – its monster is ultimately a figure of tragedy. The oldest example of this comes from Frankenstein – poor adaptations of Mary Shelley's classic fail when they forget that the man-made monster just wants to be accepted. Pacing, design and lore are all important ingredients, with the human element taking precedence over all of it. It's no easy feat creating monsters – Frankenstein himself displays just how difficult it can be – but there are common trends to guide one along the path. Get your claws and scales ready, then center them on that festering, beating heart.
Alien Taught Me Everything About Writing Monster Horror
I wish I could say I saw Alien on the big screen in 1979, and experienced the glory of Ridley Scott and H.R. Giger's chest-bursting, face-hugging terrors before they became property of pop culture and parody. Alas, Alien was years before my time. The film was nearly thirty years old before I borrowed the DVD from a friend and watched it alone in a small, dark room. Mistake.
What my tiny, flickering television experience lacked in silver screen quality, it made up for in atmosphere, intense claustrophobia, and the eerie sense of being isolated in the universe. Space is already a terrifying, incomprehensible void to me; adding Alien's Xenomorph only made me check my locks thrice and start looking up how to make homemade napalm… at least for fiction's sake.
I watched the film countless times, breaking down the movie down into its basest parts, trying to understand why it succeeded to frighten audiences so thoroughly with its modest budget, low performance expectations, and a fairly lukewarm critical reception. Nowadays, the film is widely considered a classic.
Here's what Alien taught me about writing horror.
Wait to Show Your (Entire) Hand: This rule applies to horror writers of any ilk: Once the audience manages to get a good look at the scare, it depreciates rapidly and forces the writer to fight a losing battle of diminishing returns. In Alien, Scott is careful to never let his audiences see the entire Xenomorph until the end—we see glimpses of the creature as a newborn, a hand here, a mouth there, but little else until the final showdown in the escape capsule. By that point, the reveal of the Xenomorph is not only necessary, but an integral part of the climax… and the scare.
I tend to think of this as the "new car principle" in horror—once you drive your shiny new monster off the lot, its value drops substantially and cannot be recouped.
The "Strange Form" Principle: A large part of Alien's lasting appeal is Swiss artist H.R. Giger's timeless, biomechanical design for the Xenomorph. I won't spend much time delving into the symbolism of the creature—I'd like to keep this conversation family-friendly—except to point out that the word xenomorph is from the Greek words xeno, meaning "stranger or foreigner," and morph, meaning "form." Though the Xenomorph is alien, a "strange form," its design still has humanoid elements: Bipedal, it walks upright on two feet and possesses two arms, shoulders, and a head (albeit an elongated one). Also note the lack of eyes, which makes the creature appear soulless, thus rendering the audience incapable of feeling empathy for the alien.
The inclusion of humanoid elements on a "strange form" creates a nice cognitive dissonance, too—there are limbs we recognize, organized in a shape that seems to insist upon intelligence, rationality even… but instead, the form embodies a chaotic savagery that shocks and terrifies the audience.
Lastly, to achieve a lasting psychological scare, writers can follow Geiger's model and make their monsters embody both tangible and intangible fears. In Alien's case, the tangible fear the Xenomorph presents is a gruesome, painful death; but it also represents the psychological horrors of rape. How so? For those of you who haven't noticed the film's symbolism, I'm just going to point to the Pilot Jockey. And the facehugger. And the shape of the chestburster. And the… well, you get the point.
Horror is Flexible: Ridley Scott famously called Alien "the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in space." True to his pronouncement, the film shares most of its plot characteristics with the standard slasher, particularly in terms of "the Final Girl" trope. In fact, Scott says Ellen Ripley's last stand in the starship Nostromo was influenced by Laurie Strode's end battle with Michael Myers in Halloween (1978).
Simply defined, genre is often determined by the specific events that constitute a story's plot; though the setting, roles characters assume, themes, and cultural values come into play as well. The great advantage horror storytellers have is the ability to step into a speculative world of their choosing and still tell a horror story. Horror meshes well with science fiction, fantasy (particularly urban fantasy), magical realism, steampunk, time-travel, contemporary fiction, crime novels… the list goes on. However, stories may only include horror elements as opposed to being defined specifically as horror projects.
Bet on Setting: An element Alien is renowned for is the gritty interior of the starship Nostromo. It gave audiences a dissonant view of space travel, located in a galaxy far, far away from the Empire's bright, white hallways and pristine Stormtrooper armor. Alien tore preconceived notions of space travel apart, promptly filling the void with exposed metal, rustling chains, rusted pipes, stuttering lights, and an occasional shock of pure silence.
Alien's deep space setting has the added bonus of being a completely inhospitable battleground. Settings in horror novels work double-duty, not only providing a backdrop for the action, but being an active obstacle that keeps the protagonists from escaping, surviving, being rescued, or otherwise achieving their goals.
When All Else Fails, Save the Cat: One of my favorite Ripley moments comes toward the end, when she's living the dream as the Final Girl and banging down a corridor with a gun in one hand, a cat carrier in the other. It's a horribly awkward way to try and escape the nightmare, and every time I watch the film, I always find myself chuckling because if I were in Ripley's shoes, I realize I would be doing the exact same thing.
Creating an effective scare isn't wholly dependent on the creation of a terrifying monster. Paradoxically, I have argued in the past that a storyteller can make any sort of creature frightening, so long as it presents a clear mortal, spiritual, emotional, or psychological threat; and the protagonist engages the audience's empathy.
In Alien's case, our empathy and regard for Ripley increases a thousand-fold when she chooses to save Jones the cat, a creature essentially incapable of saving itself from the Xenomorph or evacuating itself during the ship's self-destruct sequence. Jones' presence heightens the dramatic tension—we follow Ripley as she searches through the ship, calling for Jones under her breath, all the while trying to avoid the alien creature hunting her through the ship's corridors.
Don't kill the cat. Or the dog, for that matter—we're horror writers here, not monsters.
keynote speaker: w. craig hutchison
monsters and monstrosity
about monsters
monsters 101
monsters from around the world
list of legendary creatures and monsters by type
female monsters
the moral monster
determining the monstrous
what measure is a non-human?
humans are the real monsters (the speculative fiction)
freak shows or sideshows
monstrosity and films
the monstrous vegetal in fiction and film
the psychological appeal of movie monsters
famous monsters movies
捉妖記2
un monstre à paris
veloce come il vento
capharnaüm کفرناحوم
writing a horror story
write a great movie review


At my Day Job, I work in the web hosting industry. But really, if you do any amount of work daily online and deal with domain names and web development, you're going to want some browser extensions to make things easier on yourself. Here are my top 5 chrome extensions.
The first step for making life easier is using a password manager. I personally use LastPass, and it works well for its intended use. The only trouble I've had with it (or any password manager) is that sometimes it auto-fills where I don't want it to, and some web software (WHMCS for example) automatically saves whatever is entered. So, I turn auto fill off and that solves the problem.
For me, Adblock Plus is kind of a no brainer. I hate ads. They slow down my browsing (especially on meager 1.5mbps DSL) and they are an attack vector I can do without. Trouble is, AdBlock Plus now allows some ads through from companies that have paid them to do so. Yeah, they sold out just a little, but everyone has to make a living, right? Thankfully there's an easy way to disable this "feature". Just right click on the ABP icon in Chrome, and click on Options. Then in the menu below, uncheck "Allow some non-intrusive advertising". Done! Now I get the benefits of full ad blocking.
Chrome makes it impossible to copy simply the hostname out of the Omnibar (the combined search/address bar). If you want just "tidbitsfortechs.com" it'll copy "http://tidbitsfortechs.com/" no matter what you do. Enter HostCopy. With HostCopy all you have to do is click the "hc" icon in Chrome and it copies the bare hostname (including www. if it is in the address) to the clipboard. It's a great time saver!
VirtualHosts is a really neat extension. Specify the VirtualHost that you want to request in the http header, and then enter the IP address that the site resites on. It automatically resolves it and shows you the site. This is very cool because it saves you from having to make a hosts file entry that essentially does the same thing (just through DNS instead of through the http header). I use this a lot to view sites that don't have DNS pointing yet. It's a more obscure extension, but totally worth inclusion just because of how useful it is.
Have you ever needed to monitor several websites simultaneously, but don't have enough monitors? Revolver Tabs to the rescue! Open up each site in a tab, and Revolver Tabs will rotate through each tab on a schedule. You can specify the number of seconds between tab switches, force a reload on each rotation, and specify which sites not to include in the rotation. You can also have it stop rotating while you're working on something. This is useful for keeping an eye on your email, Twitter feed, Facebook, and the likes, and then stopping to answer someone, then having it keep moving.
This list would be incomplete if I didn't show you a really neat Timer extension that I found called Omnibox Timer. Once installed, just type "tm" in the Omnibox, and then "15m break" and in 15 minutes, it notifies you that your break is over. It's great for any task and helps you keep track of time, and is just so easy to use.
It even has a neat "Text To Speech" option that talks to you when your timer is up.
These are some of the most useful Chrome extensions I've found. Do you have a favorite you'd like to add? Please use the commens below, or tweet me at @realgeocrasher and I'll see about getting it added to the list. Enjoy!


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Stalking the Elusive Blockchain
May 7, 2018 By Len Lewis
Ever since Homo Sapiens appeared some 200,000 years ago, they, or we if you prefer, have had one thing in common—a distrust of everything new and fear of the unknown.
We made tools, hunted, circled the unidentified threat and if we couldn't kill it or eat it, we avoided it entirely. This Neanderthal-like approach has been taken by most of us toward blockchains. For some, it's a technology as mystifying as the cryptocurrency it protects.
But lately, blockchains are being viewed by an expanding community as a potential game-changer for business and a new "disruptor," revolutionizing the way we gather, store and distribute data on everything from food to medical records.
Confusion Reigns
At this point, there is a huge amount of confusion in the business community about blockchains, which are usually seen as synonymous with the world of cryptocurrencies and therefore something in the Neanderthal spirit to be feared and beaten into submission with a club.
But before you start swinging that club and sharpening your spears let's take a look at the relatively new phenomenon of blockchains, what they are and what they could do.
At its core, the blockchain is an electronic ledger on a network of connected computers that holds a record of transactions between different partiers. This creates a decentralized network, which is said to be more reliable and safer than other methods—specifically the cloud.
There's no denying this is a complex issue. But think of blockchains simply as building blocks that hold the data and make transactions more transparent.
Blockchain has been described as the underlying operating system that makes cryptocurrency transactions possible. It stores the information and assets rather than having a central repository like a traditional bank. This has many in the financial industry crying regulatory foul or more to the point, unregulated foul—as if anyone cares whether bankers have feelings.
Digital Contracts
Making it all possible are so-called "smart contracts," which are not contracts in the usual legal sense, but agreements that use a kind of digital fingerprint for authorized users to store information, boost transaction speed and really exchange anything of value. It is available to all participating parties in transactions and is virtually tamperproof because it stores data using encrypted keys that are nearly impossible to manipulate—at least until some teenage hacker from Estonia figures out a way in.
Blockchains for business are different than they are for cryptos — like Bitcoin. But they are highly effective in reducing overhead costs since transactions are recorded once and are then visible to all parties through a distributed network. As such, you always know who you're doing business with.
Blackchains may still be in their infancy, but many leading businesses see the potential. IBM alone has worked on over 400 blockchain projects ranging from retail, financial services and healthcare, to media and supply chain companies.
Tracing Recalls
Walmart is involved in a food safety pilot with IBM that enables the chain to trace products from the shelf back to the farm in a matter of minutes. It can identify potential dangers by bringing all food safety stakeholders together to collaborate. This blockchain represents a digital ledger that allows different segments of the food system to capture information about the product, what's been done to it and where it's been. The ultimate goal, according to Walmart executives, is not traceability but total transparency.
Walmart is also experimenting with storing payment data on a blockchain which may be safer than cloud storage and offer greater protection from data breaches and identity theft. Recently, the company also filed two patent applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a "vendor payment sharing system" that includes authentication protocols.
Another collaborative project is Batavia, a blockchain-based financial platform developed by the Bank of Montreal, Commerzbank and others, which is involved in sending cars from Germany to Spain and textiles used in furniture production from Austria to Spain.
Eliminating Blood Diamonds
Berkshire Hathaway Richline Group's Helzberg Diamonds has joined IBM in developing Trustchain, blockchain technology to track diamonds, gold engagement rings and precious metals to ensure the materials are ethically sourced. This could be live by the end of the year.
De Beers, the diamond unit of Anglo American, plans to create an industry-wide blockchain to track gems each time they change hands, starting from the time they are mined.
Maersk Shipping is developing blockchain applications in the supply chain space to track the movement of goods digitally—with greater efficiency and transparency among dozens of partners around the world by eliminating paper and using one global system.
Fortacast, a Singapore software company, is using blockchain technology to help companies automate finance and operations to achieve labor savings.
Companies including Airbnb, and Daimler have purchased blockchain startups. Others such as JP Morgan, American Express, and Visa have started their research.
Industrial Reformation
Observers seem to agree that the full impact of blockchains may not be felt for three or four years. If you think this is just wishful thinking, consider the internet and how long it took from its infancy to become so ubiquitous in everyday life.
As research firm Gartner said, blockchains will lead to the reformation of entire industries as well as how the economy and society operates. Speakers at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year were equally enthusiastic noting that blockchains would give rise to a new era for the internet and lead to unprecedented opportunities for trade.
The point is that companies should begin to explore blockchain opportunities now rather than wait until they become disruptive forces.
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Why Zara Wins, H&M Loses in Fast Fashion
Modest Moves Mainstream
Wayfair is Way, Way Away from Profitability
Kroger vs. Wegmans
Retail's New Hypebeast: Instagram Product Launch Alerts
The Diva of Decluttering Now Wants Us to Buy Stuff…Her Stuff

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Reports claim NBC Universal is planning a cameo role of less than two minutes. TV bosses reportedly want Meghan to make a one final short appearance as Rachel Zane in Suits.
If Meghan says yes, sources claim NBC Universal will pay a multi-million dollar donation to a charity of her choice.
The Mirror reports that NBC Universal is planning a role of two minutes or less, which might be filmed in the UK.
"We could be done in half a day or less," a senior production source told the newspaper.
Ever since the Royal Wedding syndication deals for all seven seasons of the series in which she starred have been struck with TV stations in many countries.
Suits has made a fortune with Meghan merchandise, especially mugs and T-shirts bearing an image of her character.
In that last episode of Suits, Rachel married law firm partner Mike Ross, played by Patrick J. Adams, who left the show at the same time.
"We could create a storyline where Rachel and Mike have created new lives for themselves and are starting a family, with Rachel showing an obvious baby bump," the source added.


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Current: Demand From Government and Manufacturing Verticals Drove 14.8% YoY Growth in India's External Storage Systems Market in 2Q21, Reports IDC
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Demand From Government and Manufacturing Verticals Drove 14.8% YoY Growth in India's External Storage Systems Market in 2Q21, Reports IDC
NEW DELHI, September 30, 2021 - As per International Data Corporation's (IDC) latest Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker Q2 2021 release, India's external storage market witnessed a growth of 14.8% year-over-year (YoY) by vendor revenue and stood at USD 73.7 million in Q2 2021 (April - June). The quarter witnessed YoY growth in storage spending from the government, and manufacturing verticals, while observing a sharp decline in contribution from BFSI, professional services, and telecommunications verticals during the same period.
"Enterprises are forced to change their existing IT architectures to be adaptive and efficient while securing the workloads. Additionally, workloads are getting distributed to the edge, which is even more complicating things for organizations. Enterprises are looking for an infrastructure platform which offers complete end-to-end data services along with built-in security features," says Dileep Nadimpalli, Senior Research Manager, Enterprise Infrastructure, IDC India.
The adoption of All-Flash Arrays (AFA) is evident, contributing 34.4% to the overall external storage systems market in Q2 2021. The emergence of NVMe flash media would further drive the AFA market due to better cost vs performance ratio across verticals. HDD arrays saw a strong growth in Q2 2021 due to uptake of backup appliance for data protection needs.
Entry-Level storage systems grew by 65.4% YoY due to increased investments from banking, government, professional services, and manufacturing organizations in Q2 2021. The high-end storage segment witnessed a YoY decline; however, IDC expects uptake of this storage segment in the next couple of quarters.
Major Vendors Analysis
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Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker Q2 2021 (September 2021 release)
Dell Technologies continued to be the market leader in the external storage systems market with a 26.7% market share by vendor revenue, followed by HPE and NetApp in Q2 2021. Hitachi and IBM saw a YoY decline in Q2 2021.
IDC India Forecast
The external storage systems market is expected to grow at a single-digit compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) for the 2020 – 2025 period. Furthermore, the external storage systems spending is expected to grow YoY significantly in 2H 2021 due to large data localization projects in BFSI segment and large government deals.
--Ends--
For more information about IDC's products and research services, please contact Shivani Anand, Senior Marketing Specialist at sanand@idc.com . You can also follow IDC India's Twitter and LinkedIn pages for regular updates.
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IDC Tracker products provide accurate and timely market size, company share, and forecasts for hundreds of technology markets from more than 100 countries around the globe. Using proprietary tools and research processes, IDC's Trackers are updated on a semiannual, quarterly, and monthly basis. Tracker results are delivered to clients in user-friendly excel deliverables and on-line query tools. The IDC Tracker Charts app allows users to view data charts from the most recent IDC Tracker products on their iPhone and iPad.
International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights: http://bit.ly/IDCBlog_Subscribe.
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and even more so as their chosen photographer for their hotel wedding next year.
They were just so in sync, you could see how much they care for one another. It was a really great opportunity to be able to create some fun photos that really reflect their feelings.
It didn't matter that the day was a little overcast… there were so many perfect picturesque areas around Hampton Court Bridge and the gardens at the entrance of Hampton Court Palace that we still had fun. And with a few curious tourists watching on, it brought on an extra laugh or two that they couldn't hold back!
Sinead and Philip were a total pleasure to photograph and their wedding at the Cartlon Mitre is a day I am truly looking forward to!
adorned by stone sculptures and original bookcases of English history. Few venues have such a stunning view of such iconic landmarks as Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, all while enjoying your wedding breakfast. As the sun sets the view is just spectacular and makes you feel how special London really is and how great your wedding day has truly become.


Individuals - As members you can board the ARK and post items (new/pre-owned) and gift cards valued at $25 in our Give Out Of Delight Store™ called GOODS and claim 1 item each month. Members pledge to donate at least $5 to your favorite charity listed when claiming items. Plus, receive $25 Store Credit to UnitedLifesavers.store for up to 3 months or until they have earned $25. Business Owners - As members you can board the ARK and list your business or nonprofit in our online directory to be supported and members can buy products from you to use as their ARK Giveaways, plus you can claim 1 item over $25 per quarter from our Give Out Of Delight Store™. Plus, receive $25 Store Credit to UnitedLifesavers.store for up to 3 months or until they have earned $25.
The Standard membership includes the Basic membership plus the GENIUS (Gift Everyone Notices In US™) feature, where you can post services (valued from $25) you're gifted in, services from your business or services purchased from your favorite business and give them away to other Standard members. Members pledge to donate at least $10 to your favorite charity when claiming your service and you can claim 1 service each month from other members. As a new member you receive a one-time $100 Store Credit to UnitedLifesavers.store, plus a $50 Store Credit to shop UnitedLifesavers.store for 3 months or until you earn $50. Additional Benefit for Business Owners - DIRECTORY + DEALS (FREE WITH STANDARD MEMBERSHIP) With this membership you get all the benefits of a Basic Business Directory, plus you can drive more customers to your business by offering DEALS up to 70% off that people can redeem on our site. Plus, your Lifesaver helps get your deal on by sharing it with their team and on Social Media. After the deal is on you keep 100% of the profit. All we ask is you donate at least 5% of revenue from the DEAL to a nonprofit aboard the ARK of your choice with a Standard membership. You may list the nonprofit on your DEAL page.


Atalanta manager Stefano Colantuono was full of superlatives for opposite number Antonio Conte and Juventus when discussing tomorrow's clash in Bergamo during his pre-match press conference.
The Bianconeri's fine streak of eight straight league victories without conceding has taken them five points clear at the top, guaranteeing their supremacy come the turn of the new year.
And the 51-year-old tactician believes Conte's hunger for victory will prevent the players from resting on their laurels during Serie A's final game before the winter break.
Speaking to reporters in Lombardy, Colantuono began: "Juventus have the best club, group, squad and manager. They are doing better than the previous two seasons and it doesn't surprise me that they keep winning - the title is only theirs to lose. Knowing Conte, I don't think they'll take the foot off the gas tomorrow."
Despite his side enduring a recent run of patchy form, Colantuono remains upbeat about the visit of the reigning champions and believes the Nerazzurri could cause an upset if they are able to replicate their promising display against Scudetto challengers Roma.


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Home → Articles → Michigan → Whistler's Lawyer
Whistler's Lawyer
Qui tam lawyer David Haron helps clients come forward
Published in 2010 Michigan Super Lawyers magazine By Aimée Groth on September 7, 2010
In May 1993, Jeanne Byrne arrived at David Haron's office holding a prepaid legal card, purchased at Montgomery Ward. "She happened to have a card that she paid [something] like $20 per month for, and it got her a will and free telephone calls" with select lawyers, says the Frank, Haron, Weiner & Navarro attorney from his office in Troy. "So she carried the card with my name on it in her wallet, and came to me and said, 'This is it.'"
"It" was a 1992 New York Times article, which Byrne had brought along, about a Medicare fraud case in which she had testified before a grand jury that her former employer, National Health Laboratories, had overbilled for tests. The case ended with the lab paying a $115 million settlement.
Now, with Haron's help, she would make similar accusations—of charging the government too much—against her current employer, another lab company. Three years later, U.S. ex rel. Jeanne Byrne v. Damon Clinical Laboratories Inc. recovered $119 million for the federal government.
Haron brought the case under the qui tam—or whistleblower—provision of the federal False Claims Act, established in 1863 to prevent fraud against the U.S. government. "It was amended in 1986, and that's when things really started heating up," he says. The amendments gave whistleblowers more rights, protection and compensation. "Prior to 1990, most [qui tam] cases were military-related, because that's where the money was. When the Berlin Wall fell, we shifted away from military to health care. And now we're back to some military because of Iraq and Afghanistan."
Since the Damon settlement was announced in 1996, Haron has devoted his practice to the False Claims Act, working in coordination with U.S. attorneys' offices, the U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys general. Because many of his cases are sealed, he can't be specific, but he will say this: "Usually in the military area, defective products are sold and put in machines, which exposes the troops to danger."
Haron is also an expert in Medicare and Medicaid fraud, which he estimates costs the U.S. government $100 billion annually. In April, his firm—representing two former drug representatives—and a firm with another client won a combined $75 million Medicaid fraud settlement against Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a division of Johnson & Johnson. The plaintiffs alleged that their employer was illegally marketing Topamax for non-FDA-approved uses.
Although plaintiffs can earn between 15 and 30 percent of any monetary award in false claims actions, it's not easy being a whistleblower. "Typically, they have made suggestions all across the management spectrum," Haron says of his clients. "They talk to their co-workers, they talk to their supervisors, they talk to compliance departments, and they're typically rebuffed, patronized, humiliated or ignored.
"You're at a job. You're not working for the government. If somebody's cheating, you may live with it for a while. You have to take care of your family. But then the stress gets to you. Ultimately, employees [as whistleblowers] are typically terminated."
And the stress doesn't subside once a whistleblower brings a case. "If you've ever met with the FBI, even if you're not a target, it's not a lot of fun," says Haron, noting that clients are often questioned by as many as 10 federal officers in one room. "I don't care if you're a physician or if you're a billing clerk, it's frightening."
Easygoing but a straight-shooter, Haron prepares his clients for these meetings, explaining that the government might refuse to take the case. In any case, it will eventually be unsealed—a fact that doesn't sit well with him. "These people were courageous. Why do you have to expose them?" he asks.
At press time, Haron was working to make Michigan the 28th state with its own version of the federal False Claims Act. "We already have a law that involves defrauding Medicaid in the state," he says. "I'm trying to get a full one that will protect the state against road builders who cheat, school districts who take state money, cities who take all the TARP funding.
"We're talking about jobs being taken away from people."
And that's enough to make a fraud-fighting lawyer do some whistleblowing of his own.
David Haron
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Kathleen Bogas has been part of employment discrimination cases since the foundation of the law Featuring Kathleen L. Bogas
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Brian Newby has worked in the governor's office, spent three decades at his law firm, and retired from the Air Force with two stars
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Jennifer Moore is eloquent, charismatic—and takes no prisoners Featuring Jennifer A. Moore


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Новый Урал — деревня в Завьяловском районе Удмуртии, входит в Каменское сельское поселение.

География
Находится в 21 км к югу от центра Ижевска и в 16 км к юго-западу от Завьялово. В 2-3 км к юго-западу от деревни находится большое число садоогородных массивов («Мелиоратор», «Мечта», «Олимпийский», «Оружейник», «Союз») и конечные остановки сезонных автобусов до Ижевска № 433 и 443.

Население

Примечания

Населённые пункты Завьяловского района Удмуртии

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Kapil Sharma's The Kapil Sharma Show season 2's first episode was a laugh riot with always high-on-energy Ranveer Singh leading with his antics.
'Ek saal se India hasna bhool gaya tha', that's how Judge Navjyot Singh Sidhu welcomed the first episode of The Kapil Sharma Show season 2 and we can partially agree to this. Many shows have come and gone, but not a single one could match up to the standards of The Kapil Sharma Show. Owing to bad health and alcohol addiction, the ace comedian Kapil Sharma took a sabbatical of a year and got himself check into a rehab to get rid of his alcohol addiction. After almost a year, the show returned to the small screen and how. The first episode of the show featured Ranveer Singh and Sara Ali Khan, who had come to promote their film Simmba. Director Rohit Shetty and actor Sonu Sood also joined them to add some humour with their one-liners.
The Kapil Sharma Show season 2 retained its old star cast including Chandan Prabhakar, Kiku Sharda and Sumona Chakravarti while some new faces were also added. Bharti Singh and Krushna Abhishek amped up the comedy quotient of the show this season. Kapil Sharma's once-friend Sunil Grover maintained his distance from the show since he's busy with his Bollywood project Bharat.
Sara Ali Khan and Ranveer Singh whose energy levels are unmatched in the industry, added charms to the episode. The actor who has married Deepika Padukone teased Kapil Sharma since the comedian was crushing on the actress forever. Sara Ali Khan also took jibes on him while intentionally taking Deepika's name every now and then. The debutante also entertained the audience with her nonchalant and grounded behaviour.
Good Old Comedy Days Are Here !!
This Chunk Had Me All !
#TheKapilSharmaShow Happiness .. fun .. laughter ..


Katare Spinning Mills Ltd. - Outcome of Board Meeting GM India's sales has crossed the one lakh mark for the first time since Chemical leakage at Dr Reddy's Labs unit kills 2 people.
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The Vardhman Group is a market leader in yarn production and has a corporate philosophy that attaches great value to first-class production facilities equipped with the latest technology.
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Feb 03, 2016 · Feb'00 – Mar'06 with Birla Textile Mills Ltd. as Deputy General Manager Coordinating with all departments, handling operations, maintenance & other project jobs. Implementing the systems in all respect, also implemented ISO 9000 :2000.
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Each Daniels watch is different
The business of selling watches
George Daniels	Master watchmaker
31. I beat the quartz watch for timekeeping 1 2306 04:23
32. The Daniels cipher 1 2057 01:25
33. Tick and tock - the double wheel escapement 1 2057 01:20
34. The Tompion Gold Medal 1748 01:31
35. The Space Traveller's Watch 1 3221 06:21
36. The origins of the co-axial escapement 1 2169 04:06
37. Moving to the Isle of Man 1 2122 00:59
38. My aim was to produce an original watch 1 2461 04:08
39. Making all the components for a Daniels watch 2058 01:04
40. The business of selling watches 1918 02:18
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Related Transcript Biography Info
It would take something like 2000 hours to make such a watch, and so of course one could only make one each year because there are other things that need attending to. If one runs a business there are all the administrative problems to deal with, and the Inland Revenue and VAT all had to be dealt with. And interesting that when I built the first watch, we didn't have VAT, we had purchase tax and it was quite a lot of money. I can't remember exactly, but I think it was about 25% or something on the cost of the thing. And so on the advice of Queenman [sic], the jeweller in London, I got my solicitor, who was an expert on tax, and I explained to him that I didn't really want to charge my customers this... what did I call it... the tax... purchase tax. I didn't want to charge them purchase tax and what could he do about it? Well, we went along to see the purchase tax people and we had a long discussion there and we were asked to come back again the following week and we went back and they looked at the watch and they agreed with me that I didn't make these watches as a business, I made them because it amused me to do so, and if there was a customer, I was perfectly entitled to sell it. And so, delighted with this ruling, I didn't have to charge my customers the purchase tax.
All that changed when we got round to VAT and then everything had to be charged VAT, but those lucky early customers, although they were not only early on that score, they were doubly lucky because I think they paid on the average about £5000 for their watches and they're selling now at £150,000, £200,000, £300,000. So, they were good investments from their point of view.
George Daniels, CBE, DSc, FBHI, FSA (19 August 1926 - 21 October 2011) was an English watchmaker most famous for creating the co-axial escapement. Daniels was one of the few modern watchmakers who could create a complete watch by hand, including the case and dial. He was a former Master of the Clockmakers' Company of London and had been awarded their Gold Medal, a rare honour, as well as the Gold Medal of the British Horological Institute, the Gold Medal of the City of London and the Kullberg Medal of the Stockholm Watchmakers' Guild.
Title: The business of selling watches
Listeners: Roger Smith
Roger Smith was born in 1970 in Bolton, Lancashire. He began training as a watchmaker at the age of 16 at the Manchester School of Horology and in 1989 won the British Horological Institute Bronze Medal. His first hand made watch, made between 1991 and 1998, was inspired by George Daniels' book "Watchmaking" and was created while Smith was working as a self-employed watch repairer and maker. His second was made after he had shown Dr Daniels the first, and in 1998 Daniels invited him to work with him on the creation of the 'Millennium Watches', a series of hand made wrist watches using the Daniels co-axial escapement produced by Omega. Roger Smith now lives and works on the Isle of Man, and is considered the finest watchmaker of his generation.
Tags: VAT, value added tax, purchase tax, Inland Revenue
Duration: 2 minutes, 19 seconds
Date story recorded: May 2003
Date story went live: 24 January 2008
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The deadline for entries to find butchers hoping to win one of the industry's most prestigious awards has been delayed to accommodate a late rush of entrants.
The nationwide hunt was launched earlier this year to find talented butchers to compete in theButchery WorldSkills UK competition 2019.
But with the original April 5 deadline fast approaching and entries still coming in from across Wales, organisers have delayed the closing date until April 12.
The competition focuses on all of the essential skills required for a successful career as a multi-skilled butcher within the food manufacturing industry.
Butchers can register online at: https://www.worldskillsuk.orgto become the next UK champion.


text:
Sex positivity can't last
TikTok holds clues about the next cultural shift
BY Katherine Dee
. Are GenZ more interested in marriage than one-night stands? Credit: CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
Katherine Dee is a writer. To read more of her work, visit defaultfriend.substack.com.
default_friend
ConservatismGenZMarriageSex positivitySex worksexual revolutionTikTokTradwivesTumblr
Before Tumblr banned pornography from its platform, its relationship with sex was little more than a footnote in the blogosphere. People knew that the site hosted a treasure trove of "adult content," but no one was talking about the knock-on effects. Tumblr was among the most popular websites for teenagers and young adults. It created not only a thriving environment for sex workers and would-be sex workers, but also adolescents trying to emulate popular porn blogs. Here, the aesthetics of hypersexuality met teen angst.
In the Tumblr of the 2010s, quasi-Japanese imagery married pastel colours and adolescent limbs; Lana Del Rey's fan base found itself; teen girls were identifying with "Daddy dom/little girl" relationships and adopting labels like nymphet. And it was prescient of a broader shift in pop culture, which was becoming increasingly sexually open. Fifty Shades of Grey de-mystified BDSM, giving it a veneer of the mundane. Millennials resigned themselves to hook-up culture. Vice and other hipster media outlets worked hard to glamorise sex work. Bold sexual admissions crept into everything from sitcoms to programs like The View; confessional, often deeply sexual, essays boomed in popularity.
Tumblr didn't create this atmosphere but, by allowing seeds to germinate among young people, did help propel it forward — as it did many other now significant cultural issues. It's been well-documented that the modern trans rights movement has roots in organising that took place on Tumblr. The platform also influenced Black Lives Matter.
But the internet shortens the life cycle of cultural moments. The boom in hypersexuality took place a decade ago; "The Man" adopted it and it stripped it of its cool factor. The pendulum is swinging. Young people feel rightfully burned by America's imbalanced relationship with sex. A growing collection of articles, blog posts, TikToks, and popular Twitter personalities now implicitly and critical — or at least sceptical — of sex positivity, third and fourth wave feminism, as well as manifestations of both, like Brazilian Butt Lifts and fillers.
If I point this out to sex positive feminists, they're quick to retort that purity culture has long been a mainstay of American life and has dominated public policy. They've got a point. The United States is a deeply conflicted country when it comes to sex — abortion and access to birth control remain hotly contested issues; accurate sex education is neither standardised nor a guarantee in public schools; untested rape kits pile up in police precincts around the country; gynaecological textbooks used in American medical schools didn't have a full or accurate representation of the nerve endings in the clitoris until the activist Jessica Pin fought for its inclusion a few years ago.
Why young men love Milfs
But ultimately, it's not the puritans — the Republican congresspeople, abstinence-only sex ed teachers in Deep South public schools, Evangelical Christian ministers — who are setting the tone for how ordinary Americans view sex. They have their own impact, especially on the individual level. But they're not going to drive any massive cultural shifts. It's corporations, universities, and mass media that lead the way. Until now, they have oversaturated popular culture with sexuality. In the coming years, could they give birth to a counterculture reacting against the Sexual Revolution?
Of course, there have already been myriad attempts, outside of Evangelical purity culture and Right-wing politics, to dampen sex positivity. Famous radical feminists like Germaine Greer have been deeply critical of so-called "sexual liberation," prostitution, and pornography. There have been less well-known movements, like True Love Revolution at Harvard — a pro-chastity movement critical of hook-up culture, set up by student Julie Fredell in 2008. At Princeton, there's the Anscombe Society, a similar student organisation that preaches the sanctity of sex. At the University of Texas, graduate student Ryan Hacker began his own chapter of the Anscombe Society, and led several protests about a wide range of issues on the subject of modesty. There was Wendy Shalit's books Girls Gone Mild and A Return to Modesty, and Laura Sessions Step's Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both.
In fact, there have been critiques of online pornography and dating sites and apps since before they went mainstream; criticism of hook-up culture was practically a vertical in and of itself between 2005 and 2015, just before #MeToo. But still, hypersexuality marched on: pole dancing became a popular form of exercise and was elevated to an art form beyond a small niche; sex workers' rights became a cause célèbre even if it enjoys relatively little efficacy; OnlyFans is a unicorn; Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion participated in tribadism on stage to an audience of millions and to the shock of no one, my mother learned what "W.A.P." stood for.
How sexual empowerment screws women
By Mary Harrington
So while it's true that our policies do not always reflect the fact that the nation is pro-sex work or pro-sex anything, in popular culture there is no sexual topic that is off limits. But what do the youth always want to do? Rebel against authority. For most people, that's the fast food restaurant, retail store, or office where you're underpaid and overworked. The digital advertisements which haunt your every waking moment, as you endlessly doom-scroll Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, for reasons that elude even yourself. The faceless corporations and affectless billionaires that promote all manner of sexual identities, lifestyles, and expressions while evading taxes. That's not an environment that screams cool. The commodification of sex as both a product and a slogan has de-sexed sex: it's like having police at the Pride Parade. Kids experiment, and they'll experiment with what they think is taboo, not what their local Citibank is promoting.
So the difference between the "sex negativity" of the 1990s and the sex backlash of the 21st century is that it's going to have a strong countercultural contingency. It won't be driven by, for instance, religious groups who feel marginalised by hip-hop music videos on MTV and Clinton's sexual impropriety; it'll be driven by people who've tried sex work, and the people who would have tried it, had they born in 1995, not 2005. People who want to rebel.
Will Gen Z recover from Covid?
By Matthew Goodwin
Tumblr proved that youth-led online behaviour is a canary in the coal mine. But now TikTok has become the most popular place for young people to obsessively hang out online: a platform where messages are mimetically transmitted. And TikTok is full of clues, when it comes to the burgeoning backlash against sex positivity.
Ashley Clark Huffman, @trashley_anonymous on TikTok, makes videos almost exclusively critical of prostitution and the flippant attitude young people have about platforms like OnlyFans. She has 1.3 million followers, and her videos have become iconic, spawning a meme format. There's also @glamdemon2004, otherwise known as Serena Shahidi, who has 411,700 followers, and was recently interviewed by The New York Times' Taylor Lorenz. Her specialty is turning the depressing state of modern dating into a hilarious joke. While she's not as expressly critical as Huffman, her videos are certainly sceptical:
"I realise the thing I hate about social media, lip gloss, girls-support-girls, we're-all-baddies type of feminism is that it centres men's opinions so aggressively … Men criticise women for being promiscuous, and then all of a sudden, it's no critical thoughts, just sex positivity."
There are countless other accounts, too. Young women creating videos where they talk about feeling left behind by a hypersexual feminism that centres the young woman as sexual object. @mommypilled (14.8K followers) mocks liberal feminism for "telling young girls hookup culture is liberating … and encouraging them to get into s*x work the minute they turn 18." Then there's here's @slutty_tradwife, who makes videos on topics like the limits of #MeToo and the failures of liberal feminism. And finally, my personal favourite, @hystericfantasy, appears to be a parody of what the hipster of the aughts evolved into: a Red Scare-listening, Christopher Lasch reading, liberal feminist critical art ho who thinks we should outlaw divorce and restore the sanctity of marriage.
It's pure camp, but it wouldn't be so funny if there wasn't any source material to draw from. That is to say, she's a theatrical version of a real woman walking around. It was reported in January that that adult GenZers (18-23-year-olds) are having 14% less sex than the previous generation at that age. One woman, in Vice's report on the statistics, says: "I only want to be with a man who has earned my trust, who worships the ground I walk on, who honours and respects me," seeming to make an explicit reference to the marriage vows. Will the professed opinions of @slutty_tradwife and @trashley_anonymous become the new normal? After all, there's not one movement that took root on Tumblr whose echoes you can't see in the broader culture today; and TikTok is the new Tumblr.
T Doyle
I read this three times and I can't make sense of it. It's just so badly written.
Judy Simpson
Reply to T Doyle
And I thought it was just me. Well done for reading it three times, I made one failed attempt.
Jon Redman
I liked the ending – "TikTok is the new Tumblr" – because I have absolutely no idea what either of these is or was, nor any interest in them. Who are these? What are these? What are they for? Why do I care? Answer came there none.
They'll both last another couple of years I guess, whatever they are. Teen tech fads are like boy bands: as Bros followed Wham followed Duran, each forgotten as the next turned up, it's the same with pointless tech. Each demographic – you, your stupid kid brother, your stupid kid brother's mates' stupid kid brothers – think the latest new piece of junk is great because it's new.
I feel very sorry for anyone born after about 1975.
Last edited 1 year ago by Jon Redman
John Riordan
Perhaps you picked up upon the essential logical conflict between the ultra-permissiveness that social media seems to be selling all the time, and the fact that young people seem on average to be less sexually-liberated now than they were a single generation back.
The problem it's revealing is that social media, being the modern equivalent of the public square, is dominated everywhere by a very shouty minority who effectively have gained the power to decide what can and cannot be said, irrespective of the personal views of everyone present. This isn't merely confined to permissiveness, empowerment and whatever else they say it is; it applies to everything.
Ian Barton
Reply to John Riordan
Mikey Mike
Okay, good. I wasn't sure if I was bored because I was reading some weird millennial shorthand or if it was true that the author had written the equivalent of 12 paragraphs of emojis.
Mark Gourley
Thank you. I too wondered if it was just my ignorance.
Graham Thorpe
The fact that noone understands this piece, from the headline onwards, is the most interesting thing about it.
Galeti Tavas
Reply to Graham Thorpe
I think this was written by Unerd's new 'Why pay writers when you can use the new article generator app?' A new product from gramercy.
Julian Farrows
I am not a parent, but if I were, I would banish all social media from my household and hold out on getting my children a smartphone until they are old enough to afford one themselves.Parents who allow their children unrestricted use of online computers and devices are exposing them to agenda-driven individuals and/or collectives who are able to circumnavigate parental controls and push their destructive ideologies on to the next generation.
Victoria Cooper
Reply to Julian Farrows
I had a (well-meaning) father like you. Loads of banned stuff (in my day it was comic books, ITV, Enid Blyton, chewing gum, the Light Programme, ice lollies, eating anything in the street – sorry, I digress). It morphed into boys: you are not to see him sort of thing, you look like a tart wearing that. Luckily my mother was more astute. Point being I got round all these bans. Your imaginary children would simply get what they want from their friends. You have only added a tickle of excitement. Parents should set a good example re values etc and trust kids will grow up (which they will) into balanced citizens.
Reply to Victoria Cooper
I understand your point and upvoted you. However, I'd still rather have my children work around me than be too laissez-faire. When my parents split up, I lived with each of them for a while. While my father didn't mind if I missed school, my mother would be livid. I attended school a lot more when I lived with my mother.
PS: What did your father disapprove of in Enid Blyton? I can't think of a more innocuous children's author.
Allie McBeth
I agree up to a point, but although I secretly smoked cigarettes, I would not smoke weed, and turned down a *black bomber experience purely out of fear of my dad finding out! *type of speed pill
Last edited 1 year ago by Allie McBeth
My perspective as the father of two well-adjusted, happy, early 20 daughters, both in long term, marriage track relationships with great guys:
1 – hold off as long as possible with giving them cell phones, etc. – but not to the extreme that they are among the very last kids to get. I've seen that back fire as much as succeed.
2 – talk with your children every day about their lives and the bigger world around them and for goodness sakes look at their homework and help if needed.
3 – build trust – it is a two way street, Do what you say you will and expect the same of them with harsh but proportionate consequences for failures.
4 – do what you can to encourage friendships with "good kids" (rough proxy=academically inclined kids with good manners) and vice versa
Cat Fan
Reply to Michael Coleman
We are about to get a phone for oldest child. We think we may start with a phone that does not have internet access and see how we go. I don't mean a flip phone, but there are phone companies (not sure if I can specify here without it being removed?) that offer phones that have the appearance of smartphones but only use calls and texts and possibly have cameras.
It is becoming increasingly hard to stay in the loop of what is going on at school without access to smartphone technology. As he approaches high school (we're in the US) it may become a necessity. The school system sends out updates via social media first, the classroom teachers use apps to communicate with parents and for the kids to upload work, extracurricular activities require you to download an app to receive team news and so.
Teaching your child use their devices responsibly is the issue. We have had a few talks with ours about the permanency of the internet and the dangers of the anonymity of the people he is talking to.
Drahcir Nevarc
"do what you can to encourage friendships with "good kids" (rough proxy=academically inclined kids with good manners)"
This was my daughter's boyfriend at school. Absolutely smashing lad.
Lennon Ó Náraigh
On the contrary, at some point the smartphone is inevitable – although the later the better. Still, you don't let the kidz buy it themselves. You pay 51% the cost. This gives you a majority interest on the board.
David Bell
Reply to Lennon Ó Náraigh
I finally succumbed and got my first smartphone earlier this year. I'm 71.
I have never used, and in many cases never even heard of, any of the here-yesterday-gone-today media fads namechecked in this article.
Tumblr – nope;
Lana Del Ray – nope;
"Daddy dom/little girl" relationships – nope;
"programs like The View" – nope;
and so on all the way through. As a result reading this piece was like reading instructions written in German on how to strip down a diesel engine. I can read German pretty well but would be entirely unfamiliar with the vocabulary. So there, as here, I could point out the subject, object, verb, dependent clauses etc but I have literally no idea what is being said because I don't know a single one of the references.
Most of the technology that da yoof consumes is either sinister, like Facebook, or it has the lifespan of a boy band: two to three years. I don't get why we need articles about flash in the pan trivia tech of yesteryear when it's so unimportant and uninteresting even when it's new.
I had none of this when I was 20 and when I was 20 nobody was asking for it. I know who is better off.
Andrew Fisher
Reply to Jon Redman
Solipsistic fallacy at play here. 'I don't use it, or see the need for it, so it's trivial and unimportant'. It's good that Unherd publishes articles from a younger generation who do fully understand this stuff, after all they will be around a long time after I, and I suspect you will.
Social media might sometimes or often deal with trivia, (though human sexuality isn't trivial) but it isn't in itself. It is one of the major forces in the world today, even I as an old fogey and technophobe can see that. Many people couldn't see the point of the telephone or for that matter railways (people travelling around for no good reason?!) etc in their day.
Reply to Andrew Fisher
Fair point – but a bit of translation would certainly be helpful.
Reply to Ian Barton
As far as I can tell, Tumblr used to be a visual blogging site where members could upload pictures of their pets and holidays etc. Over time many of the blogs appearing on it became overtly sexual and began to discuss topics like transgenderism and other fetishes. As a result, Tumblr banned nudity and other sexually explicit content from its site.
I know less about TikTok, but I believe it's a site where members can upload all kinds of video content. I've never visited it so can't really tell you more than that, except that it is Chinese owned and its critics suspect that TikTok is phishing its members for their personal details.
Angelique Todesco-Bond
I had to look up W.A.P., I wish I hadn't.
Deborah B
I'm well past my "sell-by-date", yet I understood most of this article. It makes a fair point, similar to the "kink" article recently posted. Rebellion is hardwired into the teen psych, so when mainstream media advocates sex positivity (or anything really) it's automatically uncool and to be rebelled against.
As parents, we can cunningly use this to our advantage. You have to keep your eye on the ball while pretending to be totally disinterest in it.
On another subject, I read a piece yesterday on Medium about Blockchain and then explained it to my "tech savvy" husband! It pays to be well informed about all kinds of dull and inappropriate topics.
Christopher Chantrill
I think that the way to understand this is the emergence of women into the "public square" starting over a century ago.
The idea is that men were having all the fun and the agency, and women — "hear me roar" — wanted in.
But now, a century later, women are just starting to confront the fact that they don't like the public square and its culture of insult. They don't like sex without commitment. They don't like dating as a meat market.
And by "don't like" I don't mean consciously, or even Freud/Jung "unconsciously," but something deeper and more basic in the mammalian female creature.
But it's gonna get worse before it gets better.
Last edited 1 year ago by Christopher Chantrill
Lesley van Reenen
Is that relief I feel?
Reply to Lesley van Reenen
Why? What did you just do?
Terry Needham
I don't recall s ex being this complicated. Boy, girl, bed, and off you went.
Reply to Terry Needham
The language used and the style of writing
is so opaque and confused.
Best comment goes to 'TD'
Masks make people look very self-satisfied.
Tagged Conservatism, GenZ, Marriage, Sex positivity, Sex work, sexual revolution, TikTok, Tradwives, Tumblr