The Art of Storytelling

The original post was made in the context of seduction/pick up.

by LS_NickHoss

I love storytelling and love teaching it. You have to understand before creating a story that every phase of a pick up has the undercurrent of emotions. Attraction arouses interest, qualification spurts praise and comfort should span an array. These can be happy, fearful, moderately angry, horny, etc. A girl wants to see the whole spectrum your capability so she can get an idea of you at your best and your worst. If she can figure out how you tick, she’ll know how you tock, so to speak.

The basic, face to face way of doing this is through storytelling. Being a good storyteller involves two keys:

1) Emotion over Logic

Speak from an emotional perspective, not a factual one. Back in the barrens of Canada where I grew up, it’s almost hunting season right now. If I was to describe to a woman how hunting goes, I wouldn’t say “You walk through the snow in the bush for about five hours and then you shoot at a deer when it pops out.” That doesn’t have much emotional cache.

However, if I say…

“A lot of people think hunting is just shooting a gun, but there is so much more to it. Last week, we were pushing bush (1), and God, we had to trudge through the snow forever. Seriously, I thought (2) my feet were going to freeze off. I couldn’t feel them. Anyway, we finally stopped at this little creaky warm-up shake, like the kind where you expect an chainsaw murder to pop out from behind the door (3), so we got all undressed and fired up the stove and all. Anyway, my buddy looks up and goes, ‘Hey, did you just see that?’ And sure as shit (4), we looked out the window and there was this dark, blotch standing against the trees. The thing is that we can’t see if it has a rack or not–you can only shoot so many deer each season, so sometimes you don’t want to shoot a girl deer too early because you want horns right (5). We were both undressed already, but I couldn’t let this chance go by, so I’m like to Jeremy (6), “Fuck it! Let’s get it.” So I open the window on the shack, but I’m really slow about it because I’m scared to scare off the deer, eh. I stick out my gun and have it clutched against my shoulder, and I’m timing it to my heart beat (7), so I can get the shot off between beats. Then… BOOM! I fire it, and we just looked at each other like (8)…”

(1) This saying draws a person into the story. It’s not, “We were walking through the forest.” It will get a little laugh and engage her.

(2) If I say, “My feet were really cold,” it won’t resonate emotionally. When you say, I thought, I felt, I believed, you’re injecting character into the story because the listener can get inside the head of the hero (you).

(3) The listener can relate to the feeling of the cabin through this relatable phrase. They get a feeling for the cabin.

(4) Another regional saying. I’m being real with here and if I say this right, I’m really into the story. When trying to elicit emotion, this will draw her in. So far we’ve gone from a light-hearted start to eerie to dramatic.

(5) Providing clarification. A person needs to understand the terrain of the story in order to navigate it. If I give her context for what I’m saying, I set its level of importance.

(6) Spiking emotion back up. Instead of saying, “We went after the deer.” I put her in the cabin with me and say this to her like she was hunting with me.

(7) Slowing down the pace of the story. Controlling the pace controls the emotional spikes, which keeps the listener on their toes, which draws them in more. Also would be a good chance to touch in this instance.

(8) Giving her a certain look here will resonate more emotionally than saying, “We looked at each other funny.” Body language over words. It’s also building character and emotion, not jumping to the facts.

You get the picture. Everything you say will play in her mind like it’s on a movie screen. If you want to let her know what hunting is like, tell her a story about hunting. Don’t read her the facts like you’re a talking Wiki.

If you want it to be more of a heart-melter, steer the emotions and characters toward that. If you want it to spike attraction, shorten the story up and focus on the excitement. My story above isn’t super deep.

2) Characters over Plot

Let’s keep my story from above and look at how I develop the characters. People relate to emotions, and in order to experience emotions they have to be in the shoes of the person in the story. They don’t know how the story plays out until you say the next sentence, so by telling what the character thinks or how they feel, in real-time, you put them in the story. This elicits the emotion.

If you just giving plot, it’s tantamount to just giving facts. “Nick and Jeremy went hunting. Nick got cold. Jeremy said to go into the shack. The boys saw a deer. They shot at the deer.” Pretty dull, no emotional hook. Adding the characters feeling, diction, etc. makes the story come alive.

Anyway, I realize this is a true hillbilly bush story, but it’s also a REAL story. The storyteller can’t fake it. In attraction, you can drop a quip about how you know the door girl who let you all in the club for free, but in comfort that’s not what she wants to know. She’s seen the flash; she wants something real. It’s all in how you tell that real stuff. You bring the ‘you’ to life.

The Ups and Downs of being in the Infantery

by red_one_foxtrott

Infantry is awesome. At the end of the day, you work harder and are more disciplined, combat-competent, filthy, sweaty, exhausted, freezing, broiling, hungry than any other regular job in the military. You get to become proficient with a plethora of weapons, mind-boggling communication systems, tactical vehicles, and drilled-into-you tactics that you get to doing instinctively without even thinking about it.

Infantry sucks ass. You are treated like shit by high-level leadership. You enlisted to kick doors and shoot people in the face, but there you are picking moss out of the cracks in the garrison sidewalk because General Fucknut is coming to give a 3 hour speech about whogivesafuck. You embark on an 18-mile roadmarch; 26 miles later, your feet are hamburger and your 16-pound machine gun feels like it weighs 56 pounds. You stand guard at a weapons range in the sub-freezing temps for hours on-end, hours after the range went "cold" (no more firing), on a secure garrison, because you "train like you fight." You show up for formation in the freezing rain; one guy forgot his gloves; everybody has to take their gloves off. You get your long-awaited weekend snatched away for CQ (charge of quarters = barracks desk duty) or battalion/brigade staff duty or courtesy patrol (even though there are such things as MPs) or a work detail or because your leadership fucked up scheduling and the ONLY day open for the weapons range is on the weekend.

You deploy and live in dust-caked tents while a hundred meters away, personnel clerks and finance desk-jockeys who will never leave the FOB are living in air-conditioned housing units. You go on patrol for 6, 8, 10, 12, 24, 48 or more hours at a time, come back to the FOB and get in line for a hot meal; too bad, says the dining hall guard: your uniform is too dirty to come inside. You are moved out to a combat outpost with no running water and no electricity (other than the radios at the command post) and live there for a few weeks at a time; when you're not on-mission, you're in a guard tower, or fixing vehicles, or burning shit in oil-drums, or digging ditches, or stringing razorwire, or filling sandbags, or rolling out on QRF (quick reaction force) to help a patrol who got hit, or you're cleaning your weapon. If you have time to eat, masturbate, sleep, and wipe your asscrack off with babywipes, you do it.

You train for 14 weeks to earn those blue disks, crossed rifles and blue cord (if you're a Marine, you train for 26 weeks, and I don't know what infantry-specific accoutrements USMC infantrymen get, forgive my ignorance, fellow grunts) and train for months or even a year further at your line unit to deploy to combat. You learn how to use almost every gun we have, you learn how to drive (and maybe gun) Humvees, Bradleys, Strykers, MRAPs (unit-dependent) and practice shooting with night-vision and infrared lasers, or night-vision or thermal scopes. You and your buddies give each other IVs with night-vision in the back of a moving Bradley for combat-lifesaver training. You itch for the day you deploy, while the veterans around you roll their eyes, having already seen what you yearn for.

You get there and the enemy hides in civilian clothes; he uses women and children for human shields and spotters for mortar attacks. He kidnaps people from opposite tribes/sects and rapes women and murders children and tortures people with power drills to their kneecaps and cheeks and he cuts the tongue out of a 13 year old boy because the kid chatted with you during a halt on-mission. He kills your friends with sniper rifles and IEDs and you rarely, if ever, even see him face-to-face. You probably won't get the opportunity to kill him; rarely will you get the opportunity to even shoot at him. When you finally get that chance, you won't feel a thing. You won't be happy that he's laying there in front of you, bleeding and moaning on the pavement. You'll see dead people... civilians killed by them, killed accidentally by us, indigenous security forces (cops, military, local hired militia), bad guys... you may see people die right in front of you, within mere meters. At the end of it, you'll be dull. Numb. Desensitized. You'll wish you fired your weapon more.

You'll come home and be unable to relate to the friends and family who clapped you on the back and wished you well when you left those few short years ago. You'll know that you were the very top of the food chain; only special operations direct action teams trained more, did more, saw more, and were in more danger than you were. And your future college classmates will find out you were in the military and say things like, "Oh, my cousin is in the Navy, I think he does something with computers. He went to Iraq; it must've been SCARY." Or, "My buddy Joe joined the Army. Did you know him?" Or, "Did you KILL ANYBODY?" Or, "I support you guys, but I oppose the war. You didn't really believe in what we're doing over there, RIGHT?"

The highs are higher; relationships are more passionate (and more quickly burned out), weekends and block-leave periods are cherished, and days you somehow don't get put on the tower guard roster are things to behold.

The lows are lower; I think I already summed them up.

Caveat: tankers, scouts, combat engineers, and arty guys (the other combat-arms MOS) are cool too. And medics/corpsmen, EOD, dog handlers, psyops, civil affairs, JTACs, and pilots. I don't mean to seem like I'm marginalizing every other military MOS aside from Army/USMC infantry.

The beer I'm drinking right now is one of the best beers I've ever had. Because it's Labatt-Infantry-Blue, bitches.

When I turn off the lights, where does all the light go?

by Thecat5001

Light is a form of energy, but when you turn the light off, the light goes away, so where does the energy go?

The short answer is: it gets absorbed by the wall as heat.

The longer answer needs a bit of a more detailed mental picture. The wall is a solid, which consists of a (fairly) regular structure of atoms. Just imagine a grid of hard spheres laying against each other. This is the surface of the wall. At absolute zero, these atoms do not move and are simply at rest, one just touching the next. Having a temperature means that the wall contains thermal energy. This thermal energy is a random motion of the atoms around their equilibrium point, they're basically vibrating. Such a vibration can travel rather far through the lattice in the form of a wave. One ball pushes the next, which pushes the next, which pushes ... etc. Such a wave is commonly called a 'phonon', because it is also the way in which sound can move through solids.

Now think of the light. Light consists of tiny particles called photons, not to be confused with the phonons in the wall. Each photon is a tiny packet of electromagnetic energy and momentum. If such a photon hits (an atom of) the wall, its energy and momentum is absorbed. Since both these quantities need to be conserved, it means the atom will get a little "kick" from absorbing the photon. It will move, and kick against its neighbor, etc etc. So basically the photon has been converted into a phonon.

If enough photons get absorbed, this will result in the wall warming up slightly. So the light gets converted into thermal energy in the wall.

It's rather analogous to a stone falling into a lake. The energy of the stone will spread out over the surface of the water in the form of waves. The water itself doesn't move much, but the waves can carry the energy quite far. Likewise, the atoms don't move much, but the energy/momentum from the photons can carry rather deep into the wall.

How different would the movie Jurassic Park be with today's information?

by paleoguy4

The appearance and behavior of dinosaurs is largely a factor of speculation. There are a few things that would be updated. The Velociraptors would have some sort of feathery integument, as would the baby T. rex. Maybe some of the animals would show more color than gray, brown or moss-green. But that doesn't take much thinking, and the science of paleontology hasn't been able to ascertain much about dinosaur color, unless preserved feathers are found (they have been and colors include black, white, and sort of an umbery, rusty color- I believe someone else mentions this in a post.)

Jurassic Park is now 20 years out of date. If you're looking to update the science and still retain a compelling story, you're going to end up with something like this:

The crucial part of Crichton's idea was that the amber which preserved the mosquito served as a preservative barrier- a seal which locked away the precious dinosaur blood from contaminants and harm- a simple idea which ultimately proved very compelling for a story.

Now there are definitely issues with this. You're not going to set up a lab and get extinct animal blood from a dead bug anytime soon. Plus, after sitting in a chunk of resin for millions of years there is certainly going to be some mingling between the mosquito DNA and the DNA of whatever it fed on and anything else trapped in the sap. Wouldn't it be nice to see THATcome out of an egg? Yeesh! I degress.

The one thing that people have heard about Jurassic Park if they've heard anything in the last 20 years, is that "you cannot clone dinosaurs from blood in mosquitoes trapped in amber." So how do we move away from that, bsoftut still make dinosaurs? Because no one is going to be amazed by the trapped mosquito/dino DNA idea anymore. They know it. It's part of popular culture, like "don't cross the streams" or "He's been dead the whole movie!" How do we make the core part of Jurassic Park new?

Easy.

One of the biggest developments in paleontological research in the last few decades has been the discovery of soft tissues preserved in fossil bone interiors. These bones come from the badlands, like any other dinosaur fossil, but they are excavated using sterile field techniques and without polymer consolidants (glues) to keep contaminants from entering the bone' interiors (I know this because I have done it). The fossils are then taken back to a sterile lab where the mineral components are dissolved in baths. If the dinosaur bones were truly permineralized (eg- all 'rock') then the entire fossil would basically dissolve in solution. BUT! That didn't happen when the first lab tests of this kind were conducted back in the early 2000's. There was stuff left over after the mineral components had dissolved away.Spongy, squishy, stretchy, soft stuff. Paleontologists have documented what appear to be bits of collagen (connective tissues), and remnants of blood and bone cells from those samples. There are also bits of proteins that may be preserved. This was absolutely unheard of when Crichton wrote Jurassic Park 30 years ago. Now, in the real world accessing DNA hundred million year old soft tissue is not yet viable, but in 1990, neither was sucking out a fossilized mosquito's guts. But it was brilliant science fiction. And while no one has ever actually pulled blood from a fossilized mosquito...

I'm sorry but take a moment and get ready for this realization:

WE HAVE ACTUAL HONEST-TO-GOODNESS DINOSAUR TISSUE AND CELLS. HOLY SHIT!!

What does this mean? It means that there's no more need for the old amber-bug-blood plot line! Now, instead of mining for amber in the jungle playing roulette with mosquitoes (there's no way of knowing what kind of animal a mosquito had bitten just by looking at the thing--Hammond would have had to sort through thousands of mosquitoes before finding one that had actually bitten a dinosaur), you can go to the badlands and look for soft tissue from ANY DINOSAUR YOU WANT. How's THAT for an overhaul? It completely updates the heart of Jurassic Park's story and allows it to remain a sort of beacon for trendy Sci Fi (yes, and you can have your cloning morality play too). It also removes a lot of inconsistencies, like "How did they clone extinct plants? Mosquitoes don't drink plant blood" and for scientists, it seems more plausible because if you want a park with, say, aTriceratops in it, all you have to do is go to Montana, South Dakota or Wyoming, poke around until you find some Triceratops bones poking out from a nice, thick sandstone unit, and BAM- pretty damned good chance you could get some soft tissues out of there.

The second big change for Jurassic Park would have to be the DNA gap-filling. No more amphibian DNA. Birds. They would need to use a more ancient bird, like an Emu, Cassowary, Rhea or Ostrich. These large, flightless birds (collectively known as Ratites) are some of the most primitive-looking birds living. There has been a lot of genetic work done on chickens lately, and chicken DNA might work as well because we know so much about it. In a Sci Fi story it would not be much of a stretch to say that we have control over the chicken genome, and thus could reduce it back to a sort of "stem" state, where the genetic instructions basically say to build a archosaur-like animal, and the combination of the Dinosaur DNA with the trimmed chicken genome causes the dinosaur DNA to take over and build a dinosaur.

If I had my way and could write a Jurassic Park sequel, it would go like this:

Soft tissue in fossil bones has changed paleontology. Alan Grant and co. are leaders in this area of research do to their years of field experience.

Lewis Dodson is the bad guy who never got his chance. He was instrumental in the first two books, but gets 3 minutes of screen time in the first movie. He's sinister, greedy, selfish, and cares only for profit. He has no moral scruples, other than his desire to make a profit for himself. Use him as the antagonist for the 4th movie. He's never gotten over his loss at Nedry's Hands. He never really gave up cloning dinosaurs. He sees money in them. His company has been sequencing genomes, and he has focused on birds- domestic fowl, endangered species, you name it. He spends a long time waiting. Then he hears about soft tissue preservation in fossil bones- blood cells, proteins...could there be DNA? Perhaps he is tempted to sneak out some of Grant's specimens without permission...

Point is- not only could you clone dinosaurs with the soft tissue story line, but marine reptiles, too. Giant ichthyosaurs, mososaurs, plesiosaurs...there's a lot of scary stuff in the ancient sea! For the purpose of Sci Fi, anything that's fossilized could be fair game! There's a lot of cool, extinct animals out there, people. Big, scary extinct animals...

Pura Vida - An Almost-Kidnapping in Costa Rica

by greenspikefrog

The night it happened was like our last week in Costa Rica. We met the girls about a week prior, somewhere midway through our trip, and were all having a really good time.

We had just crossed the country to the Caribbean side to see the difference and we were on our way back, south, then north, to San Jose. We stopped in a town called Quepos.

Quepos was fulla ex-pats. And it was quite hostal. We were offered harder drugs like meth and crack here for the first time, opposed to the usual weed, blow and sex. It wasn't really a tourist town. More of a shipping port town. That night we had some strange warning signs that we were in for some trouble here. One instance, at a hot-dog-eating-contest a couple of ExPat's were pounding on a belligerent tico. He was beyond drunk. And he kept trying to fight them, they would laugh and knock him down.

The guys bragged to us about how they ran the town and lived like Kings, yadda yadda, -- we didn't stay long in their presence.

We left the girls in the hostel we were at, and went searching for a quiet spot to smoke and enjoy the night air.

Just as we sat down, and lit that joint, we got run up on, my cousin and myself, by a couple of kids. They chased us with knifes down an alley way between a building and a soccer field. We eventually out ran them down a street into a bar. I thought we were toast but they were kinda fucked up, and wide-eyed from what I saw the moment they snuck up on us.

Here is a photo of my cousin and I in that allie between the soccer field: http://imgur.com/CxlaP,sz0JC,E47KV,TbFw8#3

We picked up some big rocks after that, and always had something for defense on us in the pockets. This would come in handy later in our story.

Back at this little hostel place, the girls weren't liking the town either, and wanted move down to Manuel Antonio the next day.

Manuel Antonio, you should know, is about 15 Km or something, through the hills to a dead end road with a National Park at the end.

The streets are lined with a lot of high-fenced resorts, and tourist spots to use as jumping points for exploring the park.

We found a nice little local place on recommendation. Photo here: http://imgur.com/CxlaP,sz0JC,E47KV,TbFw8#2

If I ever have the option while on proper adventure travels, I always try to stay local. You just get better intel on the surrounding area from people who call it home.

There was a lot of good times for two nights in this little mom and pop's place. We met a nice woman with twins, and she was visiting with her mother and aunt and they were our next door neighbors.

 http://imgur.com/FJWFr,Bu5bJ,gOAaKhttp://imgur.com/FJWFr,Bu5bJ,gOAaK#1

We partied pretty late with them one day and spent the afternoon at the beach hanging with them, getting drunk. They later told us that they never knew Americans could be like we were, so nice.

They opened up they're whole vacation to us.

They were staying a night shorter than us, and told my cousin and me that when we got to San Jose to come to their house and we could crash the night, wake up and have breakfast with them before the Grandmother, Abuela, said she would drive us to the airport.

On seeing our friends leave, our group started to get sentimental. The girls had spent 2 months in costa rica in the teachers school of emersion living with familys and were next off to Peru to teach english. We all decided we would have a final dinner together, suck it up and goto a local restaurant.

We didn't get out of our room till about 7 pm, and it was starting to get dark. FYI, Manuel Antonio after dark is a whole other world.

All the safety in numbers of tourists during the day and street vendors has vanished. All that remains are some locals and a lot of bums.

We arrived at the restaurant to find out they close at 7pm! Bummed out, and starting to be harassed (The girls were dressed lovely for dinner) We turned around to walk back to our rooms.

There is a place in the road, where it splits for a tiny circular turn around. It passes right by our hotel, and loops back up to the main road. We decided we would take the low road, walk under the canopy and listen to the ocean on our walk back.

At that point a stranger with capri pants, no shirt, sun dried skin and a curly head of hair, starts running down the street our direction, chasing a car as it over takes us on the road, and passes us. The girls were oblivious anything was suspicious, but my cousin and I started signaling and saying our "safe" words to communicate the alert.

He was walking like what he imagines he looks like drunk, because it a appeared to me to be him pretending to be drunk. At least that's what I thought as he was stumbling up on us to maybe appear docile enough to catch us off guard and grab someone until he got what he wanted.

(When we sense something is a red flag, we start talking about our code word. In this case it was "rock". )

The car passed us sure enough, but when the curly haired guy ran up on us, he slowed and his body language faced us somewhat. It was enough to catch the girls off guard. We all started to fast walk and "act normal, stay calm" and headed to our little low road pass.

When Curly caught up to the car, it stopped. It was slowing down when he passed us running, and he looked back a few times in our direction while talking in the car.

The car finally sped off, and Curly walked back down the road, not a bit drunk looking as he had pretended before.

He continued his way down the path back towards the restaurants as we made our way opposite towards the narrow low road. Photo here seen the next day of low road: http://imgur.com/FJWFr,Bu5bJ,gOAaK#2

The road was pitch black, and as we started inside, a car creeped very slowly down the path our direction, almost stopping but never slower than a crawl.

I instantly felt the Spidey sense and looked to my cousin to see what he was seeing. One of the girls then crossed the street. Right in front of the car as it was approaching, still about 20 feet ahead. So then my cousin, in keeping calm, also crosses the street. I crossed the street too but surprisingly, the other girl, K, stayed on the left side of the road. I followed my cousin, and motioned to her to come but she just kept on obliviously until the car came in between us and her, headlights blinding somewhat until it separated us and then it slowed again.

It freaked us out when it happened and I knew something was different, the car crawled very slowly forward and I could see K hopping now, and then out of pure instinct, she finally screamed, letting out the most blood curdling yell I've ever heard in my life. She was hopping backwards from what I could see and I thought she was being run over and dragged under some unfortunate clipping of the front tire well. Her scream was completely unintelligible and i assumed she was in unimaginable and excruciating pain. I got in front of the car and yelled stop, with my hand out, thinking somehow this benevelont driver didn't notice, but it kept moving forward, so I jumped on the hood and held on by the windshield wipers.

K let out an audible "HELP ME" and after that we all just reacted. It was almost a black out event that I remember but can't imagine happening or doing.

I slammed the hood with my hand yelling stop, and when I looked to her, I saw the front door, on passenger side of the car was open, hands reached out pulling on her, and through back seat windows, a lot of arms were in grabbing at her! Surreal I tell you.

Into my pocket I pulled out the first thing I could find, a fist sized, smooth river stone and hurled it as hard as I could directly into the windshield! The car stopped on a beat. K broke free, and the windshield glass spider-webbed a huge circular series of cracks. I thought in that instant I was going to be killed.

What shocked me next was the car completely emptied. All the guys inside, (probably about 5 or 6 guys) jumped out the car and scattered every direction. Mind you it's pitch black, with the exception of the lights emitted from the still on and ajar car.

I can only assume they weren't watching me but pulling at K, when I threw the rock. From the inside it must have appeared to be a gun shot.

When we broke free I grabbed K, who was hyperventilating, and we ran with the other girl, E, until we landed at this spot pictured here:

 http://i.imgur.com/sz0JC.jpg 

My cousin broke off and was trying to run ahead to get help. The girls were terror stricken and did not want to move, and at this point we were only a few hundred yards through a jungle to our room.

We ducked down and hid for a good 15 minutes, as we eventually saw the car flip-a-bitch and tear down the beach towards a small restaurant and then back. Picking up guys the whole time. People yelling. No sign or sound of my cousin. So we stayed low and quiet.

My cousin later told me he was chased at that point by the car.

K was just giving up. She was so terrified she didn't want to move, so we were lurking in bushes and lying on the ground breathing as quietly as we could.

At the above picture where we hid, two men came out. One younger in his 40's, and the other in his 70s, and they had a dog and a shot gun with them. We shit balls and tried to keep quiet, but they knew something had happened and heard us, and were calling out to see if everything was OK.

The girls didn't want to show ourselves but I finally just stood and said "please help us we have been attacked" or something to that nature.

They were very kind, as 99% of the locals I encountered. We described the car, where we were staying and that we did not feel safe.

The younger man, with the gun took off towards the spot in the road with the dog, and the old man walked us back up with a flashlight to the hotel we were staying.

At this time about 5 older men were watching soccer under the porch at the local hostel and they greeted us with concern. (Offered the girls valiums) and called the federally.

One thing you should know, in Costa Rica, there are no Police. There is no army. Just the Federally. And they drive around in Subaru's armed with fully auto assault rifles and in places like Manuel Antonio, they are few and far between. You are own your own out there.

The old men consoled the women and blocked off the main road and watched every car. We knew that it was one way in and out, so the car was towards the park somewhere.

We described the car, decals on the side and windows, and of course, the broken front windshield.

The men all muttered "Alejandro" roughly at the same time and knew the car. They told us there had unfortunately been some problems with this kid lately. (Drugs and rapes of tourists).

The old men wanted to take him out. My cousin finally arrived. The kid was speechless. Like he'd seen a ghost.

When the Federally's arrived they wanted us to come with them into the street and point out potential car's and identify people from the cars. We we'rent interested in being live bait, but were falsely assured by the Federally when one of the guys smiled at our balk and kinda raised his gun.

No luck after a couple hours, so we hoped in their car and drove into town. We saw the Curly haired man from earlier and pointed him out as knowing the car, but he denied it and didn't have papers and the federally just kinda shrugged him off.

The girls were so terrified they asked to go back to the high security hostel in Quepos with a ride from the cops.

We slept that night in our room, very little i admit. We waited till the sun rose to leave our room or unlock the windows. We walked through the whole night that morning, retracing our steps.

Within the week, little K was flying home and abandoning the job in Peru. E, did however stick it out and go down and have a great experience, I later heard.

We finished our trip in San Jose. We met up with our new friends, the family. We took them all out to eat on the last of our loot. They couldn't believe what we told them happened the day they left. We slept the night at their house. In the morning, after having breakfast, Abuela (The grandmother) took us to the airport and we safely returned home.

Pura Vida, I will never forget.

The Adventure of Buying Vinyl in the Senegal

by jchapstick

So we're in downtown Dakar, Senegal, "The Capital of West Africa", a huge, smoggy metropolis where there's desert sand in the streets and goats with saggy teats tied up on the sidewalks. Minarets mark the skyline, and many men dress in robes. With all the tourism, Dakar is also the home of the most persistent, pestering hustler kids in the world, the legendary faux-types. They follow you like crazy, hoping for a bit of change, or more likely, a finder's fee from whatever vendors you might visit in your travels.

We'd been there less than a week, but after just a couple of taxi trips with the car radio blaring, I decided that the Senegalese make my favorite music of all the millions of styles on the continent. The Koranic singing and the surrounding desert have a haunting, lonesome influence on the pop stuff, and the ancient tradition of kora playing makes for wicked electric guitar picking. Especially on those scratchy old 60's and 70's LPs, which sell for a small ransom back home in the West. On the second day of our week-long trip I found some old records at a street stand, and the vendor led me back to his house to peruse a pile of LPs stored outdoors under a tarp. This guy had stuff from all over West Africa, mostly smaller bands I'd never heard of, but bigger names, too, like Franco, Fela, and Ebenezer Obey. There was also a mess of classic disco and dance 12"s, American soul, old Arabic singers and stuff from other French-speaking countries. My appetite whetted, a few days later I decided to brave the central market on foot.

I had already experienced two attempted robberies on the street in Dakar, so this time I left everything of value at the hotel, including my wedding ring. I went out in thin shorts, busted trainers and a t-shirt, with only a record cover in my hand to show what I was looking for, because my French stinks. No surprise, the second I left the hotel I was followed and hounded by a young faux-type, who would never leave my side until I returned to the hotel hours later. The money was in my shoe, 30 bucks or so in Senegalese currency.

After a long walk in the insane heat, we reached Sandaga market, found a CD seller, and showed him my album cover. In American-accented English, the CD seller said smoothly, "Oh, for that kind of thing you have to go to the Black Market." But he looked at me like I was an idiot for wanting records in the first place. Good sign. Imagine. This is a street market in central Dakar, Senegal, a city where the vast majority lives in tin-roof slums with open sewers. In this market there's total chaos in every direction, thousands of people buying and selling everything from a live chicken to a translucent toilet seat. Nobody's paying taxes on any of this informal commerce, and yet one of the sellers tells me to go to the "Black Market"!?!?! I'm like, 'If this guy calls it the Black Market, it must really be the Black Market.' So I am a little scared, but the hustler kid shows me the way.

We walk another ten minutes through the heat, trash, livestock and traffic to find it--a whole city block of shanty buildings and narrow alleys oozing grey water, little kids covered with mud, a totally fucking horribly scary shithole. Salle de Vin, I think they called it.

We approach the entrance and I am just mobbed by young, loud, dirty, stoned and/or drunken crazy-looking dudes, asking me what I need, literally shoving each other out of the way to get my business. I show them the record cover and they start bickering over who's going to get what part of the sale, who's going to lead me around, what size of a cut my faux-type is going to get, etc. Heated discussion. I lean on a car to wait for them to figure it out. Eventually, what I guess is the Main Dude of the Black Market emerges from out of the spooky entrance, a cigarette in his mouth and an ice-cold look in his eye. He looks me up and down, tells the other guys to lay off and leads me into the center of the block, which is like the freakiest walk I have ever taken.

There's broken and salvaged crap everywhere, scrap re-bar and wood with nails sticking out, cast-off plastic parts of old appliances, dirty piles of cloth, whatever. There's no electricity, so everything's dark except where the sun peeks in. The odor is noisome, as probably dozens of people live and defecate here. The place is like the Senegalese version of a thrift store, where various private scroungers hawk their used furniture, used washing machines, you name it. But this being a country that's 95 percent Muslim, there's also a little baby mosque in there, and guys praying.

We get into the inner sanctum, which is a furniture factory of sorts, where the Main Dude has a crew building couches and coffee tables. It's actually kind of nice in the middle there, with all the new furniture to sit on. And it's great to get out of the insane heat, but still my senses are screaming for me to run out of here and never look back. I have definitely given my self over to forces beyond my control. Everyone is yelling at each other, looking at me like a piece of meat. The Dude offers me a cigarette, which I refuse politely. He sends someone to get me a stick of gum and proceeds to roll himself a thin joint. He doesn't offer, but I am in no mood to be stoned, anyway.

By this time I am thinking there's no way I am getting out of here with any of my possessions. I am also thinking, if I get out of here in one piece, this will be a great story. There's like 5-10 people milling around staring at me, yelling at each other and me in Wolof and French, looking hella menacing, while the main Mafioso and I are negotiating prices, him totally stoned, running these dudes like they're his personal army.

Senegalese are GENIUSES at the price war, unfortunately, and this was a conversation seriously impaired by the language barrier, even with the translation services of my young hustler friend. So despite my Herculean efforts, I end up agreeing--after like 15 of the longest minutes of my life--that I will pay him an exorbitant 12 bucks apiece for the records. Triumphant, he sends his minions off in all directions.

After a few minutes they start coming back one at a time with various bags and boxes of records in all states of disarray, mildew and fucked-up-edness. But in the business of digging for 40-year-old records in one of the poorest places on Earth, you can't care about condition, and I am thrilled to be seeing the prize at last. I go through the bags and boxes as fast as I can. Like any other pile of records, this one is 95% crap: bad 80's French singers, The Best of Nana Mouskouri, big band reissue box sets, Paul Mauriat, Olivia Newton-John, and the like. But there's also a good measure of West African originals. I pull out about 10, knowing I can't afford them all at his price. There are some real finds in there, including two copies of the same Orchesta Baobab LP (one broken) and some other 60's and 70's Senegalese things, a hot-looking record by a group from Guinea-Bissau, even an early LP by this Haitian guy Coupe Cloue, who I've been looking for forever.

I take off my shoe, pull out my sweaty money and buy the few records I can afford. Having gone this far, I am really bummed I can't get the other 5 or so that are in my pile. I'm also kinda paranoid, still not convinced that these guys are going to let me leave without some kind of struggle. But since I have nothing to lose, I ask the Dude if he'll just let me have the other ones as a gift. The hustler kid helps me convince him that nobody is ever going to come along again asking for old LPs, and he seems to see the point.

But then he yells, "Do you have any more money?" all angry. I tell him no, which is the truth, and he barks, "Stand up!" I comply and turn out my empty pockets. Get this: the dude fucking frisks me! While he's got his hand between my legs, I'm thinking, "Man, I am so glad I don't have anything else of value." Clearly the records are meaningless to him, just a means to the ultimate goal of cleaning out this dumb-ass foreigner.

But in the end, he did show a refreshing bit of humanity, giving me the other records for free, out of the kindness of his heart. I ended up with about 12 of them all told, total gems, if dirty and scratched, with water-damaged covers. We both agreed that we wished we could speak English (him) and Wolof (me) so that we could have a real conversation. On my way out he even took pity and gave me back enough of my money to catch a taxi. I gave the faux type a ride back to the hotel so he could find another mark.

Love and Low Self-Esteem

How being in love feels for someone with low self-esteem

by itchypoop

So firstly you see someone, and there's that spark, there's something that tells you that you should go for it. So you do, even though so many other times you would have just told yourself that there's no point because nobody will ever like you.

But you go ahead and put your self out there, which is pretty rare in itself. And then somehow, for some reason, it actually works and you get along. It's so rare that someone would show some genuine interest in you, well at least in your eyes it is. So you hold on to it, you keep trying to ignore that voice in your head that you're not worth a damn.

And I'd like to say that it goes smoothly, but it doesn't. You second guess yourself, wondering if she's actually into you or if she's just going along with it. Like so many others. You want to just be happy and go with it, but you don't, and you just realise the only person you've got to blame is yourself. You throw yourself into making sure it works, because it's one of the few things you've got that might work out for the best, that might make you feel like you're not a complete fuckup.

But eventually, after months and months of second guessing yourself you finally get to a point where you're comfortable and you're in love. Where it's just working.

And it's just nice.

It's really, really, really nice.

You start to think that you're actually better than you give yourself credit, after all, if someone else can love you dearly, surely that means there's something to love.

And then it's just a week or two where someone is busy and you don't meet up. It's the other person forgetting to text back, or losing a phone or something that's actually rather innocent.

And that brings everything back. It's back to you thinking that there's something wrong with you, inherently wrong with you. And you feel like shit for a while, until there's some sign that you're just being stupid and there's no problem. Maybe it's a cycle, maybe it'll get better next time around and you'll actually have some lasting change.

I just don't know at the moment.

So it's easier to fall in love when you think you're shit. But it's a bit of a rollercoaster, and in my experience you keep second guessing yourself that he/she's actually in to you, because your instinct is to think that you're not worth a damn, and it takes a lot to break out of that. That's not to say that you shouldn't try to find someone, just that it's really tough at times.

The trick, for me at least, is knowing when you're in a bad place because of your low self esteem and making sure that you don't fuck anything up because you're being an idiot.

What it is like to date someone with low self-esteem

by bakonydraco

it may be helpful to know and understand how incredibly draining and hurtful it can feel to be dating someone with low self esteem. When you fall head over heels for someone, you love them for who they are, embrace their strengths and accept everything else. To have your love for someone questioned early in a relationship is natural, but to be continuously questioned, no matter how long you've been dating, no matter how thoughtful you are, no matter how much you sing their name from the rooftops and get up early to make them breakfast is soul-crushing.

First it's hurtful because it feels like they don't value your love, because you loving them doesn't make them feel special. Then you start to question if there actually is something wrong with them; if they keep questioning if you really love them, maybe there really is something wrong with them. These two can be overcome with strength and maturity, but what's really difficult is the realization of the possibility that it's possible, no matter what you do, no matter how long, they will never fully accept that you will love them, and that you're facing a life-long mission of convincing the person you're madly in love with that you actually love them.

For all of these reasons, many people make the hard but reasonable decision to break up with someone with low self-esteem. Ironically, the fear of being broken up with causes the break up, and often reduces self-esteem even further.

After my first long relationship with someone with low self-esteem, I gradually started to lose much of my self-worth, and vowed never to date someone without self-esteem until I was mature enough to handle it. As I've matured, I've come to learn that everyone has things that they are insecure about, and that's okay. Part of being in a healthy relationship is accepting your partner for their strengths and insecurities, and helping build through them, while at the same time recognizing your own insecurities, and actively working on tearing them down. If you do not work to fight your own insecurities, you can't expect anyone to help you. And if you do not try to love yourself, you can't expect anyone else to love you either.

It's incredibly difficult to be someone with low self-esteem, but it's just as hard to be in a relationship with a person with low self-esteem. None of this can be overcome over night, and takes a lot of time, work, and love. I firmly believe that love can be found by anyone, and it is a life-long commitment of work.

Letters from Teddy

Author unknown

As she stood in front of her 5th grade class on the very first day of school, she told the children an untruth. Like most teachers, she looked at her students and said that she loved them all the same. However, that was impossible, because there in the front row, slumped in his seat, was a little boy named Teddy Stoddard

Mrs. Thompson had watched Teddy the year before and noticed that he did not play well with the other children, that his clothes were messy and that he constantly needed a bath. In addition, Teddy could be unpleasant. It got to the point where Mrs. Thompson would actually take delight in marking his papers with a broad red pen, making bold X's and then putting a big 'F' at the top of his papers.

At the school where Mrs. Thompson taught, she was required to review each child's past records and she put Teddy's off until last. However, when she reviewed his file , she was in for a surprise.

Teddy's first grade teacher wrote, 'Teddy is a bright child with a ready laugh. He does his work neatly and has good manners... He is a joy to be around..'

His second grade teacher wrote, 'Teddy is an excellent student, well liked by his classmates, but he is troubled because his mother has a terminal illness and life at home must be a struggle.'

His third grade teacher wrote, 'His mother's death has been hard on him. He tries to do his best, but his father doesn't show much interest, and his home life will soon affect him if some steps aren't taken.'

Teddy's fourth grade teacher wrote, 'Teddy is withdrawn and doesn't show much interest in school. He doesn't have many friends and he sometimes sleeps in class.'

By now, Mrs. Thompson realized the problem and she was ashamed of herself. She felt even w worse when her students brought her Christmas presents, wrapped in beautiful ribbons and bright paper, except for Teddy's. His present was clumsily wrapped in the heavy, brown paper that he got from a grocery bag. Mrs. Thompson took pains to open it in the middle of the other presents. Some of the children started to laugh when she found a rhinestone bracelet with some of the stones missing, and a bottle that was one-quarter full of perfume. But she stifled the children's laughter when she exclaimed how pretty the bracelet was, putting it on, and dabbing some of the perfume on her wrist. Teddy Stoddard stayed after school that day just long enough to say, 'Mrs. Thompson, today you smelled just like my mom used to.'

After the children left, she cried for at least an hour. On that very day, she quit teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. Instead, she began to teach children. Mrs. Thompson paid particular attention to Teddy. As she worked with him, his mind seemed to come alive. The more she encouraged him, the faster he responded. By the end of the year, Teddy had become one of the smartest children in the class and, despite her lie that she would love all the children the same, Teddy became one of her 'teacher's pets..'

A year later, she found a note under her door, from Teddy, telling her that she was the best teacher he ever had in his whole life.

Six years went by before she got another note from Teddy. He then wrote that he had finished high school, third in his class, and she was still the best teacher he ever had in life.

Four years after that, she got another letter, saying that while things had been tough at times, he'd stayed in school, had stuck with it, and would soon graduate from college with the highest of honors. He assured Mrs. Thompson that she was still the best and favorite teacher he had ever had in his whole life.

Then four more years passed and yet another letter came. This time he explained that after he got his bachelor's degree, he decided to go a little further. The letter explained that she was still the best and favorite teacher he ever had. But now his name was a little longer.... The letter was signed, Theodore F. Stoddard, MD.

The story does not end there. You see, there was yet another letter that spring. Teddy said he had met this girl and was going to be married He explained that his father had died a couple of years ago and he was wondering if Mrs. Thompson might agree to sit a t the wedding in the place that was usually reserved for the mother of the groom. Of course, Mrs. Thompson did. And guess what? She wore that bracelet, the one with several rhinestones missing. Moreover, she made sure she was wearing the perfume that Teddy remembered his mother wearing on their last Christmas together.

They hugged each other, and Dr. Stoddard whispered in Mrs. Thompson's ear, 'Thank you Mrs. Thompson for believing in me. Thank you so much for making me feel important and showing me that I could make a difference.'

Mrs. Thompson, with tears in her eyes, whispered back. She said, 'Teddy, you have it all wrong. You were the one who taught me that I could make a difference. I didn't know how to teach until I met you.'

This story is fiction.