So, around ten years ago, and this continued for several years, but I used to go to Barnes & Noble every Friday with my mom because she was looking after younger kids and she would take them there for story time.  And this was at the height of the Twilight craze, so there were knockoffs coming out left and right, all over the place. In fact, for a very long time, the Barnes & Noble that we went to had an entire shelf in the teen section that was just labeled Paranormal Romance, and it was just full of nothing but Twilight knockoffs. And I read a bunch of them, okay? It was rare that I would read the entire thing, but I would pick it up, read like 40, 50 pages, and usually I'd get bored by that point and just put it back. So I read a lot of these things, and I gotta say that when I found out Hillary Duff wrote a series of books, I was kind of intrigued. When I found out that they were Twilight knockoffs, I thought, oh dear, here we go. But having now read all three of these, I can confidently say that Elixir is the worst Twilight knockoff in existence. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. For those who don't know, Hillary Duff was a somewhat prolific child actor a long time ago. She had a show called The Lizzie McGuire Show, which some of you might have seen, and then they made a movie off of that called The Lizzie McGuire Movie. She had a musical career for a while, and I thought that she had kind of just disappeared once she entered her 20s, which honestly, by the standards of child stars, that's definitely a good thing because a lot of them just wind up doing cocaine. But I found out that she is also still doing stuff. She still does charity work. She still has a TV show called Younger, which I've never seen, but it's several seasons in so it must have some sort of audience. And anyways, the point is, at one point, she was an author.  There will be no in between. And well, yeah, like I said, it's the second one. So I don't know, enough rambling. Let's just talk about this specifically, and this is going to be full of spoilers for the whole series, so if that bothers you, if that bothers you, get over it. So the main character of the story is named Clee Raymond, or Clea Raymond, Clea Raymond.  I've never seen it before. I don't know, whatever. She's a 17-year-old girl who is totally not a self-insert for Hilary Duff, and her father is a famous surgeon who, like, okay, here's the thing, being a famous surgeon to me would basically mean that he'd be well known within the medical community. Like if he's a very good neurological surgeon, great, a lot of other doctors would know him, but your average person probably wouldn't know him. But in the book it treats it like, yes, the average person does know who he is, and I'm just, okay, that's weird. And her mom is a senator in the United States Congress, which, again, in her own circle she'd be somewhat famous, and the average American person would probably know more about a senator than some surgeon, but again, Clea is repeatedly recognized as being Senator Weston's daughter in these books.  Did I mention that Hilary Duff was famous when she was a kid? So anyways, the story picks up around a year after Clea's father goes missing. Like, he went off somewhere and just went missing, no one knows what happened to him, and by this point she's accepted that he's most likely dead.  The story starts with Clea and her friend Reina just hanging out in Paris on vacation before they enter their senior year of high school, which, okay, fine, they're from a wealthy family, that's fine, whatever, it's not a big deal. But then a picture gets taken of Clea, and in the background you can see this mysterious dark figure just standing there, and she's like, whoa, that's kind of creepy. And then she goes through some older photos that she has with her in them, and she notices that in the background pretty much all of them have this guy there. And so at first she thinks that it's a stalker, which is a reasonable conclusion to come to, but she also notices that in some of them this dude is just floating in the air, and he's also in pictures of her when she was like a baby and stuff, which is extremely odd. And so after talking to one of her friends, a guy named Ben, who is older than her, and even though he's only like 20 or 21, he already has a PhD in mythology and stuff, which I'm not even going to go near that, because if I talk about every stupid thing in these books we're going to be here all day, but she talks to him about it, and eventually he admits that, okay, her dad also noticed that this guy was there, and he had no idea what he was. He was some sort of spirit or demon or whatever, but eventually he figured that, okay, well, he's been there forever and he isn't doing anything, so I guess it's fine. Ben also admits that her dad was looking for the elixir of life, which, okay, kind of dumb, but you know what, this book's called Elixir, we had to have an actual reason for it being called Elixir. And around this same time, Clee starts having weird dreams, okay, weird dreams where she is not herself, and the mysterious dark man that is showing up in all of her photos is also there, and there in some sort of relationship. But this happens in multiple different ways, like in one instance she is a singer in a Speak Easy in the 1920s in Chicago, in another one she's some noble woman that lives in England in like the 16th or 17th centuries, and there's like I think four or five different versions of that, but every time, even though she is different, the mysterious dark man is the same, which is a little odd, and again, this is the beginning of the story where things are actually somewhat intriguing, but don't worry, that won't go on for long. So Clea and her friend Ben eventually just go on vacation to Brazil because she's rich and she can do shit like that, and while they're there, she just happens to run across the mysterious dark man on a beach, except he's real now, and so Clea wanting answers decides to run after him, but while she's running after him, she gets caught by these people who she thinks are gangsters at first, and honestly this is probably the stupidest part, one of them recognizes her as a senator's daughter, they just say, hey look, it's that senator's daughter, I'm like, you're in Brazil, okay, how many of you in my audience, how many of you recognize senator's kids, okay, do you know what Ted Cruz's kids look like, no you fucking don't, so I don't know, anyways, her and Ben escape from the gangsters, they run off into the jungle along with the mysterious dark man, his name is Sage by the way, and they hide out in this place, and while they're hiding out there, they talk to him, they demand some answers, and eventually he gives them some answers, which, oh boy, let's get into that, so apparently Sage is 500 years old, alright, he drank the elixir of life at one point and now he's immortal, seems straightforward, except that also his soul is like bound to Claire's, and she was his girlfriend 500 years ago in Italy, which she did have some dreams about, and she's just been reincarnated every 100 years, but every 100 years she also dies because she's mortal, and Sage is immortal, and look, the point is, Sage is immortal, and she's getting reincarnated, their souls are tied together, okay, sounds fine, and it turns out that Sage also met Claire's dad while he was looking for the elixir of life, and so after talking a little bit more they decide, okay, let's go look for Claire's dad, and he, the last place that they know if he went to was in Japan, so they're like, okay, we're gonna head to Japan, so they fly back to the US, and they book a flight to Japan, but it doesn't leave for another day, so the book spends a pretty substantial time, or amount of time, with just Ben, Clea, Sage, and Reyna hanging out in a hotel, and at one point Sage and Glitterus go off to get some snacks for the rest of them, and then while they're in the car she just pulls over and immediately jumps in Sage's lap, and then they start making out, and then they have sex, which don't worry, by the way, it's mentioned that Sage got a condom because he thought this might happen, which I want to make fun of that more, but honestly like it seems reasonable there was some tension there, and he wanted to be responsible, so you know, whatever, I'm fine with that, but then they both immediately profess their love for each other, and I just... okay, so the thing about all those Twilight knockoffs is that almost universally the characters say, I love you way too fast, like they've known each other for only a couple of weeks usually, but they usually, at the very least, meet in circumstances that are you know dangerous and hectic, and so their emotions are running high, so it's kind of understandable that they would feel that way, it probably wouldn't last that long, but it's understandable that they would feel, okay yes I do love this person at that point in time. Sage has known Clea for two fucking days, okay, and Clea has known Sage for two fucking days, I don't care if you've been dreaming about him, or if you feel some sort of weird connection, having them say, I love you that quick is just stupid, there's no way around it, like that I really wish I could find other ways to describe it, other than no it's just stupid, but I think it speaks for itself there, so they head to Japan and they find the last place where Clea's dad was, and it's a hidden area in a mall in Shibuya, and oh by the way, Clea is recognized by passerby while she's walking around, because I guess young people in Japan are really big fans of the children of United States politicians, we're just cool, but anyways they go there and they find this like mummified lady who's still alive hiding in the walls, and her name is Magda, and she was Sage's old fiance back in Italy 500 years ago, but she's still alive, but she didn't have the elixir of life, she apparently her mother was a mystic and cast a spell on her so that she would live forever, but she would continue to age, and my first thought when I read that was, oh okay there's other types of magic beyond the elixir of life, well this this might be kind of interesting, let's see where this goes, it never goes anywhere, like I really mean that, like throughout the second and third books there's basically no other talk of mystics or magic or magic of any sort outside of the elixir, and I'm honestly taken aback that this story could bring something like that up and then just never mention it again, the characters never bring it up again, like I have no idea how it's supposed to work, like they didn't even do the absolute bare minimum on how to make this make sense, it's kind of beautiful in its own way, and I didn't mention this earlier because I kind of forgot, but I mean the book kind of forgot too, but there are actually two different groups that are after Sage, we're just gonna call them cursed vengeance and the saviors, now basically in Sage's backstory, which is revealed completely with Magda, his backstory is that he was just some nobleman who lived in Italy about 500 years ago, and he was part of this secret society which had a couple vials of the elixir of life, and they kind of just hung around and didn't actually drink it or anything, and they didn't know where it came from, and a lot of them thought it wasn't even a real elixir of life, but they just sort of had it and played around with which, okay cool, whatever, I can buy that a bunch of rich assholes would do something like that, but the thing is his girlfriend, who was the lady that Clea was, and then she got reincarnated, and his other friend also found out about it, and he told his other friend about it, his friend got a gang of people together, they stormed the place, they killed everybody, they stole the elixir, and during the fighting they actually stabbed Magda, who she did live, but Sage thought that she was dead, and so when they find her he's very surprised. It's not that important to the story at all, so I don't even know why I mentioned it, but the point is yeah, and Sage gets stabbed as well, but they force him to drink the elixir of life, and then they tie him up in everything, and they notice, oh hey he's healed, so they flee the area and tie him up in a barn, and they basically spend many weeks torturing him to test how well the elixir works, it works very well, it's a you know standard immortality, you get stabbed, it heals, you get set on fire, it heals, and so you know after a while Sage manages to escape, he kills a couple of them, and then they run off, and those guys descendants, the descendants of those guys who stole the elixir, become a group called Cursed Vengeance, and in the modern day they're after Sage, and the family members of the other people who were, I don't know like the secret society that was looking after the elixir and playing around with it, their family members became the saviors, and both of those groups are looking for Sage, but for different reasons, Cursed Vengeance, they actually don't explain that in this book, I'll get into that in the second one, but the saviors just kind of want him so that they can make more elixir and become more, so Magda shows them all that, and then she shows them the other lives that Cleia and Sage have lived, but it turns out that every time it's happened there's been another dude who's been involved with Cleia who she then leaves for Sage, and that dude gets angry, and his anger in some way leads to her death, so like for example the first one was when he brought the gang in to steal the elixir, she got killed in the fighting, another one was where he accused her of witchcraft, she got burned at the stake, and then another one was where he was a gangster, and she left him for Sage, and so he just shot them both, but obviously Sage was immortal so he lived, and it turns out that Ben was actually being reincarnated over and over again, and his soul is also tied to Cleia's, so in other words his destiny is to be reborn every hundred years and then get cuckolded by the same guy over and over again, somebody actually wrote this, and then finally Magda shows them a little vision of Cleia's dad coming to meet her and talk to her about the elixir of life a little bit, and then she apparently also told him about the soul connection and how it is destined to die, and her dad like freaks out a little bit, he's like okay I need to break the connection, and then he leaves, so I just want you to remember that they have confirmation that he's still alive, and anyways Magda then tells them that okay the only way to break the connection is for Sage to die, so she gives them this special dagger which apparently can kill him, but he has to wait until midnight on a full moon and then plunge it into his heart.  There's basically nothing in here that is redeemable for this first book, like at all, and I mean I know I spent a while describing the plot here, but a pretty substantial portion of it is taken up by characters just kind of hanging around and talking and Clee pining after Sage, and also apparently Ben is in love with her. In fact one of the worst lines ever is in this book describing Clee and Ben's relationship. Now there was a picture of them taken where she wasn't looking, but Ben was looking at her, and she's talking to Reina about it, and then apparently Reina can tell just from looking at him that he's in love with her, and okay, but then this happens, it could just be the picture I said, they caught him at a weird moment. Yeah, a weird moment when he thought no one was looking, so he showed how he really felt. I gave Reina the phone back and shook my head. Ben and I are like brother and sister, that's gross. Hey, I read Flowers in the Attic, it was kind of hot.  Like that line alone kind of cements this as one of the worst books I've ever read, but honestly for the most part it's just boring. There's like almost nothing happening in here, because even like all that stuff with Sage and finding out about the backstory and everything, that's like the last 50 pages of the book, you know, and this is it's not a particularly long one, it's only a little over 300 pages, but still the majority of it is just people kind of hanging around and not doing much. Even in the worst Twilight knockoffs that I read before, there was some sort of actual plot there. You know, even in Twilight itself, like there were evil vampires that they were fighting. Okay, there was an actual conflict in which people could die and they could lose things that they loved, so there were stakes involved. Now, that's not to say I think Twilight is particularly good, it's not, but like at least there was an attempt there. This one has nothing. So now we move on to devoted book two, and this one is the longest. It's only 350 pages though, and well it's kind of in the same category as the first one where a pretty substantial portion of it is just people hanging around doing stuff, but you know let's get into it.  And I know what you're thinking, you're thinking oh I thought James said they don't really do anything else with magic in this series. They don't, believe me I'll get to that soon enough. But so that happens, and while all this is going on, Reina has a new boyfriend named Niko, we'll get to him later, and her mother has an assistant named Suzanne, and Suzanne appears to be into Ben, and Klaaz feels that Suzanne is more attractive than her, and she so she sees her as a romantic rival and as a sexual rival, and so immediately when I read that I thought okay so Suzanne is gonna be a bad guy, like they weren't even being subtle about it. I was thinking okay Suzanne is gonna be a bad guy. If she's a female character who poses any sort of threat to the main female character, then yeah she's she's gonna be a bad guy at some point. Turns out I was wrong, she isn't, but they also just kind of drop her after a certain point in the story, so. And this book unlike the last one which was just told from Klaaz's point of view, this one is actually split between her and another person named Amelia. Now Amelia is one of the psychic family that appeared to Klaaz at the beginning, and it turns out through her backstory which takes up around, I don't know, a quarter of the book, like it's not that much. It turns out that she was is actually 2,500 years old. Her and her family also drank from the elixir of life. And while I will say that these segments aren't good they are better than the rest of the book by a fair margin because it mentions that she was from ancient Greece, but like they actually call it ancient Greece. You know like if you're gonna do that just say in the land we were born in the land that is now called Greece or something like that or we were born in Achaea or something. Come on guys. But anyways her grandfather went on an expedition way out into the wilderness into like Ethiopia area and he got separated from his group but he found this little pool of what he found out later was the elixir of life and so he took a sample of it and he was able to find his way back home and he used it to like bring animals back from the dead and all that sort of stuff but nobody believed him and then one day Amelia when she's only seven years old just drinks the whole thing and then her family's like well she's gonna live forever we don't want to leave her alone so they go out they find the pool of the elixir of life and they all drink from it so that they all become immortal and but they drink the whole thing like it disappears and it's not like a spring that bubbles up they dig and dig and they can't find any more and the thing about that is that that's not a terrible way of introducing the elixir like it can be this mysterious thing that we don't know where it is or where it came from or even really how it works and I would actually kind of like that you know leaving that element of mystery there would be cool but that raises the question of where did those other guys where did that secret society that sage was a member of in Italy where did they get the elixir of life like if this was the only place to get it and that's gone now where did they get it and for that matter how do they know how it works if this one family of four people is the only people that have ever drank from it I don't know so you know they live as immortals for a very long time and things are great but then more recently just a couple of years before this all starts it turns out that basically the elixir is kind of wearing off so their bodies are no longer working properly but their minds are still fine so basically what it will eventually come down to is that they won't be able to see or move or anything but their minds will still be active so they'll just be sitting there in the dark for all eternity and they're like well that sucks so let's try and get some more elixir ourselves and so there's really no good way to put this they develop psychic powers by just thinking really hard like that that's the thing about it is okay this this series has magic already if they just had been practicing magic it so that they were able to like project their minds outplaces and move stuff around and show other people dreams and stuff that would be fine okay but instead they have it so that their her Amelia's grandfather in fact I don't think any of these people get any names other than Amelia I think it's just Amelia and then grandfather mother and father but anyways her grandfather just one day says you know if we practice really really hard we'll be able to have psychic powers so we can still go around places while our bodies are not moving and for starters that's just it doesn't quite fit with this setting you know like the idea of psychic powers in this manner is a little bit different from magic at least it feels different from magic and so it just doesn't quite mesh with this setting it feels very anime and on its own it might have been okay but it just clashes with the tone that this is setting not to mention that they just straight-up admit that they don't know how the powers work at all like listen to this unlikely but not certain that was the thing with our psychic powers it was hard to say what we could and couldn't do it changed something we could easily do one day might be impossible the next or something one of us had never been able to do could suddenly be simple that is just Hilary Duff coming straight on looking at the camera and saying these powers are just a plot device and granted I've read stuff where the powers are just a plot device before like they can just do whatever they need to at that point in time but I've never seen somebody just admit it so anyways Amelia and her family need to get more elixir of life and it turns out that the best way to do that is by allowing the saviors to kill sage in that ritual I described before which will then turn his blood into elixir and then they can all drink from it and sweet they're immortal again seems pretty straight forward except Amelia doesn't think that it's right that they should do that and so she's secretly trying to help clalla's this is throughout this the okay that's fine like I said Amelia's parts in this book are the best but that's not saying much so while they're searching for sage Ben and clalla's eventually go looking for cursed vengeance the people who are trying to kill him for some reason and through a long not particularly interesting investigative process they find their hideout and they get captured but cursed vengeance doesn't immediately kill them they just sort of show them around and show them all their training and everything and they explain that yes they are all descendants of those guys who stole the elixir and forced sage to drink it before and it turns out that them and all their descendants have been cursed for hundreds of years like none of them ever live past the age of 30 and the years before that are really nasty like they get horrifying diseases they have awful luck they get in car crashes all sorts of just bad stuff and they want to kill sage because killing him and restoring the elixir to the earth is apparently the only way to lift the curse again how they know this I don't know but cool like cursed vengeance are the good guys now like I know that they were probably trying to do something where the bad guys are just sympathetic but in this case no they just made the bad guys the good guys because sage already kind of wants to die like that's why he was trying to kill himself before and him being alive causes nothing but misery for not only cursed vengeance but for Clea and Ben and anyone else that might be affected by their soul bond so yeah curse of vengeance are the bad are the good guys now hey remember how at the end of the last book the last they knew of Clea's dad was that he was still alive and yeah they never look for him in this one or in the next one like there's really no good place to put that in because partway through the second book in fact just a little ways into the second book she's looking at her dad's grave and just thinking man I miss my dad he's dead like the last time you saw him he was alive he's still out there somewhere that that's what the witch lady told you aren't you gonna look no okay it's almost like the author just decided that that was a dumb plot point and didn't want to expand on it so Amelia shows Clea some more visions of what sage is up to in captivity and apparently his captors are trying to make him fall in love with another girl in order to like break his bond between him and clalla which okay fine not none of the magic is ever explained in this in any way shape or form and like look I know I'm a type of guy that likes to have things explained to me a lot because I find that interesting and not everybody is like that but I would appreciate at least the bare bones bare minimum explanation for what's going on and how this works and how people know that it works like just a little bit a little something I would appreciate so seeing this Clea gets jealous so she takes Ben out somewhere makes out with him a little bit because she knows the psychic family is gonna show that vision to sage and it'll make him jealous or something because Clea has basically no personality in this other than just being kind of a petulant child at times so do you remember how I mentioned that Reina has a boyfriend named Nico well it turns out he's a member of cursed vengeance oh yeah he's cursed and several of his siblings have already died because of the curse and so he wants to fix it and just you know they he talks with Clea a little bit and they agree that like okay we don't need to fight right now but I don't want you to kill sage because I love him I knew him for two days and I love him so much so seeing all that sage decides you know what she'll be better off so he decides to break the bond and allow the saviors to kill him which okay fine whatever and then Amelia manages to give the location to Ben who then tells Clea and then they tell cursed vengeance and they all swarm attack the compound and while they're there there's a gunfight that ensues and it's a race against time you know sage is tied to the altar they're about to kill him at the stroke of midnight all that nonsense and the psychic family is also like throwing around trees and stuff using their powers and at this point I feel like the imagery should be at least kind of cool but it's just not quite clicking yet and I think part of the problem might be that this entire climax takes place over the course of like six pages so during the fighting Nico has this super special magic dagger and he's about to kill sage with it but he just can't bring himself to do it and then Ben tackles him and Nico gets stabbed with it and dies and then while this is going on somebody else grabs the dagger and stabs sage with it and his blood spills out as the elixir of life into a bowl and they're like yes we won but then the bowl spills and all goes to the into the earth and it stops being good so no more elixir no more immortals yay also Amelia is fighting her parents and her family using her psychic powers and I think that she kills all of them and herself it's never made clear what happens and again their powers can kind of just do whatever the plot demands so I don't give a shit but here's the thing when sage's soul was torn out of his body because he was immortal or something it's it was seeking out a new vessel and so it went into Nico's body that's the end of book two devoted so now we move on to book three which is true and this one is the shortest of all of them it's only 287 pages long and I know that the first two books didn't have much plots but this one has just none okay there's there's a climax which lasts about 12 pages at the end but everything other than that is just no so at the beginning they find out that sage now in Nico's body is no longer immortal like the stab that killed him originally has healed up but other than that he's just a normal person now but it's a good thing that he happens to be in a similarly aged body of a man who is also very attractive by Claire's standards so you know that that's nice they can still have a happily ever after or something anyways and it starts off with them trying to tell Reina that Nico is dead and oh by the way this one also has several chapters from Reina's point of view but those are even more pointless than the Amelia ones actually no I will say that whatever else about the Amelia chapters they did they did serve a point to the plot to the story but this one the Reina chapters are mostly just I am sad here's me remembering stuff that the audience already saw but from a different angle but I am sad anyways that they tell her that Nico's dead but she doesn't see sage in Nico's body so she freaks out and runs off and I just want to put this in now that much later in the book like almost halfway through I think they actually she actually sees Nico walking around with Klee and she freaks out thinking that they lied to her that he was dead because he was cheating on her with Claire that's the dumbest fucking thing in a book full of dumb fucking things throughout this entire series so far these books have been horrifyingly boring and extremely annoying at a lot of points but nothing in them has really made me angry up until now because at this point they start realizing that something is wrong with sage that his soul isn't quite taken to his body right and what's going on is that he's having memory lapses like at one point him and Klee go up to her room and eat some dinner and then they leave and come back and the plates are there and he's like hey wait we should eat and she's like we just already we already just ate and sage just completely loses his shit starts yelling at her and then like breaks the plates and okay like at this point it just becomes an abusive relationship because it continues on for a while where sage will forget something she'll remind him of it he'll get very angry start breaking shit and yelling at her and at a couple of points he actually does physically hit her and so she has this I mindset where she's thinking okay it's something wrong with his soul it's not his fault I'm gonna try and fix it and at this point this actually did get really under my skin this actually did anger me a lot because the thing is that this is abusive okay like it's straight-up abusive I mentioned that already and a lot of these Twilight knockoffs like I said I read a lot of them a lot of them do portray an abusive relationship like Twilight itself has Edward trying to cut Bella off from her friends and family trying to isolate her and trying to control her which is obviously not okay but at a glance you could maybe say like okay that's not straight-up abusive because it's not physical this is very blatantly physically abusive and the fact that Clee has this mindset of well that's okay it's not his fault I can fix him it's okay I love him no no get the fuck out right now like the instant that he started breaking those plates the first time that he lost his shit that's when you should have gone because that's indicative of something much much worse and this is aimed at younger people okay this is aimed at teenage girls so the fact that that is being portrayed as romantic just no okay that actually pisses me off a lot so while they're trying to fix him Clee hears about this place which is basically just a cult where you can get a different soul put in your body and so she goes there for a while and she finds out that they don't have much to say but then she finds this one person whose soul actually did get taken out of her body and it was replaced with the soul of Magda the old witch lady from before and oh yeah Magda killed herself it I didn't mention it because it doesn't actually affect anything whatsoever Magda only exists in this story to give exposition so anyways Clee's talking to Magda in her new body and Magda says like oh yeah go talk to the Greeks ooh and that like that's all she gets and then Clee tries to leave the cult but they won't let her and then her friends come back and they're like hey let our friend out and they're like whoa whoa she's here willingly and they're like she's a senator's daughter and they're like oh okay well let yeah let's let her we have to let her go now and under normal circumstances that would make sense like it does make sense like okay this isn't just some random person this is someone who's connected to a powerful politician let's not fuck with that we'll let her go that does make sense but the thing is if Clee was constantly getting recognized all over the place not just in the US but in foreign countries as well why don't these people know who she is shouldn't they have immediately recognized her as well I mean she was there under a fake name but yeah okay so they go back home and throughout all that they discover that apparently there's still an echo of Nico's soul inside of his body which is why Sage's soul can't properly bond with it and why all this other stuff is going on again giving him an excuse for his abusive behavior but just fuck it man we're going past that because I'm just gonna lose my mind at Hillary Duff if that keeps going Hillary what the shit but anyways so they find that out and through some more research Ben discovers a way to get the remnants of Nico's soul out of his body and so he tells them and apparently when Magda was saying help the Greeks get the Greeks what get him to the Greek whatever what she meant was that they have to go to the Boston Commons where there used to be a hanging tree where they used to hang pagans I have not been able to find anything to corroborate that like they did hang people from that tree yes which it's been cut down now but they did used to hang people from that tree and they did hang people for heresy but it was mostly like hey you're Catholic you're not supposed to be Catholic like from everything I found there was no pagans that got hanged there okay whatever so they start the ceremony and as it's going on it switches to Reyna's POV and apparently apparently Ben wrote down his evil plan like I actually posted this on Discord because it was so fucking stupid I'm just gonna read this but everything Ben wrote was about finding ways to get rid of Sage's soul out of Nico's body not to help Nico but to get rid of Sage forever the worst part was the word scrawled in huge dark pen strokes and underlined three times convinced Reyna Nico's soul is in danger to get personal item I was livid so I dropped it but I don't give a shit so in other words Ben literally just wrote his evil plan down in a notebook like yes haha I will kill sage and then clearly the will be mine haha like that that's literally just what he wrote and then her friend found it and then so during the ceremony she just tackles Ben and it's over like like in less than a page it's over and like they send Nico's soul out of his body at that point um so everything's great now and then the epilogue picks up like six months later clear la la la and sage are just living together and she's about to start college and her and Reyna are still friends but Ben is out of their lives and they apparently still talk to him now and again and they ask sage like hey would it be alright if we were friends with him again and sage is like eh I'll just go with what clay is wants to do because it's not like this guy tried to murder you or anything as dumb as this whole book is as dumb as this whole series is the last line is probably the most insulting the last line is please saying because the most important things in life dot dot dot they're eternal I'm like really that is the dumbest like pseudo intellectual pseudo philosophical shit I've read in a long time nothing in life is eternal okay this is a story about immortality at least it's supposed to be a story about immortality and the thing that just about every story about immortality gets right is that immortality would kind of suck okay because you're still living but your loved ones will die and fade away all the things you love will die and fade away it doesn't matter what we're talking about that you love it could be things it could be places it could be institutions it could be people it could be the relationships you have they're not eternal okay and that's another thing about this that I wouldn't say quite angers me but it does annoy me to the point where it's almost anger and that's the way that it portrays romantic relationships and I don't mean like the abusive stuff I already talked enough about that I mean it starts with sage and clouded by la la la having a literal soul connection like they're destined for each other they're meant for each other they can never have anybody else and or they won't be happy and then that that's not how real relationships work okay it's two people or three or four or ten people I'm not gonna judge you but it's usually two people and it's that they mean each other they have stuff in common they like each other they compliment each other's flaws and they make up for each other's weaknesses and they just enjoy being around each other that's the gist of how it romance works that's the gist of how all relationships work really and sometimes that doesn't work out okay sometimes you'll only be together for a short time other times you'll be together for a long time but then you'll realize that one or both of you change and so you split like that's why divorces happen because people once loved each other and now they don't and sometimes it goes until one of you dies and if that's the case great but again this idea that there's a soul connection that you are only meant for one person that you'll never be happy if you don't meet the love of your life when you're 16 I mean again this is aimed at kids this is aimed at teenage girls so I don't like that they did that and then that very last line where it says the best things in life are eternal well obviously they're not okay nothing is eternal like I was already saying and just it's just dumb and it makes no sense and I hate it so for several years now I've said that blood rose rebellion is the worst series I've ever read and that's no longer the case now it is elixir by Hilary Duff that is the worst series I've ever read blood rose rebellion at least had some stuff in there that I could point to and say yeah that was okay like the climax of the final book I pointed to in my review and I said yeah that was all right that was that was okay that was a decent that was decent you know it wasn't great but it did something right and there were a couple of ideas that throughout to the books that though they were usually executed pretty poorly I could at least see what they were trying to do and I could say yeah that's that's neat you could maybe do something with that you would need to get a better writer for it but you could do something there but this just has nothing okay and even like I was saying before twilight and the other clones they at least had an actual plot okay like most of those I didn't find very good but occasionally I would find one that was good because and it was usually because there was a supernatural element like okay there's demons coming out and I'm in and the teenage girl is in love with a demon and he she needs to help him out with fighting the demons cool that's that's fine like that's basically the plot for all of them this one just has nothing okay it might have seemed like there was an actual plot the way I was describing it but that's because I was just describing the events that had actual meaning like if I described everything that happened in these books I'd be here like three times as long and I'd be describing a lot of Clee and men eating at diners and when I'm talking about how twilight has a better plot with higher stakes and then this you have failed completely okay Stephanie Meyer at least had a basic idea on how to construct a story this has none of that and here's the thing Hillary Duff does definitely deserve the blame for why this is bad or at least the lion's share of the blame but she doesn't deserve all of it because celebrities write books sometimes and they're almost universally bad like Steven Seagal wrote one a while ago Sean Penn wrote one a while ago and they're both awful and the reason for that is because they don't need to be good in order to sell like like I said they're celebrities they have they have name recognition they have brand recognition which means that if they just have an idea for a book and they're like oh okay this is it could be a vanity project it could be something that they have actual passion for and they want to do it so I don't I don't blame them for wanting to publish something they will just go to a publisher and the publisher will say like okay since we have the name recognition of this person we won't really need to spend money on advertising or anything so yeah let's just let's just get it out there let's not put any effort into it so they don't need to do things like editing they don't need to do things like multiple drafts and the authors themselves don't need to spend years honing their craft and practicing to get better at it because regular people who become authors that's what they have to do so yeah I can't really blame Hillary Duff because she was kind of screened from the beginning like there's no way that publishers were going to invest more money to make this better when one she has the name recognition and two it was a twilight clone that came out during the height of the twilight craze like it was guaranteed some sales and granted this one wasn't New York Times bestseller but like also a lot of times when celebrities write books at all they usually will buy a bunch of their own copies in order to bump that up and then they'll like give away copies at fundraisers and stuff like political pundits do it all the time like whenever you see Ann Coulter or Bill O'Reilly at the on the New York Times bestseller list that's usually what they're doing but anyways the point is that Hillary Duff was still the one that came up with a lot of this dumb shit in here and she was still the one that was writing a self-insert story because remember I never really described Clee in here because one she has no personality whatsoever I believe I mentioned that a little bit like she's just kind of exists like she likes photography great oh and also just a little dumb bit that I didn't have a chance to mention is that she publishes her photographs under a fake name and that fake name is Alyssa Grande okay first sue somebody secondly they spell it two different ways in the book which again just kind of reaffirms my position that these were not edited and the only description we get of Clee physically is that she has blonde hair blue eyes and fair skin and that's that's it and also on the front cover for this copy the model is literally just Hillary Duff so it's very much just a self-insert type of fanfic thing the difference being that usually those are just published online by some nobody teenager Hillary Duff was 23 when this first book came out you have no excuse girl and that's really all I have to say this is this is just the worst series ever I mean everything about it just everything about it was either boring annoying or rage inducing so it's only a little bit worse than blood rose rebellion but it's still the worst series I've ever read like the worst book I've ever read is still the lovely bones don't worry I don't think anything will ever knock that off its perch but I don't know I guess let this be a lesson to you about I don't know what lesson there is to be gleaned from this but thanks for watching please like and comment and subscribe and all that other stuff I'm supposed to say here um sorry my memories going away I got to go hit my girlfriend later thanks to Christopher Hawkins and Joseph Pendergraft and all my other patrons that you see on here please share this video bye


What comes to your mind when you think of standard written English? Maybe you think of the grammar lessons that you received in grade school or of the language spoken by news anchors on television and radio. Standard written English is taught by many people including many teachers as the correct form of English. However, defining standard written English also known as standard English or SE is actually not that simple. While SE has in the past been treated as the proper way to communicate informal settings including in the workplace in school and in government, social linguists and language experts have long called attention to how the idea of standard English works to strengthen the racial inequalities of our society. This is because as social linguists have shown, the grammar and word preferences of standard English are based on the style of speaking and the language habits most familiar to white college educated upper middle class people. Since standard English is preferred in schools and the workplace, students who are more comfortable with SE conventions are viewed as more academically prepared to achieve, while students who are more familiar with other varieties of English, say black English for example, are erroneously seen as linguistically inadequate and underprepared. These assumptions can lead to discrimination. Linguist Rosina Lippi Greene calls such assumptions standard language ideology which she describes as a bias toward an abstracted idealized homogenous spoken language which is imposed and maintained by dominant block institutions and which names as its model the written language but which is drawn primarily from the spoken language of the upper middle class. Notice that Lippi Greene highlights the bias or preference toward SE that many people have. Indeed, we cannot talk about SE without also talking about how our attitudes about what language variety is standard or proper work to advantage white communities and disadvantage communities of color. English is a language created socially by its users over many many years but there is no organization in charge of dictating the rules of the English language. That means that there is no officially designated standard. The preference for SE in school and work settings is just that, a preference. You may be thinking about the importance of intelligibility, the idea that we must be able to comprehend each other in order to coexist. Yes, intelligibility is an important part of communication. However, SE is not necessarily more intelligible than other varieties of English and it can be very confusing for people who are not familiar with it. Let's compare two sentences in which language scholars discuss the connection between SE and discrimination. The first sentence was written by Black Studies scholar Vershawn Ashanti Young in the book Other People's English Code Machine, Code Switching, and African American Literacy. Listen for how Dr. Young uses traditional academic language what most people probably think of as SE. It is important to recognize that knowledge of SE cannot solve all the problems created by language ideology that extends well beyond the classroom. The second sentence was written by rhetoric and writing scholar April Baker Bell in her book Linguistic Racism, Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy and makes a similar point by uses conventions of SE and of Black English. If you all actually believe using standard English will dismantle white supremacy, then you're not paying attention. Both sentences may be equally intelligible, unless your own language history has given you more exposure to one variety of English over the other. For some people, the academic language might actually be harder to understand that is less intelligible. And notice how the second sentence presents an emotional dimension that the first one does not. Isn't that cool? Recently, more people are learning about the rhetorical richness and communicative value of other varieties of English and public attitudes about SE are starting to change. While many people still consider SE to be the standard, people are becoming more accepting of code-meshing, that is the mixing of language varieties in a single text or conversation, even informal settings like academic writing.


only a couple more weeks in this house. So we've done quite a bit to this place in the last three years that we've lived here. First thing we did was install this new air conditioner. We actually went a little above and beyond. We shouldn't have spent so much money on it, but it is what it is. We could have gotten away with spending a lot last, but we wanted a good air conditioner, so we got a good air conditioner. Now the new owner will have a good air conditioner. That's cool. We put the air conditioner in, we put an HVAC dehumidifier system in the crawl space. We put a new bathtub in. We got that in just this year. We put a new washer and dryer in when we moved here as well. Painted both rooms. Oh yeah, we put the fence in. This whole fence was installed. The chain link fence, the wood fence behind me here, that was there already, but that was the only fence. I had to keep the dogs in, right? So we closed it all off with a chain link all the way around. This gazebo's coming with us. I've got to take that down yet in the next couple of weeks. So this is Thanksgiving weekend when I'm filming this. Yesterday I didn't make a video. It was Saturday yesterday, so I'm filming this today on the Sunday. We had a Thanksgiving gathering in Winnipeg with Brits side of the family. Today we have a family gathering with my side of the family to get another turkey dinner. It's going to be great. Before the family gathering yesterday, we went into Winnipeg and got some new furniture to furniture our new home, because it's more than twice the size of this home and it has two levels. We didn't have enough furniture to fill it up. So we got the coaches we have now are going to go down into the basement there. So upstairs is a living room up there too. So we bought a couch and a love seat coffee table and end tables for the living room upstairs. And our dining room table is obviously for two, maybe four, the one that we have now. It's way too small for a house like that. So we bought a new dining room table as well with chairs to go around it. I wanted to buy a new king size bed too, but we have to measure out our new bedroom. I don't think a king size is going to fit inside our new master bedroom, which is sad because that was one of the one things that I wanted. We might be able to make it work, but we have to get in there first and re-measure it and think about it. We spent enough money yesterday with a new dining set and new living room set. But those things are all being delivered the day after we move in as well. So everything's all fallen into place. Still got to pack everything though. Diesel came to the shop real quick to help me out. I had to fix the visor. Now, the way this visor is connected to the windshield, I've showed you before, the center is actually adhered, adhesed, adhesed. It stuck to the windshield with glass adhesive. Well, it was so windy last week on the way back. It actually ripped that glass adhesive right off the glass and it took little pieces of the windshield too. Not much, but like little chunks. That's how strong that adhesive was, but I obviously didn't use enough adhesive because I used a combination of 60 pound two-sided gorilla tape and some glass adhesive around the edges. Well, this time we went all out. Just glass adhesive, the real good stuff. And I put a lot on there. That thing's not going anywhere. Come with me. Diesel, thank you for your help. I really appreciate it. You wanted to come and hang out at the shop with me and help my tools for me and stuff. Passed me the glue, right? Yeah, you did a good job. So that's, I know, an excessive amount and I'm just gonna leave it like that. Let it dry overnight. Let me get rid of that front-facing screen for you so you don't see that reflection. One second. I lathered it on there. And then when I pinned it onto the windshield, obviously it squished out a bit, right? But that's okay. That's okay. Thing's not going anywhere. This visor will stay from now on. It was so windy. It ripped it right off the window. It's crazy. And that's how this visor is stabilized on here, right? I wish it would have used the factory mounts like most aftermarket visors do. I don't know why this one doesn't. This one's from 12 gauge customs. It's a great visor. Don't get me wrong. It has custom emblems on it. And it was a gift from Bullsnot. And I really do appreciate it. Just the way it was made, most aftermarket visors use the mounts on there. But this one doesn't, this one uses this. That's why you have to use adhesive to stick it to the glass. So if this window ever, this windshield ever breaks or cracks or needs to be replaced, you actually have to break that off of there. So it's stuck there. Oh, worry about that problem when we get to it, right? Oh, well. Okay, I gotta get back home. We also fixed the LED light on top of the cab there. I'll replace that. So that's done. Diesel, you did a great job. I'm proud of you. I hope that holds. I hope it does. Well, we'll see what happens, right? We'll see what happens. I gotta run back home now. You drive in diesel? Good, good. I'm tired. More and more stuff gets piled up here all the time. Stuff that's gonna be going to the house. So it's the next morning. I checked up on my adhesive job on the visor that we did there yesterday earlier in this vlog. And it's rock solid. I don't think there's any way that that visor is gonna rip off again. The only way we're getting that off is when we need to replace the windshield.  It's on there. Let's see what happens. I have a load out in Canora. I've already got my trailer all ready to go. I just gotta go hook up. Head on over there. It's an empty step deck, a aluminum 53 foot trailer. You can go there, put some lumber on it, tarp it and take it down a brainer. And empty it, roll up the tarps, put them on the trailer to tie those down. Go to Shakopee, Minnesota, grab some shingles, tie them down, zip back this way. So let's make some good time. Let's get out there. I got a Timmy's already waiting in the truck. It's not even in the truck yet. It's right here. I got a Timmy's right here. Let's not forget you or you. You guys are all very important. Very important. Let's put you in the truck right now. Put you right there. We're gonna get the keys for old blue. Diesel and the smell of diesel fumes first thing in the morning. So far, so good with my new mount. I think this will hold better because it's like I was telling you before. Before it was a combination, first I put on two-sided Gorilla Tape and then I glued around the outside of it, right?  Stuck it right on there and let it cure overnight. I wish I could have let it cure for about 24 hours, but it was about 12 to 14 hours. Hopefully that'll be enough. It seems to be holding pretty well now. Hopefully it remains that way. We're still in Manitoba. We're headed towards Ontario. We're getting very close to the border here. I just gotta throw a little bit of fuel in my tanks, maybe about 75 to 100 liters. We'll fuel up down in the States. Just gonna top them off just to touch, just to make sure we don't run out of fuel later today. That wouldn't be good. Once we deliver this load tomorrow, I've already told you we're able to go to Shakopee. We'll probably deliver that Wednesday and hopefully avoid any more big wind storms like we had last week that ripped the mount off my windshield. That was some crazy wind. Like not tornado or hurricane level, but yeah, it was enough that it was very annoying. People watching, this isn't the video from the future. American Thanksgiving is next month, I know. Neat, take care, ready for the holiday. Everyone's at home with their families to get a head start on the week to move. That's very exciting and settle into the new home. I've moved out of the house when I was 18 years old since I moved out of my parents' house. I've moved nine times. It's not too big and over the top. I'm gonna put in 75 liters. That'll be good. That would make it a lot more expensive than all the money I would have saved. Buying fuel down there would be spent into fixing my oops. Let's not make the oops. I'm not actually in that big of a rush. I'm in more of a rush to get loaded. I just wanna get the freight on my trailer. And then once the freight's on my trailer, I'm delivering it tomorrow morning. I've still got lots of time to get down there and have a good night and unload it tomorrow. And then my reload appointment in Shakopee isn't till 5 p.m. tomorrow afternoon. We're gonna try to get that bumped up if we can. We'll see. But if it doesn't work out, yeah, 5 p.m. So I got tons of time to get there. Tons of time. I'll probably be there like before noon. We'll see. I gotta work it so that I don't leave Brainer too early because I don't wanna be wasting my E-Log waiting to get loaded, right? I'd rather arrive there when I'm supposed to get loaded so I can just get loaded and keep going, right? Otherwise I lose time. But working with the split sleeper birth rule in the U.S. now that I understand it, it helps a lot in those situations. So there's also that. Let's go throw some fuel in and we'll be on our way. It's about 21 U.S. gallons enough to get us down there. I still have just below half tanks of fuel. This is that Petro Pass that I talk about in Kenora here where people park here overnight all the time but there are signs around the edge of saying no overnight parking. I don't know. You're not supposed to, I guess, but people do. I try not to. Usually if I stay in town here, I have a few other places I can stay. Don't mind overnight parking. I just don't want a risk being woken up in the middle of the night. Turn left on Rabbit Lake Road, Highway 598. Oh, quiet, Karen. I don't want a risk being woken up in the middle of the night. Karen! I don't want a risk being woken up in the middle of the night and told to move or worse, getting a ticket or whatever. I don't think that would happen. You know, it's a privately owned place. If they put up signs, they don't want us there overnight. I respect that. You know, it's not their choice. 200 meters, slide right on. Trans Canada Highway, Highway 17A. That's where I'm going, Karen. I know, I know how to get there. So bossy. Don't go swear at me. Tell you on this road for 11 kilometers. When he saw me merging in, saw his headlights just suddenly pointed the sky when he floored it. Put my clear lookers on. I'm gonna clear view of what's going on. Oh, those are dirty. Dirty. Oh, it wasn't any cleaning. So I'm checked in here. There was three trucks ahead of me when I got here. That were in line. There's three getting loaded. And two at the tarp station with one waiting to get in. So it's pretty busy here. Hopefully everybody knows what they're doing. And tarps efficiently and quickly. Otherwise I'll be waiting in the tarp lineup for a while. Like I said, no big rush now that we're here and checked in. We'll be okay. We'll be okay. It's a holiday today, right? You don't want to push it too hard. So from here, we have six hours of driving south once we're out of here. It's a shame that, you know, we got to tarp it all just to go six hours down the road on a nice, sunshiney, clear day just to untarp it. But just in the off chance that you hit some rain or some dirt, right? Tarping is mostly for winter time because you want to keep that road drive off of everything, right? Especially with this wood. This isn't regular lumber. This is engineered lumber. It's very special. That special purposes was created for a very special purpose, just like you. And so we got to protect it, right? Is that clean now? So hard to get these things clean. You just clean them, you put them on your face and suddenly they're just dirty, magically. Man, these things are scratched up though. Yikes. Before I got these lens wipes, I was pretty careless and was wiping them with microfiber towels, which I thought would be safe because they're soft, right? They wouldn't scratch the lens, it's just soft. Turns out the things that those microfiber towels catch inside them like the grains of dust, those are very hard. They scratch. And now I've got scratches all over my lenses.  Zeiss. Zeiss. Zeiss. Lens wipes, they work pretty good. They also sterilize it too, right? I think it's whatever. Okay, so now we twiddle our thumbs and wait. Hopefully we won't be here all day. Didn't take long and we're off. It's about two hours from the time I got there to the time I left. So it's actually pretty impressed with all the trucks that were there. Things moved along pretty quickly. I'm making my way down the King's Highway 71. Take us towards International Falls, Minnesota and Fort Francis, Ontario. One of my most popular crossings now. Never used to cross here, but with these loads, you go through here all the time. I actually don't mind it. It's nice, there's never any lineups. Everything's closed up, it's Thanksgiving. I wanted a coffee, but I guess we'll have to wait until we get to the US because it's not a holiday in the US today. There's our gift-wrapped present for Minnesota. I hope they like it. I wrapped it myself. I got those bungees back there crooked, didn't I? Well, I hope Minnesota forgives me. So I'm not redoing it now. We can continue going. It's a beautiful fall day. As soon as that sun goes down, it gets cold fast. Minnesota welcomes you, thank you. It was two hours from my pickup to the border here. Now I have three hours down to Brainerd, I guess it'd be a little more than a third in this little downtown. I never see a lot of people on here though, but then again, I usually come through here later in the evening like this, later at night. We're way up here in Northern Minnesota. Is Minnesota considered Midwest? I guess so, right? Yeah, it's gonna be a Midwest state, Northern Midwest. Last time we came through here was just what, a week or two ago? Well, last week. And we were saying how all the trees were still green. Now look at that, like a week later, all the leaves are gone. A lot of them are anyway, happens quick. These trees off to the left are just beautiful, big red trees. We're hoping to plant a new tree next spring in our new backyard. There's already a nice little spot landscape for it. The tree that the previous owners had put in there looks like it didn't make it, it's dead. So we're gonna take that out and plant our own tree in there. We're thinking of putting a weeping willow in there and just watching it grow as our family grows. Maybe take a picture of it together as a family decided every year. We can look back on how it's growing, sort of represent our growing family. We're here in Brainerd and ready to unload. Just gotta wait for them to open. Go around and check all the tires. So if you guys missed the video where I explained why this tire was wearing faster than this one, it's because that inside tire was over inflated. When I got that tire patched, the guy who did the tire repair didn't check the air pressure of this tire and filled that one up 15 psi higher than what this one was. And that's why it wore down. So I lost quite a bit of rubber off that tire, but since then I've equaled out the pressure and the wearing has become even again. So lesson learned, always double check your tire guy when he fixes a tire. I thought that that was sort of just obvious that you gotta make sure that you fill it up to the right pressure. I don't think he asked me either. Well, it could have been an oversight. You know, it was late. I don't hold it against him, he was a nice guy. Now I know double check when you get a tire fixed. Make sure that the tires all are at the same pressure because any uneven pressure will cause uneven wearing. And then you lose money because all that rubber that wore off of there, I don't get that back. It's on the road somewhere. I caught it before it was too big of a problem anyways. So here's my load. It's all gift wrapped for them. Ready for them to open first thing in the morning. This trailer is so dirty. I might wash it on my way home. I was thinking of getting a truck wash anyways. Tomorrow. Or the next day, whenever we go through Fargo, right? Yeah, tomorrow or the next day. I'm thinking I might pay for them to wash this trailer too because this trailer must have gone up north because it's just like filthy, filthy, filthy. Look at the rims here. See if I can get my shadow out of the way. Look at that. We'll see. I don't like paying to wash. Someone else's trailer too often, you know? I don't mind doing it every now and then if I'm gonna be holding on to the trailer for a good while. Cause I like pulling a clean trailer but I'm just gonna be switching to a different trailer. I could probably call and get a PO for it. That I could probably do, I'll probably do that. What a PO is, is a purchase order number.  It's their trailer and they pay for it. But usually if it's just the trailer, I'll pay for it myself. Like I said, if I'm gonna be holding on to the trailer for like two weeks, I don't mind. I don't mind doing that. They do so much for me that the least I can do is wash their trailer every now and then, right? Not every time. I might do it with this one too, you know? Like to give back and I get something out of it too. I gotta pull a clean trailer. We'll see. If I'm gonna be holding on to this trailer for this whole week, yeah, I'll probably get it done. We'll see. I'll talk with that tomorrow. It's time to go to bed though. Time to call the family. Go to bed. It's definitely sweater weather out there. It's almost zero degrees, three degrees Celsius. And that would be, what is three degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit? You don't feel like talking, okay. 37.4 degrees Fahrenheit. And today, when I was filming, this is Thanksgiving in Canada. I'm in the US now, but it was Thanksgiving where I'm from. So I'm gonna say a couple of things that I'm thankful for. I'm thankful for my wife and my son. I'm thankful for our new home that we're moving into. I'm thankful for my family, my mom, my dad, my sisters, my in-laws, my nephews, all of them. I have a really great family on all sides, on Brit's side, on my side, I'm very thankful. Very thankful. So first and foremost, I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful for my friends, thankful for my truck. For the work that I have to do. Of course, I mentioned our new home. I'm very thankful that we were able to pull that off this year. Wasn't looking like we'd be able to do it, but like I said, the stars aligned. And it was made possible for us. You know, it wouldn't have been possible without people coming together to help us. So I'm thankful for that. You know who you are. Very thankful that you helped us make this possible that we could move into this home. And I'm thankful for peace and safety in our region of the world. Living here in North America, we live in what sometimes feels like an impenetrable fortress with our good friends and brothers and sisters, United States right next door and with us on the same continent with a combined military defense force of North America. I'm thankful that I can raise my son in a land that's not at war, where there's no war happening here. I realize there are wars raging around the world. And my thoughts are with you guys out there in Ukraine fighting. My thoughts are with you guys in Israel, Palestine fighting right now. My thoughts are with all the conflicts, all the different people fighting and dying. I just wish we could just find a way so that people could just stop dying much easier said than done, right? Terrible to hear what's coming out of the Middle East now. Terrible to continue hearing what's coming up Eastern Europe. So on this Thanksgiving, I recognize that there are conflicts around this world that are just terrible, but I'm thankful for the safety and security we have here at home. And I wanna remember that that doesn't come for free. That didn't just happen. Many, many people in the past have given their lives, been slaughtered in brutal ways so that we can have the peace and security we have. So without going further into that, like I said, I don't like diving deep into these things because I know these are hot button issues. And I don't wanna start up controversy. I don't wanna start up fights. I just want people to stop dying. So anyways, I hope you sleep well tonight, wherever you are, I hope you're safe. And when you get out on the highways here, please remember to drive safe. Go down below to the comments section, even if you're not Canadian, tell me something you're thankful for today. There's just one thing, what are you thankful for? Maybe we'll do this all over again for American Thanksgiving next month. And you gotta pick something different. So you gotta find something different than that you're thankful for. So if you wanna save the good one for then, okay. But I look forward to reading all your positive comments and hearing all the different things we have around the world to be thankful for. Even when sometimes it might be hard to find something. I know, I believe in you. I'm sure you can find one thing to be thankful for. I'll see you tomorrow.


Hello everybody,大家好!大家好! Welcome to our Virtual Lunar New Year Storytime! My name is An Piat and I'm from West Vancouver Memorial Library. Thanks for joining me today for this special Storytime. We're going to listen to a story and sing lots of songs and rhymes to celebrate the new year. So before we get started, why don't we do a little bit of stretching to warm us up for the party? So the first song we're going to sing today is called Up, Down, Turn, Around. Are you ready? Let's get started! Up, down, turn, touch the sky and touch the ground. Wiggle shoulders, wiggle toes, wiggle fingers say hello. Let's do it one more time, shall we? Up, down, turn, touch the sky and ground. Wiggle shoulders, wiggle toes, wiggle fingers say hello. Awesome! Great job everyone! So now we're all ready to wave and say hello to our families and friends. So in this following song, we're going to wave and say hello in three different languages, including English, Hello, Mandarin, Ni hao, and Cantonese, Ne ho. Are you ready? Let's wave and say Ni hao. Let's wave and say Ni hao. Let's say hello to all our friends. Let's wave and say Ni hao. Let's wave and say Ni hao. Let's wave and say Ni hao. Let's say hello to all our friends. Let's wave and say Ni hao. Let's wave and say Ni hao. Let's wave and say Ni hao. Let's say hello to all our friends and start our story time. Hello, hello, hello, hello. I'm so happy to see you all today. I can't wait to celebrate the Lunar New Year with you. So now we're going to sing a New Year celebration song together. You may want to clap your hands while singing along with me. Here we go. Cheer, cheer, cheer a year. A new one's just begun. Celebrate with all your friends. Let's go have some fun. Clap, clap, clap your hands. The brand new year is here. Singing, dancing, laughing, playing through another year. Great job. Let's sing it one more time. This time let's stem our feet and roll our hands. Are you ready? Let's do this. Stem, stem, stem your feet. A new year's just begun.  Roll, roll, roll your hands. A brand new year is here. If you see a big dragon, don't forget to cheer. Hooray! Big dragon? Can you see a big dragon? Hmm. Oh, I found him. He's hiding behind my legs. Hey, Mr. Dragon. Would you like to come over to join our story time today? Okay, so Mr. Dragon is coming in three, two, one. Hello, hello everybody. Hi, Mr. Dragon. I heard you've prepared something exciting for us today, haven't you? Hmm, great. So Mr. Dragon will like to invite all of you to sing and dance with him. Dragon, dragon, dance around. Dragon, dragon, touch the ground. Dragon, dragon, jump up high. Dragon, dragon, show me a smile. Where's my smile? Dragon, dragon, step your feet. Dragon, dragon, coming down the street. Let's do it one more time. Dragon, dragon, dance around. Dragon, dragon, touch the ground. Dragon, dragon, jump up high. Dragon, dragon, show me a smile. Smile, smile. Dragon, dragon, dragon, dragon, coming down the street. Awesome. Okay, Mr. Dragon will like to sing it one more time. But this time, let's sing and dance as fast as we can. Are you ready? Here we go. Dragon, dragon, dance around. Dragon, dragon, touch the ground. Dragon, dragon, jump up high. Dragon, dragon, show me a smile. Dragon, dragon, step your feet. Dragon, dragon, coming down the street. Great job, everyone. Great job, Mr. Dragon. We have so much fun doing this dragon dance. I'll see you next time, okay? Goodbye. Right. One, two, three, four, five. Cutie pie. Time to hear a story. Do you hear it? Yep, it's time for a story. So now we're going to read a picture book together. Let me go and grab my book. Here it is. So this story is called Macy's Chinese New Year, written by Lucy Cousins. Let's see how Macy and her friends get prepared to celebrate the Lunar New Year and learn about the traditions of this festival. Tomorrow is Chinese New Year. Macy sweeps and tidies the house to get it ready. Then Macy visits a market to buy food, decorations, and a new red outfit. Red is a lucky color. What red things can you see? I can see red flowers, red lanterns, and red dresses. At home, Macy waits for her guests. Who's that knocking at the door? It's Tiger. She has come to celebrate. Hooray! Tallulah, Charlie, and Sorrow arrive next. Welcome, Tiger. They all say, hello, happy new year. Tiger has brought lots of presents to wish everyone happiness and luck. They all sit at the table to eat a delicious feast.  Yum, yum, says Charlie. After dinner, ostrich and penguin come to visit. They give everyone lucky red packets with money inside. Thank you, says Macy. Macy and her friends sit to listen to Tiger, who's going to tell an exciting Chinese New Year story. A long, long time ago, 12 animals raced across a great river. She begins. The reds warn the race, but we celebrate every animal in turn. And this makes up the 12-year Chinese zodiac. Tiger explains. Pop, pop, pop. At midnight, fireworks light up the sky to welcome the new year. The next day, Macy takes part in a spectacular parade with loud music and dancing. Finally, Macy leads her friends in a special dragon dance for good luck. Happy new year, Macy. Happy new year, everyone. And that is the end of the story. Macy's Chinese New Year. Quick question. Do you remember who tells Macy and her friends about this wonderful story of the Chinese zodiac? That's right. It is Tiger. So now, Miss Tiger would like to join us for this special story time, too. Hmm, can you find Miss Tiger? Pickaboo! Oh, there she is. Hiding behind my picture book. All right. So hello, Miss Tiger. How are you doing? Rrr. Miss Tiger would like to remind us that this year is actually the year of Tiger. Good for you, Miss Tiger. You must be really happy about it. Rrr. Okay, so Miss Tiger, I heard that you have prepared something exciting for us, haven't you? Rrr. Okay. So, yes, let's do this. Here comes the new year matching around E-I-E-I-O. And one of the years is the year of Tiger. E-I-E-I-O. With a roar, roar here And a roar, roar there Here a roar, there a roar Everywhere a roar, roar Here comes the new year matching around E-I-E-I-O. Let's sing it one more time, shall we? Here comes the new year matching around E-I-E-I-O. And one of the years is the year of Tiger. E-I-E-I-O. With a roar, roar here And a roar, roar there Here a roar, there a roar Everywhere a roar, roar Here comes the new year matching around E-I-E-I-O. Fantastic. Great job, everyone. Great job, Miss Tiger. What did you just say? Oh, Miss Tiger has another exciting song for us. It's called Tiger Hokey Pokey. You may want to stand up and dance with us while we're singing this together. Are you ready? So now, we are going to wave our right hand. Where's your right hand? I found Miss Tiger's right hand right over here.  Okay, next, let's find our left foot. Where's your left foot, Miss Tiger? Here it is.  Okay, next, we are going to find our tail. Can you find your tail? Oh, I found Miss Tiger's tail. How long it is?  Okay, finally, we are going to put our body Our whole self in and out. Are you ready?  Hooray! Thank you, Miss Tiger. We really enjoyed your dance performance. Thanks for coming. I'll see you next time. Goodbye. Whew! It feels like we've done a workout. And since we've done a lot of hand dancing, I'm feeling a little bit hungry now. Do you feel hungry too? No worries. I've got you covered. I've prepared some tasty snacks. Let me go and grab my traditional Chinese candy box. Here you are. Tada! Can you see what's inside? Yup, they are fortune cookies. These are really delicious sugary and crispy cookies. And when you crack a fortune cookie, you can find a piece of paper inside that has either a blessing or a fortune written on it. So now, how many fortune cookies can you find? Let's count them in Chinese, shall we? 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Now there were two. Two fortune cookies. Isn't this fun? My brother ate one and now there was one. One little fortune cookie. Yum yum yum. But Tiger ate that one and now, oh no all the fortune cookies are gone. Hmm Why don't we bake ourselves some fortune cookies then? So here comes another fortune cookie song. Fortune cookies fortune cookies for the new year for the new year mixed sister and bae hik mixed sister and bae hik yum yum yum yum yum yum fortune cookies fortune cookies for the new year for the new year mixed sister and bae hik mixed sister and bae hik yum yum yum yum yum yum Let's sing it one more time. Fortune cookies fortune cookies for the new year for the new year mixed sister and bae hik mixed sister and bae hik yum yum yum Yum! Awesome! So now, let's eat our freshly baked fortune cookies! Delicious! I'm feeling energized now and I'm ready to invite the last guest of the day. Can you see our last guest? There she is! Hello, come over here!  In three, two, one! Hello, this little lion! Little lion has prepared us a lion dance performance. Look at you with this pretty scarf! Is this for your dance performance? Uh-huh. So now, you may also want to grab yourself a scarf, a handkerchief, a shaker or just anything that you like to wave and shake with us while singing to the song. Are you ready? In three, two, one! See the lion dance and pranks! Dance and pranks! Dance and pranks! See the lion dance and pranks on Luna New Year's Day! Hear the firecrackers pop, pop, pop! Pop, pop, pop! Pop, pop, pop! Hear the firecrackers pop, pop, pop on Luna New Year's Day! See the lion dance and pranks! Dance and pranks! Dance and pranks! See the lion dance and pranks on Luna New Year's Day! See the children laugh and shake! Laugh and shake! Laugh and shake! See the children laugh and shake on Luna New Year's Day! See the lion dance and pranks! Dance and pranks! Dance and pranks! I'll see you next time, all right? Goodbye! So now I have one last Luna New Year celebration song to share before we end our story time. It's an exciting action song called Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. And again, you might want to wave and shake your scarves and shakers while we're singing along together. Okay, are you ready? Three, two, one! Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. The year is changing soon. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. The year is changing soon. If you want a mega wish, hold it tight inside your face. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. The year is changing soon. In five, four, three, two, one. Happy New Year! Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. The year is changing soon. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. The year is changing soon. If you want a mega wish, hold it tight inside your feast. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. The year is changing soon. In five, four, three, two, one. Happy New Year! Let's do it one more time, but this time let's sing and dance as fast as we can. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. The year is changing soon. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. The year is changing soon. If you want a mega wish, hold it tight inside your feast. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. The year is changing soon. In five, four, three, two, one. Almost time for us to say goodbye because we are approaching to the end of our story time. Again, why don't we do a little bit of stretching before we wave and say goodbye to everybody? Okay, here we go. Up, down, blink your eye, kiss and say, okay, so now it's time for us to wave and say goodbye to our families and friends in three languages, including English, goodbye, Mandarin, Zaijian and Cantonese, Zaijian. Here we go. Let's wave and say Zaijian. Let's wave and say Zaijian. Let's say goodbye to all our friends. Let's wave and say Zaijian. Let's wave and say Zaijian. Let's wave and say Zaijian. Let's say goodbye to all our friends. Let's wave and say Zaijian. Let's wave and say Zaijian. Let's say goodbye to all our friends and see you all next time. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye everyone. Thank you once again for joining me today to celebrate the Lunar New Year. I hope you enjoy all of our songs, rhymes and stories, and have a happy and healthy new year. I'll see you next time. Goodbye.


A 37 year old Sabika man was arrested and booked at the Wadena County Jail after he allegedly shot at his ex-girlfriend at a home in Sabika early this morning. William Sorolla was allegedly intoxicated when he fired a round at his ex-girlfriend shortly after midnight. He also fired a couple more rounds into the floor before the female victim was able to leave the home. Once she left the home, the female victim then went to a neighbor's house where she called for help. When law enforcement arrived on the scene with the female victim Sorolla surrendered immediately. Sorolla was taken to the Wadena County Jail where he currently sits pending formal charges from the Wadena County Attorney's Office.


When will the narcissist get their karma? When will they get their just deserts? The narcissist gave you a false impression to lure you into a relationship To secure you as their source of supply They saw you as an object Which they then use to fulfill their needs And when you started to figure things out That is when they turned against you They abused you While blaming you for your own abuse As though you were deserving of it While still extracting everything that they needed from you And when there was nothing left They disappeared like you never existed They rode off into the sunset Without a care in the world As though they were unaffected by the situation While you were left to suffer They blamed you for everything They turned people against you They damaged your reputation So that even after they had destroyed everything in your life It made it impossible for you to even rebuild Because now everyone was looking at you as though you were a bad person As though you mistreated or neglected them When you were just trying to protect yourself The narcissist will always blame your reaction to the abuse As though you were the perpetrator That's just the game they play They're never going to take accountability for their actions They're never going to look at what they're doing to you Because it doesn't benefit them in any way And all a narcissist cares about is what serves them They don't care about how their behaviour is affecting you Which is how it's so easy for them to do all of this to you And then leave as though you never existed They leave you and then they move on to another situation While trying to make you jealous While trying to make you feel like you're missing out on something As though their lives are so much better without you As though you were the problem When you were fine before you met them Maybe your life wasn't perfect But you were relatively happy You had some good things going on But then the narcissist came along and destroyed it all While blaming you for your own abuse And even playing the victim As though you did something to them As though life was so unfair to them Even though you did everything in your power to make them happy It just wasn't enough It could never be enough Because narcissists can never be satisfied They're always miserable But when they leave you They make it appear like they're riding off to the sunset As though their lives are so much better without you It's like karma doesn't affect the narcissist Karma does affect the narcissist It affects everyone Whatever you put out Comes back to you multiplied Whether you do something good or bad So if the narcissist has abused and manipulated you They will get their karma You might not see it Because narcissists are illusionists They are masters of orchestration They know how to plan and coordinate the elements of a situation To produce a desired effect To make you believe whatever they want you to believe Just remember when you first met the narcissist How they manipulated you How they love bombed you How they gave you a false impression And made you believe something that was not true They made you believe that they were so kind and caring They made you believe that they were there to help you It was so believable And many people fall for this Because narcissists are masters of their craft They've had years of practice So naturally they're going to be good at it They're going to know how to create illusions How to make you believe something that isn't true But the truth is that these narcissists are never happy Just remember when they were with you How nothing you did was good enough for them That doesn't suddenly change when they leave you Although that may be what they want you to believe The truth is they're still miserable They're still dissatisfied And that Really is their karma Their karma is that they will never experience real happiness They will never experience peace They constantly experience anxiety and distress So they've already been getting their karma They were getting it even while they were with you They were suffering even before they met you They targeted you for supply They hoped that you would be able to relieve their tension To regulate their emotions So the narcissist has been getting their karma all along And they're still getting it now It's just that they do a good job of hiding it All of their time and energy goes into creating the illusion Making you think it's something that it's not Rather than creating something for real They're just trying to fool you They're trying to make you think their lives are so much better without you Because that still gives them supply They're not going to get any supply by showing you That they're stuck in another situation Because that's just going to give you satisfaction And they know it So they hide it They make you believe they're so much happier without you When secretly they're struggling without you Because now they've lost all of the conveniences that you once provided to them Which is the only reason why they targeted you in the first place Narcissists do not care about people They only care about what you can do for them They only care about themselves And that is why they're always getting their karma So many unexplainable things just keep happening to them Because they have no respect for other people But although they can dish it out They cannot take it They are very sensitive to any difficulties or problems in their lives They're not as resilient as we are They cannot withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions Which is why their only choice is to hide it from you They have to pretend like everything's okay But trust and believe that they are getting their karma They were getting it before they even made you And they're still getting it right now Their karma is that they are narcissists They cannot self reflect from long periods of time They're heavily focused on themselves They cannot share the experiences of other people They're cursed And they're destined to experience the same situations again and again As a result of their disorder They have to live in a fantasy world But they have to pretend like everything is perfect While deep down they're miserable They hate their lives Nothing makes them happy Which is why all they try to do Is make other people miserable They try to hurt you Even after they've left you Because they're still hurt And sometimes hurt people hurt people But their lack of empathy does not mean that they're happy without you If anything that's one of the main reasons why they will never be happy Their lack of empathy is their karma Thank you for watching I hope this video resonate with you Please like, comment, share and subscribe If you would like to donate My PayPal link is in the video description Coaching inquiries You can email me at coaching.narcsurviver.co.uk Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon