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Boy Erased

Posted on November 11, 2018 by Professor Taboo

I typically do not publish blog-posts so quickly after a previous post, for several different reasons, but this is just too important, too good, and necessary to raise awareness of a crisis that is in reality more common than most people around the world realize. What is it? It is twofold. One, the frequency of inter-sexed births around the world and how often it has been occurring throughout human history and its implications on societal (not religious or moral) norms! But this is not the real “Breaking News” story that’s going to shatter life as we know it. Second, and what IS shattering and inhumane is how Conservative, close-minded (religious?) hypocrites treat other humans (intersexed humans or LGBTQ humans) who have simply been born — from prenatal genetic developments and design — the way they were meant to be born. The abuse or mistreatment needs to be illegal and their safety and rights monitored/policed by all of society.

I have written a few posts in the past about the genetic prenatal designs for a person’s eventual gender and sexual orientation, e.g. Sexual & Gender Ambiguity: My Once Gross Ignorance. The science is overwhelming: there are little options for a person to “choose” what they will be and how they will behave when most of their neurology, hormones, and neural-programming in the brain has simply manifested in a way it was DESIGNED to be in the first place, not only in the womb from conception, but also from genomes from many, many ancestors! Is anyone familiar with just how immeasurably these gender-sexual systems vary within populations around the world? These births happen today in at LEAST four or five different regions on Earth annually. If you are not aware, get educated; get informed and updated about just how unimaginably diverse this Earth and all her species truly are by reading this. But just as immeasurable are the vast, never-ending spectrums of gender/sexual orientations within endocrinology and neurology. In other words, just as there are obvious physical differences, there are exponentially more differences that are not physical, but internal that began early inside the mother’s womb and was finished before her third trimester. Think about that people!

And yet, for far too many decades and centuries we still have a cognitive dysfunctional sector of the human population that are grossly naive, ignorant, or in severe denial of the actual facts. And worse, those dysfunctional people want to treat these different individuals with such insensitive, inhumane, dehumanizing methods like this new 2018 film Boy Erased truthfully portrays.

Yes, these Conversion Therapy camps actually exist and ignorant religious zealots ship their kids and teenagers — who cannot help what their prenatal genetic design has made them into — off to these psychologically damaging internment camps! These “clinics” or facilities are not medically or psychologically based, much less legally licensed to perform such “therapy”! Just like bloodletting was a bogus remedy to infection, conversion therapy has no moral, medical, or scientific ground to stand on. It is child abuse. Period.

This must stop! Do everything you can to stop these abuses to children and teenagers by parents and churches that still live in the Medieval Dark Ages. How can you help and spread the awareness and higher intelligence? Go watch the movie for starters! Next, vote and campaign for the permanent closures of these (il)legal camps of child-abuse! These people (if you can call them that) simply do not understand the overwhelming science behind embryology, genetics, endocrinology, and neurology backed up by the actual, very tangible inter-sexed stats. Period. The religious-minded are horribly ignorant and misguided in this regard and many others! Educate them, save them from themselves… if possible. But do not NOT do anything. Speak out against them, stand up to them.

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For more important information on how to help and how much work/action needs to take place and continue, go here: LGTBmap.org and get active against child-abuse!

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Returning to Mars

Posted on November 9, 2018 by Professor Taboo

In October 2016 and again in October 2017 I wrote two blog-posts about our exploration and eventual colonization of the red planet Mars. To date the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and NASA have delivered a total of seven unmanned rovers to Mars. Currently there are proposals and plans for satellite orbits, landers, rovers, and eventually crews onto Mars by the U.S., the European Space Agency, China, and Russia between the mid-2030’s and 2060. The lone private enterprise so far is SpaceX. Telling and imagining these Martian efforts on television will return again this coming Monday evening, November 12th on the National Geographic Channel’s second season of “Mars.” Getting there after around 7-months of spaceflight and surviving the first SOLs/days (or seasons of the Martian calendar) are not the only serious challenges. Coexisting with each other will be another on a long, long list of challenges that never really end.

If you think coexisting is sometimes difficult here on Earth, even with family, where we have so many benefits and luxuries we take for granted daily, then talk to Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson, and William Pogue about how in 1973 just 84-days together inside Skylab 4 turned out! The biggest major problem for those three astronauts? Workaholism. Excessive workaholism to be more accurate. But to be safe and survive way out there is workaholism what will be required of Martian travelers and colonists?

There are a number of plans from various governmental, scientific, and commercial entities already in progress to gradually move humans from “Earth-reliant” stations (currently the ISS), to “Cislunar space” that is still Earth-reliant, and then beyond our Moon into deep space travel to another planned Mars orbiting habitat/station (a transfer station, if you will), and finally onto the surface of Mars. Many supplies, equipment, and some raw materials will be waiting, shipped there for them months, years earlier. However, before the latter stages of these plans can unfold, we must first confirm that some basic elements, like water, microbes, and geothermal hot-spots underneath Martian soil, are still present in light of those components having existed in higher amounts on Mars 3.8 – 3.5 billion years ago. Dr. Dava Newman, former Deputy Administrator of NASA, explains that so far the news of necessary life-building resources on Mars are very encouraging, however:

For such a voyage [of boots on Mars], measured in years, astronauts will have to become Earth-independent, devising ways to make fuel, water, oxygen and building materials with whatever resources the Red Planet offers. If that seems as fantastical as Matt Damon growing potatoes in The Martian, Newman shrugs: Astronauts have dined on lettuce and peppers grown aboard the space station.

All the same, these are nonhuman concerns. What are the serious and pressing psychosocial challenges for space and Mars habitation? Making it to the red planet requires obvious, daunting, precise space and extra-planetary science, preparation, and training, but it requires just as much human science. Given how deterred and unfavorably psychology, neurology, biology, philosophy, and sociology (to name only five areas) have battled in the U.S. for widespread legitimacy the last century, the Human sciences are perhaps less prepared to face a life far away from our perfectly suited green and blue planet.

Here’s another influencing factor: because expeditions to Mars will likely be international collaborations, those astronauts and Martian colonists must overcome cultural differences to survive and thrive while on Mars. Communication between Earth and Martian expeditionary craft take 20-minutes to be received — which means 40-mins could pass before an answer is received on a spacecraft or Mars colony. Are these factors insurmountable? No, but they do compound the mental and behavioral health of astronauts and Martian colonists.

Your home from 127-million miles from Mars; taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter camera in Nov 2016

ISS crew-members have always praised the emotional, inspirational, and transcendental effect staring back down at Earth gives to them. But that is nothing like the possible effect of barely seeing your home as a tiny dot 35 – 37 million miles away (see MRC photo). Living in micro-gravity and zero-gravity pose several challenges on the human physiology. Space radiation has significant threats to human DNA, tissue, and cells which impact our central nervous system altering the structure and functions of the brain. Kidney stones become more common in altered gravity environments, which also leads to urinary track infections, which undetected can lead to confusion or delirium, which can be mistaken for a psychiatric disorder. And then there are the social difficulties of prolonged weightlessness and confinement of a group or crew.

In 2010-2011 the Mars-500 project, directed by the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, tested and studied six male participants from several countries for 520-days in a small Mars-like module. The results of the project revealed some encouraging as well as potentially significant psychosocial concerns. These ranged from friendly constructive interactions to errors in experiments and daily routines caused by sleep deprivation and exhaustion. Some crew-members became more sedentary after just 2-3 months. Their activities continued to decline for the next year. Due to the stress and exhaustion of two participants and simulated problem-events, 85% of the perceived conflicts among crew members and with mission control involved these two crew-members. For a better informed understanding of these psychosocial challenges in epic space-travel, read Mission to Mars by the American Psychological Association.

All of these concerns, however, do have some solutions. Surprisingly, cultural differences and language difficulties did not bear any significant influence. This is likely due to the fact that crew-members were so involved in each other’s daily routines and such intimacy is conducive to quicker collaboration and problem-resolution as opposed to those who are complete strangers and continents apart.

We are certainly prepared and capable of manned spacecraft to Mars and its colonization from a scientific nonhuman perspective, but are we as ready and prepared for the journey and life in deep space and on the red planet from a human sciences perspective? Maybe National Geographic Channel’s season 2 of Mars will help determine that… at least in the public’s mind, maybe. Come this Monday I will be watching and learning.

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

Steve Green: Fiction, Foolery & Frauds

Posted on October 27, 2018 by Professor Taboo

By now you have likely heard or read about the fake Dead Sea Scrolls or forgeries inside the recently opened Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. The museum was built and stocked by retail chain Hobby Lobby owner and multi-billionaire, evangelical Steve Green. What many might not know or have forgotten is that this foolery is not the first time Steve Green has knowingly bought and promoted fake, fraudulent artifacts from the Classical and Antiquity Eras in the Near East. Similar to the 19th-century Old West medicine and “miracle elixirs” touring-shows of magical tricks, musical acts, jokes, and fantastical storytelling, smarter discerning people today can certainly argue that Mr. Green has an addictive sweet-tooth for fantasy and hoaxes.

In 2011 a FedEx package from an Israeli antiquities dealer labelled “hand-crafted clay tiles” with a stated worth of less than $300 drew the suspicious attention of U.S. Customs officials. They opened it and instead of home or bathroom decor it was 300 cuneiform clay tablets in Assyrian and Babylonian languages stolen in great numbers during the U.S.-Iraqi War and its aftermath over the last few decades then sold on the black market.

In 2014 while visiting the Vatican’s Verbum Domini II exhibit of antique Bibles and Bible-related artifacts, an Italian papyrus expert immediately noticed a tattered fragment containing verses from Galatians 2 written in Coptic. It was being sold on eBay many months earlier by a Turkish dealer known to be unreliable and dishonest. Several of his colleagues believed he was a smuggler of anything that would sell to evangelical buyers, fake or otherwise.

Both the clay tablets and the papyrus were dubiously purchased and owned by Steve Green.

This month Steve Green’s Museum of the Bible was forced to publicly acknowledge that five (and probably seven) of their “Dead Sea Scrolls” are forgeries. Continued scientific examinations on the museum’s remaining scrolls, perhaps other artifacts if the Greens allow, will probably reveal more similar results. Why? Because from 2009 to 2014 word spread rapidly throughout Antiquities dealers (of any sort) in the Near East that authorized dealers of the multi-billionaire Green family were purchasing around 40,000 ancient biblical-religious artifacts for their future museum in Washington D.C. This whirlwind of money and hyper fast-track purchases ignited a buzz in the market never before seen. The New York Times in 2010 reported “[t]he buying [had] also spawned some skepticism about the overall quality of purchases made in such rapid-fire style.”

“The Hobby Lobby of Biblical Fakes n Frauds” in Washington D.C.

Joel S. Baden of the Yale University School of Divinity described Green’s incompetent acquisitions this way:

Every antiquities seller knew the Greens were buying everything and not asking questions about anything.

Aside from the hap-hazard amateur acquisition methods the Greens employed, there is another serious problem: the unprincipled, unethical intent to show in their museum fraudulent items as factual originals rather than labeling them modern replicas.

These practices by the Greens soon put them in the cross-hairs of the U.S. Justice Department. Hobby Lobby had to pay a $3-million fine as well as surrender and return the thousands of illegally acquired ancient artifacts from Iraq that were knowingly smuggled into the U.S. by Mr. Green. The Hobby Lobby tycoon, however, has his evangelical agenda working in several other areas of public life.

The Greens have spent massive amounts of money to confuse, redefine, and rewrite our clear Constitutional lines between church and state and their separation. In the 2014 Supreme Court decision of Burwell vs Hobby Lobby, “closely held for-profit” corporations like Hobby Lobby can refuse their employed women contraceptive medicines and/or care which was once mandated by the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The Greens have also funded a controversial nation-wide Biblical curriculum for American public schools as well as dumped millions into private Fundamentalist Christian institutions and colleges domestically and abroad. But this is not all.

The executive director of the Society for Biblical Literature, John Kutsko, speaks to this evangelical corporate movement with heightened concern:

There is no such thing as ‘the’ Bible… We [Americans] are a melting pot, and there are many religions here […] The [Green’s] museum could be a showcase for how we and our texts are different and can coexist peacefully. That would be a wonderful message to bring to bear, particularly in the environment we live in, an environment of absolutists and polarization.

But that is not Green’s intentions as evidenced by his artifact purchases and practices.

There is another disturbing concern: the simple truth. There are a large number of historical, biblical, archaeological, paleographical, and other scholars and experts, all of which have many decades of study and acclaimed lifetime careers that know too well how “pseudo-biblical archaeology” is replete with amateur scams, frauds, and wild claims meant to prove to buyers and audiences, at least through misleading visuals, that stories in the Bible are historically accurate when in fact they are not. These same scholars and academics are just as bothered by the man hired as the Bible museum’s director who was former director of the outlandish Creation Museum in Kentucky. This further undermines the museum’s credibility. And still there is more disturbing news.

The museum blatantly misleads, even lies about recent American history. In a dramatic promotional video for the museum it alleges that the Founding Fathers designed our government and civil culture to be Bible-centered; that is Christian-centered. The video states that George Washington himself said:

It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.

The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington in Mount Vernon, VA (click here) is a resource for “scholarly research about George Washington and the Founding Era, while collecting original Washington books and manuscripts.“ The library has already determined beyond doubt that this is a misquote or complete fabrication. When Mr. Green and his leadership team were presented with this correction, he was unphased, indifferent and insisted that our U.S. government was purposefully created as Bible-centered; that is Christian-centered. In my May 2015 blog-post The Mistaken Identity of the U.S. I go into great detail — from months and years of research utilizing resources like the Smith National Library – George Washington — about how this belief or fable Mr. Green persists in propagandizing is unfounded and simply not true.

At a 2014 interview at the Vatican, Steve Green imparted a rallying call to Christians, especially evangelicals that “The fact of the matter is, the [Bible] is under assault today.” It seems to Mr. Green and many Fundy-Evangelical Christians that there are other ways of starting and fighting a Holy War, or Jihad as the militant Islamists would call it, and it is covertly changing this democracy into a theocracy by whatever means necessary, similar again to Islamic nations of today. Based on Steve Green’s practices and museum, theocracizing includes smuggling, deception, diversion, well-funded propaganda that rivals even Joseph Goebbels’ tactics, and most of all the M.O. that the end always justifies the means. Principles of accuracy, due process, fact-verifying, truth or pro-truthiness, doesn’t matter. Force the “right end” to happen whatever the cost, literally.

Mr. Green seems ignorant of his unethical track-record. Being forthright from the very beginning will always be more valuable, more historic to the greater good and demonstrate higher levels of dignity and honor. So I say to all concerned, be astute and warned when you happen upon any involvement with Hobby Lobby or the Museum of the Bible: their owner, Steve Green, continuously exhibits that he possesses none of the great noble virtues.

∼ ∼ ∼ § ∼ ∼ ∼

Now, if you are one for euphoric feel-good truths, fly-by-night veracity, and fantastical stories hyping life-changing memories in this life and the next, this is for you: 😎

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

This work by Professor Taboo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.professortaboo.com/contact-me/.

Gattaca Venit

Posted on October 20, 2018 by Professor Taboo

The title means “Gattaca Arrived.” In this scene of the 1997 SyFi film Gattaca, Vincent Freeman’s parents are planning a second child, as their first (Vincent) was unfortunately conceived “naturally” and “passionately.” The geneticist-consultant shows them four candidate embryos:

Geneticist: You have specified hazel eyes, dark hair and fair skin. I’ve taken the liberty of eradicating any potentially prejudicial conditions. Premature baldness, myopia… alcoholism and addictive susceptibility… propensity for violence, obesity, etc.

Marie Freeman: We didn’t want… Diseases, yes, but– [looks at Antonio]

Antonio Freeman: We were just wondering if it’s good to leave a few things to chance?

Geneticist: We want to give your child the best possible start. Believe me, we have enough imperfection built-in already. Your child doesn’t need any more additional burdens. Keep in mind, this child is still you. Simply the best of you. You could conceive naturally a thousand times and never get such a result.

Less than two decades after the film’s release it is no longer cinematic fiction. Editing our human DNA safely and wisely is here and will soon be available to the public. What this means is beyond profound and will change life as we know it forever! Please watch this 16-min TED video presentation from one of the co-founders of the CRISPR-CAS9 gene-editor, Dr. Jennifer Doudna.

Some of the questions Dr. Doudna raises and those presented to her at the end of her presentation were very good, very paramount questions for her, the scientific-medical community, and people in general, legislatures in particular, to seriously consider. This has created two nascent scientific-philosophical fields: bioethics and genethics.

The therapeutic uses for this medical technology are unquestionable when it comes to relief of human suffering and early mortality from diseases. One of its uses I personally find fascinating and optimistic about is that of combating addiction, heretical or acquired. The U.S.’s addiction-crisis of the brain’s reward-dopamine abuse is absolutely a treatable illness and disorder! This neurogenetic editing-rehab would have a major impact on our species and societies. For a poignant assessment of this current mental health epidemic and its solutions, click here. At the other end of the addiction spectrum there is one form of treatment which has proven a failure: abstinence. In fact, abstinence has shown for the last 70+ years to exacerbate recovery for almost all addicts.

But rewiring and editing neurological and genetic strands does raise some sub-questions. For example, when is giving charity or open-love or generosity an addiction (clinical co-dependency), and when is it healthy and not an addiction? For hundreds and thousands of years of human history, nowhere, no one group, organization, belief-system, or society has ever had a workable and successful answer — until modern medicine and science.

Then there are some non-therapeutic questions too. For example, here are some I picked out from the National Human Genome Research Institute’s website posted August 2017:

Regarding Properly Informed Consent

How can an informed choice/decision be offered to an unborn embryo of the edit(s) or to its descendants?
What exactly should define Properly Informed Consent?

Regarding Justice and Equity

How can the impoverished and disadvantaged (the world’s 80% – 90% population) people be assured that genome editing is available for all, not just the wealthy causing disparities throughout healthcare?
How will our species avoid germline editing that creates classes of individuals defined by the quality of their (purchased?) engineered genomes?

However these issues and questions play out, like it or not, gene-editing is here to stay. Whether the U.S. and other democratic nations are at the forefront of this Venit/Arrived technology, other questionable groups, societies, and nations, depending on their “resources,” will get a hold of it eventually, or do everything within their power to stop it or corrupt it. Which brings me to another profound question.

Don’t we have a moral, humane imperative and responsibility to ease and/or stop all suffering?

For me, the answer is Of course we do! It’s a no-brainer. But I am also very happy to report that this positive course of action implies another wonderful reality!

Since a supposed “God” fucked all this up in the first place — or allowed Satan to do so, whichever — in that light we can start doing the work that the mentally retarded, lazy, “God” with no foresight whatsoever has refused to do for well over 300,000 to 500,000 years! Let’s at least keep moving forward helping our reality in practical beneficial ways!

If you’d like to know more remarkable news about gene-editing, watch this 12-min TED video “Gene-editing Can Now Change An Entire Species.”

The positive benefits of utilizing gene-drives and DNA-repairing editors are endless and must be increasingly understood and discussed. At minimum, THAT is indeed what we are responsible for doing. Staying with status quo or what I’ve often described to the religious as stagnate-in-antiquation is a sure-fire way to accelerate extinction.

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

Tin Can Connections

Posted on October 18, 2018 by Professor Taboo

A few weeks back a very dear friend to me wrote and published on WordPress a most magnificent poem about chemical, ethereal, human connections, synapses, and interactions that are not so common and in my opinion come around and manifest themselves once, twice, maybe three-four times in a lifetime. When it magically occurs it hits you in the chest deep and almost paralyzes your brain, speech, and body. Esmeralda Cloud or Esme Upon the Cloud is how everyone knows the Madame. Here is her masterpiece, Melding a Small Cache of Electric, Eclectic Synapses:

The first blast came from nowhere,
To her heart . . . and to her hands.
Hands that touched his,
Palm to palm, finger to finger.
Every digit leaning gently upon the others,
Melding a small cache
Of electric, eclectic synapses
Softly between them.
Yet it came as no surprise –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

The first blast came from somewhere,
In his heart . . . and in his hands,
Hands that touched hers,
Palm to palm, finger to finger.
Every digit leaning gently upon the others,
Melding a small cache
Of electric, eclectic synapses
Softly between them.
Yet it came as some surprise –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

The initial pillows of the explosion
Were numb with silent, sonic, relinquishment.
It blasted them light years apart . . . apart.
Apart from one, singular golden thread:
A chain of tenacious fire which endured;
Linking, binding. Holding fast.
Continuing the continuum, palm to palm,
Stretching out across vast, immutable distances.
At first of space,
And then later, time –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

Together, yet alone, they hurtled backwards,
To be caught warmly, effortlessly,
By personal terra firma of autonomous worlds:
Comfortable fields of bright corn,
Arm in arm with solid landscapes of contentment.

And so it came to pass,
That the universe and its incalculable, enchanting
Dimensions were countless aeon away.
Yet the swirls on their fingertips tingled,
Mourning their loss, and reaching for the stars;
Every morning when they awoke,
And again, every evening, before they slept,
Falling into the arms of Morpheus –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

Upon each diurnal course their planets revolved;
The cogs of every hour rotated.
Ticking, tocking, clicking, clocking, onwards.
Decades, then centuries, burgeoned with life’s roller-coasters;
The pages of each life turned, emitting
Joys and happiness, loves and fears
For those who lived.
Tears and heartache
For those who died.
Passions, curiosities, trials, guiles and smiles,
All ensconced firmly within their hearts.
Ticking, tocking, clicking, clocking, onwards –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

They died, and were reborn:
In multifarious myriadal, twisting times,
Beyond quantification.
Different lives; differing planets;
Alternate worlds; alternative dimensions.
Male or female, alike and unlike alike.
Aeons arose and insouciantly passed,
Yet still, regardless of time’s toll,
The chain of fire between them remained;
Its warm glow oscillating back and forth in animated, rapacious pulses –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

The fire burned them painfully at times.
And so it was that measures were undertaken:
He took a blowtorch to his end of the chain,
She an angle grinder to hers.
In fervid despair, they, in turn, had tried
Hammers, sickles, gelignite, flint and steel,
Hatchets, guillotines and pick-axes,
Chewing and stretching, gnawing of teeth,
Acid baths, anvils dropped, dynamite, grenades.
In fact, the whole cartoon’ish caboodle of ACME warehouse
Weaponry was wily waved and yet . . .
All to no avail – the chain remained just as it was:
Immutable. Perpetual.
And elements of their souls were relieved –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

Sometimes, within certain lives
One would twang the line,
Causing untold vibrations to electrify with joy,
Or dampen the other soul’s heart.
Sometimes, the other would do just the same.
And this was welcomed,
For it conjured pockets of remembered smiles;
Times when the stars waved at them as they flew,
Through the night skies with pounding, childlike hearts and eyes –

It was, as it had always been, forever and a day.

One day, when innumerable aeons had passed,
And they were both distant copies of their original selves,
A spontaneous contraction of the chain occurred;
Like a cord shuttling back into a cosmic vacuum cleaner,
And BOOM!
Suddenly there they were once again;

Heart to heart.
Hands touching hands;
Wrinkled palm against palm;
Aged finger to finger.
Every digit leaning gently upon the others,
Melding a small cache of electric, eclectic synapses
Softly between them.
One set of murky cataracts
Gazing into the other’s.
Toothless smiles;
Radiant gums.

And it came as no surprise.

And the time was right now.

And it was beautiful –

It was, as it has always been . . . forever and a day.

Please stop over to her most enjoyable, provocative, witty Imaginarium upon the Cloud. I promise you will not regret it! Tell her that her favorite suave, Steampunk, pervert Professor Taboo sent you. It will make her heart go pitter-patter and her knees wobbly. 🤭

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always