GRRR BARK BARK WOOF GROWLL GRRRR RUFF RUFF

The month of June marked Deucey's birthday. This year she is 10 years old!

Ten years ago @obsidian-metalhead and I were in odessa at a 7-11. It was unbelievably hot. Suddenly, we heard this yowling from somewhere in the parking lot and lo and behold on the sizzling hot pavement, hiding under a car, was a tiny black poof ball, crying her head off.

@obsidian-metalhead chased her down, we took her home and cleaned her up, and she has survived 4 moves, skunks, & raccoons.

She is my big beautiful huntress.

I'll give you art that's worth way more!!!

Here's Looking At You

Watercolor on Black Paper

2024, 12"x 9"

I LOVE RTDK LENNONSHEARS

It's hot. I'm broke. I can't stop wanting to die but haven't tried in over a week. I need help and a hug. I want to die but not from heat stroke. I need $150, one painting, 3 $50 deposits or donations, or 15 $20 donations.

Venmo- Kate-Havekost

Paypal- [email protected]

My phone battery died and I lost my charger somewhere along the way. Monday is being a Monday.

I need sleep.

Having an awful day and it's not improving!

It's going to be over 100° again. My sincerest hope is to have the money for a hotel by 3pm. I can get out of the heat as soon as I can get enough to get a room! I'm short $250. I was stung by a wasp in the shoulder. It hurts and is swelling at an alarming rate in the heat.

I would save quite a bit if I can book several nights at a time. So that's my goal to sell enough to book through the weekend. To get three nights will cost roughly $550 including taxes and incidentals. I can check back in at three. Which would be ideal because it's supposed to be almost 100 today. That translates to selling one 12"x 16" wood panel.

I could check in again at 3pm. So if I could make that sale around 3pm mst it would be fantastic!!! If I did make that sale.

I don't have enough money to leave for a room tonight or food of any kind.

PayPal unfroze my payouts so I can receive payments once again. Finally some good news.

I need money for a hotel room tonight. Call me manipulative, I'm not okay right now and every second I'm not sleeping I'm building a logical case for ending my life. I need to make sure I sleep every night.

Room is going to be $200 with $50 deposit included in that. If I had an extra $100 I'd get food and more art supplies.

I know it’s a worn out topic but I was just wondering about the infamous Yoko ‘quote’ to Philip Norman about John showing an interest in having an affair with Paul. I know about the whole ‘Bohemian experience’ and ‘Immovable heterosexuality’ bits being bs, but is there any clue into what Yoko might actually have said to Norman? He’s clearly heavily paraphrasing as we know with the debunked parts, and with how the admission clearly doesn’t fit Norman’s agenda, yet he has to include it because he knows juice sells books. Do you have any idea of when Norman obtained an interview with Yoko?

Thanks :)

We have no way of knowing what Yoko actually told Philip Norman. We only know that he interviewed her extensively for his book (sometime before 2008) and that, around the time of its release, she unexpectedly withdrew her endorsement. Her stated reason was that the biography was "mean to John", a claim that doesn't make much sense once you've actually read it. Norman is a notoriously frustrating writer because he often takes direct quotes and blends them with his own commentary, presenting his personal interpretations as objective fact. For instance, when talking about his conversations with Maureen Cleave, he includes quotes where she describes John speaking about how much he loved Ringo and George, which she said was very unusual for a man of that era. Because Maureen apparently didn't mention Paul, Norman asserts that this was because John and Paul’s relationship "was first and foremost a professional one" and that they weren't particularly close. Personally, I think it actually suggests the opposite. It's actually quite telling that John wouldn't just casually talk to other people about his love for Paul. Though, again, with Norman, we can't even be 100% sure that Maureen omitted Paul. He could have simply chosen to leave it out because it didn't fit his agenda. He repeated this exact line while promoting the book: "There wasn't a friendship between them; it was a professional relationship." It’s worth noting that Norman is completely inconsistent whenever he discusses their dynamic. In the introduction to that very same John biography, he writes that Paul was to John "more than his collaborator, more than his friend, more than his brother..." He seems unable to make up his mind. He has more than enough evidence that they were close, yet he often resists the idea, though he appears to finally come to terms with it in his McCartney biography (more on that later).

So, because he mixes actual quotes with his own commentary so seamlessly, readers often get the impression that Norman's conclusions are what his interviewees actually thought. Regarding what Yoko specifically said, the most reliable parts of the passage are her direct quotations, such as:

"I knew there was something going on there, from his point of view, not from Paul's, and he was so angry at Paul that I wondered what was it really about."

Beyond her direct quotes, we have Norman recounting in his own words what Yoko allegedly told him, such as the "John's princess" nickname, the infamous tape of John basically moaning Paul's name, and the observation that Yoko suspected "John's feelings for Paul were far more intense than the world ever guessed." I think these details also feel fairly reliable despite not being direct quotes. The trickiest part of the passage is where Norman claims that based on "chance remarks" John made to Yoko over the years, she gathered John had considered having an affair with Paul because of his belief that "bohemians should try everything," but was ultimately "deterred by Paul's immovable heterosexuality." We now know for a fact that "immovable heterosexuality" was Norman's own phrasing (the host of the podcast Beautiful Possibility reached out to him and he admitted to it). Regarding the bohemian thing, in a post-release interview, when a journalist noted, "In your book, you say it was possible John was sexually attracted to Paul," Norman immediately backtracked: "No, he wasn't." He then launched into a tangent about Paul being "very pretty" but not the type of man gay men were attracted to, asserting instead that John simply saw himself as a bohemian who felt he ought to have a homosexual experience with whoever was around—"and who was around? Paul." Since Norman likes to frame his own POV and explanations as facts, we have no way of knowing whether this "bohemian experimenting" reasoning originated with Yoko or with Norman. But if it was Norman's own spin, and he genuinely believed John only contemplated an affair out of bohemian obligation rather than genuine attraction, that directly contradicts his own earlier remark about Yoko suspecting John's feelings were far deeper than anyone guessed. We also don't know if Yoko explicitly said something along the lines of "John didn't try anything because he knew Paul was straight," though she likely framed the dynamic as largely one-sided, given her comment about "something going on" from John's point of view, but not Paul's. Now, do I think that Yoko actually believes that it was purely one-sided? Not at all. Back in the studio in 1968, we all know that she clearly stated there was something "definitely very strong" between THE TWO of them. She said this right after witnessing an interaction where John asked Paul a question and Paul absentmindedly replied, "I was just looking at you," prompting Yoko to laugh and note that it was funny because she had just been doing the exact same thing, just gazing at John. Also, as I've said before, Yoko was friends with Francie back in the day, and Francie was/is convinced Paul was in love with John. It's rather likely Francie shared that perspective with Yoko. So why would Yoko frame it as one-sided to Norman? There are two primary reasons, in my opinion:

Diplomacy: I can't picture her publicly declaring that "something was going on between them" because I think she would be extremely reluctant to directly implicate Paul. She needs to maintain a functional professional relationship with him, and dropping a bombshell like that in 2008 (a time when Paul was still very defensive about John's sexuality and far more guarded than he is today) would have caused immense tension.

Boundaries: She likely felt comfortable speaking on John's internal state because she was his wife, but felt it wasn't her place to speculate on Paul's side of things.

It's very plausible that she came to regret sharing as much as she did, which likely contributed to her pulling her endorsement of the book under the vague cover that it was "mean to John." Philip Norman himself continued to flip-flop across media appearances. On one post-release panel, he claimed John was "aggressively heterosexual" and that he and Paul were merely colleagues. Whether he truly believed this, wanted to believe it, or faced back-stage pressure to tone down the claims in his book is impossible to say.

However, he adopted a much more balanced and nuanced tone in his 2016 book, Paul McCartney: The Life. In it, he stops downplaying their bond and subtly nods back to his earlier claims, writing:

"John said that no one ever hurt him the way Paul hurt him. The words suggested a far deeper emotional attachment between the two than the world ever suspected — they were like those of a spurned lover."

Noticeably absent from the McCartney biography are the "immovable heterosexuality" line, the "John's princess" nickname, the claims about John wanting an affair, and the bohemian excuse. This time, Norman implies that the intense emotional attachment was mutual, and later on labels John as Paul’s "soulmate", which is a stark departure from his earlier mantra that they weren't even friends.

The whole situation remains murky. We don't know Norman's true stance, we don't know Yoko's exact phrasing, and we don't know how much John actually confessed to Yoko. It is entirely possible Yoko told Norman far more and he chose to leave it out, or that Norman's account is a faithful transcript of what Yoko actually said or believed (even if John had originally downplayed his feelings and the extent of his relationship with Paul to her by brushing it off as a meaningless "bohemian curiosity" that didn't go anywhere, after Yoko started questioning him about it, given her suspicions). But we don't have audio recordings or a full transcript of Norman's interviews with her, so almost anything is possible.