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ephrampettaline · 5 years

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chatzy au log with @bumblingbrujo, @cassiegermaine, @ephrampettaline, @freddiewatts, @imviapassmeabeer, @joeyvoeman, @mayaparker, @scarlettxruby, and @thatwhichbindsus

Ephram came awake squinting and groaning in protest as the curtains to his bedroom were thrown open, letting in floods of too-bright pale sunshine that caught every single dust mote in the air and made him cough at the mere sight.

"Mrs. Hudson says you woke her up to draw you a bath sooo late last night that she was too tired to get us breakfast this morning so Mummy let us have cake and bread-and-butter and cold chicken with our milk!" Addie informed her uncle, once she'd cannonballed herself onto his bed and plumped herself in the slowly-deflating heft of his eiderdown. Her red hair caught at the light too, flaming up in a nimbus around her head, and despite himself Ephram hauled up to a semi-sitting position and wrapped one arm loosely around the little girl.

"Then maybe I should have more late nights that require baths, hmmm?" he said, his own hair rumpled, his skin still smelling of soap and faintly of drinking sweats under his loose white shirt and cotton sleep pants. Ephram leveled a look at Cassie (who was far too amused for his taste) and said, "--good thing I didn't bring any company home with me, either, or Mrs. Hudson would have had to draw two baths and you'd be getting no lunch after such a fancy breakfast."

He'd fucked that wide-hipped barmaid up against the casks of small beer in the back of the Fox and Fern before making his way home and rousting the long-suffering Mrs. Hudson for his bath, but he could just as easily have brought her back to the house.

Or maybe not. Maybe Cassie, in her usual fashion, knew him better than he knew himself, sometimes.

Cassie had actually give Addie the idea to bumrush into Ephram's room for a more pleasant wake up call. If it had been just her or Mrs. Hudson, they would have just pulled back the curtains, along with his sheets and barked at him. They knew Ephram long enough for that kind of privilege anyways. She rolled her eyes slightly as the little girl and her Uncle chatted, readjusting the baby on her hip. "It's time to get up, before you sleep the day away." No doubt, he was fighting back some reminance of a hangover and Cassie stuck out her hand for the red head girl.

"Adeline. Your Uncle has to get ready for work." Addie hopped off the bed standing at the foot with her hands firmly on her hips. "Better get to business." She pouted before running out of the room to go play with her toys. Cassie stayed behind.

"What did you decide at the bar?" She prompted Ephram almost immediately. "Are we keeping the guns on our turf or did Watts switch it?"

Ephram snagged Adeline back to plant a kiss on the girl's soft, sweet-smelling cheek before turning her loose to be shooed off by her mother. "Conversation took a different turn," Ephram grunted shortly as he swung his long legs off the bed, groaning and rubbing his face before lurching to his feet and going to his wardrobe to paw through the three suits he had hanging there. "Christ, the moths've been at these. The last thing I need is to be seen in public with my clothes ventilated -- everyone'll assume it's bullets that did it." He bundled two of his suits out and onto the floor, muttering, "--I'll have to get new ones from Watts, I can afford them now and I need to look the part, don't I? You should get yourself some new frocks too, Cassie. We have to make Kingfisher look like money."

Stepping into his trousers, Ephram fastened them and said, "Miss Caird will be delivering to Watts' warehouse. It's the best dropoff point, Cassie, with the river approach it'll look like any other canal traffic. Right now with the handover in power and the old man's fingerprints still all over everything at Kingfisher, you can bet our warehouses are being watched by the screws. Agents from Organized Crime & Narcotics, would be my bet." He shouldered on a clean shirt, buttoning it and sliding his suspenders over his broad shoulders. "So it's Watts' warehouse, and I'll be shifting our share of the weapons directly to Clair de Lune until we get them handed out." Finishing with his vest and suit jacket, Ephram spread his arms for his sister's approval. "Decent enough?"

Cassie looked at him wearily as he spoke. "Ephram..." It was just another reminder of why she didn't have a soft spot for Freddie Watts. Not because he was bad business or anything like that, quite the opposite. He had a way of making things too personal and muddling everything. In her own opinion, Cassie didn't like handing over the fire power but Ephram's reasoning was fair enough. "Fine. You're lucky your so clever." It was the closest to berating she got over the subject. "I can go along to Clair de Lune when we make the official shift." She pushed the door open wider when Ephram was properly dressed. "Come on. I called Miguel to come fix up your face."

Ephram was about to protest when Mrs. Hudson appeared in the hallway, looking surly and bag-eyed. "Ma'am," she said to Cassie, pointedly ignoring Ephram as if he was standing there stark naked and too shameful to be looked at, "the doctor you requested has arrived and is waiting in the second parlour." She stepped aside to let them pass, and Ephram said, "Fine, fine, I can't argue with the both of you. Although this isn't necessary." It wasn't exactly that Ephram didn't trust Miguel. It was just that he didn't like him. But then, considering the previous night's business with Freddie Watts and the further business tonight, it seemed there was a lot of weighing out trust and like in the balance lately. Striding into the second parlour, its window shutters open to allow the doctor the light he required, Ephram unbuttoned his jacket and slung it off onto a chair. "Come on then, doc," he said briskly. "And will somebody get me some tea and a crust, please? I'm famished."

Miguel had been wondering what Cassie wanted with him, but when Ephram walked into the parlour, all became clear. This was the fool who had been pulling Iann in, as close to an alliance as possible with his no name brother that desperately hated commitment. Miguel opened his big black bag with a click, and pulled out a large vial of sodium hypochlorite, it didn't burn like some antiseptics, so he could douse the wounds generously to kill any bacteria that might have been festering there. The interesting thing about war was that it always made medicine better. Suffering lead to advances. Miguel didn't have any nitrous oxide here, but then again, he didn't think Ephram particularly deserved it. A rough boy like him could deal with the pain.

"This is the part that hurts," he warned as he pulled out a needle and thread. He held it with a long steel needle driver and swished it around in the sodium hypochlorite to make sure it was clean. "Mrs. Hudson, could you be a dear and hold these two bits together?" he was used to war, to dirty trenches and sewing people back together as they screamed, this was downright rosy in comparison. "Thank you," he said politely as Mrs. Hudson helped, and he sewed Ephram's cheek up. It was fast, only three stitches, but having Mrs. Hudson there to hold the flexible skin together helped. "If I were to say, don't do it again, would that mean anything to you, Mr. Kingfisher?"

Ephram dabbed his thumb against his cheek, feeling the familiar tread of stitches with a frown. Not because it might leave a mark, he didn't care about that -- but because it brought up memories he'd rather have left in the squelching mud and stink of the trenches. "If I were to take words from men like you, Doctor," he said tightly, "then you'd be out of business. War's over, after all." Ephram lifted his chin at Mrs. Hudson, who was staring at the young doctor with the doting look of a proud mother (which annoyed Ephram even more). "Tea, Mrs. Hudson," he repeated, and the housekeeper lifted her skirts and swished off, muttering. "While you're here, Miguel," Ephram said, reaching for his jacket and tugging it on again, "perhaps you can serve another purpose. How's your animal husbandry?"

Miguel raised an eyebrow, he ignored Ephram for a couple moments as he cleaned up his equipment and put it all safe and tidy into his black bag. "I think," he finally started. "That you're confusing me with my brother, who will in fact, do anything for money. I, on the other hand, have a career."

Ephram tugged his shirt cuffs straight. "See yourself out, then." He headed out of the second parlour, almost crashing into Mrs. Hudson who was arriving with tea and toast and eggs on a breakfast tray. "Set that aside for me, and pay the doctor," Ephram instructed her, leaving the housekeeper and heading outside and down the lane to a small shed that stood along one of the inner wooden fences.

Unlocking the door, Ephram stepped inside and surveyed the sweating, bloody man who was tied down to a cot within. "Well, Carruthers," he said, taking in the pallor of the man's skin and the objectionable smell in the air, "seems as though I wasn't able to fetch you a veterinarian. You'll have to make do with my own skill at field medicine."

Miguel didn't like Ephram. And he didn't want to help him, but there was the matter of that annoying oath. Not to mention his own curiosity. So after a moment of cursing himself, he followed after Mr. Kingfisher, outside to a small shed. It didn't smell particularly of animal, it smelled like infection and blood. "Ephram - what the holy hell?!" And he had asked about animal husbandry, why did he have to be so obtuse? For that matter, why did Miguel have to be so literal? "How long has he been here? What did you do to him?"

Ephram reached over to bang the door shut after Miguel came in. "I did nothing to him. Eh, Carruthers?" Ephram kicked one leg of the cot, causing the man lashed to it to groan at the jolt. "He brought it on himself. If he wanted to hold a secret meeting about forming a union, he shouldn't have done it at the very Kingfisher Soapworks that employs him. With all that lye about there's a hellish amount of opportunity for an accident." Reaching forward, Ephram twitched off the thin, putrid sheet that covered the man's lower half, exposing oozing raw pink skin on both his legs from the chemical burns. "A dog that bites sometimes gets itself poisoned for its troubles. Sad state of affairs."

Miguel opened his bag again. He didn't think he had enough antiseptic to take care of this, but he had to try. Miguel worked on the putrid burns, cleaning, lathering on ointment, and bandaging. He only stopped to glare up at Ephram Kingfisher. "If anyone here is an animal, it's you," the words came out as soft clipped noise, something between a snarl and a whisper that evaded description. Whatever it was, it was full of vitriol.

Before anything progressed much further than that, the doors of the shed rattled with three hard knocks.

Ephram watched impassively through blue cigarette smoke as the doctor worked, making no response to the man's insult. Carruthers seemed to stir from his pain stupor, though, enough to gather that he was being tended to with care and skill; he craned up to beg Miguel, "Please, please sir, untie me, I can't hardly feel nothin' in my fingers and toes--" before Ephram loomed behind the doctor's shoulder. "If you want something, Carruthers," Ephram said, "ask for it properly. Bark like the fucking dog you are." The man stared in shock, but it was clear that through his tears and pain he was about to obey, and start barking, when the raps at the door interrupted.

Ephram dropped a heavy hand on Miguel's shoulder. "Keep working," he said, and then opened the door.

The hand on Miguel's shoulder calmed his frayed nerves, and filled him with dread. There was nothing he could do. He knew what kind of man Ephram was, the evidence was laying in front of him. Miguel wasn't naive enough to think that the three stitches on Ephram's cheek would hold him back if Miguel pissed him off.

Ciara smiled as the door opened. "Evening Mr. Kingfisher," she started, friendly as could be, flashing her badge so he knew this was official. "I happened to see you walking in over to this shed as I was pulling in, and was hoping to catch a moment of your time."

Ephram angled himself to block most of what was happening in the little shed -- not hard to do for a man of his stature -- and reached for Ciara's badge. "You know my name, I see," he said. "To be expected, since you're on my property. Which means I'm entitled to know yours as well."

Ciara didn't hand over her badge, just held it up for him to read. Keeping her smile and unassuming like. New money were in so many ways worse than old money, they weren't easy to read in the same way and were a little more unpredictable than most. "Ciara Woodman. Sorry to disturb you, but we've got a missing persons, a member of your staff at the Soapworks, a Mr. Carruthers. Would you happen to have heard anything?"

Ephram took his cigarette from his mouth, blowing out smoke as he looked Ciara Woodman up and down, taking his time. She wasn't unknown to him -- or at least, her name wasn't. He'd never seen the woman herself. After a long moment that stretched almost to discomfort, he pushed the door to the shed open, ducking his head and gesturing Ciara inside. "Workplace accident," Ephram said, his voice pleasant and featureless. "Got a doctor in to tend to 'im. If we had to report this on the books, Miss Woodman, it might mean a shutdown for a time -- and times are hard, for those working in factories."

Miguel bristled. How quickly Ephram could change his tune. But what could he say? What could he do? Other than his work, other than why he was there, to heal, to care for. That was all he was good for. At least that's what it felt like sometimes. All he could do was clean up other people's messes. Did Ephram really want to keep this guy alive? Miguel did his best to ignore the two, unhelpful, people in the room. He needed to focus if he was going to clean off all the putrid flesh and disinfect the rest.

"Evening doctor," Ciara greeted as she stepped into the shed, keeping herself mild too even as her nose wrinkled. She made careful sure that she only looked at the sick man and his doctor, and then right back to Mr. Kingfisher. There was a reason she was here, and not Mike from Missing Persons, but they didn't need to know too much about that. Besides, town like this? The police force was always overstretched, filling in jobs that weren't theirs. "I understand your concern, Mr. Kingfisher. Wouldn't want to put anyone out of work now. Mind me asking how such the injury happened?"

Ephram made a small noise, a precursor to starting to explain, when Carruthers himself answered Ciara's question. "It was an act of God, ma'am," he ventured, "or the Devil hisself. There was a malfunction with one of the lye drainpipes and I happened to be carrying buckets of softsoap as I passed, so I wasn't quick enough in getting myself out of the way of the splashing." He swallowed, throat working, and looked from Ciara to Miguel. Not a glance at Ephram. "At least nobody else was hurt thank the Lord. We look out for each other at Kingfisher, ma'am."

Ephram raised his eyebrows briefly, tipping his head in Carruthers' direction. "There you have it," he said.

Miguel mumbled something that could theoretically have been "Evening officer," but wasn't quite words, much less English words. His hands paused for a moment when Carruthers spoke. Was that bravery or cowardice? He kept himself squarely under Ephram's thumb, but maybe he had bought himself some mercy, or time, or... Miguel had no idea. But this wasn't his job, wondering and getting frustrated, none of it was his job. Figuring out a way to take Ephram down a peg was definitely not his job. His job was working, with his hands, and that's what he did. He spread more ointment, and he bandaged. He glanced up at the cop and the animal. Well, people did like dogs. Maybe that was how he was so charismatic. "I'll need to get more ointment and bandages, Ephram." It was something of a test, he wanted to see how Ephram reacted. And maybe he would ask again once the cop left, and see if the reaction changed.

"Then get them, Miguel." Ephram knocked the door open with his shoulder. "Mrs. Hudson will have what you need up at the house."

Ciara turned back to the doctor and his patient, easily hiding her surprise at her answer. Of course, it could be true. On the other hand, between her, the short doctor, and Mr Kingfisher, she knew whose ire she would want to avoid most. His gaze told her it was no gratitude that had him answering for his boss. "Thank-you Mr. Carruthers. Sounds like God's work you're still with us." It didn't; the only god in this city was the lecherous hunger for money. "And the good doctor, of course." She turned back to Ephram, filing notes in the back of her mind of what the shed had looked like from her periphery. "What's the prognosis like, doctor?"

Miguel nodded. Well, that worked. Ephram was serious about keeping Carruthers alive. And he wasn't going to wonder why that was. "If we can beat the infection, he could live." He was blunt and honest. "If he does live, he will never be quite as flexible, but that's something to worry about in a month, not now." For now, he would be going back to the house to ask Mrs. Hudson for more help. "I'll uh... leave you to it then." He glanced between Ms. Woodman and Ephram. He left and closed the door behind him.

Ephram took out his cigarette case, holding it out open to Ciara at the same time as he said, "Let's step outside, shall we? Now the doctor's given Mr. Carruthers a new lease on life, we should leave him to rest." Carruthers, shuddering on the cot, seemed to agree as he closed his eyes in fatigue.

Ciara nodded. "I'll pass the news onto his wife, that he's under the generous care of Mr. Kingfisher itself. Can't say we often get news this good for Missing Persons, especially for folks who live south of the river." She knew enough medical care to know she had to trust the doctor on this one. Factory owners didn't care about their staff like this, not when there were hundreds of men still trying to find work after the war. If the man died, the doctor had provided a perfectly good excuse. Open and shut case, even if the wife tried to do something. Shaking those thoughts from her mind, Ciara took a proferred cigarette, lighting it with her own lighter that she offered him in case he wanted to start a new one. Her shoulders relaxed, her expression eased. "I'll follow your lead."

Ephram curved his big hand around Ciara's as he ducked his head to light his own cigarette at her flame, knuckles brushing against her wrist. The sun was bright outside of the cramped outbuilding but it was chilly, and as the door shut behind them, Ephram turned, putting Ciara's back against the shed. "Have a drink with me," he said, gaze scanning their surroundings quickly -- instinctively, like so many ex-soldiers -- before he fixed her with his dark blue stare. "Come inside. I'll get you warmed up."

His large hands engulfed hers as he lit the flame, ensuring Ciara couldn't step too far away as he led them out, and swung closed the shed behind him. It was cool, and the sun wasn't far from setting. That shed wouldn't stay warm long, she thought idly. Carruthers dissipated from her mind entirely as she let out a small gasp when Ephram pinned her against the shed, those dark eyes piercing right into her. She raised her chin, smiled with just one side of her mouth, and raised an eyebrow. "Sounds tempting. Depends what drinks you're offering, and what sort of company."

Ephram and Miguel had exited the parlor so quickly after the few stitches had been made Cassie didn't get a chance to follow them. She was stuck behind with Ms. Hughs and Ephram's discarded breakfast. She sighed heavily, eventually making it outside and rounding the back of the large estate till she saw the side of the shed along with Ephram and that dectective. Her eyebrows rose high. What the hell was he doing? "Dectective." Cassie called out, voice bright and jovial as she jogged over offering a hand to shake. Cassie had practically inserted herself between them. "We weren't expecting you.You didn't come up to the house. How can we help?"

Ephram pulled back and huffed an aggravated breath, although his gaze was still hot, trained on Ciara over his diminutive sister's bustling, inquisitive head.

Ciara held Ephram's gaze a second longer before smiling just as jovially as Cassie's voice was when she looked over to her, and took her hand firmly. "Mrs. Kingfisher. I didn't, I'm afraid, I apologise. I saw Mr. Kingfisher just as I was arriving. Mrs. Carruthers called us about her husband and I'd hoped Mr. Kingfisher might point us in the right direction, which he so kindly did."

"Did you see the doctor?" Ephram interrupted. "He was to ask Mrs. Hudson for more ointment and bandages, or some such thing. And Cassie -- we'll want to send a little something to Mrs. Carruthers and their three wee boys, won't we." He smiled slightly at Ciara. "Triplets."

Cassie nodded in stiff understanding as Ciara mentioned she had just seen her brother outside and approached. A reminder to up security."I'm glad he could assist. Please, why don't you come into the house." She looked sharply at Ephram for a moment, another silent beratement. "It's chilly out here. Are there other issues we should know about? No doubt you heard about the shot I took at the cemeterary yesterday." Her lips curled into another faint smile at the mention of the Currathers wife and children, "Of course. I'll arrange something to be sent over there promptly. Have McGee handle it." She fixed her hair and shrugged at the mention of Miguel, "I believe Ms. Hughes is still helping the doctor."

Ephram serenely ignored his sister's pointed looks and shepherded the two women back up the path towards the house, where they were met by a harried Mrs. Hudson at the door. "Will you be wanting lunch, Mr. Kingfisher?" she asked, frustration evident in how she wrung her hands, and Ephram nodded.

"In my office, Mrs. Hudson," he said. "If we have any visitors, announce them first, eh?" He left the woman bristling in indignation at this affront to her ability to do her job, and brought everyone through to his office, a fire already crackling and throwing shadows around the room's dark wood and rich forest colours. Ephram sat against the desk in satisfaction -- the old man had hated it when he did that. "A bad situation, that attack at the cemetary," he remarked. "So many opportunistic people skulking around now that our dear father's gone."

"The weather is turning," Ciara agreed, and gestured for the Kingfishers to lead the way. She barely cast a half glance at the shed before following them herself. Ephram shepherded them into her office, and rubbed her arms. The police cars were invariably freezing, whether they were the striped ones or plain clothes, so the heat of the crackling fire was invaluable. She nodded sympathetically. "You understand I can't comment on ongoing investigations, but we are taking this attack very seriously. Allow me to extend our condolences for your father as well."

Ephram watched Ciara rubbing her arms, choosing a seat near the fire; he took off his suit jacket and pushed off from the desk, going over to her and holding the item of clothing out on the tips of two fingers with an encouraging hum rather than tucking it around her shoulders himself. "Mrs. Hudson will have coffee for us with lunch," Ephram said, voice low as if he was addressing Ciara alone.

Ephram stood as Ciara shivered, and offered her his suit coat. "I'll be right as rain in a moment," Ciara replied, shaking her head, and forced the shivering to still, loosening her arms to rest on her lap, looking up at him intensely. "I hope I'm not taking either of you away from work."

Ephram looked back at her for a moment, eyelids slung low, then dropped the coat to hang from the corner of her chair-back before returning to his perch against the big polished desk. "How very polite of you to be concerned about our schedules, Miss Woodman," he said in a more bland tone, all congenial business. "It's yours we're working around, though, isn't it? Seeing as you stopped by to inquire about Mr. Carruthers' whereabouts. Did I provide you all the answers you were looking for, yet?" Ephram folded his arms, fingers curling into the material of his long sleeved shirt. "Or did you need more from me."

In Ephram's office Cassie took a comfortable seat on the small couch in the corner of the room. It was a spot she had long been familiar with, a place she marked for herself as a child when she quietly stepped in as Harlan was in the middle of meetings or business. She was so quiet, she used to disappear in the dark corner. Cassie still did, if she concentrated hard enough. Little did Ciara know, she had clearly made it onto Ephram's work schedule as well.

Mrs. Hudson had showed Miguel where the medical supplies were kept. It was a good thing to know, especially if Cassie and Ephram were going to keep getting hurt and calling him. Or hurting people and calling him. Mrs. Hudson was making coffee, to fight against the chill in the air. She offered Miguel a cup and he smiled at her and took it. "I can take the press to Mr. Kingfisher," he offered and picked up the french press with one hand, and a stack of mugs with the other. Maybe Mrs. Hudson was annoying with Ephram, that seemed to be the only reason why she would let Miguel barge into Ephram's office. He would be happy to annoy Ephram if Mr. Kingfisher took it out on him and not the helpful older woman. "Here we are." He set the mugs down on the desk and started pouring coffee.

“I can’t have imposed too much as you both invited me so generously into your home,” Ciara replied with a smile, looking from him to Cassie. “I will take my leave soon. As far as I’m concerned, my work is done for now, however the paperwork which remains in my office is uninviting to say the least.” The doctor returned, with coffee, and seemed awful comfortable in serving them in the Kingfisher office. “Thank you doctor.”

Ephram took his own mug with a casualness that seemed to suggest he thought that handing around coffee was a fitting use of Miguel's time. "Ah. Does that mean this is the full extent of your interest in Kingfisher Soapworks, then?" Ephram lifted his mug to his lips, letting the steam sting the tip of his long nose before he took a swallow. "Or will we be seeing you broaden your interests to the whole of Kingfisher & Company?" He didn't expect a straightforward answer from the agent, on either his direct question about her official duties or the thread of insinuation that wound through their conversation. But sometimes it paid to be bold with your statements. You never knew how the other person would respond.

Miguel gave Ciara a quick smile. "You're welcome, Officer Woodman." He poured himself a hot mug of coffee and settled back in a comfortable seat by Cassie to wait out the weather. Once things calmed down he would leave. Or once things got a little less entertaining.

“Why do you ask, should I have a professional interest in your company?” Ciara asked, eyes glinting with a friendly mischief, as sirens rang in the distance. She stood, taking in the heat of the fire one last fire. “I believe that is duty calling, I fear. Thank you all, you’ve made my job today much easier.”

Ephram moved to see Ciara to the front door, tucking his calling card into her pocket and saying, "Once duty's call is over, remember that offer of a drink. Dinner, too, perhaps."

When Miguel took a seat near her, Cassie shifted her cup of warm coffee from one hand to another. "Acutally, now that you're here doctor." Se spoke, voice still soft as to not overtake the rest of the office, "Perhaps you could take a look at my brush with death as well." The corner of her mouth curled at the dramatics of her statement, but she didn't exactly wait for Miguel's okay either, pulling the fabric over her shoulder down and off. It was only roughly scabbed. She kept an eye on the dectective as Ciara announced her departure, only speaking when the door clicked behind her. To Ephram this time, "Crooked dectectives aren't exactly reliable."

Ephram snorted as he returned to Cassie's admonition, collecting his coffee and sprawling low in the seat Ciara had vacated. "Careful, you'll shock the good doctor with such scandalous talk," he said. "He seemed pretty impressed by Officer Woodman."

Miguel immediately went to look over the wound. It was scabbed over, and it didn't look inflamed of infected, which was almost surprising. "It looks clean. It doesn't look like it needs stitches, but we can keep an eye on it. If it hurts more or feels hot, you can give me another call." He glanced between Cassie and Ephram, and felt like a kid in a school house. A very volatile ad violent school that he was struggling to understand. "Why do you think she's crooked?" he asked.

"Oh." Cassie blinked slowly, turning her eyes up at the Tiffany Lighting fixture when Miguel seemed confused over her calculation of the dedective. Clearly, she had given him too much credit. "Anyone who takes my brother up on an offer has to be deliciously wicked." She kept her mug up near her mouth, masking a smirk, "wouldn't you agree Ephram?"

Ephram rolled his head lazily against the back of the chair, looking over at Cassie. "Not much of an offer, sister," he said with a slight crooked smile. "Only doing my part to help out law and order in our fair city. Things'll go so much smoother if we strike up a congenial relationship, eh?"

"Well maybe, she's lonely. Maybe she believed his little hero story about helping Carruthers after he had an accident at work, so not to shut down the factory." He was offering excuses, and he knew it was excuses as he said them. No one would really believe that story, would they? Not even from Ephram's smooth mouth.

Ephram left that one to Cassie to answer, since she seemed to like Miguel. Or at least, she'd been the one to call him, so Ephram figured she might as well deal with him. Mrs. Hudson appeared in the doorway and Ephram was on his feet before she even had a chance to announce, "Mr. Watts will be in shortly, and a young woman arrived whom I showed to the parlour." She paused. "Is this to be a nightly occurrence, sir? With different young women each time?"

Ephram patted Mrs. Hudson's shoulder as he went past. "You've got a dirty mind, Mrs. Hudson," he said, leaving the housekeeper sputtering and red-faced as he went on to the parlour, trusting that Freddie would find his way there. "Hullo, Ruby," Ephram said, gesturing to the bar cart. "Help yourself, get comfortable. I've got need of your cupboards and hidey-holes."

Ruby stood quietly, looking out the window and seemingly disinterested in the muted conversation of Mrs. Hudson, even though it amused her to be called 'a young woman.' Though compared to the easily flappable housekeeper, Ruby supposed she was. But it mattered not. She wasn't here to impress the help. She turned when she was addressed, smiling at the tall head of the Kingfisher clan. "Ephram. A pleasure as always." She moved easily towards the offered drink, pouring herself a small helping of something dark and rich before offering to pour one for him if he liked. She hummed as he got straight to the point. "Running out of room in your own kitchen?" she asked, knowing full well what he meant. "I've got some space you could borrow." She took a sip of her drink. "How much do you need. And when?"

Freddie sauntered into the parlour after a brief detour to the kitchen to fetch himself a cuppa. “And here I thought you weren’t having a wake, Ephram,” he said, before smirking, “This is about the sort of turn-out I’d expected.”

"That's sweet." Cassie gave him a somewhat pathetic little smile. It was clear Miguel was out of his element in their household. Sometimes it was fine to have a completely ignorant party around, like if Addie were to run into the office with one of her toys. But Miguel did know some things, like his brother was further connected to Kingfisher. He was quickly approaching in overstaying his welcome. She stiffened as the maid came in with official announcement of more visitors. "Why don 't I see you out doctor?" Cassie offered, standing and expecting Miguel to follow.

Ephram nodded for Ruby to pour him another like her own, taking a seat this time to conduct business. Unlike Miss Caird of the night before, she was a known quantity; Clair de Lune had provided Slap Jacks with space to hide money or goods or hell, breathing cargo from time to time. He could afford to be more casual. "Enough room for six rifles and," he paused for just a moment, "two dozen pistols, with ammunition." Ephram accepted his drink as Freddie strolled in, furnished with a teacup and saucer, and wondered if the other man had caught Ephram's idea of how to divvy up their new cache of weapons. He'd find out sometime. "The old man would be touched you decided to kick up your heels in his memory, Freddie," Ephram said, not bothering with introductions. In the line of business they were all in, everyone who was an important enough player was known to the others.

“Ruby,” Freddie said, giving the widow a gracious nod, before turning his attention back to Ephram again. “Your math is off, sunshine,” he said bluntly, “Count those handguns again, or I’ll start doing a few equations of my own, yeah?”

Miguel nodded. It was probably time to get going anyway. He stood and followed Cassie out. "Thank Mrs. Hudson for the coffee, please." He ducked out, black bag in hand, and fled from the Kingfisher family.

Ruby nodded to Freddie as he entered, glancing between him and Ephram as they seemed to differ on the amount of items that needed storing. "That's not a problem," Ruby said. "Though I'd need an accurate count," she told them both. "Don't need anyone thinkin' stuff goes missin' under my watch."

"Go on, darling," Freddie said, eyeing Ephram coolly, "-give the nice young lady the proper number. Take your shoes off if you need a bit of help."

Ephram gave a short laugh, then tossed back his drink. "Fine, then," he relented. "Six rifles and eighteen handguns, Ruby, all under Slap Jacks. Freddie will be retaining the balance of the shipment on his side, so no need for you to bother with that." He raised his eyebrows at Freddie. "Satisfied? We'll go halves. But only this once."

"I'll be even more satisfied once I've taken possession of my share," Freddie said. "Which actually brings me to the reason for my visit." He gave Ephram a knowing amused sort of look. "Since you got yourself into a strop last night, we never managed to work out who you'll be having on hand for the delivery. I'll be needing those names, love."

Ephram considered glowering at Freddie, but the previous night's anger had dissipated when he'd lost himself in the barmaid's kisses. "Voeman, like I said. And Dubois, you know her." He smirked in Ruby's direction. "I know he's a valued lodger of yours, Ruby, but I won't be using Cardero. Not after the sloppy fucking mess he turned up at the Fox and Fern."

"Alright. Six and eighteen. I just needed us all to hear it, since we know I won't be doin' any lookin' or countin'." Plausible deniability was one of Ruby's precautions. She never looked in a crate, or a box, and she never asked for names of anyone that might need to hide under her floorboards for a night. So as long as the two men knew what the shipment contained, and paid Ruby for use of her house, then she didn't give two shits what was in the crates. "He has his attributes," Ruby said. "But tact isn't one of them. I'll make sure to send him elsewhere."

Ephram made an approving noise at that particular initiative of Ruby's. "You must send him all over bloody Soapham on a daily basis," he murmured, snorting at the idea of Iann Cardero being sent off on fool's errands the live-long day. "Does that brother of his frequent your establishment? The sanctimonious doctor Miguel?"

"Keep him entirely in the dark, yeah?" Freddie instructed Ruby, "He's for sale at a cheaper price than anyone else in Soapham, and he's the last bloody person I ever want within 50 yards of a firearm." He turned back to Ephram. "And Dubois will do nicely, yeah. She nearly makes up for Voeman." Freddie sipped his tea. "I'll have Wawelski on hand tonight, and Oliver. Just in case you were curious."

Ephram curled up a side of his lip. "Oliver makes up for Wawelski," he grunted, and got up to fetch himself another drink.

"If he keeps busy, he stays - mostly - out of trouble," Ruby said of Iann. "And I've seen Miguel once or twice. Nice fella. Quiet. Never causes trouble." She looked at Freddie and gave him a tip of her head. "I think there's a shipment of seedlings for my winter garden the next county over that need pickin' up. Should take him the better part of two days to fetch it for me."

Ruby: "Longer if he decides to stop and get pissed."

Ephram drank what he'd poured, then sloshed some more into his glass. "So, longer, then," he said, lifting it to his lips.

Ruby smirked. "Oh, ye of little faith in the willpower of a drunkard who doesn't want to be a drunk."

Freddie took another sip of his tea, then looked to Ephram. "And yet you're in the habit of employing him," he murmured, raising an eyebrow. "Tell me darling, just what was it he needed to be paid for last night?"

Ruby looked at Ephram as well. She'd seen the state of Iann that morning, passed out and filthy in front of the kitchen fireplace. She'd tossed a bucket of water on him and run him outside.

"You're like a dog with a fucking bone, Freddie, has anybody ever told you that?" Still, Ephram figured it didn't matter to talk about Iann and what he got up to in front of Ruby; she lodged the man in her house, she was well aware of his activities. He spritzed some seltzer into his scotch and came back around to sit down again. "Nothing extraordinary. I needed a runner who wouldn't be immediately identified as Slap Jacks, and Cardero fit the bill. With the old man gone, there's loose ends I need to tie up." He turned his glass in his fingers and amended, "Loose ends I can tie up, now that I have free rein to do it." Ephram smiled lazily at Freddie. "Enough? Or would you like details of where I sent him and how I conveyed him there?"

Freddie batted his eyelashes, though his eyes remained calculating beneath them. "Oh, I think details would be lovely, Ephram," he said, "Tell us all about your loose ends, hm?"

Ephram crossed his legs at the ankles, slouching lower in his chair. "Have another cup of tea, Freddie," he murmured. "You seem as though you need help swallowing something."

Freddie smiled. "I swallow as well as I ever did, darling - it looks to me as though you have a problem spitting things out."

Ephram hung his arm over the side of the chair, glass dangling from his fingertips. "Why are you so all-fired up to know about what I do with Iann Cardero, out of everything else I'm currently involved in?" he asked, his ire beginning to rise again. "You aren't about to hire the man, and I'm not using him for anything we've got going in common. Change the subject, Freddie. I'm not in the mood."

Freddie's smile turned a bit thoughtful - Ephram's reticence to discuss Cardero meant that he absolutely needed to know what was going on there, and he resolved to set one of his best and brightest on it as soon as he got back to the shop - and he nodded his concession graciously, giving a little wave of his hand not holding his saucer. "Alright then," he said, "-a change of subject. I saw Ciara Woodman leaving here as I was pulling up - will she be playing a part in our new investment, or was that simply a social call?"

Ephram unwound a little bit when Freddie obliged his demand, a smile touching the corner of his mouth as he thought about Ciara Woodman and her clear interest in what Ephram had been proposing. "Business," he said, "but Kingfisher business. Have you tangled with her before? I've heard tell she's not immune to some shekels crossing her palm."

"All cops are dirty if you offer 'em enough," Ruby murmured, raising her eyebrow. Her ex had been a cop before getting himself killed somewhere in the dredges of France. Good riddance, of course. But that was beside the point.

Freddie frowned at the way Ephram was smiling. His getting cosy with the police would be nothing but tiresome where Freddie's own interests were concerned. Freddie would simply have to get in there first. "I know her by reputation," he said, "-but I've never yet had the pleasure."

Ephram sprang up from his chair, reinvigorated by talk about the attractive detective (neverminding Ruby's aside; a bribable agent of the law was a plus as far as he was concerned). "Speaking of pleasure," Ephram announced, "we need to move somewhere decidedly less domestic, now that tonight's weapons shipment has been pinned down. Shall we?" As per usual, the walk to the Fox and Fern was a speedy one, and this time, Ephram found them a normal table to sit at. No need for the privacy of a corner, either.

A plus they could definitely be, but bribable meant turncoat in Ruby's thinking. But Ciara had nothing to do with her, nor would she as far as Ruby knew, so she let it slip from her mind. She downed what was left of her drink and set her glass aside for the housekeeper, and followed down the street to the pub.

Maya glanced up from the customer she was serving when the door swung open. Ephram, she recognized immediately. The other two she placed quickly too. She gave all three of them a nod to acknowledge their entrance before returning to the customer in front of her. Once he was served, she made her way to the table. "What can I get you folks this evening?" she asked with her well worn smile.

"Gin," Ephram said, reaching into his vest pocket and putting some folded bills on the table, keeping them there with two fingertips. "And if either of my fine companions is thirsty for something other than gin, they'll be paying for it themselves." He lifted his hand so Maya could retrieve the money, taking out his cigarette case and lighter.

"Gin will be fine, darling," Freddie agreed, "Make mine a large one, yeah?"

Maya nodded, "Two gins coming right up." She glanced over to Ruby, taking Ephram's money as she did so.

Ephram lit a cigarette and pulled the knobby, stained ashtray closer to him. "Oi," he said to his companions, gesturing to his newly-stitched face, "Cassie got that odious little doctor in to see to me. Apparently he's still larking about as if he's the angel of the battlefield, expecting us all to fall to his boots weeping when he arrives to stitch us up and send us back out to face the guns."

Freddie rolled his eyes. "That little twat with the big sad eyes?" he asked - and then he snorted at the few stitches. "You could've done that much on your own and saved yourself the sermon."

"He was already in the house. It was either let him embroider my face, or run him over on the way out." Ephram chuckled to himself. "You know, I reckon ol' Mrs. Hudson's sweet on him? Either that or thinking of nursing him tenderly to her bosom."

"Gin's fine, thanks," Ruby said as well.

Freddie laughed lightly. "She always did put me in mind of a wet-nurse, your Mrs. Hudson," he said, "So what was he doing round yours then?"

Maya nodded again when Ruby indicated she wanted gin as well. She headed back behind the bar and poured three glasses of gin. Freddie's she made a double. While behind the counter, she started Ruby and Freddie's tabs. She returned to the table. As she set down the glasses, she asked, "Are we here for business or pleasure? I've got to prepare my staff." Although tonight it was just her and one of the bus boys.

"Thanks for that," Ruby said, raising her glass of gin to her lips with a frown. "Now I'll never get the image of Cardero and that woman's tits outta my head."

Ephram crinkled his forehead, puffing out smoke. "What was he doing still hanging around, you mean?" he asked. "I found him another job to do. Although he tried to put me off with some self-righteous comment about his brother. Your good mate Iann Cardero, that is, Freddie." Ephram looked up at Maya's question, saying, "Can't have one without the other, in my experience. Let's see where the night takes us, hmmm?"

"Oh, with Mr. Kingfisher, it's always business, love," Freddie said to Maya, murmuring a quick 'ta' for his drink and taking it from her. He shot Ephram a smirk. "Whatever he says, it's always business."

Ephram momentarily considered objecting to Freddie's characterization of him, but the more he mulled it over, the more he found he liked it. He raised his glass to the other man's smirk and took a drink with a satisfied grunt.

"And here I thought we all had enough uncertainty during the war," Maya replied with a tilted smile to Ephram. She had been an ambulance driver in France. Despite where she and her pub had found themselves, it was enough uncertainty, and many other things, to last her a lifetime. "Always work?" she parroted Freddie, "Haven't you heard about what that makes Jack?"

Ephram barked a laugh at Maya's choice of words. "Miss Parker," he said with tight, contained mirth, "I'm the head of the Kingfisher family. I decide everything when it comes to Jack."

Freddie followed suit, lifting his glass and taking a long swallow. "By which he means they're all dull boys."

Maya kept smiling. She'd been intentional in her words. She had to be. "The head of the Kingfisher family, you say?" she asked in feigned innocence and leaned on an empty chair, "Now you think someone might've mentioned that." Of course, they both knew perfectly well that she knew who he was and that he made the decisions when it came to Jacks.

Ephram pointed at Freddie. "I'll tell Cassie you said that," he threatened, amused. "She's always been of the opinion that the Jacks were wildly entertaining." He took a drag and said smokily, "--not that it means she likes any of them, mind you."

Freddie let loose a silvery peal of laughter this time, and grinned across the table at Ephram. "Does your sister like anyone?" he asked, "I'm only halfway convinced that she likes you. Honestly, if I were you I wouldn't get too comfortable in the throne, love - your Cass may decide the empire would fare better with a female ruler and that'll be your head on the block."

Ephram thumped the table with his knuckles, actually grinning himself. "There, you see, Maya? You may have to revise your knowledge of the Kingfisher family tree after all. My sister might decide she'd prefer to be an only child."

"Well, when the time comes I'm flexible," Maya replied, "Her gin money's just as good as yours."

Ephram carried on grinning at Freddie, the expression feeling all at once unfamiliar and easy on his face. That was the trouble with Watts, in particular; sometimes Ephram's body forgot they were so much older than they'd been when they were close, the first time around. That so much had happened to make him more grim, more bloody-minded. Less fun, Freddie would no doubt say.

Ephram caught sight of Octavia over at the bar and gave a sharp, loud whistle through his teeth to hail her. "Come sit with us!" he called. "Since Ruby's fucked off somewhere, you can take her place on my generous offer to pay for drinks -- so long as you're drinking gin, that is. Anything other than gin, you pay for on your own."

Octavia Picked up her drink and tipped her hat to the bartender. "Evening." She greeted them, taking a seat at their table.

Freddie watched Ephram for a moment, able tonight to see glimmers of the boy he'd known inside the man, and then turned his attention to Vi. "Hello, darling," he said, flashing her a smile and raising his glass, "Drink up, yeah? Ephram's generous offer may dry up at any moment, so do your damage while you can."

Ephram said archly, "--telling Octavia to do her damage is practically the same as turning out your pockets to her. Count your rings, Freddie. Or at least make sure they've still got their gemstones intact." He leaned back, turning his amused look on Vi. "Been lifting anything interesting? I could use a little levity. Or so everyone keeps telling me."

"Well when you put it that way." Vi raised her glass. "Cheers." She said before taking a gulp like it was pop.

Freddie flexed his tattooed hands, the heavy rings he wore sparkling in the low light of the pub. "If she can take them off my fingers," he said, "-she's earned them." He winked at Octavia, "But she knows better than that, don't you, love?"

"Ma a'ways says don't bit the hand that feeds ya." Vi laughed. She leaned forward, inspecting his rings. "Eh, I don't like costume jewelry anyway." She winked back.

Ephram hooted at that, saying to Maya, "Bring this girl a double! She deserves it for that." He shook his head in admiration at Vi's boldness.

Freddie laughed loud, and shot Vi a grin. "Octavia, darling, you may stay at this table as long as you like."

Maya nodded, "Double, coming right up." Once back at the bar, she had to deal with a few other customers before returning with Vi's double.

"My pleasure." Vi said proudly. She sat back and crossed her legs at the knee, making herself a little more comfortable. "What have you fine gentlemen been up to this evening?" She asked.

Ephram finished his drink, saying, "Maybe you best bring the bottle round to leave on the table, Maya. I have a feeling we're going to be plundering your shelf tonight." Turning his attention to Vi's question, he said, "The usual -- slandering those who aren't here to defend themselves. Although with the likes of Iann Cardero, he may just reel through the door at any moment."

Maya returned shortly after with the bottle. As she hadn't been invited to sit, she leaned with a hand on the back of one of the empty chairs. It was always good for business to keep an ear to what the Kingfishers were up to.

Vi downed the rest of the gin and tonic before sliding her glass forward. "Who else are we slandering, eh?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.

Ephram propped an elbow on the table. "Anybody. Whoever we feel like. We've already covered Iann and his doctor brother, but I'm not confining it to family."

Octavia laughed and filled her glass half way, offering a refill to the others. "Oh yes, The Brothers." Vi said.

“Well, I hope you spare your poor widowed sister.” Cassie spoke, walking up to the small group that had formed in the normal spot for Kingfisher and Co when it came to the Fox and Fern. She took a seat on the other side of Ephram. Her elbows on the table and body crouch low and otherwise opposite of the lady she looked, “You should keep business in the manor right now. Not brag about to practical strangers.” Her jaw tightened, voice still soft over the low rumble of the pub, “About anything.”

Ephram chuckled, holding out his glass for more gin. "Maya," he said, since the pub owner was still handy, "has an official called Ciara Woodman ever had a drink here?" Cassie's arrival was welcome, of course, and Ephram absorbed her words without much outward response other than a low hrrrmm.

Ephram turned to Cassie, remembering to tell her, "I mentioned to Freddie Watts that I needed new suits and you were in the market for a few new dresses and he's promised to get that sorted for us -- it's why he knocked off early. If you have any specifications on ribbons or lace or whatnot make sure to send him a runner before he gets working, eh?"

Maya shook her head, "Come on Ephram. You know I'm not going to tell you that. If I did, I'd have to tell the cops you drink here if I want to keep my license."

Octavia looked from Ephram to Maya. "I'm guessing most of this lot are already passed out and the other half's pissed." She said with a shrug.

Cassie turned slightly to look at the bar owner when Ephram inquired with her. She knew The Fox and Fern was a favored and treasured spot. Police had sniffed around in the past. If Maya was at all observant, she’d offer up even slivers of info. “If you hadn’t jumped the detective.” Cassie said cooly, “I was going to visit her tomorrow.”

Cassie nodded at Ephram’s addition about new clothes. It was lower on importance, but she wasn’t one to turn down new frocks and ribbons. “I’ll send a note over. Thank you brother.”

Ephram pressed his lips together in an assessing downturn when Maya refused to give any information, finally saying, "--you'd best attend your other customers, then, if it's your license you're concerned with."

Maya leveled Ephram with a look. "Come now, you're a businessman. What kind of reputation would I have if I went running my mouth for either side? Would you drink here if you knew I was the kind to talk?"

Ephram spread his hands on the table. "Everyone talks to someone, Maya," he said flatly, the words clipped. "If you're not talking to me, then I don't have much use for you, do I?" He nodded at the bottle. "Other than for you to pour and serve."

Cassie‘s lips thinned. “Then leave. If you want to stay on Kingfisher’s good side.” She opened her mouth to continue but Ephram stepped in. She sat back in the bar stool a little more relaxed. Cassie hadn’t ordered a drink. She didn’t plan to. Someone had to keep their head. Besides, she preferred to drink in private, regardless of the taboo. “None of this conversation concerns you. Leave the bottle.” She grumbled back to Maya, waving the bartender off without so much as a glance. It rubbed her the wrong way, when someone completely disregarded her brother’s request. The only person who could do that was…well Cassie herself.

Maya raised an eyebrow. She wasn't surprised, not really. She looked between Cassie and Ephram, not losing her plaster smile. To Cassie, she reminded, "You wouldn't do anything here, not when its the only place you can be certain isn't a trap." Then facing Ephram, she added, "And what if I had seen her around here? Her money's good as yours."

Ephram stood, bringing Cassie up with him and snagging the neck of the gin bottle to bring as well. "Seems Kingfisher's thirst will have to be slaked somewhere new," he remarked. "Come on, Cassie. Good to see you, Vi. If you want to drink somewhere for the Jacks, you know which pubs are ours." He nodded at Maya as they went past her. "Now you won't have to factor our money into what you take."

Cassie stood promptly with Ephram, not wasting her time on responding to the other woman behind the bar. “Don’t ever go back to that place.” She said, the poison and vitriol only obvious behind her words to someone like her brother.

Ephram lit a cigarette as soon as they left the Fox and Fern for the last time, inhaling in the now downright cold night air. "We have options," he said, although he was frowning. "Suppose this means I'll either have to walk a little farther or take a car when I go drinking. Ah, well."

“A driver is something we can easily remedy.” Cassie shrugged, continuing to walk next to her brother down the block until the rounded the corner and saw the familiar outline of the large manor. She paused only for a moment when she saw a figure looming around outside the front doors, but her hesitation quickly died, and instead Cassie smiled in amusement just a little. “It’s Voeman. Did you call him? Mrs. Hughs is gonna have a cow.”

Ephram grunted, raising a hand to hail Voeman as they approached. "Mrs. Hudson never met something bovine she didn't like. It's me she likes to cut her eyes at." He nodded curtly at Joey when they were within speaking distance, saying, "Awright, soldier?"

Joey had been getting a bit anxious about this job offer Ephram had thrown his way. He mostly knew what he was getting into, and it was nothing good, but Ephram had saved his life during the war and that wasn't easily forgotten. He wasn't anxious about the subject matter, no, just the fact that he hadn't been called in a while. He wasn't a man that liked having time on his hands, and lord knew he didn't want to be home with his wife. "Heya, Boss," he said with a nod in answer. "Thought I'd drop by." He caught Cassie's eye and smiled a bit. Just a bit. "Ma'am," he greeted, touching the brim of his cap.

"Well, no use you propping up the wall outside." Ephram opened the front doors to let them in, Mrs. Hudson turning up a few moments later and visibly drooping at Ephram's -- third? fourth? -- request for food for the day, his previous demands all having gone uneaten for one reason or the other. "Come into the second parlour," Ephram told the other two. "It's smallest, it always warms up fastest."

“Go, go.” Cassie waved them along eager to get into the house and next to a roaring firepit as well. She had to give it to Joey, at least he knew how to show up somewhat inconspicuous. Still, maybe he was just a little eager for a job. Ephram hadn’t used him in a bit, and Cassie wondered only for a quick moment if that was her fault. “She’s going to have a fit.” She sung quietly to her brother in reminder about their maid. The lady did look, at the very least, disheveled and flustered, “I saw her feeding your other meals to the children. And the dog.” Cassie commented when she opened up the second parlor.

"At least someone's being fed." After the strange turn of events at the Fox and Fern, Ephram didn't feel much like drinking; once Mrs. Hudson brought the tray of tea and sandwiches, he selected one and ate it out of hand with a cup of tea in the other, toasting himself in front of the fire and just ... watching his sister and Joey.

The Kingfisher house always baffled Joey. He didn't even have one parlor in his apartment, let alone a second one. He wasn't strung up for cash by any means, thanks to Ephram, but he lived a pretty simple life compared to this. No maid. No fancy teapot and matching fine china. But he didn't look at them with envy. Just awe and bewilderment. "Thank you," Joey said quietly to the maid as she brought them tea and food, which he gladly helped himself to, removing his flat cap and setting it on the arm of the chair he sat in as he sipped his tea. "What were you two out and about for?" he inquired, side glancing at Cassie as subtly as he could manage.

“Business.” Cassie answered Joey simply, taking her seat and eating one small sandwich from the tray that had been delivered. “We didn’t get very far. And instead, we found a bar that is no longer suitable for Kingfisher and Co.”

Joey raised his eyebrows as he took another sip. "Oh, which bar? Let me know where I should avoid."

Ephram added, "--or the Slap Jacks, for that matter. We're shifting our drinking to, hmmmm ... The Gray Pearl, I think. They do a nice roast there on Friday nights and it's only two long blocks further than Fox and Fern. In the other direction." Ephram drank some tea and then said experimentally, "Cassie was told tonight that she shouldn't dare try anything at Fox and Fern since it's apparently the only place in Soapham she can be sure isn't a trap." He gestured around their heads at the manor with the last crust of his sandwich before popping it in his mouth.

Cassie side glanced to Joey when Ephram informed the other man with better specifics of what had happened at the pub. A threat, but an easily perceived one none the less. She scoffed, “Which should automatically put it under suspicion for everyone.”

Joey felt himself getting angry at the notion of something disrespecting Ephram and Cassie. He wasn't sure if it was his loyalty to the Kingfisher family and the Slap Jacks flaring up or...something else. "You want me to do something about them?" he asked, setting his teacup down on the table and leaning forward slightly.

Ephram shook his head. "Not that important. Let them go on as they are -- we have more complex situations at hand."

Joey leaned back just as quickly, abandoning his empty teacup on the table. "Okay. But just say the word if you change your mind." He was debating bringing up other jobs Ephram might have for him, but unlike when they served together, this was a whole other element that belonged to Ephram and he was only allowed to be privy to because these two wished it so. So he did his best never to overstep his bounds.

If she wanted to be more petty, or more like if she could afford to be more petty, Cassie wasn’t sure she’d agree with the shadow of a threat as unimportant. It’d been more of a shock then anything to have the comment directed at her. It meant the barkeep was plain stupid, or someone in a mask. For the time being, Cassie would chalk it up to stupidity. “You look good Joey.” She commented, taking a sip from her tea. “Ephram’s gathering arms from a supplier.” Cassie paused glancing to her brother to allow him to continue, “That firepower will help us in the coming weeks.”

Ephram polished off another sandwich and cup of tea, finally starting to feel a little more settled. "You'll be needed for the delivery of the arms," he told Joey, "at the warehouse of Freddie Watts. He and his men will be in attendance, and the weapons are to be divided squarely between us. I'm bringing Dubois as well to keep you company, and then our share of the guns is going to Clair de Lune. Ruby's already been notified to make room for them." He looked over at Cassie. "You said you wanted to handle that part? Joey should go with you."

Joey suppressed the urge to smile at Cassie's compliment, simply nodding in thank you. "You as well, Cassie," he said quietly, refilling his teacup just so he had something to do with his hands. He nodded along as Cassie and Ephram explained the plan. He raised an eyebrow at the mention of 'in the coming weeks', but let it go to focus on the job at hand. "Sounds good to me. You expecting anything to go sideways?" He'd never met this Freddie Watts, though he'd heard of him, and didn't quite know what to expect.

Ephram ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek for a moment -- but only a moment. "Freddie's solid," he said, but the streak of cold, ruthless business he'd cultivated in himself spurred him on to add, "--for now. He's got nothing to gain by turning coat on this deal. And I reckon he's riding out his curiosity on what direction Kingfisher's gonna take with the old man six feet under."

Cassie sighed at Ephram’s suggestion. She felt he was doing it just to spite in her some round about way. Not that Joey’s company was unwelcome it just…felt weird encouraged by her brother. “Ephram, it’s not going to look exactly status quo for a war veteran to be approaching a half way house with a woman in tow.” She rolled her eyes at the idea of Freddie being a threat, “He’s too cocky over the share he got. He won’t put that in jeopardy.”

Ephram scratched the tip of his ring finger against his chin. "I'm sure Joey's dignity can handle some idle gossip about his whoremongering, if that's what it takes to get you and the shipment to safety," he said, stare unwavering between them. "I want you both on this. That's the long and short of it."

Joey wordlessly gestured toward Cassie with a nod of agreement, but he knew he couldn't argue with Ephram. "I'm no stranger to getting my hands dirty. Or my reputation." It was a bit of a joke, but he didn't laugh. "Whatever you want, Boss."

“Fine.” Cassie backed down, placing her tea cup on the table with a little harder ‘clang’ against the wood. She’d do as she was told, but it didn’t mean she always had to agree with it. “Joey and I will oversee Clair de Lune and the shipment together. At your request.”

Ephram met Cassie's displeased look, holding it as he said to Joey, "...there's a man in that shed against the western fence. A man whose life has run some ways past its purpose." He paused, then let the hammer drop. "Make sure those two things meet up even again, Voeman. And don't let me see any trace of it when you're done." Ephram smiled flatly. "I reckon you need more tasks to keep you busy and out of Cassie's hair."

Joey stood at Ephram's orders. He was used to being ejected from the house when he was no longer needed. Sent off to do the dirty work. But it was still always jarring. He remembered how Ephram had treated him like a pal in the trenches. An equal as they both stared death in the face over and over. But things were different now, and it didn't do well to dwell on the past. "Yes sir," he muttered, picking up his cap and heading for the door. "Consider it done."

“I know how to handle myself, and Joey Voeman.” Cassie grumbled to Ephram, “Your votes in confidence are overwhelming. Anyways, that widow should have received a check of funds by now.” Since he’d brung up the man dying in the shed, “I sent a box of groceries too. So, they’ll forget about him.” Cassie summarized flatly.

Ephram covered the distance over to Cassie in a few long strides, until he was next to her, curved over her so close his breath stirred her hair. "To hell with the Carruthers widow," he said, voice rumbling. "Do you want Voeman or not? Isn't that why you're pissed with me for staying out last night, for getting close to Ciara Woodman today? Because your bed's been cold too long?" Ephram pressed in closer, cinching Cassie's arm in his big hand. "Or is it something else that's got you bothered."

Cassie made a grimace when she saw Ephram quickly closing the space between them. It wasn’t any sort of reaction she had been expecting, but the sharp whispers next to her ear had her chuckling shortly thereafter. “Ephram please. If I wanted Joey I could have him. I’ve done it before. He’s has a wife. There are certain precautions. But most importantly, I know how to keep business and personal life separate.”

She turned, narrowing her eyes slightly at him, “I don’t know if I could say the same for you. So if the Slapjacks slip with this half and half deal you have with Watts-“ Cassie pulled her arm from Ephram’s grasp, “Don’t come crying to me.”

#au:gangster #alternate ephram #cassiegermaine #bumblingbrujo #thatwhichbindsus #freddiewatts #scarlettxruby #mayaparker #imviapassmeabeer #joeyvoeman

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zayntoxicateme · 6 years

Link

June 18, 2018

We managed to catch up with the quietly enigmatic singer.

Read "How Do You Explain Zayn?"

Zayn, the one-named man who found himself reborn after leaving One Direction, is now on GQ's cover. In his shoot with Sebastian Mader, Zayn channels Tyler Durden and Leo DiCaprio's Romeo. And the wildly enigmatic singer also let down his guard, briefly, in talking to writer Carrie Battan about his relationship with Gigi Hadid, the self indulgence of being a "star," and his crafty use of the paparazzi for his own devices—a story you can read here (full story is below; the link will take you to the GQ website)

How Do You Explain Zayn?

Carrie Battan

Photographs by

Sebastian Mader

The 25-year-old British singer is deeply, maddeningly, almost trolling-ly enigmatic. And that cultivated mystery—along with his disdain for the standard rules of superstardom—is probably what puts him on the short list for COOLEST HUMAN ALIVE. On a recent Friday night, though, he dropped his guard and spilled his guts.

There are exactly two places in New York on a Friday night where Zayn Malik can smoke Marlboro Lights as liberally and openly as he pleases, unencumbered by gawkers or the city's increasingly draconian anti-smoking laws. The ﬁrst is Zayn Malik's SoHo apartment, where he spends the majority of his time, zoning out, reading books, listening to music, and "partaking in the herb," as he says. The second is the Mary A. Whalen, a 172-foot-long restored-tanker-ship-turned-nonproﬁt-hangout-spot that is docked off the shore of Red Hook, Brooklyn. The ship is closed for business after 6 P.M., but tonight its leader, a hardy blonde ship preservationist named Carolina, has agreed to keep it open late to accommodate us. No crowds, a few plastic chairs, and a gently lilting surface that is basically a giant ashtray.

There is just one problem: The temperature on deck is decreasing rapidly with the setting sun, and Zayn—the 25-year-old former British-boy-band member, current solo pop-ish star, and all-around inscrutable avatar of contemporary celebrity—has arrived with nothing on his person but a lighter, a backpack, and an iPhone. No jacket on his rail-thin five-ten frame—just a pair of charcoal skinny jeans, a distressed Pink Floyd T-shirt, a bright pink beanie that obscures his new ﬂower skull tattoo (or "tah-oo," as Zayn pronounces it). He looks so modernly cool, blending a hip-hop swagger with a punk-rock edge, that he should receive a cut from Urban Outﬁtters every time someone makes a purchase. He is the only man whose Disney-princess-long eyelashes seem to bolster his machismo rather than diminish it. Nobody this dreamy has ever bothered to check the weather to see if he should grab a jacket before leaving the house. Through chattering teeth, he rejects multiple offers of blankets. "It's all good," he insists, burping faintly after taking a swig of his Peroni. "I'm cool."

Still, Carolina avails us of the ship's warmer galley. "I might have a cigarette ﬁrst?" Zayn asks, as though he needs permission, gesturing toward the other side of the ship. Over there is his assistant Taryn, a young woman with French-braided pigtails that make her look more like a high school soccer player than someone designated to manage the everyday logistics of a notoriously slippery superstar's life. She is the custodian of his pack, doling out individual cigarettes to Zayn periodically.

But Carolina assures us Zayn will not have to stay outside to smoke his cigarette. She'll let us smoke belowdecks on the condition that Zayn provide her one of his Marlboros and permission to snap a photograph. She promises she won't post it until after the story runs. "Uh…yeah?" Zayn replies, sounding sincerely surprised that he is the one who has to answer a question that was directed at him.

A steely detachment from life's mundane logistical concerns is part of almost every celebrity's existence, but it is the core of Zayn's being. This character trait has ruinous potential, but it also means he gets to live his life exactly how he pleases. And it means that he doesn't have to express a single word or hint of desire in order for the conditions around him to re-arrange to his liking and comfort. There's a hapless Peter Pan quality to it that makes it tough to hold against him.

We settle around the table in the '70s-style kitchen on the boat. It's 15 degrees warmer down here and private. Zayn instantly appears relieved, his shoulders unclenching and his brow de-furrowing. He stops shivering. He is in a womb-like space, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, and he seems palpably and unexpectedly happy. "Thanks," he says quietly and earnestly in Carolina's direction as she seals off the door behind us. "Couple of times I tried to quit. But I just like smoking cigs. Simple as that."

There is a major conundrum in Zayn's life, which is that he may be constitutionally incapable of being a star. He tells me so almost immediately. "I don't work well in group situations, with loads of people staring at me. And when you say 'star'…everyone wants you to be this kind of character that owns a room or is overly arrogant or conﬁdent. I'm not that guy," he says. "So I don't want to be a star." Zayn seems to aspire to the soul of Prince, or some cult '90s skate-punk ﬁgure, but is trapped in the trajectory of a Justin Timberlake.

A decade ago, someone like Zayn would not have become the Chosen Member of a band like One Direction. The Chosen Member is the boy-band graduate whose solo career evolves and hurdles into grown-up relevance, ultimately overshadowing the band's legacy. Until recently, you could spot a Chosen Member from a mile away—he was unequivocally the best dancer and the one the most girls wanted to bring home to their parents. But Zayn never ﬁt the mold of a Chosen Member. From the day One Direction formed, on the U.K. show The X Factor in 2010, he was cast as the smoldering background foil to the eager-to-please Harry Styles and Liam Payne. His energy and his dance moves were muted. He presented as the quiet, disillusioned one.

But in the past ﬁve years or so, it has become acceptable—necessary, even—for a young pop star to show some edge. Thanks to the social-media-fueled, ever intensifying quest for authenticity, real or feigned, we no longer expect our most famous musicians to be toothless and virginal robots. Now we demand that they show a certain degree of lustiness, instability, anti-heroism. The Weeknd scored a No. 1 hit with an elaborately coded song about a cocaine binge—and then followed it up with another No. 1 hit, this one explicitly referencing a cocaine binge. Lana Del Rey's entire aesthetic revolves around a kind of narcotized death wish. And Taylor Swift spent her last album desperately trying to persuade us that she really is villainous. Even Disney's babiest-faced of pop princesses, Selena Gomez, is getting mileage out of her demons, playing a Girl, Interrupted–style heroine and rocking a hospital bracelet in a music video. Face tattoos are basically required for entry onto the Billboard Hot 100 these days. Squeaky-clean is no more.

And yet even for the most tortured-seeming of these artists, there is still a ﬁerce expectation that they play the game. Mild drug habits or mental illnesses are perfectly acceptable, so long as someone is willing to write catchy songs about those tendencies and then later gussy them up for arena audiences and gamely ﬁeld jokes from talk-show hosts. Even Justin Bieber, the poster child for our current era of troubled pop stars, is always just one phone call with his pastor away from being able to quiet his demons and pop-and-lock on demand.

Zayn seems like a perfect avatar for this new generation of bruised pop heartthrobs, but he's the only one of his cohorts who can back it up with a sincerely jaded disposition and an unpredictable way of being. He is the only one who is staunchly unwilling to play the game. You will not ﬁnd Zayn cheesing with a random group of famous people for someone's Instagram story at Coachella, nor will you ﬁnd Zayn learning the latest viral dance move with Ellen DeGeneres. When he released his solo debut, Mind of Mine, two years ago, he opted out of touring altogether, surely pissing off a bunch of emotionally and ﬁnancially invested parties. And although he promises to be more public-facing this time around—he insists he will tour—he's still removed from the album-cycle content churn. He says the creators of Atlanta have reached out to him to appear on the show—a dream opportunity for anyone in the music industry at this moment—but persnickety Zayn is still mulling the potential. "If the part's right, I'd be really into it," he says. Even the "behind-the-scenes" video that accompanied his new single fails to actually take anyone "behind the scenes"—it's just the song playing over some B-roll. "I guess the cameraman didn't get too much footage," Zayn says on the boat. "I might have been running away from him a bit."

When I ask him why he failed to show up at the Met Gala a couple days earlier, he almost chokes on his cigarette smoke as he exhales. He went to the Met Gala once, in 2016, and that experience symbolized everything he detests about being a famous person—and the litany of coercion and artiﬁce that someone in his position experiences.

"I did go, but I didn't go there to be like, 'Yo, take me serious,' " he remembers. "I was taking the piss! I went there as my favorite Mortal Kombat character, Jax."

He continues: "The Met Gala is not necessarily anything that I ever knew about or was about. But my [former] stylist…would say to me, 'This is really good for you to do.' And no matter how strong you are mentally, you can always be swayed to do certain things. Now, it's not something I would go to. I'd rather be sitting at my house, doing something productive, than dressing up in really expensive clothes and being photographed on a red carpet.… To do the self-indulgent Look at me, I'm amazing thing on the red carpet, it's not me."

Here Zayn catches himself, probably realizing this might register as a diss of Gigi Hadid, the 23-year-old supermodel he's been in an on-again, off-again relationship with for two years. The supermodel who very much seemed to enjoy dressing up in really expensive clothes and being photographed on the red carpet days earlier.

"I get it, and I understand that people gain enjoyment from it," he says. I ask if he followed along with the coverage from his couch. "No, no," he says, and pauses. "Gi stole the night, though. The stained glass on her dress. Everyone else just put a cross on."

When I ask Zayn if he has any conﬁdants in the industry, he shakes his head vigorously. "No," he says. "I don't ever want to cross wires with other people too much. I just want to see the world through my eyes."

Zayn grew up with three sisters ("I was outnumbered," he says) and is still surrounded by women, ensuring that there's a high level of exasperated but fond maternal energy swirling at all times. Blood relatives and the Hadids—particularly Gigi's mother, Yolanda, who seems to have taken on a Kris Jenner–ian role in his life—make up much of his inner circle today. ("We get on. She's really fucking cool. She's a Capricorn. She's the same star sign as me.") He recently parted ways with his high-proﬁle manager. His best friend is a younger cousin.

"I'm not [in] the mix," he says. "I'm outside the mix."

This kind of stubborn non-participation, of course, is a reaction to the years Zayn spent being in a mix that was not to his liking. When he was a kid, growing up in the northern working-class city of Bradford, singing was just one part of an aimless but all-consuming creative impulse. He never thought he was much of a singer, until one day the choir leader at his performing-arts school praised his voice and suggested that he try out for Britain's premier vocal-competition show. Zayn's mom had to drag him from his bed at 4 A.M. to attend the audition, where he broke from the typical pop fare with a rendition of Mario's "Let Me Love You."

After his X Factor audition, there was an exchange (never aired) in which head judge Simon Cowell probed baby Zayn. " 'You know, with all these online platforms, why haven't you ever put out anything prior to this?' " Zayn remembers Cowell asking him. Zayn seemed the type, after all: a soft-spoken and artistically gifted teen who liked to sing alone in his bedroom and tinkered with rudimentary song-recording equipment. "I didn't necessarily think my stuff would be seen amongst the millions of people who put their stuff online. So I went with X Factor at that age," he says now. Like any ﬁckle teenager, Zayn "just did it for fun, to see what would happen."

The day that Zayn auditioned, he was among many aspiring solo artists rejected by the judges. But ﬁve of the young singers were cobbled together as a boy band in a later segment. Thus was born One Direction and a rabid fandom that British people love to compare to Beatlemania. A craze so ﬁerce and massive that it generated global synchronized ﬂash mobs and fan-ﬁction authors who've reportedly scored six-ﬁgure book deals. In an instant, Zayn was thrust into a star-making boot camp, fast-tracked to an uncontrollable type of notoriety without being given the opportunity to consider alternatives.

It's no secret that Zayn didn't love One Direction's sound or his bandmates. "My vision didn't necessarily always go with what was going on within the band," he says. There was something so earnest, so wholesomely dweeby, about the whole thing. It wasn't cool, and Zayn didn't particularly enjoy being dragged around the world to look like an epic dork during the prime of his youth.

When he split off, in 2015, Zayn ﬁnally got to do all the things he hadn't been able to in One Direction: dye his hair, grow his beard, sing about sex. But he was also introduced to a fresh army of puppeteers trying to guide him, and he felt disoriented, adrift. The only way to ground himself was to resist the pull of anyone's expectations and answer only to Zayn. He'd spent ﬁve years taking direction and had become allergic to it.

There are plenty of clichéd expressions about how toxic and stiﬂing freedom can be, and Zayn experienced many of them when he went solo. "I didn't really, like, make any friends from the band. I just didn't do it. It's not something that I'm afraid to say. I deﬁnitely have issues trusting people," he says. When he was living in Los Angeles, aimless, he fell in with a crowd of industry people: "Producers, musicians, tailors, stylists, managers. Them kind of things," he says. "It got too crazy. I just got too much into the party scene. Just going out all the time. And I was too distracted." So he left L.A. permanently and moved to New York earlier this year as a way to bring himself back down to earth.

Running a bit further, he recently bought a farm in rural Pennsylvania on the advice of Yolanda Hadid, who also has a farm there. The farm? "Cool." The state of Pennsylvania? "Cool." If you haven't picked up on it for yourself yet, Zayn loves the word "cool"; he loves it so much that he uses it more than 43 times over the course of our conversation. And now that Zayn likes to go to his farm and visit the Hadids, he and Gigi even have a horse together, named Cool. He's just getting things going on the farm, but already there are crops of cherries, tomatoes, and cucumbers. He likes to ride his ATVs. Sometimes he and Gigi will go at the same time, and she'll ride a horse, like Cool, while he watches.

Zayn has a habit of speaking in a conditioned state of detachment, responding in friendly but anodyne one-liners. Still, even someone who willfully projects this kind of cool two-dimensionalism can get irked from being flattened all the time by those around him. I catch myself flattening him, even when he's right in front of me. When I bring up the deceased Lil Peep, with whom he shared a manager, I say that it's a shame they never met—they seem like kindred spirits who could have made a great song together, or at least bonded over tattoos.

Zayn begins to laugh. "I'm not just going to be friends [with people] because we've both got tattoos. Loads of people come up to me and they're like, 'Yo, I got tattoos, you got tattoos. Let's be friends.' And I'm like… 'We're not just going to be friends because we've both got tattoos.'

"There's a bit more depth to me than that," he says, admonishing me.

One topic that will draw out this aforementioned depth is, unexpectedly, America. Despite the fact that he is living in a country under a leader that is exceptionally hostile to immigrants, the fantasy of America as a come-one, come-all melting pot is alive and well in Zayn's mind. He says he'd vote for Oprah if she ran for office because he likes her "ideologies about the world" and she's a "badass businesswoman."

"The UK is like, Fuck you, you're successful. That's not a nice attitude to have," he says. "You come to America, you're a bit shocked at first: Are these people being genuine? Are they really interested in me? Do they want to have a conversation? But they do! And that's a really nice thing. And I feel like it's misrepresented across the globe. For the kind of country it is, because everybody supports, no matter what color, what gender, what sexuality, what class—none of that matters here. People genuinely want to know you for who you are. And that's how America should be represented across the world."

Watch Now:Zayn Rocks Summer’s Best Swerves

Maybe you should run for office, I say.

"Maybe. It'd be cool. I feel like it's a beautiful place. [Because of the current political climate,] people are expressing how they really feel about where they come from and their heritage and their backgrounds. They're all mixed. To be American, you are mixed.

"So that's how I feel about it—it's a beautiful place, and it's a beautiful time to be alive."

Another unlikely topic that will break Zayn out of his default conversational mode and get him talking in jolting, paragraphs-long monologues: the paparazzi. The paparazzi who have been trailing him for years and, recently, every time he sets foot near Gigi's NoHo apartment, feeding the endless tabloid speculation about the state of their relationship. The paps used to piss Zayn off, until he realized their utility.

"That's my promo," he says. "I come outside, they take photos." He gets to quietly remind people that he exists—and gets photographed looking like the second coming of Johnny Depp, leaving the apartment of one of the most gorgeous women in the world—without doing a thing. "They stay outside and do all the work!" he says. "You can get pissed off about it and be like, 'Yo, this is a hindrance on my life.' Or you can use it for your own beneﬁt and be like, 'Well, if they're going to take the photos, then let them.' You've gotta earn your dollar, and I've gotta earn mine."

Which is to say that just because Zayn loathes the cornball industry churn doesn't mean he needs to surrender his relevance. Zayn represents an era in which underground cool and mass-market, Calabasian-style popularity have collapsed into one another. He operates on a plane where celebrity is predicated chieﬂy on relevance and intrigue, and Zayn—with his equally illustrious girlfriend, his brooding glare, and his following of millions—has about as much relevance and intrigue as anybody. He is both a casualty and a beneﬁciary of this uniquely modern form of celebrity. In running from his stardom, he's only fueling it.

I suppose now is the time to dispense with the rest of the intel I gleaned from Zayn about his relationship with Gigi Hadid, which was a less sensitive subject than I had anticipated. The two met at the end of 2015 at a party—which "pah-y," Zayn will not disclose, but suffice it to say it was a "cool pah-y"—and just days later, Zayn learned she'd broken up with Joe Jonas. He reached out to her and asked her to dinner at the Bowery Hotel. And thus was born a couple that will go down in history as one of the most iconic and Zeitgeisty pairings of all time, a couple whose images I will show my grandchildren to prove that the world was better in my day. All of the gossip about their relationship being an opportunistic setup by their respective management is bullshit, Zayn says: "If a relationship is for your career, you can fucking walk out the door. No way. See you later."

Despite the dramatic announcement of their split a couple of months ago, Zayn and Gigi are very much still close, as evidenced by myriad photos of him leaving her apartment or kissing her on the street. Zayn speaks about Gigi in a purely misty-eyed, worshipful tone that telegraphs he may be atoning for something. "I'm really thankful that I met her," he says. He uses the term "we" in the present tense quite a bit: "We go to the farm." "We have horses." The time he actually rode a horse with Gigi, he says, "I looked like a complete idiot and she looked like a complete professional.… We're still really good friends, and we're still in contact," he says. "No bad blood." He laughs. "…Taylor Swift.

"We're adults. We don't need to put a label on it, make it something for people's expectations." To hear Zayn tell it, Gigi is the hyper-organized, clear-headed, and positive counterweight to his disposition, which can dip into a vacant or negative state. She helped him reset his attitude when he was releasing his ﬁrst solo album, partying too hard. "I had a very negative outlook on things. That might have been adolescence or testosterone or whatever the fuck was running through my body at the time," he says. "She's helped me to look at things from a positive angle."

As Zayn heads into his new album cycle, Gigi has been a font of support and organizational heft. He says she's especially good with dates, which I mishear as "good with debts."

She's good with debts? You're in debt?

"No, no. Dates. She doesn't handle my ﬁnances yet," he says. "We'll get to that eventually."

When Zayn Malik went solo, he dropped his last name. The mononymic "Zayn" took on a potency and directness that enabled him to break free from the chains of boy-band drudgery and lameness. Zayn: It's a single syllable that conjures a vaporous sexuality and a moodiness that blurs the line between contemplative and blank. You can imagine the black-and-white commercial for L'Eau de Zayn.

In the years since he dropped his last name, the word "Zayn" has also become, to insiders, an equally potent verb. To "Zayn" means to be within someone's reach one moment and then completely disappear the next without any explanation. Poof! To be "Zayned" is to witness a French exit so aggressive that it almost has a supernatural quality. I know this because it happened to me.

We emerged from the ship's galley, and as I prepared to launch into more conversation, he asked Carolina where he could ﬁnd the toilets. She pointed him toward a porta-potty on dry land, and Taryn wordlessly followed behind him, obviously accustomed to this ritual. Before I could get my bearings, he was zipping off into the parking lot adjacent to the tanker, no doubt scurrying home to his fortress of solitude and cigarette smoke in SoHo. I'd been Zayned.

We were supposed to hang out the following week, and I patiently waited for him to reach out. But I knew that he never would. And much as I'd like to be the exception to the Laws of Zayn's Nature, I get it. Who among us has never fantasized about blowing off pesky professional obligations we deem useless? Zayn—driven by a spirit that is part self-destruction, part self-preservation, part youthful punk contrarianism—actually has the balls to live that fantasy. It's self-absorbed, immature, and unprofessional. I'd be offended if I didn't think it was so fucking cool.

Carrie Battan is a staff writer for 'The New Yorker' and a contributor to 'GQ'.

An abridged version of this story appeared in the July 2018 issue.

#zayn #gq #interview #magazine #print interview #love of my life

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akoaganier · 6 years

Text

Jeff Bezos the founder and CEO of Amazon, owner of Blue Horizon and The Washington Post has become the Richest man in the world and modern history as of October 27 2017.

He now surpasses Bill Gates by 10 billion dollars.There is a lot I would want to ask a person of this affluence. How did you accumulate this wealth? Did anyone help you? What do you do with all this money? A lot of us are struggling, are you helping America? What kind of effect are you having on our country? How much richer are you than than the rest of us?

Jeff Bezos makes $231,000 a minute, his warehouse workers make $12 an hour.

It’s safe to say that the wealth of Jeff Bezos comes from the hard labor of others and unjustly so. Excusing the likes of Jeff Bezos and his type of psychotic anti-social business practices is perpetuating the exploitation of the American people and widens the gap of income inequality. Jeff Bezos just bought a 23 million dollar home, an old textile museum he plans to covert into two mansions. I do not think I would be alone in this to say; he should probably properly accommodate his employees before making the grandeur purchase of a 27,000 square foot property. TIME magazine says that from January 1st to May 1st of 2015 Jeff Bezos saw his wealth increase by 275 million every single day. His average employee makes $28,446 a year, he makes that every 8.93 seconds. His warehouse workers from Lehigh Valley, whom are documented to have worked in an 114 degree environment and pass out from heat exhaustion, make $12 an hour while he makes $190,920 every minute in 2015 (as of 2018 he makes $231,000 a minute). Jeff Bezos paid ambulances and paramedics to be stationed outside of the warehouses rather than install air conditioning. In the list of priorities, running your business ethically would be at the top, a customer receiving their package with two day shipping is not worth the cost of a warehouse workers health. Furthermore your fortune should not be made on the savings that come from underpaying your staff.

Elmer Goris, a resident of Allentown, worked in warehouses for over 10 years, he worked for Amazon at their Lehigh Valley warehouse for one year before quitting in July 2011, because he was “frustrated with the heat and demands that he work mandatory overtime”. "I never felt like passing out in a warehouse and I never felt treated like a piece of crap in any other warehouse but this one" Elmer Goris says "They can do that because there aren't any jobs in the area”. Amazon is notorious for their abuse of temporary workers. Amazon hires workers through third party contractors to save money and to avoid being responsible for injuries - it allows them to avoid the American standard regulations that would otherwise give workers unemployment insurance and make Amazon liable for worker compensation. Abused workers cannot even unionize, because the work force is constantly changing and most of them are not legally tied to Amazon. It is a loophole and it leaves Americans in the dust after they are overworked by this mega-monopoly.

Amazon runs on a dystopian set of moral values. Temporary workers interviewed at the Lehigh Valley warehouse say “few people in their working groups actually made it to a permanent Amazon position. Instead, they were pushed harder and harder to work faster and faster until they were terminated, they quit, or they got injured”. Rosemarie Fritchman a 67 year old warehouse worker was driven away by an ambulance after medical staff examined her for heat exhaustion. Rosemarie Fritchman says “Following company policy, she provided a doctor's note upon returning to work, and she was still terminated without explanation”. She was in a conference room pleading for unemployment benefits of about $160 a week and was denied. The human resources agent that sat across from her denied her plea, this agent of course does not work for Amazon instead she works for Integrity Staffing Solutions, a company paid by Amazon to recruit warehouse workers and “one of the fastest-growing agencies of its kind in the country”. Jeff Bezos uses them to save money by fighting off workers like Rosemarie Fritchman who were injured on the job and are pleading for unemployment benefits. In June of 2011 an emergency room doctor called federal regulators to report the Amazon warehouse as an “unsafe environment”.

“Tell Mr. Bezos and the rest of management to come out of their offices and get on the shop floor. At the end of the day, they never feel what we go through in a day for $12 an hour. They get to sit down in their offices and get paid more than we will see in a year,” - a single mother of two, 2017.

In 2018 Amazon still avoids compensating Amazon workers for injuries acquired on the job

This is not a resolved issue, since then Shannon Allen 49 years old of Azle, Texas was injured twice after beginning work on May 2017. When being injured on the job her experience was this; “Nobody was taking me seriously about my injury. My injury was being minimized. It was not being acknowledged”. On October 24, 2017, at 10:30 at night she told her manager “My back is killing me” she felt a sharp pain in her back “It felt like someone stabbed me in the back and dragged it all the way down my spine”. There were no doctors or nurses, just EMTs. The EMT told her to lie down on a heating pad for 30 minutes, then she was discharged without pay which Amazon labeled “voluntary time off”, a bizarre label for an injury on the job. Rather than send her to a doctor, Amazon set up a questionable “treatment plan” that consisted of sitting on a heating pad for 15-20 minutes a night. She went back to work the next night but the pain was so severe she could not get passed the first four hours of her shift, and when she could not complete her shift, Amazon sent her home without payment for the work she did complete. “Amazon paid Shannon $25 a week for her short-term disability”. She says “They tried to push narcotics on me. I said I don’t want your narcotics. I want to get better”.

She “returned to work on January 27, a day before her birthday”. Amazon called her time off an “excessive amount of time to complete therapy” and cancelled her workers’ compensation. The day she returned to work Shannon was injured a second time. This time Shannon looked for other doctors other than the therapist chosen by Amazon’s insurance company. This doctor said “he did not understand why she was being released to go back to work. He said that she was seriously injured, ordered her to take off work for a month, and indicated that she may need surgery”. Amazon’s “peer review group” overturned this doctor’s diagnosis. After both injuries in the Amazon warehouse, on April of 2018 Amazon’s workers’ compensation manager told Shannon that the company’s “safety senior ops” manager “had determined that she did not need any accommodations for her job”. “They really don’t care about anything but profit” says Shannon.

Shannon Allen even had to take a co-worker to the emergency room herself because her blood pressure skyrocketed, “The doctor said if she had not come in, she would not have made it”. “Every time we would go on break, ambulances would be waiting outside to pick people up. But not one manager, nobody from HR, nobody from security is out there escorting people to the ambulances. They just don’t care. You are on your own”. Shannon Allen says “On my shift we were picking people up from heat exhaustion”. As per usual Shannon Allen described the Amazon warehouse as “sweltering” the working environment reached levels of 80, 85, and 90 degrees Fahrenheit “In the summertime, it gets over 100 degrees in there”.

Bill Gates uses “billions of dollars a year on global health, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is putting $1 billion a year into his Blue Origin space venture” - GeekWire. “The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel” says Jeff Bezos during the Axel Springer award ceremony in Berlin. Jeff Bezos just referred to the profit that he makes off the underpaid sacrificial labor of his workers…as Amazon winnings, this is not a lottery it is the deliberate exploitation of the American people. Jeff Bezos has the personal financial resources to pay his workers especially if he can say something like this; “Blue Origin is expensive enough to be able to use that fortune. I am liquidating about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock to fund Blue Origin. And I plan to continue to do that for a long time” liquidating as in cashing-in his stock, thats tangible money. All the while many Amazon workers are relying on food stamps and being pushed to work until they burn out. “They brag about the number of people that they fire” - Shannon Allen.

Allen says “There are people living in the parking lot at (Amazon warehouse) DFW-7. I have seen that myself. They go in to wash up in the bathroom”. She says “I hate this place. I feel like I’m working in a prison camp”.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders posted a video on May 22 2018 outing Jeff Bezos for his greed highlighting the fact that "Bezos makes more in 10 seconds than the median Amazon employee makes in a year: $28,466”. In response Amazon News posted “Please compare our median pay & benefits to other retailers. We’d be happy for you to come see (an Amazon warehouse) for yourself”. Accepting their invitation Bernie Sanders posts "I remain deeply concerned about Amazon, an enormously profitable corporation, paying workers wages that are so low that they are forced to depend on federal programs like Medicaid, food stamps and public housing for survival. At a time of exploding profits, I would hope that Amazon would pay everyone who works in your (warehouses) a living wage”.

Amazon threatens housing for homeless

Amazon was founded on July 5, 1994 in Seattle, Washington, its about time this morally questionable monopoly and Jeff Bezos pay their fair share to the American People. Just last month on May 1st of 2018, Amazon “halted construction of a new 17-story office building in downtown Seattle, Washington to protest a proposed city council tax that would fund housing for the homeless”. Amazon also “threatened to sublease office space it is presently using in another downtown building”. Another massive corporate move to manipulate our government and policies, halting progressive reforms.

“The city council proposal would tax large businesses in Seattle by a total of $0.26 per worker hour for those employed in Seattle (i.e. if an Amazon employee in Seattle makes $50/hour, Amazon will pay $50.26/hr, with $0.26 going to the city). This would generate $75 million a year to fund the construction of 1,780 affordable housing units within five years, as well as a modest expansion of social programs for the homeless. If enacted at a city council meeting on May 15, the tax would cost Amazon $20 million per year—roughly one sixth of what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes each day”. - wsws.org

Seattle has the third largest homeless population in America. In 2017 the Seattle Times reported that “Nearly 22,000 homeless people” were counted, a 3.5 percent increase over the course of a year. 169 of which died outdoors in 2017.

Amazon has routinely exploited the American people for the last 23 years and has built a $129 billion fortune for it’s founder Jeff Bezos, at a 2018 rate of $231,000 per minute. To make matters worse Amazon does not pay it’s taxes. Steve Kovach a Business Insider senior correspondent says that Amazon's profits in 2017 were about $3 billion and it paid almost no federal taxes. Bob Bryan a Business Insider Policy Reporter says “Amazon avoids paying federal taxes using a variety of tax credits and tax exemptions that are legal and built into the U.S. federal tax code. Some of these can include the research and development tax credit which allows them to deduct some of the costs of new investments” this includes Amazon’s research into drone delivery, but that simply means they get tax breaks for investing in themselves and becoming an even bigger conglomerate.

“Amazon does a really good job at avoiding federal taxes, and for most of its existence, it avoided charging you state sales tax. That's because of a Supreme Court case from 1992 that prevented states from collecting sales tax from e-commerce companies. It allowed Amazon and other retailers to sell tons of stuff to you effectively tax-free. By 2017, that all changed, Amazon started charging sales tax in all the states that have it, but it's not that simple, a lot of third-party sellers sell stuff through Amazon as well, and many of them don't charge sales tax” says Kovach. Bryan adds “there are tens of millions of dollars every year in state sales tax that go uncollected from third-party sellers”. According to Kovach, in addition to the saving Amazon has collected from avoiding federal taxes and sales taxes “(Amazon) has gotten over $600 million in tax breaks to build warehouses in certain states. It got another $147 million in tax breaks for building data centers around the country. Keep in mind Amazon is valued at over $700 billion, it's not like the company is struggling to save money”.

Every time you order using amazon to save a few dollars, those are tax dollars that will not go to schools, benefits for federal retirees and veterans, science and medical research, elderly and disabled citizens, and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) which provides health care to 60 million low-income American children and parents.

There are alternatives to shopping at Amazon, buy products locally or visit sites like: www.ethicalconsumer.org/boycotts/boycottamazon/amazonshoppingalternatives.aspx to find ethical shopping sources.

https://www.gofundme.com/5impots — Here is a gofundme link for Shannon Allen an Amazon warehouse worker that was injured on the job.

a few random notes to keep in mind

Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million and installed a policy to not write anything that criticizes its’ investors witch include the CIA

Jeff Bezos also bought WholeFoods for $13.7 billion

https://www.gofundme.com/5impots — Here is a gofundme link for Shannon Allen an Amazon warehouse employee that was injured on the job

http://time.com/money/5192998/jeff-bezos-net-worth-2018-worlds-richest-man/ - Jeff Bezos makes $230,000 a minute

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/09/amaz-d09.html - warehouse employee quotes

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917-story.html - amazon forces warehouse workers to heat exhaustion

http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-amazon-temporary-workers-unemployment-20121215-story.html -workers pushed to heat exhaustion than fired for missing work and denied unemployment insurance

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/04/amaz-m04.html - amazon protests tax increase to fund the construction of homeless shelters and affordable housing units

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-not-paying-taxes-trump-bezos-2018-4 - how amazon avoids paying taxes

#jeffbezos #corruption #amazon #politics #income inequality #wage theft

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theliberaltony · 6 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Sarah Hargrove didn’t expect to be on the front lines of a national emergency after getting a master’s degree in forensic science. But the opioid crisis has put her there. A Chicago native, she moved to Louisville, Kentucky, in 2012 to work as an autopsy technician in the office of the state’s chief medical examiner. She prepared bodies for examination and assisted doctors with death investigations. She loved doing the hands-on work and helping to answer questions about what caused a person’s death. “I’ve always been very interested in puzzles,” she told me recently.

In the past few years, Hargrove has been given a puzzle that officials across the country are finding difficult to solve. Her work has been overwhelmed by Kentucky’s opioid epidemic, to the point that she is now helping a state-backed research institute try to find a solution. By the end of her time as an autopsy technician, Hargrove said, it wasn’t abnormal to see one or two overdose deaths each day. “Every single death we see is terrible,” Hargrove said. “But the drug overdose cases, you just got so immune to seeing them — it was just over and over and over again.”

You may think of politicians, first responders and physicians as the people best-equipped to stop the opioid crisis. And they do have an important role to play. But so do coroners and medical examiners. The government and media generally quantify the nation’s opioid problem on only one dimension: how many people have died. Hargrove and Kentucky are working to provide an additional dimension: exactly which drugs — either prescription opioids or illicit ones like heroin and synthetic fentanyl — led to a death. Armed with even that one extra bit of data, a state can fight its opioid crisis in a new way.

The opioid epidemic continues to ravage the country. Official numbers from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that overdoses from drugs — legally prescribed or otherwise, including opioids, hallucinogens and other narcotics such as cocaine — killed about 63,600 people nationwide in 2016, a 21 percent increase from the year before. Of those, over 42,000 — roughly 66 percent of the total — involved some kind of opioid.1 In some areas, coroners are overwhelmed by how many people are dying, and morgues are running out of space.

Kentucky has been hit particularly hard. There were 1,419 reported overdose deaths in 2016 — 33.5 per 100,000 people,2 according to the CDC. Of those deaths, 989 — 23.6 per 100,000 people — involved some type of opioid. Those are some of the highest rates in the country. Over the past year, first responders have seen significant overdose spikes throughout the state.

The Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center is one of the organizations trying to put the puzzle pieces together. A partnership between the state Public Health Department and the University of Kentucky, the center is investigating the causes of the state’s drug overdoses to help policymakers make more educated decisions about how to tackle the crisis. That means improving the accuracy of death certificates and other available data and encouraging law enforcement groups, public health officials and other state agencies to communicate with one another better. The center started working with drug overdose mortality data in 2011 and quickly realized how limited death certificate information on how someone died and what killed them was.

The efforts that KIPRC and the state have made to improve this data have led to crucial findings, including that Kentucky’s crisis isn’t one crisis, but many. Different parts of the state are afflicted with different drugs. Northern Kentucky, for example, has a high prevalence of heroin and fentanyl — a synthetic opioid that is more deadly than heroin and other types of opioids — while in the eastern part of the state, prescription opioids are still the main concern.

To better understand what drugs were killing people and where, the center built a “drug overdose fatality surveillance system” (which goes by DOFSS) that combines several data sources, including death certificate information, post-mortem toxicology analysis and the prescription drug history of victims. “We’re not doing this for the sake of research,” said Svetla Slavova, a biostatistician working with KIPRC. “We provide actionable data for policymaking, treatment and prevention. We’re trying to be responsive and provide data that will help make these decisions.”

Van Ingram, executive director of the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, said he was able to push major legislation changes with the help of KIPRC’s research. In 2015, the governor signed into law a bill that increased the availability of naloxone, a drug used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, and supplied funding for treatment programs. “Armed with the information we received early around fentanyl, we were able to get funds to supply Narcan [the brand name for naloxone] across the state,” Ingram said.

This means it matters what goes into KIPRC’s databases. National statistics on drug overdoses come from death certificates. But because the death investigation process is typically done on a local level, the cause and manner of a death may be recorded in different ways, which can affect how deaths are classified. For example, a single drug may be listed on a death certificate when multiple substances were actually involved in an overdose.

When Hargrove became a data management analyst for KIPRC, she started pointing out discrepancies on death certificates. Even the smallest differences in language can leave overdose deaths uncounted. At first, Hargrove was confused by how many overdose cases weren’t making it into the DOFSS database. Eventually, she figured out that some deaths that involved more than one drug were being left out because they were being listed as “polysubstance intoxication” or “multiple substance overdose,” without giving the specific name of the drugs involved. Also, the word “substance” was triggering the classification of these deaths into another category altogether. Hargrove communicated this issue to the chief medical examiner and county coroners, pushing for this type of death to be listed as a “multi-drug overdose” instead.

Prompted in part by experiences like that, Hargrove is now trying to rally all 120 coroners across the state to collect death-certificate information more uniformly. The center is also forming collaborations with the state’s police forensics lab and local emergency medical services that will help them better track the opioid epidemic across the state.

This is the type of work that President Trump’s commission on the opioid crisis recommended bolstering in its November report. Specifically, it mentioned improving how overdose death investigations are conducted, including how drug testing is done. The country does not have “sufficiently accurate and systematic data from medical examiners around the country to determine overdose deaths, both in their cause and the actual number of deaths,” the report said.

That’s in part because the people we’re relying on to generate our data around opioid overdoses have limited resources and funding to work with.

There are two main professions that are recording information for death data: coroners and medical examiners.

In Kentucky, each county elects a coroner, who performs death investigations to record the cause and manner of death on death certificates. Many of them have little, if any, medical experience. Death investigations can involve forensic work, examinations of evidence that is found at the scene of a death, and exploration into the lives of the deceased for context such as medical history.

“Some of [Kentucky’s] coroners just a couple of years ago didn’t have a computer in their office,” Hargrove said. “Some of them are still working out of their house or out of their businesses. Some of them have two full-time jobs on top of being a coroner. … My favorite message one of the coroners has [on the office answering machine] is, ‘I’m sorry my county does not have any funding for me to have a secretary, so you’re just going to have to keep calling back.’”

Danny Finley has been the coroner for Clay County, a rural area in the southeastern part of the state, since 2011. But that’s not his primary job. He’s an insurance broker working primarily in health care and a licensed funeral director, although he’s not currently active in that role.

At the time he was elected, Finley said, Clay County was in the midst of a serious drug problem. According to KIPRC, the county of roughly 22,000 people had 25 drug overdose deaths that year. But it wasn’t clear which drugs were responsible, so Finley couldn’t tell whether the county’s drug problem was the same or different from those in other parts of the state.

The medical complexities of overdose deaths and the rise of new drug derivatives3 mean coroners need more help now than ever. In Kentucky, that’s where medical examiners come in — they assist coroners when a death is unusual or sudden by performing autopsies. Kentucky has four regional medical examiner offices staffed with forensic pathologists, doctors who examine bodies after death, but the annual caseload is overwhelming the system. “The medical examiners are on call pretty much 24/7,” Hargrove said.

The chief medical examiner’s office in Kentucky operates as a central information center to collect reports from coroners. In 2012, Kentucky tried to standardize part of the process for recording which drugs were involved in a death by requiring coroners to seek a post-mortem toxicology screening for every death suspected of being a drug overdose. The screening tests all overdose cases on the same standard panel of drugs, including several prescription opiates, heroin and fentanyl. The state’s chief medical examiner reads through every toxicology report submitted, and that information feeds into the KIPRC database.

Because national data on drug overdose deaths is derived solely from death certificates, it adds a public health component to a coroner’s job. But there is no national agency regulating the quality of death investigations or ensuring that cases are conducted in a standardized way. It’s up to states or counties to establish a clear standard for investigating deaths and recording information on death certificates.

Across the country, the roles of coroners and medical examiners vary based on the jurisdiction they’re serving under. And those variations make monitoring trends for drug overdoses complicated. Death certificates often don’t list a specific drug or drugs involved, particularly in states with decentralized coroner systems such as Louisiana, for example. Of all the drug intoxication deaths that the state reported to the CDC in 2016, only 53 percent listed the specific drug or drugs involved.4

Identifying drugs in overdose deaths

In each state, 2016

Cases in which no drug was specified state All deaths Total Share Louisiana 996 473 47.5%

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Pennsylvania 4,627 2,075 44.8

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Alabama 756 308 40.7

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Montana 119 46 38.7

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Indiana 1,526 547 35.8

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Delaware 282 99 35.1

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Nebraska 120 37 30.8

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Arkansas 401 115 28.7

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Florida 4,728 1,144 24.2

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Idaho 243 55 22.6

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New Jersey 2,056 461 22.4

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Mississippi 352 78 22.2

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Wyoming 99 21 21.2

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California 4,654 930 20.0

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Kansas 313 62 19.8

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Colorado 942 172 18.3

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Kentucky 1,419 253 17.8

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Missouri 1,371 199 14.5

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North Dakota 77 11 14.3

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Arizona 1,382 196 14.2

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Minnesota 672 93 13.8

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Michigan 2,347 309 13.2

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Texas 2,831 370 13.1

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Tennessee 1,630 136 8.3

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Iowa 314 26 8.3

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Georgia 1,394 103 7.4

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Washington 1,102 75 6.8

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Hawaii 191 12 6.3

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Wisconsin 1,074 56 5.2

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Utah 635 33 5.2

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Ohio 4,329 216 5.0

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Oregon 506 24 4.7

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Oklahoma 813 37 4.6

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South Dakota 69 3 4.3

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Illinois 2,411 102 4.2

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South Carolina 879 35 4.0

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West Virginia 884 32 3.6

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North Carolina 1,956 68 3.5

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New Mexico 500 16 3.2

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Nevada 665 19 2.9

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New York 3,638 97 2.7

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Virginia 1,405 34 2.4

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Vermont 125 3 2.4

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Maryland 2,044 42 2.1

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Alaska 128 2 1.6

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Maine 353 5 1.4

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Massachusetts 2,227 29 1.3

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New Hampshire 481 5 1.0

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Washington, D.C. 269 2 0.7

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Connecticut 971 7 0.7

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Rhode Island 326 1 0.3

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Show more rows

Based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and prevention

“If you don’t know the substances that are responsible for killing people, that really inhibits a response,” said Matthew Gladden, a behavioral scientist on the CDC’s prescription drug overdose surveillance team. “Is it a prescription, diverted, non-diverted, illicit, is it potent, is it heroin — what’s going on? That information is critical.”

In Kentucky, more thorough death investigations and better cause-of-death data allowed Finley and other officials to respond to the specific problems in Clay County. Finley was able to determine that prescription medications were the root of the drug problem in his county. “Most of the media reporting was on meth labs,” Finley said. “I would look at my data, and although meth labs were serious problems, they were not the problems I was having in Clay County.”

Since then, Finley said, there has been a collaborative effort among hospital emergency department practitioners to better educate county residents on the dangers of misusing prescriptions and to stop overprescribing opioids and benzodiazepines, a class of drugs typically used for anxiety or panic disorders.

KIPRC has already seen some success with its method of combining multiple sources of data to get more accurate information on the scope and specifics of Kentucky’s opioid crisis. Using the state’s DOFSS system, the researchers were able to determine the specific drugs that were involved in 97 percent of drug overdose fatalities in 2016; that’s compared with 82 percent using deaths certificates alone.

Additionally, the researchers used DOFSS to find which drugs were most commonly involved in deaths linked to a combination of substances, as well as which drugs were involved in overdose deaths among people of different age groups and genders. For instance, according to the findings, gabapentin — a prescription anticonvulsant (not an opioid) that is often prescribed for nerve pain or epilepsy and reportedly is being misused — was the drug most frequently detected in women who had died from drug overdoses and among victims over the age of 44.

One of the additional collaborations that KIPRC is forming will allow state police to match their drug-related data — police seizures and undercover buys, for example — with drug overdose mortality data, to help identify areas of the state at increased risk of overdose outbreaks.

“It’s only in the last year that we’ve all been really talking to each other,” said Jeremy Triplett, the drug chemistry lab supervisor for the Kentucky state police department. “We have always talked to the state Office of Drug Control Policy, but it’s the first time we’ve really talked to the public health side.”

Researchers said the overlay of public safety and overdose death data can help public health officials further track drug trends as they move across the state. “The issues with heroin and fentanyl are huge in northern Kentucky,” Hargrove said. “What we’re seeing now, though, is that it’s trickling down the highway systems. The state police are very concerned about that and very aware of it.” That tracking ability means communities that are in a drug’s path can be better prepared for its arrival, by ensuring that treatment options are available, for example.

Michael Singleton, senior data management specialist with KIPRC, said the agency is also exploring whether ambulance services could be another source of overdose data — one that could deliver information on non-fatal overdoses in more or less real time. “We know down to the point of where the response took place and what kind of scene the EMS responded to,” Singleton said. “We can map those out and look for patterns in where incidents are occurring, which can help us to target particular parts of a city that may need more attention.”

Aside from data management, an important element of Hargrove’s job is to help county coroners across the state discover their roles as public health officials. Hargrove nodded to Finley as an official who has effectively helped rally a local community to fight the epidemic. According to a KIPRC report released in August, Clay County had only five overdose fatalities in 2016, a notable drop from the 25 it had five years earlier.

Sheriff Kevin Johnson said the drop was due to several factors: statewide limits on how doctors can prescribe opioids, Finley’s helping law enforcement officials better identify trends, and improved enforcement efforts by officers. “It wasn’t one magic thing that happened — everybody kind of got together and understood the problem to figure it out,” Johnson said. To solve a puzzle this big, you need as many people working on it as possible.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Kathryn Casteel

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algarithmblognumber · 6 years

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Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco http://www.nature-business.com/nature-life-on-the-dirtiest-block-in-san-francisco/

Nature

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The 300 block of Hyde Street in San Francisco received 2,227 complaints about street and sidewalk cleanliness over the past decade, more than any other.CreditCreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — The heroin needles, the pile of excrement between parked cars, the yellow soup oozing out of a large plastic bag by the curb and the stained, faux Persian carpet dumped on the corner.

It’s a scene of detritus that might bring to mind any variety of developing-world squalor. But this is San Francisco, the capital of the nation’s technology industry, where a single span of Hyde Street hosts an open-air narcotics market by day and at night is occupied by the unsheltered and drug-addled slumped on the sidewalk.

There are many other streets like it, but by one measure it’s the dirtiest block in the city.

Just a 15-minute walk away are the offices of Twitter and Uber, two companies that along with other nameplate technology giants have helped push the median price of a home in San Francisco well beyond $1 million.

This dichotomy of street crime and world-changing technology, of luxury condominiums and grinding, persistent homelessness, and the dehumanizing effects for those forced to live on the streets provoke outrage among the city’s residents. For many who live here it’s difficult to reconcile San Francisco’s liberal politics with the misery that surrounds them.

According to city statisticians, the 300 block of Hyde Street, a span about the length of a football field in the heart of the Tenderloin neighborhood, received 2,227 complaints about street and sidewalk cleanliness over the past decade, more than any other. It’s an imperfect measurement — some blocks might be dirtier but have fewer calls — but residents on the 300 block say that they are not surprised by their ranking.

The San Francisco bureau photographer, Jim Wilson, and I set out to measure the depth of deprivation on a single block. We returned a number of times, including a 12-hour visit, from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. on a recent weekday. Walking around the neighborhood we saw the desperation of the mentally ill, the drug dependent and homeless, and heard from embittered residents who say it will take much more than a broom to clean up the city, long considered one of America’s beacons of urban beauty.

‘You have to hold your breath’

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A public works employee uses a power washer on a sidewalk. San Francisco spends $70 million annually on street cleaning.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Human waste has become such a widespread problem in San Francisco that the city in September established a unit dedicated to removing it from the sidewalks. Rachel Gordon, a spokeswoman for the Public Works Department, describes the new initiative as a “proactive human waste” unit.

At 8 a.m. on a recent day, as mothers shepherded their children to school, we ran into Yolanda Warren, a receptionist who works around the corner from Hyde Street. The sidewalk in front of her office was stained with feces. The street smelled like a latrine.

“Some parts of the Tenderloin, you’re walking, and you smell it and you have to hold your breath,” Ms. Warren said.

At she does every morning, she hosed down the urine outside her office. The city has installed five portable bathrooms for the hundreds of unsheltered people in the Tenderloin, but that has not stopped people from urinating and defecating in the streets.

“There are way too many people out here that don’t have homes,” Ms. Warren said.

Over the past five years the number of homeless people in San Francisco has remained relatively steady — around 4,400 — and the sidewalks of the Tenderloin have come to resemble a refugee camp.

The city has replaced more than 300 lampposts corroded by dog and human urine over the past three years, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Replacing the poles became more urgent after a lamppost collapsed in 2015, crushing a car.

A more common danger are the thousands of heroin needles discarded by users.

The Public Works Department and a nonprofit organization in the Tenderloin picked up 100,000 needles from the streets over the past year. The Public Health Department, which has its own needle recovery program, has a more alarming figure: It retrieved 164,264 needles in August alone, both through a disposal program and through street cleanups.

Larry Gothberg, a building manager who has lived on Hyde Street since 1982, keeps a photographic record of the heroin users he sees shooting up on the streets. He swiped through a number of pictures on his phone showing users in a motionless stupor.

“We call it the heroin freeze,” Mr. Gothberg said. “They can stay that way for hours.”

‘Land of the living dead’

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Hyde Street is in the heart of the Tenderloin, where homelessness and drug use persist and provoke outrage among city residents.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Hyde Street is in the heart of the Tenderloin, a neighborhood of aging, subsidized single-occupancy apartment buildings, Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, coin laundromats and organizations dedicated to helping the indigent. Studio apartments on Hyde Street go for around $1,500, according to Mr. Gothberg, cheap in a city where the median rent for apartments is $4,500.

A number of people we met on Hyde Street distinguished between the residents of the Tenderloin, many of them immigrant families, and those they called “street people” — the unsheltered drug users who congregate and camp along the sidewalks and the dealers who peddle crack cocaine, heroin and a variety of amphetamines.

Disputes among the street population are common and sometimes result in violence. At night bodies line the sidewalks.

“It’s like the land of the living dead,” said Adam Leising, a resident of Hyde Street.

We met Mr. Leising late one evening after he had finished a shift as a server at a restaurant. As we toured the neighborhood, past a man crumpled on the ground next to empty beer bottles and trash, Mr. Leising told us that the daily glimpses of desperation brought him to the brink of depression.

“We are the most advanced country in the world,” Mr. Leising said. “And that’s what people are having to live with here.”

Mr. Leising, who is the founder of the Lower Hyde Street Association, a nonprofit that holds cleanup activities on the street, feels that the city is not cracking down on the drug trade on the block because they don’t want it to spread elsewhere.

“It’s obvious that it’s a containment zone,” Mr. Leising said. “These behaviors are not allowed in other neighborhoods.”

The Tenderloin police station posted on their Twitter feed that drug dealing “is the most significant issue impacting the quality of life.” So far this year officers from the Tenderloin station house have made more than 3,000 arrests, including 424 for dealing drugs. “This is one of our priority areas,” said Grace Gatpandan, a police spokeswoman said of the Tenderloin. But many feel they do not do enough.

Gavin Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco and the leading candidate for governor in next month’s election, told The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board last week that the city had reached the point of “enough is enough.”

“You can be too permissive, and I happen to think we have crossed that threshold in this state — and not just in this city,” Mr. Newsom said. “You see it. It’s just disgraceful.”

‘We know all of them’’

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Mayor London Breed of San Francisco, who was elected in June, has made unannounced inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Mayor London Breed, who was elected in June, campaigned to clean up squalor.

Ms. Breed has announced plans to provide an additional 1,000 beds for the homeless over the next two years but she is also targeting a relatively small group of people living on the streets whom she says are beyond the point of assisting themselves. The concept of this involuntary removal is known as conservatorship. A law recently passed in Sacramento strengthens the city’s powers of conservatorship with a judge’s permission.

“There are about 100 to 150 people who are clearly mentally ill and who are cycling through the system and who need to be forced into conservatorship,” Ms. Breed said in an interview. “We know all of them.”

According to Ms. Breed’s office 12 percent of people who use the services of the San Francisco Department of Public Health account for 73 percent of the costs. The majority of these heavy users have medical, psychiatric and substance use issues, according to the department.

Ms. Breed has made unannounced inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom.

On a Saturday morning in September she walked past a woman on Hyde Street slouched on the pavement and preparing to plunge a syringe into her hand. “Put that away,” said a police officer accompanying the mayor.

The crack tree

On a recent afternoon we dropped by a barbershop on Hyde Street.

Glenn Gustafik opened Mister Hyde two years ago to escape the high rents of downtown San Francisco, where he was quoted a $10,000 monthly rent for a similarly small space. Since opening on Hyde Street he has been engaged in a battle with drug users in the neighborhood who break the branches off a London plane tree in front of his shop and use the sticks to clean their crack pipes. This harvesting of twigs has killed the previous four trees, Mr. Gustafik said. At Mr. Gustafik’s request the city protected the fifth tree with wire mesh, the kind used in suburban areas to discourage hungry deer.

A Sisyphean clean up

Image

Over the past five years the number of homeless people in San Francisco has remained relatively steady — around 4,400.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Toward dusk and into the night the 300 block of Hyde becomes an impromptu food and flea market. A woman offered a bicycle for $15 one evening and bric-a-brac was laid out on the sidewalks. Many items for sale were incongruous: A man hawked six shrink-wrapped packets of raw steaks that he cradled precariously as he called out for buyers. No one asked where he got them.

At dawn crews from the city and private organizations arrive to pick up needles and trash. The city spends $70 million annually on street cleaning, well more than any other American cities that were studied in a recent report.

But the sidewalks soon become crowded again and the litter accumulates.

Mario Montoya Jr. has spent the past three decades cleaning the streets as an employee of the city’s Public Works Department. Standing on a street corner as another city employee power-washed the sidewalk, Mr. Montoya described a Sisyphean cycle of cleanup and filth.

“By noon everybody is up and out,” Mr. Montoya said. “And here we go again.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/us/san-francisco-dirtiest-street-london-breed.html |

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco, in 2018-10-08 13:19:41

#Nature of Business in the Current Market

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blogcompetnetall · 6 years

Text

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco http://www.nature-business.com/nature-life-on-the-dirtiest-block-in-san-francisco/

Nature

Image

The 300 block of Hyde Street in San Francisco received 2,227 complaints about street and sidewalk cleanliness over the past decade, more than any other.CreditCreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

There are many other streets like it, but by one measure it’s the dirtiest block in the city.

‘You have to hold your breath’

Image

A public works employee uses a power washer on a sidewalk. San Francisco spends $70 million annually on street cleaning.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

“Some parts of the Tenderloin, you’re walking, and you smell it and you have to hold your breath,” Ms. Warren said.

“There are way too many people out here that don’t have homes,” Ms. Warren said.

Over the past five years the number of homeless people in San Francisco has remained relatively steady — around 4,400 — and the sidewalks of the Tenderloin have come to resemble a refugee camp.

A more common danger are the thousands of heroin needles discarded by users.

“We call it the heroin freeze,” Mr. Gothberg said. “They can stay that way for hours.”

‘Land of the living dead’

Image

Hyde Street is in the heart of the Tenderloin, where homelessness and drug use persist and provoke outrage among city residents.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Disputes among the street population are common and sometimes result in violence. At night bodies line the sidewalks.

“It’s like the land of the living dead,” said Adam Leising, a resident of Hyde Street.

“We are the most advanced country in the world,” Mr. Leising said. “And that’s what people are having to live with here.”

“It’s obvious that it’s a containment zone,” Mr. Leising said. “These behaviors are not allowed in other neighborhoods.”

“You can be too permissive, and I happen to think we have crossed that threshold in this state — and not just in this city,” Mr. Newsom said. “You see it. It’s just disgraceful.”

‘We know all of them’’

Image

Mayor London Breed of San Francisco, who was elected in June, has made unannounced inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Mayor London Breed, who was elected in June, campaigned to clean up squalor.

Ms. Breed has made unannounced inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom.

The crack tree

On a recent afternoon we dropped by a barbershop on Hyde Street.

A Sisyphean clean up

Image

Over the past five years the number of homeless people in San Francisco has remained relatively steady — around 4,400.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

But the sidewalks soon become crowded again and the litter accumulates.

“By noon everybody is up and out,” Mr. Montoya said. “And here we go again.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/us/san-francisco-dirtiest-street-london-breed.html |

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco, in 2018-10-08 13:19:41

#Nature of Business in the Current Market

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blogwonderwebsites · 6 years

Text

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco http://www.nature-business.com/nature-life-on-the-dirtiest-block-in-san-francisco/

Nature

Image

The 300 block of Hyde Street in San Francisco received 2,227 complaints about street and sidewalk cleanliness over the past decade, more than any other.CreditCreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

There are many other streets like it, but by one measure it’s the dirtiest block in the city.

‘You have to hold your breath’

Image

A public works employee uses a power washer on a sidewalk. San Francisco spends $70 million annually on street cleaning.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

“Some parts of the Tenderloin, you’re walking, and you smell it and you have to hold your breath,” Ms. Warren said.

“There are way too many people out here that don’t have homes,” Ms. Warren said.

Over the past five years the number of homeless people in San Francisco has remained relatively steady — around 4,400 — and the sidewalks of the Tenderloin have come to resemble a refugee camp.

A more common danger are the thousands of heroin needles discarded by users.

“We call it the heroin freeze,” Mr. Gothberg said. “They can stay that way for hours.”

‘Land of the living dead’

Image

Hyde Street is in the heart of the Tenderloin, where homelessness and drug use persist and provoke outrage among city residents.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Disputes among the street population are common and sometimes result in violence. At night bodies line the sidewalks.

“It’s like the land of the living dead,” said Adam Leising, a resident of Hyde Street.

“We are the most advanced country in the world,” Mr. Leising said. “And that’s what people are having to live with here.”

“It’s obvious that it’s a containment zone,” Mr. Leising said. “These behaviors are not allowed in other neighborhoods.”

“You can be too permissive, and I happen to think we have crossed that threshold in this state — and not just in this city,” Mr. Newsom said. “You see it. It’s just disgraceful.”

‘We know all of them’’

Image

Mayor London Breed of San Francisco, who was elected in June, has made unannounced inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Mayor London Breed, who was elected in June, campaigned to clean up squalor.

Ms. Breed has made unannounced inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom.

The crack tree

On a recent afternoon we dropped by a barbershop on Hyde Street.

A Sisyphean clean up

Image

Over the past five years the number of homeless people in San Francisco has remained relatively steady — around 4,400.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

But the sidewalks soon become crowded again and the litter accumulates.

“By noon everybody is up and out,” Mr. Montoya said. “And here we go again.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/us/san-francisco-dirtiest-street-london-breed.html |

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco, in 2018-10-08 13:19:41

#Nature of Business in the Current Market

0 notes

captainblogger100posts · 6 years

Text

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco http://www.nature-business.com/nature-life-on-the-dirtiest-block-in-san-francisco/

Nature

Image

The 300 block of Hyde Street in San Francisco received 2,227 complaints about street and sidewalk cleanliness over the past decade, more than any other.CreditCreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

There are many other streets like it, but by one measure it’s the dirtiest block in the city.

‘You have to hold your breath’

Image

A public works employee uses a power washer on a sidewalk. San Francisco spends $70 million annually on street cleaning.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

“Some parts of the Tenderloin, you’re walking, and you smell it and you have to hold your breath,” Ms. Warren said.

“There are way too many people out here that don’t have homes,” Ms. Warren said.

Over the past five years the number of homeless people in San Francisco has remained relatively steady — around 4,400 — and the sidewalks of the Tenderloin have come to resemble a refugee camp.

A more common danger are the thousands of heroin needles discarded by users.

“We call it the heroin freeze,” Mr. Gothberg said. “They can stay that way for hours.”

‘Land of the living dead’

Image

Hyde Street is in the heart of the Tenderloin, where homelessness and drug use persist and provoke outrage among city residents.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Disputes among the street population are common and sometimes result in violence. At night bodies line the sidewalks.

“It’s like the land of the living dead,” said Adam Leising, a resident of Hyde Street.

“We are the most advanced country in the world,” Mr. Leising said. “And that’s what people are having to live with here.”

“It’s obvious that it’s a containment zone,” Mr. Leising said. “These behaviors are not allowed in other neighborhoods.”

“You can be too permissive, and I happen to think we have crossed that threshold in this state — and not just in this city,” Mr. Newsom said. “You see it. It’s just disgraceful.”

‘We know all of them’’

Image

Mayor London Breed of San Francisco, who was elected in June, has made unannounced inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Mayor London Breed, who was elected in June, campaigned to clean up squalor.

Ms. Breed has made unannounced inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom.

The crack tree

On a recent afternoon we dropped by a barbershop on Hyde Street.

A Sisyphean clean up

Image

Over the past five years the number of homeless people in San Francisco has remained relatively steady — around 4,400.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

But the sidewalks soon become crowded again and the litter accumulates.

“By noon everybody is up and out,” Mr. Montoya said. “And here we go again.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/us/san-francisco-dirtiest-street-london-breed.html |

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco, in 2018-10-08 13:19:41

#Nature of Business in the Current Market

0 notes

internetbetterforall · 6 years

Text

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco http://www.nature-business.com/nature-life-on-the-dirtiest-block-in-san-francisco/

Nature

Image

The 300 block of Hyde Street in San Francisco received 2,227 complaints about street and sidewalk cleanliness over the past decade, more than any other.CreditCreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

There are many other streets like it, but by one measure it’s the dirtiest block in the city.

‘You have to hold your breath’

Image

A public works employee uses a power washer on a sidewalk. San Francisco spends $70 million annually on street cleaning.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

“Some parts of the Tenderloin, you’re walking, and you smell it and you have to hold your breath,” Ms. Warren said.

“There are way too many people out here that don’t have homes,” Ms. Warren said.

Over the past five years the number of homeless people in San Francisco has remained relatively steady — around 4,400 — and the sidewalks of the Tenderloin have come to resemble a refugee camp.

A more common danger are the thousands of heroin needles discarded by users.

“We call it the heroin freeze,” Mr. Gothberg said. “They can stay that way for hours.”

‘Land of the living dead’

Image

Hyde Street is in the heart of the Tenderloin, where homelessness and drug use persist and provoke outrage among city residents.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Disputes among the street population are common and sometimes result in violence. At night bodies line the sidewalks.

“It’s like the land of the living dead,” said Adam Leising, a resident of Hyde Street.

“We are the most advanced country in the world,” Mr. Leising said. “And that’s what people are having to live with here.”

“It’s obvious that it’s a containment zone,” Mr. Leising said. “These behaviors are not allowed in other neighborhoods.”

“You can be too permissive, and I happen to think we have crossed that threshold in this state — and not just in this city,” Mr. Newsom said. “You see it. It’s just disgraceful.”

‘We know all of them’’

Image

Mayor London Breed of San Francisco, who was elected in June, has made unannounced inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

Mayor London Breed, who was elected in June, campaigned to clean up squalor.

Ms. Breed has made unannounced inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom.

The crack tree

On a recent afternoon we dropped by a barbershop on Hyde Street.

A Sisyphean clean up

Image

Over the past five years the number of homeless people in San Francisco has remained relatively steady — around 4,400.CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

But the sidewalks soon become crowded again and the litter accumulates.

“By noon everybody is up and out,” Mr. Montoya said. “And here we go again.”

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/us/san-francisco-dirtiest-street-london-breed.html |

Nature Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco, in 2018-10-08 13:19:41

#Nature of Business in the Current Market

0 notes

toddrogersfl · 6 years

Text

Contemporary fragrance houses flying the flag

Who can lay claim to being ‘the birthplace of perfumery’? France and Italy regularly duke it out for the title, but British scents have been going strong since 1730 – with whispers of Yardley London‘s heritage in fact going all the way back to the reign of King Charles I, supplying royalty with lavender-scented soaps. Sadly, these records were lost in 1666’s Great Fire of London, but many British houses have archives bursting not only with records of their fragrant wares, but the customers who bought them – including royalty, film stars and prime ministers along with the many millions who flocked to their historic doors.

We decided to dedicate the latest issue of our award-winning magazine, The Scented Letter, to these Best of British. The emphasis being on heritage houses who have made our name and are still some of our favourites to this very day, and with a selection of newer houses mentioned – inluding Miller Harris, Angela Flanders, Ormonde Jayne and Floral Street – all of whom have their own boutiques you can visit to stock-up on those perfumes, both historic and ground-breakingly new. The streets of London may not be paved in gold, but perhaps they are with perfume…

To be frank, the feature was practically an entire book’s worth of material, and we still didn’t have room for every single one we’d have like to mention, which goes to show how many we have to be proud of. Also, we are thrilled that so many contemporary houses are continuing to fly that fragrant flag, being sold online and stocked in independent perfumeries that stretch the entire globe.

What better time, then, to continue our celebration of the diversity, ingenuity and creativity British fragrance houses display, and share with you a list of some contemporary houses your nose should definitely get to know…?

Ruth Mastenbroek

Born in England, graduating with a Chemistry degree from Oxford University, Ruth trained and worked as a perfumer in the 70s – both in the UK and Netherlands with Naarden International (which later became Quest and is now Givaudan – one of the largest perfume suppliers in the world…) Ruth then went to work in Japan and the perfume capital Grasse before returning to England to work for a small company, where she created fragrances for up-and-coming brands like Kenneth Turner and Jo Malone – including her Grapefruit candle. Setting up her own perfumery company, Fragosmic Ltd., in 2003 – the year she became president of The British Society of Perfumers, it was in 2010 that Ruth launched a capsule collection of scented products featuring her signature fragrance – RM – the first to use advanced micro-encapsulation technology in a scented bathrobe…! Still creating bespoke fragrances for brands, Ruth’s own fragrances allow her to bottle memories, she says, ‘…of childhood in England and America – chocolate cookies, fresh earth, blackberries… Of Holland – lilies, narcissus, hyacinth and salty sea air… Of France – orchids, roses and wild herbs… Of Japan – cherry blossom, lotus and green tea…’ Believing that fragrance can uniquely move us, and with a wealth of knowledge at her fingertips; Ruth distills olfactory flash-backs into perfumes that everyone can enjoy and form their own, highly personal connections with. And with her latest, the sulty, smoking rose of Firedance, shortlisted for Global Pure Beauty and Fragrance Foundation Awards this year, we suggest you allow yourself the pleasure of connecting with them, too…

Quintessential Scents: Launching tomorrow (Friday) on our site, we’re giving you a sneak-peek of how you can indulge in a whole box of emotionally uplifting scents. From the sparkling secret-garden fruitiness of Signature, through the romantic, rolling landscape of Umbria captured in Amorosa. A furtively-smoked Sobranie with notes of jasmine and cashmere evoke the dreaming spires of Oxford, while a classic rose is transformed with hot leather in Firedance, to become quite swaggeringly swoon-worthy. Have a chaise-lounge at the ready…

Ruth Mastenbroek Discovery Set £17.95 for 4 x 2ml eau de parfum

4160 Tuesdays

Founded: If we live till we’re 80, we have 4,160 tuesdays to fill, and so the philosophy of copywriter-turned-perfumer Sarah McCartney is: better make the most of every single one of them. Having spent years writing copy for other people’s products, and writing for LUSH for 14 years, Sarah wrote a novel about imagined perfumes that make people happy, with such evocative descriptions that readers began asking her to make them. Ever the type to roll up her sleeves and take on a new challenge, Sarah explains she’d ‘…tried to find perfumes that matched what I was describing, and they still weren’t right, so I set off on my quest to make them myself. I became a perfumer!’ Proudly extolling British eccentricity, the ever-increasing fragrances include Sunshine & Pancakes, which Sarah made to evoke a typical 1970s British seaside family vacation, opening with a burst of sunny citrus, with jasmine to represent sun-warmed skin – alongside honey and vanilla (the pancakes element). The Dark Heart of Old Havana is based on a 1998 trip to Cuba: brown sugar, tobacco, rich coffee, fruit, warm bodies, ‘alcohol, exuberance and recklessness,’ as she puts it. Maxed Out and Midnight in the Palace Garden were both shortlisted for the coveted Fragrance Foundation Awards 2016 in the ‘Best Indie Scent’ category, and an army of devotees now relish every day, scented suitably eccentrically.

Quintessential Scent: Named for a comment made by a Tatler beauty editor who smelled it, a dash of bergamot, a soft hint of creamy vanilla, velvety smooth woods, musk and ambergris make for a dreamily decadent ‘your skin but oh, so much better’ affair. Like wearing a magical potion made of lemon meringue pie and fancy pants, if they don’t fall at your feet after a whiff of this, they aren’t worth knowing.

4160 Tuesdays The Sexiest Scent on the Planet Ever (IMHO) £40 for 30ml Buy it at 4160tuesdays.com

Nancy Meiland Parfums

Founded: Nancy’s background as a bespoke perfumer began with her apprenticeship to one of the UK’s experts in custom perfumery, creating signature scents for those coveting ‘something highly individual and special…’ Before launching Nancy Meiland Parfums, her decade-long journey through fragrance had already included co-running the former School of Perfumery, acting as a consultant for independent perfume houses, working on collaborations with Miller Harris, and speaking on the subject of fragrance at events nationwide. Now dividing her time between town and country (Nancy’s based in East Sussex), she explains that ‘the creative process of gathering sensory impressions and honing them into a formula is a vital one. Once a blank canvas, the formula sheet acts as a metaphor – and gradually emerges essentially as a kind of poem, with body, light and shade and a life of its own.’ It amuses Nancy, looking back, that she often had school essays returned to her emblazoned in red pen for being “too flowery”. ‘It figures!,’ she says. Thank goodness, say her extensive base of fragrance fans, in love with these portrayals of often traditional ingredients, composed with elegant modernity and beautiful harmony.

Quintessential Scent: Definitely not your grandma’s drawer-liner, this is a rose in all its glory, with the entire plant evoked – pink pepper, for the thorns, stalky green galbanum for the leaves; geranium, jasmine, white pear and violet delicately sketching the tender bud. As Nancy observes: ‘I wanted to depict both the light and the dark shades of it, as opposed to this pretty, twee and girly rose that’s become slightly old-fashioned.” Rambling roses entwined with brambles, if this scent surrounded Sleeping Beauty, she’d never forgive that meddlesome prince for cutting it down…

Nancy Meiland Parfums Rosier £62.50 for 50ml eau de parfum Buy it at nancymeiland.com

Tom Daxon

Recalling his childhood and growing up ‘in fragrant surroundings,’ Tom Daxon rather understates how perfume practically ran in his blood. Lucky enough to have a mother who was creative director at Molton Brown for over 30 years, and therefore ‘would often give me new shower gels to try, fragrances to sniff’ his scented destiny was sealed by frequently accompanying his mother on her business trips to Grasse. There he met the father-daughter duo of Jacques and Carla Chabert, who worked for Chanel, Guerlain and L’Oréal, with Jacques the nose behind Molton Brown’s ground-breaking Black Pepper and Carla creating the hit follow-up, Pink Peppercorn. Having esteemed perfumers in his life from such an early age was a connection that would bravely – still in his twenties – lead Tom to launch a brand new British fragrance house. Clearly a chap who doesn’t like to hang around when he’s got a bee in his bonnet, by the end of that same year, he was already being stocked in Liberty’s. Not a bad start, all things considered, and describing the impetus behind him starting his own line of fragrances, Tom says ‘I wouldn’t have bothered if I thought I couldn’t offer something a bit different.’ Uniquely intriguing, the entire range celebrates a luxurious kind of British modernity in their pared back, clean lines, the oils being macerated and matured in England for at least six weeks before they’re bottled here. Harnessing Tom’s Grasse connections but remaining resolutely British in their spirit, it’s just the beginning for this exciting house.

Quintessential Scent: Lushly narcotic, it’s a hyper-realistic big-hitter – like sticking your entire face in a buxom bouquet, the better to get another dose of its lascivious charms. Using traditional, headily feminine notes like lily of the valley, carnation, rose and oakmoss might have become ‘vintage’ or even a bit old-fashioned smelling in the wrong hands, but the Chaberts and Tom vividly evoke just-bruised, silky petals with a futuristic drama that never fails to shake you out of the doldrums.

Tom Daxon Crushing Bloom £105 for 50ml eau de parfum Buy it at tomdaxon.com

Marina Barcenilla Parfums

A rising star of perfumery, Marina Barcenilla is one of the talented ‘noses’ driving the strong trend towards natural perfumery. As the name may suggest, her birthplace may not have been in the UK – in fact she was born in Spain – but it’s where Marina chose to make her home, and to set up her now thriving perfume business. Marina recalls being intrigued by the aromatic notes in the Herbíssimo fragrances and in her grandmother’s lavender water. Having always been fascinated and inspired by scent – when the chance came to branch out from her aromatherapy roots into the world of perfume, Marina rose beautifully to the challenge. In 2016 Marina won the coveted Fragrance Foundation (FiFi) Award for Best New Independent Fragrance with India. Against incredibly stiff competition, judged blind by Jasmine Award-winning journalists and bloggers, this prompted her to take the next step on her journey – what had formerly been called The Perfume Garden became Marina Barcenilla Parfums. But although the name had changed, the ethos remained the same – ‘to create the finest fragrances, using what nature has to offer.’ More awards followed, including a Beauty Shortlist Award for Patchouli Clouds, an International Natural Beauty Award for The Perfume Garden, and the Eluxe Award for Best Natural Perfume Brand. In 2017, for the second consecutive year, Marina won Best New Independent Fragrance for the opulent Black Osmanthus – which truly put her on the radar of journalists and perfumistas. From sourcing rare and precious aromatic essences from around the world to blending fragrances by hand in her own perfume studio, after years of study, Marina’s long-awaited olfactory journey to ‘rediscover the soul of perfume’ is off to a rousing start – and all from the suitably mystical base of Glastonbury. More than simply reaching for the stars, parallel to her perfumery career she’s also studying to become a Planetary Scientist and Astrobiologist, at the University of London; recently combining her twin passions by creating AromAtom – creating the imagined scents of space as a way to make space science more engaging for children – which Marina regularly tours through schools. What else can we say for this exciting house, but “up, up and away…!”

Quintessential Scent: Silky smooth sandalwood is enticingly laced with flecks of fragrant cardamom, dotted with coriander, huge armfulls of rose and woven with incense for an all-natural scent that’s soothingly spiced, earthily grounding and yet erotically tempting; so you’ll be wanting to dance barefoot (perhaps comletely bare) and wrap yourself around a Maypole, have no doubt…

Marina Barcenilla Parfums India £130 for 30ml eau de parfum Buy it at mbparfums.com

St Giles

Rarely do founders of fragrance houses come with such experience, passion and dedication to the industry as Michael Donnovan. With a career thus far helping stock the shelves of such cult fragrance-shopping destinations as Roullier White, running his own PR company, representing such luminaries as Fréderic Malle – every time we’ve met Michael, he’s been bubbling with enthusiasm about a perfume we ‘…absolutely must smell!’ or a nose who’s ‘a complete genius!’ And you know what? He’s always been right. He’d been badgered for years by fragrance experts and enthusiasts alike to launch his own range, but the idea had tickled his brain for some decades before being fully explored as a reality. As Michael explains, the concept he just couldn’t let go of was to have a collection that truly represented ‘scents as complex as you are.’ And so, the St Giles fragrances have ‘…been created to stimulate and amplify the many different aspects of our character. This wardrobe of fragrances celebrates the parts that make us who we are, fusing the reality and the fantasy.’ And the nose he sought out to compose them just happens to be one of the greatest of our time. ‘The perfumes are made in collaboration with Master Perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour, whose vision I have long admired and whose friendship I cherish.’ Having spent many years working alongside Bertrand, but always in regard to his work for other houses, Michael admits he was ‘…extremely nervous’ about approaching him, but it turns out Bertrand was more than enthusiastic in his acceptance. The only question you need ask, now, is which fragrant character you want to embody, today…

Quintessential Scent: Rosemary absolute – now proven to stimulate memory performance – adds an aromatic, drily green note while fresh ginger warmly fizzes alongside Champagne-like aldehydes, herbaceous clary sage and the uplifting, fruity zing of rhubarb. There’s a sigh of soft leather and frankincense at the heart, slowly sinking to the inky-tinged base of castoreum absolute, sandalwood, Atlas cedarwood and a salty tang of driftwood. Absolutely unique, you’ll want to cover yourself in it while seeking your muse, perhaps while enjoying a sip or three of something refreshing, wearing nothing else but a velvet smoking jacket and an enigmatic smile…

St Giles The Writer £130 for 100ml eau de parfum Buy it at stgilesfragrance.com

With a strong heritage behind us, and many of those houses still not only surviving but thriving, it seems British perfumery is once again blooming with a fresh crop of forward-thinking (and often self-taught) perfumers shaking up the scent scene. No fuddy-duddy fragrances, these, they’re flying the flag not only for British niche perfumery, but for the art of fragrance itself. Hoist the bunting!

For further reading, we suggest getting your hands on a copy of British Perfumery: A Fragrant History by The British Society of Perfumers, £30 including UK delivery.

Written by Suzy Nightingale

The post Contemporary fragrance houses flying the flag appeared first on The Perfume Society.

from The Perfume Society https://perfumesociety.org/contemporary-british-fragrance-houses-flying-the-flag/

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itateverybody-blog · 6 years

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The Party’s Parties

While there were some mixed feelings at first about the authoritarian military government, everyone agreed that once the regime had taken firm control, the parties got way more lit. Of course, no one was happy about the extreme political repression and the merciless brutality behind the ruthless bid for power. However, despite the horror of mass-graves and torture chambers, the new crypto-fascist generals did know how to throw a dope ass party.

Before, “The Great Correction,” [when the People’s military leaders purged society of the political elites and the undesirables] all the parties sucked because nobody had any money. Plus, the cops would crackdown on anything that got marginally close to being fun. In other words, the social order before, “The Great Correction,” was totally lame.

During the food riots, when society really started to breakdown, there weren’t any parties at all. Everyone just stayed in their houses and starved, waiting for the nightly news to come on so they could see and hear more about the epic socio-economic meltdown. When the schools closed and most major employers laid off their workers, the ex-students and ex-workers all went home to watch what they had just experienced on the cable news channels; viewing hours and hours of CNN correspondents analyzing the situation in the situation room with the appropriate animated graphs and expert commentators. We all sat around staring at the tube, waiting to hear something about a decrease in food prices or some emergency government subsidy. Everyone just stayed in their houses and watched their TV’s waiting for it to get better. As things fell apart everyone watched it happen on television; no one was in the mood to party.

Before, “The Great Correction,” life was all about staying indoors, hiding from the growing civil war outside. Sometimes the electricity would go out and we’d have to light candles. Other times my father and mother would insist that we all slept in the same room. Sometimes they slept in shifts, waiting and watching the door just in case. When the bombing raids started, we’d hide ourselves in the basement listening to the booms and pops of death echoing overhead in the unseen sky.

It was hella boring! There was nothing to do! No late night clubs, no crazy house parties, no cool spots, no pregaming or after-parties [and certainly no hotel lobbies], no cookouts, no keggers, no good smoke sessions, no good shows, no good music festivals, no good block parties, no good graduation parties, no good cocktail lounges or fundraisers or venues or even birthdays: nothing.

But after the military took over the government, everything started to change. Basically, the leaders of the army decided that the old president was doing a shit job of running the country, so they canned his ass [and forcibly detained him indefinitely without formal charges].

The new president-generals, who called themselves the, “Executive Committee,” eventually shut down congress and merged the courts, the military and the executive branch together into one super-government run by the military commanders. It was super badass. It was a new ultra-government, a mega-government, government to the extreme. It was a government that would correct the mistakes of the past, which is why they called it the, “Great,” [i.e. super-government] “Correction,” [i.e. purges and exterminations].

After they formed the Great super-government, the generals abolished all the political parties, and started their own party. But it wasn’t just any normal political party, it was a super-party for a super-government. A single party to permanently replace the inefficient and corrupt political parties of the past.

The new super-political party founded by the members of the Executive Committee, the party that permanently ended all other political parties, was named simply: “The Party.” It was so Meta.

Dictatorship, as it turned out, was far more convenient and inclusive than the old political system, and the vast majority of the tax-paying public found the new simplicity of staggeringly authoritarian rule to be both economically and socially progressive.

But that’s the boring stuff we hear about in the classroom. The real allure of The Party was the parties.

Parties were always a part of The Party’s history. When the economy was falling apart and the old elected government was completely helpless, The Party not only offered safety and security: it also offered enjoyment through an extensive and comprehensive system of government administered parties, designed to reinvigorate the healthy celebratory spirit of the beleaguered masses.

The Party was notorious for throwing the best parties in the entire city. The Party would have the wildest parties at the best clubs with the best DJ’s and the most top shelf liquor and the strongest drugs and the hottest people. Everyone would be dancing and drinking and just getting fucked up for days sometimes, because The Party [which was, for all intents and purposes, also the army] was powerful enough to force the clubs to stay open as late and as long as they wanted. And, since most high-ranking police officials had also become influential power-holders in the new government-military-Party administration, you could forget about curfews! The Party was having dope ass parties every weekend and all of them were fucking lit.

So eventually, once The Party had completely seized control of the state and corrected its major defects, Party leaders premiered their most advanced innovation in government management yet. They founded the Central Bureau of Partying.

The Central Bureau of Partying [or The CBP] became responsible for organizing a national system of parties that would continuously celebrate the power of The Party. It was envisioned as the most badass, dopest ideological state apparatus in the history of nation-states. Essentially, the generals sought to design the most organized and powerful party planning service in the history of Western politics, and use this service to coordinate a complex network of pre-approved enjoyments for the governed population. This was no easy task. The CBP was effectively made responsible for every issue that could arise with throwing virtually every type of party one could think to throw. The CBP became responsible for all the DJ’s, all the lights, all the sound-systems, all the liquor, all the ice, and the balloons, and the caterers and the coat check and the valet parking. The CBP became responsible for all the blow, all the weed, all the molly and everything in between. The CBP became responsible for all the freak-outs and the fights and the public break-ups and the breakdowns and the drunken idiots who needed to go home. The CBP became the new military-state’s primary mechanism of domestic policy [that was the answer to a multiple choice question in my 7th grade social studies class].

So the CBP came up with this plan. They declared that the people had the right to party. A representative of the Executive Committee interrupted television one night to announce definitively that the Party had fought for the people’s right to party. Partying, the freedom of enjoyment, was to be a cornerstone of the new regime. The military-government made clear that it was now the patriotic duty of all citizens to enjoy themselves thoroughly; no matter what! After this brief introduction, the Executive Committee gave the podium to the new Minister of Partying who outlined the future activities of the CBP.

The new Minister of Partying described a glorious new campaign they called the People’s Party Partying Program. The foundation of their plan was the initiation of regularly scheduled parties to be held from Friday to Sunday of every week, that would be mandatory for all citizens between the ages of 15 and 30 to attend. In every major city there would be a series of mandatory partying spots in various neighborhoods and downtown areas. Whole warehouse districts were taken over to host unimaginably massive house shows with world renowned DJs and open bars. All the best clubs and venues were ordered to open their doors and the Party picked up the tab. There were to be smaller parties to hit up as well, the Minister of Partying announced, in case you didn’t feel like a huge thing with lots of people. The CBP offered shows with more obscure musical acts and cheaper draft beer [that was still comp’d by the Party, of course]. The CBP would provide an array of partying options reflecting the rich diversity of its citizens, with vibes ranging from hardcore to chill.

And so it began. Every final Friday of the month the city exploded in a carnivalesque orgy of legally mandated parties organized by the central government.

The parties became the biggest, most important thing in the world. All the adults and the teenagers and the college kids cared about were the parties. When the Party announced that it would be arresting another list of suspected anti-government terrorists and imprisoning them without trial, all people talked about was the next party. When those protesting students disappeared downstate, all anyone talked about was how crazy the Party’s party had been last weekend. The Party’s parties became the center of the social universe; a self-enclosed world of psychotropic narcotics and thumping bass lines.

The craziest thing about the parties was that they were places where the Party allowed all sorts of activities that would normally be against the law and severely punished in any other context. For example, the official government position on drugs was that using them was criminal. Everyone learned that drugs were bad and it wasn’t okay to make, sell or do them. And yet, at the parties there were tons of drugs. There were drugs everywhere; every type of drug you could think of, all kinds of drugs! From the usual suspects like coke and weed to crazy-ass designer shit that you’ve never even heard of before. There would be corporate executives blatantly doing lines of coke off of the bar and stoner kids tripping out of their minds on acid and molly, going nuts with pacifiers in their mouths and pupils the size of softballs. You could get any kind of pill, powder, or plant you could possibly want to buy, and it was all within the proximity of the Party officials managing the entire affair. There was no way the military-police-Party didn’t know the place was flooded with drugs; the Party probably supplied the drugs.

The Party-state was the pusher and the loyal citizen was the addict. The metaphorically opiatic nature of ideology became itself supported by a heavy supply of actual opiates [as well as a host of other zany, mind-altering chemicals].

The party was a legally protected zone of lawlessness where the Party allowed its loyal citizens to partake in what was normally prohibited. The Party sought to make an all inclusive, all expenses paid playground out of this internalized lawlessness; the state of exception manifested itself as an infinite, society-wide bender, complete with laboratory-grade ketamine and free shots of Petrone.

But the Central Bureau of Partying’s People’s Party Partying Program wasn’t just about the epic [and mandatory] weekly parties. There was an endless parade of additional partying events; constant and legally enforced good times spread across the social sphere. The strategic philosophy behind these micro-parties held that The Party vanguard had to revolutionize the daily life of the citizen, through an endless world of parties happening everywhere, all the time. The Party brought the party to everyday civilian life, in a twisted plan to invade the mundane world with a constant barrage of parties. In the workplace, at the school, in the old folks home, and even in the hospitals, the CBP forced parties to happen, bringing music, liquor and awkward sexual advances to a variety of traditionally banal institutions.

It became routine for roaming bands of CBP party promoters to shut down workplaces and make workers attend obligatory office parties. Coworkers were forcefully ejected from the comfortable solitude of their cubicles and earbud headphones into a world of red plastic cups and poorly decorated conference rooms. Across the nation, workers were marched into break-rooms to hear old 80’s pop songs and drink bottles of free hard liquor mixed into punch bowls [the Party always made sure to secretly spike the punch which, informally, made the punch spiking not so secret but, of course, no one was going to point that out].

The CBP instituted a program to target children in the public schools with the most majestic pizza parties, outdoing all previous pizza parties organized by non-governmental organizations like baseball teams and learn-to-read programs. The pizza party operations targeting impressionable minors were sometimes referred to in secret government cables as, “operation pre-game.”

The CBP maintained its own semi-independent bureaucracy of secret police, actively generating databases of intelligence on who in the civilian population was throwing the best parties, where they were to be held and at what time. Beyond the vast collection of espionage-based information on non-combatants, CBP agents would proactively engage in escalating the size and intensity of parties thrown by non-state entities and independent homegrown domestic partiers. These Party party-police developed a variety of covert party-escalation techniques which they deployed liberally, some would say recklessly. It became common knowledge that if you threw a party, the CBP was not only going to find out about it but they were probably going to bring several kegs of beer, blow it up on Facebook and invite a bunch of randos you don’t know who will probably clog your toilet or something. In several instances, the covert party operators would go so far as to to have the military forcibly detain parents traveling abroad on vacation in order to prolong secret house parties thrown by their teenage offspring back at home.

It became a general requirement for all citizens loyal to the Executive Committee and the spirit of, “The Great Correction,” to party hearty everyday; as much as possible and as hard as possible, in a liberating expression of one’s overarching freedom to party, a freedom given to the loyal citizen by the Party.

But a few years into the Party’s regime, they went too far. The people reached a breaking point and the regime quickly began to unravel. The civilian population was simply forced to party too much, beyond the normal limits of partying; until they reached a place where the distinction between partying and not partying lost all meaning. The difference between partying and simply hanging out, or just chilling, or even extremely passive modes of being, like resting or sitting still, began to dissolve. Life became an endless carnival of indistinguishable compulsory celebrations. People became party-zombies; mindless drones shuffling between cocktail hours and flashy clubs, blindly clamoring around bars searching for free drink tickets.

The mandatory expectation to enjoy oneself, fulfilling one’s right to party, became debilitating and even oppressive. People started to feel like biological machines devoted solely to the purpose of partying.

Now let's be clear; it wasn't that people didn't want to party at all, they just wanted to go back to the way things used to be, when you would only party once in awhile like, just on the weekends. In an attempt to control its citizens, The Party had foolishly destroyed the necessary distance between parties, a sort of healthy respite from getting turned up all the time. The people wanted their freedom from the excessive partying, an excess that had actually made partying itself unenjoyable.

It seems silly in retrospect to pick a specific event that set everything off, but I suppose the moment that seemed to have the biggest long-term historical impact was the great spring break strike. The children of, “The Great Correction,” had become the zealous professionals of the bold new corporative-corporeal military Leviathan that raised them. However, the new young people, the children’s children, remained terribly insolent in the face of government incursions throughout daily life. Underground student organizations began to form on campuses across the country. Organizers engaged in serious discussions on political strategy and tactics.

The dream that brought them together, the utopian support for their social movement, was the ultimate desire to get back to work. The kids wanted a break from partying so much. They wanted the option to stay in on the weekends to do homework and loads of laundry. They wanted to have a night or two to themselves; a night to order in and go to bed early.

In the late winter of that year, student organizers courageously called for a nationwide strike against the upcoming government-organized spring break celebrations. A major event on the CBP’s calendar, spring break partying had taken on a particular symbolic resonance within the Party’s party-centric ideology. The yearly trip to exoticized foreign beaches with free shots and obnoxious music was a deep right of passage for the average Party-loving college student [and, not to mention, a highly glorified element of popular pro-partying CBP propaganda]. The Party had made spring break a national holiday for all individuals enrolled at the collegiate level, ordering all applicable parties to travel to one of the 17 international party hotspots pre-arranged by the Party administration.

The protesting students demanded that they be allowed to use their spring break to study for their upcoming exams along with some quality time at home with their families. The students called for an end to the perpetual obligation to party, challenging the very core of the Party’s politics. Due to the tenacity of their organizing work on individual campuses as well as the overall rebellious tenor of their peers, the call-out for the spring break strike started to spread across the country. People whispered to each other in the back of bars and frat houses about a secret call-out going from university to university. Burnt-out, hungover sociology majors sick of the Party devoted themselves to the cause with a wild abandon. A feeling of nearly unbearable anticipation crept into the classrooms and student unions with a sense of hopeful longing for a world where everyone could be free from the tyranny of the Party’s parties.

On the day of the national spring break departure, the Party was dealt a rude surprise. By most reliable estimates, nearly 75-77 percent of the student population either remained on their campuses, went home, or, at the very least, did not make the legally required travel arrangements. The student strike was a massive success, reaching a level of achievement even the organizers did not predict. The Executive Committee was stunned and a complacent society of oppressed, artificially manufactured party animals was awoken to the possibility of a world beyond the [P]party.

Eventually, the Party broke the strike. But it was only by going door to door, dorm room to dorm room, campus to campus; marching each student out at gunpoint to their designated partying locations. At some schools, student riots broke out, and police in storm-trooper outfits removed bruised and battered undergrads from decimated campus administration buildings. Students occupied libraries and constructed elaborate barricades to protect themselves while they tried to study quietly for finals. Tanks, battering rams, and several canisters of tear-gas violently broke up the militant study sessions held inside the reclaimed university libraries. The brutal repression laid bare for the eyes of the people, at this particular moment and in the wake of the courageous determination of the anti-party student strikers, sparked an unprecedented onslaught of resistance - the likes of which the Party-party state had never seen.

A wave of wildcat solidarity strikes erupted from within a whole host of workplaces, the sudden energy of the older generation awakened by the student uprisings. Except, instead of shutting the workplace down, they shut down the government mandated office parties they were continuously subjected to. In break rooms across the country, office workers overturned folding tables, marched over birthday cakes, and refused to get up from their desks; demanding the opportunity to keep working instead of partying. The chant rose up from the ranks of the workers: more work, less fun!

Underground far-left political cells organized themselves and begin engaging in radical bombings and various acts of anti-government property destruction. Shadowy, militant units of secretive revolutionaries formed groups with needlessly long acronyms for names and bloated manifestos composed by former humanities majors. With every explosive placed and Party office smashed, these clandestine resisters issued communiques calling for the right to nights off, the right to stay in on a Friday or a Saturday and simply read a book and make a light salad. The passionate rebels building the contemporary insurrection sought a chance to free themselves from the empty life of eternal, mindless oblivion in booze, cigarettes and dance floors. The conflict scrambled the traditional alignment of political liberation with free social enjoyment versus totalitarianism and boring bureaucratic banality. The new revolutionary desire, the quest for political liberation, was now a struggle for the freedom of boredom; the freedom to be boring and unremarkable; a freedom from the surveillance of the Party’s gaze and its expectation that its subjects enjoy themselves to the extreme, despite the particular circumstances or personal mood of the subjected partiers. .

But what really signaled the death knell for the Party, the point at which there was no return, were the mass nap-ins that were held in major city squares. The anti-Party protesters took over whole blocks to engage in gigantic group naps that lasted for hours at a time. Thousands of people brought sleeping bags, air mattresses, pillows, blankets, and plush novelty toys for snuggling. The napping protesters joined up at predetermined street corners and public spaces and collectively took a boring old midday nap. Whole cities were literally shut down so that the people could take a rest. Thousands of rebellious citizens, exhausted from the stress of over-partying, joined together and achieved a reprieve from the state’s partying apparatus.

When the nap-ins started flaring up everywhere, the government didn’t know what to do. The image of soldiers and police violently uprooting spontaneous nap encampments [or, “enapments”, as they were sometimes called] completely undermined any social legitimacy the regime once held. Grandmothers and infants were brutalized by agents of the state who cleared the enapments with particular viciousness, unique even for the Party. When the world watched the violence on their televisions and saw the headlines in their news feeds, the denunciation was global in scope and transcended the normal political divides of conservative and liberal, social democrat or republican. Leaders of other nations, authors of pain and destruction in their own countries, made public solidarity with the nappers at quickly planned press conferences, where the hypocritical heads-of-state went on to condescendingly commend the protesters for being nonviolent. Solidarity nap-ins were organized by activists in cities all over the planet, showing an international wave of support behind the movement that was bringing the Party to its knees.

The fascist Party had effectively made itself the public enemy of every person tired of feeling compelled to find the most exciting party to attend on a Friday night; every individual soul oppressed by the despotic feeling of isolation, loneliness and insignificance; every teenager who couldn’t find a date to the prom; every disaffected late twenty-something college graduate with more debt than a future and a lingering sense of dissatisfaction with their local bar scene. Every person who has fallen asleep on New Year’s Eve before the midnight.

With the stakes higher than they had ever been before, in this fever-pitch context of social revolution, a call rose up from amidst the demonstrators for a nationwide nap-in to be held inside the capitol building of the Executive Committee. They broadcasted far and wide that it was to be the biggest, most relaxing nap-in the movement had yet staged. A diverse coalition of participants called on everyone who lived under Party-party rule to either travel to the capital and join the nappers or engage in their own autonomous nap-ins where they lived, or, at the very least, stay home and nap in their own bed. The coalition even put the call out internationally for a global anti-party-Party nap-in, requesting that activists in other countries show solidarity for their righteous anti-Party-party movement. The metaphoric political planets were quickly aligning, paving the way for an immanent socio-astrological shit storm for the military dictatorship.

In response to the global enapment, the overpartying Party-state announced an inversion of the routine sovereign gesture of the, “curfew,” which it called a, “decurfew.” A juridical inversion drawing on the French etymological origin of the original term [couvre-feu [which translates literally as, “to cover the fire,”] the, “decurfew,” changed the traditional night time restriction to an English variation on découvrir-feu [or, “ to uncover the fire,”]]. The, “decurfew,” was meant to accomplish the exact opposite of a normal curfew announcement. Instead of staying indoors and sleeping at the global enapment, the Party directed its citizens to dutifully uncover the fire in a passionate explosion of emergency parties which were hastily organized by the now desperate CBP leadership. The Party even launched a poorly received advertising campaign around the slogan: “uncover the fire.” The crumbling military mobilized what troops it could to roam the streets in small patrols searching for non-compliant nappers, spreading the word that any involvement in the epic nap-in would result in violent arrest.

But the uprising had already pushed the stakes farther than the government could handle. The rebellion against partying had already won in the hearts and minds of the people; the organized napsurrection was merely actualizing what everyone already desired.

On the day of the epic nap-in, the people rose up and fought for their right to not to party all the time. A show of nearly total social unity astounded even the most hopeful revolutionaries involved in the active struggle, as folks from every walk of life marched together by the thousands, even millions, and occupied the capital buildings. In many cities, the military regiments assigned to crush the nappers merely laid their weapons down, fluffed their pillows and drifted off to sleep along with the rest of the nappers. Whole consolidated blocks of the political establishment, some of the most dedicated apparatchiks, renounced their former authority and joined step with the course of history.

The super-government fell under the awesome might of lazy boredom, as demonstrators reached the steps of the capitol building and were met by the final few loyal regiments of the Party. In a short burst of gunfire, the last of the government troops were overthrown by former members of the military who had kept their weapons when they left their official capacity as soldiers.The offices of the Central Bureau of Partying were burned to the ground in a righteous act of destruction. The extensive surveillance and monitoring of non-governmental party-activities was purged in a swirling firestorm of flaming garbage and Molotov cocktails. All the primary members of the Executive Committee who hid in their offices with their lingering supporters went down in hails of gunfire as they attempted to defend themselves from the onslaught of outraged post-citizens.

Finally, once the Central Bureau of Partying was completely annihilated, and the Executive Committee was vanquished and virtually all institutions of the Party were left charred and smoldering in heaps of smoking rubble, the people breathed a sigh of relief and got some much needed rest.

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tinymixtapes · 6 years

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Music Review: Sega Bodega - SS (2017)

Sega Bodega SS (2017) [NUXXE; 2017] Rating: 3.5/5 The practice of reimagining film scores poses a slippery hermeneutic problem for artists and critics alike. Adding modern scores to silent films can feel like an insertion of the subject into the object, while rescoring films that already have original scores can feel like a removal of something essential from the object. The former is often portrayed as an inherently narcissistic venture in which the original film acts as nothing more than a fertile canvas for the ego of the artist (or the affectations of several competing artists, as with the many rescores of Carl Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc). And the latter approach was brought to public attention when Zane Lowe curated an alternative score for Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive back in 2014. After a great deal of quibbling about “the director’s intentions” ensued to a choir of furiously jerking knees, the gatekeepers of our culture ultimately deemed the film too sacred for the grubby money fingers of Eric Prydz and Bring Me the Horizon. The latest mixtape from UK producer Sega Bodega, SS (2017), endeavors to reimagine film scores with a more honest approach, one that carefully balances a true respect for the object with a constructive assertion of the subject. The concept is fairly simple: each track condenses the vibe of a specific film into a new score for its commercial trailer. As such, the record manifests as both an exercise in structural limitation and an expression of artistic identity. While tightly chained to the visual demands of the trailers in question (in terms of timing, context, pacing, and mood), Sega Bodega remains free to explore new sounds and technologies according to his own creative whims. And most importantly, he manages this in ways that do not disrupt the aesthetic established in his previous work. Since moving from Glasgow to London, it’s clear that Sega Bodega has adapted to the filth and smog of the capital and its increasingly gritty club scene. Earlier releases were much in the vein of his Glaswegian contemporaries at Warp Records: tunes of the “quintessential banger” variety that politely say nah to form and genre through grinning teeth (see: 2013’s “Konerak” and 2014’s “Stay Nervous”). But more recently with tracks like “CC” and “Bacardi” he has started boiling those peppy highs down to their narcotic essence. Your tolerance has peaked, and those sticky hooks have lost their sexy pure-white allure. Like, it’s a real problem now. You’re huffing bass lines so addictive that you spend weeks excavating their remnants from your nostrils, with euphoric builds so acidic that they flip your stomach and plunge you into an immediate comedown. These disorienting scenes of hedonistic decline continue throughout SS in ways that both translate and elevate the films being rescored. “Requiem” captures the feelings and trappings of addiction in carnivalesque melodies that melt and churn and *bleugh* their way through a fucked-up, coke-fueled, balloon-huffing haze. Even at this kinda drowsy, kinda waltzy, kinda lazy tempo, there is no hint of rest. Instead, the track stings and aches and burns as it tries to break out of this unbearable agitation, only to sink deeper and deeper into it with every, single, desperate, lurch — it conjures the bodily action of standard dance music without the same old liberating teleology. Shygirl drawls through her trademark voice-inside-your-head monotone with enough nonchalance to make us do very bad things, to ourselves, to others, and then before you know it, you’re bursting through limbo, back into your sweaty PJs. SS (2017) by Sega Bodega The track speaks for a deeper understanding of its source material, an understanding often manifest in the meticulous choice of sounds throughout SS. Of course, electronic music producers have sampled archetypes from classic cinema to the point of making a cliché out of a cliché, but Sega Bodega gives them a little more than a quick kiss on the cheek. He handles these archetypes with studious care, generously scattering them over the mixtape like deft comments in the margins of an exhausted book. “Dogtooth” is a plucky movement of nylon that stirs up familiar sentiments, as each instrument piles up one by one: slightly tense, slightly playful, and utterly conventional. “Pi” skims the filmic language of tension in an echo chamber sparsely decorated with blunt drones and rusty strings, almost as if a tune is trying to assemble itself from disparate elements as they slowly and infinitely drift away from each other. The pianos and marimbas on “Tree of Life” play ball with some mysterious arpeggios on a comfy bed of orchestral flourishes, fit for previews at a mid-afternoon screening of Casablanca. Obviously nostalgia has a lot to it, and this can be heard pretty clearly on certain tracks. “Begotten” is a gorgeous cut of retro-synth magic that yawns so wide that it tears open new galaxies in the process; you can just about feel those legato strokes of heat every time a star collapses in the distance. As the track pulsates in time with the flickering cellulite misery of its corresponding trailer, you’ve got these proper lush chords, omg those chords, casting a dim light over the twisted bodies, devastating yet somehow optimistic. A similar sense of nostalgia has undeniably made up a crucial part of Sega Bodega’s aesthetic on previous releases, one that yearns for unfelt feelings among the night tubes and housing estates of London circa 2007. However, nostalgia misleads our collective memory toward a fiction: an endearing snapshot of the past distorted through time and reframed in the misty dreams of a disenchanted society. That we are inclined to think about the objects of our nostalgia as “things as they truly were in the past and should now be in the present” only sets us up for further disillusionment. In order to open up this liminal space between subject and object (where truth and imagination lock hands in an eternal dalliance), we must deceive ourselves. By embracing the active role of the present in our conception of the past, it’s clear that Sega Bodega has no misconceptions about the deceptive nature of our nostalgia. Rather than simply fossilizing these films in a checklist of clichés and tropes, he treats them as living works shaped by the ongoing engagement of both artists and critics. That is, he endearingly suspends their essence in a wistful memory before dragging that essence into modern software and piping it out through subwoofer cones. “Aliens” takes an unrelenting onslaught of horror film tropes — chilling droplets of atonal pizzicato rain down on animalistic growls and howls, screaming strings drill a tinnitus buzz into your eardrums — and sets it against a thorny dancehall rhythm so raw that it would probably make Drake plunge a microphone into his forehead. Sega Bodega has always had the knack for making the kind of straight-up murderous dance music that corrupts our innocent and supple youth, but when he does his worst on an actual horror film, it really makes those blood splatters pop! outta the screen. Likewise, “Stalker” accurately channels its corresponding film in the sense that it’s pretty desolate. But then the paranoid tones of sirens and bells succumb to a Jersey club kick pattern, which pounds out for like 40 seconds before remembering that maybe a post-apocalyptic Soviet film is not the best setting for a house party. Okay, okay, the track “X” definitely shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t work. Industrial drum loops launch a nuclear assault on every single frequency that your brain can register, crunching and scraping and grinding with enough force to satisfy your repressed aggression for about nine years. At the same time, precious angels beam down dramatic Zimmeresque string harmonies as they ride atop blooming mushroom clouds. It really shouldn’t work. But after a while ,you begin to tune out the differences between these two timbral surfaces and appreciate their similarities: how they twist and turn like barbed wire around a majestic sequoia, unraveling with the familiar pacing and coloring of a movie trailer while remaining completely alien to us. Still, it shouldn’t work at all. And yet there you are, having a little moment, rashing up with goosebumps as the fragile abyss between past and present collapses more with every scratch and bruise. In these more discordant (and somewhat absurd) tracks, the internal logic of nostalgia is laid bare. Sega Bodega reorients these films using sounds and structures that are both anachronistic and archetypal to the source in question — a sense of space and time that is romantic yet wildly distorted. The tracks on SS (2017) don’t attempt to critically examine the original films being rescored, nor to hold their original contexts up against present-day ironies, nor to sabotage them entirely for a quick applause and a decent blurb in fucking Time Out. While many artists have done as such with varying degrees of success, this record comes across as something way more authentic: a sincere paean to cinema and its rich musical vocabulary. http://j.mp/2z6wRfv

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heliosfinance · 7 years

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What My Ridiculous Parents Taught Me About Money

[Please welcome one half of the duo from DukeofDollars.com today, as Jack spills his heart here on all things financial he learned from growing up in a helluva toxic household, ugh… As a parent this KILLS ME, and I wish this upbringing on no kids out there! What is wrong with people????]

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The first time I rode a four wheeler as a kid, my dad plopped me down on the machine without a helmet and pointed me at the trailhead. This same guy — we’ll call him Ronald, because he’s kind of a clown — then hopped on his mechanical high horse and proceeded to take off down the trail, yelling “Follow me!” behind him. A 90-degree corner immediately greeted me, and with my limited 20 feet experience of riding so far, I was bucked off the machine as it proceeded to climb straight up a tree. I cracked my head, and the four wheeler landed right on top of me.

After waiting a minute or two, I realized I was all on my own with this problem as Ronald was long gone. I mustered the strength to kick off this heavy burden, climbed back on top of that mofo, and then sped passed Ron while flipping him the bird.

That’s pretty much how my financial life started too: flat on my ass with an enormous weight holding me down and no parent in sight.

Lesson #1: Don’t Sell The Shares You Inherited and Blow The Proceeds on Four Wheelers!

Those same ATVs mentioned above? They were purchased from stock my parents inherited. I wasn’t privy to all the details, but the sum I guestimated they received was in the $50k – $100k range: invested in what my parents called “blue chips,” which was the first time I’d heard that phrase before. What I do know, however, is that a $15k chunk started its brief life under the tutelage of my parents as the bluest of blue stocks on the market: IBM.

In 1992, a single share of IBM was worth about $88 unadjusted for splits, meaning my parents possessed roughly 170 shares. Let’s assume that instead of rushing down to Honda Motorsports before the check even cleared, Ron and his wife had the foresight to hold onto this small fraction of their inheritance and just let it ride. They could’ve spent almost $29,000 in dividends to date and still be sitting on a split-adjusted 680 shares, which would now be worth over $95,000; the annual dividend for 2017 and beyond is projected to be > $3,800.

That’s a lot of Power Wheels.

When I draw lessons from this mistake, I look at not only the hypothetical end-result, but also what kind of mindset it would take to ride IBM from 1992 to 2017. Seven years into the experiment, IBM experienced a meteoric rise powered by the turbo booster of the tech bubble. The shares reached a high of roughly $138 in 1999, right about where the price sits today, nearly 20 years down the road. During the ensuing crash, IBM dipped below $60.

Depending on your mindset, it might’ve been tempting to sell at both the high and the low phases: lock in gains in the former, or salve your fear of further losses with the latter. The company was considered the unassailable stalwart of tech during the 90’s, but its waning market position redefined the business in investors’ eyes. Declining revenue and a lack of innovation has transformed the perception of IBM from a shining star to a washed-up has-been.

I try to focus much of my investing efforts on the hold part of buy-and-hold. In the case of IBM, a dividend powerhouse, I’d pool the dividends and invest in a different, more stable sector. Diversify not through selling, but by redirecting the increasingly fat dividend stream into other businesses.

Lesson #2: Maintain Your $hit or It Becomes Worthless

They lasted just two years. No, not my parents’ faltering marriage, still talking about those damn ATVs. It turns out that engines have this weird substance called “oil,” and it needs to be changed every now and then. Three gently-used automobiles later, my parents finally discovered that cars, too, also have this same strange substance in it.

The three cars: 1) Ford Explorer, 2) Mercury Sable, 3) Lincoln Town Car – all bought with < 40k miles, and all dead by 75k miles because of engine problems.

A dear relative of mine gifted me a granny car when I was 16. I loved and appreciated the crap out of that vehicle, old people smell and all. When I scurried off to college, a school that banned freshmen from parking vehicles on campus, my parents decided to reappropriate my car to my older sister for a year. She begrudgingly returned it with a dead inspection sticker soon after the school year ended. Yes, I got a ticket on my ride home.

Surprise, surprise: she too had never learned about oil. Within a week, I heard the familiar sound of a seizing engine. Fortunately, I was able to limp the car to my friend’s house where his girlfriend was palling around with this hot chick in a bikini who happened to be a mechanic’s daughter. Though I’d learned the lesson already, I pretended to be ignorant about checking fluids while she “assisted” me.

She’s now my wife.

The first time I met my future father-in-law, he towered over me, crushed my handshake, and told me, “Boy if you ever hurt my daughter, I’ll rip your head off and cram it up your ass.” The most productive man I ever met, he was always tinkering on something. When he helped me with a plumbing issue, I asked him how he knew what the problem was. He replied, “I had no idea. I just figure out how to take it apart and then figured out how to put it back together.”

That’s perhaps the best repair advice I’ve ever received. Everything comes apart somehow, even if it’s not obvious at first. As far as maintenance tasks go, I rely on reminders. Google calendar is set to nudge me whenever air filters need to be replaced, batteries charged, gutters cleaned, and yes – especially when oil needs changing.

Lesson #3: Cheating and Refusing to Pay Taxes Are – Go Figure – Illegal

Leave it to my parents to find a silver lining in a DIY storm cloud. They ended up donating all four totaled vehicles to a registered charity. Pretty generous, right? Except for the part where they forged the receipts to show that the cars were in pristine condition and worth 4x the correct stated value.

Tax time for ol’ Ronnie was a game he played with TurboTax – fudging every number until the exact moment that the software threw a red flag. It was an endless game of chicken with the IRS. Unclaimed income, fictitious and overstated donations, illegal claiming of dependents, falsified businesses, enormous home offices: if you can think of a way to cheat taxes, my parents did it.

Before I cut ties for good, I learned that they were outraged to have received a thick envelope from Uncle Sam. Those IBM divvy’s probably would’ve come in handy around the time Ronald & Company decided to burn the mysterious contents of that package.

Determined to be their antiprotégé, I once filed an amended return when I realized that tips weren’t automatically included in my pizza delivery summer job W2 to stay on the “good” side.

Lesson #4: Cigarettes and Drugs – A Surefire Path to Financial Ruin and Misery

Legal correspondence wasn’t my family’s favorite fuel. That award would be split between the cigarettes and the drugs. At the age of fourteen, I sneaked one of my parents’ cigs to see what the fuss was about. I ratted myself out with a nasty gagging fit on my first couple draws and was promptly scolded right after: par for the course for teenage mischief.

The next day, however, my parents gave me a pack of my own cigarettes so that I wouldn’t have to steal theirs. I smoked for four formative years until I landed my first office job and realized how much the habit would hold me back in the workplace. And by that time, the free cigarette train had run out of track.

With an hourly pay rate just a smidgen above minimum wage, it didn’t take me long to figure out how expensive it was to roll up and burn a $5 bill every day.

While cigarettes seared a massive hole in the household “budget,” at least they were legal. My drug dabbling experience, getting caught, and the resulting parental guidance all adhered to the same pattern as the tobacco. Drugs, however, were difficult for my parents to find. In me, they saw a budding conduit to the black market.

My relationship with my parents had been strained, to put it kindly, up until the moment they realized that I had nefarious connections. That revelation ushered in a brief golden age between father, mother, and son. They were oh-so-friendly during my mid-teens. Bless their hearts.

Ron was pulling in a solid income by this time frame, helped along by his thievery from the taxman. He approached the drug market much like a soccer mom at Costco – preferring to buy in bulk to secure the discounts. Behind the force of his seed capital, along with the entrepreneurship of the local high school slinger, a small narcotics empire quickly rose in my town. Faster than it had risen, the entire enterprise crashed down hard right after, tossing a few people straight into prison along its demise.

Miraculously, neither Ron nor I emerged with a scratch on our records. He employed me as a delivery driver specializing in felonious interstate transportation, nearly ruining my life before adulthood was even on the horizon. I was a child. His child. For this, forgiveness isn’t in the cards.

Between the ages of 15 and 18, I did glean a few useful money lessons throughout these illicit business ventures though. I learned about cost of goods sold, profit margins, inventory, goodwill with vendors, shrinkage, the compounding power of addictive consumerism, etc. One of my top investments to this day is an alcohol purveyor.

Most of all though, I started to learn about risk. I’ve read that the human brain doesn’t reach its full risk-processing power until age 25, and I know from experience that I was nearly blind to the concepts of probability and consequences as an adolescent. Nearing my mid-twenties, I began to realize just how mind-bogglingly reckless my teenage endeavors were regardless of whether I’d acted at the behest of my parents or not.

The whole clusterf*ck set into motion a deep-set sense of personal responsibility. I learned that I needed to take control of my own life, live up to my own standards, and then reap the rewards of my own hard work, while accepting the consequences of any misdeed that I committed on my own.

The Fallout

I eventually got out of the drug game. The first person that I ever cut out of my life was a young man I considered to be my best friend. He also happened to be the founder and CEO of my parents’ personal apothecary. Little did I know at the time, the night I watched a movie with him, shook his hand, and told him to never contact me again was also the beginning of the end of my parent-child relationship. What precious little of it remained, anyway.

As my underworld connections withered and died, my parents’ addictions grew ravenously. They latched on to as many mind-altering substances they could find to escape from the reality that their house was falling down all around them. And I mean that quite literally, not a metaphor at all.

Their master bathroom had sprung a leak, causing the tub to partially fall through the kitchen ceiling where it remained for a number of years – completely suspended above a mountain of dishes that stared back at the foreign visitor from upstairs, each neglected task accompanied by its own steady drip drip drip of water that seemed to spend all night debating with its counterpart over which quagmire would be resolved first.

I didn’t stick around long enough to find out who won.

One by one, major appliances choked out their last efforts. Water heater, washer, A/C, furnace: all met their demise over a $200 repair bill that Ron refused to pay, instead opting for a $200 baggie in its place. All the while, he pulled in a six figure income.

With financial ruin creeping up from behind, my parents found a frugal alternative to visiting the ghetto: they could manufacture the drugs themselves! I’m not aware of a federally sponsored comeuppance for this crime, but it’s only a matter of time. I still have nightmares of black helicopters and predawn raids.

Lesson #5: Running a Puppy Mill Inside Your House Might Not Be a Good Idea For Side Income

In a last-ditch effort to support their drug habits over their children, my parents turned to exploiting something even more defenseless: dogs.

Because affording a kennel was out of the question, the clown committee determined that the operation should be run indoors. Eventually all manner of canine bodily fluids spread across the floors and down the walls as up to 20 helpless, unvaccinated, creatures were forced to reproduce inside the crumbling confines of my parents’ nightmare.

One poor soul died of a perpetual and untreated kidney infection; he’d bay woefully as he urinated blood behind my father’s overused recliner. They were heartless enough to have named that dog Cash. I’d moved out well before the breeding began, and my bewildered parents wondered why I never came to visit any more.

Lesson #6: “I’ll Just Come Live With My Adult Child” Is Not a Valid Retirement Plan

When the eviction was finally enforced, my parents — considering themselves victims of the gravest injustices — turned to me for help, requiring assistance which absolutely must be delivered in the form of $30,000 cash.

I’ll never forget hearing the words on the phone from my mother, “You have good credit, right?”

Invitations from me to them became exceedingly rare, so they continuously strategized ways to drop in unannounced. Once when I was still under their roof and underage, my father decided to spend an entire year without speaking a single word to me. He returned to this antisocial mechanism later at my own house as he sat on my couch, uninvited and scowling, while his wife tried to coax a few dollars out from my pockets. And if I didn’t have any, then certainly I might have some drugs they could borrow, right?

That day didn’t end pleasantly, and the next time I heard from them, my parents extended an invitation for me to celebrate dear ol’ Dad on Father’s Day.

I didn’t show up. That single inaction, one decision of defiance, was my sole moment when I’d finally had enough. It unleashed a torrent of hatred. He compared my absence — my refusal to fete the fool — to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. My inbox, voicemail, and mailbox overflowed with verbal vomit. I responded with silence.

In the years that followed, I spoke just eight total words to him on two separate occasions: “Never contact me again” and “Leave my wife alone.” I didn’t owe him the time of day, much less an explanation.

Where We Are Today – A Position of Strength

That’s the origin of my quest for financial independence. Ronnie knew that my separation from my parents had something to do with money, but his thoughts on the matter were completely twisted. In his magnum opus on the fantasy of filicide, he wrote,

“I am sorry I didn’t save money for you, blahahahahaha. You did nothing to earn it. Parents owe their children nothing.”

The fact was I wanted nothing from my parents but love and respect. I may as well have asked for the moon. When I was 18, I discovered that I could leverage frugality and a decent income to build a fortress that no person could disturb. Money was my ticket out from under the thumb of an abusive upbringing, and I still get chills when I watch Mr. Collins’ rendition of “F*ck You Money.”

Now, I’m close to that position of ultimate financial strength. I live in my own house with my beautiful, loving wife, and our pets whose healthcare rivals that of a senator’s. All my appliances and vehicles work flawlessly, and I pay gobs of taxes each year. Every single person in my inner circles shares with me a mutual love and respect, and I’m not beholden to any addictive or destructive force whatsoever.

Life is good… And I don’t own any damn four wheelers!

*********

The Master Dukes of Dollars are the dynamic duo from The Duke of Dollars Kingdom. The two bloggers held court frequently, delving into lifestyle and personal finance discussions as they searched for ways to live an optimal life, eventually deciding to invite a global audience into their mindsets by establishing their own blog together. Chris is the younger of the two and recently launched his Great War on Debt soon after achieving a positive net worth, while Jack – the author of this guest post – is further down the road towards FIRE and is seeking a cure for onemoreyearitis. Their primary mission is to help others build their financial kingdoms, providing the world with a road-map that leads to a fortified personal monetary policy.

Want more stories like this? Check out these posts next:

My Life (And Finances) After Escaping a Cult

What Being Homeless Taught Me About Money and Happiness

Seeking Financial Stability as a Gay, Non-White, Man of Muslim Faith

[Photo up top NOT of Jack’s dad – it comes courtesy of zachandlinz on Flickr]

What My Ridiculous Parents Taught Me About Money published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

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fesahaawit · 7 years

Text

What My Ridiculous Parents Taught Me About Money

********

That’s pretty much how my financial life started too: flat on my ass with an enormous weight holding me down and no parent in sight.

Lesson #1: Don’t Sell The Shares You Inherited and Blow The Proceeds on Four Wheelers!

That’s a lot of Power Wheels.

Lesson #2: Maintain Your $hit or It Becomes Worthless

The three cars: 1) Ford Explorer, 2) Mercury Sable, 3) Lincoln Town Car – all bought with < 40k miles, and all dead by 75k miles because of engine problems.

She’s now my wife.

Lesson #3: Cheating and Refusing to Pay Taxes Are – Go Figure – Illegal

Determined to be their antiprotégé, I once filed an amended return when I realized that tips weren’t automatically included in my pizza delivery summer job W2 to stay on the “good” side.

Lesson #4: Cigarettes and Drugs – A Surefire Path to Financial Ruin and Misery

With an hourly pay rate just a smidgen above minimum wage, it didn’t take me long to figure out how expensive it was to roll up and burn a $5 bill every day.

The Fallout

I didn’t stick around long enough to find out who won.

Lesson #5: Running a Puppy Mill Inside Your House Might Not Be a Good Idea For Side Income

In a last-ditch effort to support their drug habits over their children, my parents turned to exploiting something even more defenseless: dogs.

Lesson #6: “I’ll Just Come Live With My Adult Child” Is Not a Valid Retirement Plan

I’ll never forget hearing the words on the phone from my mother, “You have good credit, right?”

That day didn’t end pleasantly, and the next time I heard from them, my parents extended an invitation for me to celebrate dear ol’ Dad on Father’s Day.

Where We Are Today – A Position of Strength

“I am sorry I didn’t save money for you, blahahahahaha. You did nothing to earn it. Parents owe their children nothing.”

Life is good… And I don’t own any damn four wheelers!

*********

Want more stories like this? Check out these posts next:

My Life (And Finances) After Escaping a Cult

What Being Homeless Taught Me About Money and Happiness

Seeking Financial Stability as a Gay, Non-White, Man of Muslim Faith

[Photo up top NOT of Jack’s dad – it comes courtesy of zachandlinz on Flickr]

What My Ridiculous Parents Taught Me About Money posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

0 notes