#douglas you should have gone to jail for this one

[addictedtoredemption]

Poop Sock

It’s November 14th , 2019. I had just woken up, and it was time for the usual morning pee. As I pull down my pants and go to sit down I brace myself for the cold steel metal that soon will be touching my bare skin. The initial shock of the brisk coolness fades, and my eyes gaze over to the side of the toilet, and I see a gray frayed sock that has been tied in a knot. I think to myself, “this must have been left here by someone before me. Yuck, that’s fucking gross.” I contemplate whether I should throw it away. I hope to myself that I won’t be here long enough for it to matter. Hopefully I will leave today, and this sock won’t matter. Why bother throwing it away? “No, I better just get it out my sight, plus I don’t want them to think I have something extra or that I am not picking up after myself.” I grab the sock between my pointer finger and thumb and the oh so familiar “this is fucking gross” scrunched up face is on full display. That’s weird, it’s heavy, what the hell is in here? I don’t want to know. I toss it in the trash, and hear it thud against the brown plastic bin. I sit down on the blue mat on the floor.

I haven’t cried much yet. I’m still in shock. How did I get here? Why do I do this to myself? Why can’t I just play by the fucking rules? I hear the slamming of the thick steel door, and I hear the corrections officer yell, “Food! Top tier.” Ladies begin rushing down the stairs. It’s wave of orange jumpsuits that form a long line down one side of the commons area of Mod 13. Mod 13 is the women’s minimum-security housing for inmates. Definition of inmate: any of a group occupying a single place of residence especially: a person confined (as in a prison or hospital.) Inmate- Jenna West, 34, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, nurse, and now inmate. In jail, you are none of those other things, you are inmate. “Inmates line up for food, inmate meds are here, inmate line up for court, inmate you can use the phone, inmates you can shower, inmates it’s time for lights out.” You see, the corrections officers don’t know my story, they don’t really care. They are here to earn their paycheck and go home. They see me simply as another criminal, piece of shit, and deservedly here to serve out time for the deviant ways I have betrayed society. I stare at the women in line waiting for the slop that is to be served on scratched up, sometimes clean brown trays. They hold their brown cups in their hand hoping that by the time they get up to the front the juice won’t be gone. I use the term juice lightly, as it is a cup of water with a splash of flavoring. As they wait for their food they laugh, chat, braid each other’s hair, and seem oblivious to their current situation. It enrages me that they can be having a good time. Do they not realize this isn’t summer camp? We are in jail! “Bottom tier, let’s go.” I grab my cup and walk across the bright white floor to take my place in line. I am careful not to push my way in and try to remain unseen. That is until “Inmate! Are you forgetting something?” I don’t even look up; it doesn’t occur to me that she would be talking to me. “Hello?!, Inmate orange needs to be on.” I look down and I still have my brown t-shirt on. I feel like it’s the first day of school when you inevitably miss the memo on what’s what, and now you are the center of attention. “Sorry, I’ll go get it.” I quickly walk over to myself cell and grab my orange shirt and walk back to the line. I get my tray of food. It’s brown mystery meat. I’m told it is hamburger. A piece of white bread, a plastic spoon with ½ teaspoon of ketchup, a potato side, carrots, and cookie. I eat the cookie. The hamburger is completely inedible. The potatoes have no flavor. The carrots are cold. I don’t have much of an appetite anyway. I begin to think about my family. How worried my mom is. How mad my husband is. How clueless my kids are as to where Mommy is. I just want to be home. I want to be watching my two-year-old little girl playing with her toys, watching Pink Fong, and running to me for the occasional snuggle or kiss. I want to look outside and see my son, 10, walking down the hill from school. I want to greet him at the door and ask how his day is. I want to have some funny banter with my husband over texts. I want to give him a kiss when he comes home from work. I want to sit down on the couch with him and watch our shows. I want to sleep in bed next to him. Oh, a bed-I would give anything for a bed. I had dreams almost every night I was in jail about finding pillows in secret passageways. I just wanted a fucking pillow. All we are given is a 1-inch-thick blue mat with one end a little thicker for what one might call a pillow. It’s a stark contrast from my king size bed, with a 2in memory foam thick mattress toppers, Casper pillow, and down comforter. I don’t get a sweet tap on my shoulder at 2 am from my sweet Stella, asking if she can sleep with me. Instead, I lay awake most hours of the night counting the white bricks that make up my small cell, all 252 of them. I am anxious, I am sad, and I am defeated. During phone time, I call my mom just to have a small amount of comfort. She hears the pain and sorrow in my

voice. I know it’s selfish of me to call her, I know that calling her, and letting her hear me cry is painful, but I can’t help it. I need that comfort, I need to hear her voice, and I need a moment away from my reality. I call my husband, Casey, next. I ask if he has spoke to my lawyer, if he found out when I might get out, and I ask what he told Jaxson. His tone with me is firm, and his answers are concise. I don’t find much comfort in talking to him, as I know that he is angry with me. I’ve let him down. I’ve made him the sole caretake for our children for no one knows how long. I’ve placed my job in jeopardy. I’ve embarrassed him. There are few family members, and friends that know of my situation at this point, and he now has to tell them his wife, mother of his children is in jail so he might need some help with the kids. He tells me he told Jax, that Mom had to go on a work trip, and she is somewhere where there is no service. Jax asked, “Why would she just leave? Why wouldn’t she say goodbye? When will she be back.” These feelings my son had to feel because of my poor choices is just another ripple of many ripples in this giant ocean of the clusterfuck I have made of my life. The burden my husband had to bear is one of many he has had to endure because he married an addict. The pain and disappointment my mother and father felt is only worsened by images of their youngest daughter in jail away from her family, and there is nothing they can do to help.

I do find some comfort in that I don’t have a cellmate. I get the bottom bunk so I don’t have to try to hoist myself up on the top one. That comfort is quickly taken away on day two of my jail stint. Midday on November 14th a pretty brunette girl storms through the cell door into my cell. She says, “Hey, I am your roommate, can I have the bottom bunk? I just had a baby, and I can’t climb up there.” She could have given me any reason as to why she wanted the bottom bunk, and I would have conceded. She seemed like this wasn’t her first rodeo, and I wasn’t about to start any bad blood with someone I’d be in an 8X10 room with for the foreseeable future. Rachelle, had just been moved from the medical infirmary back to general population, “gen pop.” She had her baby only three days early. She gave birth under police custody, she spent 24 hours with her baby before she was shipped back to jail. I felt sad for her, and I felt angry for her. How can the system be so heartless that they rip a newborn baby from their mother just hours after birth? She clearly isn’t a murderer or armed robber; she is in minimum security. What could she have done that was so terrible? I’d later find out that she was caught shoplifting from a Thrift world Store. She was nearly 7 months pregnant at the time, and when they searched her, they found meth in her bra strap. They didn’t give her a bond because they wanted to ensure the baby had a fighting chance. She was to serve out the rest of her pregnancy in jail, and after the baby was born they would then decide her fate. This girl gave zero shits about anything. She quickly rummaged through her clothes- two orange pairs of shirts and pants, two underwear, two sports bras, and two pair of socks. The standard wardrobe for Douglas County inmates. She threw of her orange shirt, and through her brown shirt I could see two wet sports where her nipples would be. She was leaking, engorged, and in pain. She threw off her bra and exposed her bare breast, then asked me what I think she should do? You see on top of the emotional pain of not being with her newborn, she had to endure the pain of not being able to breastfeed therefore having engorged breasts that leaked constantly causing chapped nipples that chaffed against her sport bra. She tried to put socks and toilet paper between her skin and her clothing to ease the discomfort, but it was to no avail. I looked down quickly, and just said you need to just try to keep them dry. I told her that if she had some Chapstick that it might help with the chaffing. She swapped bras and grabbed a clean shirt and continued to unpack her bags and make herself at home. She raised hell about how dirty the cell was, and ranted, “this is fucking disgusting, how do people live like this?” She ran out of the cell to grab cleaning supplies. Cleaning supplies? I had no idea we could just go get cleaning supplies to make things a little more livable. I assured her had I known, I would have cleaned, and I told her I was hoping I was leaving later that day, so I didn’t see the point. But I picked up some supplies and assisted her with the cleaning of our humble abode. Once everything was in order she said, “Do you have any extra socks?” I replied, “No, only what they gave me, why?” “Because we need to make a poop sock.” What the hell is a poop sock I thought. Is it what she used to wipe her ass? Does she poop in it in and throw it away, or reuse it? My mind mulled over what in the actual fuck is a poop sock. Turns out a poop sock is what I had thrown away earlier. You see I had no idea that that poop sock was a gift. A glorious gift that one inmate bestowed on future inmates in order to lessen our suffering. She explained that a poop sock is when you take a bar of soap, and crumble it into many pieces, let it dry out, and then stuff it into a sock and tie a knot on the top to hold it all in. Then when you take a number two you beat the sock against the wall and shake it all around you. A dust of soapy freshness then fills the air. A poop sock is a jail made bathroom air

freshener, and it was genius. I walked over to the trash and fumbled through the dirty paper towels we had just used to clean and pulled out our poop sock. Relief and delight washed over Rachelle’s face. Turns out she was an avid poop sock user, as I would soon be choking on soap flake dust every time she went to the bathroom. She would bang that thing against the wall and violently shake all around her while she used the bathroom. I couldn’t help but giggle because she looked like a priest throwing holy water on someone the way she shook that gray ratty sock all over the place. Day two, and I was learning the jailhouse lingo, and already impressed with what these ladies could come up with. I later told my mom, well at least this experience builds character.

I ended up only spending 7 days in jail. Some people respond to that, “Oh my god, 7 days? How did you get through that? I would die.” While others, like people I was on drug court with, would reply, “Ah, 7 days, man, that’s nothing. I lost 7 years while I was in prison.” It’s all about perspective.

#opiate addiction #recovering addict #jail #incarceron #addictive #funny stuff #nursing #mental illness #sobriety #recovery

[darling-i-read-it]

Hotel Pools

Douglas Booth!Nikki Sixx x reader

Word Count: 1.3k 

Warnings: making out, cuss words, suggestive jokes obviously 

Author’s Note: Me slightly breaking my no real people rule for how douglas booth portrayed nikki in the dirt? More likely than you think! Also if I was about to count how many times ive written about pools-

(btw don't condone some thing motley crue did) 

Summary: Instead of going out for drinks like he usually did Nikki sticks with you for some reason 

Genre: flufffff

Song: sex money feelings die by lykke li 

I don’t own these characters. They belong to author/director 

(not my gif)

    You couldn’t remember what day it was. On tour those days seemed to blend together. Instead of calling them like they were (eg. Saturday, Sunday) all you knew was the tour dates. You had plane rides scribbled on your arm so you didn’t forget as though the crew would ever let you forget. You were touring with the guys after all. The guys that needed constant reminders that things even existed. But beside that, you shouldn’t have been on this tour at all.

    You knew how it was on tour. You knew the groupies, you knew the drugs, you knew the adrenaline that would eventually get to their heads. You knew that you shouldn’t have been involved with a guy who was doing those things. He didn’t deserve to be tied down by you because you knew he would want to go out and do anything except be with you. But you were in love with him and if he said he wanted to be with you, you believed him.   

    “Are you going out?” 

    You were startled. You were sure when you had gone to the hotel bathroom Nikki hadn’t been in the room. He had told you earlier that night that he was going for drinks which meant you would have some time to yourself and also you should try and keep your mind off the things he could be doing while drinking with the guys. You liked every one of them, honest, but you would never go drinking with them without someone staying sober. That someone was typically you when you tagged along.

    You folded your arms over your robe.

    “Just for a bit. I figured you’d be out drinking for a long while.”

    “I forgot my coat.” You raised your eyebrows and turned to the bathroom counter, snatching his coat and then giving it to him.

    “Here you are.” You walked past him and slipped on your sandals. It was hot in California this time of year. Nikki watched you move and grab a few of your things. It was nearly ten at night.

    “Where are you going?”

    “Nowhere of concern.” You went for the door and then stopped, turning to him and giving him a quick kiss on the cheek then you were gone.

    He was surprised. You weren’t one to usually go out which was against most of his mottos for having a girlfriend but he liked you quite a bit. He even brought you on this tour against his better judgement. So far it had been a blast. You were really considerate of him going out with the guys and never seemed to have any problems. 

    But he just figured when he went out you went to sleep or watched TV or something. Where were you going in your robes? Were you blantenley going to some other hotel room as though he didn’t care? 

    After a moment of contemplation he opened the door and walked down the stairs quickly to the first floor.

    “I’m gonna stay in tonight,” he announced to the guys who were huddled around. Tommy looked like he was gonna burst if he didn’t get a drink in him and Vince was very appalled at the fact Nikki would ever say that. 

    “What the fucks that about?” Mick asked, visibly annoyed.

    “Y/N just walked out of the hotel room in her robe.” Vince scoffed.

    “So?”

    “I gotta find her.” 

    “No you don’t.” 

    “Yes I do.” 

    They let out a collective sigh.   

    “Fine. Pussy.” 

    Nikki rolled his eyes and then they were gone, whopping a hollering as they got in the car waiting out front. He would be lying if he said that he was a little sad he hadn’t gone out but he turned that sadness into determination as he walked to find you. He walked toward the elevator, passing the hotel gift shop and the pool to the elevator. He clicked the up button, every intention of starting at your shared hotel room and going from there. He rocked back and forth on his heels, wishing he had a drink when his eyes wandered to the pool. Sure enough, there you were, tossing your robe on one of the tables and kicking off your shoes. You looked stunning in the pools night lights and he had to stop and stare, even as the elevator door opened then closed. 

    He walked through the door to get into the pool and the large door shut behind him. The pool area was closed off by tall fences and shrubs. You had jumped into the water and surfaced to find Nikki at the side of the pool, looking down.   

    “What happened to drinking?”

    “I thought you were sleeping with some douche bag in the hotel so I bailed.”

    “Shame. I’m just here, swimming about. You can still probably catch them if you want.” He shook his head and looked down at you, your hair slicked back and your swimsuit accenting your curves in every right way.   

    “I think I’ll stay.”

    You were surprised at that. You figured he’d be sprinting back out to the lobby.

    “You gonna stand there and watch?” you asked. He shrugged.

    “I think the pools big enough for the both of us. I just mean we might both fit. Tight squeeze.” You raised an eyebrow.

    “I mean we’ll have to be real close together but I think it’ll be alright.” He laughed and took off his jacket, tossing it on your robe. You swam backward, watching as he stripped down to his underwear. You smiled. “You gonna stop there sugar?” 

    “Ah, I won’t lose this till you lose that,” he said, pointing at your swimsuit. You shrugged.

    “Fair enough.” 

    He jumped into the deep end and you raised your hand to block the splash. You laughed and looked around in the lights to find where he had landed. You didn’t see him until he surfaced right in front of your face, his hand grabbing your ass as he did so. 

    You laughed, shaking your head as your hands went to his hair.

    “I thought I said something about this suit.”

    “The lobby is right there. Kids are staying at this hotel Nik. They’ll see.” He shook his head. 

    “Let them.”

    You giggled, shaking your head as he kissed your neck and then jaw.

    “Oh you mean being sent to jail for public indecency is better than a night out with the band?” 

    “We can handle jail.”

    “I can’t!” you laughed.

    “You could. I believe in you.” You rolled your eyes and grabbed his face with both hands bringing him to look at you. Your thumb brushed his cheek.

    “I missed you.” He was about to say something about how you had slept in the same bed every night for ages but he knew what you meant.   

    “I missed you too.” He shrugged. “I’m glad I stayed back.”

    “Yeah?” you laughed. He nodded. 

    “Yeah.”

    “Cool.” He chuckled.

    “Cool.” There was a beat of silence. “If you don’t kiss me again I think-”

    “Oh shut up.”

#nikki sixx x reader #douglas booth!nikki sixx x reader

[transienturl]

Q: How much do I know about sports off the top of my head? I’m bored, so let’s find out.

NFL:

NFC West (one of the strongest divisions ever):

Seattle Seahawks. Key (and less-key) players: Russell Wilson (QB), DK Metcalf (WR), Tyler Lockett (WR), Freddie Swain (WR), Greg Olsen (TE), Colby Parkinson (TE), Damien Lewis (G), Duane Brown (T), Ethan Pocic (C, I think?), Chris Carson (RB), Rashaad Penny (RB), Travis Homer (RB), Michael Dickson (P), help what’s the kicker’s name, Jamal Adams (S), Quandre Diggs (S), Bobby Wagner (LB), KJ Wright (LB), Jordyn Brooks (LB), Poona Ford (DI), Jarran Reed (defensive... line somewhere), Shaquill Griffon (CB), Quinton Jefferson (CB), Tre Flowers (CB), Benson Mayowa (DE), Carlos Dunlap (DE), Alton Robinson (DE), Shaquem Griffon (DE), god I can’t remember the new slot corner but he’s pretty good I think. Coach: Pete Carroll. OC: Brian Schottenheimer. DC: Ken Norton, Jr. GM: John Schneider. Owner: Jody Allen. Notes: Every game is close. Used to always run, but this year always throws. Quarterback is basically magic. Defense is severely lacking. My home team, obviously.

San Francisco 49ers. Key players: Jimmy Garoppolo (QB), George Kittle (TE), many fast running backs, Raheem Mostert is one of them, Trent Williams (T), Richard Sherman (CB), Nick Bosa (DE). Coach: Kyle Shanahan. Notes: Running game scheme is a work of staggering genius. Best player is a tight end for some reason. Went to the Super Bowl last year.

Arizona Cardinals. Key players: Kyler Murray (QB), Larry Fitzgerald (WR), DeAndre Hopkins (WR), Christian Kirk (WR), Budda Baker (S), Patrick Peterson (CB). Coach: Kliff Kingsbury. Notes: Runs many wide receivers, in scheme Kingsbury got from coaching college. Used to be bad, but getting better each year. Kyler is very small.

Los Angeles Rams. Key players: Jared Goff (QB), Cooper Kupp (WR), Andrew Whitworth (T), Darrell Henderson (RB), Aaron Donald (DI), Johnny Hekker (P). Coach: Sean McVay. DC: Used to be Wade Phillips, but not anymore. Notes: Runs a lot of plays from the same formation. Coach is very smart. Made the Super Bowl two years ago. Best player is a defensive tackle, for some reason.

NFC East (the worst division in NFL history):

New York Giants. Key players: Daniel Jones (QB), Saquon Barkley (RB). Coach: Joe, uh... Douglas. GM: Dave Gettleman. Notes: Spent a huge amount of draft capital on players the numbers said weren’t worth it. Seems accurate.

Philadelphia Eagles. Key players: Carson Wentz (QB), Jalen Hurts (backup QB), literally everyone else is injured. Oh, Jason Peters (T). Coach: Doug Peterson. GM: Howie Roseman. Notes: Everyone is injured. Everyone. Went to the Super Bowl 3 years ago and won with their backup QB.

Dallas Cowboys. Key players: Dak Prescott (QB, injured), Andy Dalton (backup QB, injured), No one of note (third-string QB), Amari Cooper (WR), CeeDee Lamb (WR), Ezekiel Elliott (RB), Leighton Vander Esch (LB), Greg Zuerlein (K), I could probably name more if I tried hard enough. Coach: Mike McCarthy. GM: Jerry Jones. Owner: Also Jerry Jones. Notes: Every year they have good players and lose anyway. Paid their running back instead of their quarterback. Also, now they have no healthy quarterback.

Washington [used to have a racist name]. Key players: Dwayne Haskins (benched QB), Alex Smith (QB... whose leg does not work), Kyle Allen (QB), Terry McLaurin (WR), Chase Young (DE), Montez Sweat (DE). Coach: Ron Rivera. Owner: Dan Snyder, who is the worst human being in the NFL, and that is saying a lot. Notes: No one cares about the football, Dan Snyder should be in jail. Also, Ron Rivera has cancer and Alex Smith’s leg injury almost killed him, so those guys deserve better.

NFC North:

Detroit Lions. Key Players: Matthew Stafford (QB), um, I should remember some more. Jeff Okudah (CB). Coach: Matt Patricia. Notes: Stafford deserves better. Patricia keeps signing ex-Patriots players, and it doesn’t work, presumably because the good ones are current-Patriots-players.

Minnesota Vikings. Key players: Kirk Cousins (QB), Adam Thielen (WR), Justin Jefferson (WR), Dalvin Cook (RB), many good defensive players whose names I don’t know. Coach: Mike Zimmer. Notes: Historically a good defense and just missing a competent QB. Paid a lot for an average QB; defense sucks now for some reason. Also, runs a lot.

Chicago Bears. Key Players: Mitchell Trubisky (QB), Nick Foles (QB), Allen Robinson (WR), Khalil Mack (DE). Coach: Matt Nagy. Notes: Has been wasting great defensive performances with poor to average quarterback play since World War II.

Green Bay Packers. Key Players: Aaron Rodgers (QB), Davante Adams (WR), Allan Lazard (WR), Aaron Jones (RB), Jamaal Williams (RB), Robert Tonyan (TE), David Bakhtiari (T), Za’Darius Smith (DE), Preston Smith (DE). Coach: Matt LaFleur. GM: Brian Gutekunst. Owner: “The fans.” Notes: Has started a hall-of-famer at quarterback every season since before you were born. Winning big but the analytics say they’re getting a bit lucky lately.

NFC South:

Atlanta Falcons. Key players: Matt Ryan (QB), Julio Jones (WR), I forgot the new WR’s name but he looks legit, Todd Gurley (RB). Coach that was recently fired: Dan Quinn. Notes: Have become known for inexplicably blowing enormous leads late in games. It’s quite funny, at this point.

New Orleans Saints. Key players: Drew Brees (QB), Michael Thomas (WR), Alvin Kamara (RB), Taysom Hill (listed as backup QB but just kinda does weird shit on offense), Jameis Winston (backup QB), Cam Jordan (DE), I should remember the cornerback’s name. Coach: Sean Payton. Notes: Known for having tons of talent every year, salary cap be damned, and then losing in heartbreaking fashion in the playoffs. Brees is getting old.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Key players: Tom Brady (QB), Mike Evans (WR), Chris Godwin (WR), this one WR who can go eat shit, Rob Gronkowski (TE), Antoine Winfield Jr (S), Vita Vea (DI). Coach: Bruce Arians. Notes: Signed Tom Brady. It’s working pretty well. Defense is top-tier. The most balanced team.

god, who is the other NFC south team, uh...  hold on, lemme get back to you.

AFC North:

Baltimore Ravens

Pittsburgh Steelers

Cleveland Browns

um... Cincinnati Bengals? Maybe?

AFC East:

New York Jets

New England Patriots

Miami Dolphins

Buffalo Bills

AFC South:

Houston Texans

Jacksonville Jaguars

Tennessee Titans

uhh... Indianapolis Colts.

AFC West:

Denver Broncos

Kansas City (I think this name should be changed too, honestly)

Las Vegas Raiders

I guess this must be the Los Angeles Chargers?

Oh, so the other NFC South team is the Carolina Panthers. Of course. Key players: Teddy Bridgewater (QB), Christian McCaffrey (RB and also arguably their best receiver), Yetur Gross-Matos (DE). Coach: Matt Rhule. Notes: Rebuilding their team this year, but quietly doing pretty well, considering.

Alright, I’m gonna stop there. Didn’t even get to the other half of the NFL, let alone started to try and list NBA/MLB/NHL teams, which would have gone extremely poorly. Story for another day.

Also, uh, yeah, this is a normal amount to know about football as someone who doesn’t watch football, oooobviously...

[eliniei]

Those Hard Days - Chapter 36

Summary: Rae’s brother always made sure she was tough as nails. But when her father flips her world upside down, will she find that there’s a limit on how strong she can be?

Warnings: Rape/Non-con (non-graphic, fade-to-black), child abuse, underage drinking, underage smoking, drug use, violence, major character death

A/N: not sorry.

AO3: here Fanfiction.net: here

Masterlist

Previous Chapter |  Next Chapter

Chapter 36 - Fade

The next two weeks passed slower than any time in Rae’s entire life. She felt herself spiraling into the darkness, that feeling and thought in the back of her mind growing larger until it overcame her. 

She’d stopped eating- except for a few bites here and there. She couldn’t handle the food. Everything made her sick to her stomach. Curly tried to coax her with her favorites, but she just...couldn’t. She lost weight and she could feel herself wasting away, although she couldn’t find it in her to care. 

Rae felt so stupid-so naive-to think she’d have been home by now, cooking dinner with Barb and helping Ponyboy with his homework. Playing cards with Two-Bit and laughing with Carrie. Hanging out at the Curtis house, all of her friends surrounding her. It all seemed so unreachable now. The hope she’d placed in her brother was quickly fading away. He couldn’t stay out of trouble long enough to help her when she needed it most. 

Ms. Douglas made it clear that she was worried. But when Rae starting breaking rules, it made her mad. The woman didn’t show it-but she knew. She’d tried to sit her down at have a long, serious discussion, but it only went in one ear and out the other.

At first, she started sneaking out after everyone was in bed and sneaking back in before they woke up, but eventually she didn’t even bother coming back in the mornings and skipped school entirely. She went to an abandoned warehouse deemed the Shepard gang hangout. She’d sit around a barrel fire with them, passing around bottles of hard liquor and getting shitfaced. Occasionally someone would bring a radio and they’d dance until they passed out on the old couches they’d set around the firepit.

Curly was the one who usually found her after each night out, dark circles under his eyes. The one who held her hair back as she puked her guts out. He did his best to comfort her, and she knew it. But, he was at his wit’s end, so high-strung that one morning he couldn’t wipe the despair off his face as he almost broke down crying, begging her to eat something. To stop destroying herself. 

But he didn’t understand. She felt like her brother had betrayed her- that she had a hole in her chest where the faith she’d stored for him lived. Maybe it didn’t seem like a big deal to him. It wasn’t like she was far away from her friends, right? She still had him and Tim and Angela, right? But this-this was the biggest part of her life. For years, she only had Dally...and now it was like he didn’t even care. 

She felt horrible. She really did. But, if he didn’t care, then why should she?

Finally, Tim started threatening the members of his outfit with bodily harm if they let her have anything harder than a couple of beers. Fearing for their limbs and skulls, they’d blocked her, told her what their almighty leader had ordered, and then abandoned the warehouse early. Rae just laid down on the musty couch, staring at the flickering flames before falling asleep.

That’s where Tim found her the next morning, alone. She was curled up into the corner of the couch, legs hugged to her chest, forehead resting on her knees. She heard him approaching, and suddenly she couldn’t hold it back anymore. Her entire body started shaking as tears started falling freely from her eyes. For the first time in nearly two weeks, she was stone cold sober- and she fucking hated it. Everything hurt. Her head, her heart...

“Tim,” she said, her voice high, threatening to break. He sat down on the cushion next to her. 

“Yeah, kid?” His voice was low, gentle. 

“I’m so lost.” He sighed. 

“I know.”

“I’m...I’m hurting everyone, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, you are.” She let out a shuddering sob. 

“What do I do?”

“I think you should go see Dally.” At that, Rae lifted her head and peered at him. 

“What?” she asked him, thinking she must have heard him wrong. He flashed her a grim, close-lipped smile. 

“Yeah. Quit cryin’ and come with me.” He stood and walked towards the door. 

Once she’d dried her face and ran her fingers through her hair, she met Tim just outside the warehouse. He pulled a black baseball cap out of the pocket of his jacket and handed it to her. 

“Put this on and keep your head down.”

Rae did as she was bid, and followed him back to his truck. He drove them to the Tulsa County Jail and told her to let him do the talking. Together, they approached the security guard in the lobby. The oldest Shepard sibling gave him a short wave as they got close.

“Hey, Billy.”

“Names?”

“Oh, come on. You know my name.”

“You know I gotta ask, man.”

“Tim Shepard. My sister, Angela Shepard.” The guard took a look at Rae, although she refused to make eye contact with him. 

“Ya’ll look nothin’ alike,” he mumbled as he took a note. 

“Stepsister.”

“Inmate you’re here to see?”

“Come on, man, really?” The guard gave him a pointed look. “Fine, fine. Dallas Winston.”

“Alright, go on back. You know the way.”

Tim opened the door next to them when it buzzed and led her back to an open area, tables and chairs spread out all over the room. He picked a table and sat her down in one of the plastic chairs, then sat across from her.

“Do you come see Dally a lot?” she asked him, looking down at the surface of the table. 

“Been a once or twice.”

 The next few minutes were quiet, but when Tim stood up, she heard footsteps approaching from behind her. She didn’t move until she was sure the guard had walked away, then look up to see Dally and Tim slapping hands. Her brother wore a blue jumpsuit. 

“Hey, man,” her brother said, a smile on his face. “Nice to see ya. How’s the kid?”

“Don’t ask me,” Tim said, tilting his head towards her. Dally looked over as if it was the first he realized there was someone else there and his eyes went wide. 

“Rae?” came his loud whisper as he hurried over to her. Without warning, she was lifted from her chair into a tight bear hug.

“Dally,” she breathed into his shoulder as she wrapped her arms around him as well. 

“Careful, man,” Tim warned. “Don’t break her.” When he finally put her back down, he moved back to take a look at her. His eyes hardened and he gave his friend and icy look. “That’s why we’re here. Talk.” Tim moved to another table and dropped down into a chair, facing the window. 

“What’s this about?” her brother asked as she carefully sat back down. He pulled up a chair and sat in front of her. She looked down at her lap for a few moments, chewing on her lip. “You look like shit, Rae. You need to tell me what’s goin’ on.”

“Sorry. I-I haven’t eaten in a few days.” 

“A few?” 

“A-and maybe I’ve been drinkin’ a bit.”

He sat back with a heavy sigh. 

“Look, I already know, okay? Curly...came here the other day.” She sighed as well and rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “He’s real worried about ya. Told me this all started when ya found out I was in jail. He wants to help but doesn’t know how. That little twerp failed to mention how back it was, though.”

“I thought,” she started. “I thought…”

“It’s alright, I ain’t gonna get mad.”

“I felt like you’d given up on me, Dally,” she finally admitted, outloud. “I thought that you’d gone off the deep end and if you did, then it was okay for me to give up, too.”

“Rae Lee Winston,” her chided, his voice stern. The tone in his voice caused her to look up. He crossed his arms and shook his head. “I can’t believe you. Honestly, I can’t.”

She tried to keep her mouth from falling open. She stared back at him, waiting for him to continue.

“Have I ever given up in my entire life?” he asked. She hesitated for a moment, eyes wide. “Well?” 

“N-no.”

“And you choose now to doubt me anyway?” 

“But then-?”

“Rae, the guy stiffed me. He refused to give me the money so I punched him. This ain’t about anythin’ more than that.” She felt like she just got slugged in the stomach. Dally sat forward again, leaning his elbows on his knees. “I’ve been tryin’ real hard to be on my best behavior, yeah? They could let me out early. Charges could be dropped.”

“And...Sylvia?”

“We just ran into each other. Got talkin’ about old times, ya know? Thought about maybe givin’ it another chance.”

“But-I-”

“So stop beating yourself up over this. It’s nothin’. I ain’t givin’ up. Soon as I’m out, the hunt’s back on. I know it’s takin’ a bit longer than we thought, but we ain’t givin’-”

She jumped on him before he could finish, hugging him as tightly as her weak arms could. He buried his face in her neck as he hugged her back. 

“I will never give up on you. Do you hear me?” 

“I love you, Dally.”

“I love ya too. Feel better now?” Rae nodded as she released her hold on him and wiped her eyes. “Now, get goin’. And eat some food for fuck’s sake. If someone wanted to jump ya, you’d get bulldozed lookin’ the way ya do.”

Tim rejoined them when her brother stood up to leave. They shook hands again.

“Appreciate it, Tim,” he said with a quick nod. 

“Yeah, no prob.”

“Don’t you ever bring her back here,” her brother ordered, poking a finger in his chest. 

“Yeah, yeah. Desperate times.” 

Dally turned back to face her. They stared at each other for a moment longer, his eyes searching hers for something. When he was satisfied, he broke eye contact and turned to head back to the security guard waiting for him at the other end of the room. She took a deep breath and turned back to Tim with a small smile. 

“Ready?” he asked, lifting his hand to reposition the hat on her head. 

“Yeah, I think I am.”

“Alright, let’s get you to school.”

She nodded. The bad feeling was still there, at the bottom of her stomach, but at least it wasn’t as strong anymore.

#Rae Winston #Those hard days #The Outsiders #the outsiders fanfiction #outsiders #Dallas Winston #dally winston #Two-Bit Mathews #curly shepard #curly shepard x oc #Tim Shepard #Carrie Fisher #chrissy powell #Steve Randle #Ponyboy Curtis #Sodapop Curtis #darry curtis #Johnny Cade #stay gold ponyboy #stay gold

[nanshe-of-nina]

People of the Edwardian phase of the Hundred Years War as dril tweets

Philippe VI de France: Time and time Again. People on here Fuck me over and ruin my life. simply for starting the Dialouge.

Edward III of England: thinking of wrapping my entire body in barbed wire and becoming Sovereign.

Jehan II de France: a teen approached me at the food court and said “I see you wore your clown costume today” and i spent the next 9 hours processing the insult.

Jehanne de Bourgogne: CHILD: Papa.. tell me once more about WIFE’s DUTY. PAPA: it is WIFE’s DUTY to protect her husband from villains, always.

Jitka Lucemburská: Damn. the MomTown forums just started requiring 4 point Mom Verificaiton to be able to post there for some reason..anyone got a work around?

Philippa de Hainaut: my opinion on politics: my opinion on politics is that politidcs is extremely good, but sometimes it is bad.

Ludwig IV, Holy Roman Emperor: bigmouth fake priest telling me to “drink a shitload of holy water and kill yourself” as penance? this has happened at three churches now.

Pope Benedict XII: it is with a heavy heart that i must announce that the celebs are at it again.

Jehan III, duc de Bretagne: i just left an enormous pile of vomit behind golds gym for all of you abominable pig clowns to pick at #blackfridaydeals

Robert III d’Artois: (in really quiet, barely audible voice) hope your dick falls of bitch.

Hugues Quiéret: currently employed as Water Guru at the beach. it’s sort of like being a lifeguard except i have no inclination to touch the drowning people.

Geoffroy d’Harcourt: OH im so Fucking sorry “Your Majesty”, i didnt realize that dick rings were banished in this dystopian piss earth. Ur probably a 9gag poster.

Jacob van Artevelde: (in highly rational and cool voice) i have the higher follower count than them. i wiont let them undermine me.

Pope Clement VI: may the wind carry my tweets and soothte the sick, the wounded, the downtrodden of both man & beast, across the savage shit earth of trolls,

Jehanne de Valois, comtesse de Hainaut: startling how im the only person on this site with an actual human soul. you would think the other guys on here have one, but no.

Eudes IV, duc de Bourgogne: myth: making me mad is cool FACT: making me mad is a crap move& people who do it are all sociopathivc criminals with fucked up rotten brains.

Jehan de Montfort: turning my headlights off when driving at night,.. so that my Rivals cannot see me.

Jehanne de Flandre: i just want to find the optimal bra for sniper operations, but everoyne here is so rude, and pieces of shit.

Johann der Blinde of Bohemia: Q: If your post was proven by a counsil of wise men to be racist, or bullshit, would you bar it from the record? A: I do not delete my posts.

Charles II, comte d’Alençon: ((SPILLING BLOOD ALL OVER KEYBOARD) THIS IS WHAT U WANT. THIS IS WHAT U FUCKING BASTARDS WANT RIGHT (1 WEEK LATER) WHY ARE THE KEYS STICKING

Jehanne de Clisson: as far as im concerned the best revenge is ordering wolf piss online & pouring it into soneones car. “living well” is too hard.

Arnaud de Cervole: i will raze every forest and devour each city in blood tribute for the crime of 9/11!! please nbring back blue collar TV

Frank Hennequin: the jduge orders me to take off my anonymous v mask & im wearing the joker makeup underneath it. everyone in the courtroom groans at my shit.

William Montagu, 1st Earl of Salisbury: im at the point in my life where i cant relate to any popular fictional characters unless they use massive amounts of hair gel and steriods.

Antonio Doria: my name is Destyn. i build crossbows and sell weed to all your dads and im 15.

Gautier VI de Brienne: MYTH: my posts are for the Pauper REALITY: my posts are for the Prince.

Étienne Marcel: looked at a newspaper today. looks like we’re getting taxed out the wazoo, with this president. anyone else see this shit? tax out the wazoo.

Guillaume Cale: “FEAR IS USED 2 ENSLAVE THE MASSES,” I SAID AS I RIPPED THE FUCKIN DECORATIVE CARDBOARD SKELETON OFF OF THE COMMUNITY CENTERS BULLETIN BOARD

Edward Montagu, 1st Baron Montagu: girls always love to telling people not to“ Mansplain” but they do not care of, “Man's Pain”

Louis Iᵉʳ, comte de Flandre: 1) i do not owe you mother fuckers a damn thing 2) i will not hear any more questions or comments unless they pertain to MetroPCS, or Pepsi.

Philippe III de Navarre: the crusaders fire ballistas into my throbbing diaper- unlesashing a torrent of mustard yellow shit and poisoning the entire village.

Gaston II, comte de Foix: i am going to plunge a sword into our bed and officially end outr 40 yr marriage if you do not stop yelling while i am recording my stream’s.

Henry de Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster: please help my cousin “Bruno_THought_Leader” who just had his account suspended for threatening to “Fuck” brexit.

Robert Le Coq, Bishop of Laon: i have absolutely zero interest in friendship, i have absolutely zero interest in jokes, i am simply here to collect data and earn respect.

Jehan Iᵉʳ, comte d’Armagnac: the joke is on you fuck face. i actually love getting screamed at and publicly shamed for my dumb-assed bull shit . I love apologizing.

Bardi and Peruzzi families: boy oh boy do i love purchasing large amounnts of Fool’s Gold. wait a minute... fools gold fucking sucks. this stuff is no good..!! Fuck !!!

Jehanne II de Navarre: i regret being tasked the emotional burden of maintaining the final bastion of morality and NIce manners in this endless ocean of human SHIT.

William de Bohun, 1st Earl of Northampton: if you have less than 1000 followers i can guarantee you that me and the boys share your posts in vip chat rooms and call you a "Muthafucka”.

William de la Pole: thinking about getting the dow jones back on track, simply by making a few phonecalls. but certain people have been a bitch to me, so i wont.

Thomas de Beauchamp, 11th Earl of Warwick: shutting computer down until the shitty moods & attitudes can fuck off., if you need me ill be on my other computer, sititng 60° to my right.

Thomas Holland, 1st Earl of Kent: ive heard from a reliable source that people arre putting their lips on to my girl friends avatars and going “muah muah muah.” cut it out.

Raoul II de Brienne, comte d’Eu: hate it when my boss knocks out the front leg of my desk with a baseball bat and funko pop lego shit flies every where.

Karel IV, Holy Roman Emperor: “RESULT You are the Serpant. YOu dislike loud places and people are constantly putting drama in your life. But you’re strong.” This is true.

Charles de Blois-Châtillon: torturing my damn dick with corn cob holders in Penance for the foul tone i took with the subway corporation today.

Jehanne de Penthièvre: i help every body, im not racist, i keep myself nice, and when i ask for a single re-tweet in return i am told to fuck off, fuck myself, etc.

Jacques Iᵉʳ de Bourbon, comte de La Marche: “ah boo hoo hoo i want to post Foul comments to content leaders” Fat Chance, Dimwit. I will annihilate you under bulwark of the Law and God.

John Chandos: DOCTOR: you cant keep doing this to yourself. being The Last True Good Boy online will destroy you. you must stop posting with honor ME: No,

Jehan d’Artos, comte d’Eu: , who had gone missing for 17 years and was presumed dead after failing to return from his ultimate dumpster diving life quest

William Douglas, 1st Earl of Douglas: i get emails. i get emails saying the trolls have won, and that i should bow to them, since i have lost the battle. to this i say FAT-CHANCE.

David II of Scotland: “jail isnt real,” i assure myself as i close my eyes and ram the hallmark gift shop with my shitty bronco.

Charles de La Cerda: i think that turning myself Gay in the summer of 2013 would really impress my overseas investors.

William de Montagu, 2nd Earl of Salisbury: my watch beeps whwich means its time to stand in front of my ex-wife’s house and play “Hit THe Road Jack” while dacning and licking her mail.

Edward the Black Prince: IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL

Jehan III de Grailly: its fucked up how there are like 1000 christmas songs but only 1 song aboutr the boys being back in town.

Louis II, comte de Flandre: U Have Forced Me To Take Extreme Measures To Protect My Business And My Lifestyle.

Blanche de Navarre: the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke “theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron”

Charles II de Navarre: Sovereign Citizens Getting Owned Compilation

Philippe de Navarre: shooting off automatic rifles making horrible diarrhea shit noises as the recoil makes my tiny dick flop around. hell yeah. thats cool to me.

Charles, Dauphin de Viennois: surprise, dad. while you were witnessing the pennsylvania state lottery i tried on all your work gloves and they looked very handsome on me.

#hundred years' war #medieval #dril #english history #french history #european history #history #i should be making a rubric but this is way more fun

[lawrencedienerthings]

Colorado’s governor thinks it’s stupid to not wear a mask. So why isn’t he requiring you to do it?

#jaredpolis👅 🤔 🐘 📈 👹

Colorado News

Gov. Jared Polis really, really wants you to wear a mask. In fact, he thinks you’re being stupid if you don’t put one on when you’re out in public. 

COVID-19 IN COLORADO

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>> FULL COVERAGE

He just doesn’t want to force you to cover your nose and mouth — at least not yet.

As a growing number of states and Colorado counties and cities require mask-wearing, Polis has stopped short of issuing a statewide mandate requiring Coloradans to put on a face covering when they are out and about. 

In mid-May, the governor issued an order requiring workers at essential Colorado businesses and critical government jobs to wear masks. But leaders in other states — both Democrats and Republicans — have gone a step further in recent weeks to require mask wearing for everyone any time they are in public and cannot practice social distancing.

The new requirements come as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are rising across the nation, including in Colorado. The state reported 452 cases between Tuesday and Wednesday and the percentage of people tested who test positive for the virus reached its highest level — 5.1% — since June 1 on Tuesday. Coronavirus hospitalizations, at 184 on Wednesday, are at their highest level since June 8. 

In lieu of Polis’ action, cities and counties have issued their own requirements. 

Denver, Boulder, Routt and Summit counties have all enacted mask-wearing requirements. Violators face fines and even jail time. 

A masked Denver Public Schools board member Angela Cobián speaks to a large crowd of protesters in front of the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial in City Park during a Black Lives Matter demonstration to emphasize the need for more black educators in schools in Denver, June 7, 2020. (Kevin Mohatt, Special to The Colorado Sun)

On Wednesday, the Tri-County Health Department followed those counties’ lead by moving to require mask-wearing in Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties. The order, however, will allow local leaders to opt their counties or towns out and it’s not clear how it will be enforced. 

“Everybody should be wearing a mask across the Tri-County area,” said Julie Mullica, a member of Tri-County’s board and an infectious disease expert who voted for the order, according to The Aurora Sentinel.

A number of cities have also enacted mask mandates, including Wheat Ridge, Glenwood Springs, Lone Tree, Fort Collins, Estes Park and Aspen. 

Studies have shown that mask wearing can significantly reduce spread of the coronavirus. But it only truly works if everyone is donning a face covering. People who are wearing masks are less likely to spread the disease. But face coverings are not as good at preventing someone from getting ill from someone who is infectious and isn’t wearing one. 

“The science clearly shows that the more people who wear masks, the faster our economic reopening can safely occur and the more freedom and mobility we have,” said Conor Cahill, a spokesman for Polis. “We’ve got to crush this virus in Colorado and wearing masks in public is one of the most effective tools we have.” 

The governor’s office says Polis supports municipal and county mask rules. And he’s done just about everything you can do to encourage mask wearing without making the leap to require that they be worn.

The governor’s office has launched a public service campaign, including a video ad and billboards, urging people to cover their faces. He’s made a point of wearing a mask during news conferences and public health briefings. The Democrat handed out masks to reporters and photographers in April when he asked Coloradans to wear a covering whenever they left their homes, soliciting children to participate in a mask-designing contest.

Polis even signed an executive order ensuring businesses know they have the ability to refuse service to a customer who won’t wear a mask. 

“It’s stupid not to wear a mask,” he said at a June 30 news conference. 

A masked Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signs the state’s budget into law on Monday, June 23, 2020, while surrounded by Democratic members of the Joint Budget Committee. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun)

But Polis has shown a libertarian streak during his tenure, apparently uneasy about forcing regulations upon individual Coloradans.

For instance, when areas of the U.S. began shutting down as the pandemic began earlier this year, he waited before issuing a stay-at-home order. He was then one of the first governors to lift the mandate, calling his own restrictions “draconian.”

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California, Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Illinois, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania are among the more than 20 states that have enacted some sort of mask-wearing requirement. Even Texas, where cases are spiking after officials were slower to react to the virus, requires mask-wearing in public in any county where there are 20 or more active coronavirus cases. 

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#Straight News

[v-thinks-on]

Darkness Before the Dawn

Part 6 of The Man Who Sold the World

First | Previous | Next

Mrs. Houghton glanced between Watson and the door, but the doctor had no answer, no explanation for Holmes’s departure.

She joined the doctor at the table and somehow they finished the interview. For all he could tell, Mrs. Douglas’s description of the night of the murder was almost the same as the real Mrs. Ivy Douglas’s account all those years ago - if it had differed at all, he didn’t notice it.

At last, the lady of the house took her leave. The doctor made to call for Mr. Barker, but Mrs. Houghton interceded.

“Is everything alright?” she asked, though she plainly knew it wasn’t.

The doctor just shook his head. He let out a sigh. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. I swear, he’s not usually like this. I’m afraid he might be up to something.”

“Do you know what sort of something?”

He shook his head again. “I never do.”

For a moment, they were both silent. Mrs. Houghton made to speak, but the doctor beat her to it.

“Maybe it’s just been too long for the both of us. I was so happy to see him, but maybe it would have been better if we just kept to our separate lives.” Watson let out a heavy sigh. He brushed away the tears from under his eyes and fought to compose himself.

Mrs. Houghton handed him a tissue - which were supposed to be there for the witnesses. “I can take over the questioning, if you want.” She glanced at the door in a silent suggestion.

The doctor shook his head. “We should call for Mr. Barker.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “Let’s get this over with and catch the culprit.” His eyes burned with grim determination.

Mrs. Houghton nodded and stood to summon Mr. Barker.

Mr. Cecil Barker soon arrived, looking the most nervous of anyone. He kept glancing between the detectives as though he expected to be accused of murder at any moment.

“What do you want to know?” he asked urgently. “If you think it was one of us, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. You saw that card they found by the body, there’s something weird going on.”

The doctor motioned for silence and began, “Your legal name, if you please.”

“Cecil Barker.”

“Where are you from?”

“California, most recently,” he answered with more confidence, “and London before that.”

“Why did you go to California?”

“Why else?” Mr. Barker asked and answered his own question - “Gold. That’s how I met John, we both ended up working for a startup called Benito.”

“Did anything peculiar occur while you were there?”

“Not really” - he hesitated - “Not until after John left, that is. He left pretty suddenly, and I think it was just a few days later, a bunch of rough-looking guys showed up asking about him. I said I didn’t know anything and hoped they didn’t find him, because they clearly didn’t mean well.”

“Do you know anything about Mr. Douglas’s past?”

Again, Mr. Barker’s account stayed very close to the original; he had lived in Chicago, had a German wife who died of typhoid, and seemed frightened of something, but wouldn’t say what.

“Why did you return to London?” Dr. Holmes asked.

“I followed John,” Mr. Barker answered evasively - it seemed that was one question his script couldn’t answer for him.

“You must have been particularly close.”

“Yes, and I wanted to return home after spending so much time abroad,” Mr. Barker clarified.

It sounded like he was making things up as he went, but Dr. Holmes couldn’t prove he was lying, and even if he could, that alone would not connect him to the murder. So, Dr. Holmes turned to another line of inquiry, “What’s your relationship with Mrs. Douglas?”

Mr. Barker hesitated, but when he finally spoke, it was not what Dr. Holmes expected. “I don’t know her very well and I can’t say I trust her. I don’t know if she ever really loved John and she’s been behaving strangely ever since he died.”

Dr. Holmes took what he could get. “Behaving strangely in what way?”

Mr. Barker hesitated again and shrugged, suddenly seeming to regret what he had said. “Something’s just off, I guess.”

“You have no particular reason for your suspicion?”

“Just a hunch, it’s probably nothing.” Mr. Barker regained some steam as he continued, “Anyway, doesn’t all the evidence point to something about a secret society? You saw those footprints on the windowsill, someone must have come in from outside.”

Dr. Holmes tried one last time - “Anything you can tell us about Mrs. Douglas may provide some essential clue.”

Mr. Barker hesitated, but finally he shook his head. “I don’t know what I was saying, it’s just been…” he trailed off.

Dr. Holmes gave him a moment to compose himself before turning to the night of the crime.

Just as the other witnesses had described, Mr. Barker explained that he and Mr. Douglas had dined with Mary Watson - “Just an acquaintance of John’s, don’t know much about her myself” - and then he had turned in for the night before he was roused by the sound of a gun going off. He ran downstairs to find Mr. Douglas dead, hastily turned around to keep Mrs. Douglas from entering the room - hence the argument Mr. Cole reported - and ran for the police.

At last, when Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Houghton had run out of questions and it seemed Mr. Barker would give them no fresh clue, the doctor took his leave. He retired to a nearby hotel with designs on an early night. In truth, he spent a fair bit of the evening tossing and turning, occupied more by thoughts of Sherlock Holmes than the case at hand.

The next day, there was still much to be done. It should have been more than enough to distract the doctor from whatever Holmes was up to. There were more witnesses to interview and the doctor wanted to take another crack at Mr. Barker. He and Mrs. Douglas were the most suspicious of the lot and though they could easily have been working together - especially if what Mr. Cole said about them meeting frequently in the middle of the night was true - instead it seemed Mr. Barker was attempting to direct their suspicion towards Mrs. Douglas. It was beginning to look like Mr. Barker may have been the weak link in this chain.

Dr. Holmes returned to the manor as soon as he was ready the next morning. He kept an eye out for Sherlock Holmes, as much out of suspicion as hope, but the detective was nowhere to be found. Mrs. Houghton met the doctor at the drawbridge.

“I don’t suppose you know what your friend is doing in the gardens,” she asked as they stepped inside. “I saw him walking and talking with one of the maids.”

“No, he’s left me solidly out of the loop,” the doctor said with a frown. “I can assure you that it’s nothing indecent, at the least.”

Mrs. Houghton laughed. “That’s good, wouldn’t want to be accused of witness tampering.”

Mrs. Houghton and Dr. Holmes settled in the dining room and sent for the first of the six maids who maintained the house for the Douglases. The first interview was straightforward enough. She was an ordinary woman who needed the money and so agreed to the unusual terms for the uncommonly good pay. She knew nothing, saw nothing, and corroborated everyone.

The next girl was nervous. She came in shaking and before Dr. Holmes could ask much more than her name she cried, “Please don’t take me away! I haven’t done anything, never stole, hardly ever cheated, I swear it! My poor mother couldn’t bear the news! I don’t want to go to jail!”

Between Mrs. Houghton and Dr. Holmes they managed to calm her enough to answer a few questions, but she had nothing of use to say.

The third was mercifully normal, and then came the fourth.

“What do you know about your late employer, Mr. Douglas?” Dr. Holmes asked, as he had asked all the others.

“Nothing,” was her answer.

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“No.”

“What were you doing the night of the murder?”

“Cleaning.”

It was a miracle Dr. Holmes had gotten her name out of her.

“People often find being questioned about a murder stressful,” Mrs. Houghton remarked between witnesses, “but those two had it bad.”

The next was nervous too. She was a bit older than the rest, the sort of person you might expect to be a little wiser and more clear headed, and she wasn’t distraught like the younger girl or stiff like the one before her, but she hesitated when Dr. Holmes so much as asked her name.

At last, he asked, “Is everything alright?”

“What do you mean?” she asked in a way that suggested she at least had a feeling as to what he was getting at.

“A lot of the maids have seemed a bit nervous when we were questioning them, is something wrong?” Dr. Holmes asked again.

She hesitated. Dr. Holmes could see the internal debate warring across her face.

Mrs. Houghton spoke up, “I know it’s a frightening situation, and being interviewed about it doesn’t help, but we’re not out to get anyone. We just want to find out who killed Mr. Douglas. Any information - anything you’ve seen or heard - could be of use to us. We just want the facts. Just because we’re talking to you doesn’t mean that you’re a suspect.”

Finally, the maid gave in. “It was just something Mr. Holmes said. The way he said it, it sounded a bit like you were out for blood. And if you do think one of us did it, the penalty would be pretty steep, wouldn’t it?”

“We only want to put the real culprit behind bars,” Mrs. Houghton said. “The most important thing right now is finding out who really did it. We won’t prosecute anyone unless we’re absolutely certain. The more you tell us, the better a chance we’ll have of catching them and the less likely it is we’ll suspect the wrong person.”

The maid appeared somewhat mollified, and Mrs. Houghton took over the questioning from there. The doctor could only sit and seethe - he could see what Holmes was up to clearly enough.

Still, when Mrs. Houghton was done, he had to ask the witness, “What did ‘Mr. Holmes’ tell you, exactly?”

The maid hesitated again and her eyes widened a little in fear. His anger showed more than it ought, but he couldn’t but see red. He could hardly believe Holmes had gone this far.

She explained reluctantly, “He wanted to talk to the person who did it, said they could get a better deal with him than with you. It sounded pretty convincing the way he put it.”

“Of course it did. He’s not even with the police, he doesn’t have that kind of power.” The doctor turned to Mrs. Houghton - “If you’ll excuse me.”

She nodded.

He swept out of the room as she finished up with the witness.

Without any idea of where Holmes was, he just marched through the house, glancing in every room as his anger mounted. Finally, he ran into Mr. Cole who directed him to the study, where Holmes was chatting idly with Mr. Barker. That, at least, was convenient.

Watson entered without bothering to knock and addressed Mr. Barker without sparing even a glance at Holmes, “I am afraid you’re being lied to and manipulated. I wouldn’t trust a word this man says.”

“How could you?” Holmes made a lame attempt to protest.

Mr. Barker sat stunned for a moment by the interruption, but he retorted quickly enough, “And he says not to trust you.”

“I take it he’s warned you of even an accomplice’s fate if tried for murder, and accused the official force of being willing to arrest anyone with even the slightest implication, which is the opposite of fact. I wonder if he hasn’t also offered to turn sides, maybe he’s played the criminal in an attempt to infiltrate the organization’s ranks as he tried to do with Mr. Falk - not that it worked.” With that, the doctor rounded on Sherlock Holmes himself and declared, “Your game is up.”

“Yes, you have seen to that,” Holmes said bitterly, though did not bother to move from where he was reclining on the sofa.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Watson turned back to Mr. Barker and said as politely as he could manage, “Would you mind answering a few further questions?”

The witness glanced between the two feuding detectives, his eyes wide in disbelief. “Whatever the hell is going on here, I’m out,” he declared at last. “You heard my testimony, I’ve got nothing left to say. Good luck with whatever you two have going on here.” With that, Mr. Barker took his leave and shut the door behind him.

Watson rounded on Holmes, whatever politeness he had managed gone without a trace. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself, because I assure you no one else is. Holmes, what have you been playing at?”

“I have been attempting to solve the case,” Holmes answered coolly.

“I know things haven’t been easy, but I never thought you’d sink so low as to purposely sabotage my investigation!”

“Well, now it seems we’re even, because you’ve ruined mine out of spite.”

“Your plan was to turn everyone against me and ruin any chance my investigation had of succeeding just so the witnesses would like you a little more in comparison.”

“And your investigation was going so well, I’m sure.”

“I know you're better than I could ever be, you don't have to rub it in.” Watson was tired and frustrated, at the end of his rope.

Holmes’s eyes widened a little, as though that was not what he expected - what he had expected Watson didn’t know. At last, he said with a mirthless smile, “You do yourself a disservice, Watson, after all, you’ve managed to render me obsolete.”

“Is that what this is about?” Watson demanded. “There can only be one consulting detective in England, so you’re trying to force me out of the job?”

“Yes, a very reasonable conclusion,” Holmes sneered, his disbelief written plainly across his face.

“Why then, Holmes? Why would you do such a thing?”

Holmes seemed ready to make some retort, but as Watson’s question registered his conviction faded. At last, he said, still bitter, but somewhat subdued, “You’ve got it all backwards.”

“Really?” Watson snapped.

Holmes continued before Watson could argue further, “After all this time, you’re still trying to prove yourself. But you’re the real detective now and I’m but an amateur who has not yet earned my keep. I came to help and if you weren’t going to let me I would do things my way and show you. My dear Watson, I owe you my sincerest apologies. The truth is that you have long since grown past any need for my assistance.”

That was it then, the truth Watson had been trying to avoid since Holmes’s miraculous return - that they had been reunited only to find they no longer had any need for the other. Watson tried to brush the tears from his eyes. “So what if we don’t need each other anymore? I still want to work with you, can’t that be enough?” he exclaimed in exasperation.

“You do? I’ve hardly proven myself to be a worthy partner.”

“No, you haven’t,” Watson acknowledged, “But after so long, I find I can’t bear to see you go.” He hesitated. “One more try, for old time’s sake?”

“If you are amenable to it, I can hardly refuse,” Holmes said with a smile. “I ought to warn you that I’ve become rather unaccustomed to collaboration, but I suppose I’ve already made that obvious. I swear I will do everything in my considerable power to prove myself worthy of it.”

“No more going behind my back?”

“You drive a hard bargain, my dear Watson, but you are right, it’s only fair.”

Holmes stood at last, a hand outstretched to shake on it. Their hands lingered together, neither quite ready to pull away.

“Shall we?” Watson gestured toward the door.

“Of course.” 

They left the study side by side.

“You should also apologize to Inspector Houghton,” Watson remarked on their way back to the dining room.

Holmes nodded, but he did not have a chance to reply.

Inspector Mason accosted them with a shout, “There you are! Both of you better have a good explanation for all this or I swear you’re never setting foot on a crime scene again!”

The Inspector strode over to meet them and Mrs. Houghton came running after.

“What’s going on?” Mrs. Houghton asked, her question directed toward the doctor more than anyone else. “Mr. Barker just walked out and refuses to talk to anyone. He said something happened with the two of you and that he ‘doesn’t want any part of this crazy operation.’”

“Holmes and I just had a bit of an argument,” the doctor explained, a little sheepish, “Unfortunately Mr. Barker was caught up in the beginning of it, but everything is resolved now. Our apologies for the disturbance.”

“Now listen here!” Inspector Mason cut in. “Are you saying you just lost us a prime witness just because you couldn’t keep a handle on whatever’s going on between you? I didn’t like the sound of no specialists from the start, and by God I won’t have you mucking around my crime scene any longer! Out! Both of you!”

“Just one moment, Inspector,” Holmes protested with the same ingratiating tone he had used when they first arrived, “what about the case?”

“I want you out so the rest of us have a chance at solving it,” Inspector Mason snapped.

“I’m sorry, Inspector,” the doctor said - it was time to apologize, not bargain. “You’re right, of course, we shouldn’t have allowed our personal dispute to interfere with the investigation, but I assure you that everything has been resolved and it will not happen again, and Holmes is right, there is still a case that needs solving. If you just give us until the end of the day-”

Inspector Mason cut him off, “If you have a plan, I’d be happy to hear it and we can carry it out ourselves, without either of you mucking around, frightening off the witnesses.”

“You must understand that Watson and I are uniquely equipped to solve this case. Not only do we have specialized skills and years of experience, but we have a particular familiarity with the incident this crime is imitating.” Watson couldn’t tell if Holmes actually thought he had a chance of convincing the Inspector, or was just trying to buy them time.

As little as Watson wanted to admit it, Inspector Mason was right; they needed to have a plan or they would just keep questioning the witnesses in circles without getting anywhere. Holmes had originally solved the case by convincing Mr. Douglas to emerge from the secret passageways where he had been hiding - it turned out that he had survived an attack from an intruder and left the man dead in his place. It didn’t explain all of the facts they had been presented with, but a faithful rendition could hardly omit such an essential detail.

Finally, Inspector Mason had enough. “Get out! Both of you!”

“Wait!” the doctor cried. “We do have a plan.”

Holmes shot him a skeptical glance, but did not say a word.

“Does anyone have a match? We must raise the call of fire!”

“What?” Inspector Mason demanded.

The doctor dropped his voice. “It’s one of Holmes’s old tricks” - they shared a conspiratorial glance. “We have reason to believe there is someone hiding in the walls - this is an old house, it’s liable to have secret passageways, and if it didn’t originally, there is a chance they were added during a recent renovation. We can smoke him out, and then you’ll have your man.”

Inspector Mason glanced over at Mrs. Houghton and to Watson’s relief, she nodded.

Holmes ran for something to light that would produce a good amount of smoke and the others scattered through the house to raise the call of fire. The servants and residents poured out of the house onto the lawn while the detectives patrolled, searching for the culprit and periodically calling for anyone lost in the ‘fire.’

At last, the four of them reconvened downstairs. The house was by all appearances empty, with no stranger among those who had left.

“You had your chance,” Inspector Mason said. “Now, out, both of you.”

“He may still be hiding in the walls,” the doctor attempted.

“If he is, we’ll find him.”

“Come along, Watson, if they don’t want our help it’s their loss.” Holmes made for the door and motioned for the doctor to follow.

Mrs. Houghton glanced between the doctor and Inspector Mason, looking ready to interrupt, but uncertain if she should.

“It’s alright,” the doctor said. “Now that we’ve been furnished with the key evidence, I believe we will be of most use back at Baker Street. If there are any fresh developments, do call, and I’ll do the same if we think of anything.”

“Of course. Hopefully we’ll find him hiding in the walls and that’ll be that, though I’m sorry you’ll miss it.”

“If he leads us to his employer, then it will be more than worth the wait,” the doctor said, and then he turned to follow Holmes back home to Baker Street.

“No luck?” Holmes said as Watson hung up the phone and returned to his usual seat by the fireplace.

Watson shook his head. “They found a secret passageway, but no one inside it. The whole house has been thoroughly searched; either our man has escaped, or he never existed at all.”

“Perhaps it is not so grim as that. There is still Mrs. Douglas and Mr. Barker, after all,” Holmes suggested.

“That’s Inspector Mason’s theory, and he’s probably right, but he doesn’t have enough evidence to hold either of them.” Watson rounded on Holmes. “I don’t suppose you discovered any incriminating evidence in your investigation?” he asked pointedly.

“Nothing conclusive, no, but I’ve not come away entirely empty handed. According to the maids - corroborated by Mr. Barker himself - Barker and Mrs. Douglas have been at odds since Mr. Douglas’s death. Their feud apparently began when the corpse was discovered; Mrs. Douglas was the one who found her husband’s body, and she attempted to prevent Barker from entering the room when he arrived.”

Watson nodded as the pieces came together. “At first I thought they might be working together; they even used some of the same language when describing Mr. Douglas and Mr. Barker’s past, but there did seem to be some enmity between them. Mr. Barker especially almost seemed ready to turn witness against Mrs. Douglas.”

“Yes, he was close, if only we’d had more time!”

Watson hesitated. “He may have merely been trying to redirect suspicion from himself.”

“Do you honestly believe that, Watson?”

“It’s a possibility, at least,” Watson insisted tersely. More thoughtfully, he remarked, “It is curious that Mrs. Douglas was attempting to prevent Mr. Barker from seeing his friend’s body. Don’t you remember? It was the real Mr. Barker who dissuaded Mrs. Douglas from entering the room and seeing her dead husband. It’s a peculiar reversal, especially given how close these crimes have stayed to your old cases.”

Holmes leaned in toward Watson, his long fingers tented with the tips pressed together. “And...?”

“In the original case it was all a ruse - she had already gone in and seen her husband alive. Under the circumstances, I would assume this was similar, but the fact that it doesn’t quite line up with the original and now they’re at odds when they should be laughing together suggests that there really was something there that Mrs. Douglas didn’t want Mr. Barker to see. Maybe this time, Mr. Douglas was unable to avoid his fate and Mrs. Douglas - though I hesitate to call her his wife - knew it.”

“Excellent, Watson!” Holmes proclaimed, and his eyes did seem to shine with pride, though Watson couldn’t help but hear a little condescension in his words. “The only question that remains is what has become of our intruder, unless you believe Mrs. Douglas performed the deed herself?”

“Even if she knew, I am reluctant to think her capable of having committed the crime.”

“You have always given women too much credit, my dear Watson. At the very least she was much too cagey to allow me to interview her.”

Holmes leaned back in his chair and rested his head on his fingertips. His keen gaze turned distant as incisive discourse gave way to abstraction, his eyes seemed to stare straight through the wall above the mantle. Finally he snapped back to attention. “Well, no matter. I’m certain you’ll think of something.” He gave Watson a cryptic smile, and looked like he was just about ready to spring from his chair with the suggestion of a leisurely walk that would inevitably prove to be anything but.

“You have a plan,” Watson accused.

“Just the beginnings of one.”

“And when were you planning on letting me in on it?”

Holmes seemed to deflate back into his chair. “You are right, Watson. I am only wondering what motive one could possibly have for assassinating our Mr. John Douglas.”

“It’s clearly a kind of mania for recreating your old cases.”

Holmes shook his head. “One person, perhaps, could be consumed by such a mania, but as thrilling as your writing is, I cannot imagine that all the people necessary to coordinate such elaborate scenes have been so swayed by it. No, I can only imagine that there is some money in the murder itself, but without knowing Douglas’s true identity, I can only speculate.”

“If the sufferer is wealthy enough, he could provide the necessary funds,” Watson suggested.

“No, whoever it is who has been so taken by your accounts of my cases to orchestrate this” - Holmes hesitated at a loss for the right word - “recreation has clearly been deeply involved in the planning of the crimes; few details have been overlooked. And we must give them some credit for their criminal capabilities, as our combined effort has failed to catch them. I doubt such an experienced criminal would be inclined to spend money so wantonly as to hire their peers to undertake an enterprise with no promise of a reward, especially not something so dire as murder. Someone was willing to pay for this man’s death.”

Watson glanced away as he turned the case over in his mind. At last he remarked, “Mrs. Houghton mentioned that Mr. Duvall - our Mr. Sholto - was involved in something not entirely right, and the men presented as Drebber and Stangerson had been suspected of some criminal activity in Utah. Is it not unlikely for someone so taken with your work to have a misplaced sense of justice?”

“I hope I have not inspired such ill-conceived notions of justice. No, I expect these crimes are more likely the result of internal matters in some criminal organization. If I am not mistaken, we will have to turn to America to identify our Mr. Douglas as well.”

Watson hesitated. “Perhaps you are right, but it still doesn’t quite line up. Thus far the perpetrator has kept so close to your old cases, I don’t believe if he wanted to kill someone he would make his victim play Mr. Douglas who was supposed to survive. I would think instead he’d pose as Douglas himself and try to catch the intruder by surprise as Mr. Douglas did. I confess it’s a risky way to plan it, but it seems the only way. And,” he continued, gaining steam, “Mrs. Douglas and Mr. Barker being at odds suggests that something didn’t quite go to plan. I’d say it points to an intruder who was the intended target, but got away.”

Holmes suddenly leaped to his feet. “And I think I know where to find him!”

“Where?”

“It has been a long time, but I do recall a long vigil I held in that fateful study. If the officials have not yet dredged the moat, it is past time they give it a try.”

“I’ll call Mrs. Houghton,” Watson said, standing at last.

Holmes and Watson were sitting at lunch a little after their usual fashion when the phone rang.

Watson stood to answer it. “Hello?”

“Dr. Holmes?” Mrs. Houghton confirmed on the other end.

“Yes, I am he.”

“You were right about the moat. We think we’ve found the intruder - he’s been in the water for about the right amount of time at least, and he was wearing the yellow coat you described. We’re working on identifying him now.”

“Is there any indication of who killed him?”

“Well, your story about him taking out John Douglas and then someone else doing him in lines up; it looks like he was shot by something a lot quieter than that sawed-off shotgun we found. And we may have a suspect. Unfortunately, Ivy Douglas fled last night. She must have found out we were going to dredge the moat. I don’t suppose you have any idea where we could find her.”

The doctor shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not,” he said bitterly. “What about Mr. Barker?”

“We’re bringing him in for questioning now, you’re welcome to come and watch. It looks like he might be willing to talk now that he’s been abandoned.”

“We wouldn’t miss it.”

The doctor hung up the phone, and he and Holmes hastily finished their lunch before heading out into the blustery day. When they arrived at the Scotland Yard, they were greeted by Inspector Gregson, who led them back to where Mr. Barker was being held for questioning. He took them into a darkened corridor that looked in on a barren room through a large window that must have looked like a mirror from the other side. Mrs. Houghton was already inside with the suspect, seated opposite him at a plain desk.

“So I went to California, to Hollywood,” Mr. Barker was saying - his voice echoed from a pair of speakers in the ceiling - “thought I’d get to be a movie star. That’s where I met Tom - he was playing John Douglas. He wanted to be an actor too, but it didn’t work out for either of us. Money just got tighter and we thought we might put our acting skills to” - he hesitated - “better use. Turned out we had a lot better luck with that than we ever had with getting into the movies, but the more money we made the more trouble it brought with it.

“One day, Ivy and - well, you’d know her as Mary Watson - showed up. She knew we’d gotten in over our heads and now she said someone was after Tom. We’d been worried about something like that and were just happy to have the warning. She said she’d run into some trouble too and had a plan to catch him if we worked together. She found that old abandoned house to hole up in and suggested Ivy pose as Tom’s wife. Apparently the guy who was after us had some obsession with these old mysteries, so we set everything up to look like one and I guess he walked straight into our trap. But it turns out the joke was on us.”

“Could you walk me through what happened that night?” Mrs. Houghton asked.

He nodded. “Mary came over for dinner to make sure everything was all set up and explain the plan. After she left, Ivy and I were supposed to go upstairs and wait for the sound of a gun, while Tom locked up the house. He was supposed to find the guy and get the jump on him, and then we’d make it look like he was the one who had been killed, getting them off our trail once and for all. I didn’t want to leave him alone, but she insisted that was the only way the trap would work.

“I heard the gunshot - I don’t know how it didn’t wake up the whole neighborhood - and ran downstairs. Ivy was already there and she wouldn’t let me in the room, said he was already in hiding and the maids were coming so we had to hurry. I demanded she let me see him, but by then the maids were already there and I had to run to the police.

“I swear we thought he was after Tom. The whole setup was a bit strange, but we’re actors, we’ve done stranger things. We just thought it was a clever way to save our necks.” He hesitated. “In the end, I don’t think Tom had the guts to kill a guy in cold blood, even if it was to save himself.”

Mrs. Houghton gave him a moment to collect himself before asking, “Can you tell us anything about the women who got you involved in this whole scheme?”

He shook his head. “They said they were actresses too, but Ivy’s about as wooden as they come and clearly they had something else going on. I didn’t even know Ivy’s name; we just called her Ivy Douglas. I heard her call her friend Jamie a couple times, if that helps. The name Mary Watson was just in case anyone asked; she introduced herself to us as Moriarty.”

#v writes #Sherlock Holmes #H/W #The Man Who Sold the World

[allonsysilvertongue]

The Elusive Miss Trinket

Haymitch Abernathy was pulled out of his self-imposed retirement by the Trinkets with a request of utmost urgency. [Hayffie AU]

The Elusive Miss Trinket: Chapter 3

Haymitch felt her eyes on him with a list of question burning on her lips. He ignored it as he pulled clothes after clothes from the hanger in his wardrobe.

“Haymitch….” Prim called on him quietly. “Katniss told me that you’re not doing this anymore, not after Annie. You don’t have to…for me”

“We talked about this. It’s decided.”

Behind him, Prim exhaled wistfully but to her credit, chose a neutral question. “What’s it like there… Singapore?”

He shrugged. He had done a search on the city-island and there were a few things he could tell Prim – that it was just a small city squashed in between two big countries which often sheltered it from any natural disasters or that they had developed their own colloquial English - but he settled for the easiest.

“Hot.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Not sure,” Haymitch admitted as he turned around to face Prim. She was standing by his bed, folding clothes into his bag. “As soon as it’s done, I’ll be back. Three months, maybe…”

“She’s not like mum,” she stated out of the blue.

“No, she’s not like your mum. She isn’t missing missing.”

“I think mum’s like her,” Prim said so quietly that Haymitch almost missed it. “I think she wants to leave but … I’m here. So is Katniss. This place kept reminding her of dad, though.”

Haymitch pinched the bridge of his nose.

“It’s difficult for her but she still has responsibilities to you and Katniss,” he added even if it was becoming very glaring that Katniss was the one pulling the weight.

“I know,” Prim said simply, “but it makes me think that if she could, she would have left and start a life elsewhere, just like Mr. and Mrs. Trinket’s daughter. I think – I think I’ll be okay with that, too. If it makes mum feel more… at peace.”

It startled him to hear her talking that way. Perhaps without him realising it, Prim had grown.

“Anyway, when will I meet this tutor?”

“Soon, I guess. The Trinkets will contact you to make arrangements.”

Prim nodded and went back to quietly helping Haymitch with his packing. Katniss had gone off to hunt in the woods as she did every morning. When he had told the three teenagers that he would be leaving for a few months, Katniss had said very little except that he would call to check in whenever he can. Peeta had promised to keep an eye on Chaff and watch after the two girls. It made Katniss scowl but between his amused laugh, Peeta had also offered to drive Haymitch three hours out to Charlotte Douglas Airport.

“You forgot this?”

Chaff wandered into his room, waving a stun gun and a gun that once belonged to Haymitch.

“I won’t need it," Haymitch shook his head. "Euphemia Trinket isn’t in danger - ain't a kidnapping case.”

“You never know, man. She could have a jealous boyfriend or a psycho colleague,” Chaff muttered.

"Then I'll handle it."

"Better be safe than sorry," Chaff insisted.

“Don’t need it,” Haymitch said. He hated guns or the feel of it in his hand. His knife should be enough. “You know it’s illegal to carry those stuffs around in Singapore, yeah?"

"Really?" Chaff folded his arms. "Or you're just fucking with me ‘cause you don't want to bring them?"

"I'm not kidding – guns, stun guns, pepper spray. I don't plan to be thrown in jail before I even make it pass immigration. You’ve asked Beetee to get on board, yeah?”

“Yep,” Chaff nodded in affirmative, finally relenting. “Don’t worry about it. Just get there and we’ll do what we need to do here.”  

Since Stefan had told him about Euphemia and his grandson, Haymitch had gleaned that she was active online so he had tasked Beetee with unearthing everything he could about her. In this day and age, he was quite certain she would have at least one social media account and that was all Beetee would need. In Haymitch’s line of duty, the simplest and seemingly most insignificant of detail could be a clue.

Haymitch grabbed his phone with the intention of checking that the battery had been fully charged but he ended up going to his photo gallery to have a look at the photograph Stefan had sent to him for his referral. He told himself, as he stared at the picture, that it was to commit her face to memory but ….

“She’s pretty,” Prim observed, peeking into his phone as she stood next to him with a pile of neatly folded clothes.

“I don’t see what that has got to do with anything,” he murmured.

“Oh, nothing,” Prim’s eyes twinkled, “but she looks happy where she’s at now. You’re going to be spoiling her party by bringing her home.”

“Too bad for her,” he chuckled. “That’s my job now. If I don’t do it, guess who’s not getting a tutor and that apothecary is gonna remain shut forever – a shame, yeah?”

XxX

His two hours flight to Chicago went relatively smooth with no incident.

It was the long flight from there to Hong Kong that he had a problem with. He finished a book mid-way during the flight and because he was pacing himself with the drink, he grew restless quickly. Given his career, the time he spent sitting on the flight doing nothing should be something he was used to. After all, he had spent hours in a car watching his target but … Chaff was always there to fill the gaps and the silence.

His gaze strayed to the woman next to him, engrossed with the in-flight movie she was watching. At times, he wished such mindless things could occupy him so he would not be in this state – exhausted but not fully able to close his eyes for even a short nap. He leaned back against the seat, arms folded across his chest with his leg tapping a restless beat against the floor.

There was still seven hours to go. Seven hours that a normal human being not plagued by nightmares could spend sleeping, but not him.

It was at that moment that he hated Euphemia Trinket, and her selfish reasons for leaving the States.

“Couldn’t have fucking ran off to Hong Kong or to Japan, could you?” he muttered to himself angrily. “That’ll save me a flight.”

This woman, he thought, better be worth my time.

His two hours layover was spent walking mindlessly around the airport and visiting souvenir shops. He bought three different items for Katniss, Peeta and Prim each and paid for it using the credit card Stefan Trinket had provided him.  

The last leg of his flight from Hong Kong to Singapore went by in a blur. He had lost track the date and day but the only thing he was aware of was the fact that it was one in the morning and having travelled for more than twenty hours, he was exhausted.

But he was alert. He had never been here and he was always wary of unfamiliar places.

As he stood on the travelator, his gaze swept through the premises watching the other travellers hurrying over to their gates, to the various machines lining the sidewalk offering money changing services, payment options for online transactions and the computer terminals.

Clearing immigration took him faster than expected and while everyone else was rushing to the conveyor belt for their luggage, Haymitch made a stop at the duty free shop for liquor. It was only when he had two bottles with him that he went to the belt to get his luggage and walked right out of the doors towards the taxi stand.

“Number 7!” the man waved him towards the direction of a taxi once he was in front of the queue.

He blinked and dutifully went to the spot marked seven. He spent the ride staring out of the window and watching the sceneries passed him by but the roads were too bright. There were street lamps every hundred meters and at first, he thought it was just the airport but it was on every street and road, and to his tired eyes, the glare was piercing.

“The streets are too clean,” Haymitch muttered that observation out loud.

The taxi driver briefly looked at him through the rear view mirror.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Don’t throw your rubbish on the streets only at the rubbish bin. Otherwise, I tell you, the Gahmen will fine you hundreds of dollars, make you do community service! That’s why everybody scared to litter," the driver laughed.

He stared at the back of the driver's head, wondering if the old man was joking before dismissing it.

“Gahmen?” he frowned, picking up on the irregularity instead.

“Government – that’s how we say it,” he chuckled. “Anyway, that’s your hotel. You can see it already.”

It wasn’t his hotel that caught his interest. It was something else. Haymitch straightened in his seat, his attention fully focused on it.

"That's it," he breathed out.

The Singapore Flyer loomed to his left; a bright, giant wheel against the night sky. He had seen it on Google Images but it was always different to see something for oneself. Haymitch made a calculating sweep over the nearby area to possibly identify the location from which Euphemia had taken the photo but it was difficult when they were traveling on the expressway.

XxX

Ever since he checked in and was shown to his room, Haymitch had been staring at the ceiling, occasionally drinking from the bottle and waiting for sleep to claim him.

He had already sent a text message to Katniss to notify her that he had safely arrived. Back at home, he was hoping that Beetee already had some luck with his digging. The Trinkets had sent him here to Singapore and even if the country was small, there were still millions of people here. Their daughter was a needle in the proverbial haystack.

It was not to say that he had no plan of action. He already planned to scout the area surrounding the Flyer tomorrow. It would not hurt to have a look, perhaps even ask around using the photo of her that was in his possession. She could be a regular visitor of that area and people might recognise her.

Haymitch thought of her long and hard while lying in bed. Family could be overbearing, he would grant that, but to distant oneself and completely disappear from her family's life without any phone calls or contact with her parents for years... That was something he could not wrap his head around.

He would give anything to hear his mother's nagging or the quiet creak of the floorboard as his father get a bottle he had hidden from his mother. He would trade his life to have his brother shadow him for an entire day, something which the younger Haymitch found irritating but now missed more than anything.

Whatever the reason may be, the youngest Trinket would have a weakness. He would find hers and use it to convince her to return home so he could close this job.

XxX

"You did what?!" Haymitch sputtered. "Is that … legal?"

Around him, people were giving him uncomfortable side-glances. Aware of this, Haymitch quickened his pace, weaving amongst the crowd until he reached the front of the mall. Unlike the polished, modern looking high-rise that was his hotel at Marina Bay Sands, this old-fashioned building was hardly eye-catching and was only visited by electronic enthusiast.

"Damn it, Beetee, I asked you to snoop. You can't just hack into her… or anyone’s social media account! That's... a breach of privacy."

"Says the private investigator...."

"Fine," he concurred. "What did you find?"

With the phone wedged between his cheek and shoulder, Haymitch entered a shop. Like every other shop that he had passed by since he reached the mall, this one was no different. There were a range of computers and laptops on display both new and second-hand. There were digital cameras and other electronic gadgets, none of which interest him since he was looking for something else entirely, something very specific.

“None of her social media accounts state her address – and I wasn’t expecting to find it, of course. No sensible person would put up their address on Facebook. But I did get a sense of… her, of who she is. There were photos she took while on a run and – “

“Tell me it was near that Flyer,” he muttered.

“Yes,” Beetee chuckled. “I cleaned up some of the photographs with Finnick’s help and extracted some of the background to compare with the map on – “

“Get to the point, Beetee,” Haymitch cut him off knowing full well that Beetee would attempt to explain the technicalities of it, half of which would be lost of him.

He was sounding irritable, he knew. But he had been to three shops so far without finding what he was looking for even if he had asked for it discreetly. He had heard of some shady dealings going on so he was certain he would find it. It was just a matter of asking the right people.

“I believe that she enjoys a run or a stroll by the river which is the area where the Flyer and coincidentally, your hotel is located and –“

“There are two sides to any bloody river, Beetee, what are the odds being in my favour that I’d bump into her?” he asked.

Haymitch drummed his finger against the display casing, waiting for the shop owner who had disappeared into the back of his shop to return. When he emerged, he was holding on to a packaging the size of his palm and handed it to Haymitch.

“This is what you want?”

Haymitch nodded, tearing the package open.

“Well… This might be of interest to you, judging from some of the uploaded photos it looks like Euphemia Trinket has a company… or some online business here. There were photos of bridal dresses and hand bouquets appearing quite often on her Instagram…  Either that or she was planning her wedding. No captions to accompany the photos so it wasn’t very illuminating”

“Right – hold on a minute,” Haymitch pulled the phone from his ear to inspect the small circular device. “This will do. I’ll take it.”

He made sure to pay by cash, just in case, and left the shop.

“I found it and bought it,” he told Beetee. “So did you do a business profile search under her name?”

“I was going to search for her LinkedIn account but I will get to – “

“Did you say wedding? Here? She got married here?” Haymitch hissed into the phone. “That’s fucking great, Beetee. If she has a family here, persuading her to leave would be fucking impossible, and that's not something I want to be telling her parents.”

I know that I continue be a disappointment because Effie and Haymitch still have not met but we will get there, in the next chapter. On the bright side of Chap 3, Haymitch is in the same country as Effie is so that's a plus.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on what Prim said about her mother? Or about what Beetee did/found out? What did Haymitch buy and for what? What do you think of Effie from what we've known of her so far? Let me know!

As I will be leaving for Thailand next week, the next chapter might be posted on Monday (23/1) instead otherwise, the weekend after!

#hayffie #effie trinket #haymitch abernathy #hayffie au #the elusive miss trinket

[bluewatsons]

Simon Hattenstone, Mike Tyson: 'I'm ashamed of so many things I've done, The Guardian (March 20, 2009)

The temperature seems to drop by 20 degrees when Mike Tyson and his minders enter the room. "Have I got to be nice to this guy?" he asks the film-maker James Toback. "No," Toback replies. "You can be as hostile as you like."

Yet Tyson doesn't seem to have the energy to muster up much hostility. He is wearing a baggy pinstripe suit that fails to disguise what's going on underneath. His belly squeezes out of his black shirt, and he can barely drag his size 15 feet along with him. His almost-beard, white flecked, is more oversight than design. His head slumps to the side as if his massive pit bull neck can't quite bear its weight. Everything is such an effort. He speaks quietly, lethargically, like a man who has been on a heavy dose of antidepressants for too long. His Maori facial tattoo, once so warrior-like, looks benign today. He could be Lennie in Of Mice And Men, the half-gentle giant who strokes the things he loves to death.

"Hello, legend," I say. Tyson looks confused, uneasy, says he doesn't take compliments well. But, for good or bad, Mike Tyson is a legend. Many experts would argue that he was the greatest heavyweight boxing champion - or at least should have been. Sure, he didn't have Muhammad Ali's wit or grace, but as a knockout puncher, none could match Iron Mike. He won his first 19 professional fights by a knockout, he was the youngest world heavyweight champion at 20, unbeaten in three years, so far ahead of the pack that there were no rivals. Then things started to go wrong.

His wife, the actor Robin Givens, went on television in 1988 alongside him and announced that he was a terrifying manic depressive and that their marriage was pure hell. In 1990 he lost his first fight to 42-1 underdog Buster Douglas. He'd become lazy and complacent, seduced by alcohol and drugs. In 1992 he was convicted of rape and deviant sexual misconduct, and served three years in jail. It should have destroyed him, and he might well argue that it did, but, amazingly, within a year of his release he regained his world title. Then, once again, he chucked it all away.

Since retiring four years ago, Tyson has done little with his life. He has boxed in a few exhibitions, put on more weight, got in trouble with the law again: in 2007, he was convicted of drink-driving after almost crashing into a police car. Three bags of cocaine were found on him, and he was given a day in jail, three years' probation and ordered into rehab. That is when Toback, an old friend, asked Tyson, now 42, if he could make a film about his life.

The result is extraordinary - pretty much a 90-minute monologue, some of it stream of consciousness. What emerges is a man who finds it impossible to censor himself. He talks vividly about growing up with a promiscuous mother who might have been a prostitute and about a father he never knew, stealing drugs from dealers as a 12-year-old, detention centre and being taken under the wing of the boxing coach Cus D'Amato, all while he was barely into his teens. Tyson is not a man who went off the rails. He was born on the skids. Somehow, and all too briefly, he managed to transcend his traumatic destiny

We arrange to meet in the Hollywood Hills at the opulent house of another film-maker friend, Brett Ratner. There are Warhols in the loo, Bacons in the kitchen, Giacomettis on the sideboard, Toback at the centre of the conversation, but as yet no Tyson. "We could be here a while - Mike's been held up." Toback and his entourage grin at each other. It's not the first time the boxer has delayed them.

Toback is disarmingly honest about why Tyson makes such a great subject. "The movie is like the aftermath of an earthquake. It's Mike standing there amid the rubble and wondering why he has survived. Ultimately, what I feel comes through is a struggle to justify his continuing existence because the highlights of his life are gone. Usually tragedy ends in death, but here's a tragic figure who has survived. And now that I'm here, what do I do?"

Their friendship goes back 23 years. Toback, an experimental film-maker obsessed with all things sexual, had just finished making The Pick-Up Artist with Robert Downey Jr when Tyson popped into the wrap party. "He was 18, hadn't become world champion yet. He'd heard about the orgies in [American footballer] Jim Brown's house and he was like, 'Tell me about those orgies.'" Then there were the acid trips. Toback felt that young Tyson was almost too curious.

Tyson arrives a couple of hours late. Years ago, there would have been dozens in his entourage, now there are only three. One stands over me, legs splayed, eyeballing me as I talk to Tyson. It's intimidating, but also quite funny - rather than protecting Tyson, he seems to be making sure I don't escape. It's a hot winter's day in LA. We are in the garden, the sun is beating and a rivulet of sweat is running down Tyson's nose. I ask what he has learned about himself from the film.

"When I watched it alone, I realised why people had certain opinions about me. When I was upset, I got upset like everybody else, but I'm an extremist, so when I got upset, I took it to the next level. I took it to the level of being almost violently upset. And I realise, if I was sitting next to that guy, he'd make me nervous. That guy was impulsive. Unpredictable." He wants to believe - he has to believe - that is the old Tyson.

What shocked him most? "I thought I was a dick when I was crying." This is Tyson the macho man speaking, wary of losing face in front of his buddies. But that's one of the most moving moments in the film, I say - he's talking about how he was bullied as a boy. "Well, that's your opinion, of course. Only." He talks quietly, with that familiar lisp, but the answer carries a hint of menace.

As a boy, Tyson was small, fat and bespectacled, weak with asthma and alone but for the pigeons he bought with stolen money. When kids picked on him, he just ran away. One day an older bully took one of his pigeons and popped its neck in front of him. That was the first time Tyson hit out. He surprised himself because he was good at fighting, enjoyed it, found it empowering. After that, he says, people wanted to be his friend.

"I'm a good guy, I'm a good brother. There's nothing wrong with me. Just don't push me too far, you know. I'm sure everyone has a breaking point in their lives." It's hard to know whether he's addressing the old bullies or me. Tyson's speech has a hypnotic, incantatory rhythm to it.

It was D'Amato who transformed his life. After being picked up by police at 12 with $1,500 in his pockets, Tyson was sent to a detention centre, where he learned to box. On his release he was put in touch with D'Amato, a Bronx-born coach in his 70s who had discovered Rocky Marciano and Floyd Patterson. D'Amato welcomed him into his home, fed him, educated him, trained him, disciplined him, loved him. Tyson had never known anybody like this. The two became inseparable.

"Me and Cus were two megalomaniacs sitting there talking about our future, what we could do. You understand? Two guys - we didn't have anything - talking about what we could do. I imagine myself being 13, 14, watching a great fighter fight, talking about why he is a great fighter, and asking Cus, 'Cus, how could I beat that guy if I was to fight him? What would you tell me to do to beat that guy?' " D'Amato told him that becoming a champion was more a mental and spiritual discipline than a physical one.

In 1982, aged 14, Tyson went to the junior Olympics and broke any number of records, including the fastest knockout (eight seconds). D'Amato told him he needn't worry about being bullied again, and Tyson knew he was right. He chokes on his tears. "Coz I knew I would fuckin' kill them if they fucked with me."

The most important thing he learned, he says, is that he wasn't dependent on others for his survival. "I didn't need to take the handouts. It was just psychological motivation, refusing to accept what you had always accepted, refusing to accept welfare, refusing to accept being bullied any more, refusing to live your life unlawfully." As he talks, the who man minutes ago was paralysed by uncertainty radiates a frightening conviction. "I took it to extreme levels. Success is something you work hard at, you put your nose to the grindstone and you do everything you can. You're hungry, you're grinding, and you're still not guaranteed success. So I took it to another level. I said, I'm going to die to get this. I'm going to dedicate my whole life to it. Second place is not going to do it, I'm going to be champion. And being champion is not going to do it, I have to be the champion that nobody will ever forget to the end of this planet."

Millions dream of being champion. Did it feel good being one of the few who succeeded? The diffidence returns: "That's where it gets complex. It gets tricky. I think anybody can do it because I don't think much of myself. I think if I can do it, anybody can do it." The trouble is, he says, he hears so many voices in his head, and they are so often at war with each other.

I ask if he feels more pride for the great things he achieved or shame for the bad things. "I don't know. Both become irrelevant. By thinking about the bad things, I start to feel really low and depressed. When I start to think about the good things, I just get pride and egotistical. So I try to leave them both alone."

Maybe the great tragedy in Tyson's life is that by the time he became world champion, D'Amato had died. He lost his moral compass and found himself surrounded by acolytes who encouraged his excess. He bought houses by the dozen, he had more than 130 cars, he bought lavish gifts (usually cars and jewellery) for women who had sweet-talked him for a couple of minutes. At his peak, he could command $30m for a night's work, and he earned more than $300m in his career. By 2003, he was bankrupt.

Now, he worries the film might be too successful and he will end up with "too much money and pussy" again. "It's pretty dangerous. I become accustomed to it." He has either had no money or a ridiculous amount in his life, and he feels safer with none. Does he miss the drama of his old life? "No, I was addicted to drama."

In the film he calls Desiree Washington, the woman he was convicted of raping, "that wretched swine of a woman" and insists he was not guilty.

Yet he talks explicitly, often alarmingly, about his sexual preferences and how he has treated women. "I like strong women, not necessarily masculine women, say a woman who runs an organisation, I like a woman with massive confidence and then I want to dominate her sexually. I like to watch her like a tiger watches their prey after they wound them. I want her to keep her distance for at least 20-30 minutes before I devour them and take them to the point of ecstasy. I love saying no when making love. What I want is extreme. Normally what they want is not as extreme as what I want. I want to ravish them. Completely... I may have taken advantage of women before, but I never took advantage of her [Washington]."

At times Tyson paints himself as a victim - of circumstance, of liggers, of women on the make - but in the end he says he has nobody to blame but himself. I say that the strength of the film is he doesn't absolve himself: "You say you didn't do the rape, but you did some bad things to women."

"I know. The fact is, I'm not trying to win no friends. I don't want you to think I'm doing this to try to get a clean-up job, or I want people to like me. I don't care." It's true, you don't feel he's trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

Tyson shakes his troubled head. "No... sometimes my mind tells me, you think you've got these white people fooled, that they like you - you're a fucking fraud." Now he's talking with visceral intensity. "My mind is not my friend: 'You're a fraud, you're trying to fool these white people.' And I have to contain that. That's the addict talking. That's the guy who wants to get high. The guy who wants to drink the Hennessy, the guy who wants to gallivant in the street with a bunch of crude women, that's that guy talking right now. That's not you talking, Mike."

He pauses, the sweat dripping from his head. "When you go to a doctor or a psychiatrist, and they say, 'Do you hear voices?' of course we say no, because if you say, I hear voices, they go, 'Have that guy straitjacketed' and you go to hospital. But we do hear voices. Our mind does tell us things. So your mind is not your friend if you don't discipline it and control it." He tries hard now to filter his thoughts, but he worries that it's a form of lying. Thankfully, he says, he doesn't have the same intensity of feeling any more. Maybe the antidepressants have made things easier. In 2001, he told reporters, "I'm on the Zoloft to keep me from killing y'all."

When Tyson went into rehab in 2007, he admitted being addicted to cocaine and alcohol. "I'll never beat that. That's going to be a till-the-day-I-die job. That's an inside job. Nothing to do with anything else. That's just a disease I have received hereditarily."

"Simon, keep the questions to the movie," says a minder. "We don't want to talk about stuff."

"OK, I'm sorry," Tyson replies meekly, but then goes on to ignore him. "Listen, I'll talk about anything. I'm not ashamed of who I am. I understand I've got to be sold in a certain way, but I'm not ashamed of anything I've done in my life. After all, my journey, I know who I am. And I'm cool with who I am." For a second, he believes it.

But there are so many incidents in his life that he knows he can't begin to justify. On his release from prison in 1995, by now a Muslim with the name Malik Abdul Aziz and his body tattooed with images of Mao and Che Guevara, he launched the following tirade on a reporter who suggested he should be in a straitjacket. "I'll put your mother in a straitjacket, you punk-ass white boy. Come here and tell me that, and I'll fuck you in your ass, you punk white boy, you faggot... I'll eat your asshole alive, you bitch... You scared, coward, you're not man enough to fuck with me, you can't last two minutes in my world, bitch. Look at you, scared now, you ho. Scared like a little white pussy, scared of the real man. I'll fuck you till you love me, faggot." It didn't help his protestations of innocence.

After being headbutted by Evander Holyfield in 1997, he bit off part of the boxer's ear in the rematch seven months later and spat it out into the ring. Tyson was fined a maximum $3m and had his licence revoked. But boxing needed Tyson as much as he needed boxing, and a year later he was given a final opportunity. By now, though, he had lost the pace, accuracy and hunger. His sense of fair play had also gone for a burton. In 1999, he was accused of trying to break Frans Botha's arms in the ring. That same year he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment after assaulting two motorists following a traffic accident. On his release, he fought Orlin Norris and knocked him down after the bell rang. A win in 2000 over Andrzej Golota was overturned when Tyson tested positive for marijuana. His second wife, Monica Turner, the mother of two of his six children, divorced him in 2003. In his final fight, against the journeyman boxer Kevin McBride, he was a pitiful figure - slumped in a corner, legs splayed, unable or unwilling to stand himself up. Straight afterwards, Tyson announced his retirement. "I don't have the stomach for this kind of thing any more. I don't have that ferocity. I'm not an animal any more. I'm not going to disrespect the sport by losing to this calibre of fighter."

When he talks about biting Holyfield's ear or beating up boxing promoter Don King in public, for example, he simply says he was insane.

Does he think the boxing led to that type of instability? "Boxing is nothing to do with madness, it's all about control and discipline. Madness has nothing to do with it. It's what you do with the discipline, it can drive you mad, but it depends on the individual, whether they allow it to drive them mad."

Today, Tyson lives by himself in a modest house in Las Vegas. A friend, Darryl, spends a lot of time with him and manages his affairs. His great hope for the future is that he catches up with his children, and becomes the kind of father he should have been years ago. "They never had a chance to hang out with me, like all these freeloaders did. 'Dad's an awesome guy, he's a fun guy, he's a goofy guy, he likes to make people laugh, he likes to buy gifts for people and stuff' - I never experienced that with them. I've worked hard all my life to give them a great life, and I never enjoy it with them. They get to go on all these great trips to Europe, and I should be with them."

Are they seeing a different you, the goofy guy? "I don't know - they tell me that I'm funny. Ha! I don't know. I'm just glad my 11-year-old kid doesn't have to live the life I did when I was 11."

Does he box? "Oh man, no, this guy's an erudite, he's not a boxer."

And if he got into boxing? "Let him go. There's nothing more humbling. Trust me, he'd become humble." Why? "Because it's for uniquely special individuals to do that stuff. You know, you got to strike a guy, you've got to attack the guy, but you're not mad at them, they didn't say nothing bad about your mother, then you're going and your objective is to dismantle him."

Looking back, he says, perhaps the biggest problem was achieving so much so young. "If you want to see a tragedy, just take a kid who's 19, 20 years old - some kid from the hood who's got some talent - and give them $50m. I didn't know what to do. By society's standards, you reach that level and people bow down to you. I never understood that."

Is there a danger in people treating you as a god? "No, there's a danger in that I might believe it. It's not dangerous that they say it. It depends what side of the bed I wake up on, I might believe it, then it's all downhill again, and I'm in for a big crash."

Moments later he's über-man, telling me just what made him a winner: he turned apparent disadvantages (such as his height: 5ft 11in, short for a heavyweight) into pluses (surprising challengers with his upward punching); he won fights before they started by staring out the opposition. "When you look at me, you think I'm a tough guy. I'm not a tough guy. I'm a smart guy. This is not a tough guy's sport. A tough guy gets hurt in this sport. This is a thinking man's sport. You see what happens to the tough guys; you see how they start talking, you see how they start looking. Later, they become more decrepit. This is serious stuff at the highest level. This is a brutal game."

What does he think D'Amato would say to him if he saw the film and knew how his life had panned out? " 'You swear too much!' " He grins. "I never swore in front of him."

A while later, Toback calls me over, and asks me to look at the film's trailer. It's early evening, the sun is setting and the sky is a salmon pink. The trailer is book-ended by Tyson quoting Oscar Wilde's The Ballad Of Reading Gaol:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves

By each let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

Tyson says it was Toback's idea to read the poem, but he is a fan of Wilde's. "Do you know who his lover was?" he asks. "The Marquess of Queensberry's son, and you know it was the Marquess of Queensberry who invented the rules of boxing. How strange is that?"

He seems exhausted. By the afternoon, by his life, by his mind, by everything. He says he thinks it is unlikely he will ever have anything to do with boxing again. I ask why he hasn't considered television commentary. He thinks some time before answering. "I am ashamed of so many of the things I have done." In boxing or in his private life? "In the ring, too."

It's not so long ago that he told me there was nothing he was ashamed of. He smiles, and points to his head, suggesting that the last thing you should ever expect from Mike Tyson is consistency. "There's a committee going on up there." And he laughs, a little desperately. "A committee! A committee going on up there! Oh God help me!"

#mike tyson #celebrity #repentance #penance #sinners #eccentrics #The Greats #personality #shame #authenticity #athletes

[courtneytincher]

Military History You Might Want to Forget: 5 Worst U.S. Generals Ever

The early days of the 2003 Iraq War were bound to be a graveyard for military and political reputations, given the misperceptions and misjudgments behind America's ill-fated adventure in regime change and nation-building. But Franks, who commanded the invasion, made a bad situation worse.It would be nice if all American generals were great. How might Vietnam or Iraq have turned out if a George Washington, a Ulysses Grant or a George Patton had been in command?(This first appeared several years ago.)Alas, call it the laws of probability or just cosmic karma, but every nation produces bad generals as well as good ones—and America is no exception.What is a bad general? Defining that is like defining a bad meal. Some would say that failure on the battlefield warrants censure. Others would say that it is not victory, but success in fulfilling a mission that counts.But for whatever reason, some American commanders have lost the battle for history. Here are five of America's worst generals:Horatio Gates:Great generals have great talents, and usually egos and ambitions to match. Yet backstabbing your commander-in-chief in the middle of a war is taking ambition a little too far. A former British officer, Gates rose to fame as Continental Army commander during the momentous American defeat of a British army at Saratoga in 1777.Many historians credit Benedict Arnold and others with being the real victors of Saratoga. Gates thought otherwise, and fancied himself a better commander than George Washington. It's not the first time that someone thought he was smarter than his boss. But Gates could have doomed the American Revolution.(You May Also Like: The Five Best U.S. Fighter Aircraft of All Time)During the darkest days of the rebellion, when Washington's army had been kicked out of New York and King George's star seemed ascendant, the "Conway cabal" of disgruntled officers and politicians unsuccessfully schemed to out Washington and appoint Gates.How well that would have worked can be seen when Gates was sent to command American troops in the South. His poor tactical decisions resulted in his army being routed by a smaller force of Redcoats and Loyalists at the Battle of Camden in South Carolina in 1780.Washington also suffered his share of defeats. But his persistence and inspiration kept the Continental Army in the field through the worst of times, which is why his face is on the one-dollar bill. If Gates had been in command, we might be paying for our groceries with shillings and pence.(You May Also Like: The Five Best Generals in U.S. History)George McClellan:The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside.But the worst of all was McClellan, the so-called "Young Napoleon" from whom Lincoln and the Union expected great things. McClellan was a superb organizer, a West Point-trained engineer who did much to build the Union army almost from scratch.But he was overly cautious by nature. Despite Lincoln's pleas for aggressive action, his Army of the Potomac moved hesitantly, its commander McClellan convinced himself that the Southern armies vastly outnumbered him when logic should have told him that it was the North that enjoyed an abundance of resources.Men and material the Union could provide its armies. But there was something that not even the factories of New York and Chicago could produce, and that was time. As Lincoln well knew, the only way the Union could lose the war was if the North eventually grew tired and agreed to allow the South to secede. Haste risked casualties and defeats at the hands of a formidable opponent like Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. The alternative was to split the United States asunder.Ulysses S. Grant, who replaced McClellan, understood this. He gritted his teeth and wore down the Confederacy with incessant attacks until the South could take no more. McClellan was a proto-Douglas MacArthur who bad-mouthed his president and commander-in-chief. Grant left politics to the politicians and did what had to be done.Had Lincoln retained McClellan in command of the Union armies, many former Americans might still be whistling "Dixie."Lloyd Fredendall:When the Germans shattered his troops and his reputation at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in early 1943, Fredendall was only a major general and a corps commander. If there was a saving grace for America, it was that he wasn't commanding an army.Not that Fredendall didn't have real issues that would have tried any commander. Woefully inexperienced U.S. soldiers found themselves against Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps veterans. The Americans lacked sufficient troops, supplies and air cover (when was the last time an American general had to fight a battle while being pounded by enemy bombers?)Yet Fredendall's solution was to order an Army engineer company to build a giant bunker a hundred miles from the front lines. He also issued orders to his troops in a personal code that no one else understood, such as this gem of command clarity:> Move your command, i. e., the walking boys, pop guns, Baker's outfit and the outfit which is the reverse of Baker's outfit and the big fellows to M, which is due north of where you are now, as soon as possible. Have your boss report to the French gentleman whose name begins with J at a place which begins with D which is five grid squares to the left of M.The Kasserine disaster had repercussions. It was a humiliating baptism of fire for the U.S. Army in Europe, and more important, caused British commanders to dismiss their Yank allies as amateur soldiers for the rest of the war.Douglas MacArthur:Listing MacArthur as one of America's worst generals will be controversial. But then MacArthur thrived on controversy like bread thrives on yeast.He was indeed a capable warrior, as shown by the South Pacific campaign and the Inchon landing in Korea. But he also displayed remarkably bad judgment, as when he was commander in the Philippines in 1941. Informed that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and were certain to attack the Philippines next, MacArthur failed to disperse his aircraft—the only force that could disrupt the Japanese offensive in the absence of the American fleet—and to attack Japanese airfields before the enemy wiped out his air force.But his crowning achievement was bad generalship in Korea. Yes, the landing at Inchon unhinged the initial North Korean offensive. But the rash advance into North Korea was a blunder of strategic proportions. Advancing in dispersed columns across the northern half of the peninsula was an invitation to be destroyed piecemeal. Advancing to the North Korean border with China also was a red flag for Mao-Tse Tung, who feared that American troops on his border were a prelude to U.S. invasion.(You May Also Like: 5 Israeli Weapons of War ISIS Should Fear)Perhaps Mao would have intervened anyway. But MacArthur's strategy certainly helped unleash 300,000 Chinese "volunteers" who inflicted significant casualties on United Nations forces. Instead of holding a natural defense line around Pyongyang, which would have given the United Nations control of most of the peninsula, the UN troops retreated all the way back into South Korea in a humiliating reverse for U.S. power after the crushing victory of World War II.Finally, there was MacArthur's insubordination. He called for bombing China, as if liberating Korea was worth risking 550 million Chinese and possibly war with Russia as well. Whatever its military wisdom or lack thereof, it was a decision that should not have been made by generals under the American political system. When he made public his disagreements with President Truman, Truman rightfully fired him.Tommy Franks:The early days of the 2003 Iraq War were bound to be a graveyard for military and political reputations, given the misperceptions and misjudgments behind America's ill-fated adventure in regime change and nation-building. But Franks, who commanded the invasion, made a bad situation worse.Critics say that Franks and senior officials, such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, concocted an invasion plan that used too few troops. It wouldn't take a large force to slice through the ramshackle Iraqi army and topple Saddam Hussein, but securing a country the size of Iraq required a larger force.And what then? There appeared to be little serious planning for what would happen the day after Saddam was gone. Like it or not, the U.S. military would become the governing authority. If it couldn't or wouldn't govern the country, who would? America, the Middle East and the rest of the world are still reaping the consequences of those omissions.Finally, when it comes to bad generals, let us remember Truman's immortal words about firing MacArthur:> I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

The early days of the 2003 Iraq War were bound to be a graveyard for military and political reputations, given the misperceptions and misjudgments behind America's ill-fated adventure in regime change and nation-building. But Franks, who commanded the invasion, made a bad situation worse.It would be nice if all American generals were great. How might Vietnam or Iraq have turned out if a George Washington, a Ulysses Grant or a George Patton had been in command?(This first appeared several years ago.)Alas, call it the laws of probability or just cosmic karma, but every nation produces bad generals as well as good ones—and America is no exception.What is a bad general? Defining that is like defining a bad meal. Some would say that failure on the battlefield warrants censure. Others would say that it is not victory, but success in fulfilling a mission that counts.But for whatever reason, some American commanders have lost the battle for history. Here are five of America's worst generals:Horatio Gates:Great generals have great talents, and usually egos and ambitions to match. Yet backstabbing your commander-in-chief in the middle of a war is taking ambition a little too far. A former British officer, Gates rose to fame as Continental Army commander during the momentous American defeat of a British army at Saratoga in 1777.Many historians credit Benedict Arnold and others with being the real victors of Saratoga. Gates thought otherwise, and fancied himself a better commander than George Washington. It's not the first time that someone thought he was smarter than his boss. But Gates could have doomed the American Revolution.(You May Also Like: The Five Best U.S. Fighter Aircraft of All Time)During the darkest days of the rebellion, when Washington's army had been kicked out of New York and King George's star seemed ascendant, the "Conway cabal" of disgruntled officers and politicians unsuccessfully schemed to out Washington and appoint Gates.How well that would have worked can be seen when Gates was sent to command American troops in the South. His poor tactical decisions resulted in his army being routed by a smaller force of Redcoats and Loyalists at the Battle of Camden in South Carolina in 1780.Washington also suffered his share of defeats. But his persistence and inspiration kept the Continental Army in the field through the worst of times, which is why his face is on the one-dollar bill. If Gates had been in command, we might be paying for our groceries with shillings and pence.(You May Also Like: The Five Best Generals in U.S. History)George McClellan:The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside.But the worst of all was McClellan, the so-called "Young Napoleon" from whom Lincoln and the Union expected great things. McClellan was a superb organizer, a West Point-trained engineer who did much to build the Union army almost from scratch.But he was overly cautious by nature. Despite Lincoln's pleas for aggressive action, his Army of the Potomac moved hesitantly, its commander McClellan convinced himself that the Southern armies vastly outnumbered him when logic should have told him that it was the North that enjoyed an abundance of resources.Men and material the Union could provide its armies. But there was something that not even the factories of New York and Chicago could produce, and that was time. As Lincoln well knew, the only way the Union could lose the war was if the North eventually grew tired and agreed to allow the South to secede. Haste risked casualties and defeats at the hands of a formidable opponent like Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. The alternative was to split the United States asunder.Ulysses S. Grant, who replaced McClellan, understood this. He gritted his teeth and wore down the Confederacy with incessant attacks until the South could take no more. McClellan was a proto-Douglas MacArthur who bad-mouthed his president and commander-in-chief. Grant left politics to the politicians and did what had to be done.Had Lincoln retained McClellan in command of the Union armies, many former Americans might still be whistling "Dixie."Lloyd Fredendall:When the Germans shattered his troops and his reputation at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in early 1943, Fredendall was only a major general and a corps commander. If there was a saving grace for America, it was that he wasn't commanding an army.Not that Fredendall didn't have real issues that would have tried any commander. Woefully inexperienced U.S. soldiers found themselves against Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps veterans. The Americans lacked sufficient troops, supplies and air cover (when was the last time an American general had to fight a battle while being pounded by enemy bombers?)Yet Fredendall's solution was to order an Army engineer company to build a giant bunker a hundred miles from the front lines. He also issued orders to his troops in a personal code that no one else understood, such as this gem of command clarity:> Move your command, i. e., the walking boys, pop guns, Baker's outfit and the outfit which is the reverse of Baker's outfit and the big fellows to M, which is due north of where you are now, as soon as possible. Have your boss report to the French gentleman whose name begins with J at a place which begins with D which is five grid squares to the left of M.The Kasserine disaster had repercussions. It was a humiliating baptism of fire for the U.S. Army in Europe, and more important, caused British commanders to dismiss their Yank allies as amateur soldiers for the rest of the war.Douglas MacArthur:Listing MacArthur as one of America's worst generals will be controversial. But then MacArthur thrived on controversy like bread thrives on yeast.He was indeed a capable warrior, as shown by the South Pacific campaign and the Inchon landing in Korea. But he also displayed remarkably bad judgment, as when he was commander in the Philippines in 1941. Informed that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and were certain to attack the Philippines next, MacArthur failed to disperse his aircraft—the only force that could disrupt the Japanese offensive in the absence of the American fleet—and to attack Japanese airfields before the enemy wiped out his air force.But his crowning achievement was bad generalship in Korea. Yes, the landing at Inchon unhinged the initial North Korean offensive. But the rash advance into North Korea was a blunder of strategic proportions. Advancing in dispersed columns across the northern half of the peninsula was an invitation to be destroyed piecemeal. Advancing to the North Korean border with China also was a red flag for Mao-Tse Tung, who feared that American troops on his border were a prelude to U.S. invasion.(You May Also Like: 5 Israeli Weapons of War ISIS Should Fear)Perhaps Mao would have intervened anyway. But MacArthur's strategy certainly helped unleash 300,000 Chinese "volunteers" who inflicted significant casualties on United Nations forces. Instead of holding a natural defense line around Pyongyang, which would have given the United Nations control of most of the peninsula, the UN troops retreated all the way back into South Korea in a humiliating reverse for U.S. power after the crushing victory of World War II.Finally, there was MacArthur's insubordination. He called for bombing China, as if liberating Korea was worth risking 550 million Chinese and possibly war with Russia as well. Whatever its military wisdom or lack thereof, it was a decision that should not have been made by generals under the American political system. When he made public his disagreements with President Truman, Truman rightfully fired him.Tommy Franks:The early days of the 2003 Iraq War were bound to be a graveyard for military and political reputations, given the misperceptions and misjudgments behind America's ill-fated adventure in regime change and nation-building. But Franks, who commanded the invasion, made a bad situation worse.Critics say that Franks and senior officials, such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, concocted an invasion plan that used too few troops. It wouldn't take a large force to slice through the ramshackle Iraqi army and topple Saddam Hussein, but securing a country the size of Iraq required a larger force.And what then? There appeared to be little serious planning for what would happen the day after Saddam was gone. Like it or not, the U.S. military would become the governing authority. If it couldn't or wouldn't govern the country, who would? America, the Middle East and the rest of the world are still reaping the consequences of those omissions.Finally, when it comes to bad generals, let us remember Truman's immortal words about firing MacArthur:> I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.

August 26, 2019 at 12:53PM via IFTTT

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This week on Dear Television:

Let Aaron Bady and Sarah Mesle sing you a song of love and war, friendship and betrayal, ICE and FIRE. In association with Home Box Office Productions, we bring you a saga like no other. Travel with us to the mysterious, ancient land of Westeros, where nothing is as it seems. THRILL as beloved characters disappear before your eyes! CHILL as your worst nightmares come true! TWEET whenever you see continuity errors! TEXT YOUR FRIENDS when these dudes yet again blow it with their garbage gender politics! Unsullied beware: many of the deepest secrets of the Seven Kingdoms and the dramatic conclusion of this song of ice and fire will be revealed in these essays. As the world turns, we know the bleakness of winter, the promise of spring, the fullness of summer and the harvest of autumn — the game of thrones is complete.

¤

Previous episode: Season Eight, Episode Five, “The Bells”

¤

But Why, Though?

by Aaron Bady

Dear Television,

This show long ago backed itself into a corner in terms of how it could end, and, last night, smashed its face in the corner, smiling. Someone had selected Jon kills Daenerys, the dragon melts the Iron Throne, and Bran is the new king on their bingo card: congratulations, you won the prize!

If you strain, there’s an underlying logic to it: even enlightened despots are bad, we’ve decided, and democracy is hilarious, obviously, but since all the real power-brokers are dead, the remaining half-assed aristocracy has decided to shift power a rung down the ladder (with a place-holder semi-king), which gets something like the status quo ante back, though it’s unclear why this outcome would be better or worse than a variety of alternatives. It requires a very generous reading even to deduce that that is what’s happening. But it could have gone a half-dozen ways just as easily, and nothing about how it actually went last night felt more surprising, inevitable, or satisfying than the multitude of scenarios that people had dreamed up. Ideally, a good climax would have taken you by surprise in the moment, but as it sank in, you would have realized how it had been earned by what came before; and after the show was over, you’d have been satisfied by what it all added up to and meant.

The show has pulled that off before: Ned Stark’s death and the Red Wedding (and Cersei’s big victory) are obvious examples of successful climactic moments. The show’s ruthlessness was shocking, but made sense as you thought it through. Those surprises reinforced an essentially tragic tone and message: the Game of Thrones had winners and die-ers, and, since valar morghulis (all must die), even winning just buys you time until you die and someone else can win. Power is treachery, and treacherous; the Game of Thrones is The Wheel, endlessly turning (or the astrolabe from the title sequence) with its heartbeat the accompanying theme music, the show’s true MVP, a song that never ends and never changes.

I hoped the show had another shock like that in its back pocket. The more fool I; Jon killing Daenerys was, to put it bluntly, not it. There was no element of surprise since other major characters were begging him to do it, and neither actor did anything interesting in the scene except look as surprised by what was happening as we were supposed to be. It also wasn’t earned, and didn’t feel like it meant anything: if Daenerys’ tragic flaw was the self-justifying cycle of “killing the bad guys,” why was killing her the solution to her turning bad? Why didn’t Jon Snow seize the throne afterwards (wasn’t everyone’s argument that he would be the best King?) How did he get imprisoned? Did he confess? Grey Worm’s actions make no sense; he had literally been executing soldier nobodies who had surrendered, just because, but the guy who killed his queen he just tosses in jail? And then accepts the jurisdiction of A Random Collection of I Guess These Are The High Lords and Ladies of Westeros Now when they free him? Offscreen? Why does Jon Snow go to the Actually There Isn’t A Night’s Watch Anymore So I Guess We’ll Just Roam North Epically? I mean, Tyrion can just walk out of prison and become the Hand of a king who he also just happened to appoint? Why did Grey Worm accept any of it? Why didn’t all the lords and ladies follow Sansa’s example and declare independence? Why is Bronn in charge of four castles or whatever, just because TYRION promised it to him?

WHY DID ANY OF IT, in short. What are the peasants up to? Which gods ordained all of this?

(The outcome was so beyond baffling that I found myself fixating on little things. When the Iron Throne was melted by dragon-fire, it should have been grand and dramatic and terrible, and instead it was just funny; did the dragon burn the chair-made-of-swords because he saw his mother murdered by a sword and blamed the chair? Can we really blame him for jumping to that conclusion, given what nonsense the rest of the plotting was?)

For me, the best example of the sort of thing that I’d foolishly hoped the show might do, last night, was the season six revelation of Hodor’s name. Not only shocking, earned, and tragic, but narratively productive, opening up a new dimension in the show’s temporal fabric. Through the head-fuck of Bran accidentally changing the past (or, rather, what the past had already always been), the show suggested a lot of new narrative possibilities, most interestingly, that Bran was himself both the Night King and “Bran the Builder,” my personal favorite missed opportunity: while mortals fought their petty wars, the cosmic backdrop could have turned out to be one guy’s transhistorical war with himself, building walls to stop himself from killing himself, and ruining so many lives by accident along the way.

Instead, it was all downhill once the show killed off the Night King. Without him, Bran’s plot didn’t make much sense and it seemed clear that the showrunners neither knew what to do with him — since he was functionally omniscient and no one ever asked him any questions — nor would there be much for him to do. So, of course, they made him King, and made his kingship the endpoint of whatever crazy hand has been guiding the plot. Was it the Lord of Light? The old gods? The new? The many-faced God? The show’s entire religious structure seems to have had a hand in saving him to become King, but what Tyrion and the rest of them seem to value about him is that he’s an ego-less cipher. Going a step beyond Douglas Adams, the only person who can be trusted with power is someone who not only doesn’t want it, but who isn’t even a person. And yet, who made Bran king? As ludicrous as Tyrion’s speech is — and as ridiculous as it is that Grey Worm and the lords and ladies accept it — an awful lot of deus ex machina had to happen to make this outcome possible. “Why do you think I came all this way?” is a goddamned good question, Bran, and we’d like some goddamned answers.

We got no answers. If we aren’t satisfied — and I’m not — one reason is that the show wanted to stick the landing and there just wasn’t a landing to stick. It shouldn’t have tried. They wanted to have it both ways, an ending that would be “bittersweet,” the showrunners said, probably imagining something like putting sugar in chocolate or coffee. Instead, it was like pouring lemonade into beer; yes, there was some bitterness, and yes there was some sweet, but there was also just so much that it ultimately tastes horrible.

At its best, this show could have it both ways on a lot of things because there was always more to the story. The weird mix of the Hollywood sensibilities of the showrunners — who loved them some Good Princes and Evil Zombie Hordes — and the (somewhat) more interesting genre-bending agenda of the anti-Tolkienesque author could work because the resolution of that weird emulsion was deferred, still working itself out. There was so much yet to be revealed and explained, and the game kept going on, that the presumed possibility of an ending that would work was in the back of your mind the whole time. And so the show got to live firmly within the genre’s expectations — princes, prophecies, apocalyptic doom, and heroism — while also subverting them with a grounded cynicism about politics. All the contradictions became riddles to be explained, a map filled with empty spaces; red herrings could be not-yet-revealeds and plot holes were wait-and-sees. Any character abuse could seem to be in service of some larger narrative that wasn’t yet completed, and thus, couldn’t yet be judged a failure. As long as the prince that was promised never came, we could keep waiting; the moment he did, and the show reached its conclusion, we could suddenly look at what it had done and judge it, and for the first time, the emptiness of the show was unavoidable. Like a shark, the moment it stopped moving forward, it started to die.

Obviously, the show and the showrunners don’t understand this. They went down a list, giving endings to each story which seemed to them to be plausible and appropriate, which they superficially all are. But the reason they don’t add up to anything larger is that there is nothing larger in the show: democracy is laughable because no one else exists in this show except characters with names. Most of them are now dead, but the few who remain — including long-lost second-stringers like Robin Arryn and Uncle Edmure — showed up at the end to collectively Fortinbras our way back to whatever passes for normalcy in this world. The totalitarian threat is dead — and the democratic one is inconceivable — so we’re back to the same old small council chairs.

And this, in a way, is the real problem: even after the ending, the world has to go on, and when it does, it undoes the finality of everything that happened in the finale. The story continues (even as it ends) because at some point in the future, it won’t anymore: Bran will die without children, and a new political order will be born. But this new way to defer the show’s resolution — picking a non-King for the Iron Throne that doesn’t exist anymore, the solution to hereditary kingship because he’ll be the last of his name — only works to the extent that we’re not going to see it happen. And so we don’t: the show ends, so that it can continue.

Yours, walking somewhere, forever,

Aaron

The post Game of Thrones, “The Iron Throne” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://bit.ly/2HFpGxW

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Krasner: “We’d Like to Get to the Truth” About Cop at Center of Meek Mill Case

City

In a new interview, Philly’s DA says that his office hasn’t “rendered a judgment” on whether retired narcotics officer Reggie Graham is actually guilty of corruption allegations that were cited in Mill’s bid for a new trial.

Left: Meek Mill (Matt Rourke/AP). Right: DA Larry Krasner.

The Year of Meek Mill was packed with drama, featuring a rapper wronged by the criminal justice system and a gripping tale of dirty cops faking evidence, beating suspects, and lying on the witness stand. But the cop at the center of the drama, Reginald Graham — a retired narcotics officer accused of corruption — might yet emerge with his reputation intact.

“I never lied, I never stole, and I never said I did,” said Graham last June, in his only interview on the subject thus far. That interview sparked an investigation and the uncovering of multiple documents suggesting Graham was the furthest thing from a corrupt cop: He was, instead, a whistleblower.

Today, even Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner declares himself unconvinced that Graham was a bad guy. “We’ve never charged Reggie Graham with a criminal act,” says Krasner, in a new interview with Philadelphia magazine, “and we never rendered a judgment that he was unquestionably unethical.”

The situation surrounding Graham, says Krasner, is murky, and “we’d like to get to the truth.”

The DA’s words add yet another twist to a story loaded with fateful turns. In November 2017, Mill was sentenced to jail by Judge Genece E. Brinkley for technical violations of his probation, sparking a massive public outcry for justice reform. Come April 2018, however, he was free on bail after private investigators working on his behalf uncovered damaging information about Graham, the lead officer who arrested Mill on gun- and drug-related charges.

Krasner’s predecessor in the DA’s office, they discovered, had placed Graham on a list of witnesses who could not be called to testify without the permission of a supervisor — his credibility undermined by earlier accusations, in 2013, of theft and lying to federal investigators. Though Graham was never charged with a crime, the Philadelphia Police Department of Internal Affairs hit him with disciplinary charges of theft and conduct unbecoming an officer, and a police board found him guilty. Graham had even supposedly admitted he’d lied, making it easy for heavyweight media outlets like Rolling Stone and Dateline NBC to depict him in villainous terms. Still-new DA Larry Krasner had even seemed to sign off on Graham’s guilt, supporting Meek Mill’s bid for a new trial — and it is this appearance against which Krasner is offering some pushback now.

“Our position was that Mill deserved a new trial based on the information about Graham,” says Krasner. “As a legal issue, this information should have been passed on to the defense by the prior administration, but … it was not a judgment of Graham.”

As victories go, this one is highly qualified. Krasner is not exonerating the ex-cop at this point. But it is another big step toward understanding the cop’s story — and the role he might actually play in the narrative of the Philadelphia police narcotics department, which public defender Brad Bridge describes, artfully and accurately, as offering up some “new scandal every five years … so regularly you can set your watch by them.”

The chief reason for this slow shift in Graham’s fortunes is that the paperwork appears to back him up. Law enforcement documents, including interview notes discovered from FBI and Internal Affairs investigations, reveal that Graham never did admit to lying or stealing. In fact, he’d acted as a whistleblower, even a would-be hero, who provided information to various members of law enforcement about corruption in his squad and faced retribution as a result.

That version of events is further bolstered by retired federal prosecutor Curtis Douglas, who said Graham had told him of corruption in his squad all the way back in 2003; and by Mill’s judge, Brinkley, who wrote last summer in a legal opinion denying the rapper’s bid for a new trial that the evidence points to Graham’s “truthfulness in dealing with a difficult atmosphere of corruption in his immediate work environment.”

In that June filing, Brinkley also went after the DA’s office — hard. The DA’s office agreed with Mill’s attorneys that the rapper deserved a new trial, she concluded, without conducting any investigation of the allegations against Graham. She even quoted her own exchange with assistant district attorney Liam Riley, who admitted to her that the commonwealth hadn’t reached out to any sources who might credibly speak to Graham’s guilt or innocence. These omissions included Douglas, the federal prosecutor, and police officer Alphonso Jett, who’d given a statement to federal investigators that exonerated Graham of the chief allegation of theft he faced. For a new DA whose entire career and political platform rested on the belief that his predecessors and the police require reform, his sudden willingness to accept the findings of these offices without further scrutiny appears particularly off-brand.

Today, Krasner declines to talk about “any investigation we might have done” since, but it isn’t hard to find a key political supporter of his who also believes in Graham. Rochelle Bilal is president of the Guardian Civic League, which represents 2,000 police officers and endorsed Krasner last June in his run for district attorney. Bilal says she spoke to Krasner directly about Graham. “When a cop has gone bad,” she told me in an interview this summer, “other police hear about them for years before anything happens to them, before they get arrested or get in trouble,” she says. “And in my position, I hear these things. But I had never heard a bad word about Reggie Graham, so these accusations about him never really made any sense to me.”

Krasner acknowledges that the Philadelphia Police Department sometimes punishes whistleblowers. That history, in fact, runs deep: Norman A. Carter Jr., Philadelphia police sergeant Tyrone Cook, and, pointedly, Guardian Civic League members in the narcotics department have all come forward with stories of retaliation for their attempts to address corruption in the department.

Now it appears to be Graham’s turn — and his accusers do boast dubious records. Police officer Jerold Gibson, who offered an affidavit contradicting Graham’s account of Mill’s arrest, was himself arrested, jailed and dismissed from the force over a theft charge. And Jeffrey Walker, Graham’s central accuser, who claimed Graham engaged in theft, has admitted to engaging in systemic and long-term corruption in the narcotics department. In fact, it was Walker himself, among other cops, that Graham had been blowing the whistle about years earlier. And so Krasner appears wise to adopt this careful public stance.

“I think it is obvious that there are people in the past who’ve said, ‘Hey, look at these guys, they’re corrupt’ to set up a means of defending himself later in case the shit ever hit the fan,” he says. But he also allows that the affidavits filed about Graham by Gibson and Walker are “of uncertain truthfulness.”

Where this leaves us is still fixed in story’s middle and not its end.

Mill remains free on bail while his attempts to win a new trial wind through the courts. He appears to have warmed to his role as a spokesman for criminal justice reform quite nicely, turning up every month or so with a new single or statement designed to get America woke. But the fact is, if his bid for a new trial fails, he could yet be sent back to prison.

Graham, on the other hand, has been hit with two federal suits in the wake of his public downfall, both curiously absent of detail. “I had a hard time,” says Carlton Johnson, the attorney defending Graham against the suits, “discerning what, if anything, my client is accused of doing.”

The suits look, to Johnson, like a “transparent money grab,” designed to eke some settlement out of the city. The result is that Graham, though beaten up for months in the media, appears to be notching some small but meaningful wins. And as the months pass, he looms as a potentially big figure in the Philadelphia police department — a whistleblower who might yet get brought into court to tell his story. And if that ever happens, Larry Krasner would like to hear him out. “We’d love to talk,” says Krasner, “… if he or his attorney ever wants to get in touch.”

On its face, that sounds good. But there are people they could contact on their own, including a former narcotics supervisor who worked with Graham and Walker.

“There were just none of the red flags with Reggie that there were with Walker” and other corrupt cops, the former supervisor says.

Corrupt narcotics cops brought far more cases and at a hyper-fast pace, suggesting to this supervisor, who requested anonymity because interviews must be cleared with the department, that they were “just making stuff up … because that doesn’t take any time.”

Graham, by contrast, brought fewer cases because he was methodical and actually taking the time to gather real information “on real cases.”

Further, corrupt cops often use the same confidential informants to an extreme degree, but Graham’s roster of informants didn’t appear, Zelig-like, in case after case. And finally, he never faced a high volume of civilian complaints. “I do take a high number of complaints as a red flag,” says this former supervisor.

There’s more, too, but it all points in the same direction: “When his name emerged,” says the supervisor, “everyone who worked with him was just stunned because these kinds of allegations don’t come out of the blue. But we had never heard a bad word when it came to Reggie.”

Source: https://www.phillymag.com/news/2018/12/20/krasner-meek-mill-reggie-graham/

[rolandfontana]

‘Kindness of Strangers’ a Last Resort for the Rural Mentally Ill

Even though more services are becoming available to divert the seriously mentally ill from the justice system, rural communities are struggling to find the resources they need to bring those services to the people who need them.

Transportation, for instance, can make the difference between success or failure.

“We have no public transportation here,” said Pamela Hopkins, a Fremont, Neb., lawyer who is running for Dodge County Attorney. “Many of these people are unable to drive, for one reason or another, whether it’s because they use alcohol as a substitute for their treatment and they lost their licenses because of that, or they’re too poor to have a car.

“They’ve got to depend on the kindness of strangers.”

Without ready access to counseling or treatment often located far from their homes, defendants might otherwise find it hard to prove to judges that they are serious about addressing their problems.

Nebraska, like many states with large rural populations, is at the sharp end of the challenges of dealing with mentally troubled individuals. Most of the state is experiencing a shortage in mental health and psychiatric providers, according to the state’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office of Rural Health.

Linda Witmuss, deputy director of the DHHS Division of Behavioral Health, acknowledged that the system needs to undertake a “richer review of data” to better determine how the state’s finite resources should be allotted to meet the need.

But she argues that mental health reforms launched by the state in 2004 have led to more services at the community level.

“There’s always room for more services—don’t get me wrong there,” she said. “ (But) all of our rehab options (and) services, including expansion of medication management, came about as a result of that reform.”

In 2004, the Nebraska legislature passed Bill LB1083, which was designed to reduce the use of inpatient psychiatric services at the state’s three Regional Centers in Lincoln, Norfolk and Hastings, and invest more in outpatient and community-based services that could help those struggling with mental health in their own communities.

The reduction of inpatient beds was consistent with nationwide efforts to move away from institutionalizing the mentally ill and instead treat them in their communities. But those interviewed by the Tribune say that the infrastructure for community care was slow to materialize, and it still isn’t adequate for those who may be in need of more intensive care.

“There’s a lot of people who aren’t even leaving their homes to get the services that they need because they’re just homebound because of their anxiety,” said Hylean McGreevy, a licensed mental health practitioner and alcohol and drug counselor at Methodist Fremont Health’s Behavioral Outpatient Services.

“They’re not functioning well and they fall through the cracks.”

According to numbers provided to the Tribune by the Nebraska Jail Standards Board, of 1,225 individuals discharged from the Regional Centers in a four-year period following mental health reform, nearly 500, or around 40 percent, ended up in the county jail system at least once.

About six percent ended up in the prison system.

Collaboration Between Police and Health Providers

The challenges often begin at the street level, where rural law enforcement encounters individuals in desperate straits.

“There is a lot of stress on the community,” said Fremont Police Lt. Kurt Bottorff. “Times are hard for certain people — the stress builds up and that’s where some mental health breakdowns can take place.

“Their behavior ends up being a law violation and they’re sometimes jailed because of it, instead of addressing the core problem.”

Under a pilot program that started in July, the Fremont Police Department became one of only two departments in the state to hire a crisis response co-responder—a licensed mental health practitioner who works directly in the police department two days per week, responding to 911 calls alongside officers when she believes mental health is an issue in the complaint.

The pilot program, funded by a two-year grant from the Behavioral Health Support Foundation and operating in collaboration with Lutheran Family Services, aims to help keep those struggling with mental health issues out of the criminal justice system or avoid involuntary hospital stays, and to connect them with community resources.

Until recently, even the nearest medical services were a 40-minute drive away, in Omaha.

‘When people are released (from jail) into the community, and they don’t have the supports in place, it becomes a revolving door.’

Now, mental health practitioner Rachel Wesely can respond at her own discretion instantaneously, from within the department, and can follow up with callers after law enforcement leaves.

‘When people are released (from jail) into the community, and they don’t have the supports in place, it becomes a revolving door.’

But as concern mounts about a growing number of mentally ill individuals entering the criminal justice system and winding up in county jails, local stakeholders are taking a more focused approach to line those individuals up with more appropriate services.

“There’s a need for access to treatment in jails and when individuals are incarcerated, it’s not getting filled,” Wesely said. “Sometimes when people are released back out into the community (and) they don’t have the supports in place, it kind of becomes a revolving door.”

Medication and services can be expensive. Many lack insurance to help cover costs, though some programs offer sliding fee scales, which can adjust payments based on income and family size. In recent years, co-pays and deductibles have become more expensive even for those who have insurance, providers say.

Additionally, treating mental illness is more complicated than treating physical ailments, and ensuring compliance to treatment plans poses challenges, providers say. Psychiatric treatment requires significant “trial-and-error” to find the right medications, doses and strategies. That means lots of time spent taking medications that may ultimately need to be adjusted or changed, and that may carry unpleasant side effects that deter compliance.

It’s a process that requires patience and follow-up. And ensuring that patients comply with their treatment plans, remain stable or avoid self-medicating with illicit drugs and alcohol is a challenge that’s only exacerbated by barriers like access and affordability.

“Let’s just use a hypothetical,” said Dodge County Attorney Oliver Glass. “I can’t afford my medication, my medication makes me feel strange anyway, but I do know that when I self-medicate with street drugs or alcohol, that’s going to make me feel better at least.

“And that’s when, at least in my experience here, a lot of crimes are committed.”

Intensive Care Challenges

The Regional (Health) Center has some space available to the regions for more intensive care. It houses individuals who have been ordered by a court to receive a competency evaluation or restoration, as well as individuals committed by a local mental health board. The latter process only occurs if an individual in crisis refuses to be voluntarily committed and is put under an emergency protective custody.

But wait times to get into the often crowded Regional Center have gone up, officials say.

Witmuss of the DHSS said that the state is looking into the need to increase capacity, but cautioned that opening new beds alone wouldn’t solve the problem.

“We have a lot of complex cases,” she said. “When you can’t discharge folks, then you can’t admit folks, either.”

Mental health programs and services are funded through Medicaid as well as the state’s behavioral healthcare regional system. Providers contract with one of the six regions, which then funnels funding from DHHS’ Division of Behavioral Health, federal block grants and county-level matching funds.

But grants and pilot programs, like the Lutheran Family Services’ co-responder program, are only guaranteed for fixed periods of time. Agencies and organizations are always shifting their appropriations to keep up with where the demand is highest, which can lead to changes in program availability.

Meanwhile, at the local level, stakeholders are giving new focus to the issue. Providers are exploring more innovative solutions to staff shortages, such as Telehealth, which would allow for remote counseling or med management.

Last year, Behavioral Health Care Region 6, which encompasses Douglas, Dodge, Cass, Washington and Sarpy Counties, hired Vicki Maca as a full-time employee, dedicated to trying to keep mentally ill individuals out of the criminal justice system.

The national ‘Stepping Up Initiative’ works to help the mentally ill avoid jail.

That hiring decision was spurred by a nationwide initiative involving the National Association of County Officials, the American Psychiatric Association and the Council of State Governments known as the Stepping Up Initiative.

The initiative is a data-driven effort to reduce the number of people with serious mental illness booked into jail, shorten their average length of stay, increase the connection to care for those individuals in jail and reduce rates of recidivism.

While other behavioral health care regions are engaging with the Stepping Up Initiative, Region 6 is the only one that’s hired a full-time employee devoted to the topic.

But officials and providers remain optimistic. Rachel Wesely, the co-responder at the Fremont Police Department, law enforcement’s enthusiasm and willingness to cooperate with the co-responder model has led to success, she said.

Lt. Bottorff agrees.

“What I’m seeing now is reduced calls for service for the same problem,” he added. “There are times when we get so bombarded with the same situation—they didn’t have the tools to fix their problem.”

James Farrell, a staff writer for The Fremont Tribune, is a 2018 John Jay Rural Justice Reporting Fellow. This is an edited version of  Part Two of a series exploring the intersection of mental health and the criminal justice system in rural Nebraska. To see the full version, click here. Part One can be accessed here. Readers’ comments are welcome.

‘Kindness of Strangers’ a Last Resort for the Rural Mentally Ill syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[ultrasfcb-blog]

Champions League: With Cristiano Ronaldo gone from Real Madrid is it more open than usual?

Champions League: With Cristiano Ronaldo gone from Real Madrid is it more open than usual?

Champions League: With Cristiano Ronaldo gone from Real Madrid is it more open than usual?

Will one of these be celebrating in Madrid in May?

The 2019 Champions League final will be held in Madrid, a city which has dominated the competition in recent years.

Real Madrid have lifted the trophy in four of the past five seasons – and the past three in succession – while city rivals Atletico have appeared in two of the past five finals.

But, after a summer of sizeable change – at Real in particular, is this the year when their monopoly on Europe’s biggest club prize is ended?

We take a look at some of this year’s key Champions League talking points.

Is this the most open CL in years?

Real Madrid’s dominance of the Champions League in recent years reached unprecedented levels last season, when they became the first team to win the competition three times in a row.

No side had even managed back-to-back successes in the competition’s current format before Real achieved it in 2017.

That hat-trick of titles came under manager Zinedine Zidane, and with Cristiano Ronaldo as the central on-field character. Both have since departed the Bernabeu.

Football analysts Gracenote assess every team’s chances of winning the trophy using their Euro Club Index and, for the first time in three seasons, Real do not start the competition as the most likely winners.

In fact, Gracenote say the Spanish giants’ chances of winning have dropped from 30% at the start of 2017-18 to 19.4% this season.

The data also suggests there is now a larger pool of potential champions. Twelve months ago, there was a 69.4% chance of the winner being one of Real, Barcelona or Bayern Munich, whereas that figure now stands at 59.5%.

So who has the best chance of winning this season?

Are Real noticeably weaker without Ronaldo?

Spanish football expert Guillem Balague

The real question now Ronaldo has gone is whether Real have that ‘get out of jail free’ card that he brought to the table.

The individual quality is there, and manager Julen Lopetegui has added more control and more passing, which can easily mix with their usual and lethal counter-attacking game.

That mix of styles suits striker Karim Benzema – it will give him more responsibility, more touches of the ball, and more shots at goal. He has already scored five goals in as many appearances this season.

And Gareth Bale, who demanded a bigger role, is now able to fill in a lot of the spaces previously occupied by Ronaldo.

But the concern lingers: will they have that extra factor Ronaldo gave them? Although he did not score in last year’s semi-finals and final he has made the difference so many times over the years.

Ultimately, a player who was directly involved in exactly 50% of Real’s goals in the Champions League from 2009-10 to 2017-18 (105 goals, 27 assists) could well be missed when it really counts.

Did you know? Real are playing in the Champions League for the 22nd consecutive season, the longest run in the history of the competition. They have always made it out of the group stages, reaching the semi-finals in the past eight seasons.

With Ronaldo on board, is this the year Juve make that final step?

Italian football expert Mina Rzouki

Juventus have won Serie A seven years in a row, the domestic double for four consecutive seasons and reached the Champions League final twice in four years, only to be torn to shreds by the Spanish opponents they faced.

Their tactics always versatile, their squad united, the only problem manager Massimiliano Allegri pointed to was that Juve, unlike Barcelona and Real Madrid, did not boast a world-class difference-maker to win in Europe.

Cue the arrival of Ballon d’Or holder Ronaldo.

The Portuguese superstar scored his first two Serie A goals on Sunday, a clear sign he is coming to terms with the league’s suffocating style of defending. Paulo Dybala, Federico Bernardeschi and Douglas Costa will be tasked with providing assists and goals.

Juventus sold Mattia Caldara, the youngster set to be the next great Italian defender, to bring back 31-year-old Leonardo Bonucci, another move in the transfer market designed to bring success now rather than in years to come.

Juve are notoriously slow starters under Allegri and have yet to play with fluidity, but they already find themselves top of Serie A with a three-point advantage.

They are expected to challenge for the treble, and reaching the Champions League final is the least that is expected in Turin.

Did you know? Allegri is preparing for his 77th game as a manager in the Champions League, taking him third among Italian coaches with the most games managed in the competition behind Carlo Ancelotti (153) and Fabio Capello (78).

La Liga or Champions League – Messi sparks Barcelona debate

Spanish football expert Guillem Balague

Lionel Messi’s speech to Barcelona fans at the Nou Camp in the team presentation this summer made it quite clear they were hurt by their quarter-final loss to Roma last season, when a 4-1 first-leg win was followed by a 3-0 second-leg loss and a painful elimination. There is no doubt he wants to make a major impact this time around.

Former captain Carles Puyol also mentioned that perhaps Europe should be the main priority and an interesting debate started.

Defender Gerard Pique and others in the club responded by saying the league has to be the priority and, if you compete well in that, you have a better chance in the Champions League.

Either way, if Barcelona do not progress beyond the quarter-finals – the stage at which they have been knocked out in the past three seasons – it will be considered a failure.

The squad certainly needed to be improved and they have done that with Arturo Vidal, the Xavi-like Arthur, Malcom and Clement Lenglet.

Messi is happy with the strength and depth of the side, and manager Ernesto Valverde feels he has a team ready to compete on all fronts.

Did you know? Valverde has never progressed further than the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

Who are the most likely English challengers?

BBC chief football writer Phil McNulty

The Champions League is the ultimate goal for Manchester City – and, after failure at the quarter-final stage against Liverpool last season, that desire will be even more acute.

Blues manager Pep Guardiola knows what it takes to win this tournament, City’s players will have learned from their experiences and they have every reason to hope this can finally be their year.

Or could Liverpool be the first English team since Chelsea in 2012 to lift the trophy?

Jurgen Klopp’s side have a tough group alongside Paris St-Germain and Napoli, but if they make it into the last 16 their devastating attack can do maximum damage. Liverpool have the perfect style, not to mention the power of Anfield, to mount another serious challenge.

Jose Mourinho is another with experience of winning the Champions League and cannot be discounted with Manchester United. They will certainly reach the knockout stage, but it is a stretch to imagine them as potential winners.

Spurs showed their pedigree in outclassing eventual winners Real Madrid in the group stage last term, and five minutes of carelessness cost them against Juventus in the last 16.

They have the capacity to beat any team in the tournament on a given day, but once again they must be ranked as outsiders to win.

Did you know? Guardiola has reached the semi-finals in seven of his nine seasons as manager in the Champions League but hasn’t taken a team to the final since 2011.

A surprise package? Or a Buffon fairytale?

Gianluigi Buffon has played in three Champions League finals but is yet to win the competition

For all the dominance of the continent’s traditional superpowers, in recent seasons there has been space in the latter stages for some surprise packages.

In 2017-18, Roma and Liverpool made it to the last four, a year after Monaco reached the semi-finals in scintillating style.

Could anyone cause an upset this time?

A totally left-field winner is highly unlikely but, in its own way, PSG going all the way would be a shock.

Despite their lavish spending (Neymar for £200m, Kylian Mbappe for £165.7m), the French club have not made it to the last four in the competition since 1994-95. They failed at the last-16 stage last season, and were eliminated in the quarter-finals in the four years before that.

Should PSG fulfil their undoubted potential and emerge victorious in Madrid on 1 June, it would be a first Champions League success for keeper Gianluigi Buffon, who left Juventus this summer after 17 years at the club.

Alternatively, the trophy could stay in Madrid, even if Real’s dominance is ended.

Atletico Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano will host the final, giving their manager Diego Simeone added incentive to add to his achievements at the club.

He has twice guided them to the final, losing on penalties to Real in 2015-16 and coming within a 93rd-minute Sergio Ramos goal of winning it in 2013-14, only to then lose 4-1 after extra time.

With Antoine Griezmann committing his future to the club in the summer, some made them favourites for the domestic title, and Simeone knows what it takes to reach the latter stages in Europe.

Did you know? This is Atletico’s sixth consecutive Champions League campaign, the longest run in their history.

BBC Sport – Football ultras_FC_Barcelona

ultras FC Barcelona - https://ultrasfcb.com/football/12377/

#Barcelona

#Football

[surveysonfleek]

556.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 33

3101. Would it bother you if your priest, rabbii or other religious leader (teacher if you are not religious) started wearing a plain black mask all the time? If yes, why? i’d wonder why they were doing that but it wouldn’t bother me. 3102. Where do you look for the answers? google most of the time. 3103. If you are driving and someone honks at you does it ruin your whole day? no. 3104. If you are driving and you get angry at another driver do you yell at them through their and your closed window? open the window and yell at them? throw things at them? stop the car and start a fight with them? do something else? if it’s really bad i’ll just do a long honk.

3105. I’m in the right lane on the parkway. There is an exit only lane on my right. A car pulls out from behind the pack into the exit only lane. When that car gets to the exit he is right in front of me only one lane to the right of me. Instead of exiting the parkway he tries to creep back in in front of me. I get pissed and honk the horn. He (I keep saying he but I couldn’t tell) throws up his hands as he slides in front of me. I think this is funny and toot again. He throws up his hands again. I do this about three more times and each time I toot he throws his hands in the air. Then my exit clomes up and I have to get off. From the time he got in front of me until I got off the parkway we drove approx. 20 feet. What you think about this situation? i’m getting confused coz we drive on the other side of the road but whatever. i kinda lost interest halfway through anyway lol. 3106. Do you live in reality or in your ‘own little world’? Which one is better? i believe i live in reality which could also be my own little world but meh. i don’t see one as being better. i just go with the flow. 3107. Who’s your favorite soprano? i think beyonce is one. 3108. Why is there porn geared towards straight men, gay men, lesbians but none really geared towards straight woman? i feel like there is? 3109. Is there more to being human than chemicles and impulses? If yes, what? life. experiences. memories. 3110. What if all the boys in jail could get out now together? depends what their intentions are. 3111. If your shoes could talk what would they say? replace me. 3112. How many windows are in your house? too many to count. 3113. Did you walk around your house and count them all? hell no. If not what did you do? sit here and answered lol. 3114. Do you think people store memories as pictures or words? i’m sure there are people that do both. 3115. If you got sent to jail who would your one phone call be to? my mum. 3116. Pick a movie you have seen: i haven’t seen one in awhile. Give a 2 sentence review about it using the word 'go’: 3117. Pick a song you like: no. Give a 2 sentance review of it useing the word 'come’: 3118. Pick a person you like: no. Give a two sentance description of them useing the word 'lunchbox’: 3119. What do these 3 words have in common: hippo, camp, us? they are words lol. 3120. If you could save time in a bottle, the first thing that you’d like to do is.. save every good memory i have. 3121. Who is the most powerful person in the world that you can think of? not sure… different people are obviously more powerful in different countries. maybe the queen? idk. 3122. If you were designing a mini-golf hole what would it be like? a lot of hills lol. 3123. Why do you think certain people become targets for teasing in school or exclusion at work? idk. some people are just bullies. 3124. Why, in essays, is the word 'I’ not allowed to be used when it is our own PERSONAL thoughts being expressed? i guess it’s more formal to not speak in first person idk. 3125. What song would you like your doorbell to play? something funky. 3126. Would you rather watch MTV or play GO FISH? haha depends what’s on mtv i guess. 3127. What is an itch? the urge to scratch something. 3128. Why did the holocaust happen? tbh i don’t know. i should read up on it. 3129. Would you be capable of torturing another person? no way. unless they did something that bad to me or people i love. 3130. How did Hitler’s army do this and still believe they were good people? i’m sure they were either fearful, brainwashed or promised a better life. 3131. Do you like poetry to rhyme? sometimes. 3132. Does 'jewish’ describe a race or a religion? both. 3133. How tall are you? 5′4″. 3134. If Hitler was capable of such cruelty to others, and he is human, does that mean that all humans are capable of this cruelty? not all, some humans definitely have more goodness in their hearts. 3135. How long have you ever gone without sleep? over 24 hours easily. 3136. Is a mouse a miracle? sure. 3137. there are alcoholics, chocoholics, shoppoholics, practically anything can be an 'oholic. What’s your 'oholic? sleep. 3138. Does heaven have a phone number? probably not. If it did would you call? Who would you ask to speak to? What would you say? 3139. Fortune time!! 1,2, 3, or 4? 3. if 1: 5, or 6? if 2: 7 or 8? if 3: 9 or 10? 9. if 4 11 or 12? Now pick a letter between A and G: if A: 13 or 14? if B: 15 or 16? if C or D: 17 or 18? if E or F: 19 or 20? 20. if F: 21 or 22? if G: 22 or 23? ——— you should now have two numbers. look at both numbers below and combine the sayings to get a fortune. 5: you are a very loving person 6: you will become very rich 7: you are too hard on yourself 8: cats will bring you bad luck 9: gremlins will eat all your cheese 10: you are going on a trip 11: someone you don’t know will be watching you 12: you will get what you want — 13. and your life will be filled with romance 14. but you will fall in love with a babboon 15. and salt is lucky for you 16. or you will inherit a cough medicine factory 17. and you will not come back 18. and you will lose the remote 19. or your favorite team will win 20. and you were born under a lucky star 21. but the next person who leave you a note is attracted to you 22. and you will have a stalker soon 23. or your best friend will take you to a movie 3140. Do you vote? yes. we have to here. you get a fine if you don’t vote. 3141. Are you always honest with yourself? sure. Were you honest when you answered that question? i guess. 3142. What kinds of diary names or entry titles make you specifically NOT want to read that diary? no. 3142. Is writing an online diary more about being honest about yourself or entertaining your readers? idk. 3143. What are you the last of? the last person to come into my room lol. 3144. Who do you really appreciate and what have you done lately to show that you appreciate them? my boyfriend. i guess we both take care of each other. 3145. When people do good deeds are they really doing them because they are a good person or because they want to feel like a good person? Or both? both. 3146. Somewhere far back in the survey I asked if Bill Gates or Mother Theresa was more successful. The most popular answer I have seen is 'it depends on how you define success’. Well, this survey is about YOU isn’t it? So how do YOU define success? i’m pretty sure this question has already been asked. 3147. Are people making up reality as they go along? idk. 3148. You may need a calculator for this one. Think of your weight. Divide it by 2.2 multiply the answer by .8 What do you get? That is how many grams of protein you need to eat every day to stay healthy. Do you think you eat enough? 3149. What is your feeling about republicans? idk. we don’t have republicans here. either liberals or democrats. 3150. What do you need to do? clean my room. What do you need to stop doing? lazing around. 3151. If you were to start a club, what club would you start? board game club lol. 3152. Are your hands and feet always cold? no. Maybe you have bad circulation. 3153. Have you ever been prank called? probably in high school. If yes, what was the situation? i forgot. 3154. Have you ever prank called someone? not in like over 10 years. If yes, what was the prank? i forgot. 3155. Have you ever gotten into a conversation with someone when they or you have dialled a wrong number? not really. 3156. Have you ever just sat alone with no distractions for a whole hour and thought about things? before i go to sleep, yes. If yes, does the universe open up when you do this? not sure. 3157. Are you a genius? i wish. 3158. If you were going to design the PERFECT signifigant other…what flaws would you give them? i would never want to design a ‘perfect’ person. 3159. If you answered NO to 3157, why do you doubt yourself? i didn’t exactly lol. 3160. RARRRR!!! Scared ya, didn’t I? yep. 3161. Do feelings and ideas come from inside the mind or outside in the culture? both. 3162. When you have a feeling or an idea: do you trust it? usually. Even when people are telling you that you are wrong? i’ll still think about it. Even when people are laughing at you for it? yep. 3163. WHAT IS YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME? (YOUR MIDDLE NAME BECOMES YOUR FIRST NAME AND YOUR LAST NAME IS THE NAME OF THE STREET OF THE HOUSE YOU GREW UP IN): hahaha i’d rather not. 3164. What is the differance between spirituality and religion? i don’t knowwww. 3165. What is the speediest way you know of to get over a cold or flu? rest, meds, fluids. 3166. Who is your favorite comedian? i don’t have one. 3167. What do you think of Winona Ryder’s court case? this must be super old. 3168. What was your last nightmare about? i forgot. 3169. Who are the people in your neighborhood? they’re all from different walks of life. 3170. During what decade was popular music the most emotional? 90s. During what decade was popular music the best? each decade have good hits i guess. 3171. How did Frederick Douglas, escape slavery against all odds? idk them. There were thousands and thousands of slaves around him, why did only he manage to learn to read and write? idk. 3172. Do you download porn? (be honest!) nope. 3173. Why is 'go suck an egg’ or 'your grandma sucks eggs!’ an insult? it wouldn’t insult me, sounds stupid. 3174. Life is: beautiful. I am: alive. I am not: doing anything. But I want to be: more motivated. And I wish I could: be motivated lol. 3175. What is the highest achivement anyone could ever achieve in this department? spiritual: physical: emotional: with their humanity: honestly by who’s standards? anyone can reach the highest achievement according to how they perceive it. 3176. Can you give step by step instructioons on how to think deeply? no lol. it’s different for everyone. 3177. Did you ever see the Wizard of Oz with the sound all the way down while listening to pink Floyd’s The Wall? nope. If yes, did you see what everyone says goes on when you do that? 3178. Let’s say you were writing an application for potential new friends. What three questions would you ask (and what would you want the answers to be)? i would never ask for friends lol. 3179. Which two words of the following words goes together the best and why: mullet, brocollii, community, blue, phosphor, hammer, ocean, hand blue ocean. it just works. 3180. Are you dyslexic? no. 3182. Are you overwhelmed? no. By what? 3183. 'My natural elasticity was crushed.’ What does that mean? idk. 3184. What is humanity evolving towards, do you think? technology. 3185. Are you good at cracking codes? ,t y dsud yp Ftoml upit ,o;l I’ll give you a hint. Y really means T. idk. 3186. How many holes do you have in your body (ex. mouth)? ten i think? 3187. Now there are ads on taxi cab hubcaps. Is there ANY free space LEFT to put more ads onto taxis??? all over the windows. 3188. What’s the worst place to have a scab? ass. 3189. Do you pick your scabs? yeah sometimes. 3190. Who’s goin’ chicken huntin’? not me. 3191. post 'it’ note what does 'it’ stand for? anything! 3192. What is a tragedy? idk. 3193. Where is guam? in the pacific i think? idk but i’m pretty sure we have the same timezone. 3194. Are you bubbly? not anymore. Do you drink bubbly? no, i hate it. 3195. Do you have caller ID? yes. If you do then do you only answer the phone after looking at it? yes. 3196. Bewitched or Jeannie? bewitched. 3197. When will you be able to just do what you want to? i do that now. 3198. How do people live with the fact that their time is short and priceless yet they get paid too little to waste too much of it? it’s all about the grind. 3199. OOGA! Make your best cave-pperson sound! no. 3200. Who tells better gossip, your best friend or your answering machine? best friend lol.

#survey #surveys #quiz #bored #questions

[nothingman]

John Feffer | (Foreign Policy in Focus) | – –

The evidence is in: The “adults in the room” at the White House have enabled Trump’s worst impulses, not checked them. <

In the middle of September, Harvard University announced that it was inviting two controversial new fellows to the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School: former Trump administration spokesman Sean Spicer and whistleblower Chelsea Manning. At the august institution, they would be joining Corey Lewandowski, one of Trump’s campaign managers, along with several Democratic Party operatives.

But it was not to be. Within a day of the announcement, Harvard rescinded Chelsea Manning’s invitation because of “controversy” attending the offer. Dean of the Kennedy School Douglas Elmendorf had this to say: “I see more clearly now that many people view a Visiting Fellow title as an honorific, so we should weigh that consideration when offering invitations.”

Strangely, the invitation to the thoroughly dishonorable Lewandowski did not seem affected by this rationale.

Harvard snubbed Manning in part because people like Mike Pompeo, current head of the CIA, cancelled an appearance at a Harvard forum, saying that “I believe it is shameful for Harvard to place its stamp of approval upon her treasonous actions.”

I’m not a big fan of WikiLeaks — even before its conduct in the 2016 elections — but I’d still be interested in hearing Chelsea Manning interact with other folks at the Kennedy School on questions of public service and morality. So, I’m upset at Harvard’s retraction of the invitation.

But what really bugs me is Harvard’s pandering to the Trump crowd as if they were legitimate political actors. They’re not. They’re collaborationists. They may or may not have collaborated with a foreign power against the United States (let the various investigating committees determine that). But I’m expanding the term here to mean that they are collaborating with a political figure — Donald Trump — whose behavior is inimical to American democracy.

Even if they aren’t ultimately thrown into jail for a variety of improprieties, the Trump collaborationists should be frozen out of the mainstream. Obviously I’m thinking about the future, since places like Harvard are always kowtowing to those in power in the present. But I’m looking forward to a day after, say, 2020, when America goes through its own de-Baathification process, and the leading lights of the Trump administration are purged from public life.

Okay, maybe you don’t want to go that far. De-Baathfication, after all, had lousy consequences for Iraq. Then let’s just use Harvard’s language but apply it more appropriately. “Many people view a Visiting Fellow title as an honorific, so we should weigh that consideration when offering invitations,” Elmendorf said. Those who collaborated with the Trump administration — those who served in high positions and profited materially and professionally from those positions — should simply not be honored. Even if a departing Trump pardons all his cronies, they should feel the sting of public exclusion.

Call it an anti-Trump blacklist, a political boycott comparable to the economic boycott of Trump products. Perhaps, you’re wondering, why I’m focusing on Trump. Many of his policies resemble those of previous administrations like those of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. Why not expand the boycott to include all the neoconservatives responsible for the Iraq War, among other catastrophes? It’s equally galling to see a war criminal like Elliott Abrams still accepted in polite company (and the Council on Foreign Relations).

I certainly disagreed with those figures and their policies. But this administration is different. Donald Trump has crossed the line on so many fronts. To ensure that his “innovations” in the realms of racism, misogyny, militarism, deception, secrecy, and the “deconstruction of the administrative state” do not become institutionalized in U.S. society requires not only broad-based condemnation but, eventually, public exclusion as well.

Adults in the Room

Shortly after the 2016 election, I was on an NPR program making my case for non-engagement with the Trump administration. The host was aghast: Didn’t I acknowledge the important of “adult supervision” in the White House? Wouldn’t it be better to have some sensible people near Trump to prevent him from flying off the nuclear handle?

And who would these adults be exactly, I retorted? Steve Bannon? Michael Flynn? I doubted that anyone who made it through the vetting process would necessarily qualify as an adult — at least in the sense that the NPR host meant — and even if such a grey eminence managed to get into the administration, he or she would likely be brought down to Trump’s level, not the other way around.

In a recent article in The New York Review of Books, James Mann traces the origins of the phrase “adults in the room” and its associated phrase of “adult supervision.” “Before Trump, this Washington lingo was usually a cover for policy differences,” Mann writes.

The “adults” were usually those who didn’t stray too far from the political center, however that was defined at the moment. Bernie Sanders has never qualified as an “adult” in the Washington usage of the word, although he is old enough to collect Social Security; nor did Ralph Nader; nor did Rand Paul, though he is old enough to perform eye surgery. What made them deficient was not their character or their immaturity, but their views.

Now, however, the phrase refers less to ideology and more to behavior. “For the first time, America has a president who does not act like an adult,” Mann continues. “He is emotionally immature: he lies, taunts, insults, bullies, rages, seeks vengeance, exalts violence, boasts, refuses to accept criticism, all in ways that most parents would seek to prevent in their own children.”

And thus, America is supposed to breathe easier because a trio of military men (John Kelly, James Mattis, H.R. McMaster) and an oil company executive (Rex Tillerson) are in place to rein in Trump’s more infantile impulses.

Moreover, a rogue’s gallery of non-adults have already departed the administration as a result of scandal or sheer incompetence: the aforementioned Sean Spicer, his almost replacement Anthony Scaramucci, Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Tom Price, Reince Priebus, Mike Flynn. Some, like Trump’s pick to head the Drug Enforcement Agency, withdrew from consideration even before he had to face withering questions about his support for the pharmaceutical industry. Surely the process works if it ejects such ridiculous figures as if they were tainted food in the political digestive tract.

Poking fun at this list of not-so-dearly-departed administration officials is too easy. More important is to demonstrate that the so-called adults are doing as much if not more damage to this country than the people who didn’t spend enough time in their jobs to screw things up royally.

So, before assigning blame on specific issues, let’s take a look at exactly how “adult” U.S. foreign policy has been over the last ten months. The United States has come close to tearing up the most important arms control deal of the last 25 years and edging closer to war with Iran. It has escalated the conflict with North Korea, which has raised the risk of a nuclear exchange. It has extended the longest American war by sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan. It has continued a misguided “war on terrorism” by supporting the Saudi devastation of Yemen, expanding the CIA’s capacity for conducting drone strikes, and helping to create the next generation of anti-Western jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

Beyond war and peace issues, it has pulled out of the Paris climate accord, withdrew from UNESCO, and reinstituted the “global gag rule” on abortion that will affect nearly $9 billion in U.S. funding of health initiatives around the world. It has continued to push for the building of the infamous wall on the border with Mexico, implemented several travel bans that disproportionately target Muslims, and gone after the Dreamers. It has proposed slashing foreign aid and State Department funding more generally. It has driven a stake through the heart of multilateralism.

What exactly is “adult” about this rash and destructive foreign policy? Yes, the world hasn’t been destroyed (yet) by nuclear war. But that’s a pretty low bar for the administration’s accomplishments.

Nor is it possible to argue that Trump himself is solely responsible for this foreign policy. Trump has only a vague grasp of foreign policy to begin with. His impulse is to oppose whatever the Obama administration put together — the Iran deal, participation in the Paris accords, various trade deals — even where there might be bipartisan support. To get any of these concrete policies implemented, Trump needs foreign policy professionals who can, at the very least, spell words correctly and use the proper names of foreign leaders. Trump relies on these “adults” not to restrain him but to implement his craziest ideas.

So, the only conclusion is that Tillerson, Mattis, McMaster, and Kelly have at least some, if not sole, responsibility for Trump’s foreign policy. Tillerson has presided over the destruction of the State Department — its personnel cuts, its circumscribed influence. Mattis has facilitated the significant budget increases for the Pentagon. McMaster has called the president’s tweets on North Korea “completely appropriate” and shares the president’s distaste for the Iran nuclear deal. John Kelly, in his former role as head of Homeland Security, was a big booster of the travel ban.

The evidence is in. Engagement at the very highest levels with the Trump administration has not tempered its worst qualities. If anything, these “adults” have been the chief enablers of this most reckless of presidents. They’ve given him the thinnest frosting of legitimacy. Moreover, even these so-called adults don’t rescue the Trump administration from being outside the norms of democratic discourse in this country.

The Politics of Lustration

In Eastern Europe, after the changes of 1989, the successor governments considered laws that would prevent those who collaborated with the Communist apparatus from serving in public office. These were controversial laws. It was often difficult to determine who had collaborated (as opposed to simply been accused of collaborating), and the process was quickly politicized by various political parties. Also, what constituted collaboration: membership in the Communist Party, working in the secret police, or just communicating with the secret police?

Still, lustration served as a way of distinguishing one era from another, of drawing what the Poles called a “thick line” between unacceptable collaboration and legitimate politics.

Lustration, like de-Baathification, was a deeply flawed process. But I’m attracted to the idea of eventually drawing a thick line between acceptable democratic practice and what the Trump administration has attempted to do in this country. I’m not talking about going after civil servants or low-level appointees. I’m certainly not talking about Trump voters. No, only the topmost officials in the administration, including his Cabinet of Horrors, should be subjected, post-2020, to an informal ban on further public service or the receipt of anything that might be construed an honor at a major institution.

Let me be clear. I’m not talking about Republicans. Many Republicans have already taken strong stands against Trump’s excesses, and many more will do so over the next three years. No, this campaign against collaborationists must be bipartisan. And the targets should certainly include registered Democrats like chief economic advisor Gary Cohn.

It won’t be a witch hunt. These people are extraordinarily rich and powerful. Their wealth and power will survive public shaming. But such a process will be absolutely important to discredit Trumpism not just as a belief system but as an ideology of power in which all methods of achieving wealth and position are legitimate.

We can’t put Trump and his claque into the stockade like in Puritan America. We can’t ostracize them — send them into foreign exile for 10 years, as the ancient Athenians did. But we can declare the collaborationists, including the “adults in the room,” an affront to human dignity and threaten to resign from, boycott, or malign any institution that dares to hire them, honor them, or work with them.

It’s something to look forward to during the long political winter ahead.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus

John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands.

The Young Turks: “John Kelly Lies To Cover For Trump”

via Informed Comment

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