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yunhsuanhuang · 7 months

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LOVE SONGS IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE | YH HUANG

With apologies to A.L.

When I'm seventeen, I put a picture of Loretta Lynn in the back of my clear phone case. With the same care my best friends take in decorating trading cards of Jungkook and Jisoo, I get a pair of tweezers and my most expensive stickers, and make an afternoon out of sticking little daisies all over a glossy black-and-white printout of Loretta in the 70's. In the picture she's leaning against a tree, her dark hair long and thick, smiling at the viewer with the same unshakable confidence she's always had.

The next day, I slap my phone face-down on the cafeteria table. My friends go oh-my-god and you-actually-did-it and wait-that's-kinda-cute. We propose swapping some of our cards–I get Minho, she gets Randy– until the conversation derails to exams and teachers and the presentation that's due on Wednesday but none of us have started.

Then it's two weeks later, and when I wake up, thirteen hours after Kentucky does, I read that Loretta Lynn has passed away. A clickbait news site uses the same picture for her obituary.

Sometimes I feel like everything I love is already gone and I just don't know it yet.

so why do you like country music, my friend Alex asks me once.

Alex is American, but the South is as alien a place to him as it is to me– he grew up in suburban New Hampshire, after all, in an impossibly huge house bursting with beach-themed paraphernalia. America, to him, is Dunkin' Donuts and perfectly manicured lawns and the pale foam of the Atlantic cutting itself open over and over again against the sharpness of the rocks.

I squint at my phone. It's late, and I'm probably supposed to be asleep by now, but I'm fifteen and the year is 2020 and time stopped mattering somewhere in the middle of March. It's not like I have school tomorrow, anyway.

I type and retype my message for a while. Then, because it sounds about as good a reason as any, I say, idk i just like the fiddles

It's true. I do like the fiddles, and the steel guitar and the autoharp and the banjos too– the joyful clatter of it, the melody so much like flight. During quarantine, I spend a lot of time lying on the bedroom floor with my headphones on, blaring bluegrass at ear-destroying volumes. Maybe if I play it loud enough, if I squeeze my eyes shut hard enough, I can transport myself into the real thing: a honky-tonk with wood-panelled walls, heat and whiskey in the air, some familiar rhythm reverberating through the floorboards. Sometimes I even imagine myself there in the crowd, singing along.

–

In 1957, a song called Geisha Girl by Hank Locklin topped the country and western charts. It's about this American guy who arrives in Japan, falls in love with the titular Japanese geisha, and leaves his American wife for her. Well-trodden ground, both in art and in reality– after World War 2 ended, tens of thousands of Japanese women married American men for love, for money or for everything in between. Locklin's Geisha Girl became so popular that a song was released in reply to it–Skeeter Davis' Lost to a Geisha Girl, in which Davis takes on the persona of the man’s lover back home, scorning her fickle-hearted husband. As is common in reply songs, lyrics from the original are changed to fit the new perspective:

Locklin sings, Have you ever heard a love song that you didn't understand / when you met her in a teahouse on the island of Japan?

Davis sings: Why a love song with no meaning makes you happy, I don't know / I've lost you to a geisha girl where the ocean breezes blow.

A song you don't understand. A song with no meaning. A song in a language you don't speak. What's the difference, anyway?

In post-war Japan, a whole plethora of country music bands sprung up around the country, playing American hits for homesick soldiers: Tennessee Waltz, Lovesick Blues, Your Cheatin’ Heart.. The closer they were to the originals, the better. They'd bill themselves as the Japanese Hank Williams or John Denver or Patsy Cline. The catch? Some of these singers barely spoke English. painstakingly memorising each lyric until their L's and R's sounded just right. Yet, every Friday night they'd get up on that stage and sing songs they didn't understand about a country they'd never been to.

Just a few years ago, America had been Japan's worst enemy. But here their sons and daughters were, singing American songs, working in American jobs, marrying American men. In the present day, you could almost argue that the tables’ve turned: middle-schoolers debate anime at the cafeteria table; red-blooded blue-collar workers drive Toyotas and ride Kawasakis.

One thing that's stayed the same, though– American boys, Japanese girls. Love songs in a foreign language. Kind of a funny thing.

–

For hundreds of years, the West has been fascinated by the geisha. In Puccini’s 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, fifteen-year-old Butterfly is making her living as one when she’s bought by an American soldier named Pinkerton. He marries her, knocks her up, then ditches her in Japan while he marries an American woman. The whole time, Butterfly’s left to pine for him, and when Pinkerton returns to Japan with his wife, Butterfly stabs herself so that her son will be able to live in America with his father.

(Pinkerton, as you can probably tell, is kind of an ass.)

I keep thinking about Butterfly in that lonely, empty house in Japan, waiting for someone who didn’t love her back. I keep thinking about Alex: Alex and his horrible stupid round glasses and his old embarrassing love of Panic! at the Disco and his stupid cringe emojis, Alex who’s still the smartest person I know, Alex who was the first guy to ever pay attention to me. When I’m sixteen, I think about him almost constantly, a constant hum of obsession in the back of my head. I know I’m in love with him because that’s how all the songs go: Randy Travis declares that it’s deeper than the holler / stronger than the river; Deana Carter says it’s bittersweet / green on the vine; Keith Whitley confesses that it’s what I hear when you don’t say a thing.

Alex asks me, so what do you like about country music? And I don't know what to say to him, so I say nothing at all.

–

They read it in the tea leaves and it's written in the sand

I found love by the heart-full in a foreign distant land

–

Alex likes Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, the outlaws and the jailhouses and the pistols at the hip. My classmates like the feminist murder ballads, where they think she did it but they just can't prove it, where afterwards the girls sell Tennessee ham and strawberry jam / and they don't lose any sleep at night. I personally have a fondness for the silly and unserious: Alan Jackson extolling the virtues of grape snow cones, George Strait selling me the Golden Gate.

In the end, though, what I end up listening to most are the old songs– the really old ones, all the way back to the dawn of recording, the Golden Age of the radio. These songs, collected in the 1920s and 30s, are impressively varied in lyrical content: you’ve got the ones that are basically a soap opera stuffed into three minutes flat (Lorena, My Heart’s Tonight In Texas); the religious ones (Anchored in Love, Will the Circle Be Unbroken); the relatable ones (Give Me Your Love); the unrelatable ones (The Dying Soldier, No Depression In Heaven). What I like about them, I guess, is the familiar hiss of the vinyl, the way the lyrics are both specific and universal at once, their ability to make a time and a place that you’ve never been to before feel, inexplicably, like home.

Alex and I aren't anywhere near poor– his parents are both surgeons, and I spend my evenings trying not to fall asleep in increasingly expensive private lessons. But then again, neither were the Japanese country singers of the fifties and sixties, mainly college kids from elite families who could afford custom-made cowboy hats and genuine guitars. Hell, even the prince of Japan was said to be a country music fan in his youth. None of us have worked in the fields or in the mines, none of our parents have had to tell us here's your one chance, Fancy, don't let me down. We're the people Garth was referring to when he sang about that black-tie affair, those social graces, the ivory tower.

What does it mean to understand a song? How do you sing something and really, truly mean it?

–

When I'm sixteen, my fun fact on the first day of school is that I listen to country music. When I go out with my friends, I wear ankle-length denim skirts and lacy blouses and tie my hair in twin ponytails. I beg and beg them to listen to Loretta, to Dolly, to Patsy. In response, they buy me a Cowboy of the Month calendar and save me in their phones as "the horse girl". In one inexplicable picture that we've since lost, I've got my face in my hands, trying to hide my laughter, as my friends gleefully blast a Fox News clip about Randy Travis' drunken escapades.

So maybe my taste in music is the most interesting thing about me. What else is there? I'm not very pretty, only sometimes funny, and, to my eternal embarrassment, not good at all at being Asian. If I was smarter– fine, if I was Alex, Alex with his books and essays and critical theory– I might say that I do everything I do because I don't want to be the whitest girl in a room full of Asians (lame, boring, suck-up) but the most interesting thing in a room full of white people (exotic, rare, unique). A geisha girl, dressed in Oriental style.

Even so, I don't like to think that that's all there is to it. You can shrink the world down to words on a page, map out the complicated intersections of nations and culture and war that make up the popular imagination of America, call it pentatonic scales, the mixolydian mode. Of course there's value in that, I know– but all that stuff's a foreign language to me. You can try to explain why music sounds the way it does, but in the end you just have to hear it for yourself.

–

For a genre obsessed with authenticity, modern country music's chock-full of performers: Toby Keith singing We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way, Hardy singing My small town is smaller than yours, Jason Aldean singing, I sit back and think about them good ol' days / The way we were raised and our southern ways.

A geisha's a performer, too, in a way. She trains her whole life to sing, to dance, to entertain. In yet another adaptation of Madama Butterfly, David Henry Hwang's play M. Butterfly, a Communist actor seduces a French man by pretending to be a woman for years. When the actor's finally caught, he's asked how he got away with it. He responds: Because when he finally met his fantasy woman, he wanted more than anything to believe that she was, in fact, a woman.

Don't tell this to anyone else, but when I curl my hair and put on lip-gloss and toddle around in heels, wondering if Alex would like what he sees, I feel like I'm a walking caricature in the shape of a girl. When I’m online with him I simper, I preen, I ask stupid questions just to keep him talking to me– and he likes it, or at least I really hope he does. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I wonder what'll happen if I stop performing. I wonder if there’s anything left of me below the performance.

I used to worry that I fell in love with something that doesn't exist: the myth of America, the barbeques and the cornfields and the porches, the honky-tonk and the church social and the choir all singing, the cowboys on their vast, empty ranches. A place that's already gone, or else never existed at all– but what does that matter? An unreal place for an unreal girl. If everyone's performing, then no one is.

–

How much of this is true, then?

It's true as backroads and cold beer and pickup trucks. True as private jets and cowboy hats and exaggerated drawls. True as Nashville and Wallen and the CMAs. Which is to say, it's as true a story as you want it to be.

–

Tell the home folks that I'm happy, with someone that's true I know

I love a pretty geisha girl where the ocean breezes blow

–

In the months around my eighteenth birthday, my parents start screaming at each other. Suffice to say, they never really stop. I take up temporary residence in the school library instead, and spend my afternoons staring at maths textbooks while regretting every decision I’ve ever made. My exams are drawing closer. I’m sure I’ll fail them. It doesn’t feel real. Nothing does. I can’t bring myself to look at my future, I can’t, and yet like the long black train / coming down the line I know what’s going to happen when it hits me, and I know, I know– it’s not gonna be good. I start learning how to fall asleep to the background noise of things getting thrown. When my friends come over to study, they call the house beautiful. I guess it is.

On the way back from school, pressed into a corner of a sardine-packed bus, I put one earphone in and watch the sunset fall over the expressway, the heat turning the sky a gorgeous, deadly pink. Loretta Lynn sings: Well, I look out the window and what do I see? / The breeze is a-blowing the leaves from the trees / Everything is free, everything but me. The Chicks sing: She needs wide open spaces / Room to make her big mistakes. John Prine sings: Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery / make me a poster of an old rodeo / Just give me one thing that I can hold on to / To believe in this livin' is just a hard way to go.

Meanwhile, in my headphones, a thousand different stories unfold, familiar missives from some far-off place: a son buries his parents. A wife kills her husband. Two childhood friends fall in love. A girl convinces her father to let her marry her boyfriend. A woman pins a runaway to a motel wall. Somebody calls his ex, even though he shouldn’t. A mother sells her daughter to an older man. A traveller gets on a train. The unfamiliar place names rush past. Amarillo, Charleston, Jackson, Cheyenne, Chattahoochee: evidence of an existence outside of calculus and grammar and pushing my desk against my door to block it. In my head I picture as if through a window some wide, sprawling prairie, some open starry sky, and think of Mary Oliver – so this is the world. I’m not in it. It’s beautiful.

–

(Meanwhile, online: it’s a different story.)

–

If it was a breakup, would it have been better? There's no shortage of breakup songs in country music, after all. Like, What right does she have to take you away / when for so long, you were mine? Like, I'm crazy for loving you / Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you Like, Nothing much for us to say / One last goodbye and you drove away.

Instead, it’s the stupidest, most mundane of reasons: we just stop talking. I couldn’t tell you exactly why. For me, I’m wrapped up in exams, family stuff, a clown car full of childhood friends crashing their way back into my life without warning; for him, he’s busy at Harvard, busy with his new friends and new projects and new–

Okay. Fine. His new girlfriend.

I can’t blame him. I don’t have any right to. I still don’t know whether I actually loved him or I was just sixteen, lonely and looking to write myself into a song. Still, after I learn that he’s dating her, I fall into a haze of social-media stalking: I scroll through their Instagrams, their Twitters, anything that’ll tell me more about who he was, who they are. She’s cute, I’ll give her that, and they’re cute together, the kind of forever and ever, amen couple whose profiles are full of heart-shaped chocolates, of candid kisses and in-jokes I’ll never get to hear.

(A love song with no meaning. A language you don't speak.)

For weeks and weeks on end I dream of him, but the really funny thing is that even in these dreams he’s nothing but a spectre: texting me, calling me, writing long-winded letters in the mail. The closest I ever get is this dream where I’m walking through his hometown, the one I looked up in Google Earth in a fit of desperation. It’s just like I thought it would be, every house gorgeous and stately and ancient, the trees barren but still grand. My hometown’s always been warm. It’s the one thing I have in common with the people in the songs, that overwhelmingly oppressive heat, the kind that sucks all the energy out of your bones. Even though Alex lives at the edge of America, Stephen King and sweaters country, in the dream it’s not cold at all– Georgia hot, hometown hot. As I run from house to house, ringing every doorbell, the roads seem to stretch out beneath my feet until the next door seems oceans and continents away. Nobody’s home. Nobody’s there. In the dream, I’m not surprised.

Sometimes I worry that everything I love is already gone, but I guess I knew that already. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love it.

–

When I'm eighteen, my parents spend a small fortune on a family holiday to America, some last-ditch effort at holding the household together. I miss most of it, however, because the moment I step off the plane I come down with the worst cold I've ever had in my life. Thankfully, during the last couple of days I begin to feel a little bit more like a human being and not just a collection of symptoms, so I manage to go down with my family to the shore.

Maybe it's the ghost of the fever coming back to haunt me, or maybe it's just December, but the beach is bitingly cold, the evening light only just poking through the clouds. Standing there, I find myself thinking– predictably– of Alex. We haven't talked in months, at this point: the last thing I texted him was im in the us lol to which he responded Haha enjoy, and that's about it.

On some other shore, so far away we might still be in different countries, Alex is at Harvard writing essays about America– learning how to understand it, how to shape it, how to make it somewhere he can love without reservation. But I'm not him. I know, now, that I know nothing at all about America: not the blue and far-off one in my songs. but the real place, full of contradictions, land of guns and welfare and Walmart and the Free.

I keep going back to what Alex asked me when I was fifteen, when we barely knew each other: so why do you like country music? And it's only here, now, freezing in a down jacket on the California coast, that I finally have an answer for him.

I think: because every good country song is a love song in its own way.

I think: because country music is the only thing I've ever known how to love.

I think: I have stood and watched the sun rise from the waters of the sea / and I've wondered how much beauty in this cruel world can there be / My dreams are all worth dreaming and it makes my life worthwhile / to see my pretty geisha girl dressed in oriental style.

I think: does there really need to be a reason, A?

From somewhere behind me, I hear someone call my name. I turn. It's my mother yelling: “Come back to the car! It's getting cold!”

“Coming!” I yell back, and run to her.

–

Before I have to go back home, I manage to get my hands on a Shania Twain t-shirt, which honestly makes the entire trip worth it.

#just posting for archive purposes #hi william if youre reading this #writing

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adultswim2021 · 4 months

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Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job #42: “Puberty” | March 8, 2010 - 12:30AM | S05E02

Tim and Eric explore the saltier side of growing up in “Puberty”, an episode that is roughly thematic. The wraparounds for this episode involve Eric going through puberty, resulting in a deeper voice (augmented with the high-tech computers found at Abso Lutely studios), and a fresh new mound of pubic hair bulging out of his khaki shorts. The set is a treehouse, Tim & Eric's hangout and what would turn out to be the last vestige of their respective boyhoods. Thanks to Eric’s raging hormones, these halcyon days are in severe jeopardy, with Eric feeling very ready to replace his childish playtime with sexual encounters with cheap, disgusting women. Will their partnership survive?

The cold open of the show is for a nightmarish children’s “toy” called the Cinco I-Jammer, which children can engage with by e-bumping. E-bumping seems like it’s just a direct dopamine-spiker by way of a high-pitched frequency that creepily causes the children’s eyes to roll back into their heads. It’s also equipped with “Oh-Hungee”, which is a tube that deposits a bland-looking gruel into children’s bare hands. Kids are encouraged by the ad to replace their parents’ meals with “oh-hungee”. The ad is effective in mimicking hyper-active commercials aimed at children as well as giving off a trademark Tim & Eric style sinister vibe.

I like this one quite a bit. The little girl in the ad who has most of the lines is a very funny actor. She gives a spirited delivery that is hard to be pissed off with. I went down a brief rabbit hole to see if she pursued comedy after this. I found three potential matches and one of them is doing art in Denver, CO. One of them is sadly dead. A third one stopped posting on instagram around the time the other one died, so they might be the same person. I hope she’s the alive one. RIP to a proper legend if not.

OF NOTE: The DVD contains an alternate version of the I-Jammer sketch. It's about 70% the same, with some alternate jokes and Bob Odenkirk doing the voice-over. I think the as-aired version is stronger.

Next up: DLH sings a song about Puberty. I think the overall subject of puberty for comedy’s sake is pretty worn out, but Tim & Eric have a way with words that elevate the material. But this song resembles a low-effort comedic take on the subject by somebody with less talent. But, that’s sorta DLH’s whole deal, isn’t it?

I feel like you can categorize DLH’s various songs into a few different styles: bat-shit crazy alien stuff, earnest-seeming educational offerings, and then this: a song you where you get the sense that he’s trying to be actually funny. Overall, I’m just glad that this is brief, and there are small moments that are actually reasonably funny, like him mildly botching his lines and correcting himself during the preamble. This one seems like they included it more out of duty to keep the DLH quotient up, as well as help prop up the theme of the show.

Forting with Will features Will Forte (hey, that’s sort of a pun!) playing Will Grello (NOT a pun), teaching a small group of children how to make pillow forts while he goes off the rails with tangents about his dark childhood, particularly his relationship with his father. This one is lightly thematic; forting is a childish pastime (Tim & Eric’s wraparounds are from a tree house, an equally classic type of fort), and we’re witnessing a man whose own puberty was pretty traumatic. This one does little to shine above previous Will Grello installments, but it’s still funny. The most significant running gag in this one is Grello becoming so distraught reliving his trauma that he pees his pants. His enraged sarcasm when he asks for a towel, waits a beat, and hollers “yeah, NOW!” has been in my head for a while.

Finally, the other bit of substance is a Morning Meditation sketch, which I've crowed about being a less-than-favorite of mine. This one has a truly unsettling reveal, that the man we're watching trot around on camera is actually on stilts. This is enough to make me declare that this could be the best Morning Meditation sketch of all time. Only took them two seasons to get it right.

Tim & Eric’s wraparounds are pretty significant in this one, and have a lotta memorable bits and funny lines. Eric’s low-pitched voice aids the deadpan delivery of certain lines. Lotta great disgusting phrasing about his “mushroom tip”, and exploring “wet holes”. They really make sexual intercourse sound unappetizing. Tim affably lamenting “unfortunately I’m still boy” got me laughin'. Eric calling Tim a “fag” (bleeped out) also got me. I also need to highlight the part where Tim says “I guess I’ll go play with myself”, which is followed up by a light touch of tepid studio audience laughter.

Tim’s problems are solved by seeing a commercial for the Cinco Man Shake, which is fronted by a pitchman with a slightly grotesque muscle man physique. I feel like Tim & Eric are very good at casting people whose attractiveness fall into that uncanny valley; hyper masculine or feminine people whose bodies mostly reflect a conventional ideal but are slightly strange-looking. The guy they got for this fits that bill, while also delivering a spirited and genuinely compelling performance.

The shake in question requires adding a "fistful" of your friend’s pubic hair to the concoction, which Tim harvests from Eric’s thicket. Eric jocularly pretending it hurts and then giving a sheepish “just kidding” to the camera is great. Eric’s strengths are especially played to in this episode.

Tim attempts to hork down the shake, which contains a glob of Eric’s wet hair. Even though I’m intelligent enough to understand that little Timmy is sucking on sterile wig hair, it’s still one of the grossest things the show has ever shown me. Tim, with a mouth full of hairy goo, looking to the camera and saying “just a little more left to go and I’ll be a man” is another one of those moments that has never left my brain. The result is Tim essentially becoming a werewolf. “I’m a man now no more playtime for me” Tim drones in a borderline incomprehensible guttural tone.

Overall I really like this one. It’s imperfect, but most of these episodes are. I can see this one coming off as an unimpressive exercise playing with low-hanging fruit, but it’s low-brow and juvenile humor paired with really funny/weird line deliveries really sells this one for me. Good ep!

EPHEMERA CORNER:

Aqua Teen Hunger Force #93: “A PE Christmas” (series version)

I already covered this episode, because it originally aired around Christmastime, 2009, but it was a slightly different version from this one. This is the version that included additional scenes at the end, with Meatwad at Chuck D’s mansion. I am pretty sure the original version ends with Shake’s gastro-intestinal eel infestation causing him to die in a jail cell. The stronger ending, in my opinion. Also if anyone has a HQ copy of the 2009 version of A PE Christmas, please let me know!

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #tim and eric awesome show great job

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musicfren · 7 months

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Protests March 2nd (this Saturday). Mostly USA, some global

Albuquerque, New Mexico

11:00 a.m.

Tiguex Park

Sponsored by: PSL Waukegan

Wellfleet, Massachusetts

10:00 a.m.

Town Hall Lawn

Sponsored by: Cape Codders for Peace and Justice

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triviareads · 2 years

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Releases on March 28th

Summary:

Marigold Davis is a divorcee coming out west to Denver to replace her sister as basically a mail-order bride. Virgil Gardner is the rough and tough part-owner of a mining company, and needs a wife to look after his children. When he meets Marigold however, he refuses to marry her, instead taking her on as a housekeeper. That of course doesn't stop them from being deeply attracted to one another... and it goes from there.

Some background:

I have definitely read some of Dani Collins's Harlequin Presents stories, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found out she wrote HR as well. I've admittedly not read a lot of frontier romances, but I'm always eager to read more HR set in the United States (this one is set in Denver in 1859), which is why I requested an ARC of this book.

My review:

I really enjoyed this story and the setting, even when it mildly stressed me out. Listen, frontier life is tough. I'm not surprised Dani employed the "huddle for warmth" trope which resulted in Virgil getting hard for Marigold within like, the first 3 chapters because they literally had to huddle. For warmth. But on a deeper level, when you're in this survival mindset, it leads to a lot of emotional intimacy, which Dani built on really well, without sacrificing the lust aspect.

Both Virgil and Marigold started off with trust issues, especially since they both had former spouses who cheated on them. Now Marigold is in this position where she's not only getting to know this man better, but she also needs to take care of Virgil's children while interacting with a miner town where there's like, no women (cue Virgil's jealousy/insecurities). Regarding the kids themselves, there was a lot about them, but I can't say it really hindered the plot for me. The only time children really bother me in HR is when they're like, weirdly precocious or basically exist to get the hero and heroine together, which wasn't the case here.

As for Marigold's insecurities, she was married to a shitty man before, so a lot of the plot is her coming to see that Virgil is constant where her ex was, well, a bitch. On a side note, it was novel for me to read about a divorcee heroine who also believed in female and Black suffrage, and abolition. It's easy to write about these things in abstract when it comes to characters in HR but Marigold was literally in the thick of action since she was in the Kansas Territory in 1859.

The sex:

There were some damn good sexual tension between Virgil and Marigold, and I'm happy to say the follow-through was great�� very well-written and very hot. There was a period in the book where they were getting somewhere sexually but Plot cockblocked them into a period of abstinence. But it worked because by the time they have (penetrative) sex for the first time (in hot springs!), it was not only hot, but very emotional and an expression of love as well. Virgil isn't quite a bit o'rough hero in the sack, but whatever he has going for him, it works.

Sex-wise, the high point was when he went down on her and the next morning he was, and I quote, so "drunk on pussy" he was dropping things and tripping over things. And this is after last night, right after he ate her out, when he basically couldn't contain himself so he ran outside and ejaculated in the grass. There's a winner right there, ladies.

Overall:

I would recommend this book for anyone and everyone, but especially HR readers looking to read outside their comfort zone, which is often times stories based in England with upper-class heroes and heroines in a ballroom setting. I personally will be looking into more American HR and more HR by this author!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Entangled Publishing for this ARC.

#netgalley #arc review #historical romance #dani collins #Entangled Publishing #arc #romance novel #romance novels

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muzikaddik · 2 years

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In honor of celebrating Women’s History Month, SCATTA invites you to👇🏾: "HER - A Night To Celebrate Women" 🌹 Saturday, March 18th at The Basement @ Renu 9pm-2am. 🎟️ So many good things are in play for this Afrobeats Cultural Night : 💖*FREE ENTRY for Ladies before 12AM 💖Highlights of Women owned businesses & Women achievements suggested by YOU via DM, on all displays throughout the night. ALSO 💖 Introducing SCATTA PARTY BUS PACKAGE tickets for a Afrobeats Cultural Pre-game experience through downtown Denver taking you to the event. 🍾Enjoy complimentary beverages & music from the motherland on our bus on the way to Scatta 🚌 Package Tickets 🎫 available but Limited. #linkinbio Sounds By: Sinz @vintagesinz | Dj MnM @muzikaddik Hosted By: @gq_africanboii Join us on a special Night Dedicated to Celebrating All Women !💃🏾💃🏾🌹🫶🏾🎉💖💖✨ #scattaafrobeatsdenver #scattaafrobeats #thingstodoindenver #denvernightlife #djMnM #ladydj #djsinz #afrobeatsparty #denverhappyhour #denverlife #1000thingstodoindenver (at Downtown Denver 16th St Mall) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpwPtxZAP6n/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#linkinbio #scattaafrobeatsdenver #scattaafrobeats #thingstodoindenver #denvernightlife #djmnm #ladydj #djsinz #afrobeatsparty #denverhappyhour #denverlife #1000thingstodoindenver

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masterofd1saster · 19 days

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CJ current events 12sep24

hm, I wonder if it has anything to with the crime rate in that neighborhood?

Shoppers at a Safeway grocery store, 757 E. 20th Ave., in Denver on Monday, Sept. 2, 2024. The store is among locations that have placed some items in more-secure aisles or displays. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post) Denver grocery stores are locking up or cordoning off more products. But it depends on the neighborhood. At a Safeway grocery store in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood, customers planning to peruse aisles 2 and 3 first must enter a secure shopping area cordoned off from the rest of the store. Security cameras monitor an extensive list of products stocked on those protected shelves, including batteries, lightbulbs, laundry detergent, pregnancy tests, deodorant, candles, medicine and baby food. Patrons pay at one of two dedicated check-out counters before being handed receipts and continuing their shopping trips. The anti-theft measures at the store, 757 E. 20th Ave., don’t surprise some shoppers: “They call it ‘Un-Safeway’ for a reason,” Alex Haskins told The Denver Post in the parking lot, repeating a common nickname for that location. Major supermarket chains are ramping up their efforts to prevent stealing by restricting access to certain aisles, installing merchandise lock boxes, hiring security guards and more, Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton reports.

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Should've stuck to the prince with gold bars e-mail scam

The Justice Department [5sep24] announced that Samuel Ogoshi, 24, and Samson Ogoshi, 21, both of Lagos, Nigeria, were each sentenced to 210 months in prison and five years of supervised release for conspiracy to sexually exploit minors. On March 25, 2022, 17-year-old high school student, Jordan DeMay, of Marquette, Michigan, died as a result of this sextortion scheme, which targeted over 100 other victims.*** As detailed in their plea agreements (here and here), Samuel and Samson Ogoshi engaged in a scheme while living in Nigeria to sexually exploit more than 100 victims, including at least 11 identified minor victims. They purchased hacked social media accounts and used them to pose as young women, making fake profiles and using the messaging feature on the social media accounts to contact victims. They conducted online research about their victims to learn where they lived, attended school, worked, and the identities of their family and friends. They then solicited their minor victims to produce sexually explicit images of themselves. Once they received the images, they created a collage of pictures that included the sexually explicit image with other images of the victim and their school, family, and friends. The Ogoshi brothers threatened to disclose the collages to the family, friends, and classmates of the victim unless the victim agreed to pay money using online cash applications. In November 2022, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan charged Samuel Ogoshi, Samson Ogoshi, and Ezekiel Robert, all Nigerian nationals, in the sextortion scheme that resulted in the death of Jordan DeMay. The Ogoshi Brothers were extradited to the United States in August 2023 and pleaded guilty in April. On March 21, a Nigerian court ordered Robert to be extradited to the United States. He has appealed that decision, and the matter is before the Nigerian High Court.***

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Crumbley cases set a good example

The 14-year-old suspect in a shooting at a Georgia high school that killed four people and his father will both stay in custody following back-to-back court hearings Friday morning where their lawyers declined to seek bail. At 14-year-old Colt Gray's hearing, the teen was advised of his rights along with the charges and penalties he faced.*** Shortly after Colt Gray's hearing, his father, Colin Gray, was brought into court. Colin Gray, 54, was charged Thursday in connection with the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. Nine people were also hurt in Wednesday’s attack.***

https://www.newsmax.com/us/georgia-school-shooting-suspect/2024/09/06/id/1179333

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WINDER, Georgia — Colt Gray, the baby-face Georgia school shooting suspect who is charged with murdering two classmates and two teachers, grew up in a broken and neglectful home, which police and child services visited on a regular basis, a former neighbor and landlord tell The Post.

His mother, Marcee, 43, has a lengthy rap sheet with drug and domestic violence arrests. And his father Colin, 54, allegedly bought his troubled son an AR-15 rifle for Christmas — and now faces charges of his own for supplying the weapon used in the shooting.

Lauren Vickers, who lived next-door to the Grays in Jefferson, Georgia, said there were “problems immediately” when the Grays and their three children moved into the well-manicured neighborhood 60 miles east of Atlanta in 2022.

“There were nights where the mom would lock him and his sister out the house. And they would be banging on the back door, just screaming like ‘Mom! mom! mom!’ and crying. It was absolutely devastating,” she said.***

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Surprising guilty plea

Hunter Biden‘s trial in California ended before it began Thursday after the first son decided in court to plead guilty to all nine tax charges he was facing and accept whatever sentence the judge decided to impose on him. Judge Mark Scarsi warned Biden that he could face up to 17 years in prison and up to $1.3 million in fines after the first son made the last-minute decision to enter an “open plea,” which involves pleading guilty without negotiating a deal with prosecutors. Government prosecutors read aloud all 56 pages of the indictment that special counsel David Weiss brought against Biden last December to make clear to the courtroom what tax crimes Biden had committed, according to CNN. “Do you agree that you committed every element of every crime?” Scarsi asked the first son after the reading was over. “Yes,” Biden responded. Scarsi set Biden’s sentencing hearing for Dec. 16.***

Maybe he wanted the 3-level guidelines reduction for accepting responsibility?

The indictment alleged, among other things, that Biden claimed as business expenses

a. A $1,500 Venmo payment on August 14, 2018. That payment was to an exotic dancer, at a strip club. The Defendant described the payment in the Venmo transaction as for “artwork.” The exotic dancer had not sold him any artwork.*** d. Payments totaling $11,500 for an escort paid by the Defendant to spend two nights with him.*** Defendant placed Person 1 on payroll shortly after she moved to Arkansas while she was pregnant with his child. Person 1 did not perform any work after being formally placed on payroll in spring 2018 and had no work-related communication with the Defendant after she was placed on payroll. Person 1 received $22,500 in wages which the Defendant falsely claimed as a business deduction reducing the income to him***

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Wonderful human

A motocross instructor who mentored children was sentenced [4sep24] to 40 years in prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, and ordered to pay at least $193,500 in restitution for sexually exploiting numerous children. According to court documents, Ryan Meyung, 33, of no fixed address, sexually exploited multiple young children that he met and befriended while traveling the country as a motocross instructor between July 2019 and December 2021. As part of his predatory behavior, Meyung produced images and videos of six different minor victims engaged in sexually explicit conduct, including sex acts with him and with each other. The victims were between 6 and 13 years old at the time. Meyung also possessed and transported images and videos of child sexual abuse produced by other sex offenders and sexually abused and recorded other children engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Meyung pleaded guilty in April to six counts of sexual exploitation of a minor (producing child sexual abuse material) and has been in custody since his arrest in December 2021.***

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Apparently not investigated until he complained about border

CV NEWS FEED // The FBI on Thursday raided the homes of several top officials in the administration of New York Democratic Mayor Eric Adams in the midst of an ongoing corruption investigation.***

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If a really hot female wants to go on a date and she leaves her purse on the table, you're being video recorded

CV NEWS FEED // A spokesman for a Department of Justice (DOJ) office stated in an undercover video that Democratic New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump is “nonsense” and a politically motivated effort at the behest of “the Democrats.” In addition, Nicholas Biase acknowledged that Bragg’s prosecution – which resulted in Trump’s May 30 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records – is backfiring on Democrats. Biase is the chief spokesman for the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York – a jurisdiction that covers Manhattan, the Bronx, and six suburban counties in upstate New York. An undercover journalist from the independent media source MugClub told Biase: “Those felonies did nothing to stop Trump from running.” “No, in fact they made him more relevant,” the DOJ spokesman replied. “Did that backfire?” the journalist asked. The prosecution is “a perversion of justice,” Biase continued. “[Bragg] was stacking charges and rearranging things just to make it fit a case. No, to be honest with you, I think the case is nonsense.”***

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Libs of TikTok

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Chiraq violent? Who knew?

(The Center Square) – Crime is up in Chicago despite city-wide efforts – and more than $180 million – to reduce violence through a series of programs. Republican state Rep. John Cabello said Chicago’s rising crime rate amounts to an indictment of the state’s present legal system and all its recent changes. New data shows robbery, aggravated assault and aggravated battery cases across the city are all at five-year highs over the 12 months as the number of violent crimes overall have jumped by 7.2%. “When criminals know that they’re probably not going to be held in jail because of the SAFE-T ACT they’re going to be a little bit more brave in what they do,” Cabello told The Center Square. “The arrests are down because the police are too afraid to do their jobs. They need to get rid of the SAFE-T ACT, no cash bail but for low level offenses and go back to what we were.”*** The ongoing crime wave continues to bubble despite the city heavily investing in hopes of changing things, including allocating at least $180 million for violence prevention and youth summer job programs as part of the state budget.*** “It’s going to continue with Chicago losing population,” he said. “People are going to leave because they’re afraid and they want to protect their families and that means the more people that leave Chicago the less tax dollars they’re going to have and it’s going to be a never-ending, revolving cycle.”***

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When he's driving a Lambo, you know he has the $$ for a lawyer

CNN — The Miami-Dade Police Department placed an officer on administrative leave Sunday after Miami Dolphins star Tyreek Hill was detained prior to the start of the season-opening game. On Sunday morning, just hours before kickoff, Hill was detained for a short time by police after a traffic incident, the team said on social media. Hill’s agent said the wide receiver was ticketed for a moving violation and it’s not clear why the situation escalated. Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) Director Stephanie V. Daniels said Sunday an investigation has begun into the incident and one of the officers involved is being placed on administrative duties. A second Dolphins player said he was also handcuffed when trying to discuss the situation with officers at the scene.***

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Weird - expect better from such flamers?

The Justice Department announced today that Dallas Humber, 34, of Elk Grove, California, and Matthew Allison, 37, of Boise, Idaho — leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, a transnational terrorist group — were charged with a 15-count indictment for soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Humber and Allison were arrested on Friday by law enforcement officials.***

According to the indictment, which was unsealed today, Humber and Allison are the leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, a transnational terrorist group that operates on the digital messaging platform Telegram, where it promotes white supremacist accelerationism: an ideology centered on the belief that the white race is superior; that society is irreparably corrupt and cannot be saved by political action; and that violence and terrorism are necessary to ignite a race war and accelerate the collapse of the government and the rise of a white ethnostate. The indictment alleges that Humber and Allison, as leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, contributed to and disseminated several Terrorgram videos and publications that provide specific advice for carrying out crimes, celebrate white supremacist attacks, and provide a hit list of “high-value targets” for assassination. The hit list included U.S. federal, state, and local officials, as well as leaders of private companies and non-governmental organizations, many of whom were targeted because of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Humber and Allison are alleged to have operated Terrorgram channels and group chats, where they solicited Terrorgram users to commit attacks in order to achieve Terrorgram’s goals of accelerationism and white supremacy and provided instructions and guidance to equip Terrorgram users to carry out those attacks.*** They also incited Terrorgram users to commit attacks in furtherance of white supremacist accelerationism, including the following individuals who were allegedly inspired or guided by Humber, Allison, and other members of the Terrorgram Collective to carry out attacks or were planning to do so when they were arrested by law enforcement:

An individual who shot three people (killing two) outside of an LGBT bar in Slovakia;

An individual who planned an attack on energy facilities in New Jersey; and

An individual who stabbed five people near a mosque in Turkey.

The indictment charges Humber and Allison with a total of 15 counts, including one count of conspiracy, four counts of soliciting hate crimes, three counts of soliciting the murder of federal officials, three counts of doxing federal officials, one count of threatening communications, two counts of distributing bombmaking instructions, and one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.***

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Good!

North Carolina automotive parts manufacturer and seller, Rudy’s Performance Parts Inc. (Rudy’s), and its owner, Aaron Rudolf, have agreed to pay a total of $10 million in criminal fines and civil penalties for manufacturing, selling and installing devices, commonly known as “defeat devices,” used to remove or disable required emissions controls in motor vehicles. Rudy’s pleaded guilty and was sentenced today in federal court in Washington, D.C., for conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act. U.S. District Court Judge Trevor N. McFadden for the District of Columbia ordered Rudy’s to pay a criminal fine of $2.4 million and to complete a three-year period of organizational probation, consistent with a plea agreement. *** Rudy’s sold defeat devices, known as delete tuners, which tampered with the on-board diagnostic systems (OBDs) of vehicles. Rudy’s top selling product was the Mini Maxx delete tuner originally manufactured by another company, identified in court documents as “Company A.” Rudy’s also sold the XRT Pro, another Company A delete tuner. After Company A stopped making these tuners, Rudy’s conspired with others to manufacture imitation Company A tuners. Rudy’s reached an agreement with a software technician to convert certain tuners into imitation Company A tuners. That agreement ran from July 2015 through December 2016, when the software technician stopped converting tuners. After that, Rudy’s manufactured the imitation delete tuners in-house using a laptop computer that Rudy’s purchased for $850,000. The laptop contained software to convert tuners into imitation Company A tuners. In-house manufacturing lasted from about December 2016 through July 2018. In total, Rudy’s sold approximately 43,900 imitation tuners, generating about $33 million in revenue. The civil lawsuit alleges that from at least 2014 through mid-2019, Rudy’s and Rudolf manufactured and sold over 250,000 products designed to remove or disable EPA-mandated emissions controls. These products included hardware parts such as plates that block a vehicle’s exhaust gas recirculation system and pipes that replace pollution treatment components in a vehicle’s exhaust system.***

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dbunicorn · 2 months

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You know who the fucking worst, worst offenders are. WOC who actually have trauma that virtue signal. You are such weak cunts.

Feel free to call me a homophobe Trinity. Try living in other countries. Assholes.

You are a political group of incompetent whores

She/her. Rape of women and gays acceptable. Here my Adams 🍎. 🙏🖕🖕🖕🖕

Offending a fascist who violated your privacy, doxes children, runs them.off the road and manipulates them, that's Nobel prize worthy.

You're right we have NOTHING in common.

#faggot sissy

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wikiuntamed · 6 months

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Top 5 @Wikipedia pages from a year ago: Saturday, 1st April 2023

Welcome, welcome, ongi etorri, välkommen 🤗 What were the top pages visited on @Wikipedia (1st April 2023) 🏆🌟🔥?

1️⃣: Indian Premier League "The Indian Premier League (IPL), also known as the TATA IPL for sponsorship reasons, is a men's Twenty20 (T20) cricket league held annually in India. Founded by the BCCI in 2007, the league features ten city-based franchise teams. The IPL usually takes place during the summer, between March and May..."

2️⃣: 2023 Indian Premier League "The 2023 Indian Premier League (also known as Tata IPL 2023 for sponsorship reasons and sometimes referred to as IPL 2023 or IPL 16) was the 16th season of the Indian Premier League, a franchise Twenty20 cricket league in India. It is organised by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.In the..."

3️⃣: Caitlin Clark "Caitlin Clark (born January 22, 2002) is an American college basketball player for the Iowa Hawkeyes of the Big Ten Conference. She is the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer and is regarded as one of the greatest players in women's college basketball history. Clark attended Dowling Catholic..."

Image licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0? by John Mac

4️⃣: Fool's Gold Loaf "Fool's Gold Loaf is a sandwich made by the Colorado Mine Company, a restaurant in Denver, Colorado. It consists of a single warmed, hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with the contents of one jar of creamy peanut butter, one jar of grape jelly, and one pound (450 g) of bacon. The sandwich's..."

Image licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0? by Food Stories from UK - www.helengraves.co.uk

5️⃣: April Fools' Day "April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved with these pranks, which may be revealed as such the following day. The custom of..."

Image by Lars Andersen

#TopWikiPages #WikiUntamed #WikiWonderland #WhatDoesWikiSay

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chimeratechnologies · 7 months

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WEconnect International Day and WBENC National Conference 2024

WEConnect International helps women business owners by enabling them to compete in the global market. We are excited to be part of the WEConnect International Day & WBENC National Conference 2024 happening in the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center Denver, CO, USA. From 18th - 22nd of March 2024 2023 https://www.chimeratechnologies.com/weconnect-international-day-wbenc-national-conference-2024

#weconnectinternationalday

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linneatanner · 7 months

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Lynn Downey Dude or Die #DudeRanch #HistoricalFiction #WomensFiction #WesternWomen #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub @WriterLynnD @cathiedunn

FEATURED AUTHOR: LYNN DOWNEY I am pleased to host Lynn Downey the featured author in The Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour being held between February 12th — March 4th, 2024. Lynn Downey is the author of the Historical Fiction, Dude or Die (H Double Bar Dude Ranch series), released by Pronghorn Press on October 15 2023 (328 pages) Below are highlights of Dude or Die, Lynn Downey'a author bio, and her fascinating guest post about the American dude ranch where you find the touch of a cowboy and the thrill of the West. Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2024/01/blog-tour-dude-or-die-by-lynn-downey.html HIGHLIGHTS: DUDE OR DIE Dude or Die (H Double Bar Dude Ranch series) by Lynn Downey Blurb: It's 1954, and San Francisco writer Phoebe Kelley is enjoying the success of her first novel, Lady in the Desert. When Phoebe’s sister-in-law asks her to return to Tribulation, Arizona to help run the H Double Bar Dude Ranch, she doesn’t hesitate. There’s competition from a new dude ranch this year, so the H Double Bar puts on a rodeo featuring a trick rider with a mysterious past. When accidents begin to happen around the ranch, Phoebe jumps in to figure out why, and confronts an unexpected foe. And a man from her own past forces her to confront feelings long buried. Dude or Die is the second book in the award-winning H Double Bar Dude Ranch series. Buy Link: This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited. Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/b5BVwp AUTHOR BIO: LYNN DOWNEY Lynn Downey is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, historian of the West, and native Californian. She was the Historian for Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco for 25 years. Her adventures as ambassador for company history took her around the world, where she spoke to television audiences, magazine editors, and university students, appeared in numerous documentaries, and on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She wrote many books and articles about the history of the company and the jeans, and her biography, Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World, won the Foreword Reviews silver INDIE award. Lynn got interested in dude ranches during her time at Levi’s. Her debut historical novel, Dudes Rush In, is set on an Arizona dude ranch in the 1950s; Arizona because she’s a desert rat at heart, and the 1950s because the clothes were fabulous. Dudes Rush In won a Will Rogers Medallion Award, and placed first in Arizona Historical Fiction at the New Mexico-Arizona book awards. The next book in this series, Dude or Die, was released in 2023. And just for fun, Lynn wrote a screenplay based on Dudes Rush In, which is currently making the rounds of reviewers and competitions. She pens short stories, as well. “The Wind and the Widow” took Honorable Mention in the History Through Fiction story contest, and “Incident at the Circle H” was a Finalist for the Longhorn Prize from Saddlebag Dispatches. The story “Goldie Hawn at the Good Karma Café,” won second place in The LAURA Short Fiction contest from Women Writing the West, and is based on her experiences in a San Francisco religious cult in the 1970s. (That will be another book one of these days.) Lynn’s latest nonfiction book is American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West, a cultural history of the dude ranch. It was reviewed in The Wall Street Journal, True West, Cowgirl, and The Denver Post, and was a Finalist for the Next Generation INDIE Award in Nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews said the book is “…deeply engaging and balances accessible writing style with solid research.” When she’s not writing, Lynn works as a consulting archivist and historian for museums, libraries, cultural institutions, and businesses. She is the past president of Women Writing the West, a member of the Western Writers of America, and is on numerous boards devoted to archives and historic preservation. Lynn lives in Sonoma, California, where she sometimes makes wine from the Pinot Noir grapes in her back yard vineyard. Author Links: Website: https://www.lynndowney.com Tumblereads blog: https://tumblereadsblog.com/blog-sg/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/WriterLynnD Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lynndowney/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-downey-b82460249/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lynn.downey.historian/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/westernhistorygal.bsky.social Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/WesternHistoryGal/ Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Lynn-Downey/author/B001IXQ2N2 GUEST POST: DEBORAH SWIFT My two historical novels, Dudes Rush In, and the new sequel, Dude or Die, are both set on a fictional Arizona dude ranch in the 1950s. Even my most recent work of history is about this topic, American Dude Ranch: A Touch of the Cowboy and the Thrill of the West. I love the concept of the dude ranch: a place where you can go and live the cowboy life for a few days. This vacation destination began in the 1880s, and today you can do everything from helping the ranchers herd cattle, to getting a spa treatment in a room with views of cactus-studded mountains. Working as the company historian for Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco sparked my interest in dude ranching, because the company made clothing specifically for men and women to wear on ranches: the jeans and jackets, of course, but also gabardine riding pants, wildly patterned western shirts, and shiny satin rodeo shirts with embroidery on the yoke. Most people who visited dude ranches – especially early in their history – came from the eastern states or even countries across the oceans. So, everything from riding a horse with a western saddle, to wearing clothing they never wore at home, meant a dude ranch vacation made memories guests couldn’t get anywhere else. Dude ranches are an endless source of stories, including tales of the famous and infamous, who have also enjoyed going to ranches over the years. These include presidents and presidential family members (which seems appropriate for February, the month Americans celebrate President’s Day). Theodore Roosevelt is at the top of this list. In 1883 he was a rising political star, as well as an author and a well-known outdoorsman. In that year he decided to head West to shoot a buffalo, and a friend recommended going to Medora, North Dakota, a tiny town on the Little Missouri River, where he would find abundant game. He was so taken with the area that he bought a place called the Chimney Butte Ranch, known locally as the Maltese Cross for the design of its cattle brand. He went back home to New York and managed the ranch from afar. Also in the area were the Eaton brothers of Pittsburgh, who the year before had started up the very first dude ranch on their own cattle spread. Although they would move to Wyoming in 1903, they took in a lot of guests at their place near Medora. In 1884, Theodore Roosevelt’s world collapsed: his mother and wife died on the same day. To deal with his grief, Roosevelt went West, where he hoped to heal. He arrived at his ranch in June and met the Eaton brothers, and also spent time with other ranchers in the area. The locals liked him, but they branded him a “dude” for the way he dressed. In the 1880s, a “dude” was a man who was a little too fancy to be considered really masculine. Within just a couple of decades, as the dude ranch industry grew, the word would come to mean someone who came West from somewhere else, to spend time on a dude ranch. Anyway, Roosevelt apparently loved wearing buckskins, and Howard Eaton – the driving force behind the first dude ranch – knew that was not very practical. He once said of Roosevelt, “Buckskin shirts were all right as long as they didn’t get wet, but when they got wet they’d shrink up. I never did like that buckskin hunting shirt he had but he wouldn’t have anything else.” The future president kept his ranch until about 1887, and then he sold off his cattle interests. His Maltese Cross cabin is now part of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. But the Roosevelt dude ranch story doesn’t end there. His oldest daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, inherited his love of the West, especially the Rocky Mountain region. In August of 1969 she arrived in Cody, Wyoming for her fourth dude ranch vacation. She was 85 years old, and stayed at the Sunlight Ranch, run by Faye and Don Snyder about 45 miles from Cody. Faye Snyder said Alice was a real character, which is not a surprise. She was famous for some version of this line, “If you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.” One day during Alice’s time at the ranch, the Snyders’ daughter Sally answered the office phone. She then ran to her mother saying, “Mom, the president wants to talk to Mrs. Longworth, where is she?” They tracked Alice down, and she took the call on the phone in the staff dining room. Faye Snyder heard her say, “Oh, hi Dick! How are you? What do you want?” And who was Dick? President Richard Nixon. Instagram Handles: @thecoffeepotbookclub Bluesky Handles: @cathiedunn Read the full article

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girlyandunruly · 9 months

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2023: Most important thing is family

First year I’ve felt a shift from my “forever young” lifestyle to realizing we are getting old. Our friends no longer join every big event. Both our grandmothers passed away earlier this year. We’ve also had some health problems we’ve had to manage. There’s more time spent at home with continued house maintenance and remodeling projects (and a little of relaxation when possible). I guess since we spend more time at home, we keep improving it. But overall, I’m like “what’s going on? Are we boring? Oh, we are just getting older”, blah.

The biggest focus this year has been family. Between birthdays, funerals, national holidays, and newborn family member, we traveled 8 times in the year to spend time with family. With all the life changes, I cherish the time I spend with our family.

Workwise, this year I hired three new people for my team, and it was the first time in 5 years working at Barr Engineering that I felt the workload was finally manageable. All those years of stress finally paid off; I have a solid team, way more money (ha!) and Barr did an article about me so getting some industry recognition.

Traveling to a new place or visiting family is my favorite thing to do. Here’s this year’s list, 9 different states and 3 new countries, not one full month spent in Denver.

JANUARY:

Jackson Hole, WY snowboarding with friends (Highlight: seeing a moose on the ski run!!)

FEBRUARY:

Taos, NM snowboarding trip with friends for my 38th birthday (Highlight: live music at a bar)

MARCH:

Tucson, AZ for work NAEM conference (Highlight: cucumber vodka lemonades)

APRIL:

Houston, TX for abuelita’s celebration of life

MAY:

Birmingham, MI for Luka’s birthday

JUNE:

Vienna, Austria trip with my mom (Highlights: ALL THE ART!! Absolute best and champagne breaks)

JULY:

Collbran, CO camping for 4th of July

Lake George, NY for Betty Brown’s celebration of life

AUGUST:

Nagawicka Lake, WI for grandpa Bob’s 95th birthday

Serbia and Montenegro for our 5th year wedding anniversary (Highlights: Basketball player Boban Marjanovic being at the same restaurant and all the cats in Montenegro)

SEPTEMBER:

Houston, TX for business trip (Highlight: Got to see SanJuanita and parents for a night)

OCTOBER:

Minneapolis, MN for work training

NOVEMBER:

Birmingham, MI for sisbro’s birthday and went to see Metallica (Highlight: Detroit Institute of Art with so many dutch paintings)

Tampa, FL for Thanksgiving with the Brown family (Highlights: Salvador Dali, wild dolphins and saving Sofi)

DECEMBER:

Houston, TX for Christmas with the family (Highlight: Go Karts with the siblings!)

The times I wasn’t traveling but stayed in Denver were memorable: 1- Goat yoga 2- Getting a limo to see SOFI TUKKER at Red Rocks 3- Bridgerton themed brunch with Elizabeth 4- Indoor mini golf with friends where I won :D 5- Denver Nuggets won the NBA championship and my obsession with Jokic started 6- Seeing The Book of Mormon 7- Makeup class with Kate at Sephora, and finally learning better makeup techniques (I know what to do with primer and bronzer) 8- Obsessed with Women’s World Cup games 9- Vivas Streets where Denver closed Broadway and Welton and had it open for bikers/walkers and no cars. So much fun. 10- Free outdoor movie The Goonies at Curtis Park 11- Tried something new: Hip Hop class with Holly 12- Seeing Jerry Seinfeld 13- Discovered new favorite restaurants: Jovanina’s Broken Italian and Bao Brewhouse

Relax time at home:

Creating art of any form is my favorite pastime. And this year I’ve become obsessed with creating miniatures. A few inspired by my recent travels: Mozart's home after Austria and Porto Winery after Portugal.

Favorite books I read this year: o The Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic o All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Bigger focus on skin care. I have a routine of drinking tea collagen every morning, take vitamins and use serum. The occasional face mask.

Favorite TV shows/Movies in 2023:

Shrinking

Beef

Transatlantic

Ted Lasso

Air

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

BARBIE!!

With all the art obsession this year I came up with our Halloween costume: Vincent Van Gogh and The Starry Night

Baby news!

New nephew Noah born in February 2023 and new baby announcement from Justin and Vanessa again on the same year! (another boy!)

Owen and Pearl had their baby Soren on November 7, 2023.

My 2024 wishes are for better health and continued happiness <3

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cyarskaren52 · 9 months

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This is what happened in sports during 2023

By Sam Joseph, CNNCNN —

none

2023 has been a year unlike any other in sport.

Records were broken, torches were passed, movements were started and tears were shed as fans experienced every emotion possible.

Here’s a look back at the biggest stories this year from all over the sporting world.

January

Sam Greene/USA Today Sports

Bills players gather as an ambulance parks on the field at Paycor Stadium, while CPR is administered to Hamlin. The game was suspended with suspended in the first quarter.

11th: Hamlin is discharged from hospital.

28th: Aryna Sabalenka wins the women’s singlesat the Australian Open.

Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

Djokovic celebrates after winning in Melbourne.

February

1st: Tom Brady announces his retirement from football for the second time.

6th: The Brooklyn Nets trade Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks.

Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images

James fades away to make NBA history.

9th: The Brooklyn Nets trade Kevin Durant to the Phoenix Suns.

11th: Real Madrid wins the Club World Cup.

12th: The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35 in Super Bowl LVII.

March

4th: The NBA begins an investigation into Memphis Grizzlies point guard Ja Morant after a video emerges of him displaying a gun at a Colorado nightclub.

17th: Three people finish the Barkley Marathonsfor only the second time in the 37-year history of the ultra-race.

Paul Sancya/AP

FDU guard Grant Singleton shoots during one of the all-time March Madness upsets.

21st: Japan wins the 2023 World Baseball Classicwith Shohei Ohtani winning tournament MVP.

April

Kevin Jairaj/USA Today Sports via Reuters

Reese gestures to Clark during the game.

3rd: World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and Endeavor (the majority owner of the UFC) announce that the two companies will merge.

6th: European champion England beats South American champion Brazil on penalties, 1-1 (4-2) to win the first ever Women’s Finalissima.

9th: Spaniard Jon Rahm wins the Masters.

Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images

Welcome to Wrexham - striker Elliot Lee celebrates during the match that confirmed his team's promotion to the Football League.

26th: The Green Bay Packers trade Aaron Rodgers to the New York Jets.

Matt York/AP

Griner fights back tears at the news conference.

May

14th: Ja Morant is suspended by the Grizzliesafter being seen with a gun for a second time, this time on Instagram Live. He would later be suspended without pay by the NBA for 25 games.

20th: Manchester City wins the Premier League.

Mateo Villalba/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images

Vinícius was visibly upset during the match.

June

3rd: Manchester City wins the FA Cup, defeating bitter rival Manchester United 2-1 in the final.

6th: PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV Golf announce that they will merge.

10th: Iga Świątek wins the women’s singles at the French Open.

Catherine Ivill/Getty Images

Rúben Dias and the Manchester City squad celebrate their historic treble.

11th: Novak Djokovic wins the French Open and becomes the all-time leader in men’s grand slam titles.

Jack Dempsey/Pool/Getty Images

Denver's Bruce Brown drives to the basket in Game Five.

13th: The Vegas Golden Knights win their first Stanley Cup in only their sixth NHL season, beating the Florida Panthers in five games.

22nd: French teenage sensation Victor Wembanyama is selected first overall by the San Antonio Spurs in the 2023 NBA Draft.

July

Sam Navarro/USA Today Sports

Messi celebrates after scoring a 94th minute game-winning free kick against Cruz Azul, only six days after signing.

15th: Markéta Vondroušová wins the women’s singles at Wimbledon, the first to do so as an unseeded player.

Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Alcaraz lifts the trophy on the Centre Court Balcony.

24th: Bronny James, son of NBA legend LeBron James, suffers a cardiac arrest while at USC basketball practice.

August

6th: The USWNT is knocked out of the Women’s World Cup on penalties by Sweden in Megan Rapinoe’s final international match.

15th: Soccer superstar Neymar Jr. signs for Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal, the highest profile name amongst a slew of international players to move to the burgeoning Saudi Pro League.

20th: Spain win the Women’s World Cup for the first time, defeating England 1-0 in the final.

20th: Royal Spanish Football Federation President Luis Rubiales is accused of multiple instances of inappropriate behavior after Spain’s victory, most notably forcibly kissing midfielder Jennifer Hermoso during the trophy ceremony.

Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Richardson celebrates with the flag after being crowned world champion.

24th: Magnus Carlsen defeats 18-year-old Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa to become Chess World Cup champion.

25th: Rubiales defiantly refuses to resign at a press conference and condemns the rise of “fake feminism.”

25th: Spain midfielder Alexia Putellas posts on X (formerly Twitter) in support of Hermoso and kickstarts the #SeAcabó (#It’sOver in English) social movement.

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Biles competes in the uneven bars on day four of the championships.

September

Mike Segar/Reuters

Gauff kisses the trophy after claiming victory at Flushing Meadows.

10th: Novak Djokovic wins the men’s singles at the US Open.

10th: Luis Rubiales resigns as RFEF president but does not offer an apology in his statement.

Elsa/Getty Images

Rodgers is sacked by the Bills' Leonard Floyd at MetLife Stadium - injuring him only four plays into his New York career.

David Eulitt/Getty Images

Swift, the girlfriend of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and the world's most famous football fan, watches on at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.

27th: The Portland Trail Blazers trade Damian Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks.

October

1st: Damar Hamlin returns to the Bills active roster.

6th: Simone Biles wins her sixth all-around world gymnastics title in Antwerp, Belgium, to solidify her status as the greatest gymnast ever. She would end up winning four golds at the event, taking her to 23 world titles – the most in men’s or women’s gymnastics history.

ANP/Getty Images

Verstappen celebrates after winning the Qatar Grand Prix - he had already sealed the World Championship the day before in the sprint race.

16th: The IOC announces that flag football, baseball/softball, cricket, lacrosse and squashwill be included at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

18th: The Las Vegas Aces win the WNBA Finals 3-1 against the New York Liberty, becoming the first repeat WNBA champions in 21 years.

28th: South Africa wins the Rugby World Cup with a 12-11 victory over New Zealand.

Ben Booth/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

Tributes to Johnson are laid outside the Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, England.

30th: Luis Rubiales is banned from all soccer-related activities for three years by FIFA.

30th: Lionel Messi wins a record-extending eighth Ballon d’Or award.

30th: Police confirm that they are investigatingAdam Johnson’s death.

November

Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images

The Rangers celebrate after taking Game Five on the road at Chase Field.

1st: The Philadelphia 76ers trade James Hardento the Los Angeles Clippers.

6th: Iga Świątek wins WTA Finals and regains the world No. 1 ranking after thrashing Jessica Pegula, 6-1 6-0.

19th: Max Verstappen wins the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Andrew Boyers/Reuters

Australia's Glenn Maxwell celebrates after winning the Cricket World Cup.

19th: Novak Djokovic wins the ATP Finals, defeating Jannik Sinner with ease, 6-3 6-3.

Tracy Wilcox/PGA TOUR via Getty Images

Woods tees off at the Hero World Challenge in Nassau, Bahamas.

December

3rd: Florida State, undefeated in the regular season, is controversially left out of the College Football Playoff.

7th: Jon Rahm announces that he is leaving the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf.

9th: Shohei Ohtani announces that he is signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, reportedly on a 10-year, $700 million contract, the largest deal in professional sports history.

Mark J. Rebilas/USA Today Sports via Reuters

Nurkić lies on the ground hurt while Green reacts after being whistled for a foul.

21st: The EU’s top court decides that FIFA and UEFA’s rules which blocked the creation of the controversial European Super League were unlawful, potentially removing obstacle for the controversial soccer competition to be established.

Sent from my iPhone

#Sports #year in review

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cheapsiuu · 2 years

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masterofd1saster · 5 months

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CJ current events 24apr24

I wonder if it was intentional????

SEATTLE — A Seattle woman is charged with murder and assault after she was accused of shooting and killing a 20-year-old mother in a downtown Seattle alley. The King County Prosecutor’s Office said Rickesha Overton, 33, is charged with first-degree murder and second-degree assault.*** Witnesses said they saw two women fighting. After combing through security footage and evidence, investigators said Overton marched 20-year-old Alisia DeCoteau down a flight of stairs and into an alley behind the apartment building while pointing a gun at her. Overton was heard telling DeCoteau, “I’ll blow your mouth. Say I won’t. Say I won’t.” Police said the suspect shoved the victim to the ground and goes back inside the building briefly. Overton comes back outside and shoots DeCoteau twice – once at the victim’s head, police said. The suspect continued to pull the trigger, but the gun ran out of ammunition, detectives said. As the victim was lying the ground, Overton was heard saying, “you dead b----. B---- you dead.” Overton was seen kicking DeCoteau on the ground at least five times, detectives said. A nearby crowd yelled, “Stop kicking him, back up!” Cell phone footage from witnesses captured the suspect pointing a gun at the crowd and yelling, “I’ll blow your mother f------ brains out,” the document wrote. Police found Overton, wearing a green jacket, white dress and pink shoes, running with a handgun near the southeast corner of Western Avenue and Vine Street, police said, and noticed the gun’s magazine was empty. The suspect initially told officers, “She came into my apartment. It was self-defense. I had to shoot her.” But later told police, “She’s not even dead.” “I don’t care if you give me life. I just want to go to Alisia’s funeral,” Overton added.*** https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/seattle-woman-charged-with-murder-after-shooting-killing-20-year-old-mother-downtown-alley/2HDPSNULNFGXJKROWDDTIPP5PE/

***

Trump trial meme war erupts

BB-

***

Ye meant "infamous."

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. - Montgomery County Public Schools has increased security at several schools in the district after police arrested an 18-year-old student who was threatening to carry out a school shooting. Police say Andrea Ye, whose preferred name is Alex, was arrested and charged in connection with plans to commit a school shooting at Wootton High School in Rockville. Police say Ye was taken into custody on Wednesday, April 17 following a joint investigation by Montgomery County police and FBI agents with the Baltimore Field Office. The FBI first alerted MCPD about a 129-page "manifesto" written by Ye in which he talked about committing a school shooting and strategized how to carry out the act. In the manifesto, Ye also wrote about targeting an elementary school and said that he "wants to be famous," police say.*** https://www.fox5dc.com/news/montgomery-county-teen-arrested-after-manifesto-detailing-school-shooting-discovered

***

Who knew law enforcement was good?

Jay Bianchi’s critics say earlier arrest on sex-assault suspicions could have saved “years” of new victims

Kylie Heringer, left, and Bonnie Utter alleged they were sexually assaulted by Denver music booker Jay Bianchi after a Halloween party in 2020 on July 6, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post) “I have seen it in the scene back east and here and the apologists make me sick. It’s either the dude throws great parties, or has good drugs, or is talented or owns a fun bar so no one cares that they are predators.” -Lucy Sturgess, a Denver designer and member of the city’s jam band scene The arrest of Denver jam-band fixture Jay Bianchi this week on suspicion of sexual assault follows three decades’ worth of other legal trouble and criminal allegations related to his businesses and personal practices. There have also been convictions for assault, drug possession and the flouting of COVID-era closure mandates. But critics say the Denver Police Department could have done more by publicly addressing the sexual assault allegations sooner, with or without charges, and by communicating more effectively with alleged victims who have been calling for action for years. They also believe that if Bianchi had been arrested earlier, it could have saved more potential victims. Bianchi, 55, was booked into the Downtown Detention Center on Tuesday on suspicion of six counts of sexual assault and one count of unlawful sexual contact related to three separate cases. They include sexual assault reports stemming from a 2020 Halloween party, as well as three new charges from April 7 of this year. John Wenzel reports.*** https://www.denverpost.com/2024/04/19/jay-bianchi-arrest-sex-assault-charges-denver/

***

Forgive me for quoting T Swizzle, but

And I ain't trying to mess with your self-expression But I've learned the lesson that stressin' And obsessin' 'bout somebody else is no fun And snakes and stones never broke my bones so

So, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh You need to calm down

A man set himself on fire outside the New York courthouse where former President Donald Trump is being tried for an alleged hush money payment. On Friday, with several news cameras present, a man set himself on fire. The act occurred near where a group of Trump supporters were protesting. The presence of security barricades hampered a response from police and emergency services. Flames and smoke broke out around the body. Several people tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the fire with their coats. A video showed the man being doused with a fire extinguisher. The fire burned for nearly two minutes before being extinguished.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2972386/man-self-immolates-outside-courthouse-of-trump-trial/

***

If you're wondering if the two atrocities are related, yes, they are.

McVeigh claimed that the building in Oklahoma City was targeted to avenge the more than 70 deaths at Waco. https://www.britannica.com/event/Oklahoma-City-bombing

***

Chief of National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section Matthew F. Blue Delivers Remarks at EU Network Meeting on Battlefield Evidence in The Hague

Friday, April 19, 2024

***From Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria to parts of Africa, foreign fighters have, for years, traveled to battlefields from around the world. And some of those foreign fighters have returned to their home countries or other places under false pretenses with the goal of either hiding from their prior terrorist acts or to bring terrorism to cities around the world. And along the way, those foreign fighters have left behind trails of evidence — fingerprints on weapons and bombmaking materials, registration cards and other documentation, photos, and electronic devices. All of that evidence can be a goldmine for prosecutors and investigators. But it has to be collected, analyzed, and catalogued. For over two decades, the United States has collected an extraordinary volume of collected exploitable material and battlefield evidence. And every day, highly trained analysts and investigators sift through that evidence — carefully analyzing it and cataloguing it for retrieval and sharing. And sharing is our main goal — last year we disseminated hundreds and hundreds of cables, intelligence reports, and tearlines for law enforcement and intelligence with our partners around the world.*** https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/chief-national-security-divisions-counterterrorism-section-matthew-f-blue-delivers

***

How could you possibly get away with that?

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — Japanese police have arrested a U.S. Marine on suspicion of attempted assault and robbery of a convenience store on Okinawa. Lance Cpl. Andrew Torres, 20, was taken into custody just after 1 a.m. Thursday in the parking lot of a Lawson in the Nodake district of Ginowan city, an Okinawa prefectural police spokesman told Stars and Stripes by phone Thursday. Torres is assigned to III Marine Logistics Group at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, a spokesman for the group, Chief Warrant Officer William Faffler, said by email Friday. Police said a man in black pants and a black hooded sweatshirt carried a knife into the store between 12:53 a.m. and 1:03 a.m., went behind the counter and attempted to open the cash register. The store clerk, a man in his 20s, was in the back office when, through a security camera, he saw the hooded man at the register, the police spokesman said. The clerk ran from the store and called police from his cellphone. Police soon arrived and stopped Torres, who was in the parking lot running from the store, the spokesman said.*** https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2024-04-19/marine-convenience-store-robbery-arrest-13595447.html

You're on an island

Everyone knows where you work

Everyone know where you live

Unlike LA or Chicago, Japan has vigorous, effective law enforcement.

***

In Hood U. news,

An important EMERGENCY message from UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - FLINT UM EAlert Flint: Gunshots reported MTA Bus Station at 8:13. Lockdown, secure in place. Avoid area. If necessary, RUN, HIDE, FIGHT. +++ April 16, 2024 To the university community: As a follow-up to this morning’s emergency alerts, the UM-Flint Department of Public Safety assessed the nature of the reported shots fired at the downtown MTA bus station and placed the campus in lockdown as a safety precaution. The lockdown was lifted after it was determined there was no longer a threat to campus. A suspect is in custody and the Flint Police Department is leading the investigation of the incident.****

***

What happens when you murder someone

Nicole Avant:I remember my knees buckling immediately and I froze for a second. I could hear my heartbeats, and it felt like it was going to jump out of my chest. I got in the car, and all of a sudden I felt this energy that came over me. I just started talking to my mom and I felt like I was becoming her. And I just said, “Mom, if you can hear me, I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I’m on my way and I’m going to be here for you. I’m going to take care of you.” And then I got to the hospital. And I walked in, and I saw my father sitting there, and he’s shaking a little bit. My brother’s pacing back and forth, and I looked at my father, who was physically unharmed, and I just held his hand and I said, “Dad, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m here for you.” And he goes, “Oh, she’s in surgery”—his false hope—“Jackie’s going to be okay.” And I just held his hand, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. And then we wait, and then they come out, and then you go into that room, and then everything changed. As soon as I heard those words—“I’m sorry, she did not make it”—my brother was like a pierced animal, just wailing. And then my father slumped onto me, and I just sat up.*** I knew in that second my life has changed forever. Everyone’s life has changed forever. And we got home. My father walked in my house, and I said, “Dad, I don’t know what’s going to go on. I just know that I’m never leaving your side and we’re going to get through this together.”*** BW:The man who murdered your mother is 30 years old. He had an extensive criminal record. He had spent five years in prison for robbery and then was sentenced to another four years, also for robbery, and had been released on parole in September of 2021, a few months before he walked into their house. He has gotten life in prison. So in a sense, you’ve gotten justice, but forgiveness is another story, right? And you write this in the book: “Forgiveness is a choice and a gift to yourself. I cannot carry the anger and the resentment and the fury because it’s just a dead weight on my heart, and I have to protect my soul.” I think most people, when they hear that, will say, how is it possible that you could have that level of clarity? And for anyone listening who can’t forgive the person that wronged them, what advice do you have for that person?

NA:I think the advice I would give is: change your definition of forgiveness. Because forgiveness has nothing to do with condoning, excusing, trying to understand a behavior. I don’t give a shit about him at all. The forgiveness was more about setting yourself free. For me, forgiveness was taking my attention off of you. I have to untether myself from your energy. Forgiveness is really giving up the burden of anger and fear and resentment. It’s a daily thing. It wasn’t like, “Oh, I just forgive you. It happened.” No, it’s a practice. *** NA:I’ve been disappointed, especially being born and raised in L.A. I have seen the differences of this city. I’ve seen when it’s been really great and then when it’s turned a corner. The last five years before my mom died, I would drive around going, “What the hell is going on? How are we one of the largest economies in the world functioning like this?” Los Angeles is one of the best cities in the entire world. And there was a lack of order. It was like, “Who’s in charge? What’s happening?” And what upset me was people who could live behind gates didn’t know what about everybody else was going through— BW:And cannot afford private security. NA:Yeah.And just the idea of calling the police and calling, saying there’s somebody outside of my door and they’ve pitched a tent. “There’s nothing we can do.” That’s the one thing that the government has to do is you have to protect your people and you have to have order. That’s what we hire you for. So you can’t say to a taxpayer, “Good luck.” Good luck? No. I know a small business owner who gets a ticket for her hedges being two inches higher than they’re supposed to be, but yet somebody can come and shoot heroin in front of her house, lay there, defecate all over the place, and she calls the police and [they say] “There’s nothing we can do.” And that is not okay. And everyone knows it’s not okay.

On Black Lives Matter and defund the police: NA:This arrogance of society—you don’t get to be the 20-year-old white girl to talk about defund the police. Who are you to say that? What are you talking about, by the way? There are so many people in neighborhoods—in black neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, whatever—they want order. They want to be able to call somebody. They want help, they want assistance. So seeing lots of very young white liberal people speaking on behalf of all black people—we don’t need you to speak on our behalf at all. No one asked you to, by the way. And we can speak for ourselves, and we’ll tell you what we want.

I was going into a store in Malibu, and people were chanting “Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.” And I’m like, I get it, and I parked my car. “Black Lives Matter.” I’m black. I know. I mean, they’re literally in front of my car, “Black Lives Matter.” I’m like, “Got it, got it.” I get out of the car, I go get my food, I come out, and I hold the door open for all these protesters. They walk in. Not one person says thank you. Not one. Not one person looked at me. Not one person said thank you to me. To the last one I go, “Yes, you are correct. Black lives matter. You’re welcome.” Fucking idiots. They don’t even get the irony of the whole thing. And they’re screaming at everybody. I’m like, “You don’t even see the person who’s in front of you, and you want to speak for the entire race of people?” No, you don’t get to do that. ***

***

Bill Maher gets it right

***“Have you all been watching the Max documentary called ‘Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV?’” he asked his viewer. “It’s just scene after scene, clip after clip of the child stars of their day being subjected to obviously inappropriate highly sexualized degradation.”*** “Why would a kid’s content factory at Disney be all that different from the one at Nickelodeon?” Maher asked. He went on to cite stats and testimony from former Disney child stars: A 2014 CNN report discovered that at least 35 Disney employees had been arrested for sex crimes against children and in 2021 Disney child star Alyson Stoner confessed she only narrowly survived the toddler-to-trainwreck pipeline. The next year child star Cole Sprouse told The New York Times that young actresses at the Disney Channel were heavily sexualized at an early age. “And get this,” Maher added. “After Brian Peck who was one of the lead creeps at Nickelodeon served 16 months in prison for the molesting he did there, Disney hired him, naturally, to work on a children’s series.” “For pedophiles in Hollywood, it’s a small world after all,” he stated. “And not just Hollywood,” the host continued. “There are Instagram moms these days who are practically OnlyFans-ing their itty bitty beauty queen daughters by having them wear skimpy bikinis and eat bananas to build social media stardom.” “They’re called ‘Sharenters,’ a hybrid of ‘sharing’ and ‘parent,’” Maher noted. “I call them pimps.”*** https://catholicvote.org/bill-maher-slams-hollywood-pedophiles-leftist-hypocrisy-in-viral-clip-desantis-wasnt-wrong/

***

LA mayor has home invasion robbery in official residence

Second burglary since late 2022. Suspect has record for violent crime.

Had to go wait in safe room/panic room.

***

Not the sharpest tools at Home Depot

Home Depot's rental department continues to battle the theft of its heavy equipment in schemes where suspects sell the machinery on sites like Facebook Marketplace, prosecutors allege. Earlier this month, federal prosecutors in Oregon brought charges against a group of seven defendants, accusing them of conspiring in a scheme in which they stole heavy machinery from Home Depot by renting it and not returning it. According to the indictment, first reported by Court Watch, members of the group would go to the retailer's rental desk at locations in Oregon, Washington, and Colorado to borrow the equipment using stolen credit and debit card information. Prosecutors also said the defendants would "often use their real driver's license" for the required identification. But rather than return the equipment, the defendants instead sold it on Facebook Marketplace and other online platforms, according to the court documents. In each instance, the equipment was borrowed under a one-day rental, GPS tracking devices were disabled, and items were listed for sale on Facebook and elsewhere, the prosecutors said. The thefts bear a striking resemblance to several cases in the past year, one in Washington, and two in Florida. In one, Florida prosecutors sentenced a man to eight years in prison for leading a crime ring that rented more than 60 pieces of heavy equipment, such as trenchers, stump grinders, and excavators, which were never returned, costing Home Depot more than $1 million. Officials said he too used his actual ID when borrowing equipment, the local Fox affiliate reported.*** https://www.businessinsider.com/home-depot-rental-equipment-heavy-machinery-thefts-2024-4

***

Is he unaware of why he's infamous?

There's a reason people call him "Lubin’ Toobin"

***

7th graders prolly shouldn't have hit lists

***The Pennbrook student shared that the seventh grade assailant repeatedly yelled, “I’m going to murder you” while hitting her friend’s head with the cup. She grew tearful as she described seeing her friend’s blood being cleaned up off the tables and ground. “We had to watch them take her out with blood dripping down her face and I will never forget that,” she cried.

She said the attack went on in front of the students for 28 minutes. However, the school district claims that security cameras revealed that the incident lasted eight minutes. At the school board meeting, the student disputed the school’s claim of “eight minutes” because she “timed it.” Parents at the meeting demanded to see the security tape to verify the claims of the school.*** by Tuesday, the students knew of a “hit list.” “I would say by Tuesday lunch time, everybody in the school knew that my daughter was going to be ‘curb stomped’ or made to ‘bite the curb’ or jumped,” she said of the “school talk” prior to the attack. Another mother told the school board that the assailant “had multiple reports of violence” and she didn’t understand how that went unchecked.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2975249/pennsylvania-community-outraged-transgender-student-hit-list/

Philly suburb.

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Home Deport does need security

A New York Home Depot has deployed a guard dog — and other stores may be close behind — to protect shoppers from aggressive migrants and thieves flooding their parking lots, The Post has learned.

Two men wearing MSA Security caps and bulletproof vests with a German shepherd in tow patrolled the Home Depot in New Rochelle on Tuesday. “It’s more about omnipresence,” one guard said, explaining that the company was contracted a few weeks ago. “It’s not like we let them go bite anyone or anything.”*** “It’s not just because of [migrants], but because of a myriad of other things too, like people breaking into cars, that kind of stuff,” he said.*** One 52-year-old Mexican national, Jimeno, who has lived in the Bronx since arriving in the United States 20 years ago, was at the Throggs Neck store seeking legitimate work from contractors. “There are a lot of people who have been coming here for a lot of years … asking people for jobs in construction and if they need help with projects,” he told The Post in Spanish. “We come here to find work.” He said the recent arrivals who aggressively solicit for tips have made it harder for the day laborers to find work.*** https://nypost.com/2024/04/21/us-news/home-depot-stores-look-to-security-to-keep-migrants-at-bay/

***wed

California’s unemployment insurance fund is “structurally insolvent” due to $55 billion in fraud and overpayment during COVID-19 crisis, leading to a growing $21 billion unemployment benefits loan from the federal government the state is unable to pay down.*** While the state seeks loan forgiveness from the Acting United States Secretary of Labor, who was California’s Secretary of Labor during the COVID-19 era and oversaw the state’s fraudulent payments — including nearly $1 billion to felons in prison filling out fraudulent paperwork *** In 2020 California borrowed $17.8 billion to continue payments from its unemployment insurance fund, a number that is projected to reach $20.8 billion by the end of 2024 due to insufficient payments. With unemployment projected to grow from 804,000 Californians in 2022 to 930,000 Californians by 2025, benefits payments are projected to grow — barring any legislative changes from $5 billion in 2022 to $6.8 billion by 2025. While California’s unemployment insurance fund already faced poor solvency before the COVID-19 crisis, $55 billion in fraud and overpayments have led the state’s non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office to declare the program “structurally insolvent.”***

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Sad case

A Democratic state senator in Minnesota was charged with first-degree burglary on Tuesday after authorities say she broke into her stepmother's house where the lawmaker claimed she was trying to get her late father's belongings, including his ashes. Sen. Nicole Mitchell, 49, was booked into the Becker County Jail on Monday for a suspected first-degree burglary offense, according to online jail records. A homeowner on the 700 block of Granger Road in Detroit Lakes reported an active burglary to 911 around 4:45 a.m., Detroit Lakes Police Chief Steve Todd told FOX9 Minneapolis. During a search of the home, officers found Mitchell dressed in black clothing and a black hat, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the station. A flashlight with a sock over it and a black backpack containing two laptops, a cellphone, a driver’s license, Senate identification and Tupperware.*** She was previously a meteorologist for KSTP-TV and Minnesota Public Radio, and currently serves as lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard.*** https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-minnesota-state-senator-arrested-suspicion-burglary

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Always helpful BB-

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Barry/Suzanne Morphew case

DENVER (KDVR) — The autopsy for Suzanne Morphew has been completed, FOX31 has learned, nearly seven months after her remains were discovered in Saguache County. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation confirmed that the autopsy was complete but said it could be several more days before it is released. Morphew was reported missing from her home in Chaffee County on May 10, 2020. Her husband, Barry Morphew, was arrested on May 5, 2021, and charged with first-degree murder. However, those charges were dropped in April 2022 just before the case went to trial. In September 2023, remains were found in Saguache County and confirmed to be Morphew.*** https://kdvr.com/news/local/suzanne-morphews-autopsy-completed/

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BB -

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No way this could ever be unconstitutional....

I get the point of the law, but what if the victim knowingly & voluntarily wears a t-shirt and underwear that says "I consent to sex?"

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