#Gun toters

[bitchfitch]

He had been in so many rooms surrounded by people who were armed to the teeth that Zephyr had begun to rank the ways the gun toters toted. His favorite was the macho guy classic, a pistol shoved down the front of someone's pants. It was brash, sexy, made no effort to pretend the situation was not one where a gun might need to be drawn quickly, and most importantly, let Zephyr keep his spirits up by fantasizing about it accidentally firing while still 'holstered'.

His least favorite was the preferred method of the boring black suited fuckers around him now. They had their guns in shoulder holsters, tastefully hiding under their ill tailored jackets. They all had one. The man pretending to be distracted by investigating the leaves of the potted plant in the corner of this quaint suburban home's living room was carrying a Glock gen 5. As was the woman holding a clipboard loaded with nonsense documents meant to obfuscate that she wasn't another psychologist. The only actual doctor in the room fidgeted as though there was a harness and heavy lunk of metal he was not used to carrying hanging from his left shoulder.

Zephyr leaned back on the army green sofa. It was lumpy and clearly well used by its previous owners, but it, along with everything else in this home, was his now so he could definitely get used to it. This was going to be his home for the duration of this little experiment, he might as well be comfortable.

Three knocks at the door made him and the Doc jump a bit in their seats (when did Zephyr get jumpy? He'll have to work on that again) before it swung open to admit two more people pretending they weren't carrying, and the single largest person Zephyr had ever seen.

The perfectly average sized door frame came up to his collar bones when he stood beyond it, and he was so broad that the barrel of his chest alone wouldn't be able to fit past it without him turning to the side to fit. Then when he straightened up again, the vast valley of that man's muscle bound shoulders made Zephyr wonder why none of the higher ups had thought to invest in a building with double wide doors that might actually accommodate this behemoth. This was going to be his home too after all.

Zephyr had been worried about what the man would look like, some of the earlier prototypes from the Phecda program... we're unfortunate, but this one had his charms. He wasn't handsome, not in a typical way, but he had those droopy eyes that made his baby blues look kind. His head was shaved and he made it work in Zephyr's opinion, thought it contrasted with the homey outfit he was in. The soft looking green jumper, a well loved bomber jacket looked right on him, but the faded denim jeans looked more than a bit too tight. Like someone thought they could get away with just buying this mountain a pair of straight cut jeans from the big and tall section instead of making him a pair that would actually fit.

Zephyr wouldn't complain though. They showed off the sheer girth of his new husband's thick thighs in a pleasing enough way, and he knew how to sew well enough that he could put something less uncomfortable looking together for the man in the lulls... Plus, while he had been assured he was not expected to have sex with this stranger at any point, the tightness of the pants around the guy's crotch made it clear he would not disappoint if Zephyr did decide to climb this mountain.

The doctor and the woman who was not a doctor but pretending to be, Dr. Robertson and 'Dr'.Burke stood to greet him and the silent escorts that had moved off to the side, before directing him to take a seat on the couch with Zephyr.

"Zephyr, this is Renard, and Renard, this is Zephyr." Dr. Robertson gestured between them, his smile tight and awkward as they failed to make the greetings themselves.

"Charmed," Zephyr held out his hand, and was shocked by how gentle and warm Renard's was when he quickly reached to shake it once. For such a big guy, he had a nervous energy to him. He didn't say a word in response to being greeted, kept his hands neatly fisted in his lap, and sat like he had a bar of steel for a spine.

"Good, good." the doctors sat back down as Robertson picked up his clipboard, "So. You were both already given the brief of this experiment. We're trying to see how retired prototypes handle civilian life, but I believe Zephyr as our integration specialist was left in charge of coming up with the cover story all on his own. Victoria has the printout but it'll be better if you talk him through it."

"Does he talk?" Zephyr asks dismissively to see how everyone might react.

"I do." Renard doesn't, the doctors flinch. Interesting.

"Oh you have a nice voice don't you? Wasn't expecting that Mr. Renard Paredes. But whatever, the gist of things is that we met in highschool, married shortly after graduation, then you left for bootcamp the same day our honeymoon ended. I worked at a piercing and tattoo shop while you went through basic training, you were deployed soon, but never saw actual combat because while riding into the zone your vehicle rolled over an IED. You survived mostly intact, but were left with a severe brain injury from the blast that explains any little personality quirks you might have from the Program. When you came back I moved to working from home so that I could take care of you." He rattled off before tacking "Cool?" on at the very end

"Cool," Renard parroted before considering his words for a long second. Zephyr wondered if other people could read him at all, the man was so controlled in his every movement and facial expression that the only sign he was nervous about how his words might be taken was the sight flick of his eyes. "Are we happy? In the media I was given to learn from, the couples were never happy."

Oh. Zephyr hadn't expected that, or the genuineness Renard had asked it with. He hadn't thought about whether or not they would pretend to be happy in their life together, plenty of real couples weren't so it wasn't like them not being happy would do much to give them away. And pretending to be happy in a relationship was so much more work...

"We're not perfect, but yeah, we're happy," Zephyr let impulse make his words, but when the poor guy let the corners of his lips turn up just that tiny bit it convinced Zephyr he'd made the right call.

[the-scrappy-stinger]

So I'm a Spider, So What? (Specifically the first 6 books)

(Bee gets on the floor.)

Like, I don't know how many of you are aware of the- fuckin'- deep lore of... me. But I-

There we go! Like spiders.

So I start reading the spider books.

THE PREMISE: She's been isekai'd as the smallest, weakest, most delicate little spider in a big scary dungeon, and all she has is herself.

And it's honestly pretty great. It hits a LOT of my happy reader buttons. Like, look at the me that I am. I LOVE xenofiction. Reading from human perspective every single time gets dull- I like being a werewolf, or an Andalite, or a lion, and in this case? I love being this little spider. Her stream-of-consciousness makes perfect sense to me, and I like having the same kind of mechanical revelations as she does! It's enthralling!

... and then there's everyone else.

Yeah, you've probably seen or at least heard about the anime. You know it's not just Spider- it's also her entire class of humans turned into humans, doing their usual isekai things. One's the Hero. One's the Saintess who's got to sa- okay there's no evil tree this time, but still. My favorite weird twist is the one that's reborn as a yandere vampire, but that's 'cause I know a lot of vampires and I just track onto them. And they're okay? They're fine. They bore me, and I think I finally figured out what the deal is with a lot of these books.

It's agency.

When I look back over a lot of these? There's a SEVERE lack of independence with all the leads. Book Princess gets toted around by her prince. Jeanette the Genius has her rich fiance do everything for her. The 100th Timer tries to have agency and gets stalked by her boyfriends, and in THAT, she can't get rid of them. When the characters do have agency, they're weirdly murderous about it, like the Prison Princess, the Gun-Toter, and the Revengencer. And my used-to-be favorite, Lucia, is in danger of having her agency taken away from her because all the men around her have decided she HAS to be married for her own good!

Lacey keeps hers, and Spider? She does too... for the first five books.

And come the 6th? It's pretty much gone.

I guess I shouldn't spoil it, but I'll give you this much. If you like a badass lady lead that struggles but still comes out on top, relies on her brains, and comes up with some mad plans that work, then you'll like... about half of the books, because the other half is the same ol' isekai bullshit. Either you like the humans more than I do and stick around to make sure they're okay, or you won't. I dunno. I kinda wish I could just pick out my Spider and keep her, away from all the bad places the story goes, and just kind of play with her.

But that's kinda what I do already.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"NIGHT CLUB PREY OF HOLD-UP MEN," Montreal Star. November 6, 1933. Page 3 & 11. ---- Two Bandits Get $1,500 in Daring Raid at Villa Maurice ---- When Ethel Vinelesky, secretary of Villa Maurice, Stanley Avenue night club, glanced up from her work this morning, she was looking into the barrel of a revolver, and listening to a man who barked: "Turn around."

Before this man and his confrere were finished, they had robbed the safe of $1.500 and had escaped from the building located at 1224 Stanley street. The robbery was committed at 9.45 this morning.

Miss Vinelesky, still almost incoherent from the shock, stated that she was doing her usual Monday morning routine, while nearby in an unopened safe, was $1,500, the proceeds of three days' business.

NOT MASKED "Turn around," she heard a voice shout, and looked up quickly to see two well dressed men, not masked and armed with revolvers. One of the hold-up men, seemed to have a broken nose. He was fair, and about six feet tall. The other man was dark, and about five feet eight inches in height.

"Get up against that wall" shouted the gunman. "You, too," he yelled at the night watchman, William Matthews, who happened to be there at the time.

He had turned their faces to the wall, when he seemed to have a better idea.

"Get into that room there, you two," he indicated with his gun, as he pointed to the ladies' room.

Then there was a noise over his shoulder, and the robber wheeled sharply to see the janitor, Alex Smith, burst onto the scene.

"Come on, you go with the rest," said the gun-toter. "Hurry up, get a move on."

KEPT IN ROOM. The three were then ushered into - the ladies' room, from which there was no escape.

"Don't make any noise, and stay in there," they were told, as the door banged behind them. -

When, a minute or so later, the noise outside had ceased, they came out of the wash room, to find the money gone. Phil Maurice was notified, as were the police.

To the description given above, Miss Vinelesky was able to add that one of the men seemed about 35 years of age, and the other, about 40.

[docgold13]

In James Gunn’s new DCU, does Cole Cash (Grifter, from Wildstorm comics) have the potential to be a breakout character in the vein of Deadpool, in your opinion?

interesting question. I'm not so sure. With Deadshot, Bloodsport and Peacemaker already featured so prominently, it sort of feels like the DCEU has the wisecracking gun-toter type pretty squared away.

But never say never. Stranger things have happened. I would have never have guessed Starlord to prove such a pivotal character. And the idea of anyone outside of my comic reading friends knowing who Killer Croc or Captain Boomerang is was something my younger self wouldn't have guessed.

[mrjlogic]

Name a better 4 album run… I’ll WAIT! Each album shifted the momentum of hip hop culture in its own way. All 4 are certified CLASSICS! 3 Feet High: woke up all the kids like myself that enjoyed blerd culture + were artists deep down and loved that they combined timeless music mixed with comedy and smart lyrics and a unique STYLE! De La is Dead: from jump let us know you’re entering an alternative universe so hang on tight (because we wanna swat the people who only liked “me myself and I” and misunderstood what “Da.I.s.Y Age” really meant off the train! The story book with the artwork and proving you could be different and still make hits. Buhloone: (my fave De La album) put folks on notice that they are the best Emcee’s and they lowkey influenced how me and mine dressed + carried ourselves it had us dive even deeper into our artistic selves. The song ‘I Am I Be’ is FLAWLESS imo and I think De La’s most important (if not best) song. Stakes: This album to me changed my whole thought process (again) + let me know that they can buck the current trends but at the same time better those trends (those J DILLA beats PROVED this!) and it gave more guidance that substance and art are STILL important and you can still follow those yet let the gun toters know that “we will still bust your a**es with these mic’s” without having to be fake “tough guys”. Each album aged profoundly and we watched them grow not only as artists but as men and they as a group raised the best generation. If you doubt me then go look at the kids of true De La Soul fans. They’ll most likely be the most well rounded + kindest kids in the friend group. To me De La has NEVER had a bad album or showed any signs of slipping even in todays musical mindset. They are one of the few timeless artists of my lifetime. They are MY Beatles and ATCQ are My Rolling Stones (or is it vice-versa?) Meaning they’ve never lost their staying power and have continued to have a great impact to millions of music fans. IG limits the text so I can’t go DEEP but @danteross put the idea in my head asking “best 4 album run?” De La Soul hands down! Thank you Dave, Pos & Maseo! #delasoul #thankyoudave (at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) https://www.instagram.com/p/CqHL_aPp-Xb/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[krispyweiss]

Béla Fleck “Stunned and Disappointed” in U.S. Gun Laws

Béla Fleck says he is “stunned and disappointed” in the United States’ policies toward guns in the wake of the mass shooting in Nashville that killed three 9-year-old children and three teachers.

“Our hearts are broken for the families who suffered tragedy (March 27) in Nashville,” said the Tennessee resident, who recently returned home after playing in New Zealand and Australia, which have strict gun-control laws.

“I remain stunned and disappointed that we have not banned assault weapons in our great country,” Fleck said.

Fleck’s fellow Tennessean Jason Isbell had some advice for swashbuckling gun-toters.

“Dads, protect your family,” Isbell said.

“Do the laundry. Wash the dishes. Be emotionally available. You’re not in an action movie but, boy, can you be a hero.”

3/29/22

[liveleaker]

The only mutuals I have that would survive an apocalypse for real are the gun toters and animal skinners. The rest of you I'm not convinced leave the house.

[psychoticwillgraham]

ngl it’s hard to convince myself to do anything in my life while knowing that trans people are under attack and that lots of people in my community don’t think we should exist. like what’s the point honestly?

then there’s the side of me that’s like ‘I’m gonna be even MORE visibly queer and use my voice to speak up’ because change won’t happen if nobody stands up.

but im terrified of going downtown (the main gathering hub for here) at all now, even during daylight, because of the amount of hate and gun toters there are there. times like this REALLY make me want to relapse and drink until im blacked out, because it’s just getting worse.

[hellsitesonlybookclub]

It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 15-16

CHAPTER XV

USUALLY I'm pretty mild, in fact many of my friends are kind enough to call it "Folksy," when I'm writing or speechifying. My ambition is to "live by the side of the road and be a friend to man." But I hope that none of the gentlemen who have honored me with their enmity think for one single moment that when I run into a gross enough public evil or a persistent enough detractor, I can't get up on my hind legs and make a sound like a two-tailed grizzly in April. So right at the start of this account of my ten-year fight with them, as private citizen, State Senator, and U. S. Senator, let me say that the Sangfrey River Light, Power, and Fuel Corporation are—and I invite a suit for libel—the meanest, lowest, cowardliest gang of yellow-livered, back-slapping, hypocritical gun-toters, bomb-throwers, ballot-stealers, ledger-fakers, givers of bribes, suborners of perjury, scab-hirers, and general lowdown crooks, liars, and swindlers that ever tried to do an honest servant of the People out of an election—not but what I have always succeeded in licking them, so that my indignation at these homicidal kleptomaniacs is not personal but entirely on behalf of the general public.

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip

ON Wednesday, January 6, 1937, just a fortnight before his inauguration, President-Elect Windrip announced his appointments of cabinet members and of diplomats.

Secretary of State: his former secretary and press-agent, Lee Sarason, who also took the position of High Marshal, or Commander-in-Chief, of the Minute Men, which organization was to be established permanently, as an innocent marching club.

Secretary of the Treasury: one Webster R. Skittle, president of the prosperous Fur & Hide National Bank of St. Louis—Mr. Skittle had once been indicted on a charge of defrauding the government on his income tax, but he had been acquitted, more or less, and during the campaign, he was said to have taken a convincing way of showing his faith in Buzz Windrip as the Savior of the Forgotten Men.

Secretary of War: Colonel Osceola Luthorne, formerly editor of the Topeka (Kans.) Argus, and the Fancy Goods and Novelties Gazette; more recently high in real estate. His title came from his position on the honorary staff of the Governor of Tennessee. He had long been a friend and fellow campaigner of Windrip.

It was a universal regret that Bishop Paul Peter Prang should have refused the appointment as Secretary of War, with a letter in which he called Windrip "My dear Friend and Collaborator" and asserted that he had actually meant it when he had said he desired no office. Later, it was a similar regret when Father Coughlin refused the Ambassadorship to Mexico, with no letter at all but only a telegram cryptically stating, "Just six months too late."

A new cabinet position, that of Secretary of Education and Public Relations, was created. Not for months would Congress investigate the legality of such a creation, but meantime the new post was brilliantly held by Hector Macgoblin, M.D., Ph.D., Hon. Litt.D.

Senator Porkwood graced the position of Attorney General, and all the other offices were acceptably filled by men who, though they had roundly supported Windrip's almost socialistic projects for the distribution of excessive fortunes, were yet known to be thoroughly sensible men, and no fanatics.

It was said, though Doremus Jessup could never prove it, that Windrip learned from Lee Sarason the Spanish custom of getting rid of embarrassing friends and enemies by appointing them to posts abroad, preferably quite far abroad. Anyway, as Ambassador to Brazil, Windrip appointed Herbert Hoover, who not very enthusiastically accepted; as Ambassador to Germany, Senator Borah; as Governor of the Philippines, Senator Robert La Follette, who refused; and as Ambassadors to the Court of St. James's, France, and Russia, none other than Upton Sinclair, Milo Reno, and Senator Bilbo of Mississippi.

These three had a fine time. Mr. Sinclair pleased the British by taking so friendly an interest in their politics that he openly campaigned for the Independent Labor Party and issued a lively brochure called "I, Upton Sinclair, Prove That Prime-Minister Walter Elliot, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and First Lord of the Admiralty Nancy Astor Are All Liars and Have Refused to Accept My Freely Offered Advice." Mr. Sinclair also aroused considerable interest in British domestic circles by advocating an act of Parliament forbidding the wearing of evening clothes and all hunting of foxes except with shotguns; and on the occasion of his official reception at Buckingham Palace, he warmly invited King George and Queen Mary to come and live in California.

Mr. Milo Reno, insurance salesman and former president of the National Farm Holiday Association, whom all the French royalists compared to his great predecessor, Benjamin Franklin, for forthrightness, became the greatest social favorite in the international circles of Paris, the Basses-Pyrénées, and the Riviera, and was once photographed playing tennis at Antibes with the Duc de Tropez, Lord Rothermere, and Dr. Rudolph Hess.

Senator Bilbo had, possibly, the best time of all.

Stalin asked his advice, as based on his ripe experience in the Gleichshaltung of Mississippi, about the cultural organization of the somewhat backward natives of Tadjikistan, and so valuable did it prove that Excellency Bilbo was invited to review the Moscow military celebration, the following November seventh, in the same stand with the very highest class of representatives of the classless state. It was a triumph for His Excellency. Generalissimo Voroshilov fainted after 200,000 Soviet troops, 7000 tanks, and 9000 aeroplanes had passed by; Stalin had to be carried home after reviewing 317,000; but Ambassador Bilbo was there in the stand when the very last of the 626,000 soldiers had gone by, all of them saluting him under the quite erroneous impression that he was the Chinese Ambassador; and he was still tirelessly returning their salutes, fourteen to the minute, and softly singing with them the "International."

He was less of a hit later, however, when to the unsmiling Anglo-American Association of Exiles to Soviet Russia from Imperialism, he sang to the tune of the "International" what he regarded as amusing private words of his own:

"Arise, ye prisoners of starvation, From Russia make your getaway. They all are rich in Bilbo's nation. God bless the U.S.A.!"

Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch, after her spirited campaign for Mr. Windrip, was publicly angry that she was offered no position higher than a post in the customs office in Nome, Alaska, though this was offered to her very urgently indeed. She had demanded that there be created, especially for her, the cabinet position of Secretaryess of Domestic Science, Child Welfare, and Anti-Vice. She threatened to turn Jeffersonian, Republican, or Communistic, but in April she was heard of in Hollywood, writing the scenario for a giant picture to be called, They Did It in Greece.

As an insult and boy-from-home joke, the President-Elect appointed Franklin D. Roosevelt minister to Liberia. Mr. Roosevelt's opponents laughed very much, and opposition newspapers did cartoons of him sitting unhappily in a grass hut with a sign on which "N.R.A." had been crossed out and "U.S.A." substituted. But Mr. Roosevelt declined with so amiable a smile that the joke seemed rather to have slipped.

The followers of President Windrip trumpeted that it was significant that he should be the first president inaugurated not on March fourth, but on January twentieth, according to the provision of the new Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution. It was a sign straight from Heaven (though, actually, Heaven had not been the author of the amendment, but Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska), and proved that Windrip was starting a new paradise on earth.

The inauguration was turbulent. President Roosevelt declined to be present—he politely suggested that he was about half ill unto death, but that same noon he was seen in a New York shop, buying books on gardening and looking abnormally cheerful.

More than a thousand reporters, photographers, and radio men covered the inauguration. Twenty-seven constituents of Senator Porkwood, of all sexes, had to sleep on the floor of the Senator's office, and a hall-bedroom in the suburb of Bladensburg rented for thirty dollars for two nights. The presidents of Brazil, the Argentine, and Chile flew to the inauguration in a Pan-American aeroplane, and Japan sent seven hundred students on a special train from Seattle.

A motor company in Detroit had presented to Windrip a limousine with armor plate, bulletproof glass, a hidden nickel-steel safe for papers, a concealed private bar, and upholstery made from the Troissant tapestries of 1670. But Buzz chose to drive from his home to the Capitol in his old Hupmobile sedan, and his driver was a youngster from his home town whose notion of a uniform for state occasions was a blue-serge suit, red tie, and derby hat. Windrip himself did wear a topper, but he saw to it that Lee Sarason saw to it that the one hundred and thirty million plain citizens learned, by radio, even while the inaugural parade was going on, that he had borrowed the topper for this one sole occasion from a New York Republican Representative who had ancestors.

But following Windrip was an un-Jacksonian escort of soldiers: the American Legion and, immensely grander than the others, the Minute Men, wearing trench helmets of polished silver and led by Colonel Dewey Haik in scarlet tunic and yellow riding-breeches and helmet with golden plumes.

Solemnly, for once looking a little awed, a little like a small-town boy on Broadway, Windrip took the oath, administered by the Chief Justice (who disliked him very much indeed) and, edging even closer to the microphone, squawked, "My fellow citizens, as the President of the United States of America, I want to inform you that the real New Deal has started right this minute, and we're all going to enjoy the manifold liberties to which our history entitles us—and have a whale of a good time doing it! I thank you!"

That was his first act as President. His second was to take up residence in the White House, where he sat down in the East Room in his stocking feet and shouted at Lee Sarason, "This is what I've been planning to do now for six years! I bet this is what Lincoln used to do! Now let 'em assassinate me!"

His third, in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was to order that the Minute Men be recognized as an unpaid but official auxiliary of the Regular Army, subject only to their own officers, to Buzz, and to High Marshal Sarason; and that rifles, bayonets, automatic pistols, and machine guns be instantly issued to them by government arsenals. That was at 4 P.M. Since 3 P.M., all over the country, bands of M.M.'s had been sitting gloating over pistols and guns, twitching with desire to seize them.

Fourth coup was a special message, next morning, to Congress (in session since January fourth, the third having been a Sunday), demanding the instant passage of a bill embodying Point Fifteen of his election platform—that he should have complete control of legislation and execution, and the Supreme Court be rendered incapable of blocking anything that it might amuse him to do.

By Joint Resolution, with less than half an hour of debate, both houses of Congress rejected that demand before 3 P.M., on January twenty-first. Before six, the President had proclaimed that a state of martial law existed during the "present crisis," and more than a hundred Congressmen had been arrested by Minute Men, on direct orders from the President. The Congressmen who were hotheaded enough to resist were cynically charged with "inciting to riot"; they who went quietly were not charged at all. It was blandly explained to the agitated press by Lee Sarason that these latter quiet lads had been so threatened by "irresponsible and seditious elements" that they were merely being safeguarded. Sarason did not use the phrase "protective arrest," which might have suggested things.

To the veteran reporters it was strange to see the titular Secretary of State, theoretically a person of such dignity and consequence that he could deal with the representatives of foreign powers, acting as press-agent and yes-man for even the President.

There were riots, instantly, all over Washington, all over America.

The recalcitrant Congressmen had been penned in the District Jail. Toward it, in the winter evening, marched a mob that was noisily mutinous toward the Windrip for whom so many of them had voted. Among the mob buzzed hundreds of Negroes, armed with knives and old pistols, for one of the kidnaped Congressmen was a Negro from Georgia, the first colored Georgian to hold high office since carpetbagger days.

Surrounding the jail, behind machine guns, the rebels found a few Regulars, many police, and a horde of Minute Men, but at these last they jeered, calling them "Minnie Mouses" and "tin soldiers" and "mama's boys." The M.M.'s looked nervously at their officers and at the Regulars who were making so professional a pretense of not being scared. The mob heaved bottles and dead fish. Half-a-dozen policemen with guns and night sticks, trying to push back the van of the mob, were buried under a human surf and came up grotesquely battered and ununiformed—those who ever did come up again. There were two shots; and one Minute Man slumped to the jail steps, another stood ludicrously holding a wrist that spurted blood.

The Minute Men—why, they said to themselves, they'd never meant to be soldiers anyway—just wanted to have some fun marching! They began to sneak into the edges of the mob, hiding their uniform caps. That instant, from a powerful loudspeaker in a lower window of the jail brayed the voice of President Berzelius Windrip:

"I am addressing my own boys, the Minute Men, everywhere in America! To you and you only I look for help to make America a proud, rich land again. You have been scorned. They thought you were the 'lower classes.' They wouldn't give you jobs. They told you to sneak off like bums and get relief. They ordered you into lousy C.C.C. camps. They said you were no good, because you were poor. I tell you that you are, ever since yesterday noon, the highest lords of the land—the aristocracy—the makers of the new America of freedom and justice. Boys! I need you! Help me—help me to help you! Stand fast! Anybody tries to block you—give the swine the point of your bayonet!"

A machine-gunner M.M., who had listened reverently, let loose. The mob began to drop, and into the backs of the wounded as they went staggering away the M.M. infantry, running, poked their bayonets. Such a juicy squash it made, and the fugitives looked so amazed, so funny, as they tumbled in grotesque heaps!

The M.M.'s hadn't, in dreary hours of bayonet drill, known this would be such sport. They'd have more of it now—and hadn't the President of the United States himself told each of them, personally, that he needed their aid?

When the remnants of Congress ventured to the Capitol, they found it seeded with M.M.'s, while a regiment of Regulars, under Major General Meinecke, paraded the grounds.

The Speaker of the House, and the Hon. Mr. Perley Beecroft, Vice- President of the United States and Presiding Officer of the Senate, had the power to declare that quorums were present. (If a lot of members chose to dally in the district jail, enjoying themselves instead of attending Congress, whose fault was that?) Both houses passed a resolution declaring Point Fifteen temporarily in effect, during the "crisis"—the legality of the passage was doubtful, but just who was to contest it, even though the members of the Supreme Court had not been placed under protective arrest... merely confined each to his own house by a squad of Minute Men!

Bishop Paul Peter Prang had (his friends said afterward) been dismayed by Windrip's stroke of state. Surely, he complained, Mr. Windrip hadn't quite remembered to include Christian Amity in the program he had taken from the League of Forgotten Men. Though Mr. Prang had contentedly given up broadcasting ever since the victory of Justice and Fraternity in the person of Berzelius Windrip, he wanted to caution the public again, but when he telephoned to his familiar station, WLFM in Chicago, the manager informed him that "just temporarily, all access to the air was forbidden," except as it was especially licensed by the offices of Lee Sarason. (Oh, that was only one of sixteen jobs that Lee and his six hundred new assistants had taken on in the past week.)

Rather timorously, Bishop Prang motored from his home in Persepolis, Indiana, to the Indianapolis airport and took a night plane for Washington, to reprove, perhaps even playfully to spank, his naughty disciple, Buzz.

He had little trouble in being admitted to see the President. In fact, he was, the press feverishly reported, at the White House for six hours, though whether he was with the President all that time they could not discover. At three in the afternoon Prang was seen to leave by a private entrance to the executive offices and take a taxi. They noted that he was pale and staggering.

In front of his hotel he was elbowed by a mob who in curiously unmenacing and mechanical tones yelped, "Lynch um—downutha enemies Windrip!" A dozen M.M.'s pierced the crowd and surrounded the Bishop. The Ensign commanding them bellowed to the crowd, so that all might hear, "You cowards leave the Bishop alone! Bishop, come with us, and we'll see you're safe!"

Millions heard on their radios that evening the official announcement that, to ward off mysterious plotters, probably Bolsheviks, Bishop Prang had been safely shielded in the district jail. And with it a personal statement from President Windrip that he was filled with joy at having been able to "rescue from the foul agitators my friend and mentor, Bishop P. P. Prang, than whom there is no man living who I so admire and respect."

There was, as yet, no absolute censorship of the press; only a confused imprisonment of journalists who offended the government or local officers of the M.M.'s; and the papers chronically opposed to Windrip carried by no means flattering hints that Bishop Prang had rebuked the President and been plain jailed, with no nonsense about a "rescue." These mutters reached Persepolis.

Not all the Persepolitans ached with love for the Bishop or considered him a modern St. Francis gathering up the little fowls of the fields in his handsome LaSalle car. There were neighbors who hinted that he was a window-peeping snooper after bootleggers and obliging grass widows. But proud of him, their best advertisement, they certainly were, and the Persepolis Chamber of Commerce had caused to be erected at the Eastern gateway to Main Street the sign: "Home of Bishop Prang, Radio's Greatest Star."

So as one man Persepolis telegraphed to Washington, demanding Prang's release, but a messenger in the Executive Offices who was a Persepolis boy (he was, it is true, a colored man, but suddenly he became a favorite son, lovingly remembered by old schoolmates) tipped off the Mayor that the telegrams were among the hundredweight of messages that were daily hauled away from the White House unanswered.

Then a quarter of the citizenry of Persepolis mounted a special train to "march" on Washington. It was one of those small incidents which the opposition press could use as a bomb under Windrip, and the train was accompanied by a score of high-ranking reporters from Chicago and, later, from Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and New York.

While the train was on its way—and it was curious what delays and sidetrackings it encountered—a company of Minute Men at Logansport, Indiana, rebelled against having to arrest a group of Catholic nuns who were accused of having taught treasonably. High Marshal Sarason felt that there must be a Lesson, early and impressive. A battalion of M.M.'s, sent from Chicago in fast trucks, arrested the mutinous company, and shot every third man.

When the Persepolitans reached Washington, they were tearfully informed, by a brigadier of M.M.'s who met them at the Union Station, that poor Bishop Prang had been so shocked by the treason of his fellow Indianans that he had gone melancholy mad and they had tragically been compelled to shut him up in St. Elizabeth's government insane asylum.

No one willing to carry news about him ever saw Bishop Prang again.

The Brigadier brought greetings to the Persepolitans from the President himself, and an invitation to stay at the Willard, at government expense. Only a dozen accepted; the rest took the first train back, not amiably; and from then on there was one town in America in which no M.M. ever dared to appear in his ducky forage cap and dark-blue tunic.

The Chief of Staff of the Regular Army had been deposed; in his place was Major General Emmanuel Coon. Doremus and his like were disappointed by General Coon's acceptance, for they had always been informed, even by the Nation, that Emmanuel Coon, though a professional army officer who did enjoy a fight, preferred that that fight be on the side of the Lord; that he was generous, literate, just, and a man of honor—and honor was the one quality that Buzz Windrip wasn't even expected to understand. Rumor said that Coon (as "Nordic" a Kentuckian as ever existed, a descendant of men who had fought beside Kit Carson and Commodore Perry) was particularly impatient with the puerility of anti-Semitism, and that nothing so pleased him as, when he heard new acquaintances being superior about the Jews, to snarl, "Did you by any chance happen to notice that my name is Emmanuel Coon and that Coon might be a corruption of some name rather familiar on the East Side of New York?"

"Oh well, I suppose even General Coon feels, 'Orders are Orders,'" sighed Doremus.

President Windrip's first extended proclamation to the country was a pretty piece of literature and of tenderness. He explained that powerful and secret enemies of American principles—one rather gathered that they were a combination of Wall Street and Soviet Russia—upon discovering, to their fury, that he, Berzelius, was going to be President, had planned their last charge. Everything would be tranquil in a few months, but meantime there was a Crisis, during which the country must "bear with him."

He recalled the military dictatorship of Lincoln and Stanton during the Civil War, when civilian suspects were arrested without warrant. He hinted how delightful everything was going to be— right away now—just a moment—just a moment's patience—when he had things in hand; and he wound up with a comparison of the Crisis to the urgency of a fireman rescuing a pretty girl from a "conflagration," and carrying her down a ladder, for her own sake, whether she liked it or not, and no matter how appealingly she might kick her pretty ankles.

The whole country laughed.

"Great card, that Buzz, but mighty competent guy," said the electorate.

"I should worry whether Bish Prang or any other nut is in the boobyhatch, long as I get my five thousand bucks a year, like Windrip promised," said Shad Ledue to Charley Betts, the furniture man.

It had all happened within the eight days following Windrip's inauguration.

CHAPTER XVI

I HAVE no desire to be President. I would much rather do my humble best as a supporter of Bishop Prang, Ted Bilbo, Gene Talmadge or any other broad-gauged but peppy Liberal. My only longing is to Serve.

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip.

LIKE many bachelors given to vigorous hunting and riding, Buck Titus was a fastidious housekeeper, and his mid-Victorian farmhouse fussily neat. It was also pleasantly bare: the living room a monastic hall of heavy oak chairs, tables free of dainty covers, numerous and rather solemn books of history and exploration, with the conventional "sets," and a tremendous fireplace of rough stone. And the ash trays were solid pottery and pewter, able to cope with a whole evening of cigarette-smoking. The whisky stood honestly on the oak buffet, with siphons, and with cracked ice always ready in a thermos jug.

It would, however, have been too much to expect Buck Titus not to have red-and-black imitation English hunting-prints.

This hermitage, always grateful to Doremus, was sanctuary now, and only with Buck could he adequately damn Windrip & Co. and people like Francis Tasbrough, who in February was still saying, "Yes, things do look kind of hectic down there in Washington, but that's just because there's so many of these bullheaded politicians that still think they can buck Windrip. Besides, anyway, things like that couldn't ever happen here in New England."

And, indeed, as Doremus went on his lawful occasions past the red-brick Georgian houses, the slender spires of old white churches facing the Green, as he heard the lazy irony of familiar greetings from his acquaintances, men as enduring as their Vermont hills, it seemed to him that the madness in the capital was as alien and distant and unimportant as an earthquake in Tibet.

Constantly, in the Informer, he criticized the government but not too acidly.

The hysteria can't last; be patient, and wait and see, he counseled his readers.

It was not that he was afraid of the authorities. He simply did not believe that this comic tyranny could endure. It can't happen here, said even Doremus—even now.

The one thing that most perplexed him was that there could be a dictator seemingly so different from the fervent Hitlers and gesticulating Fascists and the Cæsars with laurels round bald domes; a dictator with something of the earthy American sense of humor of a Mark Twain, a George Ade, a Will Rogers, an Artemus Ward. Windrip could be ever so funny about solemn jaw-drooping opponents, and about the best method of training what he called "a Siamese flea hound." Did that, puzzled Doremus, make him less or more dangerous?

Then he remembered the most cruel-mad of all pirates, Sir Henry Morgan, who had thought it ever so funny to sew a victim up in wet rawhide and watch it shrink in the sun.

From the perseverance with which they bickered, you could tell that Buck Titus and Lorinda were much fonder of each other than they would admit. Being a person who read little and therefore took what he did read seriously, Buck was distressed by the normally studious Lorinda's vacation liking for novels about distressed princesses, and when she airily insisted that they were better guides to conduct than Anthony Trollope or Thomas Hardy, Buck roared at her and, in the feebleness of baited strength, nervously filled pipes and knocked them out against the stone mantel. But he approved of the relationship between Doremus and Lorinda, which only he (and Shad Ledue!) had guessed, and over Doremus, ten years his senior, this shaggy-headed woodsman fussed like a thwarted spinster.

To both Doremus and Lorinda, Buck's overgrown shack became their refuge. And they needed it, late in February, five weeks or thereabouts after Windrip's election.

Despite strikes and riots all over the country, bloodily put down by the Minute Men, Windrip's power in Washington was maintained. The most liberal four members of the Supreme Court resigned and were replaced by surprisingly unknown lawyers who called President Windrip by his first name. A number of Congressmen were still being "protected" in the District of Columbia jail; others had seen the blinding light forever shed by the goddess Reason and happily returned to the Capitol. The Minute Men were increasingly loyal— they were still unpaid volunteers, but provided with "expense accounts" considerably larger than the pay of the regular troops. Never in American history had the adherents of a President been so well satisfied; they were not only appointed to whatever political jobs there were but to ever so many that really were not; and with such annoyances as Congressional Investigations hushed, the official awarders of contracts were on the merriest of terms with all contractors.... One veteran lobbyist for steel corporations complained that there was no more sport in his hunting—you were not only allowed but expected to shoot all government purchasing-agents sitting.

None of the changes was so publicized as the Presidential mandate abruptly ending the separate existence of the different states, and dividing the whole country into eight "provinces"—thus, asserted Windrip, economizing by reducing the number of governors and all other state officers and, asserted Windrip's enemies, better enabling him to concentrate his private army and hold the country.

The new "Northeastern Province" included all of New York State north of a line through Ossining, and all of New England except a strip of Connecticut shore as far east as New Haven. This was, Doremus admitted, a natural and homogeneous division, and even more natural seemed the urban and industrial "Metropolitan Province," which included Greater New York, Westchester County up to Ossining, Long Island, the strip of Connecticut dependent on New York City, New Jersey, northern Delaware, and Pennsylvania as far as Reading and Scranton.

Each province was divided into numbered districts, each district into lettered counties, each county into townships and cities, and only in these last did the old names, with their traditional appeal, remain to endanger President Windrip by memories of honorable local history. And it was gossiped that, next, the government would change even the town names—that they were already thinking fondly of calling New York "Berzelian" and San Francisco "San Sarason." Probably that gossip was false.

The Northeastern Province's six districts were: 1, Upper New York State west of and including Syracuse; 2, New York east of it; 3, Vermont and New Hampshire; 4, Maine; 5, Massachusetts; 6, Rhode Island and the unraped portion of Connecticut.

District 3, Doremus Jessup's district, was divided into the four "counties" of southern and northern Vermont, and southern and northern New Hampshire, with Hanover for capital—the District Commissioner merely chased the Dartmouth students out and took over the college buildings for his offices, to the considerable approval of Amherst, Williams, and Yale.

So Doremus was living, now, in Northeastern Province, District 3, County B, township of Beulah, and over him for his admiration and rejoicing were a provincial commissioner, a district commissioner, a county commissioner, an assistant county commissioner in charge of Beulah Township, and all their appertaining M.M. guards and emergency military judges.

Citizens who had lived in any one state for more than ten years seemed to resent more hotly the loss of that state's identity than they did the castration of the Congress and Supreme Court of the United States—indeed, they resented it almost as much as the fact that, while late January, February, and most of March went by, they still were not receiving their governmental gifts of $5000 (or perhaps it would beautifully be $10,000) apiece; had indeed received nothing more than cheery bulletins from Washington to the effect that the "Capital Levy Board," or C.L.B. was holding sessions.

Virginians whose grandfathers had fought beside Lee shouted that they'd be damned if they'd give up the hallowed state name and form just one arbitrary section of an administrative unit containing eleven Southern states; San Franciscans who had considered Los Angelinos even worse than denizens of Miami now wailed with agony when California was sundered and the northern portion lumped in with Oregon, Nevada, and others as the "Mountain and Pacific Province," while southern California was, without her permission, assigned to the Southwestern Province, along with Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Hawaii. As some hint of Buzz Windrip's vision for the future, it was interesting to read that this Southwestern Province was also to be permitted to claim "all portions of Mexico which the United States may from time to time find it necessary to take over, as a protection against the notorious treachery of Mexico and the Jewish plots there hatched."

"Lee Sarason is even more generous than Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg in protecting the future of other countries," sighed Doremus.

As Provincial Commissioner of the Northeastern Province, comprising Upper New York State and New England, was appointed Colonel Dewey Haik, that soldier-lawyer-politician-aviator who was the chilliest-blooded and most arrogant of all the satellites of Windrip yet had so captivated miners and fishermen during the campaign. He was a strong-flying eagle who liked his meat bloody. As District Commissioner of District 3—Vermont and New Hampshire—appeared, to Doremus's mingled derision and fury, none other than John Sullivan Reek, that stuffiest of stuffed-shirts, that most gaseous gas bag, that most amenable machine politician of Northern New England; a Republican ex-governor who had, in the alembic of Windrip's patriotism, rosily turned Leaguer.

No one had ever troubled to be obsequious to the Hon. J. S. Reek, even when he had been Governor. The weediest back-country Representative had called him "Johnny," in the gubernatorial mansion (twelve rooms and a leaky roof); and the youngest reporter had bawled, "Well, what bull you handing out today, Ex?"

It was this Commissioner Reek who summoned all the editors in his district to meet him at his new viceregal lodge in Dartmouth Library and receive the precious privileged information as to how much President Windrip and his subordinate commissioners admired the gentlemen of the press.

Before he left for the press conference in Hanover, Doremus received from Sissy a "poem"—at least she called it that—which Buck Titus, Lorinda Pike, Julian Falck, and she had painfully composed, late at night, in Buck's fortified manor house:

Be meek with Reek, Go fake with Haik. One rhymes with sneak, And t' other with snake. Haik, with his beak, Is on the make, But Sullivan Reek— Oh God!

"Well, anyway, Windrip's put everybody to work. And he's driven all these unsightly billboards off the highways—much better for the tourist trade," said all the old editors, even those who wondered if the President wasn't perhaps the least bit arbitrary.

As he drove to Hanover, Doremus saw hundreds of huge billboards by the road. But they bore only Windrip propaganda and underneath, "with the compliments of a loyal firm" and—very large—"Montgomery Cigarettes" or "Jonquil Foot Soap." On the short walk from a parking-space to the former Dartmouth campus, three several men muttered to him, "Give us a nickel for cuppa coffee, Boss—a Minnie Mouse has got my job and the Mouses won't take me—they say I'm too old." But that may have been propaganda from Moscow.

On the long porch of the Hanover Inn, officers of the Minute Men were reclining in deck chairs, their spurred boots (in all the M.M. organization there was no cavalry) up on the railing.

Doremus passed a science building in front of which was a pile of broken laboratory glassware, and in one stripped laboratory he could see a small squad of M.M.'s drilling.

District Commissioner John Sullivan Reek affectionately received the editors in a classroom.... Old men, used to being revered as prophets, sitting anxiously in trifling chairs, facing a fat man in the uniform of an M.M. commander, who smoked an unmilitary cigar as his pulpy hand waved greeting.

Reek took not more than an hour to relate what would have taken the most intelligent man five or six hours—that is, five minutes of speech and the rest of the five hours to recover from the nausea caused by having to utter such shameless rot.... President Windrip, Secretary of State Sarason, Provincial Commissioner Haik, and himself, John Sullivan Reek, they were all being misrepresented by the Republicans, the Jeffersonians, the Communists, England, the Nazis, and probably the jute and herring industries; and what the government wanted was for any reporter to call on any member of this Administration, and especially on Commissioner Reek, at any time—except perhaps between 3 and 7 A.M.—and "get the real low-down."

Excellency Reek announced, then: "And now, gentlemen, I am giving myself the privilege of introducing you to all four of the County Commissioners, who were just chosen yesterday. Probably each of you will know personally the commissioner from your own county, but I want you to intimately and cooperatively know all four, because, whomever they may be, they join with me in my unquenchable admiration of the press."

The four County Commissioners, as one by one they shambled into the room and were introduced, seemed to Doremus an oddish lot: A moth-eaten lawyer known more for his quotations from Shakespeare and Robert W. Service than for his shrewdness before a jury. He was luminously bald except for a prickle of faded rusty hair, but you felt that, if he had his rights, he would have the floating locks of a tragedian of 1890.

A battling clergyman famed for raiding roadhouses.

A rather shy workman, an authentic proletarian, who seemed surprised to find himself there. (He was replaced, a month later, by a popular osteopath with an interest in politics and vegetarianism.)

The fourth dignitary to come in and affectionately bow to the editors, a bulky man, formidable-looking in his uniform as a battalion leader of Minute Men, introduced as the Commissioner for northern Vermont, Doremus Jessup's county, was Mr. Oscar Ledue, formerly known as "Shad."

Mr. Reek called him "Captain" Ledue. Doremus remembered that Shad's only military service, prior to Windrip's election, had been as an A.E.F. private who had never got beyond a training-camp in America and whose fiercest experience in battle had been licking a corporal when in liquor.

"Mr. Jessup," bubbled the Hon. Mr. Reek, "I imagine you must have met Captain Ledue—comes from your charming city."

"Uh-uh-ur," said Doremus.

"Sure," said Captain Ledue. "I've met old Jessup, all right, all right! He don't know what it's all about. He don't know the first thing about the economics of our social Revolution. He's a Cho-vinis. But he isn't such a bad old coot, and I'll let him ride as long as he behaves himself!"

"Splendid!" said the Hon. Mr. Reek.

[dutifullybitchyblaze]

The grouch.

[nightinghoul]

"Good Guys With Guns"

I posted this on my FB page, and now I'm posting it here:

I hear people say "The only way to beat a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

My issues with this are, 1. Where are these gun toters' good guy credentials? Every one of our mass shooters had never done this before.

And 2. When we get to the point that the "good guy" is shooting back, that means someone has already been shot.

People also say, "Well if people don't get guns legally, they're going to get guns somewhere else." That sounds more like a defeatest statement than an actual argument. Sounds more like your trying to tell me to stop thinking about it. Believe me, this isn't what I wanted to be thinking about this morning.

😑

P.S. Who needs guns when I can cause 500 aneurysms with a single post? And here I thought I was some kind of pacifist. Also this: https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1264/2013/06/Kates-Mauser.pdf

[howdyneighborr]

Jesus take the fucking wheel and set the fucking nuke. There went the rest of his tips. Er, well, not that Craig had had many tables in his section of the dining room at all that day or anything. ‘So far’, he had lied to himself. Although, those last bits of hope drained out of him—like someone had uncorked the base of his skull to allow his cerebrospinal fluid to ooze down the back of his collared uniform top—as Tweek’s erratic behavior (albeit fairly contained to his small frame in his own seat) crescendoed. And yeah— Craig knew his actions were the equivalent of nuclear launch codes in the analogy he spun up in his head, but Christ alive… It wasn’t his fault. 

Heat briefly crept up his cheeks; secondhand embarrassment. He felt the gaze of more and more curious onlookers turn their direction from other servers’ sections of the restaurant. As much as his knee-jerk reaction was to want to cast all the blame on the clearly unstable and emotionally-spiraling man (Everyone would take his side, he imagined. After all, he wasn’t the one freaking out over a plate of microwaved bread), Craig paused and searched for the word to put to the feeling twisting his guts. He wasn’t mad at Tweek, or himself. Was it guilt? He didn’t want to put the scraggly blonde back out onto the street. Hadn’t he mentioned the rolling gray clouds to his boss when he had first been given the command to kick him out? Was the feeling misdirected irritation, then? Craig had been less-than-kind about the way he presented his solution to Tweek, chucking the cheap dish onto the table in front of a man who had no prior knowledge of the plan his server had devised all on his own. Craig had miscalculated the response. Insert the idiom about hindsight and perfect vision here, or whatever. He could acknowledge that.

He further assessed the situation.

First and foremost, Craig concerned himself with his manager’s perception of his service and general job performance. That he couldn’t follow a direction and see it to completion could, in theory, be grounds for disciplinary action. ‘’Tucker, isn’t that your crazy ex? You know how to handle him. Go tell him to leave.” He wanted to protest, but he had grit his teeth and rolled his eyes. Saying "fuck no" and flipping the bird didn't get him very far in life anymore. Hence the backfired toast scheme. Termination was unlikely, but he worried about the potential effects on his paycheck nonetheless. Anyway – 

Craig’s second concern was the loudly-spouted Second Amendments Rights comment. In Park County, no one would be shocked by NRA card toters crawling out of the woodwork, shouting about the government taking away their firearms. Inevitably, someone would throw out a remark about people moving in and taking their jobs. South Park townies loved a good rabble-rousing, especially if they could throw in their opinions about guns or immigration. Consequently, any big city, suburban-sprawl yuppies present would surely get a righteous fucking twist in their designer underwear after overhearing a conservative outcry. While Craig would rather have a redneck waving a loaded pistol around the dining room than a Karen flipping apeshit, he definitely didn’t want to be caught in the red-blue clash reminiscent of the Crips-Bloods turf war. 

Lastly, Craig had to address that he… actually gave a shit about all of the sidelong looks cast in Tweek’s direction. He cared all the time. Always kind of made him a little sad to think about. Although he never particularly dwelled on the thought, unless–in instances like the current one–it directly affected him. A familiar ire crawled along his skin when judgmental stares passed over them. An intrusive nudge that used to hit him long ago, when Tweek was still perceived as an extension of himself. Clearly, the tie hadn’t been quite as severed as Craig had thought. If he could take one more step back, he would be able to see that he was rolling mental somersaults with him and himself alone to justify and defend the guy with the gun who, self-reportedly, wasn't his problem anymore. 

Craig realized he had been overthinking Tweek. Wasn’t part of the reason he behaved like such a dick all the time a way to add another degree of separation? For his-fucking-self? He didn't want to care about what Tweek had to eat or drink, or how cold the weather was turning, or that he was trying to come up with any excuse to keep him inside. But he did, sigh. Craig had to pretend to hate Tweek, or at least pretend to be cruelly indifferent. For no other reason than Craig’s selfish tendencies. He needed to keep his distance from Tweek or emotionally relapse, return to self-imposed suffering. Craig knew he was a fucking idiot, but he couldn't stop caring about the twitching blonde that kept unfortunately, unintentionally skating around the peripheral of his life. More likely, Craig had to remember the kismet of their lives resulted in nothing more than misfortune for them both. He could try being less of a dick, he supposed.

"It doesn't matter that you're legally allowed to have it," Craig said hurriedly and under his breath, attempting to manage the severity and pace of his own reaction as well as Tweek’s. While being slow to wind up usually, the springs tended to tighten a lot faster around this one specific man. But Craig remembered he was still on the clock, and he couldn't afford to get fired right now. A few more months of sub-minimum wages and halfway decent tips were needed before he could give the dining establishment a big, fat middle finger. Money wasn’t falling out of the sky. He had no gracious benefactor or dying relative about to unburden a significant amount of wealth onto him. A few pieces of his old truck required work. The funds for which, from his primary source of income, were already tied up in his monthly tithe to the god of capitalism in the form of "rent, groceries, and utilities". 

Craig continued observing the Deterioration of Tweek Tweak happening right in front of him, and he couldn't help but to look on with pity. Which might add fuel to the flames of the blonde's descent.

"I don't care if you have that stupid revolver, pistol, whatever," he said flatly while trying to actually remember what kind of gun Tweek had mentioned carrying. "I know you didn't order it –  I just grabbed it from the back. If anyone says anything, I'll claim it as my employee meal. Literally not a big deal.” His feet shifted, tired from standing in one spot for so long. Craig crossed his arms and they settled over his chest just under the Denny’s logo on his company polo. A dismissive hand wave and an eye roll accompanied his next flippant remark, “I don't give a shit. I hate eating here anyway."  While not a total lie, Craig knew better than to balk at free food when he had the opportunity to take advantage of it. Especially after an eight hour shift (six, if he were unlucky enough to be cut early to save labor costs), that meant he didn’t have to think about the tedious task of feeding himself. 

A dry rock bobbed up and down in his own throat as Tweek curled around himself and the crumbling bread. This was getting to be too much, holy shit. He turned at the waist to observe the room, personally projecting forth a coldly irritated glance to his spectators. Their multitude of gazes quickly averted as Craig scanned the room, searching for his balding, greasy boss. Without another beat, Craig reached behind his back and gave a quick tug–in opposing directions–to his apron strings.

“I'm going on fifteen,” he shouted over his shoulder towards the kitchen, at whoever would hear him bark. Craig turned back to Tweek then, wadding up the black nylon-cotton blend accessory in his fist. 

“Can I sit here?” he asked. Without waiting for a response (from Tweek or his boss about his break), he slid into the seat across from the other and tossed his balled-up apron on the tabletop to his right. With a sigh, he dropped his face and said, “You don't have to leave or do anything. I’m sorry. Larry's just like this huge cock-sucking, passive-aggressive cunt. He’s afraid that too much confrontation will trigger another fucking heartache. Or stroke, or whatever. He makes us deal with the shitty customers ourselves.” The second his foot-in-mouth complaint passed his lips, he realized it sounded shitty. But he didn’t want to over-explain; he was done thinking so hard about this. Instead, he followed up with a conciliatory comment.

“You didn't do anything wrong, dum– dude.”

Tweek expected it by now, being told he needed to leave for the simple crime of being obviously mangy.  He looked every bit like a homeless meth addict, and it wouldn’t be the first time he was pushed out or denied entrance to a place because of it.  Once, he had been outside a gas station, and he asked a woman for five dollars so he could go inside and get a coffee.  She gave it to him without issue and went inside to carry on the rest of her morning, but when he tried to follow after her, he was stopped by a man who was delivering a new shipment of bottled sodas.  The man put his hand on Tweek’s chest and told him nobody wanted him in there, that he ought to stop harassing people because they had places to be.  Cheeks aflame with that thorough humiliation and the knowledge that it would be useless to argue that he didn’t mean anybody any harm, he turned and walked to the McDonald’s down the road and got a coffee there.

So, he knew—he knew exactly how most managers felt about the riffraff hanging out in their spaces, and because of that, he was trying to be extraordinarily polite.  But of course, Craig wouldn’t notice his efforts, or if he had noticed them, he would take every opportunity to undermine them, to get Tweek worked back up again so that he would be justified in throwing him to the proverbial wolves.  Tweek’s expression immediately hardened when he realized his attempt at civility had not gone according to plan.

“Why?” he demanded, irritated at again being set up as a burden when he wasn’t doing anything and had money enough to pay for the coffee.  He was a paying customer, and he had planned on tipping Craig, too, and it wasn’t fair.  “I’m allowed to have it; I’ve got Second Amendment rights.  Colorado law says if you’re eighteen, you can have one.”  A terrible thought occurred to him that Craig might try to get his gun taken away from him, and he just didn’t feel safe without it.  He liked knowing it was there as a last resort, and it wasn’t like he kept it loaded.

His throat began to close up, and he looked down at the raisin bread to conceal his wild eyes, although the trembling of his hands undoubtedly said plenty.  God, why did Craig have to do this every fucking time?  He was constantly telling Tweek to relax, and then when he actually was trying to relax and have a half-decent day, Craig came along and said things to get him worked up again, as if he was really allergic to a variation in the status quo, despite what he claimed.  He knew how sensitive Tweek was, how easily his anxiety was triggered, and it was hard not to feel like he was doing this on purpose.

Tweek pulled the toast toward him.  “I didn’t order it—” he breathed raggedly.  Part of him was terrified that he might get charged for it if he picked at it like Craig wanted him to.  But he could not say that he couldn’t afford it—one, because it would be too mortifying to not be able to afford two measly pieces of raisin toast, and two, because it technically wasn’t true.  He had money, around twenty dollars in fives and ones and some change; it was just that he had been hoping to spend it on other things.  Well, seeing as Craig said nothing about it being on the house and Tweek was too proud to reject it, he resolved that he would just have to take the financial hit when it came, if this was the price of it not getting kicked out into the impending storm.

He hunched over the bread and began meticulously separating the crusts with dirty, untrimmed fingernails.  “D-did I—did I—do s-s-something wrong?”  His face burned shamefully again, and he had to will himself not to cry, the tremors in his hands creeping up to his shoulders.  He didn’t have to take this shit from Craig of all people.  Just once—just once—he wanted someone to realize that the way they treated him just because he didn’t have money like them was wrong, and Craig, with all of his strictly logical thinking, seemed like someone who was liable to at least think on it a while, even if it ultimately didn’t compel him to stop being a fucking dick.  “I’m not—hh—I’m not being c-crazy.  I’m not hurting anyone or tal—”  He choked on the lump in his throat and had to pause to swallow it.  “—talking to v-v-voices.  I’m just ha-hanging out, I’m not trying—”  He was done with the crusts and moved to digging the raisins out instead.

“I’m not making p-problems…  I was trying to be n-n-nice…  Why me?  Why do I—hn…”  He turned his face out the window, at the gray clouds looking heavy and low, shading more and more of the parking lot.  “Why do I have to leave?”  His voice cracked, and he took a drink of his coffee to try to set right again.  “Why can’t you pick on s-somebody else f-for once?”

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Some Foolish Notions Regarding Penitentiaries," Owen Sound Sun Times. November 22, 1932. Page 4. --- (Editorial in the Ottawa Journal) The recent penitentiary riots have opened up a marvellous opportunity for well-meaning men and women bent on doing something for the prison population. Penitentiary ministration, prison methods, are news at the moment, and all the people and organizations with views on these subjects are getting on the front pages of the newspapers.

As, for instance, the Social vice Council of Canada, which sends on from Toronto a series of recommandations to the Minister of Justice. Briefly, this is what they want:

Greater facilities to prisoners for improvement of their minds, through employment of educationists of university standing with experience in recreational activities;

Improved lighting for cells;

Food of prisoners should be put under the care of trained dieticians:

Physical punishment should be inflicted only in the most serious cases:

Families of prisoners should receive pay:

Work provided for prisoners should be "of a character economically profitable and not merely punitive;"

Prison facilities should be enlarged as soon as possible;

The utmost care should be taken in the appointment of wardens and guards.

To some of these recommendations nobody will take objection. Obviously prison officials should be competent. Obviously prison facilities should be such as to accommodate every man in his own cell. Over crowding, dormitories in the corridors, have their share of responsibility for troubles in Canadian and American penitentiaries. Additional quarters ought to be provided where they are needed, and the work should be done by the prisoners - as at Portsmouth. Obviously it would be better if all prisoners could do work "economically profitable," but the Social Service Council takes no account of the practical difficulties in the way of this aim. But for the most part the recommendations are impracticable, visionary, without regard to realities.

Expressions of sentimental Ideas on prison management by people who combine the best intentions with a complete lack of knowledge subject and an emotional inability to look hard facts in the face do nothing but complicate the problems of the authorities. A proper concern for the welfare of prisoners can, and often does, degenerate into a foolish weakness. It is folly to suppose we can put down crime, reform hardened criminals, by turning penal institutions into high-class boarding schools with educationists, dieticians, curtains on the windows recommend cut flowers on every cable. It is the height of folly, in fact, to proceed on the assumption that reformation of the criminal is possible in all cases, or even in many penitentiary cases.

It is the fact, although the amiable reformers refuse to see it, that the majority of prisoners in the penitentiaries are confirmed crooks, hardened criminals, who laugh at efforts to reform them and look up- on a prison term as an occupational hazard. They are the men who lead riots over cigarette papers or any other petty petty grievance, gr who stir up dissatisfaction and unrest, who can be controlled by stern measures but whose outlook on life is as unchangeable as the leopard's spots. Killers, burglars, gun-toters, forgers, embezzlers, violators of women, robbers - these are the people who comprise the majority of the penitentiary population and it is needless to waste very much sympathy on them.

Unquestionably some men come out of prison with their feet re-set on the paths of honesty and straight living. But these men are never found in the forefront of revolt. They learn their lesson, pay with- out whining the penalty of law- breaking. It's the "tough guys" who cause the trouble, who like to awaken the sympathy of the unthinking. who profit most and benefit least from the namby-pamby sentimentalism which concerns itself not at all with disagreeable facts.

[maxwell-grant]

Pulp heroes are well known for wielding guns, but are there any that have different signature weapons? Are there any weapons you would love to see a pulp hero wield?

(Green Lama art by edude-makes-comics)

Quite a few, yeah. In general, because there was only so much violence the heroes could get away with, most of the really out-there batshit weapons tended to be the ones created and wielded by the villains, with “guy with a really weird weapon or method of murder that, either presents a mystery too confusing for regular law enforcement to solve, or a threat too dangerous to be allowed to exist” being easily one of the most reocurring kind of monster-of-the-week for most long-running pulp heroes. Guns were popular and ubiquotuous but not the only kind, even the more famous gun-toters like The Shadow or The Spider mixed things on occasion.

Some particular stand-outs among the gun-free pulp heroes, not counting the outright superpowers or non-boolit kinds of guns:

Doc Savage: I mean, kind of, partially included here because he’s a weird example of how gun-toting pulp heroes are so ubiquotous we attribute excessive gun usage even to characters who didn’t actually use them. Doc didn’t particularly have a “signature weapon”, but a lot of modern renditions of Doc Savage based on the James Bama rendition depict him with big bulky guns to the point that Doc’s “signature weapon” nowadays might as well be a Flash Gordon flare gun, but despite the existence of “mercy bullets”, Doc Savage actually hated using guns of any kind as anything other than a last-resort (and even then, that’s what the mercy bullets were for). Doc sometimes invented new forms of weaponry, like miniature grenades, specialized explosives and gas-filled glass balls, to be used on occasion.

Doc is mostly included here because his assistant Ham Brooks actually did have one of the more famous signature weapons of the pulps: a black cane with a concealed sword, coated with a potent anesthetic.

The Green Lama: Who detested guns about as much as Batman. His signature weapon consisted of his long red scarf that he used as a whip and garrote, which makes a pretty funny contrast with the fact that he’s the pacifist American pulp hero, so that means he non-lethally strangles the absolute shit out of criminals instead of shooting them.

Zenigata Heiji: A highly popular detective who appeared in novels, collections and short stories from 1931 to 1958, probably the most direct example of a Japanese Pulp Hero I’ve seen thus far. He’s an Edo-period working class Great Detective who unofficially works for the government in assisting the police without being quite one of them himself. He is most famous for his signature weapons: a jutte he wields, and the heavy coins (called zeni, hence his name) he throws at criminals to catch them.

Zorro: Kinda goes with saying and that goes for all the other Zorro knock-offs / alikes who also largely employed physical bladed weaponry like swords, rapiers, sabers, and etc.

Indiana Jones: Also kinda goes without saying.

(Dossouye art by Paul Davey)

Sword and Sorcery characters in general: Robert E.Howard’s Conan and Conan-alikes (as well as Solomon Kane, whose signature weapon is a staff), figures that veer into an opposite end like Elric and his Stormbringer, and Charles R Saunders’ Dossouye tends to be depicted often with spears and machetes. You rarely see guns brought into sword-and-sorcery kind of pulp heroes, to not diminish the appeal of cutting down armies while going buck-wild naked with swords intrinsic to the genre.

The Avenger: His signature weapons consist of a gun named “Mike”, and a knife named “Ike”. That’s like, half of what you prompted, but still counts.

Occult Detectives: Several Occult Detective characters who follow closer on the Manly Wade Wellman / Carnacki approach tend to ditch guns in favor of classier or more occult-themed stuff, with both Judge Pursuivant and John Thunstone wielding sword canes, and Luna Bartendale’s divining rod.

Lavender Jack: Who has two signature weapons in the form of his clawed gloves that transmit explosive waves via fingersnap, and the canes that he uses for more direct combat.

Bob Larkin, a Black Mask detective created by Erle Stanley Gardner. The character uses a billliard cue as his main weapon and has 15 years worth of practice as a juggler to make the most use of it.

If we count Scrooge McDuck as a pulp hero, which we have to, we definitely gotta include his cane here as well.

Brutus Lloyd, who was created by The Golden Amazon’s creator John Russell Fearn and appeared in 3 stories for Amazing Stories. He’s a four-foot tall, deep-voiced scientist, criminologist and consulting detective who specializes in solving sci-fi crimes via unorthodox methods, and his main weapon consists of an umbrella tipped with acid he uses to defend himself. He debuted about a year before The Penguin did.

I’m sure there’s gotta be others I’m missing either in pulps or pulp-adjacent material, feel free to point out others in the notes. Now, as to the other part of your question, what kind of weapons I’d like to see pulp heroes wield,

Pretty much anything but pistols. Even other kinds of guns are fine, there’s a trillion wacky kinds of guns out there that can be used to mix things up.

Wrenches, Shovels, Fish wrapped in newspaper, Bottles, Russian Fists for Smashing Baybeez, etc: TF2 as a whole has a painfully massive extensive catalogue of just how many kinds of guns and weapons you can give your characters and it’s a huge source of inspiration for design, that’s where I’d be pulling a lot from. The wrench as a dramatic physical weapon in particular I think works really well for a pulp hero aesthetic.

Chainsaws: I have not been the same since Mandy gave me that sick stupid ass chainsaw duel. Nothing has ever tasted the same. I want more of it.

Gadgets that are completely fucking stupid but still work anyway because this is fiction and if anything this is another reason to do it, taking something that shouldn’t work and make it work.

A kitchen sink, because why should Batman get to have all the fun?

And everything in Weird Al’s Hardware Store. For a start. Make it work.

[spn-ish]

I've seen a lot of takes about Jared’s new tattoo, spanning from it being an innocent display of Texas pride to it being a definite symbol of white supremacy. From my research, I've found information to support just about every aspect of that. It's a show of Texas rebellion. It's a alt right dog whistle for gun toters and racism.

At minimum, I believe it was an extremely poor taste. In the current climate of Texas passing oppressive laws on trans youth and women's rights, things Jared has publicly declared support for in the past, he has inked his support of the state on his skin. The timing feels like an endorsement, whether intentional or not. Even if I don't delve into the potential additional meanings of that symbol, that makes me question his values as a person. If he really got the tattoo without knowing its implications (doubtful as a Texan), this is still on him. He should have done his research.

To me, there isn't a circumstance in which this is just an innocent tattoo. Whether it's a Texas pride symbol or something more, the implications are troubling and, as a fan, disappointing.

[hateyourgovernment]

Thank you @anartchism for tagging me!!

Rules: Make a new post & spell out your URL with song titles, then tag as many people as there are letters in your URL.

h - Händy - Acht Eimer Hühnerherzen

a - a better place, a better time - streetlight manifesto

t - Toxicity - System of a Down

e - Ekel und Abscheu - Schreng Schreng & La La

y - you will be godless - heaven shall burn

o - of ballots and barricades - Pat the bunny

u - unter Freunden - Mono & Nikitaman

r - Riot queers - FaulenzA

g - going out in style - Dropkick Murphys

o - outta controle - neonschwarz

v - vampires will never hurt you - mcr

e - Ein Hirsch! Ein großer, toter Hirsch! - HC Baxxter

r - Revolution - authority zero

n - nicht erwischen -MDMH

m - Manchmal - Oxo86

e - Endlich wird wieder getreten - Waving the Guns

n - No Country for old White men - Missstand

t - the Robot with human Hair pt.1 - dance Gavin dance

@aliceopal @anarcho-gamerist @meli-hates @lebedame-wegelagerin @punkwitchanarchist @punkenuff @that-halloween-gay @moodyhoney @howboutthatbreadtho @allyments @catgirlanarchist @marzanna6 @x-keeprunning-x @w-olf @adornations @teal-eaf @whothefuckishappyy @famprined

And whoever wants to!