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vnllacosmo · 3 years ago

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ships *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

below is a list of ships i love! anyone is welcome to squeal about them in my inbox with me — as well as send in prompts with them! if i don’t feel comfortable writing the prompt, i will let you know. but i looooove writing for my ships <3. also anything with & means the relationship is strictly platonic. anything with + means romantic. if there is a romantic ship that you’d like me to write as platonic, feel free to ask! if there is a ship that isn’t on the list, you can still ask because i may have accidentally forgotten to add it!

the one hundred:

raven & abby

raven & octavia

clarke & octavia

bellamy & octavia

spacekru family

bellamy + echo

bellamy + anya

bellamy + clarke

raven + luna

raven + bellamy

raven + clarke

raven + murphy

raven + anya

raven + lexa

raven + echo

raven + emori

emori + murphy

anya + echo

monty + harper

monty + jasper

maya + jasper

octavia + lincoln

abby + marcus

raven + clarke + bellamy

raven + echo + bellamy

raven + murphy + emori

echo + bellamy + anya

echo + bellamy + clarke

grey’s anatomy:

meredith & lexie

meredith & amelia

meredith & maggie

meredith & cristina

derek & amelia

addison & amelia

mark & amelia

mark & callie

mark & derek

mark & arizona

meredith & baby ellis

amelia & baby ellis

addison & baby ellis

callie + arizona

addison + derek

addison + meredith

addison + teddy

addison + mark

teddy + mark

meredith + derek

meredith + finn

cristina + teddy

cristina + alex

izzie + alex

jo + alex

april + jackson

amelia + arizona

amelia + owen

magic crew

season 6 attending crew

the walking dead:

maggie & beth

maggie & carol

maggie & tara

maggie & rosita

maggie & sasha

maggie & daryl

beth & daryl

rick & daryl

carol & lydia

carol & rosita

daryl & rosita

glenn & tara

maggie + glenn

carol + daryl

rick + andrea

rick + michonne

tara + rosita

beth + noah

rosita + gabriel

pre-alexandria crew (rick & michonne + kids, daryl & carol, maggie & glenn, noah, rosita, abraham, eugene, sasha)

road trip crew (maggie, glenn, tara, rosita, abraham, eugene)

private practice:

charlotte & amelia

charlotte & violet

charlotte & addison

amelia & addison

cooper & violet

charlotte + cooper

addison + pete

violet + pete

king-freedman family (charcoop, mason, triplets)

glee:

santana & shelby

santana & mercedes

santana + brittany

santana + quinn

finn + quinn

tina + mike

shelby + holly

shelby + cassie

unholy trinity: santana + brittany + quinn

trebletones

victorious:

jade & cat

beck & cat

jade + beck

jade + tori

bade as cat’s parents

pitch perfect:

aubrey + chloe

aubrey + emily

aubrey + beca

chloe + emily

chloe + beca

beca + emily

aubrey + chloe + emily

aubrey + chloe + beca

aubrey + chloe + beca + emily

pretty little liars:

alison + emily

spencer + emily

spencer + hanna

spencer + toby

hanna + mona

hanna + caleb

liars squad

gilmore girls:

lorelai + luke

rory + dean

rory + paris

louise + paris

once upon a time:

regina & hope

regina & henry

emma & henry

regina & snow

regina & zelena

mal & lily

regina + emma

regina + mal

ruby + belle

snow + charming

manifest:

grace & olive

grace + ben

olive + tj

michaela + zeke

degrassi:

paige + spinner

paige + alex

spike + snake

manny + jt

manny + jay

liberty + jt

ellie + sean

ellie + craig

ashley + jimmy

emma + sean (early season only)

holly j + declan

imogen + fiona

alli + dallas

drew + bianca

clare + eli

tristan + miles

zig + tori

grace + zoë

shameless:

fiona + angela

lip + mandy

ian + mickey

carl + bonnie

kev + veronica

fiona + jimmy / steve

criminal minds:

emily + elle

emily + hotch

emily + penelope

emily + morgan

morgan + penelope

elle + penelope

the fosters:

stef & mariana

stef & jesus

stef & jude

lena & mariana

lena & jesus

lena & jude

mariana & jude

mariana & lexi

mariana & jesus

jesus & jude

stef + lena

mariana + matt

jesus + lexi

jesus + emma

orange is the new black:

nicky & red

nicky & piper

nicky & alex

taystee & poussey

maritza & flaca

daya & aleida

piper + alex

nicky + lorna

switched at birth:

bay & regina

bay & kathryn

bay & toby

bay & daphne

bay & angelo

bay + emmett

toby + lily

kathryn + regina

kathryn + john

angelo + regina

riverdale:

betty & kevin

veronica & kevin

betty + veronica

betty + archie

veronica + cheryl

veronica + archie

toni + cheryl

alice + hermione

the vampire diaries:

caroline + stefan

caroline + katherine

caroline + elena

caroline + bonnie

katherine + stefan

elena + stefan

the originals:

elijah & rebekah

elijah & hayley

rebekah & hayley

rebekah & klaus

hayley + klaus

legacies:

hope + lizzie

marvel:

natasha & yelena

jemma & may

fitz + simmons

bobbi + hunter

may + coulson

bobbi + jemma

victoria + may

natasha + maria

elena + mack

friends:

phoebe & chandler

phoebe & monica

joey & monica

joey & chandler

rachel & chandler

rachel + monica

rachel + phoebe

rachel + joey

phoebe + joey

monica + chandler

lost in space (2018):

maureen & penny

don & penny

smith & penny

john & penny

judy & penny

maureen + john

supergirl:

kara & alex

kara & cat

kara + lena

mom (sitcom):

bonnie & christy

bonnie + adam

full / fuller house:

dj & becky

dj & danny

dj & jesse

dj & joey

dj & stephanie

dj & michelle

dj & kimmy

dj & ramona

dj & rocki

stephanie & jesse

stephanie & joey

stephanie & michelle

stephanie & kimmy

stephanie & ramona

stephanie & rocki

ramona & kimmy

ramona & rocki

one day at a time:

penelope & lydia

elena & penelope

elena & lydia

elena & alex

elena & schneider

elena + syd

penelope + schneider

outer banks:

john b. & kiara

john b. & jj

john b. & pope

kiara & pope

jj + pope

jj + kiara

rizzoli & isles:

jane + maura

american horror story:

cordelia & madison

cordelia & mallory

misty & madison

mallory & coco

mallory & madison

cordelia + misty

madison + zoe

how to get away with murder:

michaela & connor

michaela & annalise

michaela & bonnie

michaela & oliver

michaela & laurel

connor & annalise

connor & asher

oliver & asher

annalise & bonnie

annalise + eve

bonnie + frank

blue bloods:

jamie + eddie

danny + maria

danny + linda

danny + jackie

law & order (svu):

amanda & olivia

amanda & alex

alex + olivia

disney:

alex & theresa (wizards of waverly place)

teddy & charlie (good luck charlie)

raven + chelsea (tsr / raven’s home)

london + maddie (suite life)

gabriella + troy (high school musical)

gabriella + sharpay (high school musical)

riley + maya (girl meets world)

mal + evie + jay + carlos (descendants)

#peaches navigation

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bookworm555 · 4 years ago

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*Reuploaded FOR THE THIRD TIME because I realized that this never showed up in any of this fandom’s tags the first two times I posted it :/ Now I am trying this as a text post with images instead of a typical art post because nothing is freaking working and I am so frustrated.

Because read-mores apparently make my post glitchy, I apologize in advance for the length of this post, and hopefully, it doesn’t clog your dashes/the tags too badly.*

Another CatCF/WWatCF sketchdump~

The top drawing is the characters from the 1971 adaptation ten years later (which was an excuse to draw 80′s fashion, haha).

Ten years later doodles (from left to right) Top row: Violet and Veruca Second row: Mike, Charlie, and Augustus

(I think Violet turned out to be the best of these doodles!)

Some headcanons for the ten years later drawings (this would have been the section under the read-more, if it worked :/ ):

I always headcanoned the characters in the ‘71 version to be thirteen, minus Mike, who I saw as eleven. So basically everyone in the drawing is twenty-three except for Mike, who is twenty-one.

Violet: For years after the nightmare that was the factory tour, Violet struggled with major body image issues, especially about her blue skin. (And is homeschooled because of this.) However, eventually, her mindset basically became ‘Wonka thought this was a punishment? Fuck that; I’m going to embrace it’, so she became more confident.

Once this confidence hits during her late teens, she uses her unusual appearance to her advantage (especially when it comes to attracting visitors/potential buyers to her dad’s car dealership).

She doesn’t go to college; instead, she works at her dad’s place, and basically learns how to be a mechanic.

She hasn’t chewed gum since the factory tour.

When Charlie contacts her and the others, she is hesitant to respond back, but ultimately does (to sass him, at the very least). During the group’s future meetups, she’s basically the glue that keeps them together.

Veruca: Unlike Violet, Veruca carries a lot of guilt about what happened during the factory tour, since her father was punished along with her. He fell wrong, and as a result, was paralyzed from the waist down, and is now in a wheelchair. Veruca was lucky; aside from a broken ankle, she did not suffer any worse injuries.

Because of this, Veruca becomes mute (her mouthing off and constantly asking for things is what led to her–pun not intended–downfall, so she decides that it would be for the best if she stops talking altogether.)

Despite the Salts being wealthy, Wonka paid all of their medical bills. Even though it would have made sense for them to take him to trial, they decided not to (Henry did not want anyone to see him in his new state, and Veruca’s anxiety spiked even thinking about the factory).

When Charlie contacts the four ‘rejects’ ten years after the tour, Violet starts to bring Veruca out of her shell. Though it is ultimately Augustus who helps her feel comfortable speaking again, due to his soft-spoken personality.)

Mike: Like the others, Mike was very traumatized by what happened to him during the tour. (Especially since he was younger than the rest of them.)

While Violet embraced her altered state, and Veruca withdrew from the world, Mike became bitter. Very bitter. Because, while sure, Wonka and co. were able to get him back to about normal size [after stretching him waaaay too tall and thin the first time; his mother fainted, then had plenty of choice words for everyone involved when she came to], the process was incredibly painful, and involved basically rubber-fying his bones and muscles temporarily (yeah, he still had no idea why Wonka would even create a candy that did that).

Because of that, he has scars all over his body–the most on his arms, legs, and torso–so he always wears long-sleeved shirts or jackets, and long pants.

He is pissed that his life was ruined at age eleven; sure, he was obnoxious, but he was a KID. Now he’s stuck with chronic pain, not to mention the occasional breakdown because he has no idea if he’s actually HIM, or just a copy that was beamed through Wonka’s television room that managed to keep his soul. (Yeah, he doesn’t like to dwell on that; he prefers to think that that would be impossible.) [A/N: That part comes from the fact that Wonka stated that the chocolate that appeared in the TV screen was a copy of the much larger chocolate bar that was beamed through the air, and not the original bar itself]

When Charlie contacts him, he almost sends a nasty letter back, but something in him pauses, and he ends up sending a civilized response. It wasn’t Charlie’s fault all this happened to him; Charlie was the nice one, and, though he would never admit it to anyone, on the tour, he thought Charlie was cool. Goody-two-shoes, but in the ‘Lovable TV Protagonist’ sort of way.

As the five of them start meeting/corresponding through letters, he lets Charlie past all the walls he put up, and is definitely the closest to him in the group.

Charlie: Happily becomes Wonka’s protege after the tour. He is ecstatic that he not only gets to live and learn to work in this magical place, but he and his family are finally out of poverty!

He goes to school during the day, then learns the tricks of the candy trade in the afternoons and evenings.

However, about ten years after winning the tour, Wonka just…vanishes. And that’s when Charlie finds the videos showcasing what happened to the other four Golden Ticket winners after their mishaps.

Charlie is appalled; looking back, they were all so young. Of course, they were bratty; that’s how kids ARE. (Sure, some of them were worse than others, but they didn’t deserve their fates! Essentially, the four ‘losers’, plus Mr. Salt, were toyed with and tortured, and their parents could not help them.) Mike’s was especially horrible, to him; it was the only tape he couldn’t finish.

This makes Charlie feel a little guilty; he got off easy, even though he also disobeyed the rules.

He is also torn; on the one hand, Wonka was a great mentor, and he was fond of the man–he made a good father-figure, for him. But on the other hand, this was a man who thought the way to get rid of a kid’s bad habits was to torture them.

Before he could think otherwise, Charlie writes letters to the other Golden Ticket winners. He doesn’t expect anything nice back, but is surprised to find that they are all willing to talk to him.

He is relieved; he wants to right the wrongs done to them.

Augustus: The poor guy falls into a deep depression after the tour. Sure, he was thinner, but he had no problem with how he looked before. Not to mention, even the smell of chocolate and other sugary sweets makes him very nauseous. Oh, and there’s the not-so-small fear of drowning that he picked up, as well as severe claustrophobia.

He felt like a part of him was lost, since he could no longer enjoy his favorite foods. Or food in general. He ate to not starve, but that was it.

He was already quiet, but after the tour, he withdrew into himself even more, preferring to spend time with the neighborhood cats rather than people. (Yes, he is definitely a cat person.)

But he still has his kind heart, so when Charlie Bucket sends him a letter, he responds right away (and is the first one to do so).

When they start writing more letters to each other, and eventually meeting, he helps the others through their trauma, while ignoring his own. He thinks he’ll always be stuck this way.

Veruca disagrees.

And in terms of schooling, only Augustus went to college. As for high school, Violet and Mike were homeschooled, Veruca went to an exclusive, posh academy, Charlie stuck with public school, and Augustus went to a private school.

Now, if anyone was interested, these are the outfits that inspired the ones I drew (though, obviously, I took artistic liberties with some of them). I wanted to give them each a different style: Violet’s is the outlandish fashion the 80s are famous for, Veruca’s is demure and preppy, Mike’s is pretty unassuming, but with a slight edge, Charlie’s is comfortable/casual, and Augustus’s is comfortable/slightly formal.

Left to right: Violet, Veruca, Mike, Charlie, Augustus

(And I imagine the back of Mike’s jacket looking like this, aka with a vent, which is why the back of the jacket isn’t visible in the gap of his legs):

WOW, that got so long (oops…), but those were just my ideas for how these characters would interact and act ten years later. Hopefully someone enjoys this, XD

#bookworm555 #charlie and the chocolate factory #willy wonka and the chocolate factory #mike teavee #charlie bucket #augustus gloop #veruca salt #augustus x veruca #charlie/mike if you squint #at the very least they become veeeeery close friends in this #violet ends up with hmmm...winkelmann?? idk?#-kidding-#unless XDD #my art #please please please show up in the tags

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exxar1 · 4 years ago

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Episode 5: Why Machiavelli Would Never Wear a Mask (And Why You Shouldn’t Either)

12/9/2020

Last week’s episode of the Young Heretics podcast was about The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince is one of those classics of western lit that I’ve never actually read – or even taken a college class where this was one of the texts. What little I remember about this text is from history class during my junior year in high school. Mrs. Jones (no relation) told us that Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a treatise on political philosophy. He believed that the ends justified the means, and that the best way for a prince to retain power over the people was to rule by fear rather than love. The word “Machavellian” has always been used as a pejorative description in our modern society, often referring to those people who are cold, heartless, and unfeeling. Machiavelli’s name has become synonymous with those characters in popular movies, books and TV shows that attempt to control other characters and events by using various means of deceit and guile.

Now, to be fair, Mrs. Jones’ interpretation and summary of The Prince is not entirely wrong. I did a brief Google search on Machiavelli and The Prince, and about half the links of my search results reaffirmed that view. The other half, however, offered a surprisingly different take on The Prince, one that is also shared by Spencer Klavan on Young Heretics. That podcast is now 29 episodes old, but this is the first one that has presented me with something entirely new – both the text itself and the interpretation of it.

In his advice to the titular prince, Lorenzo de Medici, Machiavelli instructs him on how to best maintain power and control of his subjects and his state. The best way to do this, Machiavelli believed, was for the prince to be feared rather than loved. Also, at times, it would be necessary to use what many would consider to be unjust or immoral means in order to sustain that power and control. Hence Machiavelli’s negative reputation in the history books and modern culture.

But Spencer makes the argument that Machiavelli’s reputation is ill-earned. There’s more to this Italian philosopher than what has been passed down in the history books. To put it simply, Machiavelli was a realist. He addressed human nature – and human behavior – in harsh, realistic terms. This was how Machiavelli viewed the world. To use our vernacular, he didn’t sugarcoat the bad stuff. He understood how people behaved – both the ones in power and the ones being ruled – and he framed his advice to his prince in these simple, realistic terms.

I’ve spent the last several days thinking about this episode, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Spencer chose this episode to air when it did. All over the country, many state governors have issued lockdown orders for their principalities in response to a renewed surge in positive cases of COVID-19. As any of you who know me – either in real life or via social media – can attest, I am a rabid believer in the battle against face masks and the lockdowns. I’m also a firm believer in the actual science – as opposed to the political nonsense spouted by Doctor Fauci and his panel of “experts” – that says over and over how useless and pointless the masks are in the efforts to stop the spread of the corona virus. And, as you also know, I have plenty of time on my hands to think while at my day job, and the other day I came to a rather startling conclusion:

We should all be more like Machiavelli.

When exactly did we, the American people, become a nation of whiny, spoiled, self-entitled sissies? A nation of people who are so terrified of the possibility of dying that we happily give up our most basic freedoms and cower inside our homes or behind masks? Because that's exactly what's happened. The basic liberties and routines of our daily lives and, for many, their very livelihoods, were suddenly halted and/or shut down by our state governors who were acting in response to so-called science and medical “experts” in the effort to save a small, vulnerable percentage of our population. I've lost count of the number of times I've read on social media posts in the last 6 months about how pro-maskers wear a mask to protect their 85 year old grandmother or their 70 year old father. I've been called “heartless” and “pro-Nazi” from strangers in the comments section of news articles whenever I respond with the same argument that I'm going to put forth here.

We of the last couple generations have become so soft and spoiled and lazy that we've forgotten just how harsh and deadly real life can often be. And I'm including myself in that crowd. Those of us born in the last four decades of the 20th century have known nothing but prosperity and comfort, especially if – like me – you grew up in a typically middle class household. This is even more true of anyone born after 1995. I'm speaking of the generation that has never known life without Starbucks, Amazon, Google or a cell phone; the generation that grew up using laptop computers and watching TV by streaming it on the internet. In fact, we've become so complacent that we don't even have to leave our comfort zones to order a Big Mac from McDonald's or groceries from Walmart. When I was growing up in the 80s, I remember having to wait an eternity (4-6 weeks) for a toy to arrive that I had mail-ordered from a Sears catalog. Nowadays, I complain if my Amazon package isn't on my doorstep within 24 hours.

For pretty much all of us, 2020 was a massive wake-up call; a Mike-Tyson-punch-to-the-face or dive-into-Lake-Michigan-in-the-middle-of-December kind of wake-up call. None of us were prepared for a pandemic whose projected death toll was in the millions. Everyone from the top down – the president, our congressmen, our state governors, the national and local health experts – reacted instinctively. The medical experts, especially, were very quick to panic, based primarily on preliminary reports from European countries and China. Many state governors – most of them Democrats – were quick to declare a state of emergency and issue a lockdown order for their respective principalities. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were suddenly without work. Unemployment claims shot through the stratosphere. Congress approved an economic stimulus package. Everyone in the government – both national and local – assured us citizens that the lockdowns were temporary, two months at most.

But, of course, two months became three, then four, and by mid-July, many states were still in phase one or two of their “re-opening”. By this point, even the liberal-controlled mainstream media was reporting on the sudden spike of suicides in the lockdown states. Millions of unemployment claims were stuck in severe backlog, and more and more workers were being put on furlough by their employers – or just simply laid off. Here in Las Vegas, for example, the entire strip was a complete ghost town from mid-March to mid-June. This city's economy is utterly dependent on the tourism industry, and, with all casinos and hotels completely closed, the city as a whole suffered greatly. It's still suffering, in fact, even though most of the strip has been open since mid-July. Almost all the hotels and casinos can only afford to be open from Thursday to Sunday. Thousands here are still unemployed or working two part time jobs for barely minimum wage just to make basic ends meet.

And now, as I write this, our governor – along with those of California, New York, and many others – has declared a second round of lockdowns. In California, both Governor Newsom and the mayor of L.A. have banned indoor AND outdoor dining at all restaurants. And again, we the citizens have been told that this is for our own safety, and that these lockdowns will be temporary. One doesn’t have to look far on Twitter or Facebook to see cell phone videos of desperate, tearful, and/or furious restaurant and bar owners engaged in verbal rages about the injustice of all of this.

Here’s what should have happened clear back in February of this year:

Our leaders – our princes, if you will – both national and local, should have consulted not only the medical experts but also a team of economic and social advisors. The governors of every state should have taken a long, hard look at the long term cost of even a brief economic shutdown versus the projected death toll in the short term if COVID-19 was allowed to run its natural course through the U.S. population. You can already see where I’m headed with this. Our governors chose to shut down their states, to close all “non-essential” businesses, and ordered all citizens to self-quarantine. This was only supposed to be for a few weeks, at most. But we’ve all witnessed the long term effects of these shutdowns – skyrocketing unemployment rates, a rapid, severe spike in suicides and domestic abuse cases, and children who are falling so far behind in school due to “distance learning” that many will simply end up dropping out or repeating the same grade for another year.

Our princes should have been more like Machiavelli. They should have allowed life to continue as normal – no mask mandates, no social distancing orders, and most definitely no mandatory quarantines. Instead, the princes should have advised all citizens that the choice was theirs to self-quarantine or not, and that face masks would also be encouraged but completely optional. The result of this, of course, would mean a very high death toll in the short term. There would be no way to avoid this. As we already know now, face masks and social distancing are pointless and useless when it comes to preventing the spread of COVID. The highest numbers of fatalities would be among those older than 65. Hospitals and morgues would be overwhelmed. Emergency triage centers would have to be established in parking lots and empty football stadiums. For a month or two, the news headlines would be filled each day with the most recent death tolls.

But then, into the third month, the death count would start to go down. As herd immunity was finally achieved, life would, slowly but surely, get back to normal. And through it all, there would have been a slight drop in the regular business of many restaurants, movie theaters, and other recreational businesses that rely on tourism and seasonal traffic. But, ultimately, the country would have recovered from this much faster than they will in our present timeline. As it stands now, hundreds of thousands of small businesses across America have gone bankrupt and closed their doors for good. Even major restaurant chains like Ruby Tuesday and Sweet Tomatoe’s have permanently closed many – if not all – their locations. In the alternate timeline, where they had been allowed to remain open with no restrictions of any kind on the number of customers they were allowed to have inside at any time, these businesses would most likely still be up and running.

Yes, that means that your 75 year old father or your 90 year old grandma would have probably died. But that’s life. Like Machiavelli, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. Life is hard. If you haven’t figured that out by now, you’re in for a long and frustrating existence on this earth. And lest you think I’m speaking from some superior, unaffected, condescending platform where I have not experienced any loss or hardship this year, let me remind of you of my blog post about my close friend Aaron Walker from a month ago. No, his death was not the result of COVID, as far as I know, but it was sudden, and it was completely unexpected. I’m still feeling his loss. But you know what? Life goes on. We mourn the dead, we bury them, and then we move on. Death is a fact of life. Machiavelli would have understood that, and so should all of us in 2020. This year has seen a lot of death, more than anything in recent decades, in fact. But that’s life. That’s the way life goes sometimes, and trying to avoid that inevitability by forcing face masks and quarantine and shutting down businesses on a whim is not going to change that simple fact.

I know many of you reading this are probably screaming at your phone screen right now, calling me all kinds of names and cursing me. “How can you be so heartless????” you rave. “How can you allow so many elderly and innocents to die just so you can still go to the movies or sit down at McDonald’s to enjoy your iced coffee and Big Mac????” “You’re a murderer because you still refuse to wear a mask in public!!!!”

And you know what? You’re absolutely right. I am probably infecting others by not wearing a mask. I do still want to go to a movie on Friday night and pig out on overpriced popcorn and soda. I do enjoy going out to eat at least once a week with all my friends. And yep, I’m perfectly fine with accepting the reality that many people are going to die because our governors refused to sacrifice the whole society in the chance that it might save a few innocent lives.

In other words, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” That edict is as true today as when Spock said it to Captain Kirk in Star Trek 2 in 1982. Machiavelli would have completely understood that statement, and he also would have understood this: that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. We humans have been spreading disease to one another ever since Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden. Death, you see, is the natural consequence of sin. Death is unavoidable, and death comes for us all. For some of us, we are lucky enough to live rich, full lives. For others, death comes all too soon. My grandfather will be 90 years old this year on December 31st. If I were to ask him today if he were ready to shuffle off this mortal coil and be welcomed into the arms of our Heavenly Father, his answer would be an immediate and resounding, “Yes!”. Your 75 year old father or your 85 year old grandmother are most likely looking forward to death. That doesn’t mean you should just kill them now by your own hand to hasten the inevitable. But it does mean that they are ready to meet their maker if their number is up. (And, by the way, is not more cruel to force the elderly to slowly waste away alone, locked up in forced quarantine in nursing homes, not allowed to see or even speak to their loved ones until they eventually die of depression, loneliness or COVID???)

COVID-19 is an act of God. It’s a chance of nature, a random thing that has struck the human race, and none of us have the power to change it or ward it off or protect ourselves and our loved ones against its wrath. As we have been doing since the Tower of Babel, we humans have infected one another and survived many, many plagues worse than this one. So you need to stop your whining, stop your complaining, pick yourself up, and get on with your fucking life. And, while you’re at it, you might want to open your Bible and get acquainted with your Creator. Because, sooner or later, you’re gonna meet him, and if you have not accepted his son, Jesus Christ, as your lord and savior, you will spend eternity in a place that makes COVID look like a summer’s vacation in the Florida Keys.

So, in conclusion, be more like Machiavelli. Throw away your damn mask, rise up against the tyranny of our modern princes, and help me get our lives back to normal. If we do not stand up for our freedoms we will most assuredly lose every last one of them.

Mmmmm-kay???

(And, by the way, if you haven’t been listening to Young Heretics, I strongly advise you to drop everything and begin immediately. Look it up on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. It will change your life.

You’re welcome.)

#covid #covidiot #life #god #mask #liberty #freedom

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khakilike · 12 days ago

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Grommets #5, Rick Remender & Brian Posehn and Brett Parson

#Grommets #Rick Remender #Brian Posehn #Brett Parson #Liberty Spike Mike #Rick #Hector #Comic books #Grommets 005

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spotlight-on-black-women · 4 years ago

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Edmonia Lewis: Sculptor

Sculpting has been around for centuries. The art of chipping, carving, and sanding away at various materials such as marble, granite, metal, ceramics, and so on, has played an important role in art’s history for generations. To recognize art as a whole, we must recognize the contributors to one of art’s purest forms; sculpting.

Mary Edmonia Lewis, “Wildfire,” or more commonly referred to Edmonia Lewis, was born in July of 1844 (although the information of this is inconsistent) and lived in the Albany area of New York. She often gave misinformation regarding her origin, telling various “white lies” about where she was from, how she grew up, and even her age. What we do know about her is that she spent most of her adolescents in the Newark area of New Jersey. She was born to a mixed-race woman by the name of Catherine Mike Lewis; who was of Mississauga Ojibwe and African-American descent and to an African American father (thought to be either Samuel Lewis who was Afro-Haitian or Robert Benjamin Lewis who was of Native American and African American descent).

After her parents’ death, she and her brother Samuel lived with their aunts near Niagara Falls, New York, for four years, selling Ojibwe baskets, moccasins, embroidered blouses, as well as other items to tourists, also going by her Native American name, Wildfire. When Lewis was 15 she was sent to Oberlin, Ohio, where she attended Oberlin Academy Preparatory School, then attending Oberlin Collegiate Institute, one of the first American higher-education institutes to admit women and people of different ethnicities. She boarded with Reverend John Keep and his wife in 1859 and studied art.

After college, Lewis moved to Boston in early 1864, where she began to pursue her career as a sculptor. After taking the art form more seriously, she began trying to find an instructor, with the aid of both John Keep and his wife. After three male sculptors refused to become her teacher, Edward Augustus Brackett became her sculpting instructor. Specializing in portrait busts, Brackette had many famous abolitionists as clients. After ending her time with Brackett, Lewis opened her studio to the public for the first time with a solo exhibition in 1864.

Robert Gould Shaw, 1864

Anna Quincy Waterston, 1866

Having been inspired by the lives of abolitionists during the Civil War, she used some of the most famous abolitionists of her day as subjects for her artwork. She met Union Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of an African-American Civil War regiment from Massachusetts, throw her connections with Brackett and created a bust of Shaw’s likeness, impressing the Shaw family, so much so, that they purchased her work. Lewis then made plaster casts of the bust and sold roughly one hundred of them for 15 dollars apiece. The bust was so popular that Anna Quincy Waterston, a poet, even wrote a poem about both Lewis and Shaw. This became her most famous work to date and the money she earned from the busts allowed her to eventually move to Rome in 1866.

“I was practically driven to Rome in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.” - Edmonia Lewis, Dec. 1878.

Lewis spent most of her adult career in Rome, benefiting from Italy's less pronounced racism during the time, allowing her an increased opportunity to thrive as a mixed-raced Native American and Black female artist. Living in a circle of fellow expatriate artists, Lewis established her own space, enjoyed more social, spiritual, and artistic freedom than what she previously had in the United States. She began working within the neoclassical manner, yet focusing on naturalism within themes relating to black and American Indian people. She was greatly inspired by her surroundings of the classical world and this influenced her work. While in Rome, Lewis continued to express her African-American and Native American heritage.

Old Arrow Maker, modeled 1866, carved 1872

Hiawatha, 1868

A major spike in her sculpting career was participating in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia where she created a grande 3,015-pound marble sculpture, The Death of Cleopatra; which portrayed the moment in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in which Cleopatra allowed herself to be bitten by a poisonous asp following the loss of her crown. Having already found fame and fortune through her previous work, Lewis truly outdid herself with this particular piece at the time, having been considered "the most remarkable piece of sculpture in the American section" of the Exposition by J. S. Ingraham, drawing thousands to view its beauty.

Lewis, in making The Death of Cleopatra, had added an innovative flair by portraying the Egyptian queen in an inelegant and disheveled manner. This was quite the departure from the normally refined and composed Victorian approach that many artists had used previously. Considering Lewis's interest in emancipation imagery it’s fitting that Lewis eliminated Cleopatra's usual companion figures of loyal slaves from her work, bringing into her own relationship with Black slavery tied to her ancestry.

“The associations between Cleopatra and a black Africa were so profound that ... any depiction of the ancient Egyptian queen had to contend with the issue of her race and the potential expectation of her blackness. Lewis' white queen gained the aura of historical accuracy through primary research without sacrificing its symbolic links to abolitionism, black Africa, or black diaspora. But what it refused to facilitate was the racial objectification of the artist's body. Lewis could not so readily become the subject of her own representation if her subject was corporeally white.”

The Death of Cleopatra, 1876

Countless people from all over the world have written about Lewis’ finest achievements, praising her raw talent and each of her delicately crafted works. A testament to Lewis's renown as, not just an artist, but as a female Native American-African American came in 1877, when former US President Ulysses S. Grant commissioned her to do his portrait, spending hours modeling for her. During and since then, her work has been involved in many prestigious exhibits and held in the world’s more recognized museums to date, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Unfortunately, as a black artist, Lewis had to be more conscious of her stylistic choices due tot he fact that she had a largely white audience who often mistook her work as self-portraiture. To avoid this, many of her female figures possess European features as Lewis had to balance her own personal identity with her artistic, national, and social identity. She was notably tired of this trying balancing act that she continuously found herself in and it showed in her work.

“It is hard to overstate the visual incongruity of the black-Native female body, let alone that identity in a sculptor, within the Roman colony. As the first black-Native sculptor of either sex to achieve international recognition within a western sculptural tradition, Lewis was a symbolic and social anomaly within a dominantly white bourgeois and aristocratic community.” Charmaine Nelson, 2007

Hailed as the first female African American and Native American sculptor, Edmonia Lewis set massive strides in the direction of progression in the art world. Forever changing the medium and setting herself as a prime example that anyone of any gender, nationality, ethnicity, and identity can achieve unimaginable triumph in their passions, Lewis will continue to receive posthumous acclaim for her innovative and reforming pieces of art and be recognized globally for as long as her intricate sculptures and the history behind them remain.

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atricksterproblem · 5 years ago

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A Night In Cambridge

I wrote a bit of fluff. It was inspired by some combination of wishing I could bring Terzo to the night spots, now sadly gone, I used to love in college, and the idea that since he is after all a musician, he might get recognized from time to time....

It was still too early to go to the club; Man Ray wasn’t even open yet. Papa and I were wandering around Central Square in Cambridge, killing time. He was dressed as he often was when off-duty: tight black jeans, boots, t-shirt, and a variety of chains, spikes and leather straps. Most likely he’d lose the t-shirt once we got to the club and wear the harness on its own.

We were walking past the Liberty Cafe when a flyer on the door caught Papa’s eye.

“Let’s go in! It’s open mike night.”

“You going to sing?”

He just grinned. “You’ll see.”

We went inside and he wrote himself into an open time slot. The cafe was sparsely populated but comfy, with old couches lining the back wall. We settled in and watched some of the earlier performances: slam poetry, some college guy with a guitar, another student trying their hand at stand-up comedy.

It was Papa’s turn. The cafe staffer who was introducing the acts squinted at his terrible handwriting.

“Ok, um…next up we have Papa Emeritus III.” He laughed. “Yeah, okay. Get up here.”

He got up on the tiny stage, pulled the ever-present yellow kazoo out of his pocket, and started playing “We’re Not Gonna Take It”.

By the end, everyone in the place was singing along. He bowed with a flourish, and ceded the space to the next performer.

Someone in the audience came over to our table. “Dude! Nice cosplay! You’ve got his corpsepaint perfect.”

Papa beamed. “Why, thank you!”

We left the cafe shortly afterwards.

“You seriously just impersonated yourself.”

“Who better, eh?”

“You’re a dork.”

“If I’d told them it was really me, they wouldn’t have believed me anyway.”

I just shook my head and kissed him. You couldn’t take him anywhere.

#fluff #drabble #fanfiction #my writing #I'm an idiot

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nemesisbinxartifactseries · 5 years ago

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Artifact Series L

L. Ron Hubbard's "E-Meter" Electropsychometer

La Volpe's Cowl

The Lady from Shanghai's Mirror Maze

Lady Godiva's Saddle

Lady Jane Grey's Necklace

Lady Liberty Lighter *

Lady Lovibond

Lady Macbeth's Candle

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Journal

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Tulip Bulbs

Lady Saigō's Kimono

Laelaps

Laika's Harness

Lake Peigneur Diamond Drill Bit

Lamassu Statue

Lambert Simnel's Leggings

Lamp from Chicago Pile-1

Lampshade of Psychic Power *

Lance Armstrong's Trek Bicycle

Lantern from the Courrières Mine *

Lanterns from the Tillamook Rock Light

Laozi's Calligraphy Brush

Lara Croft's Holsters

Larry Walters' Lawn Chair

Las Vegas Atomic Skillet

Las Vegas Strip Neon Signs

Lascaux Cave Paintings

The Last Straw *

Laszlo Toth’s Hammer

Latasha Harlins' Two Dollar Bill

Late Schoolbus

Lauging Baby's Highchair

Laughing Moai

Laundry Basket from 'The Merry Wives Of Windsor'

Laura Bassi's Sample of Water

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Schoolhouse

Laurel and Hardy’s Hats

Laurence Shirley's Noose*

Lawrence Joseph Bader's Eyepatch

Lawrence of Rome’s Gridiron

Lawrence Welk's Accordion

Lazare Ponticelli’s Shoebox

Lazarus of Bethany's Grave Clothes

Leatherface's Chainsaw

Leather Strap from the First Iron Spike Chair

LeBron James' Headband

Lee Harvey Oswald's Handcuffs

Lee Harvey Oswald's Rifle

Lee and Marina Oswald's’ Wedding Rings

Lee Morgan's Trumpet

Lee Travis' Fedora

Leena's Bed and Breakfast Painting *

Leendert Hasenbosch’s Tent

Left 4 Dead Survivor Clothing

Left Arm of the Statue of Fergus Mor

Left Handed Whopper Wrapper

Leg Lamp

Legalese-Forcing Desklamp *

Leif Erikson's Helmet

Lemuel Gulliver's Ship Wheel

Lenape Tribe's Cloak and Artifacts of Nature *

Leon Herrmann's Sword and Playing Cards *

Leon Panetta's Projector *

Leonarda Cianciulli's Cake Shovel

Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa"

Lenoard A. Funk Jr's Thompson Submachine Gun

Leonard Smith's TV *

Leonardo da Vinci's Gargoyle *

Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook

Leonhard Rauwolf’s Herbarium

Leonidas' Cestus

Leonid Telyatnikov's Firefighter Gloves

Leroy Brown's Coat

Leslie and John Morton's Morgue Sheet

Leslie Scott's Jenga Blocks

Lev Termen's First Theremin

Levi Strauss's Original Pair of Jeans

Levitating Gurney

Lewis Carroll's Looking Glass *

Lewis Nixon's Pistol

Lewis Powell’s Pickaxe

Li Bai’s Rosewood Wall Panels

Li Ching-Yuen's Bowl

Li Zicheng’s Shackles

Liberace's Candelabra

Liberty Bell Ruby

Licking Dog Collar

Life Replenishing Clock

Lighter

Lightning Rod from Banqiao Dam

Lillian Russell's Evening Gloves

Lily Tomlin's Rocking Chair

Lilo & Stitch Experiment Pod Container

Linda Lovelace's Bathing Suit

Linda Hazzard's Wardrobe

Linda's IrisPhone

Lindsay Broom's Fozzie Doll

Ling Lun’s Bamboo Flute

Lin Zexu's Trunk

Linda Hazzard's Wardrobe

Lion Country Safari Park Sign

The Lion man of the Hohlenstein Stadel

Lippershey-Janssen Telescope

Lisa del Giocondo's Teeth

Lisa Howard's Press Pass

Liss Seltzer Bottle

Little Mac's Boxing Gloves

Little Match Girl's Box of Matches

Liu Ji’s Fire Lance

Liu Pengli's Hanfu Hat

Liu Ziye's Tanto

Lizzie Borden's Dress

Lizzie Borden's Compact *

Lloyd Loar's Mandolin *

Lloyd Olsen's Axe & Mike the Headless Chicken's Head

Lobengula’s Assegai

Locker 837 from Columbine High School

Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird"

Locust-Summoning Dog Whistle *

Locusta’s Vials

Lon Chaney Jr.'s Makeup Kit

Lone Ranger's Mask

Lonely Christmas Ornaments *

Long Island War Trumpet

Loki's Feather Cape

Lon Chaney's Makeup Box

Lonnie Johnson's Original Super Soaker

Loránd Eötvös' Torsion Balance

Lord Alfred Tennyson's Cracked Mirror

Lord Byron’s Cloak

Lord Zedd's Staff

Lorena Bobbitt's Knife

Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Bronze Panel

Lorne Acquin's Tire Iron

Lottery Ticket, Circa 1950s

Lottie Dod's Tennis Racket

Lotus Incense Burner

Louis I, Duke of Orléans' Torch

Louis XIV's Silverware Forks *

Louis Agassiz's Iron Auger

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte III's Candelabras

Louis B. Mayer's Desk and Chairs

Louis Braille's First Braille Book

Louis Braille's Leather Awl

Louis Chevrolet's Crank Handle

Louis Chevrolet's Helmet

Louis Daguerre's Camera Obscura

Louis Essen's Alarm Clock

Louis Le Prince's Camera

Louis Le Prince’s Film Spools

Louis Pasteur's Beaker

Louis Pasteur's Flask

Louis Pasteur's Milk Bottle *

Louis Prang's Original Christmas Cards

Louis Slotin’s Screwdriver

Louis Vuitton's Suitcase

Louis XIV's Mirror

Louis XIV's Sundial

Louis XIV's Peg Solitaire

Louis the XIV's Scepter

Louis Wain's Cat Collar

Loukas Notaras’ Turban

Lourdes, France Madonna Statue

Lou Reed's Music Transformer Machine *

Lou Reed's Record Player

Love Bead Necklace

Love-In-Idleness Flower

Love Potion No. 9

L. Sprague de Camp's Theodolite

Lu Bu's Battle Armor

Lucius Apuleius' Pet Donkey Hoofs

Lucius Copeland’s Boiler

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus’ Plow

Lucius Tarquinius Superbus' Stick

Luis Garavito's Walking Stick

Luck Altering Dice

Lucky’s Magical Charms

Lucky Strike Cigarette Tin

Lucretia Garfield's Reading Glasses

Lucrezia Borgia's Comb *

Lucy's Diamonds

Luddite Hammer

Ludger Sylbaris’ Grate

Ludwig II of Bavaria's Cloak

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Drawing Board

Ludwig Prandtl’s Airfoil

Ludwig van Beethoven's Clock *

Lugh's Spear

Luigi Galleani's Wagon Wheel

Luigi Galvani's Bio-Electric Wires

Luigi Galvani's Scalpel

Luigi Lucheni's File

Luis María Mendía's Airplane

Luiz Vaz de Torres' Compass

Luke Howard's Barometer

Luke P. Blackburn's Linens

Lully's Staff

Lumiere Brother's Cinematograph *

Lunchlady Hairnet

Lycaon's Ladle

Lyn Robinson's Turtle Shell

Lynette Fromme’s Red Robe

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charlieconwayy · 5 years ago

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What are your top 20 fave Degrassi characters and top 20 fave Degrassi Ships (they don’t have to be canon Ships)

characters is in no particular order

miles hollingsworth

liberty van zandt

paige michalchuk

manny santos

ellie nash

jt yorke

craig manning

spinner mason

fiona coyne

mike dallas

bianca desousa

emma nelson

zoe rivas

lola pacini

jay hogart

darcy edwards

adam torres

rasha zuabi

esme song

sean cameron

i took the ship sorter and these were my results (in order)

jt/liberty

jay/manny

peter/darcy

sean/emma

sean/ellie

paige/alex

zoe/rasha

drew/bianca

miles/lola

jake/katie

alli/dallas

spinner/jane

frankie/jonah

kc/jenna

imogen/eli

snake/spike

spinner/paige

zig/tori

mo/marisol

anya/sav

#Anonymous

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automateking · 3 years ago

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Attorney Thomas Renz says prosecutions are coming for the covid plandemic masterminds who committed crimes against humanity

(Natural News) Will justice ever come for the plandemic tyrants who have committed crimes against humanity, including mass murder? Attorney Thomas Renz says so. In a recent interview on Brighteon Conversations with Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, attorney Thomas Renz explained how he and many other lawyers are gearing up to drop the hammer on those who have defiled our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with nearly two years of Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) fascism. Everything from the lockdowns to the mask mandates to now the “vaccine” mandates are criminal activities that require punishment. The perpetrators include names like Tony Fauci, Rochelle Walensky, Joe Biden and many others. “We the People always have the power,” Renz stated during the interview. “We have always had the power. We will always have the power. No government can govern without the consent of those whom it governs.” “As We the People stand, it doesn’t matter how corrupt they are because … if enough of us stand up and say, ‘I’m sorry, we’re not accepting this, we’re changing this,’ it will change.” This video is from channel Health Ranger Report on Brighteon.com.

This is not new information

For months, Renz has been sounding the alarm about how the plandemic is a fraud in terms of the fear and manipulation surrounding it. Sure, people are getting sick. But is the government’s response warranted? Hardly. Time and time again, science has shown that the “remedies” the government has put forth to “flatten the curve” center around control, not health.

And even if they did promote health, these unconstitutional measures simply cannot be forced on people against their will, especially when they come with deadly side effects such as in the case of the jabs. Right this moment, people everywhere who got injected are suffering from things like VAIDS (vaccine-induced AIDS). Some of them are also developing cancer due to the deadly spike proteins that have flooded their bodies. These are war crimes because in the fight to eradicate “covid,” the government forced people with no other option to get jabbed in order to keep their jobs, for instance. “So, this is a coverup, it’s a fraud, it’s a lie,” Renz says about how the government is now trying to conceal the true number of injuries and deaths that have occurred because of the injections. It is a highly unfortunate situation for those who fell prey to the programming, or who felt as though they had no other choice but to take these jabs. It is for these people that Renz and his supporters are fighting for justice, and to try to prevent this type of travesty from ever happening again. “I think that there are an awful lot of people – and I do think that there’s complicity – I think when you cover up, I think there’s liability,” Renz says about where we go from here. “I think the media, Big Tech, yeah, there’s liability and guess what: we’re coming for you. It may take a while to get there, but we’ve got millions of people who are going to be suffering from lifelong health issues and early deaths, and I’m guessing that them and their families are going to be very eager to see it happen, and we’ve just got to make sure that they’re aware.” Adams agrees. He envisions a time when every corporation that profited from this genocide has its assets seized, as well as every principal, every manager, and every CEO of every corporation that profited from this also having their assets seized. To learn more about how you can help Renz’s efforts, be sure to visit his website. More of the latest news about the plandemic can be found at Pandemic.news. Sources for this article include: Brighteon.com NaturalNews.com Renz-Law.com Read the full article

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plungermusic · 3 years ago

Photo

“If Hamish Macbeth can do it, why shouldn’t I?”

Inspired by the ‘50 tracks of 2021′ as picked by Robert Carlyle (who played the titular small screen Scots constable) and in the absence of those other Loch Dubh musical luminaries TV John, or Lachy Junior (and Senior), Plunger asked Wee Jock to nominate his 25 tracks (well, he’s only small... and that’s 175 in human tunes) from last year as a way of killing time and filling space…

So, in no particular order, here are the choices from the last twelve months by an imaginary West Highland Terrier:

Forty Elephant Gang - Strange Things Happening - “conjures a palms-piña-coladas-and-pies Malibu-on-Mersey vibe” [from Next Time Round]

Dewolff - Hope Train - “an acid-spiked 13/8 time ‘Les Brers’-style romp” [from Wolff Pack]

Portable Radio - Kick Me Out - “a nostalgic Raindrops-Keep-Falling-On-My-Pussycat waltz” [from Portable Radio]

Dumpstaphunk - Justice 2020 - “a propulsive urgent call for change, that still radiates upbeat good-time vibes.” [from Where Do We Go From Here]

Arielle - I’d Rather Be In England - “ the pop-rock equivalent of those Murder She Wrote or Hart To Hart episodes set in ‘Merrie England’ but dashed catchy, what?” [from Analog Girl In A Digital World]

Sherman Downey - Long Goodbye - “ a Littlest Hobo-meets-The Band relaxed country stroll with a surprise clash of 70s brass with fierce fuzz guitar” [from New Beautiful]

Liz Simmons - Poets - “the breezy, bittersweet, coffee-shop-ballad whimsy is heightened by some lovely Ramsey Lewis-meets-Peanuts piano” [from Poets]

The Blue Highways - Love Keeps Wasting My Time - “chugs along like a well-tuned Chevy down the Jersey Turnpike” [from I Wanna Party EP]

Mike Ross - Blow Away - “a boisterous bouncing comic cowboy rag that canters through in a third of the original’s time!” [from The Clovis Limit: Tennessee Transitions]

Kelly Bayfield - Vapour Trails - “warm, breathy Hopkins-cum-Haslam vox in chamber folk-meets-Haight-Ashburiana” [Single]

Quinn Sullivan - In A World Without You - “Miami-Vice-chase-sequence tight funk” [from Wide Awake]

Mark Harrison - Curl Your Toes - “mesmeric vox-and-guitar unison melody and bowed bass, culminating in a baroque filigree of guitar and strings” [from The Road To Liberty Part 2]

Robben Ford - Pure - “caravanserai-anthem-in-sevens with a frenetic janissary finale” [from Pure]

Mango Thomas - Spiral Lift Phase 1 - “eye-popping, white-knuckle, arrow-straight ascent beyond the ecstatic exosphere” [Single]

Scott McKeon - Crossfader - “Krantz/Lefebvre/Carlock free-form virtuosity” [from New Morning]

Rob Koral - Summer - “a superbly smoky fusion/prog hybrid” [from Wild Hearts]

Taller Than - Don’t Leave Pt 1 - “a youthful Ross out-Culting The Cult with actual (not pastiche) 90s punch and braggadocio” [from Lay It Bare]

Umphrey’s McGee - Great American - “Umphrey’s at their most Les Brers southern-jazzy jammiest, with killer contributions from Billy Strings live in Asheville” [from Hall Of Fame 2020]

Lucy Grubb - Other Side - “Plunger won’t argue with any song advising you to ‘buy yourself some cowboy boots’…” [from Waste My Time EP]

Goose - Madhuvan - “symphonic 10 min jamband epic shifting from mellow psychedelia through tight dancehall boogie to a Deadtastic anthemic close” [from Shenanigans Nite Club]

Georgia Thunderbolts - Spirit Of A Working Man - “moody, muscular blue-collar-nod-to-Blackfoot” [from Can I Get A Witness]

Gu-Ru - Teach Me - “trimmed-down and beefed-up bitesize banger crammer” [Remix Single]

Mike Ross - Seabirds - “wind-machine bombast of ballsy churning garage-riff, lush late-CSN harmonies, and a grin-inducing twin-guitar burst” [from Origin Story]

David Edward Booth - Blackbird - “Suffolk big-sky Amerifolkana, literally and figuratively the perfect dawn chorus heralding spring renewal” [Single]

Rare Birds - Molasses - “trippy syrupy lope with a splash of Free, a Madchestery drum shuffle and chorus full of Zeppish oomph” [from Early Days EP]

#woof #woof woof woof #grrrrrrr #shoshidgesh

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the-voice-of-hell · 3 years ago

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Rent is Theft, part 19

Read from the beginning here, read the previous chapter here. Note: My MC is a Filipina trans woman and I am not. If you have notes on that or anything else, hit me up.

***

In retrospect, it was a pretty big leap from my success with the allergy medicine to assuming I could make sorcery happen, but I did not hesitate or doubt what I was attempting to do. My worry of it not working was less about a lack of faith in magic than a lack of confidence in my choices of method.

But whatever those doubts, once I had my plan, I committed to it.

I moved all the remaining furniture out of the living room except one tiny end table that would serve as my “wooden altar.” I used bulk white chalk to create the magic circle, ladled with a little dustpan. The prescribed seven foot diameter was just about the entire width of my little living room. Inside that I used the bulk chalk to make an equilateral triangle about five feet per side. I had put on a face mask and sprayed the surface of that geometry with a fixative I’d brewed up with a combination of research and guesswork. It didn’t have to be permanent, just last long enough for some use, and I figured the high school technique of using hairspray to fix pastels on construction paper wasn’t going to work here.

I leaned against my kitchenette to rest, observing the work. Sloppy, but could be worse. I went back at it, writing three symbols of Mercury inside the triangle in yellow chalk. That had to be sidewalk chalk, so it was much more slow going. The triangle called for “various symbols of Mercury” and the most I could find that seemed legit was the three - the caduceus, of course, with snakes entwining a winged rod; an astrological symbol that looked like Venus with horns; and the periodic table abbreviation Hg. At the end I used my fixative again.

That was the hard stuff, and took more than an hour to complete. After that my room had a chemical smell, but I needed to eat, so I grabbed some string cheese, peanuts, and a bottle of wine to the bedroom. Rest. It had been a long morning and would be very easy to fall asleep, but I resisted. I rolled the glass on my face, cool with condensation.

I finished the whole bottle, just in case the drunkenness was an important ingredient. Although when should I be doing that drinking? Should I have done it before the chalk? Later, right before midnight? The bottle had me feeling chill, but not really drunk. My tolerance was getting high. Bad shit.

There were two brushed steel racks holding spot lights for the walls, one on each side of the room. I ran a string between them as taut as I could get it, and from that hung my St. Hubert bottle of mercury. Along the rest of the line I used clothespins to hang rumpled blue-violet wolfsbane flowers. At regular intervals around the outer circle, I placed glass olive oil bottles with their contents drained and replaced with candles - for the time remaining unlit. On the island counter of the kitchenette, I reserved two places for my blood mixture and for the sulfur-beaverbutt-camphor mixture. On the opposite side of the circle, out by the window, one of the olive oil candle bottles sat on the little side table with my three wands.

Were they wands or switches? They were meant for violence, at least per the book. The previous night I’d tried to soften the business ends by sanding them and covering them with frayed twine. I didn’t know how important it was for Knobby to get hit with the very specific woods involved, so it wasn’t perfect coverage. It was surely going to sting.

Not drunk enough. I opened a box of wine in the fridge and poured a glass, then walked out to the living room. “Evil spirits, your time is nigh! I am a highly magical bitch!” I drank the glass to the bottom, then threw it into the far corner of the room, where it broke against the window and lay in sparkling chunks. I let my head dip, my eyes close. “I am a highly magical b--”

There was a knock at the door. I answered, opening a comfortable crack for my floories. “Hello guys.”

Marcie asked, “Eh, are you drunk, honey?”

“Whu-? Oh. Listen, I’m only a lil’ tipsy, and it’s for magical reasons. I’m serious now.”

Marcie and Mike had teamed up, and were at the door together. Mike said, “So, we haven’t found Knobby. Getting pretty bushed, gotta take a break.”

“Want to come into my humble witch’s den? There is no furniture in the living room now.”

“That’s OK, Courtney. We’ll go to my place, charge up my cellphone for a bit.”

“Right on. You know where Momi is lookin’?”

“Last time we passed her she was on some floors downstairs.”

“He won’t be down there,” I thought aloud. “Thanks, guys. I’m about ready in here. I’ll see you later.”

They left, I drank a bit of water and took a bathroom break, then went out to find Momi. I still didn’t expect to find Knobby while I was at it, just wanted to be close to her again. Out in the hall I heard the elevator. I glanced that way to see Perry coming back from who knows where. He didn’t acknowledge me, but gave the untended eyeballs in the hall corners a sad look. I went into the stairwell. I’ll clean up that crap for you when I get back, buddy.

I found Momi walking around the eighth floor and smiled as I stumbled toward her. She gave me a concerned look. “Are you OK? You’re drunk.”

“I’m only a little drunk, and it’s not because I’m losing my nerve. It’s for magical reasons. Magical, I swear!”

“Mmm, OK, I guess.” She had clamped a strong hand on my shoulder to arrest my sloppy affection, so no hugging was to be had. That said, her touch made me happy. Her strength made me feel weak, in a good way.

“So I was thinking, there’s nobody living on these floors right now, so we should just look upstairs. Where the biddies are.”

“Biddies?”

“The old ladies that are complaining about our dogboy.”

“Heheh. I guess a werewolf is just a dogboy, expecially if he’s a teenager.”

“Shit, you’re so cute. That’s why I act funny, so I can see you smile.” I tried to get my paws on her, but she still held me back. “Weh. What can I do, baby?” I gave up and clasped my hands together in a prayer to my goddess, probably giving off Peter Lorre Mad Love vibes.

“We should go. You aren’t wearing your allergy medicine.” She pointed at the carpet.

I looked down. She had the pill amulet on and the floor around her sneakers was fine. The carpet under my feet was puffing and pinkish, starting to glisten. “Oh Christ.”

***

We got my amulet and took the elevator to the top floor, which again had a different layout from our floor. There were still a few small apartments available, but the spacing of the doors suggested large penthouse suites. I remembered how much those cost from the listings when I moved in. It made me wanna knock the top off the fucking building. The hall there was designed to admit a maximum of sunlight and had much more powerful indoor lighting as well, keeping it bathed in an overwhelming glow. Having never seen that hall before, I felt like an escapee from Plato’s cave, about to get shot by the guards and chucked back into the underground.

But from the brief visit I knew the day was rapidly diminishing. If we couldn’t turn up Knobby, this full moon might be a bust. Still, if we couldn’t turn up Knobby, it also meant I could just spend my night loving my girlfriend, which was much more pressing in my mind just then.

We entered the stairwell, ready to go floor to floor again. A few steps in and I tripped, about to fall hard and break apart like dry kindling. Momi grabbed me and held me still on the stairs. One of my ankles was slightly twisted, my feet were on different steps, my hips twisted in place. I untangled them and set my feet carefully in place on the closer step.

When she spoke her lips were right by my ear. I could feel her breath on me. “Courtney! Be careful! Holy Jesus.”

“You better hold me just a little longer, I’m not... quite...” No, I was totally set. I just loved the feeling, squished against her soft body in her big arms, though my head wrap was probably whacking her in the eyes. “OK, I’m good.” I held the rail this time. I moved slow to trick her into going down side by side with me, then I matched her pace.

“You ready to wrestle a dogboy?,” I asked.

“You think he will fight me?”

“I guess he might come if we ask nice. If we say we have doggy biscuits.”

“Good. I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Yeah... So if this works, maybe we can do exorcisms on our heads, y’know? Unsquirrel your hair. What would you do with your hair, if you could control it again?”

We opened the door and looked into the hall of the next floor down. No Knobby.

“Ooh, I don’t know. What would look pretty?”

“Anything on you, baby. Maybe just to show your hair who’s boss you could do some crazy punk rock ’do. Like a big bright red and pink mohawk with leopard spotted buzz on one side and green and purple liberty spikes on the other.”

“Oh my god, that would be so weird.”

“Braided pigtails.”

“I tried that before. It takes too long, and it hurts.”

“Trim the sides and back, do a big pompadour.”

“Like Janelle Monáe? She can only do that because she’s skinny and pretty.”

I opened the door to the next floor down and peeked in. Nothing. “Uggh, come on, babe. You can do whatever you want. And we’re just daydreaming here, right? Wildest dreams, silly time. What would you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m gonna bleach your ends white and dye them bright fuchsia. How you like that?”

“I guess I don’t mind.”

“Oh you don’t mind, huh? What else could I do to you, that you’d just sit there and tolerate?”

“Courtney, do you really wanna know how far you can push, before I put you in a dumpster?”

“Augh! Oh no, baby, I sure don’t!”

“It’s OK. I wouldn’t put you in a dumpster.”

“So can I paint your face like a clown?”

“What? Why would you wanna do that?”

“Not a scary clown, Momi.” I looked in on another empty floor. “Like a cute clown.”

“Do you wanna have sex with a clown?”

“Never thought about it. Might be fun.”

“I would sit and tolerate that.”

“Whoa. Kinky. But it wouldn’t be fun if you were a total pillow princess about it. You’d have to do something clowny. Like, uh, slap me with a toy fish or something.”

“I could tolerate that.”

“That’s just... fucking amazing. What should I do with this newfound sex power I have? To get you to do weird stuff.”

“Hehehe.”

“That sounds like carte blanche to me. I’m gonna go mad with power.”

We looked in on another floor. Some young dude was walking into his apartment and stopped a moment when he noticed us. We acknowledged each other with little nods and he went on. We continued our descent.

***

Marcie reached Richie on her cell, Richie was getting sporadic texts from Olivia, and supposedly the kids were going to come back home before midnight. Word was that they had found Knobby’s deformity pretty useful for garnering sympathy while panhandling, were trying to make the most of it.

I had my doubts but through the phone game we found out there were too many possible spots they were using, and they changed spots several times per day, so hunting them down would be a huge pain. We settled in to wait for them.

When Graeme came home at eight, he said he’d met Patrick in the hall, and Patrick told him the biddies were at it again - claiming that very afternoon someone had seen a large dog in the hall, urinating this time. I went floor to floor, looking for the spot, and found it on the fourteenth floor. When had he slipped by us?

Marcie got worn out, while Mike seemed more energetic as the night went on, so we let him do some searching by himself - on the condition that he keep his green ass out of sight. Around ten, Patrick reported back that he’d seen the werewolf, but it got away. He had barely seen it, only had another deuce it had left in the hall to confirm his suspicions of what the hustling figure had been.

In response to that, we had Richie text Olivia again. She got back to say she and Knobby were almost home. I found that too vexing to really consider. I shushed Richie when he started following that train of thought to its obvious conclusion.

Olivia and Knobby took the elevator up and were immediately grabbed up by Patrick and swept into my apartment. That can’t have been very comforting, but they seemed genially clueless when brought before their queen.

“Hello kids,” I said. “This is a bit of a surprise party for you, Knobby.”

He beamed nervously. His smile was huge and white for a homeless kid. I think at some point he had said his dad was a dentist. “Wha-a-a-at? Really? Look like...” He lost his train of thought as his eyes took in the whole scene - the chalk circle, the single chair in the center of the room over the hermetic symbols.

Olivia asked, “What the fuck is this shit?”

By now we had Momi, Richie, Deandre, Graeme, and Patrick in the room. Graeme looked ready to step in and be politic, but it was my show. I answered, “It’s nothing bad. Olivia, how hard are you holding your neck down right now? You notice we’re all having problems like that?”

“What’s it got to do with-”

“What’s it got to do with me?,” Knobby said.

“This seems like it’s the building’s way of trying to get us caught. Somebody in particular has been turning into a dog and causing a scene around our neighbors. We have to stop it.”

“Oh no,” Olivia said, “They’re gonna kill you!”

I rolled my eyes and showed them both palms. “No sacrificial dagger here, kids. Come on.”

Knobby went back on his haunches in a truly dog-like fashion, cringing in fear. “Oh no!”

“We’re not even going to hurt you, seriously! I came up with this magic spell. We have to spank you with those wands and pour some gross magic sauce on you, but you’ll be fine! Not even a bruise.”

He clung to her thigh pathetically. Suddenly her head turned completely upside down, her neck escaping the collar of her unseasonably heavy jacket. She scrambled to sort herself out, push the neck back in. “Ugh!”

“We have to do it guys. I’ll let you use my shower to clean up after, OK? Just, please, cooperate?”

“I don’t wanna,” he whimpered.

Richie said, “When has she ever hurt us guys? If Courtney says you’re going to be OK, you’re going to be OK. Chill, bro.”

“If this works,” Graeme said, “We’re all going to do it, to cure our problems. My red hands, Olivia’s neck, Mike’s green skin...”

Olivia settled her head down, buttoned the jacket collar to hold her neck in again. “Mmm, I dunno...”

Knobby finally let go of her leg, tried to prop himself up to a standing position - still a deep crouch. “I guess if everyone is gonna do it, I don’t like having to creep around like this. You swear it won’t hurt?”

“It might hurt a tiny bit.” I pointed to the table with the wands. “We’re going to smack you with those sticks a few times, but just a few times, right? Then I’m going to pour this gross stuff on you - some reheated pig blood and a magic potion. Both have to be pretty hot, but they won’t be boiling, OK?”

“Oh God, that’s gross,” he muttered, but he wasn’t trying to get away anymore.

“I’m glad you’re helping out, because the ritual says we’re supposed to tie you up, and I don’t wanna hafta do that. We care about you guys.”

“Speak for your damn selfs,” Perry said, as Marcie brought him into the room.

“Be nice, Perry,” Marcie said.

“I don’t know you,” he groaned.

Patrick took him by the arm off to the far side of the circle.

I looked to Marcie. “Only missing Mike now.”

“He was so rambunctious, wanted to keep looking. I haven’t had a chance to let him know we found Knobby already, and he doesn’t have a cellphone.”

“We’ll do this without him if we have to, but I really want everybody to be here. One, just so everybody knows what we’re all doing - so nobody gets any wrong ideas or loses trust. And two, I feel like the spell is more likely to work if we’re all in attendance.”

Grime said, “I sit on my ass all day at work. I could use the workout. Anybody else feel rested enough to go bring Mike back?”

Deandre said, “My feet are tore up.”

Almost everybody had done a ton of walking around town, or at work, or upstairs and down.

Richie said, “I’m kinda beat, but it’s important. I’ll help out.”

“Alright,” said Grime. “If we do this logically, there’s no way he can get past us. I say we have one of us in each stairwell, right..?” He kept splaining as they went out the door.

I addressed the rest of the floories. “OK, you’re all guests here! It’s a while before midnight, so head on into my bedroom. I have a selection of comfy seats, I’ll bring in beverages - just watch out for the chalk. Thanks Patrick, just step over... OK, there you go.”

They all went in to relax. I had some bowls of chex mix for the occasion, the kind with bugles and cheez-its. Hopefully nobody had food allergies or was vegan. I came back with a box of wine, a sleeve of red disposable cups, and a big jug of cheap fruit punch.

“Alright, here’s the stuff. Anybody want anything else? I can slice some cheese, got some donuts but they might be a bit stale.”

A few people availed themselves of that hospitality, others started chatting, and a few minutes later I was able to settle in beside Leimomi. She smiled weakly at me, then we both did the same to Olivia and Knobby, who were sitting across from us. I realized too late that was probably in creepy unison, and had a dark chuckle. Knobby laughed nervously, Olivia did not.

“I’m really hoping this works, guys, and if it doesn’t, the worst that happened is we wasted our time and Knobby had to take a shower. OK?”

“I got ya, I got ya,” he said.

“It’ll be great to get out of these stupid head wraps. Momi and I are looking like fake Erykah Badus.”

“Who’s that?,” Olivia asked.

***