#We Buy Houses For Cash New Orleans

[nmakii]

CAN’T REMEMBER TO FORGET YOU

[before you read this, check out the rest of the story!]

— running away from alastor wasn’t so hard the first time, who says you can’t do it again while pregnant?

alastor; the monster you call husband. he was absolutely by all definitions, obsessed. he never left your side— cooking all your meals, escorting you everywhere, even watching you sleep.

he proudly announced your pregnancy on live radio, sealing that you are his. no man will want for you anymore, he has defiled your purity. he clung onto you like a leech, draining away what little happiness you had left.

you just had to get away from that monster. you couldn’t stand another second in this hellhole house, everything in it was a cruel reminder that you’re trapped with no way to escape.

well, you’re not gonna just fall into his trap. it was then that you had planned to run away. far into saint bernard, where no one knew who you were.

and with that plan in mind, you packed all you could and ran. running south with wild abandon, you needed to run far as far from alastor as possible.

you took shelter at a rundown motel while you got back on your feet, taking a singing gig at a club down the street.

you sang well, earning favorable tips from the drunk men who desired you, wanting to see what else was underneath your signature loose flowy dresses. and with that money, you were able to afford a small house with the basic necessities. well, enough for when your child was born.

being a single mother had been rough, when you went to work at night, you entrusted your son, noah with one of your neighbors who you had grown fond of. you sent noah off to a public school, it was not the best, but it was all you could afford.

soon enough, your hard work truly paid off, you were able to live much more comfortably, buying your son the things he could ever want for.

true, there were times that your son wondered where his father was… and to that, you decided to tell him the complete truth; of how alastor is an evil man, a sort of big bad wolf. and, how you ran away to protect him and keep him safe from that wolf.

and, to him, that was a reasonable explanation.

7 years passed by, your son grew into a handsome little boy. handsome, yet you couldn’t look him in the eye. everyday, as he grew up, he started looking more and more just like his father; the tuft of chestnut brown hair, those piercing eyes, and that smile— it was all resembling the monster you ran away from. it seems as if all that your son inherited from you was your heart.

as you walked over to the bar, you spotted your co-worker mimzy slacking off. it wasn’t often that your shifts had co-incided, but the two of you still remained aquaintances. she was apparently talking up some fellow, probably trying to milk some cash out of him.

and as you took a peek of the poor soul mimzy had decided to prey on, your frame froze. was that alastor? what was he doing so far out from new orleans? your breath hitched as you walked back, trying to move as far away from that wretched man.

maybe you shouldn’t buy heels from thrift stores anymore.

the heel on your right foot snapped as you fell onto your butt. this had caught the attention of alastor, excusing himself from the conversation as he walked towards you.

you shuffled back into the crowd as best as you could, crawling away before he could get his hands on you. and still, you weren’t fast enough. alastor bended down by his waist, a smile plastered on his face. “why, say it ain’t so! if it isn’t my darling wife.” he laughed. “ex-wife.” you corrected. “ah-ah” alastor tutted, wagging his finger. “wife. we never had a formal divorce. did we, dear?”

“whatever…” you scoffed, still moving back. “say, where is our child? the one you’ve hidden from me for 7 years? i’m sure they’ll be delighted to meet me after you’ve kept us apart for so long!” he rambled on. “get away from me, alastor. you’ll never meet my child.” you said, finally getting back up on your feet, albeit the broken heel. “won’t you at least tell me their name?” he pleaded, doe eyes begging you. the doe eyes that made you crawl back every time.

“…noah. his name is noah” you frowned, glaring up at alastor. “noah. what a beautiful name for our son.” he mused. “now, would you leave me alone?” you hissed, pushing him away.

despite his lanky frame, alastor had barely moved. “my love, do you think i of all people would let you off the hook so easily? all the scheming, forcing you into an affair, into running away, crawling back to me, even following you far into this club— i wouldn’t want it all to be for naught…” he frowned, explaining his plan as he backed you into a wall, a predatory shine in the way he stared at you.

alastor planned it all..? all the ‘hardships’ you faced— all of it was in some elaborate scheme. no word could’ve described the overwhelming betrayal that overcame you. you just wanted to get out of this club, run home to your son, and run farther away. to another city, a different state, or even a different country! anything to keep him far away from his father. “now that you’ve had your fun, dear… i think it’s time you and noah return home. you can’t keep my son away from me forever. plus, my mother has been dying to meet her grandchild!” he laughed, holding you by the waist.

alastor took note of how you submissively agreed, letting him take you back to your true home. it seems you finally learned your lesson; there’s no escaping alastor. no matter what you do, it’ll end with you back in his bed, back in his arms.

“come now, my doe. it’s not safe to leave noah alone at home.” he chided, opening your side of the car door. “he must be quite confused right now. after all, he’s in the room we had prepared for him all those years ago, he must have no idea where he is right now!”

ah…

there was no use keeping alastor away.

he’d always find his way back, even through drab methods.

[klausysworld]

Not sure if you have written anything like this, but could you do something where Klaus is into reader and she doesn’t give him the time of day, he try’s to win her over by giving readers expensive gifts but she’s not impressed. Klaus overhears reader and a friend talking and she saids how she’s a simple woman, good food, good beer, good music is all she needs.

A narcissistic white man with anger issues?

(third person)

Klaus had been trying his very best to impress this girl. He had gone to all sorts of lengths. Thousands spent of jewellery: necklaces, bracelets, rings, earnings, anklets, hair accessories, anything. He bought clothes of the finest material: dresses, jumpers, jeans, skirts, tops, sweats, anything he could find. He would ask for her to go out with him: “we could go to dinner? I know this lovely restaurant up town” but she would deny his advances. “come ok now love, my family are throwing a gala, i’ll provide everything for you to wear, just show up” but once again she did not. “an art exhibit?” no. “wine tasting?” nope. “i could take you to Paris?” nah. “Italy is nice this time of year” i’m alright.

Let’s say he was getting frustrated. He could hand her the keys to house made of solid gold and she wouldn’t care.

He became a little obsessive, new things at her door everyday, he’d stand by watching for her reaction, the shrug she gave as you looked over his gift before rolling her eyes and inevitably dropping it back off at his house with a note saying “stop trying so hard” which to him meant that he wasn’t trying hard enough.

The one thing she did keep were the sweatpants and a jumper. He found it odd, she also kept some of the chocolates but not all of them, it was like the more money he spent the less she wanted him, and he was getting upset.

People loved money, he’d watched wars start over it and people die because of it, what was her deal?

So he followed her a little bit, for research purposes of course. And he managed to hear a very useful conversation

———————————————————————

(first person)

I was out with my friends down in the streets of New Orleans, we were making our way through the stalls while drinking our pints. There was some sort of festival going on so it was pretty crowded, we decided to go for it and dress up like hippies and raid the different free samples they were giving out at the stalls.

A few hours in we were sat in camping chairs in the middle of the street listening to the bands play their music, just past tipsy and passing round a blunt between the four of us

“this was fun, we haven’t gone out in a while” my best friend, just the one i was naturally closest to said quietly while looking at me, i nodded with a smile

“yep it’s been some time” i laughed leaning back in my chair

“surprised you still enjoy these simple outings, your pretty boyfriend still buying you a million jewels?“ we both giggled at that and i sipped my drink

“oh yea, he has not stopped, i get something everyday and everyday i bring it back”

“damn i wish someone would spend that kinda shit on me” she laughed

“he’s sweet but he’s also a little bit of a narcissist” i told her and she rolled her eyes

“what so he’s in love with himself? who cares he’s got cash”

“oh my gosh you’re right i should just marry him right now” i gasped dramatically

“yea yea i know you don’t want a super fancy life with a mansion and pool”

“i wouldn’t mind a pool”

“you’re funny” she mumbled sarcastic and i mimicked her

“leave me be” i muttered slapping her hand away when she went to take my drink from my hand

“i just don’t get it, the guy won’t take a hint?” she asked

“a hint? i’ve straight up told him to shove it” i laughed

“is he stupid?” she asked while giggling loudly, okay so maybe we drank a little more than i thought

“he’s a privileged white man with anger issues” we were absolutely pissing ourselves over nothing

“okay okay, so would you like ever go out with him?” she asked once calmed down

“i dunno, he’s alright”

“he’s hot” she responded

“he is, he’s also kinda funny sometimes”

“he had a good accent” she muttered nodding her head making me nod too

“he seems to genuinely like me” i pointed out

“that’s true, he’s quite nice actually, he hasn’t done or said anything offensive that i know of”

“no i don’t think so” i muttered while trying to think

“has he ever commented on money situations?” she asked

“mmm no… i don’t think so? he knows he has money, very self aware of that but i know that they give money to charity through their galas and stuff, last time they literally raised like millions and gave it to kids with diseases, like he’s good, you know?”

“mm i say try it, like he’s gotta good heart, right intentions and i’m sure if you go out with him once and then tell him you don’t want to he should quit”

“i don’t want to have to sit in a restaurant filled with snobs that turn their noses up because the flavour is just a tiny bit off, i think you need an extra sprinkle of seasoning no? Like no, literally just put some salt on it”

“i like salt” she murmured

“me too” i nodded

———————————————————————

(third person)

klaus was stood blankly listening to her conversation, he was a narcissistic white man with anger issues, a hot accent and he was funny…sometimes.

He thought it over a little before returning home, his siblings all eyed him suspiciously as he walked with purpose and a determined expression

“oh dear we’re all going to die” Kol muttered while hugging his knees, Rebekah slapped him up the side of the head

“shut up, you’ll give him ideas” she whispered

“both of you remain quiet, he hasn’t headed for the daggers…he’s in his art room” Elijah stated as he listened closely

“so he’s feeling artistic stop worrying” Freya mumbled with a wave of her hand in dismissal

“this is about the girl” Elijah smiled slightly to himself

“the one that told him to piss off?” Kol asked and Rebekah hit him again

“shut-up he can literally hear you” she growled

“oh come on he’s been chasing her for bloody months, i know he likes a chase but it’s getting pathetic” Kol whispered harshly back at her

“he loves her” Freya spoke into his book

“he might just” Elijah murmured

———————————————————————

(first person)

i woke up early afternoon, i made my way downstairs still wrapped in my duvet and opened my front door and yet for the first time in ages there was no present, i frowned slightly, not because i wanted another priceless gift but because it was odd that he hadn’t left me something, was something wrong? was he hurt? Quickly i pulled my phone out and rang his number

“love? is everything okay?” oh thank fuck he was alive

“yes, sorry i’m fine…are you okay?” i asked while closing the door and rubbing my temples

“i’m quite alright, i was actually going to ask if i could see you today… or another day if you’re busy”

“sure come on down, its already like 2pm so i have no plans” i could hear tapping on the other side, probably his fingers on his desk, he does it sometimes when he’s nervous.

“okay…i’ll get there in half an hour?”

“see you then”

Klaus arrived exactly 30 minutes later with a singular red rose and a nervous look in his eye

“please don’t give it back” he whispered and i smiled taking it from his hand

“i’ll keep it” i promised and he smiled back at me

“would you like to come inside?” i asked opening the door wide enough

That afternoon/into evening we spoke about various topics, our families, our pasts, our hopes for the future, ideas, dreams, aspirations. He showed me his art and i asked why i never received this as a present instead, he said he though that id judge him and i told him that he was being silly.

We planned to go out for coffee/tea instead of a top class Italian restaurant, and from there we spent much more time together.

[suckitsurveys]

Was it a boy or a girl to text you last? I haven’t checked in a bit if anyone’s messaged me but the last person I remember seeing text me was my sister.

Name something you are doing tomorrow? It’s Thanksgiving, so most of the morning I’ll be prepping food, and then going over to my sister’s in the afternoon.

Do you sleep on your stomach? I do, or my left side.

Where are you going to be at 4pm tomorrow? That is when we are planning on eating Thanksgiving dinner.

Last time you saw fireworks, with whom & where? I was with my husband in the park by our house.

Are you missing someone? Yes.

Do you like horror or comedy? I tend to prefer comedy.

Who did you last share a taxi with? I think the last time I was in a taxi was in New Orleans when my dad and I took one from the hotel to the train station to go back home.

Dogs or cats? Cats.

What were you doing at 12 this afternoon? That is in an hour.

Do you think you will be in a relationship 3 months from now? Yes.

What’s your favorite season? Summer.

When’s the last time you did something you knew was wrong? I rode in my car for a bit without a seat belt this morning.

Do you hate being alone? No.

Is there a girl that knows everything or mostly everything about you? Yes, mostly.

What about a guy? My husband.

What color shirt are you wearing? I’m wearing a dark blue shirt and a black hoodie.

What are you listening to right now? The washing machine in the basement. Karenna purring. Light traffic.

If you won a lot of money on the lottery, what would you buy first? Sushi.

What was the last thing you bought? Groceries.

What’s your greatest fear in life? My fears being used against me.

Who was the last person to see you cry? Mark.

Who was the last person you hugged? Mark.

Do you think you would be a good parent? I think I’d be OKAY but not okay enough to want to fucking do it.

When was the last time you cried? Yesterday. Basically a daily occurrence since Nov 5th

Who was driving the last time you were in a car? I was.

Does any part of your body hurt right now? I feel kinda achy actually.

Who was the last person that text you and what did it say? I’m not checking if anyone new has messaged me but my sister texted asking me to start a google doc for the family’s xmas wishlists.

What was the first thing you thought this morning? Wondered what time it was.

How many times do you talk on the phone a day on average? I usually call Mark on my way home from work.

Do you like your bed? I’d love a new mattress.

Do you like your life? Generally.

When did you last talk to your brother or sister? She texted me today if that counts.

Do you ever wanna know who you are going to marry? I am married.

How much cash do you have on you? $30.

Who are the 3rd and 7th texts in your phone from? Not checking.

Are you tanned? No.

Are you upset with anyone? Always.

Did you get any compliments today? Yes.

Have you ever gone to court? Yes, kinda. I had to appear in front of a judge for a “sentencing” when I got my bullshit trespassing arrest. There wasn’t a full court with attorneys or a jury or anything. They just read me and Mark the fines we had to pay and we were on our way.

Do you get jealous easily? Eh.

How good is your eyesight? It’s horrible.

Would you ever want to swim with the sharks? Sure.

What time did you wake up this morning? Around 4:30am.

What are you doing Saturday? Probably putting up Christmas lights at my dad’s.

What is in your back pocket? Nothing.

What were you doing at 3am this morning? Sleeping.

What do you usually do first in the morning? Check the time.

What color is your room? The walls are light blue.

Are you any good at math? Not particularly.

Any plans for Friday night? We might go to my mother in law’s.

What did you do last weekend? This past weekend I babysat my nieces all weekend.

Do you have a little crush on someone? Just lil celebrity crushes hehehe.

How old is the last person you kissed? 40.

Why did you last cry? The world fucking sucks and I’m getting my period.

Why did you kiss the person you last kissed? I was leaving for work.

What’s their name? Mark.

How has this week been? Eh.

[worldtopic6]

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[world-wide-content]

We Buy Houses 9/8/2023

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[the-writers-newsletter]

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[the-writer-posts]

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[oscopelabs]

‘America’s Not a Country, It’s Just a Business’: On Andrew Dominik’s ‘Killing Them Softly’ By Roxana Hadadi

“Shitsville.” That’s the name Killing Them Softly director Andrew Dominik gave to the film’s nameless town, in which low-level criminals, ambitious mid-tier gangsters, nihilistic assassins, and the mob’s professional managerial class engage in warfare of the most savage kind. Onscreen, other states are mentioned (New York, Maryland, Florida), and the film itself was filmed in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, though some of the characters speak with Boston accents that are pulled from the source material, George V. Higgins’s novel Cogan’s Trade. But Dominik, by shifting Higgins’s narrative 30 or so years into the future and situating it specifically during the 2008 Presidential election, refuses to limit this story to one place. His frustrations with America as an institution that works for some and not all are broad and borderless, and so Shitsville serves as a stand-in for all the places not pretty enough for gentrifying developers to turn into income-generating properties, for all the cities whose industrial booms are decades in the past, and for all the communities forgotten by the idea of progress._ Killing Them Softly_ is a movie about the American dream as an unbeatable addiction, the kind of thing that invigorates and poisons you both, and that story isn’t just about one place. That’s everywhere in America, and nearly a decade after the release of Dominik’s film, that bitter bleakness still has grim resonance.

In November 2012, though, when Killing Them Softly was originally released, Dominik’s gangster picture-cum-pointed criticism of then-President Barack Obama’s vision of an America united in the same neoliberal goals received reviews that were decidedly mixed, tipping toward negative. (Audiences, meanwhile, stayed away, with Killing Them Softly opening at No. 7 with $7 million, one of the worst box office weekends of Brad Pitt’s entire career at that time.) Obama’s first term had been won on a tide of hope, optimism, and “better angels of our nature” solidarity, and he had just defeated Mitt Romney for another four years in the White House when Killing Them Softly hit theaters on Nov. 30. Cogan’s Trade had no political components, and no connections between the thieving and killing promulgated by these criminals and the country at large. Killing Them Softly, meanwhile, took every opportunity it could to chip away at the idea that a better life awaits us all if we just buy into the idea of American exceptionalism and pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps ingenuity. A fair amount of reviews didn’t hold back their loathing toward this approach. A.O. Scott with the New York Times dismissed Dominik’s frame as “a clumsy device, a feint toward significance that nothing else in the movie earns … the movie is more concerned with conjuring an aura of meaningfulness than with actually meaning anything.” Many critics lambasted Dominik’s nihilism: For Deadspin, Will Leitch called it a “crutch, and an awfully flimsy one,” while Richard Roeper thought the film collapsed under the “crushing weight” of Dominik’s philosophy. It was the beginning of Obama’s second term, and people still thought things might get better.

But Dominik’s film—like another that came out a few years earlier, Adam McKay’s 2010 political comedy The Other Guys—has maintained a crystalline kind of ideological purity, and perhaps gained a certain prescience. Its idea that America is less a bastion of betterment than a collection of corporate interests, and the simmering anger Brad Pitt’s Jackie Cogan captures in the film’s final moments, are increasingly difficult to brush off given the past decade or so in American life. This is not to say that Obama’s second term was a failure, but that it was defined over and over again by the limitations of top-down reform. Ceaseless Republican obstruction, widespread economic instability, and unapologetic police brutality marred the encouraging tenor of Obama’s presidency. Donald Trump’s subsequent four years in office were spent stacking the federal judiciary with young, conservative judges sympathetic toward his pro-big-business, fuck-the-little-guy approach, and his primary legislative triumph was a tax bill that will steadily hurt working-class people year after year.

The election of Obama’s vice president Joe Biden, and the Democratic Party securing control of the U.S. Senate, were enough for a brief sigh of relief in November 2020. The $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed in March 2021 does a lot of good in extending (albeit lessened) unemployment benefits, providing a child credit to qualifying families, and funneling further COVID-19 support to school districts after a year of the coronavirus pandemic. But Republicans? They all voted no to helping the Americans they represent. Stimulus checks to the middle-class voters who voted Biden into office? Decreased for some, totally cut off for others, because of Biden’s appeasement to the centrists in his party. $15 minimum wage? Struck down, by both Republicans and Democrats. In how many more ways can those politicians who are meant to serve us indicate that they have little interest in doing anything of the kind?

Modern American politics, then, can be seen as quite a performative endeavor, and an exercise in passing blame. Who caused the economic collapse of 2008? Some bad actors, who the government bailed out. Who suffered the most as a result? Everyday Americans, many of whom have never recovered. Killing Them Softly mimics this dynamic, and emphasizes the gulf between the oppressors and the oppressed. The nameless elites of the mob, sending a middle manager to oversee their dirty work. The poker-game organizer, who must be brutally punished for a mistake made years before. The felons let down by the criminal justice system, who turn again to crime for a lack of other options. The hitman who brushes off all questions of morality, and whose primary concern is getting adequately paid for his work. Money, money, money. “This country is fucked, I’m telling ya. There’s a plague coming,” Jackie Cogan says to the Driver who delivers the mob’s by-committee rulings as to who Jackie should intimidate, threaten, and kill so their coffers can start getting filled again. Perhaps the plague is already here.

“Total fucking economic collapse.”

In terms of pure gumption, you have to applaud Dominik for taking aim at some of the biggest myths America likes to tell about itself. After analyzing the dueling natures of fame and infamy through the lens of American outlaw mystique in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Dominik thought bigger, taking on the entire American dream itself in Killing Them Softly. From the film’s very first second, Dominik doesn’t hold back, equating an easy path of forward progress with literal trash. Discordant tones and the film’s stark, white-on-black title cards interrupt Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s speech about “the American promise,” slicing apart Obama’s words and his crowd’s responding cheers as felon Frankie (Scoot McNairy), in the all-American outfit of a denim jacket and jeans, cuts through what looks like a shut-down factory, debris and garbage blowing around him. Obama’s assurances sound very encouraging indeed: “Each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will.” But when Frankie—surrounded by trash, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and eyes squinting shut against the wind—walks under dueling billboards of Obama, with the word “CHANGE” in all-caps, and Republican opponent John McCain, paired with the phrase “KEEPING AMERICA STRONG,” a better future doesn’t exactly seem possible. Frankie looks too downtrodden, too weary of all the emptiness around him, for that.

Dominik and cinematographer Greig Fraser spoke to American Cinematographer magazine in October 2012 about shooting in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans: “We were aiming for something generic, a little town between New Orleans, Boston and D.C. that we called Shitsville. We wanted the place to look like it’s on the down-and-down, on the way out. We wanted viewers to feel just how smelly and grimy and horrible it was, but at the same time, we didn’t want to alienate them visually.” They were successful: Every location has a rundown quality, from the empty lot in which Frankie waits for friend and partner-in-crime Russell (Ben Mendelsohn)—a concrete expanse decorated with a couple of wooden chairs, as if people with nowhere else to go use this as a gathering spot—to the dingy laundromat backroom where Frankie and Russell meet with criminal mastermind Johnny “Squirrel” Amato (Vincent Curatola), who enlists them to rob a mafia game night run by Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta), to the restaurant kitchen where the game is run, all sickly fluorescent lights, cracked tile, and makeshift tables. Holding up a game like this, from which the cash left on the tables flows upward into the mob’s pockets, is dangerous indeed. But years before, Markie himself engineered a robbery of the game, and although that transgression was forgiven because of how well-liked Markie is in this institution, it would be easy to lay the blame on him again. And that’s exactly what Squirrel, Frankie, and Russell plan to do.

The “Why?” for such a risk isn’t that hard to figure out. Squirrel sees an opportunity to make off with other people’s money, he knows that any accusatory fingers will point elsewhere first, and he wants to act on it before some other aspiring baddie does. (Ahem, sound like the 2008 mortgage crisis to you?) Frankie, tired of the crappy jobs his probation officer keeps suggesting—jobs that require both long hours and a long commute, when Frankie can’t even afford a car (“Why the fuck do they think I need a job in the first place? Fucking assholes”)—is drawn in by desperation borne from a lack of options. If he doesn’t come into some kind of money soon, “I’m gonna have to go back and knock on the gate and say, ‘Let me back in, I can’t think of nothing and it’s starting to get cold,’” Frankie admits. And Australian immigrant and heroin addict Russell is nursing his own version of the American dream: He’s going to steal a bunch of purebred dogs, drive them down to Florida to sell for thousands of dollars, buy an ounce of heroin once he has $7,000 in hand, and then step on the heroin enough to become a dealer. It’s only a few moves from where he is to where he wants to be, he figures, and this card-game heist can help him get there.

In softly lit rooms, where the men in the frame are in focus and their surroundings and backgrounds are slightly blown out, slightly blurred, or slightly fuzzy (“Creaminess is something you feel you can enter into, like a bath; you want to be absorbed and encompassed by it” Fraser told American Cinematographer of his approach), garish deals are made, and then somehow pulled off with a sobering combination of ineptitude and ugliness. Russell buys yellow dishwashing gloves for himself and Frankie to wear during the holdup, and they look absurd—but the pistol-whipping Russell doles out to Markie still hurts like hell, no matter what accessories he’s wearing. Dominik gives this holdup the paranoia and claustrophobia it requires, revolving his camera around the barely-holding-it-together Frankie and cutting every so often to the enraged players, their eyes glancing up to look at Frankie’s face, their hands twitching toward their guns. But in the end, nobody moves. When Frankie and Russell add insult to injury by picking the players’ pockets (“It’s only money,” they say, as if this entire ordeal isn’t exclusively about wanting other people’s money), nobody fights back. Nobody dies. Frankie and Russell make off with thousands of dollars in two suitcases, while Markie is left bamboozled—and afraid—by what just happened. And the players? They’ll get their revenge eventually. You can count on that.

So it goes that Dominik smash cuts us from the elated and triumphant Russell and Frankie driving away from the heist in their stolen 1971 Buick Riviera, its headlights interrupting the inky-black night, to the inside of Jackie Cogan’s 1967 Oldsmobile Toronado, with Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around” providing an evocative accompaniment. “There’s a man going around taking names/And he decides who to free, and who to blame/Everybody won’t be treated all the same,” Cash sings in that unmistakably gravelly voice, and that’s exactly what Jackie does. Called in by the mob to capture who robbed the game so that gambling can begin again, Jackie meets with an unnamed character, referred to only as the Driver (Richard Jenkins), who serves as the mob’s representative in these sorts of matters. Unlike the other criminals in this film—Frankie, with his tousled hair and sheepish face; Russell, with his constant sweatiness and dog-funk smell; Jackie, in his tailored three-piece suits and slicked-back hair; Markie, with those uncannily blue eyes and his matching slate sportscoat—the Driver looks like a square.

He is, like the men who replace Mike Milligan in the second season of Fargo, a kind of accountant, a man with an office and a secretary. “The past can no more become the future than the future can become the past,” Milligan had said, and for all the backward-looking details of Killing Them Softly—American cars from the 1960s and 1970s, that whole masculine code-of-honor thing that Frankie and Russell break by ripping off Markie’s game, the post-industrial economic slump that brings to mind the American recession of 1973 to 1975—the Driver is very much an arm of a new kind of organized crime. He keeps his hands clean, and he delivers what the ruling-by-committee organized criminals decide, and he’s fussy about Jackie smoking cigarettes in his car, and he’s so bland as to be utterly forgettable. And he has the power, as authorized by his higher-ups, to approve Jackie putting pressure on Markie for more information about the robbery. It doesn’t matter that neither Jackie nor the mob thinks Markie actually did it. What matters more is that “People are losing money. They don’t like to lose money,” and so Jackie can do whatever he needs. Dominik gives him this primacy through a beautiful shot of Jackie’s reflection in the car window, his aviators a glinting interruption to the gray concrete overpass under which the Driver’s car is parked, to the smoke billowing out from faraway stacks, and to the overall gloominess of the day.

“We regret having to take these actions. Today’s actions are not what we ever wanted to do, but today’s actions are what we must do to restore confidence to our financial system,” we hear Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson say on the radio in the Driver’s car, and his October 14, 2008, remarks are about the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008—the government bailout of banks and other financial institutions that cost taxpayers $700 billion. (Remember Will Ferrell’s deadpan delivery in The Other Guys of “From everything I’ve heard, you guys [at the Securities and Exchange Commission] are the best at these types of investigations. Outside of Enron and AIG, and Bernie Madoff, WorldCom, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers ...”) Yet the appeasing sentiment of Paulson’s words applies to Jackie, too, and to the beating he orders for Markie—a man he suspects did nothing wrong, at least not this time. But debts must be settled. Heads must roll. “Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still/Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still/Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still,” Cash sang, and Jackie is all those men, and he’ll collect the stolen golden crowns as best he can. For a price, of course. Always for a price.

“I like to kill them softly, from a distance, not close enough for feelings. Don’t like feelings. Don’t want to think about them.”

In “Bad Dreams,” the penultimate episode of the second season of The Wire, International Brotherhood of Stevedores union representative Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer), having seen his brothers in arms made immaterial by the lack of work at the Baltimore ports and the collapse of their industry, learns that his years of bribing politicians to vote for expanded funding for the longshoremen isn’t going to pay off. He is furious, and he is exhausted. “We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket,” he says with the fatigue of a man who knows his time has run out, and you can draw a direct line from Bauer’s beleaguered delivery of those lines to Liotta’s aghast reaction to the horrendous beating he receives from Jackie’s henchmen. Sobotka in The Wire had no idea how he got to that helpless place, and neither does Markie in Killing Them Softly—he made a mistake, but that was years ago. Everyone forgave him. Didn’t they?

The vicious assault leveled upon Markie is a harrowing, horrifying sequence that is also unnervingly beautiful, and made all the more awful as a result of that visual splendor. In the pouring rain, Markie is held captive by the two men, who deliver bruising body shots, break his noise, batter his body against the car, and kick in his ribs. “You see fight scenes a lot in movies, but you don’t see people systematically beating somebody else. The idea was just to make it really, really, really ugly,” Dominik told the New York Times in November 2012, and sound mixer Leslie Shatz and cinematographer Fraser also contributed to this unforgettable scene. Shatz used the sound of a squeegee across a windshield to accentuate Markie’s increasingly destroyed body slumping against the car, and also incorporated flash bulbs going off as punches were thrown, adding a kind of lingering effect to the scene’s soundscape. And although the scene looks like it’s shot in slow motion, Fraser explained to American Cinematographer that the combination of an overhead softbox and dozens of background lights helped build that layered effect in which Liotta is fully illuminated while the dark night around him remains impenetrable. Every drop of rain and every splatter of blood stands out on Markie’s face as he confesses ignorance regarding the robbery and begs for mercy from Jackie’s men, but Markie has already been marked for death. When the time comes, Jackie will shoot him in the head in another exquisitely detailed, shot-in-ultrahigh-speed scene that bounces back and forth between the initial act of violence and its ensuing destruction. The cartridges flying out of Jackie’s gun, and the bullets destroying Markie’s window, and then his brain. Markie’s car, now no longer in his control, rolling forward into an intersection where it’s hit not just once, but twice, by oncoming cars. The crunching sound of Markie’s head against his windshield, and the vision of that glass splintering from the impact of his flung body, are impossible to shake.

“Cause and effect,” Dominik seems to be telling us, and Killing Them Softly follows Jackie as he cleans up the mess Squirrel, Frankie, and Russell have made. After he enlists another hitman, Mickey (a fantastically whoozy James Gandolfini, who carries his bulk like the armor of a samurai searching for a new master), whose constant boozing, whoring, and laziness shock Jackie after years of successful work together, and who refuses to do the killing for which Jackie secured him a $15,000 payday, Jackie realizes he’ll need to do this all himself. He’ll need to gather the intel that fingers Frankie, Russell, and Squirrel. He’ll need to set up a police sting to entrap Russell on his purchased ounce of heroin, violating the terms of his probation, and he’ll need to set up another police sting to entrap Mickey for getting in a fight with a prostitute, violating the terms of his probation. For Jackie, a career criminal for whom ethical questions have long since evaporated, Russell’s and Frankie’s sloppiness in terms of bragging about their score is a source of disgust. “I guess these guys, they just want to go to jail. They probably feel at home there,” he muses, and he’s then exasperated by the Driver’s trepidation regarding the brutality of his methods. Did the Driver’s bosses want the job done or not? “We aim to please,” Jackie smirks, and that shark smile is the sign of a predator getting ready to feast.

Things progress rapidly then: Jackie tracks Frankie down to the bar where he hangs out, and sneers at Frankie’s reticence to turn on Squirrel. “They’re real nice guys,” he says mockingly to Frankie of the criminal underworld of which they’re a part, brushing off Frankie’s defense that Squirrel “didn’t mean it.” “That’s got nothing to do with it. Nothing at all,” Jackie replies, and that’s the kind of distance that keeps Jackie in this job. Sure, the vast majority of us aren’t murderers. But as a question of scale, aren’t all of us as workers compromised in some way? Employees of companies, institutions, or billionaires that, say, pollute the environment, or underpay their staff, or shirk labor laws, or rake in unheard-of profits during an international pandemic? Or a government that spreads imperialism through allegedly righteous military action (referenced in Killing Them Softly, as news coverage of the economic crisis mentions the reckless rapidity with which President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001), or that can’t quite figure out how to house the nation’s homeless into the millions of vacant homes sitting empty around the country, or that refuses, over and over again, to raise the minimum wage workers are paid so that they have enough financial security to live decent lives?

Perhaps you bristle at this comparison to Jackie Cogan, a man who has no qualms blowing apart Squirrel with a shotgun at close range, or unloading a revolver into Frankie after spending an evening driving around with him. But the guiding American principle when it comes to work is that you do a job and you get paid: It’s a very simple contract, and both sides need to operate in good faith to fulfill it. Salaried employees, hourly workers, freelancers, contractors, day laborers, the underemployed—all operate under the assumption that they’ll be compensated, and all live with the fear that they won’t. Jackie knows this, as evidenced by his loathing toward compatriot Kenny (Slaine) when the man tries to pocket the tip Jackie left for his diner waitress. “For fuck’s sake,” Jackie says in response to Kenny’s attempted theft, and you can sense that if Jackie could kill him in that moment, he would. In this way, Jackie is rigidly conservative, and strictly old-school. Someone else’s money isn’t yours to take; it’s your responsibility to earn, and your employer’s responsibility to pay. Jackie cleaned up the mob’s mess, and the gambling tables opened again because of his work, and his labor resulted in their continued profits. And Jackie wants what he’s owed.

“Don’t make me laugh. ‘We’re one people.’”

We hear two main voices of authority urging calm throughout Killing Them Softly. Then-President Bush: “I understand your worries and your frustration. … We’re in the midst of a serious financial crisis, and the federal government is responding with decisive action.” Presidential hopeful Obama: “There’s only the road we’re traveling on as Americans.” Paulson speaks on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, and various news commentators chime in, too: “There needs to be consequences, and there needs to be major change.” Radio commentary and C-SPAN coverage combine into a sort of secondary accompaniment to Marc Streitenfeld’s score, which incorporates lyrically germane Big Band standards like “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries” (“You work, you save, you worry so/But you can’t take your dough”) and “It’s Only a Paper Moon” (“It's a Barnum and Bailey world/Just as phony as it can be”). All of these are Dominik’s additions to Cogan’s Trade, which is a slim, 19-chapter book without any political angle, and this frame is what met so much resistance from contemporaneous reviews.

But what Dominik accomplishes with this approach is twofold. First, a reminder of the ceaseless tension and all-encompassing anxiety of that time, which would spill into the Occupy Wall Street movement, coalesce support around politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and fuel growing national interest in policies like universal health care and universal basic income. For anyone who struggled during that time—as I did, a college graduate entering the 2009 job market after the journalism industry was already beginning its still-continuing freefall—Killing Them Softly captures the free-floating anger so many of us felt at politicians bailing out corporations rather than people. Perhaps in 2012, only weeks after the re-election of Obama and with the potential that his second term could deliver on some of his campaign promises (closing Guantanamo Bay, maybe, or passing significant gun control reform, maybe), this cinematic scolding felt like medicine. But nearly a decade later, with neither of these legislative successes in hand, and with the wins for America’s workers so few and far between—still a $7.25 federal minimum wage, still no federal paid maternity and family leave act, still the refusal by many states to let their government employees unionize—if you don’t feel demoralized by how often the successes of the Democratic Party are stifled by the party’s own moderates or thoroughly curtailed by saboteur Republicans, maybe you’re not paying attention.

More acutely, then, the mutinous spirit of Killing Them Softly accomplishes something similar to what 1990’s Pump Up the Volume did: It allows one to say, with no irony whatsoever, “Do you ever get the feeling everything in America is completely fucked up?” The disparities of the financial system, and the yawning gap between the rich and the poor. The utter lack of accountability toward those who were supposed to protect us, and didn’t. And the sense that we’re always being a little bit cheated by a ruling class who, like Sobotka observed on The Wire, is always putting their hand in our pocket. Consider Killing Them Softly’s quietest moment, in which Frankie realizes that he’s a hunted man, and that the people from whom he stole would never let him live. Dominik frames McNairy tight, his expression a flickering mixture of plaintive yearning and melancholic regret, as he quietly says, “It’s just shit, you know? The world is just shit. We’re all just on our own.” A day or so later, McNairy’s Frankie will be lying on a medical examiner’s table, his head partially collapsed from a bullet to the brain, an identification tag looped around his pinky toe. And the men who ordered his death want to underpay the man who carried it out for them. Isn’t that the shit?

That leads us, then, to the film’s angriest moment, and to a scene that stands alongside the climaxes of so many other post-recession films: Chris Pine’s Toby Howard paying off the predatory bank that swindled his mother with its own stolen money in Hell or High Water, Lakeith Stanfield’s Cash Green and his fellow Equisapiens storming billionaire Steve Lift’s (Armie Hammer’s) mansion in Sorry to Bother You, Viola Davis’s Veronica Rawlings shooting her cheating husband and keeping the heist take for herself and her female comrades in Widows. So far in Killing Them Softly, Pitt has played Jackie with a certain level of remove. A man’s got to have a code, and his is fairly simple: Don’t get involved emotionally with the assignment. Pitt’s Jackie is susceptible to flashes of irritation, though, that manifest as a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and as an octave-lower growl that belies his impatience: with the Driver, for not understanding how Markie’s reputation has doomed him; with Mickey, for his procrastination and his slovenliness; with Kenny, for stealing a hardworking woman’s tip; with Frankie, when he tries to distract Jackie from killing Squirrel. Jackie is a professional, and he is intolerant of people failing to work at his level, and Pitt plays the man as tiptoeing along a knife’s edge. Remember Daniel Craig’s “’Cause it’s all so fucking hysterical” line delivery in Road to Perdition? Pitt’s whole performance is that: a hybrid offering of bemusement, smugness, and ferocity that suggests a man who’s seen it all, and hasn’t been impressed by much.

In the final minutes of Killing Them Softly, Obama has won his historic first term in the White House, and Pitt’s Jackie strides through a red haze of celebratory fireworks as he walks to meet the Driver at a bar to retrieve payment. An American flag hangs in this dive, and the TV broadcasts Obama’s victory speech, delivered in Chicago to a crowd of more than 240,000. “Crime stories, to some extent, always felt like the capitalist ideal in motion,” Dominik told the New York Times. “Because it’s the one genre where it’s perfectly acceptable for the characters to be motivated solely by money.” And so it goes that Jackie feels no guilt for the men he’s killed, or the men he’s sent away. Nor does he feel any empathy or kinship with the newly elected Obama, whose messages of unity and community he finds amusingly irrelevant. The life Jackie lives is one defined by how little people value each other, and how quick they are to attack one another if that means more opportunity—and more money—for them. Thomas Hobbes said that a life without social structure and political representation would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” and perhaps that’s exactly what Jackie’s is. Unlike the character in Cogan’s Trade, Dominik’s Jackie has no wife and no personal life. But he’s surviving this way with his eyes wide open, and he will not be undervalued.

The contrast between Obama’s speech about “the enduring power of our ideas—democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope”—and Jackie’s realization that the mob is trying to underpay him for the three men he assassinated at their behest makes for a kind of nauseating, thrilling coda. He’s owed $45,000, and the envelope the Driver paid him only has $30,000 in it. Obama’s audience chanting “Yes, we can,” the English translation of the United Farm Workers of America’s slogan and the activist César Chávez’s iconic “Sí, se puede” catchphrase, adds an ironic edge to the argument between the Driver and Jackie about the value of his labor. Whatever the Driver can use to try and shrug off Jackie’s advocacy for himself, he will. Jackie’s killings were too messy. Jackie is asking for more than the mob’s usual enforcer, Dillon (Sam Shepard), who would have done a better job. Jackie is ignoring that the mob is limited to “Recession prices”—they’re suffering, so that suffering has to trickle down to someone. Jackie made the deal with Mickey for $15,000 per head, and the mob isn’t beholden to pay Jackie what they agreed to pay Mickey.

On and on, excuse after excuse, until one finally pushes Jackie over the edge: “This business is a business of relationships,” the Driver says, which is one step away from the “We’re all family here” line that so many abusive companies use to manipulate their cowed employees. And so when Jackie goes coolly feral in his response, dropping knowledge not only about the artifice of the racist Thomas Jefferson as a Founding Father but underscoring the idea that America has always been, and will always be, a capitalist enterprise first, the moment slaps all the harder for all the ways we know we’ve been let down by feckless bureaucrats like the Driver, who do only as they’re told; by faceless corporate overlords like the mob, issuing orders to Jackie from on high; and by a broader country that seems like it couldn’t care less about us. “I’m living in America, and in America, you’re on your own … Now fucking pay me” serves as a kind of clarion call, an expression of vehemence and resentment, and a direct line into the kind of anger that still festers among those continuously left behind—still living in Shitstown, still trying to make a better life for themselves, and still asking for a little more respect from their fellow Americans. For all of Killing Them Softly’s ugliness, for all its nihilism, and for all its commentary on how our country’s ruthless individualism has turned chasing the American dream into a crippling addiction we all share, that demand for dignity remains distressingly relevant. Maybe it’s time to listen.

[regular-things]

Here are some of the bail funds and other organizations fighting against police injustice:

National

LGBTQ Fund: Bail fund providing relief to jailed LGBTQ people in 15 states and counting. Mission: “Each day, tens of thousands of LGBTQ people are held in jail or immigration detention because they cannot afford bail — for immigration status or charges like sleeping in public. With your help, the Freedom Fund posts bail to secure their release and safety.”

Campaign Zero: Organization that utilizes research-based policy solutions to end police brutality in the U.S. Mission: “Over 1,000 people are killed by police every year in America. We are calling on local, state, and federal lawmakers to take immediate action to adopt data-driven policy solutions to end this violence and hold police accountable.”

Unicorn Riot: Nonprofit media collective dedicated to exposing the root causes of social, economic, and environmental issues. Mission: “Our work is dedicated to exposing root causes of dynamic social and environmental issues through amplifying stories and exploring sustainable alternatives in today’s globalized world.”

Minnesota

George Floyd Memorial Fund: The official GoFundMe to support the Floyd family. Mission: “This fund is established to cover funeral and burial expenses, mental and grief counseling, lodging and travel for all court proceedings, and to assist our family in the days to come as we continue to seek justice for George. A portion of these funds will also go to the Estate of George Floyd for the benefit and care of his children and their educational fund.”

Minnesota Freedom Fund: Community-based fund set up to pay criminal bail and immigration bonds for individuals who have been arrested while protesting police brutality. This has become one of the most prominent bail funds, providing relief to protesters in Minneapolis seeking justice for George Floyd. Mission: “We stand against cash bail as unjust and identify wealth-based discrimination as a vehicle for the criminal justice system to target populations for structural violence.”

Black Visions Collective: Minnesota-based black, trans, and queer-led organization committed to dismantling systems of oppression and violence. Mission: “We aim to center our work in healing and transformative justice principles, intentionally develop our organizations core ‘DNA’ to ensure sustainability, and develop Minnesota’s emerging black leadership to lead powerful campaigns. By building movements from the ground up with an integrated model, we are creating the conditions for long-term success and transformation.”

Reclaim the Block: Coalition that advocates for and invests in community-led safety initiatives in Minneapolis neighborhoods. Mission: “We believe health, safety, and resiliency exist without police of any kind. We organize around policies that strengthen community-led safety initiatives and reduce reliance on police departments.”

California

Peoples City Council Freedom Fund: Los Angeles-based fund helping to pay for legal support, bail, fines, and court fees for arrested protesters in the city, as well as medical bills and transportation for injured protesters, supplies for field medics, and direct support to L.A.’s Black Lives Matter chapter. Mission: “As the mayor and city council have sought to increase the LAPD’s budget during a pandemic, and as police around the country continue to kill innocent people of color, we have taken to the street to protest the funding of state sanctioned murder.”

Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America Bail Fund: The Oakland/San Jose chapter of DSA is currently allocating donations to a temporary bail fund, as well as a COVID-19 aid fund. Mission: “Money in the fund may be used at the discretion of the committee for the following purposes: to pay bail, fines, or legal fees; to provide jail support; to pay for closely related expenses.”

Colorado

Colorado Freedom Fund: Providing bail relief to protesters and other individuals across the state of Colorado. CFF has also been providing protest updates on its webpage. Mission: “Founded in 2018, Colorado Freedom Fund (CFF) is a revolving fund that pays ransom (posts money bond, pays cash bail) for people unable to afford the cost of buying their own freedom.”

Florida

Free Them All: Fund organized by the group Fempower to post bond in Miami.

Georgia

Atlanta Solidarity Fund: Action Network fund set up to support the George Floyd protesters with both bail and necessary legal relief. Mission: “This fundraiser is for bail expenses for those arrested. Any surplus funds will go toward their legal defense, and to support arrestees at other protests.”

Buy Black Atlanta: Community group fund to support and repair black-owned businesses in Atlanta that were damaged during the protests.

Illinois

Chicago Community Bond Fund: Organization committed to posting bail for individuals in Cook County, Illinois, who are unable to post bail themselves. Mission: Through a revolving fund, CCBF supports individuals whose communities cannot afford to pay the bonds themselves and who have been impacted by structural violence.

Kentucky

Louisville Community Bail Fund: Bail, legal, and support fund for activists in Louisville. Mission: “The Louisville Community Bail Fund exists to not only bail out folks, but provide post-release support to get them from jail, fed, and to a situation of safety. LCBF also maintains a focus on preventative measures for those targeted by law enforcement and threatened with incarceration.”

Louisiana

New Orleans Safety and Freedom Fund: Community fund for bail, jail fees, fines, and drug testing fees in New Orleans. Mission: “Together, we will make New Orleans a safer, more equitable place to live, by redesigning the role money plays in the criminal justice system.”

Maryland

Baltimore Action Legal Team: Bail fund and legal relief for the city of Baltimore, with a focus on black activists. Mission: “BALT is committed to building the power of the local Movement for Black Lives. We take our direction from community-organizing groups who are on the ground, and we respect the leadership of local activists. BALT is committed to anti-racist practices and to black leadership. BALT is dedicated to politically-conscious lawyering and to using creative, collective solutions to support the Movement for Black Lives in Baltimore.”

Massachusetts

Massachusetts Bail Fund: Working to post bails up to $2,000 in Essex and Suffolk Counties in Massachusetts. Mission: “The Massachusetts Bail Fund pays up to $2,000 bail so that low-income people can stay free while they work towards resolving their case, allowing individuals, families, and communities to stay productive, together, and stable.”

Michigan

Detroit Bail Fund: Bail fund launched by a local activist to provide relief to the city’s protesters. Mission: “Funds donated will support BailProject.org and others who assist detained individuals in the release from jail. Your dollar will be contributed to supporting the protests, as well as getting people out of jail who were detained.”

Missouri

Kansas City Community Bail Fund: Committed to posting bail for those arrested to Kansas City. Mission: “Our mission is to give those who cannot afford bail a fighting chance at getting a positive outcome in their case rather than be persuaded to plead out through the use of a revolving fund. We want those detained pretrial to be given a chance to keep their jobs, their spot in school, their housing, and provide care for their children, while maintaining their presumed innocence, rather than sitting in local or county jail costing the taxpayers and themselves money. By doing so, we will be advocating for bail reform and ending mass incarceration by example.”

Nebraska

Neighbors for Common Good: Organization providing bail to protesters in Omaha, Nebraska.

New York

Brooklyn Bail Fund: Community bail fund for Brooklyn’s incarcerated individuals. The nonprofit recently pivoted its focus to bail reform, but organizers have committed to helping those arrested in this week’s protests and are providing support to other bail funds across the country – read their full statement on the George Floyd protests here. Mission: “We are committed to challenging the criminalization of race, poverty, and immigration status, the practice of putting a price on fundamental rights, and the persistent myth that bail is a necessary element of the justice system.”

May 2020 Buffalo Bail Fund: Fundraiser set up to provide bail for those protesting in Buffalo, New York. Mission: “In mourning and in solidarity, many people in Buffalo and other cities across the country have taken to the streets to demand justice for George Floyd and other black and brown people killed by police. This fund supports bail requirements for demonstrators arrested while doing this work here in Buffalo.”

Ohio

Columbus Freedom Fund: Bail fund committed to helping those arrested for protesting in Columbus.

Oregon

PDX Protest Bail Fund: GoFundMe established by the General Defense Committee Local 1 to bail protesters out in Portland. Mission: “The Portland General Defense Committee (https://pdxgdc.com/) has provided ongoing legal support to workers and protesters in Oregon since 2017, relying on over a century of national experience. The GDC works in connection with the National Lawyers Guild and other Portland-based organizations.”

Pennsylvania

Philadelphia Bail Fund: Bail fund providing relief to protesters in the city of Philadelphia, with the long-term goal of bringing an end to cash bail. Mission: “We are committed to providing direct bail assistance to Philadelphia protesters participating in actions to ensure their safe return home.”

Bukit Bail Fund of Pittsburgh: Organization founded after the preventable death of Frank “Bukit” Smart Jr., in Allegheny County Jail, working to bail out individuals currently incarcerated in ACJ. Mission: “The Bukit Bail Fund of Pittsburgh is a coalition of individuals and organizations striving to provide support for those incarcerated at Allegheny County Jail, located in Pittsburgh. We hope to not just provide bail, but also to increase our capacity for supporting people after they have been released.”

Tennessee

Nashville Bail Fund: Nonprofit committed to freeing low-income individuals from jail in the city of Nashville. Mission: “The Nashville Community Bail Fund frees low-income persons from jail, connects with their loved ones, and works to end wealth-based detention through community partnerships.”

Texas

Restoring Justice Community Bail Fund: A partnership between Restoring Justice, the Bail Project and Pure Justice to provide bail relief in Houston, initially set up as a response to COVID-19. Mission: “Restoring Justice is partnering with the Bail Project and Pure Justice to use donations to pay bail for people in need during the Covid-19 pandemic at no cost to them or their loved ones.”

Luke 4:18 Bail Fund: Bail fund overseen by Faith in Texas committed to posting bail for individuals in Dallas. Mission: “The Luke 4:18 Bail Fund is partnering with faith communities, currently and formerly incarcerated people, families impacted by the legal justice system, and funders to drastically reduce the jail population in Dallas County.”

400+1 Bail Fund: Bail fund originally created to assist a black man arrested in Austin who feared he could catch COVID-19 in jail. The fund is now being directed toward protesters in the city. Mission: “This bail fund was originally created to crowdfund resources for one black man too poor to make bail while fearing for his life due to the COVID outbreak. As demonstrations erupt around the nation, we are increasing our ask and reach. Additional funds will be used as a general bail fund to support the legal needs of comrades on the ground.”

Project Roar: Community fund dedicated to providing resources and outreach programs to Texas’ rural areas. They’ve expanded their services to include emergency jail and bail. Mission: “Some of the most marginalized and neglected communities are in your city, but also lie in the county areas outside the city limits. The need for services in rural areas is often overlooked. Engaging the community will include canvassing and blockwalking, phonebanking and word of mouth, public service announcements and community service announcements, etc.”

San Antonio Freedom Fund: Community fund set up to directly go towards arrested demonstrators in the city. Mission: “Every year countless unarmed black and brown men are humiliated, beaten, and murdered by militarized police. On May 30th, San Antonio will seek justice. The threat of arrest is real. We need your support. Please consider donating to our bail fund. All proceeds will go directly to the arrested demonstrators.”

Virginia

Richmond Community Bail Fund: Community group dedicated to freeing jailed individuals in Richmond who can’t make bail. Mission: “The Richmond Community Bail Fund exists to restore the presumption of innocence to defendants so they don’t lose their jobs, families, and critical services while also reducing the financial burden on our community of detaining citizens prior to their day in court.”

Washington

Northwest Community Bail Fund: Providing cash bail to arrested individuals in the Seattle metropolitan area. Mission: “The Northwest Community Bail Fund (NCBF) provides cash bail for marginalized people charged with crimes who are unable to afford bail and find themselves incarcerated while awaiting routine court appearances in King and Snohomish Counties in Washington State.”

Wisconsin

Milwaukee Freedom Fund: Bail fund for black and brown organizers in Milwaukee. Donations are currently on pause so as to administer the funds they’ve already received, but the webpage includes a list of similar local organizations to donate to instead. Mission: “The Milwaukee Freedom Fund was started by Black and Brown Milwaukee organizers who want to see residents supported as they assert their right to protest for justice. We are raising money and gathering resources for bail, court-related costs, rides, food, water, and other needs, as the community struggles for liberation.”

Outside the U.S.

Toronto Protestor Bail Fund: Toronto activists are holding their own Black Lives Matter protests over the death of Regis Korchinski and have set up this bail fund for those arrested. Mission: “In light of today’s protest we are looking to generate funding to release and support protesters who end up incarcerated. This bail fund includes any legal fees that may be incurred.”

[tinyshe]

What Will Segregated Society Look Like for the Unvaxxed? 

August 09, 2021

Story at-a-glance 

High-profile restaurant chains like Shake Shack and Union Square Hospitality will require staff and indoor diners in New York City and Washington D.C. to show proof of COVID “vaccination,” starting September 7, 2021

Vaccinated-only bars and restaurants have also popped up in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Boulder, St. Louis and New Orleans

A growing number of private companies are also requiring workers to participate in human medical experimentation or forfeit their job. High profile examples include Facebook, Google, Twitter, Lyft, Uber, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Washington Post, BlackRock, Ascension Health, Netflix, Walmart, the Walt Disney Corporation and Morgan Stanley

PayPal is vowing to block transactions and cancel accounts held by “extremists” and anyone endangering “at-risk communities,” which could include just about anything, including anti-vaccine rhetoric

CNN anchor Don Lemon has suggested unvaccinated people ought to be barred from buying food in grocery stores and have their driver’s license taken away

In 2020, the proposition that COVID-19 countermeasures would come to include forced vaccination and vaccine passports, resulting in a segregated society where only those participating in the COVID injection experiment have human rights, was labeled a wild conspiracy theory unworthy of discussion.

Fast-forward to August 2, 2021, and Forbes announces, “No Vax, No Service: Here’s Where Bars and Restaurants Across U.S. Are Requiring Proof of Vaccination.”1

No Jab, No Dining

According to Forbes,2 high-profile restaurant chains like Shake Shack and Union Square Hospitality are leading the way, requiring all staff and indoor diners in New York City and Washington D.C. to prove they’ve received the required doses of COVID-19 injections, starting September 7, 2021.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio hailed the decision, saying others will follow — and indeed, they did, with de Blasio himself announcing August 3, 2021, that proof of vaccination will be mandatory for all indoor dining, visiting gyms and going to movie theaters in the city:3

“This is a miraculous place literally full of wonders,” Mr. de Blasio said. “If you’re vaccinated, all that’s going to open up to you. But if you’re unvaccinated, unfortunately you will not be able to participate in many things.”

Several New York City eateries were already checking vaccination status, and during the last week of July 2021, the San Francisco Bar Owners Alliance urged its 300 members to require proof of COVID-19 injection or a negative COVID test for patrons wanting to have a drink indoors.

Several Los Angeles restaurants, bars and comedy clubs are also following suit, as are more than 60 establishments in Seattle. Vaccinated-only restaurants have also popped up in Oakland, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Boulder, St. Louis and New Orleans.

Since COVID countermeasures are a global lockstep operation,4 the same segregation trend is emerging in other countries as well. On the other hand, in Florida, where I live, businesses are prohibited by law5,6 from requiring customers to show proof of participation in the COVID jab experiment.

No Jab, No Job

A growing number of private companies are also requiring workers to participate in human medical experimentation or forfeit their job. As reported by Axios,7 this includes Facebook, Google, Twitter, Lyft, Uber, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Washington Post, BlackRock, Ascension Health, Netflix, Walmart, the Walt Disney Corporation and Morgan Stanley.

As mentioned, Florida prohibits businesses from requiring customers to provide proof of COVID “vaccination,” but it does not bar companies from mandating vaccination for its employees.

For now, Disney’s jab mandate only pertains to salaried and nonunion hourly employees, but according to Yahoo! News,8 Disney is in negotiations with union officials who represent theme park employees and members of its movie and TV production crews. The goal is to extend the vaccine mandate to union employees as well.

In May 2021, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission decreed that it is legal for companies to require employees to get the COVID shots.9 This despite the fact that the four available COVID injections are only authorized for emergency use and are as yet unlicensed.10 Testing is not expected to conclude for another two years.

No Jab, No Business

Private companies also have the right to not mandate COVID shots, of course, but standing up for workers’ right to choose could hamper their ability to conduct business at all, as PayPal is now vowing to block transactions and cancel accounts held by “extremists” and anyone endangering “at-risk communities,”11 which could include just about anything at this point.

Seeing how the White House is promoting the idea that people who question the safety and effectiveness of COVID shots are “killing people” and the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) labels anti-vaccine rhetoric as a form of hate speech, is it a stretch to suspect PayPal will start taking down the accounts of so-called “anti-vaxxers”?

Business owners and self-employed entrepreneurs who speak out against other official narratives probably face the same risk. Venture capitalist David Sacks recently commented on the situation:12

“When I helped create PayPal in 1999, it was in furtherance of a revolutionary idea. No longer would ordinary people be dependent on large financial institutions to start a business …

But now PayPal is turning its back on its original mission. It is now leading the charge to restrict participation by those it deems unworthy … [W]e are talking about … shutting down people and organizations that express views that are entirely lawful …

If history is any guide, other fintech companies will soon follow suit … When … your name lands on a No-Buy List created by a consortium of private fintech companies, to whom can you appeal?

As for the notion of building your own PayPal or Facebook: because of their gigantic network effects and economies of scale, there is no viable alternative when the whole industry works together to deny you access.

Kicking people off social media deprives them of the right to speak in our increasingly online world. Locking them out of the financial economy is worse: It deprives them of the right to make a living.

We have seen how cancel culture can obliterate one’s ability to earn an income, but now the cancelled may find themselves without a way to pay for goods and services.

Previously, cancelled employees who would never again have the opportunity to work for a Fortune 500 company at least had the option to go into business for themselves. But if they cannot purchase equipment, pay employees, or receive payment from clients and customers, that door closes on them, too.”

If this trend continues, which it probably will, might people who question COVID shots and/or refuse to participate in human experimentation be barred from having a credit card or a bank account?

No Jab, No Food

Some are promoting even more severe punishment for the unvaccinated. Yet, it’s not enough for some thought leaders that unvaccinated individuals can’t enter a bar or restaurant, and might lose their ability to send or receive money for goods and services using PayPal (and potentially other digital transaction services).

For example, CNN anchor Don Lemon recently suggested unvaccinated people ought to be barred from buying food and have their driver’s license taken away.13,14

Why is fascism so commonly associated with genocide …? It is because it needs a unifying force powerful enough to sweep aside all resistance. ~ Charles Eisenstein

I’d like you to conduct a thought experiment, and think this through from start to finish. What would your life be like if you were:

Barred from driving

Barred from working and earning a paycheck

Barred from sending or receiving money online

Barred from having a bank account and credit card

Barred from eating food at a restaurant (assuming you somehow got the cash to pay for it)

Barred from buying food in a grocery store (again, assuming you somehow got the cash to pay for it)

Are Lemon and countless others actually saying it is acceptable to make half the U.S. population homeless and starve them to death in order to, theoretically, prevent the spread of an infection that, so far, has had a 99.74% survival rate?15

Mob Morality

To understand what’s really happening and what Lemon’s rhetoric is accomplishing, I highly recommend reading Charles Eisenstein’s article “Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed.” It’s an excellent and thought-provoking piece. Here’s a few chosen excerpts:16

“We would like to think that modern societies like ours have outgrown barbaric customs like human sacrifice … we don’t actually kill people in hopes of placating the gods and restoring order. Or do we? …

Not just any victim will do as an object of human sacrifice. Victims must be, as [legal scholar Roberta] Harding puts it, ‘in, but not of, the society.’ That is why, during the Black Death, mobs roamed about murdering Jews for ‘poisoning the wells.’

The entire Jewish population of Basel was burned alive, a scene repeated throughout Western Europe. Yet this was not mainly the result of preexisting virulent hatred of Jews waiting for an excuse to erupt; it was that victims were needed to release social tension, and hatred, an instrument of that release, coalesced opportunistically on the Jews ...

‘Combatting hatred’ is combatting a symptom. Scapegoats needn’t be guilty, but they must be marginal, outcasts, heretics, taboo-breakers, or infidels of one kind or another … If they are not already marginal, they must be made so …

[D]efying left-right categorization is a promising new scapegoat class, the heretics of our time: the anti-vaxxers. As a readily identifiable subpopulation, they are ideal candidates for scapegoating. It matters little whether any of these pose a real threat to society … their guilt is irrelevant to the project of restoring order through blood sacrifice …

All that is necessary is that the dehumanized class arouse the blind indignation and rage necessary to incite a paroxysm of unifying violence. More relevant to current times, this primal mob energy can be harnessed toward fascistic political ends …

Sacrificial subjects carry an association of pollution or contagion; their removal thus cleanses society. I know people in the alternative health field who are considered so unclean that if I so much as mention their names in a Tweet or Facebook post, the post may be deleted …

The public’s ready acceptance of such blatant censorship cannot be explained solely in terms of its believing the pretext of ‘controlling misinformation.’ Unconsciously, the public recognizes and conforms to the age-old program of investing a pariah subclass with the symbology of pollution …

This program is well underway toward the Covid-unvaxxed, who are being portrayed as walking cesspools of germs who might contaminate the Sanctified Brethren (the vaccinated).

My wife perused an acupuncture Facebook page today … where someone asked, ‘What is the word that comes to mind to describe unvaccinated people?’ The responses were things like ‘filth,’ ‘assholes,’ and ‘death-eaters.’ This is precisely the dehumanization necessary to prepare a class of people for cleansing …

To prepare someone for removal as the repository of all that is evil, it helps to heap upon them every imaginable calumny. Thus we hear in mainstream publications that anti-vaxxers not only are killing people, but are raging narcissists … and tantamount to domestic terrorists.”

Dangerous Territory Ahead

If deep down in your gut you sense that we’re speeding into dangerous territory, you’re probably right. The “vaccinated” public are actively encouraged and manipulated both by media and government officials into literally despising and wishing death upon the unvaccinated, and this is indeed a very dangerous thing. It breeds mob mentality devoid of reason and logic, which can have tragic consequences.

“Why is fascism so commonly associated with genocide, when as a political philosophy it is about unity, nationalism, and the merger of corporate and state power?” Eisenstein asks.17

“It is because it needs a unifying force powerful enough to sweep aside all resistance. The us of fascism requires a them. The civic-minded moral majority participates willingly, assured that it is for the greater good. Something must be done. The doubters go along too, for their own safety.

No wonder today’s authoritarian institutions know, as if instinctively, to whip up hysteria toward the … unvaccinated. Fascism taps into, exploits, and institutionalizes a deeper instinct.

The practice of creating dehumanized classes of people and then murdering them is older than history … The campaign against the unvaccinated, garbed in the white lab coat of Science, munitioned with biased data, and waving the pennant of altruism, channels a brutal, ancient impulse.”

The Constitution still offers some measure of protection in the United States, but it may be naïve to assume it will be adhered to in the long term unless we the people demand it. In Australia, military are now roaming the streets of Sydney to make sure no one strays beyond their front door, as the country has implemented one of its strictest lockdowns yet.18

Fanning the flames of anger and hatred, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stated that vaccinated Australians might be able to regain some of their mobility once the vaccination rate reaches 70%, and broad lockdowns may be avoidable altogether if the vaccination rate hits 80%.

"If you get vaccinated, there will be special rules that apply to you,” Morrison told reporters. “Why? Because if you're vaccinated, you present less of a public health risk.”

A rational person might question whether Morrison would actually hold true to his word. A person blinded by anger probably won’t, but will instead direct their frustration onto the holdouts that prevent the vaccination rate from reaching that magical threshold where they believe freedom will be restored.

[worldtopic6]

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[favorhome]

We Buy Houses New Orleans LA Not All Homebuyers Are The Same

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We have been in the industry for quite some time and have invested in the best education. If we don’t see it, we have partners and are ready to help. We have seen sellers choose the wrong investor to buy their home. They were taken advantage of because they were under stress, which is the last thing you need more.

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[the-writers-newsletter]

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[longitudinalwaveme]

The Amazing James Jesse

The Flash stars in: The Amazing James Jesse

Dramatis Personae

Barry Allen, the dorky, chronically late police scientist who is secretly the Flash

Patty Spivot, Barry’s coworker, who is just as awkward as he is

Mirror Master, the larcenous Lord of the Looking Glass, alias Sam Scudder

Heat Wave, a dimwitted, loyal pyromaniac, alias Mick Rory

Captain Boomerang, the rude, crude, and socially unacceptable Australian appropriator, alias George “Digger” Harkness

The Trickster, a charming con artist with weaponized yo-yos, alias James Jesse

Script

Act I

(Enter Barry Allen and Patty Spivot, from opposite directions. Barry is on the phone, and Patty is carrying a tray full of things )

Barry: (On the phone) Don’t worry, Iris. I won’t be late, I promise. Mmm-hmm. Uh-huh. No, I didn’t forget that Bart’s going to his friend’s house. Mmm-hmm. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes, I remembered to water the flowers this morning. (Pause) That’s terrific, honey! I knew that article was a winner. You’re an amazing- (runs into Patty, knocking tray out of her hands and dropping his phone). Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, Miss...um….what’s your name again? I’m sorry, I’m terrible with names. (Patty is on her knees, trying to pick up the mess. Barry joins her, and they clean up the mess as they talk.) Here, let me help you. I’m really sorry. That was my fault. I’m-

Patty: You’re Barry Allen, the chief forensic scientist of the CCPD!

Barry: Yes, I am. Actually, as far as I knew, I was their only forensic scientist. What’s your name? I know I should know it, but like my wife says, I’d probably lose my head if it wasn’t screwed on.

Patty: I’m Patty Spivot, the newest member of the forensics department. I’ve only been here for a week, so it’s not surprising you don’t know my name. I was just transferred here from Coast City.

Barry: Nice to meet you. (Stands up and helps her to her feet) Did we clean up everything?

Patty: Everything but your phone.

Barry: Oh. Right. I’ll get that. (Picks up phone) Welcome to CCPD’s forensics lab, Ms. Spivot. I promise, I’m not this much of a klutz most of the time.

Patty: Anything else I should know, Mr. Allen?

Barry: Well, I’m always late, Captain Singh’s bark is worse than his bite, Detective Chyre acts tough but is nice once you get to know him, and literally running into me is probably the most exciting thing that will happen to you in the forensics department. Central City doesn’t have much crime for such a large city, and the crimes that do happen usually don’t require much forensic examination, because the perpetrators often don’t try to hide their guilt. So before you ask, no, you probably won’t work on a Rogues case. I never have, and I know the Flash personally.

Patty: Is that why CCPD only has two forensic scientists?

Barry: Pretty much.

Patty: That would explain the fact that I was transferred to such a large city despite the fact that I don’t have a whole lot of experience.

Barry: Well, if you need help, you can just ask me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Ms. Spivot, I should probably call my wife back before she starts to worry about me.

Patty: No problem. Good-bye, Mr. Allen.

Barry Allen: Good-bye, Ms. Spivot. It was nice to meet you. (Patty exits, Barry pulls out phone) Hello? Iris? (Pause) Yes, it’s me. I accidentally dropped my phone. What were you saying about that article again? (Pause) Oh, that’s right, it got on the front page. Congratulations, sweetheart! Mmm-hmm. Uh-huh. (Pause) No, everything’s been quiet lately. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. All right. I love you, honey. Good-bye. (Puts phone away) I really wish I hadn’t lost my super speed. It’s nice to know that Wally and Jay have my back, but I miss running around as the Flash all the time. Oh, well. I can help people as police scientist Barry Allen just as well as I did as the Flash. (Barry walks to chair, sits down, and starts mixing chemicals) Besides, now that I’m not the Flash, I can spend more time with Iris and Bart. This is good. This is fine. I am totally not upset that my nephew and my idol are better at being the Flash than I was. This is great. (Pause) Why am I talking to myself?

(Enter Patty)

Patty: Mr. Allen, the Flash is here to see you.

Barry: Which one?

Patty: I’m not sure. He’s younger than us, if that helps.

Barry: Oh. That’s Wally. Tell him I’ll be right out.

Patty: Okay, Mr. Allen. I will.

(Exit Patty)

Barry: Knowing Wally, he’s found a new favorite fast food place. But I can’t say no to seeing my favorite nephew. And who knows, maybe he has some useful information this time.

(Exit Barry)

Act II

(Mirror Master is onstage. Enter Heat Wave)

Heat Wave: Hi, there, Mirror Master! It’s good to see you!

Mirror Master: Hey, Mick. Where’s the Captain? I thought you were bringing him.

Heat Wave: Well, I was going to, but I couldn’t find him. I think they must’ve moved him to a different wing of the prison or something.

Mirror Master: Well, that’s unfortunate. Did you find anyone else?

Heat Wave: Nope. Piper tried to escape two weeks ago, but being the bleeding heart that he is, when he saw that one of his fellow-escapees was trying to kill a guard, he stopped him but got a broken arm in the process, so he won’t be out for awhile. Golden Glider and the Top are in Hawaii for the fifth anniversary of their first date, and Weather Wizard seems to have dropped off the map entirely. Nobody knows where he is.

Mirror Master: Well, that’s just dandy. I’m pretty powerful, but I don’t think we can pull off a heist with just the two of us.

(Enter Boomerang)

Boomerang: G’day, mates!

Heat Wave: Oh, that’s right! Captain Boomerang finally recovered from his broken leg! I knew I was forgetting something!

Mirror Master: Hey, Digger. Long time no see. How’s your leg? Boomerang: Never better, mate.

Heat Wave: Hi again, Digger. I’m glad that you’re feeling better.

Boomerang: Thanks. You’re a bonzer mate, Heat Wave

Heat Wave: Thanks. (To Mirror Master) That wasn’t an Australian insult, was it?

Mirror Master: No, you’re good. (To Boomerang) Why are you in such a good mood?

Boomerang: Two reasons, mate. First, I can finally fight the Flash again and prove to him that boomerangs always come back. Second, I’ve got enough coldies to get off my face.

Mirror Master: You will save that for after the heist, won’t you?

Boomerang: Of course I will. I’m a bloody professional, I am.

Mirror Master: All right. Do either of you have an idea for our heist? Because if you don’t, I was thinking that we could-

(Enter Trickster, disguised as the Flash)

Trickster: Stop in the name of the law!

Boomerang: Oh, no! It’s the Flash!

Heat Wave: You can’t show up yet! We’re not ready!

Mirror Master: Stop yelling at him and run!

Trickster: (Laughs) You should see the looks on your faces! (Takes off disguise) They’re priceless! (Laughs harder)

Heat Wave: (excited) Trickster?

Boomerang: (confused) Trickster?

Mirror Master: (annoyed) TRICK-STER!

Trickster: That’s my name, don’t wear it out!

Heat Wave: Where have you been? I haven’t seen you in months, little buddy!

Trickster: Oh, here, there, and everywhere. (Pulls out tacky souvenir) Want some memorabilia from Las Vegas?

Mirror Master: I think I’ll pass. (Pause) What were you doing in Las Vegas?

Trickster: What everyone does in Vegas: making stupid decisions that they’ll later regret!

Mirror Master: Meaning?

Trickster: I decided to use my airwalker shoes to sit on top of that big pyramid with a hundred balloons tied around my waist and while wearing bell-bottom jeans and a hot pink shirt.

Mirror Master: And you decided to do this because….

Trickster: I like attention!

Mirror Master: (Aside) Well, that much is obvious.

Boomerang: Why didn’t you take me, mate? I love Vegas!

Trickster: Because you almost died of alcohol poisoning the last time you went to Vegas, and that was kind of a downer.

Heat Wave: Did you go anywhere else, little buddy?

Trickster: As a matter of fact, I did! I went to New Orleans-Mardi Gras is fun!-and New York City and Hollywood and Chicago and Gotham and Star City and Metropolis and Coast City and Seattle and Paris!

Mirror Master: How’d you go to Paris? None of us would ever get approved for a passport.

Trickster: Paris, Kentucky . It’s got really nice people-why, I sold more shares for the Great Mississippi Bridge there than I did anywhere else.

Heat Wave: Oooh, can I buy a share, too?

Trickster: I’d love to let you, my shortness-challenged friend, but the Great Mississippi Bridge isn’t real, just my latest money-making trick. I don’t want to cheat a friend.

Heat Wave: Oh. (Pause) How’d you get so smart, little buddy?

Trickster: It’s a gift-just like my angelic cuteness.

Mirror Master: (Aside) Angelic my foot. (To Trickster) So you disappeared for six months to go on a cross-country swindling trip?

Trickster: No, I disappeared for six months to admire my country. The swindling was just an additional benefit. (Pulls out a wad of bills) Anybody want some cash?

Boomerang: Why, you little ripper! Have I ever told you that your blood’s worth bottling? ‘Cause it is, mate. Give it here. (Trickster hands him some bills) Thanks!

Trickster: No problem. Anyone else?

Heat Wave: Sure, little buddy. (Trickster gives him money) This really warms my heart.

Trickster: What are friends for? ( Pause) How about you, Sam?

Mirror Master: All right, what’s the catch?

Trickster: Oh, no catch, my suspicious friend. No catch at all. I live to outwit people, not to make money. I don’t need extra cash tying me down. (Pause) Do you want the money now?

Mirror Master: I’m good, thanks. (Pause) So, do you have an idea for a heist? Because if not, I was thinking that-

Trickster: As a matter of fact, I do! Central City’s First National Bank is receiving a new shipment of money, and I have a brilliant idea for how to steal it. I’ll create a distraction with my amazing bubble machine and my rubber chickens while you guys use the Mirror Realm to get into the vault and take the money. If the Flash shows up, he’ll be impeded by the large crowds and by my weaponized yo-yos, and even if he gets past me, he’ll still have to defeat both Captain Boomerang and Heat Wave to get to you-and since you can pick us up from just about anywhere, all we have to do is make sure that you escape with the cash. Am I brilliant, or am I brilliant?

Captain Boomerang: Sounds good to me, mate!

Heat Wave: I like it, too. You’re so smart, Trickster.

Trickster: I know. Mirror Master?

Mirror Master: (Aside) I’ll probably regret agreeing to this idea, but it’s not actually a bad plan, so I can’t really object to it. (To Trickster) It’s a sound idea. Let’s do it.

Trickster: I knew you’d like it. Now, let’s go get lunch and get ready for our heist!

(Exit all)

Act III

(Barry is onstage. Enter Patty.)

Patty: Hi, Mr. Allen.

Barry: Oh, hello again, Ms. Spivot. What do you need?

Patty: Well, normally I wouldn’t have bothered you, because I know that you’re really busy with that arson case, but I just got a really weird phone call.

Barry: What sort of weird phone call?

Patty: It was from somebody who was calling himself James Jesse. He said that you were the Flash, but that’s impossible because you said that the Flash was your nephew and…..

Barry: James Jesse?

Patty: Yeah. Kind of a strange name, I thought…..

Barry: Ms. Spivot, James Jesse is the Trickster!

Patty: But why would he be calling you?

Barry: Because I’m the Flash, too….or rather, I used to be.

Patty: What do you mean, you used to be?

Barry: A month ago, I was fighting Abra Kadabra, a malevolent magician from the 64th century, when he hit me with some sort of ray that took away my super speed. Luckily, Wally and Jay were there, too, and managed to defeat him, but I didn’t get my powers back, so I had to give up being the Flash. The Trickster doesn’t know about that, because he left Central City six months ago, so he still sees me as the Flash.

Patty: Well, what should I do? He really seems to want you to talk to him.  

Barry: (Sighs) Give me the phone. I’ll come up with something.

(Patty exits, then returns with a phone)

Patty: Here, Mr. Allen.

Barry: (Takes phone) Thank you. (To Trickster) This is Barry Allen, Trickster. What do you want? (Pause) I’d advise you not to go through with that heist if you value your liberty. (Pause) I can’t say I expected you to change your mind. Just know that the Flash will be there to stop you. Mmm-hmm. Uh-huh. Good day. (Closes phone) He’s planning a heist at the First National Bank. Tell the police that they should be ready for the Flash to deliver some Rogues to them.

Patty: I will, Mr. Allen. Gosh, this is so exciting!

(Exit Patty)

Barry: Now to call Wally. (Dials number) Wally’s Voice: (From offstage) I can’t come to the phone right now because I’m fighting aliens. Leave a message after the beep.

Barry: Okay, I’ll try Jay. (Dials number)

Jay’s Voice: (From offstage) This is Jay Garrick, the original Flash. I can’t come to the phone right now, so please leave a message.

Barry: (Closes phone and sighs) Now what am I supposed to do? Jay and Wally are both busy, and I don’t have my speed. Who’s going to stop the Trickster and his teammates now? What am I going to do? The Rogues have to be stopped, but without my speed, I don’t know if I can stop them. Of all the times for the Trickster to show up again...wait a minute! That’s it! It’s time for police scientist Barry Allen to out-trick the Trickster! (Pause) Who am I talking to?

Act IV

(Enter Trickster, Mirror Master, Heat Wave, and Boomerang. Trickster is carrying a rubber chicken, a teddy bear, and his “amazing bubble machine”)

Mirror Master: Okay, that food was legitimately delicious. Good call, Trickster.

Trickster: Why, thank you, Sam.

Heat Wave: I agree. I especially liked their ghost peppers. They’re so warm and spicy.

Boomerang: And their beer is terrific!

Mirror Master: I thought I told you not to drink until we were done with the heist!

Boomerang: It was only one tinny, Sam. It ain’t gonna hurt me.

Mirror Master: That’s what you said right before that heist where you set off the burglar alarm because you were too drunk to avoid it, too.

Boomerang: But I mean it this time!

Heat Wave: Mirror Master, he’s good at what he does. He’ll be fine.

Mirror Master: I hope you’re right, Mick. I really hope you’re right.

Trickster: Besides, I called the Flash and told him about our heist already, so it won’t matter if he sets off an alarm.

Mirror Master: You did WHAT?

Trickster: I called the Flash and told him about our heist. I told you, I like attention-and I like the Flash’s attention best of all, because he’s a real challenge!

Mirror Master: But he always beats us! How do you expect our heist to succeed if he knows that it’s going to happen ahead of time?

Trickster: Because it’s the game I love, not the money! Didn’t I already tell you that?

Boomerang: Do you have kangaroos loose in your top paddock or what? I want money, not a beating from the Flash!

Trickster: Don’t worry so much, guys. The only person who has to get in the bank is Mirror Master. It doesn’t matter what happens to us as long as he gets away.

Heat Wave: See, guys? He knows what he’s doing.

Mirror Master: Forgive me if I’m less than convinced. (Sighs) All right, let’s get to the bank. Maybe we’ll get lucky and be able to salvage some of the heist.

(Cut to Trickster standing outside the bank, shooting bubbles everywhere)  

Trickster: Bubbles bubbles bubbles! Fear my bubbles!

(Enter Barry Allen)

Barry: Hello, Trickster.

Trickster: Hi, Flash! Do you like my bubbles?

Barry: Indeed I do. They’re quite impressive.

Trickster: Really? Why, thank you!

Barry: Is there anything special about those bubbles?

Trickster: Actually, yes! The bubbles can stick to people and hold them in place.

Barry: And what else do you have?

Trickster: Ooh, I have an explosive teddy bear and a rubber chicken that sprays sleeping gas when I squeeze it.

Barry: Fascinating.

Trickster: Aren’t you going to try to stop me?

Barry: Why would I do that? Your new inventions are far too advanced for me to stop.

Trickster: Really? Well, that’s disappointing. The game isn’t fun if you won’t play.

Barry: I’m sorry to disappoint you, Trickster.

Trickster: Can’t you at least try to stop me?

Barry: Sorry. No can do.

Trickster: Please? Please? Please? Pretty please?

Barry: Don’t you want to win?

Trickster: It doesn’t count if you let me win! It’s no fun!

Barry: That’s terribly unfortunate.

Trickster: Stop that! Stop it stop it stop it!

Barry: Stop what?

Trickster: Stop not trying!

Barry: Good-bye, Trickster.

(Barry starts to leave)

Trickster: NO! If you won’t play, then I quit!

(He throws down his weapons and starts to leave)

Barry: All right, then you’re under arrest.

(Barry handcuffs Trickster)

Trickster: (Stunned) You….you tricked me!

Barry: Yes, I did. You see, I don’t have my super powers right now, so if I had fought you directly, I would have lost and you would have gotten away. Therefore, I realized that if I wanted to defeat you, I had to turn your own nature against you. You always want a challenge, so I knew that if I didn’t provide it to you, you would eventually try to leave, and I could then catch you off guard. Face it, Trickster. I just beat you at your own game.

Trickster: So you did...but since you don’t have superpowers, how are you going to stop my teammates from robbing the bank?

(Enter Boomerang, Mirror Master, and Heat Wave, all looking rather disheveled)

Barry: Well, you see, while I was on my way here to out-trick you, I managed to get ahold of Wally, and while I was distracting you, he stopped your friends.

Mirror Master: (To Trickster) I knew trusting you was a bad idea!

Boomerang: Yeah! I don’t know why I trusted you! I mean, you call yourself the bloody Trickster! And now, thanks to you, I won’t get to enjoy getting off my face!

Heat Wave: Aww, lay off the little guy. How was he supposed to know that we’d end up facing two Flashes instead of one?

Mirror Master: Because he’s supposed to be the smart one! He’s a con artist! Outsmarting people is his job! Are you telling me that it was too much for him to outsmart two people at once?

Trickster: Well, I may be a con artist, but I’m also a performer. If I don’t have an appreciative audience, I don’t see the point in going onstage.

Heat Wave: I appreciate your work.

Trickster: And I appreciate the sentiment, but you weren’t there when he showed up, so I was stuck when he refused to play along.

Boomerang: You coulda done something, mate!

Trickster: (To the audience) Some people have no appreciation for art. (To Boomerang) Done what? Attack a Flash who wouldn’t fight back? That was too easy! It would’ve been boring!

Mirror Master: More boring than going to prison?

Trickster: I like prison-in limited doses, anyhow. I love trying out my humor on new guards!

Boomerang: Well, you may be loony enough to like prison, but I hate it! I can’t get a coolie in prison! If you wanted to go to jail, you should’ve done it on your own!

Trickster: And miss the opportunity to spend time with you guys? No way! You’re way too much fun to mess with!

Heat Wave: Trickster’s right. As long as we’re together, it doesn’t matter where we are.

Mirror Master: Just stop talking. You sound like a bad Hallmark movie. (To Barry) Please, take me away already so I don’t have to deal with Mr. Small, Blonde, and Annoying anymore.

Trickster: Aww, I love you too, Sam.

Boomerang: (To Barry) And could you gag him or something? I’ve had enough of listening to his big mouth for awhile. (Aside) Cripes, I really need a tinny.

Trickster: Pot, this is the kettle calling. He wants you to stop calling him black.

Heat Wave: Yeah, Digger. If anyone has a big mouth, it’s you.

Boomerang: Why are you taking his side? He got us all arrested!

Heat Wave: Because he gave us free money when he didn’t have to, did 80% of the work for this heist, and hasn’t gotten mad that you two are yelling at him. Sure, we didn’t succeed, but we never do. It ain’t fair to get mad at him, and you blaming him for our failure really burns me up.

Boomerang: (Aside) He’s gone soft, he has! (Pause) I’m really startin’ to regret that tinny. My head’s aching something fierce.

Mirror Master: (To Barry) Can we go now?

Barry: I’m surprised that you’re so eager, but yes, we can.

(All start to exit)

Trickster: I guess you could say that this was a…. speedy defeat!

Boomerang/Mirror Master/Barry/Heat Wave: TRICK-STER!

Trickster: (“Innocently”) What? (Pause, then, to Barry) Great acting, by the way. I’m impressed.

Barry: (Confused) Um...thanks. I think.

(Exit All)

Act V

(Barry is onstage, talking on the phone)

Barry: (To Iris) Yes, I’m fine. Thanks for your concern. (Pause) Yes, Wally was great. You can definitely give him a lot of credit in your article. Mmm-hmm. Uh-huh. Yes, I’ll be home soon. Tell Bart I love him. I love you, too. Good-bye. (Puts phone away) Not a bad day’s work for a man with no superpowers, if I do say so myself.

(Enter Patty)

Patty: Are you all right? I heard you got into a fight with those awful Rogues!

Barry: I’m all right, Ms. Spivot. I’ve fought the Rogues often enough that I know how to handle them, even without super speed. But thanks for your concern. I really appreciate it.

Patty: You’re welcome, Mr. Allen.

Barry: Oh my gosh! I just realized that I’m off work now! If I don’t hurry, I’ll be late to pick up Bart! Gotta run! Bye!

(Exit Barry)

Patty: (Takes off lab coat to reveal a black leather jacket underneath, pulls hair out of bun) Ugh! Playing the good girl is hard! (Pulls out phone) Hi, Roscoe, darling! Our plan is working perfectly! Thanks to everyone thinking that we’re in Hawaii, he doesn’t even suspect that I’m not really “Patty Spivot”. (Pause) Why, thank you, Roscoe! I’m so glad you think I’m clever. After all, it’s true. And get this! Trickster called police headquarters and didn’t even suspect that I wasn’t really a novice police officer! I outsmarted the Trickster! (Pause) Oh, honeybunch, are you all right? I know you’re sick, but I didn’t think it was that bad. (Pause) Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to get your cure, too. If all goes well, I’ll be able to make you well, defeat the Flashes, and prove to Lenny that I’m as bad as he is all with one scheme! (Pause) Be careful, my little snuggle bunny. Don’t overexert yourself. I love you. Bye-bye. (Puts phone away) Central City, you’d better watch out-the Golden Glider’s on the attack! (Laughs)