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ghost-chance · 4 years ago

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Fanfiction Recommendation: “Fat. Beautiful. Tasty. Ravenous” by MoofyKitten

Title: Fat. Beautiful. Tasty. Ravenous Author: MoofyKitten on AO3/FFN/Wattpad Fandom: BNHA/My Hero Academia Rating: M/MA for a reason. (Detailed sex in over half the posted chapters. Perv away only if you’re of age!) Pairing(s): Fat Gum [Toyomitsu Taishirou] / OFC Found on: AO3

Deets Expect some light spoilers and a mini-rant.

I am an unrepentant fanfiction addict; this is no secret. There are fics I read to wind down after a rough day, fics I read to put myself to sleep in hopes of pleasant dreams, and fics I read to tear my hear into teeny tiny fragments then build it back again better than before. THEN there are fics that don’t fit the mold – the kind that I become so invested in that I physically cannot put off reading that update. THIS, my lovelies, is one of THOSE fics, and it’s earned that place from the early chapters. This story has almost everything I need from a fanfiction, and I have a feeling the rest is just around the corner.

Let’s get the basics out of the way.

The Spelling, grammar, and punctuation are all excellent – I have yet to notice a single error, so either the author and her betas are a force to be reckoned with or I’m just getting so sucked into the story an elephant could sit on me and I’d never notice. The formatting is effective and easy to follow, and the chapters have all been of a nice meaty length, perfect for plowing through in a single sitting only to realize you missed a meal and it’s time for bed and your brain is hopelessly lost in ship-land daydreaming about what’s up next. ...wait, that’s just me? My bad.

Syntax – This one requires an entire section of its own. The fact that I’m having to actually think about how well the author’s varying their syntax says they’re effing nailing it. If a story’s syntax is at all static or the sentence even the slightest bit predictable, it’s easy enough for me to recall it because I’m mentally rearranging the bits that irk or don’t impress me as I read. I can’t even get through a bleepin’ news article or an online recipe without itching to push what I’m reading up to the standards my professors held. It sounds harsh, I know, but please take my word for it when I say I’m not criticizing anyone. Suffice it to say, if my classes did anything, they made editing so instinctive I can’t turn it off. Confession: I have never found myself rearranging a single phrase in this masterpiece. Arguing with the characters? Encouraging the characters? Begging, pleading, and berating the characters for breaking my heart time and time again by stopping just short of the sugary fluff I can just smell right around the corner? Oh, Hell yes. I’ve done all of that and more, but I’ve never found myself with the urge to grab my red pen and strike out or scooch even a single word.

Something that strikes me about this story above others I’ve given the same rating (Spoiler: there are VERY FEW!) is the sheer variety of the scenes and environments. Sounds silly? Probably, but romances often develop a certain amount of location stagnation, and I know from personal experience how difficult it can be to bust through those patterns. (I mean, the majority of “A New Lease on Life” takes place in the Lair in some room, most commonly a bedroom, the lab, or the kitchen.) This story takes the couple off of familiar and ‘safe’ turf like homes and offices and drags them through countless other places without regard for their sense of comfort. Each scene feels real and multi-dimensional and directly or indirectly influences the characters’ behavior and reactions. It’s awesome. That’s a sign the author has done her people-watching!

Now, about that OC. I’ll readily admit, in the first chapter, I had my reservations. At first glance she seemed shallow, obsessed with appearances and her own view of the world, and – strange as it may sound – too skinny and too attractive. Yes, there’s some personal bias involved there, but the majority was practical rather than emotional. BUT! Because the writer of this story is the same who unleashed the beautiful Kacchako torment Hot-Headed upon me without a single breath of remorse, I gave Aiko a chance. Sure enough, my first impressions were entirely incorrect. The things that bothered me about Aiko? They all had explanation or purpose, and she’s turned out to be a pretty well-fleshed out character...pun intended. As the story progresses we’re seeing sides of her that I hoped for but didn’t expect and each chapter leaves me wondering what we’ll learn next.

Romantic connection. First word: “OOFTA.” The second word, I’d spell out, but it’s a shrill, wordless, begging whine that I cannot translate into English for the life of me. This pairing starts without any sort of romantic connection; it skips straight to the shenanigans and leaves hope that the snugglebunnies will follow eventually. Friends…if you’ve read any of my writing before, you’ll know that I. LIVE. For. The. FLUFF. The awkward mush, the sweaty palms, the am-I-gonna-barf-or-do-I-have-a-crush, the absolutely tooth-rotting sweetness capable of sending a reader headlong into diabetes with a dopey grin and heart eyes - they’re my crack and I love them. This story started with no fluff but it’s been slowly developing in the background. It’s an entirely new situation for me! I feel like I’ve gotten used to eating my dessert first then digging into an equally sweet dinner without a moment to cleanse my palate. This story? It’s like gorging on smoky, meaty St. Louie barbecue for weeks on end with literally just a smear of something sweet as an afterthought. Mind. Frackin’. BLOWN. It turns out I’m more masochistic as a reader than I ever suspected.

Another relationship I want to cover is the building friendship between Aiko and Fat Gum – because nope, she has not managed to mentally connect the half-starved Taishiro she’s climbing like a tree with the big-and-beautiful Fat Gum who owns the agency. Yep. She thinks she’s boning Fat’s beefy little brother. It’d be funny if my heart wasn’t whining for fluff. While frustrating to fluff-starved readers, Aiko not knowing the beefcake and the brother are one and the same provides an intriguing and natural way for her to build an actual relationship with him. This means none of the fetishistic bullarkey rampant in other stories pairing plus-sized male characters with OCs.

What sort of fetishistic bullarkey am I talking about? To name a handful: I love you so lose weight. I love you because you’re big. I’m fat too so it’s okay if we’re together. Blatant fat-fetish disguised as romance. Fat character’s life absolutely revolves around food and it’s gross/nvm it’s okay. Lastly, OC’s only chance at being loved by fat character is feeding them. Maybe to thin folks those don’t sound negative but to those of us who fit the description? NOPE. These don’t make healthy relationships. Using these can turn a well-meaning pairing toxic and frankly, it tends to piss off those of us who – GASP! - accept ourselves no matter our size. These...tropes, let’s call them, have made me hesitant to even try fiction involving plus sized male characters because I’ve been let down so many times. Finding plus sized female characters is easy, especially OCs, but appreciation for the chonky bois isn’t nearly as common. They need love too, dammit!

Ahem. Rant over.

As mentioned before, I ain’t seen any of that crap in this story. This author is treating Fat Gum like she would any other character instead of focusing on the fat. I wish with all my heart that more authors were capable of (and willing to) do the same with Fat Gum, and with other plus sized male characters. I can’t even put into words how much it means to me that she’s doing such a fantastic job portraying a character type that so many writers bungle without ever realizing it. I’ve needed this story my entire life and never realized it wasn’t there; I shudder to think of how long I might have been waiting for it if this author never found the inspiration to do so.

If I don’t shut up now, I fear I never will. I love this story that much. Moving on.

Warnings

Explicit sexual content – do NOT read this around your family unless you have a stronger will than I and can do so without creeping them out. (According to my husband, when I read smut I “look like a demented vulture staring down at a half-flattened ‘possum waiting for it to take its last breath,” complete with hunched shoulders and heavy breathing. Flattering, I know.) The smut scenes, while not my usual cuppa tea, wreck. My brain? Broke. Chapter four’s budding romance? It’s goin’ on my headstone ‘cuz I’m dead.

There are mentions of human trafficking and the future may include more about it. Slut-shaming comes up a few times because men are assholes and asshole exes are the ultimate assholes. Situational fat-shaming and lack of body confidence come up as Aiko comes to recognize Fat Gum for who he is instead of what he is; on the other end of the tag, Fat is also doing a lot of it to himself even when it isn’t spelled out. You can see it behind some of his reasoning in his POV chapters and since the writer is kickass at portraying thoughts and feelings without ever breaking out of restricted POV, you can also see hints in other chapters. That said, if the shaming was really bad without any redeeming purpose, I’d have noped my way right out’a that fic and never looked back. It has a purpose, and it’s not that bad. Give it a chance.

Recommendation level

This story lacks purple prose and excessive fluff, and I haven’t seen any signs of the pop culture, literary, and music references I love so dearly, but the rating remains the same:

Ten. Out. of. Farking. TEN!

YES! I’ve finally found another 10/10!!! A quick reminder for anyone who’s managed to not see my other reading recc posts, I don’t even need both hands to count off all the 10/10s I’ve read. Congratulations, Ms. MoofyKitten – your story rocks my world and I have an addiction I do not care to shake!

#fanfiction recommendation #BNHA #My Hero Academia #body postivity #Fat Gum #mature fanfiction #Plus size guys need love too #this story is KILLING ME #and I'm loving every minute of it because I'm weird like that #i stayed up for this

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kirinda-ondo · 6 years ago

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Rant/tell me about Cobalt and why u love him so much??

Ok so this is probably going to get very long, and very, very cheesy, and I hope y’all are ready for this.

Cobalt is a very special character to me and is absolutely my favorite character of all time, from anything in the history of ever. It doesn’t matter what other fandom I’m hyperfixated on or what character I’m saying is my son at the moment, if you bring him up at any time, in any context I will be there.

So you’re probably wondering how I got here.

Once upon a time, it was 2009 and I was a young weeaboo, constantly absorbing everything anime or manga I could. I had just come out from the Astro Boy movie, and I immediately wanted to watch the source material. I’d already seen a bit of it on adult swim when they were running an Astro Boy marathon, but I had to go to bed at 11:30 then so I didn’t get to see much. So this time, I went to youtube and I found all the (dubbed) episodes of the 60s series. (Sadly you can’t find them all there anymore and it’s a crying shame).

I basically marathoned them, but over in the sidebar where the recommendations were, I kept seeing the thumbnail for part 2 or 3 (this was back when youtube only let you post 10 minute videos and you had to watch anime in 3 parts) of the episode “Brother Jetto.” You could plainly see him, and so it was clear this was supposed to be Astro’s brother. I thought it was neat that Astro even had a brother, as I’d only known about Uran before. I wanted to know more, but I promised myself I wouldn’t skip ahead. Though it was very tempting at times, I stuck to my guns and watched all 83 episodes up to that point.

However, it was not actually love at first sight. When I finally got to this episode 84, I wasn’t really impressed. “Wow, he’s kind of annoying, what’s the point?” I had thought like a fool, but I was still willing to accept him as part of the canon, as I figured I’d be seeing a lot more of him now that he had been introduced. After all, that’s what they did with Uran! But then…. that pretty much didn’t happen at all, which I thought was kind of weird. After all, why introduce a new sibling if he’s not going to show up again?

But then I got to the episode “A Deep, Deep Secret” about 6 episodes later, and I found myself a little relieved that he wasn’t completely canned. Upon watching that episode, I’d found that he’d started to grow on me a bit, but he still wasn’t my favorite. However, the trend of him being gone for several episodes only to show up once in a blue moon continued until I’d run out of episodes. I moved on to the 80s series next (and then the 2003 series) having learned that Cobalt had been replaced by Atlas as Astro’s brother. While I enjoyed those series (the 80s one a bit moreso than the 2003 one), I found myself kind of missing Astro’s dingus brother that had barely seemed to get a chance. After marathoning all the series (at the time), I started doing some googling and found out he had a slightly better run in the undubbed Japanese episodes (which was also how I discovered AB-O! Hi fandom!) and I’d learned a lot more about him. But the most important thing I’d learned was that I was in fact very emotionally invested in this character now and I was in deep.

Mind you at this time the undubbed Japanese episodes were nearly impossible to find without purchasing the complete DVD set and a player that could play them (on account of the fact that the set was region locked from western DVD players) so for years I sat wondering more about what those Japanese episodes were like, as the forums only had plot summaries with a handful of screencaps to go off of. Nowadays you can watch all the undubbed (and sadly unsubbed) episodes here but 13 year old me did not have the knowledge to do foreign language googling at the time.

But still, my Cobalt-loving heart wanted more, so I scoured the English speaking internet for whatever I could find, official or fanmade. Official content was virtually nonexistent, and the amount of fanmade content, I could count on one hand. The general fan consensus at the time seemed to be “Who the hell is Cobalt” or “Eh, whatever,” which was a far cry from how it is now. But being horribly deprived back then, I did the only thing I could: I combed through the dub for every episode he was in, coming up with a whopping total of…..four (well technically five but in that one he’s literally only in the last five seconds with no animation or lines), and I watched them religiously. I could pretty much quote Cobalt’s debut episode by heart. (For the record I can no longer do this to the extent I used to, but should the opportunity arise, I can still quote large chunks of it).

As I did this and learned more about him in my desperate googling, I started developing jokes for what would become my first silly comics, for which I am known in this fandom for. The art and writing for these was….. painful, to say the least, so I don’t even like to think about it, but as I’d already had a decently sized following from drawing silly (read: bad) Sonic comics, they caught on decently well, and I’d even managed to drag my friend and son down with me into Cobalt Hell™. Together, we made a group for Cobalt fans on deviantart (which is still up, but I no longer run it, as I deactivated the account that modded it without transferring ownership, so now it’s likely a wild west hellscape that I’m a little scared to look at).

This seemed to help do the trick though, as Cobalt fans were slowly coming out of the woodwork and appreciating this good boy. On and off I’d spread my yelling about Cobalt (and my silly drawings) to different platforms like the Astro Boy forums and tumblr, and even as I got into different things, after awhile, things kinda grew without me. Now I’m not gonna be out here claiming I built this city myself with my own two hands, as a lot of people got dragged into this hell of their own accord, but I do like to think my, umm….passion at least helped generate some interest, and I can’t help but be proud of how far this fandom has come from “Who the hell is Cobalt” to “Look at this good boy, I love him” and literally all the other Cobalt fans I’ve met have been the coolest people (in general, not just because of their good taste).

I think what really changed my life though was when AprilSeven, a mod on the Astro Boy forum and also probably the original Cobalt fan, as she’d seen the 60s version back when it was originally airing, finally got a hold of the undubbed Japanese episodes, and graciously allowed me and a few of the other big-name Cobalt fans get in on that action, and boy howdy, the screenshots and plot summaries really did not do these episodes justice (at least in terms of Cobalt content). My understanding of him as a character expanded like tenfold, and my appreciation of him expanded even more than that.

…Which brings me into a nice segue in which I shift more into just exactly why I like Cobalt so much. Yes, there’s more. I warned y'all, this was gonna be a Pandora’s Box that could not be closed once it was opened.

I honestly just find him a joy to watch. A lot of what made him grow on me was just how funny he is. I’m a sucker for comic relief characters in general, and he has a personality that lends itself to comedy. In the anime version, he’s literally introduced right out the gate as being kind of a dingus. He’s naive, he’s way too trusting of obviously suspicious people, he’s easily confused, he’s easily distracted, he’s a klutz, and he just… regularly destroys the laws of physics and/or the fourth wall just because. Sometimes he also gets weird ideas in his head to do things that could have been done a completely different, easier way and weirdly enough, it actually kind of winds up working? It’s so fun to watch him approach problems because he’s just… so far out there sometimes.

But beyond being absolutely weird and hilarious, he’s just a really sweet kid. He doesn’t like to fight, he wants to make friends with everyone and everything, he will drop literally anything he’s doing, no matter how important it is, to help someone in need, he’s good with babies and small children and puppies (sometimes), he would fight (and sacrifice himself) for his family, and just means well even if he tends to bungle things up and make them worse sometimes. Honestly, and this is gonna sound dumb, but he helped me be a better person. I used to be an absolute asshole when I was younger, but once I’d gotten into Cobalt Hell™, I was like “I wanna be that sweet and good (but with a better sense of stranger danger)” and I made that effort and did that shit.

That being said though, he’s not perfect, and I wouldn’t want him to be. His flaws, though they kind of give him the short end of the stick in life, are a lot of why I find him so endearing. All the naivety and confusion and general lack of coordination I mentioned before aside, he’s honestly just really relatable. He’ll say jokes so bad that Uran wants to punch him, he’ll opt out of the plot because he doesn’t want to get out of bed, he’ll fight with his siblings over silly petty things, he’ll get frustrated if he tries something and it doesn’t go his way, he’ll absolutely partake in his siblings’ mischief (if not start it sometimes), and just so much more. He just feels like a kid you would know (or maybe a kid that you were at one point) and I really appreciate that about him.

Unfortunately, the canon was not kind to Cobalt, and I think a lot of that comes from Osamu Tezuka just… not knowing what to do with him after making him? Like in the manga, he was just kind of created as a really rushed contingency plan because they thought Astro was missing. Sure, he was taken in as part of the family afterward, but not many appearances later, he was killed off in a firey explosion… Until Tezuka decided to change his mind and let him live in the end. His grave’s still there though. He gets to see it. I know it’s a framing device to explain the circumstances of Cobalt’s retconned death but it’s kind of fucked up to let a boy see his own grave..

Even being brought back, Cobalt didn’t get to do very much. He’d get some good scenes with Uran, but a lot of the time, he was sort of just relegated to filling up space in the background, provided he actually survived til the end of the chapter. When he wasn’t getting forgotten by the plot and thusly zapped out of existence, he would wind up sacrificing himself in some way that wouldn’t allow him to continue to take part in the plot anymore (be it parts, energy, etc.) The most painfully egregious example of this is in the chapter “Youth Gas.” Astro and Cobalt are convinced to fight each other to the “death.” They’re not really dead, but Ochanomizu says they are and can’t be repaired. At first, there’s mourning for “two of the world’s greatest robots,” but then we see a funeral service in which only Astro’s body is shown and his parents are only mourning him, completely forgetting Cobalt exists. He’s never seen again for the rest of the chapter. Now I would assume this is just a writing mistake, but it really does make it look like Cobalt’s own parents wouldn’t even bat an eye if he died, so there’s that.

The anime isn’t quite as horrible, and it is kind enough to give Cobalt a more prominent role once he finally shows up (even getting a handful of focus episodes!), but he doesn’t go unscathed either. In this version, he has the misfortune of being created by Dr. Umataro “Father of the Year” Tenma before Astro was made and was scrapped because, to quote dub!Ochan, “his electronic brain wasn’t as perfect as Dr. [Tenma] wanted.” (read: he thought Cobalt was a dumbass). Cobalt is eventually found and brought into the family, but because he still winds up not being relevant to the plot a lot of the time, he is once again zapped out of the existence and looks like a victim of child neglect. As a result, he gets left out of family vacations and holidays, even in favor of Chi-tan, who is usually even higher on the scale of irrelevant Astro Boy characters. Unlike Astro, Cobalt doesn’t have any consistent friends to even remotely justify what he could possibly be doing offscreen by himself, so it just kind of implies a very sad and lonely existence in-universe.

And of course, the final, meta blow that literally every fan of Cobalt is still despairing about to this day: basically being yeeted out of the canon. After the 60s series, he disappeared off the face of the earth until 2015 when some lovely soul decided to bring him back for Peeping Life TV: Season 1?? (The question marks are part of the title). He’d be referenced again a couple years later in Atom: The Beginning, and will be here for the game Eshigami no Kizuna sometime in 2019 as a… moe anime girl. That’s a little weird, but I’m hoping these sorts of weird appearances will mean a trend toward putting him back in the canon (and hopefully being treated better).

It just hurts my heart to see such a good character get treated like this by canon. He deserves way better and it just seems really clear to me that Tezuka didn’t really know what to do with him. I feel like he has a lot of potential as a character, though. Regardless of what origin you pick for him, Cobalt is essentially existing as a worse version of Astro. I feel like you could have some good character development regarding how he would feel about himself in relation to Astro in sort of a parallel to how Astro might feel about himself in relation to Tobio, the person he was based off of. You could go some neat places with these sort of questions about identity and expectations, I think. Or if you want to just do something funny because your character arcs are getting too real now, you can just let Cobalt do some silly shit. He’s a versatile character!

I’ve done all this rambling and now I’m not really sure how to wrap all this up, so umm

Cobalt is a good boy and deserves better, please hire me Tezuka Productions, and thank you for coming to my TED Talk

#cobalt collection #kateh rambles #i feel like there's probably more i could have rambled about believe it or not but this is already so long.......

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unsettlingshortstories · 3 years ago

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Raymond Carver (1981)

My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right.

The four of us were sitting around his kitchen table drinking gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink. There were Mel and me and his second wife, Teresa—Terri, we called her—and my wife, Laura. We lived in Albuquerque then. But we were all from somewhere else.

There was an ice bucket on the table. The gin and the tonic water kept going around, and we somehow got on the subject of love. Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He said he’d spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He said he still looked back on those years in the seminary as the most important years in his life.

Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Mel loved her so much he tried to kill her. Then Terri said, “He beat me up one night. He dragged me around the living room by my ankles. He kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you, you bitch.’ He went on dragging me around the living room. My head kept knocking on things.” Terri looked around the table. “What do you do with love like that?”

She was a bone-thin woman with a pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair that hung down her back. She liked necklaces made of turquoise, and long pendant earrings.

“My God, don’t be silly. That’s not love, and you know it,” Mel said. “I don’t know what you’d call it, but I sure know you wouldn’t call it love.”

“Say what you want to, but I know it was,” Terri said. “It may sound crazy to you, but it’s true just the same. People are different, Mel. Sure, sometimes he may have acted crazy. Okay. But he loved me. In his own way maybe, but he loved me. There was love there, Mel. Don’t say there wasn’t.”

Mel let out his breath. He held his glass and turned to Laura and me. “The man threatened to kill me,” Mel said. He finished his drink and reached for the gin bottle. “Terri’s a romantic. Terri’s of the kick-me-so-I’ll-know-you-love-me school. Terri, hon, don’t look that way.” Mel reached across the table and touched Terri’s cheek with his fingers. He grinned at her.

“Now he wants to make up,” Terri said.

“Make up what?” Mel said. “What is there to make up? I know what I know. That’s all.”

“How’d we get started on this subject, anyway?” Terri said. She raised her glass and drank from it. “Mel always has love on his mind,” she said. “Don’t you, honey?” She smiled, and I thought that was the last of it.

“I just wouldn’t call Ed’s behavior love. That’s all I’m saying, honey,” Mel said. “What about you guys?” Mel said to Laura and me. “Does that sound like love to you?”

“I’m the wrong person to ask,” I said. “I didn’t even know the man. I’ve only heard his name mentioned in passing. I wouldn’t know. You’d have to know the particulars. But I think what you’re saying is that love is an absolute.”

Mel said, “The kind of love I’m talking about is. The kind of love I’m talking about, you don’t try to kill people.”

Laura said, “I don’t know anything about Ed, or anything about the situation. But who can judge anyone else’s situation?”

I touched the back of Laura’s hand. She gave me a quick smile. I picked up Laura’s hand. It was warm, the nails polished, perfectly manicured. I encircled the broad wrist with my fingers, and I held her.

...

“When I left, he drank rat poison,” Terri said. She clasped her arms with her hands. “They took him to the hospital in Santa Fe. That’s where we lived then, about ten miles out. They saved his life. But his gums went crazy from it. I mean they pulled away from his teeth. After that, his teeth stood out like fangs. My God,” Terri said. She waited a minute, then let go of her arms and picked up her glass.

“What people won’t do!” Laura said.

“He’s out of the action now,” Mel said. “He’s dead.”

Mel handed me the saucer of limes. I took a section, squeezed it over my drink, and stirred the ice cubes with my finger.

“It gets worse,” Terri said. “He shot himself in the mouth. But he bungled that too. Poor Ed,” she said. Terri shook her head.

“Poor Ed nothing,” Mel said. “He was dangerous.”

Mel was forty-five years old. He was tall and rangy with curly soft hair. His face and arms were brown from the tennis he played. When he was sober, his gestures, all his movements, were precise, very careful.

“He did love me though, Mel. Grant me that,” Terri said. “That’s all I’m asking. He didn’t love me the way you love me. I’m not saying that. But he loved me. You can grant me that, can’t you?”

“What do you mean, he bungled it?” I said.

Laura leaned forward with her glass. She put her elbows on the table and held her glass in both hands. She glanced from Mel to Terri and waited with a look of bewilderment on her open face, as if amazed that such things happened to people you were friendly with.

“How’d he bungle it when he killed himself?” I said.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Mel said. “He took this twenty-two pistol he’d bought to threaten Terri and me with. Oh, I’m serious, the man was always threatening. You should have seen the way we lived in those days. Like fugitives. I even bought a gun myself. Can you believe it? A guy like me? But I did. I bought one for self-defense and carried it in the glove compartment. Sometimes I’d have to leave the apartment in the middle of the night. To go to the hospital, you know? Terri and I weren’t married then, and my first wife had the house and kids, the dog, everything, and Terri and I were living in this apartment here. Sometimes, as I say, I’d get a call in the middle of the night and have to go in to the hospital at two or three in the morning. It’d be dark out there in the parking lot, and I’d break into a sweat before I could even get to my car. I never knew if he was going to come up out of the shrubbery or from behind a car and start shooting. I mean, the man was crazy. He was capable of wiring a bomb, anything. He used to call my service at all hours and say he needed to talk to the doctor, and when I’d return the call, he’d say, ‘Son of a bitch, your days are numbered.’ Little things like that. It was scary, I’m telling you.”

“I still feel sorry for him,” Terri said.

“It sounds like a nightmare,” Laura said. “But what exactly happened after he shot himself?”

Laura is a legal secretary. We’d met in a professional capacity. Before we knew it, it was a courtship. She’s thirty-five, three years younger than I am. In addition to being in love, we like each other and enjoy one another’s company. She’s easy to be with.

...

“What happened?” Laura said.

Mel said, “He shot himself in the mouth in his room. Someone heard the shot and told the manager. They came in with a passkey, saw what had happened, and called an ambulance. I happened to be there when they brought him in, alive but past recall. The man lived for three days. His head swelled up to twice the size of a normal head. I’d never seen anything like it, and I hope I never do again. Terri wanted to go in and sit with him when she found out about it. We had a fight over it. I didn’t think she should see him like that. I didn’t think she should see him, and I still don’t.”

“Who won the fight?” Laura said.

“I was in the room with him when he died,” Terri said. “He never came up out of it. But I sat with him. He didn’t have anyone else.”

“He was dangerous,” Mel said. “If you call that love, you can have it.”

“It was love,” Terri said. “Sure, it’s abnormal in most people’s eyes. But he was willing to die for it. He did die for it.”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t call it love,” Mel said. “I mean, no one knows what he did it for. I’ve seen a lot of suicides, and I couldn’t say anyone ever knew what they did it for.”

Mel put his hands behind his neck and tilted his chair back. “I’m not interested in that kind of love,” he said. “If that’s love, you can have it.”

Terri said, “We were afraid. Mel even made a will out and wrote to his brother in California who used to be a Green Beret. Mel told him who to look for if something happened to him.”

Terri drank from her glass. She said, “But Mel’s right—we lived like fugitives. We were afraid. Mel was, weren’t you, honey? I even called the police at one point, but they were no help. They said they couldn’t do anything until Ed actually did something. Isn’t that a laugh?” Terri said.

She poured the last of the gin into her glass and waggled the bottle. Mel got up from the table and went to the cupboard. He took down another bottle.

...

“Well, Nick and I know what love is,” Laura said. “For us, I mean,” Laura said. She bumped my knee with her knee. “You’re supposed to say something now,” Laura said, and turned her smile on me.

For an answer, I took Laura’s hand and raised it to my lips. I made a big production out of kissing her hand. Everyone was amused.

“We’re lucky,” I said.

“You guys,” Terri said. “Stop that now. You’re making me sick. You’re still on the honeymoon, for God’s sake. You’re still gaga, for crying out loud. Just wait. How long have you been together now? How long has it been? A year? Longer than a year?”

“Going on a year and a half,” Laura said, flushed and smiling.

“Oh, now,” Terri said. “Wait awhile.”

She held her drink and gazed at Laura.

“I’m only kidding,” Terri said.

Mel opened the gin and went around the table with the bottle.

“Here, you guys,” he said. “Let’s have a toast. I want to propose a toast. A toast to love. To true love,” Mel said.

We touched glasses.

“To love,” we said.

...

Outside in the backyard, one of the dogs began to bark. The leaves of the aspen that leaned past the window ticked against the glass. The afternoon sun was like a presence in this room, the spacious light of ease and generosity. We could have been anywhere, somewhere enchanted. We raised our glasses again and grinned at each other like children who had agreed on something forbidden.

“I’ll tell you what real love is,” Mel said. “I mean, I’ll give you a good example. And then you can draw your own conclusions.” He poured more gin into his glass. He added an ice cube and a sliver of lime. We waited and sipped our drinks. Laura and I touched knees again. I put a hand on her warm thigh and left it there.

“What do any of us really know about love?” Mel said. “It seems to me we’re just beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do, I don’t doubt it. I love Terri and Terri loves me, and you guys love each other too. You know the kind of love I’m talking about now. Physical love, that impulse that drives you to someone special, as well as love of the other person’s being, his or her essence, as it were. Carnal love and, well, call it sentimental love, the day-to-day caring about the other person. But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife too. But I did, I know I did. So I suppose I am like Terri in that regard. Terri and Ed.” He thought about it and then he went on. “There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I’d like to know. I wish someone could tell me. Then there’s Ed. Okay, we’re back to Ed. He loves Terri so much he tries to kill her and he winds up killing himself.” Mel stopped talking and swallowed from his glass. “You guys have been together eighteen months and you love each other. It shows all over you. You glow with it. But you both loved other people before you met each other. You’ve both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved other people before that too, even. Terri and I have been together five years, been married for four. And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us—excuse me for saying this—but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love we’re talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I’m wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don’t know anything, and I’m the first one to admit it.”

“Mel, for God’s sake,” Terri said. She reached out and took hold of his wrist. “Are you getting drunk? Honey? Are you drunk?”

“Honey, I’m just talking,” Mel said. “All right? I don’t have to be drunk to say what I think. I mean, we’re all just talking, right?” Mel said. He fixed his eyes on her.

“Sweetie, I’m not criticizing,” Terri said.

She picked up her glass.

“I’m not on call today,” Mel said. “Let me remind you of that. I am not on call,” he said.

“Mel, we love you,” Laura said.

Mel looked at Laura. He looked at her as if he could not place her, as if she was not the woman she was.

“Love you too, Laura,” Mel said. “And you, Nick, love you too. You know something?” Mel said. “You guys are our pals,” Mel said.

He picked up his glass.

...

Mel said, “I was going to tell you about something. I mean, I was going to prove a point. You see, this happened a few months ago, but it’s still going on right now, and it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we’re talking about when we talk about love.”

“Come on now,” Terri said. “Don’t talk like you’re drunk if you’re not drunk.”

“Just shut up for once in your life,” Mel said very quietly. “Will you do me a favor and do that for a minute? So as I was saying, there’s this old couple who had this car wreck out on the interstate. A kid hit them and they were all torn to shit and nobody was giving them much chance to pull through.”

Terri looked at us and then back at Mel. She seemed anxious, or maybe that’s too strong a word.

Mel was handing the bottle around the table.

“I was on call that night,” Mel said. “It was May or maybe it was June. Terri and I had just sat down to dinner when the hospital called. There’d been this thing out on the interstate. Drunk kid, teenager, plowed his dad’s pickup into this camper with this old couple in it. They were up in their mid-seventies, that couple. The kid—eighteen, nineteen, something—he was DOA. Taken the steering wheel through his sternum. The old couple, they were alive, you understand. I mean, just barely. But they had everything. Multiple fractures, internal injuries, hemorrhaging, contusions, lacerations, the works, and they each of them had themselves concussions. They were in a bad way, believe me. And, of course, their age was two strikes against them. I’d say she was worse off than he was. Ruptured spleen along with everything else. Both kneecaps broken. But they’d been wearing their seatbelts and, God knows, that’s what saved them for the time being.”

“Folks, this is an advertisement for the National Safety Council,” Terri said. “This is your spokesman, Dr. Melvin R. McGinnis, talking.” Terri laughed. “Mel,” she said, “sometimes you’re just too much. But I love you, hon,” she said.

“Honey, I love you,” Mel said.

He leaned across the table. Terri met him halfway. They kissed.

“Terri’s right,” Mel said as he settled himself again. “Get those seatbelts on. But seriously, they were in some shape, those oldsters. By the time I got down there, the kid was dead, as I said. He was off in a corner, laid out on a gurney. I took one look at the old couple and told the ER nurse to get me a neurologist and an orthopedic man and a couple of surgeons down there right away.”

He drank from his glass. “I’ll try to keep this short,” he said. “So we took the two of them up to the OR and worked like fuck on them most of the night. They had these incredible reserves, those two. You see that once in a while. So we did everything that could be done, and toward morning we’re giving them a fifty-fifty chance, maybe less than that for her. So here they are, still alive the next morning. So, okay, we move them into the ICU, which is where they both kept plugging away at it for two weeks, hitting it better and better on all the scopes. So we transfer them out to their own room.”

Mel stopped talking. “Here,” he said, “let’s drink this cheapo gin the hell up. Then we’re going to dinner, right? Terri and I know a new place. That’s where we’ll go, to this new place we know about. But we’re not going until we finish up this cut-rate, lousy gin.”

Terri said, “We haven’t actually eaten there yet. But it looks good. From the outside, you know.”

“I like food,” Mel said. “If I had it to do all over again, I’d be a chef, you know? Right, Terri?” Mel said.

He laughed. He fingered the ice in his glass.

“Terri knows,” he said. “Terri can tell you. But let me say this. If I could come back again in a different life, a different time and all, you know what? I’d like to come back as a knight. You were pretty safe wearing all that armor. It was all right being a knight until gunpowder and muskets and pistols came along.”

“Mel would like to ride a horse and carry a lance,” Terri said.

“Carry a woman’s scarf with you everywhere,” Laura said.

“Or just a woman,” Mel said.

“Shame on you,” Laura said.

Terri said, “Suppose you came back as a serf. The serfs didn’t have it so good in those days,” Terri said.

“The serfs never had it good,” Mel said. “But I guess even the knights were vessels to someone. Isn’t that the way it worked? But then everyone is always a vessel to someone. Isn’t that right? Terri? But what I liked about knights, besides their ladies, was that they had that suit of armor, you know, and they couldn’t get hurt very easy. No cars in those days, you know? No drunk teenagers to tear into your ass.”

...

“Vassals,” Terri said.

“What?” Mel said.

“Vassals,” Terri said. “They were called vassals, not vessels.”

“Vassals, vessels,” Mel said, “what the fuck’s the difference? You knew what I meant anyway. All right,” Mel said. “So I’m not educated. I learned my stuff. I’m a heart surgeon, sure, but I’m just a mechanic. I go in and I fuck around and I fix things. Shit,” Mel said.

“Modesty doesn’t become you,” Terri said.

“He’s just a humble sawbones,” I said. “But sometimes they suffocated in all that armor, Mel. They’d even have heart attacks if it got too hot and they were too tired and worn out. I read somewhere that they’d fall off their horses and not be able to get up because they were too tired to stand with all that armor on them. They got trampled by their own horses sometimes.”

“That’s terrible,” Mel said. “That’s a terrible thing, Nicky. I guess they’d just lay there and wait until somebody came along and made a shish kebab out of them.”

“Some other vessel,” Terri said.

“That’s right,” Mel said. “Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love. Or whatever the fuck it was they fought over in those days.”

“Same things we fight over these days,” Terri said.

Laura said, “Nothing’s changed.”

The color was still high in Laura’s cheeks. Her eyes were bright. She brought her glass to her lips.

Mel poured himself another drink. He looked at the label closely as if studying a long row of numbers. Then he slowly put the bottle down on the table and slowly reached for the tonic water.

...

“What about the old couple?” Laura said. “You didn’t finish that story you started.”

Laura was having a hard time lighting her cigarette. Her matches kept going out.

The sunshine inside the room was different now, changing, getting thinner. But the leaves outside the window were still shimmering, and I stared at the pattern they made on the panes and on the Formica counter. They weren’t the same patterns, of course.

“What about the old couple?” I said.

“Older but wiser,” Terri said.

Mel stared at her.

Terri said, “Go on with your story, hon. I was only kidding. Then what happened?”

“Terri, sometimes,” Mel said.

“Please, Mel,” Terri said. “Don’t always be so serious, sweetie. Can’t you take a joke?”

“Where’s the joke?” Mel said.

He held his glass and gazed steadily at his wife.

“What happened?” Laura said.

Mel fastened his eyes on Laura. He said, “Laura, if I didn’t have Terri and if I didn’t love her so much, and if Nick wasn’t my best friend, I’d fall in love with you. I’d carry you off, honey,” he said.

“Tell your story,” Terri said. “Then we’ll go to that new place, okay?”

“Okay,” Mel said. “Where was I?” he said. He stared at the table and then he began again.

“I dropped in to see each of them every day, sometimes twice a day if I was up doing other calls anyway. Casts and bandages, head to foot, the both of them. You know, you’ve seen it in the movies. That’s just the way they looked, just like in the movies. Little eye-holes and nose-holes and mouth-holes. And she had to have her legs slung up on top of it. Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn’t everything. I’d get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he’d say no, it wasn’t the accident exactly but it was because he couldn’t see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel so bad. Can you imagine? I’m telling you, the man’s heart was breaking because he couldn’t turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.”

Mel looked around the table and shook his head at what he was going to say.

“I mean, it was killing the old fart just because he couldn’t look at the fucking woman.”

We all looked at Mel.

“Do you see what I’m saying?” he said.

...

Maybe we were a little drunk by then. I know it was hard keeping things in focus. The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from. Yet nobody made a move to get up from the table to turn on the overhead light.

“Listen,” Mel said. “Let’s finish this fucking gin. There’s about enough left here for one shooter all around. Then let’s go eat. Let’s go to the new place.”

“He’s depressed,” Terri said. “Mel, why don’t you take a pill?”

Mel shook his head. “I’ve taken everything there is.”

“We all need a pill now and then,” I said.

“Some people are born needing them,” Terri said.

She was using her finger to rub at something on the table. Then she stopped rubbing.

“I think I want to call my kids,” Mel said. “Is that all right with everybody? I’ll call my kids,” he said.

Terri said, “What if Marjorie answers the phone? You guys, you’ve heard us on the subject of Marjorie? Honey, you know you don’t want to talk to Marjorie. It’ll make you feel even worse.”

“I don’t want to talk to Marjorie,” Mel said. “But I want to talk to my kids.”

“There isn’t a day goes by that Mel doesn’t say he wishes she’d get married again. Or else die,” Terri said. “For one thing,” Terri said, “she’s bankrupting us. Mel says it’s just to spite him that she won’t get married again. She has a boyfriend who lives with her and the kids, so Mel is supporting the boyfriend too.”

“She’s allergic to bees,” Mel said. “If I’m not praying she’ll get married again, I’m praying she’ll get herself stung to death by a swarm of fucking bees.”

“Shame on you,” Laura said.

“Bzzzzzzz,” Mel said, turning his fingers into bees and buzzing them at Terri’s throat. Then he let his hands drop all the way to his sides.

“She’s vicious,” Mel said. “Sometimes I think I’ll go up there dressed like a beekeeper. You know, that hat that’s like a helmet with the plate that comes down over your face, the big gloves, and the padded coat? I’ll knock on the door and let loose a hive of bees in the house. But first I’d make sure the kids were out, of course.”

He crossed one leg over the other. It seemed to take him a lot of time to do it. Then he put both feet on the floor and leaned forward, elbows on the table, his chin cupped in his hands.

“Maybe I won’t call the kids, after all. Maybe it isn’t such a hot idea. Maybe we’ll just go eat. How does that sound?”

“Sounds fine to me,” I said. “Eat or not eat. Or keep drinking. I could head right on out into the sunset.”

“What does that mean, honey?” Laura said.

“It just means what I said,” I said. “It means I could just keep going. That’s all it means.”

“I could eat something myself,” Laura said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so hungry in my life. Is there something to nibble on?”

“I’ll put out some cheese and crackers,” Terri said.

But Terri just sat there. She did not get up to get anything.

Mel turned his glass over. He spilled it out on the table.

“Gin’s gone,” Mel said.

Terri said, “Now what?”

I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone’s heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.

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d2kvirus · 5 years ago

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Dickheads of the Month: August 2019

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of August 2019 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

When there was the possibility of the parliamentary sovereignty that Leavers harp on about, off sprinted proven liar Boris Johnson to Balmoral to beg the Queen to suspend parliament in order to force through a No Deal Britait - but of course, everyone but him are the “traitors” in this sordid affair, even after Ben Wallace apparently forgot that cameras and microphones exist when blabbing about how Johnson did this due to fearing that his working majority of one wouldn't survive a No Confidence vote

It was so nice of Michael Coudrey to post a blatantly faked screenshot of El Paso shooter Patrick Crusias’ MyLife profile page to try and claim that Crusas was a left-wing extremist rather than, oh I don’t know, a white supremacist who happened to parrot several of Trump’s soundbites about Hispanics, let alone consider that maybe mass shootings are something that shouldn’t happen with alarming frequency

Meanwhile it was equally predictable that Paul Joseph Watson was jumping up and down yelling “See! See! A leftist went on a killing spree!” which not only made it obvious he was trying to divert attention from the El Paso shooter, but also drew attention to the fact that while the alt right were tripping over one another to make excuses for Patrick Crusas as he’s some poor innocent victim of society, as soon as it emerged that Connor Betts isn’t one of them the excuses evaporated

So naturally, peak twattery followed when Dmitriy Andreychenko walked into his local Missouri branch of Walmart toting a tactical rifle and handgun while wearing body armor, and when he was arrested for being such a monumental fuckwit he bleated something about testing to see if Walmart respected his Second Amendment rights

Yet somehow the UK couldn’t laugh at Americans trying to blame video games for mass shootings thanks to Priti Patel trying to create a direct link between stabbings and fried chicken

Of course Jo Swinson has taken it upon herself to say she and only she can stop Britait, which was obvious by her rejecting Jeremy Corbyn’s proposal of an interim government out of hand without any reason in spite of the fact that, as Leader of the Opposition, of a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson does get through the Commons it will be Corbyn who is asked to put together an interim government - but Jo Swinson instead suggested the first tow backbenchers she could think of because she cannot countenance the idea of Labour stopping Britait, as at that point what is she other than somebody who lies about her voting record?

This month it was Arron Banks who wanted to sound triggered to a sociopathic degree by Greta Thunberg with his lovely response to her yachting across the Atlantic by tweeting that freak yachting accidents tend to happen at this time of year, while Julia Halfwit Hartley-Brewer posted some lame tweet gloating about she and her family would be flying across the Atlantic instead, meanwhile Roger Helmer resorted to calling her a “Swedish pixie” during one of the rare occasions he remained awake when in public and Paul Joseph Watson talked about how an autistic girl was being “exploited” - but because Arron Banks has to be Arron Banks, he had to have the most cuntish last word and said it was just a joke...like saying women wearing burqas look like letterboxes

As if proven liar Boris Johnson hadn’t used the NHS as a platform for his outright lies enough in the past three years, he pledged an increase in funding...that was actually funding that NHS providers had been saving up for the past three years, but had been unable to spend in that time as the Tory government banned them from spending it...until it became convenient enough to allow them to spend their own money

If only somebody suggested to Lou Dobbs that, if you see a group of protesters sat in the road outside the ICE facility that employs you, driving your truck just inches from their faces is guaranteed to piss them off - and then using that as an excuse to plow through the pissed off crowd is guaranteed to cost you your job and piss off everyone bar the weirdos who believe it’s not vehicular assault if you run into people with differing opinions to you

It clearly did not occur to Steve King when trying to find a logical reason to say abortions should be banned that saying the human race may not exist if not for cases of rape and incest tens of thousands of years ago doesn’t in any way defend his position, instead make it sound uncannily like he’s on the side of those who raped and pillaged

It didn’t take long before Boris Johnson started reading from the Bannon playbook, stating that he would not take interviews with the press as they’re all biased against him - yes, even the BBC, the Murdoch Empire, the Daily Mail and Daily Express, all of whom have been churning out unthinkingly slanted headlines in his favour

It was so nice that James Cleverly repeatedly wanted to talk about how the Tory MP William Wilberforce fought to end slavery...even after it was pointed out to him the first time he made that statement that Wilberforce stood as an independent and not a Tory, no matter how many times Cleverly tries to rewrite history

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight: the Lib Dems state that they will do everything in their power to stop Britait...yet Jo Swinson has ruled out going into coalition with either Labour or the SNP, in spite the fact they both have far more MPs than the Lib Dems and just so happen to also be opposing Britait

Similarly, the best idea Caroline Lucas had for solving Britait was for an all-woman cabinet that just so happened to include her, Jo Swinson, Heidi Allen, Justine Greening, Yvette Cooper and Anna Soubry among others - and seemed confused when it was mentioned that not only did her dream cabinet exclude all men but it didn’t include a single non-white MP either, and appears to have forgotten that a woman spent between 2016-19 fucking the process up at every turn

In the latest Priti Patel brainfart, she suggested that migrants earning less than £36,000 a year are no longer welcome in the UK...clearly failing to comprehend that arbitrary figure is higher than the basic salary of any member of NHS staff, any teacher or any police officer - you know, something a Home Secretary should be able to understand...

Walking proof that nominative determinism isn't really a thing James Cleverley could only try and claim that the leaked Operation Yellowhammer dossier was “out of date” and was no remotely relevant to any discussion about what would happen if the UK leaves the EU without a deal...even though the dossier was dated 1st August 2019

There was something deeply sinister about how the BBC described Owen Jones as a “Labour activist” after he was assaulted, as opposed to...oh I don’t know? A journalist?

With the Leave hardcore now lionising chlorinated chicken of all things, it;s not surprise that Darren Grimes tried to say there’s no issue because we also have chlorinated water...somehow spectacularly missing the point

I have no idea how the Entertainment Software Association managed to bungle so badly that they managed to release the personal information of thousands of people who attended this year’s E3, including games journalists and Youtubers/Twitch streamers, but they managed it nonetheless

In a quite remarkable turn of events there was a controversy regarding Borderlands 3 that didn’t involve Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, instead it was Take Two Interactive sending private investigators to the doorstep of Youtuber SupMatto to harass him into keeping quiet, and because he wasn’t keeping quiet they abused Youtube’s copyright system on an industrial scale with over 100 copyright strikes to force him off the platform because of reasons

For a documentarian Stacey Dooley makes an awful lot of factual blunders, the latest of which being a Panorama documentary where she described a Muslim prayer gesture as an “ISIS salute”, leading to the BBC removing the clip from the documentary...on the iPlayer, but leaving it in unchallenged for its initial broadcast

You would think that Microsoft wouldn’t be so dense as to release an update that cripples the computers of everyone using Windows 7 due to somebody typing a 2 instead of a 1 in one line of code, but that’s exactly what happened with the KB4512506 update that was coded by someone who assumed everyone has Windows 10

As it was time for Suzanne Moore to vomit another opinion piece into the pages of the Guardian, she took it upon herself to write a piece that managed to insinuate that Shilpa Shetty somehow deserved the racial abuse she received from Jade Goody, Jo O’Meara and Danielle Lloyd on Celebrity Big Brother back in 2007 because...hold on a minute...because Shetty had servants at home while the others didn’t which apparently makes it alright

The outraged howls from Manchester City fans and football pundits alike all because VAR rightly disallowed what would have been a last-minute winner for City was truly a sight to behold, because apparently VAR exists to make things easier for a small kabal of teams and everyone else can get fucked

...and demonstrated by Mike Dean using The Wenger Defence of “I didn’t see it guv” a week later to overrule VAR stating that Tottenham should have been awarded a penalty

...and yet the depths were truly plumbed when Ian Holloway blamed the EU for the fact he doesn’t understand the offside law, even though as a football pundit (and former manager) he’s literally paid to understand it

Ooblets developers Glumberland decided to double down on their dickheadishness which began with their smug and condescending blog post explaining why they decided to make their game an Epic Games Store exclusive, but they followed that up by acting like complete bellends on their Discord that culminated with them responding to somebody asking when they could buy the game with their own currency by telling them that nobody owed them the game

With both Bury and Bolton facing extinction, trust Sky Sports News to cover this by having a clock ticking down in the corner of the screen all day, as if the possibility (and, in Bury’s case, eventuality) of a club being kicked out of the league was the same thing as Deadline Day

Britain’s most triggered man Piers Moron Morgan was predictably irked by the Meghan Markle guest-editing Vogue because obviously somebody doing that is only after the publicity...a sentiment he neglected to express when Kate Middleton did the exact same thing a few years previously

The sensible thing that Bethesda should have done after the have done after the humiliation conga line that was Fallout 76 was try not to do anything that would irritate gamers further. So instead they decided that, when releasing Doom - that’s the 1993 original, not the 2016 reboot - it would require players to use their Bethesda account to play the actual game

I know it’s a cheapshot, but did UKIP really elect somebody named Dick Braine as their new leader?

How the hell did Apple develop a credit card that gets discoloured if it touches materials such as denim or leather, or to put it another way if it’s in somebody’s pocket or wallet? What are they supposed to do? Carry it around in their hand at maximum reach?

If you have a name like Michael Buerk it isn’t a good idea to make your name fair game, but that’s exactly what he did when he suggested that it’s potentially a good thing for obese people to die early as it would save the NHS money

And of course, it wouldn't be a month without Donald Trump being a colossal cockhead, and he certainly disappoint with his prioritising schmoozing with guests at Mar A Lago while people in Dayton and El Paso were experiencing the aftermath of their respective mass shootings, and when the Orange Overlord deigned to make a statement he not only demonstrated he couldn’t give a toss by talking about the mass shootings in Toledo and El Paso, but his response to it being plain for all to see that white nationalism was the catalyst for both was to blame video games for all of society’s ills

#dickheads of the month

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castanews530-blog · 6 years ago

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One of the first short stories I’ve written...

Does The Coyote Ever Win?

You are like the Sun

With your smile being its rays

Beaming brightly and like a

Thompson Submachine Gun

It rips through my dark clouds

Of sadness and

Makes all my days.

I hope this isn't cheesy

Like a Packer fan at Lambeau field

But I really like you

And I’d like to be your boyfriend.

I gave this poem to my high school crush. The paper, once crisp and fresh from the binder, was crinkled and stained from age. The message however, was still fresh from the heart.

“Hey man, I think I like like a girl,” I confessed to my buddy, Tico, the day before I gave it to her. The lunch bell had rung and people squeezed out of classrooms towards the cafeteria or little food carts that were stationed just outside the cafeteria. People were with their cliques. Jocks in their lettermans howling in laughter over some penis joke, preppy girls covering their mouths in shock over some gossip, and geeks having a debate over whether Batman or Superman was better. We were under a shade of a tree, waiting for the rest of our friends to meet us there. He was tall, yet lanky. He carried a constant look of ogle on his face, as he checked out every female that walked by him. I was a little shorter than him, lean and handsome, although at the time nobody could convince me of this.

He dropped that look and his eyes widened.

“Really?! Who is it,” he demanded to know.

Having never shown much interest in women, he constantly made jokes about my sexual orientation. I was not surprised he was surprised.

“Well,” I slowly started to sputter, “I-I kinda like Lyd-Lydia.”

“Her!?” he squawked with his jaw agape in confusion. “You’re joking, right?”

“What wrong with her?”

“Everything bro. She doesn’t have an ass or tits.”

“That’s not all a woman is.”

“Yeah it is.”

“Ok, maybe to you, but there’s more to a woman than that. There’s their personality, their character, and how they really make you feel.”

A voluptuous girl passed by and Tico gave her an eyeful. I did too.

“Well, I’m pretty sure I know how she makes me feel and it isn’t hard to figure out even though it’s literally hard.”

“Really? Is that all you think about, asses? Have you ever seen Forrest Gump?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Well, what Forrest and Jenny had, I want that. That bond they had together. Did you not see the beautiful moments they had together?”

“No, I fell asleep halfway through. It was a hella long movie.”

I gave up. Nobody seemed to be interested in deeper connections to each other. Especially him. The only connection he was concerned about was the one that happens between genitals of the opposite sex.

“Then what’s so special about her? Is she easy?”

“I don’t want her for that. She’s an amazing person, always smiling and bringing cheer to everyone when she high-fives everyone. I just want her to be with me like Jenny was to Forrest.”

“Hey, didn’t the Jenny girl avoid him for most of the movie?”

“I thought you fell asleep through the movie!”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

“Nevermind that. I have been trying to figure out how to get her to like me.”

“Just ask her out.”

I was stunned. It had been on my mind for awhile.

“I can’t just ask her out. I haven't even talked to her besides saying hi and goodbye. I gotta talk to her first, right?”

“Just ask her out.”

“That’s it? That’s all I have to do? She’ll be my girlfriend if I just ask her?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“I don’t know, don’t I have to do something cool, like be good at some sport or be really smart that I can teach the class, or if ninjas came to kidnap her, I’d use some hidden kung fu ability in me to kick their asses, save her and ride off into the sunset?”

“You don’t even have a car.”

“That’s not the point, but still. All I have to do is ask her?”

“Hmm, if you don’t believe me then why don’t you write her a love letter.”

“Really? That works?”

“Yeah, I think it will. Girls like honesty or some shit like that.”

It started to make sense. It was perfect. I was a pretty good writer, even though I had never written any kind of poem before. If I could masterfully use my words to show her my feelings, then she’ll be by my side the moment she finished reading my passionate and romantic poem.

Later that evening I immediately went to my room. At my desk, littered with old papers and doodles, I searched my bag for a pen and some binder paper. The old stuff on my desk was cleared and expecting to start pumping out my amorous epic, I stared into the paper.

My little brother then knocked on the door.

“Hey, that movie you like is on TNT!” he informed me.

“Which one?” I responded still staring at the paper.

‘The one about a guy named Harry and how he met Sally.” He answered.

“Oh, I think I’m gonna skip it for tonight.”

“Really?” he voiced with an air of bewilderment, “You always watch those cheesy movies! Are you ok?”

“Yes, I’m ok. Leave me alone.”

“Can I play the PS3 then?”

“Go for it.”

Suddenly animated, he ran to the living room.

Finally I convinced myself that whatever comes from my mind will be honest and true so without fear, I wrote nonstop for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, I told myself: She is gonna love it.

“Bro, she is gonna hate it .” I said the next day.

“Nah, man she’ll like it.” He was reading it and giggling.

“Then why are you laughing bro?”

“Nah man, you’re good. It’s fine. Make sure you give it to her.”

Lydia hasn't come in yet and I had to make a move. I made up my mind.

“Bro I don't think I can do this.” I said as I started to put the letter away in my backpack. Tico then abruptly reached in and snatched it.

“ I’ll do it.” he said as he rushed to Lydia’s desk.

“No! Wait!”

He left it on her her desk and when he got back to his respective seat, he gave me a double thumbs up.

“Hey!!!!” a shrill and feminine voice squealed out. Lydia had walked in. My face suddenly filled with the cold air of anxiety.

With black hair that she kept in a bun, she had soft hazel eyes, with a tranquil look. But her mouth was brimming with a smile as she greeted everyone joyfully. Her petite skinny frame walked around the class, making her rounds to say hi to everyone. She approached me and with that clarion voice, semi screamed out, “Wiley!!! What’s up!!!?”

“Um…. hi.” I managed to mumble out as I timidly smiled back. She smiled back and walked on to her desk while saluting the classmates on her way there.

As Lydia walked over to her desk, my face went from cold to hot as it sweltered up. I foresaw all the scnenarios that could occur. Maybe she will read it and smile at me across the room. Maybe she’ll read it and look at it in disgust. Maybe some sweet savior was gonna pull the fire alarm as a prank and as everyone would leave the room, I would snatch the letter and rip it up.

Lydia spotted the letter when she got to her desk. She put down her bags, picked up the letter and started reading it as she sat down with a serious look on her face. I could not bear to look at her reaction, so I just scoped on the teacher for the rest of class, never looking at Lydia’s direction.

When class finally ended, I was already out the door and free from a blundering disaster.

“Hey, Wiley!” a shrill voice resonated in the hall before students started to fill it. .

I stopped and looked back. Lydia stood there with the poem in her hand. She had a stoic stare.

“Hey, uh, Lydia.” I stammered out. I slowly walked towards her. I briefly looked at her eyes then away in angst towards the floor. Then I looked at her again.

“I read your letter,” she told me, looking at my eyes. Her face was not enthusiastic nor was it disgusted.

“Oh yeah? Um,....what… what did y-y-you think?” My heart was beating as if it was trying to get out of my chest like some Alien creature. That would have been preferable.

She took her time to find her words and with a fresh smile, she chimed, “Well, Wiley it was very nice!”

I saw hope.

“But I don’t really think of you that way. I really appreciate the letter, though.”

The hope was stomped on.. I was done. I had to transfer to another school. Another county. Another state. Mars was a possibility.

“Oh yeah, I mean,” I jittered, “that’s fine. I-I-I….,” Words could not leave my mouth. Visibly trembling, I looked up and took a breath.

“ ...had to try, you know,” I blabbered off as I turned and ran away. I could never face her again.

I spent the next 3 years in self-imposed exile. I spent my lunches in the band room where it was desolate of people, save for a few people practicing their instruments. I never talked to Tico again, since he was responsible suggesting and giving that poem to Lydia. I didn’t hang out with anyone. My evenings were filled with homework and early 90’s Tom Hanks romcoms. I still yearned for my Jenny, my someone to meet on top of the Empire State Building. But the fear of bungling another attempt to talk to a girl crippled me, until prom season came around.

Everywhere I went on campus, someone was asking someone else to prom. Some guy was able to get an extra large pizza with PROM? written on it with pepperoni. Another guy wrote it on his car. One guy simply got on top of the roof and screamed it out. I admired all these efforts in envy. I had to get a prom date. So as I went through one school day, I scouted for a girl I can like.

In one of my classes, I was sitting in my desk, browsing at all the females in my class. I was too afraid to make any move.

Suddenly a tap on the shoulder broke my concentration, and I turned around.

“Can I like, borrow a piece of paper?” said Liz, my classmate behind me. She had black hair with streaks of blonde. Chubby yet buxom, I found her sexually attractive, but she put on an overkill of make up. Her lips were bright red and her blush made her skin look like pastel. She also had a reputation of being easy, as I remember Tico telling me three years ago. But I decided to take the plunge.

“Um… yeah… sure, hold on, let me get it,” I suddenly said, “So… how’s your day going?”

“OK.” she guilelessly replied.

“That’s good.” I responded. “It’s pretty hot out there, huh.”

“I'm actually cold.”

“Oh really?” I nodded my head in search of a different topic, “You know… I’m wondering if you would… you know, like come with me….. um I mean…. if you would like to…. you know… get…. some… coffee?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I was astonished. I had finally gotten a girl to go get coffee with me!

“Ok, great…. um let’s go to that one Starbucks near the grocery store?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s cool.” she answered back.

“Alright then, see you then.” and turned back around. The class was barely starting.

Later that evening, I was waiting at a table outside the Starbucks with two frappucinos. I had asked her if she liked frappucinos, and she simply replied with “yea”. A car pulled up and Liz exited it. She saw me and walked towards me.

“Hi” she said.

“Uh, hey,” I replied awkwardly at first, then quickly flashing the smile I had practiced in front of a mirror the night before. She smiled back and sat down. On a roll here.

“So I got you a caramel frappucino,” I told her, pushing the beverage towards her on the table, “I didn’t know if you liked whipped cream or not, but I thought that if you didn’t want whipped cream you could have mine which I ordered without whipped cream. Is that cool?”

“I don’t care.” she quaintly said.

“Oh ok, then I’ll take the whipped cream one. Unless you want it I mean, it’s totally cool if you want it.”

“It’s ok”

“Ok, then it’s settled.” and I took a sip of the beverage, while looking away from Liz.

“So what are you doing after you graduate?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, I see. Do you like, want to go somewhere?”

“Not really.”

“Mmm, that’s cool. Say have you got a prom date?”

“No.”

“Oh that’s interesting.”

“Yeah.”

I took another sip of my drink, and kept sipping for 10 minutes in silence.

“So I have to go,” Liz then said, “My mom only brought me here so she can shop and she’s done.”

“Oh that’s cool,” I said, then as she was about to get off from her seat, I hurriedly added in, “but-but hey maybe we could a movie on Friday?”

“Sure.”

“Great, I’ll see you then.”

Friday finally came, and I had decided to ask Liz to prom. Originally, I was going to get the movie theater to print out a ticket that said, Will you be my prom date? Unfortunately the employees could not figure out how to work the machine so I decided to draw my own ticket and have her find it somehow.

With the fake movie ticket on hand, I waited for Liz outside the theater. A drove up and Liz exited it. Said our hi’s and went to the box office to get our tickets.

Once inside the auditorium, we sat on the right side with all the lover seats of two. We were armed with popcorn and drinks. I was still trying to figure out how to indirectly give her the ticket. She was constantly grabbing and eating her popcorn. So when she was not looking, I slipped the ticket in the popcorn bucket and stared at the movie screen. I surveilled her from the side of my vision, waiting for her to find the ticket, smile and say yes.

Thirty minutes have passed and she was still munching away at her popcorn, but she was starting to slow down. I was starting to get restless.

Suddenly, I hear a gasp and then a puking sound. I looked over and she was choking. I got up and I tried to stand her up. She stood up but fell to the littered ground, gasping for any air. I tried to do what I thought was CPR. I put my hands on her chest and she looked at me like a pervert. I pushed down and she moved my hands away in suffering anger. Finally someone else jumped in and did it correctly. She coughed out a piece of paper. It was my movie ticket.

At the beginning of the last week of school, for some reason I decided to get there really early. At five in the morning I set off to school, with the sun barely beginning to rise. This caused the sky to look purplish, as if night and day were mixed together. I walked through the chill suburb, and crossed the main streets that were starting to grow alive with people going to their jobs, truckers leaving after shipping in the night and bums starting to wake up from the bus benches.

The school was empty at this hour. The sun faced the bench and glimmers of it were slowly hit it. I took off my glasses and put them on my lap. A pretty girl then approached me, and asked me for directions to a classroom. I promptly got up and showed her where it was. She thanked me and I went back to the bench, proud of the good deed.

I sat down and took a book from my backpack. Then realized that I did not have my glasses. I inspected the bench and they were not there. I figured that I must have accidently put them in my locker, so I went over to my locker and tossed it around in search of my glasses. I gave up and went back to the bench blind.

I noticed a person sitting on the bench as I walked over. It appeared to be a girl. I could not recognize her because of my Velma vision. Part of me wanted to go get my stuff and go somewhere else. But determined to learn how to talk to girls once and for all, I decided to engage her. I will make friends with this girl. It was my mission and I was going to accomplish it. It was Lydia.

“Lydia?” I astoundedly asked. Oh shit. Abort! Abort!!!! My mind rang out.

“Wiley!” she shrilled in delight.

“What are you doing here so early?” I asked.

“Well, my mom has work early in the morning and she’s using my car so I have to come to school at this hour.”

I chuckled, “This is funny. I never expected to see you at this hour.I never expected to see you at all!”

“Yeah, me neither!” she said. “Where are your glasses?”

“Oh, yeah, funny story. I think I lost them helping out a cute girl.” I said with a sly grin on my face.

Immediately she burst out laughing.

“That’s so funny. You are so clumsy Wiley.”

“I guess I am,” I chuckled.

As the sun began to rise and fully beam the bench as we engaged in deep conversation about what we had been up to.

We went to a Starbucks later that day. It was close to a supermarket, and the shoppers coming out were interesting looking characters. We made up stories about them. Middle aged guy with a shaggy beard was probably in Vietnam and if he talked to you, he would show you all his gun permits, tell you what he thought about Woodstock and go on a profanity laced rant about it even though you did not ask for it. A big lady wearing a nightgown with a cart full of cat litter. Most likely a crazy cat lady. Dude wearing a tight dress shirt, untucked, with slim jeans and dark shades even though it wasn’t even sunny, so he was most likely a axe spraying, womanizing douche. It beat looking at clouds.

She talked about how she loved golf, how she loved being a babysitter, and how close she was to her former middle school teachers. She was going to attend the same college as one of them.

I told her about my desires to help people too. How I wanted to be a lawyer and hopefully run for office. I admitted that I had my anxiety but I was willing to work on it.

For lunch the next day, we went to McDonalds. Lydia had her car so we would go through the drive thru. I’d order two McChickens and she would order a Happy Meal.

But we would also order twenty piece McNuggets for us both and eat them while she drove. I was the sauce man, holding the sauce for us both, while she, with one hand on the wheel, recklessly drove as she dipped and ate her nuggets. We were the fast food Bonnie and Clyde.

On a different night, we were eating at Panera Bread and I was enjoying my cheddar broccoli soup so much that I took the unfinished bowl with me without thinking when we left.

“Oh my god, Wiley!” She told me when we got in the car. “Did you just steal a bowl?”

“Oh Jesus, I did,” I said finally realizing what I did. “But it was so good!”

She stared at me with serious look, “Oh Wiley! You are going to get me in trouble! I am your accomplice!”

Oh no, not again. This can’t be happening again.

She then broke her stare and busted out in laughter, “Oh, Wiley you are so clumsy and badass!”

Oh thank you, sweet baby Jesus.

“Yeah, so that means you are just as bad ass as me since you are my accomplice!” I responded back, with a brimming smile.

“ Um, excuse me? I was already badass, ok?” he mockingly said, “Have you seen Pulp Fiction?”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty awesome movie!”

“Well, you know what Samuel Jackson has inscribed on his wallet?”

“Yeah, bad ass motherfucker,” I laughed.

“That is what we are! Bad ass motherfuckers! We are BAMFs!”

I burst out laughing because I could not believe that such words would come out of someone so nice and respectful.

High school ended and we were both shipping out of town for college. I was bound for UCLA, while she was heading off to an all girl school in Missouri. On the last day before she was to leave, we hung out at the Starbucks.

When she drove into my driveway to drop me off, I looked at her with a serious look.

“You know, this last week with you was awesome, especially because of you.” I said. “You are really the best friend anyone can have. You cheer me up with that smile, and make me laugh.”

She looked at me, and then smiled with tears starting to develop.

“Wiley, I want you to know that you are an awesome guy, and you have been so important in my life, but I am just not about dating or things like that. And also we are young, and heading off in different directions. We have to expand our horizons and meet new people.”

I looked her and smiled, with tears starting to develop in my own eyes. “Ok, I understand. I really appreciate you being my BAMF.”

And with that we hugged tightly in the car.

“I gotta give it to you though,” she said after letting go of me. “That was better than that letter.”

“Hey, now, you told me you liked it!” I joked. And with that, we said our goodbyes and off she was to Missouri.

I found the poem in her belongings up in the attic. She had the Panera bowl. Pictures of us that she took. A wave of reminiscence washed through me. After sixty years of being together, 50 of those years married and with four kids, I realized I didn’t find my Jenny. Jenny was hardly together with Forrest. I found my Lydia. I may not have had the smoothest record with women, but nobody ever takes the same exact path to get to where they are going or to get what they want. Every path is unique, just like my Lydia.

I left the poem next to her when she was buried. Although I may be sad now, I know I’ll see her again. She came back into my life that last week of school. She came back after college to be with me and get married. By now, I know it’s not a coincidence.

#lovestory #looselybased

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