#california has long eluded me!

[pallanophblargh]

Ya know.... I really need to make the California Vacation happen this year. You know: 3 years into the plague, 3 years after its initial planned date... Come hell or high water, and I know we’ll be getting both.

Still aiming to end up at Sequoia/King’s Canyon NP, and since I’m planning on taking the Amtrak California Zephyr line, I’ll find myself in the bay area. Hopefully I’ll see some things in the area, and check out some redwoods before moving south. 

I mean, I’ve never made it out to California yet and it’s high time I did. Been and done the east coast, it’s time to head properly west (once more!!!)

(Glacier National park is ALSO on the bucket list, and is even easier to access because I live a few miles from the Empire Builder Amtrak line)

[sweetbans29]

Feud - CC

Pairing: Caitlin Clark x Reader

Summary: You and Caitlin navigate a long-standing basketball feud (based on THIS, THIS, and THIS request)

Warnings: mentions of injury, slight angst, happy ending

Word Count: 4.4k

Sweetbans Masterlist

AN: I am saying this now, I do not think I will be doing a part 2 for this. Not anywhere in the near future at least.

If someone were to tell you by your senior year of high school you would have a rivalry going on between you and some girl from Iowa, you would call them crazy.

You grew up in Southern California - attending Mater Dei High School and playing ball year-round. You were looked at as one of the most promising college recruits alongside girls like Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark. As exciting as it is to be named alongside these girls - it also came with its challenges.

The media caught wind that you were talking to Iowa. Talking initially all about how Iowa was going to be a powerhouse of a team having both you and Caitlin. When you announced that you committed to South Carolina - that is when they immediately pitted the two of you against each other.

It was all funny to you since you had never met the girl. You were encouraged to not look into what the media was saying but there were times that just wasn't possible. You saw how they compared the two of you - never showing the full truth. Even in the facts, they would only take bits and pieces of it and try to show the world how one was better than the other.

When you got to college - it only got worse. You remember your first game against Iowa. It had been all the media could talk about - seeing you go up against Clark for the first time. You saw headlines that went from saying how you didn't want to live in Caitlin's shadow or how you couldn't keep up with Caitlin's growth. Other headlines talked about how she hated you so much that she made you choose a different state to go to school. All of it was a load of bull in your opinion.

At your first game against the Hawkeyes, you were more nervous about all the talk surrounding you and Caitlin than the game itself. You couldn't get the last headline out of your head - 'Caitlin Clark to run circles around SC's freshman'.

"Hey, don't let any of what they are saying get to you," one of your teammates Aliyah says breaking you from the trance you were in.

"Ya, no. I'm good," you say coming back to reality. Aliyah just nods, giving your shoulder a squeeze.

The team goes and plays an incredible game. You were up at the half and were ready to take the second half which is exactly what you did. It was probably your best game yet and you couldn't be more proud.

At the end of the game, someone comes into your locker room and asks you to step outside. You follow before heading to the pressor to find Caitlin standing in an empty hall.

You are surprised and nervous all of a sudden but make your way over to the girl.

"Hi," you say not really sure what to say.

"Hi," she says back. As if just as nervous as you, she awkwardly extends her hand, "I'm Caitlin." You shake her hand and introduce yourself. She continues.

"I wanted to meet you in person in a controlled environment," she says with a little laugh eluding to hiding your first meeting from the media.

"Ya, they have been sort of insane," you say with a laugh of your own. "You had a really solid game today - I can see why so many people love you." You look at the girl standing before you and see her begin to fidget.

"Me?" She says on the verge of shock. " You dominated that court today - I was having a hard time keeping up with you. If anyone had a solid game it was you." She says.

"Well, thank you CC." You say with a smile. "That means a lot coming from you."

"Of course..." She says.

"I am really glad you came here," you begin. "If I'm honest - the media has been a lot recently and I know you are nothing like they are making you out to be. I don't know how you have felt about it but I truly appreciate this gesture. We don't need to be the best of friends, but we don't need to be strangers."

"I like that, although I will never stop trying to beat you on the floor." She says.

"Oh, I expect nothing less. Now knowing you are a sweetheart, I have no problem keeping up this 'feud' the media is creating - it's what the people want." You say playful giving her a little push.

"Oh that won't be hard considering the second we step onto the court my only goal is to bury you into the ground," Caitlin says with a smile. "I am sure we can keep this up and give them what they want with ease. Just know, it is all love off the court."

The two of you exchanged numbers and went on your way. Over the course of the next few years, both of your paths crossed several times. At games, award events, and random camps. Every time the two of you were in the same building the media would eat it up - always posting photos of the two of you giving each other death stares (which never really happened, they just timed it perfectly to make it seem like that or take snippets completely out of context). Since you first met her, the media hasn't taken such a big toll on you. It also helped that she would text you whenever something overly threatening or mean came out. It had you falling for the girl every time - deciding to push the feelings aside, thinking it was just her being sweet.

It was your junior year when things heated up in the media even more than they had in the past. Going into March Madness, all they could talk about was you against Caitlin so much that it brought back all the drama that started when you were going into college. Through it all Caitlin had reached out and reminded you none of it was real. It was very sweet of her.

Your two teams were facing off in the final four and you could not be more prepared.

The game was a close one the entire time - neither team had more of a 5-point lead at any time. It all came down to the final quarter.

Tied going into it - both teams fought to go to the championship game. Two minutes into the quarter things took a turn for the worst.

You were guarding Caitlin - staying vigilant on defense, ensuring she didn't get a good shot. When she went up on a jumper you hit her arm while trying to block the ball drawing the foul. You cursed at yourself for allowing her to go to the free-point line.

She makes the first one with ease and sets back to the line for a second. Everyone anticipates it going in but the second she releases, you can see how her eyes shift as she begins to make her wait for the ball. You cut in front of her, jumping up going for the rebound as she does the same. You get your hand on the ball trying to hold onto it as you make your way down to the ground.

What you weren't expecting was to be shifted so much that when you came down you landed directly on your knee, causing you to let out a murderous scream. Your hands immediately let go of the ball and make their way to the center of the pain - your knee.

The stadium silences immediately - leaving only your cries as you curl up into a ball.

Caitlin - being the closest one to you is hunched over you with her hands on your shoulder while your teammates run to get medical.

"You're okay, you're okay." She keeps muttering as she really doesn't know what to do to comfort you. She knows she is the one who knocked you off balance in the air but never imagined this to happen.

"They are coming," she says trying to restore hope in you.

The medical team comes up and instantly knows they need to get you out of there immediately. They call for a stretcher which comes within seconds of them asking for it. Your eyes are glued shut as you bite the top of your jersey to avoid letting out any more screams.

The pain has blocked out anything and everything happening around you. You can't even remember how it happened, all you know is the centralized pain.

Caitlin watches as they remove you from the floor. She has never been this distressed when it has come to someone leaving the floor due to injury - not even girls from her own team. Cait makes the mistake of looking up at one of the monitors as they replay what happened and tears begin to form on the brim of her eyes as she clearly sees she is the cause of your injury. The media is going to have a field day with this but even more so - all she could think about was how she could ever begin apologizing to you.

Kate makes her way over to the shaking girl and pulls her into a hug.

"That wasn't your fault," she says in her ear. "Don't carry this."

Kate had been the only person on the team who knew the friendship that had been growing into more than Caitlin knew how to put into words. Kate could also see, Cait was very much at fault for what happened but knows how much Caitlin keeps in her head and shouldn't shoulder this right now.

Once you are taken through the tunnel - everyone does the best they can to regroup from the traumatic scene that had just taken place.

Your team was trying to regroup as they had to make adjustments on the court after losing their star player, also just trying to remain composed after seeing and hearing you go down. Kate was trying to get Caitlin to calm down and get her head back in the game. The crowd at this point remained silent until play resumed.

Your team lost to Iowa by 4 and no one could blame them. It was a hard loss but everyone was more concerned what the outcome of your injury would be over the ending of March Madness.

Once you were taken back, they decided it would be best to take you to the ER to get checked out. Shortly after arriving, they determined it was a transverse patella fracture which meant your patella broke into two and it would require surgery to fix if you ever wanted to play again. It was a no-brainer.

The next few days were a whirlwind for you - they kept you in the hospital as they prepped for the surgery and you started recovery after.

Your team came to visit and took turns rotating so you wouldn't be alone. Your manager thought it would be best to stay off of social media which you didn't argue with one bit. The last thing you needed was someone saying how your career was over. You went so far as to get a secondary phone and phone number just to communicate with the team and your family.

Once you were let go from the hospital to recover at home, you finally got your phone back and it was filled with messages. You scanned through them stopping at the one that caught your attention the most.

Phone in hand, you stared at the dozens of missed calls and messages from Caitlin. You clicked into her messages and began to read about how sorry she was and how she wanted you to let her know when you were home. You fought with yourself to listen to all of the voicemails she had left and settled on listening to the last.

You click on it and bring your phone up to your ear.

"Hi," she sounds completely defeated. "I know I have left you countless voicemails but I just really want to see how you are doing. This was never meant to happen - I...I don't know what was supposed to happen but it was not this." You hear the shakey breath that she takes before continuing. "I don't want to keep bugging you if you don't want to talk to me. If I were you, I wouldn't even be listening to this and would have just deleted it but I know you are better than I am and just pray that this gets to you. That this gets to you before any of the media gets to you or spins the story into something it's not. Not that you owe me anything, but I ask that you don't listen to any of it. Don't do that to yourself because none of it is true. It is all lies that they have spun to their own narrative." She is crying now but does the best she can to cover it up. "This was never supposed to happen, I am so sorry." She struggles out and hangs up.

You imagined the first handful of messages were similar to this one and decided not to listen to them. It wasn't out of anger or resentment but you knew that in order for you to move on you couldn't hang on that moment.

The next few months consisted of recovery. You were determined to come back for your senior year and were going to come back stronger and more prepared than you have ever been. When the season started - you were back to training but weren't jumping back into games until the third week into the season.

Your manager did a really good job of keeping you out of the media - per your request leading up to the season. The first time you were brought back into the light was during your team's first game of the season. You were on the bench - coaching and encouraging your team. It wasn't the first time the media had seen you but the first time they got to talk to you. There were preseason training videos that were released that showed you back in practice but always highlighted other players on your team.

During this first game though, you were going to be mic'd up for a midgame interview.

"We are so excited to have you on the air as your team kicks off the season, can you give us insight on how recovery went for you?"

They were really just jumping in. You let out a little laugh and proceeded to answer the question.

"I am excited to be back - recovery was not easy and challenged me in more ways than I expected it would but I can honestly say it has grown me in more ways than playing would have." You say as your eyes are glued to the game happening in front of you. "That a way Tessa! Get back get back!" You yell to your team.

"We got word that you will be back on the court in a few weeks, are you excited to be playing for your senior year?" Was asked next.

"Of course. I have been itching to get back on the court - YES PAOPAO! AND ONE! - sorry, yes I am ready to get back out there and help my team on the court. We have a single mission and are ready to conquer." You say.

"Does that one mission have anything to do with Caitlin Clark?" One of the anchors asks, curiosity getting the best of them.

You take a second to compose your answer.

"I wish nothing but the best for the girl. She has really elevated the game and visibility of women's sports in general. If our paths cross again, which I can see happening - there are no ill intentions." You say and then give your exit, going back to the game.

Caitlin was watching and couldn't stop replaying the video. You never responded to any of her messages - even the ones that came further along in your recovery. You had cut her off knowing it was what you needed. She couldn't blame you but really wanted to pick up where the two of you left off - during your time of not talking she realized how much she wanted you in her life. You were one of the only people she met with the same mentality as she had and could share in the craziness that the media spat out. You brought out the best in her without even being in the building.

Cait watched you for what felt like the hundredth time and really hoped that your paths would cross this season.

Both of your teams went the whole season without playing the other. This only built the tension for the NCAA tournament. You had jumped seamlessly back in with your team and contributed to their undefeated season. Caitlin and the Hawkeyes fought hard coming back for redemption. As the tournament heightened and both of your teams kept winning - the media kept circulating articles about the faceoff everyone has been waiting a year to see, Caitlin and you on the court again.

Right before the Final Four - videos of your injury circulated again and pitted Caitlin as the villain in this completely made-up narrative. When hearing them - it took everything in you to not reach out to her. Everyone was telling you not to talk to anyone about Caitlin. Your manager also strongly advised you to not make any contact considering everything was under a microscope.

You did really well until you saw that Iowa was playing UConn in the final four. You had been friends with Paige for years now and knew they were ready to take on Iowa but something in your heart was rooting for Caitlin.

The morning of the Iowa v. UConn game you did it. You pulled out your phone and sent a quick message. It was a simple text but carried more weight than just the words present - it was the first contact you had initiated since before your injury.

Caitlin was still in her apartment when she got the message. She was straightening her hair with cameras on her for a documentary coming out on ESPN. She puts her straightener down and picks up her phone, trying not to show the message's effect on her knowing she was being recorded. Looking at the phone for longer than needed her eyes were glued to it.

[Other half: You got this.]

She doesn't know how to respond but she wants to. As she is thinking through how, her phone rings. It's Kate. She answers and quickly makes her way out of her apartment knowing she is picking up Kate before heading to the stadium.

Caitlin didn't mention the text she had gotten - not that she could mention anything with the camera crew still present but her mind was going crazy.

The Hawkeyes went in and took UConn by two points, sending them back to the championship and facing off SC in the championship. The face-off every sports fan has been waiting for.

The celebration was grand but Caitlin's mind kept wandering back to how she was going to respond to you.

When she was finally able to make it back to the locker room, she sat and responded to you.

[CC: Can we meet up after we play?]

Caitlin sent it and sort of regretted asking but she wanted to talk to you face to face. You responded faster than she had expected.

[Other Half: Yes]

The championship game comes faster than everyone anticipated. Both teams preparing for one final game. Up to this point - you alongside a Kamilla had committed to the draft. From Iowa - Caitlin had made her statement saying she was going to the draft. Both of you know this last game is a significant one. It would be the last of your college career.

The game is a crazy one - buckets exchanged with the leads fluctuating between your team and hers. At final buzzard it was your team that came out on top.

The celebration was epic as you saw Caitlin and her team make their way to their locker. Pictures were taken and confetti was thrown. When things begin to die down you see Caitlin emerge from the tunnel looking for something. You have an idea that she is looking for you and are proven right when she spots you, nervously making your way to you.

When she approaches you - the two of you nod to one another saying little good jobs. The amount of cameras surrounding you is insane as they get the content of you two together.

You want to put this college feud behind you as you both head into the W so in one swift movement, you remove your jersey. Caitlin takes the hint and does the same leaving you both in your undershirts.

You pass your jersey to her and she does the same with you. You both hold them up and let the media get all the photos they want of the two of you. Once you are done, you pull her in for a hug.

"Meet me in the coach's room," you whisper in her ear. She nods and the two of you part.

You finish the celebration and interviews and head back to grab your stuff. Before heading out, you make your way to meet Caitlin.

When you get there you see a girl sitting in a chair, looking down at her hands as she picks at her nails. She doesn't hear you enter but looks up when you close the door. She immediately stands and makes her way to you not really knowing what to say.

You look at her and pull her into a hug. You never said it but you missed her more than anything.

"I am so sorry," she says, her words muffled as they are spoken into your neck.

"Stop apologizing." You tell the girl in your arms.

"It was all my fault - I was mad and didn't realize my strength when I went up. You were out because of me and I will never forgive myself for that," she says not wanting to let you go.

"Caitlin lighted up on yourself." You say and pull away to look her in the eyes. "If I am honest, I blamed you at first. I was upset and frustrated and blamed you. But as time went on, I realized I only had myself to blame. You were playing the game - I would have done the same exact thing. As I was recovering - I started to be thankful for what had happened because it forced me to grow up. No one likes to be injured but I wouldn't be who I am today if I didn't have that time."

Caitlin nods along to everything you say. You bring your fingers to wipe away the tears that fall.

"If anything I should be the one apologizing," you say and Caitlin shakes her head from side to side.

"No, you have nothing to apologize for."

"I do, I cut you out and I shouldn't have. I am sorry." You say. "Friends?" You ask sticking your hand out in a joking manner.

She takes your hand and shakes it. "Friends." She confirms.

The next week is a whirlwind as the two of you part ways to get ready for the draft. You two talk at least once a day trying to figure out what the next chapter of your lives could possibly look like.

When the night finally comes, it is more than you can imagine. Seeing so many congregate to highlight the sport and get ready for another great season while welcoming the new rookies is something you will never forget.

Caitlin is picked first - heading to the Indiana Fever. You could not be more excited for her. You were mentally prepared to head to the Phoenix Mercury or the New York Liberty.

It comes as a complete shock when you are picked by the Indiana Fever as well. You head up to the stage and go through your initial interview.

As you make your way back - you barely get to the hall before you see someone running up to you. Before you know it, Caitlin is in your arms. Her body is flush against yours as her arms wrap around you, squeezing you with everything she has. You lift her off the ground and squeeze her right back.

You could care less about who is watching - the only thing running through your mind is that you are about to spend the next four years with the girl in your arms.

When you place her on the ground she doesn't let you go but rather buries her face into your neck. You smile and let her hug you for as long as she wants.

It's in this moment that things begin to stir inside you. Your heart swells and you feel whole. Your hand comes up to hold the girl's head. There is no way the two of you are just friends and this moment solidifies that for you.

Weeks pass after the draft and you are getting situated in Indiana. You and Caitlin decided to find an apartment together.

The night of the draft the two of you found your way back to each other after going your separate ways to celebrate. That is when Caitlin admitted to having feelings for you dating back to your sophomore year of college. You sat there in complete awe of the girl and admitted that you had just recently realized your feelings for her but could probably date it to your recovery. From then on the two of you decided to take it slow - knowing how the media has been towards the two of you up to this point.

That sort of flew out the window when she asked you to find an apartment together when you both moved to Indy. And you were sure as hell glad she did.

After four years of the media pitting the two of you against each other, you were finally able to change the narrative. You were no longer rivals but now the new power team ready to take on the W.

AN: Tried to get a little of everything in here, I hope you enjoyed it! And as always, thank you for your love and support 🤍

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Be guided by your Conscientious Common Sense

We need a non-religious, universal and practical truth.

Papasan Choi

To My Fellow Conscientious Brothers and Sisters,

First, let me welcome you to the Human’s Club.

Human’s Club Happiness has eluded mankind long enough. We have sought to become just people and by doing so create healthy families, prosperous companies, and peaceful societies. The result, however, has been strife and chaos.

As conscientious people, we cannot accept this present state. It is our responsibility to create a democratic society centered on public benefit. How can this be done? By following our Conscientious Common Sense (CCS). It’s often as simple as asking ourselves, “What does my conscience dictate I do at this moment?” Unfortunately, our CCS gets clouded by other, less public-centered impulses.

Unless we clear away the layers clouding our CCS, we will continue to make choices that may bring us momentary pleasure, but which undermine our future and the future of our society.

That is the purpose of this lecture series and of the Human’s club: to examine what is the ideal of mankind, discuss how we deviate from that ideal, and finally discuss how we can bring about a public-centered democratic society centered on CCS.

As a fellowship of like-minded conscientious people, we can restore this ideal. Take up this mission with us. Listen to your CCS and the world within you and around you will began to transform.

Sincerely, Sang Ik Choi [Papasan Choi] Founder, Human’s Club

_______________________________ Dear Friend,

I am corresponding with you to announce my association with the Human’s Club of which I am proud to be a member.  We have qualified under section 501 ( C ) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code as a TAX Exempt Activity.

Humans Club is a forum and a movement, conscientious common sense (CCS) movement, to guide us to become better people, build better families,  a better society, nation, and  a better world united by universal value and goodness. Our aim is to become an effective agent to educate members of the public on a non-religious, universal and practical basis on how to build and develop effective character for this modern world,  Character which recognizes common sense truth and which rests upon a conscientious human heart and a life dedicated to universal understanding and social service.

On this website, you will find several documents which seek to portray in the barest of outlines the basic tenets our Club espouses.  We feel that a new approach to character building is essential to bring an active mutual trust into our national and international life.  Without trust, progress for world peace and domestic tranquility are not attainable.

Please read our material and find a best way for you to engage with Humans Club.

Some options are as follows. 1.     You can ask for more information on any of the lecture series we offer to the public.  We would be gradually posting short segments on Youtube, but you can purchase any set of lectures. 2.     You can make a modest donation to assist the Club in our endeavors which qualifies you as a member of the Club. 3.     You will be invited to face-to-face workshops (lectures, discussions and meals) with Sang-Ik Choi, whom we affectionately call Papa-San Choi.

Chaim Durst Member, Human’s Club

__________________________________________

Link to an extended report on Papasan Choi and the early UC in California.

[quoteablebooks]

Genre: Nonfiction, True Crime 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Summary:

A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer—the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade—from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case. "You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark." For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area. Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." McNamara pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was. At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic—capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing a victim—he favored suburban couples—he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Framed by an introduction by Gillian Flynn and an afterword by her husband, Patton Oswalt, the book was completed by McNamara's lead researcher and a close colleague. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true crime classic—and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer.

*Opinions*

As always with all nonfiction books, it is difficult for me to rate them due to the fact that I am not an expert on the material being presented. That being said, as I have become more and more interested in true crime, I’ve heard a number of podcast episodes about the Golden State Killer and gotten familiar with the general nightmare-inducing facts of the case. However, as most of those podcasts are either drawn from the same information or from Michelle McNamara’s work itself, it is impossible to tease it all apart. All that, on top of the fact that McNamara didn’t even get to finish the novel and therefore there are a number of different voices that are mingling with hers as well as unpolished text from McNamara herself, makes it impossibly to really be able to rate this novel in any critical sense. I feel torn because if McNamara had finished the novel it would be a 5-star read without even a thought and I don’t want to judge it harshly because of unfortunate circumstances, but this is far from a perfect book.   While I enjoy true-crime podcasts, reading about true crime is a bit of hit or miss for me. If the author does not provide the information as a story but just a list of facts then I find it very boring. I am also finding that I am more connected, interested, and invested in a story when there is a focus on the victims and the people surrounding the crimes and not just whatever killer the book is about. There has been a conversation in a long time about how those covering crimes that they need to stop glorifying the killer as there have been criminals who state that they do these horrendous things just to get their names in the news and to live in infamy instead of focusing on the victims and their families. Yet as someone who has multiple mental health-related degrees, why serial killers become serial killers is interesting to me and most people want to find some common trait or thread to protect them from becoming a victim themselves McNamara walks the line between telling the victims stories without being voyeuristic to their trauma and speculating about who the Golden State Killer is without glorifying him. Never is he called a genius because that is the only way he could outsmart the police, but instead points out the lack of technology and the stubbornness to cooperate along with possibly a job that provided him skills and access to his victims that made it so the Golden State Killer hadn’t been caught at the time of writing the book. You care about the people who were terrorized and lost their lives because McNamara focuses on who they are as people, not because of the way they were attacked and killed. You can tell that McNamara wasn’t just obsessed with who the Golden State Killer is, but also cared about these people she had read about in police reports or spoke with find some closure. Reading this knowing that McNamara passed away not only before her book was published, but also before the Golden State Killer was caught gave an air of sadness to this novel. I know this was probably just my knowledge of the event surrounding the novel and events, but I almost felt that McNamara was slightly sad as well when compiling all these cases and all the destruction that had been left in one individual’s wake. She was also aware that she was missing parts of her personal life due to this obsession, which makes it all the sadder knowing how little time she had left while talking about forgetting anniversaries and hating movie premieres. That being said, the overall mood is frustration and determination that someone, somewhere would get this guy and she was right. When I read the notes compiled by others who finished the book I felt a little well when some of her notes were going down the ancestry DNA route, knowing that ultimately that is what helped them find him. I know that the individuals who wrote the last sections of the novel, Billy Jensen and Paul Haynes knew that they couldn’t write like McNamara, they said so themselves, still that last section was so disjointed that I found myself losing a lot of interest in the last 40 pages. That’s possible because I knew how the story ended, even though they didn’t while compiling the last part of McNamara’s research so it was just sad seeing all these things that she never got to finish than wondering if one of these pieces of information would have lead to catching a killer. Overall, this is a compelling and chilling story about one man making an entire state fear the dark for a decade. McNamara’s writing is real and emotional and likes having a conversation with a friend of coffee as she tells you about this thing she’s obsessed with. While I did not find the end of the book interesting, I think it is a 4.5 star read, which I will round up to five. It’s sad to think how many other people McNamara could have researched in an attempt to bring them into the light if she hadn’t passed away.

[filia-sapientiae]

Como El Viento (Like the Wind)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Mexican!Reader

Summary: Four months ago, Tony hired a new computer scientist for a temporary classified assignment. Bucky didn’t plan on falling in love with her. But now the assignment is over and she’s going back home. Will he be enough to make her stay?

Series Warnings: Novela style drama, angst, cursing, crazy Mexican family dynamics, typical cartel business, drugs and alcohol, smut, rich people being assholes, Spanish 

A/N: This is for Mimi’s One Hit Wonder Challenge hosted by @captain-rogers-beard​     (Inspiration in BOLD)

I’ve had this story in my head for a little over a year and it was literally in my drafts titled “She’s Like the Wind”, so when I saw your challenge, I knew I had to participate!!! 

I’m so sorry it’s late!!! I really struggled in deciding whether or not to make it a WOC!Reader fic. And then it turned into an OC fic. And then went back Latina!Reader. And then it turned into a vague Reader fic, but my brain just wouldn’t let me write it that way. 

This quarantine has given me a lot of time to binge Spanish novelas on Netflix. So I finally settled on making a Mexican!Reader fic. You can totally use the QUEEN Selena Quintanilla as the face claim. It’s how my brain pictured the Reader. But you do you!!! I’ve got a little bit of everything planned for this story. It will definitely read like a Spanish novela!!!

____________________________________________________________________

Bucky looked at himself in the mirror. The bags under his eyes were a dead giveaway of the sleep that eluded him for the past two weeks. His hair was dirty and haphazardly thrown into a bun. He sighed as he walked away from his reflection and made his way down to the training room.

Steve eyed Bucky as he made his way to a punching bag.

How could he have been so stupid?

Punch.

He remembered fawning over every dame that crossed his line of sight. But this was different. She was so different.

Punch.

And he had to go and fuck it all up!

Bucky swung at the bag ferociously until it split open and sand spilled onto the floor.

“Buck, that’s the fourth bag this week!”

“I can’t stop thinking about her!” Bucky paced in front of the broken bag. His hands fisting in his hair. “Steve, I told Y/N I was in love with her. I put myself out there and she left!”

“You did what?! Bucky, she was in New York on temporary assignment! You knew this!”

“I didn’t plan on falling in love with her!!!” Bucky snapped at Steve.

“Buck,” Steve pulled his best friend into a hug. “What happened?”

“I freaked out when she said she was leaving and it all came out.”

“What’d she say?”

“What do you think she said? She’s gone back to California to her fiance!”

“So she’s still in love with him?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Bucky whispered under his breath. He felt defeated.

“Huh? Whaddya mean?” Steve asked incredulously.

“You remember the night we all went out for drinks and I brought her home early after she twisted her ankle dancing on the bar counter?” Bucky began to tell the account of that night, “God, I was already in love with her then.”

Y/N was snuggled against Bucky’s chest as he carried her up to her room. Bucky laid her gently on the bed. He looked down at her and his chest tightened.

“Bucky, what’s wrong with me?” She sat up with tears in her eyes.

“Nothing’s wrong with you doll. You just twisted your ankle. You’ll be good as new in a couple of days.” Bucky reassured her.

She started sobbing, “No no no no. What’s wrong with me Bucky? Why can’t I bring myself to marry Mateo?”

“Y/N, you guys are engaged. You’re getting married soon.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

“No. I postponed the wedding again!” Y/N blubbered.

“That’s ok. Why’d you postpone? What’s going on?” Bucky asked. Y/N shook her head.

“He is so good. He’s kind and sweet. He comes from a good family. But God, I am so unhappy!”

“Then why stay with him? Why are you going to marry him if you’re not happy?”

“I have to marry him. I promised them.” Y/N sank back down into the mattress and curled to her side away from Bucky.

“Doll, you don’t have to marry him. Who did you-” Bucky was met with Y/N’s quiet snores. He got up from the bed and covered her with a blanket. Bucky took one last look at the woman in front of him and left quietly.

“Buck, she was drunk.” Steve argued.

“I know, but you should’ve seen her. She’s not in love with him.” Bucky rested his head against the wall and sighed.

_____________________________________________________________

Y/N wrapped herself in a warm blanket and sat on the windowsill watching the wind blow through the trees.

Y/N had isolated herself for the past two weeks. She kept replaying her last night with Bucky over and over in her head. The feel of his lips. The way her body responded to his kiss. The desperate way he told her he loved her. The way he yelled at her.

“Tell me that you love me too!”

“He doesn’t make you happy. I do! I know I do.”

“Am I a fool to believe that I have anything you need?”

Y/N curled the blanket around her tighter and cried. After a few minutes she let out a frustrated yell. She had cried so much for the last two weeks during her self imposed isolation. She was tired of crying. Y/N stood up and paced around her living room. She was going crazy alone with her thoughts in the small apartment. She knew she couldn’t hide from the world forever.

Y/N stopped and entertained the idea of running away and starting fresh with a new life and new identity. She could do it. She knew people. You didn’t become a computer scientist as good as she was without knowing people. Hell, she had been sought out by Tony Stark for her skills. She would be free.

Y/N started pacing again. She couldn’t do that. She had to go back home. She had responsibilities and duty. The perfect Mexican daughter lived at home until marriage. But what if she didn’t want to be that anymore?

Now there was so much more to consider. The conversation she had with Tony had left her unsure of what she wanted.

“Hey Baby Houseman? Friday said you were in the lab.”

Her hair was up in a messy ponytail and her eyeliner was smudged.

“Are you ok? Were you crying?” Tony kneeled down by her side.

Y/N shook her head. “I’m fine. I’m good. What’s up Tony?”

“Are you sure everything is ok?”

“I’m good Tony.” Y/N snapped.

Tony nodded, “I have a business proposition for you.” He sat on the lab desk in front of her.

“I’m listening.”

“Come work for me. I want you to be Stark Industries’ computer network architect. You’d make communication and use of technology easier for the company to use.”

“Tony, you have your AI system, what do you need me for?” Y/N was confused.

“I want to put you in charge of Friday’s operational system.”

“Tony! I can’t take over control of Friday. Friday is your brainchild! Your baby!” Y/N gasped.

“That’s why I need you. I’m not getting any younger Y/N. Pepper and I want a family. I’m ready, but I can’t make the same mistakes as my father. In order to do that, I need to delegate responsibilities. I can’t let the company take priority over my family. That’s why I need you. You’re the only one I trust for the position. What do you say?”

Y/N stayed quiet in disbelief. “Can I think about it? I need to go home and talk to my family about it. My fiance is in California.”

Tony nodded, “Sure, take the time that you need. We’ll talk when you’re ready..”

Y/N sighed. When had her life become such a mess? The weight of her responsibility and duty and honor was steadily crushing the levity of independence and her dreams.

Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t noticed her phone buzzing.

Shit.

10 missed calls from “Madre Mia”.

Shit.

Another call came in.

“Hello?” She knew she was in trouble the second she answered.

“Y/N L/N! I have been calling you! Porque tienes un pinche telefono si no lo contestas?!”

“I’m sorry Mami. I was busy.”

“Oh too busy for your own mother?”

“No Mami. I’m here. We’re talking now. What’s up?” Y/N sighed pinching the bridge of her nose.

“You need to come home. Now.”

“Mami, I’m still working-”

“Don’t lie to me Y/N! Que crees, que tengo cara de estupida? I know you’ve been done for two weeks!”

Shit. Y/N was really in trouble. How did they find out?

“Mami-”

“You need to get home now! Estoy harta! You’ve pushed your wedding back too many times. You’re getting married in two weeks.” There was no room for negotiation in her voice. Y/N knew her mother had been pushed beyond her limit.

“Mom, I can’t. Tony offered me a job! It’s a really good job and I want to take it!” Her voice went a little high. The same way it always did when Y/N tried to get her mom to understand.

“No me importa. We’re done playing your games! Your father and I let you postpone because you wanted to go off to school. Ok. We indulged you when you postponed because you said you wanted a doctorate. Fine. We even let you go to New York to help The Avengers. You’re done. You have things to take care of here at home.”

“Mami, please! I promise-” Y/N was not done trying to bargain for her freedom.

“No Y/N! You are marrying Mateo in two weeks. Todo ya esta listo.”

Screw this!

Y/N was old enough to make her own decisions. She was accomplished. She could handle her own! “Mom, I am 26 years old! I have a doctorate! You can’t-”

“Y qué? Crees que tu te mandas sola? No. You are a L/N. You will do as I say as long as I run this family.”

Fine. That’s how she wanted to play? Y/N was done being nice. Now she was going to be heard. “I thought it was Papi that ran things.”

“Who do you think orders him around?”

“What if I say no?” Y/N words dripped with rancor.

“Yo misma me encargare que nunca vuelvas a ver a tus hermanas.”

Y/N voice caught in her throat. No! She couldn’t. Her mother wasn’t ruthless.

“Mami, please! You wouldn’t do that!” Y/N choked out. Her mother held all the bargaining chips. Y/N had lost.

“Try me Y/N. I expect you on the next flight out.” The call ended.

FUCK!

Y/N threw her phone against the wall.

FUCK!!!

How could she threaten me like that? Threaten to keep my own sisters away from me?

Y/N wiped away her tears. The severity of her situation made its home in her chest.

It was her freedom or her sisters. She had to choose between her dream job or family duty. She had to choose between herself or Luisa and Blanca.

What was she willing to lose?

The decision wasn’t an arduous one. She knew what she had to choose. Y/N made her way to her room to start packing her bags.

PT. 2 coming soon

[moonlightmurder]

Favorite True Crime Books – part 1

The Peyton-Allan Files by Phil Stanford : Two teenagers, making out one night in a car on the edge of town ― slaughtered by person or persons unknown. No physical evidence to speak of. No known motive. For all the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office knows, there’s a psychotic killer roaming the hills west of town. Until they arrest someone for the murders of Larry Peyton and Beverly Allan, no one will rest easy. The Peyton-Allan Files is the story of the savage double-murder that changed life forever in the deceptively peaceful town of Portland, Oregon. A true-life murder mystery, guaranteed to keep you turning pages till the last guilty party has been brought to justice ― or maybe just framed. Because one way or another, this case has got to be solved.

House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying by John Dean : In the heart of Indianapolis in the mid 1960’s, through a twist of fate and fortune, a pretty young girl came to live with a thirty-seven-year-old mother and her seven children. What began as a temporary childcare arrangement between Sylvia Likens’s parents and Gertrude Baniszewski turned into a crime that would haunt cops, prosecutors, and a community for decades to come…

When police found Sylvia’s emaciated body, with a chilling message carved into her flesh, they knew that she had suffered tremendously before her death. Soon they would learn how many others―including some of Baniszewski’s own children―participated in Sylvia’s murder, and just how much torture had been inflicted in one house of evil.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote : On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.

As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.

Bind, Torture, Kill : The Inside Story of BTK by Roy Wenzl, Tim Potter, Hurst Lavigne and L. Kelly: For thirty-one years, a monster terrorized the residents of Wichita, Kansas. A bloodthirsty serial killer, self-named “BTK”—for “bind them, torture them, kill them”—he slaughtered men, women, and children alike, eluding the police for decades while bragging of his grisly exploits to the media. The nation was shocked when the fiend who was finally apprehended turned out to be Dennis Rader—a friendly neighbor … a devoted husband … a helpful Boy Scout dad … the respected president of his church.

Written by four award-winning crime reporters who covered the story for more than twenty years,Bind, Torture, Kill is the most intimate and complete account of the BTK nightmare told by the people who were there from the beginning. With newly released documents, evidence, and information—and with the full cooperation, for the very first time, of the Wichita Police Department’s BTK Task Force—the authors have put all the pieces of the grisly puzzle into place, thanks to their unparalleled access to the families of the killer and his victims.

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn: In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially mixed, and he was a leader in the early civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California, where he got involved in electoral politics and became a prominent Bay Area leader. But underneath the surface lurked a terrible darkness.

In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his early days as an idealistic minister to a secret life of extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing, before the fateful decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.

Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is “the most complete picture to date of this tragic saga, and of the man who engineered it…The result is a disturbing portrait of evil—and a compassionate memorial to those taken in by Jones’s malign charisma”

Nothing Is Strange with You: The Life and Crimes of Gordon Stewart Northcott by James Jeffrey Paul: A young man kidnaps his own nephew and makes him his servant and sex slave. He abducts young boys, has his way with them, and, if they know too much, kills them. He forces his nephew to participate in his crimes and to consign these little victims, sometimes still living, to their graves.

His father is afraid of his own son. His son mocks and abuses him, falsely accuses him of incest and child abuseand still he supports his son.

His mother loves her boy and will do anything to help himeven commit murder.

The Gordon Stewart Northcott casea part of which is fictionalized in the major new Clint Eastwood film CHANGELING, starring Angelina Jolieis still, eight decades later, one of the most nightmarish in American criminal annals. This booknearly two decades in the research and writingtells the whole story for the first time.

Fred & Rose: The Full Story of Fred and Rose West and the Gloucester House of Horrors by Howard Sounes: During their long relationship, the Wests murdered a series of young women, burying the remains of nine victims under their home at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, including those of their daughter. What was left of Fred West’s eight-year-old stepdaughter was dug up from under the Wests’ previous Gloucester home; his first wife and nanny were buried in open country. Most victims had been decapitated and dismembered, their remains showing signs of sexual torture. These twelve are just the ones police found when the Wests were arrested in 1994. There may be more whose bones have not been located . . .

Howard Sounes broke the first major story about the Wests as a journalist, and covered the murder trial of Rosemary West, before writing Fred & Rose, the definitive account of this infamous case. Beginning with Fred’s and Rose’s bizarre childhoods, Sounes charts their lives and crimes in forensic detail, creating a fascinating and truly frightening account of a marriage soaked in blood.

The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson: In 1955, white men in the Mississippi Delta lynched a fourteen-year-old from Chicago named Emmett Till. His murder was part of a wave of white terrorism in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared public school segregation unconstitutional. Only weeks later, Rosa Parks thought about young Emmett as she refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Five years later, Black students who called themselves “the Emmett Till generation” launched sit-in campaigns that turned the struggle for civil rights into a mass movement. Till’s lynching became the most notorious hate crime in American history.

But what actually happened to Emmett Till—not the icon of injustice, but the flesh-and-blood boy? Part detective story, part political history, The Blood of Emmett Till “unfolds like a movie” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), drawing on a wealth of new evidence, including a shocking admission of Till’s innocence from the woman in whose name he was killed. “Jolting and powerful” (The Washington Post), the book “provides fresh insight into the way race has informed and deformed our democratic institutions” (Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Carry Me Home) and “calls us to the cause of justice today” (Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the North Carolina NAACP).

In Broad Daylight by Harry N. MacLean: Ken Rex McElroy terrorized the residents of several counties in northwestern Missouri for a score of years. He raped young girls and brutalized them after they went to live with him or even married him; he shot at least two men; he stole cattle and hogs, and burned down the houses of some who interfered with his criminal activities. Thanks to the expert efforts of his lawyer and the pro-defendant bias of state laws, he served no more than a few days in jail, the author shows. In 1981, sentenced for the shooting of a popular grocer and free on bail, he was killed by the men of Skidmore, the center of his felonies; they closed ranks against all attempts to identify those who had pulled the triggers. Written by a first-time author, this is an engrossing, credible examination of the way vigilante action can take over when the law appears to be powerless. BOMC and QPBC alternates.

Killer Clown by Terry Sullivan: He was a model citizen. A hospital volunteer. And one of the most sadistic serial killers of all time. But few people could see the cruel monster beneath the colorful clown makeup that John Gacy wore to entertain children in his Chicago suburb. Few could imagine what lay buried beneath his house of horrors–until a teenaged boy disappeared before Christmas in 1978, leading prosecutor Terry Sullivan on the greatest manhunt of his career.

Reconstructing the investigation–from records of violence in Gacy’s past, to the gruesome discovery of 29 corpses of abused boys in Gacy’s crawlspace and four others found in the nearby river–Sullivan’s shocking eyewitness account takes you where few true crime books ever go: inside the heart of a serial murder investigation and trial.

Inside Alcatraz: My Time on the Rock by Jim Quillen: Jim Quillen, AZ586 – a runaway, problem child and petty thief – was jailed several times before his twentieth birthday. In August 1942, after escaping from San Quentin, he was arrested on the run and sentenced to forty-five years in prison, and later transferred to Alcatraz.

This is the true story of life inside America’s most notorious prison – from terrifying times in solitary confinement to daily encounters with ‘the Birdman’, and what really happened during the desperate and deadly 1946 escape attempt.

Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn: Forget everything you think you know about Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Previous books and films, including the brilliant 1967 movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, have emphasized the supposed glamour of America’s most notorious criminal couple, thus contributing to ongoing mythology. The real story is completely different — and far more fascinating.

[soler97]

The Age of Unreason

Men want certainty, not truth.

- possibly from Bertrand Russell

A thoughtful friend asked me what 2020 will be remembered for, apart from the obvious, ie Covid and Trump losing. I could not think of anything.

My friend suggested it is the realisation that in the 21st century millions of people are turning away from science and reality towards a variety of beliefs that border on the crazy. Examples are QAnon, flat earthers (yes, they are serious), deniers of Covid, about 40% of Americans believe the Rapture is coming, biblical fundamentalism, climate change denial, neo-Nazis, Holocaust denial, belief in Trump as a saviour, doomsday predictions, sundry cults, alien abductions, New Age beliefs, and a multitude of conspiracy theories, such as that the moon landings were a hoax, or that 9/11 was an inside job.

Some of these beliefs appear harmless, but occasionally, they inspire horrific violence, such as the killing of 920 people by the Jim Jones cult, the sarin attack in Japan, the Breivik massacre, the Oklahoma bombing, the Waco siege, the Christchurch massacre, and the Heaven's Gate suicides.

It is difficult to generalise about the various strange beliefs that people hold, as these include conspiracy theories, varieties of denial, religious fantasies, extremist political or racist views, and beliefs like the flat earth, that elude classification. There is no common thread underlying this spectrum of beliefs. Rather, they can be characterised by what they reject, which in a nutshell, is rationality.

Rationality can be defined as the desire to be guided by reason, which we apply to the available evidence. The third ingredient is the willingness to admit we are wrong. So turning away from rationality means letting emotion or emotionally-based belief take precedence over reason, an unwillingness to look at factual evidence, plus a dogmatic belief that one is in possession of the ultimate truth. Many irrational beliefs run counter to Occam's Razor, which tells us to prefer the simplest explanation that covers the known facts. Complex processes may require elaborate or involved explanations, but the point is not to introduce unnecessary factors, especially ones of a fanciful nature.

Clearly, there are too many irrational beliefs to do them justice, so let us look at flat earthers, Heaven's Gate and QAnon to see whether there is a pattern.

A Flat Earth

Flat earth map with the Antarctic ice wall at the perimeter

A bizarre example is the contemporary belief that the earth is flat. Is such a belief even possible in the 21st century? It may be feasible to construct a world view that makes a flat earth plausible. However, it requires factors such as a massive world-wide conspiracy to hide the truth, the abandoning of all of modern cosmology and much of physics, as well as weird ad-hoc explanations for why planes fly in circles around a flat disc, rather than around a spherical globe. Also, that ships at sea disappear below the horizon requires adjustment to the laws of optics. If that still does not cover all the facts countering a flat view, then one could invoke mind control by Martians, or something of the sort. The point is that if one wants to conjure up fantastical reasons to invalidate what we know of reality then it is always possible to do so.

It seems to me that the flat earth people are not interested in gaining knowledge about the world. They are uninterested in discovering what lies beyond the putative ice wall in Antarctica that holds back the oceans or why NASA might be guarding it. They just believe in the flat earth and that is that. Their only concern is to bolster the theory, which I think they hold on emotional grounds. They are willing to perform elaborate mental contortions to support their belief, and it is interesting to observe how much of modern science they are willing to jettison in order to keep their belief afloat, eg gravity.

Whereas the explanations given for the earth being flat are interesting, to me it is more interesting to enquire what causes people to seek these explanations in the first place. What causes people to believe the earth is flat?

Four factors come to mind. One is a desire to be rid of experts and eggheads, who insist on telling ordinary people what to think. In the case of the earth's apparent flatness, the boffins are telling us to deny the evidence of our senses by invoking the large-scale curvature of the earth, something that is far from apparent in ordinary life. Flat earth is like the last stand of common sense in the face of the inexorable advance of science, which keeps telling us the world is far stranger than we thought. It is also a form of contrariness and rebellion against authority. The second is the ego-gratification of knowing a secret that is hidden from nearly everyone else. The third factor is on religious grounds. The fourth is a desire to return to a comforting and anthropocentric model of the universe, rejecting the notion that our planet is an insignificant speck in the incomprehensible vastness of the universe.

Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period (323 BC). However, early Christian writers tended to believe the earth is spherical, though with some notable exceptions. Curiously, it wasn't until 1849 that the flat earth belief was resurrected by Rowbotham and later others. He argued that the "Bible, alongside our senses, supported the idea that the earth was flat and immovable and this essential truth should not be set aside for a system based solely on human conjecture".

In the internet era, the proliferation of communications technology and social media have given individuals a platform to spread pseudo-scientific ideas and build stronger followings. The flat earth conjecture has flourished in this environment. Social media and the internet have made it easier for like-minded thinkers to connect and mutually reinforce their beliefs. They have also had a levelling effect, in that experts have less sway in the public mind than they used to.

The belief that the earth is flat could be seen as the ultimate conspiracy theory, given how many people are needed for a cover-up on such a scale. According to the Flat Earth Society's leadership, its ranks have grown by 200 people per year since 2009. Judging by the exhaustive effort flat earthers have invested in fleshing out the theory on their website, as well as the staunch defenses of their views they offer in media interviews and on Twitter, it would seem that these people genuinely believe the earth is flat. They tend to distrust observations they have not made themselves, and often distrust or disagree with each other. I imagine they are maverick individuals who enjoy challenging the status quo.

Paul Sutter, "The question isn't 'why do people believe in a flat Earth?' but rather 'why do people believe in a conspiracy?' And the answer is the same reason it always is: a lack of trust. Many people don't trust the society around them, most notably the representatives of that society. By claiming that the Earth is flat, people are really expressing a deep distrust of scientists and science itself."

Heaven's Gate

Heaven's Gate Logo

Far more bizarre than the flat earth belief are the doctrines of Heaven's Gate, which melded the Bible with belief in UFOs into a religious cult. It was founded in California in 1974 by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. These two pondered the life of St. Francis of Assisi and read works by Helena Blavatsky, RD Laing, and Richard Bach. They studied several passages from the New Testament, focusing on teachings about Christology, asceticism, and eschatology ("the end times"). Applewhite also read science fiction, including Robert Heinlein and Arthur Clarke. They concluded that they had been chosen to fulfill biblical prophecies, and that they had been given higher-level minds than other people. They wrote a pamphlet that described Jesus' reincarnation as a Texan, a thinly veiled reference to Applewhite.

Eventually, Applewhite and Nettles resolved to contact extraterrestrials, and they sought like-minded followers. They published advertisements for meetings, where they recruited disciples, whom they called "the crew". At the events, they purported to represent beings from another planet, the Next Level, which sought participants for an experiment that would bring people to a higher evolutionary level.

In September 1975, the group visited the small town of Waldport, Oregon, to give a lecture about how UFOs were soon going to make contact with the human race. Roughly 150 people packed into a motel hall to hear Applewhite. At first the town thought it was a joke. However, soon after, in a testament to Applewhite's charisma and powers of persuasion, 20 people - or about one in 30 residents of the town - drove off to a meeting of about 400 people in Grand Junction, Colorado, in the hope of meeting aliens.

Later, the crew sold all their worldly possessions and said farewell to loved ones; the group vanished from the public eye. From that point, "Do and Ti", as the two now called themselves, led the nearly one-hundred-member crew across the country, sleeping in tents and begging in the streets. Evading detection by the authorities and media enabled the group to focus on Do and Ti's doctrine of helping members of the crew achieve a "higher evolutionary level" above human, which they claimed to have already reached.

Most of their followers are described by researchers as having been longtime truth-seekers, or spiritual hippies who had long attempted to find themselves through spiritual means. The clan of UFO followers all seemed to have in common a need for communal belonging in an alternative path to higher existence without the constraints of institutionalised faith. The group purchased alien abduction insurance that would pay out $1 million per person, covering abduction, impregnation, or death by aliens.

Applewhite began to emphasize a strict hierarchy, teaching that his students needed his guidance, just as he needed the guidance of the Next Level. A relationship with Applewhite was said to be the only way to salvation and he encouraged his followers to see him as Christ. In the 1980s, the group became more like a religion in its focus on faith and submission to authority. Students who were not committed to this lifestyle were encouraged to leave; departing members were given financial assistance. He specifically cited sexual urges as the work of Lucifer. Applewhite, "We do in all honesty hate this world".

In March 1997, Marshall Applewhite videoed himself in Do's Final Exit, speaking of mass suicide as "the only way to evacuate this Earth". After asserting that a spacecraft was trailing Comet Hale-Bopp and that this event would represent the closure to Heaven's Gate, Applewhite persuaded 38 followers to prepare for ritual suicide so their souls could board the supposed craft. Applewhite believed that after their deaths a UFO would take their souls to another level of existence above human, which he described as being both physical and spiritual.

News of the 39 deaths in Rancho Santa Fe motivated the copycat suicide of a 58-year-old man living near Marysville, California. The man left a note, "I'm going on the spaceship with Hale-Bopp to be with those who have gone before me," and imitated some of the details of the Heaven's Gate suicides as they had been reported in the media. At least three former members of Heaven's Gate committed suicide in the months after the mass suicide.

Heaven's Gate members believed the earth would be wiped clean and refurbished before 2027, and that the only chance for their consciousness to survive was to leave their human bodies at an appointed time. Initially, the group had been told that they would be transported with their bodies aboard a spacecraft that would come to earth and take the crew to heaven, the Next Level. When Nettles (Ti) died of cancer in 1985, it confounded Applewhite's doctrine because Nettles was allegedly chosen by the Next Level to be a messenger on earth, yet her body died instead of leaving physically to outer space. The belief system was then revised to include the leaving of consciousness from the body as equivalent to leaving the earth in a spacecraft.

While the group was against suicide, they defined "suicide" to mean "to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered" and believed their bodies were only vehicles meant to help them on their journey. Suicide, therefore, would be not allowing their consciousness to leave their human bodies to join the Next Level. They believed that, "to be eligible for membership in the Next Level, humans would have to shed every attachment to the planet". This meant members had to give up all human characteristics, such as their family, friends, sexuality, individuality, jobs, money, and possessions.

The Evolutionary Level Above Human was seen as a physical, corporeal place, another planet, where residents live in pure bliss and nourish themselves by absorbing pure sunlight. They do not engage in sexual intercourse, eating or dying. Heaven's Gate believed that what the Bible calls God is actually a highly developed Extraterrestrial. Evil space aliens - called Luciferians - falsely represented themselves to Earthlings as God and conspired to keep humans from developing. Technically advanced humanoids, these aliens have spacecraft, space-time travel, telepathy, and increased longevity. They use holograms to fake miracles. Heaven's Gate believed that all existing religions on earth had been corrupted by these malevolent aliens.

Applewhite taught that "aliens planted the seeds of current humanity millions of years ago, and have come to reap the harvest of their work in the form of spiritually evolved individuals who will join the ranks of flying saucer crews. Only a select few members of humanity will be chosen to advance to this transhuman state. The rest will be left to wallow in the spiritually poisoned atmosphere of a corrupt world". Only the individuals who chose to join Heaven's Gate, followed its belief system, and made the sacrifices required by membership would be allowed to escape the prophesied disaster.

In a group open only to adults over the age of 18, members gave up their possessions and lived a highly ascetic life. The group was strictly regimented, tightly knit and everything was communally shared. Eight of the male members, including Applewhite (who was gay), voluntarily underwent castration as an extreme means of maintaining the ascetic lifestyle. "They couldn't stop smiling and giggling," surviving member DiAngelo told Newsweek. "They were excited about it."

Lalich speculates that they were willing to follow Applewhite in suicide because they had become totally dependent upon him, hence were poorly suited to life in his absence. He isolated them socially and cultivated an attitude of complete religious obedience. Applewhite's students had made a long-term commitment to him. Most of the dead had been members for about 20 years, although there were a few recent converts.

Three of the people who suicided left exit statements on their website. These extoll the joys of the Next Level while summing up people on earth as the walking dead. The texts are not the ramblings of disordered minds. The content is fantasy, but they are written in a lucid way in excellent English and give every appearance of sincerity. Unlike the Flat Earth Society, which no doubt numbers people who joined for a joke, as well as those who are not fully convinced, there is little doubt that the members of Heaven's Gate were totally committed to their beliefs. After all, they gave up their sexuality and their lives for their ideal.

QAnon

QAnon at the Capitol invasion

QAnon is a powerful but diffuse contemporary movement that sought to have Trump re-elected. It is animated by a loose collection of extreme right conspiracy theories whose central theme is that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against Donald Trump, who is fighting the cabal. QAnon claims that Obama, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and others are planning a coup against Trump and are involved in an international child sex-trafficking ring. It alleges that an elite cabal of pedophiles, comprising, among others, Hollywood A-listers, leading philanthropists, Jewish financiers and Democrat politicians, covertly rule the world. Followers of QAnon believe that there is an imminent event known as the "Storm", when thousands of members of the cabal will be arrested and possibly sent to Guantanamo Bay prison, and the US military will brutally take over the country. The result will be salvation and utopia on earth. QAnon promises a "Great Awakening", in which the elites will be routed and the truth revealed.

However, this summary is misleading because QAnon is amorphous, multi-faceted and confusing. In addition it keeps shape-shifting.

The conspiracy theory began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous bulletin-board 4chan by "Q". Q claimed to be a high-level government official with Q clearance. Q predicted the imminent arrest of Hillary Clinton and a violent uprising nationwide. It is likely that Q has become a group of people acting under the same name. QAnon's adherents, while seeing Trump as a flawed Christian, also view him as a messiah sent by God. Trump himself pretends to know little about QAnon, which is a lie. Trump has amplified QAnon messaging at least 216 times by retweeting or mentioning 129 QAnon-affiliated Twitter accounts, sometimes multiple times a day. Being a savvy politician, Trump is perfectly aware that many, perhaps most, of his supporters are QAnon people. He made a correct political calculation, deciding to give only scant public endorsement to QAnon. Showing full support would hurt his standing with moderate Republicans, whereas he does not need to do anything to retain the devotion of QAnon. They are happy with the crumbs he throws their way, being accustomed to snatching at Q's hints.

Q's posts have become more cryptic and vague, allowing followers to map their own beliefs onto them. Part of QAnon's appeal is its game-like quality, in which followers attempt to solve riddles presented in Qdrops by connecting them to Trump speeches and tweets. Q enthralls readers with clues rather than presenting claims directly. Travis View, a researcher who studies QAnon, says that it is as addictive as a video game, and offers the "player" the appealing possibility of being involved in something of world-historical importance. According to View, "You can sit at your computer and search for information and then post about what you find, and Q basically promises that through this process, you are going to radically change the country, institute this incredible, almost bloodless revolution, and then be part of this historical movement that will be written about for generations."

Although Q's claims are false and the prophecies routinely fail, this does little to decrease Q's influence. Believers overlook the lack of results and failed predictions because they gauge the movement's success by its popularity, its opposition from the mainstream media, and its recognition by the President himself. On multiple occasions, Q has dismissed his false claims and incorrect predictions as deliberate, claiming that "disinformation is necessary". This has led psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky to emphasize the "self-sealing" quality of the conspiracy theory, so that evidence against it can become evidence of its validity in the minds of believers. "The absence of evidence is reinterpreted as evidence without batting an eyelid." Conspiracy enthusiasts believe that the burden of proof lies with their opponents, ie that QAnon's claims are valid in the absence of positive proof that there is no cabal and no trafficking of children by Democrats.

Experts judge that QAnon's appeal is comparable to that of religious cults. According to Renee DiResta, QAnon's pattern of enticement is similar to that of cults in the pre-internet era where, as the targeted person was led deeper and deeper into the group's secrets, they became increasingly isolated from friends and family outside the cult. Rachel Bernstein, an expert on cults, has said, "What a movement such as QAnon has going for it, and why it will catch on like wildfire, is that it makes people feel connected to something important that other people don't yet know about... All cults will provide this feeling of being special."

A series of ideas began burbling in the QAnon community: that the coronavirus might not be real; that if it was, it had been created by the "deep state", the cabal of government officials and other elite figures who secretly run the world; that the hysteria surrounding the pandemic was part of a plot to hurt Trump's re-election chances. QAnon is a movement united in mass rejection of reason, objectivity, and other Enlightenment values. Some QAnoners are highly focused on what they perceive as degeneracy in the mainstream media, a perception fuelled in equal measure by Q and by Trump. QAnon may be propelled by paranoia and populism, but it is also driven by religious faith. The language of evangelical Christianity has come to define the QAnon movement. QAnon marries an appetite for the conspiratorial with positive beliefs about a radically different and better future, one that is preordained. As one adherent proclaimed, "It's not a theory. It's the foretelling of things to come."

Edgar Welch is a deeply religious father of two, who until December 4, 2016, had lived an unremarkable life in a small town. That morning, Welch grabbed his collection of guns and drove 580 km to a neighbourhood in Northwest Washington, DC. He held an AR-15 rifle across his chest as he walked through the front door of a pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong. Welch was there because of a conspiracy theory known as Pizzagate, which three years later became a pillar of QAnon. It claimed that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of Comet Ping Pong. The idea originated in October 2016, when some conspiracy theorists asserted that sexual abuse of children was taking place in the basement at Comet, where there is no basement. After firing a rifle to break a lock, Welch realised his mistake and gave himself up to police. He was sentenced to four years in prison. The New York Times wrote in June 2020 that posts on TikTok with the #PizzaGate hashtag were viewed more than 82 million times in recent months. The abuse of children fantasy arose because someone suggested that emails written by the restaurateurs referring to 'pizza' and 'pasta' were code words for 'boys' and 'girls'.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

by Goya

Anthony Comello was charged with the March 2019 murder of Gambino crime family boss, Frank Cali. According to his defense attorney, Comello had become obsessed with QAnon theories, believing Cali was a member of a "deep state". Comello was convinced he "was enjoying the protection of President Trump himself" so he decided to act. Confronting Cali outside his Staten Island home, Comello allegedly shot Cali ten times. A May 30, 2019, FBI Intelligence Bulletin memo from the Phoenix Field Office identified QAnon-driven extremists as a domestic terrorism threat. Although the conspiracy that QAnon imagines does not exist, there is a real danger that QAnon itself might become a conspiracy of armed vigilantes, determined to bring about the promised "Storm". The storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters, including QAnoners, is not a good sign.

Heavy on millennialism and the idea that a reckoning awaits the world, the theory has found fertile ground in the American alt-right. Some 56% of Republicans believe that QAnon is mostly or partly true. At least 35 current or former congressional candidates have shown support for QAnon. A Time magazine article listed Q among the 25 most influential people on the internet in 2018. Counting more than 130,000 related discussion videos on YouTube, Time cited the wide range of the conspiracy theory and its prominent followers and news coverage.

Why did Q's cryptic post on an obscure message-board ignite a movement involving millions? Why were so many eager to embrace such a far-fetched conspiracy theory? Perhaps it was the surge in confidence of the Right in the wake of Trump's win. Whatever the reasons, the grass was dry and Q provided the spark. Not all QAnoners come from a rightwing background. For those who have had no agency to suddenly discover a path into the game is heady stuff.

QAnon is not confined to the US. It has organised protest demonstrations in 200 countries, ostensibly to "save the children". One in four Britons are said to believe in QAnon-related theories. According to The Guardian, QAnon is growing in the UK, spilling over into anti-vaccine and 5G protests, fuelled by online misinformation. At a QAnon rally, Shemirani, a nurse suspended for promoting baseless theories about Covid19, told the crowd: "Our government has declared war on the people of the UK."

"There is a high possibility that the spirited belief system which surrounds QAnon can slowly become a political movement in the UK," Liyanage said. "It will be successful because no one can fight it through reason. It's not a rational belief system but mostly a supernatural belief system."

The time for Trump to arrest the pedophiles and satanists is fast running out. It is interesting to speculate what effect his departure will have on a conspiracy theory in which he is the key figure. My guess is that the powerful energy and passion that drive QAnon will shift focus.

My own view is that QAnon is a blank slate onto which people project their darkest nightmares, as well as their hopes for a Christian utopia. Where do the ideas of satanism, eating children, sinister cabals, sexual depravity, and other crimes against children come from? The answer is simple: from the minds of those who form QAnon. QAnon is nothing but a mirror showing people their shared fantasy. People are sharing with each other their worst fears, as well as their hopes. The dark parts are projected onto the favourite targets of the alt-right, ie Hillary and other Democrats, Jews, and liberals, whereas the messianic hopes are projected onto Trump and Q. However, it is a mistake to see the QAnon conspiracy theory as the work of Q. Although Q was the initial cause, his cryptic and vague messages are merely prompts, asking people to fill in the blanks. This is what many have done and the result is a miasma of fanciful lies about corruption, sexual perversions and violence. The irony is that whereas the accusations made by QAnon are entirely baseless, QAnon might itself become a violent entity, little better than the chimera it rails against.

James Baldwin wrote, "It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own." Voltaire put it more starkly, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Is Credulity Humanity's Achilles Heel?

The three belief systems discussed  have almost nothing in common except the rejection of the consensus view of reality, combined with belief in a fantasised conspiracy. In each case, powerful unseen forces are seen as perverting or hiding the truth of what is really going on. All three beliefs appear absurd except to people who are believers. The puzzle is why do apparently normal people adopt such ideas?

In a study published online in March, 2014, in the American Journal of Political Science, Oliver and Wood, found that about half of Americans endorse at least one conspiracy theory, such as the notion that 9/11 was an inside job or the JFK conspiracy. "Many people are willing to believe many ideas that are directly in contradiction to a dominant cultural narrative," Oliver said. According to him, conspiratorial belief stems from a human tendency to perceive unseen forces at work, known as magical thinking.

In the Middle Ages the Devil was a convenient factor that could be used to explain anything weird or harmful, while the deity took responsibility for the rest. With the advance of science, both the Devil and God gradually lost their explanatory powers. God became "the God of the gaps", being only needed to explain what was missing in our understanding of the physical world. Nowadays, the term "act of God" is reserved to describe the insurance industry's view of natural disasters.

In the modern era magical thinking has undergone a new twist. God and the Devil have been replaced by conspiracies. A recent survey of 26,000 people in 25 countries asked respondents whether they believe there is "a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together". In the US 37% replied that this is "definitely or probably true". So did 45% of Italians, 56% of Spaniards and 78% of Nigerians.

2020 was the year of Covid19. The coronavirus has triggered the rise of myriad myths, waves of misinformation and virus conspiracy theories, including that it does not exist - believed by 22% in Poland, where there have been nearly 1.4 million cases. The virus has also had an incubating effect on unrelated conspiracy theories because it has thrown humankind into a state of fear and isolated people in their homes with too much time to think and surf. The extra time in the virtual space means increased exposure to the proponents of conspiracy theories, without the balancing effect of social interactions.

According to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, the normal process is that as people begin to acquire knowledge of a given subject, their feelings of competence rise quickly towards a peak, before declining, as they begin to realise how much more there is to know. In the case of conspiracy theories, such as QAnon, people can arrive almost immediately at that delicious peak of confidence, without actually learning anything at all. QAnon is like a super-car that can do 0 to 100 kph in 3 seconds flat. Many are captivated by the vicarious thrill of believing they are privy to vastly important secrets about which millions of people have no idea. This is the seductive appeal of conspiracy theories.

What causes us to believe? There is an analogy between religions and conspiracy theories. Once you pay the price of entry, ie faith in a religious doctrine or conspiracy, the payoff is that much of the confusion and mystery of life is dispelled because you are in possession of the answers. Yuval Harari: "Our lives are repeatedly rocked by wars, revolutions, crises and pandemics. But if I believe some kind of global cabal theory, I enjoy the comforting feeling that I do understand everything. The skeleton key of global cabal theory unlocks all the world's mysteries and offers me entree into an exclusive circle - the group of people who understand. It makes me smarter and wiser than the average person and even elevates me above the intellectual elite and the ruling class: professors, journalists, politicians. I see what they overlook - or what they try to conceal."

The spectrum of irrational beliefs shares one characteristic: they are all unfalsifiable. Their adherents never say, "If such-and-such happens I will discard this belief." This is particularly apparent in doomsday predictions. The predicted date comes and goes, but the true believers simply reset the clock to a future date. A cult called the Seekers went one better. They believed a UFO would save them from a cataclysm on December 24, 1954. Afterwards, some of the members claimed that their group's devotion had saved the rest of the world from disaster. They responded by proselytizing with renewed vigour. Cults and conspiracy theories are highly resistant to correction. Even the thoroughly discredited Pizzagate is still believed by masses of people.

The self-validating nature of the beliefs ensures that all evidence can be construed as confirmation. New findings that contradict a belief are interpreted as proof of the further workings of the conspiracy to hide the truth. Yet cults and conspiracy theories are not the only systems that guarantee their own validation. If one questions what is taught in a personal growth course one is rebuked with, "You are resisting". Pseudo-science is very difficult to debunk. Inconvenient facts, such as aliens not showing up, are explained by another tweak to the doctrine.

To be fair, the process of theory adjustment happens in science proper as well. When a theory fails experimental test it may be given an additional proviso that accounts for the discrepancy. For instance, the fact that personal experience can be handed down as a genetic legacy to future generations seems to contradict standard evolutionary theory. As it turns out, there is no contradiction. A new sub-science called epigenetics explains the mechanism of this process in terms of alterations to the DNA molecule that do not change the genetic code but which influence gene expression.

Since science is a human activity, it is subject to the foibles of our species. It too has dogmas that are difficult to overturn. Thomas Kuhn has written persuasively about paradigm shifts in science. He saw the history of science as consisting of normal and revolutionary phases, in which the community of scientists in a particular field are plunged into periods of turmoil, uncertainty and angst. These revolutionary phases, such as the transition from classical physics to quantum mechanics, involve great conceptual breakthroughs and lay the basis for a succeeding phase of business as usual. This is captured in an aphorism that is only half humorous, "The measure of the greatness of a scientist is how long they hold up advancement in their chosen field."

The history of science features dogmas that were held too long and new ideas that took an unreasonably long time to be accepted. One example is the resistance to the theory of plate tectonics, another is the opposition to a bacterial explanation for the cause of ulcers. The mainstream rejection of functional medicine and the progress it has made in curing Alzheimer's Disease is a current example.

Nevertheless, the greatest strength of science is that it is tentative: any scientific theory may be overturned and replaced by a better theory in the future. The criterion of a theory being scientific is that it makes predictions which could, in principle, be falsified by new data. Yet to a fundamentalist or a common sense sceptic, such as a flat earther, this is not a strength but a weakness. They point out that science can never prove anything, that scientific theories have been debunked plus questions science can't answer. Hence science is not to be trusted. With the authority of science diminished, the field opens for persuasive individuals with pet theories, especially about conspiracies. Why conspiracies? Because a belief that goes counter to the accepted view of reality requires a widespread suppression of the truth.

The bottom line is that many people do not perform due diligence in checking the information they encounter and its sources. Given the virulent spread of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, this is a massive under-statement. The worry is that many obtain their news from questionable sources, such as Facebook and YouTube.

Ultimately, eschewing reputable news media in favour of bulletin-boards and succumbing to their conspiracy theories has deeper causes. These are alienation and a lack of trust in society and its leaders. Why are people alienated and distrustful? Perhaps the underlying problem is not credulity but its opposite, ie a loss of belief in the system. Those who are drawn to far-right conspiracy theories have lost trust in democracy and the modern state. They think the US no longer embodies the ideals they believe in. Conservative Christians and right-wingers resent their defeat in "the culture wars", which were about abortion, separation of church and state, creationism, recreational drug use, homosexuality, and censorship. Perhaps the "Great Awakening" is their dream of a return to how things were. The fact that they grasp at ludicrous ideas indicates the depth of their disaffection.

Of course, irrational beliefs, superstitions, baseless theories and weird cults have been with us all through history, ever since the invention of writing, and probably long before. The difference now is that we supposedly live in the age of reason and science. Furthermore, knowledge is far more freely available than at any time in the past. The problem is that disinformation, extravagant falsehoods, fringe beliefs, and sensational stories are more easily disseminated than ever before, and they seem to capture peoples' attention more than sober facts. The difference between 30 years ago and now is that anyone can post anything and potentially reach millions of people. It's the old story - those who know least have the loudest voices. The paradox is that although reliable knowledge is now easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection, millions are turning their backs on both science and common sense.

My conclusion is that despite the advances of human knowledge, human nature itself has not changed. We remain a species ruled by emotion rather than logic, and hence we come to believe all kinds of nonsense.

Another conclusion comes from an insight of the brilliant intellectual, Yuval Harari. He is convinced that we human beings can only prosper and live in harmony with each other provided we believe in a shared myth. If so, then a propensity towards credulity might be built into our genome. Unfortunately, credulity is dangerous, as shown in Heaven's Gate, the Jim Jones cult and QAnon.

Tad Boniecki

January 2021

[popwasabi]

What “The Dark Knight” says about our bad politics

Waaay back in the summer of 2008, me and my dad drove up to Northern California to attend San Jose State University’s freshman orientation.

It was a long drawn out process where first-year students basically were told and shown a bunch of things they would forget and relearn by their first day anyways and culminated with all of us spending one night in the campus dorms so we could all get a taste of the “campus life” experience.

I wanted it to end badly for a couple reasons. Being an introvert, I was not comfortable sharing a room with anyone, let alone a stranger, for a night but more importantly, I was being kept from the biggest movie premiere of the year that day: “The Dark Knight.”

As soon as I woke up the next morning, I rushed my dad to find the nearest theater and purchased tickets immediately for a late-night screening. I was already a huge fan of “Batman Begins” but every trailer to Christopher Nolan’s epic follow-up indicated we were in for an even bigger blockbuster than before and I was beyond pumped.

(Me getting the fuck off campus to watch “The Dark Knight” that day.)

Two and a half hours later I left the theater blown away by the experience. “The Dark Knight” was everything, at the time, I was hoping for in a comic book movie; angsty, dark, edgy (all things I thought I was as a teen), cinematically sharp, thrilling, a fantastic score once again by the legendary Hans Zimmer, and fulfilled just about every fanboy wet dream I had at the time for a perfect Batman movie.

To this day it remains the most satisfying theatrical experience I’ve ever had seeing a movie, not that it’s my favorite movie of all-time anymore, mind you, but that I have never gone into a movie with such high expectations and had them blown away quite like that since.

(Conversely, this^ was my most disappointing experience...)

I’m a different person now, of course. If you were to wipe my memory of the film and had to watch it again today I doubt I would have the same fanboygasm I had then as the cynical 30-year-old I am now but I’ll argue that “The Dark knight” still remains a high mark, if not the standard, for comic book movies today.

That said, parts of this film have definitely not aged well. Visually the film still holds up, the action is still exciting, the performances are all stellar (though Bale’s Batman voice is still bad) but what hasn’t aged well, for me, are the movie’s politics.

“The Dark Knight” is, of course, a post 9/11 movie, in fact, it’s arguably the definitive one as its pop-cultural footprint dwarfs pretty much all within its sub-genre. This Nolan sequel deals heavily in themes of terrorism with its iconic villain The Joker, played maniacally by the late great Heath ledger, wreaking havoc across Gotham with various explosive devices. Though the Clown Prince is more an anarchist than someone with an ideology, like those in Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the results of his beliefs/non-beliefs are more or less the same; cause pandemonium and fear in the masses. Batman, representing the power of justice and order, does battle with this in a war to save Gotham’s soul and again this is still a damn entertaining and thrilling story.

(Seriously, it’s still a rock solid entry in the comic book movie genre.)

But where the film’s 9/11 politics become problematic is toward the end of the film when the Joker begins his final act to plunge Gotham into unstoppable chaos. Batman becomes desperate; The Joker has eluded him at every turn, always two steps ahead of him, escaping justice no matter what Bruce Wayne does so he concocts a plan to finally to locate and stop the Joker for good.

He creates an elaborate sonar system using every cell phone in Gotham, effectively creating a massive surveillance state to spy on its citizens in order to locate the Joker.

(And it’s the only time we have ever got the real Batman eyes on screen, damn it!)

Lucius Fox, played by Morgan Freeman, appropriately calls this out telling him he’s wrong and that he cannot support this but Batman insists that it’s the only way. Fox reluctantly agrees and tells him he’ll resign once this is over as he can’t morally support such a system. The sonar, of course, works and Batman is able to stop the Clown Prince once and for all and upon Fox entering his name into the sonar computer the program dissolves and is deleted presumably for good.

This is of course to wash Batman’s hands of this deed to the audience. Our protagonist knows this is wrong, the audience is told it is wrong but by ending the surveillance he shows he would never abuse such a program, that sometimes good men have to do terrible things to defeat evil and that makes it ok.

For years, as a bleeding heart liberal (at the time) who grew up in the Bush years but loved the hell out of this movie, I tried to reconcile with this part of the story because Batman was the hero. I thought maybe this kind of action is ok because if the “good guy” is in charge bad stuff is fine because he/she won’t abuse such power. That’s real justice, right?

The problem is in the real world, at the top, there really aren’t any good guys and they are counting on you to believe that they are when they get a hold of such power because that’s how we are programmed.

The Patriot Act, which was the signature Bush-era reform post 9/11, created our current surveillance state. In the interest of national security and ensuring those “dern turrists don’t go killing lil’ Timmy riding his tricycle out in Des Moines, Iowa” our elected leaders, both republican and democratic (make no mistake), effectively signed away our constitutional rights to “ensure our safety” by spying on us basically without warrants. The proponents proudly claimed its necessity in fighting the “War on Terrorism” and those naysayers either shouldn’t worry “if you have nothing to hide” or worse were un-American Taliban sympathizers.

For progressives, of course, this was an evil violation of our civil liberties but for many conservatives, this wasn’t a big deal. They are just trying to keep us safe after all. 

But conveniently ignored by many on the left still today is the complicity they had in bringing about this era in warrantless surveillance. Yes, this policy started under Bush, of course, but it continued to be re-upped through the Obama administration and the Trump administration, not to mention revolving majorities in the House and Senate, showing no matter who was in charge they all liked the idea of keeping an eye on all of us with or without reason.

Considering the Patriot Act was made to win the “War on Terrorism” our leaders were never going to relinquish this power anyways because you can’t win a war on terrorism. Terrorism is not a country or a people, it’s an ideology behind many different ideologies. The US, no matter how you see it, be it as liberators or oppressors, will always have enemies and that’s all the reason they need to keep this power it seems.

Having the data on our lives mined like oil can easily be used against us in a variety of ways regardless of if any of us have terroristic or even criminal intentions. But for many in this country, it was only a problem if the wrong guy wielded that power. As soon as their “good guy” got in though, suddenly it was no big deal. I wonder why...

“The Dark Knight” puts forth a problematic view on who can and should wield supreme power, that even terrible choices can be made as long as the “right” person is the one making them.

Liberals are notorious for justifying them when it’s one of them who does it.

It’s a lie. A lie that both parties use to their advantage because they want you believe everything they do can be justified because you happen to be a part of their party; the “good guys” once again. But there is something extra cynical about the way liberals wield it as they parade themselves around as paragons and moral pillars against the Jokers of the Republican party.

For all the platitudes liberals give, that would make some superhero speeches seem benign, they wear masks about as well as the vigilantes do but not for the same reasons. When confronted by this blatant hypocrisy, liberal voters justify all kinds of horrible things as long as the other “bad guy” isn’t the one doing it. For all the shit Bush gets, and rightfully so, for plunging us into a military, financial, and humanitarian quagmire in the Middle East, Obama gets almost zero real pushback by liberals for effectively drone bombing the hell out of the same people. During these past three years Trump has more or less allowed ICE to run rampant on immigrant communities sure and liberals have been critical, again as they should, but who made the cages they were thrown into and who deported more of them during his first three years in office than Trump did?

(And once again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, Andrew Cuomo is NOT your fucking friend...)

Liberals often like to present themselves as the moral purveyors of good in the face of conservative opposition and they use it to their advantage to more or less do many of the same foul things those with R’s next to their name do. Sure, not all their actions are equally as evil but even then, we rarely truly hold either of our leaders feet to the fire because we believe their actions are somehow better because they have a “D” next to their name.

These horrific policies and actions will never see justice as long as we keep justifying them because the “right” person is behind them.

No, this is not an all sides are equally bad take. That discussion requires more nuance and for a different time, but I will say both sides are varying degrees of bad that should be taken seriously instead of not at all and can’t be pushed aside again and again and again because “the other guys are worse.” 

We are running into the same situation today as our presidential election features a credibly accused rapist, sexual predator, who supports Bush-era tax cuts, who takes money from major corporate lobbyists, who is against Medicare for All, has open disdain for millenials, and not only supports but openly bragged about the aforementioned The Patriot Act.

Hmmm, sounds an awful lot like someone we know, huh?

You could argue that one of these two men mitigates, or even vastly mitigates, harm if in office and I’m not here to necessarily scold you for making what you feel is morally the least awful choice but the point still remains; we are justifying evil again because our “good guy” is in charge.

Being liberal, just on its own, does not vastly minimize the problematic nature of a bad person.

Regardless of how you feel about this election and what choice you plan to make this November (and again, I’m not here to tell you what to do), bad things and bad policies will be continued to be enacted by bad people because that’s what choices we’ve been given. There isn’t a good one and the most vulnerable will be hurt the most by it regardless of who wins. There is a reason so many are disillusioned with voting and it’s not just voter suppression laws.

I can already hear some of you screaming “OH MER GERD pURiTy TeStS,” but this is far more cynical a standard we have than simply choosing a less than perfect candidate. Many are already making rather tone-deaf comments about people being “privileged” for choosing not to compromise their morals anymore. What’s “privileged” is voting for the guy who will do less harm for you but ultimately still disproportionately harm more people of color no matter who is in office.  

(The country and the world can really begin to truly heal when a Democrat is in charge of one of these Freedom Machines once again!)

Yes, I might agree that one is probably a net positive for the world at this point but to act like someone choosing to not participate anymore in what is effectively a never-ending cycle I can’t say I blame them either. At some point, our society has to draw a real line in the sand on these things with our leaders and force a more moral standard for our government instead of the status quo.

We can’t go on this endless “pragmatic” path picking “the lesser of two evils” until we gradually just become evil. You can make the argument that maybe the time isn’t now, and you might be right but when? These folks at the top are COUNTING on us accepting circumstances and justifying terrible beliefs and actions over and over again because of the state of our politics.

“The Dark Knight” believes that sometimes bad things must be done to defeat evil but the real world can be so much less cynical if we stopped compromising on our beliefs. It’s not entirely too late for us to do the right thing. We can’t go on forever letting bad behavior go because the “good guy” will be the one doing it instead of the other one.

Taking money from corrupt billionaires is wrong. Extra-judicially drone bombing the Middle East endlessly is wrong. Throwing migrants in cages like fucking animals is wrong. Rape and sexual assault are wrong. Mass warrantless surveillance is wrong. Doesn’t matter if its Batman or fucking Superman doing any of these things; immoral behavior cannot and should not be ever justified.

Otherwise, we really will live long enough to see ourselves become the villain...

Looking forward to the comments on this one...

[fettl3]

having ethnicity/gender thoughts

Kinda about my family, and the matriarchal mexican side that raised me. The women I grew up with were hard and mean and funny as hell, and they had no problem being women. Their weaknesses were well kept secrets. They all had long hair and would fight using anything that was around. Spoons, dolls, acrylic claws, anything to win. My abuella beat up my tio (her son) with a wooden spoon for doing drugs; she stabbed him till he bled and we all were there laughing at him!

And then I think about this womanhood and how I carried it with pride into school with me, how I never let myself be bullied by the older boys who use to pick on my friends. And then all the ways that this womanhood was too loud, too mean, too aggressive for my peers or for my teachers and so I learned how to conceal it but it never got away from me. I wonder a lot all the time about what is abuse and what is complicated defense. I wonder also about power and how my family has been in California for four generations but they carry and will always carry what the land meant before America developed it and built all those crumbling stucco apartments. I don’t know. I know that it’s not inherently mexican to be a hard bitch. In fact I know most other mexican families where the women are not like that. But I also wonder about my family and why it must have been necessary for the women of my lineage to have such a hard edge. 

And so I use these words about gender nonconformity and it feels like it centers a white gender binary that always felt like it not only eluded me but explicitly excluded my experiences... white women that I never knew as a kid, white men that I DID know but only in contexts of their rapes, religious superiority, abuse and especially their deafening absence... Always missing from the picture was the  rolling laughter, the hard look, the violent and brilliant women I knew. 

Words about nonbinary identity and nonconformity or even androgyny always feel like they’re talking about a middleground between a fantasy character of a white man and a white woman. 

But even with that being true, I still express my gender much closer to a quirky kid from the yt suburbs than I do the long-haired, tattoo-eyebrowed women of my family. I think most importantly is the fact that I look and act and therefore am in perception, white. When I grow my hair out long it is not the black mane that my nina (tia) had. It will never be grey and thick like my abuella. If I ever drew my lips on like my grandma did, I will only ever look like a white girl appropriating a latina. I’m so ashamed of that. I’m so ashamed that everybody who doesn’t know me assumes I’m not shoplifting, or assumes I’m wealthy, or assumes I know what I’m talking about when I talk out my ass. They’re assuming because I look white. I KNOW that is what it is. I’m ashamed that I benefit from their racism in every instance. I’m ashamed that I got caught shoplifting hundreds of dollars at whole foods TWICE, at the SAME ONE, and I got let go. When my friend got caught for like 2 items and got arrested. Because she was black! I’m never held accountable! Why is nobody white talking about this! I have never been held accountable for all the wild shit that I have gotten into and I know, I feel it that the reason is that i look white. And when I did the worst things and got away with it, I looked like a cis girl. 

Because of the way that I look, and the way that I’m treated now I’m just not capable of being like my family. In so many ways but especially gender expression, I don’t act like them. And after moving and living on my own I feel if I were to start now it would be false or phoney, it would really be appropriative. 

So when I think about my gender, I look at white women and I look at white men and I know that I am not either of those things and that’s like all I can figure out rn but it’s not enough

I don’t know the answers about cycles of abuse, or about colonial conquest and American assimilation, or about gender and machismo/patriarchy. Not knowing these things makes me feel like I don’t know myself. Yet the more I do to try to come to some answers the more complicated and inexplicable the whole thing is! 

[agaylatterdaysaint]

Dear President Oaks.

You know, it’s interesting, for a long time, I had admiration for you. I remember as a young child I would admire you, you were funny, spunky and spoke with a funny overbearing tone. You were almost like a cartoon character for my young impressionable mind. You were someone I thought would be fun to know. Now I want to get to know you, but for a different reason. I want to get to know what I did to you. What us Queer people did to you. Why do you persecute us so? I really don’t understand. As I got older I did lots of research on Apostles backgrounds, I was interested, don’t know why, probably the historian in me. And I found something quite disturbing, and it should make any person look at your vigor to define marriage how God sees it a little more skeptical. You have a history as defining marriage this way and blocking any advancement of LGBTQ+ Rights. In fact, you were one of the chief architects of the Family - A Proclamation to the world. It was Elder Packer’s and your brain child.

What’s interesting about the Proclamation is that it was often represented to me as a prophetic message. I grew up in a small majority-LDS community in Idaho and people would often talk as if Gays didn’t exist before the proclamation. They would say things like, “When the Proclamation came out in 1995, there was no disagreement about what marriage or gender was. Everyone just accepted what everyone knew.” Is that true? Well anyone that knows anything about LGBTQ+ history knows that’s completely false. But for those that are unaware of the Proclamation’s context, let me educate you.

The Proclamation, as eluded to in the quote in the last paragraph, was written in 1995, some of the main co-writers were then-Elders Packer and Oaks. Much of the language, especially those dealing with gender and gender roles have their roots in some of Packer’s old talks. His hill, much like your hill of LGBTQ+ issues, Mr. Oaks, was gender roles, specifically those of women. You both were able to send your messages in this proclamation. But why? What was the timing? Was it really a prophetic inspiration to write this before it was really an issue? Or was a it reactive? It was very reactive. In 1995, Hawai’i was arguing about whether or not to legalize Gay Marriage, and who was one of the people to immediately reject this proposition? It was you, Oaks, you.

When the Proclamation was finished it was immediately drafting into the war for “Traditional Marriage”. You enlisted it to the front of the battlefield at the time, Hawai’i. Later, it was used in California to defeat same-sex couples, first in 2000 for Prop 22, and later in 2008 for prop 8. Prop 8 was especially noteworthy, because the Church poured money into the campaign. At the time I was 6 and maybe gave 50 cents for tithing that year, but does it hurt now knowing that, well it’s unlikely my money helped that cause, it very well may have been given to defeat Human Rights at your request? Yes, yes it does.

But do you know what hurts more? That your talks, your documents, the whole thing, has been used by friends and family to convince me you know me better than I know myself. You were once convinced that “same-gender attraction” was the fault of the individual experiencing it. And I believed you. The person who saved me from believing that horrible heresy was God. They told me that They loved me, that I was made perfectly in Their image, I was Their son, beautiful, beloved, saved for a very pivotal point in history. For a long time, I thought I would be the one to tell my Queer brothers, sisters and siblings that they just needed to follow your council, that your council was from God, and not a personal crusade. Now the tables have turned and I’m one of your critics.

What’s interesting though, is though this letter is technically addressed to you, I understand you probably will never read it, but, if you are, let me tell you something, it might not be what you expect, I love you. I love your charisma, your undying loyalty to the cause you have started, your love for God, your love for his children. I have no doubt you love me, you see. I just don’t think you understand me. Not entirely your fault either. You’re Straight, I assume anyway, you’re Cisgender, you’re White, you’re Male, smart, probably really popular when you were younger, you were a football player. I heavily doubt you know what it’s like to feel constantly invisible, like a minority, like you don’t matter. I doubt you know what it’s like to question if God loves you for the way They made you. It’s hard to really hold contempt against you. Even though I think you are one of the reasons I won’t be sealed to my lovely husband in the temple when we get married, even though whenever you get up to speak I have a panic attack, I don’t blame you. In fact, I love you.

It’s interesting I can say that, and that it feels so natural to say that. You see, I write my letters as I go, I didn’t expect to say that, but I’m glad I did. Because I meant it. I hope you can understand that well I will fight against your cause, I do so in love. Just as you think you are doing what is best for me, I think I’m doing that is best for those around me. I’m sad some of died of depression for years because of your mistreatment of them. And I can’t speak for them, but I can speak for me, I don’t hate you, I don’t hold a grudge against you, I love you. That being said, I can’t justify your belief any longer, and I can’t sit quietly either. Some have told me that they love me, the sinner, but hate the sin. Well I suppose, I should end a tad passive-agressively just as my Straight friends that idolize your inclusion do and finish with this: I love you, the believer, but I really can’t say I love the belief, in fact, I hate it.

[dazzledbybooks]

Fifteen-year-old JL Markham’s life used to be filled with carnival nights and hot summer days spent giggling with her forever best friend Aubrey about their families and boys. Together, they were unstoppable. But they aren’t the friends they once were. With JL’s father gone on long term business, and her mother struggling with her mental illness, JL takes solace in the tropical butterflies she raises, and in her new, older boyfriend, Max Gordon. Max may be rough on the outside, but he has the soul of a poet (something Aubrey will never understand). Only, Max is about to graduate, and he's going to hit the road - with or without JL. JL can't bear being left behind again. But what if devoting herself to Max not only means betraying her parents, but permanently losing the love of her best friend? What becomes of loyalty, when no one is loyal to you? Gae Polisner’s Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me is a story about the fragility of female friendship, of falling in love and wondering if you are ready for more, and of the glimmers of hope we find by taking stock in ourselves. Early Praise: "Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me is an absolutely real, raw and emotional read, and it's a book that touched my heart with every page." - Katie McGarry, critically acclaimed author of Only a Breath Apart"Gae Polisner has done it again. I absolutely loved this beautiful, heart-wrenching story about friendship, family, and first love, and what happens when they all fall apart. Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me is a truly special book." - Lauren Spieller, author of Your Destination Is on the Left Buy link: https://wednesdaybooks.com/the-real-deal/jack-kerouac-is-dead-to-me/ Review: Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me by Gae Polisner is definitely an emotional tale. This novel is pretty raw. IT is telling about the struggles of JL's (Jean-Louise) life. JL's mom suffers from dissociation disorder so she is in a depressed fog constantly. There are days that she barely gets out of her bed. JL's dad is on a business trip. JL's best friend Aubrey has shunned her. JL has a boyfriend named Max that is a bit rough around the edges but he is really smart. Max wants to go to California after he graduates and he has invited JL to go with him. JL doesn't want to leave her mother alone. As the reader you see JL struggle with what is going on in her life. She doesn't know what to do. She is having to be the caretaker of the family when it should be one of her parents. JL feels pressure from Max especially with their age difference because he is ready to have sex and she isn't. Then she is also being put into situations that she is uncomfortable with. I just feel like this book had some really odd mature content in it. The fact that it eludes to the fact that Max sleeps with JL's mother. Like Why? Did that really need to be in a young adult book? Was that added for shock factor? I found that this wasn't my favorite story to read. It had some moments that I just didn't understand. Excerpt: LATE JUNE BEFORE EIGHTH GRADE The day is hot. We’re running through the sprinkler in my backyard, dodging in and out of the cold spray that fans over us, shrieking as droplets rain down onto our sun-warmed, tanned skin. You push me closer as the arc of water returns, and I fall onto the grass, wet, laughing, taking you down with me. The sod under us is new and soft, and the freshly cut blades stick to our limbs, our faces. We are giddy with summer, with each other. We are still on the cusp of everything. Afterwards, you turn off the hose, and we lie on faded chaise lounges we drag to the middle of my yard, our chests heaving with rapid, satisfied breaths in our barely-filled- out bikini tops. You reach out and take my hand and an indescribable sort of electricity shoots through me, real and palpable, as if I could reach out the fingers of my other hand and touch it, some white-hot charge that holds us together. We are friends—best friends—but more than that. We are entirely, platonically, in love. “See that cloud, JL?” You let go and point off beyond the top of the tallest sycamore branches. “It looks like a giant mushroom, doesn’t it?” My eyes follow your finger, my hand cold from the loss. “Do you see it there?” I bust out laughing. “What’s so funny?” you ask, your voice defensive. I lean all the way over, tilt your face a bit with my hand to change the angle. “It looks a lot like something else, Aubs. Look again.” You sit up and squint to see clearer. After a second, you say, “Oh my god, it’s a giant penis cloud, isn’t it?” and we both fall apart laughing. When our stomachs hurt so bad we have to fight from laughing more, you lie back down and ask softly, “Have you ever seen one for real, JL?” “A penis? No.” I think for a minute. “I mean, pictures, yes, but not in real life, in person. Why? You?” You nod and look at me, eyes big, mouth covered by your own hand like you’ve revealed some dangerous se- cret, making me sit up and demand, “Okay, spill! Whose?” You shake your head hard, your eyes round over your still- cupped fingers. I run off a few names, guessing. “David Brundage?” “Scott Silvestri?” “Matthew Flynn?” You uncover your mouth. “God, no! I hear it’s giant, though. Like a grown man’s . . .” “Well, tell, then.” “No one from school,” you say, covering your mouth again and adding through half-open fingers, “closer to home, JL. Come on.” “Ew, Ethan’s?” I squeal too loudly, and you nod, and we both shriek and shudder in exaggerated, disgusted delight. “Oh my god!” I say. “Why?” “By accident, obviously. I wasn’t trying! I walked in on him in the bathroom. He forgot to lock the door, and—” “Ew! So gross! Don’t tell me!” I cry, but I have a thou- sand questions. Ones I will never dare ask. “Right? Totally. That thing is, like, burned into my brain!” We shudder one more time for good measure. After, we’re quiet for a while, and the clouds shift and the mushroom one feathers out and disappears. I take your hand this time, feeling the electric bond re- turn as I swing our clasped fingers together in the space between our chairs. “I love you,” I say. “Me too,” you respond too quickly. I roll my head to the side and smile, and you add, “Your boobs are getting big- ger than mine. No fair.” “They are?” I glance down my chest toward my two pa- thetic, barely-there mounds beneath the bikini fabric. You nod. “Yes. And you’re so pretty—too pretty—you’re really perfect, you know? I’ve never had a friend as perfect as you.” It should be a compliment but, instead, the electricity fizzles as if short-circuited, and my chest fills with an in- explicable sense of dread. Your admiration feels somehow fragile and conditional, and impossible to live up to. “No I’m not, don’t be stupid,” I say, irritated. I want to untangle my fingers, get up, and sprint across the lawn, but you squeeze harder to hold on. “Yes you are. Admit it.” “Aubs—” “Well, I think you are. I wish I were more like you. Pretty and free, and not afraid of anything, like your mother.” It feels worse when you add this, because you don’t know me if you think I’m like her. I’m nothing like her, off-kilter and unfettered, nor half as beautiful. I’m plain, but I’m solid. And, yet, it isn’t about me, suddenly. It’s what you have decided. You have judged me as one thing, and at some point, I will disappoint you by proving you wrong. “I am not,” I say again, to right things. “Are too,” you insist, making my face redden in protest. But you don’t notice. You don’t see. And even if you turned and looked at me, you couldn’t tell the flush of anger in my cheeks from too much sun. “I just wish I could be more like you. Geesh, that’s all.” “You do?” You nod, and squeeze my fingers even harder, and we both close our eyes. I leave them there in yours even though a few are starting to go numb. “So much,” you say. “Really?” “Yes. Really.” So, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’re not judging me at all. I squeeze back, letting go of my unease, wanting to hold on to whatever spell has you enamored with me, instead. Or maybe I’m weak and don’t have the heart to call out the lie, and tell you how afraid of everything I really am. About the Author: GAE POLISNER is the award-winning author of In Sight of Stars, The Memory of Things, The Summer of Letting Go, The Pull of Gravity, and Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me. She lives on Long Island with her husband, two sons, and a suspiciously-fictional looking dog. When Gae isn't writing, you can find her in a pool or the open waters off Long Island. She's still hoping that one day her wetsuit will turn her into a superhero.

http://www.dazzledbybooks.com/2020/04/jack-kerouac-is-dead-to-me-blog-tour.html

[bandaidpennylane]

Vogue Remembers Edie on her 70th birthday. "When I was with Andy Warhol, I was dancing jazz ballet twice a day, so I just wore my leotards and I knew I wasn’t going to turn anybody on . . . . When I went out on the street I’d put on a coat. But Vogue photographed me in leotards and a T-shirt as a new costume,” Edie Sedgwick once recalled, seemingly stunned at the elevation of her style from accidental to iconic. Born Edith Minturn Sedgwick, the actor-model, who would have been 72 today, is remembered as a magical It girl, a winsome superstar, a big-eyed Keene painting come to life. But as has been proven time and time again, being worshipped for your youth and beauty is hardly a prerequisite for a happy life. Sedgwick’s wealthy family had deep roots in colonial America, and she had an eccentric upbringing. She was raised with seven siblings on a ranch in California; her father was reportedly by turns charismatic and terrifying. She studied art in Boston; in 1964, she moved to New York City, where she fell in with Warhol’s Factory set. She was literally painfully thin (she suffered repeated bouts of anorexia); her trademark style was achieved, she said, when she chopped off her long brown hair and dyed what was left silvery-white. An original Chelsea girl, she lived in that hotel. Warhol put her in movies with names like Vinyl and Horse. Trying to make sense of her life and the strange turns it had taken, Sedgwick once said, “It’s not that I’m rebelling. It’s that I’m just trying to find another way.” Alas, this other way eluded her; she died before she saw 30. The coroner ruled her death “undetermined/accident/suicide.” Forty-four years later, her gamine vulnerability still haunts. One thing is certain—she has been famous for far longer than fifteen minutes.

[desertangell]

End of the Year

I’m going to be sappy for a second because I’m definitely one of those people that takes this time of year to reflect upon all that has happened and how it all may affect the new year.

The beginning of 2019 was difficult. A lot happened that made me struggle with my mental health, but I also finally took the steps I needed to seek the help that would get me through the day. My 90 days as the ZooMobile Coordinator occurred on January 12th, and I spent that next weekend in Santa Monica. The fact that I live so close to California and the ocean still eludes me. January also included my decision to participate in my first aerial showcase at Vertical Fix. Little did I know how much it would mean to me.

February didn’t include anything major from what I can remember. I continued training as an aerialist, learning to love the trapeze, and I traveled to some fun places in Arizona, including Ajo, where they have a lot of beautiful murals to explore.

My first aerial performance was on March 22nd, and I had so many people show up to support me. I overcame my stage fright, fell in love with my makeup and costume, and I put everything I had into what I brought to the audience. It was magical. Of course, that meant I had to do it again in another few months!

March was also the month when I met April. We started talking via Instagram and met in Papago Park to take pictures of yoga poses. Needless to say, we became fast friends, and I couldn’t be more thankful to have her in my life.

The next month included seeing Cirque du Soleil’s AmaLuna and hanging out in Las Vegas with my sister, Lizzy, and two of her friends who also became my friends! We didn’t do anything too crazy, but it was an incredibly fun weekend and one I still look back on fondly.

May brought the end of my overnight travel season for ZooMobile. The season had come and gone, and my last couple of weeks were spent in Flagstaff. I also got my wisdom teeth out! Which wasn’t super fun but the process was fairly easy and didn’t end up in any issues afterwards. I also started rehearsals for my second student showcase at Vertical Fix! This time, I was set on doing a performance on sling, a squishy version of the trapeze.

In June, I went on my first long vacation since moving to Arizona. I went up to Wisconsin to stay with Lizzy and also got to spend a couple of days with my other sister, mom, and my grandma. We celebrated her 90th birthday! When Lizzy visited me over the holidays in 2018, she said she wanted to retire in Phoenix. When I was in Wisconsin, I said I would retire there.

July included so many great things, and I didn’t even know it at the time. I went to LA to visit Laura for her birthday, and we went to Disneyland. My first visit! She and I had decided that we were going to be roommates, so it was also a great opportunity to get to know each other better. Of course, she did take me to a boarded up mental hospital…at night. My second student showcase was on July 20th, and I completely loved becoming the Mad Hatter. April came to see me with her husband, and she was sold on being involved in the next one! I also decided to go on a date with someone named Tim on July 26th. We liked each other pretty quickly, and it continued on from there.

Once August started, it was time to begin my ZooMobile season again. I wouldn’t be doing any overnights just yet, but the summer had gone by fast. I did decide to begin volunteering as a Volunteer Keeper Assistant in our Equine Department, and I loved spending my Mondays with the horses!

My brother, Mario, turned 30 in September, so that meant I got to plan my first trip back home since moving to Phoenix. Right before his birthday, though, I spent time with Tim to celebrate his birthday. We went on a great hike in Prescott and had some pretty delicious food! He had also helped me move into my new apartment with Laura before my vacation. Vacation with my family meant a new tattoo, paying for my brother to get his first tattoo, and making tamales from scratch for the first time! I had only ever helped assemble them in the past. It felt like a rite of passage, and me and Lizzy did a really great job! All too fast, though, my vacation came to an end, and I went back to the Southwest.

October! One of my favorite months of the year. Tim and I went to Vegas together for a weekend. We had a great time, and he was definitely more of an adult than I was. We also said “I love you” for the first time, and I still feel lucky to have him in my life. In my new apartment, I adopted two cats from a friend, and I loved them immediately. Posey and Fester are my children now, and I get sad when I’m away from them for even just a few days.

Before I knew it, November was here. I attended the Vertical Fix showcase to see April and other friends perform, and it made me realize that I would have to try and be in the next one. Tim and I took our first long vacation together and spent a week in Park City, Utah. We did a lot of staying in the hotel, but it was so relaxing. One of the highlights, though, was getting to swim in hot springs that are in a crater! It was incredible. Tim and I also took part in a 5K Bubble Run. The bubbles were dyed to color our clothes, and we did more walking than running, but it was an accomplishment! At the end of November, I had gotten to celebrate Thanksgiving with Tim and his family and hosted a Friendsgiving for all of the amazing people I’ve met thus far while living in Arizona.

And now, it’s December. With less than one week until 2020, I can’t believe everything that has happened this year. For my birthday, my friend Alex hosted a birthday party with an Ugly Christmas Sweater theme, and I received my first aerial apparatus as a gift from Tim. On Christmas Day, I went with Tim to spend the day with his family. His parents and sisters had gotten me gifts as well, and I felt very special. The holidays may not be my favorite time of year anymore, but they are made exponentially better when they aren’t spent alone. I’ve created a home here, and my life is rich with the people I’ve met. There are difficult days, and I sometimes only want to stay in bed. I don’t know if I am working in the job I want to stay in forever, and I still miss having more trees and green grass surrounding me. But overall, 2019 has given me a lot. I can only hope 2020 has even more exciting plans in store.

[wildefiction]

Of Course...Mr. Collins

TWENTY-THREE

The rest of the week passed quickly as you finalized plans for the southern California convention taking place the first weekend of December. When you'd asked what would happen once the convention circuit finished for the year, Misha had reminded you that he was in the middle of filming season thirteen, and that it was likely the two of you would be spending a substantial part of the next several months in Vancouver. Although since he lived so close he often came home on the weekends, so he assured you would have some down time. Not that you minded, spending a bunch of time with your prohibitively sexy boss who you also happened to be sleeping with? It was a no-brainer.

Thursday morning dawned chilly, a cold wind and drizzling rain pelted the worn shingles of your roof. Drawing the Venetian blinds open filled the living room with a grey light and you smiled as your cats appointed themselves door guardians, keeping a wary eye on the crows who enjoyed taunting them from the deck.

Padding into the kitchen you set to work gathering the materials to make cheesecake. It was your favorite dessert, and you saved the lengthy process for the holidays. Reaching up to the top shelf of your cupboards required a step stool, as even on tiptoes the mixing bowls eluded you. Whoever had designed the kitchen failed to realize that putting cupboards above the dishwasher made them out of reach for all but the tallest people.

Straining for the stack of glass bowls occupied your attention. Just as you got a good grip on the lip of one your phone rang. Looking around you in search of the source quickly revealed that you'd left the device on the couch. By the sounds of the muffled tone, it had slid between the cushions. Setting the bowls on the counter you ran into the adjacent room, just catching the call before it went to voicemail.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Mr. Collins.” Groaning, Misha sighed on the other end of the call. “You're lucky I need you Ms. [Y/L/N], otherwise you'd be in serious need of an attitude adjustment.” 

The gravelly admonishment made you flush, a crimson heat pooling through your belly. Clearing his throat, your boss quickly changed the subject. 

“So, ahh, I hate to do this but..do you think you could come help us in the kitchen? I may have bitten off more than I could chew with this menu.” 

You were about to tell him you'd be happy to, but he continued, hastily adding that you could bring your sister if you wanted to and that he'd give you a bonus if you'd save his ass. Laughing through the line, you agreed - on the condition that you could bring dessert. “Thanks [Y/F/N], you really are a lifesaver.”

You weren't about to turn down more time with Misha, the salary boost was just an added bonus. He need never know that you had planned on spending the day stuffing your face with cheesecake; deciding to forego the big spread when you realized you'd be spending the holiday alone had saved you a lot of time and money.

Gathering all of the ingredients into a grocery tote along with several mixing bowls, your biggest springform pan and the fresh fruit used for garnish, you moved into your room to change. The bright blue fleece pajama pants littered with sheep that you currently wore didn't exactly feel right.

Not wanting to overdo things, you decided on a pair of soft, plum colored leggings and a form-fitting black tunic top, the hem falling just a few inches past the curve of your thighs. Pulling knee-high, oatmeal colored wool socks on before lacing up your pair of soft leather boots completed the outfit. Spreading a thick layer of dark eyeliner on to accompany the purple and black smokey-eye was just enough to tie everything together, your [Y/E/C] irises framed by the heavier makeup.

Pulling a brush through your long [Y/H/C] hair was enough, you knew if you were cooking that a fancier hairstyle wouldn't last long anyhow.

The highway held few cars, making the drive pass quickly. Pulling into Misha’s neighborhood, you were surprised by the number of cars parked both in his driveway and lining the street. Knocking on the heavy front door left you standing on the porch for a few minutes. After several tries,  you squeezed the handle, and finding it unlocked, let yourself in.

The maelstrom that greeted you was intense. West chased Tom and Shep through the house while JJ sat on the plush rug of the living room and stacked blocks with Maison. Gen and Daneel reclined together on the overstuffed sofa, glasses of red wine clutched in their hands, chatting as they kept a watchful eye on the girls. Rather than being overwhelmed, you felt like part of the family, a smile passing over your face as you took in your surroundings and made your way to the kitchen.

Vicki stood behind the cool marble covered island that dominated the center of the room. The sharp knife in her hand sliced through vegetables with ease. Seeing you walk in, she lowered the blade, and, wiping her hands on the half apron tied around her waist; enveloped you in a bone crushing hug. 

“[Y/F/N]! Thank you so much for coming to help with dinner...you know how Misha can be.” Thinking back to the first night you’d met the Collins’, you rolled your eyes and laughed. “So, what scheme has he thought of this time?” 

Lifting your bags up onto the counter, your [Y/E/C] eyes widened in shock at the thick piece of cardstock Vicki handed across her work station. 

“He..he actually made a menu?” “Where is our host anyhow?” Vicki snorted under her breath in mild amusement, motioning vaguely over her shoulder with the knife she’d taken up to finish her task.

Turning your attention to the set of double french doors behind her, you wandered across the cool wooden floor and looked through the glass. Misha, Jared and Jensen were all huddled around a large grill, where two twenty-pound turkeys were trussed and stuffed with herbs; slowly turning over the open flame. Jared noticed you first as you leaned against the oak door frame, impressed at their dedication. 

“Why am I not surprised that you are actually roasting turkeys over an open fire?” Jensen held up his hands and backed away from the heat, shaking his head while he tilted an amber bottle to his lips.

“Not me, Jared and I are giving him shit. There’s no way Misha can do this and have them finish before next year. We’re taking bets on how long it’ll take until we get to eat.” 

“Supervising, you might say..” Jared quipped as he moved to wrap his arms around you in greeting.

Misha’s attention finally rose from the spit and his eyes met [Y/F/N], a slow smile twisting over his face at the woman standing in his doorway. She looked amazing; a glass of wine in her hand as she smiled back at him, an amused expression on her face. 

“Well boys, have fun out here in the cold. I’m going back inside to surround myself with beautiful women...and cheesecake.” A torrent of wind off of the bay swirled around you as you stepped back into the warmth of the house.

There was a great deal of work to be done for the two desserts you had promised. Melting white chocolate over a double boiler while simultaneously reducing fresh raspberries into a puree forced you to abandon the glass of merlot Vicki had poured you. With those tasks complete you began assembling the base recipe for the cheesecakes themselves, the onyx monster of a stand mixer working overtime to whip the ingredients together. Crossing the kitchen to pour freshly ground coffee beans into the espresso machine for the tiramisu cheesecake took only a moment, the compelling smell warming you from the inside out.

Two hours later, you pulled the hot desserts from the double ovens set into the wall. Lowering the cakes to cooling racks well out of reach of small hands, you sighed; content. The smell of roasting turkey wafted through the open door when you poked your head outside to check how things were going. Rosemary, thyme and orange married together beautifully, a hint of sage rounding out the bouquet. The smug look on Misha’s face at his success caught your eye, his piercing blue eyes lit with satisfaction, that damning smile of his adding to the heat that burned through you.

Setting the expansive table distracted you well enough. A smaller, square oak table had been set aside just for the kids and you found your mind wandering to how it would feel to have your own child joining the others as they clambered up into their chairs. Shaking your head, you huffed at the thought. You didn’t like children. Mentally berating the biological clock that occasionally screamed at you to procreate, you shoved the idea away from your conscience. You could barely take care of yourself, adding a two-legged little gremlin to the mix wasn’t even a somewhat good idea. Pouring yourself a second glass of wine, you settled into one of the twelve heavy chairs that flocked the stretch of dark wood quickly filling with a myriad of dishes.

Dinner played out as if it were the scene in a hallmark movie. The  food was delicious, Misha spending twenty minutes carving up both turkeys before setting large, oval platters of meat at each end of the table. Tureens filled with mashed potatoes, both sweet and gold sat nestled amongst casseroles of stuffing, whole cranberries lending their beautiful color to the tablescape. Massive biscuits rested in napkin lined baskets; an old recipe handed down to Gen from her grandparents. Misha’s homemade wine flowing freely while the kids enjoyed fresh squeezed lemonade, West excitedly telling anyone who would listen that he’d help make it.

“[Y/F/N], where’s your sister? Did she not want to join us?” Jared’s hazel eyes were warm as they turned to you, his fingers laced with Gen’s. 

“She’s decided to stay in Hawaii for another week, actually.” Vicki’s eyes widened as she realized that you’d planned to be home alone today and she grimaced.

“If Misha hadn’t called you to help, what exactly would you be doing right now?” Shrugging, you swallowed another drink of the fruity liquid in your glass before answering. 

“Probably stuffing myself full of cheesecake and watching movies in my pajamas.” 

“What?! There are at least three food groups in cheesecake, it’s a nice, balanced meal.” 

“I’m not complaining though, this turkey is a-maaaazing Misha.”

After hours spent shopping, prepping and cooking the veritable feast laid out before you, everyone was overfull within thirty minutes. Jared and Jensen herded the children upstairs to change into pajamas and get cleaned up while Daneel, Gen and Vicki cleared the table. Back in the kitchen you pulled the fresh raspberry puree and heavy whipping cream from the refrigerator, spreading the fruit topping evenly across the surface of one of the cheesecakes. White chocolate curls and whole berries decorated the outer ring and sides of the confection. 

Adding the heavy cream to a stainless steel charger produced beautifully fresh cream for the tiramisu cake and, carrying them out to the table gleaned the interest of everyone in the house. A concerned look fell over Jensen’s face as he warred with the idea of whether or not he could fit additional food in his stomach. Laughing, you assured him there was plenty and that he could eat it later. With a curt nod of his head, he and Jared followed Misha back outside and you turned questioning glances to the women sitting around you. 

“It’s become a bit of a tradition when we’re all together to light up the fire pit and disconnect for awhile. C’mon [Y/F/N], you’ll see what we mean.” Vicki’s fingers stretched out to envelope your own as she moved to lift several large blankets from a basket by the door. Tilting her head in invitation, you followed her and the others outside where the boys already sat, the small children clambering up into their father’s laps. As you moved to sit in one of the adirondack chairs huddled near the iron pit of dancing flames, Vicki glared at you. 

“Don’t even think about running off by yourself, you come sit with us. You’re family now, whether you like it or not.”

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

TAGS: @jamielea81 @wings-of-a-raven

[bondespinoza4-blog]

Netflix's Splint Hastings Believes AT&T Time Warner Merger May be Good For Individuals.

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Each one of those factors keep the video game off being actually all that may be, and also in the case of this game, it's a true embarassment, since I think just what this game might have been is actually something absolutely exceptional, rather than just excellent.

[qn504-blog]

How to rent a car in California. Car rental guide.

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