#fuck wallace but he did the thing in 2016

[ourlittlesister2015]

The rio olympics were such a highlight of my life. It was the year I lost my aunt and the worst of my life so far. I remember going to bed the night the night brasil played France because I knew I’d throw up if i watched it. Brazil was out if they lost that game and my family already had the ticket for the finals and they won. I managed to watch the rest of the games and I particularly remember watching the one against Russia and calm. They were playing well so I was ready to lose with my head high but then they won and I was going to see them in the finals and I watched them win!!!!!!! I lost my voice that day and nothing was ever the same for me.

[roseworth]

How do you feel about Slade Wilson?

I personally could never get myself to like him strictly for what he did for Tera like I can excuse a lot of things but what he did to her is not one of them. I don’t know, I can never get myself to like him. Am I missing out?

I don’t know much about him beyond his titans cameos so is there an extra layer to his character that makes him likable?

Or is he just unlikable? How do you feel about him and him as a parent?

i think slade can be such a compelling character when hes written well. but the problem is that he is rarely written well

like. he's interesting to me BECAUSE he's such a terrible person and i hate him so much. he's a pedophile and an abuser and just an unapologetically horrible person and i LOVE it when writers don't ignore that. one of the reasons i love deathstroke 2016 is because priest doesnt pretend that slade is a good guy deep down, he is written like an asshole and does awful things throughout the entire book. because hes an asshole.

i dont like it when he works With the titans because. they should hate his ass!!! ESPECIALLY for what he did to terra. but he can be so good as a titans villain because hes a loser predator that routinely gets his ass kicked by teenagers that hate him on a personal level.

another reason hes interesting to me is because he genuinely DOES love the people in his life (derogatory). i hate it when people act like he hates his children because thats not true at all!! unfortunately he loves them so much but his version of love is abusing them and/or pushing them away. hes a terrible father and a terrible person but that doesnt mean he doesnt love his family. its just that his love is toxic and awful and him loving someone is always a bad thing

one (of many) thing that i hated about the movie deathstroke knights & dragons is that they tried to make him a good person. they treated it like his children were being irrational for hating him, his mercenary work was actually "noble" (he gave up a job because it came from a dictator; he would not fucking do that), and they even treated him cheating on adeline as "aw poor slade was so upset and he cheated on his wife because he was sad 🥺" and thats just. so boring to me. the reason he can be an interesting character is because hes such an awful person who does terrible things because hes selfish and doesnt care about other people, and even when he does care about other people hes doing it in a way that doesnt hurt him

thats also one of the reasons i HATED that one arc with respawn. i forget the name of it but it was the one crossover with batman & robin & deathstroke inc (<- this is driving me crazy what the fuck was it called.... it was the one where ra's died.... do u know what im talking about (EDIT: its Shadow War!! i forgor)) because suddenly slade was acting like he was a good father and that he loved his children and was acting Better than batman. which is so fucking stupid because hes a shithead and he knows it! but for some reason slade was like "im embracing my son i love being a family man ☺️ you wouldnt know what thats like would you batman ☺️" like since when do YOU know what thats like. at the very least he shouldve been pushing respawn away that entire time and it pisses me off that he was treated like the good guy in that story. and thats not even mentioning how bad rose's reaction pissed me off in this & dark crisis. williamson i am begging you to learn literally anything about the characters you write.

but going back to deathstroke 2016. that one is sooo good because christopher priest completely understands that slade is the worst. what i love about it is that he actually has "pure" motivations for a lot of the things he does (ie hiring a hitman on rose because he wants to spend time with her, stealing wallace's speedforce powers because he wants to save grant, etc) but it is very clear in the story that his motivations dont matter because hes doing a shitty thing! it doesnt matter that his intentions were good because he was hurting people on purpose!!!! he can try to be "good" all he wants but he is basically incapable of being good without hurting and/or manipulating someone. which is why hes such a compelling character to me. hes a shitty person with relatively good intentions. cool motive, still murder.

thats ALSO why i really like seeing him as a father (derogatory). because the shitty things he does are once again always well-intended but he fucks up his kids BAD. like just looking at his relationship with rose pre52, he pushes her away when he first meets her because hes afraid she'll be in danger if he brings her into his life. then he decides he DOES want her in his life so he hires someone to murder the people looking after her but lets her get her revenge on the person that killed her family. then he drugs her because hes a fucked up person that wants to keep her with him because shes the only family he has left (grant, adeline, wintergreen, and joey are all more or less dead at this point), then later after she leaves he fights her & joey (who is alive again) because he wants them to see that the titans to be a better family to them than he could be, THEN he fights them again because he wants them back in his life. its a back and forth of "i have to push them away to keep them safe" and "i have to go to extreme measures to keep them in my life"

hes a shitty father but hes a shitty father BECAUSE he loves his family. and he fucks them up because he doesnt know how to show them he loves them so he just makes it worse on purpose. he doesnt think that he can get any better so he pushes them away OR manipulates them and forces them to be close to him.

anyways. all this to say i find him interesting as a character BECAUSE he's unlikable and i dont trust anyone that actually likes him. if he was real i would throw rocks at him in the street because hes a piece of shit. but because hes not real i can enjoy his books as long as they dont shy away from the fact that hes a piece of shit

[weaselandfriends]

I strongly disagree with the assessment of the Epilogues here. The Epilogues end the story conclusively. Sure, Dirk has conducted a clockmaster series of insane little bits and pieces crashing down Cascade style to manufacture a "The Story Continues" ending, because as the most powerful arbiter of irony, cynicism, and disillusionment within Homestuck, Dirk cannot allow the story to end. But the story is over. John's final conversation in Candy with Roxy is the powerful, final note of catharsis that conclusively ends what Homestuck is about, even if the "plot" continues. Plot versus catharsis, that's the underlying tension of the Epilogues, inherent in the Meat/Candy split. It's why the Epilogues deal so much with John's "removal from canon." That's what I mean in my original post about metamodernism taking the innovations of postmodernism and using them to posit new meaning.

Much of the dissatisfaction I see people express regarding the Epilogues is rooted in concerns of fandom: Characters are treated with disrespect. The humor is irreverent. The tone is darker and cruder. These are the things I think time will wash away as unimportant to the Epilogues as art. New readers engaging with Homestuck aren't going to become "attached" to characters like Jake and Jade and Jane the way serial readers steeped in the fandom's intricate mythos and headcanons did, and subsequently won't become emotionally hurt by how those characters act in the Epilogues.

As an example of what I mean, one of the replies to my original post has a long discussion about Dirk that goes like this:

You know why I think Dirk is as mean as he is in the epilogues? It's because this fandom is fucking mean about Dirk, WAS mean about Dirk consistently and enthusiastically for the span of 2016-2019 in between the end of the comic and the release of the epilogues, and the epilogues were a reflection of us in the first place.

If you see the Epilogues as a mirror, it distorts your reading of them. The way the characters act is a reflection of you or someone you know, and you're going to have a personal reaction to that. But somebody reading Homestuck for the first time today or 20 years from now won't have that experience, or that reading.

Going back to the original discussion of all the -modernisms, I wonder if a story must conclusively reject cynicism to be avant garde. When David Foster Wallace brought New Sincerity to the fore, he was waging a holy war against "irony poisoned" authors like Bret Easton Ellis who were the logical intellectual outcome of postmodernism. But Infinite Jest is a bizarrely structured book that, at first glance, seems to end abruptly and without resolution to any of its plotlines: the classic postmodern ending. Only someone who rereads the book, i.e. sincerely grapples with it and tries to understand it, rather than consuming it once and spitting it out (Infinite Jest itself being a scathing critique of single-use consumerist culture), will see the somewhat facile trick DFW has played: The beginning of the book is actually its ending, with answers to all the major questions; you simply didn't realize that the first time you read.

DFW would eventually become the most postmodern creature of all by leaving his final book, The Pale King, an unfinished uneditable monstrosity after his death. Bret Easton Ellis, and fuck even Thomas Pynchon, are still alive; BEE dropped a new novel this year. The thorn of postmodernism is not so easily extracted. Is there not something innately meaningful in the fact that Hussie, after succumbing to disillusion and crapping out a rushed, lousy ending to Homestuck proper, came back for the Epilogues to truly grapple with it once more?

Post-postmodernism in Pop Culture: Homestuck’s Revenge

I recently saw an excellent video essay titled Why Do Movies Feel So Different Now? by Thomas Flight. Though the title is opaque clickbait, the video is actually about major artistic zeitgeists, or movements, in film history. Flight describes three major movements:

Modernism, encompassing much of classic cinema, in which an earnest belief in universal truths led to straightforward narratives that unironically supported certain values (rationalism, civic duty, democracy, etc.)

Postmodernism, in which disillusionment with the values of modernism led to films that played with cinematic structure, metafiction, and the core language of film, often with more unclear narratives that lacked straightforward resolutions, and that were skeptical or even suspicious of the idea of universal truth 

Metamodernism, the current artistic zeitgeist, which takes the structural and metafictional innovations of postmodernism but uses them not to reject meaning, but point to some new kind of meaning or sincerity.

Flight associates metamodernism with the “multiverse” narratives that are popular in contemporary film, both in blockbuster superhero films and Oscar darlings like Everything Everywhere All at Once. He argues that the multiverse conceptually represents a fragmented, metafictional lack of universal truth, but that lack of truth is then subverted with a narrative that ultimately reaffirms universal truth. In short, rather than rejecting postmodernism entirely, metamodernism takes the fragmented rubble of its technique and themes and builds something new out of that fragmentation.

Longtime readers of this blog may find some of these concepts familiar. Indeed, I was talking about them many years ago in my Hymnstoke posts, even using the terms “modernism” and “postmodernism,” though what Flight calls metamodernism I tended to call “post-postmodernism” (another term used for it is New Sincerity). Years before EEAAO, years before Spider-verse, years before the current zeitgeist in pop cultural film and television, there was an avant garde work pioneering all the techniques and themes of metamodernism. A work that took the structural techniques of postmodernism–the ironic detachment, the temporal desynchronization, the metafiction–and used them not to posit a fundamental lack of universal truth but rather imbue a chaotic, maximalist world of cultural detritus with new meaning, new truth, new sincerity. That work was:

Homestuck.

That’s right! Everyone’s favorite web comic. Of course, I’m not the first person to realize the thematic and structural similarities between Homestuck and the current popular trend in film. Just take a look at this tweet someone made yesterday:

This tweet did some numbers.

As you might expect if you’re at all aware of the current cultural feeling toward Homestuck, many of the replies and quotes are incredibly vitriolic over this comparison. Here’s one of my favorites:

It’s actually quite striking how many elements of the new Spider-verse are similar to Homestuck; aspects of doomed timelines, a multiversal network that seems to demand certain structure, and even “mandatory death of parental figure as an impetus for mandated personal growth” are repeated across both works. The recycling and revitalization of ancient, seemingly useless cultural artifacts (in Homestuck’s case, films like Con Air; in Spider-verse, irrelevant gimmick Spider-men from spinoffs past) are also common thematic threads.

As this new post-postmodern or metamodern trend becomes increasingly mainstream, and as time heals all and allows people to look back at Homestuck with more objectivity, I believe there will one day be a rehabilitation of Homestuck’s image. It’ll be seen as an important and influential work, with a place inside the cultural canon. Perhaps, like Infinite Jest, it’ll continue to have some subset of commentators who cannot get past their perception of the people who read the work rather than the work itself even thirty years after its publication, but eventually it’ll be recognized for innovations that precipitated a change in the way people think about stories and their meaning.

Until that day, enjoy eating raw sewage directly from a sewer pipe.

(Side note: I think Umineko no naku koro ni, which was published around the same time as Homestuck and which deals with many similar themes and then-novel ideas, will also one day receive recognition as a masterpiece. Check it out if you haven’t already!)

[beardedmrbean]

Problem is sometimes euthanasia can be the best option for some people

But y'know, everything depends on the situation

There was a young man from the UK, his girlfriend had tossed battery acid in his face.

I'm just going to do this, sticks with me since I think it was the first thing like this I ever really interacted with. Link

A woman threw acid over her former partner in an attack that left him with such "grotesque" injuries Belgian doctors agreed to end his life.

Berlinah Wallace, 49, is accused of murder and applying a corrosive fluid to Dutch engineer Mark van Dongen in Bristol in 2015.

Mr van Dongen ran screaming into the street in his boxer shorts with "horrific" injuries before being taken to hospital, Bristol Crown Court heard.

Ms Wallace denies both charges.

The attack on 23 September left Mr van Dongen, 29, paralysed from the neck down, unrecognisable and all but blinded, Bristol Crown Court heard.

Ms Wallace allegedly laughed and told him "if I can't have you, no-one else can" before throwing a glass of sulphuric acid into his face.

Prosecutor Adam Vaitilingam QC said the defendant "deliberately threw acid at Mr van Dongen, intending to cause him serious harm".

"She admits throwing it but denies any intent to cause him harm. She says that she believed that what she was throwing over him was a glass of water."

(oh yes people often mistake acid for water I'm sure)

Mr Vaitilingam said Mr van Dongen's "physical and mental suffering" drove him to euthanasia.

"Put simply, he could not bear to live in that condition. If that is right, we say, then she is guilty of murder," he added.

The court was told Mr van Dongen suffered 15 months of pain before being granted euthanasia in Belgium, where it is legal and where his family lives, in January 2017.

"He was examined by three consultants, who confirmed that this was, in their terms, a case of unbearable physical and psychological suffering despite maximum medical support," Mr Vaitilingam added.

"They agreed that the test for euthanasia was met, and on 2 January 2017 they inserted a catheter into his heart, which brought about his immediate death." ___________

Not really a fan of euthanasia, but as reasons go, I wouldn't fight anyone over this I don't think.

Now let's go to Canada.

Canada's Veterans Affairs office offered to assist a Paralympian and veteran to commit suicide when she sought to have a wheelchair lift installed in her home, the woman told lawmakers last week.

Christine Gauthier, a 52-year-old retired corporal who competed in the 2016 Paralympics at Rio De Janeiro, testified to lawmakers that a VA official had offered — in writing — to provide her with a medically-assisted suicide kit. The case officer remains unnamed but reportedly made similar offers to at least three other veterans, according to the Independent.

"I have a letter saying that if you’re so desperate, madam, we can offer you MAID, medical assistance in dying," Gauthier said in a hearing before the House of Commons veterans affairs committee.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the incident in a public statement on Friday after Gauthier said she personally wrote him a letter on the issue.

(I don't believe for a moment trudeau is displeased with anything about this other than the press it's getting is making him look bad)

This woman here

Wanted one of these

And was given the option of ending her own life instead.

So ya, you're right and I'm showing here 2 fairly extreme ends of the spectrum when it comes to this kind of thing, there should be some dignity allowed out there and you shouldn't be forced to live in excruciating pain where every moment after the morphine wears off leaves you in agony.

He went and made the decision for himself to do what he did and several doctors signed off on it saying, ya dude's fucked and baring a miracle will be beyond miserable for the foreseeable future so we're gonna ok this request, coup de grace, mercy killing.

Then we have a mostly fit veteran, paralympian, athlete that would like to be able to go upstairs in the home they live in and the doctor hands them a brochure that says have you considered suicide. (probably far more tastefully put than that, but still)

So while you are right there are situations that call for it, having EDS shouldn't be one of them, neither should having OCD, Borderline, Schizophrenia or Bipolar,

and being poor should not be a factor included either

OCD, Borderline, Schizophrenia and Bipolar I haven't actually seen if they're offering it to them but with the fact that they are offering to people with mental issues I wouldn't be surprised.

This is not mercy, mercy is helping people heal that can be helped heal, it's a chairlift for someone. it's not a needle so they don't have to fuss with it

Canada's standards for this are already too loose and they're about to get looser, doctors that don't want to treat someone might start pointing folks towards this too.

It's wrong,

[theoriesontheory]

Can Your Heart Be on Your Sleeve while Your Tongue is In Your Cheek?

Irony, Sincerity and the Internet

In their video essay “David Foster Wallace – The Problem with Irony” Schoder breaks down David Foster Wallace’s views on the downfall of entertainment, namely tv due to a saturation of irony. (2016) After introducing the problem of an overly ironic, snake devouring itself, media landscape, the solution seems to be proposed, a tonal shift towards sincerity. (ibid) Shows like The Office and Community and Parks and Recreation in some cases maintain post-modern traits in order to subvert them but more and more, mainstream media is focusing less on the deconstruction of the meta narrative and more focused on the micro-relationships. (ibid.)

In August of 2017 Kirin J. Callinan uploaded the music video for his latest single “Big Enough” featuring Alex Cameron, Molly Lewis and Jimmy Barnes. In September of 2017 a tumblr page posted a clip from the video, which was later uploaded to youtube and went viral as “Screaming Cowboy” (knowyourmeme, 2018)

The remixes and overdubs spread like wildfire and to this day, through apps like tik tok and Instagram the song and meme is heard around the world by listeners who potentially could never have heard anything else the artists have done or anything beyond the 43 second clip. In interviews on the piece featured artist Alex Cameron explains that the piece came out of the idea that people would constantly compare himself and Callinan in the relatively small Sydney Pop scene and thinking about how the world is so often divided. They wanted to remind people that everything wasn’t all about conflict but there can be unity. (Fluffy, 2018) Callinan himself describes the song as “sincere.” (Gaca, 2017) Beyond being a song about unity, represented by the two artists coming together but it also represents a deconstruction of genre boundaries for the artist. When first experimenting with making EDM, a genre he did not care for Callinan describes making something “aesthetically displeasing and pretty unexciting as an idea,” with “a euphoria that’s just infectious.” (ibid.) He continues, detailing how after hearing Sweedish House Mafia’s ‘Don’t You Worry Child’ that he was able to get past his own preconceived and taught notions of genre and boundaries between high and low art and understand that the heart of the work was important. (ibid.) This is immediately shown in this piece, bringing together the unique blend of two underground pop artists from Sydney, a world famous whistler and an Australian Rock icon. This song is the perfect representation of the idea of synthesis, it feels like a creative artist having fun while telling a sincere and genuine story about unity, not only in the lyrics but in the production of the song and the incorporation of a diverse range of cultural touchstones, the work is an intellectual masterpiece!

… But it’s still a meme and I didn’t actually listen to the whole song until around two years after it came out when I finally heard it through a bad Bluetooth speaker in a backyard somewhere. The question then stands, does the fact that something is a meme make it any less valuable as art? Looking back at the Schoder video, the first wave thinking of post modern media, the thinking that spawned shows like Seinfeld and Always Sunny, (2016) would say that this song was brilliant and funny. It’s a deconstruction of the notions of pop and using all kinds of semiotic messages that are understood by the knowledgeable and reference soaked internet generation, it did exactly what it was meant to do clearly, it’s making fun of the entertainment industry. And while it is all of those things I don’t think that is all the song is. I think this song is an example of an Office type TV show as described by Schoder. (2016) this song and the video does all of those things but still feels very human and genuine. It doesn’t stop at the deconstruction but also works on focusing to the right thing, connection and community.

Despite this wholesome message at the song’s core, some argue that the last refrain takes the song into parody

Image: Screenshot of Lyrics to ‘Big Enough’ from Genius.com

But if you think about songs that have called for peace and unity before,

Image: Screenshot of Lyrics to ‘Imagine’ from Genius.com

 I think that ‘gen z’ who was raised in cynicism would see both sentiments as equally as realistic. Meaning the only differences between the two songs are the choice of instrumentation and who’s singing it. Toward the end of the Gaca interview Callinan says, “I’d like to write more songs that are emotional and real and not full of so much fucking bullshit. But at the same time, it’s the bullshit that makes it fun. No one’s interested in listening to an acoustic singer-songwriter.” And I think that this song is a move in that direction for him.

To insert some of my own romantic thinking, in a way the fact that this song is being shared to so many different people in so many different contexts as humour, shows that the message of unity is being spread through comedy.

While the internet took this song and video and gave them a life of their own, at their core still stands an artist with a message. While a majority of people might know the song as humour, Callinan was able to achieve his artistic goal and make a song that he enjoys, as well as collaborating with a friend in Alex Cameron, an interesting and unique person in Molly Lewis and a childhood hero in Jimmy Barnes. It was funny, it was serious, it was entertaining, it is art.  

References:

Gaca, A. (2017, November 8). What Exactly Is Going On With Kirin J. Callinan? Spin. https://www.spin.com/featured/kirin-j-callinan-bravado-interview/

Fluffy. (2018, January 18). Interview: Alex Cameron Talks Style and Substance. Under the Radar. https://www.undertheradar.co.nz/news/13758/Interview-Alex-Cameron-Talks-Style-And-Substance.utr

Knowyourmeme, (2018). Big Enough. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/big-enough

Schoder, W. [Will Schoder]. (2016 October 7). David Foster Wallace – The Problem With Irony [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2doZROwdte4

Other media in order:

Kirin J Callinan. (2017 August 17). Kirin J Callinan - Big Enough (Official Video) ft. Alex Cameron, Molly Lewis, Jimmy Barnes [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvrZJ5C_Nwg

CarrierBK (2017 September 9) AHHHHH [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBLdQ1a4-JI

Image: Screenshot of Lyrics to ‘Big Enough’ from Genius.com Captured 07/07/2021 https://genius.com/Kirin-j-callinan-big-enough-lyrics

Image: Screenshot of Lyrics to ‘Imagine’ from Genius.com Captured 07/07/21 https://genius.com/John-lennon-imagine-lyrics

Red Lama (2017 October 5) Dank Meme Compilation – Big Enough [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWc-7Q8NbVA

[amillioninprizes]

An entirely too long post on how to fix Veronica Mars

So, anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows: 1) What a massive Veronica Mars fan I was and 2) how distraught I’ve been over the most recent season that debuted on Hulu in July. I’ve been pretty angry about it since it dropped, but the first month after I was pretty occupied with real life stuff. Now that I’m more settled, I’ve found myself getting sadder and angrier over time with just how terrible S4 was and what an obvious fuck you to longtime fans it was. It feels dumb to be so upset over a tv show, but this show got me through a lot over the past 8 years, and I feel like it’s been taken away from me.

 It’s anyone’s guess as to whether there will be a new season. Ideally it would end here with maybe an alternate ending filmed to avoid alienating fans further. On the one hand, the botched release, overwhelmingly negative response, and silence from the creators after initial interviews don’t look good for renewal chances. On the other hand, Hulu doesn’t have a lot of streaming hits, it probably did relatively decent numbers, and there are rumors floating around that its pickup chances look good. On a personal level, I hate the idea that this is where the legacy of Veronica Mars ends, while at the same time being extremely wary of what the creators have planned. I think a big part of the disappointment with S4 was that the movie and books set up what could have been some really interesting storylines and situations, all of which RT and co. squandered for cheap drama and to apparently turn the show into an entirely new vehicle; additionally I had hope that S4 would be a chance to rectify some problems the show has long had, but again, S4 exacerbated them. At this point I don’t expect anyone higher up in the creative process or at Hulu to give a fuck about the fans or making the show better as long as they hit streaming targets, but here are some suggestions:

Fire Rob Thomas

 While he created the show, it’s become clear that not only has he lost touch with the audience and the original spirit of the character, he doesn’t seem too keen on putting much effort into writing the show (as I will discuss below). Then you have his clear misogyny: his views that women in relationships can’t be interesting, that what makes Veronica interesting as a character is her trauma and how much she can endure, and the fact that basically every female character in the history of the show has a history of sexual victimization. He thought that making the Mexican cartel hitmen “philosophical” was subverting expectations (which says a lot of what his expectations of Latinx characters are). Then this is the way he essentially exploited his long term fan base to earn a new season of the show, only to turn around and tell us that we don’t matter. From a business perspective alone keeping him doesn’t make sense; selling a streaming platform on your loyal fanbase and then proceeding to purposefully piss ~80% of them off would be pretty questionable to me as someone in charge. The sheer cruelty with which he treated not only the fans who have supported him for 15 years (I fucking used to liveblog iZombie y’all. iZombie!), as well as how he callously dismissed long time cast members in favor of celebrity guest stars should not be rewarded. He’s admitted in interviews that he would be ok with younger writers doing a reboot many years in the future; why not just let him have a producer credit and then hand the show over to someone who’s invested in making it good?

Put a woman in charge and diversify the writing staff

A big problem with a) Veronica’s characterization in S4 b) RT’s ideas about what makes female characters interesting c) the show’s long history of problematic treatment of sexual assault is that it comes from a man’s conception of the female experience. The Veronica showcased in S4 and that RT wants to write in the future is very much a male fantasy: hates marriage and children, traumatized, DTF, and is too cool for other women. RT stated in interviews that he wanted to show Veronica at a “crossroads” this season in a way he claimed had been shown for men but not women; many female viewers found this depiction to ring false (few women are spending their time fretting about how committing to marriage after five years in an established relationship will bar us from strange sex going forward). In addition to having RT at the helm, most of the show’s writing staff for the majority of its run has been white dudes, which doesn’t bode well for telling the story of a female PI in a diverse community in today’s political climate. Putting a woman in charge would hopefully help rectify these issues to make the character feel more true to life and put a damper on the misogynistic storytelling. The show has a natural candidate in RT’s second-in-command Diane Ruggiero-Wright (despite her problematic history, never forget #KeisterEggGate), who has admitted to not being able to watch the last episode. Jennifer Graham, who wrote both of the books, would also be a worthy addition to the writing staff; while the books had a mixed reception, most fans agree that she got Veronica’s character right. And with the show’s problematic historical treatment of minority characters, adding more POC writers going forward is also necessary.

Bring back Logan (alive)

You don’t have to be a LoVe shipper to recognize just how integral Logan has been since the inception of the show, not just as Veronica’s partner but as a character is his own right. Logan’s journey in many ways parallels Veronica’s, and shows a contrast in how different characters respond to similar trauma. The most critical plot line in the show’s history, the mystery of who killed Lilly Kane, simply doesn’t work without Logan’s importance to Veronica. RT and his defenders like to claim that Logan was holding her back from true growth, which is frankly bizarre as he is the only character to consistently challenge her, like when he tells her that she obviously isn’t happy this season. Additionally, Logan’s scenes this season were the lone highlight of what was otherwise a painful slog of a season. Of the people who have said they would watch a potential S5, a good portion are only interested because they believe that the ambiguity of the last 10 minutes of the season means he’s not really dead (despite what RT has said in interviews). Then there’s what Logan’s death does to Veronica’s character, effectively cutting off what would have been an interesting character arc and stagnating her forever. No matter how much they try to shove Leo the pedo creep and other milquetoast RT self-insert love interests on us, no one else can possible measure up to Logan’s level in terms of being able to match Veronica as a character, intellectually or as a result of shared history.

Plus, the fact that we haven’t had a Weevil/Logan interaction since S3 is a goddamn travesty and should be rectified immediately.

Bring back Veronica

As sad as I am about Logan’s death, for me the most upsetting aspect of S4 was the assassination of Veronica’s character. For many viewers (including myself), the character we saw Kristen Bell portray in S4 wasn’t Veronica Mars but a different character with the same name. Between her abusive behavior towards Logan, her general indifference to her father’s medical condition, her dismissal of Wallace, and her racism towards Latinx characters (using a kid’s lawyer to threaten deportation: not a good look!), she was lacking the marshmallow-y center that always balanced out the pricklier aspects of her character and made her compelling. This change in characterization was especially jarring given that she was not this way when we last saw her in the books, where she mused about having children and sent her half-brother Hunter to summer camp (side note, but does he even exist anymore?). Many of us who had grown up with Veronica were hoping to see her grow with us as a character; instead we got an extreme regression lower than we’ve ever seen her. It would be one thing if they were trying to depict a PTSD storyline, which would make sense given her background, but since her change in behavior is never addressed by the narrative, it just makes her look like a cruel asshole and makes it impossible to root for her. This is exacerbated by the fact that RT has made it clear he has no interest in portraying her inner life, as shown by his wanting to avoid showing her grief over Logan’s death because it would be a real downer compared to the entertaining but ultimately hollow banter and quips he wants to focus on. Veronica this season was also just plain dumb: you mean to tell me that the girl who nearly got killed by Aaron Echolls in her back seat wouldn’t think to check her backseat every time she gets in a car?  (And let’s not even start with RT’s bizarre assertion in an interview that she apparently votes Republican). Not helping matters was Kristen Bell’s performance, which felt very flat for me this season compared to S1-3 and the movie; I don’t know if this was due to personal limitations or a reflection of the bad writing. Writers of future installments and KB herself would be wise to revisit S1, the movie, and the books to figure out what makes sense for Veronica’s character, leading me to my next point:

Get reacquainted with canon, develop a show bible, and hire a continuity director

This show has long had a problem with dropped plots, timelines, and continuity issues. Shelly Pomroy’s party has two happened either in the summer, or the fall. Then we have the movie paradox: Veronica graduated high school in 2006, which means her 10 year reunion should have taken place in 2016. The movie was released in 2014 and the books seem to keep to 2014 dates. Then S4 states that Keith’s movie accident took place in 2013, and mysteriously ages Veronica up to 35 when she should be 32 in 2019. Logan mentions an Aunt Naomi in S4--why didn’t she take care of him after Aaron was arrested (and what happened to Trina)? How the hell is Leo working as an FBI agent when he presided over the disappearance of the Lilly/Aaron tapes? Veronica is shown to be tentatively forgiving of Weevil taking the settlement from the sheriff’s department in Mr. Kiss and Tell, but is then shown to be extremely angry towards him for it in S4. This is just a small selection of the inconsistencies within the show. Plus there is the problem of repeated plot lines: Veronica rejects Leo in favor of Logan in S1, then rejects Leo in favor of Logan in Mr. Kiss and Tell, only for her to...reject Leo in favor of Logan in S4 (and RT says he wants to leave the high school plots behind). This sloppiness doesn’t bode well for a series that is supposed to be about mysteries, which require tight plotting. It would behove TPTB going forward to once and for all determine a timeline of Veronica’s life, keep a detailed record of past plot and character points, and have at least one person on staff who thinks to remember this stuff (RT notoriously has only a “solid, not spectacular” memory of the show, no matter what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says).

Make an effort (and do your fucking research) 

Moving on from continuity issues to more general problems with the laziness of RT’s writing. He has basically admitted that he doesn’t care much about facts or characterization when writing plots--he shoehorns details to fit the plot rather than have it evolve organically from the characters and prior canon. I know that when writing it’s often impossible to make every story detail 100% accurate, but the extent of RT’s sloppiness is alarming. This excellent Reddit thread details a lot of the problems with S4 in particular, but this has been a problem since S2. Did anyone ever understand exactly why the Fitzpatricks were invested in framing Logan for Felix’s death? In the movie, it makes no sense that if Cobb and co. wanted Carrie silenced, they would add the complication of framing Logan for her murder--given her history, it would have been a lot easier just to make it look like she had accidentally overdosed. Given his previous patterns of villain writing fans were able to guess the identity of the S4 bomber based on casting alone. The mysteries in both Mr. Kiss and Tell and S4 are both ripped from the headlines, which indicates that RT wants to turn VM into the next Law and Order. Meanwhile, he complained about how hard including Logan in the story in S4 was, while Logan arguably had the best lines and most interesting scenes this season--apparently when you put an effort into things, they work out! This laziness extends past storyline issues and into factual problems that detract from the quality of the plot. Longtime fandom pals are probably tired about hearing me go on and on about how there’s no way Aaron’s lawyers could have gotten Veronica’s medical records due to HIPAA laws. Logan’s career change from naval aviator to intelligence is highly unlikely (and unnecessary, given that they changed it only to fridge him at the end of the season). Meanwhile, I know fanfic writers who have spent hours on the phone with strangers in order to research what type of firearm would cause a specific type of bullet injury. It’s very puzzling to me that RT wants to take the show in the direction of being mystery-only when apart from that one time he is piss poor at writing mysteries and puts no effort into them. I shouldn’t have to tell television writers to, you know, do their job but this is what we’ve come to in 2019.

Know your audience

A majorly annoying thing about the promo for this season is how in every single interview Rob Thomas did he was always talking about how he wanted VM to be like other shows and movies: Fargo, True Detective, Game of Thrones, Chinatown (which is apparently the only noir movie he’s ever seen). The thing is, if I wanted to watch those shows, I would; I watched Veronica Mars specifically because I enjoyed its unique qualities, and I would say most fans agree. The general perception within the fandom is that with this season Rob Thomas seems to have been aiming to dump the old, majority female, CW fanbase in order to achieve what he perceives as a cooler prestigious male fanbase; the issue is, new people aren’t going to take up a show in its fourth season if they didn’t watch or didn’t like earlier seasons. Also, trying to write a prestigious show doesn’t make your show prestigious. Considering that based on anecdotal evidence most of the people who like S4 seem to be male, he may have succeeded in the first part of his aim. However, this majority female fanbase he was so willing to cast aside are the ones who have run fansites and rewatches during fallow times (i.e. between S3 and the movie and then between the books and S4), so drumming up interest among fans (and therefore streaming views) in the future may be a challenge. Plus, women are a better advertising demographic since they are more likely to be in charge of household purchasing decisions, so maintaining us as a fanbase makes business sense as well. He may have tricked enough people into watching S4 that S5 is given a go, but I wouldn’t be surprised if streams are weak beyond that. If the show is to succeed as a commercial endeavor, better to go with appealing to a known quantity than trying to make a generic show that very few people have expressed interest in watching.

Bring back the mystery of the week

This is a more minor thing I felt was missing from S4. I think after the criticism of S3 not having a season-long arc RT overcorrected in focusing on one mystery. However, the mystery of the week had the following benefits: 1) giving chances for the characters to interact and telling us more about them 2) helping to modulate the pace of the season-long arc. With better writing a season-long standalone mystery could maybe work, but in the case of S4 specifically the mystery was kind of dull and repetitive and could have stood to include a couple of diversions in the form of a smaller case here and there.

Re-evaluate the creators’ interpretation of the word “adult”

Much of the promo and reviews for this season noted the more “adult” content to be expected this season now that Veronica’s grown. Many fans hoped that meant seeing Veronica act like, you know, an adult with adult problems rather than a teenager less mature than the actual teenager she was. Unfortunately, the show’s interpretation of the word seems to be more in keeping with a television rating sense of the word--meaning sex, drugs, and gratuitous violence (But apparently not the word “fuck.”). Look, it was expected that as the show moved to a streaming service and given the overall dramatic scope that there would be an upgrade in some of this sort of content (and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t looking forward to steamier LoVe moments, which were sorely overpromised), but the way it was included this season felt like RT and co. included this stuff just because they could and not to serve the storyline. For me, personally, the biggest example of this was Veronica’s drug use, which I know didn’t necessarily bother everyone. Given her history as the daughter of an alcoholic as well as someone who had been the victim of two roofie attacks, not to mention the fact that her character never seemed to be into partying, I found it very out of character (and book writer Jennifer Graham agrees). It felt like RT included this just bc they thought it would be funny to see Veronica on drugs without considering whether it made sense for her character. Also, were the beheadings strictly necessary? Plus there’s RT’s little temper tantrum over not being able to use curse words this season--they weren’t present in the original show, no one was going to miss them now, and the “cuss” thing was just annoying and reminiscent of The Good Place. 

Dealing with a parent who maybe has dementia--that’s an adult storyline. Too bad RT ended it with a dumb excuse about “mixing meds” (another factual error! Pharmacy software would have caught it!) rather than actually exploring what it would mean for Veronica to see her father in decline and take over the family business (and give Rico Colantoni the exit he appears to want). This is the kind of adult content I would hope to see in future seasons.

Adult is not a synonym for “unrelentingly bleak” either. The original show, while dark, always had an element of hope that was completely removed from S4 (no matter what KB might claim). And would it have killed the writers to show Veronica wearing disguises and going undercover like she used to? There was nothing fun about this season (and no, I don’t count the multiple partying scenes as fun, more like sad).

Kill your darlings

It’s cliche, but it’s true. Another issue the show has long had is the writers keeping around characters or inserting jokes and references for their own personal amusement rather than for the story. The most notable example of this is the continued presence of Dick, a highly problematic character considering he pushed Beaver into the room with Veronica the night of Shelly Pomroy’s party, among a whole host of other racist, sexist, and generally obnoxious actions over the years. But because Ryan Hansen is so widely beloved among the cast and crew, so he stays. Then there’s the matter of the infamous Keister egg in 3x08, which the writers and KB have all expressed love for, despite the fact that said Keister egg is an example of sexual assault--which, even if the victim is a douchey fraternity president, is never funny. 

Also the constant Big Lebowski references are tiring. Watch a new movie.

Improve Neptune’s gender ratio

Veronica Mars, despite having a female lead, has always been a male-dominated show; other than Veronica herself, the only consistent female character over the original show was Mac (and she didn’t even come back this season). This is unacceptable in 2019, for any show. The books introduced promising female characters in the form of Marcia Langdon and Petra Landros, but Marcia’s character was was watered down for S4 and Petra was nowhere to be found. Additionally, Veronica and Mac have always been written as “cool girls” who looked down on other women for their femininity, which isn’t a great message. Almost every other female character, even the innocuous Parker, is portrayed as somehow bad or incompetent. I would love nothing more than a season centered on the women of Neptune and their interactions with each other. While we’re at it, stop giving every woman on this show a background of sexual victimization.

Treat VM as an ensemble show, not a Kristen Bell vanity project 

A major complaint from Burnt Marshmallows and S4 defenders alike was how little time was given over to the original core cast this season. While Veronica may be the protagonist, a large part of how the show became so beloved was her relationships with the other characters. Yet RT has decided that going forward VM will be a KB solo project, with her traveling town to town quipping and sleeping with strangers. This seems strange, given Kristen’s recent interviews talking about how difficult it is to shoot VM and how she never wants to be first on a call sheet ever again, not to mention how she asked for less screen time all the way back in S2, which resulted in the Weevil-Logan storyline, which was way more interesting than Veronica’s storylines during the first half of that season. (The traveling detective thing also seems weird considering that KB is pretty insistent on shooting in LA to be near her family.) Additionally, if this is truly the last season of VM with all the original characters, then no one got a proper sendoff. 

I’m not sure how willing much of the cast will be to return for future iterations, given how uncomfortable many of them seemed during promo as well RT and KB’s treatment of them (insensitive at best, deliberately mean at worst) this season (shout out to Tina Majorino for recognizing what a shit show this was going to be), but bringing back all the original characters into the fold and giving them significant storylines would go a long way to mending fences with fans, improving the show from a character arc perspective, and would also give KB the break she apparently wants. 

Recourt the fanbase

What has VM always been renowned for above all else? It’s incredibly loyal fandom which not only got it renewed twice during its original run but also put up their own money to get the movie made--I know many people who donated when they really couldn’t afford to. RT basically owes the last 6 years of his career to VM fans--the success of the Kickstarter arguably got him the iZombie show running gig, and the fourth season likely wouldn’t have even happened if not for it. Thus, the blatant cruelty and disregard with which RT and KB have treated fans during the promotion of S4 has been incredibly insulting and hurtful; I still can’t fathom what in the world possessed RT to think that throwing away this 15-year relationship was a good idea. It’s not a good sign when the 2 fansites most active during the post-movie period (VMHQ and VM Confessions) cease operations in the wake of S4, and when at least 3 out of 8 board members of the oldest running fan group, Neptune Rising (who were dormant during the post-movie period but played a critical role during earlier fan campaigns and in the S4 promo) resign. A fandom this loyal that was betrayed will not stand idly by if the S5 RT wants to make goes ahead; given the number of tweets the official Hulu VM account has had to delete in the wake of S4 due to the overwhelmingly negative response as well as the controversy over editing out Logan from S4 promos, I imagine that S5 will be a PR nightmare. Even if future seasons are amazing the trust can probably never be fully repaired, but it would be helpful for RT (or fingers crossed, a new show runner) and KB (as star and EP) to go overboard in reaching out to fans and at least admitting they made a misstep with the entirety of S4. Back in the day, the old Mars Investigation fansite was invited to set to conduct interviews; maybe do that again. Also someone should get KB some sort of VM fandom-fluent media trainer because I don’t think she has conducted a single interview during her entire stint on the show that didn’t anger fans (it might help if she actually bothered to watch the show).

Map out an endgame

Look, this can’t go on forever. As long as RT keeps leaving every installment open ended with the hopes of maybe getting renewed again five years down the line, the story is going to keep running into the issues the movie and S4 faced with having to shoehorn the characters into nonsensical plot lines to reconcile those endings and deal with actor availability issues. Either plot another 2-3 seasons to wrap the show up with a satisfying conclusion, or map out a greater timeline of Veronica’s life with spots where a mini series or movie here and there could fit in.

[prep4goth]

I wrote a little thing about Alex "Trash Goblin" Torini based off a prompt I saw online. It's finished, though the ending is rushed and I'm bad at grammar so. I wasn't creative enough to come up with a title lmao

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Fandom: They're Watching (2016)

Characters: Alex Torini

Content Warning: swearing, light depictions of violence/gore, mentions of trauma

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Alex began the day similarly to how he’d start each and everyday for the past several months; heart thumping wildly and a cry dying in his throat. The details of the nightmare were unclear. As his heart rate declined, the fucked up imagery would fade into obscured whisps. He can’t remember the last time he woke up in the comfort of his bed. Every morning without fail, Alex came to face down on his couch. Fortunately, it was the largest piece of furniture he owned. He could easily stretch out without even bumping the other end. Sometimes having short legs wasn’t a complete curse. 

Alex, convinced that his bones were made up of 40% calcium and 60% lead, fought the urge to remain in his current position. He felt like a boulder sinking into his sofa. Rolling onto his back, something that should be elementary, required a tremendous amount of effort. His eyes focused on the ugly popcorn ceiling. There was a crack- water damage from his pissbags neighbors above him-  that ran from the furthest corner to the fan. The longer he concentrated, the wider the crack appeared. While he envisioned the crack splitting open and dumping gallons of water on his head, the rational part of Alex’s brain demanded that his body move. 

With an Earth shattering sigh, he dragged himself into a sitting position. Alex rubbed his sore eyes. He couldn’t massage away the dry heaviness that seemed to permanently settle behind his eyelids.  What time did he pass out last night? A glance at his still opened laptop and half empty coffee mug told him it had been an unplanned slumber. He’d probably intended to only rest his tired eyes for a moment and slipped into unconsciousness. Just as he had done the previous night. And the night before that. And so on and so forth. His couch had transformed into his office/bedroom/dining area. 

Alex’s left arm was stiff from being tucked under his skull; a makeshift pillow. The tips of his fingers buzzed. Though, whether or not it was from holding that particular position or the dog bite, Alex had no clue. He curled his fingers into a fist. He watched the muscles in his forearm tense. With a slight grimace, he noted the rippling of the angry, pink marks embedded into his skin. Alex dimly recalled the searing pain of canines sinking into his flesh. He remembered the clink of teeth against bone and the ungodly amount of blood. Alex flinched as if the memory had physically burned him. But no matter how violently he jerked his head, the gruesome images were still imprinted in his mind’s eye. Hand cramping, Alex slowly unfurled his fist. With his fingers fanning out, he shook his hand until the cramping dissipated. It made no difference what he did. Numbness spread from the pads of fingers to his wrist, but feeling would eventually creep back. It always did. 

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Alex mentally prepared himself for another day of pacing his cramped apartment, slowly deteriorating his vision via computer screen, and consuming unhealthy amounts of coffee. That last one, however, was only achievable by getting his ass off the couch. As sizable as the couch was, it was destroying his back. Alex braced his hands against his lower back as he hefted himself onto his feet. He twisted side to side, spine popping obscenely loud in the quiet apartment. 

Alex scooped up his phone from the coffee table, thumb pressing the home button. Though, the screen remained black. Well, fuck me. I forgot to charge this bitch. He realized with a weak chuckle. Not that he really cared that his phone died in the middle of the night. He hardly used it aside from emailing clients and mindless mobile games. Alex reflected on how he unintentionally severed ties with most if not all his friends while he plugged his phone in to charge. Occasionally, a film buddy would reach out, but responding to pointless texts was rather taxing. His friends had eventually gotten the memo. They figured he was pretty much useless. 

Once, Alex was convinced the flame of desire he had for creating would never flicker out. He was determined to make a name for himself in the film industry. Being a sound guy for some home improvement show made for middle aged and hobbieless parents was not the end goal, but a starting point. Fresh out of highschool and hardly scraping by, Alex thought it was an incredible gig to dip his feet in. The plan was to save up enough money to move out of his parent’s place and gain some behind-the-scenes experience. He’d graduate to bigger and better things; directing. Plans change and aspirations are grated into something more realistic. Alex had not minded flying from country to country, slinging a boom mike over his shoulder. The fact that his boss wasn’t pleasant, to say the least, or that he could only afford a shitty apartment with cracks in the foundation hardly phased him because at least he had Greg. That bastard was the only thing keeping Alex from jumping ship and enrolling in law school like Alex’s dad begged him to. Then they visited fucking Moldova. 

Moldova was a pair of bloodshot eyes that tracked his every move and reeked of smoke. Alex could feel its glare sorching his back every time the memories began to fade. The smoke burnt his lungs, choking him with shame if he ever attempted to forget it. Meeting the accusing eyes meant addressing the unbridled guilt eating away at his stomach whenever he so much as breathed. The weight of its scrutinous gaze left Alex wondering why he was the one left to poorly recite the witch’s tale. According to the witch possessing Becky, Alex was destined to capture the chaos that unfolded that night. Why him, out of every other person, she failed to clarify. 

The witch’s carnage was the last thing Alex filmed. Everytime he picked up a camera, his stomach churned. He feared he’d lift the camera to his face and see Becky’s warped grin on the other side. Wallace, unfortunately the only other person alive, had kindly kicked Alex to the curb. The footage would never see the light of day. People didn’t seem to question the show’s new host, or even Kate’s whereabouts. Greg and Sarah, nameless crew behind the cameras, hardly hurt Wallace’s pockets to replace with other nameless crew. That soulless, corporate prick didn’t even blink upon hearing that his own niece had met the business end of an axe. 

There was no hazard’s pay, not even after a 300 hundred pound man nearly strangled Alex to death. Alex needed to find another source of income to keep his lights on. So, he started editing other people’s work. The majority of his clientele were grown men screaming at video games and indie artists. Humorously enough, Alex favored editing the least. He was equipped with basics, but found it skull- splittingly tedious. It required sitting in one place for too long and extreme focus- something Alex had to shut his mouth for more than five minutes to accomplish. After watching his closest friends die horribly, however, Alex found it was much easier to be silent. A chatter box to a complete mute in months. Now, Alex slipped into the monotonous mechanics without complaint. The simple repetitiveness of splicing clips and adjusting audio levels allowed him to drift through the week without thought. It was slightly pathetic. He willingly chose to rot his brain on a day to day basis for the convenience of not having to think. 

Clearing his throat, Alex realized he’d been standing next to his charging phone for several minutes. He frequently caught himself falling down a rabbit hole of damaging thoughts. His forehead creased, fingers twitching against his phone. He ignored the throbbing pulse where the scar from the dog bite was. Powering his phone on, Alex didn’t expect anything exciting. Maybe an email asking for an update or a notification from one of his various games. He was unpleasantly caught off guard by the blinking ‘missed call’ icon. Upon further inspection, it was a missed call from Bernadette- an old friend Greg introduced Alex to. 

Apparently, Greg had played gigs at some dive bar frequently enough to earn some “street cred”as he often bragged about. Bernadette, when she wasn’t lugging camera equipment around archaic buildings, was bussing tables at that very same dive bar. With similar senses of humor,  which consisted of constantly taunting poor, outnumbered Greg, Alex and Bernadette were instant pals. They were too eerily similar for Alex to develop any feelings beyond platonic, despite Greg’s occasional teasing. Bernadette was the only person left in Alex’s life that was too damn stubborn to let go. Desperate for some form of human reaction, Alex craved reaching out. He tried almost daily. Alex had typed out several messages to Bernadette but erased every single one. Of all people, Bernadette deserved to know what happened; she was practically a sister to them. Except Alex had no clue how to tell her. Whether it was guilt or fear of her not believing him, his basic vocab always disintegrated. There were literally no words to express the dread and sorrow that hollowed out his chest. Better to not have a conversation period.

Tucked away in the dusty corner of Alex’s brain, was a locked chest of traumatic souvenirs. It was splitting at the seams, yet Alex continuously stapled the cracks closed. He ignored the splintering wood. Any day, the chest would finally collapse under the weight and Alex would be flooded with blood tinged memories. He concluded a conference with Bernadette over the phone would be the final straw that broke the camel’s back. Or, in this case, the very thing that protected Alex from the shitshow that was himself. Alex had spent months building that damn chest. He’d lost friends and proper vitamin D, but was still clinging onto a microscopic amount of sanity. He was alive at least. Breathing stuffy apartment air and with the diet of a broke college student, granted. But that was more than Greg and Sarah could say. 

His phone screen dimmed as he internally battled himself. He needed to talk to Bernadette, yes, but he was terrified. There was no danger in listening to his voicemail. Alex inhaled sharply as if he were about to be held under water as he tapped the message icon. He tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder. 

“What’s up, assclown! “ Bernadette’s recorded voice shouted into the receiver. Alex winced at her sharp volume, but chuckled regardless. 

“I know you’ve been avoiding me since you got back from where-ever-the-fuck, but that ends today. No more hiding out in that closet you call an apartment- time to get rolling, babbbby!” Alex shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Hearing her voice was a breath of fresh air. That feeling of lonely claustrophobia pressing on his chest faded slightly. Though, he was nervous for where this was heading. He pressed his lips into an anxious line.

“I don’t know what all went down over there, but it’s been months, man. You can’t keep this agoraphobe act up forever. That goes for that sonova bitch, Greg too.” Her laugh was soft, but still audible. Alex felt that familiar pang of guilt in the pit of his stomach. God, she thought Greg was alive and avoiding her. Throat tightening around a baseball sized lump, Alex pressed his knuckles against his mouth. His knuckles were flushed hard enough that his teeth dug into his lower lip. 

“Did you guys decide you’re bigshots now? Cause, newsflash- that’s utter bullshit.” Bernadette must have meant for her tone to sound teasing, but the hurt was evident in her voice

“I’ve left Greg a fuckton of messages, but he hasn’t even opened my texts. If I didn’t know better, I’d be worried. But regardless, I know you’re back from Europe, so no excuses. Remember that show I do, the fuckin, uh, ghost hunting crap? Well, we’re down a camera and I thought you’d might be interested. Last time we spoke- which was, like, a century ago- , you said you needed a job, so… Here ya go, bud. It’s better pay than whatever you’re probably doing right now. Even if you don’t need a job, the least you could do is call me and tell me yourself. Just so I at least know you’re still breathing.” There was a beat where Bernadette paused to inhale quietly. She was right, though. Their last conversation was brief and impersonal. He offered the simplest explationations; the shoot was canceled due to creative differences and Alex was out of a job. As for what he yarn he spun for Greg, Alex didn’t recall. Probably some bullshit timeline where Greg was backpacking through Europe. 

Bernadette wrapped up her message with a final jab at Alex’s lack of communication skills. In a poor attempt to center his roaring thoughts, Alex rested his phone against his forehead. The guilt that was slowly swirling in his gut developed into a full on Tsunami. For a moment, he wondered if it was possible to drown in it. Alex no longer had the option. Bernadette deserved the truth, no matter how painful. 

More than that, Alex needed to get the fuck out of this place. His apartment had lost its safe haven appeal and felt more like a cage closing in on him. Whether or not he was prepared to handle a camera again was a different story. He didn’t resent the aspect of working with people again either. At one point, Alex very nearly achieved his dreams. It was still camera work, but he was more than likely rusty from his months-long hiatus anyway. He would have stood in his living room all day if he tried to debate why he should or shouldn’t take the job. This meant, on the other hand, calling Bernadette back. And eventually, he’d have to tell her that Greg was dead. How the fuck was he supposed to do that? Alex had survived an encounter with an actual blood-hungry witch, but his heart shuddered at the thought of Bernadette labeling Alex a lying ass and cutting him off completely. 

Finally, Alex worked up the nerve to press the ‘call back’ option. His eyes stung with unshed tears as his heart nearly beat out of his ribcage. Alex tightly squeezed his eyes shut. The third ring droned obnoxiously loud and Alex silently hoped she wouldn’t pick up. But when did Alex ever get what he wanted? There was a soft click, followed by Bernadette exclaiming that Alex was a fucker. 

“Good to hear your voice too, Bernie.” He shot for humor, but the tremble in his voice betrayed his bravado. Bernadette either failed to notice or was feeling generous. 

Before she had the chance to strike up small talk, Alex launched into action. “Is that job offer still on the table?”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[tokuxsenshi]

Power rangers 2017 review

so the other day me and my friend watched the 2017 movie. I’m just gonna let this out right now I do not like it so if your just gonna read this to get mad I won’t waste your time. 

so I’ll start with the plot. it starts with Zordon and Rita fighting on earth which is stupid because what would you rather watch and epic space war with a moon witch conquering many planet or a scene on an earth so grey and drab it makes the post apocalypse cry. well Zordon tells Rita shes a shit power ranger and she kills him and goes into the ocean or something. we flash forward. 10,000 year ooo big surprise. And we go right to suggested  cow molestation! what an opener!  then Billy from stranger things gets hit by a car and should probably be dead and he just gets detention despite he later seen with an ankle monitor you don’t get those for braking into a school with a cow you get them for being on probation with the law and if hes on probation with the law THEY WOULDN’T LET HIM IN SCHOOL! Here where we go into what I call movie number 1 the breakfast club remake that was to short. we meet Other Billy and he gets beat up by who me and my friend like to call Canadian Ed Sheeran name Corn Wallace or just Bully even though there were bullies in MMPR named Bulk and Skull couldn’t even be Corn Bulkmire. then we meet my least favorite character Trimberly and just send nude pictures of a teenager without concent like a sexual predator maybe she should have the ankle monitor... Then she pulls sissors out of a wall that another girl shoved into the wall but how fucking strong are these damn teens then she used to give herself the most wild can I speak to the manger bob cut. After school Billy from Stranger things goes to Other Billy house and his mom kinda wild but still more personality then any other character. so Other Billy teaches up how to disabled an ankle monitor. Thanks Other Billy! Then they go to the one location close to actual power rangers ABANDON QUARRY! there we meet Kini and Zack their introductions aren’t to dramatic. So we switch over to Billy from stranger things watching Trimberly trying to kill herself but diving into dirty quarry water hoping either the water isn’t deep enough or the leeches would get her. Sadly doesn’t work. Then Other Billy blows up a mountain with probably illegal dynaminte. apparently everyone has a criminal record. In the mountain they find some geodes pretending to be Power coin. Then like the amazing role models are they run from the police in their wood panel 2016 model mini van.But remember kids if you out run police you go to hell before you die and get hit by a train. Then we switch over to the REAL power rangers hanging out with the family at the juice bar while the new shows a report of the others dying... I WISH! okay so they wake up and find out they have powers? Uh when did the power rangers ever have actual powers in MMPR I mean before they got the ninja powers in the later season but Ninjor wasn’t in this movie. Then Ed Sheeran tries to brake Other Billys hand and the way he tries to brake it makes me assume he also has powers and they go to  Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters so the rangers aint special. They go back to the mountains and all try to kill themselves jumping off a cliff and call into MORE QUARRY WATER!!! Then swim and find a.. A space ship??? where did this come from and in it we meet Micky from Bobs burgers pretending to be a robot alien and Hal from Malcolm in the middle with his head in a pin toy. Zordon shows them a weird sexual vision don’t worry this isn’t the last one. I think at this point they pull Rita out of the ocean and put her dead body on a pile of fish they expect people to eat. and Alpha brings them TO THE PIT! They train Rita pretend to be in Lord of the rings Generic pop music plays. Then Rita Kid naps them and kills other billy not to upset bout that and instead of maybe tellin his mother while playing genric sad music they throw him in the quarry and find a new Billy. Just kidding they go to the space ship an bring him back to life meaning this movie officially has no stakes. THHEN FINALLY THEY MORPH! And they all look like Master Chief from Halo. The MMPR movie version of the theme plays for 5 seconds their zords like shit then they fight putties that look like literal shit a fight happens.Then you think they send her to the moon setting up a squeal... nope she dies in space?? DESPITE BEING FROM SPACE!!! then the movie ends when the Megazord sexy dances and I kill my self by jumping into a dirty Quarry.Also they okay I got the power at the end just like MMPR the movie does it was very weird.

Okay now to talk about my least favorite part the characters. HAHAHAHAHA THEY HAVE NO CHARACTER! These are the most bland unoriginal uninspiring characters I ever seen in a movie they have so little personality Dr.K as a computer screen puts them to shame. Jason just the main guy character Trini and Kimberly are so interchangable I though they were played by the same actress Billy is okay hes fine I don’t really want to be offensive but did antone kinda catch after getting super powers he wasn’t autistic anymore. Zack probably the only character I like because hes the only one with character but I kinda wonder being hes Chinese and his mom only speaks Chinese why does she call him zack. 

Rita okay shes kinda the only reason to watch the ,movie she chews the scenery so much so eats it at some points

Alpha 5 and Zordon arent even worth meantioning their okay maybe Alpha could been less like a drug uncle but whatever. 

I’m not a big super hero fan and this movie kinda shows everything I hate about the heros journey plot its so generic and bland they couldn’t even Try making it even resemble the show maybe if these were oringal characters I’d be fine with it but their not its trying to make character who were built 24 years ago at the time into all new one but made them worse. maybe when hasbro makes the new one it’ll not be about MMPR or at least be more like the show or even the comics honest  I’d watch a shatter grid movie. Thats all I can really say can’t wait for the hate comments.Bye - Dr.K

[thelillykane]

something so magic about you, don’t you agree?

LOGAN/VERONICA AU WEEK. Day 3: Beloved Tropes 

featuring the tropes: found family, friends to lovers, mutual pining, the start of SECRET DATING, and whichever trope it is where their bedrooms are right next to each other and they share a bathroom and begin to fall in love. 

(These three excerpts are from a fic i’ve been slowly, slowly writing for my babe @jessicajoned since 2016, in which Keith becomes Logan’s legal guardian & Logan and Veronica, are, you know, epic. eventually.) 

1. 

Veronica panics and runs away as soon as they’re done kissing. 

Logan’s confident she’s running away from the situation and not from the kissing itself because those kisses were amazing, and his hands feel strangely incomplete and disconnected from his body without the feel of her warm, solid skin beneath them. 

He’d run away from the situation too if he wasn’t still recovering from the fact that Veronica Mars kissed him. That she’d stretched onto her tippy-toes, gotten a firm grip on his neck, and pressed her lips against his lips. That she hadn’t pulled away when he’d deepened the kiss, instead opting for twisting her hands into the fabric of his jacket, brushing her hands through his hair, ensuring that their bodies were completely flush against one another, every inch of him pressed up against every inch of her. 

They’d kissed each other so desperate too, unable to keep their hands or their mouths still, wanting to devour each other– well, at least, Logan had definitely wanted to be devoured by her. Veronica had tasted like marshmallows and promises and her lips had been so soft, too soft and oh, god, he’s getting hard just at the fucking thought. 

He needs to do that – kiss Veronica and be kissed by Veronica – again. 

And that, the fact that all he can see in the future, all he wants from the future, is for them to slow-mo run at each other on the beach and then make out naked while the waves crash over them scares him beyond belief. 

It’s not until he’s halfway home, slamming on the breaks to avoiding running another red light – and yes, he knows, his elaborate daydreaming has gotten out of hand, not that he cares – that Logan realizes he has a much better reason to be scared. Because home, nowadays, is a two story house with Keith and Lianne and their pitbull and his bedroom is nestled into the corner of the house right alongside Veronica’s and they share a fucking bathroom, for fucks sake, and so Logan can’t exactly go home because if he does Keith will know, somehow, what Logan’s been fantasizing about doing to his daughter, and he’ll know that they kissed and that it gave Logan an erection like he was a goddamn middle-schooler, and then Keith will peel all the skin off of Logan’s body and set him on fire.  

Logan’s not ready to die, not without kissing Veronica a couple more thousand times first. Not without tangling his fingers in her hair and kissing at the hollow of her neck and making her come apart with his fingers. 

Fuck. 

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. 

He’s fucked. 

2. 

Veronica makes a beeline for Wallace’s room, grabbing a pillow off of his bed and screaming into it. 

That doesn’t make her feel better, so instead she throws the pillow across Wallace’s room where it lands on the floor with an unsatisfactory thud. 

“I just made out with Logan,” she says, as justification for her behavior. 

“Yeah, we aren’t gonna talk about that,” Wallace responds quickly. 

“I kissed him,” Veronica continues anyway. “We were just talking and then I reached up and kissed him. He’s a good kisser.” 

Wallace sighs, long-suffering, and settles onto the bed next to her, looping his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s make this quick, okay, supafly?” 

“I want to kiss him again, Wallace,” she blurts, burying her face into her hands from shame. 

And isn’t that a scary thing to be admitting to her best friend, that this…incident with Logan can’t be brushed aside as a fluke or rogue, one-time impulse. Truthfully, Veronica’s been thinking about kissing Logan for a while, years, embarrassingly. Always curious to know if his lips would feel the way Lilly  always described them, if he would be as good as Lilly claimed, and in the beginning Veronica could brush it off as that– curiosity. It wasn’t that she wanted to kiss Logan, specifically, but that she was curious about kissing in general. 

But then she’d started kissing other boys and she would still catch herself thinking about it, and once he moved in she found herself transfixed by his mouth constantly, watching him chew on his pencils while they did homework together, watching him put chapstick on, watching the shapes his lips made while he mouthed off to her dad and got himself grounded. 

Veronica was never supposed to act on this fixation, though. She was never supposed to actual kiss Logan, and he sure as fuck was never supposed to kiss her back. 

But she had. And he did. 

“Well,” Wallace says finally. “What are you going to do about it?” 

And that was the kicker. Veronica doesn’t have any fucking clue what to do now. 

3. 

Logan’s got the perfect plan for how to avoid Veronica and Keith (at least for tonight, his plan for how to avoid being alone with either of them or having to make direct eye contact with either of them until he’s already on death’s door still needs work), he’s coming home seconds before curfew, and then he’s going to immediately excuse himself and go straight to bed (and hopefully die in his sleep so that he doesn’t have to fucking go through this shit ever again). 

The problem is that, of-fucking-course, Veronica’s got the same plan, which is how they end up trapped in the foyer together with thirty seconds to spare before curfew and each loudly saying, “I’m tired and going to bed.” 

Keith’s got them pinned under his patented I’m-The-Sheriff-And-I-Know-All-Your-Sins stare in a heartbeat. “Anything I should know about?” 

“Nope,” Veronica answers quickly, her voice too perky for someone who’s pretending to be tired. “Everything’s great!” 

Keith’s attention shifts focus to Veronica and Logan takes full advantage of this momentary distraction to bolt up the stairs and disappear in the sanctuary of his bedroom. 

Logan gets into bed, not because he’s tired, but because he knows Keith will be poking his head in at some point to make sure that Logan’s where he’s supposed to be, and even though lying there and listening to Veronica climb into bed and – sure enough – Keith checking up on him before turning in for the night is dull as dirt Logan can’t fall asleep. 

He watches the clock change from eleven to twelve to one to two in agony, trying valiantly not to think about Veronica, if she wore her pale pink sleep shorts to bed tonight with the matching tank top that showed off her delicate collarbone. If her lips are still tingling and her hands are still burning just like his lips and hands are. 

Then, at half past two: “I can’t sleep,” Veronica whispers, padding into his room with the lightest footsteps possible. 

“Me either,” he whispers back, rolling over to look at her. One glance and he knows she’s as affected by what happened earlier as he is– she’s dressed in these awful flannel pajamas that look like they were made out of some old, tasteless grandma’s carpet. 

Worst part? Logan’s fucking into it. 

“I want to do what we did earlier, again,” Veronica says, foregoing any sort of preamble because of course she is. 

“Me too,” he responds quickly, abandoning any last hope of trying to be collected about this. 

They move towards each other as if hypnotized, and this time, when they kiss, they kiss open-mouthed and together. 

“We have to keep this a secret,” Veronica murmurs in-between exploring every crevice of his mouth with her tongue. 

“Don’t worry,” Logan says, bending at the knees to ensure their bodies were aligned in all the right places, his breath trailing cool and promising across her neck. “I’m good at being sneaky.” 

[zobi-wan-kenobi]

My answers to varied film opinion questions:

An underrated film: Ok where to begin? ‘Equilibrium’ (2002), ‘Speak’ (2004), ‘Broken’ (2012), ‘Trance’ (2013), ‘The Young Offenders’ (2016) - I could go on…

An overrated film: ‘Sixteen Candles’ (1984) - sorry John Hughes but this is not your best.

An actor/actress you like who became famous for something else first: It really cracks me up that Jason Statham was a diver- I would never have guessed if asked what sport he did.

TV series that should be a film: Ok I don’t watch as much tv, but I think that because there are not going to be more ‘Broadchurch’ episodes a loophole would be a film...

A silent film you love: Is it cheating to say ‘The Artist (2011)’? Because that film is the shit.

A film from your birth year: 1999 was a good year so this is hard to pick. ‘10 Things I Hate About You’, (and please do not kill me) ‘Star Wars: Episode 1- The Phantom Menace’.

A film you love from a director you hate: I hate the criminal that is Roman Polanski but I like his film ‘The Ghost Writer’ (2010), also I love ‘The Island’ (2005) but Michael Bay sucks (You can probably see the connection between these films).

A film you hate from a director you love: ‘The Ladykillers’ (2004) by the Coen brothers. What were they thinking?!

A foreign film: ‘La Haine’ (France, 1995) is a film I have only seen once due to how much it fucked me up when I watched it (Also ‘Good Bye, Lenin!’ (Germany 2003) and ‘Stations of the Cross’ (Ger, 2014) are both faves).

A genre that should still be popular: (I had to google dead film genres because my brain could not think of any- Westerns are having a resurgence so for me that genre is still going) There are still a few mockumentaries around (e.g. my faves ‘What We Do In The Shadows’ and ‘Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping’) but we are really lacking in spoof films like Airplane! (1980).

A film from your own country: British cinema is my favourite cinema so I would choose my all-time favourite film ‘Trainspotting’ (1996). But because there are too many I love I would also choose ‘Shallow Grave’ (1994) and ‘Billy Elliot’ (2000).

A biopic you want to see that doesn’t exist: Maybe Michael Schumacher or F. Scott Fitzgerald.

A sequel better than the original: ‘High School Musical 2’ (2007) is better than the first one- fight me. (Humu humu nuku nuku apua'a anyone?)

A movie monster: Brundlefly from ‘The Fly’ (1986) -that acidic vomit! I really want to watch more monster related films.

Traditional animation or CGI? Most films would not be the same today without CGI and traditional animation is cool and all, but my favourite animation style is probably stop-motion as I love films like ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ (2009), ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ (2016) and of course ‘Wallace and Gromit’.

A documentary: I enjoyed both ‘Senna’ (2010) and ‘Williams’ (2017) because I am a Formula 1 nerd, but I haven’t seen any yet that I ‘love’. Also, I am more of an avid watcher of biopics/more fictionalised versions of true stories like ‘Pride’ (2014), ‘Rogue Trader’ (1999) or to use another F1 example, ‘Rush’ (2013).

A film you want to see an all-female version of: I do NOT think that ‘Reservoir Dogs’ (1992) or ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ (1998) should be remade, BUT I would love an all-female gritty crime thriller. Hopefully with a cast including Kristen Stewart, Noomi Rapace, Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson and Scarlett Johansson.

A short film: ‘Sweet Maddie Stone’ (2016, dir. Brady Hood) and ‘Katherine’ (2017, dir. Britt Raes) are both brilliant (I rate short films for my local film festival, so I could list many).

A female director you love: Lynne Ramsay! I have a t-shirt with her name on from the brilliant company Girls on Tops Tees. Her latest film ‘You Were Never Really Here’ (2017) does not disappoint!

A role you’d recast and which actor/actress you’d pick: I would recast James Bond with Michael Fassbender or time travel and have Roger Moore play Bond for a few more films. I would also recast Johnny Depp in ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ (2016) and its sequels with a blonde Colin Farrell. This is so I can actually enjoy the films without feeling guilty because Depp is a twat, but also because I think Colin Farrell is brilliant.

A film from this year: ‘Game Night’, ‘Annihilation’, ‘Love, Simon’, ‘Isle of Dogs’ … DON’T MAKE ME CHOOSE.

A video game that should be adapted into a movie: Professor Layton as a mystery film- I have seen ‘Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva’ (2009), but a live action film would be epic!

A movie you wish you liked more: Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’ (1954), because I had seen the plot spoofed multiple times before watching it, so it was not very revolutionary for me. I would also say ‘American Pastoral’ (2016) as I was really rooting for Ewan McGregor with his directorial debut. Plus, ‘Gangs of New York’ (2002) because as a Scorsese fan, it was so disappointing.

[notjoebiden]

Ok but the Turnip Day Congress was just humongous dick energy.

I recognize nobody knows what I'm talking about so here's a synopsis of an actual thing Truman did and why the 1948 election might be one of the most batshit moments in American political history.

So, to set the scene - it's 1948. Harry Truman is running for re-election, and the popular consensus is that he's doomed. I'm talking like, the way people thought Donald Trump was going to lose circe September 2016. There was simply no way an incumbent polling as far underwater as Truman was could win. The Republicans were unified behind a middle-of-the-road popular governor, Thomas Dewey of New York. The Democrats were split into THREE SEPARATE TICKETS - Harry Truman won renomination from his party, but he had pushed for a civil rights plank at the convention, so southern segregationists walked out and formed the States' Rights Party. Governor Strom Thurmond (if that name is familiar, it's because he was in the US Senate until 2002. Gerontocracy, folks.) was leading the charge from Truman's right in an era where the south was solidly a one-party region. On the other side was former Vice President Henry Wallace, who can best be quantified as a democratic socialist. He was running to Truman's left as the Progressive Party's nominee, criticizing the Truman administration's hawkishness and redbaiting. So nobody thought Truman could win - Thurmond would take southern states and Wallace northern minority/union votes, sinking him and allowing Dewey to win pluralities. Tom Dewey believed this, so he followed his advisors and ran a campaign full of platitudes about unity. He stayed far from concrete commitments, letting old-school "repeal the New Deal" conservatives believe he was with them, upper-class liberals believe he was their guy, and so on and so forth. However, this meant that Dewey was functionally providing no plan beyond the actual quote he said "you know that your future is still ahead of you." As such, Truman, the only person who believed Truman would win, took it on the offensive. He tried to brand Dewey as a pawn of the ultra-conservative congress, saying things like the GOP stands for "Gluttons of Privilege." Of course, Dewey tried to stay above the fray, but it was increasingly difficult as every day yielded a new attack from the president. If he responded to Truman's attacks, he would look like he was a pawn of the conservatives, even though he was a modestly liberal guy and desperately trying to portray himself as above the fray. If he kept ignoring it, he would anger those same conservatives by not sticking up for them. One man noticed this rift - Harry S. Truman. Truman realized that, if he could challenge the congressional conservatives directly, he could expose this rift and make sure his biggest opponents hated their candidate. Fortunately, he had an idea.

Now, despite this getting used very little in the modern day, the president has the authority to call a special joint session of Congress in the event of a national emergency. Truman decided to do just that, heavily stretching the definition of national emergency. He called a special two-week session for the middle of the summer, ending the 25th of July ("Turnip Day" in Missouri folklore). He challenged the Republican Congress to live up to their party's platform of expanded social security, national health insurance, and civil rights legislation. Yes, these were things being promised by the Republicans in the 1940s because neither party really had a coherent ideology then. The immediate response of said conservative Congressional leadership was approximately "FUCK YOU HARRY!" However, that was the goal. Truman knew old-school conservatives who wanted to repeal everything passed since 1933 would never agree to do any of these things, even if their liberal counterparts wanted it. If they passed nothing, his attacks on the GOP congress as a do-nothing institution solely designed to oppose him would be validated. They only had spite for him at heart, not the best interests of the people! While conservative media screeched at there being no pressing emergency (which, yeah, the only emergency was Truman's need for a second term), the trick had still worked. The public viewed the Republicans as mindless oppositionists who would undo a whole New Deal's worth of progress if given the chance. Harry Truman had won, and in November he won the greatest upset in American history (at least at the time).

Look, if we're going to have an imperial presidency, we might as well swing that shit around.

YER A PRESIDENT, HARRY

[bookofdan]

The Trump-Biden Debate

via Wait But Why (waitbutwhy.com)

In case you missed it, here’s a transcript of the first Trump-Biden Debate:

Chris Wallace: Good evening. I’m Chris Wallace and I welcome you to what I predict will be a very bad personal experience for me. There will be six 15-minute segments, each on a different topic. At the beginning of each segment, both candidates will get two uninterrupted minutes to respond. The remainder of the segment will be open discussion. The audience has agreed not to be trashy. Both campaigns have signed off on these rules, so for sure nothing will go wrong. And with that, let’s welcome the candidates.

[CANDIDATES ENTER]

Wallace: Let’s start with the Supreme Court. President Trump, you nominated Amy Coney Barrett to succeed the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court. You say the Constitution is clear about your obligation to nominate someone to the court. Vice President Biden, you’ve called this an abuse of power. To start, why don’t you both explain your positions.

Trump: Amy Coney Barrett is a perfect nominee. Conservatives love her. Liberals love her. Chris Wallace loves her.

Biden: Amy Barrett would repeal the Affordable Care Act. And besides, the new thing is that you have to wait until after the election to nominate someone.

Trump: Not sure what you’re talking about, because last I checked a presidential term is four years, not three. You want to instate Communist medicine.

Biden: I don’t want to instate Communist medicine. I want to expand Obamacare.

Trump: Your party wants to instate Communist medicine, and you’re scared of them.

Biden: I may be scared of them but I am the Democrat Party now, so even if I was and still am scared of them, I’m not anymore. They’ll do what I say now. And how about Covid? The president killed 200,000 people. Roe v. Wade.

Trump: You would have killed 2 million people by not banning China. Not Roe v. Wade.

Wallace: K let’s go back to healthcare for a minute. Mr. President, over the past four years you have promised to replace and repeal Obamacare, but you have never in these four years come up—

Trump: Yes I have.

Wallace: with a plan—

Trump: Of course I have.

Wallace: to—

Trump: Of course I have.

Wallace: replace—

Trump: I got rid of the individual mandate.

Wallace: Oba—

Trump: The individual mandate was a joke.

Wallace: macare.

Trump: The individual mandate was the worst part of Obamacare.

Wallace: I am the moder—

Trump: The individual mandate sucks dick.

Wallace: I AM THE MODERATOR of this debate and I would like to be treated as such. You have never come up with a plan to replace Obamacare. So what is the Trump healthcare plan?

Trump: I’m cutting drug prices. Insulin is like water.

Wallace: Uh huh. How about you Joe? Why do you want to end private insurance?

Biden: I don’t want to end private insurance.

Trump: You’re literally friends with Bernie Sanders.

Biden: No I’m not. I want to—

Trump: You’re a piece of shit Joe.

Biden: I want to make sure—

Trump: A sad little man.

Wallace: Stop picking on Joe, Mr. President.

Trump: You care deeply about Bernie Sanders. You like Communist medicine. Anyway I asked the doctors and they said Obamacare is a disaster.

Biden: He doesn’t have a plan.

Wallace: Changing gears, Joe some of your colleagues are talking about ending the filibuster and packing the court. What’s your stance on that?

Biden: My stance is that voting is good. Americans should vote. It’s easy. You just go to the polling place, you wait in line, and then you go into the booth, and you push the little switch down for the candidate you want to vote for. Sometimes it’s not a switch.

Trump: You gonna pack the court, Joe? Tell us about how you’re gonna pack the court, Joe. The radical Left is pulling your puppet strings Joe. You and I both know it Joe.

Biden: Shut up, man.

Wallace: This is going well. Okay next segment. Covid-19. There have been more than 7 million cases in the United States and more than 200,000 have died. The question is, why should people trust you more than your opponent to handle this public health crisis?

Biden: 40,000 people a day contracting Covid. 200,000 people dead. He has no plan. He knew in February. He lied. He panicked. He complimented China. He has no plan. He’s playing golf.

Trump: I saved lives. It’s China’s fault. You wanted to let Chinese people come here. Dr. Fauci and all the Democrat governors said, “President Trump did a phenomenal job.” And they’re not the only ones. All of the other people said it too. “President Trump did a phenomenal job,” they all said. I did a phenomenal job. The gowns, the masks, the ventilators, you don’t know how to make a ventilator, the vaccine is here, any week now. You could never have done the job I did because you’re a random old man. You couldn’t even do swine flu. Swine flu is a disaster.

Biden: He panicked. People died. And more people are gonna die unless he gets a lot smarter—

Trump: Did you just use the word smart? You lied about going to college at Delaware State. You were the worst student at Delaware State. You’re a dumb fuck Joe. I know it. Chris Wallace knows it don’t you Chris.

Wallace:

Trump:

Biden:

Wallace: Mr. President, you have begun to increasingly question the effectiveness of masks. Are you not in favor of masks?

Trump: Masks are tremendous. I have a mask right here in my pocket. I wear masks when needed. Masks have said I’ve done a phenomenal job. Joe wears masks even when it makes no sense. He wears them when he’s 200 feet away from me. He wears a mask when he’s sleeping.

Wallace: Mr. Vice President, is that true?

Biden: If you wanna open a business, you gotta have a plan.

Wallace: Sir, I was asking about masks.

Biden: Oh masks? Sure, you gotta have a mask.

Wallace: Alright next segment. The economy. Mr. Trump, you go first.

Trump: It’s a big dick economy.

Biden: No.

Wallace: Okay how about taxes. Mr. President, apparently you pay $750 a year in taxes. There’s a girl my daughter knows who’s 15 and she works in a movie theater on Sundays and sells the candy. And she pays more than $750 a year in taxes. So is this true, Mr. President? How much did you pay in taxes in 2016 and 2017?

Trump: Miyyons.

Wallace: Miyyons, sir?

Trump: Miyyons and Biyyons. I don’t pay taxes because the Obama administration said I didn’t have to.

Wallace: Joe, what’s your plan for taxes?

Biden: I’m gonna build this economy. I’m gonna make jobs. We’re gonna buy American. We’re gonna buy American ships. American steel. American buildings. We handed him a booming economy and he blew it.

Wallace: But did you actually hand him a booming economy and did he actually blow it?

Biden: Sure, whatever. He talks about the art of the deal. China has perfected the art of the steal.

Trump: China buttered your son’s belly.

Biden: China did no such thing.

Trump: And then, Joe? You know what happened after that? Your son went to Moscow. And you know what happened there Joe? Moscow buttered your son’s belly.

Biden: Nothing happened there.

Trump: Sure did Joe. The mayor of Moscow’s wife. She buttered his belly slick.

Biden: You wanna talk about families Trump? How about your family. With their grease and their shoes. It’s not about families. It’s about the American people. It’s about families.

Trump: Oh and how about Ukraine?

Wallace: You know what? Time to move on to—

Trump: Ukraine buttered the shit out of—

Wallace: Mr. President.

Trump: Ukraine buttered him up real good.

Wallace: Mr. President.

Trump: Shut your mouth Chris. What about Ukraine Joe?

Wallace: VAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH

Trump:

Wallace: Now I’m gonna say something and I want you to listen right to me, Mr. President. I have had it up to here with you. Any more misbehaving and I will put you in timeout.

Trump: And you know what else—

Wallace: I will put you right in timeout, Mr. President. And then you’ll be sorry. Now I want you to stop being a bad boy, is that clear?

Trump: How about him? He should get timeout too.

Wallace: Well frankly, Mr. President, you’ve been the badder boy.

Trump: He’s been plenty bad.

Wallace: For the next segment, we’ll be talking about race. Why should voters trust you to deal with the race issues facing this country? Mr. Vice President, we’ll start with you.

Biden: I’m all for race. It’s about equity. About equality. About equanimity. Equilibrium. Equinox. We need to fix the systemic equity of racism and fragility in this country. And this president has done none of that. He wants to fix the systemic equity of the Nazis.

Trump: The blacks love me. Everyone knows that the blacks love me. I have blacks come up to me on the street all the time and tell me they love me. Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass and I have done more for the blacks than Joe could ever dream of. Joe won’t say law enforcement. Why won’t you say it Joe? Why are you such a puppet Joe? You’re the radical Left’s toy. You’re a yo-yo. The radical Left won’t let you say law enforcement because they bounce you like a yo-yo, Joe.

Wallace: I want to turn to the subject of protests. In many cities, things have turned violent. Portland, for instance, is a certifiable madhouse. Mr. Biden, have you ever called the mayor of Portland or the governor of Oregon and been like, “wtf?”

Biden: I don’t have their numbers. Otherwise I would have. Do you have their numbers Chris? If you do, text them to me. And besides, they’re taking care of things just fine.

Trump: Yeah Joe? They’re fine? They’re literally murdering people in the streets, which is a disaster, and no one in Portland cares.

Wallace: Mr. President do you like or not like white supremacists?

Trump: No of course not. I don’t not like, or don’t not not like any of the people.

Wallace:

Trump:

Wallace: Mr. President, what is your message to white supremacists?

Trump: Get your guns but don’t fire till I give the word. Anyway the Left is committing 99% of the violence right now.

Biden: Oh baloney. Antifa is an idea, not an organization. I heard it means anti-fascist, in which case heck, sign me up. And anyhow who hasn’t thrown urine at an old lady on a bad day? The Antifas are just like you and me.

Wallace: I’m having an awful time here. I’m really upset and I want to leave and I’m having a bad, bad time. For the next segment, let’s just go with “why should you be president over your opponent?”

Trump: There has never been a leader who has done more than I’ve done. And I don’t mean just U.S. presidents. Mandela. Attila the Hun. Caesar. King Tut. None of them did as much as I’ve done. I unified this country. For the first time in U.S. history, I ended division. I have the first 100% approval rating. And how about judges. I have 300 judges. I have judges up the ass, Chris. You know why? Because Obama and crazy Uncle Joe forgot to fill the seats. Who does that. No one does that. You forget your keys, sure I’ve forgotten my keys, I’m human, we all forget our keys, sometimes I leave my keys. But leaving judges is a disaster.

Biden: This man has made the country weaker, sicker, poorer, fatter, sloppier, and slipperier. When I was Vice President I went head-to-head with Putin, but Trump is Putin’s little puppy. His cuddle-bunny. His bushy-bushy-boo-boo.

Trump: At least Putin’s not my sugar daddy, like he is to your son.

Biden: K speaking of that, fuck off. Second, you talk about the military being losers—my son was in Iraq and he was no loser, he was a patriot.

Trump: Which son, the loser or the dead one?

Biden:

Wallace:

Trump: I don’t know the dead one, but if I recall, the loser got thrown out of the military, dishonorably discharged for having a nice time with his cocaine, only to then head off on his famous belly-buttering tour.

Biden: His belly is dry!

Wallace: Oh for fuck’s sake. Let’s move on to climate change. Mr. President, what do you believe about the science of climate change, and what is your plan to confront it?

Trump: I want clean water and air. As far as the California fires are concerned, the forest floors are full of dead trees and leaves.

Wallace: Okay but what do you believe about the science of climate change?

Trump: I want clean water and air. I’ve planted a biyyon trees. We’ve got to pick the leaves up in the forest in California. Every year I get the call. California’s burning again. Because again they didn’t pick up the fucking leaves. You know in Europe, they pick up leaves.

Wallace: Joe?

Biden: I want to get rid of fossil fuel plants and invest in renewable energy. I want to transition to electric cars and make green buildings and create millions of new jobs.

Trump: He’s talking about the Green New Deal. The 55 quadrillion dollar Green New Deal.

Biden: The Green New Deal is a plan that’ll pay for itself. It’ll work great.

Wallace: Do you support the Green New Deal?

Biden: Of course not. I’m talking about the Biden Plan. Who said anything about the Green New Deal?

Wallace: Mercifully, we’ve reached the final segment of my extremely awful night. Election integrity. How confident should we be that this will be a fair election?

Biden: There is no evidence that mail-in ballots are problematic. Trump is trying to convince people not to vote. Listen to me America. Get out there and vote. If I get enough votes, this whole thing is over and the bad man can’t hurt you. It doesn’t matter what he says, if I get enough votes he’s legit not in power anymore, how rad is that.

Wallace: Mr. President?

Trump: A squirrel’s ass, Chris. That’s where someone found a ballot the other day. A squirrel shit out a ballot in a park in Philadelphia and a man picked it up and guess what? It said Trump on the ballot. Big shocker there. This is what happens with mail-in ballots. They end up in a trash can in a river in the woods in the backcountry and then eventually the trash can gets caught up in an eddy, we both know how eddies work Chris, and it washes up on the bank, and then a squirrel gets into it and eats the ballots. Half the country’s ballots have already been found in eddies and in squirrels, and all of them were votes for me. Mail-in ballots are a fraud.

Wallace: One thing we all know for sure is that this election is going to be a shitshow. Will you accept the results of the shitshow and tell your supporters to accept the results peacefully?

Trump: If there’s no fraud, yes.

Wallace: Is there any foreseeable outcome where you lose and you don’t say it’s fraud?

Trump: No. I’ve already talked about the squirrels. If I lose, we’ll need to end the country.

Wallace: Biden?

Biden: The country can go on if I lose.

Wallace: And that concludes what will end up as a stain on my career even though it clearly wasn’t my fault. Thank you, and goodnight.

[topmixtrends]

PATTERSON HOOD has been leading the Drive-By Truckers — a country-rock band with a hip-hop attitude — for more than two decades. Along the way, the Alabama native has become, in song and in prose, one of the sharpest observers of Southern culture and society since C. Vann Woodward, W. J. Cash, and the Southern novelists he read as a kid.

The Truckers’ latest album, 2016’s American Band, was widely hailed as one of the year’s best and as the group’s most directly political: its songs took on the killing of Trayvon Martin, the worship of the Confederate flag, the nation’s madness for handguns, and the role of the band’s native region in the whole mess. Hood, like fellow Trucker Mike Cooley, grew up near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and his father, David Hood, is the longtime bassist for the R&B studio’s famous rhythm section. 

For many years based in Athens, Georgia, Hood moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2015. The Drive-By Truckers have just launched a US tour that brings them to Los Angeles’s El Rey Theatre on February 9.

¤

SCOTT TIMBERG: Let me start at the obvious place. In your writing, you often look at the South, at the complexity of the region’s history. And there’s a whole bunch of writers who’ve done this before: Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor. I’m just wondering what, if anything, these people have meant for you?

PATTERSON HOOD: I probably first became aware of that type of thing, as a genre of literature, when I was assigned To Kill a Mockingbird in high school. That was the first book I was forced to read at school that I actually loved and connected with. I fell in love with it, and the character of Atticus Finch reminded me of a very beloved relative of mine, who was kind of like a second father to me — so I really connected hard with that. And then later, in high school or in college, I read Faulkner a bit … I was too young to really get it. But it was a short story, “Barn Burning,” that I first read, and that was a good entry point, because I totally dug it, and got it, although I don’t think I would have been ready to read As I Lay Dying or anything. I love reading. I’m a fanatical reader.

And that goes back to childhood for you?

Maybe off and on. I remember times in childhood when I read a lot. I loved Old Yeller as a child — I really loved that book. And like everyone, I read Charlotte’s Web, although I don’t think I liked it as a kid. I read it to my son, actually, a couple of years ago, and fell in love with it. But I don’t think as a kid I was able to get past the fact that it was romanticizing a fucking spider. I have arachnophobia, so it was a bit of a leap on that one. So yeah, I went through periods of reading and not reading, I guess because it reminded me too much of school, and I hated school and everything about school at that time. I had to get past rebelling against it in order to enjoy it.

Yeah, I think a lot of us, especially boys, go through that phase, even if they become serious readers later. So when you were reading Harper Lee and the Faulkner story, and maybe some other stuff, what did you respond to, what made you want to go back to it, besides the fact that it was about the part of the country you live in? Did you feel it helped you make sense of the South?

Yeah, I probably just responded to the dialect, because that’s the way my people talked. And I responded to some of the manners — you know, the manners that everybody had, even the villains, who were these kind of ignorant, white trash, really terrible people in To Kill a Mockingbird. They still had a certain amount of decorum about them. When they weren’t spitting in Atticus’s face, there was still a certain amount of “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” involved. And that was beat into me as a kid, you know.

So even though terrible things were happening, in a way, you felt like you were home?

Sure, sure. And I had a similar thing with R.E.M., early R.E.M., I fell in love with them really early. About two weeks before Murmur came out, I got turned on to Chronic Town, and in the press in those days, people talked about, “Oh, you can’t understand the lyrics, you can’t decipher what he’s saying.” But these things tended to be colloquialisms, which I could decipher. There’s a song by a side project called The Golden Palominos, and I remember reading a review by someone who couldn’t decipher what Stipe kept saying, like the hook. And it’s “fixin’ to go” — that’s all he’s saying is “fixin’ to go,” he’s fixin’ to go!

Of course, there’s more to being Southern than just a manner of speech. When did you get a sense that a key element of Southern literature was the question of race? How did Southern literature change the way you understood black people or the racial rift in the region?

Yeah, I can’t remember a time that I wasn’t aware of race, and the South’s role in that story. I don’t think there was ever a point in my life that I wasn’t, at some level, aware of it, because of what my dad did. He made his living playing on Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett records, when they literally weren’t allowed to go out to dinner with him, and so he brought that home, you know — the anger over that came home with him. And we’d see George Wallace on the television screen and my dad would just start frothing at the mouth. But we have family members who I’m sure voted for Wallace, and whom I love dearly.

So there was always that disconnect. I was also aware of the generation gap, of the ’60s, the cultural revolution that was playing out in my family too. My parents came of age in the ’60s, and my dad smoked pot, and rode a motorcycle, and had a beard and long hair, and my mom wore go-go boots and hot pants … And I spent an enormous amount of time with my grandparents and my great-uncle, who were from the Depression generation. And so I kind of viewed the counter-culture, the culture clash, from a front-row seat as I was growing up, and I think that’s probably part of my attraction to dualities in my writing and the stuff I do.

It sounds like you didn’t need Harper Lee to show you that race was an obsession in the South — you were seeing and living that every day.

Absolutely. And it’s funny, because I haven’t read the other book of hers that came out. I own it, and I plan to — it’s really just a matter of time … I’m aware of its flaws, but I do want to read it, because I’m interested in that. I’ve actually written a piece, a song that kind of deals with that, because when a New York Times critic actually reviewed the book, it was the week after I moved to Portland. I read that piece in The New York Times, and I literally broke down and cried. I got so upset at Atticus Finch. I got really, really mad for a couple of days.

And then I had this epiphany that it’s absolutely right, that it was important. I believe that she was of sound mind in deciding to put that out, because I think it was important — not to disillusion everybody of their hero, or to make everybody that named their kid Atticus wince — but because that’s how it was. That is the truth.

We’re talking about the fact that Atticus, who’d been this hero of racial justice, became sort of a segregationist, a racist …

It made me mad and upset, but once I got past that, it totally rang true to me.

In the ’30s he was defending this man who was wrongly accused. It offended him on a human level that Tom Robinson was accused of a rape he obviously didn’t commit, but that don’t mean Calpurnia could sit at the table with Atticus at dinnertime. That’s a different line. When African Americans were demanding equality, that crossed a different line, and all of a sudden Harper Lee saw her father, her beloved father figure — who to her represented the side of right and justice — all of a sudden she saw him as a hypocrite. And she wrote this thing first, in anger, and then she went back and wrote, from the view of her childhood, the book that everyone knows and loves.

That rang so true to me, and I wrote a song that, at this point, has never been recorded. I’m still hoping to do something with it. It’s called “At a Safe Distance.” When you look a little closer, not at a safe distance, you tend to see things that aren’t so pleasant — you see the cracks. It really rang true to me; I wish it didn’t.

I guess you could say this about all literature, but it seems that, more than any other, Southern literature is based on history. I wonder if you ever went back and read any Southern history, journalism about the South, about the Civil Rights movement, or any of that? You’re kind of born into the middle of the Civil Rights era — ’64, right?

1964, yeah. I was born either at the last moment of the Baby Boom, or at the first moment of Generation X. I’m right on the cusp, as was my mother, who was born the day before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, which is the official start of the Baby Boom. Her birthday’s August 5, so with the time change, she was probably born about the exact moment that the Baby Boom started.

So yeah, all of that fascinates me. I’m obsessed with the Robert Caro books on Lyndon B. Johnson, which goes back to the duality thing, because he was the ultimate dual president. I mean, he was the best and the worst, and sometimes at the exact same moment. Sometimes he would say the worst thing possible when doing something amazing, and vice versa. He could be surprisingly eloquent as he’s just fucking you. He’s a never-ending source of fascination to me, and the fact that such a gifted writer has literally spent 50 years of his life chronicling this guy — I get off on that too. I’ve read all four books that have appeared so far, and I’m eagerly awaiting the fifth and final one.

Was Johnson a sort of Texas racist who grew up and saw racial reality? Or was he an opportunist?

He was all of the above. Caro’s take on it, I think, is that he is all those things, and more, at the exact same time.

When people say, “Oh, he didn’t really mean that — he just did the Civil Rights thing because he knew it would be good for his historical legacy.” Well, sure, he knew it would be good for his legacy, but he very well knew that it meant the South wouldn’t vote Democrat again for 50 years, which it hasn’t. It was the beginning of the great migration of Southern Democrats to the GOP. And when he did those things, he purposefully fucked over people who had helped him his entire career.

And yet, he was absolutely a Jim Crow guy for most of his career. And all of those things coexisted within him at the same time, and I think all along. He did have some awakenings at a young age, he did know extreme poverty, and he taught at a school that was pretty much all Latino students. And I think he was very moved by their plight, and he took that with him forever. And yet he was willing to put that in a box and not deal with it for many, many years, building a career as the LBJ that the Kennedys hated so much.

Your dad’s music, and the music you play with the Truckers, it’s all grounded in the blues and R&B. And the Truckers were founded, in some ways, as an homage to hip-hop …

Sure, sure. Though none of us would have tried to rap. But we were immersed in it. I really responded to how hip-hop seemed to be telling you the news — what was going on right now. Modern-day country was more about retro things. I wanted to sing about what was happening now, but in a country style.

Did any of this lead you into African-American literature, especially essays, from the South or elsewhere?

I got into it really late, really recently. Through reading Ta-Nehisi Coates I tried to learn more about James Baldwin, and then I Am Not Your Negro came out last year, which was so amazing. There are so many books; I’ve only scratched the surface. I can spend the rest of my life reading every day, and not even read a fraction of the things I’m really interested in.

Anything you’ve gone back to and loved the second time?

I love Mark Twain. I made it a point to reread Huckleberry Finn at a much older age, after loving it as a kid. Reading it in my 40s was great. What a remarkable piece of work. I do like reading the classics. I was turned on to Hemingway really late. I responded to the style — it’s like the opposite of Faulkner, whom I also love. Instead of long sentences, reall short, concise ones. I respond to both forms. Hemingway’s stories are so devastating; there’s no way to improve them. I loved A Farewell to Arms. I stumbled upon it accidentally. I was at my in-laws’ house and may’ve been sick, was cooped up, it was a rainy day. They had the book; I picked it up, read the first chapter, and couldn’t put it down. I read the whole thing in like a day and a half.

Your old bandmate, Jason Isbell, is reputed to be a very literary cat. Did you guys turn each other on to books and writers when you were in the Truckers together?

We probably have more since we quit playing together. When we were playing together, we were in the eye of the storm. That was a crazy time. He turned me onto Peter Matthiessen, a trilogy of books that he rewrote as one book, Shadow Country, set in Florida in the Everglades, post–Civil War, when they were first settling that part of the country. It was kind of the last frontier. All of these outlaws that had been put out of business in the West being ended up down there. It was riveting — and one of Jason’s favorite books. He’s very well read, and a great writer in his own right.

Your last record, American Band, was your most explicitly topical. You wrote about racial violence and social tensions that were exploding around you. Did your reading of essayists, novelists, or anything else help shape that album?

I was reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me when I was in the midst of writing that record. I had already written “What It Means,” and I was going through a period of questioning: Did I have a right to write such a thing? Reading his book, I kept asking, “What can I do?” Maybe this is a small part of what I can do. Maybe there does need to be a goofy white dude, in a rock ’n’ roll band, with the following that it has, that can say Black Lives Matter. Maybe that is important. I didn’t write that song from the perspective of a black man being shot by police — I wrote it from the perspective of a goofy white dude, like me. Seeing this happening around me and saying, “This is wrong. Why are we at this place in 2017? Why is this still a thing?” And unfortunately, the song doesn’t have answers, it’s just questions. But at least questioning is a start, a beginning.

¤

Scott Timberg is the editor of The Misread City: New Literary Los Angeles and author of Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class.

The post All the Poets (Musicians on Writing): Patterson Hood appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2nwKRsu

[killerspectrum]

KILLER POISONS

In 2011 there were 12,664 murder victims in the United States.  Of those, only 5 were classified as as homicidal poisoning.  In 2014, there were only 7 deaths were officially listed as murder by toxin.   Even with new testing methods and awareness, many more deaths are still going undetected or unproven.

THALLIUM

Referred to as “Inheritance Powder”, thallium is a rarely used poison in a murder plot because it’s easily detected.  It’s also not as final as other toxins, as there is an anti-dote called Prussian Blue.   

Commonly found in pesticides until 1975 when it was banned for household use, but around 70% of the annual global production of thallium is still used by the electronics industry.

FORM:  A soft, heavy metal. Thallium can also exist as metallic salts.

COLOR: White crystallized powder, salt like.

ODOR: Odorless.

TASTE: Tasteless.

SOURCE: Mostly pesticides. 

ADMINISTERED: Skin, lungs, food, drink and medication. 

SYMPTOMS APPEAR:  Few hours to a few days, depending on dosage.

SYMPTOMS:  Savage.  Abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,delirium, labored breathing, hair loss, seizures, coma, and eventually death.

TICK TOCK:  Depending on how large of the dose.  There is an anti-dote, if administered within 6 hours of contact. 

FALSELY ACCUSED DISEASES:  Viral disease, Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Examples of Nefarious Use of Thallium 

GEORGE JAMES TREPAL

October 1988 Alturas Florida.  

What are you going to do when your neighbors are obnoxious fucking beasts?  

Do you wait for them to move out? Noooo... Do you call the cops and complain about noise? Useless.  If you are George Trepal, the best plan is to poison the whole family for some peace and quiet.

The 42 year-old Trepal would sneak into their carport and lace a 12 pack of Coke with thallium. 

For four grueling months, the Carr family suffered "stomach bugs”, taunted by anonymous notes demanding they move away and hospitalizations.   Peggy Carr, the wife and mother of the family, died before they discovered the deadly conspiracy.  

But the fed up neighbor couldn’t keep his mouth shut.  When investigators asked Trepal why someone would want to kill the Carr family and he replied “They must have wanted them to move away.”  

George Trepal is currently on Death Row....where he enjoys shitty neighbors, people screaming and noise 24 hours a day.

AUNT THALLY AKA CAROLINE GRILLS 

1947-1953 Australia

Aunt Thally, spiteful old biddy, killed four people, all related to her by marriage. Targets of her rat poisonings included a 90 year old step-mother, a sister-in-law and a brother-in-law.  Three additional relatives survived her death attempts. 

After 5 years of dusting people’s lives out, Caroline Grills was arrested after a suspicious family member witnessed her dropping something into a cup of tea she was about to serve  . 

ANTI FREEZE

Ethylene Glycol, the deadly toxin in Antifreeze, enjoyed a wave of popularity with cold blooded killers in the early 2000s.  Sensationalized in the media by popular shows like Forensic Files, which highlighted a case in Georgia of Lynn Turner who poisoned two of her significant others with EG.  In addition, her eventual trial was broadcast live on Court TV, light bulbs went off in minds across the globe. 

The fact it was sweet tasting and accessible, at the time, to anyone with legs and $2.39 in their pocket turned antifreeze into a sort of green nectar for cunning killers. (Nowadays, the Antifreeze on store shelves have been designed to taste bitter, to deter the toxicomaniacs.  However, you can still buy the sweet tasting sort online.)   Even the Amish community decided to participate.  

Suspected malicious intent homicides increased from 2 cases in 2000 to 14 cases in 2004.

FORM: Syrupy liquid.

COLOR:  Fluorescent yellow-green.  

ODOR:  Sweet, like syrup.

TASTE:  Sweet. 

SOURCE:  At the store.

ADMINISTERED:  Food and drink. 

SYMPTOMS APPEAR:  30 minutes -12 hours.

SYMPTOMS: Kidney failure, convulsions, coma, cardiac issues. 

TICK TOCK:  3.5 fluid oz, will kill an average size man in 24-72 hours.

FALSELY ACCUSED DISEASES:   Diabetic shock, alcohol poisoning.

Examples of Nefarious Use of Ethylene Glycol  

STACEY CASTOR  

2005-2007 Upstate, New York

It’s no big secret that poisoners are among the most cold blooded and heartless of all killers, but even in this category the case of Stacey Castor is horrifying look at the lengths they will go to avoid being caught.

Michael Wallace, her first husband, died on Jan. 11, 2000 from what appeared to be a heart attack.  No questions, No Autopsy, No problem.  Stacey enjoyed the insurance money before getting married again to David Castor, 48.    

He was murdered on Aug. 22, 2005 with a cocktail of vodka, orange jucie, Sprite and antifreeze.    And when he no longer able to finish the cocktail, she shoved the rest down his throat with a turkey baster to finish him off.  

Stacey convinced the authorities that David locked himself inside his bedroom for two days and committed suicide- with a cocktail of antifreeze.    

It wasn’t long before suspicion fell on Stacey after investigators found her fingerprints all over the antifreeze glass and a turkey baster in the trash.

When there was a court order to dig up her husband’s corpse, Stacey attempts to frame her daughter Ashley for both murders.  “A 12 year old confessing to murdering her step-fathers!” probably sounded better in your head.  

But she decides to whip up a fake suicide note/confession and spike her daughter’s drink with a fatal mix of narcotics.  Instead of dying, Ashley was found unconscious the next morning by her younger sister and rushed to the hospital.  She woke up pissed off and Momma went to prison, where she ultimately died in 2016.

DIANE  STAUDTE 

2012-2013 Missouri

A more recent case of EG poisoning is Diane Staudte.  Of Mrs Staudte’s four children, she had a favorite.  The chosen one, Rachel, enjoyed her mother’s glowing admiration and darkest secrets. 

This is Diane smiling confidently, believing she is the smartest person in the whole world.  

Diane beaming with her favorite daughter, who coolly stood by as her family dropped like flies.  Luckily for her, it was more of a personality thing instead of a beauty contest. 

In April of 2012, her husband Mark was the first to be poisoned after drinking a Coke laced with antifreeze. He died simply because Diane “hated” him.  Without an autopsy or further testing, his death was ruled due to natural causes and he was cremated. .  

 Just five months later Shawn, 26, was also poisoned to death by his mother.  For the unimaginable crime of being a pest.  Not just any pest, but worse than a normal pest, according to Diane. She convinces the medical examiner and family that he was suffering from seizures, and they agreed without any further testing. 

And finally Sarah Staudte, the daughter who lived through an attempt on her life.  How did she survive the most clever woman that ever lived, you may ask? 

Well, after several deaths in the house, Diane had grown tired of the lingering stench and horror of death. 

“...houses are nasty when someone dies there.”  

To offset any potential nastiness, Diane orders an ambulance so Sarah will die at the hospital!  Genius.  Except hospitals do more than store dead bodies.  They also save lives and that’s what they did with Sarah, whose offenses included “unemployment and student loans”.

But Sarah had no idea her mom was trying to off her.  It was the Priest who became suspicious of Diane when the grim reaper was making extra trips to the Staudte family.  Every time he offered his religious comfort to the devout church goer, she was unfazed that her children were dying.  When Sarah was struggling to live in the hospital, Diane claimed she had a vacation to Florida in a few days, and she wasn’t going to miss it for anything.  The Priest called the authorities and she was eventually arrested for the murder of her family.  Along with her favorite daughter.    

They are both in jail.

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: August 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[sm4selfdefense]

Donald Trump might not be sitting in the White House today. At first glance, that might sound odd. The six-term Republican senator, who passed away Saturday, has been hailed as an outspoken opponent of the president, while Trump himself despised McCain and famously claimed the former prisoner of the Vietcong was “not a war hero.” McCain has also been held up, by both right and left alike, as an exemplar of political civility, integrity, and decency; a nonracist Republican; the anti-Trump. Bernie Sanders called him “a man of decency and honor;” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised him as an “unparalleled example of human decency.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Even if you discount the fact that McCain once publicly dismissed his wife as a “cunt.” Or that he referred to two of his fellow Republican senators as a “fucking jerk” and an “asshole.” Or that he mocked Chelsea Clinton, then a teenager, as “ugly.” Or that he refused to apologize for calling his Vietnamese captors “gooks.” Or that he slammed anti-war protesters as “low-life scum.” Ignore all of that and you’re still left with his hate-mongering, race-baiting, Trump-precursing 2008 presidential campaign — against the first black Democratic nominee for the White House. How have the vitriol and smears of a decade ago been so easily forgotten by his eulogizers? So casually consigned to the media memory hole? Remember: McCain introduced the loathsome Palin to the world in August 2008, when he plucked her from Alaskan obscurity and made her his running mate. In doing so, he granted prestige, influence, and credibility to a know-nothing demagogue and conspiracy theorist; a woman who thrived on racial and cultural resentment and would later become a leading figure in both the tea party and the “birther” movement. Sound familiar? Palin, as the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote in 2016, was “politically, the Mother of Trump.” As even Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC host and former adviser to McCain, conceded during the 2016 campaign: “Mr. Trump is riding the wave of anxiety that Ms. Palin first gave voice to as Senator John McCain’s running mate. Mr. Trump has now usurped and vastly expanded upon Ms. Palin’s constituency, but the connection between the two movements is undeniable.” Is it any wonder then that the New York Times’s Jonathan Martin, in an otherwise fawning piece on the late Arizona senator in May, observed how “many in Mr. McCain’s own party believe that, by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, he bears at least a small measure of blame for unleashing the forces of grievance politics and nativism within the Republican Party”? Remember also: McCain has never apologized for picking Palin. As Martin reported in his piece, McCain did express regret that he hadn’t selected his friend and fellow Sen. Joe Lieberman as his 2008 running mate, but “he continues to defend Ms. Palin’s performance.” Yes, her racist and conspiratorial performance. That performance. It’s easy, though, to blame all of the Trumpish campaign of 2008 on the former governor of Alaska. It was McCain, however, who unleashed and empowered her — and failed to restrain or rebuke her as she incited angry crowds against Obama. “The growing furor in the Republican Party was something that we, as a campaign, failed to address,” admitted Wallace. And, while it was Palin who shamelessly accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists” and dog-whistled to rally-goers that the black Democrat wasn’t “a man who sees America the way you and I see America,” it was McCain who spent much of the days and weeks before the election trying to tie Obama to his former acquaintance, Bill Ayers, the co-founder of a Vietnam War-era militant group. It was McCain who authorized his campaign spokesperson to remind reporters of “Barack Obama’s long association with a domestic terrorist.” The spokesperson added, “The American people know radical when they hear it, and John McCain is not the candidate in this election they should be concerned about.” You think shouting “lock her up” and “CNN sucks” at Trump rallies is bad? McCain-Palin rallies in 2008 featured Republican supporters in the audience shouting “Traitor!”, “Terrorist!”, “Off with his head!”, and “Kill him!” at the mere mention of Obama’s name. “Watch the tape of the guy screaming, ‘He’s a terrorist!’ McCain seems to shudder at that, he rolls his eyes … and I thought for a moment he’d admonish the man. But he didn’t,” wrote Joe Klein in Time magazine on October 9, 2008. “True enough: he no longer has his honor. But we are on the edge of some real serious craziness here and it would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower. But McCain hasn’t done the right thing all year.” On October 11, 2008, Democratic congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis lambasted both McCain and Palin for “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” and even compared their dangerous campaign rhetoric to that of arch-segregationist George Wallace. Some conservatives expressed outrage with McCain, too. David Frum accused him of “whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that is going to be very hard to calm after November.” Andrew Sullivan urged the Arizona senator to desist from dangerous and inflammatory attacks on a young, black Democrat: “For God’s sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.” Republican activist and former McCain ally Frank Schaeffer denounced the GOP presidential candidate for “playing with fire,” unleashing a “monster of American hate and prejudice,” and holding rallies that “are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.” Yet, astonishingly, all of this has been whitewashed from McCain’s political record. None of it makes an appearance in the raft of unctuous obituaries that have been published since Saturday. Instead, a single moment from that campaign — in which a woman at a town hall accused Obama of being “an Arab” and McCain replied by saying, “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man” — has become the only thing anyone seems to remember from it. Over the past couple of days, the clip of that exchange has gone viral on Twitter, with everyone from former Bush administration official Fran Townsend to liberal author Stephen King, citing it as proof of the late senator’s “character and integrity” and his “finest moment.” Sorry, what? I have never understood how this was a badge of honor for McCain — nor do many Arab-Americans, for that matter. Actor Ben Affleck summed up the problem on “Real Time with Bill Maher” a few days after the incident. “What if someone said, ‘I heard he’s a Jew.’ ‘No, no, he’s not a Jew, he’s alright … he’s a decent guy’?” Affleck asked the audience. “‘Arab’ and ‘good person’ are not antithetical to one another. … We’ve allowed this idea where denying … that Obama is not an Arab, nor is he a Muslim, we’ve allowed that denial to turn into the acceptance of both of those things as a legitimate slur.” In 2008, McCain could have pushed back against this idea, expressed by the increasingly Trumpish GOP rank and file, that there was something wrong with being Arab or Muslim; after all, his fellow Republican and Vietnam veteran Colin Powell did so rather eloquently on television around the same time. But, no, McCain, whether wittingly or unwittingly, allowed a distinction to be drawn between being an Arab and being a decent family man. Some suggest he should be given the benefit of the doubt on that remark because it was a spur-of-the-moment, off-the-cuff response to a rambling and racist questioner; his intent, they say, was noble. Maybe. But context matters. How do you explain the rest of his shoddy election campaign? Shamefully, he ran for president while repeatedly claiming his black opponent was a friend of terrorists. Embarrassingly, he chose to give the nativist Palin a national platform she didn’t deserve. Disgracefully, he stayed silent as his own supporters called for the killing and beheading of Obama. So the reality is this: if you were drawing up a list of Americans who share blame for the rise of Donald Trump, John McCain’s name would have to be somewhere near the top of it. With the noxious Palin at his side, the Arizona senator ran a nasty, bigoted, and desperate presidential campaign in 2008 that paved the way for Trump and Trumpism in 2016. And you don’t have to take my word for it. It’s been reported that McCain requested for Obama to speak at his funeral. Perhaps the former president can start his eulogy by repeating aloud what he told New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait in October 2016: “I see a straight line from the announcement of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential nominee to what we see today in Donald Trump … and the shift in the center of gravity for the Republican Party.” Thanks, John McCain. Thanks a lot. https://theintercept.com/2018/08/27/hold-the-plaudits-john-mccains-2008-campaign-paved-the-way-for-donald-trump/