#he's always hogging the water dispenser

[intercomkris]

case diggs. a college student working here as an intern, looks good on his resume and gives him extra credits. definitely spills coffee everywhere, hogs the water-fountain, and is the mastermind behind the "wear your best sweater" day at the office.

@kashisun , i say we burn all his sweaters for spilling coffee everywhere in the damn office.

[ventique18]

Papa 🐉 with triplets HCs

When going overseas for official duties, he prefers not to be cooped up in that weird iron bird creature (it's an airplane, hun). So he instead flies to the country in his dragon form. Imagine people's awe when this gigantic, magnificent creature lands gracefully, lowers his head down carefully, and out of his mouth hops not one, not two, but three little dragons. They're so tiny you could swear they're cute little dogs.

He always goes to meetings clad in heavy robes. More often than not though, his mysterious cloak has a peculiar feature: it produces three sets of giggling voices every once in a while, especially when the room goes deadly silent.

Once an hour passes though, three little tykes get magicked out of the cloak like how a bunny hops out of a magician's hat. The wyrmlings like to climb on and off papa's back and munch on his horns. Everyone could only glance in amazement at how strong their Majesty's neck muscles must be to withstand the weight.

The three siblings still have very small wings but would always attempt to fly. 🌸 always almost has a heart attack when they inevitably come crashing down from their disproportionate weight, but 🐉 would save them the last second with his magic. He'd laugh loudly and hug 🌸 to reassure them none of their babies would get into accidents while he's alive.

I say accident because the three would frequently get hurt on purpose anyway. Their parents don't understand why, but one of their hobbies seem to be beating each other up in any way they could think of. 🐉🌸 would often wake up in the dead of the night because one sibling hurled another off the bed, simply because he/she was hogging 🌸's chest apparently. 🌸's chest is their favorite snuggle spot.

While 🐉 frankly doesn't have all the time in the world, he strictly employs a 8-5 work hour like a regular person. He doesn't really mind working but ever since he's started a family, he believes this is finally his god-given grace so he'll do it properly. His spouse is very capable in assisting him so they never really had problems with this arrangement.

So he likes to be closer to his babies and feeds them personally while it's still normal. He kinda just force-feeds them mashed food with a spoon in a row though. "Can't you make it more fun? Like, open wide, here comes the flying broom!" "I am simply not a sappy person." "You feed me while saying cheesy shit though..." "I cannot very well say those kinds of things to my children."

When he bathes them, he makes them line up and dunks them into a pool one by one. When they're in their dragon form, he scrubs them with a brush like he's doing laundry.

He hangs them on a clothesline to dry them on a sunny day lmao. "What are you doing to our babies??" "What? They enjoy it." Fair enough, the little gremlins are giggling.

When 🐉🌸 gets one those snazzy refrigerators with a water faucet and ice dispenser in front, the siblings like to sit on top of each other's shoulders so they could steal ice cubes for themselves. Or lap at the running water like thirsty dogs.

Grim has dedicated water bowls all over the place because he finds it hard to pour from a pitcher, and the feral siblings actually prefer lapping from those than go to the refreshments table to fetch a drink. The first time 🐉🌸 saw this, they were so shocked they kinda just stared blankly.

"Are... Are they actually dogs..." "I do not know, at this point." "Did you do this too when you were little?" "We did not have any semblance of a pet so I do not think so." Lilia reveals later though, that 🐉 drank from the damn toilet once.

He likes teaching them all manners of things. He gets a bit too intense sometimes though, what with them failing over and over again on what he thinks to be simple tasks, so 🌸 has to remind him gently that they are not him and shouldn't ever be him. He lets up and smiles. Yes, this is what children are supposed to be.

He legitimately doesn't have any ounce of experience with fatherhood and was suddenly thrust with three, so 🌸 honestly thinks he's a bit clumsy when it comes to taking care of them. Really clumsy and callous, actually.

But when 🌸 chances upon their three babies curled up against him, with him napping soundly and still holding an illustrated book on gargoyles and their history (goodness, he never changes), they thought he wasn't so bad after all.

Thinking harder about it though, what with him carrying the weight of the country while carrying the weight of three chubby babies and a feral cat, he might be the best father ever, after all.

[bomberqueen17]

on fridges

deputychairman said:  Very interested in comparative fridge prices! Did you get a fairly-fancy one, or is that price quite standard? Bc when we had to replace ours 6 ish years ago it was more like €500 and sure you can always spend more but I just couldn’t think of anything extra a fridge could do that mine doesn’t (it’s a box that’s cold! What else do people want from it???) to justify the extra. Having said that, an ice maker is an unheard of luxury here but I can see it would be rather nice!                 

Soo.... around here you can get a cheapish fridge, from $500-1000, which has the fridge on the bottom, the freezer on top with a separate door, and may or may not have a plumbed-in icemaker in the freezer. Those are optional, you can still get ones without.

A step up, you can get ones with the freezer on the bottom, which is great in terms of ergonomics, and generally lets you store more stuff in there. (Having the freezer drawer pull out is enormously useful at letting you pile things into it and yet not lose track of what’s down there.) It is impossible to find one of these that does not have an ice maker built in; you don’t have to hook them up, and much of the time people don’t-- my mom has one of these and just literally could not run water to it given the layout of her kitchen, so she just keeps her ice cube trays in the ice machine bit, and it works fine. These also can have either the normal swinging door or French doors; we got one with French doors because it’s slightly more energy-efficient and ergonomic and fits our kitchen better. These are around $1,000-$5,000 depending largely on features that seem somewhat opaque to me, some of which include size, and my smallish doorways constrained me on that one a fair bit, but also the fact that it’s just the two of us so we don’t need a fridge we can fit a whole hog carcass into. Many, but not all, of these will have a dispenser set into the door, so that you can dispense ice from the machine straight into your cup, or dispense chilled water into a cup.

Somewhere in here are side-by-side fridges, where the freezer and fridge are next to one another vertically. That, to me, seems the least space-efficient option, but Dude’s mom has one and likes it quite a bit. Hers has the water dispenser in the door, and that broke after... well, Dude’s dad installed it, and he died in ‘03, so it did have a pretty good run. Fridge still works fine, though.

More expensive fridges will additionally have like... smart fridge shit. Ours has a sticker that tells us there’s an app we can get, but the app doesn’t actually interface with the fridge in any way, which is what I want-- dumb fridge only please I do not want my fridge to be part of a bot army DDOS’ing the Dept of Defense. Thanks!

I sort of pouted that I couldn’t get one without an ice machine-- it takes up space!!-- and said if we had the machine we were gonna hook it up, so we are. $150 to hook it up and probably it will break, but listen, I can keep the empty ice cube trays in my pantry closet in the basement until it breaks and enjoy the bougie while it lasts.

anelith51 said: This gives me hope that our fridge (ordered in November) might show up soon!

Ha I hope so!!! Good luck!!!

Ours still hasn’t shown up and I have the old fridge cleared out into coolers in the driveway (it’s 1 degree above freezing out) but I have faith. Dude even has the mop out, so we can clean the floor where the old fridge was....

[jackbabewang]

His good girl

word count: 2,678 genre: fluff, smut

Often times you wished your boyfriend were a little more anonymous. And yet his social standing was also part of his appeal. Jaehyun the jock he was, basketball team captain and also a member of a respected fraternity—they have everything, all had led to the impossibility of concealing himself from the glory being showered with. So how the hell did you end up with the almighty himself? Call it fate or luck, you both were the high school sweethearts—he happened to squeeze himself a place in your heart with his self invented pick-up lines. That scene of Jaehyun pursuing you, wooing you and winning you over itself would always be funny to you and him, as well as among the rest of the boys. And speaking about the boys, they treated you as though the lady boss since you’re the only girl in the clique. It was enjoyable. 

However college itself hadn’t been the case. You were rather excited on the first day but soon you realized otherwise. People were more realistic about life and you found yourself having a hard time making friends just because you didn’t “fit in” to the so-called societies’ beauty ideals. Girls your age were adorned in makeup and form-fitting clothing, whereas you only wore plain T-shirts with jeans other than switching between white and black time to time. Though it was quite wrong of you to wonder why Jaehyun still stuck out his hand to you all the time when you’re undecorated and boring, while he soared to the top with outstanding visuals and qualities that every girl deeply wished to own him to themselves. And because of that, your presence as Jaehyun’s girlfriend was overlooked and never taken seriously by anyone else. They simply took you as that side chick who’s about to deal with being dumped any time, or that introverted cousin who clung to her big brother that was a star himself. Regardless, the attention that was occurring around Jaehyun didn’t seem to faze him in the least. There was no breakup and no debris of shattered heart. He still loved you a lot. 

Three months had gone by in this manner and the boys decided to throw a huge party as soon as finals ended. You knew you were just not a social butterfly or party person, but since the celebration was being held at the fraternity’s property, you decided to give yourself the opportunity to let loose after major stress from studies, and a dress-up once in awhile. First, you abandoned your thick-framed glasses and freed your messy bun to soft romantic curls. Then you switched out your grayscale clothing to a floral crisscross halter dress that welcomes the approaching spring season. 

While you were having a dilemma picking out accessories to accentuate your outfit, Jaehyun stepped out from the shower bared with still a towel wrapped low on his hips. His feet padded on the timber flooring across the closet and immediately made a stop at the vanity where you were still occupied. 

You shot him a timid smile as he continued to watch you through the mirror working magic on your already-perfect appearance. The blusher seemed a little too much over your redden complexion. 

“What?”

“You’re so pretty,” he said with twinkling eyes.

“Just pretty?”

“Pretty good enough to eat.” Jaehyun loves flirting—sometimes to the point where he couldn’t help himself. But the majority of them all he was the gentleman who deposits appreciative kisses on your knuckles. 

You shoved him away in the chest and he dissolved into fits of laughter seeing your flustered expression. 

“On second thought, let’s just ditch the guys and have a party of our own. I can steal the pizza and some drinks, hm?” he suggested.

It wasn’t a bad idea actually. “Go get yourself ready!”

“C’mon, help me,” he grabbed your hand and pulled you to your feet, “We can play dress-up, I’ll be your Ken doll!”

So much so you were messing around in the closet. You had him tried out horrendous mismatching of clothing and still managed to look good in them. Eventually you picked out a shirt matching the blue of your dress and a pair of black ankle pants. And to top it all, you helped to style his hair in a lovely disheveled look. 

“All done, handsome.” Your eyes flitted around his body and then finally rested on his face. You had no shame in yourself as you checked him out blatantly. “Let’s go!”

“After you, my lady,” he made a dramatic gesture towards the door, waving his hand about so you would step outside first.  

The backyard was already filled with people; Doyoung was mingling with the other guests in attendance; Yuta was drinking straight from the beer dispenser; Jungwoo was hogging the food table; and the twin towers being Johnny and Lucas were engaged in games of beer pong. 

“This wasn’t so bad…” you let your eyes roam around the room with obvious curiosity, everything about the party was new and you couldn’t seem to pull your gaze away from the sea of people submerging themselves as fish in water. 

“Nudge me if you don’t feel like staying. The offer still stands,” he wriggled his eyebrows at you, causing you to giggle. “Do you want something to drink? Like, juice, soda or water?” 

You rolled your eyes at his mindful self. Drinking alcohol is a common practice at parties and you weren’t hesitant to give it a try, as much as the after-effects would be deadly. “I can drink, Jae.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll be fine. Besides, I have a goonda with me for the whole night,” you assured him. 

“Are you seriously calling me a thug?” 

“Quick!” you dodged his inquiry, “Make me a drink maybe, baby.” 

Veins strained and popped against the skin in his forearms as he strived to impress you with his bartending skills. To fuel his ego, you squealed with delight at his antics and he laughed and blew you a kiss. 

“I call this the ‘Sand in the Crack’,” he spoke proudly, perhaps too proudly and you snorted at the odd sounding name. 

You rubbed away some of the condensation fogging the glass, but the icy cold moisture numbed the tips of your fingers and you took a sip of the drink. “Mm, this tastes like summer.” It was a mix of pineapple juice, cranberry juice and some alcohol that you could hardly put a name to but it made you long for warm weather and deserted beaches. 

“So, pretty girl,” Jaehyun began with the comment out of his role-playing: the breathtaking bartender and a lone girl. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

He was probably fishing for compliments again. 

“No, baby, I do not,” you shrugged, leaning forward, arms on the table. 

Though it was only pretense, your comeback had him squinting his eyes at you, as if he was genuinely offended by it. He leaned forward, as well, bracing himself against the table’s edge. It put your faces only inches away, the russet-brown of his eyes so clear that you could see the subtle shading of the irises. He smelled of expensive cologne and soap, and the scent of him was very alluring. 

“If that’s the case then, can I like, maybe, get your number so I can take you on a date?”

“You don’t sound so confident.”

“Oh, do I?” he raised a brow, “What if I-” he didn’t finish his sentence because he bent his head and kissed you on the lips, “Like this?” and a few fat smooches on your forehead, nose, cheeks and everywhere, “Hm?”

His lips dotted on your face like butterfly flitting and fluttering around made you giggle uncontrollably, “It tickles!” but you didn’t try to pull away and you didn’t want him to stop. You gently cupped his jaw in your palms and kissed him on the mouth, so lightly, so tenderly, he melted under your touch as he released a long sigh through his nose. Never did he want the moment to end.

“Let’s head out and play,” the endearment ended reluctantly, you slipped your hands in his again and dragged him to where the whoopee was happening. “I haven’t got a full experience on this yet.”

A huge part of you regretted what you had said. As soon as you made it to the yard, the girls who had their own groupies were looking at you with terrible, stern, mocking, hateful faces. You still wondered how they got invited in the first place. They were always giggling like hyenas, a bunch of half-starved hyenas about to pounce on your boyfriend too. 

Your grip on his hand tightened when a skinny-little girl with big dark eyes and long chestnut hair—a little shorter than you and was a complete stranger, walking straight in your direction with no hesitation. Oh, you may have forgotten Jaehyun was exposed now and she was one of the braver girls. 

“Hey, Jae!” your insides churned at how easily she called him by the name with fondness or familiarity. Her perfume was so strong and floral, it gave you an instant headache. Her cheeks were accented with rose-colored blush that didn’t quite match her pale skin tone. But you had to admit she was cute. 

“Yerim, what brings you here?” Jaehyun had always been friendly, kind and attentive to others.

“I came to see how you’re doing. Plus, I can’t miss out on a party like this.” 

You swallowed down a moment of awkwardness, your head tipped to the side as you chewed your lips. Nothing would ease the endless ripple of agony eating through your body. Yerim seemed to have no intention of leaving or perhaps talking to you. She ignored you and held a very long drawn out conversation about her everyday things with Jaehyun only. You learned that she was the varsity cheerleader and they worked closely with the basketball team. When her eyes flicked, for a split second, to you, and perceived a slightly annoyed expression on her face, you decided that your presence was unwelcomed. So you excused yourself from Jaehyun and chose to make your exit instead.

Watching the festivity from the elevated floor above, they all had smiles on their faces and were having a great time meanwhile you were wearing a poker face, almost sad, that didn’t fit in to the mood downstairs. Just before you thought you were getting the hang of it when you had fun with Jaehyun but then you decided you weren’t, you told yourself, you weren’t made for parties. 

And from the incident prior, you kind of hated yourself for being that way. You hated yourself for being weak, hated yourself for not being able to control those people you considered as powerful. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to stand up for yourself, but that you understood you were a weak girl. All these thoughts were circling in your head and then you were twirling around mindlessly on the swivel chair.

“Found you,” the door cracked open just a little. Jaehyun poked his head through before slipping in his room, and quietly shut the door behind. 

“You found me,” a hint of dejection creeping into your voice despite your earnest endeavour to sound unaffected. 

Jaehyun was quick to figure that there was something else, “What’s wrong?” One of his hands curved around your head, gently rubbing your hair. 

“I’m just tired,” you slipped your arms around his waist and buried your face into his chest, thankful for the touch. 

You pulled away at arm’s length and looked into his face. Slid your hands over those muscled shoulders, lifted on your toes, and kissed him. He immediately returned your kiss, moved his lips tenderly against yours. You opened your mouth and his tongue swept in, probing. Promising. His body was hard, throbbing against you. Your arms wound around his neck and you lifted higher on your toes. You needed to get closer. With that, you walked forward, making him back up towards the bed. 

Jaehyun stiffened with surprise when you pulled back and sank to the floor, reaching for his crotch and removing his belt and tossing it to the side. Timidly you ran your hand over his crotch, the pressure firm enough to make his eyes roll. Never had he imagined his good girl would voluntarily offer herself. He was getting harder. 

“Baby,” he whispered when you brushed your fingers along the seam of his zipper, then caressed him, feeling the unmistakable swell of his response beneath your hand. 

“Baby,” he managed gruffly, but didn’t stop you as you undid the snap at his waist and slowly lowered his zipper. 

He groaned your name when you freed him, when you took the long, hard length of him in your hands, then traced the tip of your tongue over the engorged head of his pulsating shaft.

His head fell back, pleasure zooming from one corner of his body to the other. The temptation to pull you back into his arms—to rake his fingers through your hair, to feel your mouth opening beneath his—was overpoweringly strong. He fought back the urge, knuckles turning white as his hands fisted on the sheets. 

Figuring that this was your first time, he let you take your time, letting you feel every inch of him, experiencing and exploring ways that brought out deep animalistic groans from him. 

You lashed your tongue along his length, gliding up and nibbled so gently at the reddened, wide head of him. A sticky sweet droplet pearled at his tip, and you licked it off then sucked him in a tantalizing frequency. The extent of your inexperience and now tainted innocence did nothing but turn him on further.

Johnny nudged the guy beside him with his elbow, looking up at the second-story window in amusement. 

“Someone’s finally lost her shit,” Taeyong commented, equally amused by your change of attitude. 

Even though they had no idea what it’s like behind closed doors between you and Jaehyun, whether you had actually done it before or not, however this side of you displayed was never to their expectations. 

And through the large windows, you were hoping those girls were observing attentively at how this man, forged from muscles and determination, was at your mercy.

Mayhap, you left the blinds opened, intentionally.

Teasing your teeth along the thick vein that lined his length summoned a hissing curse from him. You hadn't hurt him. He's enjoying this too much, enjoying your aggressiveness aside your usual soft and gentle manner.

You had complete control over him. He could not utter more than a word. 

His bones shivered inside his skin. He had grown so hard and thick within your mouth you could barely encompass the head of him, but you did so, offering what you could that sent him to a dreamy-eyed heaven.

“Babyㅡ I'm cumㅡ I'm cummingㅡ” he gasped.

His torso arced forward as his body curved in an exquisite bend, moving his groin to the motions of your head, begging for release.

Your mouth closed over his head, with your thumb and forefinger edging the base of his manhood pushed him into a forceful climax that spilled down your throat. A guttural groan that came from his core released and he straightened his arms, coming forward in a stretch, gliding his hands down through your hair. His body shuddered, hips jerking subtly as he rode the wave. Each breath came in a heavy pant, his chest rising and falling.

“That was mind blowing,” he whispered as he cradled you into his arms, bruising your lips with his hungry kiss. And he realized his erection had not gone away. 

How could you underestimate the dominance you had over him?

“But baby,” he called through, voice croaked out of a dry throat, “Everyone probably saw us.”

You hummed low in agreement, bit down on your lower lip and a cheeky grin on your face as you observed closely—his eyes grew wide with realization.

“Oh, fuck.” 

[purplesurveys]

543

How many times have you ever ridden an elephant? Once, in Bali. I was around 15 and didn’t know any better. I wouldn’t do it again. Do you like cobblers? As far as I know those things have fruit in them, so no. What do you think about Lord of the Rings? Never followed the trilogy; I tried reading it but was BORED out of my mind from the very first book. I do remember having a PS2 game of LOTR and watching my cousins and uncles play – was pretty fun and gave me lots of memories from childhood. What kind of cup did you last drink out of? It was a plastic cup that resembles glass. Do you currently have any cuts or scrapes? Nope.

Did you like Barney as a child? Did I like Barney? Honestly it was all I ever watched as a kid, other than Magic English and repeats of Toy Story and Finding Nemo, hahaha. I think we had all the Barney DVDs, too. What color vacuum do you use? We don’t use a vacuum anymore but we used to own a very big and bulky white one. Do you have a lot of clothes hangers in your house? Yes. Have you ever been in a Latin class? Nope. I never had to take a foreign language elective and I’m also not sure if my school even offers Latin. Have you ever had bubble gum stuck in your hair? Yeah, when I was like 5. Weirdly enough it was easy to remove it, though. Is there any pet hair stuck to your clothing? Right now, no. What do you smell? Nothing significant in particular. Have you ever watched The Gremlins? I have not. What is your favorite type of seashell? I don’t have a favorite; I find them all pretty. Do you love 3-D movies? Waste of money. The movies are just as good when watched in 2D, and you even get to save 100-200 bucks. But ya know, whatever floats your boat. Have you ever used Proactiv? No. Is your cell on charge? It is, but from my laptop because I’m also charging the latter and there’s only one charging port available from where I’m sitting. Do you like dirt or sand better? Sand is fun to play with. When's the last time you had a hamburger? Tuesday. Do you own an iHome? I don’t. Do you own a BEST FRIEND charm or firgurine? No. What do you think about rainbows? I think they’re pretty. I feel nice when I do see them. Are you wearing anything on your head right now? I've put on my hairtie to style my hair in a ponytail. Are you watching cartoons? Not at the moment. Do you own a pet spider? I don’t, and I’ve never had a pet spider. Do you like mouthwash? Idk, I don’t really use it. Have you ever used a Ped-Egg? I have no idea what this is. Do you like Olay products? Nope...I don’t use skincare products, period. Have you ever gone on a cruise? Yep, I have. Do you use green pens? When correcting papers, sure. Do you own anything that has a striped pattern on it? I have shirts that have striped designs. Do you watch Wheel of Fortune? I don’t. They don’t air it here so I don’t really have a reason to want to watch it. Are there any fake tattoos on you? No, I haven’t done this since I was like 14 lol. When's the last time you saw your grandpa? Father’s side, last September. Mother’s side, 2015. Is there a rocking chair in your house? No. Do you call your animals "baby names"? Huh?? What does ‘baby names’ mean? Why does George Lopez say "I GOT THIS!!" in that voice? ??? Do you have homework? Yes but don’t remind me lmao this day is for taking surveys onlyyy. Have you ever gone to a Monster Truck show? No, that sounds really boring for me. Well, have you ever seen the Nutcracker? Nope, but I would love to. Where did you get your bed sheets? Pretty sure my mom got them from a department store. Do you always use manners? Of course. Have you ever been stood up? I don’t think so. Are your lips chapped? No, they aren’t. Have you ever been kicked in the throat? Wow, that’s terrible but no. Do you own a fishtank? I don’t. When is the last time you were sick? I have no idea; I barely get sick. It was sometime in high school, definitely. Do you like the song "Barbie Girl"? Not really, but I don’t actively hate it. What do you usually order from Taco Bell? I get one of their burritos, but tbh I’ve only ever been to Taco Bell twice that I can’t even call their burritos my usual. If you have a cell, is it touch screen? Yes. Do you own a feather boa? No. Are you allergic to peanuts? I am not. Do you wear ribbons in your hair? No, I wouldn’t know how to tie them. I think they’d look pretty on me, though. Did you get into the Livestrong bracelet kick? Never did. How many pictures are on the wall of the room you are in? There’s five pictures and two paintings on my bedroom walls. Do you use cheat codes on video games? I used cheats on my Grand Theft Auto games. Have you ever gone mudding on a fourwheeler? I have not. Is there a rolly chair in your bed room? No. What is your favorite flavor Jolly Rancher? Ugh this survey is such a drag skskksksksk I have not tried Jolly Ranchers ever. Who is your favorite super hero? I don’t like any of them. Who is your favorite Villan? I don’t have a favorite Villan. Have you ever been to a church camp? No that sounds insanely boring. Is there a trampoline in your back yard? There isn’t, and we never had one. Have you ever played Dance Dance Revolution? A few times before at Kaira’s place. I hate dancing though so I usually let my other friends hog the game instead. Have you ever swam in a creek? Nope. Do you enjoy running? When I was younger, sure; that’s why I took up track for a couple of years. Then I found out it wasn’t the sport for me because my endurance is just terrible. How long has it been since you last slept? It’s been around eight or nine hours. What are your thoughts on Myspace? Iconic, I guess, but I was always too young for it. It was dying by the time I joined it. What is the last thing you dropped? My phone charger. How many nickels are in your posession? I don’t have any nickels and I’ve never had. Is the sound on your laptop or computer turned off? Nope, it’s turned on right now. How many items do you have in your "favorites"? You mean my bookmark bar? A ton. I have important links, articles to read, quirky websites I don’t want to forget, and even my own bookmark folder for surveys that I save for future reference hahaha. Would you ever slide down a razor blade slide into a pool full of alcohol? What the fuck. What is the last infomercial you saw? I recently saw a HILARIOUS ad for a local water dispenser that was styled as an infomercial. How many magnets are on your refrigerator? Too many. My dad technically travels for a living and he has always bought magnets from every single city he’s been in. He’s been to every continent except for Africa and Antarctica, I think. How many keychains do you own? I’m not really fond of collecting them. JM did give each of us Ferrari keychains from his recent trip to Singapore for the F1 races, however they’re called. Do you own anything with a peace sign on it? I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think I do. Have you ever been to Johnny Rocket's? I went there, once. There was a time when Tumblr decided that Johnny Rockets was a cool retro place for the hipsters, so I asked my mom to take us there. Food sucked and was WAY too expensive. How many stuffed animals are in your room? None. Was never into them. Look up, then to the right. What do you see? The wall and a small TV. Have you ever done the "Cupid Shuffle". No. Do you know how to do the Solja Boy dance? I know how, I just won’t dance it lmao. Are you currently being stalked by anyone? As far as I know, no lol. When is the last time you wore shorts? Right now. Do you like elevators or escelators? Escalators. Have you ever layed on a tampur pedic? No. Have you ever been in Karate? No. What color is the nearest lampshade? There aren’t any in this place in the house. Is there anyone in the room with you? I’m in the dining room, but my sister is in the living room which is just super nearby. How long has it been since you've eaten a Reese's? 2-3 weeks ago.

When is the last time you went to Walmart? Never. Do you own any body glitter? I don’t. What brand of hair straightner do you own, if you own one? I don’t have one. What is your favorite brand of chips? PRINGLES What time was it 20 minutes ago? 3:51 PM. When is the last time you pet an animal? A few minutes ago. Do you own anything from Aeropostale? No. Did you have fun with this survey? Meh. Was it random, or no? It was random, but I didn’t know 2/5 of the things that were being talked about and it was almost purely yes or no.

[writernotwaiting]

Mis-Matched, Part 4

In this chapter: Sigyn is frustrated; Loki does some work in the library (real research this time); and woosh, did someone turn up the heat? I think it just got a little warm in here.

Title: Mis-Matched Rating: M (this is subject to change at the whim of the author’s muses) Characters: Loki, Sigyn, Frigga, Theoric, and various supporting OCs Description: This is an attempt to fill the propmt requested by @someillplanetreigns (and now I can’t even tag you!): “you asked for prompts and pairings - I would like to humbly beg for more Logyn? I don’t have a great prompt, but this odd thought is in my head about a way to make the comic plot about Theoric and the marriage into something about marriage by proxy? Maybe something like Loki has the duty of proxy-marrying Sigyn cos Theoric’s in the army, and totally plays everyone by going the whole hog and appearing as Theoric, but then Sigyn, who thought Theoric was dull as ditchwater and Loki is… well, y’know, Loki.” I’m not sure this is precisely what you wanted, so I apologize in advance for my wayward muses – Loki does what he wants. Chapter: 4 of 5 -- yes, I know; I said that this would be the last chapter--I swear to god that the next chapter really will be the last one! I’m really sorry! Acknowledgements: thank you @icybluepenguin for serving as one of my favorite Editor Supreme and Director of Continuity Oversight!

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 on Ao3

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        As soon as she was able, Sigyn practically ran back to her room, stuffed her skirts into her mouth and screamed. There wasn’t even anything she could break or set fire to—none of it was hers, and surely the smoke would attract attention. She sank down to the floor in front of the desk chair and beat the cushions for all she was worth.

     Aaaargh! The Norns are having a mighty fine laugh at this, aren’t they? So much for patient resignation. He can’t do this to me! I can’t do this. How am I going to survive this?

        She sat on the floor arms draped over the seat cushion for a good 15 minutes before she started feeling really stupid, and finally looked up, and turned around to lean back against the chair leg.

     Ah, goat’s piss, girl, you do what you’ve been doing. Keep your head down. Smile and nod. Be helpful, but not too helpful. Don’t set anything on fire. By all that’s fated—DON’T SET ANYTHING ON FIRE!!!!

        This whole behaving one’s self was definitely overrated. Well, one small consolation she could count on was that after consummation, Theoric would be absent from home often—as long as Asgard was at war, his services would be needed elsewhere—and Asgard was always at war with someone. Thank the Norns for tiny favors.

     Her father’s money would keep Theoric’s aging estate afloat. Herr Braggison would get whatever kickback Theoric had promised, and Sigyn would be well out of the public eye and away from anyone who might be overly interested in enforcing immigration statutes. It then occurred to her that maybe she should read up on those statutes while she had access to a law library, so she at least knew what I’m hiding from.

        See? I can be rational.

        She looked at the time piece on the mantle—two hours until supper. Time enough for a quick bath before she got her notes in order for the queen. She reminded herself of her mantra:

        Smile and nod.

        Be helpful, but not too helpful.

        Don’t set anything on fire. [read more cut below]

        Loki, on the other hand, went right from the botany library over to genealogy. He had already looked through Theoric’s and Herr Bragisson’s pedigrees with a fine-toothed comb and hadn’t come up with anything suspicious. Theoric’s blood was as blue as the underside of a glacier—an ancient country estate with impeccable bloodlines. He was probably even Odin’s fourth cousin twice removed. There was nothing improper to dredge up there. It did, however, confirm his hunch. The estate was ancient but was parasitical. It had no means of supporting itself in the style to which its owners were accustomed, and badly needed an influx of cash.

Herr Braggison’s bloodline was quite a bit more mundane—money made in trade—and he certainly seemed to need no money, but Loki had seen enough of the man to know that his veins flowed with the ink of a ledger, so some profit motive for Sigyn’s marriage arrangements would come as no surprise.

        Today he would delve into Sigyn’s family. But here he ran into a bit of a road block. Loki found the father—a trader in exotic wines and alcohols. He could trace the paternal line with no trouble. As for the mother . . . nothing. Well, not nothing, there was a marriage certificate. But that’s it. He searched everywhere.

        Alright then, what was Trygge doing in the year before he married Ilona. That meant reading trade records.

           I hate reading trade records.

        But how hard could it be, really? Merchants had to apply for travel within realms—it wasn’t always safe, what with shifting alliances and trade agreements, so if Trygge had gone off-world there would be permits involved. And it wasn’t all that difficult to find them.

     Alfheim.

     Trygge had applied to travel to Alfheim to buy sweet wines, there were the dates, but wow, he was gone for a long time.

     That’s an awfully long trip for just sweet wines. Was there anything else in the import manifest?Where’s the manifest? Of course, it’s in a completely different part of the library.

     Trade manifests.

     Ah ha! Sweet wines. Elven liquors. Fire whiskey. Lots and lots of fire whiskey?

        Fire whiskey was from Muspelheim. There is no trade agreement with Muspellheim. There had never been a trade agreement with Muspellheim. Intercourse with Muspellheim is, in fact, strictly forbidden and has been for ages.

        So, Sigyn’s father had purchased fire whiskey through a third party? Did Alfheim have a trade agreement with Muspellheim?

        More records—lists of liquor dealers in Alfheim 900-1000 years ago.

Norns, I hate trade records!

        Two hours later, Loki had come up with one possible source—there was one—singular—dealer of fire whiskey in Alfheim during the ten years prior to Trygge’s marriage to Ilona. The Fire Stone Inn: sole proprietor, Aeldit—formerly of Muspellheim.

        Wow! Look at that stack of permits.

           Permit #6870043: special dispensation for non-citizen ownership rights to The Fire Stone Inn to one, Aeldit, formerly of Muspelheim

        Well, that answered the question of how Tryyge had bought fire whiskey without traveling to Muspellheim, but look at all these other permits:

           “Permit #6870044: special dispensation for non-citizen proprietorship of a hospitality-oriented business, to aforesaid Aeldit.

        Permit #6870045: special dispensation for non-citizen sale of food and beverages, to aforesaid Aeldit.”

Permit #blahblahblah . . . Ah! alright then--

        “Permit #6870056: for the manufacture and sale of fire whiskey, ‘based on his father’s own recipe.’

        Permit #68070057: safety dispensation for a minor involved in the manufacture and sale of fire whiskey—daughter, Ilona, claimed to be essential in the running of family business.”

           Wait, what?

Daughter, Ilona, essential in running the family business.

           Trygge’s wife—Ilona.

           Urd’s stinking well, Sigyn’s mother was a fire giant!

        Why does that make Sigyn even sexier?

        It doesn’t matter, because by all the water in Urd’s stinking well, I am stupidly in love with her.

        He went to his mother right after supper.

        “We have to talk.”

        “Have you discovered something?”

        Loki looked around to make sure all of Frigga’s ladies had gone. “Fire whiskey.”

        Frigga furrowed her brow. “Don’t be cryptic, dear. Occasionally you need to spell things out, even to me.”

        “Sigyn’s father, Trygge traded in exotic liquors. While on a trading excursion, he found a supplier for fire whiskey. Made by an actual fire giant. Who had a daughter.”

        “Yes?”

        “Trygge married the daughter. Sigyn’s mother was a fire giant.

        “I beg your pardon?”

        “Sigyn’s mother was a fire giant.”

        Frigga sat down.

     It’s not often Loki struck his mother silent. He tried to savor it, but he was a little too nervous to really enjoy it as he ought.

        When she recovered, her response was probably predictable.

        “That’s not possible, Loki. There’s been no legal interaction with Muspellheim for millennia, even diplomatic contacts are mediated.”

        “A person who lived lived in Alfheim and sold fire whiskey was granted a huge stack of permits granting him “non-citizen’s rights” to operate the business. Sygin’s father was a liquor importer and acquired massive quantities of fire whiskey while on a trip to Alfheim. He also, seemingly, acquired a wife on the same trip, a wife who has the same name as said dealer in fire whiskey.”

        “And there were no other sources for the fire whiskey.”

        “Well, elves definitely do not make fire whiskey using a family recipe.”

        “No, they do not.”

        “And when you think about it, Sigyn definitely does not look as though her mother was an elf.”

        Frigga sighed. “No, she does not.”

        “So Trygge probably smuggled his new wife into Asgard when he returned with three barrels of legally purchased fire whiskey.”

        “Because of course there are no records of her mother entering the realm legally.” Frigga frowned as she spoke.

     Loki shook his head. “None.”

     “And does explain her father’s insistence that she marry early, and well.”

        Loki nodded and began to fidget with his hands. “Is this a problem?”

        “Potentially.”

        “How big of a problem?”

        “Honestly? I’m not sure.”

        Loki dropped onto the sofa next to her. “Mother, honestly? I really need it to not be a problem.”

        She carded her fingers into his hair. “Oh dearest, you know I’ll have to speak to your father about this.”

        Loki groaned.

        “Well, he would have to be involved in these discussions at some point, anyway, sweetheart. This just means I will have to involve him a little bit earlier.”

        They sat quietly for a few minutes before Frigga broke the silence, “There is still the matter of the contract.”

        “Actually, I’m not all that worried about that. I’m pretty sure Theoric only agreed to the marriage because his estate desperately needs cash, so I really think he could be bought off. And since the marriage has yet to be consummated, and I’m also fairly certain that the contract is not strictly legal, since Sigyn is not a legal resident. If this is the case, then the contract could easily be annulled. By the proper authorities.”

        Frigga smiled, “By the proper authorities.”

        “So really the biggest obstacle is  . . .”

        “Your father.”

        “My father.”

        “And you might want to speak to Sigyn, as well.”

        “Right. That could be important.”

        So his mother would talk to Odin, and Loki would talk to Sigyn.

        Goat’s piss. I’ve got to talk to Sigyn.

        Loki cloaked himself and went to find her room.

        For her part, now that it was getting late, Sigyn sat in her bed staring at an open book that she had not been reading for the last 30 minutes.

     She wasn’t frustrated any longer.

     Sigyn was angry.

        What in the known universe was Loki playing at, anyway? “We’ll talk later.” What does that mean? There is nothing to talk about. What gives him the right to jerk me around like that when he knows I can’t do anything? Selfish bastard. Just because he’s a prince he thinks he can have whatever he wants and do whatever he wants and there won’t be any consequences. Well, there might not be any consequences for him, but there absolutely be consequences for me. Permanent consequences. I can’t even defend myself without getting into trouble. I would set fire to his spellbooks if it weren’t a waste of good reading materials.

        Of course, just at that moment, someone knocked on her door. Who in Asgard . . .?

        She tied her robe tight over her sleep clothes and pulled open the door.

        “Loki?”

        He glanced quickly down the hallway before asking, “May I come in for a short while?”

        “That’s really not a good idea.”

        Loki swore he felt the temperature drop, and he swallowed nervously. “I cloaked myself. No one saw.”

        “And that makes it ok?”

     He felt colder. “I just need to talk to you. Please?”

        After a long pause, Sigyn reluctantly stepped out of the way so he could pass into the room. Once he was fully inside, she stood against the closed door and crossed her arms, making no attempt to make him comfortable.

        Loki fidgeted as he stood in what little floor space existed in the small room. Finally, Sigyn jerked her chin upwards and raised an eyebrow. She was not in the mood to be helpful. “Well?”

        Loki frowned briefly, then pulled the chair away from the desk. “Won’t you sit down?”

        “No, I think I’ll stand, thank you.”

        “Alright, if you prefer.”

        “I do.”

        Loki moved over to the bed and wrapped a hand around one of the posts as if its solidity would serve as a mental brace. He cleared his throat. “I want to talk to you about your contract.”

        Sigyn’s mouth fell open, this was clearly not the conversation she had been expecting. “What?”

        Loki stood a little straighter and ran a hand down the front of his jacket. “I want to talk to you about your marriage contract. You never signed the betrothal papers, and pardon me if this seems to overstep my bounds, but I sense that you are less than enthusiastic about the marriage. I feel it’s my responsibility to make sure you aren’t entering into something unwillingly.” He took a breath. “Sigyn, has this marriage been forced on you?”

        Sigyn opened and closed her mouth several times trying to find words that made sense, her face suddenly hot as she looked Loki directly in the face and tried to decide whether she was embarrassed, frightened, or enraged. In the end, all she could spit out was, “Why do you care?”

        He couldn’t quite maintain a neutral facade when he replied, “Well . . . it’s a matter of honor . . . why would I not care?”

        She snorted. “Honor? Is that what you call that little display in the library, then? Is a seduction more honorable when it’s only a woman’s reputation at stake rather than her husband’s?”

        He flushed. “That has nothing to do with this.”

        She crossed her arms again. “Does it not?”

        “No. Yes. Not the reputation part, but . . . ah, Freya’s cats are easier to talk to. Why are you making this so difficult? It was a simple question.”

        Sigyn walked right up into his personal space. “Not. So. Simple. You explain yourself or I’m not answering any questions. I’m not going to be manipulated into becoming a hanger on.”

        “A hanger on? Is that what you . . .? No! That is not what I meant at . . . how could you think that?”

        “Really?” And looking at him like he had quite lost his higher brain function—which to be fair, he rather felt he had at that point—Sigyn turned away and sat down heavily in the desk chair.

        Loki scrubbed his face and grit his teeth. He made a fist and jabbed a finger in her direction as he took a deep breath to speak. He snapped his mouth shut again, lips in a tight line as he scrunched his eyes shut and counted to five.

        He opened his eyes and breathed out heavily before he spoke, “I don’t want a hanger on. Alright. Here is the truth—and you really aren’t playing fair here, but this is the whole of it because you are clearly not being rational—I don’t want you to marry Theoric. He’s a thick-headed, slow-witted idiot, who’s never seen the inside of a book that he liked, whose preferred bed-mates, pardon my crassness, have all been blond, enormous-breasted doxies. The very idea of you spending the rest of your life linked to that rock-headed ass-end makes me furious, and I would actually prefer-it-if-youwouldmarrymeinstead-and-I-think-I-can-get-you-out-of-your-established-marriage-contract-wouldthatbeprefferabletoyou?”

        By the time Loki got to the end of this speech Sigyn’s eyes were as wide as trenchers and her mouth hung open in shock. She blinked. Closed her mouth. Blinked again. When she finally responded, her voice was very small. “I have no idea how to answer that.”

        “Yes. You could just say yes.”

        “It’s not that simple.”

        “I think it is.”

        “There are things that make this particularly complicated.”

        “I know.”

        Her brow pulled together in frustration and sat up straighter. “No, you don’t know.”

        Loki walked over to her and pulled her chair around so he could lean against the desk while they talked. “Actually, I do know.”

        Sigyn cocked her head suspiciously, both annoyed by his seeming obtuseness, and aroused by how effortlessly he shifted her around in that chair.

        “I do know,” he repeated, but then Loki suddenly realized the potentially stalkerish behavior of his research, and his eyes darted nervously between his hands and her face before he gathered the nerve to launch into his explanation, “Right. Please don’t take this the wrong way. I, um, I did some research—a lot of research, in fact, in the library—and I, um, found out about your mother’s origin and why those origins might be the reason for Herr Braggison’s insistence on this particular marriage and its haste, and um, I want to assure you that those origins are very much not a problem for me, and I am willing to, um, work toward not having them be a problem for any other, erm, potential contracts that you might, um, choose to enter into.”

        Sigyn’s voice came out in a whisper now. “And you would like for that contract to be with you?”

        Loki finally looked directly into her eyes, and his voice also became extremely quiet. “Yes.”

        “And how,” her voice still low, “do you propose to make any of this possible?”

        Loki dropped to his knees in front of her, took her by the hand and began to play nervously with her fingers. “I believe that, since the contract was made between a citizen and a non-legal resident who was also a minor at the time the betrothal was signed, that the contract is not legally recognizable. I also believe that after the contract is annulled, that I can petition the royal council to grant you permanent residency after which you could legally enter into negotiations for a new contract.”

        “And you have reason to believe that petition would be granted, why?”

        His gaze shifted from her face to the fingers he held in his own, and he smirked. “I have it on good authority that the petition would be supported by the queen.”

        A slow smile began to show on Sigyn’s face to match the warmth that had started to spread through her chest. “Do you, now?”

        “I do,” and when his eyes moved back up to meet hers they were full of mischief.

        “Well then, it might be worth an attempt.”

        Loki’s focus never wavered from her face as he leaned forward and brought her fingers to his lips. “We’ll consider it a plan, then.” And though the first touch of his lips to her fingers was a chivalrous gesture, the next thing she felt was the wet tip of his tongue when he brought it out to taste the very end of her fingertip, and then his teeth began to nip. Her mouth once again fell open and she flushed down her chest as he took the tip of that finger into his mouth and sucked gently. Her heart beat hard enough to shake her clothing and her breath became shallow.

        He slowly slid her finger out of his mouth and asked, “Is this alright?”

        Her assent was the smallest of nods.

        He smiled broadly as he moved even closer, his face centimeters from her own, hands sliding up her arms to rest on either side of her neck. “Then perhaps this would be agreeable, as well.” He brushed her lips with his own, feather light, thumbs resting under her jaw, then pressed forward into a soft kiss.

        Sigyn drew back barely enough to break contact. “That would absolutely be agreeable,” she whispered, and leaned into his touch once more, lips parting in invitation.

        She closed her eyes as she concentrated on the soft warmth of his mouth, on the taste of him flooding hers, and on the slow, wet slide of their tongues against one another. When they finally broke apart nothing existed but the dark green eyes inches from her own. She could barely breathe, even as her fingers found bare skin at his neck and fluttered over it, as if she could taste him that way as well, feeling the lines of muscle and following them up to trace around the shell of his ears, brush the softness of the lobes and comb through the hair at the base of his neck.

        His own hands explored downward, sending tingles through her skin as he followed the collar of her sleep shirt over her clavicle, down to play at the dip in her cleavage, sneaking inside the fabric to cup her breast as he leaned in again for more of those glorious kisses. Loki drank in the little notes of pleasure that welled up with each touch, just as Sigyn swallowed down his own soft moans.

        A distracting crick in his neck prompted him to pull back just slightly. “Sigyn, can we . . .?” And pushed the chair back slightly before pulling her down to straddle his lap on the floor and into another kiss. “Mmmmm, mch bttr.”

        She giggled and wrapped her arms and legs tightly around him to settle in as close as possible, gaining a needy groan for her efforts as she felt his cock hard through their clothes and she rocked against him.

        Loki buried his face in her neck. “Oh Norns, Sigyn, I have dreamed about this.” Soon his lips mouthed wetly at her pulse point as he inhaled the smells of her—soft amber soap mixed with the lingering scent of the library. His mouth continued its travels south. He pulled her tunic aside to reveal a smooth copper shoulder, and he paid worship to the newly revealed skin while she watched, mesmerized by the path marked out by his lips and tongue, by the contrast between his ivory complexion and her own darker skin, whimpering when his hand lifted her breast free of the shirt and he sucked at the tight nipple he discovered.

        Loki smacked his head hard on the desk behind him when someone rapped loudly of the door.

[lpdwillwrite4coffee]

CHILDREN OF LILITH CHAPTER ONE

Brooklyn

Thick crimson gushed down Alexander’s arm, staining his shirt sleeve to the elbow.

“Where is it?” He growled.

The old Croatian grinned, baring his bloody fangs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Alexander shook him by the neck. “The book. Where is the book?”

“I have many books. Perhaps you should be more specific.”

Clawing his fingers deeper into the other Vampire’s throat, Alexander tore open another artery.

“It would benefit you to know I have an excellent amount of patience,” he said, watching the red flow over the back of his hand. “And if I have to stand here and drain you of fluids like a hog being readied for smoking, then I will. But I’m sure you have better things to do with your time as well.”

The cluster of humans hunched in the corner of the office shuffled together, a flurry of harsh whispers converging before one woman stood.

“Please… Don’t hurt him anymore.”

Alexander cocked his head. “What a brave little Familiar,” he mused, looking her over. “You must care for your Alpha very much.”

“Yes.” Her voice trembled. “And I’ll give you what you want. Just… please stop hurting him.”

“Bring it to me.”

She hurried to the carved wooden desk and knelt down. Pressing one of the pegs on the underside of the desktop, she released a secret drawer and yanked it open to retrieve the small leather bound volume.

“Here,” she said, rushing back. “Take it.”

With his less-sullied hand, Alexander opened the book and glanced over the first pages. “This isn’t poetry.” His dark eyes narrowed on the woman. “I’m looking for a book of poetry.”

A gurgle from the Alpha brought Alexander’s head around.

“That’s its companion piece,” he wheezed. “You’ll find it’s much more… straightforward than its rhyming sister.”

Alexander stared for a moment and closed the book. “Thank you,” he said, tightening his grip on the cover.

“You’re a fool.” The man coughed as more blood welled in his mouth. “Wildfire can’t be trapped in a jar like lightning bugs. You’ll burn, just like the rest.”

Alexander smirked. “Whoever said I wanted to trap it?”

At an impossible speed, Alexander snapped the other Vampire’s vertebrae and sliced through his spinal cord with his nails, leaving a ribbon of flesh to connect the skull to the rest of his body. The corpse crumbled into ash as it hit the floor. The humans behind him screamed.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Alexander said. “I’ll show myself out.”

Striding through the chaos, he swung his jacket over his shoulder and tucked the book under his arm, leaving the sulfuric stench of death behind him.

* * *

Manhattan

Swinging the door open, Nikki pulled to a halt inside the coffee shop and cringed.

“You’re late,” Mister Johnson called, jabbing his finger in the air.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. There was construction and the bus was late… I got here as fast as I could.”

She wrestled with her coat and the straps of her purse, trying not to spill its contents. Long auburn hair tumbled into her face, obstructing her view as she navigated between tables.

Weaving across the seating area, she dodged a cluster of stern men in suits heading for the door, and ducked behind the counter. Rush, a coffee and juice bar near Washington park, had a varied clientele of lawyers, college kids, doctors, and tourists, but it couldn’t exactly be classified as a friendly neighborhood joint. True to its name, everyone who came in was always in a rush.

Dumping her belongings in a cubby under the bar, she paused, feeling Mister Johnson storm closer to her. She wondered if it was similar to when a seal could sense danger in the water, right before it was eaten by a shark.

“Nikki, I don’t care about construction, or the bus, or any of the other excuses you’ve made,” Mister Johnson seethed. “The point is, you were late. And that’s the third time this month.” His face reddened, the veins in his forehead pulsing.

“Now I’ve given you plenty of chances,” he continued, a fine mist of spittle flying from his chapped lips. “But if this happens again I’ll hand you the classifieds ‘cause you’re gonna need a new job. Got it?”

Digging her nails into the heel of her palm, Nikki nodded. “Yes sir. Got it.”

“Good.” He wheezed with an exhale. “God, I need a cigarette” he mumbled to himself and strode towards the back exit.

Nikki ground her teeth as the headache she’d kept at bay all morning threatened to take hold. It built up behind her eyes, traveled over her skull down the length of her neck, and just as the ache turned sharp she remembered her migraine medication… was sitting next to her toothbrush on her bathroom sink.

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Son of a bitch.”

The bell above the door rang, alerting her to the arrival of a new customer, and Nikki swallowed through the pain. A man hesitated in the doorway, blocking most of the light from the entrance.

“Welcome to Rush,” Nikki called, reaching for her apron.

One of her coworkers dodged around Nikki on her way to the blenders, and did a double take. “Yikes. He looks like he’s seen better days,” she whispered.

“Huh?” Nikki turned, looking him over more fully. And… yeah, he definitely looked worse for wear.

Several angry scratches marred the side of his face, curving over his strong jaw and darkened cheek. Purple blotches collected at his temple, in a cluster about the size of a fist. His clothes weren’t dirty or cut up, which was surprising given the state of the rest of him.

He stopped a few paces away from Nikki’s register, keeping his gaze downturned. His stature had been evident when he’d come into the shop, but now that he was closer Nikki was astounded. He had to be at least six foot four and his broad frame turned him into a towering wall of thickly corded muscle.

Smiling, Nikki stepped forward. “Good morning,” she greeted, straightening the neck loop on her apron. “What can I get for you today?”

The brightest amber eyes she’d ever seen gazed up through dark lashes and held her stare. He stayed silent.

Nikki was just about to repeat herself when a lean brunette woman dressed in dusty black shirt and jeans strode by carrying a duffel bag, and clapped the man on the shoulder.

“We’ve got ten minutes,” she said.

“We?” He arched an eyebrow at her as she passed. “Don’t you mean you have ten minutes?”

“But we are riding together.”

“To get you to your crap job.”

Tossing her ponytail over her shoulder, she called, “Way to be a team player, Griffin,” and pushed open the door to the ladies’ room.

He opened his mouth to speak to Nikki when the brunette woman popped her head out of the restroom. “Hey, you remembered I wanted hazelnut right?”

His gaze flicked up towards the ceiling. “I haven’t ordered yet.”

“But you remembered I want hazelnut?” She repeated. “And no whip cream?”

“Yes, I remembered your annoyingly specific coffee requirements,” he sighed.

“Good. I’ll be right back,” she said and disappeared again.

Griffin took a step forward, saying, “I guess she’ll have— “

“Hazelnut latte, no whip?” Nikki finished, already scribbling the order on the side of a paper cup.

He flashed a timid grin. “Yeah. Uh, also a triple red eye, and a large black, no sugar.”

Nikki nodded, tallying up the order on the register and grabbing two more cups, her Sharpie working at magical speeds. She told him the total and then moved down to the espresso machines at the end of the bar. As she poured the grounds into the scoop she got the overwhelming sensation of being exposed, and glanced down at her front just to make sure she was, in fact, still clothed. Confused, she looked up, catching Griffin’s eye before he ducked his head.

The bell above the door clattered as a man with tousled milk chocolate hair jogged over, dodging a group of students in University sweats.

Griffin turned, jerking his chin at the newcomer. “Boz, I thought you were waiting in the van?”

“Yeah, I was, until all our phones started buzzing like synchronized pissed off hornets.” Slowing in front of the registers, he craned his neck, looking around the room. “Where’s Lisa?”

“Getting changed,” Griffin said. “What’s going on?”

Digging into the front pocket of his faded jeans, Boz fished out his Blackberry and pulled up a message screen. “Take your pick.”

Griffin ducked his head to read over the texts. “What in the hell…?”

“Beats me man, but I think it’s safe to say Lisa’s gonna be late for work.”

Nikki finished pouring the steamed milk for the hazelnut latte as Lisa emerged from the bathroom, dressed in a crisp white button down and fitted black pants. She’d swept her hair up into a perfect coiled bun and even applied fresh lip gloss and mascara. Nikki envied her beautifying skills immediately.

“Hey Boz, nice shirt,” Lisa said, gesturing to his bright green Weezer tee and dropping her duffel bag by her feet. “I thought you were waiting in the van?”

Griffin glanced down at her. “You’re not gonna like this.”

Boz showed Lisa his phone and she groaned. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“At least we don’t have to pull you out of work like last time,” Boz said.

Reaching up, Lisa yanked out her hair band, sending waves of chestnut brown tumbling down her shoulders. “Why do I even try?” She muttered, picking up her bag and heading back to the bathroom.

Nikki usually made it a point not to eavesdrop on customers’ conversations, but the trio moving around her area commanded attention. As she looked up from the machine in front of her, the sensation of vulnerability rushed over her again and she froze, hand hovering over the stack of plastic lids. Something stroked down the back of her skull, taking the same path the ache from her building migraine had, brushing over her scalp. Startled, Nikki touched her fingers to her head, wondering if something had gotten caught in her hair.

A clash of plastic and metal made her jump and she glanced over at Griffin, who had knocked his elbow into a napkin dispenser. He shifted uncomfortably, crossing his arms and staring a hole through the back of the register, all while Boz eyed him like he’d lost his mind.

“Don’t.” He muttered, still glaring at the credit card reader.

Boz shook his head innocently. “I wasn’t gonna say anything.”

“You were not saying anything very loudly.”

“You’re paranoid.”

“And you’re the antithesis of subtle.”

“Dude, it’s too early for big words like that. Dumb it down a little, ‘kay?”

“You. No talk.”

“There ya go. See how much easier that is?”

Griffin started to retort back when Boz’s phone rang.

“Crap, it’s Tasha. Gimme a second,” Boz said, stepping away to answer.

Nikki added the last espresso shot into the red eye and snapped a lid on it. When she looked over, Griffin was dragging a hand through his hair and tugging at the ends slightly.

“Is everything okay?” The question flew from her mouth before she could stop it.

Griffin’s eyes widened, realizing she was addressing him. “Huh?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I just… well I noticed you all seemed kind of stressed and…” She shook her head. “Nevermind. It’s none of my business.”

“No, no that’s okay,” he said, inching closer to the edge of the counter. “Everything’s alright. We’re just… well we…” His mouth fell open as he searched for the right words. Finally, he settled on, “It’s been a long morning.”

Nikki coughed on a laugh. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

Griffin smiled. “Rough day too?”

“Rough with a dash of infuriating.”

Nikki started pouring the house brew into the last cup just as a sharp pain hit her behind the eyes and she winced. Blinking, she worked through the pain, but noticed Griffin frowning at her.

“Headache,” she explained, sliding a cardboard sleeve over the cup. “That’s the dash of infuriating I was talking about.”

“Griff,” Boz called, moving back to his friend’s side. “You know those little problems from before? Yeah, they’ve turned into a full blown code orange situation. We gotta go.”

“Well that’s good timing ‘cause your coffee is ready,” Nikki said, sliding each drink forward on the bar.

Lisa returned, dressed in the same outfit she’d come into the store wearing, her hair pulled back into a ponytail again. “Did you say code orange?” she asked, looking to Boz. “When did we implement a color coding system?”

“We didn’t, it’s a figure of speech.”

“Code Red is a figure of speech. Code Orange is just you being weird and inconsistent.”

Boz waved his hands in front of him. “I am weird and inconsistent.”

Griffin rolled his eyes and stepped forward, handing the drinks to their respective owners. Taking his cup, Boz lifted it to Nikki in thanks and turned to leave.

“Um, you’ve got a little…” Nikki said, gesturing to a splotch of red on his neck, just below his jaw line. “Something.”

Boz dragged his knuckles over it, trying to clean it off. “Heh, thanks,” he said, cheeks tinting pink. “See ya!”

Lisa followed him to the door, calling a ‘thank you’ over her shoulder. Griffin lingered a moment, digging in his wallet for cash. Nikki noticed the scrapes covering his knuckles and the aged curved scars along the back of his hands. So taking a beating was a regular occurrence for him…

As he handed her a twenty-dollar bill, the cuff of his coat sleeve pulled back, revealing a line of archaic symbols tattooed across his right wrist. Feeling exposed, she looked up, catching his gaze. This time he didn’t look away, and the sense of having her insides laid bare for inspection intensified until she had trouble breathing.

“Oh, sorry, here,” she murmured, beginning to count out his change.

“That’s alright. Keep the rest,” he said, offering a smile.

“Yo, Griff, c’mon buddy,” Boz called from the doorway.

Before Nikki could thank him for the tip, Griffin had taken his coffee and was halfway across the room. Stuffing the cash into her apron pocket she heard Boz tap his coffee on Griffin’s and say, “Goonies.”

To which Griffin replied, “Never say die,” as both men strode out of the café.

The other barista sidled up next to Nikki and stared towards the door. “Whatcha think? MMA fighter or action movie stunt double?”

Nikki doubted it was either.

* * *

Griffin climbed into the passenger seat of the van, as Lisa and Boz buckled their seat belts. “How many are we looking at?”

“I think the technical unit of measurement is ‘fuck ton’,” Boz said, turning the ignition.

“Which roughly translated means…?”

“Thirty, probably closer to forty, Vamps.”

“Damn, that’s a big pack,” Lisa muttered, fitting her coffee into a cup holder. “Whatever happened to the antisocial Vampires that kept their numbers to a minimum out of fear of being caught?”

She leaned down and reached under the seat, pulling out a steel lock box, and flipped up the lid. Taking out the six semiautomatic hand guns, she started checking the ammunition.

Boz smirked over the lip of his cup. “They stayed in Forks, Washington, just like Stephanie Meyer wrote them.”

“Too bad we don’t live there.” Lisa reloaded the clip from the first gun and cocked it.

“Tell me about it,” Boz mumbled. Craning his neck, he glanced over at her. “Hey are my knives back there?”

Lisa searched the box and then under the seat. “No,” she shook her head. “Boz, you just had them. Where did you put them after we finished patrolling this morning?”

“I thought I put them in the back.”

“Well, they’re not here,” she said, handing Griffin his two Glock nine millimeters.

Boz leaned down between the front seats, tousled chocolate hair flopping onto his forehead as he did so. “Damn it, where’d I put them-” He flipped down the sun visor, and a pair of silver daggers fell into his lap. “Whoa! Found ‘em!”

Griffin scowled at him. “Boz, how many times have I told you not to stick them up there?”

“I know.”

“You’re gonna hurt yourself one of these days.”

“I know.”

“Hey do we have any extra ammo?” Lisa asked, interrupting the reprimand.

“Yeah, in the duffel bag under the seat,” Boz said. Checking the road, he maneuvered the van away from the curb and into the line of traffic.

Lisa kept working, but glanced up at Griffin. “So, care to share with the class what you got from the coffee goddess in there?”

“What?”

“You looked like you were reading her,” she said, acting preoccupied with the weapons in her lap. “You had the goo-goo eyes and everything.”

He gulped a scalding mouthful of his coffee and coughed. “What? No I didn’t.”

“You totally did, dude,” Boz said. “Not that I can blame you.”

“She was gorgeous,” Lisa agreed. “But it takes more than that for you to read someone, so…”

“I didn’t read her,” Griffin said. “You know I don’t like to read people at random.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you don’t slip up sometimes,” she said pointedly.

He could feel the flash of heat from her stare and his jaw tightened. “I didn’t read her,” he repeated.

“Then what was with the face?” Boz asked.

Griffin gave him a sideways glace. “What face? I wasn’t making a face.”

“Not to mention you were acting kinda sketchy,” Boz continued. “She probably thought you were pervin’ on her.”

“She did not,” he said, tossing an offended glance at his friend.

“How would you know unless you were reading her?” Lisa asked, with a considerably lighter tone.

“Ooh! Got caught in your own web of lies,” Boz laughed.

Griffin faced forward and glowered out the windshield. “Can we change the subject please?”

He wouldn’t admit it, but Griffin had wanted to read her the moment he’d entered the shop. His gift had leapt for her, trying desperately to escape the hold he had on it and dive straight into her head. Patrolling had worn him out, making it difficult to keep his poker face intact, and Boz was right. He had been acting sketchy- awkward and unsure, uncomfortable in his own skin. But it had been the best he could do given the vicious internal battle he’d been fighting from the moment she’d looked at him.

“Hello? Ground control to Major Tom,” Boz said, waving a hand by his face.

He blinked. “What?”

“I asked if you wanted to call Tasha and tell her we’re on our way,” Boz said.

Griffin nodded. “Sure,” he said, reaching for his phone.

“Boz, you want me to dig out your other shirt for you?” Lisa asked, closing the lock box and sliding it back under the seat.

“Ew. No. It’s all gross from last night.”

“So?”

“So? So, it’s covered in dried goop and blood and ash and sweat. I’m not putting that thing back on.”

Lisa sighed. “Seriously?”

“Yes, now stop judging me.”

“Okay, but are you sure you really want to go hunting in that shirt?”

“Why not?” He glanced at Griffin. “What’s wrong with my shirt?”

“Besides the fact that it’s lime green?” Griffin arched an eyebrow at him as he scrolled through the contacts in his phone.

“You know what, I happen to like color mister monochromatic,” Boz retorted, gesturing to Griffin’s all black outfit. “So no, I’m not changing. Final answer.”

“Suit yourself,” Lisa said. “But I’m putting five bucks down that you’re the first one those Vampires see.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Griffin said, hitting the dial button and pressing his phone to his ear.

Boz slouched behind the wheel. “You guys suck.”

[funkymeihem-fiction]

Like Canned Peaches- (NSFW Meihem)

“Brrrr! I get cold just lookin’ at ya!”

He’d waited hopefully for a response to his attempt at casual conversation, brows lifted as he stared intently at the irritated woman in the fluffy parka who was clearly doing her best not to pay any attention to him. He’d even offered his most winning smile, the kind with slightly less teeth, before she fully turned towards him and sternly pushed her glasses up with one gloved finger. Her adorable little lips had pursed as she lifted her nose in the air and finally, finally spoke directly to him.

“Then you should look somewhere else!”

That had been their first real interaction. Mei turned him down flat.

But then again, that had hardly been the first time Junkrat had been turned down flat by the object of his attentions. In fact, he was turned down flat most of the time, and knew the only solution was to keep trying. He’d made several attempts after that one, each just as unsuccessful as the last, and took increasingly desperate measures to make her look his way, maybe give him another irked scowl, or fling more of her mild insults at him. The accusations of being a horrible, no-good bully didn’t really bother him. He’d been called much worse than that over the years, with much more colorful junker vernacular. But he couldn’t help but notice that he was the only one in the entire group to earn that particular brand of ire. So, he figured that in his own strange way, he must have been special to her. And he liked that idea very much, being special to her.

She was everything unknown to him; she was quiet where he was loud, she was soft and curvy where he was gaunt skin and bones, she used ice just as he used fire, and she was softspoken and polite where he was raucous and blunt. She had little apple-cheeks that dimpled when she smiled, even if it was never at him, and her little giggles sounded like tinkling bells that could grab his attention even through the constant ringing in both his ears. She even smelled nice, from what he’d been able to whiff of her before her giant Russian brick shithouse of a friend had grabbed his head and thrown him in the opposite direction, like vanilla extract that came in those little bottles that smelled wonderful but didn’t taste so wonderful, or flowers he didn’t know the name of.

He’d never really seen a woman like her in person before. The women in the Outback were much like the men of the Outback; their brains just as baked as their half-starved bodies, with vicious demeanors, loud voices, leathery tits, and cunts that felt like being in the inside of a baseball glove. The sheilas on the covers of the magazines (at least the human ones, any pictures of omnic women were promptly destroyed with prejudice) were always almost as scrawny as the women in the Outback, always had their eyes closed or looked vacantly confused, and usually were half covered with text about the ten most beneficial yogurts or other things that women seemed to worry about in the outside world. Occasionally he’d get his grimy claws on the good kind of magazine, the ones where they arched their backs and got their tits out and bit their fingers and looked at him real seductive-like, but he usually spent more time trying peel the sticky pages apart without ripping the good bits, and trying not to imagine the previous owner as he did so.

And then there was Mei, who was different from everyone in the best possible way he could think of, and he wished she didn’t hate him so much.

***

It was a little after lunchtime, and most of Overwatch’s agents had eaten and left by now, leaving only a handful of stragglers and latecomers. Junkrat was normally the type to inhale his food within seconds and then spend the rest of his time trying to irritate the more leisurely Roadhog, but for once he left his bodyguard to eat his pasta in relative peace. Instead he was trying to subtly peek around his partner’s wide belly, staring at where Mei and Tracer were lingering at their table, chatting and laughing and not taking any notice of him. He rocked back and forth in his seat as the metal tip of his pegleg tapped against the floor, nervous energy left without an outlet except restless squirming. The back of Tracer’s spiky-haired head was blocking his view of Mei, and he wished he’d brought along a few of his concussion mines, maybe just to toss one under their table and blow Tracer up and off to the side without hurting her too bad, they probably wouldn’t get too mad if she wasn’t hurt much.

“Shut up,” Roadhog said suddenly, and Junkrat became aware that he was making a distressed whining noise in his throat.

“Didn’t say anything!” he snapped in reply, leaning over to try and peek at the ladies’ table again. “Can’t see anything, either. Ya think I should go over there, maybe? Introduce myself?”

“They know who you are,” Roadhog said, lifting the bottom of his mask to take a mouthful of salad.

“To just give ‘em a charming how do ya do, then! Nothing wrong with a friendly hello, yeah? Just say hi, maybe see what she’s wearing. Ugh, still can’t see, what do you think she’s wearing?”

Roadhog shrugged. “Probably the same thing she’s always wearing.”

“Yeah! Yeah she probably is! Probably those real tight stretchy leggin’s, and that blue tank with the- Oi, mate, what’s the top part of the tits again?”

“Cleavage.”

“Yeah, with the cleavage! Real ace cleavage, too. Some real High Distinction cleavage, top scores, best in the biz…Bet she already knows, though. She’s real smart, Roadie. Got degrees in weather or some shit, proper schoolin’ and everything, bet she duxed everything she’s ever done. You know what that means?”

“What.”

“It means we got a lot to talk about! She’s smart, I’m smart…maybe not book-schoolin’ smart, arroight, but I can teach her a thing or two about a thing or two! Wait! Wait, shuttup, Hog, they’re doin’ something!”

Tracer collected her empty plate, laughed at something hilarious that Mei must have said before giving the other woman a one-armed hug, and then blinked off into the kitchens in a flash of blue. That left a full view of Mei, who was indeed wearing Junkrat’s favorite type of blue top with the cleavage, hurrying to finish the remainder of her meal alone.

“Now’s my chance! How do I look?” He smoothed back the charred remnants of his hair, crunching slightly under his fingertips, before cupping his palm and breathing into it several times. “How do I smell?”

“Hmm. Not good.”

“Fuck you, Roadie! Er, actually…You got a minty?” He patted his own pockets, as though breath mints might have mysteriously appeared when he wasn’t looking.

“No.”

“What do I pay you for!? She’s not going to want kisses from yours truly if I still got rat mouth! Fuck, I think she just looked at me!…Okay…Okay, no, she was looking at the drink machine. That’s a good sign, right? This is my chance, fortune favors the bold. I’m gonna go say a real nice hello.”

Hog didn’t bother looking up. “Okay.”

Junkrat puffed out his scrawny chest resolutely, throwing both gangly leg and peg out the side of the booth before standing, sauntering as suavely as possible towards the end table where the little climatologist was already eying him warily above her glasses. He plastered on his usual smile, lofting his brows in what he hoped looked friendly instead of his usual deranged menace, and came to a stop beside her. “So! G’day, Mei! Couldn’t help but notice you was…uh…eatin’.”

Mei’s stony expression remained unchanged, though she managed a gruff “Yes.”

Junkrat swallowed, eyes darting. “Yeah, me too! Me, I love eatin’. It’s uh, near the top of my list of favorite things t’do, eatin’. Had some kinda porkchop thingy, and some beans. You, uh…you like...beans? Heh! Yeah, dumb question, right? Who don’t like beans? Anyways, if you ain’t had dessert yet, I could get you one of them lil’ cakes to share if you want, the chocolate ones ar-” He went to place one arm on her table and lean towards her, but his weight threw off the balance from its center stand, and the whole table suddenly tilted dangerously to one side, causing Junkrat to stumble as he hurried to steady it. Mei’s drink toppled to one side with a clank and splashed all over her front, causing her to shriek and jolt back in her seat.

“Oh fuck! Fuck, sorry! Sorry! Fuck me, I’m sorry!” He grabbed a fistful of napkins from the dispenser and frantically began to try and pat down her soaked chest and face, but she brusquely slapped his hands away, lifting from her chair. Junkrat panicked. “It was an accident, swear it. Mei, wait!”

She smacked his hand away as he reached towards her again, her jaw set and her lower lip out in a sort of puffy anger. “That’s Miss Zhou to you, and get your hands off of me! You’ve caused enough trouble! You are always causing trouble!”

“W-well I don’t think that’s entirely fair, love!” he sputtered. “I mean, Miss Zhou. S’just a bit of water. Hey, water right under the bridge, eh?”

She scowled all the harder at him, and even her scowl was adorable. “You probably did it on purpose!”

Junkrat guffawed, placing an affronted hand to his chest. “I never! I’d never mean to spill water on your…uh, ya know.” He couldn’t help it. His eyes darted downward, down to where the wet blue fabric was clinging all the harder to her bosom, slick and wet and outlining the fabric of her bra and each breast beneath.

“Zhè hái liǎo dé!” She snapped, covering herself with one arm and grabbing the wet wad of napkins from the table, flinging them in his face before storming off towards the kitchens.

Junkrat stood stunned for a moment, the soaking wet paper sliding sickeningly down his eyes and nose before dripping with an audible plop onto the floor. Wiping the moisture from his face, he turned to glare with all the ferocity he could muster at the handful of other Overwatch agents, who had watched the whole thing transpire. They looked away and conversation slowly returned, as the defeated junker skulked back towards his seat, slumping down into it.

“How did it go?” Roadhog asked mildly, as though he hadn’t witnessed it happening a few feet away just moments ago.

“…Still workin’ on it, mate. Gotta think of a better opening line. Maybe she doesn’t like beans as much as I thought.”

His partner merely sighed in that long-suffering huffing way inside his mask, the kind where Junkrat could tell he was secondhand frustrated but not truly interested enough to get involved. Roadhog had been hired as his standover man, after all, not his caretaker. Unless his employer was surrounded by people who wanted to kill him, which happened quite a lot, Hog preferred to stay out of his business and especially his nonexistent love life. Occasionally Hog would offer a rag or a pat on the back all those times that Junkrat had drinks thrown into his face, but he seemed to be mooning especially hard over the little Chinese woman for some reason, and Hog could tell that this one was going to lead to trouble. The younger junker already had that far-away look in his eyes, boot tapping away nervously under the table.

“What are you going to do?”

“I dunno. Probably gonna go have a wank,” Junkrat responded casually.

Roadhog shrugged and shoved another forkful of tortellini into his jaws, clearly uncaring of his employer’s ‘exploits’ and more intent on his meal.

The same could not be said of the silky-haired archer, who just happened to be passing by at that exact moment. Never one to pass up an opportunity to insult one of those he deemed beneath him, which was nearly everybody, he paused in mid-stride and curled his lip up on one side as he regarded Junkrat with disdain.

“Disgusting,” he said, voice dripping with revulsion.

Junkrat bristled at that, rising up to his full towering height as he exited the booth, staring the archer down. “Oi! Hamzo! Yeah, whatever your name is! Say it to my face!”

“I did,” Hanzo replied curtly, and began to walk away.

Junkrat was slightly dumbfounded, but yelled after him anyway. “Yeah!? Well! Ain’t nothing wrong with it, it’s all natural! Maybe you should look into it, might help you with that shit attitude! Yeah, probably jealous of me! Jealous, cause I get to have both my tits out at once! Right here!” He pounded both fists to his scrawny chest before peeking behind him to see if Mei had been there to be impressed by his verbal thrashing of the archer, but she was nowhere in sight.

Shoving both hands into his pockets and bending back down into his usual slouch, the scorned junker turned and skulked back down the halls. He had business to attend to, after all.

***

His trailer was a ‘safe’ distance away from the other areas of the Overwatch base, after he had blown up several laboratories and Winston had nearly had a mutiny on his hands when Symmetra and Torbjorn’s labs were blown up with them. Eventually they’d brought in the trailer for him, and simply left it out in the far yards away from everyone else. And that suited Junkrat just fine. The dorms were too square and sterile and comfortable and they had that creepy computer lady always watching them, and he’d never liked having neighbors. Neighbors usually stole your shit or tried to off you, eventually. Nobody ever visited him out here except Hog, who lived in the converted storage garage next door. Everyone on base had quickly learned to avoid the whole junker territory. Within a week the trailer was in a state that should have left it condemned; there were scorch marks everywhere, visible and invisible traps along the perimeter, a hoard of trash and junk parts piled high inside the barbed wire fences, and ‘KEEP OUT I MEAN IT MATE’ signs that Junkrat had lovingly painted himself.

The weather was blisteringly hot, and Junkrat liked it. He threw open the screen door hanging askew in his entrance, deftly stepped over the trap under the welcome rug, and pushed his way past the piles of papers, bombs, garbage, and strange little projects he’d forgotten along the way. He pulled himself onto his little shelf of a sleeping area, though his body was too tall to ever stretch out on it fully, squirming onto his side and struggling briefly to remove his leg and arm. Had to get comfortable for something like this, after all. The mechanical parts clunked loudly onto the floors beside him as he sprawled onto his back, his single foot hanging off the edge of the hard mattress.

He deftly undid his belt one-handed, unzipping and impatiently shuffling his shorts down from his bony hips. He’d expected himself to be half-hard already, as he usually was in any interaction with Mei whatsoever, but his donger had apparently been a little more embarrassed by the situation than his brains, and he was quite flaccid. Well, time to change that up.

Reaching under the wad of coats and old clothes he used as a pillow, he retrieved a nearly empty tube, setting the cap between his teeth as he twisted it open with his single hand before using his tongue to spin it around, biting the end to force out an amount of the gel into his palm before spitting it aside to deal with later. He’d gotten good at using his mouth after losing his arm, although trying to explain this to the ladies didn’t always work in the way he hoped. Well, maybe one day if they were both lucky, Mei would get to know all the talented things his mouth was good at.

He felt his cock twitch a little promisingly at that thought as he reached down, pulling the base into his hand and starting to smear the lube over himself before starting to coax himself to real hardness, pressing the broad flat of his thumb into the top, running his long fingers along the sensitive underside from base to tip. He felt warm and sticky and slowly relaxed as his length grew and stiffened under his touch, spreading his legs a little more in the cramped space as he shoved the stump of his arm beneath his head, staring blankly at the dirty ceiling a few inches away as he gently worked himself.

He’d never bring Mei to a place like this, but maybe one day after they’d kissed and made up proper, she’d invite him into her room, he decided. She’d be wearing that blue tank top of hers and…oh yeah, just thinking of that peek of cleavage made him harder, grunting a little as he quickened his touch…yeah, those tight leggings of hers too. But he saw her in those a lot and wanted more. So she’d strip them off quickly, because she’d want him just as badly as he wanted her. She wore a sensible bra, he’d found that out by accident, and probably had panties to match. Yeah, little cotton numbers, no lace…maybe a little bow or two? Something subtle and cute, hugging those beautiful broad hips of hers, little strips of color on her curves. And she’d look at him but smile and blush a little…she’d want him.

His hand stroked lazily up and down, adding a little twist on the head of his cock and he was starting to pant and groan above the wet shuffling noises of the lube inside his fist. “Yeah…yeah, that’s good…”

He’d kiss her first. Not just jump on her like a starving dingo, like he normally did. Mei was too good for that, worth more than that to him. No, he’d kiss her proper, maybe after practicing on the back of his hand first just to make sure it’d be real good for her. Not too much tongue (he always used too much tongue), or at least not at first. Would it be awkward, maybe? She barely stood up to the height of his ribs, but that would be fine. He’d lean over her, maybe help pick her up on her little tippy-toes. He’d kiss her a lot, until she didn’t have any breath left, and she’d make sweet little noises for him as he’d hold her chin up towards him and kiss her again.

But then, he wanted to get his arms around that soft little body, wrap them around her and hold her first, like real romance sorts of things. Okay, maybe he’d grope her ass a bit too, get two nice handfuls of that, but at that point she’d be wanting him to just as bad. She’d pull down the straps of her bra, undo those fucking awful hard-to-not-break clasps on the back, and it’d drop away and reveal those magnificent, glorious tits of hers. Fuck, they’d probably even bounce a little once freed…big, creamy white, milky, round, amazing tits…

He grunted, speeding his wrist up a little as his hand worked more frantically around his cock, tightening and squeezing.

He wanted his hands on them, even the mechanical one that couldn’t feel anything beyond basic pressure. His flesh hand, though, against her flesh, he wanted that most of all. They’d be full and soft, so soft and plush and pliable beneath his fingers, kneading them steadily. They’d have weight to them, each one charmingly crowned by peaked, large puffy pink nipples, the kind he wanted to suck on. The blurry pictures in his mind solidified a little more as he imagined her, her face flush and her arms around his shoulders as he’d urge her back towards her bed, half kneeling over her as he latched his lips onto one of the little velvety nubs. He’d suckle at her almost hungrily, rolling his face to one and then the other, maybe bury his face between them and be enveloped by softness. Maybe…Maybe she’d let him nibble at them just a little? Would it make her moan? Yeah, she’d like it, if he was careful with his teeth. Just a little threat of a pinch with his pointed canines before he’d soothe her by sucking them again. And he’d probably be content to drown himself in her bosom forever, but she’d want more, and he’d give it to her.

His back arched and his head moved back against his makeshift pillow, eyes closed and chin pointed towards the ceiling as he continued jerking himself to the very thought. It was so hot inside his trailer, and his perspiration felt cloying and sticky against every inch of exposed skin, attracting little molecules of gasoline and aerosol and other poisonous things that slid and oozed down his temples and arms in every drop of sweat. The air was thick with it, almost radioactive. It felt absolutely perfect.

She’d whisper things to him. Not mean things like she usually did, either, but nice things. Maybe in Chinese (He should learn some Chinese, that would impress her) about how much she wanted him right now. It was easier to imagine them in Chinese gibberish. She’d never said a kind word to him otherwise. But that was fine for now, those Chinese sweet nothings were all he needed.

He’d lay her down, make sure she was all comfortable and whatnot on her blankets before spreading her legs for her, make sure she had lots of those fluffy pillows under her…she seemed like the type who would have lots of pillows, a real lady sort. He liked that idea more than he thought he would, really…the sight of her propped up amongst all that lace and silk and proper lady shit, with her legs spread just for him in the most un-proper lady way. She’d look real soft and pink and open for him, and he wouldn’t hesitate even a moment before he’d dive his head down between those milky white thighs. He’d wrap his arms around each thigh, but even his strength wouldn’t be able to stop her from squeezing him between them, until he couldn’t hear anything but the muffled sounds of her gasps and the blood rushing in his ears. He knew how to use his mouth and tongue, he’d show her everything he knew.

And he’d eat her up…

The thought made his body jolt off the mattress in a way that almost surprised even him, as though he was trying to drive himself into his fist all the harder. He was moaning loudly, hips moving in time with his hand as he writhed. His tongue lolled from his mouth almost as if he could taste her already, slavering as a rivulet of warm saliva oozed from one corner of his mouth and down his pointed chin.

He already knew in his mind’s eye exactly what she’d taste like, too. He thought at first that maybe she’d taste like ice cream, like the treats he and Roadie would steal at the beach. He’d sure lick her like a creamsicle, he would. Then he thought maybe she’d taste like peppermints, spicy and cool on the inside just as much as her outside. And then, for maybe just a second or two, he thought she’d taste like pancakes? He wasn’t sure where that one had come from, maybe he was just still hungry. But no. After a moment he knew…She’d taste like canned peaches, like the best damn thing he’d ever eaten in his entire life.

He had been a younger rat then, though he couldn’t recall how old. He remembered that he had been smaller and scrawnier then, but mostly he just remembered the hunger. There had been a shortage of food everywhere, and even his favorite old scrounging grounds and garbage dumps had yielded almost nothing. He had grown skinnier and weaker, and when he had finally been chased out of town for trying to steal from the wrong person, he wandered in circles for days out in the desert, alone save for the vultures that followed his every move. His stomach had shrunk, then swelled with the bloat of starvation, then shrunk again. He didn’t have enough water to waste crying and his mouth tasted like ash and dust, staggering about on bone-skinny legs as he sought quietly for a sheltered place to die.

He had found a burnt-out abandoned ute somewhere amongst the rocks and sand, and hit paydirt when he searched and found that someone else had been using it as a supply drop. There, tucked in a satchel under one of the seats, was a collection of food fit for a king. He had wrestled one of the cans open with nothing but his bare hand and a nearby rock, his stomach growling and snarling in excitement the whole time. When he finally managed to dent the lid enough to twist it open, there they were…canned peaches. He had tilted his head back and drank deeply, his senses flooded with an overwhelming, almost cloyingly sugary sweetness as the syrup poured thickly into his open mouth. The bits of bright yellow-orange fruit were slippery and wet and luscious against his tongue, a better treasure than anything he’d found in that ruined old omnium. He hadn’t bothered chewing or savoring, just let them slide down his throat and into the cavern of his belly, where their sweetness pooled at the empty bottom. It had been an almost otherworldly experience, eating those canned peaches. It had been, and remained, far and away the best thing he’d ever eaten.

That’s what she would taste like, he decided. Like eating those canned peaches all over again.

He’d eat her until he was full. Until his lips and chin were wet and shining from peachy juice, and she’d have come for him at least twice. But Jamie, she’d whisper, I’m not full yet, I’m not done. And then she’d go back to Chinese again because Junkrat still couldn’t imagine her voice being nice otherwise, but he’d know what she meant. She’d want him to fuck her proper.

His eyes rolled back into his head, singed lashes fluttering helplessly. He tightened his fist, thrust his hips up into it until the friction almost burned. He was a vocal bloke, he knew, and usually by this stage the entire Outback knew what he was doing. But the roos and lizards never gave a fuck and neither did he, moaning and grunting and hissing through his bared teeth, and sometimes whispering little encouragements to himself, because what was wrong with a little encouragement during any kind of job, especially a handjob?

In his mind, anyway, he was speaking to Mei. “Nnnh! Gghh…good girl, you’re my good girl…Y-yeah, nnhh, there we go…”

Her cunt would already be soaking wet and ready for him, easing her back into the mattress to kiss her again before mounting her. He’d slide into her, smooth as silk, and she’d be soft and hot on the inside like nothing he’d felt before. Better than any fist or cunt or arse he’d been in, for sure, because it was hers. He tried to imagine her cute little face, the expressions she’d wear as he fucked her, looking up at him with those big dark eyes, with her bangs in her face and her bun coming undone against her pillows. Noises, too, she’d squeak and gasp and make sweet sounds all for him. And call his name a bit too, he liked that. She’d welcome him on every thrust forward, so he could bury himself deep again and again until he was lost. He wanted all that.

But mostly he wanted whatever it was within her, which wasn’t heat but was somehow hotter than any flame and more all-encompassing than any napalm he’d ever made, that thing that burned inside all that ice of hers, something he didn’t have a word for. But he fucking wanted it as much as he wanted any treasure, maybe more. And he wanted her to want him back, combine his fire and her ice, his destruction and her preservation, until they burned together in whatever beautiful and hellish storm such a combination would create. Something like an explosion, but nothing he could do without her.

He needed it, he needed more heat, more friction. His own hand didn’t feel like it would be enough as he writhed atop the filthy trailer mattress. Sparks tingled under his skin and he knew he was reaching his edge. He panted and grunted helplessly, speeding his strokes over his aching cock. He wanted Mei under him, needed something under him. He twisted in the confined little space and threw himself onto his belly, balling up his pillows and mounds of clothes into a pitiful lump and pulling himself atop it, humping desperately forward with quick jabbing motions of his hips into his slick fist. Sweat rolled down his body, breath a painful-sounding rasp and his eyes open but unseeing.

She’d tighten around him, squeezing and pulsing, crying his name. Their bodies would burn together and she’d open her eyes and kiss him, her lips tasting like those canned peaches, and she’d say that she lov-

He almost screamed when he came, coming utterly undone as he pushed forward a final time. He felt it spurting hot and wet into his hand, dribbling through his fingers as he groaned and fell onto his back once more. He shivered, cum still leaking up onto his belly, pooling in all the ridges of his gaunt abdomen. The images of Mei’s smile were already fading even as he tried to keep hold of them, drifting away like little embers on the wind, replaced with a calming emptiness as he rested and tried to catch his breath.

“Blech. Well, that’s a clean-up.” Eventually he was himself again, making a face at his mess-covered hand and carelessly smearing it onto some article of clothing (An apron? Why did he even have an apron?) on his bed nearby, grabbing a dirty pillowcase and wiping his stomach free of stickiness as well. He felt a lot better now, self-satisfied and lazing about in the stifling atmosphere of his trailer.

***

He must have been so relaxed that he’d fallen asleep, because he found himself waking up when there was a sudden rapid knocking at his door. The sun had almost gone down and he grumbled as the buzzing in his head returned, groping with one lanky arm until it found the string dangling from the ceiling, activating the one sputtering light bulb above his workbench. Rolling off his bed and hopping towards the entry, he appeared one-legged, one-armed, and totally naked as he swung open the screen.

“Yeah?”

There was a high-pitched shriek as Mei staggered back, face burning red and covering her eyes. “MR. FAWKES!”

Junkrat shrieked as well, trying to cover himself with one working hand and one nonexistent one, weight thrown off as his leg went out from under him, the screen door crashing shut as there was a heavy fall and a clatter of garbage within. A moment later the door swung open again, the junker frantically buttoning his shorts and his peg leg attached backwards. “Mei! I mean, Miss Zhou! I uh, I just didn’t expect anybody comin’ my way this evening. Er, what can I do for ya?”

She peeled a finger away from her glasses, making sure it was safe before straightening politely and giving a little cough. “I’m here to invite you to a little party we’re having next week, and just trying to plan how many we’ll have.”

Junkrat stared at her for a moment. “Pull the other one!” He frowned, gaze turning suspicious and wiggling his jaw to one side. “What’s that about?”

She looked away, glancing over the piles of scrap and burnt-out oil barrels around her unhappily. “Well, it wasn’t my idea! Zarya wanted to invite Mr. Roadhog, but he said he wouldn’t go without you…I think. I think that’s what he meant. He doesn’t say very much.”

“Well…uh.” He awkwardly leaned to adjust his leg, turning it on backwards and clamping it back into place. “I’m invited? Yeah! Sure! Sure, you’re going? Yeah, might as well make an appearance, right? And look, real sorry for the water thing earlier, honestly didn’t mean to-”

Now it was her turn to look sheepish, though at least she finally looked at him with something other than disdain. “Oh! No, no, it’s fine. I actually wanted to apologize for that. It was an accident and I lost my temper, I’m sorry I yelled. And threw wet napkins at your face. And you can still call me Mei.”

Something like hope bloomed in his ribcage, expression brightening as he leaned on the doorway. “It’s fine! It’s all fine, darl. Like I said, water under the bridge. Or sand, if ya got that, wasn’t a lot of water back in Oz. Point is, it’s all fine, it’s all great.”

She smiled like she wasn’t really sure about his joke, but she still smiled. “Oh, okay. Well, I’ll go tell Roadhog and Zarya that you’ll be joining us. I’ll, um…I’ll see you around, Mr. Fawkes? I’d better go. Oh, I almost forgot to ask, was there anything you wanted us to buy for drinks?”

He looked her up and down, licking his suddenly dry lips. “Yeah, Mei, love…You got anything that tastes like peaches?”

[snappyroadster]

The Standard: The Agent as a Self-Starter, 1922

The Agent as a Self-Starter: “God Helps Them that Help Themselves,” says Chauncey S.S. Miller, former National Association Secretary.

Chauncey S.S. Miller, former secretary of the National Association of Insurance Agents and now publicity director for the North British & Mercantile, gave the Wisconsin State Association of Insurance Agents a lively talk at their annual meeting in Oshkosh, Wednesday, which was as follows:

That delightful book by Samuel Smiles (note the name), entitled “Self Help” (note the title), begins by quoting the author of “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” I cannot do better than imitate him: “God helps them that help themselves.”

Really the world is divided into two sets of individuals — leaners and pushers.

Usually, the architects of their own fortunes are insufferable egotists, so proud of the job that they are the despair of hat-marks and, as the French say, “impossible” as home-makers. but the spirit of self-help as exemplified in the energetic action of individuals really indicates the measure of a nation. Their ingenuity and indomitable will produces powerful reactions and stimuli upon the life and activities of others.

The leaners are the unobtrusive violets by the wayside, usually crushed by the Juggernauts of prohibitive misfortunes.

Many automotive vehicles are run by “cranks” today; all of them used to be started by a crank.

Now practically all of ‘em are self-starters. But even the best have to have gas, oil and an electric spark to make ‘em work: the impelling power of gasoline (energy); the oil of human understanding (tact), and the divine spark (initiative) are necessary for even a self-starter to function.

To Get There One Must Keep Moving. Power of locomotion differentiates animal from vegetable existence. To “get there” one must keep moving. To wear out one’s soles in hustling forever beats superannuating the seats of the trousers in contemplative wistfulness.

Cranking machines involved many a Collie’s fracture of the wrist, as the accident insurance companies knew to their sorrow.

Barbarians used to lope long distances afoot. Hand and arm elevation developed B.V.D. (Before Volstead Days), a wicked whip for cranking autos from a standing start to running wild along the Great White Ways.

Then came the push-the-button self-starter period, when even the juice of the wild grape was almost taboo; but the operator anomalously remained seated while getting under way. Mail order campaigns do produce contributing factors to success; but oral follow-ups still bring him the bacon for road hogs as well as gentlemen drivers.

Nobody bars the postman out. The “envelope stuff” is a Silent Salesman; but the man with the punch “speaks the language” that invariably compels attention to merge into interest and develop into desire, consummate only by the autograph on the dotted line.

Even churches advertise. Today the church advertising section of the great national organization of advertising men numbers more than 1200. But the man in the pulpit Sundays (and in his congregations’ homes other days) really delivers the goods.

Tracts are not as efficacious as trudging.

Salvation IS free; but “the word” must be uttered to save the damned. All the clever printed appeals shot into an agent’s receptive hands by publicity paragons and adverting adepts cannot produce really satisfying results until the solicitor has fired the ammunition at his own targets though the barrels of his own forceful personality, guided by the sights experience and judgment have provided.

And his garget is outside his office. Selling the greatest service vouchsafed mankind is not an indoor sport.

Today the agent with a window outlook, through which he may see the passerby, who falls to capitalize that opportunity for displaying his wares by posters, colored folders and envelope stuffers, would discourage every window-shopper who ver pug his nose against a Saturday night display on “Main Street” in Everytown.

Lantern slides beat labial lectures. It is thriving to have Theda suffocate Mary with her own molasses taffy curls, and “Doug” choke Charlie with a custard pie hurled from Hollywood to Hoboken. But the thrill that makes us happy and empties the Palace of Art twice daily is the close-up: “Go to Izzy Indolence for Your Insurance.”

Invariably, everybody gallops through the lobby, heedless of spearmint and lollypop allurements and the Bally Who Boys, to the third floor back office in the “Blitz Block” to have life, limb and limousine covered by the panoply of indemnities!

Talk Without Action is Dead Sea Fruit. No; by the beard of Bernard Shaw, talk without action is Dead Sea fruit; ashes to the taste and caviar to the common people. No honest man, sane and sober, asked for insurance. Give me the Hustling Harry who drags behind his trusty tin Lizzie, through the streets of Frederickton, the mangled remains of Selectman Silas Sobersides’ snappy roadster, with the blinding sign:

“Fifteen minutes after the crash,

Hustling Harry handed the cash!

Insurance pays the sane or rash.”

At the County Fair the prize book is not to be leered at over in the livestock pens; but in the booth that proudly bears the proud device: Insurance, Scrubbs & Dubbs, Agents of the Fearless Fire Insurance Co.

Simply that and nothing more.

The live wires put out tentacles for business by proclaiming:

“Check your hats, baby carts and grips!

Free parking space for cars and whips.

You can find ‘em and us

After the show — before the blow.

You all know Ketcham & Rush

Insurance Specialists

When a feller needs a friend.”

Mark Twain used to declare onions are delicious, but the trouble is you have to take so many folks into your confidence when you enjoy ‘em.

Some people insure their popularity by munching peppermints. But a rose by any other name would be as sweet and the scent of good advertising clings to us still. You may break, you may shatter the vice as you will, the man or article that becomes a household word is always a success, be it Harding or hard liquor.

To advertise is to advert — eyes: to attract attention to your wares.

Look up; be optimistic. Look out: be futuristic. The mole has never been adopted as a national emblem. The eagle has.

Fear is no longer a factor in insurance soliciting. “If you should die tonight” is as obsolete a talking point in selling Life Insurance as “If you should burn tonight” is in modern theology or Fire Insurance soliciting. “Safety First” was a good slogan. It’s as trite and unnoticed now as Carrie nation’s hatchet, since barrooms have become soda sanctuaries.

“Insure and be Sure” seemed snappy, like fire crackers on July 4th, 1822. Now fireworks are as scarce as firewater on Independence Day or libations and liberties at a Sunday school picnic.

“Protect Your Family and Funds” was a sweet mouthful morsel, like a disk of watermelon on a moonlit canoe mixed “twosome,” with the wavelets lapping the sides and our Ootsy Tootsies sliding off our laps. Now it’s seedy, like a storehouse when the frost is on the pumpkin and her corns have had a shock.

“Do It Now” thrilled us when we were able — to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of rum hounds. Today Volstead has taken the joy-water out of life and the Nineteenth Commandment has become a proverb, though the hootch architect is with us and the poet murmurs, “Some days must be dark and dreary; but behind the clouds is the Moonshine still.”

It used to be all the rage for alert agents to carry “cards” in the “Saturday Evening Ghost,” reading: “John Marbledome, Real Estate & Insurance, 4-11-44 Main St.” and in the program of the Finishing Exercises of the High School Commencement. By adding merely his birth and death dates, it could have been appropriately pasted on his tombstone and have chiseled the marble-cutter out of his just reward.

Up-to-the-lnstant Selling Talks. Twenty-first Century methods mark the printed selling-talks of the up-to-the-instant insurance man today. He stresses his knowledge of all covers and his readiness to obtain lower rates, through careful inspections and certain indemnity by proper endorsements.

While Torrent Hose No. 1 is still playing softly on the ruins of the cider mill or motion picture dive, "The Evening Rush Light" carries alongside the four-column out of the conflagration the dazzling fact that The High Speed Insurance Agency of our fellow townsmen,

”Payallup & Settle have the loss adjustment well advanced." "We buy that with which we are most familiar" is as axiomatic as "that all men were created free and equal." Our great-grandfathers, our grandfathers, our fathers, ourselves, obtained, and will continue to obtain Fire Insurance cover. The big city agent, the small town agent, the rural agent did, does, and will continue to do straight Fire Insurance; but the farmhouse, the village store, the city skyscraper are illuminated today with electric lights — not candles. The wide-awake insurance man long ago realized that Fire Insurance commissions alone would not butter his bread, much less put jam on it. While it is true that the volume of Fire Insurance written in this country has increased from $317,013,383 to $556,S65,968 in ten years, the striking fact is the inauguration and development of the Casualty and so-called Side Lines. In that same period, the latter have swelled from $104,338,652 to $488,898,614.

The old-fashioned drug store provided pills and purges; the modern drug store not only dispenses "dopes," but diffuses soft beverages, tickles the air with phonographs and runs a radio receiving station.

The modern insurance agent writes Fire Insurance, of course; but he hustles for fifty-seven other varieties. If lie doesn't he's in a pickle more acidulous than any of Mr. Heinz's melanges.

Moreover, the insurance agent who looks about him today realizes the very significant trend of our population towards the cities. In 1880, the census showed that 28% of the population of this country was urban and more than 71% was rural. The census of 1920 shows that now only 48% of our entire population lives, moves and has its being outside of the cities, while more than 51% is city bred and bled.

Where the Business Is Done

Obviously, the agent in the urban field has many more prospects than the fellow who has to root, hog, or die in the corn fields. Moreover, the fast increasing proportion of prospects in urban localities multiplies in geometrical measure the opportunities of the insurance salesman. You can't sell as much Water Damage, Elevator cover, Public Liability, etc.. etc., to Conrad Corntossel as you can to Cyril Cityman, can you?

It is worth noting that the proportionate number of homes occupied by the owners in the United States is 45.6%. Those living in rented homes make up the balance of 54.4%. But in your own state of Wisconsin the owners of more than 64% of the homes dwell in them. The home owner is a bright and happy prospect for as many kinds of cover as the clothing department of your biggest emporium displays for the descendants of Adam and Eve.

Out of the 20,698,000 dwellings in the United States, more than half a million have their foundations in the Badger state. Every dwelling is a beehive prospect; honey is carried thither and sweet prospects arise from the selected risks. The undertaker and the busy bee may "say it with flowers." Mr. Abel Agent must do it with tabasco.

Last year the ratio of fire losses incurred to net premiums written in Wisconsin was 63%, — an unprofitable showing; but for the ten years' period, 1912-1921, your state Fire loss ratio was 44.33%, considerably below the mean general average of all the states for the same period.

Surely these alfalfa and other dry statistics ought to furnish food for thought, whether you are Nebuchadnezzars or city born, bred and broke.

The Self-Starter Wisconsin agent carries a variegated car full of insurance wares; nearly a score of the covers are provided by his Fire Insurance companies, and more than a score of other varieties furnished by his Casualty Companies.

Not only the lively Life Insurance agent, but the Fire and Casualty man cleverly remembers his customers' birthdays with a greeting. When the Health & Accident policy is within

a month of expiration, he sends clippings of local accidents and literature which brings the imminence of daily mishaps close home to the policyholder. The clever agent takes his "Please Do Not Smoke Here'' WARNINGS, with ample space for affixing his lurid policy sticker, and distributes them at garages, filling stations, livery stables, feed stores, railroad depots, freight houses, moving picture buildings, theatre lobbies and everywhere else that Fire Prevention preachments should be conspicuously posted.

What the Clever Men Are Doing. Many of the clever men in the business, who long ago stopped bemoaning the decrease in their incomes due to depleted stocks, cessation of building operations and slow recovery of trade in general, have rehabilitated themselves by writing Water Damage, Trip Transit, Tourist Floater, Rain cover, etc., etc., in addition to such business as they could continue to renew among their old clients on the old lines.

The efforts by the companies to accelerate the agent, be he a Self-Starter or a Crank, now include the preparation and distribution of printed advertising matter intended and calculated to help him build his business up on broader lines, have evoked the most delightful and inspiring responses from the producing force.

Personally, I am tremendously indebted to the progressive agents of this country, from Eastport to San Diego, Atlanta to Tampa, for their suggestions and illustrations of business-getting ways and means. This interchange of ideas between the promotion-publicity-advertising departments in the home office and the whirlwind business-getters in the field is not only gratifying, but mutually helpful. There's a long, long trail a-winding

 Into the land of MY dream, Where the Agents all are hustling  And counting th' "long green"; It's a long, long time awaiting  Until that dream comes true,  Till the day when you're All a-hustling   New fast trails: You! and YOU!! and YOU!!!

[milenasanchezmk]

The Carnivore Diet: Pros, Cons, and Suggestions

All-meat diets are growing in popularity. There are the cryptocurrency carnivores. There’s the daughter of the ascendant Jordan B. Peterson, Mikhaila Peterson, who’s using a carnivorous diet to stave off a severe autoimmune disease that almost killed her as a child. The most prominent carnivore these days, Dr. Shawn Baker (who appears to eat only grilled ribeyes (at home) and burger patties (on the go), recently appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience and Robb Wolf’s podcast, and is always breaking world records on the rower. Tons of other folks are eating steak and little else—and loving it. There are Facebook groups and subreddits and Twitter subcultures devoted to carnivorous dieting.

What do I think?

I’m no carnivore. I love my Big Ass Salads, my avocados, my steamed broccoli dipped in butter. My blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries. My spoonful of coconut butter.

Yet, I get the appeal.

We’ve been eating meat for three million years. Its caloric-and-nutrient density allowed us to dispense with the large guts needed to digest fibrous plant matter and build massive, energy-hogging brains. There isn’t a traditional culture on Earth that wholly abstains or abstained from animal products. Nearly every human being who ever lived ate meat whenever he or she could get it.

Thus, meat appears to be the “baseline food” for humans. If you look past the cultural conditioning that tries to convince us that meat will give us heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, meat looks pretty damn good as a place to start.

The question is if it’s where we should stay exclusively…. 

All this said, I’m skeptical about the “steak and water” or “ground beef and water” diets of modern carnivory. Let me explain….

A Few Key Arguments For It (and My Feedback) “In its natural state, meat is relatively safe as far as toxins go.”

Animals can run and bite and claw and fly to get away from predators; most don’t need to employ any chemical warfare that causes problems when you eat the meat. Sure, allergies and intolerances can arise, like if you get bitten by the Lone Star tick and pick up a red meat allergy, but those are quite rare.

“Whereas plants’ phytonutrients are pesticides.”

This is technically true. They are toxins the plant produces to dissuade consumption by predators—toxins that the plants manufacture to maim, poison, kill, or even just make life uncomfortable for the animals who eat it.

But just as we can do with many other “harmful” inputs, we tend to treat plant phytonutrients as hormetic stressors that make us stronger, healthier, and more robust. 

There’s an upper limit, of course. And many of the phytonutrients have been primarily applied either to populations eating normal omnivorous, often downright unhealthy diets or to unhealthy subjects trying to improve a disease marker. As I’ve said before, there aren’t any real studies in healthy human carnivores, so we don’t know one way or the other whether the promising results of the extant studies apply to people eating only animal products. 

“Meat nutrients are highly bioavailable.”

The protein has all the amino acids we need to live and thrive. We readily absorb and utilize the vitamins and minerals in meat; they already come in “animal form,” requiring little to no conversion before we can start incorporating them into our physiology. Plant nutrients usually undergo a conversion process before humans can utilize them, and not every human has the same conversion capacity.

Some of those essential and/or helpful nutrients only occur in meat, like creatine, carnosine, vitamin B12. There’s literally no realistic way to obtain them without relying on supplementation, which didn’t exist until the last hundred years.

“Nutrient requirement studies don’t apply to us.”

I could see that. They haven’t tested the requirements for selenium, magnesium, and iodine on a zero-carb carnivorous diet. Do they go down? Can you therefore get by and thrive on lower intakes—the low levels found in muscle meat?

It’s a tough call.

It hasn’t been empirically tested. That’s true. It largely hasn’t undergone a series of RCTs. You can’t pull up a Cochrane meta-analysis of carnivore studies. All we really have are anecdotes.

I’m not disregarding the power or relevance of anecdotes and testimonials. Those are real. They’re not all suffering from a mass delusion. They’re not all lying. Peer-reviewed? No. Admissible in a scientific paper? Not unless you call it a case study. When you’re there in the room with someone pouring their heart out because something you wrote helped them drop 50 pounds and reclaim their lives, you don’t go “Yeah, but where are the clinical trials?” At some point, the weight of anecdotes adds up to something substantial, something suggestive. And hey, if it’s working for you, there’s no arguing that. 

But I can’t point to anything solid and totally objective in the research. Not yet anyway.

Still, any time you embark on a historically unprecedented way of eating, whether it’s pure muscle meat carnivore or vegan, you should be a little more careful about what you think you know. 

What Do We Know About Carnivory in Human History?

We don’t know if there have been any purely carnivorous human cultures. We haven’t found any yet, and you can’t prove a negative, so I won’t say “there were none.”

In all the best candidates so far, though, plants sneak into the diets. The Inuit actually utilized a wide variety of plant foods including berries, sea vegetables, lichens, and rhizomes. They made tea from pine needles, which are high in vitamin C and polyphenols.  The Sami of Finland, who primarily live off a low-carb, high-fat diet of meat, fish, and reindeer milk (I have to imagine that’s coming to Whole Foods soon), also gather wild plant foods, particularly berries and mushrooms (Finland’s forests produce 500 million kg of berries and over 2 billion kg of mushrooms each year!), sometimes even feeding their reindeer hallucinogenic mushrooms to produce psychoactive urine. The Maasai are known for their meat, milk, and blood diets, but they often traded for plant foods like bananas, yams, and taro, too, and they cooked their meat with anti-parasitic spices, drank bitter (read: tannin- and polyphenol-rich) herb tea on a regular basis, and used dozens of plants as medicines (PDF). Even Neanderthals used plants as food and medicine, we’re learning.

Even if we discover evidence of carnivory in human prehistory or in some extant group, the emerging science of genetic ancestral differences suggests that the habitual diets of our recent ancestors shapes the optimal diet for us today. If your close ancestors weren’t carnivores, you might not have the adaptations necessary to thrive on an all-meat diet.

Still, what about Vilhjamjur Stefansson, an Arctic explorer who came away very impressed with the native Inuit diet and underwent a series of studies on the effect of an all-meat diet in man? He and a colleague did great for over a year eating only meat. But Stefansson wasn’t eating ground beef. In his own words, he ate “steaks, chops, brains fried in bacon fat, boiled short-ribs, chicken, fish, liver, and bacon.” Definitely carnivorous. Definitely not just steak or ground beef, as many modern carnivores seem to be eating. All those “weird” cuts gave him critical micronutrients otherwise difficult to get from just steak.

How To Best Optimize a Carnivore Diet

While you won’t find me switching to the carnivore side, if I were to do a carnivorous diet, here’s how I’d try to optimize it (and why).

Take Magnesium

A recent paper showed that the majority of people following a “paleolithic ketogenic diet” with at least 70% of calories from animal foods and including offal had adequate serum magnesium levels. That’s a great start. But earlier studies show that serum magnesium may not be the definitive marker. A person can have normal serum levels but inadequate tissue levels—and in the tissues is where magnesium does its work. A person can have normal serum levels but still be deficient.

Eat Eggs

They’re not quite animals, but they contain everything you need to build a bird from scratch. That’s cool·—bite-sized whole animal.

Eat Liver

Liver is unabashedly animal flesh. It absolutely qualifies for a carnivorous diet. Loaded with choline, folate, vitamin A, copper, and iron, it’s nature’s most bioavailable multivitamin. There’s no reason not to include it. If you get your hands on some fish livers, you’ll get a ton of vitamin D along for the ride.

There’s frozen liver tabs, where people dice up liver into little chunks and swallow them hole.

There’s liver smoothies, where absolute savages blend raw liver and drink it. I know a guy who fixed severe iron deficiency by drinking raw chicken liver orange juice smoothies, with the vitamin C in OJ meant to enhance iron absorption.

Liver is also great sauteed with fish sauce, citrus, salt, pepper, and sesame oil. Do it quick, don’t overcook.

Eat Seafood

A few oysters, some mussels, a filet of wild sockeye salmon… You’ll get vitamin D, long-chained omega-3s (which tend to rare even in pastured ruminant flesh), selenium, iodine, copper, iron, manganese. Not every meal has to—or should— be a New York strip. 

Implement Intermittent Fasts On a Regular Basis

A constant influx of muscle meat will keep mTOR topped up. That’s great for muscle growth and general robustness. Just do something to stop the protein intake for a day or two to  lest you start fueling unwanted growths.

Treat Spices and Other Low/Non-Calorie Plant Foods As Medicinal Supplements That Don’t “Count”

All the nearly-carnivorous cultures we have good data on did similar things, using bitter herbs and barks and the like as supplements to their diets. You’re not getting calories from this stuff. You’re getting non-caloric compounds that provide health benefits.

Get the Best Quality Meat You Can Find and Afford

While I’m sure a diet of snare-caught hare, Alaskan elk, and choice sockeye salmon you wrest from the grasp of picky grizzlies poised over rivers preparing for a long winter would be ideal, it’s not necessary. Yes, grass-fed and -finished/pastured as well as organic are ideal, but do the best you can with what you have.

Use Bone Broth

It’s a great way to get collagen and the glycine it contains to balance out all the methionine you’re eating, especially if you’re doing the muscle meat-only thing and avoiding most gelatinous cuts of meat.  Make it yourself or buy. Collagen supplementation, of course, works here, too.

The carnivore diet isn’t for me. I like plants way too much. But I’m cautiously optimistic that it could work for more people than you’d expect, provided they heed as many of my suggestions as possible.

That’s it for me, folks. What about you? Have any experience eating a carnivorous diet? Interested in trying? Let me know what you know!

[fishermariawo]

The Carnivore Diet: Pros, Cons, and Suggestions

All-meat diets are growing in popularity. There are the cryptocurrency carnivores. There’s the daughter of the ascendant Jordan B. Peterson, Mikhaila Peterson, who’s using a carnivorous diet to stave off a severe autoimmune disease that almost killed her as a child. The most prominent carnivore these days, Dr. Shawn Baker (who appears to eat only grilled ribeyes (at home) and burger patties (on the go), recently appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience and Robb Wolf’s podcast, and is always breaking world records on the rower. Tons of other folks are eating steak and little else—and loving it. There are Facebook groups and subreddits and Twitter subcultures devoted to carnivorous dieting.

What do I think?

I’m no carnivore. I love my Big Ass Salads, my avocados, my steamed broccoli dipped in butter. My blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries. My spoonful of coconut butter.

Yet, I get the appeal.

We’ve been eating meat for three million years. Its caloric-and-nutrient density allowed us to dispense with the large guts needed to digest fibrous plant matter and build massive, energy-hogging brains. There isn’t a traditional culture on Earth that wholly abstains or abstained from animal products. Nearly every human being who ever lived ate meat whenever he or she could get it.

Thus, meat appears to be the “baseline food” for humans. If you look past the cultural conditioning that tries to convince us that meat will give us heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, meat looks pretty damn good as a place to start.

The question is if it’s where we should stay exclusively…. 

All this said, I’m skeptical about the “steak and water” or “ground beef and water” diets of modern carnivory. Let me explain….

A Few Key Arguments For It (and My Feedback) “In its natural state, meat is relatively safe as far as toxins go.”

Animals can run and bite and claw and fly to get away from predators; most don’t need to employ any chemical warfare that causes problems when you eat the meat. Sure, allergies and intolerances can arise, like if you get bitten by the Lone Star tick and pick up a red meat allergy, but those are quite rare.

“Whereas plants’ phytonutrients are pesticides.”

This is technically true. They are toxins the plant produces to dissuade consumption by predators—toxins that the plants manufacture to maim, poison, kill, or even just make life uncomfortable for the animals who eat it.

But just as we can do with many other “harmful” inputs, we tend to treat plant phytonutrients as hormetic stressors that make us stronger, healthier, and more robust. 

There’s an upper limit, of course. And many of the phytonutrients have been primarily applied either to populations eating normal omnivorous, often downright unhealthy diets or to unhealthy subjects trying to improve a disease marker. As I’ve said before, there aren’t any real studies in healthy human carnivores, so we don’t know one way or the other whether the promising results of the extant studies apply to people eating only animal products. 

“Meat nutrients are highly bioavailable.”

The protein has all the amino acids we need to live and thrive. We readily absorb and utilize the vitamins and minerals in meat; they already come in “animal form,” requiring little to no conversion before we can start incorporating them into our physiology. Plant nutrients usually undergo a conversion process before humans can utilize them, and not every human has the same conversion capacity.

Some of those essential and/or helpful nutrients only occur in meat, like creatine, carnosine, vitamin B12. There’s literally no realistic way to obtain them without relying on supplementation, which didn’t exist until the last hundred years.

“Nutrient requirement studies don’t apply to us.”

I could see that. They haven’t tested the requirements for selenium, magnesium, and iodine on a zero-carb carnivorous diet. Do they go down? Can you therefore get by and thrive on lower intakes—the low levels found in muscle meat?

It’s a tough call.

It hasn’t been empirically tested. That’s true. It largely hasn’t undergone a series of RCTs. You can’t pull up a Cochrane meta-analysis of carnivore studies. All we really have are anecdotes.

I’m not disregarding the power or relevance of anecdotes and testimonials. Those are real. They’re not all suffering from a mass delusion. They’re not all lying. Peer-reviewed? No. Admissible in a scientific paper? Not unless you call it a case study. When you’re there in the room with someone pouring their heart out because something you wrote helped them drop 50 pounds and reclaim their lives, you don’t go “Yeah, but where are the clinical trials?” At some point, the weight of anecdotes adds up to something substantial, something suggestive. And hey, if it’s working for you, there’s no arguing that. 

But I can’t point to anything solid and totally objective in the research. Not yet anyway.

Still, any time you embark on a historically unprecedented way of eating, whether it’s pure muscle meat carnivore or vegan, you should be a little more careful about what you think you know. 

What Do We Know About Carnivory in Human History?

We don’t know if there have been any purely carnivorous human cultures. We haven’t found any yet, and you can’t prove a negative, so I won’t say “there were none.”

In all the best candidates so far, though, plants sneak into the diets. The Inuit actually utilized a wide variety of plant foods including berries, sea vegetables, lichens, and rhizomes. They made tea from pine needles, which are high in vitamin C and polyphenols.  The Sami of Finland, who primarily live off a low-carb, high-fat diet of meat, fish, and reindeer milk (I have to imagine that’s coming to Whole Foods soon), also gather wild plant foods, particularly berries and mushrooms (Finland’s forests produce 500 million kg of berries and over 2 billion kg of mushrooms each year!), sometimes even feeding their reindeer hallucinogenic mushrooms to produce psychoactive urine. The Maasai are known for their meat, milk, and blood diets, but they often traded for plant foods like bananas, yams, and taro, too, and they cooked their meat with anti-parasitic spices, drank bitter (read: tannin- and polyphenol-rich) herb tea on a regular basis, and used dozens of plants as medicines (PDF). Even Neanderthals used plants as food and medicine, we’re learning.

Even if we discover evidence of carnivory in human prehistory or in some extant group, the emerging science of genetic ancestral differences suggests that the habitual diets of our recent ancestors shapes the optimal diet for us today. If your close ancestors weren’t carnivores, you might not have the adaptations necessary to thrive on an all-meat diet.

Still, what about Vilhjamjur Stefansson, an Arctic explorer who came away very impressed with the native Inuit diet and underwent a series of studies on the effect of an all-meat diet in man? He and a colleague did great for over a year eating only meat. But Stefansson wasn’t eating ground beef. In his own words, he ate “steaks, chops, brains fried in bacon fat, boiled short-ribs, chicken, fish, liver, and bacon.” Definitely carnivorous. Definitely not just steak or ground beef, as many modern carnivores seem to be eating. All those “weird” cuts gave him critical micronutrients otherwise difficult to get from just steak.

How To Best Optimize a Carnivore Diet

While you won’t find me switching to the carnivore side, if I were to do a carnivorous diet, here’s how I’d try to optimize it (and why).

Take Magnesium

A recent paper showed that the majority of people following a “paleolithic ketogenic diet” with at least 70% of calories from animal foods and including offal had adequate serum magnesium levels. That’s a great start. But earlier studies show that serum magnesium may not be the definitive marker. A person can have normal serum levels but inadequate tissue levels—and in the tissues is where magnesium does its work. A person can have normal serum levels but still be deficient.

Eat Eggs

They’re not quite animals, but they contain everything you need to build a bird from scratch. That’s cool·—bite-sized whole animal.

Eat Liver

Liver is unabashedly animal flesh. It absolutely qualifies for a carnivorous diet. Loaded with choline, folate, vitamin A, copper, and iron, it’s nature’s most bioavailable multivitamin. There’s no reason not to include it. If you get your hands on some fish livers, you’ll get a ton of vitamin D along for the ride.

There’s frozen liver tabs, where people dice up liver into little chunks and swallow them hole.

There’s liver smoothies, where absolute savages blend raw liver and drink it. I know a guy who fixed severe iron deficiency by drinking raw chicken liver orange juice smoothies, with the vitamin C in OJ meant to enhance iron absorption.

Liver is also great sauteed with fish sauce, citrus, salt, pepper, and sesame oil. Do it quick, don’t overcook.

Eat Seafood

A few oysters, some mussels, a filet of wild sockeye salmon… You’ll get vitamin D, long-chained omega-3s (which tend to rare even in pastured ruminant flesh), selenium, iodine, copper, iron, manganese. Not every meal has to—or should— be a New York strip. 

Implement Intermittent Fasts On a Regular Basis

A constant influx of muscle meat will keep mTOR topped up. That’s great for muscle growth and general robustness. Just do something to stop the protein intake for a day or two to  lest you start fueling unwanted growths.

Treat Spices and Other Low/Non-Calorie Plant Foods As Medicinal Supplements That Don’t “Count”

All the nearly-carnivorous cultures we have good data on did similar things, using bitter herbs and barks and the like as supplements to their diets. You’re not getting calories from this stuff. You’re getting non-caloric compounds that provide health benefits.

Get the Best Quality Meat You Can Find and Afford

While I’m sure a diet of snare-caught hare, Alaskan elk, and choice sockeye salmon you wrest from the grasp of picky grizzlies poised over rivers preparing for a long winter would be ideal, it’s not necessary. Yes, grass-fed and -finished/pastured as well as organic are ideal, but do the best you can with what you have.

Use Bone Broth

It’s a great way to get collagen and the glycine it contains to balance out all the methionine you’re eating, especially if you’re doing the muscle meat-only thing and avoiding most gelatinous cuts of meat.  Make it yourself or buy. Collagen supplementation, of course, works here, too.

The carnivore diet isn’t for me. I like plants way too much. But I’m cautiously optimistic that it could work for more people than you’d expect, provided they heed as many of my suggestions as possible.

That’s it for me, folks. What about you? Have any experience eating a carnivorous diet? Interested in trying? Let me know what you know!

[sharinnnews]

The truth may be stretched thin but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies as oil floats on water.

― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,    Don Quixote

What Is Wrong With Donald Trump

 He has failed at three important criteria in a successful U.S. President.

(Ten Items)

　

1) Bravery. He lacks bravery in that the media remains his excuse for why he has failed in his duties as Commander-In-Chief. "USA Today" reports that Trump is so displeased with the media that he turned a White House correspondence meeting "into an angry censure of the media's coverage of [his] administration." He condemned them for what he described as reporting "fake news." Much later Denzel Washington did something similar about reporting in general. I read Trump's assessment as cowardice meaning he wants to disguise the real news as being fake. I did, however, agree with Denzel Washington in the need for accurate reporting. This is the primary responsibility of journalism.

  Suck it up Donald Trump daily you will be the target of news reports. It is the president's quarry or in layman's terms "the nature of the beast." You have the most responsible position in the world. Journalists are going to report about you; so stop calling out journalists as being bullies, when they are simply doing their job. Journalists have a great responsibility to accurate reporting, thus far I believe that they have achieved this goal in spades (see later in this blog, Journalistic Achievement: Glenn Greenwald.)

To reiterate, Donald Trump has not practiced bravery even in the face of opposition from his own countrymen. What makes MAGA so sure he'll be able to perform when faced with an act of foreign agression.

2 ) Willing To Admit Fault. The second criteria that Donald Trump has failed in is being willing to admit fault, see criteria #1. Former President Jimmy Carter would have to be our country's leading example in humility, having the willingness to self-assess and admit fault where fault was due, in order to accomplish the greater good, which he is still invested in today. Recently having suffered dehydration while physically working for Habitat For Humanity, being recently discharged from the hospital, he returned to work building homes for the disadvantaged.

3) Willing To Take A Chance. The third criteria that Donald has failed in is being willing to take a chance. My primary support for this is the fact that he so openly and blatantly has practiced what we in Catholic circles would call cronyism. He surrounds himself with parrots to do his bidding. In this way he never has to take a chance to achieve something greater than advancing his own agenda.

  Other Areas Where He Has Failed:

4) Making Fair Appointments. Donald Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his inability to appoint good leaders to key positions. He has hired the economic elite in which to accomplish his own end of continuing to build the "Trump Empire." This is what one would call a major "Conflict of Interest." A presidential example in fair appointment of leaders is Obama's choice of Hilary Clinton for Secretary of State.

　

5) Legal Hiring Practices. This brings me to the 5th and most obvious criticism of nepotism. Apparently this ill-advised choice in hiring practices has already gotten him into a little bit of hot water from which he is unable to extricate himself. Not only is he guilty of hiring from whithin his own family; he demonstrates how insupportable it is by throwing his own son under the bus, when faced with charges of collusion. Donald Sr. now claims no responsibility for successfully colluding with a foreign power in order to rig the presidential election. The now well-publicized meeting of Donald Trump Junior with Russian operatives, in the Trump tower meeting room, was comprised of using material illegally gleaned by Russian hackers to destroy the credibility of Trump Sr's then political opponent Hilary Clinton. There might have been less criticism of his electoral victory if it were a fair fight to begin with. Hilary won the popular vote; thus leading America to review a rather antiquated and ineffective election process. Hilary Clinton's shame was pre-empting Donald Trump by acquiring Presidential Debate questions from CNN before the debate was aired. She is certainly not above reproach.

　

6) Dispensing of Staff found guilty of illegal activity. We now await a hearing to discover whether or not Donald Trump Jr. will be indicted on charges of collusion, political espionage, and probably a host of other apt charges connected with his meeting or meetings with Russian operatives. This is the precursor to Item #10.

　

7) Qualifications. The seventh and probably the most damning criticism is Donald Trump's complete lack of experience in the arena of politics and utter absence of credentials. One might say he is the president of reality t.v. That and $10 might get you a movie and some popcorn at the local theater.

　

8) Being objective, modern, progressive and decent. The eighth criticism is his denunciation of the value of women in general. It goes without saying that he is a unapologetic mysogynist. There are many people groups angry with him right now, the least of which are foreign nationals, because of his undisguised bigotry and xenophobia, but undeniably women top the list.

　

This one is my favorite.

9) Being fiscally responsible. The ninth criticism would be his whole-hog economic irresponsiblity regarding dispensation to the vulnerable of our citizenry, the needy and economically challenged, and especially the elderly (with the fate of medicare in the balance.) The once uninsured might again be, under Trump, with the current decimation of Obamacare under his newly sanctioned policies.

Has Trump addressed increasing the federal minimum wage?

Has Trump addressed closing the gender wage gap?

Is he immune to sanctions under the emoluments clause?

Many fiscal considerations have fallen by the wayside. Will the liberals pick up the fallen thru the cracks members of the disenfranchised? Or will it be business as usual with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer? Bernie Sanders was right. The middle class is disappearing. Maybe the title of this piece should be: "The Annihilation of The American Middle Class."

　

10) Patriotic. A president should be loyal to his nation. Has Donald Trump in effect committed an act of treason in colluding with a foreign power? Since articles of impeachment have been introduced, will treason be the grounds for his impeachment?

To recap: the 10 items were: cowardice, unwilling to admit fault, unwilling to take a chance, cronyism, nepotism, collusion, uncredentialed, mysogyny (along with bigotry, and xenophobia), fiscal irresponsibility, and treason (or at the very least: claiming to be above the law.)

　

These criticisms are not necessarily in the order of importance they just fell on the page as they occured to me, nor is this list all-encompassing. Someone said to document the changes lest they be forgotten, so i have here. (They were referencing the rise of fascist idealogy.)