#hold on i think i can macgyver this with the office pieces

[vault81]

thiink I'm gonna change the tilset that's been used for the Novac player room, since the OG one is literally just one used for a hallway and not a room. Moving it to one specifically made for rooms would mean i can actually do what I want with it!

(left is the hotelroom set and right is the original officehall one)

[escxpedes]

loopholes (cont.)

I literally can’t even begin to tell you how much everyone’s support meant to me on the last chapter. All your comments and tags were so sweet, it was seriously the highlight of my day. I’m sorry for the delay, I meant to get this out a couple of days ago, but I’ve come down with a bad cold. This part, while fun, was so hard to get right. Angus Macgyver is a genius, his mind goes a mile a minute, and I wanted to do my best to replicate that. This part is a little slow in getting to the Macriley stuff, but I wanted to show how much he really thinks about things. He’s such a complex character, that if I didn’t do him justice, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself. Also, there’s dialogue in this one! Sadly, Jack isn’t mentioned in this chapter, but he’s there in spirit. Clearly, we all love and miss him. I hope you guys enjoy, the last part will be out soon! x

~

loop·hole

noun | A loophole is an ambiguity or inadequacy in a system, such as a law or security, which can be used to circumvent or otherwise avoid the purpose, implied or explicitly stated, of the system

~

Riley finally moves into her new apartment, but struggles to adjust after the events of Codex and the realization of her feelings for Mac. When Mac finds her passed out over her keyboard after a late night of coding at Phoenix, he decides a talk is long overdue. Just some slightly angsty soft!macriley to help you cope with this season 5 hiatus.

~

of lips that i am yet to kiss (and eyes not met my own.)

It's highly unlikely that you'll find Mac walking down the halls of the Phoenix Foundation so late at night. Without the bustling energy of his coworkers fetching important documents or discussing the best way to break down one of the many mysteries the foundation deals with, the darkened hallways and quiet atmosphere can be unnerving.

Sure, he spends nearly every waking hour employed there, but he'd rather be outside the office in different countries, doing hands-on work and saving lives. When you work in his profession, It can be difficult to separate business and pleasure, but that only makes it more important—if only to conserve what mental health he has left. 

However, in the haste of putting together last-minute preparations for yet another meeting with the Department of Justice and trying to make it back to his house in time for something Desi whipped up, he managed to forget his cellphone.

It's funny, mainly because of how little the small device truly matters to Mac.

It only goes to show how insignificant material objects, or even human beings in general, are. The idea that something so meaningless can affect someone's life so much when, if they just looked past that obsession and considered its part in the profound scope of the universe, another perspective would take shape.

It's fascinating stuff, really.

There's a concept essential to understanding Japanese aesthetics, otherwise known as an ancient set of ideals important to Japanese society, called Yūgen. When applied in the right context, Yūgen underlines this deep awareness of the universe and the experiences we have within it. It's often the feeling interpreted when you gaze at the stars late at night or watch the sunset dip behind a hill.

Mac wouldn't think twice before breaking his phone, or rather, breaking the phone of his nearest friend, open for an obscure part that might make one of his many homemade devices come together. However, when he's the only person able to communicate the scientific specifications of an unheard-of-until-recently base plan for saving the planet, he's practically on call 24/7.

He remembers having it in the labs earlier that day when he stopped by before his meeting to remind Bozer to come by his house on Friday for the team's new weekly attempt in group-bonding.

After the betrayals that surfaced during the climax of taking down Codex, the team collectively decided to spend more time as a group in hopes of eliminating any lingering doubts. 

They used to hang out all the time before the government dismantled the Phoenix Foundation.

Mac still can't believe that, after everything they had been through, he allowed his friendships to dissipate over the year they had been separate.

Bozer is his childhood best friend, and Riley had become a solid foundation in his life. He didn't have anyone outside his team at Phoenix, and while he deeply cared for Desi, their first relationship was proof that too much time—and too little communication—with each other can do severe damage to one's sanity.

If Russ hadn't brought them back together, would they have tried to reconnect at some point?

Mac wants to say they would have but wouldn't blame them if they didn't; they all lost something they cared about, and each served as a constant reminder of it.

It would've been hard, but part of him feels like living without them is a lot harder.

When he manages to access the lab, flipping his shiny new I.D. card over his fingers and into its place in his wallet, his eyes scan the room. It's empty, which isn't unusual at this time, but years of military training have rewired his brain to notify him of threats, even if there aren't any.

Just like he thought it would be, the device sits untouched a few tables behind Bozer's workspace where Mac had been sitting.

Quickly, because he left the house in a hurry and forgot to leave a note, he scoops up his phone and makes his way towards the exit. There's a couple of missed calls, but it doesn't seem like he missed anything too important.

Not that they would let him. 

At any rate, they would probably show up on his doorstep if they couldn't get a hold of him. With days off so few and far between, that's the kind of interaction he's hoping to avoid. Hence, why he came to pick up his phone when he realized it was missing instead of waiting until the next day.

He's nearly made it to the end of the hall when a light flashes in his peripheral vision, coming from the I.T. department.

His body is tense with apprehension; his mind races with several different kinds of possibilities and outcomes. He slows his pace, his movements fluid, silent, and controlled from years of stealth practice.

The light is soft, he notices, as if only one or two monitors are in use.

When he gets to the doorway and nudges open the door, hands at the ready, his entire body sags in relief to see the dark wavy hair he's come to associate with one of his closest friends.

"Riles?"

The nickname falls from his mouth before he can stop it, and even though the light from the monitor creates a halo above her head, shadowing her features, it's unmistakably her.

She doesn't move. 

It becomes abundantly clear why as Mac moves towards her and notices the monitor's screen filling up with a sequence of letters that look nothing like coding despite his lack of knowledge in programming languages.

Her elbow balances precariously on the edge of the table, her arms creating a makeshift pillow for her head. The weight of her forearm bears down on the keyboard, causing the side of her hand to press down multiple keys at once.

He shakes his head a little, amused by the situation unfolding. 

Her cheek rests comfortably on her hand, a serene expression masking the signs of exhaustion that showed on her face.

Mac's lips curved into a soft smile, seeing Riley in any state that wasn't cloaked in layers of worry or anxious determination always washed away any doubts he might have about working in such a stressful field.

The scars that covered his body, the secrets he has to keep, and the pain he has to endure are so unbelievably worth it as long as she out of harm's way and able to sleep peacefully.

Of course, he couldn't imagine anyone else by his side on a mission, knowing they share the same love and passion for kicking ass and saving lives.

However, he also knows that more lies underneath the surface.

He wouldn't wish the hardships of this job on anyone. Seeing it affect someone he cares about, watching it break them down slowly pulls at his heartstrings and fills him with a knowing sadness. 

When a piece of hair falls into her face, his fingers don't hesitate to gently brush it behind her ear, lightly tracing her cheekbone and caressing her cheek.

Kneeling, his hand drops to her shoulder in an attempt to gently wake her.

After a couple of shakes, the expressive brown eyes he's come to look forward to seeing begin to flutter open and nearly render him speechless.

She blinks a couple of times, inhaling slowly, "Macgyver."

Her voice is full of sleep and breaks from misuse, but the way she says his name—like there's nobody else she'd expect to see when she wakes up —has him grinning from ear to ear.

"Good morning, sleepyhead."

Rising from her position on the table, she scans the room before meeting his eyes and scoffing, "It's hardly the morning."

He laughs softly, holding back the urge to mention that technically it is morning considering its past twelve. Instead, he focuses on the matter at hand, or more likely, the question at hand.

"What are you doing here so late?"

She's more alert now, sitting back in her chair and lifting her arms to stretch out the muscles that stiffened while she slept, glancing at her work on the monitor.

Her face drops into a grimace when she notices her mistake, "Matty and I were talking about updating the foundation's firewall and spyware," she yawns, "I must have been more tired than I realized."

Mac's eyebrows scrunch in thought, remembering something Bozer said earlier about Riley spending quite a few nights this week working late.

Between going over his mother's scientific data, trying to patch up whatever relationship he had left with Desi, and making sure he didn't go off the rails with grief, his effort to check in on everyone decreased significantly.

"Yeah, you've been doing that a lot lately," his hand returned to her shoulder to emphasize his point, "Everything okay?"

She waves him off, "There's too much work that needs to be done around here before we can get things running the way they used to."

Riley doesn't lie to him—if you overlook the whole situation with her ex, Aubrey, that is, but the movements she's making indicate otherwise.

Her eyes refuse to meet his, flickering down and to the right. When she talks, her head shakes lightly, and she purses her lips in an attempt to give off a careless impression. Maybe someone who doesn't know her or didn't train to pick up on it would believe her, but he knew better.

She was definitely hiding something from him.

Part of him understands that if she wanted to talk about it, she would. However, his instincts urge him to press harder, locate the problem, and bring back her contagious smile that always seems to fill him with warmth.

As much as he doesn't want to admit it, you can't patch some things together by sheer will and sellotape, so instead, he stands up and drops his hand from her shoulder.

"Let's get you home."

[macgyvermedical]

Soup: a “Tesla + Bell + Edison + Mac” Medical Review

“You have a perfectly functional syringe pump with the PCA in the background, and you’re going to give him an injection with a metal needle? Also, if you’re gonna sedate him you might as well use the IV pump too??? Like, you have a whole ‘nother channel?? Most floor nurses would kill for that setup?” <--- From my notes on this ep.*

Awl - X-Ray + Penny - Duct Tape + Jack - CD + Hoagie Foil - Guts + Fuel + Hope - Wilderness + Training + Survival - Father + Bride + Betrayal - Lidar + Rogues + Duty - Nightmares - Seeds + Permafrost + Feather - Friends + Enemies + Border - Mason + Cable + Choices - Bitter Harvest - Kid + Plane + Cable + Truck -

In case you didn’t see it, the story went like this: After being knocked unconscious trying to prevent Codex from stealing an encoded map to a Tesla-era WMD, Mac wakes to find he’s lost certain memories of the event that are crucial to interpreting the weapon’s location. In order to recover the memories and stop Codex from getting there first, Matty calls on a friend at DARPA who studies experimental memory-recovery drugs. Drugged, Mac enters a dream state to track down the memories, where he encounters his mother, a man he recently chose to kill to save everyone in LA, his high-school bully, and a darker version of himself who thinks Codex’s directive to kill an eighth of the population to save the world might not be too far off the mark.

So there’s a lot to talk about here medically. For this post, I’ll go into the concussion and its aftermath, the drug and it’s administration, and the medical technology that the Phoenix infirmary seems to have at its disposal.

The Concussion/Amnesia:

Mac is knocked out by a blow to the head. He wakes up “a few hours” later in the Phoenix infirmary. I’ve talked about concussions before (see here, here, and here), so I’m not going to go into too much detail about them in this post, but essentially if someone’s out for that long, they’re in trouble.

It’s reasonably common to lose consciousness in a concussion, but it’s usually only for seconds to minutes, and if it occurs at all, that person needs prompt medical evaluation in an emergency room. Even if there ends up being no major complications, like bleeding in the brain or an increase in pressure in the skull, the recovery time for concussions with a loss of consciousness can be in the weeks or months range. Someone who’s out for “hours” is looking at a stay in a neuro ICU and probably severe and possibly permanent brain damage. Like, it’s a season-long arc at least.

Since we’re not seeing that level of medical need, I think it would probably be safe to assume that Mac wasn’t actually out for “hours” as stated. He could have been briefly unconscious, as shown in the house attack scene, but then had trouble forming memories after that, which caused him to not remember the ride back to Phoenix very well, if at all. These are still concerning enough symptoms that I would have taken him to an emergency department instead of to the infirmary, but at least with that scenario there’s a possibility what happened to him isn’t actively life threatening outside of a neuro ICU.

Unlike the extended period of unconsciousness, the portrayal of amnesia isn’t far off the mark for once. The amnesia that Mac suffers is actually pretty reasonable- trouble remembering the incident and the events just before it is common in head injuries, as is having trouble forming new memories after. Not only is accurate amnesia something that I didn’t expect out of Rob Pearlstein (writer of the infamous Guts + Fuel + Hope), but it’s something that fiction as a whole (including, I’ll admit, 1985 MacGyver**) tends to struggle with. So kudos for that specific part of this episode, Pearlstein.

The Drug:

Even if we assume Mac wasn’t unconscious that whole time, the brief unconsciousness and memory problems indicate that he still had a pretty significant concussion that needed medical care and monitoring. I’m guessing that as advanced as the Phoenix Infirmary is, it doesn’t have the capacity to do neurosurgery or intracranial pressure monitoring. That means the Phoenix medical team’s priority in this situation would essentially be to catch any major, life-threatening complication as early as possible, and if one happened, get Mac to a hospital quickly enough to save him.

The best and lowest-tech tool they have to this end is repeated mental status exams. Mental status exams have the patient answer a series of questions like “what’s your name?” “what day is it?” “where are you right now?” “what happened to you/why am I asking you these questions?”  followed up with a series of mental tasks like counting backwards from 100 by 7s or making a logical decision based on a given scenario. If Mac’s answers significantly change, from one assessment to the next, that could mean he’s in trouble. 

Because these assessments rely so heavily on Mac’s ability to answer questions and perform tasks accurately, and they’re really the only thing that’s going to catch a serious problem early enough to save Mac’s life, the last thing you’d want to do is give him a drug cocktail that would alter his perception of where he is and what’s going on around him. I’ll just… leave that there.

But let’s assume that for some reason they have a non-CT way of assessing whether Mac’s about to die from a brain bleed while in a drug-induced dream state (they do appear to have limited EEG capability- can anyone tell me if this would still be helpful in the context of the drugs?). I’m not going to talk too much about the drug cocktail itself, since it was stated as fictional (so, essentially, anything they say it does it can probably do), but since they do reference it as containing DMT, I invite you to check out the erowid experience vault for DMT for stories of other people’s experiences with it.  

I will, however, talk a little about the administration of the drug. In the episode, a syringe with a needle is used to deliver the medication. Though not explicitly shown, I assume Dr. Cheryl inserted the metal needle into one of Mac’s arm veins and injected the drug.

Something that fiction generally doesn’t understand is that inserting a metal needle into a vein in order to administer medication doesn’t happen in a medical setting. Ever. The ONLY way to administer a medication IV in a medical setting is through an IV cannula- a short, flexible plastic tube inserted into a vein, often just colloquially called an “IV”:

If Mac had one of these ^^^, the syringe could attach to one of the blue and white pieces and the medication could be injected without worrying that the needle could slip out of the vein (many IV medications must be injected slowly over several minutes, and that’s a long time to hold a needle still).

Before Dr. Cheryl gives him the drug, she takes his vitals and asks him some questions, namely whether he has ever had “a psychotic break”, then, without explaining further, asks if he thinks he will become violent.

Now, it does make sense to ask someone about their psych history when administering a drug known to have psych side effects, because those can be a lot worse or more likely for people with certain psych histories. Think about SSRIs and SNRIs- they’re good antidepressants, but when given to someone with bipolar disorder, they can greatly increase the risk of a manic episode, and that possibility has to be evaluated before the drug is prescribed.

The conversation should have started with Dr. Cheryl asking everyone else to leave the room. Asking if someone has ever experienced psychosis in front of their coworkers, is not only a serious breach of patient privacy, but could also be incredibly dangerous. If Mac had experienced psychosis, but didn’t want his coworkers to know, he’d either have to lie and risk side effects without being able to prepare, or feel pressured to release that medical information and possibly risk his job or reputation***.

Then she’d ask something to the effect of “have you ever been diagnosed with a mental illness, been hospitalized for a mental health reason, or do you take any medications for a mental health problem?” And if the answer to that question was anything that would make the drug particularly dangerous to him, she’d probably tell him the risks and her assessment that it was a bad idea to proceed.

If there was no other option for some reason (I’d argue not the case in this situation), she’d tell him what the risks were, and only then would she possibly have to ask if he knew he might become aggressive, at which point they’d come up with how he’d like her to handle that possibility.

I know it’s not quite as snappy, but I would have really liked to see it.

Plus, unless it’s been asked off screen, Dr. Cheryl hasn’t asked him if he has any other health problems, if he takes any medications, or if he has any allergies, all of which could significantly impact how safe this drug could be for Mac.

Phoenix Infirmary Medical Tech

Now let’s look at some of the bits and pieces in the background of the episode. Particularly, I wanna talk about that chair, the IV pump, and the monitor.

So, chair first- it’s a dentist’s chair. It’s good for dental things and maybe some minor procedures (we have a slightly different chair in a doctor’s office I work at- we use it for things like implanting birth control, removing warts and moles, and providing wound care), but it’s not great for anything else. It’s especially not great if you have to sit there longer than a half hour. Considering we know from previous episodes that they have a full-on hospital bed somewhere at their disposal and possibly a couple of carts (narrower beds you see in the emergency department), I gotta say it makes literally no sense to put the guy who’s unconscious from a head injury in the procedure chair.

Next, the IV pump

We talked above about administering medications “IV push”- a medication “pushed” through an IV by a syringe, one dose at a time. Another way to give IV medication or fluids is via an IV drip or “piggyback”- the medication is diluted in a bag of saline or other IV fluid, and set to continuously run into a person’s IV. These are nice for doses of IV medication that have a lot of volume (like IV antibiotics) medication that wears off quickly and may need constant adjustment (like some kinds of sedation or some types of pain medication or medications that counteract shock), or just straight up IV fluids.

IV pumps control how fast the medication or fluid goes from the bag into the person. You can vaguely control this without a pump using gravity, a drip chamber, and a roller clamp, but if you need to know precisely how many milliliters of medication/fluid per hour is getting into a person, and you didn’t start your nursing career in the 1970s, you need a pump.

The one pictured above specifically consists of a central computer box (colloquially called a “brain”) where the pump rate can be programmed, flanked by interchangeable modules that each do a slightly different thing. The modules on the pump in the episode include an infusion pump, which essentially just pumps fluid from a bag hanging above it into a person, and a PCA pump. A PCA pump holds a syringe of medication (usually pain medication) and delivers a dose of it when the patient presses a button.

Honestly I think the whole things is just chillin’ in the background making the room look medical-y, but they really could have used it to continuously administer the drug or the sedation if they’d really wanted to incorporate it.

Side note, the modules are actually kind of heavy, so you have to balance them a little or the whole thing kinda tilts (see the screenshot from the episode). Also, for some reason if you stick an infusion module on the same side as a PCA module, the brain won’t recognize it half the time. Not sure if it’s a feature or a bug. Below is how someone who has ever once used one of these things would have set it up:

The other thing they have in the episode, and the last thing I’ll talk about before I let you get back to your life (I’m sure your cat misses you by now, mine sure does), is the monitor. 

I read several user manuals for this (real) monitor system in preparation for this post. I’ve concluded that it’s way, way above my med-surg pay grade, and usually used in operating rooms by anesthesiologists to monitor sedation level (so at least in theory they could be using it correctly? I’m as shocked as you are, really). I don’t even know what half those numbers mean (beyond the SpO2, heart rate, and respiratory rate), more than just being able to say they (surprisingly) do actually reflect real monitoring options on this thing. This leads me to believe this may be some kind of weird product placement thing? As if the gratuitous use of the Toyota backup cameras weren’t oddly forced enough.

Now, beyond the fact that this is a wildly high-tech, completely overkill machine for what is happening in the episode, the thing I would like to impress upon you is that regardless of the high tech-ness, every line on a monitor requires at least some attachment to the patient. Something measuring an EKG requires at least 3 leads on the patient. Something measuring oxygen saturation and pulse requires a clip on an ear or finger. Something measuring blood pressure requires a blood pressure cuff. Something measuring temperature usually means a probe somewhere the sun don’t shine. Mac has two little leads on his forehead. That is actually hilarious. He’d be covered in wires. He would have so much adhesive stuck to him.

In case you’re wondering, the heart/lungs/brain/person outline picture on the monitor just tells you how each part of the body is doing- like, the brain will turn yellow and then red if something starts going weird with the brain-related monitoring, same with the heart and lungs. It took an insane amount of searching to figure that out. I’ve been writing this post for 4 days now.

 *I had a much longer and rant-ier intro to this but I feel like I’ve complained enough on main about how the reboot dumbed down and politically neutralized an extremely opinionated and hardline character. I do really like this show, and the storylines are really interesting, but I need you all to understand how science-based and politically charged the original one was, especially in later seasons. You had such a platform for good here, CBS, and I’m hoping against hope the generic-action-show it’s become was some kind of weird, collective misunderstanding and not a censor problem. My main problem, having finished writing this post, is that he looks really weirdly good for someone who was unconscious with a head injury and then subjected to what was another few hours unconscious and hallucinating. Like, his shirt is still tucked in. Great update to the theme song, though.

**Twice. They played the bourne-style-amnesia storyline twice.

***At this point I can only recommend you watch the 1985 MacGyver Season 7 episode “Obsessed”- it’s a ridiculous-criminal-plot episode but the undertones are all anti-ableist (both criticizing the Phoenix Foundation board of directors’ ableism in assuming Pete is no longer fit to do his (desk) job after he loses his sight, and the pressure Pete himself is under to let MacGyver go because of mental health symptoms).

[chanagun]

Soft Hearts Electric Souls

Fandom: Why R U the Series Pairing: Saifah/Zon

Summary:

The first time Zon ended up in the cramped tattoo parlor, it was because of his friends' oh-so-clever dare to get something pierced. The rest of his visits definitely didn’t have anything to do with the (handsome) piercing artist.

AO3 

——

Saifah actually heard the group before seeing them. 

Day was on desk duty for the hour, so Saifah had been upstairs, going back and forth between chairs and doing his best to crack jokes and distract the clients as Tutor and Hwahwa created artwork on their skin. 

Tutor had a regular client, adding another chunk to his growing sleeve and Hwahwa worked on a walk-in, her classic script stretching across the client’s collarbone. Saifah loved watching his friends in their element. 

Which was disrupted, as mentioned, by the sound of the chime on the door followed by what sounded like fifteen dudes all laughing and talking over each other. Saifah frowned slightly before excusing himself from Tutor’s booth to help Day with the assumed influx of customers. 

Their shop was an odd set up, being in a row of other squeezed-together buildings in a busy college town. Patrons were greeted immediately in the waiting room with pieces of tattered furniture they haven’t had the heart to replace and the reception desk against the stairs. The piercing station was a back office they gutted and converted. They didn't have a second floor as much as they had a loft that they macgyvered into the sterile tattoo booths, so everything was quite open; it wasn’t ideal but it was theirs. They put a lot of work into it and it was definitely a source of pride. 

The openness of their shop also helped with gaging the customers from afar.

To his surprise, as he walked down the wooden stairs, he found that the bold entrance noise came from only five men. All of them looked up expectantly at him as he heard Day explain that Saifah was their piercer while pointing up at him. 

Four of the guys looked at him with shit-eating grins and one looked at him with absolute terror. Saifah knew how he looked outwardly; he had a dozen holes in his ears and a few in his face and he had tattoos peeking out from everywhere his shirt didn’t quite reach. His favorite, a painted bat with wings outstretched ( Kerivoula picta , Tutor would remind him after spending diligent hours on it) decorated his neck with a shocking burst of color and a sharp snarl at anyone shorter than him. Saifah watched the one man visibly gulp when he finally joined Day at the counter and he couldn’t help the half smile form on his lips.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Saifah started, “I heard my services were needed?” The one man was not looking him in the eye, but instead directly at his throat. Saifah couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed like he was shaking in his metaphorical boots. 

One of his friends slapped his shoulder, making him jump a mile, before saying “Our Zon here would like to get his ears pierced!” 

“Oi, Junior-“ the guy, Zon, snapped as he elbowed his friend in the gut. 

“Yeah, he looks super excited to do that,” Saifah replied easily.

“I am!” Zon quipped adamantly.

Saifah knew he was being a prick, but couldn’t help it as he raised an eyebrow and let out an unimpressed chuckle. “Sure. Anyone else getting stabbed today?” He asked the rest of the guys in the same cocky tone and received negative murmurs in response. “Righto, come on back Mr. Zon and I’ll set everything up.” To which he received a tight nod from Zon and stifled laughter from the rest. 

Saifah motioned Zon to follow him to his station but paused when the whole hoard of men started coming too. “Ah, the love fest is really cute but the room is not that big, guys,” Saifah explained.

“I can come by myself,” Zon said, and sent a sharp glare at each of his friends, “they just want to see me suffer anyway.” Saifah let out a chuckle, and continued to the back, now only being followed by one. Saifah motioned to the cushioned stool in the middle of the room and Zon sat obediently. 

“First things first Mr. Zon, we have to get some paperwork done,” Saifah explained, grabbing one of the clipboards, “and I hope you have your ID on you or else this’ll be pretty embarrassing.” 

“Of course I have my ID,” Zon huffed in response before pulling out his wallet. Saifah let Zon hold it up to his face as he recorded his necessary details on the paper.

“Alright, so you gotta read all these bullet points and initial each line on the left here,” Saifah told him, turning the clipboard around and handing him the pen, “let me know if you have any questions, but I’m going to get the station ready.” 

“This is a lot more … official than I thought,” Zon mumbed, making Saifah pause.

“It is surprising to some people that we are a legitimate business,” Saifah replied even though Hwahwa’s voice nagged in this head about not being so sarcastic with customers. Saifah risked a glance at the guy.

He was frowning, sitting the paperwork with his initials before saying, “That’s not what I meant, I just didn’t actually know what to expect.” He held out the clipboard to hand back to Saifah. 

He took it, but kept a strong gaze on Zon. “Why are you here, dude? You don’t seem well-informed, nor excited to be getting this done.” 

Zon cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “My friends dared me. I don’t want to seem weak or anything,” he explained in a huff. 

Saifah considered his words. He placed the clipboard back down and pulled up his own stool to sit right in front of Zon. The action seemed to unsettle Zon more, but that didn’t deter Saifah. “Are you sure you actually want to? Listen, the basis of this business is all ‘fight the man, rebell, mod your bod’ and everything but it’s about living for yourself, too. You think my parents wanted me to open a tattoo shop with my hooligan friends?” Zon laughed lightly at his statement, “I can scare your friends off if you really don’t want this, man. I’ve heard I’m intimidating.” 

Zon cocked his head to the side, a smile still faint on his lips. “Nah, you’re just tall,” he joked, “Clearly you’re a softie or else you would have just stabbed me and taken my money.” Saifah snorted at that. “And I… I still want the piercings. Not for my friends’ benefit, I’ve just actually wanted to get them for a while. Needles aren’t really my favorite thing but they look cool.”

“I bet I’m the coolest person you’ve ever seen then, huh?” Saifah asked, wiggling his eyebrows, which just made Zon roll his eyes. “So, studs or rings?” 

“What do you suggest?” 

Saifah hummed, “Studs. Rings are cool but it’s harder to heal when you’re pierced with rings. Also, in my opinion, captive beads suck.” 

“Studs it is then,” Zon replied. 

Saifah flashed a smile before turning back to his counter. He could feel that Zon was more at ease so he popped on some gloves and disinfected his tray. He collected his sterile supplies before turning back around. “I’m going to mark your ears and you can tell me if you like the placement.” Zon just nodded. 

The rest of the process came easily to Saifah, my muscle memory taking over. Zon gasped during the first but only winced for the second. 

“Already done! You did great.”

“Thanks,” Zon replied, smiling into the hand mirror. 

“You can head back up to the front desk and Day can ring you up. Pleasure doing business with you, Zon,” Saifah told him as he worked to clean his station up again. He couldn’t help but watch him go.

.

.

Zon took a deep breath. He could do this. He did it before and he could do it again. 

He stood outside the tattoo parlor, under the dark green awning to escape the blazing sun, pumping himself up to go inside. With no friends forcing him, it was taking longer than it should. 

He knew what to expect this time, and that was making it even harder than before. Not piercing pain wise, but tall, handsome piercer wise. That wasn’t why he was going back, obviously. He just kind of really dug his earrings and the piercer, Saifah, had had a really cool piercing in his eyebrow and Zon couldn’t seem to get it out of his head. 

He wanted to at least ask Saifah what he thought about getting one himself. His feet just weren’t cooperating. 

Zon jumped out of his train of thought when his phone chimed in his pocket. He let out a breath, glad to be out of his head when he pulled up the text. Zol had sent him a message asking him what he wanted for dinner, since she was going out shopping with their mom. He smiled typing out his reply and finally felt back in the right mindset to go inside.

He wasn’t expecting to see an upside-down Saifah laying (incorrectly) on the couch, strumming apparently absentmindedly on an acoustic guitar. 

“Um, hello?” 

Saifah glances towards the door, squinting his eyes at Zon. “Ah!” He exclaimed before placing the guitar next to him on the couch. “Welcome back.” Zon raised an eyebrow in surprise, not expecting the piercer to remember him at all. “Is everything healing okay?”

“Oh, um, yeah,” he replied, his hand instinctively going to his neck, just below his ear (where he’d learned to stop himself from touching and irritating his piercings). “I was actually wondering if I could get, like, a consultation for another.” 

Saifah raised his brow (Zon assumed, it was hard to tell from upside down) in surprise before somehow gracefully flipping over to stand (Zon pointedly tried not to look when his shirt rode up and- are those nipple piercings ?) and greeted Zon for real. “What were you thinking?”

Zon, who was definitely not flustered, swallowed hard and met his gaze, “I really like your…” he said, pointing at his own eyebrow.

“Ah,”Saifah smiled, “an eyebrow piercing. It was one of my first ones,” he reached a hand out towards Zon’s face but stopped short, “Do you mind if I?” Zon shook his head no, letting Saifah continue his movement. His fingers were gentle against Zon’s face, just lightly touching the skin above his brow, before giving him a little pinch. 

“Hey!” 

“Sorry! Just seeing if you can deal with the pain,” he explained.

“I wasn’t ready! And you know I don’t care if it hurts,” Zon huffed in response, making Saifah grin again. 

“Okay, okay,” he said with his hands up in surrender, “if you’re interested, I think you have the perfect browline for a horizontal instead of a vertical. I’ll knock some off the price if you let me do that instead,” he finished, punctuated with another toothy smile.

Zon bit his lip before answering, “Can you show me what that would look like?” 

Saifah nodded excitedly before leading Zon to the front desk and pulling both stools up to the laptop. They spent ten minutes, shoulder to shoulder, sitting at the desk, Saifah pulling up different images for Zon to consider. Within two minutes Zon had decided he loved it, but he couldn’t stop himself from watching Saifah excitedly find new ones to show him. 

“What do you think?” 

Zon looked up, met with Saifah’s bright eyes, and he couldn’t help smile. “Yeah, dude it looks sick. I’m down for it.” 

Saifah smiles so brightly in response, his eyes almost closed. And Zon could feel his heart in his throat, thinking cute , how was this man covered in tattoos and piercings ( including nipple piercings his mind supplied) so cute ?

Zon quickly found himself back on the same cushioned stool in the back room as his first visit, going through paperwork with Saifah. He felt more at ease the second time around. 

Like Saifah could read his mind, he stated, “you seem much more chill this time. Is it because you know what to expect or because your friends aren’t here this time?” he asked, voice light, presumably so Zon knew he was mostly joking around.

“A mix of both I guess. My friends are great, but… sometimes they’re not,” he chuckled. 

“I think that’s true for most friends,” Saifah agreed, “mine have been on lunch break for like two hours at this point,” he said while glancing at his wrist. His tone wasn’t unfriendly, rather it seemed fond. “Tutor has the day off, since he and his boyfriend work at the foodbank on Thursdays, but Hwahwa and Day, the other artists, think they’re so slick.”

Zon furrowed his brow, “you’re the only one here?” 

Saifah nodded, “they didn’t have any appointments scheduled until the evening so I’m sure they thought their sneaky secret date would go unnoticed. But I’ve got a keen eye.”

Zon chuckled at that, “the most keen eye if they thought you wouldn’t notice being left alone in the shop.”

“Oh, he’s cracking jokes! Careful, try and remember who is stabbing who today, my Zon.” Saifah teased. 

A sudden wave of heat hit Zon- from his neck to the tips of his ears. He scrambled, trying to  come up with a retort to hide his fluster, but Saifah took it in stride, turning to sanitize his station. He hummed a familiar tune that Zon couldn’t exactly place, but he was kind of mesmerized. Saifah was gentle and yet so diligent with his work.He’d done a bit more research for this visit and he read plenty of horror stories online about dirty shops and artists that didn’t care, so he was glad his friends just happened to stumble upon Saifah’s shop. 

“Ready?” Saifah asked, tone low, and genuine , Zon noted. 

He nodded, a lazy smile finding its place on his face. Saifah returned the grin and took the clean marker with a gloved hand. Zon relaxed at the familiar steps and let Saifah do what he clearly knew how to do best. 

Needless to say, it hurt quite a bit more than his ears.

“Tears are normal, you know,” Saifah reassured as he handed Zon a tissue,  “It’s close to your eye, so it’s a natural reaction. Just in case you were still worried about seeming weak or something, don’t be,” he clarified. “On a completely unrelated note, I cried like a baby when I got the tattoo on my neck,” he pointed at the (frankly terrifying) bat on his throat, “and when I got the one on my hip. And the one that wraps around my foot, oh my god-”

“Okay, okay,” Zon said, laughing lightly despite the well of tears in his eyes. He sniffed, “Thank you.” He wanted to say more; more about his kindness, more about toxic masculinity, more about anything but Saifah handed him the hand mirror then. “Wow.”

“Wow as in what a great job it looks fantastic or wow as in this is terrible and I’m going to slash your tires as soon as I’m out of here?”

“Has that happened?”

“Of course not! I’m very talented.” Zon laughed, still admiring the work. “Wow as in I didn’t think it would make me look this… hot?”

His sentiment seemed to tickle Saifah, causing him to let out a laugh too. “I can confirm, you definitely look hot.”

Zon coughed, seemingly choking on nothing before hurriedly asking, “so how much do I owe you?”

.

.

“We should start some sort of punch card system.” Saifah peeked up from his guitar, ready to shoot Tutor a skeptical look, but he continued, “I think your guy with the ‘eyebrows for days’ would appreciate it, since he’s back. Again.”

“What?”

Tutor didn’t answer, just smiled his devilish grin as the door chimed and a person came into the shop. Saifah whipped his attention to the door, cracking his neck in the process.

Zon let out a snort, “don’t hurt yourself, geez,” he joked. The midday sun glinted off the still somewhat fresh barbell in his eyebrow and Saifah could faint.  

“Welcome!” Tutor called from the desk, “how can we help you today?”

“Oh, um,” he faltered, eyes shifting from Tutor to Saifah, back to Tutor, “I wanted to get a piercing.”

“Ah, so Saifah and I are both certified for piercings-”

“Tutor, I can take care of him,” Saifah said, straining. Evil. His best friend was evil. Saifah quickly led Zon to the counter, glad to see that smile return to his face. “Didn’t Hwahwa say she may need some help with her back piece client?” 

“Oh how could I forget!” Tutor overdramatically replied before rushing to the base of the stairs, “and please consider those punch cards, dude!” he called as he took two steps at a time. 

“Is he… usually like that?”

“Unfortunately,” Saifah replied, immediately followed by a burst of laughter from Hwahwa and Tutor upstairs. He grimaced.

“Anyway! How are you?” Zon asked with a curious smile and (that goddamn) eyebrow quirked. 

“I’ve been pretty good,” Saifah started, “I was beginning to wonder if my favorite customer was ever going to show back up again, so I was slightly down in the dumps for a bit.” “Oh? So you do get regulars,” he paused, seemingly considering this, “Did they come around?” Saifah nodded excitedly, making Zon’s smile even brighter, “That’s great! What did they get done?”

“I don’t know. What were you looking to get done today?”

Saifah was met with the biggest eye roll he’s ever seen, so he laughed. “Seriously, what are you interested in?”

“Ah, I was actually going to see what you thought would look good,” he answered quickly, looking down at the counter. Saifah raised an eyebrow but he couldn’t help it. He also pointedly ignored the snickering from the top of the stairs.

“Wait, so you didn’t have anything in mind? You wanted to know… what I think would look good?”

“I find it hard to believe no one has ever asked for your professional opinion before, dude,” Zon said, tips of his ears turning pink. 

“I… I mean-“

“Anyway, I did do research, I know that dermals aren’t for me, but otherwise I wanted your expertise,” Zon babbled, as Saifah still didn't quite know what to say, “I’ve just really liked how I’ve looked recently and I like how I’ve been more confident and I think you have a bit to do with that, so ,” he took a breath, “what do you think?”

Saifah must have been gaping. He didn’t hear anything from upstairs either; he wasn’t sure what that meant. Zon still wasn’t looking at him. He closed his dumb mouth and cleared his throat. 

“Well, I guess, in my expert opinion,” he started, “I think… you had that confidence in you somewhere already. I just poked some holes in your already very nice looking face.” Saifah caught the edge of Zon’s smile, still mostly hidden from his view. “As for a recommendation, I’d say anything but a lip ring.”

“Oh?” Zon let his gaze drift back up, “why is that?”

“You can’t kiss anyone while it heals,” Saifah answered with a toothy grin. Zon responded by weakly punching him in the arm. 

“Do you always hit on your clients like this?”

“No, just my favorite one. I’m hoping it’ll make him stick around.”

“Tell him about the punch cards!” was yelled from the top of the stairs.

 Saifah ended up giving Zon a helix piercing somewhere in between chasing Tutor out of the building, buying Zon lunch, and a few kisses (sans lip ring).

[genius11rare]

Figured id try this. AH  Chit chat livestream notes / QnA  7-10-20

because i'm weird i like “documenting” videos and (in this case) Live Streams. figured why keep this to myself so here. maybe one day ill just post a google docs link for a viewing copy but idk. So heres what i got for today seeing as the chitchat part will likely be cut off for the “real” video i may as well memorialize it. not perfect and may be kinda nonsensical but its what i could come up with.

Matt has a window…. With a balcony blocking above , pointless window. Red Web (trevors podcast)  “where he gets in over his head on the internet” “think if i just show them the episode of Technical Difficulties where i made garden lights into solar chargers i can get that tax kickback?” , Jacks neighbor with the tesla solar roof , having to train people to know how to install it . Ryan: “what are the odds he cant look outside at any given hour of the day and see atleast one human with a big piece of paper scratching their head” Elon Musk Starlink satellites for internet worldwide, Ryan “not saying that's _clearly_  a supervillain plot but if it was it wouldnt surprise me” , Ubisoft Far Cry teaser… oh its live action movie teaser clip- oh shit that's rendered!!! , teaser pick of a young Vaas with scars…. Ryan “Did he get them in the womb!?!?!?  Wanna know how i got these scars? Born with them don't know…”  “What is your fave type of cake?” Ryan: Chocolate (Lava)… don't put a sprinkle on it OR ILL SLAY YOU Jack: I mean is birthday a type of cake… Funfettis great Jeremy: both are stereotypical , Boston Creme cakes and Rum Cakes. Matt: Yellow cake with fudge frosting. “Pets and significant others are safe , what item do you grab in a house fire” Jack: Animation cel of the Dino DNA scene in Jurrassic Park (think i got it) Ryan: i mean my life looks alot like this corner , if i could burn this shit down to start with a new empty house i might even be happy. (chat Ryan your insurance is listening)  Jeremy: don't have much i really care about , just “well that sucks it burnt up” . Matt: first ever smash trophy i won , only one i still have. Chat answers “Photo albums , Ryans DeadPool Suit” “what games hope to be announced on microsoft stream?” Matt :  Fable 4 (Ryan ”surprised theyd try to bring it back past the press that is peter molyneu” Matt ” well now nothing holding them back , not those trees!”) Jack: not so much games but LockHeart the mini streaming Xbox. (Ryan: all those types of things have failed idk why they think - well they also made mixer and that went tits up so sure why not) Jeremy: microsoft doesnt really blow me away , arent really anything that im like “i HOPE they announce a sequel” Matt: know this isnt the right crowd but Banjo Kazzoie? Just added in smash , Crash Bandicoots got a new game it makes sense nows the time… i mean the time was already before this but fuck it do it anyway. Steffie says we are at almost 10 mil views on Achievement Knievel (9.95 mil)  Ryan “which one was that” (Jack and Jeremy) “that's Im Still In The Air” Ryan “oooohhh… now i know why i blocked it out… thought we titled it like “the greatest stunt ever” or atleast that's what we called it while making it” “rather fight 100 duck sized ChilledChaos (yey my boy chilled!) or 1 ChilledChaos sized duck?” Ryan “feel like the duck cuz atleast it still doesnt have thumbs” - Jeremy “or teeth , what is it gonna do it can bill and flipper you” Matt “i mean a bunch of tiny Chilleds can work together to kill you” Jeremy “right they will figure something out” Ryan “tiny chilled more dangerous he can infiltrate spaces i wouldnt expect to find him” “tv show / movie you could watch again for the first time what would it be?” Jack: Breaking bad and Endgame … but only if its with a crowd who is ALSO seeing it for the first time. Matt : The Office Ryan: Full Metal Alchemist (oh anime time) , everyone talks about Brotherhood but i really liked the original. Matt:  Brotherhoods a bit better but original is still good on its own (paraphrased). Ryan : had that twist at the end of “dafuq did this show just go?” made a movie based off it… skippable though. Jeremy: Futurama , *or erase all my knowledge of Whose Line* “Fave piece of Merch put out?” Jeremy: Geoff tanktop with the tribal skull. Ryan: *puts on classic gray achievement hunter hat* Jack: Extralife Posters if those count , like the Xmen AH one behind Ryan that Jon (Risinger i assume) and Pat (IDFK) made. Matt: Tiki Mugs. Jeremy “do you use those , make pina coladas?” Matt “often! When i get caught in the rain (GDI Matt) “ Chat alot saying FrontBack ,  one said Jacks Varsity Jacket. “Trapped in quarantine with a fictional character , who?” Jack: Macgyver maybe idk (Ryan: How about Dr Manhattan he could just fix it)  yeah like Q from star trek. Matt: GlaDOS but in potato form. Jeremy “theres a lot of anime girls id be ok being stuck with but idk their name” (i love jeremy)  a Matt: you want Lust from Full Metal Alchemist - Jeremy: That sounds great , (Ryan *Nods*) i can picture that i like it or if we keeping the Futurama train then Bender… think wed have A LOT of fun , and he wouldnt get me the virus! Ryan: no he would , hed deliberately try to get you  sick. Jeremy: hed bring people in “what occupation / person where you most surprised to find out was an AH fan?” Jack: Fun story im looking to learn how to Sauder , someone messaged me saying they're a fan if you need help , *hes the guy welding StarShip* Matt: well… anyone smart really… Jack (and Ryan) : the Dr Who Set/Prop designer (Ben) hes done some stuff us (think he snuck in a name plate on a show of Jack and Ryan name or something , saw a tweet about that before) Ryan: not really any that's surprising… there was the time Macauly Culkin wore our shirt (press my awesome button) “our” being RT  Jeremy: Cool meeting Xavier Woods but like we know hes a gaming fan and watches a lot of content like ours… still on Whose Line Johnathon Mangum is a AH fan , even messaging me at one point. Trevor in chat “what if president trump rode up in a Salad Chalice shirt” , Jack: one guy who bought it , like “im hip with the kids” Ryan: can you imagine someone less likely to be seen near a salad? Matt: I mean ryan he thinks he has to drink them so…. Jeremy: also been having a lot of solicitors recently for some reason… really annoying and during a pandemic. Ordered a sign thats basically “fuckoff im not answering the door LEAVE” , have a ring doorbell (some kind of doorbell app where you can talk to people at the door i guess?)  but when im recording cant be like “hang on a second - FUCKOFF” Ryan: i DO feel like you have the kind of job you could do that , if anything youd put them in the video like “hey you're live right now what you need” … Jack managed to crash 7D2D on my local system already that's a good sign (brief technical difficulties music playing as it cut to ryans screen in the game) 

[asflowersfade]

Ficlet: Friendly Fire

A MacGyver ficlet. Mac was honorably discharged in 2012. How did it happen? Mac’s POV.

(I’m no army person and English is my 3rd language. If I managed to mangle up the military part, just put it down to “artistic license,” alright?)

Mac wakes up to pain and nausea.

The pain’s sharp. The nausea overwhelming. He can’t see out of his left eye. And there seems to be a tube stuck down his throat!

He starts to panic because he has no idea what’s going. What’s happening? Where is he? What--?

Then. “Hey, hey, hey,” a soft voice somewhere to his right and a face swims into his blurry view, looking concerned. A familiar, friendly face.

Jack.

And it’s as if a switch’s flipped. Seeing Jack there, Mac relaxes, his whole body that started to tense up, making the pain almost blinding, goes limp. Jack’s here. As long as Jack’s here, everything will be just fine.

He sees Jack glance somewhere to the side as he gently squeezes the fingers on Mac’s right hand. “Don’t do that, kid. The machines went all crazy! You almost gave me a heart attack!”

Mac stares at Jack, anchored by the sight of his friend. He wants to ask so many questions but he can’t even form them, his mind’s too dulled with whatever they’re pumping into him, let alone say them aloud. So he just stares.

And Jack stares back and his eyes are full of emotions that he can’t seem to put into words. Finally, he whispers, “It’ll be fine. You will be fine. Just rest, okay?”

Blinking slowly once, twice, Mac allows his one good eye to close, trusting Jack. Always trusting Jack. Jack always has his back, after all.

Still, before unconsciousness claims him again, Mac wonders why he can hear engines, plane engines, in the background. And why Jack has a black eye. He should’ve been on a vacation, after all…

The next time Mac wakes up, he can see out of both of his eyes, thank God! Yes, he still has trouble focusing but at least he can see. And what he sees is a ceiling, white. And then a wall on the right. And then a window. And outside… a tree. A tall tree, lush and very green. Huh. He’s definitely not at the Afghan base, then!

There’s a scrambling and a shuffling and a grunt and then a head pops up in his line of sight and Mac’s lips quirk up into a smile. Jack.

“You awake!” Jack exclaims. His eyes are wide, his cheeks stubbled and he’s in his civilian clothes. How odd.

Mac tries to clear his throat to respond - and he realizes that he can. The tube’s gone and he’s breathing on his own. It’s a relief even though his throat still aches a little. “Y-yeah,” he croaks out.

And that’s when Jack disappears again and as Mac slowly, carefully turns his head a little more to the right, he can see that Jack sank back into his chair and now he’s sitting there with his face in his hands. He looks like he’s… crying?

“Ja-ack?” Mac asks in a raspy voice and furrows his brows.

“Give me a second,” Jack mumbles into his hands.

Mac doesn’t understand what’s happening. His head aches - well, his whole body aches - but the sharp pain and the splitting headache from before are gone. And the bruise he remembers seeing on Jack’s face has faded from almost black to yellow. How long was he unconscious?

When Jack finally lifts his head from his hands, his eyes are red. He was crying!

“Jack?” Mac asks again in a stronger voice. He’s starting to freak out a little. “What…? Whe-ere…?”

Jack scoots closer and reaches out to squeeze Mac’s fingers again. Mac wonders about that for a second because it seems as if Jack’s afraid to touch him anywhere else!

“The doctors weren’t sure you would ever wake up,” Jack explains in a soft voice, filled with overwhelming emotions: dread, relief… joy. “They said you cracked that noggin of yours real bad. But I told them you would be just fine. If they thought one big boom would take Angus MacGyver out, then they didn’t know you at all. And I was right.”

One big--? Mac’s eyes widen. “There was an... explosion!” he blurts out quickly and suddenly, he’s seized with a coughing fit. That makes his whole body hurt a lot more!

“Hey!” Jack chides him. “Would you stop that!”

Then he reaches out for a glass of water and lets Mac take a sip through a straw. Just a small one. The cool water feels like a balm to Mac’s throat.

Mac takes a shallow breath - careful of his ribs - while his mind gallops a mile a minute. He was disarming an IED in an old… warehouse? Factory? He doesn’t remember. He only knows the building was huge. And it served as a… as a… it escapes him now. But there was a bomb and he was disarming it while his unit kept watch. And then…

He looks at Jack fearfully. “Did I… did I screw up? Did the bomb--?”

“No. No, no, nothing like that,” Jack assures him quickly. “It wasn’t your fault. You did an exceptional job on that thing, like always, man. It wasn’t the bomb that exploded.”

Mac frowns again. “Then… what? If not the IED, then…?”

“A missile hit the building. It blew up,” Jack explains, his face and voice grim.

A missile? But… Then Mac’s eyes widen again and his breath quickens. His unit!

“The guys?” he asks, his chest seized with dread.

Sighing, Jack lets his head hang. The pressure on Mac’s fingers tightens. Mac tries to squeeze back but it hurts too much. This is going to be bad, isn’t it?

Finally, Jack responds in a whisper, “Everyone who was inside with you is gone. Grover, Eddie, Little Billy… everyone. You only survived because of that funny bomb suit you had on. And even with that” --he shakes his head-- “you had a building dropped on you and you look the part, kid.”

Mac tries to pull air into his lungs but his breath hitches, his throat’s so thick it’s choking him. He blinks hard but tears still leak out of the corners of his eyes. His whole unit. Grover just asked his girlfriend to marry him. And Little Billy became an uncle only a week ago… And now they’re all gone.

Gently, Jack wipes his tears with a paper tissue. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should’ve been there with you. I asked the guys to watch extra good for you while I’m gone. If I hadn’t let the CO nag me into taking a few days off--”

“You would be now dead, too,” Mac croaks out, fiercely glad that Jack wasn’t there when it happened.

Jack drops the wet tissue into a waste bin. “Yeah, well…”

Mac swallows hard. Then again. And again. He wants to let go and cry so badly his chest hurts. And he knows that Jack wouldn’t think any less of him because of it. But… he still has questions.

“Who bombed us? There hadn’t been any missile attacks in the region for weeks now,” Mac says at a loss.

Jack clenches his jaw and the grief in his eyes is replaced with fury. “It was friendly fire, Mac! Would you believe it? It was our own people who shot up that hospital to pieces!”

A hospital! Now Mac remembers. “Friendly fire?” he asks in disbelief. Their side did that? Their missile killed his unit? “Any civilian casualties?” Please, God, no!

A vein starts pulsing in Jack’s jaw. “Several of the patients couldn’t be moved when you ordered an evacuation because of the IED. Some of the staff stayed with them…”

Mac closes his eyes, tears burning behind his eyelids. They were supposed to help people!

For a long while, they both stay quiet, their hearts heavy with pain - and guilt, even though what happened wasn’t their fault.

In the end, Mac takes a shuddery breath and opens his eyes to look at Jack. “How did you find out? About what happened? And how it happened?”

Jack sighs, still holding Mac’s hand in his. “I was about to fly out when I got the call. Don’t worry,” he adds hastily, “I made sure they didn’t call your grandpa. That’s why you gave me your power of attorney, right? To not worry the guy?”

Mac nods gratefully. “Thanks,” he whispers.

Nodding, Jack continues, “I raced back just in time to see them bring you guys in. Christ.” He rubs his eyes as his voice quivers. “So many body bags. When I thought you might actually be in one of them…” He falls silent.

This time, Mac squeezes Jack’s hand hard and to hell with the pain.

After a moment, Jack composes himself. “But then they brought you in, alive but… Jesus, Mac, you looked like minced meat. They rushed you off to the hospital and while I was waiting for news, I heard some guys talking. Apparently, a certain someone fucked up again. They hoped that this time, there would actually be consequences.

“So, I grabbed one of the gossiping grannies and asked him very nicely who the fucker was who shot up that damn hospital! And then I went and had a word with that guy,” Jack finishes fiercely.

Mac’s eyes widen again. “You didn’t--?”

Jack nods resolutely. “You can bet your bruised ass I did. I found him in the officer’s club and beat the living daylights out of him. Threw him out through the  window even, plated glass and all. And that’s how I ended in the brig because, as it turned out, that idiot was Major Sanders’ nephew.”

“Jack…” Mac whispers, now really worried for his friend.

But Jack waves his hand airily. “Don’t worry. I wasn’t actually charged with anything, even though Sanders pulled all the strings he could. See, all the officers in that club had it up there with Sanders’ pet. This wasn’t the first time he fucked up - but so far, never this badly. When the MPs came aknockin’, all the guys suddenly suffered a selective amnesia and couldn’t remember a thing about what happened between me and Sanders’ boy in the club.”

Mac sighs in relief.

“But it was suggested to me very strongly that I pack up and move on,” Jack adds grumpily.

Mac’s heart skips a beat. “What?”

“I got honorably discharged, my man,” Jack explains. “Actually, we both did.”

“What?” Mac asks again, now truly shocked. He was discharged? When? Why?

Jack scoots even closer and reaches out with his free hand to run it over Mac’s head, his… bandaged, shaved head. “Mac,” he says kindly. “You might not feel it right now - they’re giving you some really good stuff here - but you have more broken bones in your body than intact ones. And inside, you’re definitely more shaken than stirred. The doctors at the base couldn’t do anything for you, you were that bad off. They had to fly you to Europe.”

Mac’s staring at him, alarmed.

“We’re in Germany, buddy,” Jack continues softly, “and you’ve been unconscious for almost two weeks. You won’t be even walking on your own any time soon, let alone disarming bombs. You’re lucky to be alive, kid.”

“But… but what am I going to do?” Mac asks anxiously. He thought, he planned on staying in the army. Maybe not directly in the field but as an instructor or something like that. What is he going to do now?

Jack smiles, still stroking Mac’s head to calm him down. “First, you’ll get back on your feet. You’ll need a lot of help with that but you’re lucky ‘cause you have me. And then, then we will figure out what to do next, okay? Let’s take it one day at a time. Neither of us has to decide today or tomorrow, or even next week. We’ll come up with something, together. Don’t worry.”

Mac stares him in the eyes and slowly, his heart stops galloping and his chest relaxes. Jack’s right. They’ll figure it out. They, together. “Alright,” he whispers.

Jack’s smile widens. “Great. Because where you go, I go. And I’m not letting you out of my sight again, buddy. So, you just focus on getting well and let Jack take care of everything else, okay?”

Mac smiles a little. “Okay.”

And then his eyes close and he falls asleep again.

[bountyofbeads]

Excellent piece on the woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, who found, trafficked and befriended young(14 to 17) girls for Jeffrey Epstein.

The Socialite on Epstein’s Arm

By Matthew Schneider | Published July 15, 2019 | The Cut | Posted July 15, 2019 |

She was there at the socialites’ do’s: Cornelia Guest’s holiday bash, Georgette Mosbacher’s party for the writer Michael Gross. At real-estate mogul Aby Rosen’s birthday, at Bergdorf Goodman’s 111th anniversary, at Harvey Weinstein’s cocktail for William and Harry: Behind the Palace Walls. At film screenings and store openings and fashion shows, at Tina Brown’s home and Arianna Huffington’s home and the Time 100 Gala and the Alzheimer’s Association’s Rita Hayworth Gala. For years — though not lately — Ghislaine Maxwell was a constant on the New York social scene in its most Upper East iteration. She was a friend of everyone, if an intimate of few.

“I know her just socially,” growled the furrier Dennis Basso, who swathes the wealthy in mink. “Alone. She’s been to my fashion shows. But some hundreds of people come.”

Alone — that’s the party line now. Because Maxwell’s closest associate, her intimate, her maybe-employer and now the albatross keeping company with the jewelry around her neck, is Jeffrey Epstein. The disgraced financier, who has been accused of sexually abusing underage girls, is currently awaiting trial at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan on charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy. Maxwell seemed to know many rich and powerful men — articles mention her dining with Bill Clinton, photos show her partying with Elon Musk and deep in conversation with Stephen Schwarzman — but her most durable connection has been with Epstein. She was there at his gargantuan townhouseon East 71st Street, there on his private plane, there with him and Donald Trump and his then-girlfriend Melania at Mar-a-Lago. She was, as he put it in a 2003 Vanity Fair profile, his “best friend.” Maxwell, 57, has been accused in civil suits of serving as his procuress, luring women and girls into Epstein’s web. Maxwell has denied these allegations and has never been criminally charged. Her attorneys did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In court documents, Epstein’s accusers allege that Maxwell acted as a recruiter, an instructor, and in some cases a participant in the abuse he practiced. Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who claims that Maxwell recruited her on behalf of Epstein when Giuffre was a 16-year-old spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, where Epstein has a home, said much of her grooming came from Maxwell herself. “The training started immediately,” she said in a video interview with the Miami Herald. “It was everything down to how to give a blowjob, how to be quiet, be subservient, give Jeffrey what he wants. A lot of this training came from Ghislaine herself. Being a woman, it kind of surprises you that a woman could let stuff like that happen. Not only let it happen but to groom you into doing it.”

After Maxwell disputed Giuffre’s earlier statements to the press and called her a liar, Giuffre sued her for defamation. The two settled the case — as did Maxwell and Sarah Ransome, another woman who claimed Maxwell groomed her — and many of the filings from these suits are sealed or redacted. Earlier this month, just before Epstein’s arrest, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered filings from the Roberts case to be unsealed, thanks in part to efforts by the Herald and other news organizations, which Maxwell opposes. The files could be made public in a matter of weeks. “The one person most likely in jeopardy is Maxwell, because the records that are going to be unsealed have so much evidence against her,” David Boies, Giuffre’s attorney, told the Herald. He suggested she might have an interest in cooperating with the authorities — “though she may have missed that opportunity.”

Every pretty girl in New York in those days, Ghislaine would invite to Jeffrey’s.

Those who knew Maxwell only as a friendly face on the social circuit were wholly unaware of this side of her. “I have nothing bad to say about her,” one former acquaintance said. “Nobody knew any of this creepy sex stuff,” said another. “No one I knew had any idea.”

Those who knew her in connection with Epstein saw her as nothing more sinister than a social matchmaker.

“Every pretty girl in New York in those days, Ghislaine would invite to Jeffrey’s,” said Euan Rellie, an investment banker and social fixture who has known Maxwell for years and who, along with his wife, the author and socialite Lucy Sykes, was a fellow guest at a dinner for Prince Andrew at Epstein’s townhouse in the early aughts. Maxwell and Epstein had been attached, but she was “now an employee of his, as I understood it,” he said. “Her job was to jazz up his social life by getting fashionable young women to show up.” He presumed the young women to be in their 20s.

Was Maxwell an employee of Epstein’s? No one seemed entirely sure. Their lives were certainly closely entwined. Tabloid reports on her claim that she managed Epstein’s properties — besides the houses in New York and Palm Beach, Epstein has homes in New Mexico and Paris and his own private island in the Caribbean — from his office on Madison Avenue, which appeared for many years as one of Maxwell’s addresses in public records. Court documents show Epstein’s bills going there, too.

Epstein, for his part, once said she wasn’t on the payroll. Yet she did errands for him: hunted for a yoga teacher in California, according to Vanity Fair, or acted as intermediary when he wanted to give his friend the billionaire Les Wexner a family portrait painted by Nelson Shanks, whose previous commissions included Bill Clinton, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and Pope John Paul II. (Shanks sued Maxwell, Epstein, and the Wexners when Epstein refused to pay for the finished painting; the case settled out of court. Wexner has saidthat he cut ties with Epstein more than ten years ago. Shanks died in 2015.)

Maybe these were simply the favors of a devoted friend. When Maxwell donated to Hillary Clinton’s presidential-primary campaign in 2007 ($2,300, the maximum individual contribution allowed at that time), she listed herself as unemployed; when she gave to Gary King’s congressional bid in New Mexico a few years before that (furnishing an address, in Saint Thomas, associated with Epstein), she was “retired.” (Epstein and several associates also donated to King’s various races, including his runs for governor and his successful campaign for attorney general; King has twice had to return money either from Epstein or from companies related to him. Epstein bought his ranch in New Mexico from the family of King’s father, the state’s former governor. And Epstein, who was required to register as a sex offender as part of a 2008 plea agreement with federal prosecutors, managed not to do so in New Mexico.)

In the social world, questions of profession are secondary anyway. “Half of my friends, I don’t even know what they do,” said one social regular who knew Maxwell casually. “It’s just not done to even ask those things.”

And why would you, when Maxwell was great company, as one longtime power broker called her? An addition to any table, said another. “If there was one word, it was charming,” said Patrick McMullan, the society photographer. Vicky Ward, who wrote the Vanity Fair profile of Epstein (and who has said publicly that her reporting about Epstein’s abuse of two young girls was removed from it), returned to the subject of Epstein and Maxwell in a short, separate article. “Full disclosure: I like her,” she wrote. “Most people in New York do. It’s almost impossible not to.”

She was said to be wickedly funny and unusually knowledgeable, glamorous and, on top of that, British. (“I think New Yorkers are charmed by that high-end English accent,” McMullan said.) She could toss off a quip and a flourish worthy of Waugh, even when the occasion wasn’t. “I was drip-fed Shakespeare at Oxford,” she told a party reporter at the launch of book on Richard III by a Hollywood mega-lawyer in the late ’90s. “Just sniffing fresh ink gets me high.”

What’s more, she was exotic. She’d explored the seas and could pilot a helicopter, or maybe a submarine, one acquaintance thought, a MacGyver of the gala circuit. “The couple times we talked,” Tina Brown recalled, “she was always going on about intrepid voyages she took.”

Maxwell arrived in New York in the early ’90s, on the cusp of her 30th birthday. English-born and poshly educated, she was the favorite daughter of Robert Maxwell, the English media mogul, whose holdings included newspapers, notably the tabloid Daily Mirror in London and the Macmillan publishing house in the U.S. Ghislaine had founded a social club for women in London and worked for another of her father’s papers, and according to the New York  Post, she came as his emissary to American society when he bought the New York Daily News in 1991.

But that same year, he was found dead— by accident (the official inquest’s ruling), suicide, or murder; opinions vary — in the Atlantic, off the Canary Islands. (He was last seen on the deck of his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine.) Soon after, he was discovered to have plundered the pension funds of the Mirror to shore up his floundering empire. Two of his sons, Kevin and Ian, took over the family’s companies after his death; they stood trial for their alleged involvement in his fraud and were acquitted.

Ghislaine had fine taste and excellent connections, and a whiff of disrepute had never seemed to dim her prospects. “She was very popular at Oxford, absolutely famous,” said Rellie, who was at Cambridge a few years after. “England’s no different from anywhere else. You can have a dad everybody thinks is sleazy and rich and that’s sort of a plus, socially. In a way it made her more fascinating, not less.” She was reported to have an income for life from a family trust, but at ￡80,000, it would hardly be enough to sustain a high-flying lifestyle. (Infamously, she came to America on the Concorde.)

The meet-cute of Epstein and Maxwell in New York is unclear, and neither has historically gone into any great detail. Suffice it to say that they were romantically linked and then platonically linked. (Ward wrote that Epstein told people his former paramours move “up, not down,” to friend status.) Among socials, she was known to have been attached to Ted Waitt, the ultra-wealthy co-founder of Gateway Computers; one pointed out wryly that around the time his first marriage dissolved, Waitt was unstylish, with a bald patch, a ponytail, and bad clothes; afterward, he was sleek, shaved, and well dressed. (Waitt did not return an email seeking comment.) Part of the Maxwell appeal was savoir-faire: “She had an upbringing and taste and knew how to run a house and a boat and how to entertain,” an acquaintance said. (More than one remembered her entertaining on Waitt’s yacht, Plan B.) “You can’t buy that. You can’t buy access, either.” Maxwell had both.

Her passion was the oceans. For a woman seen everywhere about town, she is curiously silent in the press, except where conservation is concerned. In 2008, she hosted a cocktail party for the board of the nonprofit Oceana at her townhouse on East 65th Street. (Hers? “I’m not sure whose townhouse it was, but she entertained in it,” McMullan said.) And by 2012, she had launched the TerraMar Project, a conservation nonprofit of her own, of which, according to tax filings, she was president but from which she drew no salary. She gave a Ted Talk about its work and talked it up at the U.N. and in the press, which credited TerraMar as her “brainchild.” But her association, after years of bad press with Epstein, seems to have become a liability. While it remained active on social media of late, Maxwell’s name had been curiously absent from its website. On Friday, a tweet from TerraMar’s verified account announced it will cease all operations, and its website and Instagram account were taken down.

From the New York social world, too, she has vanished. “I have not seen her in a zillion years,” one acquaintance said. The trail of party photos dries up in 2016. Her 65th Street townhouse was sold, for just over $15 million, that year. (The seller was given as 116 East 65th Street, LLC, which once claimed offices at that same old Epstein Madison Avenue address.) Where is she now? One social-watcher guessed the islands; others think Europe. The way may have already been paved. In 2012, she incorporated Ellmax Enterprise Limited, with herself as secretary and director — the only director listed. In its filings with Companies House, the British registrar, she is described as a resident of the U.K., with a correspondence address in Salisbury, not far from Stonehenge. (The address given for the company is in London. It is a non-trading company, listed as dormant, and its net assets are ￡1.)

She was not, after all, bound to a particular city or country, and, whether driven by design or dubious circumstance, she was used to jetting freely and fabulously around the globe. “There was an independence about her,” said someone who knew her. “She kind of had to make her way in the world.”

Rellie, with the benefit of hindsight, saw a darker version. “Ghislaine was funny and didn’t take herself too seriously,” he said. “But she seemed like a woman who didn’t have any real job, didn’t have any real boyfriend, had lost her dad. A woman adrift who was clinging on to whatever she could find.”

[quiltedopenlettertounclesam-blog]

Yes, Uncle Sam, love does exist.

One evening last December, my husband and a friend quizzed each other on U.S. citizenship questions. I sat in the living room with them, listening as I worked on my husband’s Christmas quilt. They were studying for the final step of the U.S. citizenship application process, where 10 questions out of a pool of 100 are administered orally by an immigration official.

Questions range from as easy as #28 (“What is the name of the President of the United States now?”) to as difficult as navigating the subtleties between the rights and responsibilities of citizens versus residents as bestowed by the Constitution (#49 “What is one responsibility that is only for United States citizens?” and #51 “What are two rights of everyone living in the United States?”).

Over a decade ago, I passed my high school A.P. U.S. History exam. Immediately thereafter I replaced most of the memorized facts with post-high-school-worries and summertime shenanigans. Bearing witness to the study session unfolding in my living room was an excellent refresher course in U.S. history and, much like my husband, I began internalizing the 100 items the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) deem most important for new citizens to know. We hold our new citizens to high standards.

Occasionally, self-quizzes pop into my online periphery, touting citizenship questions and daring me, “Could you pass?” I’ve seen cringe-worthy videos of random victims fumbling through incorrect answers to the same questions naturalized citizens are required to answer correctly.  Most of the questions I knew vaguely, but the USCIS only accepts a highly specific set of answers.

Off the top of your head, and without help from Alexa or Google:

- Do you know the answer to Question #70? (“Who was President during World War I”)

- How about Question #23? (“Name your U.S. Representative”)

- Can you differentiate between a responsibility granted by the Constitution for U.S. Citizens (Question #49, mentioned previously) and a right of everyone living in the United States, citizen or not (Question #51, see above)?

- Couldn’t we ALL benefit from a cozy living room refresher course?

Let’s back up: My husband and I have spent the last half-decade wading through the U.S. immigration system together, petitioning for visas, requesting permissions, demonstrating evidence, and spending large chunks of our savings on the aforementioned. What began with a petition for an interview at a U.S. embassy in South America turned into a whirlwind visa approval with strict time limits on his entry to the U.S. and just 90 days to legally marry on U.S. soil, morphing into formal requests for permissions to work and travel, then a temporary conditional residency, resulting in our filing for permanent residency and, most recently, applying to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Phew.

I recognize that my socio-economic and race privileges, paired with good will and support from family and friends, made any of the above possible. This has been an exhausting and humbling and privacy-invading process for us, and I’m disturbed to think how exponentially more difficult it would have been under different circumstances: if I were not white; if my family could not have helped us prove financial solvency; if ours wasn’t a heterosexual relationship.

Almost every step of our immigration process mandated we show evidence of our continued genuine relationship, and we not only sent the required formal documents (marriage certificates, joint leases, bank accounts, and tax returns), but we also attempted to show the humanity of our relationship, that which black-&-white documents simply cannot convey, in hopes that humans on the receiving end of our application would see us as real people.

We included the receipt for our wedding rings, bought as soon as we learned we were granted an embassy interview and marking the exact moment we allowed ourselves to believe our dream might become reality; we included ticket stubs from flights taken together throughout his native country and the ominous one-way ticket from his country to mine; we included photos of our impromptu marriage ceremony in a U.S. county government office, when our 9-year-old niece boldly stepped into the role of Maid of Honor with a beautiful reading – in two languages, no less! – as follows:  

Today I am marrying my best friend, The one I laugh with, The one I live for, The one I dream with, And the one I love.

(These very words are now stitched into my husband’s Christmas quilt)

We were stuck for almost 18 months at the “permanent residency” step of our immigration process due to unprecedented backlogs in the USCIS system. It was during this time the defining phrase “a nation of immigrants” conspicuously disappeared from the USCIS mission statement.

A nation of immigrants: I am as proud of my husband’s South American heritage as I am of my own immigrant ancestry. I am just two generations removed from the brave Jampolsky family that anglicized their Eastern-European surname to the American-sounding “Jay.” Question #67 of the civics exam states: “The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.” One of the accepted answers is John Jay, a founding father of the USA.

While my family shares John Jay’s name today, our “Jay” comes from immigrant tailors taking a purposeful measure to avoid implicit bias when 20th-century New Yorkers purchased their garments. My family’s original surname is etched on the wall at Ellis Island, meaning the Statue of Liberty was our beacon of hope, as it was for so many others. For more on Lady Liberty, see citizenship Question #95.

A few weeks before citizenship questions ricocheted around our living room, we received an “RFE” from the USCIS regarding my husband’s residency petition: the dreaded Request For Evidence. After sending bank letters, joint health insurance policies, utility bills, photos from our first years of marriage, and affidavits from family members, we now had a hard deadline to provide even more proof of our relationship, and failure to comply risked deportation. Was there still room to doubt the existence of our love?

We pulled out all the stops. We slogged through every single document containing our two names, and we spent over $100 at the copy store making a veritable tower of papers. We are products of our tech- and texting-savvy generation, and it dawned on us we had no idea how to send via snail-mail a stack of documents too thick for paperclips, staples, or envelopes.

We ultimately tied the giant bundle together with ribbon leftover from tethering our garden vines, and after placing everything in an over-sized box we filled the extra space with plastic bags blown up like balloons. Our previous attempts to prove our humanity with photos and anecdotes obviously hadn’t worked, as shown by this Request For Evidence, but perhaps this MacGyvered packing method would do the trick?

After a few anxious weeks, my husband’s permanent residency was approved. In rapid turnaround, he soon applied for U.S. citizenship – I’ll save the conversation surrounding one’s willingness to pledge loyalty to the U.S. in today’s xenophobic environment for another time. We are back to playing the waiting game, but at least this time we have a solid method of distraction by way of studying for the citizenship exam.

Let’s shift gears to this Christmas quilt: When you’ve just spent upwards of a thousand dollars on applications, copy fees, and postage (and when a thousand dollars is still a considerable sum of money), what helps pass the time while your husband works evenings, without increasing the credit card balance? A quilt. What will be unequivocally better than any gift found on Amazon? A quilt. What can I give to the person who opened my eyes to the beauty of a new culture, who walks with me through international bureaucracy barriers, and who continues to be the best thing to happen to me each day? This quilt.

I grew up accompanying my mother to Quilt Guild meetings and falling asleep under a patchwork made by her and her friends. I marveled at the Gee’s Bend quilts and devoured children’s books about the Underground Railroad, with illustrations depicting specific quilt blocks that signaled safe houses. I showed up at college with an extra-long quilt for my dorm room’s Twin XL mattress, and I myself have made T-shirt quilts for friends when beloved tees from high school athletic teams and drama clubs became too threadbare to continue wearing and washing.

Quilt symbolism fascinates me, so I carefully chose representative blocks for this foray into heirloom quilt making: the “Log Cabin” block, with its square hearth in the middle wrapped in outward radiating strips, for the homes we’ve made on two continents; my mother’s favorite “Flying Geese” flock around the centerpiece, for although geese migrate long distances, they always find their way home; “Storm at Sea” for my husband’s love of the ocean and recognition that life’s storms are better weathered together.

Quilting purists will notice my Storm at Sea block contains one too many diamond-and-triangle rows, the result of a novice attempt to make things fit after flipping the square centerpiece on its corner – let’s chalk that up to the Amish quilting tradition of purposefully including an imperfection in each piece, or in my case, a fair few imperfections.

I was, perhaps, a little overzealous trying to hand-quilt the entire piece before Christmas, which is why basting stitches are still visible (though I might argue the basting stitches reflect our life together as a work in progress). Leaves and curling tendrils will eventually replace the basting stitches, embodying the fruit vines my husband so carefully tends, and ruefully reminding us of the string used to bundle our Request for Evidence papers.

Quilts need stitches every few inches to anchor their layers, and I needed something to anchor me in the tumultuous close of 2018. Hand quilting is meditative: making uniform, even stitches means rocking the needle up and down, over and over again. Placing the needle perpendicular to the fabric, find the tip of the needle from underneath and use the thimble you filched from your mother’s sewing room decades ago to push the needle through, then begin the process anew. I recommend playing an audio book and losing yourself in someone else’s world and in a rhythm of stitches.

I was like the millennial Betsy Ross stitching into the night, trying to finish before the holiday, and my husband the modern-day immigrant Francis Scott Key, finding his own quilted Star-Spangled Banner* on Christmas morning after having survived the bombardment of plagues that the year 2018 hurled at our family.

*For anyone keeping score, “the Star-Spangled Banner” is the correct response to Question #98: “What is the name of the National Anthem?”

The living room study session paused: “What the *bleep* does ‘Spangled’ mean?”

Follow-up observation: “Spangled” is not an English vocabulary word I’d had occasion to translate into Spanish, nor is it easy to do so. Despite not having a direct translation, I got the point across with “estrellada,” and “cubierto de estrellas.”

At one point, I showed process shots of the quilt to a friend (also an immigrant and someone who has selflessly adopted me and my husband on numerous holidays). While swiping through photos she mused, “Making quilts is something typically American, isn’t it?”

A little context: I spent the better part of six years living in South America, struggling all the while to put my finger on the U.S. equivalent of the traditional dishes, the typical costumes and dances, and the ingrained cultural customs I witnessed. Everyone in my new country inherently knew they must greet each person individually when entering a room, and everyone expected that pork belly and freeze-dried potatoes be served at weddings (usually well after midnight), just like everyone assumed fast-food hamburgers were wholly representative of the U.S.  Sigh.

Thanks to my immigrant friend’s nonchalant observation, I discovered that quilting was the very evidence I sought: a cultural link, a generational continuum, a method of telling stories and connecting families. Quilting is an American tradition. Quilting is MY American tradition.

Returning to the pre-Christmas study session, quilt on my lap, Question #55: “What are two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy?” Easy answers include voting and running for office. Farther down the list of USCIS-approved ways we can participate in our democracy is “write to a newspaper.” At the raised eyebrows I saw appear over my quilt, I explained Letters to the Editor and Op-Eds.

“So … Anyone can write?”  “Yes.”

“… And does anyone actually write?” “Well …”

Apparently, not all answers to the USCIS questions have contemporary resonance (seeing as writing to a newspaper certainly pre-dates 160-character limits), and it seems not all South American countries encourage writing to newspapers, thus the question I just fielded. Once I’d gotten past the shock that writing to a newspaper is now a somewhat archaic concept, I used the classic example of “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” to show that anyone can indeed write to a newspaper. It was Christmastime, after all.

To jog your memory, in 1897 a young girl named Virginia wrote to the New York Sun doubting if Santa Claus was real, and the editor’s response is a timeless explanation that “often the most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.”  You’ll notice there was no implication that at age seven, “It’s marginal, right?”

When all is said and done, it’s important to note my husband and I are grateful. Although I aim to remind the USCIS that this will always be a nation of immigrants, its systems have allowed me and my husband to live, be free, and pursue our happiness on U.S. soil.

So, in the Christmas spirit (albeit belatedly), with help from Virginia and the editor at the New York Sun, and with renewed inspiration to contribute to my democracy as Question #55 of the citizenship exam suggests, I conclude with this:

 Yes, Uncle Sam, love does exist.

Our relationship exists “as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist,” and this gives our “life its highest beauty and joy.”

And yes, Uncle Sam, we are a nation of immigrants.

As neither of these two statements has been clear from the stacks upon stacks of papers and documents and signatures and petitions and forms and photos we dutifully provided, I invite you to come lay under my husband’s Christmas quilt, painstakingly stitched with generations-old traditions and infused with an entire nation’s dreams. For without these dreams, “there would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.”

I invite you to wrap yourself, as our future children will, in the warmth of this labor of love, and to dream with us our American dream.

[allofbeercom]

7 WTF Details About Historical Events Everyone Forgets

Tragic events are typically followed by periods of shock, grief, anger, and the occasional flash of inexplicable horniness. So it’s only natural that when we’re dealing with lives lost and places destroyed, we tend to only focus on these important matters and damn everything else to hell. But sometimes, that means we ignore all of the chaotic insanity that typically accompanies history, making textbooks just that little bit blander. So let’s put on our Indiana Jones hats and dive into the past, and remind ourselves of some truly crazypants parts of history that usually get left out of the conversation. For example …

7

The Manual For The German Tiger Tank Contained Poetry And Porn

War is chaos. With bullets flying and bombs whizzing everywhere, preparation and alertness are the keys to survival. But while combat is exciting, combat training can be mind-numbingly boring. So how do you get a group of disinterested, overly hormonal boys to sit up, pay attention, and remember stuff? By turning that stuff into smut, of course.

During World War II, German commanders needed to quickly familiarize new recruits with the inner workings of the complicated Tiger Tank. Unfortunately, the Fuhrer’s finest were less than thrilled with spending long days memorizing the dry technical manuals. Finally, the Nazis came up with an elegant solution to motivate the laser-like focus necessary to master the tank: They included a naked lady on every other page, and made sure the important parts rhymed.

German Federal ArchivesTranslation: “Danger lurks in the sump! Read your manual well, otherwise your Tiger goes to hell!”

After the war, it was discovered that the manual for the German Panzerkampfwagen was full of nudes, jokes, and dirty limericks. This masterpiece was the brainchild of Josef von Glatter-Goetz, who had novel ideas on how to warm up his cadets’ learning muscles (among others). And most of the warming up was done by Elvira, a buxom blonde who appeared every few pages to keep the boys thumbing — or whatever else helped them get there faster.

German Federal Archives“Klaus, why do you keep taking the manual to the bathroom?”

She would pop up (often with her clothes popped off) whenever the cadets were supposed to pay extra attention to the lesson, like the importance of making accurate measurements when firing or keeping the engines clean, even if it led to making the cockpits sticky.

German Federal Archives“I only read it for the articles.”

The program was a demonstrable success, and both von Glatter-Goetz’s excellent understanding of his target audience and Elvira’s ass helped untold numbers of troops masturbate their way to mastering the Tiger Tank.

6

Hurricane Katrina Ejected Over A Thousand Coffins From Graves

According to FEMA, Hurricane Katrina was “the single most catastrophic natural disaster in U.S. history.” It caused over $41.1 billion in damage and killed more than 1,800 people. But not content with causing misery for the living, Katrina decided to go after the deceased as well, digging them up so she could pee her hate water on their faces.

Petty Officer Kyle Niemi/US Navy“You whine when it doesn’t rain, you whine when it rains too much, what do you want from me??”

Read Next

5 Crazy Scenarios You Didn't Know The Constitution Allows

During the disaster, over 1,000 coffins — and, more gruesomely, those coffin’s residents — were ejected from their places of rest. The transition wasn’t gentle, either. One New Orleans native found his grandmother’s body, still in her pink burial dress, splayed out in the open like she was trying to get a tan. Skeletal remains were sprawled among cemetery statues, and more than one coffin was found up a tree. According to the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (Dmort), it’s unlikely that all the uprooted bodies will ever be located and returned. “Many are in extremely remote and inaccessible areas,” a spokesman said. “They have been carried way downrange into muck and swamp and forest.”

APWe don’t want to sound too alarmist, but this is exactly how a zombie apocalypse would start.

Despite the difficulties, officials are still doing their best to return the drifting dead to their correct burial sites — or as much of them as they can scoop up, at least. Unfortunately, since we have this silly idea that the dead aren’t supposed to move about, corpses and coffins tend to not have any labels of traceable information. Finding a corpse that’s buried with something unique is like finding a corner piece of an especially macabre puzzle. So far, officials have been able to identify bodies buried with their favorite golf club, some unusual rosary beads, and a six-pack of beer. It won’t be long before the government starts insisting we all get buried with a valid driver’s license and two utility bills.

In the meantime, less stringent coffins laws have been introduced in order for us to better retrieve these lost soulless husks. After Katrina, Louisiana passed a law requiring labels for coffins. However, they weren’t clear enough in their wording, so now Louisiana morticians are labeling their coffins with everything from smartphone tracking apps to the less-than-ideal paper tags. Inhabitants of one particularly low-lying cemetery now have beacons attached to their coffins, but the battery life for the floater-be-found is still to be determined.

William Widmer/The New York Times“Warmer … warmer … colder …”

5

King George V Was Euthanized So His Death Could Make The Right Headlines

For all the perks associated with being born into a royal family (unlimited wealth, the right to eat peasants, fancy hats), living the life of royalty also means you’re always in the public spotlight. Never can you falter from keeping up appearances, making sure your every action benefits the crown as best as possible. That includes your death, because god forbid a royal should die at an inconvenient time of day like some low-class pleb.

Library of CongressGod Save the Facial Hair

When Britain’s King George V lay on his deathbed in 1936, doctors were concerned about more than his failing health. Convinced that the king was not long for this world, medical staff began suspecting he might not kick the gilded bucket at the most dignified of times. Deciding that the matter couldn’t be left in the clumsy hands of God or fate, steps were taken to “hasten” the king’s death, and he was euthanized in his sleep shortly before midnight on January 20th.

Why the rush? According to the notes of his physician, Lord Dawson, the king was given lethal doses of morphine and cocaine so that word of his death would appear ”in the morning papers rather than the less appropriate evening journals.” Dawson administered the injections to King George himself at around 11 p.m., right after he’d had his wife in London ”advise The Times to hold back publication.” That’s right, the king’s life had a literal deadline.

Bradford Timeline“Here is the royal speedball, your grace.”

Whether the injections counted as mercy or murder is still a topic of debate. Though the king had been in generally poor health for some time, the doctor had only been summoned to care for him four days prior to his death. On the morning of his last day, the king held a meeting with his privy counselors, which is pretty lucid for someone who’s about to get injected with mercy coke. Documents give “no indication that the King himself had been consulted,” but seeing as his last words were “God damn you” to a nurse administering a sedative, we don’t think he would’ve liked being involuntarily Belushied so that the morning papers would sell a few extra copies.

4

Millions Of Landmines Were Left In The Sahara After WWII, And Now ISIS Is Digging Them Up

Aside from proving how adept people can be at killing each other, World War II also highlighted how much the resulting clean-up sucks. Entire continents had to deal with the debris of their broken nations, the costly effects of which can still be felt. One group that was exempt from their collective spring cleaning were, of course, the Nazis, who were a bit busy getting tribunaled to death. Which is a shame, because they had millions of unexploded landmines buried in the African desert, and every other country had already touched their noses and called “Not it!”

German Federal Archives“I’m sure my actions will have no lasting consequences.”

But that was over 70 years ago. Surely we’ve taken care of those pesky balls of death we left buried in the sand since then, right? While countries like Egypt have tried to reduce the 17 million landmines both Nazi and Allied forces left behind in their desert, the place is still a minefield of … minefields. Thanks to the high temperatures and dry climate, the Sahara is doing an amazing job of preserving these war relics, which means they’re still very capable of taking a limb (or life) if fiddled with too much. But while most people are content with not going near any unstable explosives, there’s one pesky little death cult that doesn’t mind going out in a blaze of glory, intentional or otherwise.

In the past few years, ISIS has realized that one man’s minefield is another man’s massive cache of explosives, so they’re digging up and reusing landmines and their components. There have been several reports of ISIS terrorist attacks in which they used old munitions “MacGyvered” into IEDs. At least when it comes to age, ISIS seems to be quite open-minded.

NATOAs well as being adrenaline junkies.

And landmines aren’t the only type of antique firepower people in the region are packing these days. In 2015, video footage showed Syrian rebels firing a 1935 German howitzer. Meanwhile, Iraqi weapons inspectors documented the capture of a 1942 Lee-Enfield rifle, and the Armament Research Services report that British Webley revolvers, Italian cavalry carbines, Mausers, and Bren guns have appeared for sale in Libya. As long as it goes “boom” and someone dies, they’re only too happy to put it to terrible use.

via Shaam News NetworkNazis: ruining your day since 1933.

3

The Feud Between The Hatfields And The McCoys Was Probably Caused By A Medical Condition

History has seen its share of epic feuds, but few are as legendary as the pissing contest that took place between the Hatfields of West Virginia and the Kentucky McCoys in the late 1800s. Why were they so special? Longevity. They kept their fiery hatred going for a solid decade. But recent medical tests have revealed that, at least on the McCoy side, that might have been because hatred literally runs in their blood.

via Encyclopaedia BritannicaMoments later, the man on the right was riddled with bullets.

Why did these two ornery tribes want to shed each others’ blood so badly? Some say the beef started over a stolen hog, while others think it was residual hostility from the families having fought on opposite sides during the Civil War. Over a hundred years later, we still have no idea what spark started the fire, but we have an idea of where they got the gasoline. In 2007, a young girl called Winnter [sic] Reynolds was struggling at school. She had anger issues, and would often fly into fits of rage. While her teachers thought it was nothing but a bad case of ADHD, a series of medical tests revealed it was worse than that. She had bad blood. McCoy blood, to be specific.

Winnter is the latest offspring of the McCoy bloodline, from whom she had inherited her temper. She suffers from a rare genetic condition called von Hippel-Lindau disease. The illness causes the formation of adrenal tumors which cause, among other things, “hair-trigger rage and violent outbursts.” After Winnter’s diagnosis, it was revealed that several other McCoy descendants had also been diagnosed with the same condition. And while having tumors keeping you pissed off 24/7 still doesn’t shed any light on the start of the feud, it does go a long way toward explaining their whole “I’m going to kill you over some bacon” reputation.

Earl Neikirk/AP“Cleetus, go fetch the tumor chart, we gotta black another circle.”

2

We Are Still Paying A Civil War Pension

War is never not tragic, but civil wars pile all the hurt on one people. With an estimated 620,000 lives lost during the American Civil War, the cost of that little disagreement hurt the nation badly. The price paid was terrible — not only in human lives, but also in the long-term financial state of the country. How long-term? They’re still adding up, apparently.

US ArmyYeah, were sure their main concern was how much this was gonna cost.

While the indirect ramifications are impossible to calculate, there is still one straightforward bill the U.S. Civil War is serving America: $73.13, to be exact, paid monthly to one woman in North Carolina. You see, because soldiers have a tragic tendency of not always being able to collect what Uncle Sam owes them, the government compensates by also paying out pensions to widows and children of war veterans. And while the Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, believe it or not, there’s still one soldier’s child alive and kicking. That would be Irene Triplett, 86 years young, and she’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

Irene’s father, Mose Triplett, was born in 1846, and managed to fight on both sides of the Civil War — though that sadly didn’t mean he’d get to draw two pensions. He later married a woman 50 years his junior, who we’re assuming must’ve been into antique cannons. When Irene was born, Mose was 83 years old and ready to mosey on up to Heaven.

via Stoneman Gazette“Ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex …”

But Irene’s isn’t the only 19th-century war pension that still being paid out. We’re also still supporting 88 people for their families’ contributions to the Spanish-American War, which started and ended in 1898. And while we’re certainly not begrudging anyone their dues, if we keep up our current military policies, half of our country’s 2080 budget will be going to Iraq vets’ second families.

1

The Search For Wreckage Of The Challenger Turned Up A Lot Of Junk — And A Duffel Bag Of Cocaine

Being an air crash site investigator must be a harrowing gig. Their entire job revolves around cataloging the most horrific of disaster scenes, where the Earth has gotten a dose of corpse buckshot to the face. But finding 73 separate pieces of the same human being isn’t the only weird thing they might find at a crash site. Sometimes they also find a shit ton of coke.

CNNGodspeed, friends.

Like 9/11, the Challenger disaster is one of those awful tragedies seared into memories of all who witnessed it. Seven people lost their lives simply because some faulty O-rings and unusually cold weather caused their vessel to blow up and plow into the ocean. After the crash, NASA immediately began searching the Atlantic for any and all portions of the shuttle that survived the crash, as well as any remains of the crew that could be retrieved and given a proper burial. But with such a spread out investigation site in constantly shifting water, the crew was bound to encounter some weird stuff.

For nine weeks, experts spent 15-hour days combing sonar data of a 420-mile area. But when their submarines or robots finally found the wreckage, they also stumbled upon what looked like Poseidon’s garage sale. During NASA’s investigation, they encountered a whole warehouse full of lagan (that’s maritime for “junk”). Some of the more ordinary items included batteries and paint cans, a refrigerator, a filing cabinet, a kitchen sink, and a toilet. More interesting finds were eight shipwrecks, a Pershing missile, and half of a torpedo.

But the best non-shuttle find by far was a duffel bag containing 25 kilograms of cocaine. When NASA handed it over to the police (what a bunch of goody-two-shoes), they revealed the estimated street value of the marching powder at $13 million, roughly the cost of the entire salvage mission. So if you’re struggling to find rent money or hoping to remodel your house, maybe spend more time hanging out at the beach.

Kelly Stone remembers watching the Challenger explode, and speaks only as much German as Google Translate does. She sometimes Tweets about cats and Star Trek.

History is insane — find out more from the Cracked De-Textbook!

Support Cracked’s journalism with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more, check out 6 Dark Details History Usually Leaves Out (For Good Reason) and 6 Disasters With Details So Awful, History Left Them Out.

It would be a shame if you didn’t follow us on Facebook.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/7-wtf-details-about-historical-events-everyone-forgets/

[samanthasroberts]

7 WTF Details About Historical Events Everyone Forgets

Tragic events are typically followed by periods of shock, grief, anger, and the occasional flash of inexplicable horniness. So it’s only natural that when we’re dealing with lives lost and places destroyed, we tend to only focus on these important matters and damn everything else to hell. But sometimes, that means we ignore all of the chaotic insanity that typically accompanies history, making textbooks just that little bit blander. So let’s put on our Indiana Jones hats and dive into the past, and remind ourselves of some truly crazypants parts of history that usually get left out of the conversation. For example …

7

The Manual For The German Tiger Tank Contained Poetry And Porn

War is chaos. With bullets flying and bombs whizzing everywhere, preparation and alertness are the keys to survival. But while combat is exciting, combat training can be mind-numbingly boring. So how do you get a group of disinterested, overly hormonal boys to sit up, pay attention, and remember stuff? By turning that stuff into smut, of course.

During World War II, German commanders needed to quickly familiarize new recruits with the inner workings of the complicated Tiger Tank. Unfortunately, the Fuhrer’s finest were less than thrilled with spending long days memorizing the dry technical manuals. Finally, the Nazis came up with an elegant solution to motivate the laser-like focus necessary to master the tank: They included a naked lady on every other page, and made sure the important parts rhymed.

German Federal ArchivesTranslation: “Danger lurks in the sump! Read your manual well, otherwise your Tiger goes to hell!”

After the war, it was discovered that the manual for the German Panzerkampfwagen was full of nudes, jokes, and dirty limericks. This masterpiece was the brainchild of Josef von Glatter-Goetz, who had novel ideas on how to warm up his cadets’ learning muscles (among others). And most of the warming up was done by Elvira, a buxom blonde who appeared every few pages to keep the boys thumbing — or whatever else helped them get there faster.

German Federal Archives“Klaus, why do you keep taking the manual to the bathroom?”

She would pop up (often with her clothes popped off) whenever the cadets were supposed to pay extra attention to the lesson, like the importance of making accurate measurements when firing or keeping the engines clean, even if it led to making the cockpits sticky.

German Federal Archives“I only read it for the articles.”

The program was a demonstrable success, and both von Glatter-Goetz’s excellent understanding of his target audience and Elvira’s ass helped untold numbers of troops masturbate their way to mastering the Tiger Tank.

6

Hurricane Katrina Ejected Over A Thousand Coffins From Graves

According to FEMA, Hurricane Katrina was “the single most catastrophic natural disaster in U.S. history.” It caused over $41.1 billion in damage and killed more than 1,800 people. But not content with causing misery for the living, Katrina decided to go after the deceased as well, digging them up so she could pee her hate water on their faces.

Petty Officer Kyle Niemi/US Navy“You whine when it doesn’t rain, you whine when it rains too much, what do you want from me??”

Read Next

5 Crazy Scenarios You Didn't Know The Constitution Allows

During the disaster, over 1,000 coffins — and, more gruesomely, those coffin’s residents — were ejected from their places of rest. The transition wasn’t gentle, either. One New Orleans native found his grandmother’s body, still in her pink burial dress, splayed out in the open like she was trying to get a tan. Skeletal remains were sprawled among cemetery statues, and more than one coffin was found up a tree. According to the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (Dmort), it’s unlikely that all the uprooted bodies will ever be located and returned. “Many are in extremely remote and inaccessible areas,” a spokesman said. “They have been carried way downrange into muck and swamp and forest.”

APWe don’t want to sound too alarmist, but this is exactly how a zombie apocalypse would start.

Despite the difficulties, officials are still doing their best to return the drifting dead to their correct burial sites — or as much of them as they can scoop up, at least. Unfortunately, since we have this silly idea that the dead aren’t supposed to move about, corpses and coffins tend to not have any labels of traceable information. Finding a corpse that’s buried with something unique is like finding a corner piece of an especially macabre puzzle. So far, officials have been able to identify bodies buried with their favorite golf club, some unusual rosary beads, and a six-pack of beer. It won’t be long before the government starts insisting we all get buried with a valid driver’s license and two utility bills.

In the meantime, less stringent coffins laws have been introduced in order for us to better retrieve these lost soulless husks. After Katrina, Louisiana passed a law requiring labels for coffins. However, they weren’t clear enough in their wording, so now Louisiana morticians are labeling their coffins with everything from smartphone tracking apps to the less-than-ideal paper tags. Inhabitants of one particularly low-lying cemetery now have beacons attached to their coffins, but the battery life for the floater-be-found is still to be determined.

William Widmer/The New York Times“Warmer … warmer … colder …”

5

King George V Was Euthanized So His Death Could Make The Right Headlines

For all the perks associated with being born into a royal family (unlimited wealth, the right to eat peasants, fancy hats), living the life of royalty also means you’re always in the public spotlight. Never can you falter from keeping up appearances, making sure your every action benefits the crown as best as possible. That includes your death, because god forbid a royal should die at an inconvenient time of day like some low-class pleb.

Library of CongressGod Save the Facial Hair

When Britain’s King George V lay on his deathbed in 1936, doctors were concerned about more than his failing health. Convinced that the king was not long for this world, medical staff began suspecting he might not kick the gilded bucket at the most dignified of times. Deciding that the matter couldn’t be left in the clumsy hands of God or fate, steps were taken to “hasten” the king’s death, and he was euthanized in his sleep shortly before midnight on January 20th.

Why the rush? According to the notes of his physician, Lord Dawson, the king was given lethal doses of morphine and cocaine so that word of his death would appear ”in the morning papers rather than the less appropriate evening journals.” Dawson administered the injections to King George himself at around 11 p.m., right after he’d had his wife in London ”advise The Times to hold back publication.” That’s right, the king’s life had a literal deadline.

Bradford Timeline“Here is the royal speedball, your grace.”

Whether the injections counted as mercy or murder is still a topic of debate. Though the king had been in generally poor health for some time, the doctor had only been summoned to care for him four days prior to his death. On the morning of his last day, the king held a meeting with his privy counselors, which is pretty lucid for someone who’s about to get injected with mercy coke. Documents give “no indication that the King himself had been consulted,” but seeing as his last words were “God damn you” to a nurse administering a sedative, we don’t think he would’ve liked being involuntarily Belushied so that the morning papers would sell a few extra copies.

4

Millions Of Landmines Were Left In The Sahara After WWII, And Now ISIS Is Digging Them Up

Aside from proving how adept people can be at killing each other, World War II also highlighted how much the resulting clean-up sucks. Entire continents had to deal with the debris of their broken nations, the costly effects of which can still be felt. One group that was exempt from their collective spring cleaning were, of course, the Nazis, who were a bit busy getting tribunaled to death. Which is a shame, because they had millions of unexploded landmines buried in the African desert, and every other country had already touched their noses and called “Not it!”

German Federal Archives“I’m sure my actions will have no lasting consequences.”

But that was over 70 years ago. Surely we’ve taken care of those pesky balls of death we left buried in the sand since then, right? While countries like Egypt have tried to reduce the 17 million landmines both Nazi and Allied forces left behind in their desert, the place is still a minefield of … minefields. Thanks to the high temperatures and dry climate, the Sahara is doing an amazing job of preserving these war relics, which means they’re still very capable of taking a limb (or life) if fiddled with too much. But while most people are content with not going near any unstable explosives, there’s one pesky little death cult that doesn’t mind going out in a blaze of glory, intentional or otherwise.

In the past few years, ISIS has realized that one man’s minefield is another man’s massive cache of explosives, so they’re digging up and reusing landmines and their components. There have been several reports of ISIS terrorist attacks in which they used old munitions “MacGyvered” into IEDs. At least when it comes to age, ISIS seems to be quite open-minded.

NATOAs well as being adrenaline junkies.

And landmines aren’t the only type of antique firepower people in the region are packing these days. In 2015, video footage showed Syrian rebels firing a 1935 German howitzer. Meanwhile, Iraqi weapons inspectors documented the capture of a 1942 Lee-Enfield rifle, and the Armament Research Services report that British Webley revolvers, Italian cavalry carbines, Mausers, and Bren guns have appeared for sale in Libya. As long as it goes “boom” and someone dies, they’re only too happy to put it to terrible use.

via Shaam News NetworkNazis: ruining your day since 1933.

3

The Feud Between The Hatfields And The McCoys Was Probably Caused By A Medical Condition

History has seen its share of epic feuds, but few are as legendary as the pissing contest that took place between the Hatfields of West Virginia and the Kentucky McCoys in the late 1800s. Why were they so special? Longevity. They kept their fiery hatred going for a solid decade. But recent medical tests have revealed that, at least on the McCoy side, that might have been because hatred literally runs in their blood.

via Encyclopaedia BritannicaMoments later, the man on the right was riddled with bullets.

Why did these two ornery tribes want to shed each others’ blood so badly? Some say the beef started over a stolen hog, while others think it was residual hostility from the families having fought on opposite sides during the Civil War. Over a hundred years later, we still have no idea what spark started the fire, but we have an idea of where they got the gasoline. In 2007, a young girl called Winnter [sic] Reynolds was struggling at school. She had anger issues, and would often fly into fits of rage. While her teachers thought it was nothing but a bad case of ADHD, a series of medical tests revealed it was worse than that. She had bad blood. McCoy blood, to be specific.

Winnter is the latest offspring of the McCoy bloodline, from whom she had inherited her temper. She suffers from a rare genetic condition called von Hippel-Lindau disease. The illness causes the formation of adrenal tumors which cause, among other things, “hair-trigger rage and violent outbursts.” After Winnter’s diagnosis, it was revealed that several other McCoy descendants had also been diagnosed with the same condition. And while having tumors keeping you pissed off 24/7 still doesn’t shed any light on the start of the feud, it does go a long way toward explaining their whole “I’m going to kill you over some bacon” reputation.

Earl Neikirk/AP“Cleetus, go fetch the tumor chart, we gotta black another circle.”

2

We Are Still Paying A Civil War Pension

War is never not tragic, but civil wars pile all the hurt on one people. With an estimated 620,000 lives lost during the American Civil War, the cost of that little disagreement hurt the nation badly. The price paid was terrible — not only in human lives, but also in the long-term financial state of the country. How long-term? They’re still adding up, apparently.

US ArmyYeah, were sure their main concern was how much this was gonna cost.

While the indirect ramifications are impossible to calculate, there is still one straightforward bill the U.S. Civil War is serving America: $73.13, to be exact, paid monthly to one woman in North Carolina. You see, because soldiers have a tragic tendency of not always being able to collect what Uncle Sam owes them, the government compensates by also paying out pensions to widows and children of war veterans. And while the Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, believe it or not, there’s still one soldier’s child alive and kicking. That would be Irene Triplett, 86 years young, and she’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

Irene’s father, Mose Triplett, was born in 1846, and managed to fight on both sides of the Civil War — though that sadly didn’t mean he’d get to draw two pensions. He later married a woman 50 years his junior, who we’re assuming must’ve been into antique cannons. When Irene was born, Mose was 83 years old and ready to mosey on up to Heaven.

via Stoneman Gazette“Ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex …”

But Irene’s isn’t the only 19th-century war pension that still being paid out. We’re also still supporting 88 people for their families’ contributions to the Spanish-American War, which started and ended in 1898. And while we’re certainly not begrudging anyone their dues, if we keep up our current military policies, half of our country’s 2080 budget will be going to Iraq vets’ second families.

1

The Search For Wreckage Of The Challenger Turned Up A Lot Of Junk — And A Duffel Bag Of Cocaine

Being an air crash site investigator must be a harrowing gig. Their entire job revolves around cataloging the most horrific of disaster scenes, where the Earth has gotten a dose of corpse buckshot to the face. But finding 73 separate pieces of the same human being isn’t the only weird thing they might find at a crash site. Sometimes they also find a shit ton of coke.

CNNGodspeed, friends.

Like 9/11, the Challenger disaster is one of those awful tragedies seared into memories of all who witnessed it. Seven people lost their lives simply because some faulty O-rings and unusually cold weather caused their vessel to blow up and plow into the ocean. After the crash, NASA immediately began searching the Atlantic for any and all portions of the shuttle that survived the crash, as well as any remains of the crew that could be retrieved and given a proper burial. But with such a spread out investigation site in constantly shifting water, the crew was bound to encounter some weird stuff.

For nine weeks, experts spent 15-hour days combing sonar data of a 420-mile area. But when their submarines or robots finally found the wreckage, they also stumbled upon what looked like Poseidon’s garage sale. During NASA’s investigation, they encountered a whole warehouse full of lagan (that’s maritime for “junk”). Some of the more ordinary items included batteries and paint cans, a refrigerator, a filing cabinet, a kitchen sink, and a toilet. More interesting finds were eight shipwrecks, a Pershing missile, and half of a torpedo.

But the best non-shuttle find by far was a duffel bag containing 25 kilograms of cocaine. When NASA handed it over to the police (what a bunch of goody-two-shoes), they revealed the estimated street value of the marching powder at $13 million, roughly the cost of the entire salvage mission. So if you’re struggling to find rent money or hoping to remodel your house, maybe spend more time hanging out at the beach.

Kelly Stone remembers watching the Challenger explode, and speaks only as much German as Google Translate does. She sometimes Tweets about cats and Star Trek.

History is insane — find out more from the Cracked De-Textbook!

Support Cracked’s journalism with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more, check out 6 Dark Details History Usually Leaves Out (For Good Reason) and 6 Disasters With Details So Awful, History Left Them Out.

It would be a shame if you didn’t follow us on Facebook.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/7-wtf-details-about-historical-events-everyone-forgets/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/7-wtf-details-about-historical-events-everyone-forgets/

[asflowersfade]

Ficlet: For Zoe Kimura

A MacGyver what-if story. What if Mac was on the R. V. Bancroft, too? Or, 33 survivors become 32 in the end. Jack’s POV. Retelling of episode 210.

Jack can feel the military plane shake and rattle around him. He’s sitting on the hard, unupholstered bench, dressed in his warmest clothes because the cargo hold’s not exactly toasty. And there’re boxes of provisions everywhere, held in place by strong netting. But he doesn’t pay attention to any of that. After years and years in the army, he’s used to traveling rough and this was the best that Matty could find him at such short notice.

Besides, his mind’s elsewhere. As he sits there with his elbows propped up on his knees, staring down at his gloved hands, all he can think of is Mac. Mac who took a few days off after his latest brush with death to nerd out, to just be a geek for a week, to travel to some arctic research station dealing with-with penguins or icicles or who-knows-what. And instead…

Jack rubs his face hard. He should’ve gone with him. He knows that bad shit happens when Mac travels anywhere alone. Bad shit happens when they travel together, too, but at least then he can keep an eye on the kid and make sure he gets home in one piece, sometimes a little bruised, sometimes a little charred around the edges, sure, but alive. And mentally sound.

But this time, this time Jack had other priorities he thought couldn’t wait, namely Elwood. Elwood who’s now sitting locked up in one of Phoenix Foundation’s cell in protective custody while Jack’s flying north to be where he should’ve been from the start: by Mac’s side.

Jesus. How could have Jack known? It was a stupid geeky trip on a stupid geeky college research ship with a group of 31 college geeks and their teacher. It should’ve been safe. As safe as the Arctic Sea can be, that is, but since Jack has yet to hear of any terrorists or madmen prowling the Big North, he thought Mac would be alright. And instead…

Yeah, instead. Instead, an explosion killed the captain and the crew of that ship and stranded the geek squad in the middle of nowhere at negative 56 degrees with help more than 12 hours away. And yet, with Mac on board, the situation wasn’t hopeless, they were dealing with issues as they arose and everything was just… fine. More or less.

Until the ship’s hull was crushed and ripped apart like a wet tissue. Not even MacGyver can stop icebergs from behaving the way icebergs usually do: they plow through everything. Stranded ships included.

Jack will never, ever forget the sound of metal tearing and twisting under enormous pressure. And he’ll never forget Mac’s look, his expression in the moment he realized what was happening and how it would all end. He’ll never forget because he was right there with him, through a satellite connection, they all were - he and Riley and Cage and Matty - following their friend’s fight for survival live through a webcam, unable to help, unable do anything but pay witness... and be there for him when he needed it.

Like when he did the math and arrived at one simple conclusion.

One hole. One room. One door…

One door that could only be closed from the inside.

And one person who would have to die to save everyone else.

Jack remembers every word Mac told him. He can still see his pale face, his lips turned blue from the ice cold water that he’d been wading through for long, long minutes by then. He can still hear his perfectly reasonable, calm and accepting voice...

“If I don’t seal this door right now, the whole ship will sink before the coast guard can get here. I did the math myself…”

And then Jack yelled. He yelled and he raged, he even threw things. And then he begged. He begged and he pleaded, don’t do this, Mac, please, help’s only thirty minutes away, don’t, please, please…

“I can’t risk the lives of these kids, Jack. I won’t…”

Never before in his life had Jack felt this helpless. He wanted to reach through the screens and throttle the self-sacrificing idiot. He wanted to shake him and hug him and never let go…

The plane jumps and drops, hitting a hard turbulence, and Jack’s torn from his reverie. He can feel the nose of the craft dip as they head for descent. In a few minutes, they’ll be on the ground and there’ll be a car waiting for him to take him to the harbor where he would wait for the coast guard’s icebreaker to come in, carrying the survivors from the research ship R. V. Bancroft.

32 of them, not 33.

Soon now.

Jack’s there when the icebreaker finally comes in, delayed by a storm out on the sea. He’s been waiting there for hours, in the harbor master’s office, staring out into the breaking dawn, patiently, quietly.

He’s there, on the pier, when the students file out, ushered away by the coast guard to be taken to a warm and cozy hotel in the city where they would wait for someone from the university or maybe their parents to come and pick them up, Jack doesn’t know. Nor does he care. He’s there for someone else.

There. On the gangway, coming down last with a duffle bag dangling loosely from his hand. Mac. He looks pale, washed out, his red parka seemingly the only splash of color on him. He’s shuffling down with his head bent low, drained, sad and broken.

When he finally notices Jack waiting for him, his head shoots up and he freezes, and Jack can see clearly the dark bruise on his forehead, so stark against his skin. The bruise that under any other circumstances would make Jack’s blood boil - but now he’s glad to see it. Because that bruise saved Mac’s life.

Zoe Kimura saved Mac’s life. With a lead pipe and more guts than Jack thought possible.

Because that’s what the pretty teacher whom Mac liked so much - Jack could tell - did. She hit Mac over the head, knocking him out. Then she dragged him from the room and locked him out - and herself in, sealing the door from within with one stroke of a match.

Room sealed. Hole sealed. One person’s fate… sealed.

Jack stayed with her those last few minutes. He stayed and he talked to her and he kept her company till the very last moment. Because it was the right thing to do. Because he liked the girl who geeked out about icicles with Mac on live feed and who craved ice cream while trapped on ship in the Arctic Sea.

And because Jack was grateful to her. He hated to see her die - if he could, he would’ve traded places with her in a heartbeat, he wouldn’t hesitate! - but if that had been Mac in there… Jack didn’t think he would’ve survived watching the kid die.

For Zoe Kimura, Jack cried. For Angus MacGyver…

He did ask her why. Why she did it when all she had to do was stand back and do nothing.

Her smile was as sweet as it was heartbreaking when she told him, “I couldn’t have let him die for us. These are my kids. My responsibility. My choice…” She paused then and as the water started choking her, she added, “Tell him I’m glad I met him, okay? That I wish we got to share that ice cream. I know a great place, he would love it…”

And he will. Jack will tell Mac all that. Maybe on their way back. Maybe over a beer, safely at home. They will talk about Zoe Kimura and about the sacrifice she made to save his boy’s life. About her death that broke Mac to pieces.

Jack waits for Mac to reach him. And when he does, Jack doesn’t say anything, he just folds Mac into his arms and holds him tight. For a long time, Mac doesn’t react at all, he simply stands there rigid and unmoving. Then, dropping his bag, he slowly hugs Jack back, fisting his hands into the back of Jack’s sky blue parka, hiding his face in Jack’s shoulder.

Jack’s willing to stand there till the end of time if that’s what Mac needs, he’ll hold him together and he’ll hold him up, anything the kid needs. But in the end, Mac pulls back and Jack lets him. Mac’s eyes are red-rimmed, their blue shade even starker than usual.

“Can we go home now, please?” Mac asks hoarsely, blinking hard.

Nodding, Jack bends down to pick up Mac’s back. “Yeah, buddy. Let’s go home.”

[asflowersfade]

Ficlet: All Alone Now (Or Not)

A MacGyver ficlet. Mac’s still in Afghanistan when his grandfather dies. Jack’s POV. Possibly AU? Depends on the state of Schroedinger’s grandfather on the show ;)

When the barrack’s door opens, Jack looks up from the shoe he’s brushing and squints into the sudden flood of mid-afternoon brightness. The sun blinds him for a moment, stabbing him in the eyes, and he doesn’t recognize who just entered until the door slams shut again.

MacGyver.

Returning to his task, Jack calls out, “Hey, man. I heard the CO called you in. What did he want?” He frowns down at that one stubborn piece of stuff, sticking to his heel, and rubs at it harder with the brush.

He expects some answer, a complaint about the higher uppers’ unreasonable demands or something, but all he gets is silence. Mac doesn’t even move further in, he just stands there, at the threshold, as if rooted to the spot.

Jack looks up and frowns. “Mac?” he asks uncertainly because even in the dim light of the long room he can see just how pale and wide-eyed the kid is. Jack drops his shoe and the brush to the floor and gets up. “Mac, talk to me!”

Slowly, MacGyver takes a step closer and then another only to stop again. Jack now sees that his eyes aren’t just wide, they’re red rimmed and impossibly blue. He looks shell-shocked.

“I got a call from home,” he finally says in a low, raspy voice. “My grandfather died. He’s dead, Jack.”

Oh, hell. Jack knows that Mac’s grandpa was the only family the kid had left. Well, except for that bastard of a father who walked out on him good ten years ago; Jack will never understand people who abandon their own flesh and blood, and especially someone like Mac, the kid has the biggest heart Jack’s ever known. And now it seems the old man’s gone, too. Damn.

Jack walks up to him. “What happened?” he asks softly.

Mac rubs his nose with the back of his hand and blinks hard. “He had-he had a heart attack? I didn’t even know he was sick, Jack. How could I’ve not known he was sick? I should’ve known that. I should’ve--”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Jack interrupts his friend’s breathless rambling and rests his hands on Mac’s shoulders; he can feel him shivering slightly, despite the stifling heat of the room. “If your grandfather didn’t tell you, I’m sure he had his reasons. Probably didn’t want to worry you, didn’t want you to think about him while you tinkered with things that could go boom. My pa was the same. Stubborn like a mule. It wasn’t your fault, alright?”

Mac stares at him mutely for a moment, then he whispers, “Alright.”

Jack nods. “Alright. Who’s taking care of the funeral?” he asks, thinking that mundane, practical things might give Mac something to focus on.

Frowning, Mac replies, “Uh… the Bozers? I think?”

“Your friend’s family?” Jack says. He’s heard tales about Wilt Bozer, Mac’s best friend since junior high and wannabe filmmaker.

Mac nods. “Yeah. Before I deployed, they agreed to look after my grandfather. He insisted there was no need but--” He falls silent and squeezes his eyes shut, swallowing hard.

To hell with it, Jack thinks and pulls the kid into his arms, hugging him hard. If anyone’s ever needed a hug, it’s Angus MacGyver right now.

Jack doesn’t know what to expect, they’re friends, brothers in arms, but this is a completely new territory. And when Mac just stands there, frozen, Jack starts to fear that he might’ve overstepped a boundary. 

He’s about to let go when Mac slumps against him, he almost melts into Jack, and lifting his arms, he fists his hands into the back for Jack’s t-shirt, holding on tight.

And Jack simply holds him back. He doesn’t tell Mac that it’s okay, he doesn’t spout platitudes. Because he’s been there, when his pa died, and the last thing he wanted to hear back then was how everything was going to be alright. Back then, he wanted to punch anyone who told him that because, Christ, his father just died! And he still had his extended family to rely on. Mac doesn’t have anybody anymore.

Well, then the kid will have him, Jack decides in that moment. He might not be blood but family’s not about that - or at least not just about that.

When Mac finally pulls back and rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms, Jack asks, “What do you need?”

Dropping his hands, Mac looks around a little helplessly. “I need to pack? I’m on an official leave for the next few days. The funeral is the day after tomorrow. I-I… don’t know. What… I don’t--” He falls silent and his shoulders slump.

Alright.

“Look, I’ll put in a request for a few days off myself and go with you,” Jack decides. “I’ll explain the situation to the CO.”

Mac looks at him, startled, and then he seems to gather himself. Taking a deep, fortifying breath, he straightens up and shakes his head. “No. It’s okay, really. I’ll manage. I’ll be fine. I just need a minute.”

“Hey,” Jack says softly. “I was set up for a leave next week anyway. My sister’s birthday? The big 4-0? I’ll just look into moving it up a few days. The rest of the unit’s out south anyway and with you gone, who knows what they would have me do here, latrine duty with my luck,” he tries to joke but Mac doesn’t even crack a smile. No wonder, really.

“Look,” Jack continues kindly. “I can’t promise they’ll actually grant my request - you know the army, they’ll always find a way to screw the little man over - but let me at least try.”

Mac doesn’t refuse again, which proves that he really needs and wants Jack there, but he still says, “Your sister--”

Jack cuts him off, “Will understand, I promise you that. Come on, man. Let me do this for you, okay? Nobody should have to go through this alone,” he adds quietly, gripping Mac’s shoulder. “Okay?”

Mac rubs his nose again and nods. “Okay,” he replies quietly.

“Okay, then,” Jack says, nodding. “Now go, pack your things and I’ll talk to the CO. I’ll be right back,” he promises and waits for Mac to actually move before leaving the barrack, heading for the main office.

In the end, Jack gets his permission to go with Mac. He has to trade every favor he’s garnered for it - and promise owing some big ones in return - but, well, there are things the kid doesn’t need to know...