#jock (thomas jefferson)

[ask-chubby-hamilton-hs-au]

“I know what you did you idiotic emo bitch.” -Jefferson growls, he had pulled Hamilton into an empty classroom by the collar and loomed over him-

Alexander winced a bit, but looked up at Jefferson with a cocky smile.

"what do you mean, Jefferson? I think you're gonna need to elaborate."

Alexander knew full well what Jefferson meant, he just wanted to hear him say it himself.

[ask-chubby-hamilton]

//I like how everyone in the fandom agrees that if the Hamilton modern au were to be in highschool, Thomas Jefferson would be a basketball jock

[ramrodd]

COMMENTARY:

The reason why the January 6 majority has no choice but impeachment is because they ran themselves off the same cliff the neo-cons ran America off of and into Iraq and the abyss of Ivy League. Socialism..

These people are the political legacy of the stupid white slave owners who fired on Ft. Sumter and Johnathan Turley is the Thomas Jefferson of the January 6 Republicans. Fredrick Nietzsche is a down-stream consequence of Thomas Jefferson's full throttle self-indulgent libertarianism of inherited wealth and privilege and virtually no social restrictions. Thomas Jefferson personifies the nobility of Ayn Rand's "Virtue of Selfishness".

William F. Buckley made Fascism both charming and elegant and intellectually superior. That's the Young American's for Freedom Brand: the Big Men on Campus, the white jocks and Greeks, which, in 1960 was a reflection of The Great Gatsby" on the American college campus. I'm a Theta Chi and I'm all for the Greek system, but it needed reform in 1960, Theta Chi actually went through a serious schism in the 50s resulting from the integration of the Army, My dad was on the integration side of the conflict and his best friend from his pledge class was a Segregation Forever Indiana Copper Head, like Dan Burton and the Pence family country club. Dad's side won, but I was never in an integrated living community like Animal House but the Salt Water Economics of the Indiana School of Business and generally aligned with the Ivy League Socialism of Firing Line. Most of them avoided miliary service like Dan Quayle or Dick Cheney.

And they were largely from the Ozzie and Harriet world of the Country Club Republican. Their career path had been set at birth, like Brett Kavanagh, to work their way up the Corporate Ladder and join their daddy's country club. That's what The Graduate is all about: "Plastics". Frank Sinatra's cover of "My Way!" is like "God Bless the USA": the National Anthem of Draft Dodgers and the MAGA nation. That's who is represented by the January 6 majority trapped into impeaching Biden. As a woke Biden voter, that is exactly what I want other woke Biden voters to see as more validation of the wisdom of their vote for Paul Krugman's Peddling Prosperity as Presidential policy.

Boden's $7 Trillion Build Back Better capital budget is the down payment on a permanent colony on Mars in the next 30 years and the cunt hair America needs to complete Eisenhower's paradigm shift from the Military Industrial Complex to Stage 3 of his mobilization for WWIII, which looks like the Starship Capitalism of 2001:A Space Odyssey.

All the structures are in place for the Star Wars economic infrastructure, especially the combination of the US Constitution and the internet, but we are stuck in the operational paradigm of the Harvard MBA program that forms the basis of the business model of the Studio Executives who are opposed to the Quality Assurance business model of Fran Drescher and SAG. The Harvard MBA program is the distilled legacy of the Ivy League Socialism that was defeated by Marxism in Vietnam. The popular mythology, of course, is that it was the draftees who fucked up Vietnam, because Harvard could not conceive of its self as anything but the hero in the Romantic Fiction of Atlas Shrugged and William F. Buckley's Sharon Statement that fired the first shot in what became the 60s campus cultural warfare that persists. ' Well, becoming woke will fix the Harvard MBA program. The processes that must play out to implement Biden's $7 Trillion Build Back Better capital budget are already working to fix Harvard as voters aim at a permanent Starship Trooper lunar base by 2028 and the Green New Deal will achieve warp speed.

The only thing standing in the way is the continuing January 6 rebellion by political obstructionism. The woke Republican Congressional Women of the Party of Lincoln can vacate the Speaker's Chair,, re=do the rules in collaboration with the Squad and Nancy Pelosi and then vote McCarthy back in and let him lead the way into the Green New Deal.

[hamilmoodboards]

Jamilton high school star starcrossed secret lovers (popular jock jefferson, nerd and outcast hamilton) ??

Here ya go!

{Requests are open!}

[anotherhamiltonblog]

Foreign Touch ch 3

Chapter Summary: Y/N has a special name for our Thomas on Facebook! Will these two finally talk?

Warnings: Once again, I didn’t proofread. Sorry <3 minor cursing?(Is cursing a warning? like wtf.)

Word Count: 1,450 (Give or take)

Previously 

Enjoy!

After the dream with Jefferson, Y/N found herself always watching him when they were in the same class. Even at the game Friday night, as the cheerleaders were cheering for the team, Y/N’s eyes watched Number 17 with the name “Jefferson” on the back. The dream made it so she would look at the bushy, curly haired jock and blush. Y/N hated herself for blushing.

Surprisingly he never did try to talk with Y/N after the text messaging he had sent her. Y/N actually had her eyes peeled for him just in case he tried to talk with her.

Yet when the game was finally over, their team winning. Everyone was celebrating. Y/N was being invited to the after parties, yet Y/N couldn’t. She had a early morning and a busy weekend ahead of her. With tutoring and helping Alex with his campaign. She waved to the other cheerleaders before gathering her things.

“Y/N! Thought I missed you!” A familiar voice said from beside her and Y/N froze, wide eyed.

Thomas.

The very same man she wanted to avoid. How could she stand in front of him after that dream?

“Jefferson! Get away from my sister!” A voice called from far away. It was enough to distract the football player and allow Y/N to slip away quickly.

Rushing to her car, face red as a tomato. Y/N let out a breath she didn’t realize she was even holding in before getting into her car.

»»-————　♡　————-««

Laying around the living room floor, Y/N was eating some popcorn as Alex, John, Herc and Laf were all on the couch watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

“I think… my soulmate is a bag of sour gummy worms…” Y/N said randomly with a sigh and rubbed at her eyes. Visibly tired, hair still damp from her shower. Wearing a pair of black slim sweatpants and a black tee-shirt with the cookie monster on the front of it. Y/N looked over at her friends.

“I just ate a whole bag of the gummy worms, Y/N” Lafayette said, holding up the empty bag to prove it.

Gasping, sitting up. Y/N placed a hand on her chest. “You ATE my soulmate? You asshole.” She tossed a throw pillow that was on the floor at the boy and they laughed.

Yawning, Y/N stood up and rubbed her eyes. “I’m off to sleep. Night guys.” She waved and moved to the stairs and quickly made way to her bedroom.

Once the door was closed, Y/N crawled in bed and grabbed her phone. Only to sigh and seeing that Thomas had sent her various messes on Facebook messenger. Why did he have to come to her for help? Y/N had enough on her plate to add one more person to help. Honestly.

With a sigh, she sent a message, hoping it would get him to back off. Honestly, why did everyone want Y/N to help them? Surely there were other smart people at the school.

When he called her, Y/N frowned and moved so she was sitting on her desk chair and accepted the call. Putting on her earphones so no one would hear Thomas Jefferson of all people talking to her.

“Ok. What the hell do you want?” Y/N asked, getting right to the point.

Only to narrow her eyes at Thomas’ smiling face.

‘at least his smile is nice…. and a cute dog’

Shaking her head from that thought. Y/N sighed. “Come on, I want to sleep.”

“RIGHT! First, are you ok?“ Thomas asked, catching Y/N by surprise that he seemed to actually be worried about her. After Y/N nodded, assuring him was was fine. Thomas went back to why he was bothering her in the first place.

“SO, my parents, they are going to be celebrating Twenty-Five years of marriage… the silver anniversary.” Thomas sighed. “A few birdies in school said you usually plan the Hamilton’s parties… and I’ve been to some of those with my parents. You’re good. I was hoping to… hire you to help me plan a party for my parents.” He raised an eyebrow and Y/N frowned.

That was the last thing she expected him to say. Sitting there on her chair, Y/N was thinking about it. Maybe doing some planning could be a good thing?

With a sigh, she eyed Thomas on her phone screen. “Fine, I’ll help you.” She agreed and couldn’t help but smile when he did. The man had an incredible smile.

“Thank you so much for this. I’ll pay you for your service. No need to worry about it. OK?”

“Jefferson, chill out. We’ll talk about money another time…” Y/N rolled her eyes smiling. “Aren’t you supposed to be partying?” she changed the subject and glanced at the time. Usually at midnight everyone at the game who was at the party were wasted by this time.

“Nah, my parents took me out for a big celebration dinner.” He shrugged. “Why didn’t you go?”

Y/N shrugged and looked around her room. “Have too much to do tomorrow. Didn’t want to be hungover for it.” She simply stated before tilting her head. “Hey, do you think I should put fairy lights around my room?” Y/N randomly asked Thomas.

That’s how the two spent the next hour and a half. Talking while her phone was resting up against her desk pointing at her bed and she was stringing lights up around her room.

“Yo... your room is so much cooler than mine.” Thomas snorted once Y/N had finished and was laying on her bed holding her phone.

“I don’t doubt it. I do have better taste.” She smirked and winked at the male before laughing. “OK, I am going to get off now and actually sleep. I’ll… unblock your number tomorrow and we’ll talk about the party. Deal?” she raised an eyebrow.

Once they both agreed to that, said their goodnights with little smiles. Y/N rolled her eyes when Thomas ruined it.

“Dream of me, I know I’ll be dreaming of you.”

Of course, that just got Y/N to hang up on him instead of actually replying.

“Cocky asshole… ugh.” Y/N muttered as she turned off the lights and closed her eyes. After minutes of rolling around to find a comfortable position. Y/N finally fell asleep.

“Oooh, Thomas!” Y/N yelled out as she walked around a house with a huge smile on her face.

“COME FIND ME!” a voice called back and Y/N just laughed before going on a search throughout the home.

It wasn’t until ten minutes of looking for the tall doofus she felt hands on her waist and her sides were being tickled.

“NOO!” she squealed and quickly got away, giggling. Turning and glaring at the man, she crossed her arms over her chest. “You asshole!”

“Aww, I’m sorry sweetheart.” Thomas pouted and stepped forward. His hands returning to her waist, their foreheads touching and small smiles on both of their lips. “But hey, you found me!” he wiggled his eyebrows and Y/N just laughed.

“Yeah, whatever. Lunch is ready.” She tried to get out of his grasp. Yet, Y/N found herself pressed up against the wall.

Thomas softly kissing her cheek. “Fine… we’ll pick up after we regain our energy.”

As the two walked towards the kitchen, Y/N glanced up at Thomas. “Hey, can I have a kiss?”

Thomas, with a smirk on his face shrugged. “I dunno, Y/N… CAN you?” he asked, and Y/N’s mouth fell.

After about a minute of silence, Thomas sensing he fucked up, gulped.

“Guess I can’t.” she shrugged and walked to the kitchen, leaving Thomas standing in the doorway.

“Y/N… babe, I was just kidding.” He laughed and followed after her.

“Yeah? Pity, I don’t want your kisses anymore.” She simply said as she sat to have to tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich, she made for them.

Not having it, Thomas turned her chair around and lifted Y/N head with his finger under her chin. “Come on, baby girl… gimme a kiss?” he smiled and the two met in the middle. Lips softly brushing against one another.

Once again Y/N woke up gasping and her hand flew to her lips. “What the heck…” she mumbled and rubbed her tired eyes. Checking the time and seeing it was a little past Four am. Y/N fell back against her pillows and sighed. Wondering what the hell was up with her dreams. She could NOT have a crush on Thomas Jefferson.

Streets away, Thomas was laying in his own bed. Thinking about both the dream and the girl in his dream. Surely it meant something… they talked, and he dreamt of her. Of course, he woke up as soon as they kissed. But it HAD to mean…. Something!

                                                                                                    Next Chapter

Don’t forget to Like, Reblog and send Feedback! My asks are also opened and so is my IM!

Much love from me to you!!  ♥(ˆ⌣ˆԅ)

Taglist: @exquisite-dreamers @ballerinafairyprincess @thefandomgirl03  @criminallyhamilton @1elysium @slytherinssssnake @youtxbemusic @i-honestly-dont-know-anymore @sabbrriiinnaa @yes-i-know-im-weird-blog @they-write-once-in-a-blue-moon @wtfevenismypage @namethatthasnotbeentaken @cubedtriangle @a-hopeless-fan @namelesslosers 

[ambitioncunningpridemieczyslaw]

Author's Note:

Hahaha... so I was looking through my Google Docs because I wrote a few poems for Mother's Day and I stumbled over a a crossover fic for Teen Wolf & Andi Mack I don't know if I'll ever finish probably not since I literally wrote this last May and never looked at it again so I figured I would just post the little snippet and idk make someone laugh from my terrible writing skills lol

Basketball and Ballet Shoes

(Jonah)

“This is everyone's favorite guy on the mic Jonah Beck - “

(Andi)

“And don't forget me Andi Mack everyone's favorite girl on the mic!”

(Together) 

“And we're here to make sure you all getcha' head in the game and keep it there.”

(Jonah)

“Number 34 Jefferson's own basketball star Mr. T.J. Kippen fakes a pass to number 23 Marty Beck a.k.a Marty from the Party a.k.a only the most annoying housemate ever-.”

(Andi)

“And NO ONE Cares number 34 shoots an outside J and scores the winning basket for Jefferson's Forefathers score 27-16.”

(Jonah)

“The crowd is going wild along with everyone's favorite mascot Thomas Jefferson!”

Here at Jefferson Middle School, only two things matter: basketballs and ballet shoes. But what happens when worlds collide, new friendships are formed, old friendships are tested, and relationships begin?

Basketball stars T.J. Kippen and Marty Beck find themselves stuck with boredom after the basketball season ends. This is their last year at Jefferson Middle School and they want to make it count.

~

Allégro

Allégro

Allégro

Pirouette after pirouette

Arabesque after arabesque

Assemblé after assemblé 

Mrs.Parker finally ends the class with a tap tap from her cane. With Nationals coming up, she must make sure that her students are on par with their routines.

Out of all her students, Buffy Driscoll and Cyrus Goodman are her star pupils. She knows as long as they stay focused they will make her proud.

Buffy turned to dance as a coping mechanism due to her dad passing away and her mother Braeden too busy serving in the Marines to notice her daughter's suffering. She now stays with her Uncle Derek and his husband Mieczyslaw, who goes by Stiles for short. Selfishly, Buffy has to admit that they're the two best caretakers she could ever ask for. Since, living with them, money is no longer an issue and they always make time for her. The best thing about them is that when they see her dance they always say she's doing amazing even when she knows she could do better. Though hearing a “Good job!” is always nice because she never got to hear it from neither her father nor her mother.

Cyrus fell in love with dance when he was a little boy though his Ima being a professional ballerina may be another reason why he loves dancing so much. Their favorite ballet was "The Red Shoes". Cyrus though, didn't start dancing until he was 8. Many things changed that year. His parents' divorce was finally finalized. A month later, they both remarried. His Ima retired from ballet and became a therapist. She married Richard, also a therapist. His Abba, a Psychiatrist, married the Jefferson Middle School Guidance Counselor, Shannon Kane. You see a pattern yet? 

All four of these parents love to be overbearing and make him talk about his feelings and problems. It was fine until he started getting anxiety attacks from trying to appear perfect to all four parents. Then, he started dancing and after that, he felt like he could finally breathe again. When he started taking classes, he not only got to breathe but ended up meeting his best friend Buffy, whose dad recently passed away. She now stays with her uncle and his fiancé with some unpronounceable name. They think their friendship was meant to be. Plus, they both agree on the same thing: bunheads are superior to jocks.

[ao3feed-lams]

To Steal My Affections

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/2DJBhxE

by JohnIsHelpless

Alex is the only openly gay kid in school. John is a jock...I feel like this is starting to sound like a Avril Lavigne song. Anyway, John and Alex begin a secret relationship until Alex gets attacked at school. John blames himself. Happy ending though!

Words: 5049, Chapters: 6/6, Language: English

Fandoms: Hamilton - Miranda

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: M/M

Characters: Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette, Hercules Mulligan, George Washington, Martha Washington

Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - High School, everyone is over 18, Shameless Smut, Porn With Plot, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Bullying, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alexander gets attacked at school, john blames himself, Secret Relationship

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/2DJBhxE

[daveeddiggsit]

Tutor?

WIDEOUT MASTERLIST

Series: WIDEOUT

Note: This is the most cliche series/fic I’ve ever written and probably will write lol. (I decided to split this up into a series that I’m entitling WIDEOUT!) I’m not entirely finished with writing it yet (I still have one part to go, I think), but I decided to release the first part today since it’s Saturday. Enjoy, and please lemme know what you think! I’d love some feedback.

Word Count: 2,262

Pairing: Thomas Jefferson x Reader

AU: High School. Football Player/Tutor

Warnings: None. Chemistry? High School?

Summary: When you’re assigned to tutor Thomas Jefferson in chemistry, you find out that there’s more to him than just football. Will you end up being more than just a tutor?

Tags: @musicalmoriarty @nadialinett14 @jazygirljazzy @coololdsoulpoetlove @perfectionistdia @friendlyneighborhoodwhatever @gunsandshiiiips @wreakhavoconmacroissantdiggs @wiffle-snuffles @snufflypuffly @walkingtvs

“Alright, everybody. For the final five minutes of class today, I will be handing back your tests from last week. The average grade on the exam was an 88.” Your chemistry teacher says as she picks up the stack of papers that lie on her desk.

"Amazing job as always, Y/N." Mrs. Stephenson smiles when she hands you your graded test on chemical compounds. It has a 98 circled in red pen at the top left of the paper.

As your teacher hands out the papers, you chat with your best friend Maria, who sits in the desk next to you.

“Ooh, what’d you get?” Maria asks from her seat, leaning over to get a glimpse of your grade. “Knowing you, you probably got a perfect score.”

“Nope,” you say, “I actually got a 98.”

“Wow, nerd.” She teases.

“Shut up, I am not!” You laugh, shaking your head at her. Your best friend calling you a nerd is a regular occurrence, but you don’t take any offense to it. “Chem is my best subject, okay?”

“Okay, whatever you say, Y/N…” She trails off and you roll your eyes, directing your attention back to your teacher who is handing papers back to the group of football players who sit in the back of the classroom.

"Mr. Jefferson, I'm afraid I'm going to have to see you after class. We need to discuss some things regarding your grade in this class." She says when she hands Thomas Jefferson’s test back.

Thomas' buddies, James Madison and Aaron Burr, who sit to his left and right 'ooo' obnoxiously, causing the star athlete shove both of them while rolling his eyes.

You know who, well, everybody knows who Thomas Jefferson is. You know that he is good at multiple sports (he’s on the varsity football and track team), his dad used to be in the NFL and his family is rich because of it, all the teachers love him (except Mrs. Stephenson apparently), and all the girls have had a crush on him at some point of their high school career (you’d be lying if you said that you didn’t find him at least a little bit attractive...).

As the star football player, Thomas is one of the most popular kids in school. He carries himself like the stereotypical jock: cocky, poised, outspoken, and most of all — he’s hot and he knows it. 

So to say the least, you are actually surprised to hear that he’s not doing well in this class. You’re pretty sure he has to have good grades in order to play on the football team — all athletes do, to your knowledge.

Oh well. It’s not your problem anyway. Why do you even care about all this? You’ve never even talked to the guy…

The loud ring of the bell dismissing class snaps you out of your thoughts. As you get up and gather your things, you are ready to head out of the door with Maria when Mrs. Stephenson calls your name.

"Y/N, could you stay behind for a few moments?"

You pause in the doorway for a second. Maria and you exchange confused glances before you face Mrs. Stephenson. “Uh, yeah sure.” You respond hesitantly before you turn back to Maria. “I’ll text you later.”

She nods before she turns to exit the room, leaving you in the room with your Mrs. Stephenson and a few others. 

"Yes, Mrs. Stephenson?" You ask politely, walking over to her desk with your books hugged to your chest. “You wanted to talk to me?”

"Yes, one moment, Y/N," the chemistry teacher says, her sight set on something over your shoulder. "I’d like Thomas to join in on this conversation as well. This involves both of you."

Wait, what? Thomas? Why would he need to be in this conversation? What could this be about? You’ve never even interacted with him before. 

Your heartbeat begins to beat slightly quicker as you grow a bit nervous.

Mrs. Stephenson raises her voice so that Thomas and James (who are still talking to each other in their seats towards the back of the classroom) can hear her. "Thomas, can I speak with you for a moment. And James, don’t you have another class you need to be getting to?"

Thomas mumbles something that makes James laugh. Mrs. Stephenson doesn’t seem phased at all as her stern look pierces into Thomas and James’ slow-to-move figures.

"Alright, man, catch you later at practice." You hear Thomas finally say as they do a special handshake and bro hug.

“Later, Jefferson.” James says before he walks out of the room. “Bye, Mrs. Stephenson.”

Thomas saunters up to Mrs. Stephenson's desk next to you as James leaves the room. "What's up, Mrs. S?" He asks coolly before he nods to you. "Hey, Y/N."

He knows your name?

"Mr. Jefferson," your teacher begins. "As you know, you are extremely close to failing this class, which is not only bad for your reputation, but mine as well."

"Okay..." Thomas trails off, leaning against the desk behind him. "And?"

You look him up and down as he nonchalantly glances at Mrs. Stephenson. He’s wearing a varsity jacket (stereotypical), fitted jeans, and Nike shoes that you’re sure are hella expensive. The silver chain he wears around his neck backs up that statement.

"And, as you also most likely know, Y/N has the best grade in this class.” 

Thomas takes that moment to glance over at you, causing you to quickly snap your gaze to Mrs. Stephenson. You can feel his stare on you as your chemistry teacher continues. 

“This explains why I will be pairing the two of you together so that she can hopefully help you better your grade through a number tutoring sessions over the course of the semester."

Thomas looks back at Mrs. Stephenson before he scoffs, clearly annoyed by his teacher’s accusations. "Is this really necessary? A tutor?" He asks, crossing his arms. "I mean, I'm not a dumb guy.  Nothing against you, Y/N, but I don't need a tutor to help me learn."

“None taken,” you chime in. You’re just as surprised as he is about this whole thing. Thomas and you are on the same side here; you don’t really want to tutor him unless you absolutely have to.

"Well, your grade says otherwise, Thomas."

The football player presses on defensively. "Well, what about James? His grade isn't that great either. Why doesn't he need a tutor?"

"Mr. Madison has a B- in this class. You have a D, Thomas."

Thomas pauses for a second. "Really?" His eyebrows quirk in confusion. "Well, damn..."

"I'm afraid neither of you have a choice in this matter.”

Well, shit.

“Y/N, I'm sorry to put you in this position, but it is the school's decision. The science department scores need to be brought up, and this is the way we are choosing to take action. Thomas, you will either get tutored until you bring your grade up, or there will be repercussions and your coach will have no other choice but to kick you off the team."

"Coach would really do that to me? To my teammates?" He hops to his feet and actually looks offended. "Are you really-? You can't be serious."

"Deadly." Mrs. Stephenson responds sternly before she stands up from her desk and grabs her empty coffee mug. "I'll leave you two alone to exchange information, set up times, etcetera. Good luck to the both of you. I’ll be looking forward to seeing your progress in the upcoming weeks." She says, walking out the door to presumably fill up her cup with a fresh brew (well the freshest you can get from the cheap coffee machine in the teacher’s lounge).

The two of you stand in shocked silence. After a few moments, you sigh and turn to him.

“Well, uh… I guess I’m your tutor now…”

He looks at you and nods slowly, his curls slightly bouncing as he does so. “I guess so.”

You set your books down on a nearby desk and shrug off your backpack, taking your phone out of its front pocket. You unlock it and open the Contacts app before you hand it to Thomas. “Here, put your number in. We can start tomorrow after school, I guess.”

“Okay, so I have practice from 6-8 everyday after school, except for Fridays which are game days, and I have practice Saturdays from 2-4.” Thomas explains, as he types in his name and number before he gives your phone back to you. “But tomorrow right after school works.”

“Wow, you could have just said that. You didn’t need to give me your entire life story, Jefferson.” You laugh softly, causing him to flash you a charming grin, but you miss it as you send him a quick text so that he knows it’s your number. “Just text me and make up a schedule. I’m usually free right after school.”

“Alright, sounds good, Y/N.” Thomas nods as you put your backpack on and pick up your books.

“See you around, Thomas.” You say, and he waves at you as you walk out of the room and towards your next class.

As you walk in the hallway, your thoughts run freely. You’re not entirely mad about the whole tutoring thing (you’re not happy either; it’s not like you want this), but you know that it’ll at least look good on a college application in the future. That is all you have to look forward to.

⋆﹥ ━━━━━━━   ♛   ━━━━━━━﹤⋆

“Alright, Jefferson. So, what exactly is it that you need help with?” You ask, taking out your chemistry notes. Thomas sits in the chair next to you, tapping his pencil on the surface of the wooden table. The library isn’t entirely empty yet, which means that there’s ambient noise surrounding you both. It’s the perfect condition for studying.

“I don’t know.” He says, shrugging. “Everything?”

“Let’s just start at the beginning, yeah? The easy stuff.” You reply, opening your notebook.

“Whatever you say, darlin’.” Thomas shrugs with a hint of a smile. “You’re the boss.”

You have to force yourself to not let his charm or smug persona affect you. So you ignore the nickname he calls you and move on, but not before you address something with him to get it off your chest.

“Listen, Jefferson, I’ll be honest, I don’t really wanna be here any more than you do. Tutoring isn’t really my thing. Neither are athletes or sports or anything like that. No offense.” Your blunt statements cause him to raise his eyebrows, but an amused expression appears on his face. 

“None taken.” He smirks, and it’s like a mirror of the day prior in Mrs. Stephenson’s classroom. “Gonna take more than that to offend me, though.”

“I wasn’t trying to offend you, that’s why I said ‘no offense.” You reply, breaking eye contact before continuing. “I’m sorry if I came across as rude, but I just want you and I to be on the same page, okay? I’ll give you my full attention and you give me yours. Then, hopefully this’ll all be over quicker and we can go back to our separate lives.”

“Okay, now that offends me.” Thomas says, faking hurt and putting a hand over his heart. “Tryin’ to get rid of me already? Really, sweetheart, that hurts.”

“Really...?” You trail off, giving him a pointed look, but his fake pout persists and you know that if you want to make any tutoring progress in the near future you have to give into his antics. “Fine... I’m sorry you feel that way?”

“Good enough.” He shrugs, before he adds on another sentence. “I was just messin’ with you. I know what you mean, though, so yeah - you’ve got my full attention, princess. Doesn’t mean I’ll like chemistry any time soon, though.”

“Wasn’t expecting you to, genius.” You roll your eyes, biting your lip subconsciously. “I’m not gonna be offended if you hate chemistry, trust me, Jefferson.”

He watches you with the edges of his lips quirked up into a small grin. “You know I have a first name, right?”

“You earn first name privileges after the first tutoring session.”

“Well, what are you waiting for, then? Let’s get on with it.” His grin widens, causing you to let out a small laugh and look back down at the paper that’s between you.

You can feel his gaze still on you as you try to put your mind back into chemistry-mode and come up with a question to gauge how much of the subject Thomas actually knows.

“What does the C stand for on the periodic table?” You ask him after a few seconds of silence.

“Carbon.” The football player answers, breathing out a laugh. “I’m not hopeless, Y/N.”

“I mean, you did say everything before, didn’t you? I had to make sure.” You grin (making Thomas roll his eyes) before asking, ”Do you know how many protons it has?”

Thomas’ eyes narrow in concentration as he thinks. “Seven?” He says slowly as if he’s unsure of his answer.

“Is that a guess?”

“Nah, I know this stuff.” He says confidently, but you know he’s lying. “I swear.”

“Well, you’re actually wrong. It’s six.” You correct him.

“I knew that…” He mumbles, looking down at the pencil in his hand.

You sigh internally but don’t let your true, already frustrated emotions show on the surface. Deep down you know that tutoring Thomas Jefferson is going to be a challenge to say the very least.

[seaglassdinosaur]

I once watched this play called George by a guy named Hamburger it was about George Washington but he was a total jock and thought that French money was made of cheese and then John Adams and Thomas Jefferson accidentally killed him so they got advice from Ben franklin to bring him back with electricity but they also had to get George through a date without anyone knowing he was dead

At the climax of the play Benedict Arnold who was there the whole time and had been introduced with a letter that said he was ‘definitely not a spy’ declares battle while at the Delaware river George Washington gets hit with lightning at the exact moment to lead the charge and no one ever knows he died

[theliterateape]

Is the Cancel Culture Racist or a Response to Bigotry?

by Don Hall

Morgan Wallen is a country singer who was recently caught on camera using the word that cannot be uttered by a white person, let alone a white guy who sings country music. 

On one side, he was canceled. Suspended record deals, dropped from radio stations, streaming services taking down his music, and an automatic disqualification from this year’s Academy of Country Music awards. On the other side, Wallen’s latest album Dangerous became the the longest running number one album for a male artist since 2016, largely out of protest for his being canceled.

Aside from the fact that I wouldn’t likely buy his album in the first place as my musical tastes were frozen in the 1980’s, I can’t say that I disagree with the canceling. In this day and age, uttering the n-word while white is always with intent. It isn’t an accidental utterance. The intent most assumed is that dude is a fucking racist and leave it at that. Those who then purchase his music in record numbers must also be racists. Five years from now, if someone notices a copy of Dangerous on your record or CD stack, you’re going to have to issue an apology for owning the work of a racist.

In our current cultural civil war the lines are clearly drawn but the motivations for being one side or the other are less clear, less evident. Like the term ‘fake news’ the GOP loves to take that issue taken with their practice (originally utilized to describe Trump’s routine bag of horseshit trotted out daily) and turn it around on the rest of us (it was quickly re-branded as the enemy of Trump). ‘Cancel culture’ has undergone the same transformation.

There is a problem—in accountability, in due process, in general fairness—with the practice of mobs not merely boycotting individuals for what is deemed egregious behavior and language but harassing people into joining the boycott on moral grounds. These problems are not quite the same as what is meant by ‘cancel culture’ when uttered by Ted Cruz.

The new esoteric social media thing is called Clubhouse. Essentially an audio Zoom call for hundreds of people to have ‘rooms’ designed for conversations about agreed upon topics, one must be invited to join and then either listen in or join the discussion. You can even hit the “Leave Quietly” button if all you’re doing is listening in. You can ‘raise your hand’ to let the moderator know you want to pipe up as well.

As much as I despise social media, Himmel sent me an invite, so I joined just to see what this might be.

A few weeks ago, Michael Tracey started a room entitled “Is Clubhouse Obsessed with Wokeism?” He hosted the conversation as moderator with a few other moderators until around two hours in he allowed a woman whose handle was “Brooklyn” (IRL Amanda ‘Brooklyn’ Toussaint) to co-moderate. She immediately exiled him and took over the room.

Toussaint is the founder of PROVX, or Progressive Reform Overrides Violence. Her agenda was simple: take over the conversation because she felt it was white people talking around the issue. She made comments early on that the term "woke" should not be used by white people because it is inherently black vernacular and began "stacking" a list of people allowed to speak in the room. The ensuing discussion took an additional three hours.

A few selected quotes after listening to almost the entire thing:

“I just turned off the hand raising. White people put your fucking hands down…”

“As a queer black polyamorous woman I have been checked by trans people because of my internalized transphobia. Violence is not just physical. Your whiteness is violence.”

“By having rooms like this you commit violence to black bodies, violence on marginalized bodies.”

“Why would ya’ll let white people on any stage to talk about anything…?”

“My n****s, you don’t gotta be kind. Let these white motherfuckers choke on it.”

“It’s black history month. Fuck you. Fuck you. Pay me to listen to us, internalize our truth. On Venmo. Right now.”

“White people don’t think of themselves as being white. That’s supremacy.”

“Science was built on transphobia and anti-blackness.”

“How can you say that something is not racist when people are literally telling you it is?”

“I do want white people to reject whiteness. I want them to be anti-white.”

“I value the lives of animals over the lives of white people.”

If you switch out “white” for “black” it is obvious how completely bigoted this nonsense is. “I value the lives of animals over the lives of black people.” WTF? “I just turned off the hand raising. Black people put your fucking hands down…” If it looks like bigotry and smells like bigotry, it’s bigotry. I don’t blame them for being bigots but it’s still bigotry, no matter how you justify it.

Now, the likelihood that most Americans in the rural parts of the country give two shits for Clubhouse, it is not realistic to assume they hear this sort of hateful rhetoric on the regular. They do, however, read The Atlantic. They do read Newsweek. Many of them have some sort of social media and certainly most are in tune with the Trumpish perspective, the FOX News take, on social justice.

You wanna know what social justice looks like to them?

No. This is not what the preponderance of social justice seeks to accomplish yet it is what some might suggest it should. For the exact same reason one would shy away from a white nationalist promoting faux identitarianism, books on black racism, or the cancelling of the beloved writings of, say, August Wilson, we should openly refute this nonsense as well.

Most (as in the vast majority) of the country’s population recognize that anti-black racism is and has been a major issue we need to address. Most (as in the vast majority) are decidedly not bigots. The loudest of both the extreme right and left, however, are really fucking loud and incredibly bigoted.

We know what white supremicist rhetoric and iconography looks like and we should. We should also recognize the same dogma in different skin.

During the summer of unrest last year, as campus activists were tearing down statues of Confederate generals, I saw Ken Burns on some channel talking about the collegiate cleansing.

His perspective was that, of course, in the pursuit of justice there will be over correction. How else to explain the damning of Abraham Lincoln with Robert E. Lee? Over correction is an expected result when attempting a huge fix societally. So is a backlash in response.

Perhaps I simply cannot damn 75 million Americans as racist dipshits for voting for Trump over Biden. Perhaps I believe there are a lot of issues at play and race is only one of many. Hard to say but I do not believe that bigotry—which is present in every human in every country in every century—is the moral evil those seeking power using it as a bludgeon against the Others want us to believe.

I don’t buy Wallen’s music because I’m not a country fan. I don’t buy anything by Ted Nugent anymore despite my love of “Cat Scratch Fever” because he’s a rightwing loon. Road Dahl was a Nazi-sympathizer but I still watch Gene Wilder as Willis Wonka every time I see that it’s on somewhere and I love me some Thomas Jefferson while still recognizing he owned slaves.

Some in America are lashing back from the extreme rhetoric of activists like ‘Brooklyn’ Toussaint. This is an expected result. 

The more history I read, the more I am hit in the jaw with a simple fact: there is nothing new about this. In 1918 there were anti-maskers and protests about government babysitting us. In the fifties, people who were even adjacent to Communists in almost any form were “held accountable” and lost careers over it. And for the entirety of time, there have been asshats who use race to divide us into camps, pitted against each other like teams in a campground battle, like high school jocks versus nerds versus that one badass kid who made a bong in shop class.

We tend to buy this hook every time. Why? Because, like the center of a Tootsie Pop, it only takes the owl three licks to get to our judgmental, self-interested, terrified centers. It is the very core of the Republican (and now Progressive) strategy of population management: tap into that completely normal if not wholly insulated fear of one another and milk the bovine teats of rage spawned from the recipe of terror and impotence.

Perhaps it is due to my ascendence in the (problematic) 1980’s—pre-smartphone, pre-internet, pre-social media, pre-surveillance state—that allows me to fully decide to listen to the race grifters on both sides of the rabid canines of ideology and take no moral offense. Perhaps it is my very GenXness that chooses to engage but on my solid color-blind, MLK inspired path.

Or maybe, like the cancelling of a country music guy, the coup over a social media discussion, or the attack upon Dr. Seuss, I realize that these issues only really matter to people with plenty of food and places to sleep. As in academia, the drama is so high because the stakes are so low.

[frankenvine-blog]

The Jock, The Nerd, The Hot Chick, and the...Merlot?

Happy Hauntings, folks!

I’m getting a jump start on my weekend, mostly ‘cause I’m sitting at home sick, curled under a blanket, watching the gloomy LA weather that rolls through once every seven years, but that means I’ve got time to flick through some old favorites and exciting new options for horror viewing! In the belated American spirit of Veteren’s Day (side note, huge thanks to all our active and retired Vets, we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for each and every one of you), I decided to check out the indie horror section on Amazon which suggested just the film I needed today.

I present to you, one of my new favorite horror comedies, President’s Day!

In the vein of Cabin in the Woods and Scary Movie, this indie treasure pokes so much fun at the horror genre while also teaching us all a little something about American History. Seriously, the amount of historical puns and jokes blows my mind, and even if it were a terrible film (which is most definitely is NOT), I still would have laughed my ass off.

From James K. Polk becoming a breakout character to each of the stereotypical teens finding their own unique story arcs, this was such a joy to watch, and the perfect thing for me today.

Now, thanks to my illness, I didn’t pop open a bottle of Madeira (Fun Fact: this was James Buchanan’s personal favorite), but I did allow myself to indulge in some warm, fuzzy, mulled wine! I grabbed a bottle of Merlot and followed one of my mom’s best slow cooker recipes and I’m not gonna lie, I actually feel 10 times better than I did when I woke up this morning. I’m not saying wine will cure your illness, but I’m not sayin’ it won’t either. (For the exact recipe I used, if you wanna follow along at home, click here!)

I’m going to leave you all with a few fun presidential wine facts! Woo!

As I mentioned before, James Buchanan loved his Madeira (and Sherry...he really favored those fortified wines!), and also had a bit of a reputation as a tank. At one time, his annual wine budget was $3,000, which is roughly $80,000 today! He also once drank 16 toasts on the Fourth of July, which just goes to show you, we’re not the only ones who rang in America’s birthday with an absurd amount of drinking.

Thomas Jefferson was the original “wine president” and he owned an extensive collection of French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish wines and it seems he favorite the French Bordeaux, perhaps thanks to his time as Ambassador to France.

Richard Nixon was the first president to bring Californian wine (and American wine in general) into the White House, serving it every one of his guests. Often.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for you today! Stay Spooky!

*images © Crooked Jaw Productions*

[jamalam]

Hold On To Let Go Chapter 1

Y’all wanted this, so here it is! The first chapter of the Jamilton soulmate AU, Hold On To Let Go. I know that @puns-and-fics has a wonderful story called Meant To Be, which has a similar premise, but I can promise that I have their permission to write this, and will be taking the story in a different direction as well.

This chapter has a bit of mentions of self-harm, nothing too graphic, but you have been warned.

Sharp laughter cut through the air as Alexander’s small frame was stuffed into a cold metal locker. Sometimes, he was glad to be short- it was much easier to avoid people and stay out of the way. But times like these? When he was having his size used against him by being crammed into such a tight space? He was a bit less thankful.

The locker door slammed closed and Alexander was left cloaked in darkness, the heavy cloud of night hanging over his head far too early in the day. He wished that he could reach for his backpack, to grab a pen and talk to his soulmate, his amazing, wonderful soulmate, and ask why this had to happen to him of all people. But he couldn’t. So he sat there in the dark, crying silently as he waited for someone to find hm and let him out.

Soon enough, the school janitor walked through the halls, doing his usual late afternoon rounds and asking if anyone was stuck in the lockers. Alexander had banged against the door to the one he was trapped in, and ben let out quickly, not looking at the janitor’s look of worry. It certainly wasn’t the first time Alexander had been let out one of the school lockers, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Scurrying out of school, knowing that he probably already missed the bus, Alexander began to walk home. He wiped off his tears and tried his best to regain composure, stretching his legs after having been trapped in such a small space for so long. He trudged up the stairs to his adoptive parents’ home. The Washingtons were soulmates, and having been unable to have children of their own, decided to adopt Alexander. He would never really understand why they’d chosen some scrawny kid from the Caribbean.

Nodding a small ‘hello’ to them, he pushed open the door to his room and walked in, closing the door behind him and locking it. He didn’t want anyone walking in on this.

Thomas was hunched over his desk, eyes scanning the essay for what seemed like the thousandth time. He had been sitting there for nearly an hour, a half-finished essay staring up at him, patiently waiting to be completed. He picked up his pencil, attempting to begin marking places he would need to rewrite again, when a soft line of red caught his attention.

It was not a cheerful red, the kind on women’s dresses in autumn, or the kind that adorned the streets in that season, either. It was a precise red, a crimson. Lifting his wrist, he stared at it for a moment. It was far too red to be a mark from something on the table, and he had not been resting his arm on anything. He brought his other hand up to it, touching it slightly. Had it been his soulmate?

His soulmate had never been able to speak their name, but even despite that, Thomas knew them well. They weren’t particularly fond of the color red either. And the line was too thin, too straight to have been drawn by hand on their skin, and it wasn’t like they could place a flat ruler on their curved arm. It was too...uniform. A razor-sharp….oh. Oh.

Dropping his pencil, Thomas grabbed the nearest pen and began to scrawl on his arm in the dark blue ink.

Are you okay? What’s going on?

I’m fine.

Are you hurting yourself?

Yes. I just went through some shitty stuff today.

Like what?

This dickhead at my school. He did all the usual dickhead jock stuff. Kick me down, laugh, stuff me in one of his friend’s lockers. Usual stuff.

Thomas felt a twinge of pain at his soulmate’s words. That was the kind of thing he did to people like that short kid in school. What was his name again? Alexander or something? But he knew that this was different. Alexander deserved his treatment, for being a whore’s son and a smartass who didn’t know when to shut up. This was different. This was his soulmate.

I’m sorry you have to go through that. You don’t deserve it.

Yes I do.

No, you don’t. You are one of the kindest, sweetest people I’ve ever known.

We’ve never met.

True, but my point still stands. What’s this dickhead’s name, anyways? I need to know so I can fantasize about beating the shit outta him. Get some comebacks based on his name.

Ha ha. You might even know him. That’d be a laugh, huh?

Yeah. So what’s his name?

The words that were scrawled onto Thomas’s arm next made his blood run cold, colder than the winter wind blowing outside, colder than the metal of the lockers at school, colder than his heart when he had been at said school earlier in the day.

Thomas Jefferson.

[lostmemoriies-a]

frances isn’t jealous . really . she isn’t .

well , okay , maybe she is . but just a little bit . it’s just not fair , though . not fair that jack gets to have a bunch of friends , friends who are cool and popular and frances is stuck . she’s stuck with no friends . jack was really her only friend . it’s sad to think that she’s a fucking junior in high school , her and her brother having turned seventeen just a few days ago , and she has no friends .

it’s halloween and normally frances would be ecstatic . it had always been her favorite holiday . she loved getting to pretend that she was someone else , someone who was happy and confident , for just one day . jack had always hated halloween though . which is why it doesn’t make sense to her that she’s having the worst time while jack is having fun .

this halloween party that thomas fucking jefferson has thrown every year since the seventh grade has been shit . frances had never really had fun at his halloween parties before . but they had been bearable because she’d have her jacky at her side . they’d make fun of drunk girls loudly singing karaoke together . but this year is different . since her brother got on the baseball team , he’s changed . he’s been hanging out with the other guys on the team . hanging out with jocks   (   it’s kind of a slap in the face because they used to make fun of the self - absorbed jock assholes at their high school .   ) . he’s been distant as hell . hadn’t had time for her anymore . it was always the guys this , the team that . but that was okay . frances wasn’t jealous .

barely twenty minutes into the party , frances locked herself in the bathroom and slid down the door to hug her knees tightly to her chest . she felt terrible . her and jack would always go costume shopping together . and she had stupidly waited until the night before , hoping that maybe that he hadn’t gotten a chance to go to the halloween store yet so they could go together like every other year . but he had already bought a costume , coordinated with the other guys on the baseball team . they were all dressed as fucking marvel characters . it made frances want to hate marvel , but she couldn’t - her , jack , and mom had seen pretty much every marvel movie on opening night together . and frances wasn’t wearing a costume . what a kick to the gut . it was like they changed fucking places , jack loving halloween and frances hating it now . she was wearing her favorite t - shirt , the one with the skeleton ribs on it , with a black and white striped thermal shirt on underneath .

frances wasn’t quite sure , but she’s pretty sure that she was having a panic attack . isn’t that great ? having a panic attack in the bathroom of a virtual stranger at the biggest party of the fall ? if anyone found out , she’d be ruined . at least she could blame the red eyes from crying on weed . that would be believable .

she crawled away from the door and climbed into the bathtub . frances thought that maybe if she was further from the door , then no one would hear her cry or talk to herself   (   she had this habit . whenever jack wasn’t there to talk her through panic attacks , she’d just talk to herself . just another thing that would ruin her if anyone found out .   )

“   i could stay right here or disappear and nobody would even notice at all ,   “   frances begins softly , eyes shut tight to try and stop tears from falling . it doesn’t work though .   “   i'm a creeper in a bathroom 'cause my jacky kinda left me alone .   “   she sniffles and shakes her head angrily for a moment .   “   but you know what ? i'd rather fake pee than stand awkwardly , or pretend to check a text on my phone .   “   she’s rubbing hard at her eyes now , throat closing up a bit , chest hurting from all the heaving .   “   everything felt fine when i was half of a pair . now through no fault of mine , there's no other half there .   “

frances silences herself when she hears someone outside of the bathroom . it’s just some drunk girl , though , someone singing along somewhat nicely to the music thumping throughout the house , despite the owner of the voice being completely shitfaced . she thinks it might be maria lewis . girl had a set of pipes on her that frances would kill for . but frances was okay with being perfectly mediocre .

she lets out a breath of relief when the footsteps from the girl retreat , probably off to get some more beer . whatever . frances didn’t care .   “   now i’m just frances in the bathroom at a party . i forget how long it’s been since jack wanted to spend time with me .    “   she hears a knock at the door , sitting up with wide eyes .   “   no , you can’t come in ! ! !   “   whoever it was , they muttered a small   ‘   damn , fine then   ‘   and walked away . jesus , frances felt like she was going insane now .

“   i'm waiting it out 'til it's time to leave . and picking at grout as i softly grieve . i’m just frances who you don’t know , frances flying solo , frances in the bathroom by herself !   “   the first part is kind of directed towards jack . she knows he’s not there for her to yell at , but it feels good . after all , it feels like they don’t know each other anymore . it sucks . it really fucking sucks . but she can’t do shit about it , she can just wait it out , hope he’ll come to his senses soon .

“    i am hiding , but he's out there , just ignoring all our history . memories get erased , and i'll get replaced with a newer , cooler version of me  .   “   frances gets kind of choked up at the thought . it seems plausible though . there’s probably a guy on the baseball team who has a sister . a sister who looks kind of like frances , but much cooler . frances wouldn’t blame jack , if he left her for that girl .

“   i half regret the beers .   “   frances finds herself mumbling , rubbing at her eyes , letting out a half laugh . she’s kinda glad she had so much already because her anxiety would be killer if she didn’t have some sort of buffer .   “   as i choke back the tears , i’ll wait as long as i need . won’t come out ‘til my face is dry . or i could just blame it on the weed ! everyone would believe that in a fucking heartbeat !   “   frances clambers out of the tub now , stumbles over to the sink . she leans on the counter and glares at her reflection .

as she looks at herself , she realizes that she hates everything about her appearance . her eyes are too big . her lips are too chapped . her nose looks weird . her hair’s frizzy as hell . it’s pulled back into a messy bun , but it doesn’t help at all . and her freckles . god , don’t even get her started on her goddamn freckles . there’s far too many of them . she thinks it makes her look stupid , like she’s got specks of dirt all over her face . she spits at her reflection .

“   it sucks you left me here alone ,   “   frances says softly . she looks similar enough to jack that she can pretend that she’s yelling at him instead of her own tired face .   “   you left me in this stupid fucking teenage battle zone by myself .   “   she shakes her head , more tears flowing . she thought that she was over this already .   “   i feel the pressure building up . big mistake number who - the - fuck - knows of today was showing up .   “

frances chokes back a sob as she turns on the faucet . she bends her neck towards the sink , splashes cold water on her face . she takes a deep breath to steady herself . she feels herself slip into a better place after that . it’s nice . she’s finally back in her somewhat - happy place . it’s the one she slips into when she doesn’t want anything to do with jack . the one where it’s just her and mom . her and mom spending time together at the park , going to see a movie , anything . she keeps her gaze on the sink , somewhat afraid of looking back at herself .

“   i can't help but yearn for a different time . maybe middle school ? shit was pretty good then . maybe before we even started school . that’s when shit was still good .   “   frances scoffs softly , looks back up at her reflection .   “   and the present is clearer . and there’s no denying i’m just . . .   “

that’s when she breaks . she collapses onto the floor , curls into a ball and starts fucking bawling . she’s gotten most of her anger out now . now she’s just sad . really fucking sad .   “   is there a sadder sight than . . .   “   frances wants to finish her sentence . really . but she’s thrown into another sobbing fit , throat tight and chest burning .   “   what a heinous night .   “   it takes her , like , five minutes , but she’s finally regulated her breathing back into a normal pace . she slowly stands up , rubbing at the tear tracks falling down her cheeks .

“   i wish i had stayed at home instead and watched some shitty movie on fucking hallmark .   “   the anger’s back now .   “   or , i wish i had offed myself instead !   “   frances is full - on yelling now .   “   or maybe , i wish i had never been born ! then i wouldn’t be dragging jack down !   “   she punches the door hard enough to hurt herself , but not hard enough to break the door . her dad would kill her if he had to pay to fix someone’s fucking door because she couldn’t control her anger issues   (   she needed to go to anger - management classes . maybe she’d look into it in college . if she wasn’t dead by june .   )   “   i’m just frances who’s a loner , so she must be a stoner ! god , what a fucking loser ! frances flyin’ solo , who you think that you know ? !   “   frances covers her face with her hands , screams into her palms before flinging the door open .

as she’s looking for thomas fucking jefferson , she lets herself say one last thing .   “   all you know about me is my name ,   “   frances murmurs as she finally spots the tall boy . one of jacks’ baseball buddies , judging by his iron man costume . she taps him on the shoulder and is briefly surprised to see that thomas fucking jefferson was just talking to jack .   “   hi . awesome party , i’m so glad i came .   “   she doesn’t want to come off as rude , so she relies on pretending - pretending that she was happy , pretending that she had had fun . frances had even plastered on a wide , rather convincing smile . thank god for taking drama all throughout middle school .

thomas fucking jefferson smiles condescendingly at frances before turning back to talk to jack . frances unintentionally glares at jack before turning sharply to exit the house . jack mutters some half - assed excuse to thomas fucking jefferson before turning quickly to chase after frances .

when he makes it outside , frances is already clambering into her car   (   she’s sobered enough to be able to drive now . and they didn’t drive together . it’s weird and abnormal , but they’re not exactly the best of friends anymore   )   . jack runs up to her , grabs her arm a bit harshly and pulls her close to him .   “   what the fuck is your problem ?   “   he says roughly , eyebrows narrowed . if looks could kill , frances thinks that she’d be a dead girl .

“   excuse me ? what the fuck are you talking about ?   “   frances shoots back , free hand coming up to try to pry jack’s fingers off of her arm . luckily , it works , and she stumbles away from her a bit . she’s looking at him the way she looks at their dad now and jack seems unphased . it doesn’t sit well with her , the fact that he doesn’t care that he’s equivalent to their shithead dad right now .

“   you’re kidding . you were being so fucking rude to thomas back there !   “

“   no i wasn’t , i was being polite . i told him that his party was awesome and that i was glad that i came . how is that being rude ?   “

“   polite ? ! you call that being polite ? ! you were fucking dripping with sarcasm !   “   john’s stepping closer to her and frances is flinching . she doesn’t like this at all .

“   so maybe i didn’t have a good time , what - the fuck - ever ! it’s not like you care anymore about me to want to check on me ! fuck you , john goddamn laurens !   “   frances hisses , gets in john’s personal space before side - stepping to get to her car , purposefully steps on jack’s foot hard . she climbs into the driver seat , slams the door shut , and is soon peeling out of her parking space and is off towards their house .

jack found himself just standing there , eyes following frances ‘ s stupid fucking pt cruiser , completely shocked . frances was never that harsh towards him . he knew he’d fucked up , but he didn’t want to admit that he had done wrong . he was stubborn as shit , and so was frances , so he was pretty much resigned to the idea that they’d never be friends again . but he didn’t care . really . he didn’t . if she’s going to be an ass , then he doesn’t want to fight to be best friends anymore .

[jornami]

Hamilton High School AU!

A/N: I'm so excited for this! With every person’s headcanon there's a little something about me too!

Request: no one asked for this, but did that stop me from writing it? No

Let's start with Aaron because he is me

He freaks out about his grades. He checks them three times a day. Minimum.

He once tried to go the whole winter break without checking his grades.

Spoiler alert: he lasted for three hours

One time he got a 69 on a math test

He freaked

He started looking up McDonald's applications and told all his friends that he could kiss his dreams of college goodbye

I actually did this. He actually did this.

He's also in debate club

Him and Alexander argue the whole time every single meeting

Student Body President

The other members have renamed it “The HamiltonBurr Discourse Club”

Let's do Eliza next, shall we?

She's in chorus and she outshines everyone

She auditioned for District Chorus and got in of course

She has the hugest crush on Alexander and none of friends know why

She has straight A’s

She packs her lunch strategically

Her sandwiches are always perfectly cut

she has her carrots and hummus in a container that looks like this

she always puts a napkin on the table and on her lap

All the teachers love her

Got all her community service hours done her freshman year

She's that girl that's so perfect you just wanna punch her but you can't because she's so kind

Let’s give it up for the baddest female in town, Angelica Schuyler 

No one messes with Angelica Schuyler

She eats fuckboys for breakfast

She's in Social Justice Club

She got kicked out of history class for saying, “America is a hierarchical structure that was built by sexist white men.”

And let's just say they definitely had something to say to talk about in the next Social Justice meeting

Also got kicked out of English class the next week for saying, “Well, excuse me for thinking that we should read books by a variety of authors not just old, dead white men!”

I love her. She's my hero

I'm not even going in any specific order at this point, so I'm going to talk about Gwash!!!

He's the sexy math teacher that everybody wants

He wears button ups and rolls up his sleeves,,, and,,,, his hands,,, they’re so big and,,,,I,,,, lost all ability to for,m sentences,,,,

He's clueless to the fact that everybody wants him

“Wow class! I've never had such a big turnout for after school SAT prep!1!1!”

Poor baby, he's clueless, protect him, okay?

Calls Alexander son

Next up, my sweet sunshine, my cinnamon roll, my curly haired freckled faced cutie, JOHN LAURENS!!

He's in Social Justice Club too

He loves to doodle !!!

He's gotten so many points taken off for classwork for doodling on the side of them

His binders are filled Polaroids of his friends and pictures of sloths

Common misconception: his favorite animal isn’t turtles; it's sloths!!!

He's notorious for taking naps in class???

“John what's the answer to number 6?”

“Uh, y=7x-8”

“John, this is Spanish class.”

Yeah,,,he never lived that down

Thomas motherfucking Jefferson

He's cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

He packs Mac and cheese with ketchup 3 out of 5 days of the school week

Shows up to class late

Goes on random tangents in Debate Club and ends them with

“And if you don't know, now you know.”

Never goes anywhere without his sidekick/echo/lap dog James Madison

Theatre nerd

“Today I'll be performing a monologue for A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare.”

Then continues to recite the monologue until the teach interrupts and says,

“Young man, I asked for your name.”

Starts speaking in French for no reason at random times,,,,,????

“Mr. Jefferson, answer the question in English or go see Mr. Seabury in the office.”

“Peu importe.”

Complains about school but is getting all A’s

Yay! Time for Maria!

She's super introverted

She writes poetry and music and sits in the chorus room during lunch to focus

She writes like she's running out of time

She can sing her ass off

Always afraid that she's going to get the answer wrong but always ends up getting it right

She is quiet, but she's definitely judging you

She very shy and gets intimidated very easily

Angelica always stands up for her

Lafayette! Ladies! Lafayette!

Uses his French accent to get what he wants

Also uses French to confuse people

He's sort of a rebel??

“Laf, we can't make out in the dressing rooms!”

“Shhhh, you worry too much.”

Is also a theatre nerd

Is the only person getting an A+ in AP French

throws raging parties when his parents aren't home

Despite his rebel ways, he's getting straight A's

And Peggy, of course!

Went through a phase in middle school where she wore headgear

They called her metal mouth even when she got it off

She hit her glow up freshman year and every guy was throwing

themselves at her

She's the person who finds the quizlet for the whole test online

Then people are asking how she got an A on the hardest test of the year

She'll never tell

She's in theatre and she always end up in the ensemble even though she deserves a starring role

Also in district chorus

Eats in the middle of class????

They’ll be taking a test and all you hear is a bag crumpling

She once brought peanut butter crackers and started coughing up a lung because they were so dry and got caught in her throat

help her

B rahhh B rahhh it’s Hercules Mulligan

Is the king of Home Ec

Knitted all his teachers scarves for Christmas

Looks like a jock but is really a big softie

A model student™

Hates math class with every fiber of his being

 Tutors people for fun

And last, and definitely least: Alexander Hammy Ham

If Mr. Washington calls him son one more time he's going to wild out

His spam account on Instagram is mostly rants about Mr. Washington

Don't let this fool you...he loves Mr. Washington

Turns Debate Club meetings into rap battles

Incapable of answering a question without going on a tangent

“Mr. Hamilton we get it. Please, sit down.”

Laughs at Burr for freaking out over his grades but also freaks out about his grades

Oblivious to the fact that Eliza likes him

Only eats nachos from the cafeteria

Has his name displayed on the “Perfect SOL Score Wall” multiple times

Hates Shakespeare with a burning passion

smarter than most of the teachers

[blackkudos]

Leon Robinson

Leon Preston Robinson IV (born March 8, 1962) usually credited as simply Leon, is an American actor and singer, who began his professional career as a film actor in the early-1980s. Robinson is best known for his roles as David Ruffin in the TV Movie The Temptations (1998), J.T. Matthews in the 1991 Robert Townsend film, The Five Heartbeats, Derice Bannock in the 1993 film, Cool Runnings, and as Shep in the 1994 basketball drama film, Above the Rim.

Career

Robinson appeared in a 1989 episode of the NBC series Midnight Caller, in which he played an athlete who falls victim to crack cocaine. He also co-starred in the 1989 ABC miniseries The Women of Brewster Place, as the boyfriend of a suburbanite (played by Robin Givens). He was cast as Saint Martin de Porres in Madonna's controversial 1989 music video "Like a Prayer".

Robinson's early film roles included a football teammate of Tom Cruise in All the Right Moves (1983), as Shadow Nadeing, the Notre Dame-bound basketball playing co-worker of Matt Dillon, in The Flamingo Kid (1984). He costarred in the Michael Mann-produced Tri-Star Pictures film Band of The Handas well as the "Killer Bee" in the Dennis Hopper-directed gang film Colors, starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. After his exposure in the 1989 video for the song "Like a Prayer" by Madonna, he played a leading role in the 1993 Disney film Cool Runnings. That same year, he co-starred as John Lithgow's henchman in Renny Harlin's Cliffhanger and followed with a turn as a disillusioned ex-jock in New Line Cinema's Above the Rim (1994). Robinson also appeared as Lela Rochon's married lover in 1995's Waiting to Exhale directed by Forest Whitaker and starring Whitney Houston and a starring role in the Merchant/Ivory produced movie, Side Streets with Rosario Dawson. He produced as well as starred in the 1997 romantic drama The Price of Kissing with TV star Pauley Perrette. He also starred in the movie Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored, directed by Tim Reid and winner of Best Picture at the NAACP Image Awards.

Robinson has received critical acclaim for his portrayal of three singers: David Ruffin in the 1998 NBC miniseries The Temptations, Little Richard in the self-titled 2000 NBC movie biography, and JT in the 20th Century Fox movie,The Five Heartbeats directed by Robert Townsend. He received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Little Richard. During this period, Robinson joined the ensemble cast of two TV series, playing the popular Jefferson Keane on HBO's first series, Oz and as Lawrence Hill on Showtime's Resurrection Blvd., a costarring role as "Stoney" best friend of Joaquin Phoenix in Miramax' military drama Buffalo Soldiers, an uncredited role as "Joseph 13 X" in Michael Mann's award winning biopic, Ali starring Will Smith, in addition to briefly hosting his own late-night talk show, The L-Bow Room, on BET.

In 2008, Robinson starred in the 20th Century Fox thriller Cover, directed by Bill Duke, and starred alongside Danny Masterson and Dominique Swain in the indie comedy The Brooklyn Heist, directed by Julian Mark Kheel. In 2009, AOL Black Voices voted Robinson one of the Sexiest Actors of All-time. Between 2013 and 2014, he appeared in four movies, the romantic comedy I Really Hate My Ex, written and directed by Troy Beyer, the southern drama Soul Ties, based on the book by Tee Austin, the indie rock/drama 37 and the romantic drama, And Then There Was You with Garcelle Beauvais.

Theater

In theater, Robinson has headlined three national tours, with sold out performances at Hollywood's Kodak Theater, NYC's Beacon Theater, Detroit's Fox Theater, Washington, DC's Warner Theater and more in Friends and Lovers (2005), based on Eric Jerome Dickey's NY Times bestselling book. In 2009 and 2010 as a soldier returning from Iraq in 3 Ways to Get A Husband co-starring Billy Dee Williams and in 2012, the revival of Why Do Good Girls Like Bad Boys.

Music

Robinson is the lead vocalist and songwriter of the band, Leon and the Peoples. In 2007, he received an International Reggae and World Music Award nomination for the band's debut CD The Road Less Traveled, winner of Best International Artist at the Joe Higgs Reggae Awards and completed a 36 city US tour with reggae greats Beres Hammond and Marcia Griffiths titled the "For The Love Of It Tour". He was a frequent guest on Beres Hammond’s 2008 and 2010 North American tours. He head-lined NYC's Central Park 2010 and 2013 AIDS Walk Concerts. Other performances include: 2011 Aspen Jazz Fest., 2012 Catalpa NYC Music Festival, New Orleans Music Festival, Chicago's Festival Of Life, Reggae on River, Jamaica's Rebel Salute, and BET's popular 106 & Park.

Leon and The Peoples' single, Love Is A Beautiful Thing was featured on the BET/Centric TV show Culture List, which premiered on July 21, 2013.

Filmography

Sole Survivor...Gang Leader

All the Right Moves (1983)...Shadow Nadeing

The Flamingo Kid (1984).. Fortune Smith

Band of the Hand (1986).. Moss

The Father Clements Story (1987)...Ice

The Lawless Land (1988)...Road Kill

Colors (1988)...Killer Bee

The Women of Brewster Place (1989)...Abshu

A Mother's Courage (1989)...Michael Thomas

Like a Prayer (music video)...(1989)

The Five Heartbeats (1991)...J. T. Matthews

Cool Runnings (1993)...Derice Bannock

Cliffhanger (1993)...Kynette

Bad Attitude (1993)

Above the Rim (1994)...Shep

Waiting to Exhale (1995)...Russell

Pure Danger (1996)...Felix

Once Upon a Time... When We Were Colored (1996)...Uncle Melvin

Spirit Lost (1997)...John

B*A*P*S (1997)...Himself

The Price of Kissing (1997)...Larry

Runaway Car (1997)...Officer Isaiah 'Beau' Beaufort

The Temptations (1998)...David Ruffin

Side Streets (1999)...Errol Boyce

Friends & Lovers (1999)...Tyrell

Bats (1999)...Jimmy Sands

Little Richard (film) (2000)...Little Richard

Ali (2001)...Joe Simmons

Buffalo Soldiers (2001)...Stoney

Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2005)...Slim

Cover (2007)... Ryan Chambers

The Brooklyn Heist (aka Capers) (2009)...Ronald

Je'Caryous Johnson Presents: 3 Ways to Get a Husband (2009)

The Heart Specialist (2011)...Handsome Doctor

Soul Ties (2012)

Ex-Free (2012)

And Then There Was You (2013)

Against The Jab (2015)

Where Children Play (2015)

Wikipedia

[notsdlifter]

Middle Children

                    "A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often, he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it."  -- Mark Twain

            It is a philosophical conundrum that I first encountered in college. A professor, looking at stadium seats filled with students nursing hangovers, asks the class “do you want to know where you are going to die?” Someone stifles a yawn. A jock in the back-row T’s off “nah . . . it’d spoil the fun.” A bookish girl in the front row wades in deliberately, “knowing would enable a person to plan and live life to the fullest.” The classroom splinters over the next twenty minutes as students interject answers that are subtle variation of those two camps. This question has troubled scholars and teenage potheads since time immemorial.

I do not know when you are going to die, but I can tell you exactly where the death will originate. The place has produced every near apocalypse in American history. The death toll runs into the hundreds of millions and counting. And it is the very last place that you’d expect to be on the forefront of the next, great American catastrophe.  

The place is a sleepy little town in Kansas. The birthplace of madness and the garden of the future apocalypse.  Kansas is a paradox, a difficult thing to pin down, a place so backwards that the land itself can’t even make up its mind. Most think that the history of Kansas is all progress propaganda and the pioneer spirit. The iconic image of the brawny settler perched atop a wagon squinting his eyes while he surveyed the “Great American Desert” is the Great Plains’ version of Betty the Riveter. The settlers came, they saw, and they kicked Kansas’ grass covered ass. It is the version that Hollywood portrays in its movies about the Sunflower State. It is a secret history that hides the true excitement behind the Wizard’s purple curtain. For there is another side to the tale that few writers or historians have ever touched.

Kansas prairies were occupied long before the Egyptians built pyramids in the Valley of the Kings. The history is ancient, the mystery is unsolved. The tale that most American’s know is a half-truth; a partial representation that filters the State’s macabre history through the canvas of Norman Rockwell that is closer to cliché than reality. The people that could tell this tale are dead, murdered by white settlers coming to terminate the “great market for bodies and souls” or pursue the dream of free land riches.

But if you listen to Kansas’ history, the real history, you can hear it whispering its enigmatic legacy. An amazing string of evil coincidences defines the region. For Kanas has had its finger on nearly every American war, international disaster, and global pandemic since the human beings crossed the ice bridge.  And that evil is still here waiting under an ocean of winter wheat waiting . . .

Brief Revision

For those of you who missed the minute history class devoted to Kansas history let me take you back before human beings. Eons before the Great Plains stretched across the borders of Kansas, the whole place was the Western Interior Sea. Even today, it is not uncommon to find a fossilized tooth shark in the middle of a wheat field. Geology indicates that Kansas was once home to a great mountain range. Once mountains, then ocean, and now the largest tall grass prairie in the world. You might say that confusion is in Kansas’ blood.

There is a wildness to Kansas. A mixture of uncontrolled rage and relentless ambition that have made the state a breeding ground for a special kind of “madness.”

The madness—if it can even be called that—originated in the geographical enter of the United States thousands of years before the signing of the constitution. Resting inside of the rib cage of the burgeoning nation, within the heartbeat of a vast Indian community, was a hidden power that would dictate the outcome of world history.

The madness is ancient, perhaps as old as the land itself. Some say it began after the Indians were forced off their land, taught Christianity and beaten till their tan plains skin bled a socially acceptable brand Uncle Sam blue. An ancestral curse, or some form of national karma for the wrongs done to the Indians.

Various Indian tribes inhabited Kansas throughout the ages, but the dominant tribe was the Osage. A proud people whose Indian name, Ni-U-Kon-Ska, means little children of the middle waters, the Osage inhabited a swath of prairie stretching from the Kansas plains all the way down to the deep canyon cut rocks of the Texas panhandle. The Osage were not specifically a warrior-like tribe, nor where they agrarian. They were a nomadic band of hunters that managed their massive prairie land. For centuries stretching back millenniums before Columbus, the Osage grew into the land. The earth, much like the buffalo they hunted, become an integral part of the tribe. They listened nature, respond to her wisdom, and adapted their lifestyle to suit this knowledge. This connection ran deep, and the prairie flourished.

Then the Spaniard came. He was one of the firsts in a maddening string of Kansas’ firsts. It was the promise of riches that brought Spaniards 5,000 miles across the Atlantic. In 1540, at the height of Spanish power, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luján marched his army right through the center of the Osage country. He brought only 330 armed Spanish soldiers clad in plate metal and morion helmets capped with a steel Mohawk and a single read feather. He had a thousand Indians in tow. Some as scouts, most as slaves, Coronado’s Indians spearheaded north through the center of the Osage country in search of Quivira, the mythical seven cities of gold. Coronado was especially interested in gold bars and rumors of hyper-sensuous virgins. He marched for years and ended up stopping in what is now Token-Oak, Kansas.  He set up camp on the top of black hills now known as the Hollows and stopped. After three years marching, Coronado stood on those barren hills and decided to return home.

Shortly thereafter, things went to shit. He never found the gold to fill Spanish coffers, only Indians, buffaloes, and grass as far as the eye could see. When he left the rolling hills of Token-Oak, he walked west back into the prairie. With such flat land, there were no landmarks for the Spanish use for navigation. The ominous prairie sky, unobstructed by trees and mountains, closed in on the party. The elements and the Osage descended.  

Then the madness came—as it comes to all people in this narrative—and seized Coronado. As his party began to fracture, he wanted to make an example out of the discontent. In the open prairie, just outside of Token-Oak, he tortured, raped, and dismembered Indian members of his party.  And sleeping under the vast sky, surrounded by natives, listening to the strong night winds sweep the ocean of prairie grass across the flat plains, the madness tickled Coronado. The subtle sound of millions of bottlebrush husks floating on top of the wind like barely audible whispers. Underneath the wind, all the time, was the fear.

Coronado left the state forever, but it never left him. The madness walked within the conquistador’s ranks taking the life of his compatriots in an endless series of bizarre accidents. Starving Spaniards stumbled off the edge of cliffs. One soldier cut off his own scrotum. Another got syphilitic dementia so bad that he gorged himself on his own flesh. Of three hundred Spaniards, less than twenty made it home. Coronado lost his considerable fortune and, due to the atrocities that he committed on those Kansas Plains, his respect. Penniless and ostracized from the government, he died in Mexico City.

Only a handful of Coronado’s party made it back to Spain. The Spanish Empire, which crossed oceans with its mighty navy and dominated indigenous people the word over, collapsed.  The greatest import—at least in terms of impact on the nation—that the Spaniards ever brought back was not Aztec gold, Chinese silks, or African diamonds. It was Kansas crazy. And that crazy brought the empire to its knees.

The second explorer to visit Token-Oak, Kansas, was the world-renowned Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Duo. As manifest destiny began to sweep the nation, and the burgeoning country “bought” millions of acres of unexplored territory. Thomas Jefferson commissioned a small band of explorers to chart the newly acquired land. Lewis and Clark shot up the raging waters of the mighty Mississippi river and paddled up its largest tributary, the Missouri River, on their way to the west coast. The two men left the river and explored the Northeastern corner of Kansas for a three -week period.

Lewis and Clark encountered small bands of mounted Osage Indians in the areas surrounding modern day Token-Oak. Meriwether, a man that had a legendary drinking problem and a rapier wit, took things too far and had his way with some of the local. He tasted all the local fare he could wrap his nasty prairie-caked hands around. Allegedly, there were three scourges of the Plains Indians: whiskey, disease, and Meriwether Lewis. Lewis and Clark pushed their way up the Missouri River, all the way to the pacific shores of Oregon leaving Token-Oak and its bizarre black hills behind.

After “conquering” the great unknown, Lewis and Clark returned to their respective homes, Clark to St. Louis and Lewis to Louisiana. Conquering Indians became a passion for Lewis as he became the head of the newly formed Bureau of Indian Affairs and directly assisted in white settling of the plains. For years, Lewis cleared land and managed various tribe’s relocation.

When the madness overcame Lewis, it brought him down in style. Apparently, the old Indian slayer checked himself into a hotel on his way from Louisiana to Washington D.C. He was speaking some crazy shit. He demanded a bowl of soup with three spoons. Hotel proprietors heard him orating to himself as if giving a thunderous closing statement at a trial. He secluded himself in his room. The end came in the predawn hours of October 11th, Lewis pulled a shotgun from his horse saddle next to his bed, stuck the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Now, here is the crazy part. The proprietor noted two clear shots and Lewis had two wounds. Wrap your mind around this thought. Lewis pulled the trigger and probably blew the lower set of teeth and a cheek out of his face. The blast burn alone would be enough to sear exploded flesh. After the first shot, with half his face gone, Lewis picked up his rifle, loaded the gun powder and ball, and fired a second shot into his stomach. That, my friends, is Kansas crazy. The madness in it rawest, physically overcoming, other worldly form.

About fifty years later, the madness went national. The most devastating war ever to strike the United States. A conflict that killed over 600,000 civilians and burned dozens of American cities to the ground . . . yep, that started just outside of Token-Oak, too.

With the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the growing nation decided to allow residents of the new territories to decide if the area would be a slave-bearing state. In that sense, moving out to Kansas was either a noble endeavor or to ensure the furtherance of the slavery establishment. To Kansas went prophets, hermits, abolitionists, fundamentalists, pro-slavery settlers, and profiteers. Kansas was the first “actual” battle ground of the Civil war. The idea of popular sovereignty—the agreement that each new state would decide by popular vote to be anti- or pro-slavery—became a lightning rod. Slave states, especially Missouri, sent thousands of pro-slavery settlers to win a majority in the vote for slavery in Kansas. Conversely, abolitionists from Iowa to New England sent people, too. Two governments sprung up in Kansas each vying for control of the new constitution. Conflicts raged around the newly established territory. Bombs went off. Cannon boomed hot. Years before the War consumed the nation it soaked Kansas soil red. A mere reference to “Bleeding Kansas” had a one southern member of the House of Representatives brandish a walking cane and nearly bludgeon his northern colleague to death on the floor of the United States Senate.

About eighty miles southeast of Token-Oak, a northern abolitionist, John Brown, attacked a gang of slave drivers with a broad sword. Brown had a giant set of testicles and a stare that could burn a hole through steel. He hatched a plan was to drive a small group of followers into the heart of the south, seize the weapons stash, and lead an army of slaves across the southern United States on a veritable romp in the name of the Lord. Brown died in the raid at Harper’s Ferry, but his ideas lived on. The long-held fear that he exposed in Southerners ignited the conflict. Slaves made up nearly half of the Confederate population. The simple thought that a man could run into the South, arm slaves, and lead a rebellion was too much for the slave drivers. The roots of that fear were planted in Kansas soil and sprouted the bloodiest conflict in American history.

And the madness was just getting warmed up.

In 1881, Kansas was the first state to outlaw the sale of alcohol in its state constitution. A fierce lady named Kerry Nation burst into salons with a hatchet and smashed barrels of whiskey and bottles of beer. She described herself as “a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what He doesn't like.” Arrested some thirty times for her raids on saloons and unabashed temperance, Ms. Nation never backed down from a fight. She personally sowed the seeds of the prohibition movement that led to the birth of organized crime and the development of the drug trade.

Then the madness went global. In 1918, in an army barracks just outside of Token-Oak, a soldier in Fort Riley, Kansas, came down with the flu. A few days later, that soldier was dead, and half the barracks were sick. A global pandemic had ignited outside of an eerie Kansas town that sat on the Smoky River and spread across the world. This flu infected over five hundred million people at its peak. Once the dust settled, estimates state that seventy million people across the world died from H1N1.

About twelve years after the Kansas-based super flu nearly crippled the planet, another sinister disaster sprung from Kansas soil. Just west of Token-Oak, farmers watched two-thousand-foot-tall clouds roll across the ground towards their homes. The low moving blackness sent waves of birds and jackrabbits screaming ahead of the dirt like an army of half a billion Paul Reveres warning of hell. Trillions of dust particles carried static energy so strong that it fried the electrical systems in cars and shorted radios. Waves of grasshoppers descended upon any scraps of plants in an Old Testament style reaping.

Before the Great Depression, people fled to Kansas in droves. Towns sprung up along newly established railway roots. Settlers came to farm the prairie and plant Kansas' biggest cash crop: red winter wheat. A family could cheaply buy a section of land (640 acres) and begin to plant. Brand new Kansans turned millions of acres of centuries old prairie grass upside down in the span of a few months. As the hopeful inhabitants carved up the prairie on the backs of their lumbering John Deere’s, the land struck back. The rains stopped. The winds came. And they blew—and blew—and blew rolling mountains of earth across the plains.

The giant dusters brought a hundred thousand tons of earth in tiny dust particles. Houses in the wake of these black monoliths were stripped of paint and buried in sand-like dunes of dirt that drifted fifteen feet high. Kansas dust filled the lungs of children and the elderly choking their capillaries creating a wheezing cough the produced pitch-black phlegm. As gritty Kansas earth invaded people's lungs, they expelled it with a hacking cough mixed with blood. Every American in those black days swallowed a little piece of the prairie. The dry dirt drowned the oceans of freshly planted wheat and caused entire herds of cattle to go blind. For nearly a decade, these storms romped across the Great Plains at it most vulnerable point in history. It took the French and then the Americans nearly 50 years to dig the Panama Canal. Each dust storm produced three times that much dirt in 5 minutes. 

Then the madness began appearing in world events like a drive by shooter. Right at the end of the Dust Bowl, the eyes of the world were fixated on the massive Zeppelin landing in Manchester Township, New Jersey. The Zeppelins were a scientific marvel that would surely soon be frequented by bourgeoisie travels from across the world. Initially, the monstrous blimps were designed to use helium as their lifting agent. Helium, after all, was not nearly as explosive as hydrogen. Ironically, the largest supply of helium in the world rested underneath the prairie grass of Kansas. Poor Kansas had the most bountiful source of rare gas and, due to a trade embargo, was not sharing. A spark of static caused the hydrogen-fill blimp to ignite. Kansas gas claimed the first lives of WWII through the trade embargo that kept its helium locked beneath its soil.

In the mid-1940s, at the beginning of the United States nuclear weapons testing boom in Nevada, scientists began studying nuclear fallout. After the Trinity detonation in July of 1945, the government started receiving complaints across the nation from Kodak about foggy X-ray film. Fact is that film canisters were packed in a corn derivative from Kansas that had become irradiated. Turns out Kansas was especially susceptible as heavy plains storms pulled iodine 131 out of the air and bathed the ocean of buffalo grass in radioactive soup. If someone passed a Geiger counter across the Midwest, Kansas will betray the Chernobyl-like fallout.

Kansas kids were the most affected by this governmental misstep. As cows consumed the contaminated grass; kids drank the milk. Long before the milk industry launched its “got milk” campaign that glorified consuming the opaque cow product by shooting celebrities with yogurt-stained upper lips, there was a twenty-year decline in milk drinking. Why? Because the milk went bad. It picked up radiation and the kids—the poor effin’ kids—drank the shit like it was straight from their momma’s teat. Does a body good my ass! The radiation, though it did not originate craziness in Kansas, certainly compounded the problem. But that was just the beginning of Kansas’ nuclear worries.

Kansas does not just create disasters, wars, and madness; it also creates hall of fame college basketball coaches. It is a virtual mecca of the sport. James A. Naismith, the inventor of the game was the University of Kansas’ first coach. His predecessor, Forrest “Phog” Allen brought accolades galore. The paragon of other tradition powers—North Carolina’s Dean Smith and Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp—both played from the Jayhawks before coaching their teams to multiple titles at their respective schools. Moreover, Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain was born and played his college ball in Lawrence. That’s right, the only guy to score 100 points in a game and, I will argue the more astounding accomplishment, is the only man to have slept with 20,000 women.

20,000 women. Imagine that. Essentially, “the Stilt” was able to rise above the limitations that the Lord gave him. He battled through STDs, fatigue, a depleted sperm reserve, and the inevitable road rash to tap twenty . . . thousand . . . women. Mathematically, he had to have a woman a day since he was 15 years old. It sounds impossible, I know, but when you start throwing in the weekend orgies it is totally doable. It took devotion, a high pain threshold, and a hell of sex drive, but the Stilt swung is stick with more consistence than DiMaggio's 56 in 41’. When all is said in done, and centuries pass, and governments rise and fall, the people of the future will look back on Chamberlain’s 20K lay. It is a record that will never be broken.  

Kansas’ sports acumen is not limited to the hardwood of the basket basketball court or the bedpost. The madness has created an innate desire to run. The town of Wichita, Kansas is home to some of the best runners in world history. Local Wichita track speedster Jim Ryun was the first human being to break the four-minute mile. The greatest running backs ever to play were born or played their football in Kansas. Jim Thorpe played his college ball at Haskell University. John Riggins, a bruising runner nicknamed “the diesel” nearly two decades before Shaq. The “Kansas Comet” Gale Sayers also came from the city. Perhaps the greatest of them all; the slipperiest small man to ever tote the pigskin, was Barry Sanders. Watching Barry play the game was like watching smoke slide through keyhole. His diminutive frame could devilishly contort through the smallest spaces. He was an ankle breaker, a shake-and-bakester, that could have had all the records but quit after only a decade.

The greatest turnaround in college football history occurred in Manhattan, Kansas. For half a century, the Wildcats where the epitome of suck. There are two eras of football in Manhattan, that before Bill Snyder and that after. Before Snyder, K-State had lost 500 games, by far the most of any division one program. The team had the fewest scholarship players of any program in the country. There was serious talk of demoting the Wildcats to division two. Players on the football team didn’t wear letter jackets out of sheer embarrassment. The school didn’t even have carpet in most of the athletic facilities. After Snyder, the team has two conference championships against schools with quadruple its athletic budget and played in several New Year’s Day bowl games. Bill Snyder, the “Purple Wizard”, used Kansas madness to his advantage. The Wildcats now romp around in a $300 million dollar stadium aptly named after the man who resurrected the team from the dead.

Some of you from bigger states might be saying to yourself that any state could produce a list as astounding. Fact is that Kansas accounts for less than a single percentage of the national population, yet it is involved in over 95% of the shit that goes on in the nation. There is something in the water out here. Something that drives tragedies and fuels success stories. And that something is the madness.

Kansas is the great initiator of events that have shaped national and even world history. It is the place myths and dreams. This fact has not gone unnoticed in popular culture through the years. After all, it is the birthplace of Superman, the home of the man behind the curtain from the Wizard of Oz, and the home at least one blonde haired, squared-jawed soldier in every Hollywood war movie since the development of moving pictures. The poor bastard that got blown to bits attaching sticky bombs to German panzers in the Opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, you know that fucker was from Kansas! Holla! The iconic phrases “WWJD” and the “Great White Hope” originated here in the boyhood home of the man of steel, the place where Dorothy desperately wants to get back to. “I can't see my hand in front of my face” developed in the middle of one of Kansas’ dust storms. It is a land of flying monkeys, town destroying tornadoes, and Governors who campaign on a platform of implanting goat testicles into humans to cure impotence (true story . . . and the bastard almost won the race). If find myself wondering, at least once a day, how it is the nation has missed the enigma is the clipped rectangular state of Kansas.

For those Kansas prairies hold a unique history and a vibrant heritage of conflict, confusion and “madness.” Kansas represents a wide-open frontier that sits between America's two dominant ideologies of rugged western individualism and reserved eastern puritanism. Kansas is the space at the beginning of the sentence. It’s the place that people look down upon from 35,000 feet and see irrigation circles and an ocean of grass and think of nothing at all. What people fail to see from the sky are the roots. The roots of the nation’s deadliest war and the worst modern, global pandemic began a stone’s throw from Token-Oak. The nation's most devastating natural disaster sent suffocating Kansas soil on a ten-year smothering spree. The first legal abortion occurred inside the clipped rectangular borders of Kansas. Electroshock therapy was invented in Kansas. The most psychologically devastating food item, the White Castle tiny, dog-flavored, shit burger, started in Wichita. These little sliders have tortured a billion buttholes across the world. Fact is, whatever you ate today, whatever pissed you off politically last week, and the next time you fucking snap; chances are whateveritis originated in the Sunflower State.

It is not just Kansas, but a sleepy little town in Kansas that sits on the Smokey Hill River and nestled at the edge of the Flint Hills. It is a place that has been the epicenter of the all of the above. It is a place that has taken current events of the day—slavery, poor farming practices and influenza—and magnified them into national and global crises.

Now there are two issues in Token-Oak, both related to drug abuse. It is a town that has long suffered from the methamphetamine epidemic. For decades, the local jail has been full of meth cooks and addicts. In the past few years, a new addiction has hit Token-Oak with a vengeance. Somewhere in the black hills northeast of the Token-Oak, the roots of the next great America apocalypse will spring anew on those Kansas prairies that have long been the garden of the apocalypse.

Per aspera ad astra

It is the State's iconic mea culpa. An admission that the environment is totally fucked, and the expectations of the people are even more out of whack. It is like saying “sure . . . we got problems, but when we get through this shit, we're gonna conquer the fucking world.” That is the driving force inside of us all. It is a great motivator of passions, a destroyer of rational perspectives, and a perfect place to begin this dizzying little jaunt through the craziest thing of all: the story of Token-Oak, Kansas.

Per aspera ad astra

Anytime I come within a few feet of a ledge or drive my car over seventy miles-per-hour or hold a gun; I can feel the “madness” festering inside of me. I tell myself that I have a fear of heights, that there is something about the bird’s eye view that conjures some visceral, subconscious fear. But none of that is true. And somewhere, deep inside me, I know it is not the height that scares me. It’s the all-encompassing, parasitic madness. A stomach-turning, teeth-clenching rage that that takes over a person and destroys them completely. I know I am not the only one that feels this. I believe that anyone with Midwestern roots or even a drop of Indian blood in their genes knows exactly what I am talking about.