#the banality that is evil sometimes needs to go to the post office too

[lizord-lord]

i think spotting elias bouchard outside of work would be a harrowing experience worthy of its own statement even with exactly 0 actual spookiness involved

[the-trashy-phoenix]

Supernatural season 2 review (part 1)

Link to part 2:

Here we are, we’ve already finished the second season of Supernatural (we’ve also already started the third to tell the truth) and it’s time for my second review. I have to say I’ve enjoyed this season more than the previous one, maybe because I knew the main characters (mainly Sam, Dean and Bobby) quite well, and also because I think the plots of all the episodes were really catchy and original.

The first episode is meant to be tragic, with all the issues connected to Dean’s apparently inevitable death, but I wasn’t worried at all because 1. Dean had already escaped death once , in episode 12 from season 1, when a healer kind of cured him; 2. one of the main characters can’t die in the second season out of fifteen; 3. Carly had told me they always seem to die but they never actually do, or if they do they suddenly resuscitate. Despite all that, seeing Sam so sad about his brother really broke my heart, not to mention all the things he’ll go through during this season, but let’s go in order. Of course the price for Dean’s life is high, but at least we finally get rid of John… I don’t want to be harsh on him, because at the end (by the way I’m not sure this is really the end for him) he does what every good father would do sacrificing his life for his son’s, but still I couldn’t help blaming him for how he treated the brothers when they were children (a lot of details from their childhood emerge in these episodes through flashbacks) and how he denied them a happy life, so that I don’t think this ultimate sacrifice is enough to repay Sam and Dean, also because it makes Dean feel so guilty even though he has no reason to.

John’s death gives the boys a new impulse to hunt the “Yellow-eyed demon”, which killed their mum and at this point also their dad, because Dean was saved thanks to a deal he made with the demon. In their search for this creature they find out there’s a complex net of hunters John belonged to, who gather in a bar owned by Ellen, wife of a dead hunter, and her daughter Jo. They seem to have some secrets but still help the boys in their hunts: especially Jo is willing to become a huntress herself and embodies the prototype of the young girl who wants to follow her own path and make her experiences break free from her mother’s control. But Ellen, helped at some point by Sam and Dean, just wants to protect her from a dangerous job, the same that killed her husband and which will end up killing both of them. A special mention to another character met by the brothers at the Roadhouse, Ellen’s bar, Ash, a really weird man who can find out whatever is needed in an impressively short lapse of time. He doesn’t talk much but he’s extremely helpful, and I think Sam and Dean never thank him enough for his work.

I’d say the second antagonist of this season (the first is of course the Yellow-eyed demon) is Gordon, a hunter Sam and Dean meet while hunting some vampires. From the very beginning it was clear to me that he was a real pain in the ass (do I have to start worrying about the fact that I constantly feel like using Dean’s expressions? And even if Sam is still my favourite one?), but Dean really liked him at first, maybe because he desperately unconsciously needed a strong figure to take the place of his dad. Sam immediately recognises him as extremely cruel, because he kills creatures instinctively supposing they will necessarily harm someone just by the fact they’re supernatural. But also the brothers, especially Dean, sometimes seem to be driven by this thought, so I think the episode about the “vegetarian” and harmless vampires (the same in which we meet Gordon for the first time) also demonstrates them not only that not all hunters are good people, but also that not all supernatural creatures are bad. That’s a good lesson, because it leads them to focus and argue more about the ethical aspects of their work and about how murder of whichever creature is a very problematic ground to which they must always pay attention, in order to kill less and try saving as many innocent creatures as possible. Going back to Gordon, after having tried to separate Sam and Dean, both mentally and physically, he gets arrested (but of course he comes back to bother them as the show goes on) and Dean finally understands he has to rely more on Sam’s judgement and accept the fact he’s an adult who doesn’t always need his supervision and who can also protect and help him if necessary, in every possible way.

One of the big deals of this season is Sam’s struggle to find his identity, solving the mystery about his psychic abilities. Everything can be related to the Yellow-eyed demon who wants Sam to be the leader of a demonic army. His meetings with other guys (such as Andy) who have similar abilities and lots of things in common with him make the episode’s plots quite interesting, but the ending was quite banal to me: even if you don’t know who’s actually dying or surviving, you still always know that Sam won’t die (or, at least, that if he will, he’ll also eventually resuscitate). I also found so unrealistic that Dean would kill his brother if he becomes evil. Of course that’s what John whispers to him at the very end (and we all know Dean would do anything to please his dad), but still it’s very unlikely to happen both because Dean would never kill Sam, even if it was the right choice to make, and because Sam would rather kill himself than becoming evil.

Another thing I have to point out is the constant breaking of the law. I do understand they always do it for the best, but the fact remains, and I think they could do better if they only wanted to. Starting with credit card fraud: I do understand they earn nothing from their job, but I still think deliberately stealing money just because your job is to save the world and you don’t get paid for that is wrong (not to mention they spend it to buy disgusting food…). Going on, I don’t understand completely passing themselves off as police officers or FBI agents: I know this way it’s easier to get information quickly, but if they really wanted to they could do it without this constant lying. But, you know, that’s just fiction… But also in fiction you get arrested! Sam and Dean know it well, but we have to say also the police knows them well (that’s easy if you are evidently involved in a bank robbery!) and keeps trying to catch and imprison them. Who can blame them? Without knowing the truth, the brothers make a lot of unexplainable crimes… And I think the fact the police is after them keeps the show on a field of realness, even if I can’t stop wondering how they figure out hiding from the police from very long periods of time (by the way police seems always to be quite stupid in series like Supernatural, that is when you see events from the “criminal” ’s point of view).

I’ll go quickly examining in order the episodes I liked (or scared me) the most. Episode 2 scared me quite a lot, but that’s just because I find clowns really really frightful: I can’t understand how a child could find them funny, to me they’re just terrifying. Episode 9 quite hit me because the story of the mortal virus reminded me how what we considered supernatural some months ago is now real and tragically near us. I also have to mention episodes 13 and 15. In the former, angels seem to order people to kill sinners and that’s a crucial point because it’s one of the first mentions of God, faith and religion in general in the series. I found it quite interesting because it’s unusual to have this kind of theological reflection in a fantasy story (Carly also pointed me out Dean’s lack of faith in angels, which is ironic considering his future close relationship with an angel, Castiel, but I was not supposed to know that). In the latter Bobby appears to help the boys: that’s important because he’ll be a permanent character and because both Carly and I love him. He’s literally the kind and caring and strict-when-needed father Sam and Dean never had and deserved, and I’m happy he’s always there to support them and make them feel like they’re not alone in doing their job. By the way, my favourite episode was the twentieth because it’s been involving to see Dean’s possible life if his mother wasn’t dead: it underlines this feeling Dean has in the whole season (and as far as I now in the whole series) of having wasted his life, which could have been happy and stable instead of constantly in danger. It’s been heartbreaking seeing Dean renouncing to a perfect life, the one he had always desired, in the belief his current life could never be perfect, but it’s the one he’s destined to and it’s the altruistically best choice he can possibly make.

In conclusion, the last two episodes are dedicated to the solving of the plot and the last fight with the villain of the season: after having kidnapped Sam and the other guys with superpowers he’s defeated, as that was predictable, and the boys can’t stop a horde of demonic creatures to come out from hell, whose doors the Yellow-eyed demon succeeded to open. Well, they could’ve tried to close them faster but they were too distracted by the epiphany of John Winchester who came out of hell to say hi and encourage them to keep fighting… But thinking about it, if they succeeded in closing the doors and preventing the demons from coming out from hell, who do you think they would have hunted in the next season(s)?

- Irene 💕

[destroyyourbinder]

looking at instagram

There are hazy pictures of children having fun in spring-green new grass, the sun or maybe the filter sparkling. A photo of a man laughing, relaxed, he's wearing a soft cotton shirt, and it's not wrinkled. Dynamic black and white photos of people my acquaintance knows, a coworker, herself, their skin texture looks like granite, like muslin, like acrylic sculpting medium, like something under lights that's very "Interesting," to men in glasses holding wine and pontificating like bowerbirds strutting over little pebbles and bits of fur.

I'm angry. I look like dough, like a laundry pile at the end of a week, maybe two. I'm custard piled on itself, dingy men's shorts pulled up way too high over the bottom dollop. Nobody's captivated by my pock marks or my uneven peach fuzz. I look like who my mom was afraid I was going to be, except I'm not even that exciting, I'm a monster made of felt cut out by shaky kindergarten hands and unraveling tape. Dandruff gets under my fingers when I scratch my head. There's no social media where I can post the sensation of my stomach gurgling after I eat fistfuls of mozzarella from the fridge, and nobody would Like it anyway. When I shave my head there is no confident, bold, sharp picture I can take, tattooed and muscular arm curved up over my new haircut to casually hold the phone. There's just tiny bits of hair in the bathroom rug and yellow light that makes my face look puffier than I thought it was.

I feel the bile rise in my throat. So-and-so bought a house, my sister bought a house, friend after friend after friend is having a dinner party, moving to California, getting married at a place with "Estate" in the name. There's pictures, lots of pictures, of breezy nights and big smiles, a colorful world of delight and ease, everything I wanted from life incarnated in the bodies of straight people and lesbians prettier and happier than me. I pull a piece of cat hair out of my teeth and listen to the neighbors shouting at each other on the street, and I imagine what it would be like if my body didn't ache, didn't feel like a jumble of nonsense the consistency of dogshit and balsa wood. My apartment smells like mold. I make nine-sixty-something an hour after taxes. I don't know how to use Instagram because at twenty-whatever I've managed to become both old and out of touch, but I do know how to let Instagram make me feel bad.

In the photo, a guy I know looks rugged, cheeky, like a man with a story to tell but who might pull a quarter out from behind your ear instead. In reality, he's an old gay guy who both lurches and flops about at the same time, his too-large T-shirts hanging off his hunched shoulders. When he's feeling sprightly, he does a little ungainly but joyful Charleston, a grin on his face goofier than his little kicks, which show off the dirty bottoms of his fluorescent Converse shoes. I see him a lot in the back office at work or the break room, which are dim and yellow, making his ruddy face and greying stubble an undifferentiated jowly mass. But this guy also has lots of pictures of his own, that he shows me sometimes, of himself when young, with friends all dressed up in alternative 80s gear, all eyeliner and teased white hair. He smiles when he flips through the pictures. I don't know what he is remembering. I see a lot of cool people I've never met; he tells me this picture was even used in an ad for a local fashion hotspot back in the day. Then, swiping up and down with his fingers, still smiling but using a tone of voice that's a particularly terrifying variety of cheerful sarcasm, he tells me most of the people in these pictures are dead.

He knows I know why.

When I scroll through that woman's Instagram I am angry, maybe, because there's nobody to see me, nobody to remember what I did. The endless dullness that characterizes my days is not something I myself remember; I have the barest sense at all, even, that it is too dull for memory. There is something particularly disgusting to me that this is how most women have lived their lives, a parade of dishes and diapers, the inside of their heads taken up by minutiae about the state of the carpet and lists of birthdays. I've fallen headfirst into it, softly, like a particularly cushy pie on a grandmother's windowsill or the pillowy bosom of a schoolmarm. As a child I was particularly offended I was not noticed for who I was, or who I thought myself to be, at least, and what my mom did manage to notice was a nitpicking ritual of continual impropriety; what was on the floor but shouldn't be, what spot I missed on the counter with a sponge, which hairs were out of place and what crumbs were in the corners of my lips, what smile wasn't on my face and when. In retrospect I don't know if I was more offended on my behalf or hers, and if I was a selfish little shit about it whether I was more enraged by the idea that I was lost under her omnipresent fussing or that my proper development into a woman involved filling my head with such an eye.

I used to scream at her that I would not become like her, and I guess I didn't. I'm gay, for one, and live in a city, full of the types of people she imagines when she neurotically checks and rechecks the locks on her doors. I don't have children, a husband, a credit card, a mortgage, but I do have what I never wanted from the legacy of women, which is enormous spans of time where I fiddle with a sponge, a spoon, tiny meaningless papers, buttons on a cash register. As a child-- and embarrassingly, as an adult ill-prepared for reality-- I screamed because I insisted by the declaration of my lungs that my life would be different, it would be about intensity, perceptiveness, truth, integrity, adventures, journeys, big huge concepts that would bowl me over and spill out of me like a living mystic channeling forces of the universe. I used to read for hours and hours as a child, usually epic fantasy or science fiction I probably shouldn't have been allowed to put into my prepubescent brain; sometimes I used to hang upside down off the couch and read upside down just for the hell of it, to shake my world up a bit. I moved onto philosophy and hours of mopey music through headphones in the dark when I got older. I was delusional about what my life would be like, about what life would make me into. The big huge concept that would end up bowling me over was mediocrity, mundaneness, the stuff men on Reddit call women "vapid" for.

Hannah Arendt was a really smart woman, the kind of woman I thought I might be someday. She said a whole lot of shit that was really deep, and when I was still chasing the highs of thinking that there were neat-o discoveries to be made in this world that made you Somebody to see them, I thought that "the banality of evil" was the most profound thing I ever heard. When I encountered it for real it wasn't profound, just banal indeed. Evil is soul-sucking in a special fucking way, it sucks the life out of you in the way that alcohol shuts off first the part of your brain that lets you know you're drunk. Something's gone and you're all screwed up about it but you're gone in a way that won't let you know what left, there's just rage disguised as irritability and crud on the counter and a bus that doesn't show up. Sometimes you get to look right into the sucking hole, a yawning abyss of multi-generational societal depravity and institutional apathy, when you're sitting next to a homeless woman on a bench downtown with legs so swollen she couldn't go anywhere even if she had someplace to go. I gave her five dollars on most days of my commute because I hoped at least she could eat something, and she deserved the dignity of being seen by somebody, but honestly she needed somewhere to sleep and a bunch of somebodies to do something about her health. A lot of fucking evil had to happen to a lot of people for buildings full of suits to exist on the same block as this lady. A lot of fucking evil had to happen for people to accept this as normal.

What evil has to happen for women to accept their lot, whether it's accepting that the cumulative buzz of your life-inspiration be directed towards holding up a glass in a particularly enrapturing photo on Instagram, or whether it's accepting that you're gonna have to spend another night on the bench? I cry sometimes knowing that no one will remember my mother; all she will leave behind is a gravestone next to a man's and a legacy of psychological scars on her daughters, who nobody will bother to remember either. My mother's life is worth a book or two, but I couldn't get it out of her even if I tried. I don't think my mom even knows she has a story, just petty dramas she tries to escalate into a validation that she hasn't disappeared yet because she can hurt somebody. I don't know the homeless lady's story or how she ended up begging on a bench downtown each day. I hope with all my heart she finds a place to live out her life, a little home where she can use a scooter and have enough to eat, where five dollars isn't the difference between confirmation of the world's cruelty and God's presence. She showed me a video once on her phone of a preacher that she followed, a woman who she said she saw at a big church event in the South; she could go places once, and I don't know how she ended up so she couldn't go anywhere anymore. Maybe she doesn't know-- maybe when you can't go anywhere anymore the point is that you don't think you got there and you don't think you're getting out, you're just there right now, but also always were and somehow forever will be. Maybe you're watching buses go by all damn day and feeling your tongue go numb from saying "spare a dollar", or maybe your finger's getting red from wiping the snot under your kid's nose, time passing only when the tissues are gone. They don't take shots of this shit. There's no filter for "life's over, but not yet."

I wish what I felt could become great art, maybe even just shitty art, that it could mean something, that I was something; dudes have generations of scholarship-worship trailing behind them because they wrote paeans to being existentially bored, because they discovered what it's like to look at a damn soup can and slapped it in a museum. Maybe I'm just jealous, but, you know, I used to stock groceries, and I spent a lot of my time looking at damn soup cans. I think I now know why Val shot him.

[96thdayofrage]

WAR DAY 7️⃣1️⃣2️⃣2️⃣ 🍐 "Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that the Biden White House (and its friends in the Pentagon) are considering postponing the scheduled May 1, 2021 withdrawal of most US military forces from Afghanistan. This is not only wrong, it’s foolish. The US will not get its way in Afghanistan more than any other invading nation has. Twenty years of war and close to fifty years of armed meddling should prove that. Although only 2500 troops officially remain in Afghanistan, the symbolism of their leaving without a victory seems to be too much for some to take. Indeed, last month Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said US military forces 'will not undertake a hasty or disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan that puts [its] forces or the alliance’s reputation at risk.' When all other reasons to occupy a nation with foreign forces have proven false, Washington is never afraid to bring up the face-saving argument.

"After all, if one truly takes a moment to consider it, what reputation is General Austin referring to? Would it be the reputation of NATO as a tool of the world’s bloodiest imperial nation? Or perhaps he meant the United States’ reputation as the nation whose promises at peace talks were referred to by Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce in this manner: 'White man speak with forked tongue?' Maybe he was referring to the reputation of the US/NATO weapons industry’s claim that its products are designed to make and keep the peace; a claim brutally exposed in Afghanistan.

"If one looks at the history of Afghanistan over the past fifty years, it becomes clear that the primary reason for its current situation is the meddling of the United States. The US involvement in Afghanistan that began under Jimmy Carter was not an accident. Led by neocons Zbiegniew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes and aided by liberals like Barney Frank and Paul Tsongas, this ultimately successful effort represented a resurgence of the pro-militarist wing of the policy establishment as the primary architect of US foreign policy. What this meant for Afghanistan was that Washington was going after the progressive government in Kabul by backing a class of socially and politically reactionary mullahs and landowners opposed to any social reform for generations. This mujaheddin war and what followed destroyed the social progress made under previous Afghan governments. Women and girls were relegated to second-class status and fundamentalist intolerance became the order of the day. Ultimately, these forces won thanks to the support of Washington and Saudi Arabia. The strongest of these reactionary mujaheddin groups were called the Taliban. It was they who claimed victory in 1996. It was the Taliban the United States said they were going after when it attacked Afghanistan in 2001.

"One can not be certain why the United States is still in Afghanistan. It could be to control the opium business or it could be for alleged mineral resources. It could be for strategic reasons or it could be to force a US-style regime on the nation. It could be all these and more. The original intent to exact revenge for the events known as 9-11 is long gone, along with most of the original players in that episode. In fact, it seems fair to say the only players present back in October 2001 when the first attacks occurred are the arms manufacturers the US military and the CIA. The phenomenon known as Al Queda is not the same as it was, nor are the Taliban and other resistance forces. The US mercenary forces once known as Blackwater are not only operating under a new corporate name, but also different directorships.

"The failure of the US to impose an effective client government in Afghanistan is not a good reason to remain in that country until one is established. Instead, it is real proof of the failure of any policy that requires a military occupation in that nation and region. Keeping US forces there to support the US-funded regime in Kabul is an admission that Washington’s policy has failed. It’s time to accept that and get out, lock stock and barrel."

- 🍐 Ron Jacobs, CounterPunch

*****

"There are at least two main sets of problems standing in Biden’s way, assuming he did actually want to ditch this 19+ year disaster.

"First, expect the Pentagon, and the civilian Washington-wing of the 'defense watcher' expert analyst class to either obfuscate or exaggerate — maybe even fabricate, given past track records — the existence or extent of current al-Qaeda-Taliban ties.

"In fact, the [wishful] think tankers — civil and military alike — have been pushing such alarmism for a hot minute now already. Yet such fear-mongering masquerading as objective analysis rarely offers satisfactory evidence, place what evidence they do have in proper context, or provides any real sense of proportion — i.e., even if they’re right about the Taliban-al-Qaeda nexus: what’s the actual, comparative, threat to the U.S. Homeland of leaving Afghanistan?

"Second, it seems the Taliban feels, and may in fact be, strong enough — they now control or contest half the country — to scoff at such stipulations. And they’ve no motive to quit attriting an Afghan National Security Force that’s long been on life support, and can’t recruit replacements as fast as the Taliban offs them — to say nothing of their army of AWOL 'ghost soldiers,' who don’t so much man the battle lines as line the pockets of the corrupt officers who continue collecting their paychecks.

"Problem is, the Taliban’s understandable propensity to escalate — and maybe even talk to a few al-Qaeda capos to boot — may offer Washington’s war-hawks just the justification they need to settle U.S. troops in for an even longer haul. They may even try to escalate — with some calling for 2,000 extra troops to bring the count of hopeless crusaders back to 4,500, thereby undoing Trump’s late-stage reductions. That oughta do it!

"The most recent, and mainstream-amenable, energy behind the 'Stay-the-course, Joe' crowd, comes from the congressionally-appointed Afghanistan Study Group, a bipartisan panel whose recent report essentially argued 'that withdrawing troops based on a strict timeline, rather than how well the Taliban adheres to the agreement to reduce violence and improve security, risked the stability of the country and a potential civil war once international forces withdraw.'

"Sound familiar? Yep — it’s the exact same line these exact same people have peddled for years. It even burnishes the same old buzzwords!

"Next comes the exaggerated alarmism, encouraging you to be afraid, be-very-afraid, because: 'A withdrawal would not only leave America more vulnerable to terrorist threats; it would also have catastrophic effects in Afghanistan and the region that would not be in the interest of any of the key actors, including the Taliban.'

"Strange though, these scare-tactics always seem — and always have been — laced with way more ominous lingo than actual empirical evidence of credible threats to the homeland, or clearly-defined vital interests that the United States actually has over in the Afghan imperial graveyard. Perhaps that’s by design.

"For example, nowhere in Steve Coll’s New Yorker piece — which was a hardcore hedge job — did he so much as mention a vital U.S. interest, or a realistically assessed threat to the homeland. He, like the Study Group authors — and mainline pundits everywhere — speaks instead of 'Kabul’s fortunes,' Afghanistan’s (admittedly in-for-it) 'working women,' and the foreboding fortunes of that country’s 'globalized urbanites,' and 'democracy dreamers.'

"Anyone else notice that there’s no calls for invasion, occupation, and a societal makeover on behalf of those same groups — including the near chattel-status of women, sometimes beheaded for 'witchcraft' and 'sorcery' — in the Saudi Kingdom we’ve propped up for nearly a cruelty-complicit century?

"So just who’s in this here group study in the bureaucratic banality of evil? I mean, since they’re charged by Congress to submit sweeping recommendations for the new president’s profound policy decision in America’s longest-ever war — it’s probably a pretty diverse sample of U.S. foreign policy thought, right? Wrong again!

"Sure enough, the Afghanistan Study Group is a full house of failed militarists — a crew Rep. Ro Khanna poignantly dubbed 'the people who got us into this mess.' These folks are all tainted by war industry-ties and their past policy positions. In fact, they’re so overtly hawkish and awash in defense contractor blood money, it’s frankly embarrassing — and a slap in an apathetic public’s face. Consider the highlights:

-Former Senator Kelly A. Ayotte, co-chair: a leading voice in the hawkish wing of the Senate Republican Conference; opposed Obama’s Iran nuclear deal and closing Guantanamo Bay; and is on the board of BAE Systems – a prominent defense corporation.

-General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. (Ret), co-chair: former four-star general who once commanded – and failed to win when had a crack at that hopelessness – America’s Afghan War; these days he’s on the board of Lockheed Martin.

-Oh, and you may recognize a few others: Nisha Biswal (senior adviser with the [Madeleine] Albright Stonebridge Group); James Dobbins (RAND Corporation); Michèle Flournoy (WestExec Advisers and Center for a New American Security); Stephen Hadley (one of the key architects of George W. Bush’s absurd – and failed – Iraq surge); Meghan O’Sullivan (Raytheon and WestExec Advisors); and retired General Curtis 'Mike' Scaparrotti (another former Afghan War commander and now of the Cohen Consulting Group)

"These are the pyromaniacs — if mostly polite pyros — who lit wildfires from West Africa to Central Asia since 9/11, and are now studiously dancing on the torched region’s blackened graves. Think these Congress-members might revive and hire John Wayne Gacy to perform at their children’s next birthday parties?

"Steve Coll did get one thing basically right — in his column’s closing line: 'Now, as then, there are no good or easy options — only less bad ones.'

"True, but after 20 years of less-bad-strategies that never stuck or meaningfully moved the Afghan needle — maybe, for once, it’s Band-Aid time, baby! That’s right, ditch all the arguments to stay and fail — whilst only maintaining the fiction of not-yet-losing — and head home. Bring the boys and girls back, and fast. Consider it the Seinfeld solution to pain-management and forever war loss-cutting: one move, right off!

"Pity we didn’t do it back in 2016, 2009 — or 2003, for that matter. Nothing would have meaningfully changed — in the long-term, at least — on the ground if we had … and thousands of the troops Americans pretend-to-adore might be alive today."

- 🍐 Maj. Danny Sjursen (USA, Ret.), Antiwar.com

*****

"The governments of Albania, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mongolia, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, UK, and US all still have troops in Afghanistan and need to remove them.

"These troops range in number from Slovenia’s 6 to the United States’ 2,500. Most countries have fewer that 100. Apart from the United States, only Germany has over 1,000. Only five other countries have more than 300.

"Governments that used to have troops in this war but have removed them include New Zealand, France, Jordan, Croatia, North Macedonia, and Ireland."

- 🍐 David Swanson, Antiwar.com

_____

🍐 Washington in Afghanistan: How Long Must This Go On? By Ron Jacobs, CounterPunch, Mar. 16, 2021.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/03/16/washington-in-afghanistan-how-long-must-this-go-on/

🍐 Will Biden Finally Bring Troops Home from Afghanistan? By Danny Sjursen, AntiWar.com, republished in Consortium News, Feb. 22, 2021.

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/02/22/will-biden-finally-bring-troops-home-from-afghanistan/

🍐 A GLOBAL DEMAND TO 35 GOVERNMENTS: GET YOUR TROOPS OUT OF AFGHANISTAN. By David Swanson, Antiwar.com, republished in Popular Resistance, Feb. 22, 2021.

https://popularresistance.org/a-global-demand-to-35-governments-get-your-troops-out-of-afghanistan/

🍐 Intersectional Imperialism: A Wholesome Menace.

The empire claps back. By Alex Rubinstein, Mar. 15, 2021.

https://realalexrubi.substack.com/p/intersectional-imperialism-a-wholesome?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2YmHJGw7RV2ZzLdsyhpvODf7lUD2qhag6RRa9e6IgWRPtZIE_v5jr5k-U

🍐 CNN is pushing for permanent occupation of Afghanistan: What Biden and Blinken don't want to tell Americans about Afghanistan. Opinion by David A. Andelman, Capitalist News Network, Mar. 16, 2021.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/16/opinions/afghanistan-us-troop-withdrawal-andelman/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2ie4dIqDoO-5fL5S8GpB6lNT5B1YzhLgS6qAa7S3xr8q2gkDLU6dfbXk8

[howyoutalktostrangers]

So,

I’ve decided to publish another story from my manuscript.

This one’s called “Post-funeral”, and the main character is named Joel Bishop. He’s a friend of my main characters Paisley Troutman and Neil Solomon, and in this story his older brother has just committed suicide after running for political office in Garibaldi. It’s the 10th story in Whatever you’re on, I want some.

It’s raw.

The Literary Goon

Post-funeral

by Will Johnson

FIRST WE swallowed bitter shards of MDMA, spent hours slip-sliding over each other’s bodies giddy and feverish. I’d been staying at my brother’s mansion with my ex-girlfriend Kylie, up in Garibaldi, for nearly two weeks. We wandered the streets shirtless, dove into foggy backyard pools that didn’t belong to us. We did blow off the toilet tank. We sipped mushroom tea, pinkies erect, then watched Jurassic Park while we waited, dopily dragging on cigarettes and ashing on the freshly installed carpet. We smoked salvia and hash, hot-knifed thumb smudges of tar-black ooze. We were doing okay, food-wise: salmon steaks, cheese-drowned Tostitos, frozen blueberries. We drank Black Label and Bailey’s-infused coffee. Some days we binged on Chinese food and pizza; more often we wandered the linoleum barefoot and mind-fucked, sniffling and twitching, having forgotten what hunger feels like.

And whenever we got bored we circled the neighbourhood spearing my brother’s campaign signs onto unsuspecting people’s lawns, just to fuck with them. Vote for Joshua Bishop, indeed. 

One night Kylie fled. I careened along shadowed boulevards in my brother’s minivan just after 3 a.m., wearing sweatpants and a pair of Santa Claus slippers, chain-smoking cigarettes to keep my headspace level. The night dew-misted my forearm hair from the open window. When my headlights slashed across a lawn three blocks over I glimpsed Kylie under an expansive, shadowed oak with thick, threatening arms. She was curled fetal, wearing red bikini bottoms, dollar store flip flops and my Garibaldi Elementary GRAD OF 2004 hoodie. As I lugged her limply off the grass a dog-walker in a peacoat paused on the sidewalk.

“She had a little too much to drink,” I explained. “We’re all good here.”

“And who are you to her, exactly?” he asked, cell phone palmed. “It looks like she needs some assistance.”

“We’re fine, honestly. I’m just taking her home.”

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”

Kylie moaned in my arms as I lift-shoved her into the passenger seat. Her legs slackly dangled towards the concrete as I gathered up her feet and slammed the door shut behind her. Peacoat man flapped his arms, distressed and honking.

“If you fuck with me,” I said. “I’ll kill your little dog and drink its blood.”

I don’t remember what he said after that, but I do remember the electric surge of hatred that blood-dumped through my veins. This man’s banal existence, his uncomplicated morality, the look of fearful revulsion on his face—all of these offended some feral version of myself I’d unleashed during those weeks. I battered my chest, squeezing out wild tears, and roared in his face until he retreated with his little dog yipping.

Kylie wore a thick-padded bra with metal crescents scooping under each fleshy handful. She whined as I undressed her, paranoid of the oil-like substance pooling on the walls and overflowing into the living room ceiling. I worked my fingers under each goose-pimpled boob, inhaled her chest glister. Kylie wasn’t mine exclusively, but our experiences were our own. I took her earlobe in my mouth, her weight supported in my arms, and worked it with my tongue like a soother. We’d tired of our porn-inspired routines and were finding creative ways to exploit each other’s bodies lazily, gluttonously. A tweaked nipple on mushrooms is like a chest-explosion, while a firmly gripped dick on acid can change your life. Cheek to arm pit, sole to shin, elbow to pelvic bone, we chest-banged and hugged, childlike, in the trenches of our sweat-soiled blankets.

Then we slept.  

Sometimes I get brain whispers from my former self, little buried guilt yelps from the Christian kid I used to be. He’s horrified. Kylie struggles to believe I used to be religious, that I used to keep a prayer journal, that I was once scandalized by swear words. She can’t visualize it, can’t reconcile it with the version of me that she knows: a hipster rich kid with no moral code to speak of. She can’t understand that it’s all the same impulse, that God is nothing more than the Drug of all Drugs, that the hardest thing I ever had to kick was Christianity. Driving by St. Catherine’s I’ve got multi-year histories flashing across my vision. Our youth pastor Trent Stonehouse sings at the front of the sanctuary, takes kids on missions trips to Tijuana and Brazil and the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, and then there’s all the kids I knew—Amber, Turner, Paisley, Neil and Ty—they’re all memory-cached, worshipping with the Agape Soldiers onstage while I sway awkward in the pews and try to figure out how come I’m the only one who does’t seem to feel it. Sure, I’ve felt the Holy Spirit before—or at least I believed I felt it at the time—and I’ve been one of those ultra-pious kids seizing on the ground, overcome as the Church Moms lay blankets over our God-blissed teenage bodies. Slain in the spirit.

But spiritual awakenings wear off. Slowly, one day after the next, I felt the emotional intensity drain. Outside the context of the St. Catherine’s sanctuary all the meaning dribbled out until I had to go back, soul-hungry, for more. Being a disciple of Christ meant living this special type of life, meant elevating yourself from the mundanity. At Camp Evergreen, around the campfire, we sang “Jesus, I am yours” and two hours later Rachel Peachland gave me a hand job behind the girl’s cabin line, a frantic and gasp-filled spectacle in the shadows. I was a little perv, shame-soaked but undeterred, obsessed with girls but convinced that every lustful thought was a freshly disgusting sin, something to beg forgiveness for. Do you know how exhausting it is to be ashamed all the time? To spend your life hearing how sinful and hopeless you are without Jesus?

Turner used to say the whole point of grace is you don’t need to feel guilt, that God’s already forgiven you before you even dream up our next transgression.

But who said we need to be forgiven at all?

“If you could go back and be Christian again, would you do it?” Kylie asked, morning squinting in my brother’s bed, her voice grumbly from sixteen hours of sleep. I gripped sleepily at my dick while urine hammered into the shower drain.

“I think about that every day.”

“And?”

“Are we talking like a lobotomy-type solution here? Like would I have to give up part of my brain?”

“No, just say you believed again.”

“The thing is, to make that happen I’d have to give it up.”

“What?”

“My doubt. My fucking reason. I’d have to give up my whole personality.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Yes necessarily. Unless God fucking prances in here and goes ‘hey, Joel, I’m fucking real’, this shit isn’t going to happen.”

I slump into her lap. Kylie was born in a Burmese orphanage, got adopted by white Canadians. Didn’t find that out until three months into our thing, when I met her crazy Mom. She kept all that to herself, and I understood why. People project shit, put labels on you. Who wants to be the starving kid from one of those World Vision commercials? She didn’t want pity; she just wanted to be Kylie.

I liked her way more than I realized.

“But what if the thing with Trent never happened?”

“It wasn’t about him. I stopped going to St. Catherine’s way before all that shit in Mexico, before any of those other guys.”

“Do you think he raped anyone you know? Like anyone in the youth group?”

“Fuck, what’s gotten into you?”

“I’m just so curious. I’ve never met someone who knew a real child molester.”

“You talk like it’s a movie star or something.”

“Or a serial killer.”

“So what do you think? Do you think he was doing like pervy, Catholic-style shit?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.”

“But what do you think?”

“I mean they say he molested this Mexican kid, right? Or two of them? That’s why he got arrested originally, in Tijuana. But they never came up with any Canadian victims.”

“Who’s they?”

“Investigators or whatever. He was down there for eleven years years, and it’s kind of like why press charges and do all that work if he’s not even in Garibaldi?”

“Shit.”

“But eventually they figure he’ll be back, right? I mean, the Mexicans can’t keep him forever.”

“When is that going to be?”

“The system’s so corrupt down there. Guilty til proven innocent, all that.”

“Turner told me he got letters.”

“From Trent?”

“Yeah, a while back he was telling me stories about Trent. He told me the letter said ‘you can’t turn your back on God’ and ‘don’t let this be an excuse to lose your faith’, all this shit.”

“Are you serious?”

“From prison he was giving him a sermon!”

“Fuck.”

“I mean, we were smoking a joint but I’m pretty sure he was telling the truth. Wasn’t he like Trent’s little favourite? Do you think it was him Trent messed with?”

I’ve considered that plenty of times, but it’s different to say out loud.

“Trent had a weird thing with Paisley Troutman, one of the girls in the worship band. People were gossiping about that for years.”

“But doesn’t he fuck little boys?”

“Yeah, but maybe he’s just like a non-discriminating deviant, right? Just raping whoever, wherever. Dudes’ fucking evil.”

“I heard there’s some people that think he’s still innocent.”

I light a cigarette, roll across the bed and go looking for blow.

“I’m not one of them,” I say.

Kylie sat cross-legged and hungover in the minivan’s passenger seat, reorganizing her purse while we descended the Sea to Sky. Cliffs draped with steel netting loomed to our left. To the right was nothing but open, cloudless sky. The road slalomed along the mountain slope, twist-rising and falling just as quickly. Ocean air swirled around us. A grey thumb of stone emerged in the distance, thrusted up hitchhiker-style, with a few stubborn bushes defiantly alive atop it’s wind-blasted summit forty feet above the road.

The mansions along the highway—stilted and gleaming in the trees—reflected the Pacific’s blue glow from giant mirrored windows. These were the people in my brother’s voting district, who had proudly displayed his campaign signs so they would be visible for commuters passing through the construction progress below. Vote for Joshua Bishop.

No more.

“The last shit we got from Turner was dirty,” Kylie mumbled. “Fucking weak.”

“That wasn’t his regular guy.”

“Says him.”

A bored, sunburned teenager wearing a Solomon Development Ltd. uniform waved us off the highway, past some pylons and orange fencing, and towards the razed shoulder currently being paved. Steamrollers grumbled a few kilometres further on, while in front of us six men guided a crane-suspended concrete median into place. I parked beside a line of trucks facing oceanward, overlooking Howe Sound, and texted Turner. Within a few minutes he appeared, knuckle-rapping the window, and Kylie unlocked the sliding door behind her.

“You two’ve been voracious lately,” Turner said. “You’re outpacing my coworkers, even.”

Kylie ignored him, sullen.

“I’ve got five hundred here, that’s two for last time and three for now,” I said.

“And you’ve got time for a couple lines now?”

An ice-blue sky populated with drifting gulls appeared as I took my first hit. Their beak-tips were dolloped with bright red. I thumbed a nostril for leverage, snorted with all my might, and sucked back. It filled me like sunlight. Wave-crests built frothing and burst into chaos amidst the rocks below.

“That feels better, huh?” said Turner. “I’m gonna fire through my afternoon.”

“I don’t know how you do this dip-shit job, man.”

“Whatever.”

“I would feel like one of those historical Chinese guys they used to dynamite the tunnels, you know? Like some expendable pawn they use for the hard labour. A slave they can just blow up whenever they feel like.”

“Yeah, so what’s your fucking job, Bishop?”

Kylie dabbed residue on her gums, sucking her finger. The world continued outside our windshield, introduced a dangling silhouette to our view-scape. It took me a moment to take this character in: parachuting past with some magical floating canopy, he was trailing an unfurled sign that read NO OLYMPICS ON STOLEN NATIVE LAND while filming with a camera strapped to his wrist. He was wearing those stupid shoes with individual toes, the ones rich men wear, and spandex head to toe—like some gravity-defying ninja spirit. I almost laughed.

How long had he prepared for this moment? What did he imagine he would see, hanging suspended and superior over us? The afternoon wind carried him sideways, tilting.

“Look at that piece of shit,” said Turner. “Look at him flying high.”

On the way back to town, Kylie asked if we could swing by her friend Lauren’s place. She lived in one of the new townhouses by the highway, Garibaldi Estates, on the fifth floor.

“This bitch owes me like a hundred bucks,” Kylie said as we rode the elevator up. “She’s always doing shit like this, and I can’t let her get away with it. You know what I mean?”

I shrugged.

The hallway hung silent following Kylie’s door-battering, but after a minute or two the door rattled and opened. A girl wearing a short pink bathrobe leaned into view, her bed-shagged hair streaked a similar hue. Her eyes were half-closed.

“Uh huh,” she said.

“You gonna let us inside?” Kylie asked.

“I’ll come out’n talk,” she said, pained.

I pretended to ignore them while they argued in the hallway, and watched as a dishevelled crow shifted uncomfortably on the edge of the roof, its talons clicking, just outside the window. Kylie paced shouting while Lauren listened bored with her beautiful brown legs.

Eventually Kylie turned back to me, exasperated. “Let’s go, Joel.”

Once we got back on to the Juan de Fuca Hill she held out her palm, two chalky pills cradled in the creases.

“This is supposed to be boss stuff. It’s K. She didn’t have any cash.”

How can I capture that moment? Kylie halfway-swivelled against the seatbelt, her forehead salmon pink from the sun and her white palm-skin outstretched. The grassy bluffs leading up towards the towering dominance of Mount Garibaldi were stretched out behind her, floating and blurred, while within the carpeted boundaries of our little vehicle we were safety-bathed by the air conditioning. I swallowed the pill. We hurtled towards our future.

“Will you put some more signs up with me later?” I asked. “After?”

“Of course.”

“There’s still so many, babe.”

“We can put up as many as you want, babe.”

Sixteen years old I thumb-dabbed my goggles, donkey-kicking, my headphones tucked under my swim cap. The finals heat for the 100 butterfly at provincial championships, and I was the one standing in front of Lane 4. Ty was there, Sketch and Neil too. I spat air, flailed, my feet splashing on the tiles. I expected to win my whole life, always anticipated easy victory—what does that say about me? I had this daily suspicion that I was a little more interesting than everyone else, a little more talented. My brother Josh was the same way, and all during the campaign I wonder if he had any idea how wrong things could go, how easily his future would evaporate. Vote for Joshua Bishop. I can see his temp’s bemused face, the self-satisfied sneer, as he ruined my family’s life with every fucking word he spoke. As soon as my brother’s news went public, our family scattered into our own grief trajectories, none of us sure how to handle the sudden scrutiny. And before we could decide whether we forgave him, before we could prove to him that being a part of the Bishop family means more than some sex scandal, some political campaign, before my father could even talk to him, he was gone. The ocean will take us all, I figure, but we were left with his body, shower-dangling, at his mansion in Garibaldi. That house! White carpets like cat fur underfoot. This is where I belonged, not slave-waging away in Vancouver.

Underwater is where I feel best, dolphin-kicking streamlined. Life made sense at 16, when my evening revolved around 58 seconds of frenzied exertion. Fuck real life and the future and the present moment too because I’m suspended mid-dive, dripping, while around me the bleachers erupt with cheering. Ice-wind slashes my cheekbones and stings my eyes shut.

Rotting clumps of mown grass collected on my boots as I worked my way up the St. Catherine’s lawn, past the youth trailer in the parking lot, up towards the stained glass window at the apex of the sanctuary. As kids we played this game called Gestapo where the youth leaders would chase us through the streets of Garibaldi with flashlights while we raced from Diefenbaker Park to the safety of the church. I scanned the treeline for spectators, but I was alone. I was thinking about this thing Turner once told me, about how we’re all just energy morphing from one form to the next. In reality, he was the first one to ditch on Jesus. He was braver than I was, less scared of the social consequences, or maybe he was just more honest.

“When I die and go to Heaven, I’m going to walk into the throne room of God and I’ll have three simple words for him: what the fuck?” Turner told me, perched in the Sky Train window, when I asked him about why he wasn’t coming to church anymore.

“If you had kids, what could they do to stop you from loving them?” he asked me.

“Nothing, I guess.”

“So why are we worshipping a deity who routinely condemns whole swaths of society to Hell? It’s so fucking arbitrary, Bishop! You’re born in India, you’re fucked. You’re born in China, you’re fucked. But if you’re a white Christian dude, everything will be fine and you’ll be a happy little saved boy.”

I didn’t know what to say then, and I still don’t now.

“A God like that doesn’t deserve my love.”

The way Turner talked, he didn’t miss religion. He didn’t miss understanding everything, having that communal reassurance. He liked to be an outlier, a rebel, a heathen.

“You can’t spend your whole life pretending,” Turner said. “Sooner or later you have to admit we wasted our teenage years on a medieval crock of bullshit.”

All that meaning, all those years of prayer, all that struggling and learning—for what? I speared the first campaign sign firmly beside St. Catherine’s front entrance, another one beneath its stained glass, and the final one at the top of their hilly lawn. My brother’s plastic face smiling from each one. Then I sat, butt-damp in the grass, and lit a cigarette. My brother was 33 years old when he died, the same age they nailed Jesus to a fucking cross, but he wasn’t dying for any reason. He didn’t get to close his eyes knowing he’d made some huge sacrifice, knowing that he left the world a better place than when he arrived. My brother died tormented and hopeless, kicking against the porcelain, and who deserves that? How come he got hand-picked for that fate? I felt personally robbed of decades of experience, of the chance to see his face wrinkle, his voice change, his hair go white like Dad’s.

“I really wanted to believe in You,” I told the looming, dark church. “If I had a choice, I’d still be here. You know that.”

I couldn’t believe I was praying. I was still high.

“If there’s something more to this, something I’m missing…I guess what I’m saying is if you’re going to keep me around, You’re going to have to do something.”

I sat there quiet, wondering what God could do, short of flashing across the sky in all His radiance, to convince me of His presence. I heard this quote once, attributed to a 16th century hymn writer: “a God comprehended is not God”. If that’s true, then why even attempt to grasp the mystery? Why call out to Him, why pray, why devote yourself to a deity who can’t (or won’t) respond? When I was a kid I used to make little faith bargains, sending mental requests for God to manipulate the circumstances around me. (“If you really exist, make that kid put something in the garbage can as he walks by.”) Sometimes it even worked. It was like having an Almighty, imaginary friend. But now I’m an adult, a real person, I’ve read fucking Nietzsche. I won’t be so easy to convince. A warm feeling in my chest won’t be enough, a whispered voice deep in my psyche was completely inadequate. I needed something tangible, a Burning Bush-style sign, and I would accept nothing short of a miracle. Maybe my brother could bound out of one of his election signs, let me know this was all an elaborate dream sequence, or maybe Trent would materialize in front of me and explain what happened down in Mexico all those years ago. He’ll tell me our youth group’s implosion was part of some larger, mystical scheme, that St. Catherine’s has some continued role to play in my life. 

Or what? An angel! A demon! Anything. These sorts of visions end up in sermons and heartfelt testimonies, in parables. These experiences alter people’s entire lives, give them purpose and direction. Why not me? Why couldn’t I, just once, be allowed a glimpse of something beyond all this? Why couldn’t I be the one with the faith, the one who understands the light while everyone else stands in the dark?

“Will You speak to me?” I said, my voice trembling. “Are You there?”

[okimargarvez]

METEOROLOGY- Cloud

Original title: Meteorology.

Prompt: climatic metaphors, phases of love.

Warning: none.

Genre: drama, romantic, comedy, angst, family, friendship.

Characters: Luke Alvez, Penelope Garcia, BAU team, Phil (Luke’s partner), Phil’s wife, Roxy, Derek Morgan.

Pairing: Garvez, Phil x Lucille.

Note: Multichapter.

Legend: 💏😘😈👓🔦🐶❗👨‍👩‍👧‍👦💍🎈. 

Song mentioned: Via con me, Paolo Conte. Note: I'm so happy because in this chapter there is a confrontation between Phil and Luke. Coincidence? I remember writing it three weeks ago, so again I had imagined right.  Obviously my Phil is different from the CBS's, I had few elements to create it, just name, profession, and the fact that he was hurt. Let me know if you want this evening to post the first part of "Unconditionally- mater & pater". :)

Peace & Love Garvez always

Meteorology- Masterlist

MY OTHER GARVEZ STORIES

CLOUD

You don’t feel them, you don’t realize it, and yet they are turning enough slowly not to attract attention, but quite quickly because, staring at them, reveal their movement. Often, we have never observed them with be careful, although we can do it at all times, but we forget it, and sometimes, looking at them suddenly we discover a new, unexpected, point of view, and after a while we were concentrating on something else we find that sometimes everything is changed, something happened in that time spent without looking at the sky. Is our life being so. Silently, something happens to us every hour, everyone day and transforms us, like a cloud, in good and evil. (Luca Mercalli)

 You just got in time to take refuge in the building when the downpour starts. Look out the window like the brushstrokes change the face of the city, already gray in itself, rather which is indeed enriched with colors of so many umbrellas and raincoats. Everyone seems forced to slow down the rhythm, mothers try to prevent children from putting their feet in the puddles.

You didn't bring anything in the rain. You are not very careful about the weather, lately. You're not very careful about anything, actually. However, it is useless concern to it, at the time you put your foot out of here, maybe there'll be nothing like this.

You get back into your bunker to prepare the useful documents for the meeting that will take place in one hour. JJ warned you that there will also be a Task Force agent, the best bureau hunter, so Rossi describes him, the only person to know him personally.

But you don't think it should be something that matters to you. The idea of capture those escapees no longer stimulate yourself, even if there is Mr. Scratch among them, which is a serious threat to all of you. Long time ago you would have imagined the appearance of a new guy, you comment it with the others, between laughter and some alcoholic sip. Like you and JJ did the first time you saw Hotch's brother. But today you do not have the slightest interest in replicating such a scene; JJ is married, and you are no longer yourself.

You look the desk and system the various objects, changing the place continually, always dissatisfied with the result, like wives in television shows that make walk back and forth, carrying a heavy couch, her husband and his best friend. You probably should worry because it's one of the symptoms of obsessive maniacs, or it isn't a good sign anyway.

You spill a vial mistakenly that you find isn't closed properly. You save everything except your dress and your hands. -Damn!- you exclaim, aware that you'll be forced out of the safe area to go into the world beyond that door. You head to the bathroom trying to avoid further damage. You stay still for a moment, reflecting on how to open it without even touching up the handle when you hear footsteps behind you. You turn and moving to let him pass, but he stops in turn.

-Lady, you need some help?- you jump when you see him. The outer shell adapts perfectly to the warm voice, with slightly Latin features. He is tall, brown, a bit bearded so as to give him a wild, frisky air. Muscled. And above all drenched; apparently, he hasn't even brought an umbrella with him.

While waiting for your answer, he has a genuine smile printed in his face. - Ehm... yes.- you exclaim, suddenly embarrassed and all because he is a handsome man. What a superficial world! And you're completely part of it. Should we all be blind to be certain that the other person is interested in us not only for the physical aspect?

He is, however, unaware of the thoughts that pass through your mind, so he just keeps the door open so that you can pass, entering after you. Here, your roads will be split, and he will become the further beautiful, unknow type. But no. He stops on the threshold of the corridor leading to male toilets and he looks at you a bit. -I've seen you somewhere, but I can't remember where.- you never figured this. You couldn't forget him if you met him previously, those like him remain indelible, like a tattoo. Not even the rain takes them away.

About rain ... -What has happened to you? - you didn't keep a laugh without great skill, real and not built; a rarity, at this time. His hair is completely soaked and even his clothes are a mess. He looks like a wet chick. You note that he holds a parcel in his hand, probably, you hope for him, his change of clothes.

He enlarges his arms without blushing. -It's a shower unscheduled.- he smiles again. There aren't more excuses to stay and continue this "conversation" if this can be defined. -And you? A close encounter with a sepia? - man seems doesn't feel the same as you. You see that you like its nice tone, which brings some sunshine on your gloomy mood, and this is worrying you.

You no longer want to be happy after Morgan. Mourning is too fresh. - Something like this ... - just give him another look. -Well ... good day.- he also stops for a few seconds to staring you.

-Good day too.-.

 As you dry your hands, understand it: she's the blonde who was going to fall in front of you on the subway. You remain dismayed. You don't believe in coincidences. But not even in fate.

She hit you. You don't know precisely the specific reasons. She isn't one of those women by the cover. But her mild smile has been able to dissolve some layers of ice covering your heart. And that gaudy dress, full of colors ... and her hands so clear, dirty in ink. But above all her voice, how many nuances and sweetness, makes you think ... to your mother.

You get out of the bathroom trying to convince you that doesn't help think about it. See her twice was already strange, there won’t be a third. Even if a chance, even on a thousand, there is. After all, if she's here, she'll work for the Bureau too. In what role? Considering the ink, which assumes the use of a pen, the most obvious deduction would be she is a secretary. But something doesn't convince you.

You reach David Rossi's office and you knock at the door. He welcomes you with enthusiasm. From the earliest steps to the Academy he took you under his protector wing. It has become, banally, a kind of second father for you, since the physiological one has gone too long ago. -Luke! Come in!- he makes to you a sign of sitting down. - As I mentioned yesterday, we need your help. Twelve among the worst serial killers who have ever walked on this earth are escaped. Among them there are Peter Lewis, Tommy Yates, and Daniel Cullen- you immediately extend your ears to hear the last name. -I called you for that. - he gives you an emblematic look. He knows a lot about that event, but not everything. The only other person to know most of the story was Phil. - Well, are you in? - you don’t have to think about it; you nod, and give your hand to the older man.

-Sure. When do we start? - the other man smiles, the usual pride betrays from every pore.

-Whenever you want to- he replies, and you thank him for not mentioning anything about your emotional state. It's a profiler, he can easy saw these things, you can't fool it. He there was also at the funeral.

-For me even now. Just give me the time to warn the big boss. - you reciprocate his gaze.

-Sure. Do you prefer to study documents in the old-fashioned way or have you become one of those with the head always to staring to your cell phone and tablet? - Rossi's joke also get you a laugh, he has always been a degree away from technophobia.

-They're fine with paper, if it's not a problem.- he bends to press a button.

-Garcia, would you please give to agent Alvez a copy of the complete dossier on the evasion? You will find him at Morgan's desk- an extended silence.

Then, that voice: -As you wish, boss.- Rossi shakes his head, then he stands up and you do the same. You go back to the open space and here he shows you one of the desk, the only empty one.

-Set up you here too.- you nod and settle the bag. -Are you sure you don't want to join a full-time job? We have a vacancy and you'd be a great resource for the team ... - he starts to charge, but you shake your head. Before you time to replicate, a blonde appears in front of you. -Oh, right in time. Garcia, this is the agent of the task force, Luke Alvez. He'll give us a hand in the case of escapes. The folder that the woman clutches in her hands falls to the floor as soon as your eyes are chained to each other.

Right you! her eyes seem to tell you. You lower to help her, your hands touching hers, but she retraces hers like she was scared. Rossi looks confused at the scene. Now he looks at you, now at the woman. -You two have met before, by a chance? - a moment of silence.

Then you both break out, shouting each one their own opinion.

-Yes- you, quiet.

-No! she says, much more agitated than you. Before anyone can add something else, the blonde gets away with what seems like an obvious excuse -I had to go back to my office. I have a lot to do.- you shifted your attention to Rossi.

-Don't do that face! She's a weird woman, but she's also the best computer technician in the Bureau and a wonderful person. If you often cross in these parts, you will become accustomed to Penelope mood.- so you learn her full name, which sounds fit for her. Then also the man leaves, and you remain alone. You look at the folder on the desk and then, without knowing why, your gaze is drawn to a huge window: it does not rain anymore, but the sky is covered by a lot of clouds. _______________________________________________ @talesoffairies @itsdawnashlie @c00lhandsluke @saisnarry @janiedreams88 @kiki-krakatoa  @arses21434 @gcchic@martinab26 @rkt3357 @orangesickle @entireoranges @jamirn@kathy5654 @lovesgoodluna@thisonekid @thenibblets @ambrosiaswhispers @perfectly-penelope @teyamarra @courtneyxoxo1@jahreau @gracieeelizabeth27 @thinitta @silviajajaja @maba84

Tell me if you want to be tagged here or if you want to be removed ^_^

[prorevenge]

Pro revenge from a revenge pro.

warning: long story. TL;DR at the end.

If you think about it cynically, one of the functions of the police is to provide a sort of society-wide revenge service. Unfortunately for this sub, it's usually kind of boring. When cops do take exceptional revenge, it's usually unfortunate and icky, like a dirty beating in the no-camera areas of the copshop, or giving someone the silent-patrolman treatment during transport. Fortunately, most cop revenge isn't dramatic - it's procedural. You misbehave, we do the paperwork, and eventually some consequences happen, or not.

Sometimes, however, you get a chance to take a bit of vengeance that is (i hope) the very definition of professional.

For a time, I was a small-town Canadian cop, working in $hicksville, $province. Several years before I came to work in the town, there was an event which entered town legend (and made national news - the funny little throwaway story they go to just before the end of the broadcast). Some kids committed an act of spectacular and iconic vandalism, and cost the town quite a bit of money. They were all caught, tried and sentenced to probation terms with restitution. I would love to provide details, but anything more would be immediately identifying.

All but one of the kids paid off quickly, served their probation without major incident and moved on with their lives. These were juvenile sentences and would in the ordinary course of things be purged from their records about two years after completion of probation. Unfortunately for one of them, whom we will refer to as LackWit hereafter, this was only the beginning of a pattern of failure and incompetence that would mark the his life from then on.

LackWit came from the kind of low-down redneck family that can't meet the standards of a transient's trailer park. They lived in decrepit trailers on a semi-serviced rural property that someone lent them out of pity. I wish I could tell you the moronic and laughable names these cretinous parents inflicted on their kids - think 'Jesse James' for the boys and 'Jezebel' for the girls and you're aiming too classy. I suppose his unfortunate nature wasn't his fault, but LackWit seemed so dedicated to his banal evil and low-grade crime that any sympathy I might have had just kind of melted away.

When I first arrived at the post, I was given my share of the list of the area's repeat offenders, who it would be my job to keep tabs on. Basically, the boss divided up all of the guys/gals on probation or other court supervision and every constable was responsible for any new charges involving one of 'their' guys. LackWit was to be my problem for the next 3-5 years. I spoke with his probation officer, and was told that LackWit hadn't paid one dime of his restitution, and in fact had been charged with breaching his probation by not doing so. He had also not been doing required community service, had missed probation appointments, and was generally not a great subject. She reccomended additional breach charges, which we duly laid.

The matter wended it's leisurely way through the justice system, and eventually LackWit appeared before a judge. Out in these rural circuits, the judges come by once day a month, and it's frequently the same judge seeing these redneck recidivists again and again. This judge turned out to be the same one who had sentenced LackWit to probation for his initial vandalism, and the subsequent breaches. Of course, on each of these occasions, LackWit had begged the mercy of the court, promised to get his life together and so on. (Understand, we're now more than 4 years out from the initial vandalism event). This might have worked on this occasion too, but the restitution became a sticking point. This town was small, and they needed the money from the restitution to repair some of the damage. We had a victim statement from the town about the things they couldn't afford to do without raising rates on their taxpayers. We had evidence of the reasons LackWit wasn't holding down jobs (attendance, unreliability, pot use at work), and we had evidence of the money he had made but not bothered to pay to the town. Judge decides to throw the book at LackWit this time: he puts him on a CSO. Although LackWit's original charges were Youth charges, and would have been purged, his breach of probation occured after his 18th birthday, so is an adult charge and semi-permanent on his record - nice work, chump.

{A Digression on the Canadian Justice System} We don't like to put people in prison. This is for a number of reasons: we're cheap and prison is expensive, our jails are hideously overcrowded and ill-maintained, and it flat-out doesn't work anyways. Trust me on this - if you aren't committing crimes against persons or involving sex or firearms, you aren't likely to go to jail on a first offence unless you're doing damage/stealing into the millions. {End digression}

A CSO is like a super-probation order. It's technically a jail sentence, but one you serve outside of a jail. The judge can order you to stay at a particular location, can give you a curfew or house arrest, can impose practically any conditions he/she feels will 'assist' you in successfully completing your term. The CSO also has some procedural differences from a probation order which will be important later. In this case, it had a pretty strict curfew among other things.

LackWit is terrible at complying with his order. We give him a few warnings about curfew breaches, and notify his PO. LackWit is formally cautioned. It comes to pass that LackWit asks Probation for permission to do a thing, and is denied. LackWit does the thing anyways, and becomes aware that we know about it. We stop by LackWit's house to 'have a discussion', and LackWit decides to go on the lam. He rabbits, and we don't see him again for a while. A breach of the CSO is filed and approved by Prosecution. At this point, LackWit knows he's going to be jailed for at least a week or two, and being a virgin jail-wise, has no intention of being caught.

Over the next few weeks, we are told by Sources (you would call them snitches) what LackWit is up to: he has couch surfed until he wore out his welcome with his few friends, and is now living in an abandoned car behind a friend's house. Friend's dad hates him, so LackWit has to sneak in and out and spends his days wandering disconsolately around town trying to find people to hang out with, or who might lend him money. I begin to see LackWit around town but pretend not to.

I go by his house from time to time, but he is never home. Sources say his parents want him to turn self in, get us off their backs, but he is convinced he's going to go to jail and get murder-raped (not likely, but hey - he hasn't let us explain that), and they will not let him stay there. I visit his friends, and make a point of being VERY obvious when I visit Friend's house with the derelict car. I never find LackWit, but am told that he spends several cold nights in the bush after our visits.

At this time, I have a rookie with me. One day we come across lackwit and he bolts. Rookie is gung-ho and she starts to chase. I catch up and after a token effort tell her to stop. She asks why - we could have caught him. Hell, LackWit is lanky but has the grace and coordination of a professional e-sports player, even with 20kg of crap strapped on - catching him isn't going to be a problem.

"Look," I tell Rookie, "I don't want to actually catch LackWit, " Rookie is baffled; we've been out to look for LackWit maybe a half dozen times this month. I explain, "The thing is, LackWit is punishing himself far more than the court will, and he's providing a great lesson to his friends about the consequences of this kind of life." Now, the thing about a probation order is that it has a fixed duration, from the date you begin to serve it, it runs for X months. If you're out of the country, in jail, or on the run, the order still runs out. CSO doesn't work this way. If a CSO breach is filed, the CSO stops counting down. I tell this to my wide-eyed Rookie, then add "If I'd picked him up 3 months ago, he'd have done a week or so in cells with a warm bed and three meals/day, then been out again with a firm slap on the wrist. This way, he can live like a hunted animal until he gets tired of it, then serve the same amount of time as he would have if he'd just turned himself in."

He ended up turning himself in a couple months later, when the fall nights got a bit too nippy for him. For the next few years, I would use the story (now well known locally) of LackWit's carpartment to frighten young juvenile offenders and to convince them to comply with probation.

TL;DR - Local schmuck breaches CSO/Probation conditions, decides to go 'on the run', ends up living like a hunted animal for months because police only make enough effort to find him to keep him hiding. CSO/Probation is frozen at breach and just waiting for schmuck to turn self in. Schmuck is used as an object lesson with local youths for years afterwards.

(source) (story by CopRevenge)

[justonemoreepisodeuk-blog]

Mad Men

So, advertising, then. It’s a pretty big part of modern life. It’s the industry I pretend to work in (I really do have a job in it, but my contribution mostly boils down to titting about).  Outside of the BBC, it has historically been the necessary evil that has funded content.  Without content, there are no boxsets, and without boxsets, this whole blog would just be me revealing inappropriate and banal childhood memories.  But I also hate it.  I don’t read freesheets or listen to commercial radio, but I do watch TV.  My version of watching TV, however, is setting the Sky Plus so I can fast forward all the ads. Or I pick shows from Netflix and Amazon in order to keep up with office conversation (though this also includes half an hour or more of agonising over what to begin watching, checking the various trailers over and over until I’ve totally run out of time and have to go to bed).  This Christmas, however, when summoned to spend the enforced festivities at my parents’, I realised some people still watch linear TV, checking in the Radio Times for when things are on, debating scheduling clashes until they compromise on watching bits of most things but never all of one (unless it’s Call The Midwife – not a moment was missed of that horrendous tat), rushing meals to catch the start of a show and then sitting through all the advert breaks in full.  On average, there are three minutes of ads ever quarter of an hour. In short, Christmas, for me, was watching the same DFS ad over and over.

“Right, let’s make a show about advertising,” said someone at AMC apparently. But this wasn’t going to be a show that went behind the scenes on the ScS double discount savings shoot (sale starts 9am Boxing Day).  It was to be about the early days of advertising.  In fact, relatively speaking, these were still the early days of consumerism.  Because mass production and consumption were new, they were also sexy.  If you follow, all new things are sexy, then they just become things, and then they are things that we are tired with and want to move on from, and then, when they have been out of our lives long enough for us to miss them, they are nostalgic, and we want them back and want them to forgive us for ever growing tired of them (see my post on Friends).

Thus, we are onto Mad Men.  It might, technically, be a show about working in an office, but it’s one of the sexiest boxsets you can get your teeth into.  But the sexiness doesn’t come from the usual sources: hot cast, wearing not much, engaged in storylines that involve them getting off with each other (though there is plenty of all of that too).  Instead, the show perfectly captures the sexiness of the times, when so much was new. 1960s New York was the throbbing heart of a brave new world.  The show is at its best when pitching the values of past times against a revolutionary regime.  But this is not our modern outlook being catered to.  Mad Men does not meekly give us what we want as a twenty-first century audience, it wrong-foots us repeatedly with its characters’ 1960s mind-sets.  We cannot understand their behaviour because we are of a different time.  This asks so much more of the viewer than something like Downton Abbey that gives us only what we find easy to accept.

This is Mad Men’s appeal. It is for the discerning.  It makes no concessions. Remember that old man character from two seasons ago? Neither do I, but he’s back, and what he did last time is important.  Keep up, stupid!  If you like finishing one episode and going on to the next to see how a situation was cleared up, Mad Men will only disappoint.  It simply moves on to what it finds interesting.  Fill the gaps in yourself, you idiot!  Finally, if you need clear cut directions on which characters to root for, then turn away now.  From Don Draper himself, to Peggy Olson and the rest, each cast member does terrible things for terrible reasons (and they all never stop smoking or drinking). You’ll be so conflicted you won’t be able to resist the next episode.  Guess what, people are complex!

Importantly though, the viewer goes on a journey with these characters across the show’s seven series. You’ll also be willing their actual fictional advertising firm to do well.  There is a massive distance between where they and it start, and where things end up.  Along the way, you’ll only get glimpses, but that will be enough.  The perfect stylisation helps you to forgive the show its challenges.

Selling a product is selling a dream.  Buy this thing and your life will be better. Your dreams will come true.  Seeing the characters launch into these sorts of pitches in the many fantastic boardroom scenes throughout the episodes is the only time you will hear script clichés. Otherwise there is not one lazy exchange in the dialogue.  It all fizzes in just the right way.  And if they’re not talking, they’re giving knowing looks (which nobody does better than Christina Hendricks’ Joan).

No other industry tries to make the humdrum of everyday life into an aspiration.  I have no point of reference, but I’m sure no other show makes working in a 1960s office so glamorous.  Even with their sharply tailored suits and outfits, the coiffured hair, the (sometimes) impeccable manners and social graces and their (initially) idyllic marriages, however, we are left in no doubt that these people will never be happy. And in that way, their 1960s fantasy seems entirely relatable.