#bill // answered // secretary of comic books

[honeydewmuses]

@not-bcring said:

❝  i know this might sound weird but,  do you wanna stay over?  i guess ‘sleepover’ sounds kind of childish but.  i think it’d be nice.  ❞ - (( Kazuichi @ Bill because on this blog we ball ))

It doesn't sound childish. It sounds gay. Unfortunately, Bill really, honestly does want to stay over, and he can't tear into the offer too hard if he's gonna accept it.

"I'm a real good friend, so I'm gonna give you a tip here. Cool guys don't invite their friends to stay over. They just don't make anyone leave, and all of a sudden it's the next morning. Unless you're a loser and people don't want to hang out that long, in which case you really don't want to have made a formal invitation."

Bill is pretty sure that's a clear yes. But just in case...

"So, what kind of homo shit do you even do at a sleepover? If that's what you wanna call this. You got any junk food or movies or anything?"

He looks Kaz over as he waits for an answer. It is kinda cute, honestly. The way he got all self conscious about inviting Bill to stay, and the way he wanted Bill to stay. It's not something he likes to admit to himself, but Bill isn't really the kind of person people are scrambling to get closer to. Or to stay in the same general vicinity as. But Kazuichi seems to like him, and to think his collections and trivia are cool, and to be okay with the fact that he doesn't speak Japanese or get along with most of their fellow students. Which is cool. Nice, even.

If Bill didn't know better, he'd think he liked Kazuichi. But he's too smart to like people. Instead he likes what they can do for him. And what Kazuichi can do for him is stroke his ego and make him little robots and give him that weird, warm, calm feeling that he gives him. Almost like friendship. Almost like... no, he doesn't wanna think about that one. He wants to have a dumb gay sleepover with Kazuichi. And when he says gay, he doesn't mean gay. Obviously.

#((jesus christ. i forgot i wrote that asshole and i definitely forgot we ship these two. they're fun tho we're just insane for it)) #((answering this on this blog was also a huge risk)) #((cause they are SO BAD at not turning everything n//sfw)) #((but anyway)) #bill // ic // secretary of comic books #bill // answered // secretary of comic books #bill // relationship // bill and kazuichi #not bcring #starring not bcring as kazuichi #((apparently i had not yet done b/ill's tags. makes sense. i am also sooo out of practice with him lmao)) #long post cw #implied homophobia cw

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 23, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Someone asked me today why former president Trump seems still to get more news coverage than President Biden. My answer was that Trump is still a powerful force and explodes into the news because he is so unpredictable, while Biden is behaving like presidents always did before Trump, holding meetings and letting Congress get on with its own business, which is much less immediately newsworthy for all that it matters in the longer term.

I am reminded of the 2012 Calvin and Hobbes cartoon by Bill Watterson in which Calvin wonders why comic book superheroes don’t go after more realistic bad guys. “Yeah,” Hobbes answers. “The superhero could attend council meetings and write letters to the editor, and stuff…. ‘Quick! To the bat-fax!’”

“Hmm…” Calvin answers. “I think I see the problem.”

Today was a bat-fax kind of day.

The Senate committees on rules and homeland security today organized into a joint session to hear testimony about what happened on January 6, the day of the deadly insurrection in which rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes that would make Democrat Joe Biden president. The testimony told us mostly that what happened that day is still contested. Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund and former House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul D. Irving disagreed about what happened when, and on what they said about deploying the National Guard.

Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), who encouraged the rioters by their willingness to challenge the counting of the certified ballots, questioned the law enforcement officials about their actions during the insurrection. While Cruz drew criticism for scrolling through his phone during opening testimony, Hawley drew attention by appearing to refer to himself when he said that suggestions that Capitol Police leadership were “complicit” in the insurrection were “disrespectful” and “really quite shocking.”

The only firm information that came out of the hearing was that Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) used his time to read into the record an account of the January 6 insurrection that laid blame for the violence not on right-wing supporters of former president Trump, but on “provocateurs” and “fake Trump protesters.” The account came from a far-right website. Johnson is trying to convince Americans that, contrary to what our eyes and the testimony of the rioters tell us, the attack on our government came not from Trump supporters but from the left. It is a lie, and it is worth questioning why Johnson feels that lie is important to read into the Congressional Record.

The Senate, meanwhile, voted to confirm Linda Thomas-Greenfield as the United States ambassador to the United Nations by a vote of 78 to 21. The no votes were all Republicans, prompting conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin to tweet: “[T]hat 20 Rs could oppose diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield—an African American woman with decades of career experience tells you just how extreme and beyond reason these people are.” Thomas-Greenfield served in the Foreign Service from 1982 and was the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 2013 to 2017, when she was fired by the Trump administration as part of a general purge. Just next week, on March 1, Thomas-Greenfield will assume the leadership of the U.N. Security Council, the top decision-making body for the organization.

President Biden had his first bilateral meeting today with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, and Biden made it a point to say it was his first bilateral meeting. Both leaders focused on democratic values, ending racism, and addressing climate change. Biden expressed American support for the release of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who have been held for two years by the Chinese government. The men were accused without evidence of being spies, likely in retaliation for Canada’s decision to detain Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese technology executive, at the request of American prosecutors.

Biden’s meeting with Trudeau emphasized that American foreign policy will return to its traditional alliances. Trudeau thanked Biden for “stepping up in such a big way in tackling climate change.”

“U.S. leadership has been sorely missed over the past years,” Trudeau said.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #political #Biden Administration #confirmation hearings #January 6 2021

[tomeandflickcorner]

Episode Review: The Real Ghostbusters- Ghost Busted

Okay, I realize that this is supposed to be a kid’s show, so there’s bound to be moments that don’t make a lot of realistic sense.  But oh boy, this one really went a bit too far, particularly towards the end.

It seems that the Ghostbusters have not received any cases in a few weeks, and they’re all visibly bored.  Janine is flipping through a magazine, Egon is fiddling around with his P.K.E. Meter (and the Egon/Janine shipper in me grins a bit over the fact that he’s sitting with his back to Janine’s desk), Ray is reading a comic book, Winston and Peter are playing cards and Slimer is just lounging about.  And full props to Winston here for attempting to look at the silver lining by saying they could use a break.  However, boredom is not the only issue they have to deal with.  Egon crunches some numbers and determines that if they don’t get any calls soon, then they will be essentially bankrupt.  This is driven home when Janine reveals they’d received a notice from Con Ed, stating that they’re planning on cutting off their power because they haven’t paid off their bills.  At that moment, the phone rings, and everyone goes nuts, with everybody practically fighting to answer it.  Of course, Janine manages to be the one to pick up the phone, only to find out it’s a false alarm- the caller was some random solicitor trying to sell them some swampland in Florida.  (Though points for callbacks, as Peter remarks it might have been his con artist father calling.)  In any event, it’s announced that the Ghostbusters desperately need to rake up some cash, so it might be necessary for them to all get secondary jobs.  (Something Peter is particularly distressed over.)

Regardless, the Ghostbusters and Janine all refer to the classified ads and apply for various jobs.  For the next few minutes, we see their attempts at finding secondary jobs. Peter ends up getting a job at some chemistry lab, but is quickly fired when he causes a small explosion.  Egon tries his hand at being a used car salesman, but that doesn’t work out, as he apparently can’t get a car door open and somehow ends up ripping the door clean off the car.  (Come to think of it, why didn’t Peter apply for the used car saleman job and Egon go to work at the chemistry lab?  Wouldn’t that have made more sense, given their individual personalities?) Janine gets a secretary job at what looks like a fancy office, and it’s clear that this new job is keeping her super busy.  Ray gets a job at a local zoo, but he apparently quits rather quickly after feeding a lion or something.  (Which seems a bit stupid, really.  I would love to have a job that involves feeding the animals at the zoo.  But Ray seems to turn tail and run simply because the lion was able to remove the giant slab of meat from the pole Ray was holding. I don’t get why Ray had a problem with that.)  As for Winston, he gets a job as a taxi driver.  But that doesn’t go so well for him, as he ends up honking at some large truck in front of him, and the three burly truck drivers respond by exiting the truck and actually flipping Winston’s taxi cab clean over.  Okay, granted Winston probably was a bit out of line by honking at the truck, since they were clearly in a traffic jam and it wasn’t as if the truck could go anywhere.  But wouldn’t those burly truck drivers face repercussions from flipping over the taxi cab like that? I admit, I can’t find any real information on any legal issues they would face from doing this, but I imagine it would count as vandalism.  So were those truck drivers hit with a fine after this?  Did they lose their jobs over this incident?  

However, it turns out that, in their efforts to find second jobs, nobody remembered to keep an eye on Slimer, as he’s taken to just roaming around unsupervised.  He ends up stealing a pretzel from a street cart and takes refuge behind a locked gate that guards the door of a closed electronics store so he can eat in peace. And, as bad luck would have it, some jewel thief that just happened to be nearby witnessed Slimer effortlessly passing through the locked gate and he decides to take advantage of this, tricking Slimer into helping him gain access to a jewelry store in exchange for food. Slimer, obviously too naïve to recognize the situation for what it was, readily agrees and unwittingly assists the thief in breaking into the jewelry store.  But as the thief is stuffing necklaces and such into his bag, Slimer notices the Ghostbusters and Janine hanging around outside the jewelry store.  Yeah, they just happened to choose that particular spot to regroup and check up on everyone’s progress in landing jobs.  Excitedly, Slimer begins waving at them, inadvertently alerting them to the current theft going on.  The Ghostbusters and Janine, instead of calling the cops, decide to take it on themselves to catch the thief and give chase.  In the end, Peter ends up catching the thief by firing his Proton Pack at a fire escape overhead, which results in the thief getting trapped in the makeshift cage.

The Ghostbusters subsequently get a check for $10,000 as a reward for catching the thief.  Thinking they might be onto something, they decide to become vigilantes by catching criminals instead of ghosts.  To achieve this, Egon and Ray modify their equipment so the Proton Packs would be attuned to the bioelectric fields of living individuals and the Ghost Trap would produce a solidified energy cage.  (Not certain how sound the science behind such a thing would be, but oh well.)  And so, things progress from there, with the Ghostbusters rebranding themselves as the Crimebusters.   We’re then treated to a mini montage that shows the newly dubbed Crimebusters continuing to make the front page news as they proceed to apprehend various criminals, with Mayor Lenny even hailing them as his new special task force.  Before long, crime throughout the city dropped by 30%, and the Crimebusters are soon out of debt, with an additional $30,000 surplus.

However, Ray decides to jinx things by stating the infamous phrase of ‘what could go wrong?’  It turns out that the top crime boss in New York (whose name is simply Crimelord, indicating a severe lack of creativity within the criminal sect) is not at all happy that the Crimebusters’s efforts are effectively putting a monkey wrench into his operations.  In an attempt to scare them off, Crimelord ends up arranging for Janine to be abducted from the Firehouse, leaving behind a ransom note that states the Crimebusters must stop their crime fighting activities if they ever want to see their secretary again.  Of course, the Crimebusters are not easily deterred and decide to take matters into their own hands.  Egon modifies the P.K.E. Meter to track Janine’s bio-rhythm (has Egon memorized the bio-rhythm of everyone on the team, or just Janine?  If it’s the latter, that’s actually kinda adorable) and they manage to follow the signal to this building that’s actually an entrance to some underground subway storage facility. Of course, Ray ends up loudly tripping over a subway rail, which ruins their efforts at sneaking up on Crimelord’s goons.  And a full-on shootout erupts.

And this, dear readers, is one of the major issues I had with this episode.  The fact that the Crimebusters charged in blindly into a place that was undoubtedly filled with hardened thugs who would sooner shoot you than look at you instead of alerting the authorities, who are supposed to be trained to handle hostage situations.  After all, this IS supposed to be a kid’s show, right?  Isn’t that one of the moralities many kid’s shows try to incorporate? Encouraging kids to view the police as people who are there to help serve and protect?  Having the Ghostbusters/Crimebusters take matters into their own hands seems a bit counterproductive.

Either way, Egon ends up saving the day by managing to magnetize the subway tracks, which results in the guns the thugs were using to fly out of their hands and attach themselves to the tracks.  (No explanation as to why the Proton Packs weren’t also affected.) With the threat of getting shot to death nullified and the thugs effectively captured, the Crimebusters are able to enter the abandoned subway car where Janine was being kept hostage, leading to a really nice moment where Egon personally unties Janine, with the two sharing a rather sweet hug.

Sometime later, the Crimebusters storm into Crimelord’s office building.  They inform him that Slimer had personally spooked his thugs enough to force them to provide signed confessions that implicates Crimelord as the one who ordered Janine’s abduction.  (Why would they actually confront the dangerous crime boss about this instead of actually turning in the evidence to the police?!)  Of course, Crimelord isn’t willing to come quietly, and he manages to escape by activating a force field he just happened to have, as well as an elevating chair that enables him to escape through the ceiling.  (How does he have those things?!  Is Dr. Claw his brother or cousin?)  Upon reaching the roof, Crimelord attempts to make good his escape on his personal helicopter. But the Crimebusters are soon in hot pursuit in the Ecto-2, which has finally made a reappearance in the show.  For the next few minutes, we get a whole dogfight between Crimelord and the Crimebusters.  In the end, Winston is able to bring down Crimelord’s helicopter by disabling the propellers with a well-aimed shot from his Proton Pack.  Of course, Crimelord doesn’t die when his helicopter crashes, as it is effectively skewered by the Chrysler Building.  Of course, I didn’t expect the episode to actually have this guy die in a helicopter crash.  Again, it’s a kid’s show.  Still, I think it would have been cooler if they showed Winston’s arm getting nicked by one of the bullets being fired at him from Crimelord’s helicopter.  Not that I wanted to see Winston harmed, of course. But there were bullets flying everywhere.  The fact that his arm didn’t get grazed in a miracle.  Was there some sort of network mandate that prohibited the appearance of blood?

As the episode comes to a close, the Crimebusters bask in their success at getting Crimelord behind bars.  However, they also realize that, in doing so, they might have just put themselves out of business.  With Crimelord out of the picture, it might mean that the city is free of criminals. So they’re now at the same exact spot they were at the start of the episode.  But, as luck would have it, the phone starts to ring.  Wouldn’t you know it, someone has a ghost problem!  And seconds later, a second ghost related call comes it.  So it looks as if the dry period of no paranormal activity has come to an end. And the Crimebusters become the Ghostbusters once again.  In the final moments, the Ghostbusters drive off in the Ecto-1 as Slimer and Janine return the Ghostbusters sign to the front of the Firehouse.  And, out of nowhere, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man appears on the screen, watching the Ecto-1 drive off before turning to the camera and winking.

Um…questions.  Why is the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man roaming free?  Isn’t he supposed to be in the Containment Unit?  And why is he winking at us?  Are we supposed to suspect that he is somehow responsible for ghosts appearing in the city again?  If so, was he doing it to help the Ghostbusters get back in business?  Because if memory serves, he does become an occasional alley to the Ghostbusters in future episodes.  Rather like how Godzilla eventually stopped being an antagonist in Kaiju films and became a protector of Earth.  Also, I do wrinkle my nose at the show showing the Ghostbusters become vigilantes.  Isn’t that basically sending a dangerous message to kids that they can do the work of the police and take down criminals and crime bosses?  Then again, I suppose it’s not that different from people like Batman, Daredevil and Spider-Man taking the law into their own hands.  I don’t think many kids try to imitate their comic book heroes.

(Click here for more Ghostbusters reviews)

#the real ghostbusters #rgb episode review #ghostbusters franchise

[ocasio2018]

AOC month in review: May

um ya’ll...we’re almost halfway through 2019. what?! what?! ok. i won’t attack you by asking about what goals you’ve met. let’s see what AOC was up to this month...

IN THE NEWS:

knock down the house: the sundance award winning film dropped on netflix and into our hearts. the film documents her rise from unknown bartender in NYC to one of the most popular politicians in the U.S.

green new deal: AOC is doggedly pursuing a path to a GND by doing talks & townhalls. in may she joined a bernie sanders x sunrise movement and gave a *rousing speech*, reminding us to not settle for less than what we need to save our planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adxMJoskpEo&t=315s

elizabeth warren x AOC collab: in a fun collab we didn’t know we needed, presidential candidate senator warren & AOC trace the peculiar history of treasury secretary steve mnuchin’s history with sears. https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1131534446044352513

ru paul’s drag race: AOC sent nina west, rupaul’s drag race season 11 miss congeniality, a farewell video after she was eliminated. they played the clip on the reunion episode. 

comic book: the first issue of AOC’s comic book was released! buy it here: https://devils-due-1first-comics.myshopify.com/

rent control: AOC went to a town hall about universal rent control in NYC. https://twitter.com/Met_Council/status/1134245682854944769

IN CONGRESS:

youngest presider in history: AOC became the youngest woman to preside over a House session on May 10, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlXbla-cBjE

PrEp hearing: the CEO of gilead (lol) tries to avoid explaining why the exact same HIV-prevention drug in australia is a fraction of the cost as sold in the U.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma2FvPTi5uQ

HUD hearing with ben carson: ben carson...ugh...answers questions about the disproportionate impact of incarceration laws on the poor.  https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1130877315980906498

failures of facial recognition tech: facial recognition technology is dangerous because its inaccuracies put poc in danger. watch.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxZk6IQxaLY

AOC & bernie’s credit interest cap: AOC & bernie collaborated on a new bill to cap all credit interest at 15% country-wide. the payday lenders who sometimes charge up to 200% won’t be happy they can’t prey on low-income POCs! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ycprvFZLyM

ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

that’s it for may. what’s the biggest boss move made last month?

ps. you’re doing great. i’m proud of you.

#AOC #AOCstanclub #alexandriaocasiocortez #alexandria ocasio cortez #AOCmonthinreview

[losers-party-imagines]

Can I get romantic Highschool headcannons for Richie, Stan, and Bill?

Richie answered

Stan

he carries all of your books until you reach class

opens the door for you

you joined the photography club and Stan likes seeing your work

he always tries to keep your school work organized

one time you accidentally grabbed each other’s note book, he got to see all the cute notes you make about him

“you think my smile is handsome y/n?” “OMG HUSH”

he asks you homecoming if you say yes he will be a nervous mess when you appear with your dress as he takes your hand

his parents are really cool with the idea of you being understanding of Stan

he likes helping you find things to photograph, its like mini dates

you and the losers hang out after school and tease you guys when you kiss each other

often helping him with English homework when he gets stuck

in exchange he helps you in math since it’s not your strong suit

if you have the same class, he looks out for you if you fall asleep, he also split the homework with you, you do one half and he does the other and copy of each other

movie dates, he asks his parents for the car so you guys and see the film in the drive-in

he’s still like comics so you buy him some you enjoy and his favorite ones to read during break

you guys do this cute thing of instead of holding hands you guys interlock pinkies

when he asked you to prom he gave you a little ring he saved up for to compliment you dress

Bill

you guys walk to school in the morning, he sometimes brings coffee with him so you can properly wake up

his hand is always by yours

his stuttering has improved enough that he went ahead and joined the speech class

the teacher who sponsors the club there is very happy the Bill challenges himself with you by his side, making you the secretary of the speech club

both of you spend most of the time donating your times by doing community service and the local daycare 

when some of the jocks try to cat call you he tells them to back off, showing that he won’t let anyone push you

study dates often happen, be it your house or his, he likes it when you help him get a presentation ready

if you feel stressed he hugs you and sings you some of the songs you like

on one of the anniversaries he gave you a promise ring to express his love for you

he quoted Shakespeare’ romeo and juliet late one night by your bedroom window and held a boom box with you guy’s first song

the losers often tease that’s he’s whipped, he just tells them to quiet down there’s nothing wrong with doing things with you

you wear his hoodies on winter days

“y/n why don’t you wear your hoodie?” “Bill yours are more comfier and warmer”

the school has this competition on who can have the most ugly christmas sweater, you and Bill win every year

applying to the same college

he mentors younger kids you have speech problems like him to give them encouragement 

#Anonymous #eddie kaspbrak #eddie kaspbrak x reader #stan uris #stan uris x reader #richie tozier x reader #richie tozier

[mindwideopen]

I’m looking for a job in satirical journalism, and I live in Chicago. Hot dog! Looky loo! (Not Lucy liu) Here’s a newspaper that is straight up my comic sensibility alley! The much loved and revered, “the onion”! This is great! I’ll just cobble together some writing samples and oop.... uh oh.... read this:

Oh no.... and this:

Well, I guess that answers that. Exclusion. Hey onion, I have a fantastic....

NO!

But...

NO! We will throw your shit AWAY!

To be fair to “the onion” there’s most likely a ton of nut balls like me, who come up with what they deem to be “comedy gold” all the time, and it probably gets old. Lots of dad jokes. Lots of silly aunt petunia pickle bottoms out there that had their brush with fame in the local community theaters back in aught aught, and now they are the resident experts in the funny. But there are people out there, that may have a decent idea or two, that deserve a chance, and don’t know how to get their foot in the door with this writing thing. And it kinda puts a wet piece of lettuce on your passion part below the belt; all this instant rejection prior to the “try to apply”. And yes, they have job openings every once in a while, so try back then.

No. An answer that an actor hears, or doesn’t hear until they see the show or commercial on the air WITHOUT them in it. I was an actor/singer/jack of most trades for a good 15 years here in Chicago, and to me, a “No” never got easier. It got more and more frustrating as time went on. And as much as I hate to admit it, my “no”, came first.

When I read this initially, I was pissed. “Oh, no?! Oh! Ok! Well guess what, onion, you stink! Yeah! Onions smell like someone’s B.O. and all the rest, and you know what? I don’t even eat onions, cause my husband hates them, and I’ve avoided them for so long that now when I try to eat them, I get agita, so no to you first, onion! Ok? Yeah! You don’t say no to me, cause I, yes, i, the small egoic i, say no, to YOU, so go stick that in your armpit and blow it out your onion hole!”

George Carlin: oh man.... Kari?

Kari: oh shit....

Carlin: Kari, you are single handedly alienating yourself from every creative group in this country...

Kari: actually it’s the world, i went after the good folks of Monty python, and I’m gonna do a piece on, “the thunder from down under” an all Australian male strip show that I can’t be a part of either, cause I don’t have a peep.

Carlin: ok, Kari, seriously, what is with you?

Kari: I’m feeling lonely and left out of the comedy world. It’s been at least 12 years since I quit acting, and I’ve been mad ever since. And I was told by someone in the biz that the best I can hope for is to be a secretary or bit part on one of the Chicago shows; Chicago Hope, Chicago fire, Chicago this, Chicago that, Chicago, the movie...

Richard Pryor:... already made, you missed that shit.

Kari: see?! I miss out on everything!

Carlin: Kari, do you want to do any of that?

Kari: well, I’d like to think I could, but probably not.

Carlin: well ok! Then leave that to the people who want to do it. What do you want to do?

Kari: i..... dooooont....knooooowwww!!! Waaaaaaaaa.... (cries like Lucy from I love Lucy. Again, NOT Lucy liu, unless she’s cries like that)

Carlin: ok, then how about figuring that out before you burn every bridge you don’t even cross yet.

Richard: she’s burned all the bridges, and the buildings, and allll the shit. Kari is maaadddd. She’s more “Carrie” than the movie “Carrie” by Stephen King...

Kari: He’s also like gayle king, a man who needs to clarify his last name! I can’t get past the cover of any of his novels! Stephen King who? Which king? One of the kings in a deck of cards? Elvis? King Louie from jungle book?! Who?!

Richard: ok, Kari this is our point. You are not ok with success.

Kari: I’m not?

Carlin: no! You yell about the stupidest shit, really! How do you expect to get a job at “the onion” when you have already written them off as “exclusive”? You haven’t even looked to see if they’re asking for submissions.

Kari: again, I’m not sure.. any suggestions?

Richard: well, you write your own shit, but you are not known, so going after people, seems mean.

Kari: um, you both did it.

Carlin: yes, but we came up during a different time, Kari. And we had friends and collaboraters.

Richard: I talked about stealing my shit on the tonight show. I stole Bill Cosby’s shit before I did my own shit. So just steal someone’s shit!

Kari: I can’t steal someone’s shit! I’d be horrible doing someone else’s shit!

Carlin: Kari, you were an actor, you were paid to do other people’s shit...

Kari: yes, but I don’t want to steal their shit!

Jerry stiller: Kari, to date you owe the king of queens $8 million dollars in back quotes. You love us.

Kari: yes, I do. You currently in production?

Jerry: no.

Kari: ok then! I didn’t even have an LA agent... so I wasn’t even able to be considered. oh man... I’m totally depressed...

Carlin: ok, Kari, maybe we shouldn’t discuss this subject for awhile, ok? Lay off the concept of collaboration for a bit. What do you like?

Kari: I like the concept of working with like minded people.

Richard: well, you have us...

Kari: yes, but I mean here in the 3d world. Someone who’s not me.

Richard: good point.

Carlin: ok, well you want like minded or people who like your comedic sensibility and can build from that with you.

Kari: yes. And I want to laugh. A lot.

Carlin: yes, laughing is good, we haven’t done much of that as of late.

Kari: yes. And I want to have the freedom to write whatever I want, as crazy and as silly as I want to be, and I want people to act it out. And I want the people to be sweet, and cooperative, and kind, and supportive, and good natured, and all the good stuff that makes for a good collaboration.

Carlin: great! How about money?

Kari: yes. I’d like that too. A shit ton of it. & I want to feel like I belong. I’m tired of feeling like someone on the outside peeping in at the nude people on the inside...

Richard: oh shit...

Carlin: ok, Kari. Do us a favor, and focus on what you do want, and not on what you find wrong with everyone. The world doesn’t hate you. Some people may, and if you keep this shit up, you will get everyone to hate you. That’s what your negative beliefs do. They fuck your shit up. They have you acting a fool. And then you wonder why people are afraid of you, cause you end up making your nightmares come true.

Freddy Krueger: yesss! You’re mine now, bitchy woman....

Kari: ok, you know whuuuut? I will take your jello 1,2,3 face and body and separate you into different jello cups, and chill you for 2 hours, and then I will as ready whip, and I will have the dog in “nightmare on elm street 4” eat your jello ass as a parfait, ok?! Don’t you ever talk to me like that again, you wormy piece of liver and onions, ok? Good...

Freddy: oh shit... even I’m afraid of her...

Carlin: Kari, be cool, ok? Watch the stooges (not iggy pop’s band, but the 3 nut balls) and relax. Things will start looking up, give it time.

Kari: fine, but I’m not into this exclusivity, shit.

Groucho marx: she does want to be a part of a club who will have her as a member. I don’t share in that opinion, but she does. Maybe that’s why no one will have her. Her jello 1,2,3 is made of Freddy Krueger’s ass.

Richard: Scene. 🤣

#writing sample #writing #honesty #writer #i get by with a little help from my friends #self improvement #self reflection #selfawareness #frustrated #love #choose love #lovematters #funny #kinda #mind wide open #kari keillor

[chrismaverickdotcom]

I'm a not so good guy...

I’m a teacher… and I think I’m pretty damn good at it. I know for a fact that at least a few of my former students read my blog, and I bet they’d say I’m pretty damn good too. But I wasn’t always a teacher. I’ve had a lot of other jobs. I’ve designed computer software. I’ve been a photographer. I’ve written comic books. I’ve worked in retail. I’ve worked in a restaurant. I worked at a TV station. I was a paperboy. Hell, I was even a professional wrestler for a little bit there. That’s a lot of jobs, and I’m not even Jamaican.

One job I’ve never had was being in the military. And it’s not that I couldn’t have been. I totally could have. I was a poor black kid in high school in the 90s. Military recruiters love poor black kids. So I was totally offered a chance to be all I could be and see the world or whatever the fuck the slogan was back then. I turned it down. I was offered a ROTC scholarship. Turned that down too. A recruiter from the Air Force Academy came to my school to try and get me to come there too. Once again, I said no. See, I just wasn’t interested in being a soldier. It didn’t excite me then. It doesn’t excite me now. And in all the years since, I have never regretted that decision. See, when I think of the idea of “risking your life to fight for the rights and safety of others.” My next thought is something along the lines of “well, that doesn’t sound like something I’d want to do.”

I have no particular ill-will against the military. I had a lot of friends who did enlist. Good for them. Good for cops too. These people provide a very important role to society. I am thankful that there are people out there willing to fulfill it.

I’m not that guy. Honestly…. I’m just not that good a person.

And see, this is important. In fact it’s very important. This is something that everyone who is ever one of my students, and ESPECIALLY everyone who is ever the parent of any one of my students needs to understand.

See, every time there’s a school shooting, the national conversation predictably turns to the question of gun control and school safety… and this becomes predictably political. You have a lot of politicians on the left saying “this is why we need gun control” and then the right retorts with “have some respect. This is not the time, these families are going through tragedy. Now is not the time for your political agenda.” (As a side note, whatever it is that ultimately kills me, I want the record to show that anyone who loves my has my permission… and in fact my INSISTENCE… that you immediately start petitioning Congress to ban whatever killed me. If I am crushed to death in a freak accident by two tons of cotton balls, I want a fucking bill trying to take down the cotton ball cartel on the floor of the House by the end of the week).

Anyway, nothing ever comes of these talks because it’s apparently never the time to talk about gun control, So regular everyday people start passing around memes. Some of them are really stupid. I had the pleasure refuting the ridiculousness of one that my wife’s cousin, William, posted earlier today, which pointed out that there were only 374 “rifle deaths” in 2016 and there were 478,000 cigarette deaths. Actually the meme cited a bunch of stuff that was “more deadly than rifles.” Including “fists.” Of course, it was bullshit… which was pretty easy to prove if you spent like 5 minutes reading the sources that the meme claimed to be citing… or if you gave it 10 seconds worth of intelligent thought on your own. But whatever… as I’ve said many times before all facts are alternative, some are more alternative than others. But whatever… the nice thing about dumb memes is that they’re pretty easy to refute and I can go make fun of people by being smart and this amuses me… because I’m just not that good a person. I’m a petty little man and I kind of delight at being smarter than other people and sometimes take pleasure in their misfortune.

Every time one of these big mass shootings comes around and kills white people (killing brown people is much smaller news) we get a different take on it. In the past we’ve blamed video games. We’ve blamed movies. We’ve blamed mental health. We’ve blamed bump stocks. But this particular go round, led by the “genius intellect” of the B-movie super villain that we’ve elected President we’re actually trying to have a serious discussion about whether or not the problem would be better if we armed teachers. Arming teachers… you know… like me.

Now, I want to point out that this isn’t the first time this has come up from this administration. During her actual senate confirmation hearing the current Secretary of Education actually floated the need for armed teachers in order to defend students from possible bear attacks. She wasn’t joking. This was a serious concern of hers. Of course, then on her first day at work she also tweeted she couldn’t do anything because she was unable to find the pencils. So that’s the bar of intelligence we’re working with here. But now, the US President has piled on… and because he’s said it a couple times (and then in a brilliant tweet storm today, denied that he said it and then went on to reiterate it over the course of half a dozen tweets) it’s become news. And something that people are having to have a serious conversation about.

So let me make this clear. This is a dumb idea.

Earlier today, the Broward County sheriff’s department released a statement that apparently there was an armed deputy on duty at Stoneman Douglas high school during the shooting. He was a trained law enforcement official. He knew that there was a shooting going on. And he opted to do… nothing. He made a decision that there was gunfire happening in a building and even though he had a gun, the smartest thing for him to do… was not enter that building. Basically he was faced with the option of protecting his own life or the lives of others… a position that no one forced him into… he volunteered for that career. He swore and oath to serve and protect. But in the heat of the moment, when faced with the reality of the situation… he chose himself over others.

I get it…

My wife, Stephanie, linked to this story earlier. And of course, a right wing friend of hers, Jeffrey, immediately tried to refute it by saying “a single person lacking the courage to act does not mean that others in that situation may have saved lives.” I laughed at this. Jeff then tried to counter me by pointing out “Somebody took out the Texas church shooter with a gun. It happened to late to prevent the initial killings but someone did step up and we don’t know if that shooter would have attacked others. Its no guarantee but to say it won’t ever happen just doesn’t make sense.” And my friend Adam pointed out that just because it worked out once doesn’t mean it’s a particularly good idea.

I’m actually going to split the difference. It’s happened more than once. In fact, because I happened to do some research earlier to refute William’s ridiculous rifle’s are safer than fists or cigarettes meme (I bet you didn’t expect that to come back around), I just happen to know that in 2016, there were exactly 276 justifiable homicides using some type of firearm by a private citizen. Of course, from the same research I also happen to know that contrary to the meme there were 58,853 reported criminal shootings that year. So, that means 0.4% of shootings result in a justifiable defensive kill.

And sure… oh right wing reader… I know what you’re thinking: “But if more people had guns, there’d be more saves.” Well, it turns out at that from the same research, I also just happen to know that the 276 justifiable homicides were out of 1,980 attempts to defend oneself with a firearm. So it works about 14% of the time. Usually against someone with a similar class of weapon. And sure… better than nothing. Except… I also happen to know that there were 2,203 accidental shootings reported by registered gun owners that year. So while you are 14% likely to be able to kill an armed assailant if you have a gun… it turns out you’re 8x more likely to end up shooting some random other person during an attack or otherwise as you are to shoot a bad guy. So… to any parent who thinks this is a good idea… understand that the likelihood that I can defend your kid from an active shooter if one can happen is about 14%. And I’m 8x more likely to end up actually shooting them than I am defending them. Do you still want it? Math is fun!

And if your answer is yes… well, ok fine… I’ll take it.

See, because El Presidente also floated the great idea that hey, why don’t we give a bonus to the teachers willing to go through the training and carry a gun in the classroom. And… well, I like money.

But really.. understand who you’re asking and what you’re asking of me. I’m not a soldier. I’m not a hero. I don’t want to be. As I said at the beginning, I had that opportunity and I passed it up because I don’t want it. What I am, is a guy who reads funny books for a living. I’m the guy who gets paid to teach your kids to write. I’m the guy who gets paid to teach your kids about literature and it’s connection with feminism and sexuality and gender and race and marxism. Have you been reading this post? I’m an ultra-liberal, socialist, agnostic, feminist, pro-LGBTQ, pro-BLM, pro-union, pro-drug, pro-sex, pro-polyamory, pro-pornography, anti-religion, anti-establishment, damn-near anarchist SJW asshole. And you know… if you really want to pay ME to carry a gun around your kids… ok fine, I guess.

But understand something… I’m not going out of my way to take a bullet for your kid. I’m not going out of my way to shoot someone to protect your kid. I’m just not. Much like the deputy from Stoneman Douglas, if I see a gun, I’m probably running in the opposite direction. I’m just not that good a person. The only difference is, I’m telling you this right now upfront.

And I don’t think any of my students would expect any differently. As I said, I know for a fact that some of them read these. And they all know me very well. So, Ayana, Brooklin, Elysse and any of the other couple hundred students I’ve had the pleasure of teaching these last few years and might be reading this, I say to you… you are all wonderful, lovely, bright and intelligent people. I love and care for you all. And just to be clear, should you ever find yourself in a classroom with me again, and someone comes in with an automatic weapon, then RUN! FUCKING RUN!!! RUN AND HIDE!!! DO NOT WAIT FOR ME TO SHOOT THAT PERSON!!!

And see… because all of my students have been bright and intelligent. I’m pretty sure they know that. To their parents… I mean, don’t get me wrong… if I have a gun and I’m cornered, I’ll probably take the shot. But given the choice between trying to hunt down a guy with an assault rifle and well…. not doing that… I’m going to choose not… EVERY SINGLE TIME. Because that’s who I am. I’m a guy who’s pretty damn good at my job — reading funny books and talking about how they reflect culture — and I chose that job because I didn’t want to deal with bullets! I’m just not that good a person.

And the thing is, a lot of my friends are also teachers. I’m sure a lot of them are reading this and laughing… And honestly, most of them are far nicer and better people than I am. But I’m pretty sure you’re going to have a hard time finding a single one of us who is looking to take a bullet for your kid. Sorry.

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I’m a not so good guy… was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

#arming teachers #Donald Trump #dumb ideas #Florida #gun control #Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School #NRA #School shooting #school shootings #Trump

[theblacktivity-blog]

Keep Your 4th of July.

The 4th of July for most Americans is cognitive dissonance expressed at a peak commercial level. It is a time where some of us gather around grills in manicured backyards and harp on the “glory” of living in the “greatest nation on earth”. We sing “America The Beautiful” and tear up as “The Star Spangled Banner” blast over the ballpark loudspeakers as we wait for the crescendo “…and the rockets red glare” to applaud and scream into a frenzy. In expected fashion this is also a time when we look to the past with a degree of reverence for the nation’s founders and their infinite wisdom in crafting the essential documents that have since remained a cornerstone of this country’s supposed creed, The Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, The U.S. Constitution, The Bill of Rights.  In some parts, this desire to bring the nation’s past to the fore borders on the comically insane as some citizens take it upon themselves to dress in full colonial era garb in peak summer weather to recreate for one day the events before, during, and after July 4th 1776. We gather around open fields at city parks, at airports, or watch from our porches and pillars (if you’re among those lucky enough to have either) and gaze in awe at the magnificence of the fireworks illuminating the nighttime sky. If you are more of a home body, the “Americaness” of “ ‘Merica” shall nevertheless escape you not, as everything from the M&M candy commercial, to the Budwiser beer ad, to the jingle for the wholesale furniture outlet down the street will make some allusion to “ ‘Merica” faster than you can say Yankee Doodle. Still words such as liberty, equality, justice, freedom, democracy, rights, and of course…patriotism, are used in excess all of which are a vain attempt to conceal from ourselves and the world that for many other’s the 4th of July doesn’t mean shit. That’s right, as a Black person (that is a person of African descent whose ancestors were the forced human engines upon which this nation was built to and for the advantage of white people) the 4th of July is a day off, nothing more, nothing less. It’s a time in which we are reminded in earnest that freedom actually isn’t free, and that the folks whom Ta-Nehesi Coates so eloquently described as “the dreamers” in his book “Between The World and Me” aren’t just merely delusional, they suffer from what could only be considered a psychosis. We are reminded that for more Americans than less, it is of such importance to protect the illusion of “exceptionalism”, that it has driven the majority white (for now) citizens into a state of endless vertigo, reinforced by at least 250 years of twisted (at best) and false narrative. We’ve known the chicanery in this supposed celebration of “freedom” ever since we where able to piece together this tomfoolery occurring in full view of the slave quarters and cotton patches, and none put it so eloquently as Frederick Douglass when he asked and answered:

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness; swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

With this in mind, on this 4th of July we are reminded that for Black people while there have been some liberties in the nominal, Blacks are still considered 2nd class citizens whose lives matter not to the American “dreamers” and whose pleas for justice and human dignity continue to fall on deaf ears. Such has been the case since July 4th 1776, however July 4th 2017 is a time uniquely suited to the representation of this country’s grotesque shams of liberty, justice, and togetherness. It falls at a time when the nation is at its most openly polarized time (active word: openly) since the 1960’s. A time after the so-called post racial era of President Barack Obama in which white resentments, anxieties, jealousies, and nonchalance has swelled to such a degree as to render the house highly combustible. In the person of newly elected President Donald Trump whites see their psychic savior and at least a superficial return to American “normalcy” where white men rule with impunity, no matter their behavior. It’s a time when an administration such as Trump’s, swamped with more allusions to criminal activity than any presidency in recent history, is practically pored over and discussed by pundits to the point of xerostomia , though it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that if the previous administration of former President Barack Obama had been faced with a tenth of these allegations, they would be under Guantanamo Bay right now. As if this isn’t enough, we also have a president and cabinet who has made it quite clear that the issues of African Americans are so out of the discourse for them, that they don’t feel the need to be informed on Black history (see Trump and Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s discombobulated rant about Frederick Douglass existing with us in the present tense), not to mention the appointment of Attorney General (and former Alabama Senator) Jeff Sessions to chief cop despite his (or because of) his sordid civil rights record. These occurrences and a laundry list more doesn't bode well for the Black situation on the ground. As the Black bodies pile up from police executions, said police officers are walking off scot-free, and from the looks of it, there seems to be some consensus among many in law enforcement that “hunting” season is back in session, Bull Connor style. Meanwhile, urban areas densely populated with Blacks suffer from a mixture of poverty, gentrification, and crime, the former, next, and latter of which has time and again been proven to be the result of racist economic and housing policies. Yet, the narrative is that there is something “inherently wrong” with such communities and while there seems to be no shortage of town halls and special reports on the subject, in the most prosperous nation on earth, we still haven’t gotten to any solutions and in many cases moderators and politicians resign it to being “a complex issue”.  We Black people in America have this to think about as the 4th of July rolls around.  It will be said, as it is has been in Independence Day’s past that “we need to get over it”, that “Black people have come a long way”, that “we are being unreasonable”. There will then be attempts by the “dreamers” to disregard America’s utter hypocrisy via our television screens flooded with “people from all races” championing their love for country. Meanwhile those of us willing to confront the illusion, will largely go on about this day no doubt appreciative of the family gatherings, the time off of a stressful job, and the cookouts, nevertheless as for the country and its celebrations, we’ll feel nothing. For African Americans this July 4th will be but another piercing reminder of how those suburban manicured lawns so storied in American lore came to be (redlining, restrictive covenants, and mortgage discrimination). It will be yet another reminder of whose freedom was really achieved that day in 1776 (white people). It will be yet another reminder of the second Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the grounds on which it was fought (primarily the maintenance of the slave state in the South and the North’s jealousy of it). It will be a reminder of the broken promises of The Reconstruction (still being fought til this day). It will bring to pass the images of old Jim Crow lynching and new Jim Crow jailing and police killings. It will remind us of the litany of names that have been martyred throughout the struggle for real freedom, and those symbols missing justice who weren’t born to be symbols but died becoming such. More than anything though, for Black people, the 4th of July will mean nothing.  

#4thofjuly #blacklivesmatter #blacklivesstillmatter #frederick douglass #ta nehisi coates #americandream #american nightmare

[thecounterplan]

The Trump Era and the Death of Hypocrisy

by Brice Ezell

Politicians are a lot like lawyers: even though we know that they’re important to society, the invocation of their job title usually comes with a host of negative adjectives. Just as lawyers are slimy and deceitful, politicians are power-hungry and manipulative. Where once television shows like The West Wing depicted politics as a noble enterprise maintained by flawed if aspirational people, now the hit political show du jour is House of Cards, where Machiavelli is filtered through a questionable Southern accent. The vision of politics illustrated by House of Cards puts a von Clausewitzian spin on the enterprise of governance: politics is a continuation of scamming by other means. 

Of the many negative attributes given to politicians, “hypocrite” is perhaps one of the most common. One need only look to the most recent presidential administrations in the United States to see examples of this. Barack Obama ran on a campaign of repudiating the militarism of George W. Bush, only to then maintain interventionist foreign policy through the increased use of drone strikes. The Republicans claim to be fiscal conservatives, but their new president just proposed the building of a border wall -- whose efficacy is dubious at best -- that will cost the US taxpayers (not Mexico) billions of dollars. George W. Bush was also supposed to be fiscally conservative, yet his spending decisions look far from conservative. In fact, as Derek Thompson notes for the Atlantic, compared to Reagan and Bush, Obama looks like a fiscal conservative, despite Republican claims that he represented a new era of government lavishness and excess.

These are just three examples, and it is not difficult to find more in both of the major political parties in the United States. Hypocrisy, it seems, is just a part of the game: “it’s only wrong when the other guy does it” is a common critique of both parties.

What is disheartening about the frequency of hypocrisy accusations is that they have inevitably lead to normalization. If both parties accuse each other of hypocrisy regularly enough, the accusation loses any force. Hypocrisy is so rampant in Washington DC that it has diminished the moral charge of hypocrisy, which should be no small accusation. Because being morally inconsistent is the norm, inconsistency is the new consistency.

Tracing the extent of hypocrisy in DC could (and, I think, should) be the subject of a doctoral dissertation, research grant, or book-length study. I couldn’t hope to cover the breadth of that subject in this single post. What I will claim is that in 2017, beginning with the presidency of Donald Trump, we have reached peak hypocrisy, meaning that hypocrisy no longer has any moral charge in US politics. Calling someone a hypocrite is no different than calling him a congressman.

On his own, Trump is a major problem for US governance. He has zero political experience, and his incompetence has already begun to show just weeks into his presidency. During 15 February press conference -- a spectacle of ineptitude -- Trump was asked about a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in the US, to which he gave a non-answer mostly about how substantial his Electoral College victory was. (Predictably, his comments about that substantiality were false.) He has refused to disclose his tax returns, which if revealed would help make apparent his numerous conflicts of interest that should render him ineligible for the office he holds. Trump’s unrepentant mendaciousness, as evinced by his repeated lies about voter fraud and attendance at his inauguration, is a disgrace to the office of the presidency. Tellingly, those two lies aren’t in the realm of truth-stretching so commonly occupied by politicians, such as lies told to exaggerate the benefits or harms of a particular policy. (E.g. “The rollout of Healthcare.gov was great!” “Tax cuts are always good for business!”) Those lies of Trump’s are only about making him look good, and making him appear loved by his population even though he faces bleak approval ratings in the polls. That kind of lying cribs more from the tactics of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un than it does the spin doctoring that goes on in Congress. 

The follies of Trump have been widely acknowledged by individuals all across the political spectrum. One doesn’t have to be a Democrat or a lefty to find Trump’s behavior abhorrent. But, shockingly enough, Trump isn’t the biggest problem in DC at the moment. The real problem is the party that has leveraged him -- despite all the ways in which Trump clearly clashes with its (supposed) ideology -- for the benefit of majority power. The real problem is the Republican Party.

David Brooks, a famous conservative commentator for The New York Times, recently wrote, “The Republican Fausts are in an untenable position. The deal they’ve struck with the devil comes at too high a price. It really will cost them their soul.” Like Norman Orenstein and Thomas E. Mann did during the end of Obama’s first term, Brooks has made a clear break with the (ostensibly) conservative party of his country. In his words, “Sooner or later, the Republican Fausts will face a binary choice. As they did under Nixon, Republican leaders will have to either oppose Trump and risk his tweets, or sidle along with him and live with his stain.”

Brooks accurately explains the position Republicans found themselves in with Trump. Despite Trump being targeted by many of the Republican candidates for president in the 2016 primary -- among them Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Rick Perry (who now works for Trump) -- the Republicans didn’t work at all to counteract the Trumpish rise, and for an obvious reason. The party’s strategy, Brooks writes, “was at least comprehensible: How many times in a lifetime does your party control all levers of power? When that happens you’re willing to tolerate a little Trumpian circus behavior in order to get things done.”

“Tolerate a Trumpian circus” is an understatement on Brooks’ part. In order to embrace Trump for the strategic benefit he provides, the Republican party has to accept the following, among many other things:

1. Trump has been married three times, has openly bragged about past infidelity and sexual assault (the “grab her by the pussy” comment). This, despite the fact that the party treated Bill Clinton like the worst human being in the ‘90s for his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

2. Trump’s “bring jobs back to America” plan involves giving government deals to companies like Carrier in order to save US jobs (even though the money Carrier saved on its “deal” with Trump will go in part to automation, which will render future US jobs obsolete). This, despite the fact that a repeated line of Republican criticism throughout Obama’s presidency was that the government shouldn’t “pick and choose favorites.”

3. Trump, when asked anything about the Bible, gives answers that wouldn’t fly in a second grade level Sunday School class. This, despite the fact that the Republican party claims to be the party of religion and Christianity. 

I could go on. In accepting Trump to be the face of the party, despite all resistance to him throughout the primaries, the Republicans tacitly accepted his tactics as legitimate, as acceptable. There are contingents of #NeverTrump Republicans, or of non-GOP conservatives who are fighting against Trump -- 2016 independent candidate Evan McMullin being a key example. But the #NeverTrump faction is now the minority. By electing Trump, by supporting his cabinet picks, and by utilizing Trump’s demagoguery to its advantage, the Republican Party has made its allegiances firm: the GOP is the party of Trump. Conservatives who want to distance themselves from Trump either have to stage an inter-party coup or form a new conservative party. As many commentators have noted, despite Republican opposition to Trump in the primary, Trump is the natural consequence of Republican anti-governance during Obama’s term. The GOP spent years treating Obama like an illegitimate president, blocking his every move even when it confounded reason; should it be surprised that its newest president is someone who stubbornly refuses to accept the factual details of his own election?

The flagrant cases of hypocrisy listed above are but a small part of a now ever-growing catalogue. Since Trump has been elected, the duplicitousness of the GOP has swollen to almost comic proportions. The GOP arrived into the White House a shell of itself, and it is only getting more hollow with each passing day. In so doing, the party represents the culmination of the hypocrisy normalization trend that plagues DC. Hypocrisy is dead, and the Republicans -- who once, amazingly, were understood to be the party of a “Moral Majority” -- have killed it. 

“Unprecedented” Obstruction: It is not controversial to call the Obama-era Republican party obstructionist. It is a fact. The party’s frothing at the mouth over Obamacare -- a policy that was initially conceived by Republican legislators in the ‘90s, and then utilized in Massachusetts by 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney -- is the focal point for its irrational anti-governance. Right now, the GOP is struggling to “repeal and replace” Obamacare without facing political blowback, and a key anti-Obamacare Republican, Paul Labrador of Idaho, asked the question that no Republican had the stones to ask during Obama’s term: “Something Republicans need to be concerned about is if we’re just going to replace Obamacare with Obamacare-lite, then it begs the question, ‘Were we just against Obamacare because it was proposed by Democrats?’”

In the face of the Trump administration’s many unqualified cabinet picks, the Democrats have at times postured toward obstruction, though by and large most Democrats have voted for Trump’s cabinet picks. (With respect to “unqualified,” one need only to Rex Tillerson, whose role as Secretary of State is being for oil what Dick Cheney was for military contractors, or Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon who turned down a post in Health and Human Services because he believed himself “unqualified” only to take a post in Housing and Urban Development, where he has zero experience.) The Democrats have also suggested potential obstruction of Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, who will fill the spot that should have gone to Merrick Garland, a widely recognized consensus pick by both parties, whose only fault is that he was nominated by Obama and had to be confirmed by an obstructionist, Republican-led senate. 

Ideally, America could operate without obstruction. But in utilizing an obstructionist strategy during Obama’s presidency, the GOP legitimized obstruction. Mitch McConnell attempted to justify the reprehensible denial of Obama’s appointment of Garland on the nonsensical grounds that “the people should have a say,” even though they did have a say when they elected Obama for a four-year term, which included the year 2016. The GOP’s total contempt for democracy was made even more apparent when John McCain announced that if Hillary Clinton won, Senate Republicans would block any of her Supreme Court nominees. Did he not get McConnell’s memo about “the people having a say?”

Now that the Republicans are in charge of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, their tune on obstructionism has changed. McConnell claimed that the Democrats’ resistance against Trump’s cabinet picks -- milquetoast as it was, in many cases -- "has reached new extreme levels... [an] historic break with tradition.” This, as the BBC points out, is false, as thus far Trump doesn’t even come close to beating the timespan on Obama’s cabinet confirmations. But more importantly, even though the timeline argument McConnell made was false, the main issue is that Republicans have zero grounds to criticize obstruction. To the detriment of the country, obstruction was the GOP’s winning strategy in 2016. They can’t act surprised when others try to draw from that playbook. 

Trump’s Benghazi: Imagine that, in 2016, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton conducted a hastily-planned raid on a group of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. The result of the raid was the death of an elite Navy Seal, nearly 30 civilian casualties, and the destruction of a 90 million dollar plane. How would the GOP react? Would they calmly call for an investigation to see what could have been done better, and perhaps to see if anyone should be held accountable?

If you answer falls under the thesaurus entry for “no,” you are correct. The Jon Stewart clip above shows the failing of a conspiracy theory touted by the GOP in Obama’s second term: namely, that the 2012 tragic attack at at US government building in Benghazi, Libya -- which resulted in several American deaths -- was the result of a cover-up by Obama and Clinton, whose malevolence led to Americans dying at the hands of terrorists. Multiple Congressional hearings and reports later (reports, mind you, helmed by Republicans), it was revealed that while some things could have been done better with Benghazi, the event was not in any way caused by criminal negligence or conspiratorial maneuvers by Obama, Clinton, or anyone else in the executive branch. 

So how did the GOP react to the not-so-hypothetical raid in Yemen I just mentioned, which Donald Trump greenlit? The White House reacted predictably, drawing from Trump’s Fisher-Price “My First Dictator” playbook, saying that any critique of the raid “emboldens the enemy.” Trump took special aim at McCain -- a decorated war veteran and former prisoner of war -- after McCain said, like a reasonable human being, “I would not describe any operation that results in the loss of American life as a success.” 

Some Republicans have defended the raid. Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said the raid “was worth the risk.” A select few Republicans, namely Rand Paul (of Kentucky) and Mike Lee (of Utah) have asked for a formal investigation into the matter, along with some Democratic senators. Yet while it’s too early to say that the raid was clearly Trump’s fault, as not enough evidence has come in, it’s worth asking why Benghazi -- an attack which had similarly ambiguous details -- gets ultra-politicized, and Yemen is treated with either hushed tones or a “wait and see” sensibility. 

The answer is not so difficult. Brian Beutler, in an aptly titled article called “Never Believe the Republican’s B.S. Ever Again,” notes that

by Republican standards, [the Yemen raid] should be a major, impeachment-worthy scandal. Unless there’s some arbitrary minimum number of U.S. casualties (greater than one but less than four) above which administrative heads should roll, there’s no standard by which Benghazi should have become the subject of a vast, conspiratorial inquest, but the botched raid in Yemen should not.

“Draining” the Swamp: One of the better comedy sketches of this recent political season was performed on Saturday Night Live. The sketch features Bryan Cranston, who reprises his Breaking Bad role as Walter White. In the faux interview segment, White is revealed to be Donald Trump’s pick for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). “I like [Trump’s] style,” White says, “He acts first then asks questions later.”

To borrow a phrase from the short story author Justin Taylor, let that sketch serve as synecdoche for the rest of Trump’s cabinet. Like many ultra-wealthy GOP candidates before him -- Mitt Romney and all members of the Bush family especially -- Trump utilized the “blue-collar billionaire” narrative, which is anchored on the questionable premise that people who come from massive, dynastic wealth are first and foremost concerned about the plight of the working class. As far as con games go, it’s not subtle, but to Trump’s credit, it worked. But rather than try to keep the con up as he took office, Trump immediately raised taxes on middle-class homeowners on his first day in office, and then proceeded to pick a cabinet whose combined wealth is larger than the wealth owned by a third of American households. 

As someone whose academic research in part deals with the confidence game and its manifestations in American culture, I’m fascinated by Trump, a con artist who makes his con obvious as he’s performing it, and then once he’s achieved his con he immediately starts undermining it. It’s a bit like imagining Ocean’s Eleven where the thieves tell the casino owner they’re going to rob him, and after successfully robbing him despite making the thievery obvious, they then dump the money in the casino pool and start swimming it Scrooge McDuck-style -- all the while never being held accountable. It’s not as fun a movie, but it is more baffling.

“Hypocrisy is a third-rate political crime,” writes Buetler. “But it isn’t just that conservatives apply different standards to different politicians on the basis of partisan affiliation; it’s that their appeals to like-minded voters are fraudulent. National security, rule of law, and religious faith are supposed to be central facets of conservative identity. Presumably some Republican voters around the country are genuinely motivated by conservative views on these issues.”

Buetler’s first sentence, calling hypocrisy a “third-rate political crime” is a predictable if sad proclamation. That hypocrisy is an expected feature of US politics -- and, perhaps, politics in Western liberal democracies more generally -- is a sorry statement about the way we get things done. I imagine some would read the title of this piece and think, “’The death of hypocrisy?’ Was hypocrisy ever a concept in the halls of Washington?”

I have no Sorkin-esque visions of a politics of grandeur based on sharp intellect and sound principle. “The good old days” never were. Graft has always existed, and politicians have always sold out their values. I also have no illusions about the other major party in the US. Although socially liberal on many issues, in terms of the major structural facets of the US government -- namely, neoliberal economics, imperial global influence -- the Democrats have a lot in common with the Republicans across the aisle. The Democrats try to make claims to being left, but contradict their own supposed values. My case here is not meant to suggest that hypocrisy is unique to one political party.

But never have I seen hypocrisy so cravenly embraced as it is by the Republican Party. It’s one thing to be hypocritical, as so many politicians are. It’s another to ostentatiously display how little one cares about being hypocritical. Consider the many lies told by the Trump administration: Trump only losing the popular vote because of “illegal voting,” supposedly widespread instances of voter fraud such as people “being bussed in to New Hampshire from other states,” the murder rate being the highest it’s been in 47 years, refugees from Middle Eastern countries being able to “just walk in” to the United States, refugees from the countries on the travel ban “posing a threat” to the United States, the Democrats are engaging in “unprecedented obstruction”.... I could go on, but it’s exhausting. And it’s only been just shy of a month.

The thing about all of those lies is that they are easily disprovable. Their untruth is so open that only those ideologically uncritical of Trump could accept them. There are none of the vagaries, equivalences, or obscurities that come with politicians trying to sell the public on a policy or on a candidate. These lies are just that: lies. Not “alternative facts.” Lies. It is one thing for Trump to deal in these lies: as a con artist, it is his purview. But for the Republican party -- supposedly principled, supposedly the party of values -- to embrace Trump and his lies in this way, is to admit that all the party really stands for is the pursuit of power. If principles get in the way of that, damn the principles. If a candidate conflicts with party ideology... well, as long as he gets the party a Supreme Court seat, all’s well in the end. 

To say that politics is a pursuit of power at any cost is not a new claim on my part. As far back as Seneca, writers and thinkers have illustrated the follies of government, and how given over to so much power people can become grotesque versions of themselves, corrupted into the very thing they sought to avoid becoming. But with the election of Donald Trump, the Republican party took an especially precipitous moral fall, unlike anything in the past century of American politics.

I write this not as someone who belongs to a political party, or someone who ascribes to a particular political ideology. I write as someone who is concerned about what it means to be moral, what it means to live in a good society -- “good” here not just a practical but an ethical term. It’s one thing to joke and watch TV shows about scheming politicians and ominous negotiations in shadow-striped corridors; it’s another thing to, without any repentance or self-reflection, cast hypocrisy aside as an irrelevance. Fealty to principles doesn’t matter, as long as you get what you want. At least the Frank Underwoods of the world take to secret rooms to sell out everything they claim to believe. 2017 Republicans make no effort to hide the abandonment of their core platform, one on which they staked their entire opposition to Obama.

In response to this piece, I expect conservative supporters of Trump would say, that I’ve taken in too much “fake news”; I have a “liberal bias”; I’m not “hearing both sides.” There are no “two sides” to lies. They are just lies, and hypocrisy is hypocrisy. I don’t identify as a conservative, but everything I say in this piece could be argued by a conservative; many #NeverTrump critics have rejected lies, relativism, and the other moral failings of the Trump GOP. Can conservatives, who for so long have stressed that character matters in a politician (hence why someone like Bill Clinton can never be forgiven), honestly embrace a man who lies like it’s all he’s done his life? Can conservatives support a man whose idea of “bringing jobs back to America” involves the kind of government intervention and “picking favorites” that Republicans have decried for years? The damage Trump has done should matter greatly to conservatives, for his toxic politics have now permanently tarnished the conservative bonafides of the GOP. 

If conservatives truly stand for the importance of character and the importance of being a good person, they cannot “Yes, but...” with Trump. No “Yes, Trump is a liar, but we at least got a Supreme Court seat out of it, and now Roe v. Wade might be overturned.” No “Yes, Trump has bragged about sexual assault and routinely disrespects women, but at least Obamacare might be repealed.” Statements like that can be translated thus: “Right and wrong do not matter, as long as I get X, Y, and Z goals.” What makes that statement even worse is that there is no guarantee those goals will come about. Although conservatives have been chomping at the bit to get a conservative majority court to overturn Roe v Wade, most forget that it was a conservative court that gave the Roe verdict, and it was a conservative court that upheld Planned Parenthood v. Casey. By playing the relativism game in backing Trump, the GOP sold its soul, all for only the possibility that it might get its way this time around. Perhaps the GOP will get what it wants. But like Faust, the party has forgotten that, eventually, the devil comes to get his due. 

There’s great if minor scene in the first season of Community between the characters Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) and Ian Duncan (John Oliver). Winger has returned to community college in order to earn a bachelor’s degree after having faked having a degree to be a lawyer. Disbarred and itching to get back into law at the earliest possible moment, Jeff believes he’s found an opportunity to skate by during his return to college: have Duncan, an old friend and professor at the college, steal the answers for all of his tests. Jeff and Duncan meet to discuss the possible theft:

DUNCAN: Suppose I was to say to you it was possible to get those test answers. JEFF: I would say go for that. And could have said so in a text. DUNCAN: I’m asking you if you know the difference between right and wrong. JEFF: (Beat) I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I could make anything right or wrong. So either I’m God, or truth is relative. And in either case, boo-yah. DUNCAN: Interesting. It’s just that the average person has a much harder time saying “boo-yah” to moral relativism.

I wish I had the faith that Duncan does in the average person. But for now, I live in Trump’s America. Boo-yah. 

#Donald Trump #Republicans #GOP #Democrats #hypocrisy #politics

[newagesispage]

                                                              JULY                               2019

PAGE RIB

If you care what people think, you’re their prisoner. – Heidi Fleiss

*****

The Stones are back and opened in Chicago on June21. The reviews were great, they mostly stuck to the hits and Mick was in top notch form. Monkey Man and Sweet Virginia are back!!! Woo Hoo!!

*****

Satellite images show the complete deployment of 4 Russian made S-300 missile defense systems.

*****

Comedians in cars getting coffee will start season 11 on July 19. This season will bring us Eddie Murphy, Barry Marder, Bridget Everett, Melissa Villsenor, Sebastian Maniscalco, Seth Rogan, Ricky Gervais, Matthew Broderick, Jamie Foxx, Mario Joyner and Martin Short.

*****

Law and Order: Hate Crimes is coming.

*****

NRATV is no more. Hooray!! The NRA’s second in command Chris Cox has resigned after he was implicated in a plot to oust Wayne La Pierre. Cox calls the charges, “offensive and patently false.” There are also multiple lawsuits from ad firm Ackerman McQueen that claim the NRA is in violation of contracts.

*****

Republican representative Duncan Hunter is headed to court in September for charges that he and his wife illegally spent more than $250,000 in political donations. Prosecutors want to list details of his many affairs.

*****

NBC is bringing back Who Do You Think You Are?

*****

Police in Hong Kong are beating protesters.

*****

Sexual harassment news of the month: George Nader, part of Trump’s transition team, was arrested in New York on child porn charges.**Cuba Gooding Jr. was charged in NY with forcible touching. His lawyer says that the incident is on tape and will prove he is innocent.** Trump has been accused by the 22nd woman, this time of rape, but most of the media seemed to be playing it down. The victim, writer E. Jean Carroll says she will cooperate 100%.

*****

The Supreme Court ruled that the government can’t stop us from running a business with a scandalous name.

*****

Stop the cash bail system. It is costing us money every day.

*****

Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger have wed.

*****

Joe Sestak is running for President.

*****

I always think of Meghan McCain as the Rosie O’Donnell of the right. She seems to have a big heart and her childhood and parents seem to have made a huge influence. Somehow she always brings everything back to her and she freaks on certain talking points.

*****

Let’s keep an eye on U.S. transportation secretary Elaine Chao. The shipping dynasty of her family is benefitting from industrial policies in China.

*****

2 deputies were fired for inaction pertaining to the Parkland shooting.

*****

People were horrified at the image of Scary Clown with graves in the background on foreign soil as he talked of “Nervous Nancy” and called Mueller a fool. We were outraged when he told us that he would want to listen to dirt on others and wouldn’t see why he should tell the FBI before he walked it back. He does not fucking care. When will we all understand that?

*****

The President is being urged to cancel his speech at the Lincoln memorial.  Many of his own people think it might appear to be a campaign stop paid for by the American people. He did that already when he made ads for himself while at his golf course in Scotland.** I suppose he will pretend to be all about America again when he gets back from smiling with North Korean and Russian dictators.

*****

New York has banned declawing. Meow!!

*****

It is looking like Sam Little, in prison in California, may turn out to be the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history.

*****

The Tony’s came and went. Big winners were Bryan Cranston, Elaine May and Bob Mackie. Ali Stoker was the first wheelchair bound winner and Hadestown won the most awards.

*****

Some schools are trying out yoga instead of detention.  Teaching children how to control their feelings and help it to dissipate seems to be work.

*****

The Catholic Church has stomped on the rights of our Trans brothers and sisters. They decree that people should stay the way they are born.

*****

The movie,’ The Dead Don’t Die’ sounds great with Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Adam Driver, Danny Glover, Tom Waits and Steve Buscemi.

*****

Trump and Pence seem pretty pleased with themselves for not allowing the rainbow flag to fly during pride month. They really hate progress, don’t they?  Luckily, some brave souls are finding ways around it.

*****

Scary Clown has signed an executive order to increase transparency of hospital costs and info of medical professionals.

*****

On July 17 Bob Mueller will testify. **A comic book publisher is turning the report into a graphic novel.

*****

JB Pritzker has signed legal weed into Illinois and they will look at releasing low level drug offenders and putting money back into hard hit communities that were affected by the drug war.

*****

Maple Vale is suing because they say big chicken companies have colluded to hike prices.

*****

Absolut has been a proud supporter of the gay community since the 70’s.  

*****

Jim Gaffigan is in the new film, ‘Being Frank.’

*****

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is out. Many reporters tell us that she and other WH staff can be very different behind the scenes. They have been known to be very helpful and personable at times. The bluster and the lies are mostly for show for the boss.** Acting US customs and border protection commissioner John Sanders is out.

*****  

Scary Clown really put his foot in it with his Stephanopoulus interview. From little wise guy to taking help from foreign powers to the look on his face after ‘the cough’ it was quite the show.** Chuck Todd really soft balled his interview with our Pres. Shame on you.

*****

So, of course Manafort is going to a Federal location instead of Riker’s Island after AG Barr sent a letter to state prosecutors.

*****

One day it is announced that ICE is throwing millions out of the country. Another day they will round up 2,000 illegals that haven’t shown up for court etc. then that is on hold. Iran is going to be hit then it isn’t. It seems like real panic time in the WH. Justice Department attorney Sarah Fabian has explained in her double talk that kids without toothbrushes, soap and proper sleep is fine. Concrete floors in cages seem like a good idea to Trumps WH. Sarah Fabians phone number of 202-532-4824 was released to the public and she got an earful but I am sure she has changed that # by now.** ICE won’t even allow anyone to donate items to the kids in cages except for one in Deming, NM.

*****

Roy Moore is running for senate in 2020. These pompous, narcissistic pigs will not just fade away.

*****

I really hate this way the media lumps all the ‘rest’ of the Dem candidates as interchangeable. At least give everybody a chance to tell us who they are until the debates. All should have an equal chance because there are some good candidates there. Each one is unique and has at least one good idea. Would they all make a good President? Probably not but let’s hear them out!! People wonder why we never have enough choices and then they try to thin the field right away.  Andrew Yang wasn’t even included in some of the advertising for the debates and he is polling 8th. ** Seth Macfarlane and Bill Maher suggest that we do away with the audience. Great idea!!

*****

The first night of debate went well. I went in loving Inslee and went out the same way. He didn’t get much chance to talk what with the moderators asking Elizabeth Warren questions about 4 to the others 1. When Jay did get to speak about climate change and calling out CEO’s,  I thought he was dynamic. He really puts his money where his mouth is. I wish more people would research him. He had the best answer of what this country’s greatest threat is when he answered ,”Donald Trump.” Colbert made fun of Inslee for interrupting Warren about the rights of women. I must say that as a woman, that never even occurred to me because I was looking at her as a candidate. He has also been raked over for trying to interject with that finger in the air. Hmm.. so polite. DeBlasio got in a great line about not blaming immigrants for their problems but blaming the corporations, otherwise he seemed like a bully. Warren and Booker were competent. Klobachar, Gabbard and Ryan should call it quits. I like O’Rourke but he just seems too sweet. I loved his close because he referenced current events like the kids in cages and student protests which didn’t seem like running for student council Pres. I was impressed with John Delaney who I hadn’t known much about.  But Julian Castro won the night. He still wouldn’t be my first choice but he did everything right. He was truly Presidential and seemed to resonate with everybody. He was forceful, down to earth and seemed to know what he was talking about.

*****

Night 2 of the debates was a bit more lively. Hickenlooper will probably impress a few conservatives with his insistence that the Dems shouldn’t identify so much with socialism. Gillibrand seemed like tonight’s bully and it is time for her to go along with Bennet, Swalwell  and Williamson. Now, Marianne got a lot of shit but I agree with her on some basics. Preventative medicine and love being the answer is not stupid. These are things we don’t put enough stock in so why laugh it off? She is right about the chemicals and climate and why we are so sick in this world. She is right about state sponsored crimes and child abuse at the border. I thought Gillibrand repeated herself too much but she is right about putting too much money into private prisons. Buttigieg had a great point about the ‘free college for all’ thing by looking at the reality of those who don’t want college, a decent minimum wage and the rich paying for their own schooling.  He is also quite perceptive about republicans using religion while separating families which gives them no right to use God’s name. He was a bit sweaty but poised and measured all the way through. I am a big Andrew Yang fan and his money to all every month is something I have thought a solid idea for years but he is not Presidential at this point. He should be in the cabinet because he is an idea person but he sort of nervously choked on his first question about his signature piece. I loved that he didn’t wear a tie and his closing statement was awesome. Bernie gave us no surprises but the red, white and blue reflected in his glasses was fascinating. I did love his line about a hemisphere problem that we have and called out the Yemen crisis.  Like the night before, Biden seemed to get more time than the lesser knowns. He started out smooth and easy and ended serious and defensive because of the jabs he received. Kamala Harris stole the night with some of those. She jumped on Williamson’s mention of reparations to explain to Biden why his recent rhetoric of segregationists was so painful. This is why I love debates, it can change everything. I can’t really imagine anyone else taking on Trump at this point. She had some great lines like calming the boys down about no food fights but putting food on the table. Her close was a bit halting but she fired up the crowd as if she was already President.

*****

The after shows zeroed in on the flaws which will unfortunately define some of them.  The way we loop ‘Bookers look’ or ‘Williamson’s love not fear for political purposes’ can belittle the progress we can make. I am right in there watching it but it gets old. Trevor Noah said that many try but it was the Right time for Harris to play the race card. Race is already playing a part as some birtherism is erupting eluding to her Indian mother and Jamaican father.  Don Jr. got the wheels in motion by retweeting some garbage about Harris not being an “American black.”She raised about 2 mil after the debates.

*****

I will never understand why people always bring up this ‘elite’ business when talking about the Dems. Most of the people I have personally known who had a lot of money and looked down their nose at others have been republicans. Perhaps it is all about where one is from.

*****

Teens are evolving bone spurs on the back of their heads from looking down at their phones so much.

*****

Succession will be back on August 11.

*****

A little political hocus pocus seems to be ok with the Supreme Court. In a 5-4 ruling they have barred challenges to partisan gerrymandering.

*****

G20 countries make about 80% of global CO2 emissions. They had agreed to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels. Reports show that in the years since , they have nearly tripled subsidies to coal plants.

*****

Trump is schmoozing with Kim Jong UN saying, ”I would invite him tight now to the WH.”** There was a brawl with new unofficial  WH press secretary Stephanie Grisham and Kim’s people.

*****

The Travers film fest will honor Lily Tomlin with a lifetime achievement award.

*****

The ex- governor of Michigan Rick Snyder, who is responsible for the Flint water crisis, will now have a fellowship at Harvard.

*****

“Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election and he was put into office because the Russians interfered.”- Jimmy Carter, former President and international expert on election fraud.

Toy Story 4 is big box office.

*****

Mythic Quest is the new series produced and written in part by Charlie Day and Rob Mcelhenney.  The show will be about a video game development company and will star F. Murray Abraham and Danny Pudi.

*****

Melissa McCarthy may play Ursula in the live action  The Little Mermaid.

A hacker stole the latest music from Radiohead and threatened to release it if they didn’t pony up $150,000 in ransom. The band released a statement declaring. ”We’ve been hacked” , released it themselves for 18 days and the money went to charity. Rock on!!

*****

In Cape Coral, Fla., a parent forced a kid to walk around with a sign of  their wrong deeds. Oh bit.. this stuff is back again.

*****

ICS in Springfield, Illinois’ fired Joe Crane from his broadcast for his honesty. Corporate was insisting on using a ‘CODE RED’ alert for weather even when the weather wasn’t so bad to keep the paranoid watching. After numerous complaints and Crane apparently not able to talk corporate out of it, he went to the public and let them know how much he disagreed with the policy but his hands were tied.  Of course, corporate let him go.

*****

The FCC is giving the phone company more power to fight robo calls.

*****

Archeologists found some weed in China inside some ceremonial cannabis bowls from 2500 years ago.

*****

Rapper Scarface is running for city council in Houston.

*****

20,000 Christians have petitioned Netflix to cancel Good Omens. I am sure the Amazon show is loving the publicity, they were probably looking for something just like this to happen. Oddly, just before I heard this story I saw the first couple of episodes and thought it was pretty good.

*****

Don’t judge someone because they sin differently than you.

*****

The fight to end robo calls has been named ‘Operation Call it Quits.’

*****

OJ Simpson opened a twitter account on the 25th anniversary of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

*****

The 71st Emmy’s will be held on Sept. 22 and may not have a host. This no host thing seems to be catching on since it saves money and controversy. The noms will be announced July 16.

*****

If you get the chance, read the Vanity Fair article about Col. Jennifer Pritzker. The cousin of Illinois Governor, JB Pritzker is the world’s only known trans billionaire.

*****

Refineries, Chemical plants and plastics are giving our fire fighters cancer and cities are often not compensating them.

*****

Jordan Klepper used his mug shot as the pic to headline his show. He was arrested with pastors for their rally n support of immigrant students.

*****

Do you wonder if the Trump kids and Melania have so much power and money that they don’t mind that Trump is a laughingstock?

*****

I saw that Seth Meyers used the term bummer camp to explain a kid who gets sent to camp because their parents need to work on their divorce. My friends and I always used that term when our summer camp music festival gets ruined by endless rain.

*****

R.I.P. Roky Erickson, Leon Redbone, Dr. John, Franco Zeffirelli, Leah Chase, Zarious Fair, Elliot Roberts, Alan Brinkley , Troy Chisum, Oscar and Valeria Ramirez, Edward Gallardo and Gloria Vanderbilt.

[sirxantham-blog]

Catherine, Chapter 2

Once Stephanie was out of the office, Catherine breathed a sigh of relief, feeling less restricted now that she could finally finish looking over the rest of the bills without any outside forces impeding on her decisions.  She smiled.  This is gonna be easy, she thought.  Circling around to the desk again, Catherine straightened her hair and sat down, scanning the first document on top.  It read:  Provisionary supplement for families with children act.  After scanning through it, she felt that it was something she would definitely want to employ, so she signed it, but then realized her pen was dry.  

“Gah, at least the scanner pen had ink…”  She muttered to herself.  She looked through the same drawer where she found her current pen, found another, tested it on a sheet of blank stationery, and signed it, putting it in a manila folder.  Then she found the health care act, immediately tossing it in the folder after reading it, having a gut feeling that it was disdainful and retrograde in its alignment with the natural progression of society and norms.  After that, she passed over the immigration bill and read the national park bills thoroughly, making sure that it was to protect them rather than the opposite.  Once she was sure that she had even read through all of the extra legislation to check for any secret clauses that would cut into the bill, she placed everything into the folder and handed it to her silent aide, stationed at the door.  This rarely happened, but a few times she had to hand the bills back to the aides to send the bill back to the creators, circling the offending articles.  

One of the aides offered to escort her back to her room, or wherever she was headed, as she was going to her yoga class at the gym, an afternoon habit she had grown accustomed to right before dinner.  The bright afternoon sun shone through the indigo curtains on the windows, casting some purple light on the hallway.  Catherine smiled into the sunlight, feeling more free now that she was able to do her work unhindered and tapped a bead on her bracelet and the time flashed in blue numbers on her wrist:  2:49, ten minutes until her yoga class started.  The yoga class was taught by Joey Bartlett, an old guru of Catherine’s from her travels around Europe when she had begun her blog that turned into a TV show.  The TV show, simply titled Premonition, was picked up for a network once she started telling movie stars, politicians and even random people on the street what was going to happen to them in the next few days, and then came back to them later, with a nearly 100% success rate.  She flipped through some messages on her hand-screen- a meeting with secretary of treasury Furman Gadot, for a review of crypto currency (Catherine wanted to make it more widespread, Furman was skeptical but open to the idea), a review of all the headlines from the nation, her twitter feed.  But just as she was about to enter the threshold of the gym in the basement, a call came in, beeping and flashing on her wristband. Catherine took a bead from her band and placed it in her ear.  As it inflated and fit into her ear, she pressed it and answered the call.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. President, your scanned bills aren’t looking very… amenable now, are they?  I am afraid some corrective measures must be taken.”

“Who-who is this?”  Catherine demanded.  “And how did you get this number?”  She leaned in front of the doorway, signaled to Joey that she was on a call, and crossed her arms, fuming, and mumbled.  “I swear, if I get one more sketchy call today I’m going to tighten security on this line...”  The voice on the other line seemed to belong to a male with some kind of unknown but unmistakable accent, perhaps light Armenian with a flourish of Moroccan.  

“It is useless for you to do so, Catherine.  Senicontra has full access to the Executive branch, to your office and private numbers.  Because we own a majority of your branch and all of its communications, we, the ‘shareholders’ of your ‘company’ as one could call it are scrutinizing your every penstroke, and let me tell you, the scans we just got in of the bills you were supposed to have signed were not beneficial in any way.  Did you speak with Stephanie?”  

“I just fired her.”  Catherine growled.  “I dislike firing anybody and have set up a very reasonable care package for those who have tested my patience so.  Don’t test me again.”

“Ha! Test?  You have failed every test we have put to you besides the budget cut, and that one we saw was begrudgingly met.  I implore you, do what you can to keep your job, because we have ways of making sure you get impeached very, very soon.”  Catherine snarled.  

“You don’t scare me.  Don’t call this number ever again, or I will have you reported!”

“No, it is I who have reported you.  You are under review and if corrective measures need to take place, they will.”  She shook her head.  

“Goodbye.” and she pressed the bead in her ear, feeling it decompress, and she clipped it back onto her bracelet.  She shuddered.  Just like the sensation of falling she felt in her dreams as of late, Catherine was feeling like she was losing control bit by bit, like the grains of sand held in your hand by the beach at night, or the moonlight you try to see in a halo surrounding the moon.  She breathed heavily, and scrunched her face and hands in helplessness, aware of people in the workout room watching her, and suddenly aware of a slight rubbing against her legs.  Halbert/Dakolon could sense her worry, and was offering what support he could, purring.

“Aww, thanks there, buddy.”  She reached down and picked up the cat, and he immediately started purring and rubbing against her face with his. “Wow, you really like being a cat, huh?”  she smiled, and gave him a butterfly kiss with her nose.  Just then, Joey signaled to her.

“Cath! Are you doin okay?”  He waved her in, smiling concernedly.  “Seems like being in charge has its little downfalls, doesn’t it?”  She walked in, acknowledged the three other staff members who would be taking the class- a secretary named Hilda, a gardener she knew well, Anthony, so she gave him a side hug, and a older black male aide she forgot the name of so she reintroduced herself, after replying to Joey.  

“Hey, Joey, yeah, I’m… wow…  feeling a bit work-weary, but...pulling through.  And what’s your name again?”  She assumed everybody knew her so after the first few weeks she learned not to introduce herself after usually getting a strange look and a ‘yes, madame president’.  Being the first third-party elected president made everyone who worked there all seem aglow, like children at christmas, or even ‘elves’ as some jokester started calling White House staff, all who were green party affiliates or progressive democrats.

“Murray, Madame” he smiled coyly and gave a slight bow.  Ignoring the formalities, Catherine laughed and patted Murray on the back, but immediately felt self-conscious and drew her hand away, putting on a smile.  

“Love the aliteration… didn’t I play you in Golf Siege Z?” He nodded, clad in jammers and a blue spandex shirt, he was hunched over, probably from scoliosis or the like, and began stretching his arms.  

“Yes, we beat you thoroughly, haha.  I still have the golden sky rocket I stole from you!”  Golf Seige Z was an augmented reality game that was popular among adults and children alike in the U.S. for its multi-faceted approach to playing disc golf.  There was a popular tournament in Central Park every year that many of Catherine’s friends attended, and there was a 9 hole course programmed on the White House gardens and premises.  

“Oh really?  Wow, I think I remember now.  That was my favorite mod, I think!  Honestly, I can’t hardly keep up with all of them, or even have time to play.  Sad, really.”  Murray nodded earnestly, eyes shining, and he straightened up a bit.  

“Did you get the new predator pack for polititians?  You even have a vacuum attached to your disc that sucks the money from any player that is nearby!”  He laughed.  “Although I can’t see you using it.  What if you did?  What if you did?”  He chuckled to himself. Catherine just rolled her eyes in response.  

“If someone taped it and put it on the internet, I’d never hear the end of it.  No, I’ll- I’ll get my golden… flash rocket back from you.  Or something.  We’ll play again, I’m sure!”  Then, she put a hand on his shoulder “Excuse me, I have to go and change…” There were gym and yoga clothes folded neatly in a locker for both Catherine and Matthew next to the gym, as well as his and her bath robes in the spa and sauna, which Matthew used frequently.  After quickly changing, getting back to the gym where the rest of the staff were patiently waiting for her, and ribbing Anthony for putting nothing but wildflowers all over the back lawn (“I thought that’s what was trending nowadays!  I’m sorry!”), they got onto the yoga class, all four of them facing Joey.  Having some of her energy depleted from dealing with Senicontra, it was worthwhile to recharge and refocus for Catherine, who, in addition to the routines, added some of her own “ohming” mantras to the exercise.  As she stretched, she revisited in her mind the overwhelming events that led to her historic victory over democrat Vicky Sonmers, and the derelict two party system that the American people had obviously outgrown.  It was an easy decision for her to make, one that was unpopular with her advisers but embraced by the media, who painted a picture of a struggle that everybody could relate to- bringing people together to save the planet from imminent destruction.  Having “superpowers” as many late night hosts dubbed it, didn’t hurt either.  There was even a popular comic book based on her life story, except with a few of her abilities perhaps overblown, but when read, the similarities were a near perfect match, and the comic book was in the process of being turned into a TV show.  There was nothing more dear to Catherine than a certain moment on the campaign trail, which she famously camped out in an all-electric RV and drove from state to state in it, one she came back to again and again, and that she revisited while doing a “star” pose.  

It was a Tuesday night in August and the sunset over the verdant hills of Ohio sparked in reds, indigos, and blues, all twisted in shuffling clouds and chirruping crickets who told tales of the blistering day. Her RV, a completely clear giant living pod that became murky for privacy at a push of a button, was parked on a campsite on the Wabash river surrounded by tents, and it was parked there for days, allowing Catherine, Matthew and her best friend and sometimes costar of her show, McKenzie Dee-Martin.  McKenzie was eleven years her senior, and a wizened proof of age and beauty aren’t mutually exclusive- her gray hair dreads were adorned with beads and colorful threads, and thanks to a recently discovered natural supplement, there was hardly a wrinkle on her usually smiling face.  This night was one of such joyous, raucous festivities as they had just finished camping three days with what is called a “rainbow gathering”, or a group of earth conscious people who came together and cooked, cleaned, told stories, hiked and even partied together, sometimes going on for weeks.  This party, however, was a fireside musical romp that started seemingly Sunday night and lasted until that night, with two groups of people either sitting around two different fires, or “movies” as the campers called them.  The “movie” roared and it was Catherine’s job to feed it and the flame flickered across many toasty faces that Catherine had gotten to know pretty well over the past few days, as they all knew and recognized her from either the Campaign or her TV show but the motley group seemed not to fawn over her and treated her like they would anybody else.  This, especially was a gift to Catherine who cherished her privacy from adoring fans and the like, as most encounters with people led to them asking for an autograph, which made her feel a little bit uncomfortable.  The incense sticks creating sweet, nestling aromas, the ramshackle guitars strewn about the campsite that were played often, the freedom of movement and dancing during a drum circle- all of these made her feel comfortable, as in their own way, they made her feel at home like when she was traveling freely in Europe.  

“Doesn’t it feel great?”  A long-haired, frazzled young man with a long beard, glasses in a blue parka turned to her that night while fireworks were being brought out from someone’s tent.  He was missing a tooth in his front and smiled unabashedly when she turned back to him quizzically.  Some people had left the circle when about 9:00 hit and were ambling back to their tents or RVs.  

“Hmm?” She responded.  He spread his arms out, looking around.

“This! All of this!  It’s like...”  He looked at her in the eye, and had a sage-like demeanor about him, like he had more answers than a top-paid professor.  “You got lucky, right?  Just being here.  I mean, out of all the planets you could have come to, you chose Earth. At this time.  This- brilliant, important, all-pervasive time.” Catherine looked down and smiled self-consciously.  Sometimes she did feel that Earth was an assignment of sorts, with all of the fragility and the uncertainty of life, with her political career lifting off to new heights every day, sometimes she felt like destiny pointed at her with conviction, and all she could do was cower at times.  She looked back, showing him interest, giving him time.  He continued, “We won.  We won the lottery just by being here.  Look at this food! Look at it!”  He picked up a slice of pizza that was baked in a makeshift oven by his transient friends who got it, not yet baked, from a dumpster outside a pizza shop, still in its plastic casing. It was fresh-not-so-fresh redeemable treasures like these that made the rainbow gathering community erupt with glee upon finding it. “This planet GROWS FOOD.  From the Ground.  To nourish us.  Isn’t that insane?  That something as delicious as this that hits all of your… synapses with glee AND gives you the energy to do something like this-”  He grabbed a guitar nearby and strummed a flamenco riff, picking the last few notes with relish, wincing with a vibrato at their melody.  Catherine laughed, and picked a piece of pizza from a plate on a chair next to her and started to eat.  She didn’t really feel like responding, she just wanted to take it in, as if his words were a tonic meant to soothe all by themselves without need of any effort from the receiver.  He kept playing wildly, shaking his long, brownish hair with abandon, causing his glasses to slightly fall off his nose, which he paid no attention to while entertaining. The night was warm and full of laughter, from afar as people were preparing fireworks in the road nearby and Catherine’s bright laugh bounced off the trees and boulders surrounding the campfire, adding to the music of the atmosphere as the stars twinkled in agreement with what the traveler was saying.  “If life is a game,”  He looked at her, very seriously, his glasses distraught and his eyes like fires.  “We won the lottery.  Just by being here.”  He glanced around and with a swoop put down the guitar and gestured around and cried, “Earth!  You’re so fucking beautiful!  I love you!”  Catherine could do nothing but look around in silent agreement.  He laughed and looked up at the sky, probably high on something, but content, as most travelers seem to be, to Catherine. A star caught her eye and she winked at it, and a smile grew on her face.  

“You’re right, it is so beautiful.”  She thought for a moment.  “That’s why we’ve got to do all we can to protect it.  The beauty,” She added, swallowing some pizza, “She’s the fragile beautiful princess we have to protect.  A home we have to protect.”

“Against ourselves!”  He added, with a punch in the air to prove his point. She nodded solemnly, folding up her paper plate and getting up, looking at the other trash strewn about the campsite.  She made it her duty not just to look after the campfire, but the trash as well, quickly reminding herself where the recycling and trash bins were. They were the only ones left at the campfire, and yet, since she seemed to meet about five new people a day, she felt it unnecessary to ask her companion for his name.  As Catherine made herself busy around the fire collecting trash and recycling bits into separate bags that she found, her friend simply sat watching her for a few minutes while some shouting commenced behind them, then, explosions erupted, catching her eye.  He noticed her looking at the commotion, and while she passed in front of him and gave him a smile, he grabbed her arm, softly.  

“Do you wanna go see?”  She smiled, and nodded, not wanting to pull away either.  He laughed and took her hand, pushing up his glasses with the other, his hair flailing wildly all about him, and he struck a pose like he was leading a charge against a calvary.  “Come, come!”  He said, more or less to the sky.  “Beauty awaits!” Catherine giggled, running with him up the hill to the road, excited and feeling more alive, and not wanting to let go of this strange man’s hand, who seemed to be like he was in his 20s.  Even though Matthew was nearby, she had no qualms of even flirting with strangers sometimes as they traveled, as Matthew and she had an understanding of sorts, a trust that was always present between them, like a giant river full of emotion that never ran dry.  They reached the street, adding to the noisy laughter that was all around, about a dozen people including a few kids were lighting the fireworks and tenaciously dancing around them, careful not to get too hurt.  Her friend , when she looked back, was already dancing among the sparks, twisting and turning erratically, jumping and twirling with a little girl, who kept calling him “Funnyface”.  Catherine looked around for Matthew instinctively, knowing he was probably calling it an early night in the RV, he was well known for going to bed at about 9 and getting up at 5:30 in the morning.  “Funnyface” halted his dance moves, spun around and gestured to Catherine.  

“C’mon! You gots ta make a fire walk if you want to complete the trial of the Oompy Loo!  Only the strongest  of feet can survive!”  He laughed.  She chuckled, about to inquire as to this trial of theirs, then he continued  “The council of Lala land can only accept the Frou Frou who walks through fiiire with… bravery and conviction!” He was making a theatrical turn here, causing the little red haired girl who seemed to be about five to cover her mouth in laughter and join in.  She had freckles and a blue jumpsuit on, and was still dancing about.  

“Yeahh lady,”  She pointed at Catherine.  “You gots ta do the Oompy Loo!”  Catherine crossed her arms.  

“Well what if I don’t wanna?”  She made a pouty face.  “What if I don’t wanna be a frou frou?  I like my feet fine without having them blown off!  And where- where is your mommy, young lady?”  The girl made a face at Catherine and stuck out her tongue.  

“What mommy?  I don’t have a mommy.  Where’s your mommy?  I – can – do – what – I – want!”  She stomped on each word, and laughed when “Funnyface” poked her.  “Funnyface is my mommy!” Catherine shook her head, crossing her arms.  She refused to budge, even with the both of them goading while the fireworks were going on and off, as there was a lull in between eruptions, a group of campers were coming back with more fireworks.  When they got them set up and decided to light them-

“Should we?”  asked one older man to a younger teen guy, with long black hair and a jean jacket.

“Ahhh...”

“Should we?”

“Ahhh...” The little girl was starting to jump up and down again, pumping her fist in the air.

“Pleeeeaase?”

“I dunno,”  The older man smiled, a red bandana around his mostly bald head, his eyes crinkled and sparkeld.  “Maybe we should wait...”

“Nooo!” Cried the girl.  

“Lets do it!”  Said the teenager.  And they lit the sparkling fireworks on the road, making sure to jump away as they switched from candle to candle, the little sparklers that you would find in a corner store somewhere.  Then, “Funnyface” held out his hand, and Catherine self-consciously grabbed it, a look of doubt clouded her visage, she pushed a strand of hair over her eyes.  He flashed a smile, his missing tooth in the upper right corner of his mouth, he had an air of confidence about him and did everything with a theatrical flair, almost as if the world were a stage.  Catherine melted into his confidence and, with a twirl, jumped into the sparkling fray and started kicking the whistling fireworks with the bottom of her feet, as she had sandals on that flapped when she walked.  Furryface had sneakers on, black converse style with holes in them, but he still rambunctiously kicked the spinning fireworks at Catherine’s feet, causing a startled “yelp” from her lips every time the sparks came flying close to her.  She finally managed to take her sandals off and bend down and swat the fireworks in his direction, yelling at him.

“Yaaah! Yahh!  This is one Frou Frou who can pass all of your stupid tests!” He chuckled and returned fire, tripping and righting himself with his hand and kicking a sparkler her way.  

“Milady, you mistake me for a charlatan,”  He said in a british accent, picking up a sparkler and waving it at her.  “Might you be the princess of the divine Flametongue order?  The one from planet - - Embry-- Embryonis, who slayed the mighty dragon race Puff- - er, pufferpot?”  Catherine tilted her head and furrowed her brow, putting her shoe back on.  He continued, switching to a slightly more cockney accent, the sparkler sputtering out, he bent down to find a new one.  “Hodgepodge Puffpot the third was the mighty golden- no, rainbow- dragon upon the throne, yes, as I remember it, and put the edict in effect to offer a parley between the flametongue order and the dragons.  The dragons, in their mighty sky castles and their strong, hearty brews and their aptitude for… star fishing.  That’s right, they fish for stars.”  He looked at her seriously and gave the firework a slight shake and pushed his glasses up on his head.  

“Star fishing huh?  Sounds – slightly dangerous to me.” She kicked one firework towards him that had sputtered out already and he kicked it back.  He pointed at her dramatically.  

“Well, stardust, actually.  The stardust they get from stars using a diamond crusted hydrocarbon line gives them the gift of immortality.  And it’s just about as dangerous as what the flametongue order requires of dragons to live, to keep from getting killed, and in effect, to partner with the flametongues to rid the galaxy of the evil buckaboos.”  A glint in his eye, he turned to the little girl.  “Of which YOU are one!  Buckaboo!  Begone!  Go back to thine mother and grace this starburst field no more!”  He then jumped out at the girl with a sparkler, who was watching, enraptured, and giggling in short interminent spurts.  She cried out, arms akimble.

“Aaah! Mommy!”  And ran off towards a few RVs that were parked in the distance.  He looked back at the girl running, and With a mischievious grin, furryface turned towards Catherine and flourished a bow in her direction.  

“And here am I, but a humble red dragon at your service.”  Catherine put her hands on her hips, and straightened out her green, flowing skirt. She had on a multi-layered green and purple top, and brown bead bracelets, as she remembered, and a golden topaz necklace that glistened against the sparkling fire works in the night.  

“A dragon, huh?  So you’re...”  And before she could continue, he went on, still in a british accent.  

“Yes! And in order to win the terms of the parley that your order requires,”  She tried to interrupt.  

“But I don’t think I’m...”  

“Flametongue order?”  He scrutinized her, waving his sparkler at her with every word.  “I can tell by the way you dress that you are!  Those beads on your wrist, alagonian beads that contain the very fire from these stars I breathe in to keep immortal!  And you- you have been given a mission to snuff out my race, down to the very last drop unless we can complete the flametongue Parley!”  He said this last word like a pirate would, swirling his words in his mouth like a sifter, feeding off of her attention and intrigue like a hummingbird off a feeder, he was still waving his sparkler about energetically. Catherine smiled, and decided to play along.  

“Ah, the parley.  What would be the conditions of the parley again, so I don’t – I don’t shoot you down where you stand?”  She reached for a firework hesitantly, then withdrew her hand.  He stuttered for a second, breaking character.  

“Are- are you… Are you really going to grab one?  Because you don’t need one for the parley...”  He flashed her a mischevious smile again and continued in his cockney/british accent.  “Oi do!”  

“Oh! Of, of course.  I knew that.  Ahem.”  She extended a hand towards him to continue and twirled it and he nodded.  

“Milady, according to our long-lived tradition, all I have to do in order to gain your favour and possibly stay in your quarters with you, is swallow a star!”  And he opened his mouth and began to inch the sparkling firework towards his mouth, closing his eyes so that the spark wouldn’t harm his eyes going in.  Catherine gasped.  

“N-no! What!  I don’t want you to do that!  Nononono no, wait.  You- you don’t have anywhere to live right now?  Is that what this whole thing is about?  Because you can stay in my RV on the couch if you want- I’m sure my husband won’t mind.”  He put down the firework gingerly and looked at her, surprised, but obviously was a little let down.  

“Oh! Your husband?  Are- are you sure?  I could… um… ask someone else...”  He waved his hand as if his homelessness wasn’t that big of a deal.  Catherine and her husband brought an extra tent just in case they found anyone who was homeless on their journey across the U.S. and even let more than a few people stay on their couch while McKenzie stayed on a bed overlooking the driver’s seat.  

“No, please, I insist.  Consider the order of the flametongue fulfilled,” She laughed, and he went up to her and gave her a hug.  

“Ohmigod thank you, thank you so much.”  He said, holding the hug for a little bit longer than what was comfortable for a hug, but it was appreciated, as long “super-hugs” were common among rainbow gathering devotees.  She laughed, breaking the tension.  

“No worries, we got ya, friend.  Hey, I actually didn’t ask for your name?”  He smiled back at her, his long hair caught in the wind, all pretenses brushed away, and seemed to settle more into himself.  

“You can call me Furryface.”

The yoga class had given Catherine a blessed moment of reprise and she felt her soul calming down from the slight terror of the phone call she received from Semicontra, a few times even mumbling to herself “furrfurrs” and giggling, for sometimes Furryface would try on multiple accents and personas, always performing and entertaining his guests as he traveled, one accent being full of murmurs and slurred “r’s” where he spoke of himself in third person.  Although Matthew didn’t seem to find Furryface all that funny, but perhaps a bit overblown, Catherine and McKenzie adored their adopted “rainbow” friend and found themselves constantly laughing in his presence and even shared a few rollicking inside jokes, a few of which the two girlfriends still repeated, always edging a giggle from and following up with “remember that time?”  After padding down real quick in the spa and paging Matthew to see if he wanted to join (he was busy in a poetry collaborative class), Catherine said her goodbyes (“Don’t worry, Anthony, I’ll get somebody to pick all those wildflowers before we can get back the lawn again!) and headed contentedly over to visit Matthew’s poetry class, owning a popular poetry website of her own, called Mu, it was a non-profit creation of hers and her friend Annette, an African American who was all business, no frills.  She had one of those personalities that could wrench a fly into attention, setting trends with the snap of a finger to create one of the most successful and visited social networking sites of that generation, with the user interface like a game where users interact and post stories, poems, and soon to be done – music – where moderators view and check and double check the creations made so that it is intelligible and edit any mistakes and block out any spammers.  If the spammers were to create good and intelligible things on their own “bookshelf”, the moderators would then grant these past spammers the ability to collaborate again, granting new privledges every time more is created.  It was this kind of attention to detail that redefined Catherine as a star in her generation,

she often posted quite a few of her own verses that she came up with on the spot, as well as whatever was crafted in the poetry classes that were held twice a week at the White House.  After brushing through the hall, Catherine peeked her head in the conference room to find two aides furiously scribbling alone in the room on their pull-out screens emanating from both of their wrist bracelets.  One of them, Ephraim, was from Zaire and had an accent, and a strut about him that was self-evident of his working at the White House in such a popular administration.  The other, Gloria, a hispanic american who liked to keep flowers in her hair, was looking over Ephraim’s shoulder and was nudging him emphatically every time he came up with a good word or phrase.  Catherine worked with Ephraim before but did not know Gloria, so she nudged the door open and introduced herself.  

“Hey there, Ephraim, and who are you, again?  Have we-”

“I’m Gloria,”  She replied, her large brown eyes sparkling after fawning over Ephraim.  Ephraim motioned to Catherine.  

“Would you like to join us, Mrs. President?  Er, Catherine?”  Despite Catherine having a staff meeting where she urged those who worked for her just to call her Catherine, for the most part, the staff still liked using the formal moniker, and she begrudgingly let them. Catherine walked up to them, smiled and pressed a button on her bracelet and synced it to theirs, waiting until it was done to fully respond.

“Ahh, yes, I have yet to post on Mu today and would love the chance to add to the host of repertoire we have been letting flow from us lately, it’s quite refreshing honestly, I just recently came up with a shakespearean lore poem using classical english and two characters from As You Like It’s Orlando and Celia.  There was just too many hidden gems in that play to choose from so I chose them on a whim after a second read-through. It’s just too fun to add to the Mu website’s poetry slam things like lore because, honestly, with a little bit of study, you can really even begin to come up with all new stories involving those same characters, I once created a character arc with Romeo and Juliet if they lived and eloped somewhere else, you know, I think it is on the website but it may have been deleted, though My assistant was careful to only bring proper prose over to the White House annals, as both of those poems were, ah, shall we say, not too apropo” Catherine gushed, all in seemingly one or two flowing breaths, she finished with a flourish of her bracelet scanning in to their own, allowing her hand to add to the projector screen.  Ephraim chuckled, nudging Gloria away from her ever closer proximity to him to give Catherine some room.  

“Well, er, yes, Ca- Catherine, I believe we were just – ruminating on what could be either ‘death by pansies’ or ‘the eclipse of’ Gloria was going to go with ‘earth by sea’ and I was going to go with ‘family’ because, as you can see, the earlier verse was ‘you can try to live happily, picking apart until-’”  And he paused for reflection, Gloria’s gaze never leaving Ephraim’s, he tried to play it off by focusing on Catherine, obviously feeding off of Gloria’s attention.  Catherine, overjoyed by poemic collaboration, jut in.  

“Until the eclipse of earth by sea… Obviously a climate change allusion, right?  That I like.  That I like a lot. So what is the structure here?  Iambic pentameter?  Or, as it seems-”  He interjected, widening the projected screen.

“There is no structure, as you can see from the previous verse.”

“And the rhyme scheme?  Is that set in stone or-?”

“There is none, again, as we have ‘pills’ rhyming with ‘agate’ and ‘front’ alltogether, there, see?”  Catherine paused, putting her hand to her mouth, usually very deliberate with verse craft.

“I see.  Well, as you know, I rather don’t like to have to constantly rhyme and putting rhymes into otherwise non-rhyming verses isn’t really my kind of tea, but I like where you’re going, and as I said before – yeah, my vote is on ‘Earth by sea’”  They all paused, saying a chorus of “yeah’s” and “uh-uh’s”, scrutinizing the screen while Ephraim typed on a keyboard that emitted from his bracelet onto the glass table.  The afternoon sun flitted through the window, creating a glare on the glass table and the three each had furrowed brows, aiming at something intangible, reaching for the ephemeral.  

“If – if I may,” Catherine drawled out the last word, still searching through the first part of the poem.  “Could I try and – let’s see – finish this part of the poem?”  Ephraim nodded and swiped the keyboard over to Catherine.  

“I think you should go for it.”  He smiled.  Gloria giggled and padded Catherine’s arm.  

“Yeah! Go for it!”  Catherine straightened herself and wiggled her fingers over the projected keyboard.  

“Okay, well, ‘running into oblivion’ just came to mind, continuing with the climate change theme, I’d like to try something...” And she typed furiously, her mind swimming with possibilities, channeling the inner angst of taking hold of an entire nation and world that was headed for ruin.  She thought of her best friend, McKenzie.  She thought of a generation that may grow up with their planet in peril, uncertain of their future.  “Okay… Almost there… okay let me know what you think.”  

And then a ghost approaches, “will it float?  Will it sink?” and the deer eyes brighten as our minds are made unaware, “beware! Beware!”  a call from a time unknown, not yet, not yet, we say, it is too much for our minds to behold.  When you begin to behold, then you must begin to let go, when all manner of rites have failed you, that is when it needs to let you know that you may fail, the ship approaches, in the time river’s flow.

Gloria looked over it once, and immediately gushed “oh, its brilliant! It’s amazing, really.”  Ephraim, however, looked over it more carefully.  

“I like it, the allegory, almost a ‘ghost of future past’ kind of feel.  But you did say ‘behold’ twice in those lines… I would say ‘when it starts to unfold, then you must begin to let go.’?” Catherine nodded, pleased with this turn of collaboration, the many word games on the website ‘Mu’ and the ease of collaboration of ideas and prose made this season of classes quite popular with more than a few of the staffers in the White House, with Mario Kart coming in first and cooking classes with the head chef Pietro third.  

“Yes, let’s definitely make that change.  I like it.”  They all looked over the glowing projected screen, and then Ephraim pushed down the part of the table that was supporting the screen.  

“I do too!  Wow – Deep.  You added some good aspects to that, I think – I think that is postable!”  Catherine blushed, sitting back in her seat.

“No, you think?”

“Yes! Quite!  We need all three of our signatures, are you all ready?” Gloria jumped slightly out of her seat, rubbing Ephraim’s shoulder again.  

“Ohh, yes!”  Catherine still wavered, stoking her brooch.  

“I don’t know… maybe we should continue to revise it?”  Ephraim shook his head.  

“Nonsense, with the star power that we three hold on Mu, this one will be instantly favored to rise to the top, actually, all of your posts are Mrs… er, Catherine.  Haha, sorry”  He rubbed his head and smiled bashfully.  “I sometimes get that… anyway.  Yes.  What do you think?”  Catherine swiftly gave her signature and clicked the link that would post it, and stood up.  

“Well, it has been wonderful collaborating with you all but alas, I must go.”  Catherine made a pouty face and made sure to hug Gloria and Ephraim before she left.  “Au revoir!”  She smiled, and she flitted out the door, looking around for Matthew, leaving the two aides to mingle some more.  

Catherine ruffled her hair while calling Matthew, walking down the hallway that led outside, to the gardens.  She was immediately accosted by a press secretary who greeted her with an awkward smile and a slight laugh.  

“Ahem, Mrs. President, How are you?  Um, do you have a minute to talk?” Usually her relationship with the press was very positive so every time she saw Myra Panuk it was a cause for celebration – a successful speech at an energy summit, a professional outlook on trade tariffs, a beneficial meeting with the Iranian President, positive remarks on her twitter account activity.  But this time Catherine saw some trepidation in her press secretary, with whom she had gotten to know very well over the past nine months.  The process usually started with a quip about how she was “killing it” with the press (“every time they stand up, you sweep them off their feet!”) so Catherine had reason to remain upbeat.  

“Hi, Myra!  Well, you tell me!  Did my polls reflect strongly after the Italian Prime Minister’s visit?”  She had stopped saying the word ‘favorably’ between them after a while because the polls always viewed her favorably, it was all about “strength” now, said her head of P.R.  Myra pushed some bangs out of her hair and opened a holographic screen on her hand and expanded it with her thumb and index finger.  She had a narrow face and bright brown eyes that always seemed to slit with intensity when talking about the Republican opposition and widen with serene excitement when spouting the (usually) positive reviews coming from Catherine’s Presidency.

“Ah, ma’am, yes, um, there has been no negative fallout to your innocent ‘babyface’ gaff.  Most have taken it to mean that you appreciate the youth of culture taking charge and did not mean to come on to him, except, of course for Fox News, who immediately said that you were quick to want to get in bed with other heads of state, even though your hand was touching your husband’s at the time...” Catherine winced.  The newly elected Prime Minister of Italy, Emilio Ricardo was as ambitious as he was young, and at 33 he was famous for taking risks to move his country forward technologically, his hair slicked back like a don and always wearing a three piece suit, he was known to have an air of stickiness about him, like a mob boss, and had a nickname “sticky rick”.  Catherine, however, found it endearing and during a press conference joked around about having a “baby face” that any mother would want to protect.  She felt it would make her seem more motherly, as Myra pointed out that Catherine not having any children did not poll well with millenials.  

“Yeah, I know, but once you get to know him, Emilio is really adorable.  He tries to put on this ‘tough guy’ facade, but honestly I could see right through that and I was trying to help others to see it as well.”   Catherine put her hands up, as if to say ‘I’m innocent’.

“Well, Matthew’s confused look to you after you said that is trending on news sites everywhere and is giving the right wing media some fodder for their fires against you.  It is not a politician’s job to joke, Mrs. President.  Usually when politicians try to make a joke or light of something it ends up coming off obtuse.”  Myra, an indian woman was known for ‘telling it like it is’ and helped shut down some obfuscations about Catherine’s protocol when it comes to decision making, her being the first woman president the U.S. has ever known. Catherine sighed.

“What if, honestly, what if I am trying to change that?  Create a new paradigm for the position of office when it comes to relatability? You know that is always my agenda, Myra, relating to people well.” She did not need to say “and I do it well, do I not?” because that was implied, and the rhetorical answer would be, yes, she did do it well.  Myra looked back at Catherine sternly.    

“To be frank, you are trying to juggle too many balls, do too many things.  Focus on your primary agenda – welfare reform and climate change counteractive infastructure – and let your team do the rest. Nobody gets too far if they worry about what people think.”  This was a stern lecture, and coming from someone about ten years her junior made it sting a bit.  Catherine breathed, tight-lipped and pondered for a quick second before acquiescing.

“I guess you’re right.  Thank you.”  She paused to let Myra continue but Myra seemed to be proud of what she had accomplished, so she stood as if in a daze, looking off somewhere indescriminant to the sky.  Catherine brought her out of her daze.

“Is there anything else, Myra?”  Myra looked up at her, startled, and brought her attention to the screen on her hand that she had put away during the time she was talking to Catherine.  

“Er, yes.  The main reason I wanted to talk with you was about your recent poetry post on Mu.” Catherine’s eyebrows raised, they were headed outside as Catherine had begun to page Matthew at this time, and a ring came in from one of her beads that she quickly detached and put in her ear, feeling it expand and she pressed a button on her communicator.  

“Hmm, you’ll have to excuse me, this is my husband.”  She paused. “Hello?”

“Honey, I’m making reservations to The Periodical. I gotta have their shepherd’s pie.  Just gotta.”  Catherine laughed.  

“Okay, but can you make sure it isn’t until after 8?  I have yoga class.”

“Didn’t you already have yoga class?”  Catherine snickered.  She was used to doing yoga twice daily and invited all of her coworkers to do it with her, something Matthew liked to rib her about.  

“I dunno, I don’t really feel that mind/body connection yet.”

“Well, when you become a yogi and learn to levitate, I’ll just ride on you everywhere we go so we save on gas, mmkay?”  Catherine nodded.  

“Deal. See you there?  I’m gonna be in a meeting until yoga again.”

“Sounds good, honey.  See ya!”

“Bye!” and she clicked off the headset and pushed the bead back into her bracelet, which accepted it with a hum.  Myra was standing patiently next to Catherine in the glaring sun, shielding her eyes from it and tried not to look like she was grimacing.  Catherine acknowledged her with a wave of her hand.  “Sorry, what were you saying about a post of mine?”

“You just posted something on Mu involving ghosts?  It is the White Houses official stance that ghosts do not exist.  If I were you, I would be careful to more secularize yourself if you want to be taken seriously, especially by congress.” It was no secret that Catherine and congress did not get along, currently with a Republican majority who mostly resolved to name calling and beration, especially to the press, who usually backed her up.  

“Hmm, you have a good point there.  Honestly, I don’t know if Congress and I will ever truly see eye to eye, oh hi Halbert, hey, hold on… Here, kitty, kitty!”  Halbert had sauntered up to the glass doors facing the gardens and had started scratching on the door, so Catherine let him out.  “All they seem to care about is, well, if you want to lay it out plainly, killing the environment with natural gas and carbon emissions, taking away the rights of the poor, propping up the corporations that are killing our planet and our people and, well, getting in my way, heh.”  She let out a soft chuckle, as if all of this was some kind of joke, trying to alleviate the severity of it.  She had griped to Matthew plenty of times about her trouble with congress, and even sometimes to talk show hosts, who shared her concern aplenty.  

Halbert/Dakolon sauntered up to Catherine and started to purr, giving Myra a cautionary eye.  Catherine smiled and picked him up.  

“Lookit you, you little spirit guy.  Aren’t you just a spirit guy?  A wittle spirit guy?”  She gave him a rub on the nose with her own. Myra chuckled nervously and put away the screen emanating from her hand.  

“Spirit guy?  What, uh, what is that?”  Catherine ignored her while Halbert went limp in her arms and gave her a mew.  

“You know what I think, Myra?  Damien Rylance was right, pointing out that it was in my power to do something about congress.  He said:  ‘As my mom always said, You can never get anywhere by complaining about something if it in your power to change it.’”  Damien was a popular talk show host who had famously had the president on his show three times, each time playing a creative game with her like charades or a singing challenge.  Catherine had actually gone on more talk shows already than any other president had in their career, something she enjoyed doing as it connected her more to the people in her opinion.  

“You’re right, Mrs. President.”  Myra offered, standing respectfully with her hands twisted in front of her, switching to support mode.  

“Please, call me Catherine.  I know people like the way that sounds and all but it just sounds too… Campy to me.  Anyway, there is something we can do, something we all can do to fix this… problem, if you will. I actually just thought of it today, and I’m really excited about it.  And Myra, please tell me what you think.”  Catherine smiled and suddenly lifted Halbert over her head and wrapped the limp cat over her shoulders, wearing him like a shawl, his limp arms and legs dangling down over her shoulders, much to Myra’s enjoyment.  

“Ohhh, Catherine, that is so, so cute.  Oh my god.  I have Got to get a picture of this and post it on twitter.  What’s his name?  Hal- halbie?  Halbert?  Yes.  They are going to Love this.”  Myra squeezed her bracelet together and out popped a screen on the back of her hand, projecting what the camera on it saw.  She zoomed in by flicking her hand at the screen, and laughing took a picture while Catherine posed and smiled, turning her hips to give a more edgier look to the camera.  

“Oh yeah?”  Catherine said between shots, even giving a slight pout and a more serious squint in her eye to capture something different. “Twitter, huh?  I’d like to see what they think about this one.” Catherine pet Halbert, the cat still purring on her shoulder. “Yeah, Halbie, you’re gonna be famous!”  Myra pressed her bracelet down and reached out to pet the cat on Catherine’s shoulder.  

“So, what is your idea?  I’d like to hear it.”  Catherine breathed and steadied herself and Halbert, as if about to give a lecture for a large crowd.  

“It came to me lucidly today, in a… strange way, almost as if I am a transistor element for the universe, a gateway of sorts, like what you would experience in a dream.  Don’t worry, I wasn’t on any drugs, of course, I just was… channeling something.  Something simple, unique, elegant, world-changing.  Something that if implemented, it would greatly shift the way politics are done in the west, or if it catches on, the rest of the world.”  She pet Halbert and held on to his paws so he didn’t have a chance of falling, looking Myra intently in the eye.  “What if… our entire legislative process was done on an encrypted, hacker-proof app, written by the people and voted on by the people.  Just imagine you would get notifications every day of new bills to be voted upon, with their popularity so far and a few paragraphs on what they would do for our country.  And you vote either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on if you would like to see that happen, and if a majority votes ‘yes’, it happens, with perhaps a Presidential veto power and a Senate to make sure that whatever gets voted by the people into effect, happens. Same checks and balances, except the citizen has the power.” Myra’s eyes widened.  

“Wow.” She crossed her arms and stared off into the gardens, contemplatively.  “That sounds like a true democracy.  And ours is, well, broken because of special interests.”  She nodded “That would fix so many of our problems.”

“Right? There are so many ideas, good ideas, I feel, that get pushed aside like so much compost for the heap in the name of corporate interests.  Did you know that in 1988 a man created an engine that could run on water, but was poisoned for disrupting the oil companies agenda?” Myra looked back at her with renewed interest.  

“I did not know that.”  

They both stared at the sunset as it eked over a cerulean sky, contemplating the idea and its ramifications.  The air seemed lighter around them, the concept dizzying, exciting in its upending qualities.  Halbert blinked as he sighed, his paws and legs held by Catherine, content that he was able to be a conduit of knowledge for an empire that needed democracy’s hope desperately.  

[omnipop-mag-blog]

http://time.com/5261014/michelle-wolf-trump-white-house-correspondents-dinner/

Been there, done that. The first thing you have to know about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which I performed at in 1993, is that every comedian who entertains there is trashed by the press and members of government as soon as it is over. Even if you got huge laughs with brilliant commentary, you will be attacked. It’s almost as if members of the government are so used to denial and backtracking, they can’t admit they just had a good time (and here they don’t even have to use taxpayer money and NDAs to keep people quiet about it). So you go in with guns blazing; you’re going to pay the price anyway. It’s your chance to “write your Congressman.”

Why do they bring comics in for this? The press and government are so insulated, they think they need to hear one outside voice — one person who travels the country and moves among real people. But as soon as they hear what real people are saying, they get rabid.

Male, female, clean, “dirty,” the only real criteria for a comedian is “funny.” This year, Michelle Wolf’s political jokes were so funny and mostly on target, and so there’s the usual firestorm. (It just seems bigger this year due to the proliferation of social media outlets and endless news programming.) Outrage is how you know you did well. Here’s how well she really did; since the media can’t defend against the truth in her jokes, they’ve decided to rally around White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the apologist for a man who is dismantling decades of hard-won progress for women’s dignity, equality and reproductive freedom, over a joke they wrongly said was critical of her looks.

Sanders is a human steamroller — regularly shutting down journalists’ inquiries about the truth — yet she puts on an evening dress (I thought she looked lovely, by the way) and suddenly she’s Blanche DuBois? If the attendees didn’t get the joke about Sanders “being great in The Handmaid’s Tale” (which I will laugh at for the next 10 years), it’s because this administration is so anti-woman, they’ve never read the book or seen the show. Then-candidate Trump once said of Carly Fiorina, “Look at that face! Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” Where was their outrage then — for an actual slam at a woman’s looks, and one not said in the context of comedy?

When I did the dinner, I was criticized for my jokes about capital punishment, abortion, gun control, sex education — all of which would sadly still work today, because we can’t make enough progress in this country. That’s why we need a Michelle Wolf, and the next comic, and the next, to get up there and keep saying it, in front of the people who write about it and the people who make the laws. Maybe to punish them all, next year a comic should come up and just talk about airlines, cell phones and being single.

Margaret Talev, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said the evening is supposed to “promote unity.” Maribel Perez Wadsworth, the publisher of USA Today, wrote a letter to Talev: “Ms. Wolf represents one point of view… Is it appropriate that we invite a celebrity to launch a relentless… attack on the very people we cover?”

They’re both missing what was missing: The President.

No matter what the comedian’s politics have been since the dinner began using comics in 1983, the President of the United States was there to respond. The President got his chance to roast and counter-attack in the spirit of the evening and, yes, in the spirit of unity. This is the first president since this dinner began in 1921 not to attend —not including President Ronald Reagan, who still called in by phone after being shot in an assassination attempt. Like all bullies, current President “I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon” is a coward. He’s capable of delivering his “witticisms” against the media, Democrats and others only from a safe distance. Like all bullies, he can never engage on an even playing field.

Yessiree, Saturday night he was the funniest guy in Washington, Michigan. No contest.

When I did the dinner in 1993, President Bill Clinton had just come off one of the worst first 100 days in office: the Tailhook scandal, the Branch Davidian fiasco, not getting his budget passed and so on. Yet he showed up, took the hits and brilliantly answered in the spirit of the evening. That takes intelligence.

Wolf was “wildly inappropriate” and “raunchy” and didn’t take the high road? The high road was demolished at Donald Trump’s first presidential debate and is now a sinkhole. Mocking the disabled is inappropriate. Raunchy and vulgar? Well, that’s just locker room talk. If only Michelle Wolf had smiled more…

Whatever you think of this dinner, it’s a venerable tradition in a free country that celebrates a free press. By not attending, this president continues his bulldozing of American traditions like decency, inclusiveness and fair play. His review from afar? “This was a total disaster and an embarrassment to our great country.” He ought to know. The comic reflects the times.

The post New story in Entertainment from Time: I Was a Correspondents’ Dinner Comedian. Michelle Wolf Was No Bully appeared first on OMNI POP MAG.

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[spynotebook]

Morning Wonketariat! Here’s some of the things we may be talking about today.

According to Magic Hailbeanman, Trump’s lawyers were trying to iron out the details for an interview between Trump and Robert Mueller’s team, but they got spooked when Michael Cohen was raided by the FBI. Now Mueller’s team is moving ahead without the interview, suggesting there may be enough evidence to call out three (or maybe four! or 17!) separate instances where Trump obstructed justice. Like we didn’t know.

Michael Cohen used to tape conversations, WaPo reports, and that has many in Trump world pissing themselves like hookers in a Moscow hotel.

Yesterday, Rod Rosenstein was summoned to Trump’s golden throne for a curious chat. This comes amid a growing cacophony of yodels from the right-wing echo chamber to “You’re Fired” Rosenstein, and kill the Trump-Russia probe.

Now that he’s skull-fucked what’s left of America’s breadbasket, Trump is thinking about rejoining the TPP after finding out that his bilateral trade idea was fucking stupid, and the US can’t “win” a trade war against China. (#ProTip: He can’t rejoin the TPP.)

A Depression-era program is being considered by Trump officials to offset the catastro-fuck faced by American farmers if Trump continues his trade war.

Trump has ordered Steve Mnuchin to head a task force to review the business practices of the US Postal Service “to prevent a taxpayer-funded bailout.” Obviously, this is just Trump throwing another tantrum about Amazon.

Mick Mulvaney is expected to cut open the omnibus spending bill around May 1, that way Trump can start gutting the parts of the bill that help Democrats.

James Comey’s tell-all spilled out into the ether last night and, LORDY is it rich! Comey talks about Trump being pissed about the pee hookers, insisting that it wasn’t true, and likening Trump to a mob boss with his loyalty oaths and “us-versus-them worldview.” The book touches on a number of subjects, including Loretta Lynch, Hillary Clinton, Jeff Sessions being a pussy, the size of Trump’s hands, and how the Trump team curiously tried to “spin” revelations of Russian fuckery to their advantage.

Dick Cheney’s lackey, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, is expected to get a presidential pardon by Trump. Though nobody is sure how/why Trump even knows who “Scooter” Libby is (he outed a CIA agent to get back at her diplomat husband) there’s speculation that this is an attempt to knock James Comey and other speculation that this is a trial balloon to prove Americans don’t care about perjury and obstruction of justice.

Things didn’t go well at Mike Pompeo’s confirmation hearing yesterday, with Democrats pressing Pompeo to show his true colors.

A federal judge has ruled that the Justice Department can’t turn local cops into la migra in order to get federal funding to stop taco trucks from appearing on every corner.

Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, the security chief of EPA head Scott Pruitt, is drawing the scrutiny of Congress after reports that “Nino” threatens and harasses staffers who criticize Pruitt, like the “You’re Fired” staffer who didn’t want to buy Pruitt’s “favored staffer” first class flights.

Before being grilled by Elizabeth Warren all morning for his constant poor-fucking at the CFPB, Mick Mulvaney told the congressional banking committees that he only had to be there by statute, and didn’t have to answer any questions. Later, Mulvaney went back to his office and bitched out his staff for “undermining [his] leadership.” Fucking crybaby.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao got chewed out by the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee for the Trump administration’s stalling of a badly needed tunnel linking New York and New Jersey.

Republicans in fly-over country are freaking out this morning as party leaders push incumbents to get off their asses and get some campaign cash before it’s too late.

Oklahoma teachers have ended their strike after the Republican-led legislature caved, agreeing to give teachers a roughly $6,000 raise, and $500 million in education funding. [Archive]

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey says he’ll give in to the demands of teachers threatening a walk-out, but the teachers are calling bullshit on the governor’s proposal, demanding actual legislation before they call off their planned strike.

As Trump twiddles his thumbs on Twitter, British Prime Minister Theresa May says it’s “vital” to respond to Syria’s chemical weapons attacks on civilians.

Attorneys for Michael Cohen are trying to stall litigation on the Stormy Daniels case, and now say that Cohen may invoke the Fifth Amendment. LOCK HIM UP!

Reporter April Ryan says that she’s received death threats for asking Sarah Huckabee Sanders hard questions, and shaking her head at Sean Spicer. [Video]

The “alt-right” (white supremacists) have embraced a former conspiracy-peddling gossip columnist as their new aryan queen. Maybe she can tell us who’s cucking who?

Internal emails and communiques from Facebook show that the deplorable duo of Internet talking heads known as Diamond and Silk are full of shit; their “censorship” was for violations of rules regarding clickbait and money fuckery — and their dumb videos are still shown to more people than Rachel Maddow’s are — and she’s got six times their Facebook fans.

Comic book nerds are scared that Stan Lee may have been kidnapped by evil mind-controlling super villains trying to steal his fortune. SERIOUSLY!

The CEO of Backpage has pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and conspiracy to facilitate prostitution in three states(!), and has agreed to flip on other executives.

And here’s your morning Nice Time! A BABY BABIRUSA PIGGY!

VIDEO

DO YOUR GOOD FOR THE DAY and buy us a cup of coffee, a beer, or a sandwich! We’ll love you forever, from the pits of our stomachs to the bottoms of our hearts.

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Jonathan's Prophecy, Buhari's Heresy and Tuface's Bravery By Reno Omokri

On December 11, 2014, then President Goodluck Jonathan accepted the Presidential nomination of the Peoples Democratic Party to contest the 2015 Presidential elections as its candidate. At that occasion, the former leader made a statement which, in hindsight, can now be seen as a prophecy.

On that day, Jonathan said:

"The choice before Nigerians in the coming election is simple: A choice between going forward or going backwards; between the new ways and the old ways; between freedom and repression; between a record of visible achievements and beneficial reforms - and desperate power-seekers with empty promises."

When the Naira crashed to ₦500 to $1 on Monday the 30th of January, 2017 it hit me that Dr. Jonathan's prophecy had been fulfilled.

I remember (and I am sure you can too) the giant bill boards the APC erected all over the country saying, and I quote

'Is ₦216 to $1 okay? It is time to act now. Buhari-Osinbajo'.

Well both President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo have 'acted' for almost two years now and today it is now over ₦500 to $1. It is time for the duo to answer their own question.

On the 20th of November, 2014, a certain young Nigerian named Mohammad had tweeted the following tweet on Twitter;

"Today a dollar N180 and a pound is N280, hope you have a family....this is really the transformation agenda..!! GEJ has finished Nigeria.."

This tweet went viral because the APC through its agents on Twitter retweeted the tweet until it trended online.

Flash forward to Monday the 30th of January, 2017, the day the Naira crossed over the ₦500 to $1 rubicon and the now sober Mohammad tweeted three times and I will quote each of those tweets below:

The first tweet

"GEJ should please forgive me!!!"

The second tweet

"N500 even wen they claim the are fighting corruption #bringbackourGEJ"

The third tweet

"GEJ a true definition of the word HERO ...!!!"

This time around, though the APC refused to retweet Mohammad who tweets from the handle @deee009, his last tweets are even more popular than the first because Nigerians retweeted them, storyfied them and blogs celebrated them.

On Tuesday 31st of January, 2017, another young Nigerian named Uchenna tweeted through his twitter handle, Uchez2 this:

"@Uchez2: How did the dollar stay at ₦175-₦200 for 4yrs under "massive looting"? How is it now at N510 in 2 years under "massive savings"?"

What Jonathan's 2014 quote and Mohammad's 2014 and 2017 tweets as well as Uchenna's question has shown is that, no matter how far and fast falsehood has travelled, it must eventually be overtaken by truth.

Everybody is affected by the failed promises of the Buhari administration. The richest African and Black man in the world, Aliko Dangote, has seen his fortune depreciate by more than 50% from $25 billion under former President Jonathan to $12.4 billion today. We pray it does not shrink to $1.2 billion before 2019!

There is no Nigerian that is not affected and that is all the more reason why the multiple award winning singer and rapper, Innocent Idibia, AKA Tuface has said he is going to lead a nationwide protest against the policies of this government which are impoverishing Nigerians.

Of course very predictably, the administration, either directly or indirectly, has come out guns blazing against the much loved entertainer.

Government surrogates and jealous rivals have sought to disqualify and disenfranchise him from leading his protest by saying that as a father of seven children from three different mothers Tuface lacks the moral authority to protest against government policies!

First of all, the problem many of his celebrity haters have with Tuface is not the protest itself perse. They are really angry that they were not the ones who thought of it!

If having children from many women is their grouse then they would have had a grouse with many Nigerian leaders. Which Nigerian leader has children from only one woman?

And it almost became comical when the Presidency asked to debate with Tuface on live TV. Really? A President who refused to debate his opponents at the Presidential Debates during the elections now wants Tuface to debate live on TV. I mean just negodu!

When some musicians and actors gathered at Ojota with Nasir Elrufai and Dino Melaye against then President Jonathan in February 2012, nobody cared how many children they had but suddenly they care about Tuface's baby mamas!

I guess both Elrufai and Dino Melaye have all their children from one woman!

In the new and improved Federal Republic of Double Standards, if you have more than one baby mama you can be a President, a Governor or a Senator, but you cannot lead a protest! It is haram! You are not morally fit to protest!

And it was so disappointing to see an official All Progressive Congres Twitter handle mocking the protest. APC News TV tweeted and I am quoting:

"@APCNEWSTV: JUST BEFORE YOU JOIN THE SENSELESS PROTEST, NOTE THAT! Godswill Akpabio bankrolled the posh wedding of 2face"

What rubbish! First of all, this is a desperate lie. But even if this were true (it is not) didn't Nigerians vote for President Muhammadu Buhari despite the fact that former Governors Rotimi Amaechi and Bola Tinubu bankrolled him?

If the Presidency and the APC want us to believe that Tuface Idibia's planned protest is "senseless" because his wedding was bankrolled by former Governor Godswill Akpabio then they are inadvertently admitting that President Buhari's Government is "senseless" because its election was bankrolled by Amaechi and Tinubu. That will explain a lot!

It will explain the Presidency's senselessness in the matter regarding Supreme Court Justice Walter Onnoghen who has been denied what should have been his privilege by political tradition as well as by judicial precedent.

Ibrahim Magu is accused of corruption yet President Muhammadu Buhari insists on confirming him. Justice Walter Onnoghen is free from corruption yet President Buhari refuses to confirm him!

This from a so called anti corruption President. Is it because Magi is a Muslim from the North, while the other is a Christian from the South.

This is yet another example in the series of double standards that are the hallmark of this administration.

A Government that publicly urged accused justices to immediately step down, yet writes copious and even verbose letters to justify why the provenly corrupt Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, continues to retain his post. In Nigeria, it seems there is one law for the 97 percenters and another for the 5 percenters. Again I say, welcome to President Buhari's new and improved Federal Republic of Double Standards!

What President Buhari is doing to Justice Walter Onnoghen is nothing short of judicial heresy. He is placing his parochial bias above a well established doctrine that seniority at the bar and bench is the major requirement for upward mobility in the legal profession.

And as an aside, I am noticing that the rapidly shrinking army of the cult of Buhari are also set against the new U.S. President, Donald John Trump. And it got me thinking.

I have a hunch that the problem Buharists have with Donald Trump are not his policies but the fact that a politician is actually doing what he promised to do during his campaign.

They are so used to President Buhari, who promises one thing and does another thing, that when they finally see a leader who says what he will do and does what he says they go into shock.

In his first day in office, President Trump has already started fulfilling his promises. He has not blamed Obama, he has not blamed the state of things he met on the ground. He has rather began his tenure by focusing on his promises rather than focusing on the alleged wrongdoings of his predecessors.

This is why many people who supported Nigerian President Buhari cannot stand Trump. Because he exposes the hypocrisy of someone who promised change and is delivering more of the same.

This is why they are so heavily invested in blame gaming the system and blaming every negative occurrence on previous administrations while waiting to give President Buhari credit for the few things that have gone right under his government which are, ironically, the handiwork of the very administrationsthat he denigrates.

Two days ago (January 31st of 2017) the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics revealed that foreign investments into Nigeria has dropped to a 10 year low.

I am waiting to see the creativity with which the Buhari administration will come up with reasons to blame Goodluck Jonathan for this!

Perhaps Jonathan went around to all the nations of the world to convince them not to invest in Nigeria!

I thought that the Buhari government said Nigeria was a pariah state under Jonathan. How could a pariah government attract more investment than an acceptable government like the Buhari administration.��You see, like I said previously in this piece, no matter how far and fast a lie has travelled, it MUST eventually be overtaken by truth.

And it is silly of the Lagos State Police Command to say they would stop Tuface's protest! This is the sort of impunity that has become the norm under President Muhammadu Buhari.

Doesn't Tuface have the Constitutional right of freedom of assembly? Does he not have the right to free speech?

The same security forces that cannot bring the killers of pastor Eunice Elisha to book, or give justice to the be-headers of Evangelist Bridget Agbahime have now found their voice when it comes to stopping the harmless Tuface.

Is it not silly that at a time when the Directorate of State Security have not been able to utilize its man power to make any discernible impact in the war against terror they have the men to storm Apostle Johnson Suleiman's hotel room in Ado Ekiti?

At a time when we have a Governor confessing that he paid money to killers of the citizens he is constitutionally sworn to protect, at a time when Nigeria has overnight become the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian, at a time when the dollar goes for ₦500 to $1, is it really Apostle Suleiman that is the problem of Nigeria?

The Presidency called Apostle Suleiman's speech hate speech! puh-leeze! What hate speech can be worse than President Buhari's 97% versus 5%? That a Presidency headed by a man who threatened that the "dog and baboon will all be soaked in blood" has the guts to ask the Christian Association of Nigeria to condemn Apostle Suleiman is the joke of the year. If the Presidency are looking for someone to condemn let them go to London!!!

Finally let me say that the Father did not give Jesus a Name that is above all names because Jesus is intelligent. No. Lucifer is also intelligent. God promoted Jesus because of two qualities. Loyalty and Humility.

When people ask me why I am loyal to former President Jonathan, they do not realize that I do not live my life for anybody whether it is Dr. Goodluck Jonathan or President Muhammadu Buhari or even Donald J. Trump. My life is a test and upon my death the Father will mark my test paper. I am loyal to ex-President Jonathan just as I try to be loyal to all my friends whether high or low because a disloyal and proud person is like Lucifer who tried to take The Father's Throne and a loyal person is like Jesus who had the opportunity to do the same yet chose to remain Loyal and Humble. If I do not follow the Messiah's example, then my Christianity is questionable.

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Egomaniac by Vi Keeland

Life, Books, & Loves Presents: Egomaniac by Vi Keeland

  The night I met Drew Jagger, he’d just broken into my new Park Avenue office. I dialed 9-1-1 before proceeding to attack him with my fancy new Krav Maga skills. He quickly restrained me, then chuckled, finding my attempted assault amusing.

Of course, my intruder had to be arrogant. Only, turned out, he wasn’t an intruder at all.

Drew was the rightful occupant of my new office. He’d been on vacation while his posh space was renovated. Which was how a scammer got away with leasing me office space that wasn’t really available for rent. I was swindled out of ten grand.

The next day, after hours at the police station, Drew took pity on me and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. In exchange for answering his phones while his secretary was out, he’d let me stay until I found a new place. I probably should have acted grateful and kept my mouth shut when I overheard the advice he was spewing to his clients. But I couldn’t help giving him a piece of my mind. I never expected my body to react every time we argued. Especially when that was all we seemed to be able to do.

The two of us were complete opposites. Drew was a bitter, angry, gorgeous-as-all-hell, destroyer of relationships. And my job was to help people save their marriages. The only thing the two of us had in common was the space we were sharing. And an attraction that was getting harder to deny by the day.

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REVIEW

After reading the synopsis, I had to read EGOMANIAC! Although when I began to read, the author begins with a quote from an unknown author: “Sometimes what you’re looking for comes when you’re not looking at all.” Anyone who knows me personally knows I love quotes and anything Vi Keeland writes!

“Maybe, just maybe, neither one of us had found the right one before now…because we hadn’t met each other yet.”

FIVE-STARS! Drew Jagger is a successful New York City divorce attorney returning from Hawaii after a couple weeks from his Hawaiian vacation to his Manhattan home. Before going home, he decides to check on the progress of his Park Avenue law office when he discovers a gorgeous redheaded woman in his office. What he did not expect to encounter was a gorgeous petite intruder with mad Krav Maga skills!

“For a crazy person – now that I was looking – she was pretty damn cute. Fiery red hair piled on top of her head seemed to match her firecracker personality.”

Emery Rose moved from Oklahoma to New York and thought she found a great deal on a Park Avenue office space, when she quickly discovers she was a victim in a scammed by a con. Drew immediately felt sorry for Emery and her situation, so he temporally invites Emery to share his office space. However, he is a divorce lawyer working to permanently separate couples while she is a marriage counselor trying to keep marriages together. Can total opposites share office space, or will they be sharing a little more than square footage and office supplies?

“Some of the best times in life come from bad ideas.”

What starts out as friends, ignites to an explosive relationship together! Although, Drew still has some trust issues to from his past; Emery is ready to slay those demons with him.

“You’re the red in my black and white world.”

Author Vi Keeland did it again with EGOMANIAC! EGOMANIAC is a sexy romantic comical standalone that will melt your heart!

        Sometimes what you’re looking for comes when you’re not looking at all.

-Unknown

  DREW

I hate New Year’s Eve.

Two hours in traffic to make it not even the nine miles home from LaGuardia. It was after ten o’clock at night. Why weren’t all these people at a party by now? Whatever tension two weeks in Hawaii had relieved was already back to coiling tighter and tighter inside me as the town car inched its way uptown.

I tried not to think about all the work I was coming back to—the endless string of other people’s problems to compound my own:

She cheated.

He cheated.

Get me full custody of the kids.

She can’t have the house in Vail.

All she wants is my money.

She hasn’t given me a blowjob in three years. Listen, asshole, you’re fifty, bald, pompous, and shaped like an egg. She’s twenty-three, hot, and has tits so young they almost reach up to her chin. You want to fix this marriage? Come home with ten Gs in fresh, crisp bills, and tell her to get on her knees. You’ll get your blowjob. She’ll get her spending money. Let’s not pretend it was ever more than it really was. That doesn’t work for you? Unlike your soon-to-be ex-wife, I’ll take a check. Make that out to Drew M. Jagger, Attorney at Law.

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling slightly claustrophobic in the back of the Uber, and looked out the window. An old lady with a walker passed us.

“I’ll get out here,” I barked at the driver.

“But you have luggage?”

I was already exiting the back of the car. “Pop the trunk. It’s not like we’re moving anyway.”

Traffic was at a dead stop, and it was only two blocks to my building. Tossing a hundred-dollar tip at the driver, I grabbed my suitcase from the trunk and took in a deep breath of Manhattan.

I loved this city as much as I hated it.

575 Park Avenue was a restored pre-war on the southeast corner of Sixty-Third Street—it was an address that gave people preconceived notions about you. Someone with my last name had occupied the building since before the place was converted into overpriced co-ops. Which is why my office was allowed to remain on the ground floor when other commercial tenants were tossed out years ago. I also lived on the top floor.

“Welcome back, Mr. Jagger.” The uniformed doorman greeted me as he swung open the lobby door.

“Thanks, Ed. I miss anything while I was gone?”

“Nah. Same old, same old. Peeked in on your construction the other day, though. Looking good.”

“They use the service entrance down Sixty-Third like they were supposed to?”

Ed nodded. “Sure did. Barely heard them the last few days.”

I dropped my luggage inside my apartment, then headed back downstairs in the elevator to check things out. For the last two weeks, while I was screwing off in Honolulu, my office space had been getting a total renovation. Cracks in the high, plastered ceilings were to be patched and painted, and new floors installed to replace the old, worn parquet.

Thick plastic remained taped over all of the interior doorways when I walked in. The little furniture I hadn’t put in storage was also still covered with tarps. Shit. They aren’t done yet. The contractor had assured me there would only be finish work left by the time I returned. I was right to be skeptical.

Flicking on the lights, I was happy to find the lobby completely done, though. Finally, a New Year’s Eve with no horrible surprises for a change.

I took a quick look around, pleased with what I found, and was just about to leave when I noticed a light streaming from under the door of a small file room at the end of the hallway.

Thinking nothing of it, I headed to turn it off.

Now, I’m six foot two and a half, two hundred and five pounds, and maybe it was just my frame of mind, my not expecting to see anyone, but when I opened the door to the file room, finding her there scared the living crap out of me.

She screamed.

I took a step back through the door.

She got up, stood on the chair, and began yelling at me, waving her cell phone in the air.

“I’ll call the police!” Her fingers shook as she dialed nine, then one, and hovered over the last one. “Get out now, and I won’t call!”

I could have lunged for her, and the phone would have been out of her hand before she realized she hadn’t dialed the final digit. But she looked terrified, so I retreated another step and put my hands up in surrender.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” I used my best soothing, calm voice. “You don’t need to call the police. This is my office.”

“Do I look stupid to you? You just broke into my office.”

“Your office? I think you took a wrong turn at the corner of Crazy and Nutjob.”

She wobbled atop the chair, holding both arms out to regain her balance, and then…her skirt fell to her feet.

“Get out!” She crouched down and grabbed her skirt, tugging it up to her waist as she turned her back to me.

“Do you take medication, ma’am?”

“Medication? Ma’am? Are you joking?”

“You know what?” I motioned to the phone she was still holding. “Why don’t you push that last one and get the police over here. They can drive you back to whatever loony bin you escaped from.”

Her eyes widened.

For a crazy person—now that I was really looking—she was pretty damn cute. Fiery red hair piled on top of her head seemed to match her firecracker personality. Although from the looks of her blazing blue eyes, I was glad I’d held off on telling her that.

She pushed one and proceeded to report the crime of entering one’s own office. “I’d like to report a robbery.”

“Robbery?” I arched an eyebrow and looked around. A lone folding chair and crappy metal folding table were the only furniture in the entire space. “What exactly am I stealing? Your winning personality?”

She amended her complaint to the police. “A breaking and entering. I’d like to report a breaking and entering at 575 Park Avenue.” She paused and listened. “No, I don’t think he’s armed. But he’s big. Really big. At least six feet. Maybe bigger.”

I smirked. “And strong. Don’t forget to tell them I’m strong, too. Want me to flex for you? And maybe you should tell them I have green eyes. Wouldn’t want the police to confuse me with all the other really big thieves hanging out in my office.”

After she hung up, she stayed standing on the chair, still glaring at me.

“Was there also a mouse?” I asked.

“A mouse?”

“Considering you jumped up on that chair.” I chuckled.

“You find this funny?”

“Oddly, I do. And I have no fucking idea why. It should annoy the crap out of me that I come home from a two-week vacation and find a squatter in my office.”

“Squatter? I’m no squatter. This is my office. I moved in a week ago.”

She bobbled again while standing on her chair.

“Why don’t you get down? You’re going to fall off that thing and get hurt.”

“How do I know you’re not going to hurt me when I get down?”

I shook my head and contained my laugh. “Sweetheart, look at the size of me. Look at the size of you. Standing on that chair isn’t doing jack shit to keep you safe. If I wanted to hurt you, you’d be out cold on the floor already.”

“I take Krav Maga classes twice a week.”

“Twice a week? Really? Thanks for the warning.”

“You don’t have to ridicule me. Maybe I could hurt you. For an intruder, you’re really kind of rude, you know.”

“Get down.”

After a full minute stare-off, she climbed off the chair.

“See? You’re as safe on the ground as you were up there.”

“What do you want from here?”

“You didn’t call the police, did you? You almost had me there for a second.”

“I didn’t. But I can.”

“Now why would you go and do that? So they can arrest you for breaking and entering?”

She pointed down at her makeshift desk. For the first time, I noticed papers all over the place. “I told you. This is my office. I’m working late tonight because the construction crew was so loud today that I couldn’t get done what I needed to. Why would anyone break and enter to work at ten-thirty at night on New Year’s Eve?”

Construction crew? My construction crew? Something was going on here. “You were here with the construction crew today?”

“Yes.”

I scratched my chin, half believing her. “What’s the foreman’s name?”

“Tommy.”

Shit. She was telling the truth. Well, at least some of it had to be the truth. “You said you moved in a week ago?”

“That’s right.”

“And you rented the space from whom, exactly?”

“John Cougar.”

Both my brows shot up this time. “John Cougar? Did he drop the Mellencamp, by chance?”

“How should I know?”

This wasn’t sounding good. “And you paid this John Cougar?”

“Of course. That’s how renting an office suite works. Two months’ security, first and last month’s rent.”

I shut my eyes and shook my head. “Shit.”

“What?”

“You got conned. How much did all of that cost you? Two months’ security, first and last month? Four months in total?”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

“Please tell me you didn’t pay cash.”

Something finally clicked, and the color drained from her pretty face. “He said his bank was closed in the evening, and he couldn’t give me the keys until my check cleared. If I gave him cash, I could move in right away.”

“You paid John Cougar forty thousand dollars in cash?”

“No!”

“Thank God.”

“I paid him ten thousand in cash.”

“I thought you said you paid four months.”

“I did. It was twenty-five hundred a month.”

That did it. Of all the crazy shit I’d heard so far, thinking she could get space on Park Avenue for twenty-five hundred a month took the cake. I broke out in a fit of laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

“You’re not from New York, are you?”

“No. I just moved here from Oklahoma. What does that have to do with anything?”

I took a step closer. “I hate to break the news to you, Oklahoma, but you got ripped off. This is my office. I’ve been here for three years. My father the thirty before that. I was on vacation the last two weeks and had the office remodeled while I was gone. Someone named after a singer scammed you into giving him cash to rent an office he had no right to rent. Doorman’s name is Ed. Walk through the main building entrance, and he’ll verify everything I just said.”

“That can’t be.”

“What do you do that you need office space?”

“I’m a psychologist.”

I held out my hand. “I’m an attorney. Let me see your contract.”

Her face fell. “He hasn’t brought it by yet. He said the landlord was in Brazil on vacation, and I could move in, and he would come back on the first to collect the rent and bring me the contract to sign.”

“You’ve been scammed.”

“But I paid him ten thousand dollars!”

“Which is another thing that should have tipped you off. You couldn’t rent a closet on Park Avenue for twenty-five hundred a month. Didn’t you find it strange that you were getting a place like this for next to nothing?”

“I thought I was getting a deal.”

I shook my head. “You got a deal alright. A raw deal.”

She covered her mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

    ★★★★

  We hope you enjoyed this extended preview!

          Vi Keeland is a native New Yorker with three children that occupy most of her free time, which she complains about often, but wouldn’t change for the world. She is an attorney and a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, & USA Today Best Selling author. Over the last three years, eleven of her titles have appeared on the USA Today Bestseller lists and four on the New York Times Bestseller lists.

In 2013, she released her first romance novel and never looked back. To date, she has thirteen novels released, with PLAYBOY PILOT also releasing in 2016. Her novels have appeared on #1 on Amazon and are currently being translated into German, Polish, Portuguese, Korean, Hebrew, French and Italian.

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Disclosure: This information was provided by InkSlinger and Vi Keeland. This is NOT a compensated post.

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