#if you see this..... Ignore My Dobbs Posts

[paradesgoby]

Ah.

[stusbunker]

First Line Tag Game

The idea is to post the first line from the last ten fics you posted and see if there’s a trend. I was tagged by @illegalcerebral who is an amazing writer for Star Wars, Criminal Minds and other fandoms.

Forgetting Who We Were Supposed To Be (A Destiel Omegaverse fic I'm only posting on AO3) 9/11/24

Dean hit his alarm at four am, like every other day. He arrived at the bakery before five, turned on the ovens and pulled out the dough they had prepped the day before to get their product started for the day. He washed his hands and poured flour on the counter to begin rolling out the sweet rolls.

2. Spotless (Dean/Reader, Dean/Bela, Fake Dating Rockstar Slowburn) 12/7/23

You woke up overthinking. Like continuing a conversation with yourself from your dreams, the thoughts steamrolled you into consciousness. The band was in the studio for at least another week and you had to make sure the anticipation continued to build. You had a call scheduled at nine with the record label, Bobby and some other folks who you knew by name but not by face or voice.

3. Take Two (Destiel Omegaverse Dad fic from last year's DOBB) 8/30/23

Dean stared at the green glow of the alarm clock from across the bed. He always woke up before he had to, but today felt earlier than usual. His back ached, and his eyes felt like the exhaustion was sucking them backward into his skull. He didn't want to move.

4. Smoking Spirits on the Roof (Destiel College AU) 1/13/23

If anyone asked him, Dean just said it was what he had available. But if you really knew Dean, you’d know that the costume he wore that night was born from a deep seeded interest— some may call a fetish— in cowboy culture, films and legend.

5. Oasis (part of my Places Verse AU again Destiel) 12/4/22

    Dean stares at the shelf in unfocused paranoia. He feels exposed under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the chain pharmacy and fumbling through the family planning aisle like a teenager on his way to prom, isn’t helping his nerves. He shifts on his crutches and exhales.      Cas is waiting in the car.     Cas.

6. The Places We Hide (Destiel Hermit/Divorce AU from DCBB 22) 10/18/22

The water erupts from the steaming faucet. Unfocused, Castiel stares at his hands as he scrubs, ignoring the mirror in front of him and the impossible white of the bathroom around him. He should get back to his desk, instead he lingers in the echoing emptiness of the fourth floor men’s room.  They called it a reshuffling. But what it was, what it feels like— is a demotion.

7. Wasted Potential (A Drowley Drabble from my 4Me 2U celebration) May of 22

Crowley didn’t know why they were lying there, legs entangled and breathing steady. Neither of them needed to sleep, afterall.

8. (W)hole ( Steve Rogers/Reader my only MCU so far) 3/7/22

Steve had known love before, knew anticipation and longing. Strove toward honor and valor and comfortable companionship. Until he met you, he thought he knew what love was. Now he knows it is an all-consuming, frustrating, festering pit of which he knows no way out of. And still he seeks it out.

9. Desperate Measures (Young Dean Omegaverse AU) 2/20/22

Dean walks up to the second floor offices with twelve bucks in his wallet and rent due in two days. He’s twenty one and has called this town home for only seven months. But Sam has made friends at school and John’s been less than present the past two months. It’s time to get serious.

10. Barstools and Backrooms (Chestervelle Omegaverse two parter) 2/4/22

This isn’t the first time she’s sensed him, felt his inner omega hide from her very presence. It is the first time she’s certain it’s not from repulsion, but from fear. A guy like Dean, doesn’t seem likely he hasn’t taken a knot; the hunting life is never that simple. So it probably isn’t a sexual insecurity, but that still doesn’t ease the tension between them, the silent truce each time they see each other thickening whenever she invades his space.

Well, the first few definitely tell me I start with waking up too often, lol. I was better at jumping into the action in the past, also used to be much more lyrical.

Could have been worse a discovery, but I definitely need to nail the next fic's first line now.

I could not tell you off the top of my head what the last ten fics I've posted even were, since I've been doing bangs and long fics for so long. So sorry if you've never heard of these fics before, it was a deep dive. I ended up using AO3 mostly for dates, but I'm sure I missed some drabbles or something.

No pressure tags:

@lastactiontricia @thoughtslikeaminefield @mrswhozeewhatsis @rockhoochie @there-must-be-a-lock @kazsrm67 @deanwinchesterswitch @malicmalic

[carriesthewind]

Everyone is focusing on 2S2S right now, which is understandable, but when I read the very first-ever post on it you started with something like "oof. So you guys know I like to laugh at bad case law as much as the next person...." So I'm curious, what are some of your faves that AREN'T the 2S2S case?

Hello! My apologies for the very late response.

I don't know if I have favs, really, at least not that I can think of off the top of my head - I am to a large extent at the whims of my hyperfixations. And while I like to laugh at bad legal arguments, often dumpster fires that both end up in court and are interesting and unusual enough to catch my attention involve too many real world harms to be entertaining. (E.g., as a small and pedantic sidenote - "case law" is the legal term for laws that are made through precedential decisions in cases. So "bad case law" can (and usually does) include bad legal arguments, but it's less 2S2S nonsense and more...Dobbs. Which doesn't make me want to laugh so much as it makes me want to [REDACTED].)

With that said, Sovereign Citizen nonsense is often quite funny (as long as you avoid the parts where people are/become white nationalists/other terrorists and/or ignorant people are conned into putting themselves in situations that massively increase their risk of being subject to police brutality.) If you don't know what Sovereign Citizens are, the Southern Poverty Law Center has a file on them; this video is also quite good (and funny); and I haven't had time to read the Mead decision cited in the video, which I hadn't seen before, but I have it bookmarked because it looks fun and interesting.

Speaking of youtube videos, I don't know if I will ever see anything funnier than someone stating, in a DMCA takedown notice, "the poster significantly transformed my original work".

If you are up for something involving more real world harms, I really enjoy Knowledge Fight's Formulaic Objections series, where they go through the depositions of Alex Jones et. al. in the cases filed against him by the Sandy Hook families (which one very funny digression into a deposition of Roger Stone). Dan and Jordan do a great job of making it funny while treating the actual tragedy and experiences of the families with the seriousness it deserves. And all of the corporate rep depositions are just...magical.

[qqueenofhades]

As a Non-American (French), I have a genuine question regarding the basis of abortion right in the US. I read your response to this ask about why not passing abortion right into law and I still don't quite understand a) why it could not be done at the time of R Vs W or later and b) why it wouldn't necessarily be more protected against Supreme Court decisions. I think I don't quite understand the scope of the powers of the Supreme Court in a sense.

French 2: Not to say that it's on the Democrats at all, I'm just a bit curious as to why this right was never explicitly out into the law and left at the mercy of jurisprudence and interpretation of the constitution. I follow American politics from afar only so I'm a bit lost. I had enough on my French political plate recently…

French 3: OK so the Democrats had little control over both Congress and Senate, so at least it clarifies a little bit for the more recent years. Now I guess my questions morphs a bit into why is it such a big cornerstone of Republican policy to want to do away with this? Not saying that it's not a non-issue in France but for instance, our right is much more focused on surrogate pregnancy for instance. 

WELP. Welcome to the complete and utter shitshow that is American politics, and which has especially become the case as the Republican party has lurched further and further hard-right and openly fascist, while still being largely accepted as a “mainstream” political movement. The reasons for this are an incredibly complicated mix of political, legal, social, cultural, and religious factors, and I’ll see if I can possibly condense it into anything resembling a succinct explanation. It’s totally fair if you don’t understand everything about our Lovecraftian nightmare of a government, because tons of actual Americans who were born and grew up and have lived all their lives here don’t understand it either. Sometimes this is due to deficiencies in public education, sometimes to apathy and indifference and “bothsiderism,” sometimes because of willful ignorance and the deliberate creation of an alternate universe, supported by its own media ecosystem and hardworking disinformation spigot. So let’s see what I can start with.

1. The Supreme Court is the highest legal authority in the land -- the end, full stop, no more debate. Even if the Democrats had managed to squeak through a law that formalized Roe, in one of their very brief periods of full control of the Senate, House, and Presidency, the Supreme Court would still have been able to strike it down. (And the Democrats would have needed not just full control, but an absolute supermajority, due to a horrible invention called the filibuster, which we will discuss next, and the fact that literally no member of the Republican party, especially post-Obama, would have voted with them or supported it). Any law made in America can be challenged in court -- whether on the federal, state, or local level. Even if Democrats had turned Roe into an actual law, anti-choicers could still have sued them and won, especially since the judiciary was packed with hard-right wingnuts during Trump’s reign of terror.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which is the actual case that will overturn Roe when the final decision is handed down, could still have been brought all the way to the Supreme Court. Any ruling has to be upheld by lower courts -- state, district, federal, circuit -- before it reaches the Supreme Court, but Republicans have packed those lower benches with anti-choice, hard-right judges precisely in order to get favorable rulings to bump the case up the food chain. Once again, it would not have mattered if Roe was an actual federal law, since Dobbs regards a Mississippi state law that was enacted in 2018 and prevented abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Anti-choice factions could still sue to overturn the federal law, and could still win, and we would still be in this exact same position. So if anyone wants to claim that the Democrats could have just stopped all this by making it into law, as if that would have shielded it from judicial review and/or overturn, yet again, they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Another thing that’s important to stress: the Supreme Court does NOT have to take all the cases presented to it. They often either simply decline to hear cases (in which case the legal chain of custody expires), or issue what is known as “shadow docket” rulings, wherein they just issue their opinion without public debate, formal hearings before the Court, or any of the other ordinary apparatus of a lawsuit. This has been criticized as an underhanded way for this neoconservative, Republican-packed court to hand down federally binding and unchallengeable rulings with the minimum of public scrutiny or due process, especially since those rulings often tend to advance said neoconservative Republican interests. The thing is, once the Supreme Court makes a ruling, that’s it. There is no other legal avenue to overturn it, aside from starting the lawsuit process all over again at level zero (and once again, it will take YEARS to get to the Supreme Court, and they don’t even have to agree to hear it). Much of American politics rests on the honor system: the idea that elected officials will do the things they’re supposed to do, and act in the public interest. We saw the danger of that when Trump, for the first time in history, refused to respect the peaceful transition of power to a democratically elected successor, and instead organized a coup that came within a whisker of actually succeeding. Congress’ certification of the Electoral College/popular vote results is supposed to be a basic formality. Instead, on January 6, 2021, it became the site of an alt-right terrorist attack that openly wanted to hang the Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) and the then-Vice President (Mike Pence). Trump did not respect a precedent that has existed for as long as America has, and it’s mostly luck that he and his red-hat thugs didn’t succeed.

The Supreme Court made a deliberate choice to hear Dobbs, which they didn’t have to do. Furthermore, it’s clear that it was made because the hard-right faction of the court (6 out of 9 justices are conservatives appointed by Republican presidents) knew that it finally had the votes to fulfill the cherished Republican dream of overturning Roe. (Which wasn’t even actually at issue in the Dobbs case!) That’s why we all got to read that horrifying draft opinion wherein Samuel Alito decided that the question of whether the state of Mississippi could forbid abortions after 15 weeks could be interpreted to mean that the federal government had no right to require abortions to be legal in any US state. If the SC insisted on hearing Dobbs at all, this ruling could have been tailored to the question at hand. It wasn’t. It was a blatantly maximalist action to unilaterally fulfill the Republican wet dream of overturning abortion rights. Because once again, the Supreme Court’s ruling cannot be appealed. They are the final legal authority in America, full stop, the end. Traditionally, they are viewed as impartial and apolitical, making decisions only on the pure and abstract rational and legal merits and being morally uninterested in grubby party politics. Except we’ve all seen that the conservative wing of the court is nothing more than Republican hacks in black robes, and are acting exactly like rank-and-file Republican politicians, while crying about how “trust in the institution is being eroded” and people “don’t want to live with” unpopular decisions. (Yes, this from the party that organized an actual coup in an attempt to overturn a presidential election, spews lies and hate around the clock, and continues to whine and sob about people protesting outside the SC justices’ homes, because suddenly they’re really big into the concept of “civility.”) Once again, we’re seeing how a very small handful of bad actors can make huge decisions that affect everyone in the country, and why everyone who claimed during the 2016 election that the Supreme Court wasn’t important can go jump in a lake.

2. The Republicans have become so extreme that none of them will support abortion rights, and two bad-faith Democratic senators are helping them maintain the filibuster. Two Republican female senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are generally viewed as “moderates” who occasionally vote with the Democrats and aren’t total raving MAGA wingnuts. Both of them voiced “concern” during the hearings for Trump’s three Supreme Court picks, about whether those judges would commit to upholding Roe as settled law. And yet, in the most unsurprising move ever, both of them announced that they would vote *against* the Democrats’ motion to codify Roe into law (happening later today). They can make all the Statements of Concern that they want, but when push comes to shove, they will vote with their party and that’s it. And these are the so-called “reasonable” Republicans who even dared to act like they were pro-abortion at all! Yes, the two-party system is a terrible idea, but it’s what we’re currently stuck with.

I will bet you a million dollars that the mainstream media framing of the vote will be “Democrats fail to codify Roe,” thus and yet again putting the implicit blame on them for Not Doing Enough, while completely failing to point out that an entire Republican caucus voted against it. Because the spin is that Both Sides Are Bad and At Fault For Our Polarized Politics (tm), and that means even the most tepid criticism of the Republicans has to be matched with something something Democrats Did Not Do Enough. This will ignore the fact that 48 of the 50 Democratic senators will vote for it, including Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who is still regarded as fairly anti-abortion and whose father was the namesake for Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, the Supreme Court decision that largely upheld and reaffirmed Roe in its entirety. The two Democratic holdouts will be the exact same ones who have caused constant problems for us all along and stopped the Democratic caucus from passing more of Biden’s major legislative priorities: Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Both of them have repeatedly voted to keep the filibuster in place, and refused to support even modest reforms or carve out exemptions for voting rights or (in this case) abortion rights.

Why is this a problem? Because right now, the Senate is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaker/51st Democratic vote in event of a gridlock. Any piece of legislation before the Senate can be “filibustered,” i.e. indefinitely delayed and sent to die a slow death. The only way to break the logjam is for 60 senators to vote for “cloture,” therefore ending the filibuster and setting up a floor vote for actual passage. To say the least, there’s no way in hell you’ll find 10 Republicans willing to vote with the Democrats on anything, and that means they can stonewall most legislation as they please. However, if the Senate passed a procedural rule with a simple majority vote, they could eliminate or severely reduce the filibuster and therefore skip this step altogether. But because Manchin and Sinema won’t vote for it, ever,  in any circumstances, that means Majority Leader Chuck Schumer physically cannot get more than 48 votes, and the motion will fail 48-52 (the 48 good Democrats against Manchin, Sinema, and all the Republicans). We don’t know what the fuck their problem is, but in an equally divided Senate where you have literally no margin for error, it’s difficult to read the riot act to them completely (since they’re fucking terrible enough, especially God Emperor Joe Manchin, to threaten to withhold their vote entirely in terms of judges, economic issues, etc). This is why we need AT LEAST two more Democratic senators who will vote to eliminate the filibuster and make Manchin, Sinema, and their two-man obnoxious circus of endless obstruction irrelevant.

3. The religious right is a huge force in American politics, and have long framed abortion as a moral, not a medical, issue. I’ve written before about the rise of the religious right in the 1980s under Reagan, and how the Republican party has become increasingly illiberal, theocratic, fascist, and anti-everybody except straight white rich Christian heterosexual men. They have incorporated fundamentalist Protestant evangelicalism into their policies and worldviews at all levels, and that means viewing all women who get abortions, for any reason, as slutty baby murderers who probably got pregnant from having casual sex while unmarried and contributing to the Moral Decay of America etc etc. The anti-choicers have conducted a decades-long, guerrilla terrorist campaign ever since Roe was handed down -- bombing abortion clinics, murdering doctors, harassing women, so on and so forth, you name it. (The idea that the so-called “Pro Life” movement, which only cares about theoretical unborn children and literally nobody else, is a peaceful and principled opposition is another of the Republicans’ favorite lies.)

The right wing doesn’t view abortion in terms of a medical procedure, a woman exercising basic control over her own body, or anything else. In their minds, it’s only Terrible Murder, and is deeply tied to all those evangelical fiats about women, sexuality, control, repression, and patriarchy. The thinking is that if they punish women for having sex, or make it difficult or impossible to get abortions, they will give up all this silly “feminism” stuff and be content to stay home, be dominated by their husbands, and pump out babies as fast as Quiverfull would like it. That’s also why the GOP has voiced their intention to go after birth control, condoms, Plan B, and IUDs next. Any sex, ever, has to be heterosexual, married, and procreative in intent, just like we’re still in the Old Testament. It’s an essential pillar of their theocratic, fascist worldview, and rests entirely on viewing women as subordinate to and lesser than men, unable to be trusted with decisions about their own body, and needing to be punished for having sex for any reason other than to have babies. It sounds horribly regressive, sure, but this is the reality of the once-proud Republican Party in America, 2022.

Anyway, in summary:

1. Even if the Democrats did make Roe into a federal law, it could still be challenged in lawsuits and ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court, which made a deliberate decision not only to hear Dobbs, but to make its ruling as broad and anti-abortion as possible, in service of long-held Republican political goals.

2. At present, the Senate Democrats simply do not have the numbers to overcome a legislative filibuster, thanks to Manchin, Sinema, and the entire goddamn Republican Party voting against it. This is why we need to elect more and better Democrats in November 2022 and make the Manema clown show irrelevant, ASAP. The only way to make abortion rights SCOTUS-proof is with a constitutional amendment, and in this current political climate, it will never, ever pass.

3. The modern Republican Party hates women and doesn’t believe they have the right to control their own bodies, have sex outside of heterosexual marriage, or pursue careers outside the “traditional” sphere of domestic housewifery, marriage, and motherhood. This is because they’ve gone so far-right that they’re literally re-enacting the early days of The Handmaid’s Tale. (Lest we forget, Gilead got started with a terrorist attack wherein right-wing extremists “shot the President and machine-gunned the Congress and blamed the Islamic terrorists.” January 6, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)

Anyway, yes. I hope that was somewhat helpful, and illuminates the utter shambles that this country is currently in. Hoo lord.

[gayliensav]

Holding Hands While the Walls Come Tumbling Down (1/?)

The Dark Side realm is in trouble when the strongest of them resurfaces. Deceit and Remus are forced to run and hide out in the place they’d least be expected: the imagination. 

Eventual Roman/Deceit, mostly focusing on the relationships between Roman & Remus (not romantic...obviously), Remus & Deceit, Deceit & Virgil, the Dark Sides (including Virgil), and some very vague Logan/Patton in the background, but barely noticeable. 

Trigger warning for this chapter: slight blood and injury. I research this, but I’m not a trained medical expert or anything, so if information is correct, that would be why.

Author’s Note: First Sanders Sides fic in a while but my love for Roceit along with Remus has awakened by half-dead inspiration! Please let me know if you want to see more by dropping a like and/or reblogging. I’ll probably post this on AO3 sometime later. This is my first actual WIP that I post as I go, usually I plan things out ahead and stuff like that, so this is pretty new to me.

Deceit stumbled down the hallway, practically falling out of his room. When the shaking started, it was small, like an earthquake...or when Thomas got a migraine- but this was different.

The hallway had an orange tint to it.

Deceit growled to himself and made his way down the dark hallway, using the wall for support. He heard the other dark sides yelling around him, some even fighting. He knew the effects their orange side had on people and it wasn’t a surprise the conflict already arising.

He had to find Remus.

“And where do you think you’re going?” someone asked suddenly, slamming him up against the wall.

Deceit chuckled, putting his gloved hands up in surrender, “Okay, jealousy, you have me,” he said before phasing through the wall to the room behind him. He swallowed when he entered a dark blue room, darker than the others and the hallway. He quickly phased through again, grabbing Remus by the back of his shirt as soon as he entered his room, “I think it’s time we take our leave, my friend.”

“You know there’s no way to hide from him,” Remus said, looking confused, “Where, my dear snake, do you plan on taking us?”

“The last place they’d expect us to go,” Deceit said before disappearing into a yellow cloud of smoke, Remus going with him just as the door slammed open.

Rage cried out in anger, throwing a knife at the cloud of smoke.

____________________________________________

Roman walked through his kingdom (aka his room) in the imagination. Sure he had a room of his own...in a castle, but he also had an entire kingdom in the imagination that he oversaw, all from his own creation...and some from Remus, when they were younger.

Roman sighed to himself, messing with his sash when his thoughts fell on his brother again. It had become more frequent since he reappeared.

His thoughts were torn from his brother when he felt...something in the north of the imagination. It was easy for him to feel what was his creation and how they were doing...and what definitely wasn’t his creation.

Roman disappeared and then reappeared in the north kingdom, this one covered in snow in the woods. He was now wearing a heavy coat along with gloves, a hat, and heavier boots, not wanting to catch something from the cold.

His eyes widened at the sight of blood in the snow and quickly followed the trail.

“Hello?” he called, his hand on his sword, “I believe you’re in the wrong...place…” he trailed off slowly when he saw his brother, supporting Deceit.

“Help,” his brother breathed out, his hand on Deceit’s stomach.

___________________________________________

“Lay him on the couch,” Roman said quickly, having his hand and causing the fireplace in the cabin to light up.

Remus nodded, oddly quiet, as he helped Deceit lie down. He kept his hand pressed against his stomach, looking over to his twin for help, “I-I don’t…” he trailed off helplessly.

“Why aren’t you healing?” Roman asked, walking over quickly and kneeling down, “There shouldn’t be anything powerful enough to leave you actually injured. You need to heal-”

“There’s one powerful enough,” Deceit breathed out, “And we need a place to hide. Your room seemed like the biggest place and the last he’d expect.”

Roman swallowed, “The other sides won’t like this…” he trailed off.

Deceit grit his teeth, “And I totally give a damn,” he spat, “Patch me up or leave.”

Roman stared at him for another moment before nodding, “Okay, first thing we need to worry about is the blood loss...how long have you been bleeding?”

“Oh, I’ve definitely been counting the minutes,” Deceit said, taking a shaky breath, “Ten, at the very least...but my perception of time isn’t the best right now.”

“Where’s the weapon?” Roman asked.

Remus pulled the bloody knife off of his belt.

“We had the same brain until we were twelve, how did you not know to not remove the weapon?” Roman demanded, snatching it from him and putting it aside.

Best to leave Remus without weapons.

“I panicked!” Remus protested.

“Keep pressing on the wound,” Roman told him, ignoring his protests as he conjured a pair of scissors and cut Deceit’s shirt around where Remus’ hands were. He took a shaky breath at the sight of all the blood, “Okay, I’m going to need to remove the cloth. As soon as it’s gone, I need you to continue to put pressure on the wound no matter how much blood there is.”

“Do I seem like the type to mind blood?” Remus raised an eyebrow.

“I know you,” Roman snapped, “Craziness aside, he’s your...friend or something. You care.”

Remus grit his teeth before turning back to Deceit, “Move the cloth now, I’m getting bored.”

Roman quickly removed the cloth and made sure he was pressing down again before conjuring it away then reconjuring bandages. He held his hand over Remus’ hands and closed his eyes.

“What are you doing?” Remus snapped, “Now is not the time for daydream mode.”

Deceit closed his eyes tightly, breathing a little quicker.

“Checking for internal injuries, but it looks like it’s clear,” Roman said quietly, “Either you’re really lucky or the person who did this knows what they were doing.”

“Trust me, he does,” Remus growled, still pressing, “I don’t know a lot about this, but I know Dee is going into shock right now.”

Roman cursed under his breath and waved his hands and the stitches appeared, causing Deceit to gasp in pain. He then started to bandage the wound the best he could, “Sorry for the rush, but I have the ability to conjure anything here and I don’t have a lot of time. It was best to do it that way, despite the pain.”

“Thank you,” Deceit breathed out, gritting his teeth.

“No problem,” Roman gave him a soft smile before pressing his hand to his forehead, causing the other side’s eyes to drift close.

The moment Deceit’s eyes closed, Roman was thrown to the ground. He quickly kicked the knife out of the way, causing it to skid across the floor, knowing his brother would try to reach to it.

“What did you do to him?!” Remus yelled, holding him by the front of his shirt.

“He’s resting for now,” Roman said quickly, his hands up in surrender, “I’ve done nothing to hurt him. He is fine and my abilities took care of anything I may have forgotten,” he explained, trying to keep his voice even, “He needs to rest, Remus, and you need to watch over him and tell me what the hell is going on.”

Remus grit his teeth, “The dark sides are...let’s say, disrupted recently. I’m sure it has something to do with our dear host,” he said as he stood up, offering a hand to the light creative side, “Deceit usually does a good job at keeping the...darker sides contained, but there’s been a breach in security and we need to hide out somewhere. Dee thought it would be a good idea for us to hide here until this blows over or until you guys can talk to Thomas.”

Roman stared at him suspiciously before taking his brother’s hand, allowing him to help him up, “No one can get into my room without knowing the way in.”

“I told Dee the way to get in,” Remus gave him a one-armed shrug, releasing his hand once he was up, “You can’t tell anyone we’re here,” he said seriously.

“I won’t,” Roman nodded, “I’ll cloak you until you give me the word,” he said, staring at him with the same amount of suspicion in his eyes, “I haven’t seen you this serious in a long time.”

“Well, it’s not everyday your only friend gets stabbed,” Remus swallowed, “He was totally Dobb-ied, brother. Rage threw the knife right as he teleported.”

“Rage?” Roman asked.

“Rage,” Remus nodded, “He’s the strongest of all of us...I’ve never met him. From what I’ve heard, Dee and Virgil contained him long before we split.”

Roman glanced away awkwardly at the mention of their split, shaking his head quickly not to relive the memories, “So Verge knows something about this?”

“Yeah, but don’t tell him,” Remus said, shaking his head, “The less people who know about this the better.”

Roman looked a little conflicted, but nodded, “I’ll cloak the cabin; anyone who walks near this will just see an empty spot in the forest.”

“Thank you,” Remus said sincerely before looking him in the eyes, “Cloak Virgil too...keep an eye on him and protect him. Please.”

Roman just stared at him.

“He was my family before he was yours,” Remus said, “After I lost my own, he and Dee were all I had. I can’t let them get hurt.”

Roman nodded, not saying anything. He felt himself being pulled slightly, “It’s time for dinner, Logan is calling. I’ll come back tonight and check on you both. There is a bed in the other room, if you want to rest, and food in the fridge. Give him some pain medication when he wakes, there’s some in the cabinet in the bathroom.”

“Yes, mom,” Remus said, his sarcastic tone bleeding back in.

Roman rolled his eyes before heading out of the cabin. He kneeled down to the wolf on the porch, a common animal in this forest, “Keep an eye on the place, Copper, I’ll be back soon. Remus might think he’s in charge while I’m gone but it’s you,” he said, scratching under his chin before heading back to his room to go to dinner.

Next Chapter: We

[a-method-in-it]

So, let me offer you my perspective as someone who is pretty involved in labor activism and therefore has seen how to exert power and achieve change without either voting or violence.

Top line information: You need to vote.

If you don't want to read the rest of this long-ass response, I don't blame you. You can just go with that takeaway. Don't believe the people who tell you there's other ways to achieve change and therefore you can afford to give up on electoral politics. Fucking vote.

Longer perspective:

There are ways that you can achieve change without voting or violence, and unions are a great example of this. In my workplace, we obviously don't get a vote on who the people are making decisions for our employer; we vote for our union leaders, but not for our managers. And we also aren't allowed to hit people (obviously). So how do you get anything done?

Well, there are a lot of ways. The most powerful, of course, are work stoppages: Whether it's a full-on strike or a shorter work stoppage, like everyone leaving an hour early for the day, it cuts into the company's bottom line.

There are also all sorts of other ways to disrupt the normal functioning of the workplace (ex: a work to rule day, a deliberate slowdown, or even something as small as coordinated breaks that leave the workplace empty). There are also ways to make management uncomfortable on a personal level (ex: signs or buttons, petitions/open letters, or marching on the boss). And there are ways to shame an employer (ex: talking to the media or posting on social media about their behavior).

And all of this? Takes a TON of organization

I cannot even properly convey to you the amount of work it takes to get everyone to even do something as lowkey as sign a petition. If you want to get 75% participation on a petition (because you need a supermajority to make it an actual show of force), you need not only multiple mass emails but one-on-one contact with everyone who doesn't sign by the soft deadline. Because there are people who just forget or who don't check email or who are nervous and need someone to tell them their legal rights.

If you want people to do a work stoppage? Any work stoppage? That takes so much more work. That takes months and months and months of slow escalation, doing more and more aggressive actions, tracking participation to make sure you have a supermajority still comfortable and participating as you ramp up, before you are ready even to think about something like a strike authorization vote.

It takes whole teams of people doing regular one-on-one outreach, building relationships, developing trust, addressing people's concerns openly and honestly. It takes transparency from leaders and a willingness to address concerns respectfully and in depth. It takes planning and coordination and strategy and so many meetings.

Every time I see people posting stuff like "We should just all not go into work on the Monday after the Dobbs decision" or "There should be a general strike in October this year" I just roll my eyes. None of these people have any idea how to build to something like that. The years it would take. The infrastructure it would require. The support networks that would have to be built up slowly, carefully, patiently.

What's more: None of those people are doing that work.

And this is my ultimate gripe with people who tell you to ignore electoral politics. They aren't doing any of the things you'd need to do in order to achieve change without electoral politics.

Where are the efforts to bring in existing groups -- unions, nonprofits, community groups, progressive churches, advocacy organizations, etc -- under some common umbrella to coordinate?

Where is the robust training program for people who want to learn how to do this kind of activism?

Where are the outreach networks operating on a 10-to-1 ratio that both disseminate information to participants and funnel information, questions, and concerns back to leadership?

Where is the roadmap for how we will build to a strike or some other action?

Where are the check-in forms and questionaires?

Where is the strike fund? Where is the bail fund?

And even if we're being super cynical about whether this can be done without violence: Where are the guns?

I'm someone who believes that electoral politics are woefully inadequate. But also: They are often the easiest way for massive numbers of people to engage in politics, and mobilizing on that front is not without merit. At worst, it is a form of harm reduction, which is still *checks notes* not a bad thing.

But also yeah, electoral politics is probably not going to save us. So please go join an activist network or found an activist network or unionize your workplace or start a politically minded sewing circle in your church or whatever.

You can't get results without getting organized. It's not enough for everyone to just agree a thing ought to happen. If it were, electoral politics would actually be all we needed.

So please start getting organized.

Since I'm seeing anti-voting posts on my dash again, and Tumblr is even *recommending* them to me, let's be clear about this--

Voting is one of the most basic tools for participating in American government and policy. It is not perfect, but it is there.

The people who say that change is possible without voting, that protecting minority interests is possible without voting, rarely lay out a course for how those things could be accomplished.

Sometimes, they make vague promises that "activism" and "pushing for change" is what is needed instead of voting. This makes no sense. Engaging with elected officials is an inherent part of activism. Voting is a way of engaging with elected officials. Voting is activism.

No, some say. Not that kind of activism.

Okay, then what kind of activism?

Historically, the only way to accomplish change without voting is through physical force, i.e. warfare.

That's right. Warfare. Like the Civil War, or I guess what we will soon be calling Civil War I. There are, of course, other names for this besides warfare. Rebellion, revolution, extrajudicial killings. They all involve violence, they all involve killing people, and they all involve killing bystanders. They all also involve massive deaths on your side as well as the other.

But no! you say. What about Gandhi? Well, Gandhi was one actor in an anti-colonial movement that also involved violence and physical force. People died--more Indians than British.

Are deaths as part of a revolution or war worth it? That is a separate discussion to be had. I'm not commenting on that here.

I merely want to highlight for anyone who has not read between the lines that change, without voting, is very unlikely to occur without widescale violence. If you are promoting anti-voting rhetoric, then by default, you need to be okay with this possibility.

If you are not okay with that possibility, then you need to rethink what you are doing.

[orbemnews]

Fox Settled a Lawsuit Over Its Lies. However It Insisted on One Uncommon Situation. On Oct. 12, 2020, Fox Information agreed to pay thousands and thousands of {dollars} to the household of a murdered Democratic Nationwide Committee workers member, implicitly acknowledging what saner minds knew way back: that the community had repeatedly hyped a false declare that the younger workers member, Seth Wealthy, was concerned in leaking D.N.C. emails throughout the 2016 presidential marketing campaign. (Russian intelligence officers, the truth is, had hacked and leaked the emails.) Fox’s choice to settle with the Wealthy household got here simply earlier than its marquee hosts, Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity, had been set to be questioned below oath within the case, a doubtlessly embarrassing second. And Fox paid a lot that the community didn’t should apologize for the Could 2017 story on FoxNews.com. However there was one curious provision that Fox insisted on: The settlement needed to be stored secret for a month — till after the Nov. 3 election. The exhausted plaintiffs agreed. Why did Fox care about conserving the Wealthy settlement secret for the ultimate month of the Trump re-election marketing campaign? Why was it necessary to the corporate, which calls itself a information group, that one of many largest lies of the Trump period stay unresolved for that interval? Was Fox afraid that admitting it was flawed would incite the president’s wrath? Did community executives concern backlash from their more and more radicalized viewers, which has been gravitating to different conservative shops? Fox Information and its lawyer, Joe Terry, declined to reply that query after I requested final week. And two individuals near the case, who shared particulars of the settlement with me, had been puzzled by that provision, too. The bizarre association underscores how deeply entwined Fox has grow to be within the Trump camp’s disinformation efforts and the harmful paranoia they set off, culminating within the deadly assault on the Capitol 11 days in the past. The community parroted lies from Trump and his extra sinister allies for years, in the end amplifying the president’s monumental deceptions in regards to the election’s final result, additional radicalizing lots of Mr. Trump’s supporters. The person arrested after rampaging by the Capitol with zip-tie handcuffs had proudly posted to Fb {a photograph} together with his shotgun and Fox Enterprise on a large display screen within the background. The lady fatally shot as she pushed her method contained in the Home chamber had engaged Fox contributors dozens of instances on Twitter, NPR reported. Excessive profile Fox voices, with occasional exceptions, not solely fed the baseless perception that the election had been stolen, however they helped body Jan. 6 as a decisive day of reckoning, when their viewers’s goals of overturning the election may very well be realized. And the community’s function in fueling pro-Trump extremism is nothing new: Fox has lengthy been the favourite channel of pro-Trump militants. The person who mailed pipe bombs to CNN in 2018 watched Fox Information “religiously,” in line with his attorneys’ sentencing memorandum, and believed Mr. Hannity’s declare that Democrats had been “encouraging mob violence” in opposition to individuals like him. And but, as we within the media reckon with our function within the current disaster, Fox usually will get ignored of the story. You may see why. Canine bites man is rarely information. Fox’s vitriol and distortions are merely considered as a part of the panorama now. The cable channel has been a Republican propaganda outlet for many years, and below President Trump’s thumb for years. So whereas the mainstream media likes to beat itself up — it’s a method, typically, of inflating our personal significance — we now have largely sought much less apparent angles on this winter’s self-examination. The Washington Put up’s Margaret Sullivan concluded final week that the mainstream press is “flawed and caught for too lengthy in outdated conventions,” however “has managed to do its job.” MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan mentioned the media had “failed” by normalizing Trump. I took my flip final week, writing about how a person I labored with at BuzzFeed performed a task within the rebellion. One considerate reader, a former engineer at Corning, wrote to me to say she’d been reckoning with an analogous sense of complicity. The engineer was on the crew that developed the skinny, brilliant glass that made doable the ever-present flat display screen televisions that rewired politics and our minds. She’s now asking herself whether or not “this glass made it occur.” Once I shared the engineer’s electronic mail with some others on the Instances, one, Virginia Hughes, a Science editor and longtime colleague, responded: “Everybody needs guilty themselves besides the individuals who truly deserve blame.” And so let me take a break from beating up well-intentioned journalists and even the social media platforms that greedily threw open Pandora’s field for revenue. There’s just one multibillion-dollar media company that intentionally and aggressively propagated these untruths. That’s the Fox Company, and its chairman, Rupert Murdoch; his feckless son Lachlan, who’s nominally C.E.O.; and the chief authorized officer Viet Dinh, a sort of regent who largely runs the corporate day-to-day. These are the individuals in the end chargeable for serving to to make sure that one explicit and pernicious lie a few 27-year-old man’s loss of life circulated for years. The elder Mr. Murdoch has lengthy led Fox, to the extent anybody truly leads it, by a sort of malign negligence, and letting that lie persist appears simply his closing, lavish present to Mr. Trump. The corporate paid handsomely for it, in line with Michael Isikoff of Yahoo Information, who first reported on the settlement and has coated the case extensively. The Murdoch group didn’t originate the lie, however it embraced it, and it served an apparent political goal: deflecting suspicions of Russian involvement in serving to the Trump marketing campaign. That’s why the story was so interesting to Fox hosts like Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, who stored hyping it for days after it collapsed below the faintest scrutiny. There has by no means been a shred of credible proof that Seth Wealthy had contact with WikiLeaks, and a sequence of bipartisan investigations discovered that the D.N.C. had been breached by Russian hackers. The story of Fox’s influence on the fracturing of American society and the notion of reality is just too massive to seize in a single column. However the story of its influence on one household is singular and devastating. Seth Wealthy’s brother, Aaron, mirrored on it Friday from his dwelling in Denver, the place he’s a software program engineer. Seth was his little brother, seven years youthful and two inches shorter, however extra comfortable with individuals, extra in style, higher at soccer in highschool. Seth Wealthy was murdered within the early morning of Sunday, July 10, 2016, on a sidewalk within the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Aaron was nonetheless wrestling with the shock, reeling from the worst week of his life, when a pal advised him that one thing was occurring on Reddit. A information story had talked about that Seth was a workers member on the Democratic Nationwide Committee. Whereas among the high feedback had been merely condolences, the decrease a part of the web page was filled with unfounded hypothesis that the younger D.N.C. worker — not the Russians — had been WikiLeaks’ supply of the hacked emails. Julian Assange of WikiLeaks inspired the hypothesis, however it remained low-level chatter about complicated theories for about 10 months. That’s when Fox claimed that an nameless federal investigator had linked Seth Wealthy to the leak. The story took off. It was like “throwing gasoline on a small fireplace,” Mr. Wealthy’s brother recalled in a phone interview from his dwelling in Denver. “Fox blew it out of everybody’s little echo chamber and put it into the mainstream.” The story collapsed instantly, and in spectacular vogue. The previous Washington, D.C., police detective whom Fox used as its on-the-record supply, Rod Wheeler, repudiated his personal quotes claiming ties between Mr. Wealthy and WikiLeaks and a cover-up, and mentioned in a deposition this fall that the Fox Information article had been “prewritten earlier than I even received concerned.” “It fell aside inside most of the people inside 24 hours,’’ Aaron Wealthy recalled, but “Hannity pushed it for an additional week.” Lastly, Aaron Wealthy mentioned, he despatched Mr. Hannity and his producer an electronic mail, and the barrage stopped, however he mentioned he by no means obtained an apology from the Fox host. “He by no means received again to me to say, sorry for ruining your loved ones’s life and pushing one thing there’s no foundation to,” he mentioned. “Apparently, ‘sorry’ is a tough five-letter phrase for him.” A Fox Information spokeswoman, Irena Briganti, declined to touch upon Mr. Wealthy’s request for an apology. Fox additionally pulled the story down every week after it was printed, with an opaque assertion that “the article was not initially subjected to the excessive diploma of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting.” The injury had been performed. The story remains to be in huge circulation on the suitable, to the purpose the place Mr. Wealthy was reluctant to share {a photograph} of himself and his brother for this story with The New York Instances. Each time he has performed that, he mentioned, the picture — of the brothers at Aaron’s wedding ceremony, as an illustration — has been reused and tainted by conspiracy theorists. Aaron Wealthy, who together with his brother grew up in Nebraska, mentioned he hadn’t thought a lot about who past Fox’s expertise was chargeable for the lies about his brother. Once I requested him about Rupert Murdoch, he wasn’t positive who he was — “I’m actually unhealthy at trivia issues.” That’s the genius of the Murdochs’ administration of the place: They gather the money whereas evading accountability and letting their hosts work primarily for Mr. Trump. Mr. Wealthy isn’t occasion to the settlement together with his dad and mom, and he declined to debate its particulars. His dad and mom mentioned in a courtroom submitting that the barrage of conspiracy theories had broken their psychological well being and value his mom, Mary, her means to work and to socialize. However he mentioned he merely doesn’t perceive why Fox couldn’t merely apologize for its damaging lie — not in Could of 2017, not when it reached the settlement in October, and never when it lastly made the settlement public after the election and wished his household “some measure of peace.” It jogs my memory of a widely known political determine now leaving the stage, one who has been strikingly allergic to apologizing, expressing any empathy or partaking in any soul looking out about his function in mobilizing the ugliest of American impulses. “I used to be glad they stopped doing it,” Seth Wealthy’s brother mentioned, a bit hopelessly. “However they by no means admitted they lit the fireplace.” Supply hyperlink #condition #Fox #insisted #lawsuit #Lies #Settled #unusual

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY A father and son go hunting in the mountains. Before they can begin hunting, which the son does not want to do anyway, they are killed by flying jellyfish-like creatures, which penetrate their skin with needle-tipped tentacles.

Some time later, four teenagers, Tom, Greg, Beth and Sandy, hike in the same area, ignoring the warnings of local truck stop owner Joe Taylor (Jack Palance). A group of Cub Scouts is also in the area; their leader (Larry Storch) is also killed by the alien creatures, while his troop runs into an unidentified humanoid and flee.

The teenagers set up camp at a lake, but after a few hours, Tom and Beth disappear. Sandy and Greg go looking for them and discover their bodies in an abandoned shack. They drive away in their van, while being attacked by one of the jellyfish which tries to get through the car’s windshield. After they get rid of it, they arrive at the truck stop. Greg tries to get help from the locals, but they do not believe him, except for Fred ‘Sarge’ Dobbs (Martin Landau), who is a mentally ill veteran. Meanwhile, Sandy encounters the humanoid and flees into the woods, where Joe Taylor finds and returns her to Greg.

While they discuss the situation, the sheriff arrives, but Sarge shoots him and begins to become more paranoid. Greg and Sandy leave with Taylor, who reveals he has been attacked by the humanoid before and secretly keeps the flying jellyfish as trophies. They search for the shack and once there, Taylor goes inside to only find the bodies of Tom, Beth and the cub scout leader. They discuss waiting for the creature when Taylor is attacked by another “jellyfish”. The young people run once again, leaving him behind as ordered. They stop a police car and get into the back seat, but find Sarge driving. He abducts them, believing them to be aliens. Greg plays along, telling the deranged man that an invasion force is on the way, thus distracting him enough to toss him aside, run away with Sandy and jump from a bridge.

They make it to a house where they find new clothing and try to relax. In the night, Sandy wakes up and goes looking for Greg, only to discover that he has been killed by the alien, who is still in the room. She flees to the basement and the creature is about to get her when Taylor arrives and saves her. On the way to the shack, he tells her about the creature: it is a tall extraterrestrial (Kevin Peter Hall) who hunts humans for sport to keep as trophies, using the living creatures as living weapons against its prey.

They wait at the shack to ambush the hunter with dynamite when Sarge shows up, almost spoiling their plan. He and Taylor fight, and Sandy is about to hit Sarge from behind when the alien arrives and kills Sarge. Taylor then shoots the creature, with little to no effect. Realizing the last chance of success, he lures it to the shack, which is then blown up by Sandy. She alone survives the horrible night.

DEVELOPMENT It was Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977) co-producer Mike McFarland who came up with the idea for Without Warning (originally titled Alien Encounter, and also released as It Came… Without Warning), Clark’s 1980 sci-fi/horror effort. In a theme later picked up by Predator, Without Warning’s bubbleheaded alien comes to Earth on what amounts to a hunting expedition. After the script spent years floating around Hollywood, Clark reworked it and helped get it into production.

“McFarland hired two teams of writers to flesh out his idea, and besides myself I had another writer, Curtis Burch, come in to help revise the script when I took over,” Clark recalls; neither he nor Burch, who served as an associate producer and the film’s editor, wound up taking credit for their rewrites. “Originally, the alien hunted with a bow and arrow. I wanted it to be a little more unusual than a weapon we could have here on Earth, so I came up with the flesh eating creatures that the alien flips like a Frisbee at its victims.”

BEHIND THE SCENES/ PRODUCTION Shot in California during December. Without Warning was filmed almost exclusively at night, which Clark feels “adds tremendously to a film’s atmosphere,” but also caused its share of problems. “At night it would get down to the low 30s. That’s cold for Southern California. The entire crew wore ski masks, and with the dark and the masks, I couldn’t tell one crew member from another. My cinematographer was Dean Cundey and let’s see, this was my seventh picture. When I wanted to talk to Dean Cundey, I would have to go up to each of them and say, ‘Dean? Are you Dean?’”

“This picture was made for $150,000, including $75,000 for Palance and Landau,” he reveals. “That left me with 75 grand to shoot the picture, edit, do the post production and everything else. So when I agreed to do it under those circumstances, I realized I had to make it in three weeks.

BEHIND THE SCENES/INTERVIEWS Besides offering the obligatory don’t go-near-the-woods warning, the forceful appearances of Palance and Landau serve notice that Without Warning isn’t just going to be a movie about kids in peril. Throughout, there’s a running tension between the young and old characters, and the film ends up being at least as much about the craggy old dudes as the naive, attractive youths. This young-vs.-old dynamic is brought home in a long and impressive scene fairly early in the movie, when two of the kids stumble into a country bar in their retreat from the alien’s flying weapons, finding not only Landau and Palance inside, but also such cinema vets as Sue Ane Langdon, Neville (Eaten Alive) Brand and Old Hollywood star Ralph (Food of the Gods) Meeker in his final role.

“I had used Jack Palance in a previous picture, Angels’ Brigade (1979) and I’d used Ralph Meeker before and worked with Neville on, I guess, two pictures previous to this,” recalls Clark. “I always like collaborating with professional people like them whenever I have a chance. The more experienced an actor is, the less you have to direct him, and I’m able to work quicker because they know what I’m trying to do. My experience with performers of that caliber is that they’re eager to help the director, and very, very good to work with.”

Brand had a not-unfounded reputation as a boozer and brawler, but according to Clark, by the time the two shared a set, Brand’s problems had ameliorated. “He was an absolute sweetheart to deal with,” Clark recalls. “You know, he was the second most decorated hero, behind Audie Murphy, of WWII. He’d had some really tough times, and he’d talk about the fact that he’d had problems drinking and what have you. But when I worked with him for the first time, in 1977, he was completely sober. In fact, in the scene in the bar in Without Warning, he said, ‘Greydon, I’ll do anything you want, but you know I can’t drink.’ And I said, ‘Neville, I never have alcohol on the set. This beer is apple juice with a little bit of spritz water in it to make it foam.’

“So he was wonderful. He was a terrific guy, and always on top of his game. Again, the experienced actors know that they have a job to do. They’ve done it many, many times, and they come prepared, and it’s easier for everybody on the set.”

Landau returns the compliment. “Greydon Clark knew right where we were going with that story before we ever started shooting,” the actor says. “Now, Jack and I might have taken things off in some unexpected directions, what with our tendency to ham it up, but we always had that anchorage that we could rely on.”

Landau and Palance, the two principal veterans in Without Warning’s cast, were hardly nursing-home geezers. Palance was barely past 60, and Landau had yet to turn 50. But careers age in Hollywood with unnatural speed, and at the time the picture was made, both found themselves down a few rungs from the place they had once stood on fame’s endless ladder.

“Yeah, I was one of those washed-up has-beens who found himself mired in a mess of low-budget horror movies and foreign-market exploitations for a long while there,” Palance told us, five years before his 1996 death. “Me and Martin Landau and Cameron Mitchell and Neville Brand and Ralph Meeker, and good old Larry Storch, in the case of Without Warning. But I loved the experience. Maybe not so much at the time, grateful though I was just to keep on working, but certainly in the bigger perspective of having a showy, aggressive role that somebody might notice and appreciate.

“The only direction for us from Without Warning was straight up!” he added with a chuckle. “But us old mavericks, Landau and me and the boys, knew the job was dangerous when we took it-acting, I mean, trying to get away with being movie stars in a land where talent is a disposable commodity—and a hot temper, like I used to have in the early days, was pure damned career suicide.”

Clark has similar praise for Landau whose Dobbs is ultimately revealed to be a shell-shocked wacko who believes the alien has somehow taken over the kids’ bodies, à la Invasion of the Body Snatchers—and the actor returns it. “Greydon Clark is a godsend,” says Landau. “He believed in me—not just in me, I mean, but in a lot of us aging near-burnouts who’d had our day in the fickle major leagues and he offered roles that were neither demeaning, like I’d seen happen to Lon Chaney Jr. with some of those low-budget guys, nor otherwise false. Just working actor stuff, meaty bits of business that allowed us to slice the ham as thick as we wanted. In fact, Francis Coppola told me that he had sought me out for Tucker [1988] in light of that over-the-top stuff I had done for Greydon Clark. It served notice that I still had the chops.”

“I’d like to tip my hat to Marty Landau,” Clark says. “We were on a very, very short schedule, so some days we had to work really long hours. When you’re at a location you only have for a single day, a 12-hour shoot is a short one. We had some 16-, 18-, even 20-hour days.

“This was the first film I’d done with him, and that night, when we were finishing with him, I had to say, ‘Marty, you’re scheduled to come back in about six hours. It’s relatively short, and I can have you out in a couple of hours, but because of scheduling problems, I need you in first thing. You know that I’m supposed to give you a 12-hour turnaround, according to the Screen Actors Guild, but I don’t have the budget to pay you the penalty that’s required by the guild.’ And Marty said, “No problem, Greydon. I’ll just come in and sign in at the regular time.’ ”

Clark pauses. “This is a guy who’d been around. I believe he told me his first film was North by Northwest (1959), Hitchcock’s film, and of course he’d done two or three television series. Again, I’ve been so lucky in my career that all the ‘name’ actors I’ve directed have been just remarkable, and very cooperative and helpful. I know Neville Brand and Palance had a reputation for being difficult, but I found just the opposite to be true. The picture I did with Jack before Without Warning, Angel’s Brigade, had a lot of very, very young people in it, inexperienced people, and he would work with them and rehearse with them, and showed a great deal of patience.”

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  SPECIAL EFFECTS

Seven-foot actor Kevin Peter Hall, who made a career of performing in monster suits, tallied his second film appearance as the barely glimpsed human-hunter. “McFarland had already contacted Rick Baker about creating the alien, and Rick had somehow found Kevin,” the director explains. Baker’s involvement ended when Clark took over the production, with Baker protégé and future Oscar-winner Greg Cannom ultimately responsible for the creature and its gruesome handiwork.

“As a producer/director, you’re responsible for everything, really, and I always like to blame somebody else if it doesn’t work and take the credit if it does,” he says with another laugh. “So I don’t want to use the word ‘created,’ but I came up with the idea for the little Frisbee creatures, in the scripting stage. The original concept was that the alien had come here and was hunting with a bow and arrow. That didn’t do it for me, so I was kicking around ideas of what I could do. I wanted to have a live creature that it hunted with, almost like sending dogs out, except that it would be a flying thing that he threw. So I started sketching one day what they might look like, and then I brought in my effects people, and we created this little guy with teeth, and hair around it, and tentacles and so forth, and I believe it works pretty well.”

RELEASE/DISTRIBUTION Selling the film to a distributor seemed easy at first, but quickly became complicated. “I made a U.S. distribution deal with American International Pictures (AIP) and within a few weeks of finalizing the deal, Filmways purchased AIP and announced they were not going to distribute any more of those AIP exploitation pictures,” Clark said. A potentially lucrative sale to cable-TV and to CBS, which premiered Without Warning on its Late Movie, depended on the film’s theatrical exposure. “I had to threaten them with a lawsuit to get Without Warning distributed,” Clark said. “They gave it a minimal release across the United States and the picture, much to their surprise, was well-received and did substantial box-office.” In some territories, the film was released as It Came Without Warning. Clark sees it differently. “Without Warning was released around the world in the spring of 1980 and received positive critical response and strong box-office,” he says.

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CAST/CREW Without Warning (1980) Directed by Greydon Clark Produced by Greydon Clark Tarah Nutter as Sandy Christopher S. Nelson as Greg Jack Palance as Joe Taylor Martin Landau as Fred ‘Sarge’ Dobbs Neville Brand as Leo Ralph Meeker as Dave Cameron Mitchell as Hunter Darby Hinton as Randy David Caruso as Tom Lynn Thell as Beth Sue Ane Langdon as Aggie Larry Storch as Cub Scout Leader Kevin Peter Hall as The Alien

Cinematography Dean Cundey

Makeup Department Greg Cannom … special makeup Alistair Mitchell … makeup artist

Music by Dan Wyman

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Fangoria#150 Fangoria#271

Without Warning (1980) Retrospective SUMMARY A father and son go hunting in the mountains. Before they can begin hunting, which the son does not want to do anyway, they are killed by flying jellyfish-like creatures, which penetrate their skin with needle-tipped tentacles.

[stilljumpingback]

(via Black Sails Episode 308 - XXVI)

WELL-FORMED THOUGHTS

Here’s a question for you:  At this point in the series, does Flint think of VANE as his primary partner more than Silver?  I joked about Flint wanting his city-sacking buddy in my review of 305, but in this episode we see that he’s invited Vane into his private home.  This is a level of intimacy not afforded to Silver, though that’s arguably because there was never the need or opportunity.  I was also struck by Flint’s insistence on going after a captured Vane by himself and his conflicted decision to let Billy rescue him.

I don’t know, I just got a real “unlikely pairs” vibe from Flint and Vane discussing domesticity and comfort, and it made me think of their partnership as more significant than I previously assumed.  Maybe it’s not fair to compare Vane and Silver…but it’s kind of fun to!  If forced to choose between the two of them, which do you think Flint would choose as partner at this point in the series?

FRAGMENTED THOUGHTS

Vane makes a casually sexist comment about how men shouldn’t desire domesticity, and Flint doesn’t have time for that shit.

Flint:  You have no instinct towards earning for yourself a life more comfortable? Vane:  I don’t.  And had I that instinct, I would resist it with every inch of will I could muster.  For that is the single most dangerous weapon they possess, the one they tempt.  ‘Give us your submission, and we will give you the comfort you need.’  No, I can think of no measure of comfort worth that price.

Thank you, Vane, for summarizing my conflicted feelings about civilization so well!  YES, England offers comfort (stability, etc), but at the cost of submission.

It’s fitting that a former slave would be the one able to see through the lie.  Huh, but it’s interesting that another former slave, Max, very much buys into civilization’s offer of comfort.  Wow, I continue to love how complex this show is!

Anne:  We miss that caravan, you lose what?  Money?  Your war?  What I got to lose ain’t something so easy to recover from.

Whereas previously people partnered because they shared the same immediate goal, the pirates of Nassau have evolved.  Flint says they’re all attacking the caravan for their own reasons, but that they must stay united.  It’s not necessarily unselfish, but it is a new level of trust.

“There’s a whole world out there that every so often rewards ambition.  Mark my words:  today the crumbs, tomorrow the loaf.  Perhaps someday the whole damn boulangerie.”

Jack uttering these words in a prison to a rat is the perfect blend of regret and hope.

Silver and Madi almost flirting about Silver’s nautical ignorance is lovely.  I love Madi for asking him about his descent into darkness (stomping in Dufresne’s head) to check in on his mental state.  It’s says a lot about his level of intimacy with both that he tells Madi it’s an experience he doesn’t want to repeat, but he told Flint that it felt good.

That scene with Max and the Eleanor surrogate is the most sexually explicit scene we’ve gotten in a good long while.  It’s interesting that this is an Eleanor surrogate and not an Anne surrogate – is that supposed to mean something?

Max realizes that Anne must have given up the cache for a reason, and she tells Eleanor and everyone else.  This is, to me, her real betrayal.

I am so torn between being mad at Max and Eleanor for trying to frustrate Anne/Flint’s plan and being mad at all the dumb men who don’t listen to them.

When Dobbs attacks a Maroon sailor, Silver has three options:  1) kill the Maroon, 2) let the Maroon attack Dobbs, or 3) let Madi decide.  My appreciation of him rises significantly for choosing option 3.  When an oppressed group is oppressed, the privileged people have to step back and let them explain what they want to be done.

Jack’s complete confidence in Anne’s love is *Chef’s finger kiss*

I just can’t be bothered to care about Hornigold even the tiniest amount.

We now know Jack’s backstory, which explains both his proclivity for fancy clothes and his preoccupation with establishing his name.

“‘You people, incapable of accepting the world as it is,’ says the man to whom the world handed everything.  If no Anne, if no rescue, if this is defeat for me, then know this.  You and I were neck and neck in this race right till the end, but Jesus, did I make up a lot of ground to catch you.”

That is, hands down, my favorite Jack speech of ALL TIME.

And Rogers’ response about “all you know about me is what I want you to know” is okay, whatever.  You’re scary.  But that does not at all address Jack’s accusation of privilege, you ninny.

That whole carriage attack!!  Excellent action!  Excellent tension!  Flint and Billy leave with the cache, assured that the rest will be right behind.  Vane, Jack, and Anne get a lovely triumvirate moment.  Jack and Anne leave, assured that Vane will be right behind.  Vane and Woodes Rogers fight and it is SO desperate and painful.  AUGH.

This deserves it’s own bullet point:  Anne’s look of horror when she thinks Jack is dead, and that A+ smooch when she realizes he’s alive.  Jack’s post-kiss “ow” is icing on the cake.

“You can just imagine what that was like, asking him to accept what was done to him at the hands of men who look so very much like those he watched murder his parents when he was a boy.”

I love that this show never lets us forget the risk the Maroons are taking by partnering with white pirates.  But Madi refuses to fight the small battles that will compromise the war despite her fear and anger.  She is the best leader we’ve had on this show.

Silver is clearly impressed by Madi, as he ought to be.  But he doesn’t trust his men to obey him with the same level of devotion and loyalty that hers have, so Dobbs is sneak-attacked belowdecks.  In the pirate world, fear is still more powerful than love.

Is the Flint/Vane ship tagline “I can’t let someone else hang you” because it should be.

Flint is pretty obviously comparable to Madi here, making the hard decision to give up the small battle (rescuing Vane) in order to keep the war going.  I love them both so much.

I like that Woodes Rogers knows Eleanor’s worth, but man, it’s annoying that he is still questioning whether or not he can trust her.  Although kudos to his concern:  “I’m asking you to tell me the truth about what you’re capable of right now.”  He’s worried about her power and how she’ll wield it, which earns him a few points.

Eleanor admits she first partnered with Rogers because she thought that would get her close enough to Vane to exact revenge for the murder of his father.  I like that she hasn’t forgotten.  So many horrible things happen in this show that it’s easy to think, “But that was last season.”  Let’s be real, though.  Bad father or not, Eleanor’s “boyfriend” straight up murdered her last family member because she rescued a girl who would have made him money.  I think that’s earned her a season’s vendetta.

[paulbenedictblog]

%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

News Fox News hosts go mum on the covid-19 drug they spent weeks promoting - The Washington Post

News

At the height of Fox Records’s coverage of a would-be treatment for the unconventional coronavirus, the community’s clinical correspondent, Marc Siegel, equipped a noteworthy testimonial at some level of Tucker Carlson’s picture.

Siegel talked about his 96-year-venerable father, plagued by signs of the virus and fearing he would die, made a full recovery on story of of the drug, hydroxychloroquine, and a direction of antibiotics. “He bought up the following day and became comely,” Siegel suggested an astonished Carlson.

Siegel’s miraculous-recovery legend became segment of a reach-campaign for hydroxychloroquine by Fox Records and its sister community, Fox Enterprise.

Echoing President Trump’s description of the drug as a “sport changer,” Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and “Fox & Chums” hosts spoke of its doable advantages in dozens of segments from mid-March to mid-April. They additionally criticized those in the media and the clinical institution who raised considerations, turning a debate among researchers and scientists into one more entrance in the custom wars.

But previously week or so, Trump has all nonetheless stopped speaking about hydroxychloroquine. And so possess Fox Records’s hosts.

The relative silence follows disappointing, even alarming, new research about hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for covid-19, the disease ended in by the virus. A observe launched this week on 368 male Veterans Affairs sufferers with the disease confirmed that the loss of life rate among those given the drug, both alongside with one more drug and on my own, became bigger than for those that were now no longer. Researchers additionally talked about its spend made no difference in the need for ventilators.

Be pleased other rapid-appealing research about covid-19 treatments, the observe by VA and academic researchers hasn’t passed via the bizarre ponder about-overview direction of and isn’t the roughly formal scientific trial, like those underway in completely different locations, that can offer more definitive solutions. On the replacement hand, it became in accordance to at least one of the largest collections of information about the drug’s spend.

One more observe, launched by French researchers final week, equipped more discouraging clues. It came across no statistically main difference in the loss of life rates among 181 covid-19 sufferers who had taken hydroxychloroquine interior 48 hours of being admitted to a hospital and people that hadn’t. The observe additionally highlighted unhealthy aspect effects; eight developed arrhythmia, or strange coronary heart rhythms, and had to discontinuance taking it.

On Tuesday, an knowledgeable panel convened by the National Institute of Hypersensitivity and Infectious Diseases steered physicians in opposition to prescribing hydroxychloroquine with the antibiotic azithromycin on story of of the aptitude aspect effects. The panel talked about there wasn’t ample evidence yet to counsel for or in opposition to hydroxychloroquine as a treatment. The agency is headed by Trump’s top infectious disease adviser, Anthony S. Fauci, who has over and over tempered Trump’s upbeat commentary about the drug.

All of which raises a ask about the Fox Records hosts’ advocacy of hydroxychloroquine: Were they pushing a potentially ineffective, even unhealthy, treatment in the absence of sound science and well in excess of their expertise or info?

A Fox spokeswoman declined to comment loyal now on any top-time commentary nonetheless talked about contemporary segments that “picture the community’s consideration to all sides of this legend from a news and thought standpoint.”

Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham didn’t level out the new research on their programs on Tuesday. The subject became replaced by rhetoric about China’s culpability for the pandemic and advocacy for reopening the country, again apparently as segment of a feedback loop with Trump’s have feedback.

Ingraham, who met with Trump in early April to scurry him to push the drug, hadn’t talked about hydroxychloroquine since April 15. But on Wednesday, Ingraham devoted the starting up of her picture to tackle the observe of VA sufferers, calling it a “shockingly irresponsible” ponder about and “most likely even agenda-pushed.” She additionally criticized the media coverage around the observe.

She talked about the observe lacked methodological rigor and that the drug works handiest on sufferers who aren’t yet severely sick, no longer like in the ponder about.

“What’s using this? It’s a blind obsession to disprove the effectiveness of a drug that’s being inclined loyal sort now tonight in clinical centers across The United States,” Ingraham talked about. “Is that this a angry impulse to minimize set any possess the lend a hand of the therapy? Is it triggered by pure hatred of Trump, Fox or me? I don’t know. Is it motivated by a secret desire to defend up The United States hopeless?”

“The truth of the subject is, we don’t know,” he suggested co-host Brian Kilmeade, alongside with, “There’s quite a lot of variables. Brian, I gotta inform at this level there's so critical info coming from so many locations, we're greater off observing for the randomized trials Dr. Fauci has been inquiring for. In any other case, we defend reacting support and forth to reports that picture opposite results, and quite a lot of it may maybe maybe well maybe have to enact with have to you win the medication.”

Oz, a cardiac surgeon with restricted expertise in pharmacology or virology, had beforehand talked about on Fox Records that Fauci — the govt.’s leading infectious-disease knowledgeable — main to “appreciate” the certain results of reports performed to this level, even when they were miniature.

Given the new info, Fox Records has an obligation to give equal time to the doubts and doable dangers of hydroxychloroquine, talked about William Haseltine, the well-known biologist and biotech entrepreneur.

“That’s honest public responsibility,” talked about Haseltine, who's chairman and president of Win entry to Effectively being Global, a nonprofit organization that seeks to manufacture bigger entry to health care. “They've an obligation to converse their [viewers] that they made a mistake. It’s now no longer a crime to manufacture a mistake, nonetheless they enact have to moral it.”

In contrast to the community’s accepted commentators, Fox’s news programs and web living had been more cautious and possess reported on the new research.

The community on Tuesday performed clips from a White Home press briefing via which Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Meals and Drug Administration, entreated observing for randomized scientific trials “to truly fabricate a definitive determination around safety and efficacy.”

Trump sounded a little much less hydroxychloroquine at some level of the identical briefing. He talked about he became ignorant of the VA observe. He additionally talked about, “Clearly, there had been some phenomenal reports and most likely this one is now no longer a well informed document. But we’ll be taking a see at it.”

The legend has been as a lot as this level.

Learn more:

[theconservativebrief]

Before he opened fire in a mass shooting that killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday, witnesses say the gunman shouted, “All Jews must die.”

But the particular moment he (allegedly) chose for his massacre, and the place he chose to do it, show that what radicalized the assailant to the point of violence was a specific manifestation of anti-Semitism: blaming Jews in America for bringing in an invasion of nonwhite immigrants who would slaughter the white race.

His last post on the pro-hate-speech social-media site Gab, posted minutes before the synagogue massacre, spells it out — with a reference to HIAS, the Jewish nonprofit that resettles refugees in the United States:

HIAS likes to bring invaders that kill our people.

I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.

Screw your optics, I’m going in.

The obsession that appears to have tipped the gunman over the edge was a conspiracy theory insinuating that the migrant caravan currently making its way through southern Mexico, and which President Donald Trump and conservative media have treated as an existential threat to the United States, is a Jewish plot.

His response was an attack that was both anti-Semitic — an attack on Jews and Jewish values — and characteristic of Trump-era xenophobia, which is generally expressed toward Muslims and Latinos.

Some Trump officials have all but admitted that the president has seized on the caravan to motivate Republicans to turn out in the midterms. Whether or not that’s true, it’s clear that the administration had no ability (and little apparent interest) to control just how that panic took shape. (Adam Serwer of the Atlantic has a must-read essay on what specific responsibility Trump and those in his administration may bear for the delusions that pushed the assailant to murder Jews.)

Trump’s version of the caravan panic didn’t blame the Jews, but it’s not surprising, given longstanding anti-Semitic tropes, that the gunman ended up doing just that.

Over the past few weeks, President Trump and the conservative media ecosystem have elevated a caravan of a few thousand Central Americans into the chief existential threat facing America in the runup to the 2018 midterm elections.

The caravan is weeks away from reaching the US-Mexico border, and when it gets there, the people in it are likely to turn themselves in legally at an official border crossing to claim asylum. In other words, it’s not even remotely the national security threat Trump has painted it as being.

But the caravan panic isn’t just about the idea of a lawless mob swarming the border. Its proponents have characterized it as a deliberate, coordinated effort to undermine America in general — and Trump in particular.

Trump officials have endorsed the idea, put forth by the Honduran government, that the caravan was a political stunt by the Honduran opposition to undermine the current Honduran president. Vice President Mike Pence has gone so far as to say that it’s underwritten by Venezuela — something for which there’s no evidence.

But other conservatives, understandably, are looking closer to home. Some have said that the caravan is a deliberate effort to sway the November elections. (They hook the caravan panic to longstanding myths, endorsed by Trump, about unauthorized immigrants swaying elections by voting for Democrats.) Others have blamed Democratic megadonor George Soros — who just happens to be Jewish.

Straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Just moments ago, Lou Dobbs guest Chris Farrell (head of Judicial Watch) says Caravan is being funded/directed by the “Soros-occupied State Department”. pic.twitter.com/QBSong7uk1

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 27, 2018

Trump himself hasn’t endorsed this view explicitly. But he has encouraged the idea that domestic opponents are to blame for the caravan. When Trump says that Democrats should be blamed, he’s ostensibly saying that the Democratic minority in Congress doesn’t support efforts by immigration hawks to eliminate extra protections for children, families, and asylum-seekers coming to the US — but it’s easy to see how people who believe the caravan is literally a plot by Democrats to import people to vote illegally might not understand the nuance.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) popularized a video of a man handing money to women waiting in a group of people to speculate that George Soros was paying caravan members to migrate to the US. Trump tweeted the video without Gaetz’s remarks or any other context as to who was doing the paying — but he certainly spread the idea that caravan members were getting paid.

Anti-Semites on the internet took the theory one step further. They portrayed the caravan as a deliberate effort by Jews writ large to invade the United States, using an image — purportedly from footage of the caravan — in which a Star of David is seen on a truck into which people are climbing:

Bowers posted conspiracy theories about this image a ton. He became convinced Jewish-backed groups were launching an “invasion” through the caravan.

The image and conspiracy were extremely prevalent on Gab, 4chan, conspiracy YouTube and parts of Twitter.https://t.co/IfelguHuXR pic.twitter.com/M971tLhyev

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) October 27, 2018

The Fox News segment from which this image spread didn’t call attention to the Star of David, just like Trump didn’t explicitly say that Democrats were paying people to come to the US. Conservative media turned Trump’s conspiratorial subtext into text; anti-Semitic social media subsequently turned that subtext into text.

The Pittsburgh gunman wasn’t targeting George Soros. He was targeting HIAS, the century-old organization that is currently one of nine federally contracted nonprofits responsible for providing housing, job placement, and cultural orientation to refugees arriving in the United States.

Before his final Gab post, he facetiously thanked HIAS for a post in which they listed groups that had supported a refugee benefit — including a congregation that met at Tree of Life. “We appreciate the list of friends you have provided,” he wrote.

Refugees have become a particularly suspect category of immigrants over the past few years, thanks to the Syrian refugee crisis. (The crisis in Syria has promoted the idea of masses of Muslim people trying to enter traditionally-white countries, and confused the categories of “people fleeing violence” and “terrorist infiltrator.”)

President Trump called Syrian refugees the biggest Trojan horse in history; his administration has slashed refugee resettlement, specifically by making it harder for refugees to come from unstable or war-torn countries in the Middle East and Africa.

The fact that refugees are by definition legal immigrants — and that the US government funds organizations like HIAS to support them for their first few months in the US — doesn’t stop conservatives from being wary.

In a recent study published in the American Sociological Review (and discussed on Vox podcast The Weeds), researchers found that conservatives, but not liberals, were much more likely to assume that an immigrant was here illegally if the immigrant was Syrian than if she belonged to other nationalities. (Syrians in the US are extremely unlikely to be unauthorized, but they’re pretty likely to be refugees.)

Furthermore, people who believed a Syrian immigrant was here illegally were more likely to say they would call police on her than people who identified a Mexican immigrant as here illegally.

Most of the organizations that do refugee resettlement are religious organizations. But HIAS’s history is different because it started as an organization to help Jewish immigrants and refugees — and is now pushing for the US to accept more victims of the current refugee crisis, who are almost never Jews and very often Muslims.

This stance puts HIAS at odds with the Trump administration when it comes to what it means to be supportive of world Jewry. To Trump and fellow Republicans, the best way to be pro-Jew is often to be pro-Israel — and the Trump administration’s close relationship with Israel’s government is built in part on a shared attack on “radical Islam.”

To HIAS and many other American Jews, however, being pro-Jew means standing up to oppression in general and distrust of foreigners in particular. It means working to resettle Syrians, even if the president is ranting about terrorist infiltration.

But anti-Semites look at the alliance between HIAS and refugees — between Jews and Muslims — and see evidence of an alliance to overpower the white race, with the faceless brown masses storming the gates and the crafty Jews on the inside opening the latch.

It would be irresponsible to pretend that the gunman marched into the Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday simply because he hated Jews. It would be equally irresponsible to ignore that Jews were the people upon whom he opened fire. Not everyone who hates Jews hates Central Americans or vice versa — but it’s not at all surprising that a person accused of killing nearly a dozen people in his hate, hated both.

Original Source -> The conspiracy theory that led to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, explained

via The Conservative Brief

[thrashermaxey]

On This Day Last Year I Received a Stem-Cell Transplant

An update, one year later, on the health and recovery of the founder Darryl "Dobber" Dobbs from MDS/AML.

  On August 30, 2017, one year ago today, I received stem cells from a world donor who was found to be a perfect match. Finding a perfect match was extremely fortunate as many people have to settle for half-matches or worse, which decreases the likelihood of successful grafting in your body. In May, 2017, I had been diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), which is a cancer of the bone marrow, and after a month of “lighter” chemo treatments it had expedited to AML (leukemia) and I had to be admitted to hospital.

Today is a day for celebration and a day for reflection. I celebrate because the hard part is over and I have come out of it happy and healthy. I reflect because I honestly haven’t done so. As soon as I left the hospital I put it behind me. I’d think about or discuss it as “that time I was in the hospital” but my mind would gloss over and ignore what went on in there and all the things I went through. Like a locked compartment in my brain. To think about it just causes me to tear up so the easy solution is to not think about it.

Last year I told everyone that when (not if) I made it to one year post-transplant, I would disclose the survival rate that my hematology doctor gave me. Before I could sign off on receiving the stem cell transplant, I had to acknowledge that I was given the three-year survival rate of a man in my age group with my symptoms that were given the same stem cell transplant. So here I am and here it is. It was 40%. I was given that number and then had papers put in front of me that I needed to sign before they would make preparations. Forty percent three-year survival rate after this transplant. And I signed it because non-treatment would mean certain death, likely within a year. It was too late to seriously consider homeopathic or other solutions (I had already jumped on those, as I’m a big believer in trying everything if it can’t make things worse).

So then I was admitted to hospital in July for nearly four weeks. To start off – I had a Hickman line put in my chest. This is a tube that leads to a main ventricle going to my heart. This way, instead of getting 100 needles per day, they can hook it up to me directly. I actually got my stem cells through this tube. The tube remained hanging from my chest until New Year’s Eve.

Most of the chemo happened in the first week. But it was a rough chemo – the kind you hear about with the vomiting, etc. But I was one of the stronger patients who could actually get back to eating after a few days. I was a picky eater with what I could (or wanted to) hold down, but I have family who supported me and ran around the city getting whatever I asked for. On August 19 I was released from hospital for five days, but on the 19th I had been given a lumbar puncture for spinal fluid and it resulted in a massive neck ache for three of those five days, kind of sucking the fun out of my brief home time. But I did what I could to spend time with my kids because the next phase meant that I couldn’t see them.

I was back in the hospital on August 24, after a “last dinner” with the wife and kids at a restaurant. Then it was a different chemo per day on the 25th – 28th. After that, on the 29th, was full radiation. This killed everything in my marrow both good and cancerous, and left me with zero immunity. And on August 30 I was reborn. With no immunity to fight these “invading” stem cells, the hope was that it would be accepted into my body and that within two weeks it would become new marrow and start creating healthy blood (picture of the donated stem cells on the right). This was helped along by different doses of different chemos, just making sure that none of my body’s defenses would fight or hinder the process. I actually maintained a decent appetite, one of the better cases for sure. Although around Day 10 I had sores in my mouth that everyone gets from one of the chemos or the radiation (I forget which) that forced me to eat pretty much through a straw. But this only lasted four days (most people this can last a week to 10 days so again – lucky).

I had a little exercise bike and was also encouraged to walk around the isolated ward (with a mask). I was able to go once around by Day 10, and then each day I would try to add to that – twice, three times, etc. My entire time in the hospital the nurses (one and all – amazing amazing amazing people and unbelievably patient and helpful and how can they stay so cheerful? Wow) took my vitals every two hours (every hour the first while after the transplant), even overnight. I remember over two dozen blood transfusions. I remember working on the Fantasy Guide here and there on the laptop when I was able, but had relied on my team for updates and helping out with the many customer issues that cropped up – specifically Mario Prata, Mike Clifford, Ian Gooding, Neil Parker, Mike Hiridjee, Cam Robinson and Riasat Al Jamil. I remember having to drag the damn IV pole around on my walks, or into the bathroom. I remember binge-watching Justified, and all the Mission Impossible movies, and watching Suits and Ozark when my wife visited. And Family Guy. I remember the KFC Zinger, Dominos pizza, and McDonalds nuggets – cravings of things during times when the stomach was delicate, and these greasy items actually worked!

On September 19 I was released from hospital. Possibly in record time, but certainly close to it. But on September 18 the isolation order was lifted and you know what I did? I had my wife bring the kids. At the time I had just found out that I was probably going to be released the next day and would see the kids anyway, but I hadn’t seen them in a few weeks and I wasn’t going to wait another day. We just hung out in the visitor’s room and played a couple of games, ate ice cream and then we all gathered to work on a big puzzle as a family. I remember on the rooftop patio raising my six-year-old Mackenzie to see over the rail down below – and I remember not having the strength to similarly lift my eight-year-old Avery to do the same (a reminder of how weak I was).

The next day I did indeed get released. I would never forget the hugs the kids gave me when they got off the bus that afternoon. I remember trying so hard to get home in time to do that and just making it by mere minutes.

From that point I would go to Princess Margaret for twice weekly checkups. My immunity was like that of a newborn so I needed to sterilize a lot and avoid crowds. Getting sick could mean breaking the graft and losing my donor’s cells, which would mean either starting all over again or dying. I was able to sit at the computer for as long as an hour. I tried working out right away, starting with 20 sit-ups and 10 minutes on the treadmill. I remember my stomach muscles killing me the next day so after learning that lesson, I started with five sit-ups and five minutes on the treadmill! And then I would add one sit-up each day and one minute on the treadmill each week.

But then I had a setback. The Epstein-Barr Virus is a virus that everyone has and easily fights it off. But I got it in November and couldn’t fight it. I was exhausted all day, couldn’t do any work and would miss workouts after I had built them up to 40 sit-ups and 15 minutes on the treadmill. So I was given a form of chemo every Friday for three weeks until it was gone. That was it for the setbacks. In mid-December I was back working out, had regained 10 pounds (I had lost 25) but still had no hair. By February I was down to every two weeks for hospital checks, and by March I was doing full workouts and at monthly hospital checks (where I am at today). And my hair returned (“hair” being a relative term for this bald guy – haha).

Today I can go to the movies. I still need to avoid crowds when I can and getting sick is still not a good idea, of course. But I’m out of the red zone and into more of a yellow zone. I feel good and have no restrictions in terms of my abilities. Today I savor more in life, show more patience, and hug my children even more than before.

I can also, if the donor is willing, discover the name and location of the person who saved my life. And I will be thanking that person will all my heart.

I also want to thank Mario, Mike, Mike, Ian and Riasat for making things so much easier for me. I don’t think the readers even noticed a difference in terms of the websites and fantasy guide, and many didn’t even know I was sick – that’s how seamless they made everything.

A big thank you to my wife, who was steadfast by my side, and took care of everything at the house with the kids at the same time. And who made me meals to whatever I could handle, or bought them for me if that was what it took. My parents and sisters. My sister-in-law who worked near PMH and so she came to see me every day and also ran around buying whatever craving I had. (I remember she once took me up to the rooftop patio to eat food that I requested and she bought. I remember fainting there and she had to round up help and get me into a wheelchair and wheel me back to my room for another transfusion. Good times.)

And finally, I want to thank my friends and my readers, often one and the same. Your positive messages on social media and on my website had an unbelievable impact, often making me tear up with hope. Throughout my hospital stay I would go back and read them, drawing inspiration from the ones who have gone through similar or know somebody who has. And instead of sales suffering because I wasn’t there to market my Guide or oversee everything – sales actually increased as readers rushed to support me. You kept visiting the site even though at the time I wasn’t writing or contributing to it. So financially, my family was still taken care of and not having that worry was tremendous. And that was thanks to your effort as a group.

Here’s to continued positive news over the next year and beyond. Feeling lucky and blessed.

DD

    from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-home/the-dobotomy/on-this-day-last-year-i-received-a-stem-cell-transplant/

[anthonycharlestabone]

Having trouble viewing? View in Browser Thursday, October 12, 2017 TOP OF THE MORNING It's Thursday, Oct. 12, 2017. Welcome to Fox News First, your first stop for today's news. To get your early morning news emailed directly to your inbox, click here. Here's your Fox News First 5 - the first five things you need to know today: The Harvey Weinstein sex scandal exposes a Tinseltown wall of silence, sends Hollywood into chaos NBC is under fire for declining to televise a Weinstein exposé  'Hannity' Exclusive: President Trump says the NFL should have suspended quarterback Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem The Obama presidential library will not keep hard copies of the former president's documents onsite, baffling historians Conservative students at UC Berkeley face threats of violence for their views Let's take a closer look at these stories ...    THE LEAD STORY: Hollywood is in chaos, and all because of one man: Harvey Weinstein. Multiple allegations of rape, sexual harassment and trading sex for movie roles have forced one of the most powerful men in show business out of his company and begging for help and forgiveness ... But Weinstein’s dramatic fall has implications that extend much further than his business and personal relationships and so far show no signs of abating. From the women he allegedly abused, to the associates who allegedly knew about his behavior all along but stayed silent, to the A-list actors and actresses who depend on him for their career-making roles, many of the biggest Tinseltown titans are wondering what their lives — and show business itself —  will look like in a post-Weinstein town. Report: FBI opening investigation on Weinstein Report: Weinstein Co. knew about payoffs since 2015 Everything you need to know about the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal Roundup of Hollywood's reaction to the Weinstein sex allegations Weinstein leaves LA for rehab in Arizona NBC BIAS EXPOSED? Critics are wondering why NBC passed on running a Harvey Weinstein sex harassment exposé that was ultimately published by the New Yorker. The answer may lie in NBC's Hollywood screenwriter news president, Noah Oppenheim... Until a few days ago, Weinstein was one of the most powerful and influential players in Hollywood. Oppenheim is still an active screenwriter who wrote Jackie, a 2016 film starring Natalie Portman, and has been attached to multiple other projects. He has told industry colleagues that he’s likely to one day return to Hollywood full time. Former MSNBC host Ronan Farrow, who reportedly worked on his Weinstein story for a year, had offered the scoop to NBC News months ago. However, the Oppenheim-run news organization refused to air the story, saying it did not meet their journalistic standards. Farrow then took his 7,718-word bombshell to the New Yorker. From Fox News Opinion: Weinstein, what on Earth does the NRA have to do with your mistreatment of women? Hillary Clinton says she'll give Harvey Weinstein donations to charity  Howard Kurtz: Clinton, Obama finally appalled by Weinstein 'HANNITY' EXCLUSIVE WITH TRUMP: President Donald Trump suggested that the NFL could have avoided the controversy over national anthem protests if it had suspended quarterback Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" ... "The NFL should have suspended him for one game and he would have never done it again," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity during an interview in Harrisburg, Pa. Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem last season as part of a protest against police brutality while a member of the San Francisco 49ers. Kaepernick has since become a free agent and has been unable to get a job with another NFL team. Meanwhile, to the chagrin of NFL executives and fans who don't like to mix sports and politics, the sight of players kneeling during the national anthem has become the norm. Judge Andrew Napolitano: Is taking a knee protected speech? OBAMA’S PAPERLESS LIBRARY: The Obama Foundation is taking an unconventional approach to the presidential center and library planned in Chicago. It is opting to host a digital archives of President Barack Obama's records, but will not keep his hard-copy manuscripts and letters and other documents onsite ... That means no thumbing through the ex-president's correspondence on the health care fight or first drafts of his State of the Union speeches. The decision has historians scratching their heads. The Chicago Tribune reports that while Obama's physical records are currently in a private facility in Illinois, they will likely be shipped to locations in and around Washington, D.C.  CONSERVATIVES UNWELCOME AT UC BERKELEY?: The birthplace of the free speech movement in the 1960s apparently isn't very friendly to today's conservative students ... Following a slew of high-profile, violent protests against conservative speakers on campus, students say that life at UC Berkeley has become more difficult for anyone whose politics lean toward the right.  Flashback: $600,000 security price tag as conservative Ben Shapiro speaks at UC Berkeley Cal Thomas: Students at Seattle Law School denied a well-rounded education by the free speech police.   ABOUT LAST NIGHT 'FAKE' RUSSIA COLLUSION: "It wasn't Russia, it was a bad candidate. It was a candidate that didn't go to Wisconsin and Michigan like they should have." – President Trump, on "Hannity," addressing Democrats' insistence, almost one year later, that Russia somehow titled the 2016 presidential election in his favor. WATCH HYPOCRISY, HOLLYWOOD-STYLE: "That's progressive values in Hollywood in a nutshell. Oh, I'm totally committed for more roles for fierce, strong, independent women, and I'll consider giving one to you if you come up to my room and sexually service me." – Author and radio host Mark Steyn, on "Tucker Carlson Tonight," skewering Hollywood liberal elites for claiming to stand up for empowering women, while ignoring Harvey Weinstein's alleged sexual harassment for years. WATCH   MINDING YOUR BUSINESS House Ways and Means Committee Chair Kevin Brady continues push for state and local tax elimination. GE stock hits 4-year low as analysts debate possibility of dividend cut. NAFTA benefits Canada more than the U.S., agriculture secretary says. J.P. Morgan's loan arm may see hurricane impact.   NEW IN FOX NEWS OPINION Repeal the Jones Act to speed Puerto Rico recovery. Michelle Obama's condescending and disgracefully out of touch advice to job-seeking women. The conservative case to keep the Iran deal. Shouldn't pro-life students have the same free speech rights as millionaire athletes?    HOLLYWOOD SQUARED Kid Rock vs. Eminem: Will music stars compete for Senate seat? Alec Baldwin has drink-throwing meltdown on NYC street. OBJECTified preview: Tyler Perry opens up on his faith. Andy Cohen to host CNN's New Year's Eve with Anderson Cooper, replacing Kathy Griffin.   DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS? Star of 'racist' Dove ad speaks out. Zuckerberg apologizes for VR tour of hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. Volcanoes kill about 540 people a year, scientists say. 'Surprise period pants' is the worst Halloween costume idea.   STAY TUNED On Fox News: Fox & Friends, 6 a.m. ET: Country singer and reality TV star Jessie James Decker discusses her recent announcement of her pregnancy, the latest season of her A&E show and more. Hannity, 9 p.m. ET:  Jesus Campos, the security guard shot by Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock before the Oct. 1 massacre, speaks out in an exclusive interview.   On Fox Business: Mornings with Maria, 6 a.m. ET: Linda McMahon, administrator of the Small Business Administration, takes on the implications of tax reform for small businesses. Varney & Co., 9 a.m. ET: UFC President Dana White discusses efforts to help Las Vegas massacre victims and more. Cavuto: Coast to Coast, Noon ET: Sen. Rand Paul talks the Iran nuke deal and tax reform. The Intelligence Report, 2 p.m. ET: Counselor to President Trump Kellyanne Conway takes on the hot topics facing the White House today Countdown to the Closing Bell, 3 p.m. ET: Brendan Boyle, House Budget Committee, discusses the latest in the quest for a budget plan.  Risk & Reward, 5 p.m. ET: Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney sizes up the implications of Trump decertifying the Iran deal. Making Money with Charles Payne, 6 p.m. ET: Rep. Mark Walker discusses disaster relief funding challenges.  Lou Dobbs Tonight, 7 p.m. ET: Rep. Ron DeSantis, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, takes on the latest threat from North Korea   On Fox News Radio: The Brian Kilmeade Show, 9 a.m. ET to 12 noon ET: Columnist Marc Thiessen dissects President Trump's anticipated decertification of the Iran nuke deal; Kevin Hassett, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, takes us inside Trump's tax reform plan; columnist Andrew McCarthy discusses attempts by the Justice Department and FBI to hide info about the Trump dossier.   #OnThisDay 2000: A suicide bomb attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen kills 17 sailors. 1997: Singer John Denver is killed in a plane crash in Monterey Bay, Calif. 1957: Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" is first published by Random House. 1792:  The first recorded U.S. celebration of Columbus Day is held to mark the tricentennial of Christopher Columbus' landing.   Thank you for joining us on Fox News First! Enjoy your Thursday and we'll see you in your inbox first thing Friday morning. 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